Guild Wars 2

Part (1/2)

Iv’e had a couple of ideas lately for the Ranger and so I figured I’d share them with you. But first I want to talk about what this class means to me, why I play it and what it should be all about. This has been a highly talked about topic on the forums and so I figured I’d give my two-cents. What is a Ranger?

The agreed upon opinion is a roamer. Someone who patrols large areas and “protects”. Has an affinity with nature. The opinion that gets immediately shot down is someone who uses ranged-based combat. My opinion is sort of a mixture. When I was little(er) I read a series of books titled The Rangers Apprentice. Quality books, which had a lasting impact on me. In these books, the “Ranger” is sort of a secret-police service for the king. There are only 50 of them in the land and each one protects his own area, whilst reporting to the ranger-leader guy. They are known as black-magic practicers because of their ability to seemingly vanish or appear out of nowhere, and take down entire units of soldiers easily. Their prized weapon of choice is the Longbow, but they also carry 2 daggers. (There is one ranger in the book who uses a sword but he’s a special case). They are masters of camouflage, using their specially crafted shimmering cloaks and vast wilderness survival knowledge. What they do is rarely seen but without them the kingdom falls apart etc. Anyway, great series of books I highly recommend them but THIS is what a ranger is to me. None of that LOTR Elf crap.

“Ok cool, thanks for your opinion now go back to pewpew’ing with 2”.

I’d love to but I’m not finished. My ideas are mostly thought of in a PvP sense but you can apply them to PvE quite easily.

The problem Rangers have in PvP is selfishness. They don’t really add anything to a team-based event which is also why they’re disliked by some Dungeon do-ers. They’re normally on some cliff somewhere raining down arrows on one target, whilst not doing much damage (compared to some other classes) and not absorbing any damage for the team fight. This is also why they take little to no skill to play. On-top of this, they have no real perceived role.

So in my eyes, the Ranger is the clinical finisher. We are the ones who can very quickly deliver finishing blows to enemies, or put pressure on enemies so they can’t focus on DPS output. We also don’t like to die which is why we do this from a nice safe distance. As well as this, we are the scouts. The Ranger should have the knowledge to quickly identify the opponents who are causing the most threat, target them and quickly pin them down/kill them. Whilst the “noobs” among us will never be able to do that until they become experienced enough (same with every class’s role) It should still be a considered fact due to the nature of the Ranger.

Whether you agree with me or not, this is how I believe the class should be pushed forward.

Ideas: Birds as pets should be more versatile. I think, the eagle in particular, should be able to fly up way high in the sky over the map, and act as a sort of “UAV” for the mini map for a short period of time. Your mini map shows the locations of all enemies (except maybe enemy rangers, because of their Wilderness Survival knowledge thing) when this happens.

Pets should be more unique from each other. So in real life, all animals are very different. Some are stronger, some are faster, some are stealthier etc. In GW2 what separates pets from each other is base stats and skills. Whilst this isn’t a bad way to do it, they could make it more interesting. For example, have you ever seen a scorpion run as fast as a Jaguar? No. Speed of the pet should be a base stat and should vary massively. They should also have a lot more health. Animals in real life are wild and some of them are vicious, and they will fight to the point of death for food. (We’ve all seen planet earths polar bear quest). Another bonus to that is it might make them useful in WvW as they wouldn’t die quite so quickly, which would make a lot of Rangers happy. To get an even trade-off with that is once the pet does die, all your skills are sent to recharge mode like they did in GW1.

Part (2/2)

Rangers should have a trait or skill that acts passively and auto alerts you to threatening enemies. I don’t know entirely how this would be pulled off, but maybe when an enemy is quickly unleashing a lot of damage? or healing its team mates too much? Not sure on that one.

Map roaming ability. Rangers should have a skill or trait like ‘Rope’ or something that allows them to climb small cliff edges. Ignoring the need for stairs and giving the class the ability to traverse the map faster. Something that falls in line with my idea of the ranger and everyone else’s, a roamer. also, 25% movement speed shouldn’t have to come from a signet that should be baseline passive trait or just built into the ranger itself. (as in when you role ranger, you have 25% more movement speed over other classes. This might be a bit OP, so maybe knock that down to 10%?)

More precision. I think the Ranger should be able to do a bit more damage with his weapons. I’m aware this could take us into top-tier and people would massively complain, but hey it’d be swell for us. Or maybe, just more damage as the foes health drops below a certain value? so that we can be that clinical finisher who takes out foes. Also maybe an unblockable attack trait/signet?

More stealth options. We should have a skill which straight up stealths us for 8 seconds. Get rid of a rubbish skill no one uses and replace it with that. Cool cool.

Additional skill-slots. This is a tricky one. But maybe a GM trait that allows the ranger to take another utility skill? To be a trapper ranger we already have to sacrifice them. Could be a nice addition could be something way too unfair, may have to have a play-around with the idea more.

Well thats the end of this post. TL;DR Rangers are super cool everywhere else, can we have bird UAV + stealth pl0x?