Guild Wars 2

My goal for this thread is to bring the minds together of those who want to be as detailed as possible about what the Ranger lacks and how we can improve them. I have been browsing threads all day since the Balance video on Friday, and I have found a lot of very disappointed/rage threads. Those of which have resulted in people arguing and insulting each other. I want this thread to be the place people come to for civil discussions about what they would like to improve to the ranger in their perspective. Give and take ideas from other people. Agree and disagree about certain things, but please be civil!

Voice off your opinions. Try to be detailed. Section off your posts with areas of specific focus like traits, cleave/aoe, pets, weapon skills, utilities, etc. Feel free to talk about whatever area you feel you want to discuss.

If you think the Ranger is fine then please refrain from posting.
Again, please be respectful of other people and DO NOT turn this in to a rage thread.

Some of my major concerns about Rangers are their traits and the way they are organized. I feel as though they are very inefficient. Consider moving/combining/altering traits particularly in the Skirmishing, Wilderness Survival, and Beast Mastery Trees. Combining and moving traits could promote newer traits coming to light.

Traits

Skirmishing

1. Trait #1 Pet’s Prowess could possibly be combined with Trait #6 Agility Training or even moved to Beast Mastery tree. Freeing some space for new traits.
2. Trait #3 Trapper’s Defense (I’ll talk more about this later down the post when talking about skills)
3. Trait #7 Carnivorous Appetite - Probably move this one down to Beast Mastery.
4. Trait #8 Trapper’s Expertise and Trait #11 Trap Potency are both trap related which is ‘wilderness survival’ themed. Should probably be moved.
5. Trait #13 Strider’s Defense - I feel like this trait is incredibly underwhelming.

Wilderness Survial

1. Trait #2 Healer’s Celerity - This trait needs a better effect. Swiftness only is underwhelming. The revive speed is an ‘ok’ segment, but maybe it could be a bit stronger.
2. Trait #7 Offhand-Training - Possibly move to Skirmishing tree. Master?
3. Trait #10 Martial Mastery - Also could be moved to skirmishing tree. Adept?

Nature Magic - Edited

1. Trait #1 Circle of Life - Use Healing Spring at 25% HP. Move to Master trait. Edited (shadowpass)
2. Trait #12 Nature’s Voice - Unsure if this is worthy of a Grandmaster trait. Shouts are uncommon as it is.

Beast Mastery

1. Trait # 1 Speed Training and Trait #5 Commanding Voice - I personally do not see a reason for why these are split. Simply make all pet related skills shorter c/d.
2. Trait #8 Stability Training - Your pet getting CC’d should be the least of your worries in my opinion.
3. Trait #9 Intimidation Training - I feel like this trait is in most cases redundant regarding canine and spider pets whom already have a snare inherent to their F2’s (Chill/Immobilize).

Possible future/new traits

For those out there(I’m positive there are many of you lol) who believe Ranger lack cleave or AoE dmg in most cases.

1. New Trait – Glass Arrows or Splinter Shot – These traits could be used for Bows in that possibly whenever they land a critical hit the shots would splinter and do AoE dmg. Give this trait a 1sec internal cooldown to prevent splinter piercing spam on stacked mobs. (Bringing back some GW1 named skills!)

Pets:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Is-ranger-in-a-terrible-place-right-now/page/2#post4033965

Sword:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Why-the-current-sword-needs-polishing/first#post4118838

Longbow: More kiting options.

That’s what I want to be changed. I would be fine with that. And some trait adjustment have to be done. Yet again that applies to all classes.

Next are some of my concerns about utilities. Mostly traps and how they can improve. Giving Rangers a bit more options for AoE. I also feel like they could use a few tweaks on their heal skills. Lastly, I feel as though a variety of other utilities could be looked at.

Utilities

1. Heal as One - Reduce the cooldown to 15sec. Reduce the heal the amount to a fair spot similar to that of Mirror or Withdraw. Could promote actively keeping an eye on your pet’s health without having too much down time to worry about yourself when you need it. Could also promote certain Rune builds with heal skill effects. (example: Rune of Lyssa's {4})
2. Healing Spring Shave off the cooldown a bit to possibly 25sec. Initial condition cleanse to 2 with 2 additional cleanses every 3 sec for 6sec. Or something of this nature because at times I find it rather difficult to sit in the spring for multiple cleanses the whole time, So hopefully you would get a little more out of it while not being completely confined to an area that is most likely getting bombed. I’m not trying to compete too much since Healing Spring has a longer water field, but it is hard to keep up with engi’s healing turret when they have a shorter cooldown and bigger burst heal as well as a trait that brings their heal off cooldown.
3. Troll Unguent This skill is pretty strong, but I wouldn’t want it to share a similar cooldown with Healing Spring. Possibly reduce the healing a bit but not too much since it is a heal overtime.
4. Spike Trap could be more useful if it was like GW1’s Spike Trap in that it caused knockdown when triggered. Trap Rangers lack hard CC. Remove cripple effect.
5. Frost Trap - Possibly apply a small dmg per pulse. So that maybe some power builds could have access to at least 1 trap.
6. Viper’s Nest - Make this trap cause cripple. Nobody in their right mind likes walking through snakes… right?
7. Flame Trap Possibly cause blindness on initial hit. A soft CC that might be kinda useful if you decided to run a trap build since you would most likely lack a stun break.
8. “Guard” - Possibly give your pet Fury.
9. Sharpening Stone - Cooldown seems a bit high for simply just bleed stacks that don’t last too long.

New Utilities

1. Dust Trap – Trap that causes blindness per pulse. Smoke Field. Edited (shadowpass)

Issues with complexity. In short, Ranger has to be simpler and traits, skills, pets need to be stream-lined. Honestly, one big problem ranger has is providing an avenue for a high range DPS build because the LB is buggy and the pet is kinda meh.

Also the extended edition of above is click my name and look for it. It’s called the reason ranger is bad.

Weapons & Skills

Warhorn

1. Hunter’s Call - I feel like this ability should probably cause blindness in some way. Could help being moderately defensive in certain situations. A fine example would be when you are wielding an Axe mainhand and you are lacking mobility/evasion. Blind could help mitigate not being a complete sitting duck.
2. Call of the Wild - Reduce the cooldown to 20 or 25sec. Reduce the duration of the boons given. Could help aid WvW by having a more reliable blast finisher up and ready.

Shortbow

1. Crossfire - Remove the requirement of having to bleed on flanking. I find it unfair that engis and necros can toss out more conditions as well as having no requirement for constant auto attack pressure. In most cases one cannot ideally position himself the way they would like for this to be effective.
2. Concussion Shot - possibly shave off the cooldown to 15 or 20sec to help promote GW1 style of play being an interrupt ranger. Could remove stun if necessary. Compared to other classes, Ranger lacks CC.

Sword

1. This being a popular topic that I am sure is well known.
   Simply polish the clunky Auto-Attack. I understand that this is a unique chain of attacks by having 2 of the chain skills being leaps. However, unfortunately more often then not it gets you killed. Changing this to a regular sword chain could also promote a better PVE experience and a more reactive style PVP experience.
2. Serpent’s Strike - I believe this skill should match its evade time from start to the attack execution.

Aurawind.8429:

Weapons & Skills

Shortbow

1. Crossfire - Remove the requirement of having to bleed on flanking. I find it unfair that engis and necros can toss out more conditions as well as having no requirement for constant auto attack pressure. In most cases one cannot ideally position himself the way they would like for this to be effective.

The rate of fire of SB is so high though. I could maintain ~8 stacks of bleeds easily with current restrictions. If they were lifted, i would imagine the bleeding on SB will be very OP.

Pets

I see a lot of diversity on this topic. Some say that pets are completely useless and are a liability. Some say they dislike the fact that you do less damage because you rely on your pet to do a portion of the dmg. Some wish that the pet should just be a tool for buffs, debuffs, and cc while contributing no dmg.

I feel as though I am personally on the side of the pet being a tool. I love the idea of it being there for buffs, debuffs, and cc.

Ideas of how to make pets more effective

1. Combine some of the already existing traits. (like Pet’s Prowess and Agility Training)
2. Add traits to possibly increase their attack speed.
3. Give them an option to be able to pulse buffs kinda like Experimental Turrets. While the Ranger is doing what it does best in the back line, it can help support his team with the pet in the front line.
4. Add a trait in which the pet gains more of your stats. Might help promote Beast Masters.

gawker.8340:

Aurawind.8429:

Weapons & Skills

Shortbow

1. Crossfire - Remove the requirement of having to bleed on flanking. I find it unfair that engis and necros can toss out more conditions as well as having no requirement for constant auto attack pressure. In most cases one cannot ideally position himself the way they would like for this to be effective.

The rate of fire of SB is so high though. I could maintain ~8 stacks of bleeds easily with current restrictions. If they were lifted, i would imagine the bleeding on SB will be very OP.

That is a good point. Possibly do a 1sec bleed? Or just straight up make the cast time longer a bit.

I personally like the cast time. So probably do a reduced bleed duration I think.

If you want ideas for weapon/trait/utility changes, check out this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Power-to-the-Rangers-Brainstorming-Changes/first

Why move the pet traits to beastmastery?
The Beastmastery tree is extremely underused in the Ranger community due to the massive amount of QQ about pets in general, and moving every single trait to that one tree will just lead to more QQ about pets, at least spreading them out give people more variety when it comes to building a ranger AND including your pet in that build.

Susanoo.2586:

Why move the pet traits to beastmastery?
The Beastmastery tree is extremely underused in the Ranger community due to the massive amount of QQ about pets in general, and moving every single trait to that one tree will just lead to more QQ about pets, at least spreading them out give people more variety when it comes to building a ranger AND including your pet in that build.

Lol, you are probably right, it might just be my thought process of fitting themed-like traits in to the trees you would most likely see them in. :P

shadowpass.4236:

If you want ideas for weapon/trait/utility changes, check out this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Power-to-the-Rangers-Brainstorming-Changes/first

Longbow

1. I like your idea on the Hunter’s Shot gaining immobilize. However, the more I think about it… I don’t have many issues with Longbow the way it is. I would say that in my experience the issues I have are not being able to do close quarters skirmishes with my alternate weapon set. I feel like Longbow is designed for those long ranged shots, but I do think that the range dmg thresholds should be altered a bit.
2. I cannot fully agree with your opinion on Rapid Fire. I feel as though it is pretty strong in the sense that it can track stealthed players. If you had that on a shorter cooldown you could simply spam that skill and they wouldn’t have anywhere to hide.
3. I don’t mind barrage the way it is. That skill can get a lot of tags and cut off a zerg in WvW. It also provides decent pressure on points in pvp.

Greatsword

1. I agree to bring the dmg up a bit on the auto attack.
2. I disagree about increasing Maul’s dmg because it does have really HIGH base dmg for a relatively short cooldwon. At 2k Power, Maul’s base dmg is is about 1370ish. Increasing the dmg by 50% would mean a base of 2k. That is like an eviscerate on an 8sec cooldown.
3. I am uncertain how I feel about Swoop knocking people down. That just sounds like Maul combo to be a little too devastating while following it up with a daze/stun on the Hilt Bash.
4. I am fine with how Counter Attack works.
5. I am fine with how Hilt Bash works currently.

Sword

1. All I ask for as an auto attack chain is personally something that doesn’t lock you in place. The rooting auto attacks prevent the reactive style of play I feel the sword is designed for. Giving the first 2 auto attacks might seems a little over the top for me. Guardians have a similar ability except they only gain 1 stack of might on their last hit in the chain.
2. I am fine with the way Hornet’s Sting is.
3. Mostly fine with Serpent’s Strike, I just want the evade time to match the start and end of the skill.

Axe

1. I do agree on the increase in dmg for Ricochet.
2. I am fine with how this skill works for condition ranger purposes. The shotgun bleed isn’t too bad. 5 stacks of Torment seems really over the top. I personally think Torment is overpowered lol.
3. I am also fine with Winter’s Bite.
4. Possibly apply a few stacks of torment to Path of Scars. maybe about 2 or 3.
5. I feel like Whirling Defense doesn’t hit hard enough.

Shortbow

1. This was mentioned a couple of posts above, but I do agree that the auto attack should always cause bleed on hit regardless of which side they were hit from like necros and engis. But since the auto attack is quite fast, I think the bleed stack should only be 1sec.
2. I am fine with Poison Volley, Quick Shot, and Crippling Shot the way they are.
3. I feel like Concussion shot should have a shaved off cooldown. To promote more GW1 interrupt style of play since they lack a bit of CC. If not that, then definitely increased the daze/stun duration.

Warhorn

1. I like your idea on Hunter’s Call.
2. I agree with the reduced cooldowns. The boon durations would have to be decreased a bit. I am uncertain about the condition cleansing.

Aurawind.8429:

Susanoo.2586:

Why move the pet traits to beastmastery?
The Beastmastery tree is extremely underused in the Ranger community due to the massive amount of QQ about pets in general, and moving every single trait to that one tree will just lead to more QQ about pets, at least spreading them out give people more variety when it comes to building a ranger AND including your pet in that build.

Lol, you are probably right, it might just be my thought process of fitting themed-like traits in to the trees you would most likely see them in. :P

And yet again, if we want to exclude our pet from our gamstyle, we can’t do that either. Just look at the Skirmishing traitline. There is simply no trait you would want to take as fullzerker ranger excluding the pet.

shadowpass.4236:

If you want ideas for weapon/trait/utility changes, check out this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Power-to-the-Rangers-Brainstorming-Changes/first

Traits

Skirmishing

1. Trapper’s Defense – I love your idea of a dust trap and it being a smoke field.
2. Strider’s Defense – I feel as though this ability should possibly provide a 25% to evade an attack. with a 10sec cooldown.

Wilderness Survival

1. Your version of Healer’s Celerity would be kinda overpowered in PVP. Possibly add a little aid from your pet, but not as strong as Lick Wounds.
2. I agree on the Shared Anguish trait having a reduced cooldown.
3. Hide in plain sight needs to keep its cooldwon.
4. I like your idea of Oakheart Salve.

Nature Magic

1. I LOVE your idea of Circle of Life. I feel this would need to be a Master trait.
2. I like your idea on enlargement proc at 50%.

Beast Mastery

1. I like your idea of Stability Training.
2. I like your idea of Speed Training.

shadowpass.4236:

If you want ideas for weapon/trait/utility changes, check out this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Power-to-the-Rangers-Brainstorming-Changes/first

Utilities

1. I feel like for “Protect Me”, the pet should take 50% dmg reduction, but still take the dmg you would take.
2. I am fine with “Sic ’em”, you have to use it wisely. The duration of the the buff should last its full duration though.
3. I like the idea of Muddy Terrain applying reveal. It would be like watching invisible footsteps in the mud. lol
4. I love the idea of Dust Trap. GW1 Skill FTW!

Bringing up the post.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Aurawind.8429:

Susanoo.2586:

Why move the pet traits to beastmastery?
The Beastmastery tree is extremely underused in the Ranger community due to the massive amount of QQ about pets in general, and moving every single trait to that one tree will just lead to more QQ about pets, at least spreading them out give people more variety when it comes to building a ranger AND including your pet in that build.

Lol, you are probably right, it might just be my thought process of fitting themed-like traits in to the trees you would most likely see them in. :P

And yet again, if we want to exclude our pet from our gamstyle, we can’t do that either. Just look at the Skirmishing traitline. There is simply no trait you would want to take as fullzerker ranger excluding the pet.

Pet is the reason I pretty much stopped playing my ranger. I’ll be using it for fractals now aside from the no skills needed wbt. You can use the skirmishing line for a trapper build… which always puzzled me as I thought those condition traits should be in the condition line… but, whatever, it helps for tagging mobs.

Ranger

• Hilt Bash (Greatsword)
  Impossible to land.

• Hunter’s Shot (Longbow)
  Should stealth on-use rather than on-hit. Remove its low damage if necessary.

• Concentration Training (Nature Magic Adept trait)
  Remove the requirement for the pet to be in combat.
  Boon pets are often kept on “Avoid Combat”-mode, so they don’t get out of range or killed. (Fern Hound, Red Moa, Blue Moa, Jungle Stalker).

• Compassion Training (Beastmastery Adept trait)
  Remove the requirement for the pet to be in combat.
  Healing pets are often kept on “Avoid Combat”-mode, so they don’t get out of range or killed. (Fern Hound).

• traps should be 900 range when traited so they can become a realistic AOE option in WVW
• untraited pets should be faster by default and species more differentiated
• sword #1 is broken and should be fixed

Hunter’s Shot - its hard to me to see this skill being instant since it does shoot a projectile.

• You would have to make it unblockable so that it is a bit more reliable.
  Or
• Make it be instant, do no damage, and cause immobilize or something.

I do agree that pets need to be reworked in the regards to gaining boons/getting healed.

Love the idea of traps being 900 range. would make rangers moderately more viable in WvW

Well, only reason where Hunter’s Shot could be used as Stealth giver is if it buffs uf instantly for 5+ seconds, and immobilises on projectile hit.
Any other way, would transfer Stealth bonus to Point Blank Shot and redesign whole Hunter’s Shot to some tricky stuff, which could give immobilise, or at least daze/torment if Rapid Fire doesn’t building up Torment instead of Vulnerability.
Oh yeah, and Vulnerability building should go to Long Range Shot when it even has bit faster RoF…

No clue how our “fixation” planned…

Rampage as one. Reload from 120 to 40. Many problems solved.

No, RaO at 40 would be insane broken.. with boon duration you can get up to 30 seconds of stab uptime. Maybe 90 seconds? It does need to be shortened though for sure.

I would prefer if they cut both the duration and recharge down by half, so 10s and 60s respectively.

10s is not good enough. Imagine that your pet is going elsewhere so 5s may be wasted.
20s/60s?

anyway we can play figures as much as we want

I dont unterstand why people complain about hilt bash
kitten it needs to much skill to land?
Instant stealth for a lb skill? kitten it needs to much positioning to gain a reward?

A lower cd on RaO would be nice
Currently the ranger cqn gain less advantage from on-elite runes.
Maybe a 90s cd or the possibilty to lower the cooldown via traits. Maybe shout mastery.

Sarision.6347:

I would prefer if they cut both the duration and recharge down by half, so 10s and 60s respectively.

This. Lack of stability is a major issue in wvw.

Not to be too negative, but with the current track record of Ranger development the simple answer is:

Lower standards and expectations.

Hey Snow, my problem with the Hilth Bash is that it’s same slow as my other skills. I take like 2-5k damage between button push and interrupt @ good latency.
Didn’t said a word about this before, just telling you

The only thing rangers need are better pets.

I do pretty well roaming with my Ranger and its a fun class to play, but what little the ranger lacks can be easily mitigated. This topic has been beaten to death, but there is a distinct disadvantage for rangers. Points invested into healing are somewhat negated by the lack of pet AI. Ranger is the only class that does not have Healing Power coupled with Vitality or Toughness.

My only suggestion is to make all pet skills available to the player and of course the common QQ about pet response times.

This would make up for the points “lost” in the beastmastery trait line by making players more capable at responding to his/her surroundings. Of course this would make the pet/ranger worse off then it is now without a serious response time mechanic fix.

For example:
Felines would provide a bleed when needed.
Birds would provide people who like running in zergs a swiftness cast.
Canines would provide timely interrupts for melee rangers.
Spiders could immobilize allowing for an additional escape option.
So on and so forth…

Again, this topic has been beaten to death. What I’ve said could not possibly be an original idea but I think its a pretty good one.

Taking aside responsiveness, pets still have some problems with hitting moving targets. I got thinking… we all hate sword autoattack, because we are jumping around like stupid with no real control. Why not do the same thing to pets attacks?

How to improve the ranger?

• Give the pets more evades or immunity to the ridiculous AOE and cleave in this game, single target damage only (in pve).

• Allow dodging during sword #1 animations.

• Buff unused pets, such as boar and bird.

• Take swiftness off bird dmg rotation and make it an attack.

• Make traps instant cast

• Make pets naturally faster, so they can hit moving targets and not have a net dps loss.

Seisyll.5914:

Taking aside responsiveness, pets still have some problems with hitting moving targets. I got thinking… we all hate sword autoattack, because we are jumping around like stupid with no real control. Why not do the same thing to pets attacks?

The sad thing is this is how the attacks work when you are in Moa Form to compensate for the fact that NPC animations don’t allow for moving and attacking at the same time (mostly).

The only reason pets don’t slide or leap on their autos to compensate for the move-stop-attack-move npc AI is simply because Anet refuses to fix it.

Hell, even a lot of hostile mobs have enough range on their melee’s to allow them to hit you even if they never physically touch you while you kite them.

I would argue better pets and better power options and some more group build options besides spirits. Right now, if you go power. You’re not REALLY power, more so what a hybrid would be with other classes except you don’t have the survivability that comes with being a hybrid that other classes get going hybrid example: d/d ele, celestial engi, celestial warrior.

The reason is the dmg coefficients on weapons being lowered coupled with the traits that just don’t synergize completely for power builds are only detrimental really to power setups and you just don’t see it as a ranger UNTIL you run power.

If you go FULL ON power , meaning no survivability at all power then yes, you do alot more damage, but if somebody sneezes on you , you will die (this is where being good with positioning especially in a tPvP sense comes into a play, but even then there’s only so many spots on the map and rangers get no blinks/teleportation like other zerker counterparts) but you have literally nothing in condi removal and barely anything that you can count with direct dmg mitigation like other classes that go full power get except maybe shatter mesmer (protect me ,stone signet, which isnt BAD , but it’s still 2 utility slots , thankfully protect me is a stun break though), but then again, compare shatter mesmer power burst with longbow power burst and you’ll see the glaring problems in a comparison of balls to the wall power build setups.

We sacrifice more to do much less dmg than every class that sacrifices to get dmg that makes a much more impact without any group utility while other classes get burst impact and most of the time even coupled with OR have the option to have group support except possibly our renewal signet if you chose to run that however doing so with signet of the beastmaster would almost instantly kill you unless you did it in conjunction with a guardians cleanse but then if a guardian has to cleanse you after, what’s the point of aoe condition removal in the first place then – hence it would then probably just be selfish as you would never push the active meaning you would probably take something like lightning reflexes instead.

Our only truly traited condition removal lies in 2 highly defensive trees, one of those condi removal options being completely passive something which I hate to begin with , especially something that’s important and should almost always be actively handled with like conditions. Survival of the fittest isn’t bad though, I feel like that’s probably the only good new GM trait we got in that patch, it’s just 30 deep in a vit/boon duration tree meaning you sacrifice yet again, power for little condi removal which wouldn’t effect us if our dmg coefficients didn’t suck.

Alot of our group-wide traits exist mostly within our beastmaster line. A line that only promotes builds in which are selfish and aoe factors in this trait line have no synergy at all with running a team build. (AOE Vigor, which can be handled by horn warriors anyway, not saying any would run such an offhand in tPvP , but you see that ALOT in WvW).

To me, besides pets which they did do an alright job of fixing (f2 still doesn’t work in most cases but it’s better than what it used to be which is saying alot, pathing still isn’t GREAT and pets don’t do enough IMPACT dmg except canine knockdowns – there needs to be more impact damage existence that can compare to canine knockdowns, it’s good and reminds players why rangers have a pet when they get knocked down and to possibly look for that animation later on while they’re fighting a ranger. I feel like this is the presence most pets should have whether it be a support presence or an offensive presence… As of right now I think the only other pet with a similar presence is the immobilization on spiders and maybe the burst on raven (used to be atleast before nerf to dmg). Also needing to be looked at is the group-wide build options being opened up besides just running spirits which gets old but also power build survivability options. Opening up group-wide build options with actives to help the group as opposed to all passive or mostly passive builds, but active/high skill ceiling build setups as well.

I just don’t know how to approach it and it seems like no matter what gets proposed it will most likely get ignored anyway, unfortunately.