Guild Wars 2

I seem to recall a post a while ago, where it was mentioned that Rangers primary strength (i.e. the thing that we’re best at) was supposed to be sustained ranged DPS / single target ranged DPS. We’re also very good at constantly moving around the battle, flanking and kiting. While this on the surface is a good thing to be “best” at, it’s only really useful when roaming around in PvE solo.

In a game where the vast majority of support occurs within a small radius of the issuing player, be good at providing sustained DPS at range or being good at flanking, is useless. This is simply because your not getting any of the boons provided by other classes (meaning you do less damage than you could do), and you’re not able to provide support (meaning your allies do less damage than they could do).

This essentially means that the Ranger is forced into melee range, and once there, we’re no longer best at anything. It also means that we can provide better DPS up close (with ally boons) than we can at range (without them), which obviously makes a bit of a mockery of our primary strength.

However, we ‘do’ have the pet too, and because of that, a couple of changes could make the Ranger more useful, while allowing them to actually do the one thing they excel at.

1. When Pets get boons, the Ranger gets them too. – Essentially would be the opposite of Fortifying Bond, although with the actual stacks and durations the pet got, rather than a generic duration for each boon transferred. There would have to be careful checks that prevent never-ending-circular-boosts when combined with Fortifying Bond, and that might make it technically hard to actually code. But it would mean that the Ranger can receive ally boons via a melee pet, while staying at range, kiting or flanking. This would be especially useful for Shortbow Rangers, who really need to be in a flanking position, rather than stacked in melee range.

2. Ranger Boon AoE are centred around the Ranger AND the pet – The majority of skill, trait or utilities that provide support are centred around the Ranger (like with every other profession). The problem with this, is that it once again forces the Ranger to ignore the primary strengths, give up on any flanking bonuses and move to the stack, or be selfish. However, if all of these utilities had two casting locations, one centred around the Ranger and the other around the Pet, the Ranger could provide support to the group from via a melee pet, without being ‘in’ the cluster.

“Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.”

- https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

Mia Crazymike.1780:

“Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.”

- https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

???
He IS saying that rangers are good archers AND the suggestions he made would make being at distance not an issue.

BTW, if those suggestion would be implemented, I’m sure that ranger could join the PvE dungeon meta, improve the support in PvP, but in WvW wouldn’t change much since pets would still die in a fraction of seconds in the zerg.

These look like some solid changes; from the looks of it boons track creator already, so making sure the same one doesn’t get applied twice should be simple enough. Just add the getting boons from pets into Fortifying Bond, and suddenly the ability should work just fine! Hopefully someone in red is listening!

You know how World of Warcraft has individual class baseline abilities or traits. I think ArenaNet should implement something like that.

And make Fortifying Bond one of those Ranger profession baseline ability.

Number 1 would hardly take effect because of the 5 person limit for boon application and the game favouring players over pets.

Number 2 would be golden.

I feel as though a lot of the traits we have do not even affect the pet, they should really, any effect we get, they should have as well. So, change all our traits to reflect that.

Fortifying Bond becomes baseline, then replace change FB to “Whenever you apply a boon to an ally, your pet does as well”.

Mia Crazymike.1780:

“Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.”

- https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

People need to stop quoting these kitten flavor texts.

Yep sounds like good ideas to me