Guild Wars 2

Yep, until patches to the ranger class starts getting rangers asked to join in WvW’s reindeer games, the patches are meaningless. The patch must be meaningful and noticeable.

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

Holland.9351:

Solid Gold.9310:

And as Jon Peters hasn’t posted here for the past 17 days I would assume we have been dumped again.

They only had a short time reserved for discussing the new patch notes. Noone got dumped. He talked about all the classes, not just the Ranger. Jon did say it was a successful experiment, so maybe it will happen again.

Just don’t expect any other changes for the 10th of December since none have been confirmed for the Ranger. It’s not that odd since we almost only had buffs. We only really had Natural Vigor to complain about. I don’t think anyone even bothered to complain about the nerf to spirit actives.

I do hope they picked up on some suggestions for the next patch over.

Actually we did kind of get dumped. His last post was on how he had an interesting idea to address sword rooting and would fiddle with it when he got to the office and then nothing. we have no idea if his idea worked at all or even what he came up with which is rather unsettling since the current sword is working as intended for the most part.

Every single one of the profession pages had a topic from the devs addressing them, and every single one got “dumped” around the same time frame.

It isn’t something specific to the ranger class, and there is a point in time from the devs perspective that responding to a thread isn’t helping any more because there just isn’t anything else to say.

Not that I think the patch is going to be amazing or anything (hahaha I’m actually chuckling in real life. good ranger patch, that’s a real knee slapper).

No I get that. My point was that he said he had an idea that he would test out while in the middle of a back and forth dialogue and then just dropped off that map. I can understand if they used up all their allotted forum time but a little one sentence post on whether his idea panned out or not would have been nice.

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

Holland.9351:

Solid Gold.9310:

And as Jon Peters hasn’t posted here for the past 17 days I would assume we have been dumped again.

They only had a short time reserved for discussing the new patch notes. Noone got dumped. He talked about all the classes, not just the Ranger. Jon did say it was a successful experiment, so maybe it will happen again.

Just don’t expect any other changes for the 10th of December since none have been confirmed for the Ranger. It’s not that odd since we almost only had buffs. We only really had Natural Vigor to complain about. I don’t think anyone even bothered to complain about the nerf to spirit actives.

I do hope they picked up on some suggestions for the next patch over.

Actually we did kind of get dumped. His last post was on how he had an interesting idea to address sword rooting and would fiddle with it when he got to the office and then nothing. we have no idea if his idea worked at all or even what he came up with which is rather unsettling since the current sword is working as intended for the most part.

Every single one of the profession pages had a topic from the devs addressing them, and every single one got “dumped” around the same time frame.

It isn’t something specific to the ranger class, and there is a point in time from the devs perspective that responding to a thread isn’t helping any more because there just isn’t anything else to say.

Not that I think the patch is going to be amazing or anything (hahaha I’m actually chuckling in real life. good ranger patch, that’s a real knee slapper).

No I get that. My point was that he said he had an idea that he would test out while in the middle of a back and forth dialogue and then just dropped off that map. I can understand if they used up all their allotted forum time but a little one sentence post on whether his idea panned out or not would have been nice.

Pretty sure there’s a post by him saying that the idea didn’t work out. I’m sure i read that.

JonPeters.5630:

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

Too much typing for the bus, I’ll try and discuss more when I’m in.

Jon

P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.

That was the whole reply that had anything to do with his update on the sword idea

I wish I knew what the heck they did all day that makes them seemingly so busy all the time, yet so little in terms of changes and results.

JPeters, I know you can’t reply, but if you’re reading this, I just want to say we’re rooting for you about the 1h sword fix!

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

Actually we did kind of get dumped. His last post was on how he had an interesting idea to address sword rooting and would fiddle with it when he got to the office and then nothing. we have no idea if his idea worked at all or even what he came up with which is rather unsettling since the current sword is working as intended for the most part.

Every single one of the profession pages had a topic from the devs addressing them, and every single one got “dumped” around the same time frame.

They didn’t get dumped. There was a generic post from JPeters thanking us for the feedback, saying he read every single post in each of these profession-specific threads, and closing out the community input on the Dec 10 update.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/page/35#post3175331

Solandri.9640:

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

Actually we did kind of get dumped. His last post was on how he had an interesting idea to address sword rooting and would fiddle with it when he got to the office and then nothing. we have no idea if his idea worked at all or even what he came up with which is rather unsettling since the current sword is working as intended for the most part.

Every single one of the profession pages had a topic from the devs addressing them, and every single one got “dumped” around the same time frame.

They didn’t get dumped. There was a generic post from JPeters thanking us for the feedback, saying he read every single post in each of these profession-specific threads, and closing out the community input on the Dec 10 update.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/page/35#post3175331

That’s why I put “dumped” in quotations lol.

I just think the ranger community needs somebody to “spearhead” communication with the community. Not necessarily an ANet employee, but perhaps a “top tier” ranger player that actively streams (or uploads) themselves in the different types of content and with different, usable playstyles besides just the “meta” builds.

Guildwars2pvptv has a lot of great players that play a decent amount of all of the professions in the game except the ranger, which just doesn’t do the class justice when there really are no readily available and up-to-date tutorials/guides/videos about the ranger class, except the same players posting videos of roaming in WvW over and over again, which is good, but not an extensive look at the class.

Maybe if somebody like Eurantien would stream or record videos, it would be a good way to show off the class at a higher tier and in a way the would help the community out greatly (though I’m not sure if Eura is a dungeon player or does much WvW, but still).

How about Eura? (if you’re reading this)

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

The reason you can’t get it to work is the same reason why all pets must be re-named when swapped. You are using (for example) the same juvenile jaguar that exists in the world as the ranger pet. The animations of the ranger pets, their behaviors, are the same as those you encounter in pve as a mob.

To counter the skill activation lag:
Imeadiately on F2 the ranger pet goes into blurred frenzy or distortion which would allow for the replacement of the current animation set with the special ability animation set. This would also be a nice visual clue to opponents that the ranger has activated F2 so they can prepare and not make it game breaking, or OP, just working as intended.

I realy dont know why people complain this much about ranger… my stronguest character is a beast master ranger, When i need damage coupled along with a lot of buff self and partywide I know what to play.

Altrought i guess i do could use a +50% damage reduction on aoe attack from boss for pets so that i dont have to constantly swap at the last second in order to make it dodge those nasty 1 shot red circles that spawn under alpha in crucible of eternity. People are so focused on the ranger itself that they all ignore what pet can do.

25 days and nothing new…

urdriel.8496:

25 days and nothing new…

Look at the title of this thread

Soilder.3607:

urdriel.8496:

25 days and nothing new…

Look at the title of this thread

You should read the whole post……

PD:Page 10.

There’s one thing which I feel needs to be addressed. Spirits. Specifically, our elite spirit.

The radius of its passive ability is so small, you have to be practically standing on top of the spirit to receive any benefit from it. Its active ability takes far too long to cast to save someone in a pinch. And unless you’ve taken the Spirits Unbound trait, your nature spirit isn’t going to revive anyone unless they happen to get downed right on top of it.

The spirit does have some merits. 500 health per second for all affected allies is extremely powerful. The slow cast time of the active ability allows the ranger to revive him/herself with some savvy timing.

However, in comparison to the warrior’s battle standard, the spirit of nature falls short. The battle standard is ground targeted, and revives allies on summoning. The battle standard’s passive effect has an extremely wide radius, providing might, fury, and swiftness to nearby allies. The banner can be moved without traits, and cannot be killed by enemies.

I feel as though spirits should be made more in line with banners. All spirits should be ground targeted, and spirit passive effects should match the radius of banner passive effects, including the nature spirit. In addition, the nature spirit’s active effect should either be made instant, or have its cast time significantly reduced.

urdriel.8496:

25 days and nothing new…

Step 1: Admit the ranger needs dire help
Step 2: Admit you have no real plan to fix said problems
Step 3: Nerf ranger more because we do well in spvp, disregarding every other aspect of the game

Quarktastic.1027:

There’s one thing which I feel needs to be addressed. Spirits. Specifically, our elite spirit.

The radius of its passive ability is so small, you have to be practically standing on top of the spirit to receive any benefit from it. Its active ability takes far too long to cast to save someone in a pinch. And unless you’ve taken the Spirits Unbound trait, your nature spirit isn’t going to revive anyone unless they happen to get downed right on top of it.

The spirit does have some merits. 500 health per second for all affected allies is extremely powerful. The slow cast time of the active ability allows the ranger to revive him/herself with some savvy timing.

However, in comparison to the warrior’s battle standard, the spirit of nature falls short. The battle standard is ground targeted, and revives allies on summoning. The battle standard’s passive effect has an extremely wide radius, providing might, fury, and swiftness to nearby allies. The banner can be moved without traits, and cannot be killed by enemies.

I feel as though spirits should be made more in line with banners. All spirits should be ground targeted, and spirit passive effects should match the radius of banner passive effects, including the nature spirit. In addition, the nature spirit’s active effect should either be made instant, or have its cast time significantly reduced.

lol you must have missed their little stealth nerf. Now it has an automatic 1 second cool down on summon so you have to wait even longer to res downed allies now.

Substance E.4852:

urdriel.8496:

25 days and nothing new…

Step 1: Admit the ranger needs dire help
Step 2: Admit you have no real plan to fix said problems
Step 3: Nerf ranger more because we do well in spvp, disregarding every other aspect of the game

Wasn’t that last month’s game plan? /sigh…

I’m not very good player but from my 600 hours of playtime on Ranger I have made a list about issues I have with this class:
1. Pet
2. Pet
3. Pet
….
n+1. Pet (n is large integer)

It simply doesn’t work. It misses skills on moving opponents because it can’t move and cast a skill at same time. There is a huge lag in skill casting. It dies to AoE all the time. It kills me if I forget to stow it away in Uncategorized Fractal. GW2 is very fast paced game and the pet is ridiculously slow to react to any commands.

I’d love to be able to give up the pet for stat increase on Ranger. I wish there was a ability to select petless Ranger build.

Give us a elite with a 90sec CD, give us rampage has one or turn Rampage has one into a shout.

each class have a elite with 90sec CD why not the ranger?

So they know that one of the core mechanics for the Ranger has a flaw, but they don’t want to touch it? At this point I’m not even surprised.

Substance E.4852:

urdriel.8496:

25 days and nothing new…

Step 1: Admit the ranger needs dire help
Step 2: Admit you have no real plan to fix said problems
Step 3: Nerf ranger more because we do well in spvp, disregarding every other aspect of the game

profit
15 chars

As one of the very, very few successful full melee rangers out there running with both sword and greatsword.. JonPeters, please if you take the evade out of gs chain and put it into sweep, give the basic gs attack chain some other perk besides just damage. Namely, cripple. Especially cripple. It would also enable melee range fighters to prevent enemy escapes and simultaneously to slap some cripples on melee foes before escaping with number 3 when the immo drops increasing the odds of getting away. It wouldn’t be op at all, since just like any cripple it can be removed.

When the actual December patch comes around are we gonna make a new thread or what?

Worst Balancing Team I have ever seen in a Game before….just pathetic

Love all the viewers that the last tournament got lol and how about that $7,500 grand prize? That sure is alot more then the $100,000 Tournament Series in Guild Wars 1. This game is on a downward trend and the fact that they come on here and make poor excuses why they can’t fix a class mechanic thats been broken since first beta. Why they can’t fix a sword rooting that has ticked off alot of people since beta? I love all the attention that Jon is giving the thief forum =) at least he’s helping his precious thief along and answering to their tears. Get a team member who actually plays the ranger to get in here and get our feed back we are tired of your excuses jon.

Edit: PS: When ya see a team of developers who have gone all this time without relying on the forum base for help in balancing and then all of a sudden coming out and almost beggin for the help of the actual players you know they are scrambling….

I’m getting edgy the closer we get to the 10th.

I can see nothing being fixed, things getting stealth nerfs, and maybe the GS getting borked !

once they will do the right thing. i still believe this. maybe it will be accident but they will

Well they’ve said we can look forward to new skills being added in the future which I can’t wait for. While it’s a shame that our ‘new’ skills would just be things we should have been given in the first place where other classes will get new toys to try out new builds and broaden their class’ diverisity, it’s nice to know that we don’t need to make suggestions to currently existing skills and abilities to try and resolve the numerous problems this class has.

I’m just gonna post my own thoughts here…. posing before I go sleep so I didn’t read every single post.. although I really want to.

1. Ranged fights: Unless you are in PvE or WvW [Inside a tower of keep protected by the walls and gates], LB simply doesn’t do much. AoE deals significantly less dmg now, its much better to just use something else like GS. Rapid Fire is the only viable nuke-skill for range that doesn’t deal much dmg.
I go full berserk I die even before I get the chance, I go soldier, it deals around 5k IF the enemy just takes it.
PtB shot? Well, when I fight against ranger with my guardian PtB is simply nuisance but I really don’t care because I can close up my distance and if I have stability or block, it won’t even do anything really.
If I use shortbow, it has evasive ability to keep kiting for some parts of fight but really, that is about it. Unless I run condi-build SB really is not something I choose.

2. Tank-ranger: When I run bunker, I run spirit build with E-Bond. Plus I will rely on my one handed sword and dagger’s evasion for close combat.
Now you deducted endurance regen from 50-25%. GS evasion might get removed. Without any good sustainable condition removal or effective invulnerability, evasion becomes key to rangers.
Rangers need to dodge more than any other class yet you deducted the endurance regen…. It IS powerful build but it is also EXTREMELY vital in ranger survival.
I find rangers who can dodge more effective that much more scary than those who use signet of stone active ability. With the endurance regen deducted, rangers won’t simply be as surviving as they were.

Pets: I will be honest. I ABSOLUTELY adore pets. They are the reason why I play ranger really. However, it is simply too bad. I used to run Beastmaster build with wolf and krytan hound. But now, they are more for decoration or simply getting rid of mines, marks or traps.
They don’t deal as much dmg, they aren’t smart by any means and now they can’t chase target that is 2k distance away. Pets need serious improvement right now. Before BM was powerful build but it really was one of the few viable builds which rangers could use. Even then, when pet dies it becomes useless. WvW this happens all the time. PvP would be much less so but pets are simply not effective. [and here i thought necro’s summons were bad…]

My overall opinions on this matter:
I generally approve of what is there except endurance regen deducted. However, like I already read in other posts, ranger still needs more. Stealth and LB is NOT enuogh!

ANet should take a page out of the GW1 Ranger’s book and make pets optional.

I mean, the Ranger’s class mechanic has been a big issue since the game was released, and it still is to this day. On top of having a lousy gimmick when compared to the other classes, they also have some subpar weapon sets and utility skills. When it’s all said and done, there are very limited scenarios where someone would say “I WANT A RANGER FOR THIS!” instead of any other class.

I personally love the flavor and the general idea behind the Ranger class, but it’s hard for me to commit the time needed to get mine to 80 since they’re really only successful in WvW as roamers and in sPvP. What I really want is for ANet to bite the bullet and admit that there is a major problem with one of their eight classes instead of pretending like everything is ok; the Ranger needs some hefty overhauls, and the new skills/traits that are supposed to come out in the near future might help, but that remains to be seen.

They already came out and admitted that the pet is broken and not working as intended. Now they either need to fix it (which they stated would cause a total overhaul of AI in general which they’re avoiding) or do something about the profession mechanic.

Ignoring F2 response time, just extending the range on all melee pet attacks from 130 melee range to 250 lunge range would do wonders.

I recall someone testing that pets under the effects of moa morph had an increased ability to hit their targets.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Ignoring F2 response time, just extending the range on all melee pet attacks from 130 melee range to 250 lunge range would do wonders.

I recall someone testing that pets under the effects of moa morph had an increased ability to hit their targets.

I’m not sure this really resolves anything. Wouldn’t it just mean the pet moved to 250 units, stopped to swing, and missed as opposed to the current move to 150 units, stop to swing, and miss?

If they extend the range they’ll still need to make the activation range the shorter distance. That way at least if the unit stops, it won’t miss. That or just make all pet attacks a leap since it’s such an amazing success with sword :/

I agree with Flytrap. ANet has gotten rid of most GW1 ranger options (and dervishes as well, which makes it even worse for me). They really need to make either pets that are uninvolved in combat which cannot be killed and give the ranger active and passive buffs, or else make pets optional and make preparations the class mechanic. Rangers have very little of what made them great in the first game: no strong disruption ability at medium-long range, a baffling lack of condition removal options, etc.

If they can’t fix rangers, they could at least add a new class which appeals to players who want a master of archery, but don’t want an arranged marriage with terrible AI.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

If they can’t fix rangers, they could at least add a new class which appeals to players who want a master of archery, but don’t want an arranged marriage with terrible AI.

Yeah add an Archer cos the Ranger is broken…………..

Xukavi.4320:

They already came out and admitted that the pet is broken and not working as intended. Now they either need to fix it (which they stated would cause a total overhaul of AI in general which they’re avoiding) or do something about the profession mechanic.

Yeha but they also admitted that they don’t care enough to fix the pets since it would take some effort/work. Rather just tinker around and randomly nerf and buff things in a fashion that makes no sense.

Boomstin.3460:

Xukavi.4320:

They already came out and admitted that the pet is broken and not working as intended. Now they either need to fix it (which they stated would cause a total overhaul of AI in general which they’re avoiding) or do something about the profession mechanic.

Yeha but they also admitted that they don’t care enough to fix the pets since it would take some effort/work. Rather just tinker around and randomly nerf and buff things in a fashion that makes no sense.

Well, of course. Which is in other words what I said between brackets. Causes to much hassle to fix so they’re avoiding it.

Last time I enjoyed Ranger class was Gw1 and Gw2 beta. I brought my Gw2 ranger out of retirement to see if some of the recent updates helped the ranger class, I had some hope things would get better.
The changes listed for dec10 will do little to help the ranger. It inexcusable to still have the Rangers primary mechanic broken to the point that even the developers don’t know what to do about it. I guess its time to put my ranger back into retirement.

I just want to say that I am pretty disgusted that here we are over a year from release and the balance team is still mostly padding out the patch notes with nothings. There are real problems with all classes and they require real fixes. This whole act changing tooltips and moving a few numbers here, like a kid playing with his vegetables, just to appear like they’ve been doing something every month is getting old.

Hire more people to work on the classes or replace them with better people.

I had a thought or two (yeah, it happens) during the motorbike commute in this morning. Condensed it boils down to:
What if the pet was made immune, or 95% resistant, to all forms of damage? OP, right? What if at the same time the pet’s direct damage output was halved, or reduced even further? Nerf! Okay, what if that was compensated for by adding to the ranger’s damage? No need to massively overhaul anything, just tweak the numbers.

Anyway, probably a stupid idea…

KyreneZA.8617:

I had a thought or two (yeah, it happens) during the motorbike commute in this morning. Condensed it boils down to:
What if the pet was made immune, or 95% resistant, to all forms of damage? OP, right? What if at the same time the pet’s direct damage output was halved, or reduced even further? Nerf! Okay, what if that was compensated for by adding to the ranger’s damage? No need to massively overhaul anything, just tweak the numbers.

Anyway, probably a stupid idea…

It has been suggested many, many times, in some form or another. Go read some suggestions going back months and you will find many folks with ideally simple changes that would help this class like those you suggested.

No response from devs. Swept under the rug.

Most dev response time and tweaks being made are under the SPvP part of the game. PvE and WvW are pretty much non-significant when it comes to getting Anets attention.

Whale.

I’m new to the forums, but I purchased GW2 with a few days of launch.
So far i’m loving it!

However, their are a few questions and problems I have.

First, I don’t mean this in an offensive way at all, but a few of the pet families are almost useless.

Take my favorite, the porcine group.

It has more health than your standard pet, but less health than a bear. In fact, i’m quite sure every stat is lower or the same as a bear.

It’s F2 ability creates an improvised weapon. The problem is that you cannot use this in combat effectively, because it has to stand still to use it, and most of the time your enemy will pick it up in pvp.

A lot of people want to change the f2, but I instead suggest a change in stats.

Make it either more of a tank than a bear with less damage, or have about the health and defense now, but more damage.

Other group worth mentioning are the moas (I feel they should all have support-related screeches, because they almost never hit with the offensive ones), the hyena (Too few damage, ally despawns to quickly), and I feel the drakes are off somehow.

Thank you so much if you read this.

BTW, I love how that one spirit becomes a whale underwater! If only we had a whale pet.

Actually with the right build drakes are by far currently the best of all melee pets IMO. If you go with a close range or full melee build and use an axe offhand you can frequently pull your target straight into a tail sweep and open many opportunities to land f2 (although I still think it could use improvements and some bug fixes). If you have the nature trait that shares your buffs with the pet, when you pop axe off-hand number 5 you will share retalitation with your pet, which can potentially mean throwing double retaliation ticks against the sweeping attacks of of warriors, which only the drake and bear are probably tanky enough to pull off to begin with. (Although you need high tankiness levels on your ranger for that combo as well.) At any rate, because their attacks (to my understanding even the auto attack) have a sweeping motion rather than a fully linear one like the cats, it is more complicated to side step drake hits for a chilled/crippled target, especially with stuns in the mix than it is for the former.

Above all the drakes of all melee pets have by far the best ratio of damage to survivability and with the right build, especially a shout w/ nature’s voice build with reduced cooldown guard giving them effective perma regen, protection(if you have roll protection) and occasional stealth. Unfortunately there are still some AoE’s that in albeit kind of rare circumstances can overly easily kill them in a 2-3 hits, like a high damage warrior build’s bow AoE but I don’t mind this given that the classes yielding such damage atm are supposedly getting some nerfs, and the unmatched value that pulling off a timing-attack with pet swaps can offer in potentially landing consecutive tail sweeps with maul combos.

So sadly, canines, felines still lagg behind drakes from everything I’ve experienced for the same old problems: Vitality is far too low, and their attacks are too short range and linear-based design, the cripple and stun available(on the canines) fail to make contact too often. These two desperately need a skill rebuild, and once again raised vitality. If you ask me, the drakes should be used to set a precedent as the minimum survivability required for melee pets, and the cats and canines given near equal levels of vitality to reflect this reality. (Which as I recall of the top of my head is 3.5k-ish.) If they were to receive attention.

Well, I disagree on drakes (or any class) being the “go to” melee pet.

Pets are the most situational part of our class.

Birds are faster (better for chasing).
Cats can do decent condition damage traited. Drakes can too but it isn’t consistent and relies on F2 versus basic attacks. Canines are just better at it.

If you pop RAO, you want a lashtail. 7 attacks on an F2 which is ranged and fast typically lead to 5-7 stacks of might on you.

One of the biggest increases I ever made to my value as a ranger was playing around with all the pets until I understood which is better when. The more you are swapping out pets, the better you are playing your ranger. . . typically.

cats does bleed but please dont underestimate its actual physical damage either. traited for critical hits the cat realy can pack a punch.

Granted pets being situational is obvious, and my build is very specified to synergize well with the pet and just happens to work best with the drakes. However, I’ve extensively tested cats, canines, moas, drakes with perma-swiftness, regen and protection. And in terms of building a melee pet build that IMO has the least amount of counter-builds to worry about and the greatest potential to go toe to toe with a higher number of just about any build of any other class and hit closest to parity. (As in entering a fight with similar gear and having an equal chance to see victory when used skillfully) I’m convinced its one using drakes, but that’s just me.

I know there are other pets that work better for other builds, what I’m trying to say is that, for its function and design, the drake is currently best in line with its purpose. Cats sure hit hard, but when singled out by the enemy (most skilled players I’ve fought will do this) even with permanent protection, swiftness, regeneration+signet healing and a cautious and very skilled ranger pulling it back and even trying to use that predictability to his edge.. its extremely easy to kill jaguars and other cats, and the time spent waiting for pet cooldowns will hurt your dps drastically if it occurs, which in a fight between two equally and very skilled players will happen far more than most rangers rolling cats are willing to admit. Canines it’s a little less often, especially when the stuns do land. But the fact that it’s the pet controlling when it stuns outside the predictability that it will use it almost immediately when its off-cooldown/swapped still makes it very inconsistent.

Admittedly I have not worked with birds much, but since I have aoe permanent swiftness at hand I certainly don’t need to rely on its swiftness skill for that, which would make that a wasted skill for me. The rest of the skills on birds, even including the blind of the raven and frequent bleeds of the other ones and chill of the snow owl.. still don’t quite cut it. And again, they are even more easily killed when singled out by a skilled player.

If course, if you roll with guard you might think you have some shock and awe value with the two stealths on the jaguar which is of some truth to be sure, however since it cannot open with a ranged attack from stealth the players will know the pattern by instinct if they’re battle hardened enough that it’s either waiting beside the ranger on passive for them to go in for the rush, or barreling down on them to land hits. Even if they can’t see it, they know it’s there and merely need to swerve left to right (especially with swiftness) to avoid the majority of its attacks. In turn, attack the air with aoe and sword sweeps will be sufficient if its a real problem.

Canines have a similar rule of thumb when it comes to issues hitting targets albeit some incredibly useful F2 AoEs. When timed right they are a godsend, but it’s still inconvenient given the cast time and easily interrupted or avoided by a skilled player with high apm and enough interrupts, evades, and teleport to location and other escape skills unless chain stunned. They may be extremely useful to some ranger builds (perhaps spirit rangers with the sheer amount of allied units you put out on the field) but the majority of builds that they are actually thought clasically as compliment best fail to get their “bang for their buck” out of them due to missed stuns and attacks; namely the classic power bow builds. I’ve fought plenty of power bow rangers who thought they were really good at chain stunning with wolf and drake hound/hyena and every single one of them died at my feet with doing less than half my hp bar even with the very best of them so I guarantee you are probably less good at chain stunning with canines, longbow 4, greatsword five or axe pull than you think. (Which very few rangers even roll with an axe off-hand.) Consequently that makes spiders are far superior option for power bow builds and is why most of the better power bow builds roll with spiders. As I will mention later, they have a much higher hit ratio from not needing to chase the majority of their targets nearly as much.

Just my 2 cents on the current state of melee pets.

As for ranged pets, I never criticized them outside lack of damage. They are incredibly adept at hitting their targets in comparison to their melee counter-parts. The spider is invaluable to high damage-slightless tanky ranger builds(Although I don’t know why the poison field duration is so short, its nearly impossible to use it at times). The devourer on the other hand: hit or miss; you roll with them for their damage and condi output however 10% poison on auto attack is just relying on low end poison procs in a prolonged fight in a battlefield saturated with condi and consequently condi removal, the evade on it is actually useless; a complete waste of a skill slot even if someone were to go after it which very, very rarely ever happens if the ranger and devourer positions are different(If you think otherwise you’re fooling yourself, be honest. It’s evade is extremely slow so you lose damage every time it does that, the whole point of having one to begin with.) The F2s are less than spectacular outside the one with the poison volley. Because the lashtail’s has a massive cast time and despite the theoretically good combination of physical damage to bleed, the bleed more than often not will get chance purged due to the amount of people running high on condi removal. That often leaves you with about 2k phys damage at best if your foe lacks toughness to reduce it, assuming they don’t dodge part of it which vastly lacks compared to the potential 5ks of a full river drake f2. As for the poison field devourer, that’kitten or miss unfortunately.

At any rate, keep in mind this is all from the perspective of a ranger that has perma swiftness, protection and regen on him and his pet, no matter the distance between him and his pet. Those rangers out those perks may find different realities and that’s fine. Furthermore let me clarify that I am not trying to shoot down anyone’s builds; just merely sharing what I’ve observed in personal experience and extensive practice and testing. To add a final note, I’m talking specifically of fight other players. WvW, SPvP fighting skilled, intelligent sapient beings who are moving targets, not predictable stationary PvE mobs following the same script with maybe a tiny bit of RNG combinations of attack patterns thrown in. Against powerful and skilled players who constantly move in combat, the pets will function on a different level; a diffferent level of usefulness, or a different level of uselessness, depending on your build and pet setup. So if we’re talking fighting other players you must consider very carefully what pet you use and how you fight with it but furthermore, synergize with it if you want to fight with the best of players using the best builds of the other classes. If you’re trying to take everything out of your pet and put it into the ranger, you will lose to the best on other classes atm. If you do the opposite and power up the pet too much but kitten the ranger, the same fate awaits you. Forget ArenaNet’s “unparalleled archer” statement, its untrue right now in terms of damage and AoE, frequency and utility. Right now for a ranger to fight at the best a ranger can fight against other players, he MUST find good ways of harmonizing with his pet and creating a “The two fight as one” scenario/build. VERY little ranger builds are doing that at the moment, and that’s unfortunately because VERY FEW ranger builds can.

I think they will make spirit rangers even more powerfull i dont know why really. and what about condi rangers? Our best defence to evade is also removed i wonder how much more Anet will destroy rangers.. i am disapointed.So what stun lock warr will keep us now 99% of time stunned cyz cant evade etc.. great 1 GG Anet.

Greetings !

DONT take away ranger’s ENDURANCE – we really need those evades to stay alive in some places – as we need to go max paper to even try to compare.
And in PVP you need the evades despite running amulet with decent defensive stats.
( and yes ofcourse i use dagger offhand and shortbow ).

Strike as One ( GW1 skill – would be a nice workaround or ’’help’’ for pet AI ).
DONT make it an ELITE skill if you go for it!

Ranger SWORD is OK, if you turn off auto attack and watch what you are dooing. I read on someone else’s post that a slight damage increase as compensation for the ocassional leap into the abyss would be ok.

Torch could be less lame… It’s not even used as lighting

I have no problem with the pets, I like them on my side.
Problem is, they’re just useless. Slow, luring, tactic braking, and in a COF P3 they cause my dead at lava balls triggered.
If there would be a mechanics to trait and adjust points on pets, so they’ll behave as we need… would be great.

Gw1’s pet skills on locked 8 skillbar was pathetic imo.
Gw2 made a good step, but just a half.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I have no problem with the pets, I like them on my side.
Problem is, they’re just useless. Slow, luring, tactic braking, and in a COF P3 they cause my dead at lava balls triggered.
If there would be a mechanics to trait and adjust points on pets, so they’ll behave as we need… would be great.

Gw1’s pet skills on locked 8 skillbar was pathetic imo.
Gw2 made a good step, but just a half.

In GW1 you can choose if you want a pet or not, here, we have a pet that have a crap AI and that all good players knows how to kite.