Talking about WvW zerg here -Seriously, commander just kick rangers from squad even if they running healing druid. Sadly they are right. Healinghealinghealinghealing but let’s be real there is too much AoE poison in this game. Also damage is pretty lackluster and mostly single target skills. Our pet is dead 99% of the time and can be Epid when is alive. Two stability with 1 second cast time and incredibly long cooldown. I’m really sad cause i can’t play one of my favourite classes in wvw only because the class is not designed for it. I play guard, war and necro and they do pretty well in zergs. But i really want to play my ranger.
Anet, please, can we have an update with a rework of our skills that can make us viable and not completely useless like the past 4 years?
In my opnion these are our main problems:
1) Pets aren’t reliable in large fights.
- They can’t dodge AoEs.
- Even in passive mode they dont follow properly.
- They have too low HP compared to the pve counterpart.
- Important secondary skills like Harmonic Cry (jouvenile Moas) are wasted because our pet can not know when to activate it.
My suggestions: Pet’s health increases automatically when we have more than 10 enemies in 1200 radius. When pets have increased health, they also have a 60% chance to dodge attacks when affected by Vigor and they also evade attacks when the ranger evades. When pets have increased health, they have 1 more Special skill. (example: Blue Moa – Protecting Screech/Harmonic Cry).
2) Ranger/druid locked into beastmastery-shouts-signets.
- Signet of Stone is mandatory.
- Shouts are the only way to support our allies while granting us some survivability. So beastmastery is mandatory.
- Our beast AoE boons are granted by spirits and our best aoe damage is granted by traps. We actually cant run them in zerg because spirits die in 2 seconds and traps don’t guarantee any way to survive cause no stun-breaks or supportive-boons.
My suggestions: Spirits really need some love outside pve. Make them invulnerable to damage (like warrior banners) in wvw only and let them move if using the trait Nature’s Vengeance. Give traps some love aswell, granting a break stun to one trap (Maybe Frost trap?). Trait Trapper’s Expertise now grants a pulsing boon or condition based on which trap is triggered (Healing Spring – Protection / Flame Trap – Might / Frost Trap – Stability / Spike trap – Cripple / Viper’s Nest – Slow) and reduce the recharge of traps.
3) I don’t understand the class design.
- Ranger should be THE sniper class but the class doesnt have unblockables.
- Druid should be THE healing spec but our cooldowns, especially on CA (15 sec), makes us subpar to other healers.
My suggestions: Adjust cooldowns, cast times and some effects. We have 2 stability with 60 and 75 sec cooldown/1 sec cast time, unreliable in larger fights except if you prevent the stun. Signets have HUGE cooldowns and actually i miss the unblockable bug on Signet of the Wild. CA cooldown in wvw is just stupid cause we cant sustain our group with our healing skills locked to 15 sec cooldown form (maybe revert to 12sec?).
Just some hints, hope you guys agree. I just want to play large scale fights properly with my ranger.