Guild Wars 2

RoyalPredator.9163:

Oh the Stealth… Since it has no reveal-brake rules, its kind of a godmode when you know how to use it. Even in PVE when mobs still seeing you sometimes…
For us, “Reveal!” shouts/bonuses would be nice to help out the groups.
If we would be able to use pet to reveal and lock stealthing on foes, that would be a nice support – and when Dungeons are designed to have stealth using enemies, we would be welcome even there.

I think the idea of the Ranger being an anti-stealth class would be interesting to explore. At least it would define some sort of role and unique functionality in WvW. However, finding the right balance point would be tricky. I fear it would either be completely OP to stealth classes or almost completely useless (i.e. current Sic ’Em)

You need to consider just how powerful the actives of some of our signets are to start out, which is why we have to take a grandmaster trait just for them to work on us.

For example, if Signet of Stone were to be untraited, it gives us 6 seconds of taking no physical damage, us and our pets. (Its automatically better than Endure pain because of that, which gives the warrior, 4 seconds, even though endure pain is a stunbreaker and our cooldown is longer).

Also, Signet of the Wild gives us 8 seconds of stability, and +25% damage. What equal skill does that without traits?

Well that is one of our best signets when traited even though its passive heal is low, but still its not rely op as you make it sound. Compare that effect on signet of judgement, dolyak signet, assassin signet and signet of spite. Sure our signet might be bit better but thous classes don’t have pet tailing them and don’t have use 30 to get that effect. If ranger signets are to powerfull to pet and ranger get active effect from them without 30 point investment then thous active effect should effect us without traiting and pet after we use thous 30 point.

The problem with rangers currently has to do with how unbalanced the professions have been for quite some time. Every class in GW2 should be of equal statistical value since the game has no trinity. What I mean by this is if a class has high armor, health pool, cleanses, party buffs, and high damage, then everyone in the game will be pigeon holed into playing that class (I’m looking at you warrior). Warriors and guardians are in the best space and have been for the last 2 balance patches in particular and Anet isn’t going to blow them up which is fine, I have a warrior, don’t kill it. But my ranger is lagging behind in utility and party support and healing, condition cleansing, damage mitigation and damage. Not everyone wants to main a warrior or guardian so I would ask that you risk making rangers as strong as warriors if it means you actually are doing something to help bridge the gap between the haves and the have nots.

With the introduction of ascended gear and the amount of resources and time gated materials used to craft them, this issue of balance has jumped an energy level. Whether intended or not, alts aren’t as viable, and I do not plan on playing 5 characters and gearing them all (gearing 5 ascended characters would take 1.5 years anyways). So balance is key. If a class does high damage, remove it’s healing ability. If a class is spec’d for healing, they should suffer a severe damage loss. If as you say the ranger is meant to outlast an opponent, then mitigation, healing and cleanses should be vastly improved. I don’t want my ranger to be a warrior or a thief, but we need our own power.

Orpheal.8263:

• Moving the Shouts into the Game mechanics of F1-4
• Active/Passive Symbiosis Skills between you and your Pet/ Symbiotic Pet Evolution
• Pet Combo Attacks

After little thinking i got to say i like that idea of removing current pet controls and moving shouts on they place as new command mechanism. Sure that might lesser our control from pet actions to same level with other minions, but in other hand we don’t have much more anyway and this system can be worked to something like that aspect system we have talked. Like if ranger set pet on aggressive sic’em stance pet charge in when battle start and provide swiftness and fury type effect both it self and ranger. If we keep it as save and rescue stance pet might provide something like regeneration and go use lick wound on downed allies automatically. Protect me could be defensive stance in witch pet stay whit us and only attack when some one come on melee distance, in this stance ranger get something like protection and part of damage (s)he receive is moved to pet. Guard could be something like debuffing stance where it provide things like cripple, freez, vulnerability or weakness for thous opponents that comes to close.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview

• Redesign the ‘Active’ portions of Signets to effects that work on both the Ranger and Pet by default.

Goal of Proposal

• To give these skills more utility when activated, while also filling in weaknesses in the Rangers design. (lack of viable stun breaks and active condition removal)

Proposal Functionality

• Signet of Renewal
  Passive – Removes a condition every 10 seconds.
  Active – Remove 2 conditions from you and your pet. 25 sec CD.
  This would largely solve the Rangers lack of active condition removal. Thou one more source of active removal might still be needed to give people options.

• Signet of Stone
  Passive – Increase Toughness on you and your pet.
  Active – You and your pet gain Stability and Aigis for X seconds. Stun Break. 30-45 sec CD.
  This should give the Ranger another viable stun break and stability option, besides Lightning Reflexes. So long as the cooldown isn’t prohibitively long.

• Signet of the Hunt
  Passive – You and your pet move 25% faster.
  Active – You and your pet’s next attack deals 25% more damage. 30 sec CD.
  A decent compromise with what the skill currently does, allowing for spike potential without being overly strong.

• Signet of the Wild
  Passive – You and your pet regenerate health.
  Active – You and your pet share damage for X seconds. 40 sec CD.
  Note, with the Signet of the Wild’s active effect, when you take direct damage, 50% of that goes to your pet, and vice versa. Only once per damage, it doesn’t bounce back and forth. Retaliation and conditions are unaffected.
  The reason you’d want to do this is that Protection, Retaliation can be triggered twice, in addition to healing. However you run the risk of taking double damage if both you and your pet are being attacked. Naturally it doesn’t work if your pet is dead.

Associated Risks
The ‘Signet of the Beastmaster’ would be rendered useless by this change, and would have to be replaced. Signet of the Wild’s effect could become too powerful in SPvP as a tanking option. Increasing the cooldown for that version could solve that problem.

Ok i have to jump in right now.

First i want to cc the description of Anet for the Ranger.

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

All of that sounds nice to me
Only question left is, when will this Class be integrated into the game?
I cant wait to play that class as described in the Anet text ^^

Short Summary:

Pets: Broken as hell
Bows: LB == Noob Weapon Nr1
SB == Pew pew pew 1111111 2 5 111111111 booring and only usefull in pvp

U know what thanks to u Anet, Rangers are called Free loot in WvW ty very much for that.
Bear Bow ftw

Tako.7894:

Ok i have to jump in right now.

First i want to cc the description of Anet for the Ranger.

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

All of that sounds nice to me
Only question left is, when will this Class be integrated into the game?
I cant wait to play that class as described in the Anet text ^^

Ok, you deserve a cookie. That was kind of amusing.
I honestly can’t help but feel that the original Guild Wars version was much truer to that description then the one we have now, same goes for the Necromancer for that matter.

Flytrap.8075:

I resent the fact that ANet views Ranger as “the pet class”.

Well, their class mechanic is a pet.
We might not think that “Ranger” (as a word) should be the class it is in GW2, but for purposes of design dicussion, it’s probably better to think of this thread as “Collaborative Development: Pet Class Profession”.

PvX

Speedy pets!

This proposal will do nothing to keep pets from dying, and stowing them isn’t going to happen for whatever reason, but this should help our pets HIT WHAT WE TELL THEM TO. My idea, give pets their actual RL movement speed relative to humans (since Charr and Asura run at human speed as well).

Human maximum run speed is 20 mph.
Jaguar maximum run speed is 40 mph. (2x human speed, easy fix)
Hawk maximum speed is over 100 mph. (5x speed makes birds really cool)

My point is that hitting a moving target is much easier when your pet is a predator with superior speed than it’s prey.

My second suggestion which also works hand in glove to the pet speed boost so as not to break the game, is to reduce all non condition pet damage by 50% and add that to the base damage of the ranger so that we aren’t penalized as severely as we are now when our pets die in dungeons. Pets dying would subtract 15% of our damage under this formula which is significant enough.

Specific Game Mode
PVE

Proposal Overview
Rework the attacks of the pets and give all pets the same autoattack. Increase the amount of control over the pet. Make lesser used pets more attractive to use.

Goal of Proposal
Give the players more room for customisation and control over the pet.

Proposal Functionality
All the pets should share the same autoattack. Melee and ranged autoattack should do a different amount of damage, but should have the same attackspeed. The pet itself shouldn´t do any other attack besides the autoattack.

The F1 key should be used to switch between attack and retreat.

The player should be able to choose which ability is on the F2. If one ability is chosen, the same can´t be used on the second pet.
The abilities you can choose from should depend on the pet family (e.g. feline, bear, dog, etc.) but with an overlap between the pet families (e.g. dogs can fear and bears can fear, moas can give regen also can dogs, pigs give fury like moas do, etc.). Every pet family should have the ability to give 5 stacks of might.

The F3 key could then be used for a dodge/evade on demand with a cooldown on it (maybe 10sec).

The F4 key wouldn´t be changed.

The pet should not have attributes by itself. It rather should use the attributes of the ranger, thus the pet get the benefits from better armor and weapons.

The pet swap cooldown should be just 40 seconds if your pet is down. If you go 30 points into beastmaster the cooldown would be decreased to 20 seconds and the normal pet swap cooldown to 10 seconds. Also the scaling from the attributes should be doubled. A full beastmaster ranger should get about 30-40% of the total damage from her/his pets. Other rangers should get around 15-20% of their damage from the pet.

Associated Risks
Can´t imagine one right now… but someone else sure does i guess

the more i read the more i am depressed by this thread but i do understand my fellow rangers and their frustration.

videoboy.4162:

Chrispy.5641:

Arcane Mage and Chaos Mage? They work!

Hey! The word “mage” is nowhere in those Trait Line names!

and neither are the words hunter or druid for ranger, yet peoply try all the time to call us ‘hunters’.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
fixing pets, adding more team utility

Goal of Proposal
making rangers welcome in teamplay

Proposal Functionality

PETS
1. Sort pets into groups: healing pets, tanking pets, damage pets (these groups in fact exist already). Every group has a “signature functionality” as below.
Healing pets: avoid combat, and heal their master and/or the party members, never take aggro. This is in fact a HOT with an animal animation.
Damage pets: attack rangers target from flank or behind, aviod damage, never take aggro. This is in fact a DOT with an animal animation.
Tanking pets: always have aggro (as long as alive), turn mob away from rangers. This is pretty much the typical trinity tank, with one important exception – it will never lose aggro until dead or called back from combat.

Notes:
a) Mobs take the ranger responsible for actions of his healer and dps pets, i. e. dps pet attack (or healers heal) draws aggro on ranger. These two pet groups will also never affect mobs trajectory or position, unlike tanking pets, who work exactly the other way.

b) Non-healer pets are guaranteed to hit, they open with a charge / teleport / jump and land on the target mob (to avoid AI trajectory
problems), and their attacks will “glue” them to the target much like rangers sword 1 skill. An additional effect like short root, knockdown or slow might be added to make sure the pet will connect properly.

c) Pets have some additional abilities as a bonus to their main functionality.

d) concerning WvW or PvP, the non-tank pets might pretty much work as described above, the tank might make the ranger invulnerable as long as it lives and shall attack (well positions itself so it can be easily seen and attacked) rangers attacker – or draw the damage ranger takes to itself.

2. Pets are permanently stowable and will never respawn until rangers explicit command. When stowed, pets give ranger certain bonuses.
The simple way: just add a damage bonus about as high as an average pet damage (calculated over all pets).
The more complex way: add some bonuses to stats (and damage) based on pets stats and damage. Keep the pets action, centered on the ranger.

TEAM UTILITY
Add shouts (pleads to nature animal forces like the Norn spirits) with a party wide effect. All party members get the effect as long as they are close enough (in combat, under 1200 range etc.)

Shouts have several short time effects, like heal and regen, damage bonuses, protection bonuses, with an animal spirit animation on every affected character when invoked (animation is on as long as the effect is on so the party members know they were just buffed by the ranger). These work on party members if the ranger is in an party, or on 4 closest allies under the range of 600. There are no enemy targeted shouts.

Spirits as they are now shall be able to follow the ranger by default, untraited.

WEAPONS
Shortbow: change the 2 skill into a aoe centered on target with the same effect. Increase shortbow range.
1h sword: make kick animation in skill 1 interruptable by evade.
Longbow: add guaranteed crit to the next attack to skill 3

Holland.9351:

If the Ranger class it supposed to be a sustained damage class without burst nor area of effect, then its single target damage should be reliable. Ranger damage is very unreliable:

Pet damage output is unreliable. Pets need to path and miss their attacks often.

[…]

The problem with the pet is, since it’s controlled by an AI, that it never will be reliable, it never will be as good as you, the player. You can improve the code as long as you want, an AI will always be a risc. And our classmechanic shouldn’t be tied to riscs.
Basically, whenever the ranger hits a target and the pet wont because it’s either running around, misses it’s attack, beeing stuck in an animation, getting CC’d while the ranger is evading the CC or just hits one enemy while the ranger hitting multiple enemies, th ranger is losing damage. Therefore the pet shouldn’t be entrusted with a core mechanic of the game, dealing needed damage.
If the pet would deal additional damage, that would be no problem, because you wont lose anything beside bonuses if the pet unreliable.
The solution to this is, that the ranger should deal all the core damage, while the pet deals only little, additional damage.
To keep the pet still as a threat for the enemy, the pet could apply vulnerability per hit, so the enemy is still better off, if he manages to kite the pet.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Introduction of condi damage pets

Goal of Proposal
Reinforce the hybrid nature of the class; currently we can only run condi on the ranger and direct damage on the pet.

Proposal Functionality
Spiders and devourers have a baseline 300 condition damage. Their condi damage can now go up to 950 with 30 BM points and Expertise training (Wilderness Survival V). Now they don’t get any bonus condi damage possibly because of a bug.

Associated Risks
Overbuffing condi builds.

The Ranger Power just need a skill with a massive damage that isn’t channeling. Channeling = sux. Rapid Fire shouldn’t be channeling, or the skill time should be reduced for 2 seconds / 1 + 1/2.

Isn’t rapid fire a dps loss compared to auto attack?

Please notice that English is not my mother language!

Specific Game Mode
PvP / WvW

Proposal Overview / Goal of Proposal
ArenaNet said that the Ranger is a “skirmishing” class so in my mind the ranger should have good movement (what they actually have) BUT the ranger cant break out of immobalization. >Every< other class can either use a teleport or use a movement skill that breaks them out.
Also ArenaNet siad that the ranger is “drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies.” BUT the only support the can offer are the spirits and some pet skills so maybe we can change Shouts to… well be Shouts that everybody hears not only the pet ^^

Proposal Functionality
Lighting Reflexes
Add “Remove Immobillize” and Remove the stun breaker for it.

Protect Me!
Allies around you gain Protection and the pet takes 50% off the Rangers damage. Reduce the duration to 4 seconds.

Search and Rescue
Reduce either the cooldown to 40 seconds or increase the revive power.

Associated Risks
Well I think the ranger gets maybe a bit too easy too play with these Shout changes.
Need to be tested.

Aioros.4862:

Isn’t rapid fire a dps loss compared to auto attack?

A detail which needs attention and tweaking, perhaps.

A detail? I can probably use one hand to count ranger weapons skills that are not a dps loss compared to auto attack.

Aioros.4862:

Isn’t rapid fire a dps loss compared to auto attack?

It’s because the loading skill is so slow (4+1/2).

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview

Changing pet range of attack compared to distance to trigger attack to improve hit rate. Also changing the angle the attack would allow to discourage sidestepping pets continually.

Goal of Proposal

The idea with the proposal would be an attempt to make the melee pets hit more reliably against moving targets. This would improve the ranger’s ability to provide sustained dps by allowig for my reliable hits from the pet.

Proposal Functionality

The way I usually see the pet attack is that it attacks the moment the opponent is within range of the attack, which means a small amount of movement will put the opponent out of range.

angle of attack
Allowing pets to attack in a larger angle around their position would partially mitigate the ability to continually sidestep most of the attacks. This would need to be tested but a guess would be 2x or 3x the current attack angle would work.

attack distance
Also if the pet was made to trigger an attack at a distance half the range of the attack, the chances of the opponent moving out of range would decrease. So if the attack-trigger range was 120, the range of the attack should be 240.

This is based purely on the observation of the pets’ attack range compared to when they start their attack animations. If this was implemented (and worked to make pets hit better), it would still be possible to dodge or use terrain/movement skills to avoid pet skills. Possibly each melee pet should have a gap closer as well.

Associated Risks

There is the risk that the solution would not solve the pet problems due to the attack-range/attack-trigger condition being a guess at what causes a problem. Also not sure if a change like this would affect PvE opponents (would it truly be a problem to allow common PvE opponents to hit a target though?).

Aioros.4862:

A detail? I can probably use one hand to count ranger weapons skills that are not a dps loss compared to auto attack.

and all of them are on Greatsword.

Something to get the thread going back to positive!

What do you like about rangers? What makes you come back to it? In which situations do you choose it over another profession? What would you not want to see changed?
(Edit: Reason for these questions is that we know what we want changed, but it’s interesting and might be useful for devs to know what shouldn’t change / what makes the class unique from the players’ point of view)

I like the reactive gameplay, that weapons have built in defense/offense on demand, that in PvE, I can switch aggro with the pet, in WvW, that I can take camps and towers alone, I like my water fields and my control in zergs, and the support I can give when the spirits and the pet don’t die… I like to stop thieves from stelthing, particularly when we swipe a structure.
I like the defensive/offensive on-demand abilities (SB#3, GS#4)…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Edge-of-Extinction-and-Frozen-Soil-please/

Just came across this thread while looking through the forums. A great idea for making rangers viable in large scale WvW.

A couple of our pet utilities could be easily replaced by this. (“guard” for instance should be a basic pet functionality, not a utility)

I agree with you Jocksy

I enjoy outplaying opponents by watching what they are doing and having the tools on my ranger to avoid / counter what they are doing. I dont use many on my weapon skills, LR or my elite in many fights, simply because I use them when needed not because they are off CD, and in most fights LR and elite are not needed.

Contrast this to when I am on my mesmer.. and its very much a case of “spam ALL the things because thats how I get max DPS”. That fine, sure, and I get that some people find that more enjoyable than AA being your max DPS, but for me I enjoy having skilsl that I dont use. Skill that are there for counter play if/when I need them, not skilsl that are to be used in some pre-determined rotation which is the same every single time.

I enjoy using bows, killing at range and efficient direct damage builds.

Talk about picking the wrong class!

Yoh.8469:

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview

• Redesign the ‘Active’ portions of Signets to effects that work on both the Ranger and Pet by default.

Goal of Proposal

• To give these skills more utility when activated, while also filling in weaknesses in the Rangers design. (lack of viable stun breaks and active condition removal)

Proposal Functionality

• Signet of Renewal
  Passive – Removes a condition every 10 seconds.
  Active – Remove 2 conditions from you and your pet. 25 sec CD.
  This would largely solve the Rangers lack of active condition removal. Thou one more source of active removal might still be needed to give people options.

• Signet of Stone
  Passive – Increase Toughness on you and your pet.
  Active – You and your pet gain Stability and Aigis for X seconds. Stun Break. 30-45 sec CD.
  This should give the Ranger another viable stun break and stability option, besides Lightning Reflexes. So long as the cooldown isn’t prohibitively long.

• Signet of the Hunt
  Passive – You and your pet move 25% faster.
  Active – You and your pet’s next attack deals 25% more damage. 30 sec CD.
  A decent compromise with what the skill currently does, allowing for spike potential without being overly strong.

• Signet of the Wild
  Passive – You and your pet regenerate health.
  Active – You and your pet share damage for X seconds. 40 sec CD.
  Note, with the Signet of the Wild’s active effect, when you take direct damage, 50% of that goes to your pet, and vice versa. Only once per damage, it doesn’t bounce back and forth. Retaliation and conditions are unaffected.
  The reason you’d want to do this is that Protection, Retaliation can be triggered twice, in addition to healing. However you run the risk of taking double damage if both you and your pet are being attacked. Naturally it doesn’t work if your pet is dead.

Associated Risks
The ‘Signet of the Beastmaster’ would be rendered useless by this change, and would have to be replaced. Signet of the Wild’s effect could become too powerful in SPvP as a tanking option. Increasing the cooldown for that version could solve that problem.

Absolutely not…

Like I said before, the signets may be powerful, but only if you ignore the fact that they’re on a Ranger and not some other class and their passive effect disappears when you use them.

Signet of Renewel: This is the only one I really agree with. I think it’s still too weak though and should probably remove 3 conditions and not just 2, but the 25 second cooldown which can be traited down further is probably enough to warrant just 2.

Signet of Stone: You just made it 100% useless. While it’s great that you gave the class another stun break, you’ve left them in the middle of battle. This is why LR is nice. There is no way a 6 second endure pain on a 1.5 minute cooldown is overpowered. Especially when activating it removes a ton of toughness making you weaker. There’s just no way changing Signet of Stone is warranted, I’m sorry.

Signet of the Hunt: Again, keep in mind the class it’s on. While the damage proc is quite large, it’s also on a class with horrible options to use it on. Do we really want to swap to maul to try and hit like a truck only for them not to die or it misses and we’re stuck in the weapon for the remaining 9 seconds?

Signet of the Wild: Remember we now have a trait to proc this so Enlargement may need to be changed as well. I’m also worried you came up with this idea because of the nerf to SoS? And not to mention it will have no functional use in WvW because pets are still useless there. I don’t think this class needs both Signet of the Hunt and Signet of the Wild providing a damage boost though so I’d just change signet of the hunt’s active.

To what, I don’t much know… but given this class has other issues (like the majority of weapons being bad and not being fun to use) why not make Signet of the Hunt have an activated skill depending on which weapon is selected?

Shortbow: Fire an explosive shot that deals moderate damage and puts a fire field on the ground.

Longbow: Kill shot.

Axe: Stun your target for 2 seconds.

Sword: Leap at the target 900 yards.

Greatsword: Reset all weapon skill cooldowns.

When Rangers were revealed as the Pet Class, Anet basically said they’d make the profession the premiere pet class. Unlike GW1 were pets were optional but also weak. But what has really changed since GW1 – in terms of functionality. I don’t think tweaking numbers on pets is really going to help the fundamental problems.

Comparison between GW1 and GW2

• attack/return, passive/active – basically the same
• pet skills – removed from ranger skillbar in GW2. No longer takes skill slots, but no more choice in skill, no control except F2.
• two pets can be swapped in GW2 (the real difference between the two games)

That does not seem like a premiere pet class to me. Again, numbers can be tweaked and buffed, but the class mechanic is weak functionally. In all the pro-pet posts, its all about pet management – but there’s so little to manage. The class mechanic is something you need to compensate for, not something that enhances your gameplay like other professions. Plus, most other professions can have great builds with no or minimal investment in their class mechanic traitline. Rangers, in order to get acceptable performance out of their pet, need to invest a lot in Beast Mastery.

In short, if Rangers are going to be a Pet Class, then make them a real pet class. A class whose mechanic requires skill to excel with, not skill to merely compensate for. Either the pet mechanic has to go or it needs a major overall. There’s lots of things that can be done, many touched in various ways in this thread. But no single one will help, pets need a revamp.

• More customability. Give a full skill bar to pets. Maybe some fixed by family/species, but others selectable from special ranger pet skills (that don’t require ranger skill bar space or investment in only 1 traitline). Give more control of these skills. Maybe go full Hero from GW1, or something inbetween that and current functionality. I wouldn’t mind an alternate set of skills from the by hitting Shift-1,2,3,etc

• Effectiveness in large combat. Yeah, rangers can get along. Usually the less opponents, the less problems with the pet. Whether this is some passive, toggle-able, or just more control over the pet. But in the large world boss events, or high level instanced content, to med to large battles in WvW, rangers pets are near useless, and sometimes a liability

• Get rid of the Beast Mastery traitline as necessary. Every trait in all trait lines should have a small side function which enhances the pet.

• etc, etc

The point is, again, this is not just a number tweaking, buff this or that issue. Rangers as a Pet Class are just weak functionally. If Anet wants a premiere pet class, then invest in some real re-design of said pet, make it fun to use. Make it engaging to use. Make the pet mechanic something that has a high skill cap. Not something that requires a lot of player management just so its not a liability.

And if the people and time resources aren’t there to do that, then get rid of the pet.

Joiry.2504:

When Rangers were revealed as the Pet Class, Anet basically said they’d make the profession the premiere pet class. Unlike GW1 were pets were optional but also weak. But what has really changed since GW1 – in terms of functionality. I don’t think tweaking numbers on pets is really going to help the fundamental problems.

Comparison between GW1 and GW2

• attack/return, passive/active – basically the same
• pet skills – removed from ranger skillbar in GW2. No longer takes skill slots, but no more choice in skill, no control except F2.
• two pets can be swapped in GW2 (the real difference between the two games)

That does not seem like a premiere pet class to me. Again, numbers can be tweaked and buffed, but the class mechanic is weak functionally. In all the pro-pet posts, its all about pet management – but there’s so little to manage. The class mechanic is something you need to compensate for, not something that enhances your gameplay like other professions. Plus, most other professions can have great builds with no or minimal investment in their class mechanic traitline. Rangers, in order to get acceptable performance out of their pet, need to invest a lot in Beast Mastery.

In short, if Rangers are going to be a Pet Class, then make them a real pet class. A class whose mechanic requires skill to excel with, not skill to merely compensate for. Either the pet mechanic has to go or it needs a major overall. There’s lots of things that can be done, many touched in various ways in this thread. But no single one will help, pets need a revamp.
[…]

If they do so, they should separate the “pet” type and the “archer” type of the class in two different classes. Right now the ranger serves both functions.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Joiry.2504:

When Rangers were revealed as the Pet Class, Anet basically said they’d make the profession the premiere pet class. Unlike GW1 were pets were optional but also weak. But what has really changed since GW1 – in terms of functionality. I don’t think tweaking numbers on pets is really going to help the fundamental problems.

Comparison between GW1 and GW2

• attack/return, passive/active – basically the same
• pet skills – removed from ranger skillbar in GW2. No longer takes skill slots, but no more choice in skill, no control except F2.
• two pets can be swapped in GW2 (the real difference between the two games)

That does not seem like a premiere pet class to me. Again, numbers can be tweaked and buffed, but the class mechanic is weak functionally. In all the pro-pet posts, its all about pet management – but there’s so little to manage. The class mechanic is something you need to compensate for, not something that enhances your gameplay like other professions. Plus, most other professions can have great builds with no or minimal investment in their class mechanic traitline. Rangers, in order to get acceptable performance out of their pet, need to invest a lot in Beast Mastery.

In short, if Rangers are going to be a Pet Class, then make them a real pet class. A class whose mechanic requires skill to excel with, not skill to merely compensate for. Either the pet mechanic has to go or it needs a major overall. There’s lots of things that can be done, many touched in various ways in this thread. But no single one will help, pets need a revamp.
[…]

If they do so, they should separate the “pet” type and the “archer” type of the class in two different classes. Right now the ranger serves both functions.

A split would not help in the argument I make. Whatever Pet Class was split off would continue to have the same problems unless a major overhaul to the pet system occurred. My argument is, the pet system should shine, it should truly be the class mechanic. The thing you get skilled at in order to excel.

If Anet doesn’t have the resources to truly do this with a ranger pet, then it doesn’t have the resources to do it with a whole new class. Maybe long term they could work on a Druid/Shaman or something, but such a thing I bet would take at least a year given there are other aspects to the game that also need attention.

bri.2359:

This way Whiteside can say, they ‘tried’ but the mean and nasty ranger community derailed things because we did not ‘understand’ Anet’s ranger ‘philosophy’.

Doesnt help that they so far have refused to share their philosophy to any reasonable extent. But yes, i agree. This thread was doomed to fail, not because of how it was set up, but the resources given to it. Allie has no way to keep up with 250-300 posts pr day. Not to mention the other devs lurking around. Doesn’t help that the devs by and large is living in the US, so all of us non-US players have little chance of discussing things with them directly while their even here.

Joiry.2504:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Joiry.2504:

When Rangers were revealed as the Pet Class, Anet basically said they’d make the profession the premiere pet class. Unlike GW1 were pets were optional but also weak. But what has really changed since GW1 – in terms of functionality. I don’t think tweaking numbers on pets is really going to help the fundamental problems.

Comparison between GW1 and GW2

• attack/return, passive/active – basically the same
• pet skills – removed from ranger skillbar in GW2. No longer takes skill slots, but no more choice in skill, no control except F2.
• two pets can be swapped in GW2 (the real difference between the two games)

That does not seem like a premiere pet class to me. Again, numbers can be tweaked and buffed, but the class mechanic is weak functionally. In all the pro-pet posts, its all about pet management – but there’s so little to manage. The class mechanic is something you need to compensate for, not something that enhances your gameplay like other professions. Plus, most other professions can have great builds with no or minimal investment in their class mechanic traitline. Rangers, in order to get acceptable performance out of their pet, need to invest a lot in Beast Mastery.

In short, if Rangers are going to be a Pet Class, then make them a real pet class. A class whose mechanic requires skill to excel with, not skill to merely compensate for. Either the pet mechanic has to go or it needs a major overall. There’s lots of things that can be done, many touched in various ways in this thread. But no single one will help, pets need a revamp.
[…]

If they do so, they should separate the “pet” type and the “archer” type of the class in two different classes. Right now the ranger serves both functions.

A split would not help in the argument I make. Whatever Pet Class was split off would continue to have the same problems unless a major overhaul to the pet system occurred. My argument is, the pet system should shine, it should truly be the class mechanic. The thing you get skilled at in order to excel.

If Anet doesn’t have the resources to truly do this with a ranger pet, then it doesn’t have the resources to do it with a whole new class. Maybe long term they could work on a Druid/Shaman or something, but such a thing I bet would take at least a year given there are other aspects to the game that also need attention.

You say as long as the pet AI gets no major overhaul, the pet will be unreliable. I go even further saying no AI will ever be that good that you can truly rely on it.
Therefore I have suggested that the pet shouldn’t offer core-mechanics but only additional mechanics, so you wont be on a disadvantage if your pet is unreliable.

I can understand your point of having a “working” AI as classmechanic, but that should be the only classmechanic. Yet the ranger defines himself not only through his pet but through many different aspects, such as trapper, archer or whatever this spiritsummonig theme is. I think the pet as damage component doesn’t work well with the listed playstyles. Concretely, the pet offers no advantage to the listed playstyle, yet we still have to manage the disadvantages the pet has.

Prysin.8542:

bri.2359:

This way Whiteside can say, they ‘tried’ but the mean and nasty ranger community derailed things because we did not ‘understand’ Anet’s ranger ‘philosophy’.

Doesnt help that they so far have refused to share their philosophy to any reasonable extent. But yes, i agree. This thread was doomed to fail, not because of how it was set up, but the resources given to it. Allie has no way to keep up with 250-300 posts pr day. Not to mention the other devs lurking around. Doesn’t help that the devs by and large is living in the US, so all of us non-US players have little chance of discussing things with them directly while their even here.

At least you can post in the same forum as the Devs. Other MMOs (coughwowcough) have separate forums and devs only respond to the North American forums.

I’m sure Allie is doing the best job she can.

This is a thread that everyone in the forums knew was going to be BIG…. having one freaking person assigned to answering in this thread was a huge fault of anet AGAIN…

I don’t understand, you have actual developers and class design people and not a SINGLE one can make a post. This thread has been up for what, the entire work week?

You are telling me that this anet dev team is soooooo busy they cant possibly take one hour of their entire work week to post a few things on this CDI?

It’s just flat out disappointing. I’m not even mad anymore though, we all knew where this was heading when anet decided we will remain a pet first class, even though we have absolutely no intentions on fixing the core issues…

There are people in this CDI that are posting great suggestions and taking their time out of the day to make such a committment. Where is the anet side of this committment?
almost 2 years of little to no feedback for this broken class and it still continues..i’m in awe of how little they care.

And please , if i see one more post red saying “just because we don’t post anything doesn’t mean we didn’t read it”…. umm it means you completely ignored it (see, past 1.5 years of feedback for rangers, this thread, etc)

This playerbase is doing soo much to try and help fix the myriad of problems yet anet, in my point of view, devs are just sitting their twiddling there thumbs (i’m making this on the fact there is been no feedback at all from a dev).

I’m sure Allie is doing all she can, I am by no means angry at her, just the people behind the steel curtain

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!

Nekomimi Mode. Nekomimi Mode, ne!

[sub]Too bad Charrs already have enough ears[/sub]

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

You say as long as the pet AI gets no major overhaul, the pet will be unreliable. I go even further saying no AI will ever be that good that you can truly rely on it.
Therefore I have suggested that the pet shouldn’t offer core-mechanics but only additional mechanics, so you wont be on a disadvantage if your pet is unreliable.

I can understand your point of having a “working” AI as classmechanic, but that should be the only classmechanic. Yet the ranger defines himself not only through his pet but through many different aspects, such as trapper, archer or whatever this spiritsummonig theme is. I think the pet as damage component doesn’t work well with the listed playstyles. Concretely, the pet offers no advantage to the listed playstyle, yet we still have to manage the disadvantages the pet has.

I am not talking about the AI. I do agree with you, the very fact of pet AI is a big issue.

But that is not the issue my post is addressing.

I am talking about the basic functionality the player has with regards to the pet. A good pet class has to be built from the ground up around pets. It has to offer a great deal of customization of each pet. It has to offer a lot of control over the pet (this partly relieves some issues with AI, but not all).

The point of my post is the pet mechanics have to be more than attack, retreat, F2, swap if you want a good pet class. This is the thing Anet needs to overhaul massively if it wants the pet mechanic to benefit the profession, instead of something you have to compensate for.

There are other pet classes – Mesmer, Necro, Engineer. But they all have disposable, high turnover type pets. They don’t need much more control than they have. But rangers have just slightly more control over their pets than those other professions.

So, I suggest, the paths forward are:

• Make the pet mechanic truly interesting, customizable, and something that can have a high skill cap.
• Remove the pet entirely.
• Make the pet(s) more high turnover like those other three classes. This could be something as simple as quick “summons”. Say like F1-F4 each causes a different pet to come out, attack with its special attacks for 20 seconds, then goes away. Doesn’t have to be that specifically, its just an example of a more disposable/rapid turnover pet.

I am actually not a huge fan of pets. But if Anet is going to continue to insist rangers are the big cool pet class, well, then pets better be cool. They should have a lot of functionality, there should be a lot of player skill involved, there should be a dynamic that engages the player, not hinders them.

If you want high skill cap, you can go and play the class now, there are people out there who can make the class work. It’s just not for us common folk.

There is also a big problem with pets, if ANet says they can’t fix them and we can’t play without them we end up right where we are.

I think people want the option to play without pets because ANet failed miserably on every attempt to fix them, and many PvE features they released have core problem with pets (even if it’s just exploding the pet up in 1 blow). It seems that playing without pets is the last resort for this class ever be on par with the others.

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

This is what I wanted in the Ranger minus the pet. Why do we need to have a required standard pet class? Because that’s what most games do? Oh well… I’m sure this topic has been chewed up enough

I hate playing my ranger simply because I love my sword and gs, but damage is shared with my pet that doesn’t scale. So being a full melee ranger can be very frustrating at times…and if I want to go condition I have to use projectiles which currently suck. Lower base damage than melee on average and they can be reflected back at you for their full damage (reflections suddenly become damage immunity in this situation not counting traps, which I have to trait in a direct damage line to use to their full extent).

Let me run dagger dagger ranger with MH dagger being a melee condition weapon or something if you arn’t going to fix the broken pet
And let’s be honest, if the pet ai is considered a joke and it is the same ai as your npcs, maybe an ai revamp isn’t exactly a bad idea for the game health as a whole.

I understand that the game long out of beta, so you want to avoid big changes but the polish just isn’t there. My favorite character (it received my favorite character name even =/) is the only character that makes me want to rage quit while playing [especially if I make the mistake of looking at the traits!].

And why would I even bother playing it now I have a warrior, mes and engi 80 is beyond me. My swsw/lb warrior is the better skirmisher, my engi can trait for aoe 1500 range (with chills, poison fields, max vulni stacks) if I want to play long distance fighting, hell I could even grab a gs on my mesmer and I get a piercing 1200 aa without traiting, that isn’t a projectile so can’t be reflected and a damage phantom that can be summoned ON walls. argggghhhh

Meh, I should leave this thread, I’m starting to get toxic.. Scarlet could have just come to the forums XD no need to hire the toxic alliance. I’ll be back when I think of a suggestion that might not have been said before [in the ranger forum], so I probably won’t be back.

Best of luck to everyone, oh and the person who makes the pet optional like it was in good old gw1 will be my hero!

I think the Devs haven’t realized yet that the pet is incompatible with any playstyle but beastmaster. There may be some small niches for the pet such as tanker if you try to hit an enemy from afar with bows. Yet we gain just small advatages and huge disadvantages by beeing tied to the pet.

Aioros.4862:

If you want high skill cap, you can go and play the class now, there are people out there who can make the class work. It’s just not for us common folk.

High skilled players can make ranger work, a ranger played by a high skilled player is as effective as an average warrior, guardian and so on.

[off tipic]your niki is from the anime Saint Seiya?

EDIT: Pets wont be fixed, so suggest that is pointless, we need to figure out ways to not be punished for that problem, ways of our class mechanic not be totally disabled when the pet is dead and so on.

If I recall, in beta there used to be a fair amount of confusion about how to keep pets alive even more than now before people learned to switch pets. The instinctive reaction was to choose one pet and make that the ranger’s best friend forever companion. Which isn’t surprising, given the character creation questions and how necromancers are perceived as the minion army profession.

I don’t have any hard numbers, but bringing a ranger’s focus back to one pet in combat might make some of these suggestions more reasonable to work with, such as giving a lot more pet customization. It might be easier to balance and account for rangers having one pet than two. Having two doesn’t even help all that much when they fall prey to large group play. The second will typically fall shortly after and you’re on cooldown anyway.

If rangers are to be a pet class, I do think the ranger needs to be able to interact with their pet a lot more than they currently do. Either in preparation (customizing skills and having some influence on stats), in control, or both.

In its extremes, a pet class in this game would use the pet as a primary weapon with all weapon skills commanding the pet in some way. I think we’ve all passed that point of it being a reasonable option though.

mtpelion.4562:

Proposal Overview

Pets need help

Goal of Proposal

Currently, pets are useful for tanking open world PvE mobs but not much else. These ideas should improve the effectiveness of pets so that the ranger feels like he and his pet are one, not that his pet is a ball and chain that is holding him back.

Proposal Functionality

Pet stats should scale based on the ranger’s stats and the pet’s family, with a weight on specific stats based on the individual pets (some benefit more from power, others from condition damage, others from vitality, etc.).

Pet Melee range needs to be increased to 600, or the AI needs to be significantly improved to combat the current “Run>Stop>Begin Attack>Cancel Attack>Run>Stop” cycle that prevents the pet from DPSing moving targets.

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.

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.
Speccing into Beastmastery should improve the pet stat scaling
Signets should always affect the Ranger and require a Beastmastery trait to also affect the pet (the opposite of the way it is now).

Associated Risks

Having a pet is a risk right now…

I know the aspect part got quoted and discussed quite a bit, but I did have some other pet ideas too!

Specifically, the increased melee range, reduced damage, and stat scaling which would all go a long way to improving pet usage without needing to update the AI.

SkiTz.4590:

This is a thread that everyone in the forums knew was going to be BIG…. having one freaking person assigned to answering in this thread was a huge fault of anet AGAIN…

I don’t understand, you have actual developers and class design people and not a SINGLE one can make a post. This thread has been up for what, the entire work week?

You are telling me that this anet dev team is soooooo busy they cant possibly take one hour of their entire work week to post a few things on this CDI?

It’s just flat out disappointing. I’m not even mad anymore though, we all knew where this was heading when anet decided we will remain a pet first class, even though we have absolutely no intentions on fixing the core issues…

There are people in this CDI that are posting great suggestions and taking their time out of the day to make such a committment. Where is the anet side of this committment?
almost 2 years of little to no feedback for this broken class and it still continues..i’m in awe of how little they care.

And please , if i see one more post red saying “just because we don’t post anything doesn’t mean we didn’t read it”…. umm it means you completely ignored it (see, past 1.5 years of feedback for rangers, this thread, etc)

This playerbase is doing soo much to try and help fix the myriad of problems yet anet, in my point of view, devs are just sitting their twiddling there thumbs (i’m making this on the fact there is been no feedback at all from a dev).

I’m sure Allie is doing all she can, I am by no means angry at her, just the people behind the steel curtain

I literally can visualize Allie sitting in a room with the devs trying to sum up this whole thread. It’s ridiculous.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Switch over more Pet damage to Player damage.

Goal of Proposal
Pets are sometimes unresponsive/clunky, they don’t provide maximum DPS uptime.

Pet damage also didn’t increase accordingly when Ascended weapons were rolled out so our potential damage output is lower compared to other classes which rely on their weapon damage only.

AI fixes, mechanic fixes etc. maybe too tedious/complicated, allow the Ranger to rely more on himself to deal damage.

Proposal Functionality
Simply lower Pet damage and raise the Damage Coefficients of Ranger weapons accordingly.

Associated Risks
Overtuning of damage too much to the Ranger resulting in pet damage being trivial when it comes to choosing one (extreme would be 99% ranger 1% pet of overall DPS, Feline doesn’t have significantly better DPS than a Bear is bad).

We need some direction from ANet or this thread isn’t going anywhere.

Also… could people please stop posting huge walls of text? Less is more when it comes to something like this; taking up three pages to describe all of the issues that you have with Ranger is not as effective as using bullet points to do the same thing in a single paragraph.

Belzebu.3912:

Aioros.4862:

If you want high skill cap, you can go and play the class now, there are people out there who can make the class work. It’s just not for us common folk.

High skilled players can make ranger work, a ranger played by a high skilled player is as effective as an average warrior, guardian and so on.

[off tipic]your niki is from the anime Saint Seiya?

EDIT: Pets wont be fixed, so suggest that is pointless, we need to figure out ways to not be punished for that problem, ways of our class mechanic not be totally disabled when the pet is dead and so on.

Yes, that’s where the name came from.

And you got my point exactly before and after the edit.

Ranger always has been separated into two type.
People should know this much but ranger even in guild wars 1 was able to do heavy burst damage without multispecialising so here ill point out some stuff

1. In GW 1 Ranger altrought realy good at sustain from condition interupter was still able to burst without specing into another profession as a beastmaster however you did ned about all of the campaign to even get a serious results (Most important campaign was obviously faction prophecy and eye of the north because of the fact all the heavy damaging pet move as well as heal as one where obtained from those campaign). A ranger with 16 in BM and about 10+ in expertise could easily overdamage a warrior if not even a dervish deals 7 degen per second and tank like a godlike behing. Beast mastery was FAR from useless in GW 1 unlike what some believe and actualy was a very dangerous build in pvp (I know about it because i ran a full beast mastery bar including only pet skills heal as one and pet buffing shouts!) those monk who got nuked by the angry pet of a spear beastmaster will quite remember it.

2. Pet in guild wars 2 cannot be actualy specialised like they were in GW1 (aka dire, healthy) and are way harder to ressurect (A beastmaster spamming heal as one would ressurect his pet on every cast if it was dead, also pet didnt have a death penality else then in pvp thus making them ideal frontline soldier and weapons).

3. Guild wars 1 and guild wars 2 are different in therm of the fact that gear now is ’’stated’’ Pet however doesnt scale at all with gear and is actualy specialised into nothing wich makes its damage source reguardless of specialisation kind of bad because lets face it 30% crit damage or 300 condition damage wont actualy change anything (might as well say our pet got a full set of nerfed celestial with 30% total critical damage and 20 point of condition damage per piece and that is if the player even bothered to put point into those traits!. As such weither you a beast master or not you end up with a pet wich deals about very cheap damage tank like Feather pillow (wich means not at all) and is about as treatening to other player as the lazy housecat on the sofa.

Before offering advice on how to “fix” pets, or discussing ways on how to fix them, let’s have a look at how Anet tried to fix the pet problem so far.

According to the devs, they didn’t want to buff ranger pets too much because they were very powerful “in certain situations”. The “best” update, that I can think off, that did something for the pets was the health boost update, almost every pet got more extra health, so let’s see how that “solution” helped fix the pet problems or not.

There are a few areas of the game that we can discuss about.
Open World PVE, roaming around the map, exploring, gathering doing random events and achievements.
Dungeons/Fractals
World versus World (large scale)
sPVP and also small scale WvW

So how did the only major Ranger update since release (buffing pet hit points) helped pets in the above 4 sections?

Open World PVE: Pets used to be strong here, the update made them somewhat stronger
Dungeons/Fractals: even if they triple the health of pets they would still be completely useless. There is no reason for pets to exist in Dungeons/Fractals, with or without the health update.
World vs World (large scale): instead of getting killed in 0.1 of a second, they die in 0.2 seconds, horay for progress. No, still useless.
sPVP, small scale WvW: The health update made the pets somewhat stronger in these two aspects of the game, at least it made them harder to kill while the ranger uses their downed skill3 and is underwater (can’t stomp)

So, the single change that has happened since release to buff pets in some considerable way, the health update, did absolutely nothing to make pets even useful in parts of the game that they were useless (hint: health won’t make them better) while buffing them, arguable but they did get some kind of buff, in situation were the pets were stronger…. So the whole health update was simply pointless and had the complete opposite effect of it’s purpose.

Also, I’ve seen in numerous patch notes so called “improvements to pet F2 skills”, honestly I haven’t seen any kind of difference, they used to be useless and they still are.