Guild Wars 2

pets:

i think there should be pets with
-give the pet and the ranger invis when press f2
-heal the pet and the ranger when press f2
-remove conditions from ranger and pet when press f2
-use a attack with blast finisher if you press f2
-defend the ranger if you press f2

i also think we should be able to use at least 2 of the pet skills by ourself not only 1
AND the pets need to cast the f2 skills INSTANT, how often i need a wolf fear NOW but my wolf is running around and dont whant to start the fear, gg

utilitys:

shouts: well, sry but i think all of them need to be removed and new ones need to be created

traps: i also think all of them need to become a combo field
spike trap: maybe a blind field or if not the trap should have torment
frost trap: well it should at least deal dmg per second or anything, this trap was and is the “4. trap” nobody use
fire trap: i think this one is the only trap wich is fine atm
viper nest: maybe combo field poison, but the ranger have so much poison on condi builds, im not sure this is a must have
maybe this trap should be the trap with torment?

spirits:
well they are in a not bad place right now.
but FIRST pls finaly fix one bug on all spirits, even the rez spirit.
the spirits rly dont cast there active skills much times.
they just dont start the animations, we lose to much times teamfights just because my rez spirit dont start his animations, or my sun spirit dont start the animation for blind when i whant stomp in a 1vs1…
and remove this 1 second cooldown after i cast my spirits, you called it bugfix, but the bug still exist.
at least, i think the frost spirit need some improve, nobody use it
i think i should chill insteald 10% more dmg each 10 secs

healing skills:
healing as one need a improve, just nobody use it.
maybe add a dodge like the thief heal there.

sigils:
sigils are not in a rly bad place.
but the most sigils actives are not interestig enough to waste the passive of the sigil.

traits:

well there you should rly rly keep an eye on it, and rly offer much time to fix this issues…
theres more then 50% of traits rly useless or rly in the wrong traitline!

just some examples…

the trap traits:
why they are in skirmishing master tier and grandmaster tier?!
i think they should be in wildnes survival adept and master tier
or they should be in marksmanship adept and master tier.
also there need to be at least 3 or 4 traits for trapper ranger

empathic bond:
i think this one should be a wildnes survival master tier.
i also think there should be a new trait in any other traitline for power rangers
which add condi remove to some skills.
or maybe a trait which add condi remove to all survival utility skills.
or a trait which add condi remove to all signets when you use them active.
or a trait which add condi remove on some weapon skills.
something like this to add active condi cleanse on ranger builds.

beastmaster traitline:
there need to be more traits for beastmaster offensive and deffensive players.
maybe something what adds more effects on the f2 skill and such things.
tratis which add more effects on shouts and and

well that was my ideas, im not a game designer so its your job to improve the ranger , gl and pls do it finaly, pls!

at least, thats for all professions, we need a timer to see the cooldown of our passive skills.
i whant to see when empatic bond is rdy, i also whant to see when shared anguish, hide in plain sight or even oakheard salve is rdy again

Nike.2631:

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

Lets take this point by point.

A Resilient Profession. The Ranger is a medium armor, medium hit point profession with poor native condition removal/conversion and with a major portion of its functionality partitioned into the hands of a flawed AI where it can be destroyed independently. They’re maybe not as bad off as Elementalists, but the reality is still they are bad at one of the things the Developers think they’re good at. Yes, Rangers can — though MASSIVE trait investment — cover these flaws in a few highly specialized builds, but as a default position for the profession as a whole this statement is so untrue as to be ludicrous.

Excellence in Skirmishing. If “skirmish” means something along the lines of “mobile conflict from range” …nobody is good at it. The underlying damage co-efficients for ranged attacks are brutally punitive and doubly abusive considering most melee attacks also cleave, while Rangers have to trait for piercing. Ranger’s have modest access to knockbacks, immobilizes, cripples, and swiftness — all completely overshadowed by melee-oriented opponents’ easy access to gap closers and CC removal/immunity. And when the fight does inevitably turn to melee, the Ranger’s ability to reestablish position is limited at best, hampered by poor counters to the CC melee-based professions routinely employ to ensure their attacks land.

Supporting Themselves and Their Allies. This may come as a surprise to anyone other than most people who play the game, but Rangers are not considered an amazing Support class. While Spotter, Frost Spirit, and some shared Fury skills are welcome contributions in the one-dimension world of “More DPS”, Ranger Support tends towards inadequate magnitude, long cooldowns, or effective ranges that directly conflict with their role as skirmishers.

Alongside their Pet. Most of the time our Pets simply are NOT along side us – They’re either throwing themselves into melee like maniacs or standing like statues waiting for death to come to them. And they don’t have to wait long, because the content designers’ first and final solution to creating challenge is splashing the landscape with mega-damage red circles that pets categorically fail to respond to.

The best single target and sustained damage. This is probably true, and yet… So what? Success in nearly all encounters hinges on AoE damage or spikes. “Sustained damage” is the “I have nothing better to offer” form of damage ALL professions deliver when they aren’t doing something USEFUL. Being good at standing there hacking on a billion HP World Boss is not something to be proud of. With this statement the Ranger has been defined as the ‘supreme master of mediocrity’.

Lets Whittle our Opponents! The final piece of the philosophy neatly sums up everything that is WRONG with the Ranger profession – a class that must employ mediocre damage to slowly take tiny cuts out of their opponents, while leveraging mediocre survivability, exerting mediocre positional control, contributing mediocre support skills, and saddled with a less than mediocre class mechanic.

The Real Outcome. Its not that the final result is unplayable. You can still go and indulge in basic abnegation out on the landscape. Its that that Rangers are boring and dull, responding poorly to the slightest difficulty when compared to other professions.

+1

Funny how some of these players posts in the Ranger development. How many of you actually play the class in game? and how many of you are just posting ideas from what you hear in game about the class? Cause I read some of your proposals and concerns, most don’t even make sense. One of the ridiculous posts…

make Ranger pets like Guardian spirit weapons so that they’re invulnerable

………. ok

xev.9476:

Nike.2631:

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

snip

Devs, please read and re-read Nike’s post. It’s towards the bottom of page 8.

From a pvp perspective, personally I find the dps you can squeeze out of bows fine. The issue is that to beat a bow Ranger all you have to do is get in his face, and there is very little that he can do about it. Ranger lacks effective defensive(kiting) mechanics when using bows.

Compare to some other classes-
Thief – SB #3 and #5, P/D #3, plus the myriad of ways to access stealth/teleports.
Warrior – 5s weapon swap into GS, then back to rifle/bow (plus immunities to soft cc).
Mesmer – Staff #2, plus blinks/stealth and clone body blocking.
Ele – Burning retreat plus hard/soft cc on staff, lightning flash.

Does (Bow)Ranger have anything close to what’s listed above? No. Also soft CC is kind of useless for kiting in a meta where you run into a ton of Warriors that are immune to it.

Specific Game Mode
PvE & WvW

Proposal Overview
A better balance around pets needs to be found. In other professions, the profession mechanic is a bonus, even if you don’t plan to spec around it. On the ranger, damage is reduced with the idea that you will spec for the pet and that it will make up for it, it isn’t a bonus but a hindrance. Pets need to become optional, there are many situations in which they are less that ideal, such as shooting from walls in WvW at enemies, or against bosses which can easily kill our pet.

Goal of Proposal
Increase the viability of playing the ranger as an archer, while keeping the ability to choose to spec into pets who are given increased reliability.

Proposal Functionality
1) Find the ranger : pet damage ratio (full glass cannon ranger with highest damage pet) at 0 in beast mastery, and give the damage% the pet would do back to the ranger when it is stowed.
2) Make the pets far more useful for people who spec into beast mastery, while also condensing pet traits in that line. Overall, providing fewer, but far more powerful pet traits, while providing more of a variety of new traits to take the place of the moved pet traits in other lines.
3) Signets affect both the ranger and the pet without being traited. It makes no sense to have it only buff either the pet or the ranger since the pet IS taken into account as part of the ranger’s damage and is thus a part of the ranger itself. Signet traits increase the effectiveness of signets in other ways (possibly an added stat for each one slotted like a warrior or might stacks upon use like a thief, both of which would affect the ranger and the pet).
4) Increase range when shooting from above your target. This occurred in GW1, I see no reason why it doesn’t in GW2. At the very least, if you aren’t willing to do this, give me the same horizontal range when I shoot as if I was on flat ground against someone below me, ignoring the vertical distance difference. This should be changed for all ranged options. Its extremely annoying thinking "I wouldn’t even need to “shoot” a projectile at them, I could just drop it on them, but I am out of range because I am too high above them."

Associated Risks
1) People find that the ranger is now a fun profession to play with more of a purpose than just the pokemon collector, that bow rangers can actually fight back in WvW, and that rangers are useful in dungeons, maybe even taking that 4th warrior’s slot!
2) I’d remake the ranger that I deleted almost a year ago out of frustration and go back to fighting people in WvW with it as I did before you nerfed the damage on short bow (because of that epic “animation” problem) and even its range, in addition to the general quickness nerf, and then moving the 5 pt nerfed quickness trait to a 30 pt beast mastery trait. …Just thinking about all of the things you did to prevent rangers from being able to play like an archer reminds my of why I deleted it! RAGE!

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all,

A few of you mentioned disappointment at the lack of response so far in this thread. Yesterday was an extremely busy day for me to be actively participating in the thread, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to get the thread going.

I’ll be spending most of my day today just going over this thread and summarizing some of the ideas. I’ll try and get some of the guys in here as well to comment on specific feedback!

Please be patient, the thread hasn’t even been up for a full day!

Thanks

See guys! I might not have much faith that Ranger can be helped, but I have faith in Allie!

roamzero.9486:

xev.9476:

Nike.2631:

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

snip

Devs, please read and re-read Nike’s post. It’s towards the bottom of page 8.

From a pvp perspective, personally I find the dps you can squeeze out of bows fine. The issue is that to beat a bow Ranger all you have to do is get in his face, and there is very little that he can do about it. Ranger lacks effective defensive(kiting) mechanics when using bows.

Compare to some other classes-
Thief – SB #3 and #5, P/D #3, plus the myriad of ways to access stealth/teleports.
Warrior – 5s weapon swap into GS, then back to rifle/bow (plus immunities to soft cc).
Mesmer – Staff #2, plus blinks/stealth and clone body blocking.
Ele – Burning retreat plus hard/soft cc on staff, lightning flash.

Does (Bow)Ranger have anything close to what’s listed above? No. Also soft CC is kind of useless for kiting in a meta where you run into a ton of Warriors that are immune to it.

The problem is sustained damage means nothing. The damage a Ranger does is all passive auto attack damage. What matters is burst and aE, and these areas the class has almost nothing to offer. they have such an extreme lack of burst and AE it’s almost as if the class was specifically designed not to offer it, which seems silly at face value.

Yes, critting for 3k at 1500 every second sounds like a lot, but it’s not a threat to anyone because it’s easy to counter and anticipate.

Not going to read all the proposed changes, because some of them are just terrible. I am writing this completely on WvW gameplay as the spvp side of this game is a joke to me.

Specific Game Mode
WvW
———Proposal Overview
Give power to using/not using a pet. Instead of YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PET, be allowed to stow the pet and keep the pet stowed. Because the pets arent that great atm, give the ranger a f2 skill that when you stow your pet, you can hit the f2 skill with a 2-3 minute cooldown that does something along the lines of the war rifle longshot. Essentially giving the ranger who is efficient at long range the thing it needs most,
———-Goal of Proposal
The goal is to make longbow viable in WvW
———-Proposal Functionality
It would fit perfectly, Rangers have the sustained damage and if played right with longbow can thrive in small groups. Allowing it to have a kill shot will incorporate it into the larger scales by being able to pick off the backline
———-Associated Risks
Not many risks i see with this. It would be a 2-3m backstab or rifle longshot. Give the ranger the one thing it absolutely needs to be viable with longbow and have a burst skill that it can incorporate it with its current sustained damage. Also i believe having the burst skill would also allow the ranger to gear a little differently then straight zerker making it more viable across the board.

-Padapwn

@Nike

I mostly agree.
Except Sustained Damage.
I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with sustained damage as a concept, but there is alot wrong with an RPG where ‘Spike AOE’ is the only thing that matters. It’s a problem, and ranger is indeed suffering for it…but I don’t think Ranger is where the fingers should be pointing.

But you’re right Resilience and Skirmishing could totally be pushed farther.
What are your thoughts on how to improve this? I think you did an awesome job of summarizing problems, but let’s get to the good stuff by offering suggestions.

Like, I personally don’t feel encouraged to skirmish.

• I’m not rewarded for trying to play Keep Away in PvE. Because nobody is.
  • Break the melee/ranged damage output dynamic just for Ranger. Sword is now power-based utility, Longbow is damage.
  • Switch LRS’s distance requirement and Rapid Fire’s Vulnerability. I have a reason to fall back for Rapid Fire, and the natural gravitation towards a mob will encourage me closer.
• Not enough means to positionally reset combat in PvP.
  • Like how Thief has Stealth. Give me something that’s my own kind of reset. Every Pet has universal access to Hard Control and nix aggro, I have bar none the farthest leaps above and beyond what I have now, I can always switch places with pet, etc.

/edit: clarity

When initially released I hoped that we would have a skill that camouflages us. Instead of sharpening stone could we get camo? ( Makes more sense in survival) As far as I know the only option for this is a feat.Maybe make 2 versions of it? In combat we get a few seconds while out of combat we can hide indefinitely (Maybe in specific terrain?) PvE/PvP/WvW

Also tracking of specific foe types would make sense. Ogres, animals, humans, charr, sylvari, asura. A feat to select 2 races? Maybe make this a signet passive or active? and so forth. WvW/PvE

Also the reintroduction of preparations would be nice. Like in guild wars 1 only one would be active at a time.

An option to perma-stow pets and get back that damage.

The problem is that a ranger is extremely undefined in the fantasy world. Many different roles to fill. The scout role needs a bit of work :/

Shadowbane.7109:

When initially released I hoped that we would have a skill that camouflages us. Instead of sharpening stone could we get camo? ( Makes more sense in survival) As far as I know the only option for this is a feat.Maybe make 2 versions of it? In combat we get a few seconds while out of combat we can hide indefinitely (Maybe in specific terrain?) PvE/PvP/WvW

Also tracking of specific foe types would make sense. Ogres, animals, humans, charr, sylvari, asura. A feat to select 2 races? Maybe make this a signet passive or active? and so forth. WvW/PvE

Also the reintroduction of preparations would be nice. Like in guild wars 1 only one would be active at a time.

An option to perma-stow pets and get back that damage.

The problem is that a ranger is extremely undefined in the fantasy world. Many different roles to fill. The scout role needs a bit of work :/

I kind of wish that pets were a utility skill and preparations were our class mechanic. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

Shadowbane.7109:

When initially released I hoped that we would have a skill that camouflages us. Instead of sharpening stone could we get camo? ( Makes more sense in survival) As far as I know the only option for this is a feat.Maybe make 2 versions of it? In combat we get a few seconds while out of combat we can hide indefinitely (Maybe in specific terrain?) PvE/PvP/WvW

Good point, Since playin a longbow ranger for awhile now been searching for a way to give the ranger a way to escape without giving it op war run skills. Problem is your far enough away with longbow you can break combat but the closing speed by other classes is incredible.. a Simple utility skill that you can pop to stealth (combat stealth would be a few seconds, and only stealth till you move) would significantly help the ranger class.

I’m going to do my best to make my list of proposals and suggestions fit into a format, though it isn’t going to be the exact format proposed because my suggestions are not singular.I will be breaking down my suggestions between multiple posts, and I will try to keep it as close to 200 words as possible.

Game Mode

PvP based (SPvP, TPvP, WvW)

Design Philosophies That Lack Specific Suggestions

• Make ranger utilities less dependent on 30 point traits in order to achieve viability
• Allow players to build around pet swapping as a mechanic for people and builds that don’t wish to invest into the pet

Goal

Both of these changes are being made in order to increase build versatility in order to make builds less linear in nature by opening up addition trait build options, pet swapping options, and potentially freeing up utility slot usage.

Cont’d

• Allow players to disable pet skills from entering the skill queue (like heroes from Guild Wars 1)

Goal

To increase the players ability to control the pet without adding too many commands, by simply deselecting certain skills so that they don’t get used, which then allows players to customize how they want to play. Also, it allows players with good micromanagement ability to control when a skill enters the skill queue, giving them more control over their pet without dramatically increasing the learning curve beyond being reasonable.

Corpus Christi.2057:

Aveneo.2068:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ranger Design Philosophy: Please keep this in mind when posting feedback.
The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

I just need to ask, why the complete shift in design philosophy and the complete exclusion of the archer aspect all of a sudden?

Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.

Precisely.

No idea what happened to the ranger profession in GW2. It was very promising. I myself have 3 maxed out rangers, which serve me in PvE and PvP. Although I’ve always played a ranger class in MMOs, I feel it has become somewhat misunderstood here. Just like you said, the philosophy has shifted from a nature driven master of bow with a pet companion to something… broken.
Hope this thread will have it fixed in the nearest future.

Indeed, that’s why I’d like to know why Ranger is suddenly designated as ‘resilient skirmisher’ instead of ‘unparalleled archers’.

To me the original philosophy captured the Ranger perfectly; whereas this new philosophy feels like a catch-all that could apply to any class by just changing out 3 words.

Like this:

The Guardian is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from virtues to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their faith, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

*Game mode: PVE/WVW

Goal of Proposal
Ranger weapons rework to fits ANet’s description of Ranger.

Overview
Emphasizing on skirmishing and being a resilient profession.

Proposal Functionality
Would create a clear function for Greatsword and Longbow Ranger weapons.

Risk
Might promote Power Ranger (pvp) into a different level.

Weapons rework:

Longbow – power base weapon. dish out damage in a flash, ability to burst in a few seconds and get out.

1. - make travel speed of arrow faster to avoid being detected by enemy from a distant.
2. - reduce cast time to 2 1/2 seconds like Elementalists frost bow.
3. - same like current. gives swiftness to player as well, modifies skill #5.
4. - same effect like current but deals more damage the closer you are to Ranger.
5. - same like current. reduce cast time to 2 1/4 seconds. increase power ratio to 5. reduce fired arrows to 7.
   Modified #5 while stealthed, Barrage immobalizes foes for 1 second.

Greatsword – power base weapon that specializes on countering.

1. - faster attack animation. each attack now applies vulnerability for 2 seconds.
2. - faster attack animation. Maul is now a blast finisher. remove vulnerability
3. - Swoop now inflicts knockdown on foes. Up recharge.
4. - now dashes to dodge an attack. if you dodge an attack counters next hit is an attack of opportunity.
5. - between animation now dodges attacks. guarateed stun 1s

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Make traps more viable in WvW and more interesting to use in general. Change Trapper’s Defense. Make traps something enemies actually worry about walking into and rangers want to use. Make traps distinct from targeted AoE spam.

Goal of Proposal

1. Rangers need something enemies will fear walking into.
2. WvW requires mobility and survivability (and your pet needs both in spades to hit human enemies). Traps cannot provide either right now. They need at least one.
3. Unlike Symbols, Marks, and Wells… traps only hurt enemies and are not all combo fields. Traps either need more utility or more lethality.
4. There are no healing or elite traps so traiting heavily for traps feels weak, especially in a line that does not improve conditions.
5. There are runes that affect shouts and signets, but not traps.
6. Traps are used less as traps, and more like spammable ranged attacks.
7. WvW often involves strategic pushes and feints and lots of waiting… traps should have a better place here.
8. Traps should be good enough that Commanders ask for them, and bemoan the fact when there is no ranger there to use them.

Proposal Functionality
Trapper’s Defense – Transfer one condition to a foe when a trap is triggered. 10s cooldown. (If the enemy puts a 10s confusion on you, Trap Potency could put a 20s confusion on them).

Like the Longbow that does more damage at range, traps should do more if the ranger plans ahead.

1. Flame Trap – Set a trap that burns foes. . For every 20s it remains on the ground, it gains additional burning (1 additional pulse per 20s, max 3).
2. Spike Trap – Set a trap that bleeds and cripples foes. For every 20s it remains on the ground, it gains immobilize (1s initial immobilize per 20s, max 3s).
3. Viper’s Nest – Set a trap that poisons foes. For every 20s it remains on the ground, it hits one additional target per pulse. (max 3 additional targets)
4. Frost Trap – Set a trap that chills foes. For every 20s it remains on the ground, the frost field increases in duration. (2 extra seconds, max 6s extra)

Encouraging thoughtful pre-placement with suggestions like these would separate trappers who can think and plan from those that just toss AoEs. These are merely examples… other factors like crit-chance, damage done, size… these could all be possibilities as well.

Elite Trap Ideas

1. Hornet’s Nest – Set a trap that torments and weakens foes. 20s duration 60s cooldown
2. Storm Trap – Set a trap that damages, blinds, and weakens foes. Lightning Strikes hit nearby foes. Launches foes trying to cross in or out of the whirling storm (like a gray dust storm graphic). 7s duration – Lightning Field. forty-five second cooldown

Superior Rune of the Trapper
1: +28 Condition Damage
2: +10% Condition Duration
3: +55 Condition Damage
4: You place a Spike Trap while reviving an ally (30s cooldown)
5: +100 Condition Damage
6: Placing a trap grants you Camouflage until you move or attack. (90s cooldown)

Associated Risks
Trapper’s Defense might seem more at home in the tanky WS line, but other trap traits are in Skirmishing so I think it could remain there. It might need to be swapped to Master Tier. I expect adding additional damage potential to traps could upset pvp and pve, but it may not even be enough in WvW to make traps worthwhile on its own. Elite skills and new rune sets might be expensive to acquire and make the only really viable trap builds an elite niche option which would be depressing. Better AoEs may affect dungeons more than anything else. The Storm Trap as described may very well be overpowered in spvp.

jcbroe.4329:

I’m going to do my best to make my list of proposals and suggestions fit into a format, though it isn’t going to be the exact format proposed because my suggestions are not singular.I will be breaking down my suggestions between multiple posts, and I will try to keep it as close to 200 words as possible.

Game Mode

PvP based (SPvP, TPvP, WvW)

Design Philosophies That Lack Specific Suggestions

• Make ranger utilities less dependent on 30 point traits in order to achieve viability
• Allow players to build around pet swapping as a mechanic for people and builds that don’t wish to invest into the pet

Goal

Both of these changes are being made in order to increase build versatility in order to make builds less linear in nature by opening up addition trait build options, pet swapping options, and potentially freeing up utility slot usage.

Cont’d

• Allow players to disable pet skills from entering the skill queue (like heroes from Guild Wars 1)

Goal

To increase the players ability to control the pet without adding too many commands, by simply deselecting certain skills so that they don’t get used, which then allows players to customize how they want to play. Also, it allows players with good micromanagement ability to control when a skill enters the skill queue, giving them more control over their pet without dramatically increasing the learning curve beyond being reasonable.

Next part:

Specific Trait Changes

• Move Nature’s Voice to Master Slot
• Move Evasive Purity to Grandmaster Slot. Change Functionality to: “Dodge rolling removes 1 condition from you and all allies within range. 10 second ICD.”

Goal

These changes reduce shout dependency on 30 points. The duration of the boons on Nature’s Voice may need adjustment to compensate. Evasive Purity is now a decent, general purpose cleanse with team support options, and aptly is placed as a Grandmaster tier to so that builds attempting to build for heavy condition removal will have to do so at a large tradeoff for that specialization.

Cont’d

• Pets now gain Opening Strike on Pet Swap
• Opening Strike now removes 1 boon on a successful attack (with investment up to 25 points)

Goal

These changes make Opening Strike more of a consistent factor in battle, promote the ranger working with the pet, and increase the viability of power builds by allowing them to remove boons that impair their damage output, which is also decent team support as well.

jcbroe.4329:

jcbroe.4329:

I’m going to do my best to make my list of proposals and suggestions fit into a format, though it isn’t going to be the exact format proposed because my suggestions are not singular.I will be breaking down my suggestions between multiple posts, and I will try to keep it as close to 200 words as possible.

Game Mode

PvP based (SPvP, TPvP, WvW)

Design Philosophies That Lack Specific Suggestions

• Make ranger utilities less dependent on 30 point traits in order to achieve viability
• Allow players to build around pet swapping as a mechanic for people and builds that don’t wish to invest into the pet

Goal

Both of these changes are being made in order to increase build versatility in order to make builds less linear in nature by opening up addition trait build options, pet swapping options, and potentially freeing up utility slot usage.

Cont’d

• Allow players to disable pet skills from entering the skill queue (like heroes from Guild Wars 1)

Goal

To increase the players ability to control the pet without adding too many commands, by simply deselecting certain skills so that they don’t get used, which then allows players to customize how they want to play. Also, it allows players with good micromanagement ability to control when a skill enters the skill queue, giving them more control over their pet without dramatically increasing the learning curve beyond being reasonable.

Next part:

Specific Trait Changes

• Move Nature’s Voice to Master Slot
• Move Evasive Purity to Grandmaster Slot. Change Functionality to: “Dodge rolling removes 1 condition from you and all allies within range. 10 second ICD.”

Goal

These changes reduce shout dependency on 30 points. The duration of the boons on Nature’s Voice may need adjustment to compensate. Evasive Purity is now a decent, general purpose cleanse with team support options, and aptly is placed as a Grandmaster tier to so that builds attempting to build for heavy condition removal will have to do so at a large tradeoff for that specialization.

Cont’d

• Pets now gain Opening Strike on Pet Swap
• Opening Strike now removes 1 boon on a successful attack (with investment up to 25 points)

Goal

These changes make Opening Strike more of a consistent factor in battle, promote the ranger working with the pet, and increase the viability of power builds by allowing them to remove boons that impair their damage output, which is also decent team support as well.

Last part:

Cont’d

• Merge Quick Draw with Eagle Eye (remains in Marksmanship)
• Merge Pet’s Prowess and Agility Training. Adjust numbers if necessary, it remains where it is.
• New Skirmishing Trait, Adept Level: Gain Fury, Might, and Swiftness when interrupting a foe
• New Skirmishing Trait, Master level: Transfer up to 3 conditions from yourself to target foe on interrupt. Gain a small amount of health for each condition transferred.

Goal

Merging traits to open up slots for new skills in skirmishing by helping power builds with interrupt traits that synergize with Moment of Clarity, have a risk/reward or skill-shot factor, and make power builds a little more potent and a little less frail.

Last

• Increase Zephyrs Speed to 5 seconds
• Stability Training now grants AoE stability for 2 seconds to all allies in range for any pet, on pet swap
• Rending Attacks now works with all pets. Now applies a stack of 3 bleeds for 5 seconds on every 5th attack
• Intimidation Training keeps it’s current effect, works on all pets, and also provides a short duration AoE fury (like 4 seconds max) to allies within range on pet swap

Goal

Zephyrs Speed is weak for a Grandmaster trait and with the reduction of quickness to 50%, could use a bit more potency for such heavy investment. The other traits are meant to open up pet versatility through traits, while providing different functionalities for different playstyles.

AEFA.9035:

Funny how some of these players posts in the Ranger development. How many of you actually play the class in game? and how many of you are just posting ideas from what you hear in game about the class? Cause I read some of your proposals and concerns, most don’t even make sense. One of the ridiculous posts…

make Ranger pets like Guardian spirit weapons so that they’re invulnerable

………. ok

Play? No. Played? Yes. I bet there are more former rangers and any other profession.

PvE
Some small Trait suggestions

Eagle EyE should also apply to the shortbow.
Piercing Arrows should also increase the chance of physical projectile combo finisher to 40% (or higher).

-Game Mode

World Vs World

-Overview

As a Ranger, the player should feel like they bring more utility/options to support their party. What other class gets to essentially have 2 weapon sets active at the same time? Unfortunately at the moment the opposite is true. Poor survivability in big engagements, a clunky ai/ui and weak overall design of pets mean that Rangers literally offer the least of any class.

In order to improve the Rangers abilities to contribute to any encounter all 3 of these aspects of the profession mechanic need to be overhauled/

-Goal

Increase the utility of the Ranger class and expand/open roles for the class to play

-Functionality

Firstly pets need to be able to actually survive engagements. I propose that pets health and toughness scale with the number of enemy players within a certain range. Pets survival would then scale in the same way that champs and bosses in PVE scale with the number of players around. This way pets will stay alive longer in bigger fights, but still be “mortal” in smaller engagements.

Second the pet interface needs to be changed entirely. You should be able to see any buffs/condis on your pet. Put your pet into the party ui. Simple. Doesn’t add any clutter to the skill bar.

Next the F keys need improved/different functionality. F1 should be attack/return. Push it once to attack, push it again to call your pet back. F2 can remain the same. F3 and F4 would then allow you to command your pet to perform the other 2 skills it has. F5 can be used for pet swap, or not at all. The potential here is that the Ranger can better time his/her skills with the pets skills, or even save pet skills for a time of need.

Lastly pets need an over all redesign. Many others have put forth very specific proposals regarding this, both in this thread and in the past on the Ranger subforum. I’ll keep my comments general.

Overall, each pet “family” should feel somewhat like a class/role. This means that the pet brings abilities that fill that role, as well as natively have stats that support that! In the same way that Dmg pets tend to have higher power or crit chance, support pets should already have some healing power. This increases the Rangers ability to have a Split personality, as devs have mentions.

Felines being so Damage oriented already feel a bit like Thieves.

Drakes like Warriors for their combination of durability and cleave/burst.

Spiders/Devourers are like a Necromancer with their combination of poison and debilitating condis (immob/weakness).

Bears/Moas should play somewhere on the Guardian/Staff Ele spectrum with their combination of group buffs, aoe heals, and condi clear.

Canines bring the CC potential of of an Engi.

Porcine pets bring the vast utility potential of an Engi. Their F2 should work the same way a thieves steal works. Their F2 needs to be streamlined as well to remove redundant forages and take some of the RNG out.

Birds feel like they are somewhere between Mesmer phantasms and Thieves. They don’t feel different enough from Felines.

Pet skills that apply to the pet only, such as Defy Pain, Devourer Retreat, and Chomp need to be removed or redesigned. These skills don’t contribute to your group at all and don’t really improve your pets effectiveness either.

If a pet brings a group heal, that should also be a water field. 2 sec? 3 sec?

And shouldn’t more pets bring blast finishers?

There are many many many pet skills that need to be use able outside of combat, without a target, before an engagement.

-Risks

The largest risk associated with this proposal is the increased skill floor for the class. Having more buttons to push and a wider array of skills on those buttons means more decisions to make. That increases the time it takes to assign meaningful value to different pets in different situations. One play through from lvl 1-80 may not be enough time for a new player to completely grasp how to play the class.

Nike.2631:

-snip-

Sorry, but let me correct you in some areas;

Resilient =/= being able to stand in one spot and facetank every single point of damage coming at you.

Ranger has Medium armor, Medium HP and a metric ton of evades. Timing, insight of enemy attacks, Resilience is simply the ability to hang on even in a very tough time, and rangers certainly have that ability without the shadow of a doubt.

Rangers does indeed have poor condition management, and little can be done with that as is. However we can manage it somehow, at the expense of our own performance.

Ranger’s CC ability is without the shadow of a doubt, much greater then most other professions. We have easy access to immobilize, chill, cripple, knockdown, knockback, stun/daze and fear. Not only can we apply these conditions, but we can do this with surprising ease. CC is one of the few things rangers never have been bad at, yet the circumstances of how we apply this CC could be better under some circumstances.

Single Target sustained damage is indeed without any competition the best. Thieves have much stronger single target burst, warriors too have strong single target burst, but their sustained damage is nowhere near the ranger.

The ranger are indeed in need of a lot of QoL improvements along with several rebalances, and minor fixes. In scandinavian language (or rather danish/norwegian) we got a saying; Mange bekker små blir én stor å.
Translating this you get; Many small streams become one large river.
This is probably the best description of the ranger profession. There is no need for massive overturns, however a large number of small fixes collaborate to create a huge mess which plague the profession.

I’ve created my ranger expecting an archer.

Then you picked the wrong class. The Warrior and Thief are the Archers, the Ranger is a pet class that can use a bow, really more Druid than Archer. Which other class you pick depends on what else you want to do, but either class is great and leveling to 80 in the current environment is fairly easy. Good luck.

As for why people want to play as an archer, anyone who played GW1 knows the answer to that. It is truly a SHOCK to the system to go from being the ranged master to a class that gets mocked for pulling out a bow.

I never played GW1, but from what I hear there are other classes that are even further removed from what they were in that game. Mesmers, is one I’ve heard. “Because GW1” doesn’t seem to be a particularly useful point when talking about GW2 classes.

1) Safe our pets names!!! (we change several pets in each fractal run and they lost their names…)
2) See the buffs and debuff in our pets HP bar

/second.

This means that warriors are not better then ranger’s with the bow because ranger’s have no equal and we are second to none with the bow. According to Anet’s description:

And to a point, it’s true. Rangers do have advantages over the other archer classes, in that they have the highest maximum range, and that they are the only class which can equip both types of bow. This does not, however, mean that they are automatically better in all situations when using a bow, nor that they should be playable as a petless archer, because “With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation,” is also a part of their description.

If you want to be an archer that can rain damage from 1300 distance? A Ranger can do that. If you want an archer that can use both Kudzu and The Lover? A Ranger can do that. But he’ll have a pet both times. Want an Archer that is great at dealing mid-range DPS with a Long Bow and doesn’t have a Pet? That’s a Warrior. Want an Archer that does mid range damage and field control with a Short Bow and doesn’t have a pet? That’s a Thief. The Ranger is no more an Archer than the Thief is a “Daggerer” or the Elementalist is a “Staffer.” The bow is one weapon in the Ranger’s kitten nal, but it is not his only weapon, nor is it exclusively useful to that class. It’s fair to argue that there are ways to buff up the existing bow skills, but they will never be 100% effective without factoring in the pet.

Pets should not and will not be optional. Rangers will not and should not be as effective as other classes at any range without factoring in their pet’s damage. The problem is that currently it can be difficult to get the most out of our pets because they die too easily to concentrated AoEs, and the solution is to fix that problem, not to remove the pet from the equation entirely.

Nike.2631:

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

Lets take this point by point.

A Resilient Profession. The Ranger is a medium armor, medium hit point profession with poor native condition removal/conversion and with a major portion of its functionality partitioned into the hands of a flawed AI where it can be destroyed independently. They’re maybe not as bad off as Elementalists, but the reality is still they are bad at one of the things the Developers think they’re good at. Yes, Rangers can — though MASSIVE trait investment — cover these flaws in a few highly specialized builds, but as a default position for the profession as a whole this statement is so untrue as to be ludicrous.

Excellence in Skirmishing. If “skirmish” means something along the lines of “mobile conflict from range” …nobody is good at it. The underlying damage co-efficients for ranged attacks are brutally punitive and doubly abusive considering most melee attacks also cleave, while Rangers have to trait for piercing. Ranger’s have modest access to knockbacks, immobilizes, cripples, and swiftness — all completely overshadowed by melee-oriented opponents’ easy access to gap closers and CC removal/immunity. And when the fight does inevitably turn to melee, the Ranger’s ability to reestablish position is limited at best, hampered by poor counters to the CC melee-based professions routinely employ to ensure their attacks land.

Supporting Themselves and Their Allies. This may come as a surprise to anyone other than most people who play the game, but Rangers are not considered an amazing Support class. While Spotter, Frost Spirit, and some shared Fury skills are welcome contributions in the one-dimension world of “More DPS”, Ranger Support tends towards inadequate magnitude, long cooldowns, or effective ranges that directly conflict with their role as skirmishers.

Alongside their Pet. Most of the time our Pets simply are NOT along side us – They’re either throwing themselves into melee like maniacs or standing like statues waiting for death to come to them. And they don’t have to wait long, because the content designers’ first and final solution to creating challenge is splashing the landscape with mega-damage red circles that pets categorically fail to respond to.

The best single target and sustained damage. This is probably true, and yet… So what? Success in nearly all encounters hinges on AoE damage or spikes. “Sustained damage” is the “I have nothing better to offer” form of damage ALL professions deliver when they aren’t doing something USEFUL. Being good at standing there hacking on a billion HP World Boss is not something to be proud of. With this statement the Ranger has been defined as the ‘supreme master of mediocrity’.

Lets Whittle our Opponents! The final piece of the philosophy neatly sums up everything that is WRONG with the Ranger profession – a class that must employ mediocre damage to slowly take tiny cuts out of their opponents, while leveraging mediocre survivability, exerting mediocre positional control, contributing mediocre support skills, and saddled with a less than mediocre class mechanic.

The Real Outcome. Its not that the final result is unplayable. You can still go and indulge in basic abnegation out on the landscape. Its that that Rangers are boring and dull, responding poorly to the slightest difficulty when compared to other professions.

All that… I never could write it as good as Nike (not an english native here) so I just quote and rep her… +1 (x1000)

Specific Game Mode
PvP/WvW

Proposal Overview
Add a PvP Taunt to all pets

Goal of Proposal
To make pets so that other players cannot ignore them in PvP situations.

Proposal Functionality
This would go hand in hand with my “Berserker” suggestion on page 2. So long as the pet is “alive,” every time he attacks an opposing player, he would apply a strong damage debuff. This debuff would not apply to the damage taken by the pet himself, however, and would be cleared on the pet’s death. This makes it very high priority for an enemy player to target and down the pet ASAP, because if they ignore the pet then they will just be swinging wet tissue at you, and will cause player behavior to naturally mimic the intended enemy AI behavior. Other games in the past have used a similar mechanic for “tank” classes in PvP.

The specific proposal, subject to tweaking, would be that each pet attack would apply, in addition to normal effects, a 25% damage debuff on the target, lasting 5s each time, overwriting/non-stacking, and this debuff does not reduce damage to the pet itself, only to any other target. Killing the pet instantly cleanses the debuff.

Associated Risks
It might be tricky to implement this debuff, since it’s a bit complicated in nature.

Pets would still die a lot in WvW zergs, which would make this effect largely moot in those circumstances, but it should be at least somewhat useful, and really add an element to sPvP.

Ohoni.6057:

I’ve created my ranger expecting an archer.

Then you picked the wrong class. The Warrior and Thief are the Archers, the Ranger is a pet class that can use a bow, really more Druid than Archer. Which other class you pick depends on what else you want to do, but either class is great and leveling to 80 in the current environment is fairly easy. Good luck.

You have given the answer to your question in your own statement. Ranger is the only class who can both use longbow and shortbow. And yes, I’m already running both Kudzu and The Dreamer. Ranger is one of the classes who reach 1500 range. I don’t agree with any other point you mentioned. Thief as archer? LoL yes, thief is the is the first class which comes in my mind if I’m thinking about archers… not. Or yeah, reroll a warrior… no. Gosh I hate those guys. “If u want to play archer, play warrior” is one of the most stupid things I’ve heard in this forum.
Rangers meant to be the archers of GW2, yet they get hindered by their pet.

Ohoni.6057:

I never played GW1, but from what I hear there are other classes that are even further removed from what they were in that game. Mesmers, is one I’ve heard. “Because GW1” doesn’t seem to be a particularly useful point when talking about GW2 classes.

I’m not arguing that it should be like GW1, I’m point out that certain expectations were set in GW1 about what a class that goes by the exact same name and description should be in GW2. Since those expectations were not even close to being met, that is where a LOT of the frustration comes from regarding the impotence of the bow.

Pets should not and will not be optional. Rangers will not and should not be as effective as other classes at any range without factoring in their pet’s damage. The problem is that currently it can be difficult to get the most out of our pets because they die too easily to concentrated AoEs, and the solution is to fix that problem, not to remove the pet from the equation entirely.

If they can fix pets so that they are not a baseline liability, then I agree they should not be optional. No other class has the potential to lose 30% of their effectiveness due to bugs, ignoring, or improper use of their class mechanic. In all cases except Ranger, the class mechanic is at worst an unused flavor feature that is ignored because it isn’t needed.

jcbroe.4329:

Specific Trait Changes

• Move Evasive Purity to Grandmaster Slot. Change Functionality to: “Dodge rolling removes 1 condition from you and all allies within range. 10 second ICD.”

• New Skirmishing Trait, Master level: Transfer up to 3 conditions from yourself to target foe on interrupt. Gain a small amount of health for each condition transferred.

Pets should be optional. Otherwise it’s like forcing elementalists having a perma elemental, necromancers perma minons, engineers perma turrets. All of that is optional so why can’t pets be?

Prysin.8542:

Sorry, but let me correct you in some areas;

You are welcome to disagree, but others can judge whether you made a case for correction being involved .

Resilient =/= being able to stand in one spot and facetank every single point of damage coming at you.

My ears, what a strange notion! Its like you think I’m oblivious to the contribution of dodging . “Resilient” to many people, myself included, means ‘not dead after it all goes down’. It is the complete package.

Ranger has Medium armor, Medium HP and a metric ton of evades. Timing, insight of enemy attacks, Resilience is simply the ability to hang on even in a very tough time, and rangers certainly have that ability without the shadow of a doubt.

Your ‘metric ton of evades’ is not exactly a uniquely “Ranger-ish” proposition. Are we to assume that all class design philosophies blurbs start with “The X is a resilient class…” as outlined in the hilarious class Mad-Libs seen a few posts back?

If the Devs are going to lead of with that as the very first point in their outline, it needs to be kinda noteworthy. Rangers did rely on Dodge/vigor-like effects. Then they downscaled that mechanic across the entire game and guess which class took it on the chin the worst as a result? I didn’t feel like harping on this fact in my post, but hey, if you want to shine a spotlight on Resilience: Then & Now, I don’t think it exactly helps the All’s-Well-with-the-Ranger cause…

Ranger’s CC ability is without the shadow of a doubt, much greater then most other professions.

Woo-hoo! Like “sustained damage” once again we’re amazing at something that DOESN’T MATTER. Every significant NPC in the game Lives behind a wall of Defiance stacks, and as mentioned, the professions most capable of smashing face have cooldowns on their stun-breaks or immunities that make a laughingstock of CC, not just for Rangers but for everyone.

As a Ranger player, you must get tired of being the king of broken mechanics, yes?

The ranger are indeed in need of a lot of QoL improvements along with several rebalances, and minor fixes. In scandinavian language (or rather danish/norwegian) we got a saying; Mange bekker små blir én stor å.
Translating this you get; Many small streams become one large river.
This is probably the best description of the ranger profession. There is no need for massive overturns, however a large number of small fixes collaborate to create a huge mess which plague the profession.

To be clear, even in this somewhat ill-tempered review, my goals are not some sort of complete re-write. On the whole I think the worst ranger issues can be fixed with little more than turning 2-3 minor traits we have now into permanent class features, a light pass on the weapons to make them less schitzophrenic mixes of Power-based damage and condition damage, and push a few traits around to align them with the lines that make the most sense.

The things that hurt rangers the most are global issues: Ranged damage it punished excessively. Defiance annihilates Control as a meaningful role. Mob AI is juvenile. These are not just Ranger Problems they are Guild Wars 2 Problems… The ranger just makes a career out of showing up at the intersection with every one of them .

PROPOSAL OVERVIEW
Modify all Longbow skills and the first three Greatsword’s skills by adding effects or reworking them without messing up with the mechanics of these weapons.

GOAL OF PROPOSAL

1. Make LB a viable Kite/DPS weapon.
2. Make GS a viable Defensive/DPS weapon.

PROPOSAL FUNCTIONALITY

LONGBOW:

• 1 (Long range shot): I would change this skill by transforming it into a chain-skill so that it would Cripple every third hit (2 sec, I’m not suggesting a perma-cripple auto attack).
• 2 (Rapid fire): due to the fact that the cast time is insanely long (4½ sec) and the skill is incredibly easy to dodge, I would add a 5-10% increase damage PER hit, at least, making this a real ranged-burst skill. I would NOT decrease the cast time since it would just make it easier to avoid completely.
• 3 (Hunter’s shot): why not adding some effect to the skill? Like gaining N stacks of might for N seconds on a successful hit while invisible after the use of this skill (only with this skill, not every time stealth is gained). This would grant Ranger an option to gain access to might since this class has very few option to gain such an important buff.
• 4 (Point blank shot): making this skill hitting all targets in a straight line (even without “piercing arrows” traited) will make it too OP? It should also be considered to make this a channeled skill so it deals more damages the more you charge the attack.
• 5 (Barrage): it would be awesome having the cast time reduced a bit (1¾ instead of 2¾) and the damages increased a bit because, by now, it deals a very little damage more than just auto-attack (10-15% increased damage) while being very difficult to capitalize properly against moving opponents.

GREATSWORD:

• 1 (Slash – chain): I would add effect on a successful hit. Like 5-8 seconds of Vulnerability or Weakness on hit.
• 1 (Slice – chain): same as above or inverted.
• 2 (Maul): maybe reducing the cast time (from ¾ second to ½ second for example) would help to land the strike because it is very easy to dodge by now. Or, this skill could become a 2 hit skill making the first strike hit immediately when you activate the skill and the second strike normally after the cast time. Let’s say Maul now deals 400 dmage in total (pursuant to the description of the skill): with 2 hits, every attack should deal 200 damages. By doing so Maul would be less easy to dodge entirely.
• 3 (Swoop): why not adding a 7-8 seconds of swiftness for the Ranger after the leap (even if it does not hit a target)? This would give a lot more mobility to the weapon, considering the fact that builds where people uses Greatsword haven’t great access to Swiftness.

ASSOCIATED RISKS
Point me to risks because I don’t see any.

Suggested Proposal Format:

Specific Game Mode
WVW
Proposal Overview
- a blast finisher on maul gs 2 would be nice so we can blast waterfields
-more active condition removal
-signet or shout sharing ( more support for allies )
-the ability of using pets skills in zerg fights
-easier access to stability + allies sharing
-more overall survivability
-remove and replace unpopular traits (forum should have a lot ideas)
- new weapon if it will ever comes nature themed ofc but aoe/support

Goal of Proposal
improve ranger in wvw so people would not look down on us like a useless class.
yes we excel in skirmish but some of us ranger want to be good in group fight kitten well i want to be able to join wvw with ranger.
i want to be able to support my team not be liability i want to be able to use my pets skills in zerg fights
some of our pet skills already have aoe effects howl on wolf to state an example.

Proposal Functionality
can’t answer

Associated Risks
risk to improve a class that i love and play over 2k hours i see none.

i play my ranger as a melee in wvw i tried different builds and melee support i what i personally want for our rangers granting vigor and fury among other boons give us skills to be able survive in zerg fights (i use signet of stone for the biggest inc) and gs is doing well leap and block skill.
axe main hand for the aoe dmg. but yes we lack in 1 of the aspect philosophy support our allies!!!
and pets that have the potential of being a great part of us in wvw and can’t not be used for the several reason you have seen here on this forum. (but people should be able to play ranger on their bows as well without being liability to the group)

You have given the answer to your question in your own statement. Ranger is the only class who can both use longbow and shortbow. And yes, I’m already running both Kudzu and The Dreamer. Ranger is one of the classes who reach 1500 range. I don’t agree with any other point you mentioned. Thief as archer? LoL yes, thief is the is the first class which comes in my mind if I’m thinking about archers… not. Or yeah, reroll a warrior… no. Gosh I hate those guys. “If u want to play archer, play warrior” is one of the most stupid things I’ve heard in this forum.
Rangers meant to be the archers of GW2, yet they get hindered by their pet.

I play an archer Thief and it works great. Look, nobody is saying that you can’t play as a Ranger with a bow, but nobody EVER promised you that you could play as a Ranger without a pet, much less that playing as a Ranger without a pet should be just as viable as with a pet. If having a pet, and having to depend on that pet for a portion of your effectiveness, will always bother you, then your only option is to reroll, because so long as you have a Ranger, your pet is responsible for ~30% of your DPS. End of story.

If you’re determined to stick with the Ranger class, then get used to having a pet. If you don’t think pets currently work well (and many agree with that), then work on ways to make them less of a hassle, not on ways to remove them from your presence entirely.

Pets should be optional. Otherwise it’s like forcing elementalists having a perma elemental, necromancers perma minons, engineers perma turrets. All of that is optional so why can’t pets be?

You’re comparing the wrong things. Pets for Rangers are not equivalent to pets for other classes. Spirits for Rangers are equivalent to other classes’ pets, something you slot as a utility as a temporary summon and that you can use or not. Ignoring pets for a Ranger would be more akin to sticking to one element on an Ele, ignoring Deathshroud on a Necro, and never using Toolbelt skills on an Engi, and as someone who plays all three, good luck with that. Rangers are THE pet class, all other classes are just dabbling in it.

Prysin.8542:

Sorry, but let me correct you in some areas;

Resilient =/= being able to stand in one spot and facetank every single point of damage coming at you.

Ranger has Medium armor, Medium HP and a metric ton of evades. Timing, insight of enemy attacks, Resilience is simply the ability to hang on even in a very tough time, and rangers certainly have that ability without the shadow of a doubt.

Rangers does indeed have poor condition management, and little can be done with that as is. However we can manage it somehow, at the expense of our own performance.

Ranger’s CC ability is without the shadow of a doubt, much greater then most other professions. We have easy access to immobilize, chill, cripple, knockdown, knockback, stun/daze and fear. Not only can we apply these conditions, but we can do this with surprising ease. CC is one of the few things rangers never have been bad at, yet the circumstances of how we apply this CC could be better under some circumstances.

Single Target sustained damage is indeed without any competition the best. Thieves have much stronger single target burst, warriors too have strong single target burst, but their sustained damage is nowhere near the ranger.

The ranger are indeed in need of a lot of QoL improvements along with several rebalances, and minor fixes. In scandinavian language (or rather danish/norwegian) we got a saying; Mange bekker små blir én stor å.
Translating this you get; Many small streams become one large river.
This is probably the best description of the ranger profession. There is no need for massive overturns, however a large number of small fixes collaborate to create a huge mess which plague the profession.

Prysin, excellent post.

+1

Doom.8647:

Goal of Proposal
Eliminate the AI headache that pets pose by changing them to be an additional “weapon” equipped by the player.

I’m new to the ranger profession, and had been feeling that something wasn’t quite the way I liked it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it (other than irritation that I couldn’t [a] map a key to stow my pet and/or [b] perma-stow the pet when I chose to do so).

Reading this suggestion shed some light on it. I hate only having one input into my pet’s actions every XX seconds. In the original Guild Wars, I did not actually have a guild (I know, weird), and I played the game solo. I was SO EXCITED when you introduced heroes in Nightfall. I felt like a symphony conductor, a puppeteer, and a battle commander all at one time when taking a full group of 7 heroes into a zone. I could control their actions by placing a flag for them to walk to, picking which skills they had available, indicating their targets, and even tell them which skills to use during the heat of battle.

I came into GW2 thinking that pets would work the same way, and now realize that is the source of much of my disappointment.

I haven’t played enough to have insightful suggestions, but I do support Doom’s suggestion and/or basically propose that rangers are given more control over the actions of their pets. Of the 4 F-skills, only one of them actually makes the pet do something in the fight. Rather than having an unpredictable NPC running around with me, I would love to have four extra skills (swappable, so actually 8 skills) available in the form of the “pet-weapon” as Doom suggested.

Also, could we pretty please have a cleaner, WHITE polar bear? I have a hard time telling the polar bear icon from the hyena in the pet selection window, and my actual pet is pretty dingy.

See lots of interesting ideas that could develop into something. However my focus has been on thinking about the pet/ranger relationship. Decide what improvements can be done there then think about trait changes that synergize. I don’t expect miracles in interface(A stay please) and I’m sure some of my specific ability wishes are balance wise over the top. Key really is the concept of effectively adding an aura to the ranger that interfaces differently with different pets(enabling PvE, WvW, and SPvP enhancements by pet choice In some ways it makes the pet a killable mini-signet.

Aura of the Ranger (Inherent ability of rangers that interfaces with pets)

For consideration I would break the pet’s out as follows(More philosophical direction PvE, WvW,PvE direction than specific ability) and there would be a pet benefiting and ranger benefiting(synergistic) effect. The ones included are examples I find relevant and are generally designed around problems I have encountered in specing traiting etc….

1) Ursine, Support tank role, added passive ability from the rangers aura when the ranger is within 2k of bear. (bear: XX% chance to heal on hit(self), XX% chance on being hit to absorb the next attack on the ranger)

2) Moa’s – Support Buffing Pet – added passives from aura
a. Moa: Immune to AOE/Cleave attacks; Ranger: Boons on the pet are shared with the ranger.
i. Generally this is a PvE pet and the design of this interaction lets the Moa be in a DPS clump transferring boons from the clump to the ranger enabling the ranger to be outside the clump potentially. As the MOA is one of those pets that is damage worthless the immunity to cleave/aoe really shouldn’t impact PvP much.
ii. This is a powerful ability but it may be enough to create a role for ranger archers in PvE not in the clump.

3) Spiders – Offensive/CC Debuff pet
a. As both a ranged pet and a CC pet the spider already gets decent usage for good reason. As a pet needing less improvement offensively and with spiders and venom being synonymous.
i. (spider: Removes Poison/Weakness on self: Ranger: Removes Poison from ranger every 10 seconds.) –

4) Feline – Offensive pet bleeds and crits is what I think of so:
a. Feline: XX% chance on crit cause bleeding Ranger: Every 10 seconds remove(NOT TAKE) bleeding from ranger.

5) Devourer – Ranged tank/ damage I guess so
a. Devourer: XX% chance to gain retaliation on hit Ranger: Devourer devours one condition on ranger every 10 seconds

6) Drake – Survivable AOE damage and Blasts…
a. Drake: XX% chance on next attack to trigger a flame blast Ranger: Drake consumes burning from the ranger every 10 seconds.

7) Porcine pets – Hmm tank utility offensive and defensive debuffing and a KD GAH!!!! Reality is the pet needs more KD or snare to be able to deliver any functional damage somewhat reliable so
a. Porcine: XX% Chance on hit create muddy terrain: Ranger: consumes immobilize on ranger every 10 seconds.

8) Canine – The crowd control pet but dogs are also guides so –
a. Canine: XX% chance when hit crit on next attack Ranger: Increase duration of immobilize 10%

9) Birds – DPS swiftness blindness – don’t stay on target to well
a. Bird: % Chance on hit cause confusion (A way to deal damage when you aren’t in contact based on what target does) Ranger: Increase movement speed 15

From this base traits in BM could be adjusted to share rangers benefit from pet around them although I’ld argue pet benefits to the aura should cross trait lines, 1 level back to pet as well higher up with group. Appreciate the opportunity and remember the abilities represent in my mind more the focus of the pet pve, wvw, Spvp.

Would also love a way to convert my vigor shared with pet to a protection boon on the pet as pets can’t dodge and receive no benefit from my vigor capacity.

Thank you.

I felt that just hitting +1 wasn’t strong enough to show how I feel about these items:

mtpelion.4562:

Sword – Power
2 Jumps should be reversed so that the first leaps into combat and the second leaps out of combat

Yes. I find this very confusing. I get the feeling it’s only the way it is so that people won’t go “heyyyy, that’s the same as that thief skill!”… but there are plenty of skills that basically do the same thing between functions. Who cares?

Roy.7405:

Combined Traits: Combine Rending Attacks, Stability Training, and Intimidation Training (Beast Mastery master tier traits) into a single trait. Introduce 2D family symbols for each pet type (ursine, feline, etc) to aid players in figuring out which bonus a specific pet would get. Give Moas an effect (they are currently excluded). Have the tooltip function like the Elementalist’s Evasive Arcana trait where you right-click to view all the effects.
Reasoning: Having these traits separated makes it unattractive to mix different types of pets, hurting build diversity. Combining them will allow for new build options and make space for new traits.

This really speaks for itself, but having the ui and tooltips cleaned up would be such a relief.

unleashed.8679:

Proposal Functionality

• Pets strength will now change depending on the players build
  The pets of the ranger should scale with their masters stats, making balancing different ranger builds possible, because pets won’t push in a different direction.
  Therefore every pet gets defined major and minor stats, that scale differently with the owners stats. Let’s say 70% and 30%.

Some examples:
cats: major (Power, precision) minor (vitality, toughness)
bears: major (tougness, power) minor (vitality, precsion)
spiders: major (condition damage, duration), minor (precision, vitality)

Again, it speaks for itself, and makes a lot of sense. Would also make choosing a pet more involved than just picking the one additional skill you want to have (e.g. chill foe, apply bleeding)

Frostfang.5109:

• Make it optional to HIDE/SHOW u’r pets NAME + GUILD-TAG. I still have the blue “edges” that shows that it’s u’rs for u… It loosk betetr IMO, reduces clutter info and is helpful in dungeons/instances etc.

• Make the PORTRAITS show the CORRECT PET and sort them by PET TYPE in the (K) – panel, Makes searching for a pet easier.

• Plz make PETS REMEMBER their NAMES!!!

• THE F2 FIRE TIMING… Either they fire instantly, causing miss (pet is not at target), not at all, or on contach with enemy. …

• I still get the “Charm” option if i get Close to somebody elses pet that I have not yet tamed. Plz get this fixed so that it goes away.

Quality of life improvements are always appreciated.

Specific Game Mode:
PvP

Proposal Overview:
Greatsword skill changes

Goal of Proposal
GS is currently inferior in every way to sword/dagger. GS autoattack + perfectly timed mauls does less DPS than sword autoattack. (sword aa also gives your pet might and crippples your target). GS gets a 1 directional movement skill (swoop). Sword gets a 1 or 2 directional movement skill on a shorter cd with an evade. GS does less dps, and also has no access to poison which further limits the pressure the GS can unload. Sword/dagger gets two good sources of poison. GS 4, the blocking skill has a slow animation that in many cases can send you to the grave. (vs mesmers, vs burning speed, vs necros, vs any fast attacks). Sword/dagger on the other hand gets three evades which are each superior to Greatswords single block. Hilt Bash: Because you can’t move while hilt bashing, people can avoid it just by running away from you.
Proposal Functionality
autoattack chain: substantially increase damage of the 3rd attack and remove the evade. (give rangers a reason to stick to their target).
maul: increase cd and damage slightly. doesn’t apply vuln, instead applies cripple.
swoop: evades for the duration. (swiftness boon as suggested in an earlier post)
counterattack: now funtions like warrior shield stance, the ranger can end the skill by throwing his sword but now the sword inflicts poison.
hilt bash: can move while casting.

Associated Risks
can’t think of any but let me know.

Ohoni.6057:

I play an archer Thief and it works great.

This twirling, exploding or poisoning arrows at crappy range shooting and shadowstepping is an archer for you? If you think so, you have your archer.
But for me an archer would be exact that what the ranger is offering with his bows.

Look, nobody is saying that you can’t play as a Ranger with a bow, but nobody EVER promised you that you could play as a Ranger without a pet, much less that playing as a Ranger without a pet should be just as viable as with a pet.

The ranger is described as a bow using class, which relies on its pet.
Yet you don’t have to use bows. So why am I forced to use pets?

If having a pet, and having to depend on that pet for a portion of your effectiveness, will always bother you, then your only option is to reroll, because so long as you have a Ranger, your pet is responsible for ~30% of your DPS. End of story.

The pet is a mess. You are losing damage so your can pet deal damage. No other class in this game has any drawbacks from not using their classmechanic. It’s me that losing damage every time I attack because my pet sits on 30% of my damage without using it.

If you’re determined to stick with the Ranger class, then get used to having a pet. If you don’t think pets currently work well (and many agree with that), then work on ways to make them less of a hassle, not on ways to remove them from your presence entirely.

No.
Actually I don’t want the pets to be removed. I want the damageloss on ranger to be removed. However I don’t mind if they have to remove the pet because of that.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all,

A few of you mentioned disappointment at the lack of response so far in this thread. Yesterday was an extremely busy day for me to be actively participating in the thread, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to get the thread going.

I’ll be spending most of my day today just going over this thread and summarizing some of the ideas. I’ll try and get some of the guys in here as well to comment on specific feedback!

Please be patient, the thread hasn’t even been up for a full day!

Thanks

Perhaps I can help with the summarization part. These are the issues I’ve seen crop up the most, with hopefully a general view of their proposed solutions.

1) Pets. They have problems hitting moving targets, the pet commands still feel unresponsive, and only high levels of micro management can keep them from being quickly killed in WvW and large scale content. Additionally pets are a large part of a ranger’s power budget, and because of the above points rangers often feel weaker than other classes.
-Solutions generally revolve around reworking pet AI , buffing pets to the point where their weaknesses are compensated for, or making them a non-issue with permanent storage or more utility focus instead of dps focus.

2) Traits. Traits are often in strange places in relation to their tree (traps in the crit line, pet traits scattered all over) and there’s lots of competition for major slots with almost no competition in minor and grandmaster traits (marksmanship being a big offender).
-Solutions generally involve moving traits and stat points such that they synergize better with eachother.

3) Utilities. Ranger utilities feel generally underwhelming without specializing for a certain family. This limits both your tree choice and your utility choice, since once you’ve specialized other utilities perform far worse than the ones you’ve traited for.
-This issue is often mentioned in the same line as #2, so the solutions are worked together. This might also be addressed with moving the power budget of utilities away from the master and grandmaster traits, either making more available at the first tier or baking them into the utilities.

4) Weapons. Ranger weapons often overlap in their purpose – greatsword is supposed to be the defensive option but sword has so many evades it can be better (especially if sword 1 chain is fixed), longbow is supposed to be power oriented but benefits a lot from condition duration, axe is supposed to be for mid range aoe but piercing arrows and melee cleave eclipse it.
-Many different possible solutions here, but the general consensus is that ranger weapons want for more definition on when each should be used. Offhands might be the least suspect in this category as they’re rarely mentioned.

5) Team support. Outside of spirits rangers have little that is usually considered team support, and all spirits except frost overlap with other classes that provide buffs better (guardian virtues almost completely negate sun spirit and stone spirit passives). Mostly this revolves around having limited access to traditional team buffs (only one blast finisher, weak pet actives for buffs vs their cooldown, only one weapon skill that grants buffs). A similar/related issue is their lack of aoe burst, something that’s valuable in both large-scale WvW and dungeons/fractals.
-Not a lot of proposed solutions here, and of them not much consensus. The most common is giving greatsword 2 a blast finisher.

Thread Summary So Far

Posts were counted and placed into categories. Posts that made multiple distinct proposals were counted the appropriate number of times for each category. Posts that made no distinct proposals, or too many, were put into the ‘Other’ category. Since one person could make multiple proposals on different subjects, posts were not filtered based on author.

Rework the Pet Entirely: 53
Anything that changes the core mechanics or purpose of the pet.

Fix AI/Buff Pet (leaving current mechanics in place): 50
Anything that enhances pets, pet skills, or pet traits, without major overhaul.

Pet (Total): 103

Slot Skill Rebalance: 49
Anything that deals with a Healing, Utility or Elite skill.

Bow/Archery Reblance: 23
Major changes to Bows or Bow traits; making Rangers the ‘Archer Class’.

Other Weapons Changes: 37
Non-bow weapons or traits.

Trait Changes: 34
Anything related to traits that is not covered under Pets or Archery above.

Other: 39
Anything not listed, such as UI or usability improvements. Also posts with no distinct focus.

Condition Cleansing or Counter: 30 (approximate)
I started counting this separately too late, so this number is an approximation. Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the Trait and Slot category counts will also fall into this one.

Game Mode PvE (but applicable to all modes)

Proposal Overview:
Bear with me, I’ve been reading since page one and have some ideas for three different aspects, so this may end up in several posts! I’m super excited that the devs are working on rangers and can’t wait for the results—I’ve had two 80s just because I wanted to swap my human for an Asura and ranger is still my favorite class. I’ve been reading this thread since post one, and I’ve come up with ideas for three of the most problematic aspects of the ranger class: Pets, Bows, and Customization (Read: Utilities, Traits, and Skills). I think to be safe, I’ll split this up into three parts with possible risks at the bottom of each. Note: All pet proposals assume AI won’t be fixed at least not for the foreseeable future

Part One: Pets Are Friends, Not AOE Fodder
The problem: Pets have little survivability, can’t hit for beans in melee, and draw aggro unintentionally. Pets are meant to be our companions and help us fight, not act like a ball and chain. That said, I believe that pets are also mortal beings and it should cause a little bit of pain when they “die”. Not to say, of course, that rangers should be punished for bad AI, so read on:
Proposed Solution: First, give rangers 85-90% of their damage and let pets take up 10-15% only. It’ll reduce the amount rangers rely on pets for dps, but still let them make a difference. Second, reduce pet damage from AOE by 75-80% and make pets immune to AOE out of combat. Some people suggested a dodge mechanic, but this is risky. Controlling the pet separately means one more thing to deal with in battle and dodging simultaneously might not even work with timing. Third, give pets a boost to survivability, either a percentage of the ranger’s HP or something, I’m not entirely sure what that would look like. Fourth, give melee pets a small, but larger hit radius, so they can effectively chase enemies down. Also provide a small swiftness boon when the F1 button is pressed.
The problem: The pet interface doesn’t allow for good pet management
Solution:I liked someone’s idea that pets should toggle attack/stow on F1, use their special on F2, adopt an aggressive stance on F3 (higher offense, lower defense), and adopt a defensive stance on F4 (higher defense, lower offense). For F5, maybe give the pet it’s own healing skill or some survivability option? I think that’s all for pets, so I’ll move on to the second part.

Risks
I don’t see any beyond balancing issues, or maybe I’m forgetting something. Other than that, I think these are viable options.

This twirling, exploding or poisoning arrows at crappy range shooting and shadowstepping is an archer for you? If you think so, you have your archer.
But for me an archer would be exact that what the ranger is offering with his bows.

Ok, then fine, play a Ranger, but you’ll have a pet. You can’t expect them to tailor the class to your specific tastes. I’d like to play a Necro that uses proper skeletons and zombies as summons, but that’s not how they designed the class and I don’t expect them to overahul it to my tastes. Make your choice and stick with it, do you want a Ranger with the bow skills you want but that has to work with a partner, or do you want an Archer with bow skills you apparently don’t like as much but no sidekick to deal with? You can’t have both.

The ranger is described as a bow using class, which relies on its pet.
Yet you don’t have to use bows. So why am I forced to use pets?

Because it’s the class mechanic. If it were really as much an “archer” class as you insist it should be then they wouldn’t even have the other weapons as options. The Engineer, for example, is a “gun wielding class,” they literally have no non-gun mainhand weapons.

The pet is a mess. You are losing damage so your can pet deal damage. No other class in this game has any drawbacks from not using their classmechanic.

That’s not remotely true. There is not a single class that can completely ignore their class mechanic and still do their best. There are ways to shift them to more of a passive than an active role, just as you don’t have to trait into Beastmaster or slot pet-based utilities, but with any class if you don’t use your class mechanics at all then you’re leaving a ton of DPS on the table.

No.

Then invest in some tissues in bulk, I suppose, and a pack of tiny replacement violin strings.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not remotely true. There is not a single class that can completely ignore their class mechanic and still do their best. There are ways to shift them to more of a passive than an active role, just as you don’t have to trait into Beastmaster or slot pet-based utilities, but with any class if you don’t use your class mechanics at all then you’re leaving a ton of DPS on the table.

No other class get its damage cut to 2/3 just to make its mechanic work.
I would happily accept the drawback of noone tanking for me or no skills to use if I just get my missing damage back.

Part 2: Rangers Should be Good at Range!
The Longbow: It should be the ranger’s signature weapon, and we should excel at it more than warriors. I propose the following skills:
LB #1: Make this grant vulnerability and/or confusion or bleeding at 1000+ range, just vulnerability at 500-1000, and just damage at <500 range. More reward for being far away, but also increases effectiveness. Also make arrows fire faster.
LB #2: I like this as-is.
LB #3: Why was this ever changed to stealth? I rarely use this skill anymore, and only in select instances. Make this skill “Enfeebling Arrow” and inflict weakness and minor poison.
LB #4: A major complaint about rangers is spamming Point Blank Shot. I propose that this skill just needs to be turned from a knockback into a knockdown—would synergize well with pets and allies alike.
LB #5: I like barrage, but I propose a more “rangery” skill, like “Poison Barrage” where it creates a poison cloud field in the same radius. Also, let us be able to move during the casting, otherwise we lose out on mobility.

The Shortbow
SB #1-2: Fine as-is
SB #3: There are few instances when using a short bow that I feel the need to evade straight backwards. Make this skill dodge roll to one side instead perhaps, or just make it inflict a condition, like burning.
SB #4-5: Fine as-is.

Risks Obvious balance issues, but I will say this: I don’t think adding these conditions will be terrible, in my opinion, ranger weapons are pretty condition deprived as it is compared to other classes.

Specific Game Mode
All Modes
Proposal Overview
Master’s Bond needs to stack like weapon Sigils and stay on when you swap pets or go into water. The only time it should be removed is if the Ranger is downed, or the pet is downed.

Goal of Proposal
Makes it a useful skill.

Proposal Functionality
Right now it disappears when you swap your pet which goes against 95% of the Rangers traits like Zephyr’s Speed, Mighty Swap, Loud Whistle and Vigorous Renewal.

Associated Risks
A stronger pet.

Part 3: Too All-Around to be Good at Anything

When I’m playing my necro, I find it easy to pick the trait lines I need for the skillset I want. I’m going 10/30/0/30/0 and plan to use minions and wells. There, easy. But for my ranger, it’s not easy. Some skills can’t be combined without sacrificing certain traits for others, which isn’t what other classes face. I think as an overall proposal, please make it so that traits fit with the stats the people using them would want! For example, Spirits are fine, but traps should be in Wilderness Survival. That said, I have some ideas on how to improve specific skills (ones that I have used, want to use, or use frequently):

Overall: Allow pet skills to reach the ranger, even those provided by shouts (like the ones I’m about to suggest below). Don’t punish rangers for using range!
Search and Rescue: In addition to its present effect, add revive speed for allies (possibly regen too).
Protect Me: Scrap the effect and change to “Protect Us”—pets run to a target location and form a dome around them that reflects projectiles and provides protection on allies.
Sic Em: Scrap the effect and change to provide might (5s) and swiftness to allies.
Signets: Give the active effect to rangers first and trait for pets.
Spirits: No trait to have them follow, they do automatically. Replace the trait with something more useful.
Piercing Shots: No trait for this, make all shots pierce by default. As others have said, Warrior arrows pierce automatically, thief arrows bounce, let ranger shots pierce too, as we are “unparalleled archers”.
Eagle Eye/Quick Draw: Combine these, they would work so well together. Also allow Eagle Eye to work on short bows.
The Entire Beastmastery Line I know there are rangers who use it, but I see no appeal. I can get my pets some buffs, but they aren’t particularly useful. I suggest changing this trait line to be more beneficial to the pet, like providing stat increases and different abilities like the other trait lines offer the ranger. Some people have suggested that the pets have their own set of trait trees, which would be awesome, but maybe this would be a good start to see how it could work.

Risks Again, balance. To me, and I’m sure others, all of this seems like it would make the ranger on par with other classes, which it would, but I’m sure there are some suggestions that would be OP.

Specific Game Mode

PVE/WWW/SPVP

Proposal Overview

More control on your pet.

Goal of Proposal

More active gameplay, more skill involved using ranger, basically more fun.

Proposal Functionality

My idea is very simple, a new utility for ranger, “a kit”, very similar to engi kit, which replaces pet skills in your bar (1-5) more another one (pet skills are 4 + another one, locked by default on every “passive” pet but unlocked when you use this “kit”)

Associated Risks
I don’t see special risks for this idea, if people think it’s to hard to use active pet and ranger at the same time, simply don’t use this “kit” but if people want to try to expand ranger power can use this and get a better control of their pets.