Guild Wars 2

Hey, guys.

I don’t usually play ranger (only around 700 matches in PvP), but I’ve been lately gravitating towards it out of boredom and couldn’t help but remind myself how poor the ranger shouts are.

Now, I come from a necromancer community and we’ve had a long history of providing feedback and holding discussions about the profession and it seems ArenaNet is finally coming along.
To my surprise, I couldn’t find any large discussions on shouts here, and I’d expect the community to be bursting with ideas and asking for changes. We know that traps are getting streamlined and spirits are getting changed/reworked. So what about shouts, by far the worst ranger utility-line.

Problems I see:

1. lackluster, straightforward effects (you know something’s wrong when the best skill is a percentage-based damage / movement speed increase for the pet, that is still only viable in PvE)
2. overshadowed by other utility lines (signets and survivals are both superior in all meta PvP builds)
3. poor trait synergy (partially being fixed by the proposed trait reworks)
4. purposelessness of these skills, i.e. they don’t open gameplay possibilities

All these problems are connected. The original design just doesn’t allow them to be good. I understand that they were supposed to be ‘the ranger twist on shouts’, allowing the ranger to utilise the pet in new ways, but I don’t believe they’re achieving that goal.

• Search and Rescue – high-tier PvP is now based on banners, rezz spirits and mercy runes. No one is ever going to use the shout with it’s horrendous recharge (even if traited in all possible ways), because the pet is just going to get CC’d and cleaved to death, so you’re wasting your pet and the cooldown.
• Sic ’Em – the addition of Revealed was supposed to increase its appeal, but there are much better options, not to mention the pet is either going to get kited around or get stuck in passive crowd-control.
• Guard – it gives some nice effects for the pet and has a pretty low CD, but I can’t understand what the purpose of this skill is. Haven’t seen anyone use it in PvP in over 6000 matches. Also that 1s cast time making its use unenjoyable.
• Protect Me – potentially good and different from SoS, but still feels just worse and bland.

Some ideas to make these shouts work better, more fun and give them their own niche:

Make them a ranger version of physical skills for warriors, gameplay-wise.
Basically – lower cooldowns, more active effects, accordingly adjusted traits.

• Search and Rescue – removes poison and heals allies for 15% HP both those standing and downed. Anet said that they are thinking about allowing one of necromancer traits that makes DS#4 skill heal allies to also heal downed players, rezzing the effictively, so why not use a similar mechanic with a more bursty heal/rezz on rangers? Lower cooldown, not too low.
• Sic ‘Em – just add some short duration stability (3 stacks, 3 seconds) to the pet and a launch effect with a little charge so that you basically bull’s charge the enemy with your pet and launch them, revealing them and dealing increased damage (pet) for a short period. Similar cooldown.
• Guard – remove the cast time! Pet gains stealth, protection, runs to the target location and taunts enemies. Slightly higher cooldown.
• Protect Me – pet teleports to you (just like with the pet swap), does a short range (600?) PBAoE knockdown and gives you protection and/or resistance. Lower cooldown.

Traits – shout traits across professions are similar – usually a 20% recharge reduction and some active effect (shoutbows heal). While I think that regen + swiftness aren’t necessarily bad, I prefere some active effects; 0.5s evade for the ranger and allies on activation? Wouldn’t like to make it too strong to create a perma evade ranger, just throwing in the idea.

What I think these changes achieve is that they make shouts more active, more fun to play. They can be used both defensively and offensively. Opponents can still mitigate the proposed Sic ’Em and Protect Me by evading/blocks. The proposed changes allow your pet to actively support you if used skillfully.

What do you guys think? Should shouts get reworked?

leman.7682:

To my surprise, I couldn’t find any large discussions on shouts here, and I’d expect the community to be bursting with ideas and asking for changes.

Oh, we’ve talked about shouts (and evrything else) numerous times alright, since the release of the game. It’s just that after a while you get tired of providing ideas, since we don’t get any feedback from the devs. They don’t tend to hang around in the ranger forums much (as in, not at all, more or less).

Its funny how much cry on necro forum that their shouts are disappointing, compared to ranger shouts, each of necros could be considered an elite.

Guys, could you please present some valuable feedback on my ideas and your own ideas instead of derailing the thread? No wonder devs don’t want to read posts if they have to read through numerous complaints before getting to the real value…

Sorry, u’r right
Your ideas are good, they obviously tackle the issue of what ranger’s shouts suppose to be? warriors/gurds are about allies support and buffs, necros are about aoe damage and effects, ranger’s are about deepen rangers control over pets giving them new kinds of abilities and utility.
Your ideas support this design and i’m greatly approve.
Don’t forger RAO and heal as one are also shouts now and should be flavord as such.

Mate, the Ranger forums have dozens of posts about shouts and suggestions for re-works and improvements since the launch of the game. All your ideas are viable, yet, so are the multitude of other suggestions made on other pages of this forum, just go back and take a look.

The only time ANet posts on the Ranger forum is to close de-railed threads, so we know they read them at least

But seriously, last time a dev actually posted was to inform us they fixed a major bug to our pets and that was 9 pages ago, nothing since. They don’t come here to discuss things.

I don’t understand that really. If I was involved with ANet and developing Ranger, I would be here all the time for ideas and discussion.

Anyway…

All shouts should be able to be used on the pet at once, they currently cancel each other out, as does the F2 skills.

I would like to see “Sic Em” lose the 40% speed for Super Speed and an additional effect that applies to allies, Search and Rescue could become Search and Destroy with some effect that pulses PBAoE on your pet and Protect Me could give Protection and Resistance to your pet for the duration as well as allowing it to continue attacking.
“RaO” could do with a halving of durations and recharge and HaO could do with one additional small effect.

This is what I would suggest:

Guard remove cast time.
Protect Me add 6s protection to pet & ranger.
Sic ’Em don’t let other commands break the buff.
Search & Rescue scrap it. unsalvageable.

If we get to this point we might be able to talk about further improvements.

The reason there are no big discussions anymore on the Ranger forum is because we ran out of steam in the first year of the game when the class kept getting hit with nerf after nerf.

It took the CDI for them to finally see the light since everyone voted for Rangers to be improved.

Then it took another half year or so for some improvements to come through. Now Ranger is pretty good, but I guess we’ve just lost hope in trying.

I like how you still have high hopes that this will lead anywhere. We’ve learned to keep our expectations as low as you can possibly imagine and to adapt to whatever comes our way.

Also, why on earth would you want to increase the cooldown on Guard? Trying to get rid of the only thing it’s good for? Guard +Nature’s Voice + Shout Mastery

The Ranger Shouts are intended as commands to the pet. If shouts are too good then every ranger has to run them to make the profession mechanic work, if the baseline commands are too good then the entire skillset is worthless. The skillset is certainly getting buffed though, Heal as One and Rampage as One are being included in the mix (both of which are good skills, the problem is so are the other Ranger elites and heals).

Search and Rescue used to be a good skill, but was nerfed horrendously over several patches. The pet’s leash becoming smaller, it no longer reviving defeated allies (meaning it also will never revive an NPC) and the cooldown being absurd. I feel like mechanically the skill is perfect, a lick wounds we can use on our allies is perfect. It’s simply been Smiter’s Boon’d. I definitely don’t want to see this skill’s mechanics changed (especially after all the bugs that had to be fixed), just given numbers to make it viable again.

Sic ‘em is a staple skill for beastmaster rangers. Jaguar+Signet of the Wild+Sic ’em+Rampage as One, throw down in the fight with your own sword and some sucker’s gonna die. Beastmaster rangers got thrashed I think half a year back now. The damage of our pets got stomped on and the Catsassin just hasn’t been the same since. With Agility training moving to beastmastery, exchanging the speed boost for a knockdown attack seems pretty amazing.

Guard is used by Nature’s Voice rangers for perma regen and perma swiftness. No other shouts involved at all. That build’s issue is that the Ranger has very little way to actively heal allies and our regeneration effects are all through the boon, unlike Elementalist, Necromancer, Guardian and Thief. Warriors drop Banner of Discipline with the trait making banners regenerate, obtaining perma regen for far less work. At baseline it helps with pet positioning and the protection and stealth would be even better, if pets weren’t already frustratingly difficult to take down and were a bit more threatening. In conquest it’s supposed to have your pet stand guard over a location while you help elsewhere, but the leash range nerf saw to that interaction. Point is it’s the shortest cooldown shout in the game and suffers because shouts don’t have anything as powerful as survival of the fittest. Your change is a bad idea.

That leaves Protect Me, which was a staple PvP ranger skill. But since our signets now effect us as well as our pet, there’s no reason to take it over Signet of Stone except for the lower cooldown and the fact that it’s a shout and I doubt anyone needs 12 seconds of invulnerability. Just making the pet teleport to me would be better than giving it a death sentence.

Making our shouts our CC skills, comes with a lot of inherent problems. It’s like trying to get a quick interrupt with your Flesh Golem, y’know?

Holland.9351:

Also, why on earth qould you want to increase the cooldown on Guard? Trying to get rid of the only thing it’s good for? Guard +Nature’s Voice + Shout Mastery

After patch you no longer have to take guard as for trait activation, you’ll have heal as one with 16 sec CD RAO and protect me etc..
What you do want is some useful effect from your utility, guard ATM does nothing beside activating Nature’s Voice and its a fail design.
He suggested a way to make guard a shout that stands for its own in the price of higher CD, I highky agree.

Holland.9351:

Also, why on earth would you want to increase the cooldown on Guard? Trying to get rid of the only thing it’s good for? Guard +Nature’s Voice + Shout Mastery

I’m not sure you’re seeing the whole picture. Also, why so offensive?

The aim was to make the skills more active, to allow for both offensive and defensive uses, to make them more fun to use and to balance them around these new effects.
I think that with the changes I proposed, Guard would be too strong on its 15/12s cooldown and so I’ acknowledge that by offering an upward adjustement of the recharge.

Ranger shouts are basically F2 skills that every pet can use at the cost of a utility slot.

They should rename shout to command. Then the F2 skills can be classed as a command as well.

Then all F2 and shout traits should apply to commands instead. So you can activate those traits both with F2 and with any shout (soon also Heal as One and Rampage as One).

I guess another way to look at it is to simply class F2 as a shout. This changes in HoT:

shouts also trigger Beastly Warden (taunt)
shouts also trigger Writing Strike (weakness on hit)
shouts also trigger Invigorating Bond (AoE heal)

F2 skill also triggers Resounding Timbre (AoE Swiftness + Regen)
F2 skill also triggers Rune of the Trooper (1 condi removed)

Interesting to think about. It would give shouts a few extra traits without changing much.

Holland.9351:

This is what I would suggest:

Guard remove cast time.
Protect Me add 6s protection to pet & ranger….

I agree with Guard and your other ideas, but it is hardly worth placing 6s of Protection on the ranger when he is going to be invulnerable for the duration, assuming the pet doesn’t die, but still, I would think Retaliation for the Ranger would be better.

As for “Guard”, remove the ground targeting and instead make it shadow step the pet to your target, everything else the same.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Holland.9351:

This is what I would suggest:

Guard remove cast time.
Protect Me add 6s protection to pet & ranger….

I agree with Guard and your other ideas, but it is hardly worth placing 6s of Protection on the ranger when he is going to be invulnerable for the duration, assuming the pet doesn’t die, but still, I would think Retaliation for the Ranger would be better.

As for “Guard”, remove the ground targeting and instead make it shadow step the pet to your target, everything else the same.

Protect Me yes, I was just thinking it needs protection to make the pet last longer. I just don’t know if the protection should be on the pet or on the Ranger for it to work.

But either way, as you said, the protection would also last if the pet died and if you give the pet another command (breaks Protect Me). So it’ll always have a certain level of usefulness, even if you have a pet that’s already dead when you use it.

Retaliation is an interesting idea. That could certainly work and make Protect Me a bit different compared to Signet of Stone.

Another idea is to give Protect Me pet revive and a full heal. Perfect for a Beastmastery focused build that always wants the pet up.

Guard If it shadowstepped to the target, it would require a target like Sic ’em. Could work, but wouldn’t it be better if Sic ’em shadowstepped instead?

Personally, I want to see not only Ranger shouts becoming useful, but providing some group utility. This is what I’d do:

Sic’Em: Place a buff on the pet that provides the movement and damage buff, that way, it’s not lost with other skills or orders. Not much to do here.

Guard: I want to see this skill cause the pet to move to the targeted location, gain protection and then taunt. Most people only use this skill to fuel Nature’s Voice. This change would probably result in an increased cooldown that might affect, those builds, but it makes the skill itself more useful stand alone and with other builds.

Search & Rescue: For this shout, I’d like the cooldown to be reduced to bring it in-line with the other revives, then change it to be a ground target where the pet pulses a heal for that duration that can also revive downed allies. Some stability would be nice too. Hopefully these changes would see it being at least considered.

Protect Me: This shout is mostly fine if they just lowered the cooldown and maybe gave the pet a little protection or allowed it to pull some conditions with or with out a short duration resistence to go with it. Another possibility is to turn this into something like the mesmer’s Phantasmal Defender with condition pulling as well.

• Search and rescue: This was decent if you knew you had a group of clowns that would go down often. It was also decent in pvp. However, they nerfed it to the ground and six feet under.
  Should probably be reworked completly, as in a totally new function.

• Protect me: Decent sort of “invulnerability” skill that breaks stun. Still, I rather take SoS if this is the kind of skill I’m after.
  Should probably be reworked completly, as in a totally new function.

• Guard: The skill itself is trash. May find some niche use i wvw since ppl think it’s good, even though there are better options out there even for the folks that actually think the skill itself is good. It’s never seen in pvp because it’s crap, and i pve you don’t need it. I think that the ppl using it uses it for the trait that triggers on shouts rather than the skill itself.
  Should probably be reworked completly, as in a totally new function.

• Sic’em: Our best shout skill by far. Used to be better before the huge nerf to pet damage. Would need a change to allow F2’s to be used while it’s active. Also, imho, I think it would be more interesting if this skill would allow the pet to track and attack a foe in stealth, rather than apply reveal. The duration for tracking/attacking enemies in stealth should be at least 15 seconds to be worth it though.
  My suggestion: Grant quickness to the pet for 6 seconds, increase damage dealt to 25% (down from 40%) for 10 seconds, pet gains superspeed for 10 seconds and are able to keep track of (and attack) enemies in stealth for 15 seconds.
  All this seems may seem OP – if it were granted to a player! Here we’re talking about an ai, and we all now the drawbacks of pets/minions by now, so no, it would not be op.

Someone suggested reworking Nature’s Voice, soon to be Resounding Timbre, to apply different boons depending on the shout. I quite like that idea, we got an overload of possible regen application already. Oh, and yes, increase the radius of the trait. Obviously.

Search and Rescue… Scrap it, it’s unsalvageable. Just get rid of it and make it interesting. We already got a revive skill from our elite spirit (which they hopefully will enhance further). We don’t need a second one, and pretty much anything would be an improvement to what it is now. Warriors do great with just their elite, we should aswell.

Guard needs a complete rework, it’s just a trait trigger at this point, and it won’t even be needed for that when they push out the trait changes. Remove the cast time while at it.

I’m not really sure about the two other shouts, other than the general idea that at least a couple of our shouts should have some sort of a party wide support effect (defensive or offensive). I get that ranger shouts were supposed to be some sorts of commands as opposed to the more straight forward guardian and warrior traits, but in practice this idea doesn’t work with the current implementations of the skills. Furthermore, what’s the point of having an obvious support oriented shout trait if our shouts ain’t supposed to be supportive at all? If they wanted shouts to be “commands”, the trait should reflect that. The only rune that enhance shouts are also support oriented for that matter.

It’s time to hire robert to the ranger department too.

I’d rather have the guy who is responsible for the massive power creep on Guardian and Ele.

That cast time on “Guard” is incredibly silly and sort of defeats the purpose of its short cooldown. Just get rid of it.

You want my ideas?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Shouts-in-HoT/first

Here you have it.

I like these ideas. Of course I like most people’s suggestions for improving shouts. Ranger shouts causing the pet to do physical skills makes a lot of sense thematically and would give them a unique niche on our bar. A beastmaster ranger would have even more crowd control effects to maximize pet damage, which still producing high amounts of regeneration and swiftness through Nature’s Voice.