Guild Wars 2

Quite some time ago, I think almost a year, I hit the 1000 hour mark on ranger, and decided to do a long talk about the troubles I see in this class.

Now I hit 2000 hours a week ago, I now have quite a lot more of experience. I’ve done raids and killed every boss, playing both healing druid and cranger, sometimes a hybrid of the 2.
I play WvW quite a lot, I’ve done healing for a smallscale lots of times and am roaming alone almost every other, winning most of my 1v1s and sometimes even against multiple enemies.
I’ve done PvP too. I’m nowhere near the top level, maybe because I don’t put enough time into it, but I’m in the lower gold and higher silver regions. I’ve finished Ascension

Last time I did a post on this some of the grievances were addressed, like the glyph not healing the pet(which it now does) or adding something to Warhorn 4 because it was a bit weak. If it was my post that made it happen or something else, who knows? But I’d like to think I played part in it. :)

So, let’s go into the class and its troubles. I’ll start with minor annoyances and work up to the big problems later on.

On Wapons:
Staff 5: Sublime Conversion: I already mentioned it last year, we don’t have an indicated Castime on the skill, but casting it interrupts other casts(like AA). 1 and a half years later and I still don’t know, is it 1/4ths of a second? Is it 1/2? How long does it take to cast it?

Sword 2: The first cast of it is still quite wonky. I’m still not entirely sure when exactly the evade starts, and sometimes while casting, one just stays on the spot even though there are no roots or anything to block the way. While making it activate like lightning reflexes(instant evade) would probably make it OP in combination with all the other evaded and low cooldown, I would very much appreciate it working like LR in the sense that when we walk backwards, LR always casts with the evade in the backwards direction, while with sword 2 we first turn to a target(sometimes through auto target).
I know it might annoy some other people, but I would very much like it to always evade in our current backwards direction. Clicking away target, shutting of autotarget, turning the right way, then casting, then finding my target again and turning on auto target again just to have 1 evade in the direction I want? That’s quite annoying, and I often mess it up.

Axe 5: Pls, let us move like warriors? Even if our movement was 66% reduced during cast, I’d still like that a lot more, because right now even the tiniest move interrupts the cast, and that makes me sad very often.

Dagger 5: This abillity feels so underwhelming… It barely ever hits if the target is moving in any way and the distance is over 600, but the range is supposed to be 1200.
By now I treat it as a 600 ranger, otherwise it’s basically useless. If it were more reliable I’d play dagger offhand a lot more often.

Longbow 3: Please, If our character doesn’t even bother to shoot the arrow, because the target is behind us, don’t make it go on cooldown? And I think something like that also happens on LB4 now and then.

GS2: Minor thing, but with 2handed Training the damage in the tooltip still decreases after 9 months now. The actual damage goes up though.

GS4: The hands on Deimos trigger the block. Experienced Rangers know that you can work around those triggers by jumping, but kitten , things that can’t be targeted shouldn’t trigger a counterattack anyway!

SB3: Similar to the first cast of sword 2, I’d like this to always cast in backwards direction, even if the shot cant hit the target that way, but since SB is barely usefull in WvW or PvP anyway, it doesn’t matter too much right now.

Abilities that never get used in any serious build and any gamemode ever:

Glyph of Alignment: (The condis and damage on this are terrible, we don’t need more heal or condiclear in avatar. Casting this would just steal time in which we can cast better things)

Stormspirit: I’ll not accept Boots Dazy McDazerson daze build as anything serious, and even then there are better dazes available and in group content we always have 25 vuln on an enemy all the time. there are enough sources for it that don’t require a stationary spirit with just 1000 range.

Muddy Terrain: Yes, before HoT this was part of some immobilization builds, but now with all the condi clear and resintance it’s only there to maybe remove 2 condis, if it’s traited.

Signet of the Hunt: Though this on is not surprising, really… Most classes have a similar signet that is only there to provide some speed with a kittenty active.

Spike Trap: High cooldown for a bit of cc. If I want some bleeds I’ll take sharpening stones, we have enough CC available on Ranger to not waste an ability slot for this.

Frost Trap: Chills for a maximum of 12 seconds on a 30 second cooldown, terrible damage. If we go for traps we take condi damage/duration, okay then maybe the chill lasts longer, but we have better traps available on lower cooldown.

Skills that almost never get used, but still have their place in the game somewhere:

Water spirit: Sometimes in raids, if you’re kiting flak on Sabatha maybe, or kiting Cairn’s agony and basically only interacting with your team through spirits the whole fight.

Signet of Renewal: The mechanics of this skill are immensely convoluted.
1- Your pet hast to be alive for this skill to do anything other than stunnbreak, if your pet is dead, it ofcourse still goes on cooldown if you press it.
2- If your pet is more than 600 range away, you’re not Benifiting from the Condi clear.
3- Lets say 1 and 2 are not the problem in your situation: You and some other players around you have condis that badly need to be cleared and you cast SoR. You basically just killed your pet! Okay you got some benifits from it though. Now if petswap is on cooldown, because before casting it you wanted to make sure the pet is nearby, you’re going into a 60 second cooldown(45 if traited) for petswap now. And SoR itself also has a 60 second cooldown.
If on the other hand you have not petswapped before, you’re still forced to swap after the cast to keep a low cooldown on petswap.

Having to keep so much in mind and having so many risks added to SoR makes most people never use it at all!

Signet of the Wild: Basically I only have a use for it when kiting Cairn’s agony(again).
Yes, the unblockable bug that we had for many months was overpowerd, but without anything else it’s underpowerd, and only comes to use in Boots “Heavy Petting” ranger or similar builds. We have better alternatives to choose from.

Glyph of Unity: Like… still the most kitten elite ever. Only used in raids for extra heals and GotL application, There might be some use outside of raids to it if the “returning damage” mechanic was improved.

Pets: Oh there is a lot to talk about here. Yes, the most loaded and hardest to balance classmechanic, that some rangers would even like to get rid of. Let’s get into it!

Not counting the GW1 reward pets we have 33 of them. Only 8 of them ever see the daylight on my ranger. Those are: Pink Moa, Lynx, Tiger, Fernhound, Wolf, Electric Wyvern, Bristleback, and Smokesclae. Maybe a number 9 with Junglespider using Paralyzing venom for Prides on handsome Deimos…

Yes, I know some other people might have some Birds or Drakes in some of their PvP/WvW builds, but they are not meta, and for good reasons.

The worst pets are probably Pigs and Devourers. Devourers need some more interesting F2 skills and better overall DPS, maybe people would use them then.
I gotta admit I barely ever played with a Devourer. Does the AI use the evade they have in any useful way? I doubt it…

On pigs: Ohh these are a big mess that is totally stupid. Pigs need an overhaul, or they will never ever be used.
Apart form the fact that improvised weapons are a remnant from the beta days and that enemies can pick up the digged up improvised weapons and deny you their use and even use them against you and the fact that you can’t even plan on what you’re getting, because it’s random(!) and adding that you have to walk to the digging site and replace your weapon skills with whatever stuff your pig found for their F2 to have any use;
these are the current problems that exist with the digged up stuff from pigs:

If the boar digs up a skull, the cooldown of the skull is 120 seconds, another digged up skull can’t be used untill that cooldown is over.

If a warthog digs up a Venom Sac: The poinson field is there, yes, but it’s borders are not shown.

Siamoth: Aren’t Feathers and Tuft basically the same thing? Both blind and Stealth… Plasma on them is one of the best things any of the procs can dig up, other than Hero Drink on Pigs.

Pigs: Egg: Restore Health and Initiative? Yay! Initiative! On a Ranger!

Seriously Anet, what’s with up with the porcupines, they are such a mess!

Traits!

For me, all traitlines are in use at some point, but some traits just never find any use:

Skirmishing: Light on your Feet and Most Dangerous Game can just never compete with Quickdraw.

Marksmanship(least used Traitline for me): Predator’s Instinct: This trait is total trash. Ranger has enough ways to cripple and immobilize without it.
Steady focus: Might be good if we had the skills to pull of something to do Power DPS.
Brutish Seals: Might be good if we had a healing or Elite Signet. The few we have are kinda bad, so it never gets used ever.

Beastmastery: The pet F2 enhancements barely get used, Maybe the Taunt now and then, otherwise not. They are not good enough to use a signet build.

Wilderness Survival: Empathic bond Basically never gets used, because Wilderness Knowledge is the way better trait for condi removal and you play this traitline if you’re up for a build with 3-4 Survival Abilities. Poison Master at least gets used for Cranger.

That’s it for this time, and again it’s a lot. Well, with any luck something might influence balancing again.

Hope you all have a great time!
~Ranys

PS: I didn’t look for misspelling right away, might fix them later.

That’s a huge write up. So, where to start…

Other points you mentioned are fair to question and bring up, so, yeah… That 2k playtime definitely helps one see things (for better or worse).

As I’ve said in the after my first 1k hours, If all the thing I mentione in my writeups would be buffed/reworked at once, it would probably make the class OP, but I’m still gonna do it, just to push for some minor changes/buffs. It seems to help, even if the process is really slow.

On GS4: I like this abillity actually, it’s one of the few things with a trick to it that you can jump to keep the counterattack from triggering. I know these things are not supposed to be, but every class has little… “gimmicks” like this. Ranger is one of the classes that has the fewest of these gimmicks and GS4 is the only one I know of.

I like Bootts Bad Build Videos he does with Wooden Potatoes, they are highly entertaining and the builds can be something fun to play, for a time.

But they are admitedly “BAD BUILDS”. HOW DID YOU MISS THAT PART?

Don’t hold them up as the standard for anything. They aren’t.
Have you missed the time where wooden potatoes rips the build for minutes?

EnderzShadow.2506:

I like Bootts Bad Build Videos he does with Wooden Potatoes, they are highly entertaining and the builds can be something fun to play, for a time.

But they are admitedly “BAD BUILDS”. HOW DID YOU MISS THAT PART?

Don’t hold them up as the standard for anything. They aren’t.
Have you missed the time where wooden potatoes rips the build for minutes?

Whoa dude… calm down…
You sound like an elitist prick if you talk like this.
There are Ranger players that actually play something similar to the daze ranger on a higer level than I play my rankeds.
And Heavy petting ranger is actually quite fun to play and can be quite strong if you can use it and the enemy doesn’t expect the tiger to hit for more than 50% of their health.

But Ignoring all that, I just mentioned these non-meta builds to show that there is a tiny niche for these rarely used abilities. I think I made it quite clear in the post that I don’t think of these builds as anything close to the meta.

I don’t get why you gotta flame me for that? o.o

On pets:

While I do agree that most of them need a close look at their skills, there’s simply no denying that, I also resent the notion that that would make pets great. Even if all pets would be equally viable, pets in general would still be the worst profession mechanic. If any other profession uses its unique mechanic, something is going to happen. When the Ranger uses his mechanic, the pet has to to run to its target and it has to hit its target to achieve any effect. So the Ranger’s mechanic is not only delayed, but also unreliable, as it is dependent on many ifs to align to do what it’s meant to do. It gets even worse if you tell the pet to use its skill, because you have to add the question if the target stays in range until the pet finishes casting and if the ability achieves the desired effect. If your wolf is fearing the target in the opposite direction of you wanting it to, you have essentially wasted the fear.
The simple fact is that even ANet gave away that the pet is a kittenty mechanic by completely sidestepping it with the Druid. I’d go even further and say that the Druid has almost no connection to the Ranger. You could take that traitline, the weapon and the glyphs, put it on a different profession and it would hardly matter. The pet is in dire need of mechanical changes, or ANet will be stuck with buffing the pet’s damage so that it atleast hits hard in the rare occasion that it hits, until a playstyle get popular that allows the pet to hit more reliably, the pet gets nerfed again and the cycle continues.

That is why I advocate for being able to send your pet to locations via ground targetting, so that the player can circumvent, or make up for kittenty pathfinding, so that the questions if the pet hits and if the pet uses its skills in the right angle can be eliminated by the player.
I envision the player to play with the pet, not around the pet. I want to be able to set my pet up for situations I know are going to come and not just react when those situations do finally come (As one example, if I see a Thief stealthing in the distance in PvP or WvW, I want to be able to move my pet between me and the Thief in preparation of the ensuing fight which currently I cannot do).

I’ve updated my thread in which I go into way more detail on how I’d implement such a ground target feature with how the Celestrial Avatar could be integrated into the pet, just follow the link below if you are interested.

Ranys.4028:

EnderzShadow.2506:

I like Bootts Bad Build Videos he does with Wooden Potatoes, they are highly entertaining and the builds can be something fun to play, for a time.

But they are admitedly “BAD BUILDS”. HOW DID YOU MISS THAT PART?

Don’t hold them up as the standard for anything. They aren’t.
Have you missed the time where wooden potatoes rips the build for minutes?

Whoa dude… calm down…
You sound like an elitist prick if you talk like this.
There are Ranger players that actually play something similar to the daze ranger on a higer level than I play my rankeds.
And Heavy petting ranger is actually quite fun to play and can be quite strong if you can use it and the enemy doesn’t expect the tiger to hit for more than 50% of their health.

But Ignoring all that, I just mentioned these non-meta builds to show that there is a tiny niche for these rarely used abilities. I think I made it quite clear in the post that I don’t think of these builds as anything close to the meta.

I don’t get why you gotta flame me for that? o.o

Sorry bud, I was in a rush—-wife trying to get somewhere while I was trying to hurry up and post—

~It seemed to me that while you were making a critique of the ranger class as a whole, you added Bootts builds into that serious critique. And it really doesn’t belong, not that it isn’t meta, but its not very reliable.~
All in all, I agreed with the post.

Oh and I like the build—the heavy petting ranger. I completely agree with you on that.
No one expects that Tiger on Krack. Side question—Have you ever pulled off that full combo on someone? Try the combo on the doors in Legacy of the Foefire.

Yes, 2 or 3 times I managed the combo, but it’s very complicated and some random dodge from the enemy can mess it up.

Wuselknusel.4082:

That is why I advocate for being able to send your pet to locations via ground targetting,

I totally get your stance on this, and I agree, a rework of pet mechanics would probably be great and I’d welcome it.

Though I’m a bit pessimistic on that. I don’t think Anet will ever put the effort into a big overhaul like that. I don’t mean to dissuade you or other from advocating for it, but I’ll talk about what I think Anet might actually take a look at. And I think going for many small changes(hopefully with balance patches coming more often, like many people ask for) is the way that all this will actually happen.

If anyone from Anet reads this though: Don’t take this as an excuse! Please consider reworking our pet mechanics!

Ranger bows have an ‘arc’ of fire. Forward, Forward left, and forward right. If your target is rear, Rear left, or rear right, your bow skill goes on immediate cooldown as if it “failed to hit target”. I agree that is quite annoying. If you ever played GURPS, you’ll know what i’m talking about the arcs with the hex positioning charts they have.

In the past it was reported that when you fire the bow, no matter where your opponent was standing, the arrows would fire through your own body in the direction of the enemy, while you were still facing the same direction when you activated the skill. For example if the enemy was standing behind you, and you were facing away, you’d fire the bow, but the arrows would shoot out your back and hit your target.

And here we have the ‘arc’ system.

I kinda wish that if an enemy moves behind me, that when I fire the skill, that my avatar would automatically spin to fire on the target. However that’s not how it works. You physically have to face your avatar towards the opponent, and hope that your arc forward, forward left, forward right is facing towards the opponent. Otherwise you fired your shot, your shot “missed” and it goes on cooldown, wasting the skill.

Many thieves use this to their advantage with backstab ability, because their skills do massive damage to the rear of the opponent or the side arc rear left, or rear right. When a ranger sees the thief, we actually have to turn our body’s to fire on the enemy, if we want a chance to ‘hit’.

When it comes to combat, I’m afraid ranger’s aren’t very good at ‘dancing’, and quite a few opponents will circle a ranger while dealing damage, leaving the poor ranger attempting to “maneuver” with Longbow or Short bow in hand in order to face our enemy.

Many opponents that regularly target Rangers first, know this, hence why rangers are easily torn down fast. Any skill that roots a character in place is also a death sentence, especially when the opponent can just side step away, and hit is from the backside. Axe #5 for a short period of a two months I was able to shock the enemy pretty good with the massive splurge of damage. But after that the shock wore off, and they just side step back or to the side, wait a few seconds, then jump right into me.

Thank you for writing this. Hopefully someone over at Anet will take notice. Experienced player’s advice should not be overlook, that’s how imbalances and inconveniences are allowed to thrive whilst at the same time, due to the nature of an MMO, new mechanics are introduced that are not without their faults also. This is the pattern with every MMO ever created and the very reason most quit or take their money elsewhere.

Agreed on pets, there are too many and many that are utterly useless. Many skills are wonky indeed and the 3-5s CD when the shot isn’t aimed propperly is beyond frustrating, especially with moving targets and considering lag etc. Ranger has two way to stay alive on LB: knockback, negated by stability, and invisibility shot, which can be blocked by say a random DH aegis proc. I mostly pvp so that’s my focus.

Invisibility shot should just grant invisibility, 3s of superspeed if it connects. LB 4 needs to have its damage increased and further increased against targets that cannot be knocked back so that it’s remotely useful. GS 5 utterly pathetic, you need to stand still while casting and the range is minimal; instant cast and range increase.

Many don’t enjoy playing bunker druid but truthfully the alternatives are lacking in sustain or dps, especially considering projectile hate. I feel ranger is probably the worse ranged profession at the moment, which is simply ridiculous. People who are new to the game and select ranger do so to play ranged, yet their burst potential is among the lowest: LB 2 for DH, Burst for Warrior, and unload for thiefs are all better at pressuring than rapid fire; and even Eir was replaced by a DH, so go figure. The one good skill we have is insanely telegraphed and anyone with half a brain can dodge; the two sustain skills we have are easily negated resulting in a quick death.

I say reduce Rapid Fire cast time, maybe even the damage and lower the CD. Make invisibility shot grant invisibility, period, and 3s superspeed if it connects. Make LB 4 do at least 2k damage on medium armor and 50% more on targets that cannot be knocked down (that seems like a lot? consider DH’s LB 2 with a 4s CD) so that it’s actually useful and have pets that provide useful utility such as protection or stability.

Every profession should have a viable power, condition and support build. That’s my suggestion for addressing one such issue, since that’s what I know best.

I just remembered: the script to have your character turn around and face the enemy when activating a skill, rather than have it misfire and go on cd, is already written and has been given to Mesmer’s shield 5.

I understand that could lead to all sorts of shenanigans if it were universally applied but when it comes to evasive skills, such as invisibility and knockback, it should be a standard.

i agree with everything it is said in this post.

But guys Anet devs arent known for listening sensible and helpful suggestions in the official forums, only the mods circle this places.

Better to take this to reddit, seems those are the official support forums.