Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking alot about the recent changes to the ranger in the feature patch and have come up with some ideas that may improve rangers in other ways, firstly i had thoughts about the ‘hide in plain sight’ trait and how i liked the idea of it but it felt a bit lackluster so i thought what if the ‘camoflage’ not only stealthed the ranger but allowed us to attack from stealth without being revealed much like the jaguars ‘stalk’ ability and as it is a short duration stealth i doubt it would be OP, just a small idea but i think it would be good and something unique to the ranger.

Another idea i had was aimed more toward the BM type ranger and it was a new trait for the beastmastery line, i thought alot about how some of the rangers weapon skills synergized with pets by applying certain effects and that got me thinking, what if we had a trait that would apply the pets F2 ability to the ranger and would perhaps go something like this:

Empathic Response: Active pets F2 ability is applied to the ranger.

for example, the spider type pets F2 ability would apply their effects to the rangers next attacks, the wolf F2 would cause the ranger to also apply fear increasing it’s duration, the jaguars ‘stalk’ ability would apply camoflage to the ranger or the porsine pets would allow the ranger to also forage item’s making it easier to pick them up etc,
now some of the F2’s may need to be adjusted/improved in order to make them useful but in my opinion it would improve synergy between ranger and pet.

I like the idea of Empathic Response. Though, the hyena F2 would be problematic (mesmers would rage about us getting a clone lol). This trait would make pets useful even when you have to pull them out of combat to keep em alive. Pop their F2 and you get a bonus attack.

You mentioned the porcine forage skills being made easier to use with this trait. Honestly, that mechanic needs to be cleaned up anyhow. The items needs to replace the ranger’s F2 button automatically and then maybe drop another item to be used by an ally, similar to ele summoned weapons.

That is true it may not work that way with the hyena but i think perhaps if they added an effect to the skill like an attack of opportunity, “Damage increased 150% on next attack” for both hyenas and the ranger and seeing as the hyena has much lower power than other pets this effect would be beneficial.

You could spawn a second character and copy your first’s movenents/actions when trigger Hyena F2. People would report you for multiboxing though.. lolz

Don’t know about the idea though… Most of pet abilities are howls, tail attacks, venom spits etc..

Plus I don’t think we need this.

While your ideas are certainly fun, what short coming of the Ranger are they trying to resolve? Changes need to be geared toward fixing some of the issues the class has. They would certainly make the class more engaging, but do you feel we need help delivering damage?

Take the RF change for example. While the class wasn’t really lacking in overall damage, it was severely lacking in burst. This is the problem the RF change fixed. Unfortunately it really didn’t do much to make the class more engaging or reward higher levels of play.

Changes we receive need to be geared toward improving our role in WvW, giving the class more functional group utility (which ties into WvW), improving overall survivability and manueverability, the condition dilemma, and finding a niche for the Shortbow to fill now that it has been outclassed by main-hand Axe. At least these are the areas I find most pressing at the moment since I mostly focus on WvW (as a guild group), GvGs, and roaming.

@Atherakthia: The Empathic Response idea does solve some issues. First, it makes the ranger more team-friendly. A pet howl that chills nearby foes is nice. But if another howl originated from the player as well, that’s more chills = more targets and/or longer duration. Good for control. Or good for aoe regen, fury, might, fear, cleanses, etc.

Secondly, it adds more dynamic to the ranger. Placing your pet far away so that the 2 howls affect multiple areas vs doubling up on a single target. If it’s an attack, like the Raven’s strike, that’s 2x hard hitting spike.

And lastly, it’s more synergy with the pet, which I think is needed. As I mentioned above, if you have to pull your pet back in a zerg/dungeon to keep it alive, you can still use your F2 skill originating from the player and so the pet still serves a use. Pull your jaguar out but go stealth and crit hit hard anyway? Cool.

I think a trait like empathic response would either require a big nerf to most pets or to ranger cc…

Stalker becomes really OP, though. AOE 10 stacks of might for 15 seconds + RF = ow.
:P

solrik.6028:

I think a trait like empathic response would either require a big nerf to most pets or to ranger cc…

Right.

If you want to do something like this, it’s better to think of unique skills for each pet family.

Like all Dogs will do their current F2, but the ranger will cast a large AE cripple around himself.

things of that nature.

Makes sense , it don’;t Dicrectly buff the Ranger , it shares the cooldowns.
it provides no Extra passive Defensem all Active use.
it creates a Wider Range of Utlity/Abilities for a ranger to use In group fights.

and by no means Stalker would be op its 6secs for a Grandmaster (if it was Grandmaster Trait for BM line , instead of that sucky f2 heal well i think its not very good :P )

it would make much more Sense and Use, combined with other skills.

eg , Furn wolf > compassion Training>Natures bounty>healing spring>f2 Burst Regen for a Long Duration.
and no need to Trait all the way into Nature magic and having to use Shouts.

0,0,4,4,6 Bm Support master. Damage and Self support/ additional Survival or offense depending on which pet is out.

if people Learnt what pet does what they can Predict what is going to happen ,or wait to see , what is going to happen then Create a Tactical Strategy against it.

but in the end its just like i said in a different thread Fighting a BM is like Juggling two targets and both need to be Fought at the same time.
Answers Aoe+Cleave and Aoe stuns/kds , perfect answer Hammer+gs or weapons of the same combat style can be Very Effective vs this build (if this trait was made)

also putting said trait in the BM line , keeps the Ranger himself from becoming too Powerful, and his boost of power comes from the new Trait on the Cooldown from the Selected Pets.

Good idea.

Empathic Response seems like an awesome idea. It’d give us more value out of our pet F2s without making the pet itself useless. Wider coverage on boons, and it’d make the condition applying pets more useful for a condi ranger set up.

Plus how insanely cool would it be to use a drake’s F2 ability? It’d make salamander drakes much, much stronger as we’d be able to shoot fire from our mouths and thus aim it better. Huge benefit for a condi ranger who might not want to bring torch but still needs burning. A condi BM build where the ranger could BREATH FIRE would immediately become a popular build if for no other reason than how cool it’d be.

Marsh drake would also be nice as it’s a lot of poison applications in a bouncing AoE. Rifer drake would give the ranger a ranged AoE burst when using something like the mainhand axe that doesn’t have much burst. It’d be a pretty interesting playstyle to say the least.

I’d also like for our spirits to work differently. They just feel so underwhelming in actual use, probably because it’s just a random proc on attack and you don’t see any special animations from it. I’d like them to be a bit more engaging than just sitting there and giving passive benefits.

I had an idea for spirits also and i think they should be changed into glowing orbs of light that float around the ranger and follow by default (the utility icons already look like orbs), remove the health and make them untargetable, change ‘Vigorous Spirits’ by removing the health increase and adding a reduced cooldown on their abilities, (Trait IV Vigorous Spirits: Spirits abilities have 20% reduced cooldown and a greater chance to trigger their benefits.) and change ‘Spirits Unbound’ to (Trait VII Spirits Unbound: Spirits abilities affect twice as many targets.) and ‘Natures Vengeance’ to (Trait XI Nature’s Vengeance: Activated skills of spirits are larger and trigger when the spirit disappears.) and finally make the light emitted by the spirits pulse when their benefits are triggered so the ranger knows when it’s activating and emit a flash when the ranger triggers it’s ability.

I wouldn’t want their animations or models to change. Spirits are a call back to the nature rituals from GW1 where they had the same sort model and had the same stationary effect generators they have now. I don’t want to lose that theme.

The problem is that spirits can’t behave the way they did in GW1 because of how limited GW2 is in terms of build variety. Nature Rituals in GW1 created a constant environmental effect over a large radius that effected both allies and enemies equally, and the big advantage was from building your skill set around taking advantage of whatever environment you created with the spirits.

For example if you placed Brambles down, a spirit that damaged anyone who fell down in the area, you’d then use your knock down heavy build to rack up damage. The enemy could take advantage too, but wouldn’t have the advantage of preparing their build ahead of time to maximize the spirit.

You could throw down Conflagration and Favorable Winds to make all arrows faster and cause burning if you ran a heavy marksmanship set up, but if you came across enemies who also used bows you’d be a bit screwed.

Lacerate could be useful if you had a stronger healing team as it caused health degeneration and bleeding to everyone in the area. If you build for sustain it’d let you outlast your opponents who might have forsaken defense for offense. You get the idea.

Unfortunately the spirits can’t work like this anymore because GW2 builds are rather shallow compared to GW1. If you dropped, say, Brambles, in a team fight sure, your team could exploit the knock down damage. But if your opposing team happens to have a hammer warrior, which is fairly likely given the small number of builds per class, you could literally get crowd controlled to death.

Ones that MIGHT work for GW2 are ones like Lacerate and Predatory Season, the first doing damage as I said and the other cutting healing down but letting you regain health with attacks. So Lacerate would be ideal for a heavy sustain, bunkerish team and Predatory Season would be ideal for a high burst, low sustain set up. But alas, you’d have to build the entire team comp around the spirits to be useful, and GW2 doesn’t really offer the build variety to make that a viable tactic.

Ah i see well i never played GW1 so didn’t know they were trying to mimic an old theme, my idea is based more like the genies from PWI or the espers of JD (which is what i played b4 GW2) and thought it might work better if spirits were the way i described above, perhaps someone else can come up with something that keeps them within their old theme then.

Actually, I think I had an idea for how we could make spirits more comparable to their GW1 counterparts and make them much more active at once.

Have the effects of the spirits trigger through certain crowd controls when they are inflicted on the enemy within the spirit’s radius.

Stone Spirit could function more like Brambles in that when an enemy in the radius suffers from a knockdown or immobilize they take bonus damage from the effects and have bleeds or cripple applied, which would allow the ranger and the ranger’s team to capitalize on this effect to deal extra damage within the spirit’s zone of control.

Storm Spirit could strike enemies with a bolt of lightning for burst damage and apply vulnerability to enemies who are inflicted by daze, stun, or launch.

Frost Spirit could work a bit differently and inflict chill on enemies who get regeneration or swiftness applied to them, which would make boon spam a lot more dangerous.

Sun Spirit could be similar to Frost Spirit but inflict burning whenever the enemies grant each other might or fury, which could go a long way to making certain overly strong might spam set ups more dangerous to use.

Water Spirit and Spirit of Nature could keep doing what they’re doing, though Spirit of Water just periodically giving small group heals similar to a weaker, but AoE, healing signet might be better. The ranger would basically sacrifice a strong self heal in favor of providing a weak constant heal to his whole team.

Since rangers really don’t have any boon hate as is this could be an interesting new playstyle. The ranger would bring great team support by making ally crowd control effects stronger and punishing enemies for boon spamming. It’d also fit into the theme of the ranger’s spirits creating a hostile, unforgiving environment for the enemies to deal with while fighting the ranger’s team. It’s also easily countered by just taking the time to kill the spirits, so it’s not like there wouldn’t be counterplay involved.

This was something I, and others, suggested in the Ranger CDI thread…

Remove the current form of spirits from the game. Instead, they are now a global buff to the Ranger’s active pet. They are 100% duration and are set to a 20second cooldown whenever the Ranger’s pet dies or is swapped. The Ranger, pet, and closest 5 allies will all gain the buff like they currently do with spirits.

The spirit’s active spell are all attached to the pet’s F2 skill. When the Ranger pushes F2, a ‘wisp’ will spawn at the pet’s location and after .5 seconds, activate doing the same thing the current spirit does.

Alternatively, you could remove the spirit actives and just make each have a 10 second iCD that procs something on your pets attack. Storm will have an air proc on your pets attack. Fire can proc a fire proc on your pets attack. Etc etc.