Guild Wars 2

First off, due to the lack of the lack of, or assumed lack of experience when it comes to balancing Guild Wars 2, this write up will push to make sure that the aim of the write up, which is to present an organized list of areas in which the ranger class could be rebalanced with explanations as to why these areas are being considered as having enough weaknesses to justify the potential rebalancing of them.

While suggestions are more than welcome for discussion purposes in order to create examples to make examples so that discussions can progress more smoothly, ideally, this thread should remain to discuss the Quality of Life and balance change areas being suggested for improvement, while debating whether or not any additional line items are in need of being listed. However, because specific example discussions are deemed in the developer sticky to be more useful than more generalized topics, suggestions should definitely be worked into the discussion and discussed, as to comply with this forums guidelines.

This is going to be the initial list of areas that has been discussed within the ranger subforum as having a need for either some sort of rebalance of overhaul. Here, they will just be listed, and later on, explanations will be provided as reasoning. Due to the earlier statement that essentially states that the playerbase, for the most part, doesn’t have enough information in front of them as far as direction/core balance/balance philosophies/etc goes, these explanations will refrain from making suggestions as to what to overhaul or rebalance things to. More so, this list is just a statement of where a portion of the ranger community has taken a stance of the position of the rangers class balance across various game types, versus other classes, and within itself.

The list:

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design
• More functionality/gameplay options for pets
• Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment
• Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions

The reasoning:

1) Pet Responsiveness – Last year, nearing the last balance patch, a developer response was kind enough to enlighten the ranger community with the information that the pet skill lag, particularly, the response time of the pet F2 key, is dealt with through the server because pet AI is coded off of the games creature AI. Essentially, this means that using this F2 skill basically just adds the unique skill to the AI action queue for the pet to use at its earliest convenience. This is a problem. Lack of true control over the single player dictated skill on a class whose pet AI has to be continuously be band aid fixed in order to improve basic functionality is a serious problem. This needs to be more reliable, especially since it is one of the only ways a player can actively utilize their pets skills to use the F2 skill on demand when needed during a fight. Without this skill taking full precedence and being reliable, its success rate has so much disparity that it ends up being more rage inducing than helpful.

2) Reliance on a small handful of traits for every working build – This area could be said to be aimed directly at Empathic Bond, since it is the only form of reliable cleansing that is strong enough, particularly for a competitive environment. That specific example aside, there is an issue that is not ranger specific with certain traits in this game becoming a “staple” for almost every build deemed viable by the community, which limits build diversity.

3) Pet survival not balanced adequately for large scale engagements – This area seems self-explanatory, but basically, the ranger, whose class mechanic is an “always-on” pet in which the players damage is balanced around, does not have functionality that scales well with how large engagements, specifically in modes like WvW. This often results in ranger players sacrificing what most would consider a fairly significant portion of their damage during these large scale engagements, either by way of having a passive or a dead pet. Being that this is the class mechanic and was designed with an always-on design, there shouldn’t be any instance in which the class mechanic is rendered as ineffective as it can be currently.

4) Utilities completely outclassing other utilities – There are a lot of utilities the ranger has access to that can just be considered to have a “null” function. The shouts really don’t do much and really don’t compete with the functions of the rest of the other utilities. Keen Edge (trait) is the only time Sharpening Stone ever sees any use. Frost Trap is very underwhelming for its cooldown. But just generally, there are utility slot options that just don’t functionally compete with other options that can be taken, which is very limiting to build diversity.

5) Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content – In a nutshell, weapons seem like they should ideally all be unique and have a specialty role as far as functionality goes, in order to get players to actively make the best weapon selections for the content and their build/etc. However, functionally, the ranger bows are very bland and unexciting weapons, and the ranger longbow especially, which provides very underwhelming functions and damage. Sword and Greatsword compete directly with each other, as both are power based melee weapons with evasive/defensive capabilities, and Axe (and Dagger) competes directly with the shortbow so closely that the only difference aside from an interrupt is deciding what conditional bleed application you want. This leaves only offhand weapons to compare. Really, the weapons just need to be more different from each other, and less subjectively boring in some cases.

6) Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design – This one should be a bit more straightforward too. As the “pet class,” 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. The same pet which devs have stressed to the players the need to work with in order to maximize combat potential. 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. What happened to skills from Guild Wars 1 like Predatory Bond, Strike as One, Symbiotic Bond, and Companionship?

7) More functionality/gameplay options for pets – Why is the pet just a DPS option? There are quite a few problems that could be fixed with more options to build around with for pets. Why do they always just have to be a damage option? The game needs more traits like Mighty Swap and Vigorous Swap, where you can choose to use your pet for utility options like giving boons and supporting rather than damage. It sure would open up playstyle diversity to have more options to gear pets towards other than “damage or more damage.”

8) Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment – This one seems pretty straightforward too. Basically, Signets, Spirits (more so previously than now), and Traps all require 30 trait points to make otherwise pretty mediocre utilities useful (only 20 with Spirits now). Heck, signets don’t even work on the player without a grandmaster trait. For rangers, this is probably the biggest hindrance to build diversity that needs to be addressed. The utilities already require heavy investment in the utility slots to be worthwhile (Traps and Spirits both typically work better with at least 2, to even 3 slots). Adding another 30 point trait requirement on top of that makes ranger builds have to build with heavy investment in order to be successful, for the most part. Just as Spirits Unbound was moved down to the master tier, Trap Potency and Signet of the Beastmaster really should be looked at for similar reworks/repositions to open up more build opportunities.

9) Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions – This is more of a concept than it is a true issue. Basically, the ranger doesn’t have a whole lot that offers competitive options for a team composition to the degree where players think that rangers are worth slotting over other classes. More prevalent in PvE/Dungeons and WvW than PvP, but really, rangers only offer Spotter and Frost Spirit in certain circumstances like dungeons (this is mostly where you see this build selection). Outside of Spotter and Spirits, everything the ranger does is accomplished by other classes. But, as mentioned earlier, Spirits suffer from the same issues that pets do; not scaling well the larger an engagement gets, due to their killable nature. On top of that, most ranger builds require a trait investment that forces them to specialize more than other classes and in the process give up other offensive or defensive options that those other classes still have access to. Overall, every class should be able to compete for slots on a team composition equally, by either bringing something unique and helpful to that team composition, or by bringing something similarly competitive in function to other classes, while being able to provide more of a unique role/addition elsewhere.

Overall, this sums up where many people in the ranger community feel that ranger is at balance and as far as quality of life changes are concerned. Any feedback, especially developer feedback, is welcome.

The original discussion started within the ranger community can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/The-State-of-Balance-discussion/page/1

Discuss

Bump because the ranger forum put in a lot of time to discussing these topics and Jacob has very kindly written it up for us

+1000 on point 8 especially. I’ve been playing on my mesmer a fair bit recently and its sad that I can equip glamours, clones, phantasm, manipulation, really any utility I want and have it be of use without any traits. I can trait to give them extra uses, but they work so nicely even without traits. Ranger utilities dont work like that.. when I am only trap build, more or less every other utility its out of the question because without 30 traited into them they cant be used.

Copy pasta from other thread.

Make acquiring a pet to require putting 5-10 points in the beastmastery trait line. Otherwise, you have no pet. Your damage is unscaled. Your utility skills are unbound so that almost all of them are no longer pet oriented and rely on the poor pet AI. This will let people who want the traditional pet class have a pet and people who want the traditional archer class to have an archer or a ranger who is very agile at dodging/applying conditions/setting traps and do competent damage.
Make putting 5-15 points in marksmenship give you “quiver” attunements, or some kind of “natural poison” attunment, similiar to elementalists/guardians that apply effects like weakness/poison/burning/chill once every 5 seconds.
And please let us use our pets secondary abilities on demand. One more keybinding won’t scare away gamers. Not having access, on demand , to my pet’s CC really irritates me, because Rangers lack CC, and we’re suppose to fill that role with our pet, but it’s very shoddy. That’s really at the core of all the issues wrong with the profession. We rely on our pets yet they are just unreliable.

In my opinion, there are only 3 real areas a class is needed for groups: burst damage, AE, and utility. Nothing says a class needs to provide all 3, but if a class is deficient in one, you’d expect them to make up for it in the others. The Ranger is deficient in all three.

Burst is important because it’s the only real way to apply enough pressure to push an enemy off balance. If you’re hitting someone for the same damage every second, you become predictable. Even if that damage is 2k or 3k crits as is the case with a max range longbow. Without real burst, you’ll never do anything but site around hoping you outlast the opponent. There’s no way to outplay them.

AE: AE is important for the same reason as burst…. it applies pressure on an opposing team and forces them to use their cooldowns.

Utility: This is what you bring to either counter the opposing teams AE/Burst or improve your teams AE/Burst.

That’s it… and the Ranger doesn’t do any of this.

AE and Burst is obvious. There is none. The limited amounts the Ranger does provide is so poor in comparison to every other class and worse still is it doesn’t really compliment the Ranger class any either. Utility is something the Ranger isn’t necessarily weak in, but almost all of the utility provided comes from the pets which are borderline worthless and have been since launch.

I know this isn’t a suggestion thread, but I really do feel unless you provide this class with meaningful burst on demand, a real AE that isn’t weapon/spec specific, and find ANYTHING for the class to do in a group (especially WvW) there’s simply no reason for the class to exist. I’ve been asking for a year now what the Ranger class is supposed to do and the only thing I’ve ever heard is ’it’s the official GW2 pet class’ which is worrisome considering pets don’t work and after the 12/10 thread, fixing them isn’t on the radar.

In order to keep the thread in compliance with the rules sticky’d in this subforum, I’m going to list possible solutions based on each numerical category that was posted above. Note that these are my own ideas and have not been as discussed by the ranger community as the compiled overview list. Getting everybody to agree on how to change something and putting it into a perfect balance perspective is a much more difficult task than first agreeing what needs to be changed, which is why I believe the information I have already posted in the OPs is necessary to begin with.

So:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

2)

• Pet Swap removes x conditions with a 20 second ICD
• Traps transfer x conditions per pulse
• Activating a signet removes x conditions
• Interrupting a foe either transfers or removes x conditions
• Make Carnivorous Appetite heal the player as well as the pet. Shift its function to “your crits steal health for you and your pet with an ICD”
• Make Honed Axes work for more weapons (maybe melee weapon specific, or even bow specific)
• Allow companions might to affect the player by giving might to the player when the pet crits
• Combine Quick Draw with Piercing Arrows

3)

• Damage reduction for AoE
• Addition of a pet dodge or a pet damage immunity option
• Less strict penalty for pet death than a 60 second cooldown

4)

• Rework “Guard” entirely. Maybe “for the next x seconds, pet attacks grant rangers x boons randomly” or even “for the next x seconds, damage taken by either you or your pet is split between you.”
• Rework “Protect Me” so that the pet only takes a percentage of the incoming damage, to the point where the pet can still be killed by damage overload when this is active, but the pet doesn’t melt and die, putting it on cooldown, basically just to break a stun, since the damage immunity/transfer can be so short it doesn’t make much difference.
• Rework Sic’ Em so it doesn’t get removed by anything during the time its active
• Change Sharpening Stone to either 2 bleeds per attack or torment or immobilize or something more potent in either damage or control than it is now.
• Increase the Direct Damage traps do, especially Spike Trap
• Reduce the cooldown of Frost Trap
• Make Signet of the Hunt’s active a Stun Breaker

5)

• Reduce the cast time of Rapid Fire and increase the damage, or reduce the amount of shots fired and increase the amount of damage done and vulnerability applied per shot. Rapid Fire should be stronger than autoattacking, period.
• Allow Barrage to be channeled while moving
• Blind on Hornet Sting
• Torment instead of poison on Serpent’s Strike
• Increase Hunter’s Call damage
• Increase Whirling Defense’s damage
• Turn Poison Volley into an area target skill
• Crippling Shot now has pet apply torment, based on the player’s condition stat

6)

• Empathic Bond should just be made to remove conditions on pet swap. This would allow it to be a more reactive skill, and it wouldn’t be killing the pet like it is currently
• “Protect Me,” see suggestion under section 4
• Let Signet of Renewal either just outright cleanse conditions with its active, or have it gain a boon for every condition the pet takes, then have this boon gaining function be applied to the player through Signet of the Beastmaster

7)

• Stability on Pet Swap
• Heal on Pet Swap
• In general, give swapping pets out more of a function for players that can then choose to leave their pet on passive and turn the mechanic from a damage mechanic into a buff mechanic.

8)

• Merge Piercing Arrows with Quick Draw (stays in Skirmishing)
• Move Eagle Eye to Grandmasters and have it affect the Shortbow for 300 more range as well, turn longbow damage increase to 10%
• Move Signet of the Beastmaster to a Masters Slot
• Remove Honed Axe
• Move Trap Potency down to Master tier
• Remove Trapper’s Defense
• Move Trapper’s Expertise down to adept tier
• New Grandmaster trait, choose from:
  -Traps transfer x conditions per pulse
  -Activating a signet removes x conditions
  -Interrupting a foe either transfers or removes x conditions

9)

• Any changes here would be a direct result from anything else mentioned being changed.

An older suggestion thread I created with an already established in depth discussion: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Trait-Rework-extensive/

Also, thank you to those already responding

After reading over the forum rules more extensively, I feel like we should take this thread and make the format similar (albeit less length where necessary) to what I’ve just posted.

As an example, take the numerical number of where you think your suggestion is on the list, and then use that, so let’s say, to take Atherakhia’s ideas as an example, maybe going:

“5)
More burst is needed etc”

I think that this way allows me to keep and update the OP listed with overview topics as discussed and as necessary, but allows us to delve into specific suggestions and ideas as the forum dictates. Sound okay everybody?

If you’re up to formatting that is, if you just have a single reference point like Cufufalating, that is absolutely fine as well

Whatever it takes to sustain this thread and create a valuable discussion!

Suggestions then….

As I said in my other post, I consider burst to be one of the primary things a power oriented class needs to provide. Currently the Ranger’s capability of burst is quite low. Really the only way to do it reliably right now is to swap weapons to greatsword and use Maul. This is counter productive because you may be at range and not want to melee someone and also because aside from maul, the greatsword is lacking in offensive capability. Auto damage is low and all the utility is oriented more toward defense. To resolve some of this, simply giving Rangers a weapon swap cooldown like warriors would at least make using maul a little more fluid.

In addition to that, and assuming Longbow is supposed to be a power weapon, I propose removing barrage and giving the class a killshot style move similar to the Warrior’s burst skill.

‘But Barrage is our only real form of AE!’ I agree… so I have a suggestion for that too.

As it is right now, most Ranger utility is awful unless you invest heavily in traits. Traps being a great example of this. I propose removing spike trap from the game and replacing it with barrage. You can then change barrage to do more damage, apply a bleed each wave, and make the first wave immobilize for 2 seconds.

This effectively makes barrage the same as spike trap with a 30points in skirmishing, makes the AE attractive to both condi and power builds, and gives the class an offensive utility to choose from. With it being a skill, perhaps it will no longer need a channel time where the Ranger is required to remain stationary.

An alternative suggestion that still grants the Ranger access to a kill shot style move is to adjust Signet of the Hunt. Right now the active is underwhelming to say the least. What if Signet of the Hunt was changed to act similar to an Elementalist’s Glyphs? So when you activate glyph of the hunt you get a unique skill depending on which main hand weapon you have selected?

Longbow would still grant a kill shot styled attack.
Shortbow could make their auto attack apply torment for the next X shots.
Shortsword could get a mongoose attack that leaps at the target and deal a lot of damage and apply vulnerability.
Greatsword could pin the target to the ground for 4 seconds.
Axe could throw 2 axes for the next 10 seconds instead of 1.

& the sad part is no mod/dev is going to reply because they are scared … & they seem to be very incompetent at balancing – fixing, that i don’t really count on this game to make it 1 more year from now.

It has already begun in twitch.tv it’s not even in the 15 top games …

im glad that some1 loves ranger as much as me to even do this much posting and digging, but sadly my friend “All is vain”, there has not been any changes during 1 year+ that the games been out, most if not all of this problems have always been there, and in 2,3 years you will log on and they will still be there.

I invite all ranger to keep this thread in the top page by commenting and giving ideas in the format that you have advised.

Bump, great thread

I agree with a lot of this information, this class needs some major help

Great summary of Ranger issues. Let’s try to keep this at the top of the page.

Great posts on ranger issues. Agree 100% on possible solutions; would really like to at least see the low hanging fruit of build diversity through trait amalgamation and placement happen.

Erm, I’m still pretty sure that Spirit Ranger is one of the best, if not the best home point bunker in the game. The class certainly needs work but Ranger certainly has a role in team comps as a home defender.

Neko.9021:

Erm, I’m still pretty sure that Spirit Ranger is one of the best, if not the best home point bunker in the game. The class certainly needs work but Ranger certainly has a role in team comps as a home defender.

To quote myself from the team composition section: “More prevalent in PvE/Dungeons and WvW than PvP…”

But yes, rangers have always had a working meta build in the PvP environment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t imply build diversity and it doesn’t translate to the rest of the games content, which are two issues that basically every class in the game (except maybe Guardians and Warriors, and even they don’t have the most perfect examples of diversity) faces in some way, shape, or form.

This is good

I’d like to thank everybody that has posted on the thread so far. I’m glad people are finding my write up agreeable!

Keep it up. Maybe it will attract some attention and we’ll be able to capture that elusive red post hahaha.

Reading through the general suggestions, I only really disagree with a couple things, and your list of big issues is pretty decent.

For your suggestions, what you say about Signet of the Beastmaster. It should either be removed or have its function reversed (makes signets affect pets as well) in addition to being moved.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of the suggested pet overhaul. While pets do need work, I don’t like the idea of essentially making them timed summons in the slightest.

Great write-up jcbroe, thanks for taking the time to compile this!

Fermi.2409:

Reading through the general suggestions, I only really disagree with a couple things, and your list of big issues is pretty decent.

For your suggestions, what you say about Signet of the Beastmaster. It should either be removed or have its function reversed (makes signets affect pets as well) in addition to being moved.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of the suggested pet overhaul. While pets do need work, I don’t like the idea of essentially making them timed summons in the slightest.

I agree with these suggestions as well!

I was just trying to take some of the suggestions that I’ve seen a few times, and my own suggestions list was just an attempt to keep this thread within the confines of the sticky’d forum rules/format.

The general ideas with explanations in the first few posts are the main focal points of balance for the class I think, and as long as they are adequately addressed in some sort of way, then I personally will be 100% satisfied.

felixdacat.3804:

Great write-up jcbroe, thanks for taking the time to compile this!

No problem! I just absolutely love the class. I played ranger in Guild Wars 1 for almost a decade in every possible format that game offered, and I would love to see ranger improved to the point in this game where I love it enough to play it for another decade.

I hope that the experience that the guild wars 1 ranger brought me, whether it was bunny thumper, or touch ranger, or dagger with evasive stances, or a ranger/ritualist spirit master, a turret build, or my absolute favorite, especially when I was heavy into the competitive aspects of the game, an interrupter, wasn’t just a fluke on ANets part when they made this game called Guild Wars 1 whose iteration of a ranger class literally stole my heart lol.

I want to believe that ANet can make me fall in love with a class named “ranger” again, and I hope that this thread can serve as a stepping stone in collecting and providing feedback from people in order to make that goal possible.

Didn’t notice this before I posted my suggestions list. Great post, although the potential that could come from your view on sword/greatsword competing with each other greatly worries me. As a power melee ranger, I use both simultaneously. Running a sword+x/Greatsword build became impossible for condition damage builds when bleed was removed from maul. By either converting one of the two to more condition based damage output, you’d destroy the ability to run with both together, killing a few already rare but perfectly viable power builds and further feed an already massively fattened completely oversaturated condition gameplay style. Damage gained from power doesn’t scale as well as condition damage, and when I have finally found a build that enables to achieve respectable survivability to damage ratios while moving away from conditions spam, I am adamantly opposed to any change that involves tossing on more bleeds and poisons to sword or greatsword, especially if it came at the cost of physical damage.

As for the pet AI thing, I hope people understand that the pet autoattacks being negated via misses through sidesteps is just as much as issue as slow/misfiring f2s as well. People often in practice in mobile combat mitigate entire thousands of ranger damage through sidestepped pet auto attacks. It’s too much.

I also main a ranger before but she is now relegated to just doing low-mid level fractals. My engineer is now my “go to” class for open world pve, dungeons and WvWvW because damage-wise, mobility-wise, utility-wise and in fun factor, the ranger is severely outclassed.

I have a few ideas floating in my head which I want to share because I, like you, want to go back and main a ranger again.

1. Marksmanship minor traits rework – both Opening Strike and Alpha Training serve the same purpose and going by the concept of a ranger and his/her pet being one entity broken into two, these minor traits should be merged and put into Adept tier. Precise Strike, an upgrade to Opening Strike, should follow accordingly and be put into Master tier. This leaves the Grandmaster minor trait open and can be filled in by a major trait, my personal pick being Remorseless which also serves as an upgrade for Opening Strike.

2. Marksmanship major trait idea – “Puncturing Shot” projectiles ignore the target’s armor value and defense boosts provided by boons (10 seconds cooldown), this gives our ranger a periodic burst which synergizes well with the power line and Opening Strike.

3. More access to Stability – it irks me that our only access to stability is an elite (not all builds benefit from a “traited” SotW), how about giving the rangers a trait which grants stability while channeling? or tweak a few utilities to grant it?

A lot of the glaring flaws had already been addressed over and over so there’s no reason repeating them.

Sasajoe.1509:

& the sad part is no mod/dev is going to reply because they are scared … & they seem to be very incompetent at balancing – fixing, that i don’t really count on this game to make it 1 more year from now.

It has already begun in twitch.tv it’s not even in the 15 top games …

A dev is never going to reply to a thread that insults them, I know if balancing was my job I’d just ignore anyone who throws out remarks like “incompetent at balancing”

Detharos.3157:

Didn’t notice this before I posted my suggestions list. Great post, although the potential that could come from your view on sword/greatsword competing with each other greatly worries me. As a power melee ranger, I use both simultaneously. Running a sword+x/Greatsword build became impossible for condition damage builds when bleed was removed from maul. By either converting one of the two to more condition based damage output, you’d destroy the ability to run with both together, killing a few already rare but perfectly viable power builds and further feed an already massively fattened completely oversaturated condition gameplay style. Damage gained from power doesn’t scale as well as condition damage, and when I have finally found a build that enables to achieve respectable survivability to damage ratios while moving away from conditions spam, I am adamantly opposed to any change that involves tossing on more bleeds and poisons to sword or greatsword, especially if it came at the cost of physical damage.

As for the pet AI thing, I hope people understand that the pet autoattacks being negated via misses through sidesteps is just as much as issue as slow/misfiring f2s as well. People often in practice in mobile combat mitigate entire thousands of ranger damage through sidestepped pet auto attacks. It’s too much.

The AI/animations of pets not being able to “keep up” with player controlled opponents definitely is an issue that isn’t stressed enough yet in this topic, and that could probably use some discussion. It was never really truly discussed in detail within the ranger forum, which is why I held off on discussing it here, because there is always the counter argument for it that “a pet that would always hit with pets in their current state would be too powerful and take too much of a gameplay element away from the ranger by being an overly effective damage component that plays for the player too well making the ranger class too forgiving.”

Not that I won’t add it, I just want to see the discussion for it hahaha. As some key points to discuss: is the pet reliable? What is the current hit percentage on a moving target and how often do they hit? Would making the pet “stick” to a target for a 100% hit percentage be too strong? Is there some approachable middle ground between the two ideas?

My 2 cents on it is that I think that removing the rooting animation and allowing pets to attack while moving, but only for autoattacks, would be the best middle ground. Damage output balanced as necessary of course.

As for your concerns with my ideas for the sword, I didn’t really want to touch it’s damage output, but I thought that adding a blind to the initial dodge back on Sword 2 might be a nice feature that plays well with how melee ranger works currently, which is fairly evasive.

As for the torment on sword 3 versus poison, on condition builds, the poison ends up being redundant, and almost over maintainable, while in a power build, the poison doesn’t really fit well imo with how the rest of the sword attacks are basically about soft CC’ing and out maneuvering opponents. So I figured torment would be a nice condition that punishes opponents from moving, similar to soft CC, but that can be made stronger damage in a condition based build, and since it is the only other mainhand weapon aside from axe, I thought that it would be a good way to turn the weapon into a weapon that works in both types of builds.

Just to give you some reasoning, if you still don’t like the idea, I totally understand.

Thank you for the feedback though!

FallinDevast.5364:

I also main a ranger before but she is now relegated to just doing low-mid level fractals. My engineer is now my “go to” class for open world pve, dungeons and WvWvW because damage-wise, mobility-wise, utility-wise and in fun factor, the ranger is severely outclassed.

I have a few ideas floating in my head which I want to share because I, like you, want to go back and main a ranger again.

1. Marksmanship minor traits rework – both Opening Strike and Alpha Training serve the same purpose and going by the concept of a ranger and his/her pet being one entity broken into two, these minor traits should be merged and put into Adept tier. Precise Strike, an upgrade to Opening Strike, should follow accordingly and be put into Master tier. This leaves the Grandmaster minor trait open and can be filled in by a major trait, my personal pick being Remorseless which also serves as an upgrade for Opening Strike.

2. Marksmanship major trait idea – “Puncturing Shot” projectiles ignore the target’s armor value and defense boosts provided by boons (10 seconds cooldown), this gives our ranger a periodic burst which synergizes well with the power line and Opening Strike.

3. More access to Stability – it irks me that our only access to stability is an elite (not all builds benefit from a “traited” SotW), how about giving the rangers a trait which grants stability while channeling? or tweak a few utilities to grant it?

A lot of the glaring flaws had already been addressed over and over so there’s no reason repeating them.

Just wanted to let you know that I personally love your ideas and +1

jcbroe.4329:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

I like this one the most. I’m assuming coefficients are brought up and Ranger is balanced with 100% damage output returned to the Ranger except for when the pet is out?

really liking some of these ideas, keep the good work friends.

I really need a red post. Really.

Please.

thefantasticg.3984:

jcbroe.4329:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

I like this one the most. I’m assuming coefficients are brought up and Ranger is balanced with 100% damage output returned to the Ranger except for when the pet is out?

Exactly. And then I was thinking that with this way, the pet stats could scale off of the player in some manner, and then the more invested into beastmastery, the higher the scaling coefficient, while being able to choose pet traits to further increase the pets functionality/damage/support/survival/etc, or maybe decrease the recharge time if the pet dies, or etc.

jcbroe.4329:

Detharos.3157:

Didn’t notice this before I posted my suggestions list. Great post, although the potential that could come from your view on sword/greatsword competing with each other greatly worries me. As a power melee ranger, I use both simultaneously. Running a sword+x/Greatsword build became impossible for condition damage builds when bleed was removed from maul. By either converting one of the two to more condition based damage output, you’d destroy the ability to run with both together, killing a few already rare but perfectly viable power builds and further feed an already massively fattened completely oversaturated condition gameplay style. Damage gained from power doesn’t scale as well as condition damage, and when I have finally found a build that enables to achieve respectable survivability to damage ratios while moving away from conditions spam, I am adamantly opposed to any change that involves tossing on more bleeds and poisons to sword or greatsword, especially if it came at the cost of physical damage.

As for the pet AI thing, I hope people understand that the pet autoattacks being negated via misses through sidesteps is just as much as issue as slow/misfiring f2s as well. People often in practice in mobile combat mitigate entire thousands of ranger damage through sidestepped pet auto attacks. It’s too much.

The AI/animations of pets not being able to “keep up” with player controlled opponents definitely is an issue that isn’t stressed enough yet in this topic, and that could probably use some discussion. It was never really truly discussed in detail within the ranger forum, which is why I held off on discussing it here, because there is always the counter argument for it that “a pet that would always hit with pets in their current state would be too powerful and take too much of a gameplay element away from the ranger by being an overly effective damage component that plays for the player too well making the ranger class too forgiving.”

Not that I won’t add it, I just want to see the discussion for it hahaha. As some key points to discuss: is the pet reliable? What is the current hit percentage on a moving target and how often do they hit? Would making the pet “stick” to a target for a 100% hit percentage be too strong? Is there some approachable middle ground between the two ideas?

My 2 cents on it is that I think that removing the rooting animation and allowing pets to attack while moving, but only for autoattacks, would be the best middle ground. Damage output balanced as necessary of course.

As for your concerns with my ideas for the sword, I didn’t really want to touch it’s damage output, but I thought that adding a blind to the initial dodge back on Sword 2 might be a nice feature that plays well with how melee ranger works currently, which is fairly evasive.

As for the torment on sword 3 versus poison, on condition builds, the poison ends up being redundant, and almost over maintainable, while in a power build, the poison doesn’t really fit well imo with how the rest of the sword attacks are basically about soft CC’ing and out maneuvering opponents. So I figured torment would be a nice condition that punishes opponents from moving, similar to soft CC, but that can be made stronger damage in a condition based build, and since it is the only other mainhand weapon aside from axe, I thought that it would be a good way to turn the weapon into a weapon that works in both types of builds.

Just to give you some reasoning, if you still don’t like the idea, I totally understand.

Thank you for the feedback though!

Ah, that would be alright then. I love the idea of the blind as well.

As for the pet AI and pet auto-attack discussion, currently there’s a very few ranger builds hitting Survivability to damage ratios that alarm people when the thought of the pet damage raising from higher hit ratios is mentioned. Namely they are certain condition builds for the most part from the nature of how condition damage ignores toughness and can be used as “fire and forget” enabling a full focus on evasion and kiting.. also how in some cases the starting damage points might be a bit high or the stacks too easily applied. (Certain bleeds and perhaps the damage allowed by torches despite the cooldown.) There MAY* be some very specific berserker builds that could be a little damage saturated with the right pets if such a change was made. In that case, it’d be easy for ArenaNet to tone down the ranger damage of the offending builds that become an issue with properly functioning pets in exchange for massively upping the pet hit ratio; to approximately equate to the same thing, but simply enabling more builds.

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

More or less. With pets, its hit or miss. In some cases, namely where targets are standing still and the full might of the class can be brought to bear.. it becomes exceedingly powerful. I think we as a class should want our damage to be at 100% when we launch a successful attack; not 70% percent with a cat, drake, canine or ursine and what not helplessly chasing a moving target while the ranger does all the heavy lifting with uplevel style damage. That or obviously, the pet could be made a choice rather than forced.. which is unfortunately something that ArenaNet historically expressed its being adamantly opposed to. Right now it seems that two; ranger and pet; are expected to fight as one entity- so we need to be able to attack in unison. Enemies randomly hitting movement keys or teleporting, whatever just mitigates that expectation far too easily.

Another argument for a different method to theoretically achieve that desired result is increased pet control. I fear that what some people have in mind for that might not be a good direction for the ranger class however.

More pet control would be a godsend for easily controlled ranger builds, but see those with an already extremely high skill requirement becoming exceedingly difficult. Melee ranger for example you have to pay a lot of attention to your timings and need high levels reaction time and good instinctual reflexes built from good amounts of pratice. You’re getting hit by more attacks, timing interrupts and stuns very carefully, fighting against your sword planting in timing your dodge rolls, very easily put yourself in a downhill fight if you mistime a utility or react poorly to stun at the wrong time; throw in having to control a pet with your mouse as well like a unit in Starcraft on top of that as some might have in mind, however nice for longbow spammers.. would make skill requirement on melee ranger even higher, maybe to the point of becoming a brain workout. I could see that becoming a living nightmare.

Plus, while admittedly not being an expert in programming; with reassigning pet locations even if the pet was controllable to that degree (as some ranger suggestions seem to demand) could increase scripted requests to the server for pet movements which would still potentially see pets responding slowly and increase strain on servers, that given certain responses by certain balance team members; I’m not certain the servers could handle the added load from a few thousand rangers constantly clicking their pets location requests everywhere. Despite that I’m not completely opposed to such pet control options, only hesitant towards them.

Detharos.3157:

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

More or less. With pets, its hit or miss. In some cases, namely where targets are standing still and the full might of the class can be brought to bear.. it becomes exceedingly powerful. I think we as a class should want our damage to be at 100% when we launch a successful attack; not 70% percent with a cat, drake, canine or ursine and what not helplessly chasing a moving target while the ranger does all the heavy lifting with uplevel style damage. That or obviously, the pet could be made a choice rather than forced.. which is unfortunately something that ArenaNet historically expressed its being adamantly opposed to. Right now it seems that two; ranger and pet; are expected to fight as one entity- so we need to be able to attack in unison. Enemies randomly hitting movement keys or teleporting, whatever just mitigates that expectation far too easily.

Another argument for a different method to theoretically achieve that desired result is increased pet control. I fear that what some people have in mind for that might not be a good direction for the ranger class however.

More pet control would be a godsend for easily controlled ranger builds, but see those with an already extremely high skill requirement becoming exceedingly difficult. Melee ranger for example you have to pay a lot of attention to your timings and need high levels reaction time and good instinctual reflexes built from good amounts of pratice. You’re getting hit by more attacks, timing interrupts and stuns very carefully, fighting against your sword planting in timing your dodge rolls, very easily put yourself in a downhill fight if you mistime a utility or react poorly to stun at the wrong time; throw in having to control a pet with your mouse as well like a unit in Starcraft on top of that as some might have in mind, however nice for longbow spammers.. would make skill requirement on melee ranger even higher, maybe to the point of becoming a brain workout. I could see that becoming a living nightmare.

Plus, while admittedly not being an expert in programming; with reassigning pet locations even if the pet was controllable to that degree (as some ranger suggestions seem to demand) could increase scripted requests to the server for pet movements which would still potentially see pets responding slowly and increase strain on servers, that given certain responses by certain balance team members; I’m not certain the servers could handle the added load from a few thousand rangers constantly clicking their pets location requests everywhere. Despite that I’m not completely opposed to such pet control options, only hesitant towards them.

Definitely all true. I don’t think that the state of the game can physically handle the level of control players would like to see with the pet without recoding the pets entirely. From what I understand, ANet took the route of having the pets inherit from open world monster AI, and unfortunately, what rangers are requesting, and what I doubt will happen, or happen any time soon, based on how tedious it would be, would be to remove how the pet is currently implemented, then code pets as their own entity with their own AI entirely.

Since the likelihood of that is low, what did you think of my previous suggestion? This: My 2 cents on it is that I think that removing the rooting animation and allowing pets to attack while moving, but only for autoattacks, would be the best middle ground. Damage output balanced as necessary of course.

Doing that would allow pets to have more decent sustain than they have now, but because they couldn’t land their burst/cooldowns without setup from the player through CC/positioning, it wouldn’t be such an overpowering change that it would be unfeasible.

At least not in my opinion lol. I’m not sure whether or not it would fix, or even bandaid fix, the core issue though. Maybe making Agility Training just part of the pets coding would be a start?

jcbroe.4329:

Detharos.3157:

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

More or less. With pets, its hit or miss. In some cases, namely where targets are standing still and the full might of the class can be brought to bear.. it becomes exceedingly powerful. I think we as a class should want our damage to be at 100% when we launch a successful attack; not 70% percent with a cat, drake, canine or ursine and what not helplessly chasing a moving target while the ranger does all the heavy lifting with uplevel style damage. That or obviously, the pet could be made a choice rather than forced.. which is unfortunately something that ArenaNet historically expressed its being adamantly opposed to. Right now it seems that two; ranger and pet; are expected to fight as one entity- so we need to be able to attack in unison. Enemies randomly hitting movement keys or teleporting, whatever just mitigates that expectation far too easily.

Another argument for a different method to theoretically achieve that desired result is increased pet control. I fear that what some people have in mind for that might not be a good direction for the ranger class however.

More pet control would be a godsend for easily controlled ranger builds, but see those with an already extremely high skill requirement becoming exceedingly difficult. Melee ranger for example you have to pay a lot of attention to your timings and need high levels reaction time and good instinctual reflexes built from good amounts of pratice. You’re getting hit by more attacks, timing interrupts and stuns very carefully, fighting against your sword planting in timing your dodge rolls, very easily put yourself in a downhill fight if you mistime a utility or react poorly to stun at the wrong time; throw in having to control a pet with your mouse as well like a unit in Starcraft on top of that as some might have in mind, however nice for longbow spammers.. would make skill requirement on melee ranger even higher, maybe to the point of becoming a brain workout. I could see that becoming a living nightmare.

Plus, while admittedly not being an expert in programming; with reassigning pet locations even if the pet was controllable to that degree (as some ranger suggestions seem to demand) could increase scripted requests to the server for pet movements which would still potentially see pets responding slowly and increase strain on servers, that given certain responses by certain balance team members; I’m not certain the servers could handle the added load from a few thousand rangers constantly clicking their pets location requests everywhere. Despite that I’m not completely opposed to such pet control options, only hesitant towards them.

Definitely all true. I don’t think that the state of the game can physically handle the level of control players would like to see with the pet without recoding the pets entirely. From what I understand, ANet took the route of having the pets inherit from open world monster AI, and unfortunately, what rangers are requesting, and what I doubt will happen, or happen any time soon, based on how tedious it would be, would be to remove how the pet is currently implemented, then code pets as their own entity with their own AI entirely.

Since the likelihood of that is low, what did you think of my previous suggestion? This: My 2 cents on it is that I think that removing the rooting animation and allowing pets to attack while moving, but only for autoattacks, would be the best middle ground. Damage output balanced as necessary of course.

Doing that would allow pets to have more decent sustain than they have now, but because they couldn’t land their burst/cooldowns without setup from the player through CC/positioning, it wouldn’t be such an overpowering change that it would be unfeasible.

At least not in my opinion lol. I’m not sure whether or not it would fix, or even bandaid fix, the core issue though. Maybe making Agility Training just part of the pets coding would be a start?

I agree with the suggestion. If it can be executed, it should. I had thought Jon Peters suggested that the animation system could not support that, but now I am not sure if that was directed towards that debate or the F2 cast time debate. I have to re-read those posts in the Dec 10 changes thread and double check on that.

I worry the pet rooting problem may source from something different in nature than the sword 1 rooting though.. and I’d love to and hope that we can hear more from the balance team on that one. If enabling pets to attack and move simultaneously is easy as it would be to take rooting of off sword 1, then by all means they ought to do that. The fact that it’s still around most likely means there is a lot more to it, though.

From what I understand, and from my own assumptions, the pet AI is basically using the open world monster AI, down to the point where they stop to attack the same way. It is assumed then that necro minions and mesmer summons behave in the same fashion.

So, I gather that what I’m suggesting would mean that they would have to literally recode ranger pets entire AI system. Essentially, the game would have to be overhauled to allow for this new “object,” aka the updated pet, to exist within and interact with the environment. How it takes damage and does damage and everything would have to basically be coded from the ground up.

That’s just based on my assumption though. Truly, there isn’t an easy solution to the problem. The easiest solution would be to make the pets autoattacks act similarly to the 1 handed sword so that the pet always has a small leap to the target, but even then, it would probably take some time to get all of the animations right for the different pet species and attacks.

It’s just one of those sigh issues, but it definitely needs to be addressed.

Please make the greatsword do more damage than a warriors banner. Thanks.

keep it up guys!

Come on anet. Say something!

Nice post,

1) In my opinion if anet could fix the pets responsiveness it would be already a big improvement, because right now some combos are almost impossibile to do, like :

• Switch pet (for quickness)+ F (ressing/stomping) + F2 (wolf fear), this combo is very important in team fight and 1vsX, but you cannot just press F4+F+F2, you must wait X time before pressing F2, in that time you can be interrupted in many ways

• F2 skills when running to/from enemys

These are the most annoying things, but not all pets behave equally, only some pets have this problem, those with low activation time seems to casts skill normally (and underwater pets are even less bugged).
- Suggestion for WvW: what about boosting pet’s swiftness and skill’s activation time reducing pet attack, could it work ? because in WvW almost everyone run with +25% swiftness.

2) Build diversity is also a problem, in a condi meta empathic bond is a must, but its not just for rangers, also eles have the same problem with Arcane trait, or mesmer with Chaos.

Azure.8670:

Please make the greatsword do more damage than a warriors banner. Thanks.

I was just assuming that it was a problem with a scaling coefficient, which I’m sure plays into it, but there isn’t even enough information for a banner stab to conclude that, since on the wiki there is no damage coefficient listed, and has a base 325 damage apparently.

I would bet money on it being an issue mostly tied to our poor weapon scaling coefficients, which was to balance for have an “always-on” pet mechanic. ANet would probably have to address the pet mechanic before allowing the player to do more damage, which is frustrating for sure since players want as much control over their gameplay as possible and don’t want to be doing less damage because their “other” damage is tied up in an AI that isn’t considered to be the most reliable.

If the pet scaled off of the players stats, the player could actually have more damaging weapons, and then investing in beastmastery would allocate damage to the pet over increasing your own stats and thereby your own damage.

That would probably be the best solution to this problem.

The problem right now is that as long as the pet remains unchanged, it is a linear mechanic that is always on, always functioning as a damage source, with very little in-game changing how it works, and the overall effect of putting points into beastmastery not being the greatest.

jcbroe.4329:

thefantasticg.3984:

jcbroe.4329:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

I like this one the most. I’m assuming coefficients are brought up and Ranger is balanced with 100% damage output returned to the Ranger except for when the pet is out?

Exactly. And then I was thinking that with this way, the pet stats could scale off of the player in some manner, and then the more invested into beastmastery, the higher the scaling coefficient, while being able to choose pet traits to further increase the pets functionality/damage/support/survival/etc, or maybe decrease the recharge time if the pet dies, or etc.

That’s fine. I could definitely be ok with that.

jcbroe.4329:

From what I understand, and from my own assumptions, the pet AI is basically using the open world monster AI, down to the point where they stop to attack the same way. It is assumed then that necro minions and mesmer summons behave in the same fashion.

So, I gather that what I’m suggesting would mean that they would have to literally recode ranger pets entire AI system. Essentially, the game would have to be overhauled to allow for this new “object,” aka the updated pet, to exist within and interact with the environment. How it takes damage and does damage and everything would have to basically be coded from the ground up.

It’s the way I understand the problem as well. And I still think that whoever has made the decision to use copy-paste method to provide AI for pets did not think it through at all. Honestly, it should’ve been already obvious back then what problems will result from this.

Sadly, it’s also the reason why I doubt we’ll see any significant improvement in the area of pet AI in the nearest future. So far Anet has been very keen to avoid devoting major amounts of effort or resources into balancing, and nothing indicates they may be planning to change that policy.

The problem is that nothing else than creation of new, separate AI for pets will work in the long run. As I already stated in another thread, even if they find any way to fix the pets without dealing with core of their problems, it will not be that different from a temporary band-aid. With every piece of new content that Anet will introduce to the game in the future, pets will be at risk of becoming inadequat for one reason or another.

Searban.5984:

jcbroe.4329:

From what I understand, and from my own assumptions, the pet AI is basically using the open world monster AI, down to the point where they stop to attack the same way. It is assumed then that necro minions and mesmer summons behave in the same fashion.

So, I gather that what I’m suggesting would mean that they would have to literally recode ranger pets entire AI system. Essentially, the game would have to be overhauled to allow for this new “object,” aka the updated pet, to exist within and interact with the environment. How it takes damage and does damage and everything would have to basically be coded from the ground up.

It’s the way I understand the problem as well. And I still think that whoever has made the decision to use copy-paste method to provide AI for pets did not think it through at all. Honestly, it should’ve been already obvious back then what problems will result from this.

Sadly, it’s also the reason why I doubt we’ll see any significant improvement in the area of pet AI in the nearest future. So far Anet has been very keen to avoid devoting major amounts of effort or resources into balancing, and nothing indicates they may be planning to change that policy.

The problem is that nothing else than creation of new, separate AI for pets will work in the long run. As I already stated in another thread, even if they find any way to fix the pets without dealing with core of their problems, it will not be that different from a temporary band-aid. With every piece of new content that Anet will introduce to the game in the future, pets will be at risk of becoming inadequat for one reason or another.

That’s correct, our pet’s use the same AI as it’s NPC Counterparts. So any changes they make to the pet will effect the NPC’s as well. In order to have this fixed they will have to rewrite the entire pet code as a pet code. Just like they did for Necro’s pet, mesmer’s clones, etc.. It does not look like they wish to devote there time or money into rewriting the code so the next best thing is to put a bandaid on it which is something that they do not want to do either. For over a year we have been dealing with this problem and I think it’s time they did something about it.

As a suggestion, which I have suggested it since launch day, the damage is split now between Ranger and pet 70/30 (or there about). Direct damage should be removed from pet’s and given to the ranger. Ranger will have 100% control over their damage. Pet’s will remain in the game, they will still have their functions, fear, Knockdowns, poison, boons, etc., but they will not deal any Direct Damage. We know the Anet can remove the direct damage portion from pets without screwing up the AI of other NPC’s because they have nerfed the damage on the pet before without problems to other npc’s. With this, ranger’s will no longer be handicapped in WvW where the pet’s die in a matter of seconds. Ranger’s will now have their full damage when attacking from/to keeps where the pet will not work (not even the birds will fly up the keep wall or down the keep wall to attack). And we will still have our pets, be considered a pet class, because we will be using them for the boons and any effects they provide in combat minus the damage.

This is not a fix, this is a band-aid, but at least the ranger’s will not be handicapped while we wait for an actual fix to come down the line with a new pet AI as we have been for the past year. They have had a full year to fix or rewrite the code and they haven’t. I think we are all tired of waiting. At least do this so we’re better off for the time being until you do get around to actually creating a fix.

Just to play devil’s advocate a little.

Unbound was moved down to the master tier, Trap Potency and Signet of the Beastmaster really should be looked at for similar reworks/repositions to open up more build opportunities.

I like the idea not having to trait 30 into MM for more useful signets (even though SoR is good untraited as well, SotH is widely used for the speed bonus anyways). However, with anything else unchanged, a ranger could take signet of the wild for stability at 20 points into MM, barkskin in WS (maybe not the best choice for sPvP currently though), and enlargement, which they surely not let happen. And than you could have protection on dodge, and maybe Stone spirit. Sorry to split hairs… but there are probably other combinations that would be too powerful for most (especially non rangers ?).

Copy pasta from other thread.
Make acquiring a pet to require putting 5-10 points in the beastmastery trait line. Otherwise, you have no pet. Your damage is unscaled.

I think this would require GW2 to calculate with different weapon coefficients based on your current trait choices. Only for rangers there would be 2 sets of weapons data. It would also close out people who want healing power from stat points, and also your damage would scale down regardless if you put 10 or 30 into BM. And we are not talking about PvE, PvP split either.

& the sad part is no mod/dev is going to reply because they are scared …

There are 2 people working on class balance… I don’t think its down to fear. Just give them time.
Suggestions will follow in another post…

Pets:
I think that with all the ascended gear now available, it would be time for us to have more points for our pets through BM trait line. I think it would also be a good idea to have those extra stat points (limited at 600 at 30 in BM, and 300 per stat) be distributable, so we could opt for condition damage, healing power, toughness, or whatever we wanted. Pets would still have their base stats, so it would be kept in check. People would be incentivised to use their pets more, if they could do more with them (taking for granted that their reliability is increased).
Weapons:
Some support weapon like staff would be interesting, so instead of being a sheep herder (switfness and regen), we could be a druid (protection or stability) to a party. Axe auto attack could use some damage increase or have a good coefficient instead. This way we could opt to be direct damage or condition damage. We had the same option with shortbow until the quickness nerf, now its not as good as a power weapon (especially with 900 range). Please make dodge override sword auto attack, and a lot of people will accept it with its strange mechanic.
Utility:
I agree with what’s been said about our utilities, having to trait for them to be really useful. Instead of the double condition duration trait, all traps should apply cripple for 1 seconds, which would result in the target getting maybe 2 pulses. This should be a master trait. Grandmaster should be bigger area of effect (with bigger trigger area as well!!!) and cooldown reduction. I don’t think they should be throwable, so that frees up 1 spot in skirmishing for a new master trait for power rangers.
Having sigils affect the ranger untraited would result in SoW and SoH pigeonholeing power rangers IMO. I agree that power rangers need love, but they only need a slight increase in their damage dealing ability and I see the problems in sustain. Rangers in berserker are squihsier than other classes in my oppinion. They need more ways to defend themselves, especially with sword being our highest damage weapon, but being “interesting” as well. I think a signet as a heal utility would fit the ranger better than a spirit (we can already heal with shouts, and pets). We could either have heal on evades and dodges as passive, or some damage reflection, like a weaker form of retal. But please no more rng spirit stuff.

My 2 cents.

I like the idea not having to trait 30 into MM for more useful signets (even though SoR is good untraited as well, SotH is widely used for the speed bonus anyways). However, with anything else unchanged, a ranger could take signet of the wild for stability at 20 points into MM, barkskin in WS (maybe not the best choice for sPvP currently though), and enlargement, which they surely not let happen. And than you could have protection on dodge, and maybe Stone spirit. Sorry to split hairs… but there are probably other combinations that would be too powerful for most (especially non rangers ?).

I see how it could be an issue with where the numbers currently are on combinations like that, and in no way do I advocate over buffing anything or contributing to power creep, but from a functional standpoint alone, I find it hard to see where a build combination like this is doing anymore than other classes build combinations.

Not to argue for super powerful combinations, but I am just saying from a functional standpoint, I would rather see combinations like this exist and then nerf things accordingly, like maybe making Enlargement not last as long as the actual SotW active with SotBM, similar to what was done to traits like Necro’s Weakening Shroud.

That’s more of a “compelling gameplay” argument though.

Using some of my other suggestions throughout the thread, like moving eagle eye up to grandmaster, increasing the damage to 10% for longbow and the shortbow range up to 1200, as well as Signet of the Beastmaster also competing with Spotter, would builds like what you’re suggesting really become apex predator builds?

I really do see what you’re getting at though. Ideally, over time, everything would be tweaked numerically to achieve balance, but the process I would hope to see is providing the class with some functionality that it feel like it’s sorely missing at times when builds have to go all out with traits and utility slots, and then once this new functionality and versatility is in place, iron out the numerical balance.

Edit: And thank you for your thoughts and contributions! I like the discussions the thread is creating, and it’s interesting seeing how everybody has a different take on how to balance things that ultimately ends up reflecting the same core issues over and over.

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

If pets had 70~100% hit rate rather then the current 15-25%, they would do so much DPS, that certain builds would be over the top.
My Beast Cannon Build is pretty much over the top if the target doesnt keep moving. Trapper, BM Bunker and Remorseless builds will be insane.

Probably wouldn’t be the new meta for bunker rangers, just wanted to highlight that its a pretty big change we are talking about. Also see SoW and SotH would pigeonhole power rangers, because there aren’t many burst skills to begin with (maul, path of scars, ist there anything else). One of those damage buffs would need to go, and probably a lot of other changes necessary as well. It sounds like 1 change, but it would have a huge impact probably.