(Prepare for a bit of a text wall. TL;DR is at the end.)
Hello, everyone! As with many others here, I’ve been massively disappointed with the lack of support the ranger has gotten thus far. However, I’d like to suggest a change that hits a couple of problems.
The main problem the ranger faces in my experience is that the class offers so little in group play. It works fine for general PvE world farming (hello, bots!), but groups benefit from bringing a different profession along because about the only things the ranger can do for them is use warhorn skill 5 and healing spring. I’m not going to count boons from pets because they’re unreliable, and I’ll defer that discussion to the hundreds of other topics on it.
Next, rangers have a glass ceiling because their skills are less effective. I gather, hopefully without misunderstanding something the dev’s have told us all, that this was intentionally done in consideration that the ranger has a persistent pet with skills of its own (again, let’s defer pet discussion to other topics). However, this leaves the rangers sorely lacking in effective skills and build diversity. Signets and spirits in general seem lacking due to long CD’s, limited effects, and flimsiness in the case of spirits.
So, with all that said, here’s my suggestion: replace nature spirits with nature aspects. A nature aspect is similar to a transformation except that the ranger keeps all his other skills as they are. The aspect’s effect would be to provide specialized buffs to all allies (within some range, say 1200), perhaps with a more powerful version of the buff applied to the ranger. Some points on this:
1) The buff is not a boon and is not subject to removal.
2) Application to the group is crucial.
3) Effects are guaranteed to activate – no more of this X% chance mess. There can still be conditions for the effects, but meet the condition and its a guarantee – see the example.
4) Effects are in effect (see wut I did thar) the entire duration of the aspect.
This would be accompanied with some type of graphical effect on the ranger; I envision sort of a translucent overlay of the ranger’s body, slightly larger than the actual ranger, that has a color corresponding to the aspect that’s been chosen.
For example (and the final effects could, of course, be different), let’ kitten Sun Spirit. It’s now called Aspect of the Sun. Under this aspect, the ranger’s attacks deal an additional 10% damage. Additionally, allies in range are buffed to deal 10% extra damage to burning foes. This stacks meaning the ranger does 20% extra damage against burning foes while allies just get the 10% conditional buff.
So, what do you think? Does anyone have other ideas for reworking spirits? I toyed with the idea of just making them invincible but decided the X% chance to activate would still make ranger assistance far less reliable than simply bringing another class.
Dare I suggest…this could even replace our class mechanic of the “non-optional” pet? Taking a pet could then be made into a skill like in GW1 where you can pick to have it or not, maybe even replacing the Spirit of Nature elite.
TL;DR: Replace nature spirits with nature aspects giving guaranteed buffs to the party (maybe even make it the class mechanic) to improve ranger value in groups and create another viable build option.