Guild Wars 2

Specific Game Mode

PVE/WWW

Proposal Overview

All pets cleave on melee attack

Goal of Proposal

To increase pet performance in group fights and lend more multi-target damage to the ranger.

Proposal Functionality

Enable all pets to cleave on melee autos just as the drake does. This would increase our damage potential in WvW fights where we suffer from a great lack of AoE/mutli target damage and increase pet performance in pve as well.

Associated Risks

The drake line would lose one of its unique characteristics, but it’s AoE tail swipe combined with the swamp and river bounce attack and the drake’s overall combination of good damage and tank would still lend it enough to remain unique as a pet species line.

It’s good to know that the devs are genuinely interested in the ideas here at least.

I think it’s a wise move by Anet investing more time/resources into profession development – simply for the fact that our character is the one element of the game we are experiencing 100% of the time. Our gaming experience is therefore entirely centered around the performance of our profession: so to improve the quality of profession development and evolution is most certainly to improve the quality of gameplay experience more than any other element of the game.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Consists of a few changes:
Remove [Vigorous Renewal] (Wilderness Survival IV)
Move [Oakheart Salve] (Wilderness Survival VIII) down to IV
Move [Trappers Expertise] (Skirmishing VIII) to Wilderness Survival, VIII
New Trait, Skirmishing VIII [Vigorous Targeting] -> gives Vigor based on crits.

Goal of Proposal
Please read my other proposal (page 7) too for this. This is the second change to bring Traps into the Wilderness Survival Trait line, where it belongs. It opens up a whole new path for trap builds, while also giving the Longbow crit ranger an more sustained ability to dodge/ kite.

Proposal Functionality
Remove [Vigorous Renewal] (Wilderness Survival IV)
- The trait isn’t really bad, but trap traits belong into Wilderness Survival, and this one is the most fit to be changed into a Skirmishing trait (with a tweak)

Move [Oakheart Salve] (Wilderness Survival VIII) down to IV
- This trait is not that often used, because there are alot better alternatives on the Master Traits. It should be an Adebt Trait and is therefore getting moved there

Move [Trappers Expertise] (Skirmishing VIII) to Wilderness Survival, VIII
- It just belongs to wilderness survival. Traps deal more condition than power damage and just do not belong to precision and crit dmg. Keeping this trait at Master trait level is necessary though.

New Trait, Skirmishing VIII [Vigorous Targeting]
On crit, you gain 3 second of Vigor. 10 seconds cooldown.
- This should be fair enough. It has a nice sustained duration of vigor, gives the Bow ranger more kiting ability and replaces Trappers expertise in Skirmishing and somewhat imitates [Vigorous Renewal], which would be removed, in some way.

Associated Risks
I don’t think any of those changes would be “too strong” or “too weak”, except if totally wrong numbers are used. The ones I used here should be ok though.

No other class get its damage cut to 2/3 just to make its mechanic work.

Sure they do, they just aren’t all so clear about how they do it. If you ignore your class mechanic entirely then you’re going to lose out on 30% damage, maybe more in some cases. Try playing an all Fire Ele, or a clone-less Mesmer. Pets didn’t “steal” 30% of the damage you were owed, they just account for the 20% bonus damage that take Rangers from 100% to 120%, just as the other classes go from 100% to 120% by the use of their class mechanics.

Specific Game Mode
PvE/Dungeons

Proposal Overview
Option out of Pets

Goal of Proposal
Remove the pet handicap

Proposal Functionality
By giving the option of replacing the pet with another class mechanic such as preparations it will make the Ranger more effective in the PVE/Dungeon end game. As it stand now it is a handicap to bring my Ranger into a dungeon or PVE event instead of my Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer, Thief, or Engineer.

Associated Risks
None. There is absolutely no risk associated with giving players the option to opt out of a band-aided (as stated by Lead Game Designer J. Peters in the Dec 10th CDI Ranger thread) class mechanic.

Final Thoughts
Until the resources are used to rewrite the pet AI to make it complete independent of mob AI the pet will remain a handicap. Giving the Ranger 100% dps back (instead of balancing for 100% uptime and splitting the DPS between the Ranger and Pet as it currently is) and using another non-AI dependent class mechanic is an option many thousands of Rangers would love to it. I know personally I would main my Ranger once again if I could perma-stow my pet. We who believe the Ranger could be much better without the pet should not be held back because of a band-aided mechanic and by those who want everyone to suffer with said band-aided class mechanic.

I don’t have any changes to suggest for this, I just have one thing I want to add my input on:

Please do not make the pet optional in any capacity.

The ranger as a beastmaster is great, and I love having a partner with me no matter what my build is. I have been a ranger in Guild Wars since 2006 but only in around 2010 did I start actively using a pet, something I wish I had done earlier because it was extremely enjoyable. I believe that learning to work alongside the AI is extremely effective and a measure of high skill for this profession, and is something that should be maintained.

If the pet became optional, I assure you that we’d see a massive influx of rangers who decided they wanted to be “medium armor warriors”, completely forgoing the main mechanic and trying to faceroll. Not only that, but if it was optional to have pets, pets would undoubtedly retain their poor reputation, and the players who still used pets would become the primary victims of elitist discrimination, regardless of their actual skill with them.

Make changes, improve the AI, but keep the pets mandatory.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Please do not make the pet optional in any capacity.

The ranger as a beastmaster is great, and I love having a partner with me no matter what my build is.

And because you don’t need choices, no one else should be allowed to have them.

How incredibly gracious of you.

Specific Game Mode
PvP

Proposal Overview
Dramatically reduce – or possibly even remove – weapon swap cooldown, innately or by a trait.

Goal of Proposal
Distinguish Rangers from other physical DPS professions by making them less predictable, more flexible, more fast-paced and combo-driven in combat.

Proposal Functionality
Rangers are supposed to be agile, cunning, and great skirmishers. To me, this means they should excel at hit-and-run tactics as much as any other class, if not more (current prize for this, in case anyone had been living under a rock, goes to Thief of course). They should be able to dart in to capitalize on an opportunistic opening in an opponents defenses, then dart back out after baiting their foe’s reaction. They should be able to trick an opponent into committing to a toe-to-toe fight, then disengage quickly to harass from afar.

In brief, they shouldn’t have to telegraph their strategy – moves, yes, but overall tactics and combos no. Currently the weapon swap mechanic (and even kit/attunement swapping for Engineers and Elementalists) serves as telegraph to your opponent. If I see a Warrior switch from his greatsword to a mace and shield, I’ll know that for the next five to ten seconds he can’t access any of the great mobility that greatsword provides.

Allowing Rangers to swap weapons at any time, or with a drastically reduced cooldown, would make fighting a Ranger much more challenging and mindgame-y, akin to fighting a Thief or Mesmer, and would also make playing a Ranger more challenging and interesting. Currently the respective playstyles are “ignore pet, stick close to Ranger until it dies” and “start fight with whatever weapon seems to give you the most advantage, and hope it counters their setup.”

Associated Risks
Some weapon skills may need to be toned down so that swapping back and forth between them in rapid succession wouldn’t be too powerful; not so much the skills with long cooldowns, obviously (those can already be cycled back and forth more rapidly than they’re usable) but possibly skills in the zero-to-five cooldown range.

The traits Tail Wind and Furious Grip (boons on weapon swap) might warrant adjusting to prevent permanent swiftness and permanent fury, although I’d point out that perma-boons are very possible with several other profession & build combinations already. Not that I’m complaining… ];D

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Removing Stealth of [“Guard”] and giving it Regeneration instead. also Changing range from 1200 to 1500

Goal of Proposal
Changing [“Guard”], to effectively allow kiting. This makes this skill a good choice in certain situations, since, at the moment, it cannot be used to effectively kite, nor does it really allow the pet to “tank” some damage and gives no real other functionality except being a low cooldown shout.

Proposal Functionality
[“Guard”]: Shout. The pet aggressively guards an area.
Cooldown: 18s (3s)
Duration: 180s (same as before)
Cast time: 1s (same)
Protection: 10s (same)
Regeneration: 10s (instead of 10s stealth)
Ranger: 1500 Units (300 range)

This allows to actually kite with the Guard skill. It also allows interesting Player/ Pet interactions as for example with the jaguar and while wearing a longbow.
Guard → #3 on Longbow (3 second Invis), waiting until mobs get to the pet → F2 (pet invis) → focus goes back on the player.
There are some pretty neat interactions that one could do with this kind of [“Guard”], whereas at the moment, it underperfomes in any situation.

If interested, at the moment Rangers use it to send their pets into Fishheads at tequatl to amuse them while waiting…

Associated Risks
It should be checked if this doesn’t allow any weird situations as for example, sending the pet upfront 1500 units, letting it tank, while the rest of the teams shoots with extended Longbow range and doesn’t get focused at all.

How to combine Archer and Beastmaster

The Problem:
Our pet is currently broken. This is one of the reasons this Thread exsists.
There are however different opinions out there how to fix our class mechanic.
The most common suggestions are to either romove the pet and get the missing damage back or fixing its AI, so it can fulfill its purpose as companion.

The Requirement:

• Pet AI has to be fixed
• Most of the traits regarding pets have to be moved to the Beastmaster traitline

The Suggestion:
The pet can be permastowed. While the pet is stowed the ranger damage will be raised to 100%
The ranger also gets new F1-F4 skills.
When you stow your pet you can’t summon it for the next 60 seconds.
All Skills who interact with the pet will lose the interaction as long as the pet is stowed.

While the pet is summoned the damagemodel will go back to its current values. (For the following explanation I will assume that this damagemodel is around 70% to 30%)
If you invest points into the Beastmaster traitline, you can increase the damage your pet is dealing up to 39%, so you will end up dealing 109% damage.

Conclusion:
The pets will never synergise completely with the ranger, espacially if you’re using ranged weapons. Therefore give us the possibility to bypass this issue. However, if you decide to play with your pet, you should end up dealing slightly more damage or beeing more effective in general.

AEFA.9035:

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.

AEFA picture

I’m honestly not sure what you are trying to insinuate. That fact that I’m taking concepts that existed during the beta period and reimplementing them after they were adjusted to be worse because they were deemed too powerful, like Evasive Purity (I was informed that during a beta phase, Evasive Purity removed 2 conditions on dodge roll for the player and all allies within range) is indicative and in line with how the game has developed since then, and is definitely an option the deserves some consideration.

The other suggestion is a homage to guild wars 1 interrupt builds that were very decisive with high/risk reward if played properly, and also sported a very decent plethora of skills that were capable of handling numerous conditions at a time.

Because guild wars 2 is a different monster, for the sake of risk/reward, the less “free” condi cleanses on a cooldown and more skill based situations that are created are a good thing, and transferring conditions is absolutely something that logically fits with the rangers kitten nal (also true for guild wars 1, think plague touch on the standard touch ranger) and since we can already make the tradeoff of transferring them to the pet, it makes every bit of sense to be able to transfer them to another player in a very, very situational circumstance.

We all have our own perception of the class though, I’m not saying you have to agree with me, I’m just providing supporting reasoning that obviously didn’t align with the proposed format when I made the posts.

Ohoni.6057:

No other class get its damage cut to 2/3 just to make its mechanic work.

Sure they do, they just aren’t all so clear about how they do it. If you ignore your class mechanic entirely then you’re going to lose out on 30% damage, maybe more in some cases. Try playing an all Fire Ele, or a clone-less Mesmer. Pets didn’t “steal” 30% of the damage you were owed, they just account for the 20% bonus damage that take Rangers from 100% to 120%, just as the other classes go from 100% to 120% by the use of their class mechanics.

That’s an incredibly silly way to look at it. What DPS loss is there for a Thief? Is their class inherently doing 120% damage instead of 100% like everyone else? What DPS loss is there for a Guardian? Any for a Necro? How about with your Ele example where a full fire Ele who stays in Fire 100% of the time is actually the highest DPS class in the game aside from an Ele with a hammer?

The simple fact is the Ranger’s damage is handicapped with a pet which is balanced, we presume, as if it has 100% uptime and 100% chance to hit. In reality the pet has about a 75% chance to hit, an F2 function that doesn’t work, and is alive a fraction of the time (or not at all as is the case in WvW).

Ranger base damage is lower as well as their weapon coefficients… for a mechanic that doesn’t even appear to be feasible let alone functional. I’m all for keeping the pet, don’t get me wrong. But the class shouldn’t be handicapped for it.

You want to know the perfect solution to Ranger’s and their pet? You increase the Ranger weapon and coefficient damage tables to be on par with every other class in the game instead of the 30-60% reduction they apparently suffer from now.

You then make every pet do the exact same damage, have the exact same health, and have the exact same armor. You then reduce the pet’s damage down to what a 6 to 8 stack of bleed is capable of doing. Why 6 to 8? Because that’s about what any class can maintain with just auto attacking and isn’t really that impressive.

That’s it… you now made the Ranger mechanic a unique ‘DOT’ that no other class has that can also provide some utility or damage depending on the pet you’ve chosen.

Now everyone’s happy… petless Rangers aren’t being handicapped. Pet rangers can choose to spec into BM to improve the pet. The mechanic overall is still a vital part of the class because so much of the class’ utility is built into it. Pets in their current form are about as annoying as a single stack of bleed so nothing changes there.

mtpelion.4562:

Pets need to take 30% damage from AoEs, be immune to one shot mechanics, and take 25% damage from cleaves, when not the selected target for the cleave attack.

I’m thinking of Poppy’s passive (Character from LoL) when I’m reading your suggestion.
“Whenever Poppy would otherwise suffer damage greater than 10% of her current health all damage exceeding that threshold is halved; Poppy receives the first 10% normally.”

Allie Murdock.8152:

mtpelion.4562:

snip

When Stowed, the ranger should gain the “Aspect of the [pet name]” effect, which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.

mtpelion.4562, you have some really great ideas in your posts. I noticed your sentiments about Ranger pets right now are shared by a lot of the community here. The quote is an idea in particular struck me as interesting.

If we weren’t able to have an option to keep the pet permanently stowed, would having an option like you suggested make it feel better to toggle the pet? It seems like the kind of thing that you could develop a strategy around (pet could be out for one reason, then you switch it up to catch opponent off-guard).

I’m glad you posted this, otherwise I would have missed it. This could work really well…think Udyr with a powerful short-term buff based on the pet and a permanent, weaker buff as long as it’s stored.

This could open up a lot of interesting synergy with Master’s Bond and the pet swap traits. Compact the training buffs into one and add traits based around swapping into aspects. Keep the cooldowns global, so you have to choose between gaining the short and powerful aspect buff or swapping to the other pet and proccing things like Mighty Swap.

I very much like where this is headed, though I can see problems with hotkeys. We already lost the binding for aggressive/passive; where would we bind this new aspect swap?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

Traps should be in wilderness survival. It only makes sense.

Allie Murdock.8152:

mtpelion.4562:

snip

When Stowed, the ranger should gain the “Aspect of the [pet name]” effect, which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.

mtpelion.4562, you have some really great ideas in your posts. I noticed your sentiments about Ranger pets right now are shared by a lot of the community here. The quote is an idea in particular struck me as interesting.

If we weren’t able to have an option to keep the pet permanently stowed, would having an option like you suggested make it feel better to toggle the pet? It seems like the kind of thing that you could develop a strategy around (pet could be out for one reason, then you switch it up to catch opponent off-guard).

The option to keep the per permanently stowed (read: perma-stowed during combat) needs to be in there. Personally I would be 100% happy with just being able to perma-stow my pet and going on about my business with zero changes, even better if we got a buff for perma-stowing them that made up for the DPS loss or gave it back to the Ranger since they are balanced DPS-wise with the pet having 100% up time. I know of 3 other Rangers in my guild who feel exactly the same. We have spoken at length about just wishing to have the perma-stow option, especially during fall damage when trying to do jumping puzzles.

I must request a hot keybind for toggling active/passive. That really really needs to be in there to help manage pets.

I must ask, are there any Devs who main Rangers? Who have put over 1000 hours into Rangers completing PVE, Dungeons, and WVW?

Nike.2631:

Those Aren’t Holes… They’re Opportunities!
The above steps create several gaps in the Ranger trait array. These holes would need to be filled with new effects, hopefully enhancing the diversity and effectiveness of our weapons or utility skills. While this represents additional work before the process could be considered complete, its work that should bring the Ranger more in line with expected performance levels and increase competitive build diversity.

Some elaboration on this please? I get the concept… I think we all know that scattering “companion” buffs throughout all the other trait lines just confuses people. And frankly seems like an intentional hurdle put in place specifically to PREVENT us from specializing into the ‘old Turret rangers of yore’, or stealing Sword&Dagger thieves jobs from them like we did in the first game. This is even more apparent when attempting to make a working Spirit build for PvE for instance. (b/c it was still too good in structured??).

But how can this actually be manipulated in a way that avoids the return of Bunkering condition Beastmasters while giving our power archer/axers a real role in WvW & Dungeons? I think most people understand by now that a lot of those current functionalities, (especially conditions/CC used against Bosses/GuardianZergs) are useless to them because they are redundant from other classes and don’t really do much to begin with or fail as “boons” b/c they DONT STACK. And the don’t stack, b/c they weren’t built around PvE. They were built around 5v5.

Regeneration & Vigor for instance. In PvE, we don’t “feel” either of those, we just “feel” stuff like Stability & AEGIS b/c it actually does buy more time for us to focus on DPS’ing & stay alive until our #6 Heal pops again. We also want a lot more access to Might because it helps end the fights sooner which means less worrying about when our next Troll Unguent can be popped for the kind of regeneration we actually NEED. And we want more Quickness b/c … well, it’s QUICKNESS. It’s what our class should have been all about from the start in PVE.

What I’m saying is, there still seems to be a huge disconnect between what people expect, and what little gains can be made by only shifting TRAITS around. You mentioned filling in better traits after doing this compression and shifting. What kinds of effects are we talking about for these New traits then? I think that’s where the discussion really needs to trend if we expect to actually bargain for anything beyond Piecemeal here. IOW: You need to take the reigns on that and not just leave those holes up to them to fill

I main a ranger. I play most of my time in wvw (90+ %).

Here is my feedback on the ranger for wvw:

PETS:
Pets die really fast. They have useful abilities but their pathfinding is terrible and sometimes prevents them from using the abilities. The more people there are, the faster the pets die and thus, the less we have damage and abilities.
Either improve the pathfinding, upgrade their HP or make their stats scale with the ranger’s stats.
That or give us an option to perma stow them and get a boost to our stats.
Another thing that would be really fun and useful: an ability to incarnate the pet while having the character still vulnerable. You possess it and can run around with it, use its abilities but your character can be killed while doing so.

SHOUTS:
Our shouts are near useless in wvw, even when traited and using rune of the soldier. I tried a shout build and while it CAN be effective, the fact that it does way less than a warrior’s shout build makes it useless. This could be changed if at least one of our shouts gave some utility or removed a condition, similar to the warrior shouts.
Search and rescue has never worked for me even once, i’ve stopped trying to use it.
Guard is useless and mostly used because of the smaller cooldown on it. It serves no purpose at all other than getting those swiftness/fury buffs (and potential condi removal).

SPIRITS:
Spirits are really lackluster in wvw. They die even faster than pets since you can’t control them at all, have a chance to trigger an effect and need heavy trait investment to even be considered. Basically they are banners that can die and sometimes don’t give a buff. Spirit of Nature is particularly useless when it could and should be pretty strong. It dies almost instantly, you can’t rez anyone with it because of the cast animation that occurs when you try to, giving enough time for opponents to kill it, and obviously, no one gets that great healing since he’s dying so fast.
Compare them to banners and you see why this is an issue.
This could be avoided by granting the spirits more health (still have them killable but nowhere near as easily) and upgrading the trigger chance to 50 (untraited) / 100%.

WEAPONS:
Most weapon skills are ok in my opinion and they complement each other. However, since we have the pet, the skills do much less damage than other classes’s weapon skills. If i compare the greatsword damage to the hammer of guardian or warrior, those 2 grant more CC, much more damage and utility as well.
An upgrade to damage on Greatsword (#1, #3) and mainhand axe (mainly #1) seems appropriate.
Mainhand axe would be perfect if the bounce occured even if there wasn’t 3 targets (=> bounced back to previous target). It would make it a stronger weapon against solo/duo enemies and stay the same vs the rest.
Torch, sword, dagger, offhand axe, shortbow and longbow feel pretty good and have the right skills. They all have a different purpose and i have had no issue with those.

And make entangle unblockable. The tooltip says it is, but it really isn’t.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

However you would then lose the on-crit drive that the skirmishing tree has. And where would the crit stats go then? Marksmanship might make sense but then our trees would look almost identical to thieves in stats, which may or may not be a good thing. Wilderness Survival would be a natural choice for the PvP meta, but wouldn’t make much sense for other content.

Not that it’s a bad idea, just playing devil’s advocate for a second.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

You would have to switch both precision and crit damage because otherwise we would have to invest into three traitlines to get max. direct damage.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Atherakhia.4086:

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

snip

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

Battosai discussed with me the idea of turning the spirits into auras that are applied to your pet, and then the range of the effects are based on the location of your pet.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

The only traits out of place in skirmishing are the traps. Most other traits there actually support a power build (especially power builds that want to use a bow). Is it out of the question to simply give each trap an up-front damaging component that can crit? Seeing as the class has such an extreme lack of burst damage as a whole (is this by design?), allowing traps to do reasonable damage seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

How much damage is up for debate given the cooldown on each trap, but it would need to be large enough so even those who don’t invest into the traits would have a reason to at least use a trap (which is a huge problem with the class overall right now as most utility skills aren’t worth slotting without first investing 30pts into a tree).

Allie Murdock.8152:

mtpelion.4562:

snip

When Stowed, the ranger should gain the “Aspect of the [pet name]” effect, which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.

mtpelion.4562, you have some really great ideas in your posts. I noticed your sentiments about Ranger pets right now are shared by a lot of the community here. The quote is an idea in particular struck me as interesting.

If we weren’t able to have an option to keep the pet permanently stowed, would having an option like you suggested make it feel better to toggle the pet? It seems like the kind of thing that you could develop a strategy around (pet could be out for one reason, then you switch it up to catch opponent off-guard).

I actually have a nice idea for this, but not only making it a passive buff, make it a change on the active F2, granting a unique ability to the player. I will just elaborate my idea, even though it probably still has some flaws. Still, I think it has a very nice touch to it.
This would open up a completely new type of gameplay to the ranger, as well as giving an opportunity to get some benefits from the pet even in WvW zergs, where it normally is not just as useful.
Still, the buffs while having the pet stored should not be as beneficial as an alive pet.

Proposal Functionality

F4 effectively now stores your pet instead of changing to the second pet.
Storing your pet gives you now the “Aspect of the <pet family name>” (for example Felines)
This effectively changes your F2 skill into a new spell,
F1 now allows you to send your second pet into the fight, if wished so.

If the pet is stored while being dead, the new F2 skill automatically is on cooldown.

Example
Pet 1: Wolf (Family: Canine)
Pet 2: Reef Drake (Family: Drake)

Wolf is outside. You can fight alongside with it. You see the position of your pet is bad, it will probably receive alot aoe damage and would be rendered useless. You press F4 to store it.
You now have [“Aspect of the Canine”] effect active.
You use the F2 skill, since it is a new one. Your pet wasn’t dead yet, so it is not on cooldown.
8 seconds after using the F2, you feel it is safe for your next pet to come out and press F1. You get normal Pet gui again, and you loose [“Aspect of the Canine”]. Reef Drake is now the active Pet.

The Canine stored F2 Skill: (for example)
[“Shuddering How”]: Shout. (Also contributes towards shout traits)
Cooldown: 25s
Cast Time: 2s
Radius: 600
Aoe Weakness: 8s
Targets: 5

jcbroe.4329:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Atherakhia.4086:

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

snip

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

Battosai discussed with me the idea of turning the spirits into auras that are applied to your pet, and then the range of the effects are based on the location of your pet.

The same pet that dies in 1/10 of a second in wvw ?
We don’t need another skillset tied to the pets, we already have too much based on them as it is…

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

Or, would it make more sense to have more traits in the Skirmishing line that directly effect power builds so that there would be a larger range of options when choosing to invest in Skirmishing than just building for traps?

jcbroe.4329:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

Or, would it make more sense to have more traits in the Skirmishing line that directly effect power builds so that there would be a larger range of options when choosing to invest in Skirmishing than just building for traps?

Completely agree with jcb here.

Allie, have you looked in this thread?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/first

There are many many great suggestions and community CDI in that thread which need to be seen by the Devs.

Fenrir.6183:

jcbroe.4329:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Atherakhia.4086:

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

snip

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

Battosai discussed with me the idea of turning the spirits into auras that are applied to your pet, and then the range of the effects are based on the location of your pet.

The same pet that dies in 1/10 of a second in wvw ?
We don’t need another skillset tied to the pets, we already have too much based on them as it is…

People already offer up that same complaint about spirits in WvW. It isn’t a bad idea when trying to reduce the amount of screen clutter, as it would reduce the amount of things on screen while offering the same effects that spirits currently have, minus having to trait for Spirits Unbound.

Pet’s only have a survival issue in large fights in WvW anyhow, where a lot of the game mechanics that were more than likely designed around smaller skirmishes don’t translate well.

Maybe that’s just a general performance issue for pets in WvW that needs to be handled, since it is a fairly global issue that affects much more than just the ranger class is all.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

An alternative is to increase the direct damage of triggering a trap, allowing them to scale with this trait line. In utility, they suit the skirmishing/hit and run playstyle perfectly, it’s their focus on conditions that makes them odd. By making each component (power, condition) low baseline but with high scaling, the traps could then be used by either type of build without being too powerful multiple areas at once.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

I was one of the persons that really did suggest to move trap traits into the Wilderness Survival line. It certainly is true that, as the Skirmishing Trait line is at the moment, they do not seem to fit.

However, if you would swap condition duration from the Marksmanship lane with the Crit damage of the Skirmishing lane, it would be a very interesting change.
For the Berserker stats at the moment, nothing would actually change. since they use both lines, but it would open a completely new interesting sort of build. Crit, Condition builds. And the traits could stay the same, since actually only 1 trait from the Marksmankitten traits benefit from condition duration at all. And there is also 1 in the Precision line that takes advantage of it, as well as the trap potency.

Using Sigil of Torment, which applies Torment on Crit, as well as Bleeding on critical hits (trait), while using traps from the “new” Skirmishing lane would make an interesting change. You could build make new builds with Sword/Torch and Shortbow, with the Trap traits and Trap utilities, as well as using Entangle in effective pve builds with conditions and traps. I like the idea.

One of the two should happen though, because at the moment, the traps do not really benefit from the Skirmishing trait line.

That’s an incredibly silly way to look at it. What DPS loss is there for a Thief? Is their class inherently doing 120% damage instead of 100% like everyone else?

A Thief that makes use of neither Steal nor Initiative boosting mechanics is not doing 100% of his potential damage, just as a Ranger that is not making ue of his pet is not making 100% of his potential damage.

What DPS loss is there for a Guardian?

Plenty of fire procs and other effects, but the Guardian Mechanic is more defense than offense. A Guardian that does not take advantage of his mechanic would probably be more like 95% damage and 80% defensive strength.

Any for a Necro?

A Necro that does not use Life Force is at a massive deficiency. You might just use it to gain benefits per LF, or to quick-shift to proc some effects, or you might spec fully into Deathshroud, but if you aren’t doing something with it then you’re probably leaving more than 30% of your total effectiveness on the table.

How about with your Ele example where a full fire Ele who stays in Fire 100% of the time is actually the highest DPS class in the game aside from an Ele with a hammer?

Using fire some of the time is very nice, using fire exclusively is a waste of cooldowns. The fire attacks might have the best burst, but you need to weave in and out of them.

The simple fact is the Ranger’s damage is handicapped with a pet which is balanced, we presume, as if it has 100% uptime and 100% chance to hit. In reality the pet has about a 75% chance to hit, an F2 function that doesn’t work, and is alive a fraction of the time (or not at all as is the case in WvW).

/sigh, which is WHY we need to be making suggestions to get them closer to 100% uptime. They’ve already announced that they’re going to be making the f2 abilities more reliable, and if they implement a proposal to allow them to deal damage even while downed, I think they would sort themselves out.

Ranger base damage is lower as well as their weapon coefficients… for a mechanic that doesn’t even appear to be feasible let alone functional. I’m all for keeping the pet, don’t get me wrong. But the class shouldn’t be handicapped for it.

Well you can’t have both. If a Ranger can do 100% as much damage as a Warrior and then have a pet adding damage on top of that, it would swing the balance way too far in the opposite direction. If pets are dealing significant damage, then it needs to come from somewhere, obviously.

You then make every pet do the exact same damage, have the exact same health, and have the exact same armor. You then reduce the pet’s damage down to what a 6 to 8 stack of bleed is capable of doing. Why 6 to 8? Because that’s about what any class can maintain with just auto attacking and isn’t really that impressive.

That sounds really lame.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

I could definitely get behind that, although you might also need to move around a few of the traits, for example “pets gain might on crit” should go to wherever crit moves to. Maybe change things like Honed Axes from being +crit to +Condi.

Still, condi damage is a mess right now since you haven’t fixed bleed/poison stacking yet, and they still don’t work on objects, that needs to be sorted before we start worrying about tweaking class-specific condi issues.

Why not just give traps some massive “on-crti” effects to them, so that the traps crit and when they do amazing things happen, meaning that a crit-heavy build would be ideal for a trap heavy build?

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class. So instead, why not just cut the cooldown time on pet death (perhaps tie it to beastmastery)? In every other situation besides a zerg you should be able to keep your pet alive a good majority of the time by paying attention and swapping it.

Also, if we are discussing adding stow buffs, why not just add the micromanaging to something else…like the innate pet ability we currently cannot control? Call it an F5 skill if you want, just let us use skills like wolf knockdown on demand.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

Switching trait placement for traps? NO. That would break the trap build horribly. I’d have to sacrifice either Empathetic Bond or Bark Skin, neither of which any trapper would be willing to part with, as being without either we’re screwed.

However, the stats…I believe that could work, but you’d also have to move around some traits (this was going to happen anyway, but to a far less build breaking degree) otherwise several of the traits could become worthless. But in general, this is what I would like to see.

Marksmanship: Power, Critical Damage
Skirmishing: Precision, Condition Damage
Wilderness Survival: Toughness, Boon Duration
Nature Magic: Vitality, Healing Power
Beastmastery: Condition Duration, Pet Attribute Bonus

Reasoning behind this is that this fixes the problem with several fields. Before if you wanted to go traps and subsequently condition damage, you were forced to spec into Wilderness survival along with the full points in Skirmishing to get their full power. Now you don’t need to in order to pull off the efficiency. This also makes several other build types not forced into a single role. I do however again, see the problems with some traits requiring to be moved around, but I believe we all agree that was going to have to happen eventually.

EDIT: Main reason for my suggested change to traits stats is that instead of denouncing the location of the trap traits, we should EMBRACE their location by moving condition damage over there. Plus moving the Condition Damage’s location doesn’t negatively effect Wilderness Survival at all, as no traits in that line are effected by Condition Damage on the Ranger’s end, whereas several are in skirmishing.

Allie Murdock.8152:

mtpelion.4562:

snip

When Stowed, the ranger should gain the “Aspect of the [pet name]” effect, which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.

mtpelion.4562, you have some really great ideas in your posts. I noticed your sentiments about Ranger pets right now are shared by a lot of the community here. The quote is an idea in particular struck me as interesting.

If we weren’t able to have an option to keep the pet permanently stowed, would having an option like you suggested make it feel better to toggle the pet? It seems like the kind of thing that you could develop a strategy around (pet could be out for one reason, then you switch it up to catch opponent off-guard).

To answer this question Shortly and Succinctly (B/c I think we all GET why the pets aren’t stowed permanently even when we wish they were while doing Dungeon-Trap Puzzles). The “Aspect” doesn’t even need to be a separately programmed. IE: you don’t have to separately write a new skill table for the Brown bear, and then another one for Canines, and moas ect. There just needs to be 3 different tiers of longer-duration “Combos” coming from the pets while we’re either adjacent to them, or while they’re in passive/heel mode. (and it should probably stack with Spirits, there’s no reason to remove or redo sprits). And combos simply meaning applying all conditions or boons (but especially BOONS) that would make the most sense for each animal == effectively turning them into buff-bots that we actually have an incentive to keep alive

And I have to Emphasize the word “Combos” here because it’s the only niche in the game that other classes don’t need to monopolize (besides Elementalist perhaps). It’s also important to mention COMBOS again, because it’s one of the least “robust” aspects of the Ranger class and most of them honestly felt like an afterthought granting much shorter durations than all other classes gain from their Combos

jcbroe.4329:

People already offer up that same complaint about spirits in WvW. It isn’t a bad idea when trying to reduce the amount of screen clutter, as it would reduce the amount of things on screen while offering the same effects that spirits currently have, minus having to trait for Spirits Unbound.

Pet’s only have a survival issue in large fights in WvW anyhow, where a lot of the game mechanics that were more than likely designed around smaller skirmishes don’t translate well.

Maybe that’s just a general performance issue for pets in WvW that needs to be handled, since it is a fairly global issue that affects much more than just the ranger class is all.

Problem is, most of wvw is large fights as roaming around makes no sense. I’ll give you small groups (capping camps, ninjaing towers and escorting dollies/scouting), but your idea does not solve anything anyway…instead of having to kill the spirits, they’ll just focus kill the pet in 1 second and you lose both some damage and your buffs. It would be even worse.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Yeah, it would also mess up a bunch of builds. I spoke with the guys on this one and they aren’t super happy with the skirmishing line in general either.

After release I made a skirmishing/wilderness ranger that used a hybrid crit/condition spec. With conditions on crit traits and sigils, plus Maul on Greatsword (which applied bleeding at the time), and traps dropping in melee range (while you already meleeing anyway), it was the ideal skirmisher. Hit fast, block, evade and stun your target to avoid damage, then disengage and recover while the conditions wear your target down. It had a high skill ceiling and high reward, and was a fun active playstyle. Sadly, changes made since then combined with poor condition mechanics of the base game have made this build inferior.

This is what I want out of the skirmishing tree. All it needs to synergize well is improved condition usability on crits (33% chance to bleed on crit is not enough), and some resistance to Crowd Control effects (something like Dogged March, only not OP). Depending on spec then, skirmishing would be able support power melee builds and crit/condition hybrid builds equally. I think this is why traps are how they are (damage on trigger, apply condition) and why they were originally put in skirmishing. The model works, but the game has drifted away from it. There’s no reason it can’t be fixed with a couple minor changes.

edit: although I really skirmishing stats how it is, swapping crit damage with condition duration in marksmanship, would fit into the playstyle of both of them, and would not ruin any build either.

Fenrir.6183:

jcbroe.4329:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Atherakhia.4086:

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

snip

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

Battosai discussed with me the idea of turning the spirits into auras that are applied to your pet, and then the range of the effects are based on the location of your pet.

The same pet that dies in 1/10 of a second in wvw ?
We don’t need another skillset tied to the pets, we already have too much based on them as it is…

Right, but this is the problem with this whole CDI thread and something that has been brought up several times now. Do we make suggestions with the assumption that ANet can get pets into a place that they actually work? Do we make suggestions to work around the problem they currently have? Or do we make suggestions as if the pets should be phased out?

The suggestion I made is working under the assumption that pets will at some point be functional in larger group settings. The faults of the pets in PvE and sPvP are pretty over stated to be honest and given the short cooldowns on spirits, the idea of shifting them to the pet as opposed to independent objects on the battlefield would end up being a positive thing for the game and class as a whole IMO. WvW continues to be the problem.

Now as for Allie’s specific request… there are 2 ways to approach it. You can simply make the spirits ‘posses’ the Ranger as opposed to the pet and make them ‘companions’ that follow the Ranger around and remain untargettable (until you shed one in which case you need to DPS them down much like a Mesmer Phantasm per a previous posters concern). This fits your ‘Ranger in control’ issue.

Alternatively, you could simply look at the permanent pet as our ‘spirit guide’ and it is capable of taking on the various spirit aspects. Alternative F2 functionIn another thread on the Ranger forum eons ago, this tied into a 'workaround' to the F2 problem where the F2 function for the pets was replaced entirely and when a player hits F2 it simply spawns a 'spirit' at your pets location (a neon blue version of your current pet like the Spirit Wolf when using the Horns) and .5 seconds later it 'detonated', turned into a blue ball and did whatever the F2 function normally does. AE howl, turns into a beam of light (guardian down state #1 for example) and hits the opponent etc.. This way you could simply turn the pets eyes various colors indicating what spirit was currently on the pet.

Now if you want to scrap the entire idea of removing the spirits and simply try to approach the body blocking issue, the easiest solution is to simply make them ground targetted like banners and move the trait to make them mobile to a 30pt trait. Not ideal, but I think you’d find most people would be using spirits if they worked more like banners and would open up build diversity some as 30pts is out of reach and other more attractive options exist in other trees.

Fenrir.6183:

jcbroe.4329:

People already offer up that same complaint about spirits in WvW. It isn’t a bad idea when trying to reduce the amount of screen clutter, as it would reduce the amount of things on screen while offering the same effects that spirits currently have, minus having to trait for Spirits Unbound.

Pet’s only have a survival issue in large fights in WvW anyhow, where a lot of the game mechanics that were more than likely designed around smaller skirmishes don’t translate well.

Maybe that’s just a general performance issue for pets in WvW that needs to be handled, since it is a fairly global issue that affects much more than just the ranger class is all.

Problem is, most of wvw is large fights as roaming around makes no sense. I’ll give you small groups (capping camps, ninjaing towers and escorting dollies/scouting), but your idea does not solve anything anyway…instead of having to kill the spirits, they’ll just focus kill the pet in 1 second and you lose both some damage and your buffs. It would be even worse.

It actually is a solution that’s PvP based (remember, Battosai, top PvP player, sent this to me for the CDI if I so chose to bring it up). It would reduce lots of the screen clutter, and the pet is fairly hard to kill in a PvP environment as long as you don’t let it sit in AoE or get focused.

I agree that is isn’t a solution for WvW, just like it wouldn’t be a solution, and might even create more problems, for any situation where pets are extremely vulnerable to death and 1-shot mechanics, like in certain open world PvE or dungeon instances.

Atherakhia.4086:

Right, but this is the problem with this whole CDI thread and something that has been brought up several times now. Do we make suggestions with the assumption that ANet can get pets into a place that they actually work? Do we make suggestions to work around the problem they currently have? Or do we make suggestions as if the pets should be phased out?

The suggestion I made is working under the assumption that pets will at some point be functional in larger group settings. The faults of the pets in PvE and sPvP are pretty over stated to be honest and given the short cooldowns on spirits, the idea of shifting them to the pet as opposed to independent objects on the battlefield would end up being a positive thing for the game and class as a whole IMO. WvW continues to be the problem.

Now as for Allie’s specific request… there are 2 ways to approach it. You can simply make the spirits ‘posses’ the Ranger as opposed to the pet and make them ‘companions’ that follow the Ranger around and remain untargettable (until you shed one in which case you need to DPS them down much like a Mesmer Phantasm per a previous posters concern). This fits your ‘Ranger in control’ issue.

Alternatively, you could simply look at the permanent pet as our ‘spirit guide’ and it is capable of taking on the various spirit aspects. Alternative F2 functionIn another thread on the Ranger forum eons ago, this tied into a 'workaround' to the F2 problem where the F2 function for the pets was replaced entirely and when a player hits F2 it simply spawns a 'spirit' at your pets location (a neon blue version of your current pet like the Spirit Wolf when using the Horns) and .5 seconds later it 'detonated', turned into a blue ball and did whatever the F2 function normally does. AE howl, turns into a beam of light (guardian down state #1 for example) and hits the opponent etc.. This way you could simply turn the pets eyes various colors indicating what spirit was currently on the pet.

Now if you want to scrap the entire idea of removing the spirits and simply try to approach the body blocking issue, the easiest solution is to simply make them ground targetted like banners and move the trait to make them mobile to a 30pt trait. Not ideal, but I think you’d find most people would be using spirits if they worked more like banners and would open up build diversity some as 30pts is out of reach and other more attractive options exist in other trees.

Are you proposing this as a solution to NPC clutter in WvW or for PvP? Your original post was for PvP and kind of confused me…spirit body blocking is a huge asset and is the only reason Spirits Unbound might be considered.

There’s always issues with making more actors available on the screen though, especially in WvW with so many already there, and ranger spirits are one offender. I’m just not sure this should be changed just because of WvW if necro minions, ele minions, and mes clones aren’t also handled some other way.

Gotejjeken.1267:

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class.

You may not be happy about permastowing. I would be absolutely. Furthermore, if you could stow your pet, you could still use it like you are used to. And people like me, who don’t want to rely on the pet can stow it. Simple as that.

Angela Ranna.5638:

Atherakhia.4086:

Right, but this is the problem with this whole CDI thread and something that has been brought up several times now. Do we make suggestions with the assumption that ANet can get pets into a place that they actually work? Do we make suggestions to work around the problem they currently have? Or do we make suggestions as if the pets should be phased out?

The suggestion I made is working under the assumption that pets will at some point be functional in larger group settings. The faults of the pets in PvE and sPvP are pretty over stated to be honest and given the short cooldowns on spirits, the idea of shifting them to the pet as opposed to independent objects on the battlefield would end up being a positive thing for the game and class as a whole IMO. WvW continues to be the problem.

Now as for Allie’s specific request… there are 2 ways to approach it. You can simply make the spirits ‘posses’ the Ranger as opposed to the pet and make them ‘companions’ that follow the Ranger around and remain untargettable (until you shed one in which case you need to DPS them down much like a Mesmer Phantasm per a previous posters concern). This fits your ‘Ranger in control’ issue.

Alternatively, you could simply look at the permanent pet as our ‘spirit guide’ and it is capable of taking on the various spirit aspects. Alternative F2 functionIn another thread on the Ranger forum eons ago, this tied into a 'workaround' to the F2 problem where the F2 function for the pets was replaced entirely and when a player hits F2 it simply spawns a 'spirit' at your pets location (a neon blue version of your current pet like the Spirit Wolf when using the Horns) and .5 seconds later it 'detonated', turned into a blue ball and did whatever the F2 function normally does. AE howl, turns into a beam of light (guardian down state #1 for example) and hits the opponent etc.. This way you could simply turn the pets eyes various colors indicating what spirit was currently on the pet.

Now if you want to scrap the entire idea of removing the spirits and simply try to approach the body blocking issue, the easiest solution is to simply make them ground targetted like banners and move the trait to make them mobile to a 30pt trait. Not ideal, but I think you’d find most people would be using spirits if they worked more like banners and would open up build diversity some as 30pts is out of reach and other more attractive options exist in other trees.

Are you proposing this as a solution to NPC clutter in WvW or for PvP? Your original post was for PvP and kind of confused me…spirit body blocking is a huge asset and is the only reason Spirits Unbound might be considered.

There’s always issues with making more actors available on the screen though, especially in WvW with so many already there, and ranger spirits are one offender. I’m just not sure this should be changed just because of WvW if necro minions, ele minions, and mes clones aren’t also handled some other way.

The value to the change assuming nothing else is mostly for PvE (not needing to get the trait for mobile spirits) and PvP (no more spirits). While the body blocking is an asset for the Ranger, it’s not something well received by the player community overall and is seen as quite overpowered. It’s not as large an issue for Mesmers or Elementalists because of the way their pets work. It’s a very big deal for the Necromancer, but this is a Ranger thread and a solution to minionmancers is simply not my concern.

As for WvW, this does nothing but make spirits more viable for roaming builds. The current WvW meta of zerg first and ask questions later? It’s irrelevent because pets simply aren’t functional at all. It was never meant to be a solution to this. It was meant as a solution to the imbalance in PvP and the build diversity issues the class faces. It’s working under the premise that some other idea brought up in this thread solves the larger scale problem.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

Yes, I thought so as well and it was one of the suggestions I wanted to make on the subject, thank you for bringing it up.
If you were to swap Crit Damage for Condition Damage so Skirmishing was Precision + Condition damage, then swap Healing Power into Wilderness Survival alongside Toughness, and put Crit Damage in Beastmastery.

Thou maybe you might consider putting Vitality into Wilderness Survival with Toughness, and put the Healing Power into Nature Magic, since it has both the healing and boon traits.
Idk if having both Vitality and Toughness in one line might be too powerful, but it theme well.

That I think would do it.
That way we can keep the traits right where they are, and maybe even have more of a reason to go into Beastmastery, since Healing Power really isn’t an incentive, certainly not in that line. Because incidentally Skirmishing and Beastmastery tend to go well together.

You’d go for Marksmanship for direct damage + non-damaging conditions, thus condition duration works well here.
Skirmishing for crit chance and condition damage, for both traps and on crit procs.
Wilderness Survival for Toughness and Vitality with traits for straight up tankiness .
Nature Magic for healing and boon support.
Beastmaster for stronger pets and damage.

That sounds rather good actually.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

It’s funny that you use a lore argument here, because nature spirits only exist because of a balancing decision in GW1: Before the ranger set spirits with a health bar, nature rituals hat indefinite range and only one hard counter: the Unnatural Signet (Mesmer).

Personally, I really like the idea that the ranger imbues his pet with the Spirit of Water/Sun/Stone/Frost/Zephyr/Renewal, both mechanics-wise (as Atherakhia suggested) and lore-wise. It’s still the ranger’s energy, but he uses his companion as focus.

This change would make ranger pets a higher-priority target, remove visual clutter, and free up a master trait slot for tanky/supportive specs: Nature Magic VII, Spirits Unbound, would just be obsolete.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Gotejjeken.1267:

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class.

You may not be happy about permastowing. I would be absolutely. Furthermore, if you could stow your pet, you could still use it like you are used to. And people like me, who don’t want to rely on the pet can stow it. Simple as that.

An opt out for the pet totally breaks the spirit of the class. There are other classes (see: warrior) if you want to do big damage with no pet reliance.

Pet needs to be out, and there needs to be good reason to use more than a select few. They all have unique abilities, but they are so unresponsive that the utilities are useless. If you redistribute power and make the pet a sole utility provider then you get the best of both worlds. If it dies, the most you lose is the F2 ability.

If anything, the most annoying thing for me about the pet being out is going into combat mode when it gets hit. If that could be separated then I see no real downside to having what amounts to an animated utility slot running around.

Allie Murdock.8152:

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

Some? No. Many many people. Just have a gander at how many threads have been created in the subforum about replacing them with something. If perma-stowing during combat = aura buff I am so hard for it that if I was anymore I would explode with infinite unicorn rainbows from every orifice.

Allie Murdock.8152:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Gotejjeken.1267:

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class.

You may not be happy about permastowing. I would be absolutely. Furthermore, if you could stow your pet, you could still use it like you are used to. And people like me, who don’t want to rely on the pet can stow it. Simple as that.

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

I like your musings. I can’t see how anyone would complain if given the option (yea, I know some still would but you will never please those types)

Allie Murdock.8152:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Gotejjeken.1267:

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class.

You may not be happy about permastowing. I would be absolutely. Furthermore, if you could stow your pet, you could still use it like you are used to. And people like me, who don’t want to rely on the pet can stow it. Simple as that.

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

I’m all for removing the pet (or keeping it…), but I’m very concerned with trying to find simple solutions to removing it like the often suggested ‘give Rangers +XX% more damage while the pet is stowed’ solution. Even in their horribly crippled state, the pet can provide a lot of utility. 2 wolf pets left on passive for example provides a ton of single target utility with their leap (which is always the first move used if in range of an enemy when told to attack when passive) leading to a howl, leading to a pet swap, leading to another leap, leading to another howl.

That’s a lot to sacrifice that I’m not sure I’d be willing to do it for 30% more damage unless I were given a Kill Shot ability (which has been suggested many times as well).

The class is already a very ‘boring’ class to play because everything is so passive. We have pets that do their own thing, we do nothing but spam auto attack all day because our weapons have no burst of combos to string together. Removing the only real complexity to the class is a hard pill to swallow. I’m also worried if we move down this road we kind of leave Ranger territory and start approaching the land of Bards and Druids?