Guild Wars 2

Preface: this is my own ideas, not everyone has to agree with them.

Over the last week or so we’ve all seen a lot of turmoil over the ranger profession. A few good aspects are being taken away, and now we’re all faced with primarily poor functions and skills that are making many of us frustrated and uninterested in our original profession.

It’s clear that Arenanet doesn’t put a high priority on these issues, but regardless, I thought I’d post some changes I’d personally like to see that would help the class’s gameplay style to be “more fun”

I’d like to see a better synergy with Ranger and Pet as I feel it’s the Ranger’s pet that makes them a unique profession. If the change in Shortbow attack speed has to occur, then the pet’s need to account for more DPS than they do at the moment. Currently it’s too easy for moving targets to simply avoid the majority of pet’s damage and this should not be the case.
Here’s what I’d like to see in the patch notes:

• Pets can now move while attacking. This includes both pet-controlled attacks and their special F2 ability
• Pets base movement speed has been increased by 30%. The trait “Agility Training” now increases pet’s attack speed by 10%
• Pets now have a base 10% evade chance. Adding points into the beastmastery tree will increase this up to a maximum of 25% chance.
• Pet’s active F2 ability will now cancel any other attack in progress and start casting immediately.
• Pets can now be swapped outside of combat without the 20 second cooldown. Instead pet’s F2 abilities will not complete their cooldown period when swapped away and will still be counting down while the pet is not active.

Spirits are too unpredictable and are dying too easily. This is causing the Ranger to be less supportive that they should be.
Here’s what I’d like to see in the patch notes:

• Spirits have had their HPs increased significantly
• Spirits now give flat bonuses when out
  Frost Spirit: Causes nearby allies to chill on attack. 5second cooldown. Activate: Spirit explodes in a icy blast chilling all nearby enemies.
  Stone Spirit: Applies a 2-second Protection to all nearby allies. 5second cooldown. Activate: Spirit shatters into dust inflicting weakness to all nearby enemies.
  Sun Spirit: Causes nearby allies to burn on attack. 5second cooldown. Activate: Spirit explodes into flame blinding all nearby allies.
  Storm Spirit: Applies a 2-second Vigor to all nearby allies. 5second cooldown. Activate: Spirit releases a stormy blast dazing all nearby enemies.

Signets for rangers are not up to par with other professions and should also provide benefit for the Ranger as well as pet. All passive effects of signets should be increased to match other profession’s benefits. Signet of Stone, for example, only gives 35 toughness and should be giving 90.
Here’s what I’d like to see in the patch notes:

• Signet of Stone – 60 second cooldown. Active effect now applies a 10 second protection to Ranger and pet.
• Signet of the Wild – 60 second cooldown. Passive healing increased slightly. Active effect now applies a 10 second stability to Ranger and pet.
• Signet of the Hunt – 60 sec cooldown. Passive now increases run speed to 25%. Active effect now applies 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds to Ranger and pet.
  (signet values changed based on feedback – post your own list on this thread!)

The Pet utility skills don’t seem to be worth using other than Protect Me (which needs to absorb conditions perhaps). It feels like they were all thought of, created, and pushed out over a weekend and it shows in how poorly they function now.
Here’s what I’d like to see in the patch notes:

• “Search and Rescue” – Increased the revive speed, and the pet will now attempt to revive the nearest player until the player has revived, dies, or the pet dies.
• “Sick ’Em!” – Increased the run speed and and damage increase of this skill.
• “Guard” – Sends the pet running to the ground target location, and the applies a AOE knockback around the pet. This skill is meant to use to push people off of a location.

Other changes/fixes:

• Arrow projectile speed has been increased slightly
• Arrows no longer give the “Out of Range” message when the target turns sharply
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Thanks for reading, if you got this far. Feel free to comment, or post your own patch note changes as I have. The more suggestions for Rangers the better!

Strongfort.2451:

Here’s what I’d like to see in the patch notes:

• Pets can now move while attacking. This includes both pet-controlled attacks and their special F2 ability
• Pets base movement speed has been increased by 30%. The trait “Agility Training” now increases pet’s attack speed by 10%
• Pets now have a base 10% evade chance. Adding points into the beastmastery tree will increase this up to a maximum of 25% chance.
• Pet’s active F2 ability will now cancel any other attack in progress and start casting immediately.
• Pets can now be swapped outside of combat without the 20 second cooldown. Instead pet’s F2 abilities will not complete their cooldown period when swapped away and will still be counting down while the pet is not active.

I agree that pets should be able to attack moving targets. In my opinion, this is the biggest problem with our profession right now.

Pets move faster? Okay, sure. I don’t know if its vital, but wouldn’t complain about getting it either.

Pets evade? Sure, again okay. Or at least let pets have a chance of evading AoE. Or better yet, make the pet IMMEDIATELY respond to my “come back to me” F3 command.

The thing with pets F2 command is that it should have an animation. I mean, look at a rifle Warrior’s kill shot. It has a cast time. So I’m okay with our F2 also having a cast time. As long as pressing F2 just once was guaranteed to cast the attack and not decide to fail for who knows what reason.

Yes, I agree 100% about out of combat pet swaps. Why can I immediately swap weapons out of combat, but not pets? It makes no sense whatsoever. Also, if my pet is stowed, make it a permanent stow until I say otherwise. Or, at the very least, let me instantly re-stow my pet when I’m out of combat and took 1 point of damage jumping off a rock.

I’m not sure how I feel about some of the signet changes.

Signet of Stone would give you 20 seconds of -33% incoming damage every 40 seconds (the ability goes on CD once its used so the down time between boons is 40 sec instead of 60).

Signet of the hunt.. eh, 20 sec of 5x Might… I could see that getting messy. Starting with warhorn skill 5 + sig of hunt + swap to shortbow + rampage as one + quickness could give you insane might stacking in a short period of time. Pair that with full set of the armor that increases Might boon duration and the chance on crit: might sigil.. you could get pretty scary pretty quickly with just a power/precision build. AND due to the large amount of might you’d have a good bonus to Condition damage as well. all this every 60 seconds (save for Rampage as One)?

Some really nice suggestions, but I think that the improvement suggestions for signets are a bit over the top tbh. 20 seconds of protection is huge. I agree that passive abilities really needs to be buffed though, especially signet of stone and signet of the wild.

As for the improvements to spirits and pets – I agree 100%.

Some nice changes, but some things I don’t agree with:

Signet of the Hunt/Stone just giving generic boons removes most of their value. Signet of the Hunt should just affect the Ranger, and Signet of the Stone should be on a 90 second CD, break stun, and affect the Ranger, which is exactly what the other invincibility skills do. It might need to lose a second of invulnerability, however, as I believe the other skills are 4-5 seconds, not 6.

Also, I don’t think pets need to be faster, they just need to attack while moving. The evade chance would do little to nothing for helping them survive. Dodging roughly 1 out of every 10 attacks really doesn’t do anything when 2-3 hits from non-regular mobs will down them. That also doesn’t deal with pets being absolutely trashed by AoE damage. Adding AoE resistance and some sort of escape/dodge skill for the squishy pets would make them perfect.

I like some ideas in this thread. Mind if I add them to my current GW2 Ranger Suggestions list? Some I find are just blatantly OP lol but were good for giving some ideas!

Please be sure to post your suggestions here guys. The signets are just awful compared to the Thief and Warrior, and I want to see them on equal grounds.

Strongfort.2451:

Please be sure to post your suggestions here guys. The signets are just awful compared to the Thief and Warrior, and I want to see them on equal grounds.

Here’s my little wishlist for Ranger suggestions:

Weapons:

1. Longbow-increase damage back to pre-nerf levels.
2. Shortbow- reduce Poison Volley to 3 Arrows, increase posion damage/duration, buff bleeding from Crippling Shot
3. Greatsword- buff damage to a percentage of pre-nerf levels, remove bleeds from Maul, allow use of Counterattack while moving
4. Sword-allow use of movement during chain, remove leap from Kick
5. OH Axe-buff Path of Scars base damage, allow Whirling Defense while moving
6. Dagger- add a small leap to skill 4

Utilities:
Signets
Signet of the Hunt-increase move speed to 25%, affects Ranger by default. Increase CD to compensate if necessary
Signet of Stone- Reduce CD to 90 seconds, affects Ranger by default, breaks stun, reduce duration to 4-5 seconds
Signet of the Wild- Reduce CD to 45-60 seconds, rebalance where necessary. Provide a better tooltip for what enlargement does

Spirits
ALL spirits gain a small health boost
Sun Spirit- Passive: Grants allies Burning on critical hits, Active: Grants might to nearby allies
Frost Spirit- Passive: Increases allies’ damage by 10%. Active: Heals nearby allies
Stone Spirit- Passive: Grants allies Protection when struck, Active: Grants nearby allies Stability for 4 seconds
Storm Spirit-Passive: Grants allies Swiftness on Dodge Roll, Active: Grants nearby Allies Vigor and cures crippled, chilled, and immobilized

Traits:
Marksmanship
Opening Strike’s guaranteed crit and current Remorseless rolled into the T1 trait
Remorseless changed to grant opening Strike on Crit
Signet of the BeastMaster moved to T2, causes SotH and SoS to affect Pet

Skirmishing/Wilderness Survival
Traits for traps moved to Wilderness Survival, Survival skills moved to Skirmishing

BeastMastery
Everything from 20-30 points scrapped, new traits added. I’ll think of possible ideas later.

Skolvikings.5132:

Yes, I agree 100% about out of combat pet swaps. Why can I immediately swap weapons out of combat, but not pets? It makes no sense whatsoever. Also, if my pet is stowed, make it a permanent stow until I say otherwise. Or, at the very least, let me instantly re-stow my pet when I’m out of combat and took 1 point of damage jumping off a rock.

In the beta, you could. In another shining example of the foresight that Anet puts into their class adjustments, it was nerfed because you could use it to stack quickness out of combat.

Naturally, when it was fixed so that you didn’t get the quickness stack unless your PET (not even you. If you hit with your pull-shot but swap before the pet gets a smack in, no stack), they didn’t bother to revert the nerf.

I agree with a substantial amount of DoomBunny’s opinion, take a second peek at his genius improvements! Personally I would love to see the bonus on Signet of the Hunt increase to at least 20% if not 25% (I can’t imagine being a scout without it); not to mention weapon improvements on #4 and #6 are mechanic improvements from the heavens!

I had some more radical ideas in mind. I have taken a look at the spirit system and it seems to me that it could have been developed in a much better fashion.

Here is the idea:
Each spirit utility skill summons a sprite (for example sake) that hovers around you as a persistent boon/effect for x duration. On first cast it creates the effect in a small aoe aura around you (this follows you); the second cast is dependent upon your current target, for allies the sprite will hover to them granting the boon/effect in a small aoe as if it were theirs for x seconds before returning, for enemies the sprite will cast x effect/damage and disappear.

Think Guardian spirit weapons with a twist. This would effectively keep the two part design of spirits (although it would be necessary to adjust the scale of the effect appropriately) whilst creating an opportunity for spirit system improvement and the possibility of rewarding successful micromanagement (which some enjoy about pet based classes). Furthermore, with the system not based off of chance and the variety of effects that could be linked to individual spirits, you allow the ranger to indulge in play-style variety by freeing up utility slots.

The second opinion I had was for the Ranger to gain the offhand weapon choice of the sword. I believe that the Ranger could gain versatility by having a single stealth skill, so I suggest switching stalkers strike to the sword for an evasive skirmishing play-style and add a stealth mechanic onto the dagger; the second sword skill could inflict vulnerability and weakness whilst leaping to the side?

I apologize for the rants. Anyway, what do you guys think?

I would seriously want a sniper skill . Since we are a “unparalleled bow user”.
2000 range 2sec charge time, 1500 damage or something.

I want something that makes my arrows travel faster, like that Spirit in GW2. No use attacking twice as fast if it’s all gonna miss/obstructed.

I liked the suggestion I read once to improve longbow by making projectile speed very fast, have the #1 skill have no penalty for range (current version makes no sense, is impractical), and have #2 be a slow attack burst damage effect (net result being the same damage as its current incarnation.)

The other longbow skills are fine.

If they want shortbow to be slower, they need to compensate for it somehow. #2 could be changed to be more like longbow’s current #2, a rapid fire shot suits shortbow’s speedy, skirmish-like qualities, can keep the poison, perhaps only applying it on the first shot. #3 should be changed to be less glitchy, 4-5 are fine.