Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow Rangers and hopefully some Dev’s,
As the title would suggest this (rather long) post will be a personal vent to display a few of my personal thoughts and Ideas on how to possibly develop the ranger profession further with Specialisations (and hopefully give the Ranger some much needed depth).

The skill and trait tooltips have been created with that_shaman’s tooltip creator. I tried, with help of the GW2-wiki, to balance the skills as realistically as possible; the numbers are somewhat comparable with similar in-game skills and the effects not too overpowered (hopefully).

• I designed the weapon skills and the traits with the intent to fill a few gaps of the current ‘vanilla’ profession as creative as possible while remaining in the general Ranger theme.
• I designed (most of) the utility skills to try and redefine the Rangers relationship with his pets, what should be the distinct main-class-mechanic.

The pictures are hosted on Imgur but below I also want to give personal feedback on every skill:

A possible new weapon: Main hand Dagger

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#0

Surely not the most original but probably the most logical weapon for a Ranger specialisation (Ranger is currently the only ‘dagger-wielding’ profession that cannot use this weapon in his main hand). The gap I am trying to fill with the main hand dagger is the current absence of a ‘reliable auto-attack possessing main hand power based ‘weapon (looking at your sword!).

• ((dagger thrust)) & ((bee stings)) With the auto attack I wanted to create an auto attack that, for example just like engi grenade kit semi-auto attack, gives a lot of multi target pressure and cleave in a small area. Thematically I think the skill ((bee stings)) is quite fitting with the energetic nature of the class. It differs with the Thief’s massive one hit kill attacks and is potentially different then a Warrior dagger wielding profession that I would see wielding the dagger using lots of force.
• ((Upper’cut’ )) A ‘ straight up’ interrupt skill, always useful! At the moment in mechanics it is the exact opposite of the shortbows concussion shot 5 skill and therefor it is bit overpowered as the 2 skill, but I just really like the puns.
• ((Aqua Jet)) Totally not fully inspired by a Pokémon attack /s. Could give the Ranger another cool animation and serves as a possible more stable gap closer: Great sword freezes you mid –slope during the leap and sword first sends you flying backwards. Also includes the almost mandatory evade, which is something I really like to use in fights as a Ranger.

A possible new Trait line

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#1

• ((revenge)) In my opinion a simple but really strong thematic trait. Really, the more I think of it, the more I am surprised that an equivalent trait doesn’t exists.
• ((Home advantage)) Ever noticed that the boons silhouettes resemble little houses? I did. Another thematic strong trait (I think) with a lot of nice synergies (clarion bond etc). Should possibly be tied down with an internal cool down of 20 second or something. Overall I like this trait.
• (Turtle reflexes)) A skill to give Rangers a little bit of an extra edge when being burst down or when fighting in a huge blob in WvW. Has synergies with all the other traits that trigger upon reaching certain health-thresholds.
• ((improved medicine)) It is my general opinion that regeneration as a boon feels underpowered. But I am not sure if this trait is the best way to quick fix such a ‘problem’. At the very least it gives having regeneration an additional benefit of extra healing power. Arguable not the best trait.
• ((Dashing Apperance)) Because Blast finishers! and signets, they deserve some love too. Arguably not a really good trait, but we can dream, right?
• ((Outnumbered)) A damage modifier. Strong in the current Dungeons, WvW zergbusting and in the general PvE environment but this trait could really shine in PvP as it promotes and rewards active and skilful gameplay and punishes stacking on enemies.
• ((donkey tricks)) Good synergy with the evade traits Ranger already has, mostly I really want to see this trait in the current game as it gives us an skill-promoting counter against all the retaliation that a lot of classes get to use (and will get, Dragonhunter and Revenant). The name btw is a Dutch joke and ties in with the thematic of the trait and the Ranger. For more information on the name here, the relevant part is the 4th expression.

Possible new utility skills #1: Meditations

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#2

Inspired by and for the not yet fully announced druid profession. Meditations are the type of skill I like the most of all the Guardian utilities because they are creative and unique. I think they suit the Druid theme well and they inspire fun new ways to interact with your pet.

• ((Calming Presence)). Your pet is your mandatory companion and gives you comfort; therefore I think it is logical that you could heal more the more health your pet still has. Basically it punishes your enemies for ignoring your pet, promotes swapping pets and skilful play but is also obviously less useful in big WvW fights.
• ((companion switch)) This is the first skill that I came up with and the one skill I want to see the most that rangers get. Promotes that you actively manage your pet. The skill is similar to Guardians Judges intervention in a way but much harder to pull of successfully. (and because of this I hope that more impactful effects are justified)
• ((contemplation of …)) Finally a good condition removal skill. After thinking about this skill some more I think that I made the skill too complex to understand easily. Instead the skill would be much more fun if it would cross convert conditions into boons: Your pet gets the Rangers converted conditions as boons and vice versa.
• ((Mark of the prey)) If it is justified that any profession gets more access to stealth besides thief and mesmers I think it would be the Ranger.
• ((Inner focus)) I designed this skill to serve as a sort of reset button reserved for when you are utterly unhappy with the tide of the battle. The skill is potentially really powerful and should have a very high cooldown (~180 seconds). Currently the Ranger does not have really powerful high cooldown elite skill and that is why I think the skill could be a real asset to the Rangers abilities. The skill also has a good synergy with the heal skill. Maybe the block should be a stability buff? or even invulnerability or prevent point-capture?

Possible new utility skills #2: Glyphs

http://imgur.com/a/seLeU#3

Possibly I am the most excited about these skills conceptually. Glyphs can give a lot of additional impact to your pet-choice and they could have a killer profession mechanic tied to them. Potentially this system could be used to give more meaning to underused pets, just like the toolbelt skills of the engineer somewhat even out his main utility skills. Playing and swapping with different pets out would drastically change the way you play the Ranger as your skills adapt.

• ((Glyph of restoration)). I think the best example of how play style could change is displayed in this heal skill, there is one common element for every heal but still every animal family gets a way to drastically alter the possible use.
• The other skills remain a little bit ordinary, but give some more ideas about how this could play out.

Just imagine all the possibilities that could be tied to the elite if the designers where to go full out on this one. One pet could possibly give more stealth, the other a push back, a pull, what about invulnerability or Party wide quickness, or a really powerful condition burst? That would just be awesome!

Tl;dr

I just really want ((Donkey tricks)), ((companion switch)) and Glyphs to be added to the current class to give the profession more depth. (Aka more high skill for higher rewards alá Mesmer instead of being the current one trick proffesion)

My apologies for the long vent/post but If a Dev reads thought this post and I manage to even get just one of my ideas across I would be ecstatic! Fellow rangers please discuss!

i rather have torch as main hand, thus i could dual weld 2 torches and double the burning !

#pyromaniacranger4life

I really like the idea of mainhand dagger and have been asking for that for a long time. I just don’t know how well uppercut would work with it. I feel to justify how strong it is you would have to give it a really long cooldown. Personally I’d rather see a backwards evade that cripples and torments. That would work really well with the forward leap of dagger 3 and the evade on off hand dagger.

I really wanna see a 2h Spear with Stances.

Edit: Updated the tooltips

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really wanna see a 2h Spear with Stances.

I really love those spear skills. Not sure about the stance durations though. I feel like 5 seconds is just too short for those cooldowns. And maybe give run as one a passive 25% movement speed.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really wanna see a 2h Spear with Stances.

I want this. Now. So much nostalgia.

Puck.9612:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I really wanna see a 2h Spear with Stances.

I really love those spear skills. Not sure about the stance durations though. I feel like 5 seconds is just too short for those cooldowns. And maybe give run as one a passive 25% movement speed.

Yeah, with the trait you could have 6/36s so that is pretty nice. I tried to balance it around best case scenario. With Quickness, Quick Draw and RF, you can hit 20 times in that duration, so potentially 25s of quickness stacked up or 6000/12000 damage/healing from Melandru’s Resilience. Natural Stride can potentially give you 26s of Resistance and Super Speed immediately, then more if more conditions come in. Dryder’s Defense is 6.25s of unstrippable Protection/Retaliation, could do with a touch more duration I suppose and Beastial Fury is like that for Remorseless pretty much. Maybe I’ll play around with them a bit later, a couple of other things are too powerful too, like Escape when combined with Chest Thumper. Heh.

Edit: I updated the tooltips on my spec idea.