Guild Wars 2

As I am sure you have seen, many people on the forums are upset with their rangers. The purpose of this post is to highlight what I believe are very important changes that need to be made to the ranger, how you implement these changes is up to you. I know you’ve got creative minds working at anet, I just ask that you hear me out and apply that a bit more to the ranger class! Also keep in mind that I mainly pve right now, so these ideas are mostly about pve.

1. Sword default attack locks you in place, making it impractical in many situations. Love this weapon, but I feel that it is very difficult to effectively use in pve, where there are attacks that are very necessary to dodge.

2. Longbow feels very clunky. the arrows move slowly and make it hard to hit enemies at times, and you attack very slowly. I loved longbow in gw1, and I really like the idea of doing more damage at longer range, but I think this weapon needs some work. Fun to use and cool idea, but not as effective as many think it should be.

3. Traits. I am very dedicated to my ranger, and for that reason have no alts at all. But when I look at some of the traits other classes get, they seem so much more interesting and/or useful. Some of them are cool, like piercing arrows and losing poison/blind on dodge, but I think a lot of us rangers would agree that it would be nice if you took a hard look at them, and made some significant changes. I think traits could also be the solution to some complaints about weapons, namely greatsword. I really like the idea of greatsword, that it is a huge thing that you, being a nimble character, can effectively jump around with, interrupt things, and block/dodge attacks. But from a practical standpoint, it’s not as useful as many would like it to be. I think traits could be a good answer to this.

4. Dagger. A lot of people forget that rangers can even use dagger! Other classes have some really cool skills with dagger, and I feel sort of left out because it doesn’t seem very effective/cool.

Moderator edit: removed CoC infraction from thread title

5. Pets. About this, I will say two things. I love my pet a lot, but in some parts of the game it just ends up getting in the way, so much that my party members will ask me to put it away, and are baffled when I say I can’t (Quick example, jade maw boss in fractals targets pets even if they are dead). I don’t think it’s fair that we should be punished for something that is a major part of our class, so do whatever you can to fix that. Number two is that I think the beastmastery traitline should do a lot more to make you, well, a beastmaster. I’d love to see being a beastmaster who is one with my pet as a legitimate spec, without feeling like I am a laughing stock.

6. Utilities. Jon peters has already admitted that many of our utilities are lackluster, and that you guys are working on it. I just want to hammer the point: please talk to some rangers about the problems with some of these skills. For example, the fact that the grandmaster spirit trait actually hurts you because your spirits follow you into battle and die. Spirits were a really awesome part of ranger in GW1, and I think a lot of people would like to see some more unikittenfects from them than just applying a buff/boon. Signets and shouts also need work, obviously, but I will leave that up to you.

7. Mobility. When I (and many others) think of a ranger, we think of a class that can easily outmaneuver other classes, dodging around and scouting out areas at great speeds. When comparing ranger to thief, they have better passive mobility (signet), a bunch of dodges, AND stealth. I think this gap is pretty big and unfair, as many were under the impression that ranger would be a very mobile class capable of outpacing others.

8. Big numbers. Not all people want big numbers, but most classes get them, so it would be cool if you could just throw us a bone on this one.

9. Comparison to other classes. This is a pretty big issue. I consider myself a pretty good player, and my team mates usually agree. But often, when I am in a dungeon or whatever, I find myself asking “What am I doing here…?” It seems like other classes have better support, better damage, and better survival. I very rarely feel like I am doing anything cool to change the tides of the battle. (Like how the guardian can blast enemies away/pull them together, thief can stealth the party, mesmer can portal team around ect ect) I understand this is a big thing that will take a lot of time and effort to work out, but I just ask that you PLEASE work on it. It almost feels like there is a constant pressure to build another character so I will be more useful to my team.

10. Last point here :P The “vision” of the ranger. When I chose the ranger, I thought of a character that could run around, dodging attacks and dealing good damage at long range while my pet provided useful support and extra single target damage that would make me a great single target DPSer. I thought my spirits could provide cool party support, and that I would be able to run a spec that made my pet and me feel awesome. I felt like I would be THE class to use bows, taking out enemies from afar. I think ranger was sort of advertised like this, and that a lot of us were disappointed by what we got out of the box. If you do anything, I really ask that you consider this “vision of the ranger” and what you, and the players who love the class, want it to be.

Thank you if you took the time to read this, and I am hopeful for the future of ranger, but as with many, I’m getting a little impatient. Please take this seriously, as many people are losing motivation to play their rangers, or even play the game at all

this is a really well structured post, well said.

2 and 8 i don’t think are problems really, its just the flavor of the class

4 i can agree to an extent, but i don’t see what they could do with the weapon to make it more interesting, and it shouldn’t really be a priority

5 should have had a little more emphasis put on it

7 is a problem, but i think it is more a problem where the thief should be nerfed rather than the ranger should be buffed.

for the most part i agree with you on the rest of the points

thanks for putting in the effort to post.

I have to disagree somewhat on the ‘clunkiness’ of the longbow, I think the way the longbow fires and how ‘weighty’ it feels is really good and somewhat realistic to how even a master archer would use a longbow. However, I think they should hit a lot harder to make up for it, even on auto-attack, and the skills are lacklustre bar barrage.

Give me Ignite Arrows as a utility skill and I’ll be satisfied though! :p

Thanks for the feedback guys
I’ll clarify a couple things you guys are pointing out. For the longbow, I am fine with a slow attack speed, but the arrows just miss so often on any moving target, and I think that should be addressed in some way. As for big numbers, I was just throwing that in there because there is a lot of demand for it from a lot of players, sort of a plea from the community rather than me personally. As for nerfing thieves, I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to go into that here lol. I guess anet will have to decide what to do in terms of mobility. And as for pets… Yes, I agree a lot of work needs to be put into that. I really wanted to run an awesome beastmaster build and mess stuff up alongside my pet

Off Hand axe need some love too. Not too much.
Be able to move during the 5 (why not at 50% of normal speed) and an effect on the 4 (like a lil root or a grapple when the axe come back, like some mobs have)

If my memory is good, during alpha, ranger got a skill that stealth him and his pet, untill they move. I love this idea, for scouting.

Totally agree with you. We are nimble and we need to move faster by default and be able to dodge more. I think signets are a joke as well as the spirits and so are some of our traits.

Just like you, when i dungeon crawl with my mates…..i sometimes do not know wtf I am doing here because all i do shoot miserable toothpicks waiting for my cooldowns, which most of them are quite useless. It gets even worse when one monster comes after you in the dungeon and that monster is like a champion equivalent. There is no way of escaping long enough so that your mates can come and back you up. At most i can keep away for about 10+ secs longest before i have to go toe to toe with it. Worse part..when i dungeon crawl…i put two bows…short and long in primary and secondary so that I can provide all the support necessary. When it comes to toe-to-toe fighting….i am screwed. If i put a sword and horn as secondary….i am stuck with some kitten weapon skills from bow primary…..back to standing there shooting toothpicks with some occasionally crippling and concussion shots.

Agree for the buff speed, but we already got enough dodges with weapons/vigor buffs.

Oh, right, thank you for mentioning offhand axe. I forgot about that, and I do think it also needs some work.

To Da Poolp, I do think we have enough dodges, but the gap in mobility compared to other classes, when I think a lot of people see ranger as something of a class that should be good at scouting, is a little too big in my opinion. I run lightning reflexes a lot, and make use of the dodge on shortbow. Obviously everyone know signet of the hunt needs work :P It gets annoying having to carry warhorn everywhere if we want a decent speed buff. Again, thanks for the feedback and thanks for keeping it civil.