Guild Wars 2

Lotsa people have suggested either Rifle or Dagger for a Ranger elite spec, and those suggestions have been good on their own rights so I’ll head for another approach instead.

Ranger – Strider
Weapon: Shield
Skills: Spectral
Mechanic: The Strider no longer has their trusty pets along. At least not in corporeal form. Yet, these loyal beasts remain in the form of Spirit Companions that passively empower the Strider, and can be called on to strike enemies when the Spirit Gauge is filled.

Mechanic: Spirit Companion
The Strider is no proud warrior, not anymore. A lone wolf who lost their trusty companion, the Strider now walks alone with only the spirit of their former companions appearing in their time of need.

While the Strider has no visible Companion, they’re constantly surrounded by the spectral whisps of their pets. While Passive like this, the Spirit Companion increases a Parameter of the Strider depending on which type it is:

• Canines, Sharks: +10% All Damage, +10% Critical Hit Damage
• Felines, Birds: +10% All Damage, +10% Critical Hit Chance
• Ursines, Porcines, Armor Fish: +10% Damage Resistance, +10% Condition Damage Resistance.
• Wyvern, Drake, Saurian: +10% All Damage, +10% Damage Resistance.
• Spiders, Devourers: +10% Condition Damage, +20% Condition Duration.
• Moa, Jellyfish: +10% incoming Healing, +20% Boon Duration.

The Strider can materialize their Spirit Companion for a short time in order to attack their enemies. The Spirit Companion is 15% stronger than normal Pets, however they cannot be summoned indefinitely, as the Strider must maintain a new Spirit Force Level to keep them corporeal, which is a Bar behind the Pet Commands that fills as the Strider Deals or Takes Damage. When the Bar is at least 20% full, the Strider can Summon their Companion with F1, which also triggers Pet Swap Traits on activation now. When Summoned, F2 is available as the Pet Command skill and the Strider can unsummon his Companion prematurely with F3. F4 still switches between 1 of 2 Companions, who now share the same Spirit Force bar.

• F1: Summon Spirit Companion – Use Spirit Force in order to summon an incorporeal spirit of your pet to attack enemies. Spirit Force is continously depleted while the pet is active, and acts as your Pet’s Health Bar. If the Spirit Force is depleted while the Companion is summoned, the Cooldown is increased.
• F3: Recall Spirit Companion – Withdraw your Spirit Companion into the Mists again, placing Summon Spirit Companion on Cooldown.

Spirit Force doesn’t diminish outside of Combat, similar to Life Force.

Weapon
The Strider is a Defensive champion, who won’t let his mistakes be repeated with his allies’ lives on the line. The Shield mixes powerful CC with Defense and Defensive Boons, making the Strider a tough adversary to take down, and even tougher to go through if you’re headed for his allies.

• Shield Drum -> Turtle Down – Taunt all nearby enemies by striking you shield. If this skill hits a target, gain access to Turtle Down. Turtle Down Blocks all incoming attacks, while pulsing Protection to nearby Allies.
• Aggressive Protector -> Brave Distraction – Rush your Target with your Shield and Knock them Down, gaining access to Brave Distraction if they were using a Skill. Aggressive Protector acts as a Leap Finisher. Brave Distraction Immobilizes your Target, while removing Movement-Impairing Conditions from and granting Swiftness to nearby Allies.

Utility Skills
The Strider’s thoroughly connected to the world of Spirits, just like a Necromancer is. Calling upon the restless spirits of the forests and wilderness, the Strider makes sure that even on his lonesome, he’s a force to be reckoned with. Like how Spectral Skills grant Life Force to Necromancers, Striders gain Spirit Force to fuel their Spirit Level with, in order to Summon their Companions.

• Spectral Tree – Healing Skill. Heal yourself and create a spectral tree that slowly Blooms over time, pulsing moderate heals to nearby allies in an expanding radius. Once fully bloomed, it will drop 3 fruits allies can walk over to Cleanse a Condition and gain Regeneration. This Consumes the fruit. Each time a fruit is consumed, you gain Spirit Force.
• Spectral Mist – Summon Mist at the target area, Chilling enemies within. Projectiles fired into the field are destroyed. Gain Spirit Force whenever a projectile is destroyed. Acts as an Ice Field.
• Spectral Wisps – Break out of Stun and surround yourself with Spectral Wisps, Blocking incoming Attacks for a short duration. Chill enemies that attack you and gain Spirit Force. The chill portion can only happen once every second.
• Spectral Sight – Pull nearby enemies out of Stealth, Revealing and Chilling them, gaining Spirit Force for each target Struck. You become Immune to Blind for 4s, plus 1 additional second for each Enemy struck.
• Spectral Pack – Surround yourself with a pack of spectral wolves for 5s, gaining Frost Armor and increased Movement Speed. The wolves lash out at nearby enemies, damaging and chilling them.
• Spectral Warden – Elite Skill. Surround nearby Allies with Spectral Wings, causing them to Pulse Protection for 4s. If an enemy strikes a Protected Ally, you Taunt them for a long durationm, Gain Protection yourself and Stealth your Ally, consuming the Buff.

Specialization Line

Minor Traits

• Lone Wolf – Gain access to Spirit Companions, the Spirit Gauge and Spectral Skills.
• Wayward Soul – Summoning your Spirit Companion grants Swiftness and Protection to you and your Companion.
• Regretful Power – While your Spirit Companion is inactive, you gain +15% All Damage Strength.

Adept Traits

• Vengeful Hunter – Gain Fury (4s) whenever your Companion or a nearby Ally takes Damage. ICD: 10s.
• Chilling Sorrow – Whenever Chill is applied to you, nearby enemies are Chilled (2s) as well. Outgoing Chill Duration is increased by 20%. ICD: 10s.
• Lonesome Memories – While your accumulated Spirit Force is 50% or higher, you and your Companion take 10% less Damage from all sources. Spirit Force gain from all sources is increased by 25%.

Master Traits

• Decisive Lament – While you or your Companion have Fury, you or your Companion gain 180 Ferocity.
• Eyes of the Raven – Activate Spectral Sight when striking a target whose health is below the threshold. Spectral Skills recharge 20% Faster. Threshold: 50%. ICD: 35s.
• Mourning Mist – Gain Frost Aura (4s) when you Summon your Spirit Companion. Lose 1 Condition when you gain Frost Aura.

Grandmaster Traits

• Feral Aggression – Shield Drum’s Cooldown is reset whenever you kill an enemy. Taunt Duration on none-player enemies is increased by 100%. ICD on Reset: 5s (15s in sPvP).
• Nature’s Domain – Finishing an enemy or reviving an Ally creates a lesser Spectral Tree at their location. You finish enemies and revive allies 10% faster.
  • Lesser Spectral Tree – Create a Spectral Tree that slowly blooms over time, pulsing healing to nearby allies. Once fully bloomed, it will drop 1 fruit that allies can walk over to Cleanse a Condition and gain Regeneration. ICD: 20s.
• Parting Promise – When you Summon your Companion, Copy 1 instance of all Boons on yourself to it. When you Recall your Companion, Copy 1 instance of all Boons on it to yourself.

I appreciate the effort you put into this.
What I like that GW2 does is excel at being different and in that avenue giving unconventional weapons to professions that would not ordinarily use them in other games.

So it’s not too farfetched to say that a defensive ranger with a shield could very well be plausible.

The concept is interesting, however

The Strider is no proud warrior, not anymore. A lone wolf who lost their trusty companion, the Strider now walks alone with only the spirit of their former companions appearing in their time of need.

The ranger not having physical companion is detrimental to many core traits and skills. Without this “wall”, I’m sure your e-spec would be very enjoyable to play.

NB.: Also, I dare to say that giving specific buff from each pet type is a move that is bound to fail since Anet seem to want to give us new pets in the futur. And for them to have to update an e-spec each time they release new pet… that’s just impossible.

E-Spec mechanics build on Core class mechanics and dont just replace them. Because of this is this E-Spec mechanic not suited to be implemented.
I know a lot of players want a petless ranger, but having a pet is the actual point of being a ranger. They should improve the pet mechanics on the core class asany will agree with me.

I like the idea of a more defensive ranger and i would like to see shield as a E-spec weapon. The more Ice oriented theme is also kind of fitting to it.
Good skill and trait designs, some of which could interact greatly with core ranger.

I was also thinking of shield for ranger.

I actually really like this proposal. Its unqiue. And seems to be well set for completing the intended goal of the spec.

I believe I would really enjoy running this spec with BM and NM in WvW. Turning my pet into a burst function in order to finish people off (likely with sic em) while supporting my allies and dealing more close range damage.

The block and mobility of the shield gives some interesting possibilities as far as close range survivability goes. Between rolling evades on gs and swapping to Sw/Shield when things get rough I feel it could act as a close range damage dealer/supporter.

On the other hand (also in wvw and potentially in PvP as well) I would like to try running something like this as an anti Pick tool. Thats often a roll I take in zerg fights when fighting other organized guilds.

The concept of a more powerful but temporary pet actualy works pretty well with beast mastery. As its a burst based talent line when used for dps. (Make the most of your pets cooldowns while combining them with your own to deal extreme single target damage in a couple seconds) Where as druid rangers have periods of down time while the pets and rangers cooldowns are coming back up. The “Strider” would push the extreme a little bit.

I guess my biggest question would be How the cooldowns themselves would work out. But thats a balancing thing in the end and not really part of this discussion.

As far as a Concept goes. This is great in my opinion. And I don’t think its as far out of anets sphere as people seem to think.

This would also be an interesting compromise for the people who do and don’t enjoy using pets on there ranger (although most pets now are MUCH more reliable than they used to be. Especially since the recent patch)

I would not at all be upset if Arena net announced something similar to this in their next expansion

It’s not a bad start of an idea, but there’s a few things I would change:

• Make the Spirit Force bar more similar to how Celestial Power or the Necromancer’s Life Force bars are. You slowly build it up through attacks, and it only goes down when it’s active or when you die. I don’t know if having it like the Warrior’s Adrenaline bar is a good idea.
• Shield is fine as a choice, but the way you suggest chain skills isn’t like all the other ones in the game. If you want Shield Drum to be the block skill, it should be that the character holds the shield up; if the strider is hit during X seconds, block the attack and the vibration grants Protection to all allies in range. Otherwise, Shield Drum could be a Taunt as the strider beats the drum.
• Having two chain skills, especially on an off-hand weapon, is extremely rare. I think having the strider charge while holding the shield aloft is a good idea, and it feels more like a blast finisher than a leap one.
• Spectral Tree seems too powerful as written. Pulsing is OK, but I would think it should get weaker over time, not stronger. Adding the fruit makes it super powerful, unless the tree can be attacked by enemies which stops both the healing and fruit, in which case I think it’d be fine as written. Maybe.
• Spectral Wisps acts like an ice field, and yet it destroys projectiles. Is this meant to be defensive or offensive? If it’s defensive, it would probably be better to just be targeted on the self, similar to a well and leave it at destroying or reflecting projectiles back. If it’s offensive, it chills enemies in the area and maybe removes one boon per pulse.
• Why have a five limit condition cleanse on Spiritual Cleansing? Not sure how often you have that many conditions on a single target. Perhaps cleanse all conditions, with an effect if X conditions are cleansed, or maybe a lower cap on the condition cleanse.
• For Spectral Protector, maybe have the nearby enemies get taunted on activation, rather than taunt anyone who tries to attack an ally (by which point, it’s too late). The strider gets one stack of Aegis for every two enemies taunted. (Aegis might also be too strong, but it balances out the medium armor of the profession.)
• Instead of Regretful Power, maybe make it Protective Spirit, where having a spiritual pet grants 10% Damage Reduction instead (or otherwise balanced). If the focus of the class is being a more front-line protective fighter, having a spirit prevent the damage seems better than just granting raw power.

Not sure what to think about the parts I didn’t comment on, but these are what I think would make it a more balanced specialization. Naturally, some of the other powers could be balanced by having a long cooldown instead, but I think it’s better to have moderate abilities with neutral powers rather than have superpowered abilities with long cooldowns. It’s a good initial idea, but definitely needs some fine tuning.

Was thinking that if Rangers were to ever receive an off-hand shield e-spec, it would have been named “Warden” since that was one of the three ideas merged to create the current Ranger.

Rognik.2579:

-snip-

I like the way you think.

remember when Legolas was shield-surfing while shooting a bow?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DvBE7Vt7Vg

of course, in GW2 you can’t have a bow and shield in the same weapon set. but this is a chance to introduce a new concept to the game: a skill dependent on the other weapon set.

I like the idea.

Use to try and get a Frosty ranger build going way back before HoT.
MakeRangerFrostyAgain.

For the heal, personal preference but having it pulse from your location would be better functionality, could be a chain skill where you activate it and it pulses from you like SotP.
Active skill cancels the healing pulses and produces the fruits. Could even have an added affect like more fruits are produced the sooner you activate the skill.
Gives good functionality as a group heal or as a burst Spirit Force gain.

Woah, lotsa input to adress, let’s get to it!

I see a common concern (and rightfully so) is the lack of a “permanent” pet and its effects on baseline traits and skills entirely reliant on its presence. While the Spirit Companion is recalled, any such traits or skills will treat the Pet as if it’d defeated, simple as that.

Now, I’d imagine that the Spirit Gauge will build fast enough to have possible upkeep of the Pet at around 40-80% in Combat (Depending on how much damage is going out and how many Spectral Skills the Strider has on their Utility bar). I agree though that having the Spirit Gauge degrade out-of-combat might’ve been a tad overkill, will correct that to work more like proper Life Force.

The primary objective of an Elite Spec is to bring a new kind of playstyle to the Core Profession. The Strider accomplishes this by transforming the Pet from a staple part of the Ranger’s DPS (Think someone calculated the pet to be responsible for about 40% of a Ranger’s DPS) into a more controllable Burst Damage tool. Because of the loss in DPS, the Strider gets a Damage Bonus from their Minor Grandmaster trait (Regretful Power) to somewhat off-set the lack of a Pet.

However, while numbers are good and all, realistically speaking the Strider will be much more suited for encounters where pets are oftentimes disadventageous, either because they die so quickly or because their presence makes the fight harder. Able to remove the Pet from combat entirely without much ado, the Strider trades the constant stream of DPS for greater versatility and control. At least, that’s my reasoning for the design choices I’ve made so far.

Onto the skills!

For the Strider’s Shield, I took inspiration from the Chronomancer’s Shield. When getting only an Off-hand weapon and no actual other Non-Utility skills to speak of, then I think that the off-hand should be atypically elaborate when compared to standard Off-hands, which is why the Strider got 2 Chain Skills as part of their kit. It only makes sense to Block after you Taunt enemies, but it felt a bit hollow to only have two regular skills on the list. Initially, the Taunt was a stand-alone feature, with Turtle Down being something you could cancel into Aggressive Protector’s rush feature. But I felt the lack of a secondary mode or new Profession Skill warranted a more elaborate and multi-faceted load-out on the Shield itself.

Looking back at the Utility Skills, I can tell that some might be a bit over the top and will be going back to make a few changes here and there. But the function of each will remain the same.

Specifically, Spectral Wisps is a Defensive Tool that can be used in two ways: Either placed on ranged enemies to both slow them down and prevent them from firing Projectiles at you, or placed near yourself in order to gain Frost Aura. With a new Leap Finisher available and a Defensive Ice Field, the Strider have easier access to Frost Aura than ever. This is to off-set their use of Medium Armor despite being a tankier Elite Spec, similar to how Scrapper got Adaptive Armor and Bulwark Gyro.

Spectral Cleansing is admittedly quite boring, and Spectral Tree might need a look-over. Ranger overall have pretty good Heals that cover a wide variety of niches already, so I tried to find one that was relatively new.

It bears mentioning that all the input I’m getting is greatly appreciated! Kudos to ya’ll for that.

I would find it hard to believe that a ranger lost all of his pets lol, its a great idea tbh but the concept is a little odd or maybe grim. Not intending to bash your idea, but prolly would be better to say he’s just a animal spirit/totem caller kinda like the norns, instead of saying his pets DED.

Knuckle Joe.7408:

I would find it hard to believe that a ranger lost all of his pets lol, its a great idea tbh but the concept is a little odd or maybe grim. Not intending to bash your idea, but prolly would be better to say he’s just a animal spirit/totem caller kinda like the norns, instead of saying his pets DED.

No more grim than the “Lore” behind the dragonhunter. Zealots who have given up their protective nature in order to commit themselves to violence. Typically out of desire for revenge from the sound of it.

Considering how intense the fighting has been. Its actually more surprising we don’t see NPC rangers mourning the losses of there pets more often. Or atleast taking care of pets who have been critically injured. (Like losing limbs to a vinetooth).

Knuckle Joe.7408:

I would find it hard to believe that a ranger lost all of his pets lol, its a great idea tbh but the concept is a little odd or maybe grim. Not intending to bash your idea, but prolly would be better to say he’s just a animal spirit/totem caller kinda like the norns, instead of saying his pets DED.

The thematics behind the Strider are rather grim, admittedly. Although, as ANet has shown in the past, they’re always looking for new venues to explore and they don’t shy away from darker thematics if they feel they can work with it (Such as Reaper having been inspired by Slasher flick monsters.)

And while sorrow is definitely a big part of the Strider, so is permeance. After all, the bond between the master and pet was so strong that even death couldn’t part them, so there’s some silver lining in there too!