Guild Wars 2

Abrilete.1439:

I think that we all agree that right now, considering all the gap-closers, escape habilities, teleports and stealths, the game rewards powerful bursts and Hit’n Run tactics.
That’s why sustained damage is not very effective.

It would be nice to see the Devs opinion on this matter.

Well they seem to have already given their opinion which, unfortunately, involves nerfing the DPS of the other classes in an attempt to make Rangers’ sustained damage relatively more viable. The much more logical option would instead be to bring the Ranger’s burst capabilities up to par with the other classes’. This would not only require less work but it would also appease the Ranger community and avoid kittening off the other classes.

I have a feeling our lack of burst capabilities is the primary reason (though of course there are others) that we have always been ‘bottom of the pile’. The only thing that seems to be standing in the way of true balance at the moment – as people have been discussing – is the seemingly unwavering Ranger design philosophy. This is the thing that needs to be changed, because it underlies all the core issues with our class.

Bryzy.2719:

Abrilete.1439:

I think that we all agree that right now, considering all the gap-closers, escape habilities, teleports and stealths, the game rewards powerful bursts and Hit’n Run tactics.
That’s why sustained damage is not very effective.

It would be nice to see the Devs opinion on this matter.

Well they seem to have already given their opinion which, unfortunately, involves nerfing the DPS of the other classes in an attempt to make Rangers’ sustained damage relatively more viable. The much more logical option would instead be to bring the Ranger’s burst capabilities up to par with the other classes’. This would not only require less work but it would also appease the Ranger community and avoid kittening off the other classes.

I have a feeling our lack of burst capabilities is the primary reason (though of course there are others) that we have always been ‘bottom of the pile’.

Actually, the logical thing is doing exactly what they want to do and nerf everyone else’s damage.

Damage in GW2 is too kitten high atm, ESPECIALLY in PvE content, it’s to the point where you just take high burst and just burst bosses down so fast that you completely ignore the mechanics of the fights.

Not to mention burst isn’t NEARLY as useful as sustain is, burst can be completely nullified by a good player with relative ease thanks to the dodge mechanic, sustain can not. If you want to weaken sustain damage you’ve gotta run a defensive build, and if you’re running a defensive build you’re good vs burst damage too.

For example, if the enemy pops a CD to go invuln for 6s as someone’s bursting, all their damage is gone, where if they popped it vs us sustained damage dealers it’s hardly an issue because we deal the same damage at a constant rate overtime.

Durzlla.6295:

-snip-

So glad at least one person shares my opinion on the matter, and is able to explain it better than me.

That works well while roaming, but in a zerg single target sustained damage is nearly useless.
And no one can time any cooldown vs burst cooldowns when you don’t know where the damage is coming from.

Aioros.4862:

That works well while roaming, but in a zerg single target sustained damage is nearly useless. No one can time any cooldown vs burst cooldowns when you don’t know where the damage is coming from.

The only profession capable of bursting you from range atm is a warrior using kill shot, or a staff ele hitting you with their “The world is splitting open, hey let’s throw in some more obvious tells to these damage skills” abilities being chained together, other than that you’re either going to 1) see the warrior/thief/guardian/ranger/engi/Mesmer clone brigade/ele/necro either pounding your face in or running in for the burst or 2) you’ll get hit by a kill shot and die from the warrior hiding in the Zerg or 3) you’re completely oblivious, or chain CCed, and got nuked by the eles stuff crashing down on your face at the right time.

In WvW zergs, and anywhere else really, if you’re being bursted, you know kitten well where it’s coming from. And if you don’t that’s YOUR fault for not paying attention.

Also, how is single target sustain nearly useless? If you’re planning on zergling you’ve for piercing arrows, that or you need to really rethink your build choice, so you’re not gonna do single target, you’ll be causing some collateral damage as well.

Not to mention MOST zerglings tend to run full glass with no defensive CDs because there’s safety in the Zerg, so your single target sustain is going to absolutely shred them because they have absolutely no way to mitigate it. Burst in this game is ALWAYS easy to mitigate due to the dodge role, sustained is just as hard to mitigate as always, I mean sure, you can dodge, but evading for 2s isn’t going to affect a rangers constant arrows thumping into you.

Suggested Proposal Format:
Specific Game Mode.
PvP but applies to all game modes.
Proposal Overview.
Make ranger have more stealthing skills and traits.
Goal of Proposal.
Make the ranger class more advanced by giving them special skills when stealthed, like the thief.
Special skills should be like allowing bonus damage on the long bow skill: “long range shot” when the ranger is stealthed or enabling to apply poison the first 5 shortbow hits when attacking while stealthed, like the sharpening stone skill.
Proposal Functionality.
This allows the ranger to make special stealth builds and make combat for them more dynamic(like being able to place traps while stealthed?).
Also using the idea of more sniping skills on the longbow would make it more interesting to use it.
After all camouflage is something awesome about nature, something a ranger should be able to use for his own goals.
How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2.
Enabling the ranger to use special stealth builds makes it more survivable to try other builds than the commonly used ones at the moment.
Associated Risks
Too much power from stealth skills and too much stealth would make the class a little too powerful, like some thief builds focus on(backstab skill builds).

Durzlla.6295:

…

I didn’t mean ranged burst, in the middle of a bunch of people (friendly and foe) even if you see (and you probably won’t, in the middle of the mess) someone popping cooldowns, how do you know it’s you they’ll be targetting and not someone else next to you? And this is if you’re not mass stunned or feared.

That “you can use cooldowns to negate a burst combo” works in small scale pvp, but in large scale burst is king. And AoE too. We have neither.

Talking about AoE, don’t ranger aoe skills hit less targets than other classes? Like others hit 5 targets at once while our skills only hit 3?

I want to ask some questions to the developers.

Why this campaign is not transferred to other communities?,
Do not believe these will have something to say?,
Do these players not bought the game in the same condition?,
Is there any legislation providing that the English-speaking communities have priority over the other?

@Durzlla

No, when the majority of the Ranger community (as evidenced by comments in this thread) are unhappy with the sustained damage philosophy, the logical approach is most certainly not to undermine them by emphasizing a playstyle they are unhappy with, or from which they derive no enjoyment.

The points you are attempting to make in favour of using a sustained damage approach are irrelevant to the issue at hand. We don’t want to be forced to play a sustained damage role. Sure, keep the option, but give us a solid DPS option too. Why deprive us?

Main points:

1. Design philosophy needs to be malleable to fit with what the players want from their gameplay experience

2. Nerfing all other professions in favour of sustained is definitely not a logical approach. Once again I’ll reiterate why:

- This leaves a gaping chasm for all manner of problems with profession mechanics
- Will most certainly lead to widespread fury and people quitting the game entirely
- Is ignoring completely what the majority of Ranger players want from their gameplay experience
- Is far more time and resource-consuming than the opposite approach

Specific Game Mode
PvE (PvX)

Proposal Overview
Add blind to Hunter’s Call or condition removal

Goal of Proposal
Hunter’s Call offers decent fire and forget damage but other than that offers no utility whatsoever. Warhorn is primarily a utility, support weapon and since it only has 2 skills it should represent this.

There are very few weapon skills that are just raw damage and adding a blind (or condition removal) would make the weapon more interesting.

Proposal Functionality
A blind makes the most sense since it’s a bunch of birds pecking at the bad guys face, so I go with that condition. It makes sense thematically and it offers good defensive utility.

If the devs wanted to address one of Ranger’s major concerns (condition removal) adding a condition removal on use could be one way to achieve this. Like the warrior warhorn, removing cripple, chill, immobilize at least would be helpful.

Associated Risks
As I said, it’s a decent Fire and Forget damage ability and can accumulate some pretty decent numbers and it’s incredibly helpful for stacking might on RaO. However, adding a small debuff like a blind would not imbalance the skill at all and would bring it in line with many other off hand weapons of other classes.

Durzlla.6295:

Actually, the logical thing is doing exactly what they want to do and nerf everyone else’s damage.

No.

This might work in WvW/PvP, but most certainly not in PvE.

Explain how doing a world boss like the 3-headed wurm will go if every class has burst damage nerfed ??

I can tell you this event will never succeed if that happens.

Cufufalating.8479:

Durzlla.6295:

-snip-

So glad at least one person shares my opinion on the matter, and is able to explain it better than me.

yes, sustained damage is indeed GOOD. however the way we apply it is, in more case then one, a bit unreliable.
Most of our ranged attacks still have some issues regarding random “obstructed” errors not to mention that ironically, the further away we are, the harder it is to maintain our DPS as our arrows are slow enough to be sidestepped without effort.
In the case of the longbow, in ranges 600+ you can sidestep 2/3 shots by just pressing A-D-A-D-A-D-A-D-A-D-A-D or Q-E-Q-E-Q-E-Q-E-Q-E-Q-E. When they get below 600 range, this no longer works very well, however by then, LB damage on AA is so low that it is hardly an issue.

Sustained damage is not bad, however the burst options we got is just terrible.
Rapid Fire is actually a worse choice then just keep on firing your AA on the LB
Sword has no real burst, Monarch Leap has a good coefficient but nowhere near the damage needed to be called a burst
Maul is far too telegraphed at this point
Path of Scars are only ever scary if you eat BOTH attack and return

Another side of this coin is our AOE options, which is lacking.
We got Traps, very strong, but on a far too short range and area to be effective
Barrage is just as likely to kill us, as it is to kill the enemy thanks to retal and self-root
Axe AA is just a ranged “cleave” attack, and its full power only shines in 2v1/1+AI v 1 encounters.

Durzlla.6295:

Not to mention burst isn’t NEARLY as useful as sustain is, burst can be completely nullified by a good player with relative ease thanks to the dodge mechanic, sustain can not. If you want to weaken sustain damage you’ve gotta run a defensive build, and if you’re running a defensive build you’re good vs burst damage too.

For example, if the enemy pops a CD to go invuln for 6s as someone’s bursting, all their damage is gone, where if they popped it vs us sustained damage dealers it’s hardly an issue because we deal the same damage at a constant rate overtime.

I usually agree with you Durzlla, however I don’t fully agree with you here because your not taking the weapon swap into account. Once your burst run out on your main weapon, you can swap to your secondary weapon and start all over again. 99% of the time, that’s all you need to finish the job in the example you gave. In PvP and WvW, Burst is king. The fact that most classes can burst 15k damage within 5 seconds is telling you that burst wins, mainly because the majority of classes have less then 15k hp’s. Sustained will never beat out burst in this game because of weapon swap…or if your a thief, because of the majorly overpowered stealth.

I still say if you want to fix ranger’s, REMOVE THE STUPID PET’S! Up our damage 30-40% which is what the pets are Suppose to do and we’re set. From there we can start fine tuning the profession and it’s weapon’s.

bri.2359:

Durzlla.6295:

Actually, the logical thing is doing exactly what they want to do and nerf everyone else’s damage.

No.

This might work in WvW/PvP, but most certainly not in PvE.

Explain how doing a world boss like the 3-headed wurm will go if every class has burst damage nerfed ??

I can tell you this event will never succeed if that happens.

it will go down, however you must build differently across ALL classes. Instead of going high power high crit damage, you got to go high precision high crit damage. Actually, unless you’re a warrior, assassins gear is in most cases better as power+crit damage scales worse in terms of spike then crit chance+crit damage does.

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

bri.2359:

Durzlla.6295:

Actually, the logical thing is doing exactly what they want to do and nerf everyone else’s damage.

No.

This might work in WvW/PvP, but most certainly not in PvE.

Explain how doing a world boss like the 3-headed wurm will go if every class has burst damage nerfed ??

I can tell you this event will never succeed if that happens.

But then, the Devs would only need to nerf the newest world bosses.
Old world bosses and dungeon bosses are already out of date because of the power creep, and it’s doubtful that the “Ferocity patch” will fix that. Nerfing every class burst capabilities would lessen the need to remake those bosses.

This is a difficult matter because PvE has many different scenarios: open PvE, World Bosses, Dungeons, Fractals…

Akisame.9508:

I still say if you want to fix ranger’s, REMOVE THE STUPID PET’S! Up our damage 30-40% which is what the pets are Suppose to do and we’re set. From there we can start fine tuning the profession and it’s weapon’s.

If we remove the pet entirely, what are we left with?
A warrior with less armor, less HP, more evades, the poison spam of a thief and the sustain of a guardian.
Upping ranger damage by 30-40% would make us ridiculously OP. All you’d ever need to do is spam LB AA at all ranges. As todays current LB in zerker does like 3-5k crits constantly, add 30% to that and you will be doing 4-6.5k crits all day every day, every 1.25 seconds.

I don’t have a problem with certain classes being better at burst and others being better at sustained, but in a game where burst is king in almost every instance, that philosophy needs to be revisited.

At the very least, every class needs to have a burst weapon available to them so that they can participate in ALL aspects of the game, since a lack of burst makes you non-viable in burst-required fights.

thefantasticg.3984:

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

however we can both agree that some professions suck harder at it then others.
Rangers got high AA DPS, with very fast attack speed. Coupled with pet (if you trust it to hit anything) and you get close to the same DPS as some of the other professions bursts do.

Durzlla, burst and AE aren’t even the issue… the thing that matters in coordinated large scale combat is applying pressure to the opposing team. When you throw the enemy off balance you force them to use their cooldowns, their burst skills, etc etc to compensate. This is the problem with sustained, single target damage… it doesn’t apply pressure. You mention burst is useless because it’s easy to dodge and avoid? That’s the whole point! You put enough pressure on the opposing team to actually need to use their dodge, their endure pain, or their heal. Sustained, single target damage is absolutely, 100% useless.

While the Necromancer arguments on ‘attrition’ are somewhat valid for other reasons, the sustained damage model works for that class because their damage is AE and they can apply enough damage to a large enough number of people for the opposing team to use their cooldowns to compensate. The same isn’t true for the Ranger.

Without burst or AE, the Ranger class simply has no way to pressure the opposing team to do anything. This is why they are repeatedly ranked 8th place… the class does nothing but soak AE from the opposing team.

When I, and I assume others, say this class needs burst we’re not talking about over-the-top, 1 shot KO damage. We’re asking for something that does enough damage to pressure the opposing team to force them to use a cooldown.

This is why it’s needed. A class that has neither burst or AE is 100% useless in every PvP scenario ever conceived past, present, and future.

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

I still say if you want to fix ranger’s, REMOVE THE STUPID PET’S! Up our damage 30-40% which is what the pets are Suppose to do and we’re set. From there we can start fine tuning the profession and it’s weapon’s.

If we remove the pet entirely, what are we left with?
A warrior with less armor, less HP, more evades, the poison spam of a thief and the sustain of a guardian.
Upping ranger damage by 30-40% would make us ridiculously OP. All you’d ever need to do is spam LB AA at all ranges. As todays current LB in zerker does like 3-5k crits constantly, add 30% to that and you will be doing 4-6.5k crits all day every day, every 1.25 seconds.

What’s the difference between us doing that and a thief spamming the same skill with no cooldown’s? usually the thief spamming the same skill (heartseeker) can normally take you down in 3 to 4 hits, not crits, HITS, less then 5 seconds. And no, it’s not overpowered because the pets are suppose to account for 30-40 percent of our damage, and since pets don’t hit moving targets, that makes us handicapped by 30-40 percent. So no, we will be at the level we where intended to be at. This also gives us the opportunity to gear effectively. Right now if you want anything close to the resemblance of burst, you have to go full zerker gear. This gives you no protection and guarantee’s an easy death. By doing this we can now equip some protective gear along with our zerker gear to have somewhat of a survivability setup while still being able to do good….ummm…‘sustained’ damage. Or you can stay in full zerker being able to kill people just as fast as a thief can or a warrior with 100blades

Prysin.8542:

thefantasticg.3984:

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

however we can both agree that some professions suck harder at it then others.
Rangers got high AA DPS, with very fast attack speed. Coupled with pet (if you trust it to hit anything) and you get close to the same DPS as some of the other professions bursts do.

True, but the only high AA DPS my Ranger has is the AA on the sword. Axe and GS are not good. SB is good w/bleeds. LB is 1000+ is ok at best, the other two closer tiers are terrible AA DPS

Prysin.8542:

thefantasticg.3984:

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

however we can both agree that some professions suck harder at it then others.
Rangers got high AA DPS, with very fast attack speed. Coupled with pet (if you trust it to hit anything) and you get close to the same DPS as some of the other professions bursts do.

Except you don’t… full ranger rotation + 100% pet uptime yields about the same DPS as what other class’ sustained is capable of. And this is with sword, not a ranged weapon.

Now that said, if you actually compare the Ranger’s ranged weapons to those of other classes ranged weapons, your argument is correct. A ranger + pet is able to do more single target damage than another class’ (Warrior in this case) longbow rotation. Of course theirs is almost entirely AE and we’re not talking about a significant advantage for single target in favor of the Ranger either.

Atherakhia.4086:

When I, and I assume others, say this class needs burst we’re not talking about over-the-top, 1 shot KO damage. We’re asking for something that does enough damage to pressure the opposing team to force them to use a cooldown.

Agree with everything Atherakhia said, but would also like to reiterate the above quote.

I’m sorry but burst >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> anything sustain related

first off, the cooldowns on most burst skills for other professions is not that long okay.
in 20-30 secs, they can go and unload again. It might not be as strong as first time unless they can keep up the restacking on fury/might, but nonetheless, the burst is still effective and there.

In those 30 secs, the rangers laughable sustained damage will not kill them at all. first off, most classes can heal/regen/condi cleanse… this easily counters a lot of the sustained damage that rangers can do (all in conditions – another huge problem. where are our power numbers? outside of maul, there is nothing lol)….

I’m not even sure why people are even discussing sustained damage in PvE….. there is 0 reason to even have sustained dps in PvE lol. Please provide me one scenario where sustain DPS > burst. There are no reasons to have sustain in dungs/fracs/meta events like wurm,teq.

Its been over a year and a half. Stop trying to convince yourself that rangers should be sustained DPS class….NO ONE wants this. I have no earthly idea as to why you think sustained DPS matters in this game when you failed to realize that in order to make sustained DPS even viable, you would need to change the entire core of the combat ssystem, which is unrealistic.

Stop messing around and telling us “we gonna nerf other classes damage”…its been almost 2 years, you are doing nothing. Even after the nerf, the rangers will STILL have laughable DPS. why? THERE IS NO BURST. Our pets take up 30% of our damage (a joke in itself, if you don’t change that, this class is lost).

So to summarize
As it stands, rangers can only do one thing effectively in this game, 1v1s. Thanks, thats really great planning on the development side. After almost 2 years, this is where rangers stand.

– Pathethic sustained DPS that almost all classes can shake off/withstand. Sustained DPS is a joke, get that nonsense out of here if thats what you want rangers to be known as. No one is scared of rangers sustain lol.
-Absolutely no burst what so ever (maul i guess lol , GL landing that, the most obvious telegraphed skill
-no reliable condi cleanse except forcing us to trait 30 (except doing this also kills our class mechanic, lol, flawless design anet, bravo)
-a class mechanic which devs have stated is completely broken and has no intention on fixing it because of the massive amount of work it would take…
almost two years and this is what the rangers are dealing with….just flat out embarassing…
but hey, lets keep focusing on Living story and gem store additions!!!

get rid of pets if you have no plan on re-working their code because its too time consuming. This better be a viable option on the table during your dev discussions. Majority of the rangers DO NOT WANT A PET if you can’t fix it (buffs will not do at all)

give rangers back 100% of the damage, none of this nonsense where my dead pet is taking up 30% of my damage

give us some burst skills for gods sake.

1/2

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Pet system

Goal of Proposal
Highlighting and suggesting solutions to pet problems

Proposal Functionality
Design
Let’s start with the basics. Unlike other pets in the game, which are summoned via skills are not core part of the Professions, mainly just an extra oomph and / or utility, while Ranger Pets are part of the profession, just separated into two different entity, similar to Mesmer and their clones, but as a permanent companion. This will bring up the problem, that how we should achieve a more symbiotic relationship between the two, while staying in the boundaries of Guild Wars 2.
At the leveling stage of the game (open world, pve mainly) it isn’t an issue. The pet can hold agro, you keep it alive with your healing skills. Things get tricky, when the player get past this experience and get into high level PvE, WvW or PvP.
I would want to continue this proposal, assuming we are going with the Pet system and assuming also, that you (Arena Net) are capable of fixing the problems. The next post will go on with the assumption that it can’t be implemented and we should drop the entire Pet idea.

Issues

• Path finding. This is one huge issue already, however i want to make one small suggestion. Add a max range (~150 range) to the Pet when it follows you, so it won’t randomly skyrockets into the distance and back especially when it have swiftness. Also another tiny detail, when you activate a pet it already appears behind you. The first Pet is slightly left, the second is slightly right. Keep that distance while moving both in the X and Y coordinates and prevent the Pet to move ahead of you.

• Damage divided between the two entitiy. Which as a standalone feature isn’t a problem, it’s a must actually, but it leads to the next problem, which is …

• Lack of active defense of the Pet. It already got mentioned by others, if the Pet dies, you will lost a significant chunk of your damage and while you can swap to another Pet, the cooldown on swap get tripled (20s → 60s), which can be a huge handicap and also you face the problem, that you can’t have the same pet on swap, thus your other Pet possibly isn’t that good for that job.
  I already tried to bring up my concerns about that here. Implementing a working dodge / invulnerable mechanic to the Pets is seems impossible to me. Either the Pet won’t move out from the danger or jumps to another. Which brings up a question.

• Should we give passive defense to Pets? Having some aoe resist (90% sounds way too much, but it could work in practice) would solve the large scale WvW issue maybe and the wide aoe attacks in PvE. In PvP it can be either splitted or greatly reduced to around 5-15% and somehow make spirits prior targets compared to Pets when both of you are in an aoe. The reason behind this is that from a simple aoe you shouldn’t loss 30% of your damage potential just by a design decision that Ranger isn’t a single character. Also as i described above, without the lack of active damage mitigation, i should take into consideration to give the Pet resistance against single target damage sources in dungeons to prevent the death of the companion, since it’s unable to reposition itself nor it’s possible to micromanage it against smaller targets, especially if they are pushed to a wall.

2/2

• The pet is not a threat. Mainly by the issues above and the lack of symbiotic relationship between the Pet and it’s master. I give an example what i mean.
  In another game (should i mention the name, so devs can check it out?) there was a class called Summoner, which was the games pet class.
  As we have now in GW2, the damage of the pet and the master divided there too, but their combat abilites too!
  The pet itself had 3 skill. A close range aoe freeze (similar to Deep Freeze), a ranged aoe Fear and a single target ranged nuke ability which did a very significant amount of damage even without debuffing. And of course a base auto attack on a few second CD.
  Meanwhile the summoner had various CC (silence, slow, debuffing) and Defense skills (aoe protection, aoe agro against mobs) and a few Offensive spells as usual.
  Also you were able to siphon health from the Spirit or heal it from your mana, so with good positioning you could ping-pong with both of your health. While it couldn’t be implemented here, it worth a honorable mention. The class also had an ability which enabled to link yourself to the Spirit, which take 50% of the damage from you. Why is it important? It made a great tactical element for oppontents. If the Summoner position was bad it could caught with an aoe along with it’s pet, which took 150% damage that way, thus you could kill the Spirit faster, negating half of the abilities of the master that way.
  There were various other buff optionaly for the pet, to boost their movement speed a little (awesome with aoe freeze, so it reached the target faster), extra damage and crit etc.
  So the fight went like you rotated your and the Spirit CC skills, while both of you slowly whittled down the opponents health and if stuff started to look wrong, you still had the option to defend yourself while your CC was off.
  And exactly that shared combat experience is what i missing with Ranger, which is impossible due to the issues and fast paced combat. There is next to no synergy combat wise, just both of them doing their own stuff and you as a Ranger just try to save the pet with swapping.

• Obviously if we have a nearly unkillable pet which does less damage than the current amount, basiclly we get an animated extra utility skill slot, which just doesn’t makes sense and it’s better to remove the entire Pet system.

Interface
Now the pet works, let’s see what else we got. Not enough options, not enough hotkeys.
I suggest to implement the movement orders for the Pet in the Options menu via hotkeys. There should be Attack, Come back, Hold position, Stop. Of course it can be implemented in the UI with buttons, but it fills up space. In a more detailed format:

• Attack: Go, try to kill target. Simple.
• Come back: This is also already in game. Retreat to their default position (see above).
• Hold position: It wouldn’t prevent actions (auto attack, special skills), but the Pet won’t move until it toggled off or it gets a Come back or Stop command, since they already change targets upon the Ranger switches between enemies and if they are in Guard mode, they try to defend the ranger.
• Stop: Stop doing whatever it did and doing nothing, not even moving. It could prevent Pets rapidly hiting opponents that they shouldn’t or just standing in buff range and act as a passive boon bucket.

Now the F1-F4 buttons has more options. We need at least two buttons for Special attacks and Swap already. So you can implement more skills to give a more detailed variety for Pets with various abilities or toggle their high CD skills on demand, like Boars charge skill.
Maybe give 3 different type of ability. One for different pets as we currently have. Another after each family as we also have now, but with now the option to use it as we wish. The third could be based on the role of the pet, like Damage, Control, Support or something in between.

Associated Risks

• Obviously, a skrittload of work and resources, but a whole class defining feature needs to be fixed, which also improves other professions AI related skills and builds.
• More bugs and various unwanted problems i’m not aware of as a non-programmer.
• With the current UI the options to make Pets and their controling more detailed are very limited.

tl;dr: Fix bugs, make synergy between the Pet and the Ranger.
Second part later, this is already more that i tought it could be.

Specific Game Mode
PvX
Proposal Overview
Pet Responsiveness
Goal of Proposal
To give Rangers true control over their pets F2 abilities
Proposal Functionality
Rather than using back end server functionality to direct pet’s actions. Instead of running actions through the pet AI directly, the pet F2 functionality could be designed on its own thread, perhaps using a tiny percentage of the user system’s resources, which would communicate to the pet’s thread via priority to take over whatever the pet is currently doing. I understand that there are multiple implications, mostly pertaining to the current design (back end server communications, pet AI animation, and everything else), but in the end everything that the pet does relies on pet AI + user commands, in our case its clear that user commands should take absolute precedence over it. It’s important to note that in a do or die situation, your pet will need to know from you exactly what to do and those reactions are quite critical since we are talking about very quick decision making even for the average player. Pet needs to be on par with the combat design period.
Associated Risks
Naturally a lot of figuring out how to get around this issue, I do not foresee that the players will be negatively affected by it, since pets are always by design running with the AI rather than with the user commands.

Durzlla.6295:

Aioros.4862:

That works well while roaming, but in a zerg single target sustained damage is nearly useless. No one can time any cooldown vs burst cooldowns when you don’t know where the damage is coming from.

The only profession capable of bursting you from range atm is a warrior using kill shot, or a staff ele hitting you with their “The world is splitting open, hey let’s throw in some more obvious tells to these damage skills” abilities being chained together, other than that you’re either going to 1) see the warrior/thief/guardian/ranger/engi/Mesmer clone brigade/ele/necro either pounding your face in or running in for the burst or 2) you’ll get hit by a kill shot and die from the warrior hiding in the Zerg or 3) you’re completely oblivious, or chain CCed, and got nuked by the eles stuff crashing down on your face at the right time.

In WvW zergs, and anywhere else really, if you’re being bursted, you know kitten well where it’s coming from. And if you don’t that’s YOUR fault for not paying attention.

Also, how is single target sustain nearly useless? If you’re planning on zergling you’ve for piercing arrows, that or you need to really rethink your build choice, so you’re not gonna do single target, you’ll be causing some collateral damage as well.

Not to mention MOST zerglings tend to run full glass with no defensive CDs because there’s safety in the Zerg, so your single target sustain is going to absolutely shred them because they have absolutely no way to mitigate it. Burst in this game is ALWAYS easy to mitigate due to the dodge role, sustained is just as hard to mitigate as always, I mean sure, you can dodge, but evading for 2s isn’t going to affect a rangers constant arrows thumping into you.

sorry, but I don’t think im shredding anyone has a ranger spamming 1 on LB… I’ve played this build a few times because thats all I can truly do in a zerg – spam 1 at 1500 range.

First off, guards/warriors , our arrows are just laughed at. you are probably going to target a guard/warrior in the front line… ANY waterfield will do enough healing to shake off our arrows, that is a fact…

I have to go around and target low armor targets.
Eles – I have a very easy time bringing down because I can spam 3-4k auto attacks on them… but if the ele has half a brain, they can just mistform out of my arrows range… GF
Mesmers – yea GL picking out a mesmer in a zerg with there clones phantasm, also, they can block projectiles very easily lol.
Necros – waaay to much HP to even bother shooting at. This will end up no where
Thieves – stealth, cya later
Engineers – tough to bring down, they have good healing capabilities to shake off most ranged dps
Warriors/guardians, it would take 5 glass cannon rangers all shooting at 1 war/guard to bring it down, no point in targetting these guys unless they are on low hp/getting ganked by others

so yea, all I can do as a ranger in a zerg is just sitback in the backline and press 1, which is only effective on ele’s.

Rangers are the most useless class in a WvW zerg and have Nothing useful to bring besides an AOE cripple, which means very little in the grand scheme of things.

Akisame.9508:

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

I still say if you want to fix ranger’s, REMOVE THE STUPID PET’S! Up our damage 30-40% which is what the pets are Suppose to do and we’re set. From there we can start fine tuning the profession and it’s weapon’s.

If we remove the pet entirely, what are we left with?
A warrior with less armor, less HP, more evades, the poison spam of a thief and the sustain of a guardian.
Upping ranger damage by 30-40% would make us ridiculously OP. All you’d ever need to do is spam LB AA at all ranges. As todays current LB in zerker does like 3-5k crits constantly, add 30% to that and you will be doing 4-6.5k crits all day every day, every 1.25 seconds.

What’s the difference between us doing that and a thief spamming the same skill with no cooldown’s? usually the thief spamming the same skill (heartseeker) can normally take you down in 3 to 4 hits, not crits, HITS, less then 5 seconds. And no, it’s not overpowered because the pets are suppose to account for 30-40 percent of our damage, and since pets don’t hit moving targets, that makes us handicapped by 30-40 percent. So no, we will be at the level we where intended to be at. This also gives us the opportunity to gear effectively. Right now if you want anything close to the resemblance of burst, you have to go full zerker gear. This gives you no protection and guarantee’s an easy death. By doing this we can now equip some protective gear along with our zerker gear to have somewhat of a survivability setup while still being able to do good….ummm…‘sustained’ damage. Or you can stay in full zerker being able to kill people just as fast as a thief can or a warrior with 100blades

i only talk about WvW in this case. And i laugh at you DD thief. Signet Ranger is far far superior to any DD thief both in 1v1 and zerg ability. Sorry, but Rangers with another 30% damage would be brokenly OP.

PvP

Revisiting the unique Ranger mechanic (F).

Goal
Currently you are forced to share your usefulness with a NPC at all times.
Here are some problem of being forced with one.

• You share your DPS with a NPC, you rely too much on your Pet and this stops build diversity on Ranger.
• The Pet is unable to call priorities, it does not know when to do what, when and where.
• You can jump onto things to quickly move around the map, your pet can not and takes the long path before he reaches you.
  • During combat your opponent can jump over things where your Pet can not.

These things are of huge matter especially in a Player versus Player environment.
You absolutely can not rely on a NPC at all times.

Proposal
Remove the Pet mandatory.
Instead, add a Pet as a bonus when spending, let’s say 15, points into Beast Mastery.
This allows players for easy access to pets if they want to.
Also opens up to add points into Beast Mastery to improve your ’’beastiality’’.

Pet utility skills will also need overhauls.

Associated risk
It’s a big change and we’re going to be needing a new replacement mechanic (F) for Ranger.

For example, and this would be great for those who have played GW1, you could take back Preparations.
There would be a variety of different Preparations to choose from and they will lock during combat.
This would open up different combinations on their attacks.

Here are some ideas (these are not final and require obvious testing).

• Apply Poison For 12 seconds, your attacks apply Poison for 8 seconds (does not stack beyond max duration) on hit.
• Sharpen Blades For 12 seconds, your attacks Bleed your opponent for 5 seconds on hit.
• Seeking Accuracy For 12 seconds, your attacks are unblockable.
• Expert Focus For 12 seconds, you deal xxx more damage on your attacks.

Specific Game Mode
PvX
Proposal Overview
Pet Roles
Goal of Proposal
To better define the role of pets in the ranger’s combat rotation.
Proposal Functionality
I propose that pets should have a more meaningful role in combat. Why do rangers have to go abusing their pets in order to gain survival? Signet of Renewal, “Protect Me,” and Empathic Bond all kill/harm the pet; it just seems very counter intuitive the rangers have more functional “pet killers” than utilities that actually allow players to effectively work with their pet. Also if pets are such an important and integral part of the rangers, why is it that pets are completely useless in large scale combat? Skills such as Rampage as one literally do nothing for a pet who is in the middle of a boss fight, a huge living world event with lots of monsters, or the day by day mayhem in WvW. Please note that in large engagements pets are rendered as ineffective and given that pets are an “always on” functionality; it often results in rangers sacrificing what most would consider a fairly significant portion of their damage, either by way of having a passive or a dead pet. In such scenarios, the game needs to provide rangers and or pets with options. All professions can specialize to a role, and by including or modifying a trait or a utility that would be meaningful to rangers in large scaled combats, then a ranger pet can seem a viable option in large scale combat. Specialization in Beast Mastery could provide pets with trait mechanic that would be most suitable for large scale combats for pets. Compassion Training could simply improve a pet’s traits and F2 effectiveness while in passive mode. Stability Training could give constant stability to pets and on F2 activation it would provide an AoE stability to allies, as long as the pet is in passive mode. Speed Training would provide allies with AoE speed to allies swiftness on pet’s F2 activation while the pet is in passive mode. Vigorious Training would provide allies vigor on pet’s F2 activation while pet is in passive mode. Make passive mode a 10 second cooldown. That would also force a new skill tree where one ranger could truly be a Beast Master without running into Nature Magic for spirits for the support role. At the same time, it would give pets a much more meaningful role in the Beast Mastery traitline. If traits are not the way to go, then make an elite signet which will provide pets with something like the above while on pet’s passive mode.
Associated Risks
Pet AI will need an improvement depending on how this role is better defined by the devs in technical terms. Pets and how they have been presented could change to a more meaningful role, which will impact the way that rangers use them nowadays. The ranger community will have to submit substantial feedback in order for the devs to work on positive changes, however this is only under the devs initiative to expand on this idea. Different builds will easily be affected by a change like so, therefore exhaustive testing will need to be performed in order to better balance out the utility of having a ‘boon’ pet.

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

thefantasticg.3984:

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

however we can both agree that some professions suck harder at it then others.
Rangers got high AA DPS, with very fast attack speed. Coupled with pet (if you trust it to hit anything) and you get close to the same DPS as some of the other professions bursts do.

Except you don’t… full ranger rotation + 100% pet uptime yields about the same DPS as what other class’ sustained is capable of. And this is with sword, not a ranged weapon.

Now that said, if you actually compare the Ranger’s ranged weapons to those of other classes ranged weapons, your argument is correct. A ranger + pet is able to do more single target damage than another class’ (Warrior in this case) longbow rotation. Of course theirs is almost entirely AE and we’re not talking about a significant advantage for single target in favor of the Ranger either.

However you should not do ANY “rotation” with the LB as the LB AA at 0 range already has better DPS then rapid fire, simply from coefficient being way better.
Rapid Fire has 0.38/shot and the lowest coefficient for the AA is 0.5 at 0-500 range. Rapid Fire is bound by the same limits as AA regarding projectile speed and travel time, so yes, the DPS is less.

LB max DPS = NO rotation what so ever unless you activate RaO and want to stack might on pets, in which case you should switch to Warhorn, use WH4 and swap back ASAP.

Abrilete.1439:

I think that we all agree that right now, considering all the gap-closers, escape habilities, teleports and stealths, the game rewards powerful bursts and Hit’n Run tactics.
That’s why sustained damage is not very effective.

It would be nice to see the Devs opinion on this matter.

Even with sustained damage you can have hit and run tactics. Drop condis and get distance, watch as your target ticks down without damaging you.

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

thefantasticg.3984:

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

however we can both agree that some professions suck harder at it then others.
Rangers got high AA DPS, with very fast attack speed. Coupled with pet (if you trust it to hit anything) and you get close to the same DPS as some of the other professions bursts do.

Except you don’t… full ranger rotation + 100% pet uptime yields about the same DPS as what other class’ sustained is capable of. And this is with sword, not a ranged weapon.

Now that said, if you actually compare the Ranger’s ranged weapons to those of other classes ranged weapons, your argument is correct. A ranger + pet is able to do more single target damage than another class’ (Warrior in this case) longbow rotation. Of course theirs is almost entirely AE and we’re not talking about a significant advantage for single target in favor of the Ranger either.

However you should not do ANY “rotation” with the LB as the LB AA at 0 range already has better DPS then rapid fire, simply from coefficient being way better.
Rapid Fire has 0.38/shot and the lowest coefficient for the AA is 0.5 at 0-500 range. Rapid Fire is bound by the same limits as AA regarding projectile speed and travel time, so yes, the DPS is less.

LB max DPS = NO rotation what so ever unless you activate RaO and want to stack might on pets, in which case you should switch to Warhorn, use WH4 and swap back ASAP.

That was true before Rapid Fire was changed to include vulnerability. Unless the target already has 25 stacks of vuln, rapid fire is a DPS increase because the vulnerability also affects you auto attack damage.

Just one small correction… Rangers have two bursts, not only one: Maul and Path of Scars.

Abrilete.1439:

Just one small correction… Rangers have two bursts, not only one: Maul and Path of Scars.

Another small correction…Rangers have three bursts, not only two: Maul, Path of Scars, and Counterattack.

(A well timed counter attack used with Signet of the Hunt will deal almost as much damage as Maul will, and more often than not catches everyone off guard when they get hit by it.)

Yoh.8469:

Chrispy.5641:

• 90% of the time, we don’t have what it takes to overwhelm the enemy with DoT because there is too much counterplay to it currently.

• What I am saying, Ranger needs alot of work, not just on the DoT part, but also on the Resilient part. We need to be able to react and bounce back after taking high damage, or getting poked with alot of conditions. While our heals are quite good at that, nothing else is right now.

Not to nitpick, but your using that word wrong.
Counterplay only describe a situation where a mechanic is fun to use and be used on, and open up new options for both.
I think the word you were looking for was ‘counters’.
There are too many counters to DoT. Which I agree with incidentally.

Also, I think the Ranger is one of the most resilient professions out there. I just got finished doing WvW where I had at least 5 guys chasing me on low health during this battle we had, and they just could not for the life of them kill me.
We have so many evades and a lot of regeneration skills and traits, and Bark Skin is awesome. I know people love Empathetic Bond, but man is Bark Skin good. Tank mode.

I just use Melandru’s Runes and Lemongrass, conditions begone.
But yeah, we could stand to have a couple more active condition removals.

But besides that, we have the tools there if you want to use them.
If you elect not to, well that’s your fault.

I agree to an extent that the Ranger is ‘Resilient’. I ’ve said before that their heals are better than anything, but, like you said, we need more active condition removal (or more healing to counter our lack of active condition removal {or both}).

I have gone against 5 guys before and come out alive (thanks to settler’s gear, melandru runes, and lemongrass), but my damage output was next to zero. Other professions can go against 5 guys and come out alive, and still deal damage, and not rely on runes and food to do it (yes, there are some who can’t, still doesn’t make it right). That’s where I take issue with the Ranger’s so called Resiliency.

Abrilete.1439:

Just one small correction… Rangers have two bursts, not only one: Maul and Path of Scars.

I think people stick to mentioning Maul instead of including Path of Scars and Counterattack because Maul is the only truly controllable burst DPS on demand. Counterattack relies on the enemy striking you and path of scars actually needs to hit on the return strike.

All options are still very poor options for the class as a whole though because we don’t have a trait to reduce the cooldown on weapon swap. You run the problem of swapping to these weapons to do the burst and then you’re stuck with a weapon that doesn’t work offensively at all for the rest of the time waiting for the skill to come off cooldown or to swap back.

A lot of you seem to be assuming by me saying “we don’t need burst” and “burst isn’t as useful as sustain” as “our damage is totally fine and doesn’t need to be fixed”.

Our direct damage is absolutely kitten poor compared to everyone else’s, sustained or not, ESPECIALLY in WvW, that being said I think it’s more that everyone else’s damage (for the most part) is too high for the game.

As someone said, some burst builds deal 15k damage and it’s quite literally “dodge or die” that’s a problem, that needs to be toned down, not is being out up to the point where our sustain matches their burst over the same time frame.

Also, we DO have burst options, we have ways to make maul hit for 37k in sPvP god knows how high that gets in WvW and PvE. Also, pets have ample access to burst as well, we’ve got ravens and the double F2 (gonna be a lot better once they fix the F2 responsiveness), we’ve got drakes, we’ve got Canine KD + SotH, we’ve got the jaguar+ stealth + Sick’Em, we have options, they’re just not used very often.

@Bri, PvE I’d say is where damage needs to be nerfed the most, it’s quite literally zerker or gtfo because with going full glass you can completely trivialize encounters. That shouldn’t happen, EVER. Granted the wurm and maybe tea kettle may need their DPS requirements dropped to compensate, but the other bosses in the game are FAR from needing that.

DonRobeez.3560:

Also opens up to add points into Beast Mastery to improve your ’’beastiality’’.

O_O

Now that’s a really…cough…different suggestion. Takes the ranger in a whole new direction. :-s

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

thefantasticg.3984:

For a game built around doing as much damage as possible as fast as possible in numerous encounters from PVE to Dungeons sustained is not perferrable.

Oh, and every class has “sustained damage” it is called “auto-attack” ….

however we can both agree that some professions suck harder at it then others.
Rangers got high AA DPS, with very fast attack speed. Coupled with pet (if you trust it to hit anything) and you get close to the same DPS as some of the other professions bursts do.

Except you don’t… full ranger rotation + 100% pet uptime yields about the same DPS as what other class’ sustained is capable of. And this is with sword, not a ranged weapon.

Now that said, if you actually compare the Ranger’s ranged weapons to those of other classes ranged weapons, your argument is correct. A ranger + pet is able to do more single target damage than another class’ (Warrior in this case) longbow rotation. Of course theirs is almost entirely AE and we’re not talking about a significant advantage for single target in favor of the Ranger either.

However you should not do ANY “rotation” with the LB as the LB AA at 0 range already has better DPS then rapid fire, simply from coefficient being way better.
Rapid Fire has 0.38/shot and the lowest coefficient for the AA is 0.5 at 0-500 range. Rapid Fire is bound by the same limits as AA regarding projectile speed and travel time, so yes, the DPS is less.

LB max DPS = NO rotation what so ever unless you activate RaO and want to stack might on pets, in which case you should switch to Warhorn, use WH4 and swap back ASAP.

That was true before Rapid Fire was changed to include vulnerability. Unless the target already has 25 stacks of vuln, rapid fire is a DPS increase because the vulnerability also affects you auto attack damage.

The only downside however is that with the patch on July 23 2013 the vulnerability shifted to Rapid Fire and you only get 1 stack per arrow. So you have to land a full channel to get 10 stacks compared to the old setups where you could get 10 stacks instantly with Hunter’s Shot and being able to do Rapid Fire afterwards.

So during that patch they effectively reduced our DPS potential and forced us even more into AA.

Fozzik.1742:

DonRobeez.3560:

Also opens up to add points into Beast Mastery to improve your ’’beastiality’’.

O_O

Now that’s a really…cough…different suggestion. Takes the ranger in a whole new direction. :-s

yeah, not sure ANET want to abuse the pets further….cough… their already borderline supporting animal abuse through our traits and utilities.

Durzlla.6295:

we’ve got the jaguar+ stealth + Sick’Em, we have options, they’re just not used very often.

Yeah, about that, tested that a couple of weeks ago….. Entangle-F1-SotW, F2 Stealth, quickness, sick’em and watch that jag spam 7-9k crits on immobile target. It was ridiculous. Thief got mad and brought 2 more thieves and a “usain bolt” warrior.

at Durzilla: you do know that they nuked every single pet burst attack by 50%? right? that was a while ago when we lost 5 pt zephyr, and long leash. Buddy, there is no more dual raven f2!!! Using it is a loss of dps compared to just leaving the bird auto attacking

Durzlla.6295:

A lot of you seem to be assuming by me saying “we don’t need burst” and “burst isn’t as useful as sustain” as “our damage is totally fine and doesn’t need to be fixed”.

Our direct damage is absolutely kitten poor compared to everyone else’s, sustained or not, ESPECIALLY in WvW, that being said I think it’s more that everyone else’s damage (for the most part) is too high for the game.

As someone said, some burst builds deal 15k damage and it’s quite literally “dodge or die” that’s a problem, that needs to be toned down, not is being out up to the point where our sustain matches their burst over the same time frame.

Also, we DO have burst options, we have ways to make maul hit for 37k in sPvP god knows how high that gets in WvW and PvE. Also, pets have ample access to burst as well, we’ve got ravens and the double F2 (gonna be a lot better once they fix the F2 responsiveness), we’ve got drakes, we’ve got Canine KD + SotH, we’ve got the jaguar+ stealth + Sick’Em, we have options, they’re just not used very often.

@Bri, PvE I’d say is where damage needs to be nerfed the most, it’s quite literally zerker or gtfo because with going full glass you can completely trivialize encounters. That shouldn’t happen, EVER. Granted the wurm and maybe tea kettle may need their DPS requirements dropped to compensate, but the other bosses in the game are FAR from needing that.

Again, I think all rangers can agree that rangers do just fine in a 1v1 situation… unfortunately we are literally not useful in any other aspect.

Also durz, I don’t think you realize that nerfing damage in PvE will not solve any thing at all… I have already stated that the core mechanics of PvE combat would have to change in order for other things to be viable… Just look at this future nerf to crit damage… you honestly believe people are going to stop using zerker armor lol?

Zerker is still king, even if the damage nerfed was 20% lol.
Why? because zerker will still output the best DPS. This will not change at all because their is no trinity in this MMO.
Condition = does not matter at all in PvE, where it seems a lot of ranger skills are focused on….

Nerfing damage in PvE means absolutely nothing and it will NOT change the zerker meta… because the core mechanics are still the same in combat (do as much dps in the quickest amount of time possible is the current meta). There is plenty of dodge/active mitigation to survive majority of the encounters in PvE…

People will still use zerker because it will still be the top option, until the core mechanics are changed. This will not happen lol, not a kitten chance anet redesigns anything to this extent… all they can do is mess around with numbers

Chokolata.1870:

at Durzilla: you do know that they nuked every single pet burst attack by 50%? right? that was a while ago when we lost 5 pt zephyr, and long leash. Buddy, there is no more dual raven f2!!! Using it is a loss of dps compared to just leaving the bird auto attacking

Using any pet F2 is a loss to pet dps (except for Drakes, which have to be timed extremely well or they miss)(And Jaguar)

Chrispy.5641:

Abrilete.1439:

Just one small correction… Rangers have two bursts, not only one: Maul and Path of Scars.

Another small correction…Rangers have three bursts, not only two: Maul, Path of Scars, and Counterattack.

(A well timed counter attack used with Signet of the Hunt will deal almost as much damage as Maul will, and more often than not catches everyone off guard when they get hit by it.)

Lol, never tried that, thanks for sharing it.

Prysin.8542:

Fozzik.1742:

DonRobeez.3560:

Also opens up to add points into Beast Mastery to improve your ’’beastiality’’.

O_O

Now that’s a really…cough…different suggestion. Takes the ranger in a whole new direction. :-s

yeah, not sure ANET want to abuse the pets further….cough… their already borderline supporting animal abuse through our traits and utilities.

Now I am not sure what you guys understood as the beastiality.
But I meant as trait options that enhances the more beast themed skills.

My two cents. Could also use more condition removal, but I don’t have a well thought out way to implement it.

Specific Game Mode: PvX.

Proposal Overview
Change to one-handed Sword targeting, Pet targeting and survivability, moving certain traits into different trait lines

Goal of Proposal
To improve control over Sword skills; to improve control over Pets and effectivenes of Pets; to increase the amount of weapon specialization allowed in builds and the effectiveness of Ranger builds.

Proposal Functionality
First, the Sword. It should not drop the lock on my target during the #1 or #2. I also want to be able to break combat easier with that sword. The player should be able to cancel any Sword skill at any time.

Pets should have dodge capabilities or have more health. We should be able to keep them hidden as long as we want in order to avoid aggro. It would also help to have them follow the ranger closer until they attack. When I call my pet back with F3 to pull it out of an AoE, I don’t want it to stop so far in front of me: it should come right next to me so that I don’t have to move as far back. To fix targeting and reliability issues, have low cast time for all offensive pet skills—1 second max. Preferably less, especially for F2. When the player uses the F2 skill, any other skill or action that the pet is taking should be immediately canceled. F2 should instantly respond to player input, unless the pet is dazed/immobilized/otherwise incapacitated. I love pet mechanics: the GW2 ranger pet system just needs to improve.

The Quick Draw trait should be moved into the Marksmanship line, since that’s the trait line related to bows. Or it should be knocked down a tier. We shouldn’t be forced to invest so much into the critical hits line just to get decent use of our bows, especially since the critical hits mechanic has recently been nerfed by things like critical-immune bosses. And Two-Handed Training should be moved into Skirmishing or some other trait that works better with Greatsword. It just doesn’t make much sense in Nature Magic. This kind of change should be implemented for other weapon-related traits, too.

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.