Guild Wars 2

Seriously, title says it all.

But for the record, Roy has been the one that has announced every single change that has ever done rangers any sort of justice.

So, while it’s obvious that Revenant is of course going to have the biggest spotlight with it being the expac exclusive class, with Roy being the lead designer, it’s clear that an intuitive design with a well-rounded toolkit and smart, fun combat flow are all focuses and that feedback is both heard and acted upon.

All I’m saying is that it would be nice to have that sort of development and developer when it comes to the ranger/druid.

If it isn’t Roy, then I really just hope this plea gets out to whoever is the lead on Ranger so that they understand that while the old efforts have been appreciated, there is a very revamped looking GW2 around the corner and the community would like the tools to have fun and be competitive with Ranger/Druid in that game; because it’s very apparent that we comparatively will never get the opportunity to play a ranger like that in this iteration of the game.

That is all.

Sincerely,
Pretty much every Ranger.

When Roy presented ranger changes on the CDI, everyboudy complained that while presenting the ranger, he was a bit guffy and unserious so IDK, I respect the guy and I hope he’s exited to work on the ranger the same way he’s exsited about the revenant. Its importent to note that the revenant is not only the new shiny toy, but also being a big marketing tool for HOT. Just go to revenant forum and see how quciky the community gets a feedback from the devs, changes, buffs etc… rangers got some 3 years old bugs and no, i’m not talking about pet’s AI.

Let’s give Roy some credit. During the Live AMA stream, it was Roy that suggested the increased Trap Radius become baseline while it was still attached to Trapper’s Expertise.

He may not be as serious about Ranger during those segments, but he’s made some good changes on Warrior. This is not to short-change what Kui has done either, as Quick Draw was a high-point of the Ranger trait changes.

Even if Roy were to be at the helm of Ranger balance and development, I feel there are others higher up on the design and balance team that need to back off first, as there were possibly some great ideas that wanted to be pushed but were scrapped due to the higher ups giving knee-jerk reactions.

yeah quick draw was a great change. Probably the best of them, along with wilderness knowledge.
Clarion Bond had potential until it got nerfed, when it should have got buffed to provide more might, as should warhorn.
Beastly warden was a great concept to, but only works with a few pets and has crap range. Needs a buff.

just need to make traps baseline throwable again with wider radius, and improve off-hand range and effectiveness, give us some more condi pressure, one additional condi cleanse source outside WS, and buff pet health in pvp/wvw.

The same Roy that agreed to move Most Dangerous Game to grandmaster on livestream?

To be fair, they all seemed to be under the impression that Bark Skin would still work below 50% health. But since that was changed to above 90% health, all the below 50% health traits fell flat. And we do have quite a few below 50% health traits now: Enlargement, Most Dangerous Game, Instinctive Reaction, Rejuvenation.

I think there was supposed to be some awesome below 50% health build that could really shine if you picked up all the traits together with Bark Skin. You could spend a lot of time below 50% health because of Bark Skin, esp in a high vitality build.

So, I’ll give him and the others a pass on this, but I do expect some improvements now that Bark Skin only works above 90% health.

I personally much prefer Bark Skin above 90% health (since I run Scholar Runes), but would not mind to see it changed to below 50% health again.

edit:
Nevermind, a few minutes later Roy talks about how Bark Skin changed to 90%

Maybe they didn’t put two and two together.

Let’s also remember that even if the ideas weren’t directly his, he was also the one who brought us the “baseline signets affect the ranger” announcement and was probably the most excitied a dev has ever been about ranger when showing off Rapid Fire with a halved cast time.

While it’s absolutely important for the dev team to withhold some level of transparency so that nobody gets singled out as an individual and attacked, I can’t be the only one who see’s Roy as the person who brings fun design to class to improve gameplay quality, which is something that’s been severely lacking on the ranger change spectrum.

I have no intention of trying to “rain on” anybody’s “parade” or ruin their day, but even from the most casual (a word in this being used to describe a person who has not taken the time to become familiar with the intimate concepts/effects of the game) perspective, there is an extreme difference in design quality as far as “what can I do on and with this character” that is immediately evident, before we even start to discuss balance details.

I’m just asking for the same quality and care be put into ranger/druid design that has clearly been put into classes by people like Roy who also simultaneously communicate visibly and gather feedback and implement changes based on feedback, which, while the communication part may be rare, is not a singular case with just one dev (see Robert Gee).

I’m not trying to create an attack or anything at all; just offering up the criticism that whatever the previous approach has been for ranger has never been significant, and that a page needs to be taken out of these other guys design “notebook” with whatever the old ranger philosophy is being scrapped and forgotten if the class is to ever make progress on the fronts of “fun” and “competitive value.”

Funny. I was thinking what the original poster said.

Sure I am aware that no one is perfect… but I like the quality that is being put into Revenant. And while I know that’s because it’s the brand new class…

I would like to see all of the classes (professions) get similar attention. Probably not as much as their mechanics are older and already set in stone… but maybe in how those mechanics are supposed to play out and what not.

Holland.9351:

The same Roy that agreed to move Most Dangerous Game to grandmaster on livestream?

To be fair, Roy just agreed and was not the one to make the call to move it to Grandmaster status. Most Dangerous Game being originally placed in the Adept tier of Skirmishing shows that Kui (probably) knew that it was not a powerful trait to begin with.

Traps being throwable again?
Spirits finally getting a distinct role?
Sword Autoattack being interruptable, or sword being reworked completely?
Shortbow getting more love?
Moving while casting whirling defense?
Quickdraw triggering on skill usage, not on skill finishing?
Pets being made more usable?
Shouts being reworked?

The Ranger finally becoming more than “just ok” if mastered?
Is it too much to dream of?

Right now the Ranger just holds up to other classes due to his defensive capabilities, not through his offensive capabilities. The Ranger is seriously lacking mechanics other classes have plenty of access to.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Holland.9351:

The same Roy that agreed to move Most Dangerous Game to grandmaster on livestream?

To be fair, Roy just agreed and was not the one to make the call to move it to Grandmaster status. Most Dangerous Game being originally placed in the Adept tier of Skirmishing shows that Kui (probably) knew that it was not a powerful trait to begin with.

I also wanted to point out that the trait they talked about in that stream was 3 stacks of might for 6 seconds on a 3 second interval. Under 50% health, with Strength (or whatever might based) runes, that would have easily maintained 9 to maybe even 12 stacks of might once the interval proc’d a few times.

A whole lot of the stuff from that stream was gutted. Signets were resetting Remorseless with Brutal Seals, Light on your Feet was activated while moving, Strider’s Defense increased swords Damage by 10%, Keen Edge (sharpening stone activated on opponents health threshold) was still worked into Wilderness Knowledge, Peak Strength (10% more damage above the threshold of health) was a master in Wilderness Survival, Regen on Windborne Notes was the same duration as the rest of the boons given by the Warhorn.
And all of that was just what the obvious differences were.

I’m not sure why all of these things were gutted either. Important damage modifiers were lost and cool effects got overnerfed or removed before hitting the live servers.

Still, Most Dangerous Game in that livestreams iteration was a much, much better trait than what made it to live.

Guys, I dislike being the bringer of bad news, but Ranger will not be having another pass over.

I have lost hope in this class… I play it still because it’s fun but I’m really not waiting for anything. It’s been too long waiting for stuff I’m just over it.

You know what will happen, don’t you? They will buff Thief because it is lacking compared to Ele and Mesmer.

Guys, you need to understand this from a PvP perspective. There were so few Rangers in top level play over the last couple of years that the class is simply irrelevant. They will balance towards their preferred classes, the Ele, Thief, Mesmer, Warrior and Guardian.

If you ask any of the top players about Ranger, in any game mode, they will dismiss it outright and just ignore you going forward. Sounds familiar?

While some things might be toned down a little bit, we will be dealing with this situation 6 months from now.

At this point it doesn’t matter. As far as Dungeons and Fractals are concerned the Ranger is dead. The Rev now has a spotter trait and much CC. Why do we need to bring in a Ranger? Frost Spirit? One utility skills? LOLWUT

No. As of watching the PoI, the Ranger is officially dead to me.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

At this point it doesn’t matter. As far as Dungeons and Fractals are concerned the Ranger is dead. The Rev now has a spotter trait and much CC. Why do we need to bring in a Ranger? Frost Spirit? One utility skills? LOLWUT

No. As of watching the PoI, the Ranger is officially dead to me.

I didn’t prepurchase, but I was under the impression revenant was complete garbage for PvE?

Here’s the blunt truth; your guys cynicism and how you think others should feel about the class (to treat it as dead to you and to stop caring) has nothing to do with the point of this thread/topic.

Not that I myself don’t sympathize with those feelings; but that those feelings shouldn’t equate to no longer trying to communicate feedback. It should be the opposite; empowering. With the devs “coming out of the woodwork” for all of the great changes other classes are getting, now more than ever I personally am moved to remind whoever our lead design dev is the position that we are in.

And if you’re so jaded that you’re going to spend your time trying to shut down threads that are trying to get a message across that we can all agree with, even those of you with no hope, then it might be time to just take a necessary hiatus. I do it myself when I get too jaded, and it’s a very refreshing experience.

So please, I don’t mind that you’re expressing that you feel this way at all, but don’t use those feelings to reason why the rest of us shouldn’t care and/or stop providing feedback.
Because that’s the whole point of this thread; that our feedback has never been implemented in a meaningful way and either our Dev or whoever put the death grip on the original batch of changes they showed off during that livestream needs to throw out their past approach with rangers and get on the track that is being given to most every other class.

If you guys don’t think anything will come from this, fine. But the last message any dev for any game should ever be sent is that there community is apathetic and doesn’t care, so they can be apathetic and not care.

@JC:

There is a very real reason that Ranger is neglected. No high level team plays one. The last time Ranger was usable in high level was the spirit build, but that was almost 2 years ago. Like really, no one cares about Ranger. It is all about Ele, Thief and Mesmer. Perhaps a Guardian and a Warrior. You saw what they even did to Engi in PvP, how they made him far worse then before.

I would be perfectly happy if they just fixed the bugs. Trap rework actually made Traps worse, Spirit rework made them worthless and we have 2.5 usable shouts. Like I said, there is simply very little to no top level feed back on Ranger.

Fluffball.8307:

I didn’t prepurchase, but I was under the impression revenant was complete garbage for PvE?

That was the impression during the last beta when people got to play the Revenant. The recent Points of Interest stream showcased the Shiro Legendary and from the demonstrations and what the traitlines have to offer, it looks pretty awesome for PvE.

Roy also posted on the Revenant sub-forum a lot of changes including a slew of damage buffs to weapon/utility skills across the board, so the Revenant feels “faster” during combat.

I guess the Revenant makes the point on what this topic is about; getting Roy to be (more) involved with Ranger development. Though, I do not see any drastic changes coming since they are busy with the Revenant, Elite Specializations, and so forth, but it would be nice to see what Roy and Kui can come up with collaboratively for the Ranger.

Again, I would not want to short-change Kui’s efforts (though I still bash Nature’s Vengeance – sorry, man). If one were to look at the Engineer changes, I bet Kui can shake-up the Ranger class just as much if he was allowed more room.

Chokolata.1870:

@JC:

There is a very real reason that Ranger is neglected. No high level team plays one. The last time Ranger was usable in high level was the spirit build, but that was almost 2 years ago. Like really, no one cares about Ranger. It is all about Ele, Thief and Mesmer. Perhaps a Guardian and a Warrior. You saw what they even did to Engi in PvP, how they made him far worse then before.

I would be perfectly happy if they just fixed the bugs. Trap rework actually made Traps worse, Spirit rework made them worthless and we have 2.5 usable shouts. Like I said, there is simply very little to no top level feed back on Ranger.

I understand. Also, realistically speaking the actual competitive community is only like 20 people deep between NA and EU combined, so I would really hope that the devs would be smart enough to gather that there isnt enough of a sample size of a population there and that PvP itself needs serious help lol.

Don’t quote me on this, but if I were to mention that engi and ranger share the same designer, would that add any sort of perspective to the underlying message I’m trying to convey without creating a personal attack (which honestly isn’t the intention)?

jcbroe.4329:

And if you’re so jaded that you’re going to spend your time trying to shut down threads that are trying to get a message across that we can all agree with, even those of you with no hope, then it might be time to just take a necessary hiatus. I do it myself when I get too jaded, and it’s a very refreshing experience.

Sound advice that I can get behind. Reminds me of when I become so jaded due to all the Ranger nerfs I took a year off of the game. For anyone that looks at my post history, I had a few months where I was a complete skritt here. Ugh, troubled times…

I don’t think Roy worked on the trait rework of ranger personally, since they mentioned something along those lines in the live stream.

That being said, I’d be more than happy to have Roy work on our stuff, I doubt he’d overlook something as major as Off Hand Trainings range increase. You know, the #1 reason most people even took that trait…

Chokolata.1870:

@JC:

There is a very real reason that Ranger is neglected. No high level team plays one. The last time Ranger was usable in high level was the spirit build, but that was almost 2 years ago. Like really, no one cares about Ranger. It is all about Ele, Thief and Mesmer. Perhaps a Guardian and a Warrior. You saw what they even did to Engi in PvP, how they made him far worse then before.

This is cyclical logic. Ranger is neglected because no high level team uses one, which is because they are neglected.

The reason no high level team plays one, is because they are sub par in every aspect for that game type.

I just can’t see how they would just give up on a class and put it in the “too-hard-basket” because they lack imagination with which to improve it. Look at all the other class changes, they are just far and above what Ranger has been given. They also could not possibly just accept that one of their classes will never be a part of the PvP Meta. Ranger is actually perfectly suited to PvP, being a jack of all trades. The real problem, is that ele is a better jack of all trades.

The other issue is Ranger has the least number of available in-combat skills. Ele can get 41, Engineer can have a total of 35, Necro has 20, Revenant will have 20, Mesmer and Guard have 19. Ranger and Warrior get 16. Warrior can swap between their weapon sets twice as fast though and one of our skills is tied to AI that can die. More skills = more utility. We need an Elite trap kit.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Chokolata.1870:

@JC:

There is a very real reason that Ranger is neglected. No high level team plays one. The last time Ranger was usable in high level was the spirit build, but that was almost 2 years ago. Like really, no one cares about Ranger. It is all about Ele, Thief and Mesmer. Perhaps a Guardian and a Warrior. You saw what they even did to Engi in PvP, how they made him far worse then before.

This is cyclical logic. Ranger is neglected because no high level team uses one, which is because they are neglected.

The reason no high level team plays one, is because they are sub par in every aspect for that game type.

I just can’t see how they would just give up on a class and put it in the “too-hard-basket” because they lack imagination with which to improve it. Look at all the other class changes, they are just far and above what Ranger has been given. They also could not possibly just accept that one of their classes will never be a part of the PvP Meta. Ranger is actually perfectly suited to PvP, being a jack of all trades. The real problem, is that ele is a better jack of all trades.

The other issue is Ranger has the least number of available in-combat skills. Ele can get 41, Engineer can have a total of 35, Necro has 20, Revenant will have 20, Mesmer and Guard have 19. Ranger and Warrior get 16. Warrior can swap between their weapon sets twice as fast though and one of our skills is tied to AI that can die. More skills = more utility. We need an Elite trap kit.

" I just can’t see how they would just give up on a class and put it in the “too-hard-basket” because they lack imagination with which to improve it. "

I’m sure they don’t lack imagination , I think they probably have a lot of interesting ideas for ranger the problem is the resources it takes to do such class overhauls and reworking isn’t enough for their team. They will never, EVER , rework the class itself. They will only try to modify existing things to make them work with the ranger which is unfortunate and sad because this class literally needs a complete overhaul/rework entirely through all trait lines. It’s just they simply don’t have the resources to do it. So it will never belong in top tier for this reason and even if it does get buffs to alot of traits/weapons we’ll just be cried about and it’ll get nerfed exactly like spirits / BM and traps w/ shortbow in the beginning of the game.

All they really need to do is create a half dozen traits and improve/merge some of the others. I can’t see that it would take a huge amount of resources to improve Ranger traits, since most of the mechanics are already in the game, many of the traits we need improved would be cut-pastes of other class traits and the others are number changes to existing mechanics.

I don’t think the class needs a rework at all, mostly improvements. If they don’t improve a class to the point where it is usable in all game modes, then they have put it in the “too-hard-basket”.

They could have implemented all the changes needed with the trait re-work they already used the resources to do. I do think they lack the imagination really, look at the changes they made in comparison to other classes.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

All they really need to do is create a half dozen traits and improve/merge some of the others. I can’t see that it would take a huge amount of resources to improve Ranger traits, since most of the mechanics are already in the game, many of the traits we need improved would be cut-pastes of other class traits and the others are number changes to existing mechanics.

I don’t think the class needs a rework at all, mostly improvements. If they don’t improve a class to the point where it is usable in all game modes, then they have put it in the “too-hard-basket”.

They could have implemented all the changes needed with the trait re-work they already used the resources to do. I do think they lack the imagination really, look at the changes they made in comparison to other classes.

Outside of a full overhaul of the class: pets first, traits second
Having an actual fully supported and functioning class mechanic is paramount. Currently our traits/damage/whathaveyou are balanced around the pet actually succeeding at something other than being marginally better than useless. You can buff traits all you want, but they’d have to end up almost game-breakingly strong in order to compete with other classes once you factor in how pets are at the moment.

I’ll copy/paste something I put in another thread about pets:

1. Pet base movespeed increased to 25% more than player base movespeed. This is so they can actually catch targets that are running.
2. Pet basic attacks get a small lunge added to them. This is to make their attacks more fluid and able to hit moving targets.
3. Full control over their skills. Sometimes I don’t want an eagle deciding it is better to take 2 seconds to give AoE swiftness rather than just killing the target. Maybe I want a bear to use Defy Pain when I know a big hit is incoming, rather than wait till after the hit goes through and its hp tanks.
4. An F5 skill which would be a simple ground targeting ‘go here’ command.
5. Make pet attributes actually match the pet. You know what power/precision does for a spider or devourer? Not a whole hell of a lot. You know what would be nice on them? Condi damage.

Edit:
OT:
To whichever dev is working on ranger,
For the love of all that is: holy, unholy, and mundane; either make pets fully functioning and supported or replace them as our class mechanic.

God no! Roy hates the ranger class.

As rangers we all should take a break from playing ranger and maybe gw2…
When they see noone playing ranger…maybe they’ ll do something…like : deleting our class

Pets…The dumbest things in the game. Even dumber than a rock. There are several issues with the ranger class, but the pet mechanic(s) is the most urgent one. There should be an option for a ranger to play and survive without pets at least. They are not improving pets AI, thats ok. Then take those pets, and give us another option.

Quick draw is good? Well, not bad I admit, but not very good either. Remorseless? Well it is a mediocre trait compared to lead the wind. Why? Because we have actually one chance to burst. Especially when you are fighting with a mesmer with perma stealth, you actually have less than 10 seconds to apply a decent burst with a good placed aoe and a fear from the pet. After that, it is done.

Only melee rangers are having some good time, and even they are limited in their builds too. Such a shame. I think Anet really dislikes the profession.

Roynger to the rescue! Pew pew!

Sina.9208:

God no! Roy hates the ranger class.

Out of all of the visible Devs, Roy is the only Dev that even takes Ranger discussion seriously as well as trying to have conversations with some sort of depth about reveals/changes. He even gasp enjoys aspects of the class and gameplay.

People like Jon Peters (is is sadly a design lead with his mentality) and Grouch (who isn’t a Dev but perpetuates stigmas), as seen by that link to the livestream earlier in the thread, turn ranger into the butt of all jokes and JP, as a design lead, made the more than joking comments about how he wants to just skip covering the class (and really, why does that make you a good design lead?).

Regardless, it doesn’t really matter if Roy dislikes the class. As a matter of fact, most of us here only want to love the class, but hate it’s actual implementation.

A lead designer that doesn’t like a class can be a very good thing anyhow, because that means they have ideas and ways they would change it to make it more likable. Personally, Ranger has always and will always be my main, but I absolutely hate the class myself and would redesign it from the ground up and have it by ten times better at a minimum.

The problem is whichever dev thinks that ranger is in an okay enough spot that big changes are out of the question. If that’s the person leading Ranger class design, then some serious reshuffling on who is managing what project needs to occur, because that person is no longer (and the history speaks for itself) doing an acceptable job. They either need to step it up or hand off the class design to somebody who can.

I mean, I have my CompSci degree, and I’ll even work on a volunteer basis; so ANet can take me up on my offer to redesign the class for them at any time

Have you collected a bulleted list of rangers changes recently, jcbroe? Your suggestions are always 100 times better than anyone else in the ranger community. And devs love bullets.

I need ranger to be fixed because I’m only logging in for 5 or 10 minutes a day at this point to finish dailies, in the hope that I’ll be able to enjoy GW2 at some point in the near future.

These are developers, PR isn’t really in their wheelhouse.

Its fine to play favorites, I guess. But try not to tie their professional capabilities to every little glimmer and grimace.

That said: I have no idea who to attribute the recent changes to – but overall they’ve done a really good job. However you may feel about the strength behind things (which I’ll admit there’s some specific weak offenders), the gameplay has undoubtedly taken improvement by strides. So much of Ranger was filling empty space with autoattacks, but now there’s a solid framework of things to think about and do.

Let’s be honest. We’ve got the coolest darn mechanic in the whole freaking game. Who needs friends when you can have A LOYAL VIRTUAL PET? ! You don’t even have to feed the dang thing. Fantastic mechanic, just needs to be tweaked. Every other class dislikes ranger because they’re peanut butter and jealous they don’t get to have floofy dogs and LOLcats.

I’ve said this since the beginning, they don’t play their own game and therein lies the problem. If you rely on forum feedback, you’ll get the most broken suggestions along with some good ones and unless you know the class, they’re meaningless. Just off the top of my head, I recall people asking for a killshot that could be fired while stealth without root or pets that’ll land their hits 100%. Nevermind the other LOL stuff being asked for from other classes.

Relying on algos don’t provide good feedback either because it lacks context. Look at your SB, it was wildly used because it was the fastest horse at the glue factory, not because it was overpowered and it got nerfed.

I’ve played glass LB ranger since the beginning and asked for the following during the beta weekend: consolidate longbow traits, faster arrow speed, lightning reflex removing snares, signets works on ranger without traits, SoTH to provide faster speed, more responsive F2 and we just kind of got them all after close to 3 years. Unfortunately, the other classes have moved on already and have become far better and the metric has changed drastically.

Why is it that someone that played the game for 4 days during the beta could see these issues that took a team of devs to recognize in 3 years? No amount of dev reshuffling will help this class in the long run. They need to get someone to main a ranger and play their own game. Just look at how they mangled healing spring tells you no one plays this class on the team.

Aridia.3042:

I’ve said this since the beginning, they don’t play their own game and therein lies the problem. If you rely on forum feedback, you’ll get the most broken suggestions along with some good ones and unless you know the class, they’re meaningless. Just off the top of my head, I recall people asking for a killshot that could be fired while stealth without root or pets that’ll land their hits 100%. Nevermind the other LOL stuff being asked for from other classes.

The killshot idea was mentioned back when Rapid Fire had a longer cast time. In the end, they went with something very similar, so I don’t know why you would call a killshot being off the charts.

The reason why some poeple want the pet to reliably hit its target is because the pet is resposible for our damage. It is not extra damage, it is damage that was stripped from the Ranger, so that pets could have a purpose. Again, an understandable demand from someone who’s sick of the poor AI the pet is bound to.

There are suggestions that don’t fit the Ranger or the balance this game has, but it’s not like the developers are not able to differentiate between suggestion that could work and those that do not.

Nicknobreak.7543:

Let’s be honest. We’ve got the coolest darn mechanic in the whole freaking game. Who needs friends when you can have A LOYAL VIRTUAL PET? ! You don’t even have to feed the dang thing. Fantastic mechanic, just needs to be tweaked. Every other class dislikes ranger because they’re peanut butter and jealous they don’t get to have floofy dogs and LOLcats.

The issue is not having a pet, but how much control one has over the pet. The pet and the Ranger are supposed to function as one, one person being in two places, doing two different things. But the reality is that it’s just the Ranger and its dumb, AI controlled pet that can only execute a few very basic commands.

Wuselknusel.4082:

The killshot idea was mentioned back when Rapid Fire had a longer cast time. In the end, they went with something very similar, so I don’t know why you would call a killshot being off the charts.

The reason why some poeple want the pet to reliably hit its target is because the pet is resposible for our damage. It is not extra damage, it is damage that was stripped from the Ranger, so that pets could have a purpose. Again, an understandable demand from someone who’s sick of the poor AI the pet is bound to.

There are suggestions that don’t fit the Ranger or the balance this game has, but it’s not like the developers are not able to differentiate between suggestion that could work and those that do not.

Killshot from stealth has 0 counter play. Try playing the scout in the snowball mini game come this christmas if you want to see how broken that idea is. No skill should 1 or 2 shot you from stealth, ever, regardless of how glassy someone is.

100% hit accuracy in pet means your DPS goes up and comes in 2 sources while other classes don’t get more chances to mitgate the said damage, so basically it boils down to you getting free hits with no work, again, 0 counter play.

Those are broken ideas.

I’m saying devs that don’t main this class are not qualified to judge what’s viable in a reasonable time frame since everything I’ve said and suggested from day 1 has been validated by them eventually since they implemented it.

It’s clear as day as to what needs to be fixed on this class if you play it. The constant fumbling by the devs on this class just goes to show that they don’t play their own game.

Or they think that the Ranger is good enough compared to what a redesign would take up of resources.

Aridia.3042:

…100% hit accuracy in pet means your DPS goes up and comes in 2 sources while other classes don’t get more chances to mitgate the said damage, so basically it boils down to you getting free hits with no work, again, 0 counter play…

If pets hit 100% of the time, then and only then, can Ranger deal 100% of it’s actual damage. Since now you can just run in circles and avoid 30% of Ranger’s total damage very very easily, I cannot see how pets actually hitting their targets instead of just chasing them around the map is OP.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If pets hit 100% of the time, then and only then, can Ranger deal 100% of it’s actual damage. Since now you can just run in circles and avoid 30% of Ranger’s total damage very very easily, I cannot see how pets actually hitting their targets instead of just chasing them around the map is OP.

Pets hitting 100% = asking your weapon to be nerfed. I don’t know how you don’t realize this. There’s no way they’ll make each fight into a real 2 vs 1 in favor of the ranger.

Aridia.3042:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If pets hit 100% of the time, then and only then, can Ranger deal 100% of it’s actual damage. Since now you can just run in circles and avoid 30% of Ranger’s total damage very very easily, I cannot see how pets actually hitting their targets instead of just chasing them around the map is OP.

Pets hitting 100% = asking your weapon to be nerfed. I don’t know how you don’t realize this. There’s no way they’ll make each fight into a real 2 vs 1 in favor of the ranger.

I don’t know how you don’t realize this, but our weapons are already nerfed to take into consideration that the pet is also hitting for damage. Ranger is balanced with the assumption that the pet is hitting at the same time, which is why they do far less damage in PvP than they do in PvE.

Which is why I’m asking to strip the damage from the pets. If the pets do no damage anymore, the player would be in full control of the damage application and ANet wouldn’t have to deal with balancing the pet anymore.

Yea I’ve kind of been wondering if stripping pet damage is the cheap fix to the problem. I personally really like the idea in theory. If we could keep our pet for the f2 and other skills they have while taking all their dps and putting it onto our weapons I’d be a happy ranger. Some damage based pets would be worthless but maybe could have skills changed so that they could do support? Otherwise I vote jcbroe as volunteer dev!

Wuselknusel.4082:

Which is why I’m asking to strip the damage from the pets. If the pets do no damage anymore, the player would be in full control of the damage application and ANet wouldn’t have to deal with balancing the pet anymore.

I really cannot see that happening as it basically removes the point of pets completely, if they did no damage, they may as well not exist and ANet will never remove them.

They could probably fix pets inability to hit players by making the +30% run speed on Pets Prowess a base run speed increase. As it is now, if you take BM, your swiftness on the pet only increases its run speed by 3%. If Pet’s prowess was base run speed, you could buff your pet to +63% faster than a normal speed player, meaning they could catch people pretty easily and it would definitely fit thematically, since that is what they seem to be going for lately.

I don’t think the +% base run speed should be baseline unless you choose BM.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

They could probably fix pets inability to hit players by making the +30% run speed on Pets Prowess a base run speed increase. As it is now, if you take BM, your swiftness on the pet only increases its run speed by 3%. If Pet’s prowess was base run speed, you could buff your pet to +63% faster than a normal speed player, meaning they could catch people pretty easily and it would definitely fit thematically, since that is what they seem to be going for lately.

I don’t think the +% base run speed should be baseline unless you choose BM.

This could potentially create problems with an inability to kite pets in a lot of situations which would almost certainly lead to Anet shifting into maximum over-nerf.

All they need to do is simply either speed up animations on particular pet types, enable pets to move and act at the same time as a player can, and/or increase attack range further.

The last option is the easiest and it worked fairly well the last time they did it but it could be better.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Which is why I’m asking to strip the damage from the pets. If the pets do no damage anymore, the player would be in full control of the damage application and ANet wouldn’t have to deal with balancing the pet anymore.

I really cannot see that happening as it basically removes the point of pets completely, if they did no damage, they may as well not exist and ANet will never remove them.

They could probably fix pets inability to hit players by making the +30% run speed on Pets Prowess a base run speed increase. As it is now, if you take BM, your swiftness on the pet only increases its run speed by 3%. If Pet’s prowess was base run speed, you could buff your pet to +63% faster than a normal speed player, meaning they could catch people pretty easily and it would definitely fit thematically, since that is what they seem to be going for lately.

I don’t think the +% base run speed should be baseline unless you choose BM.

Feel free to check out the idea I linked below how I would tackle the problem of the pet not having a purpose if its damage got stripped.

I’m seriously looking at Revenant S/S with Shiro thinking, it is a Sword Ranger with Counterattack and Shadow Strike/Scorpion Wire offhand, LR, heaps longer QZ, no animation lock on AA, and everything else the Ranger should have had. Like, a million times better than Ranger with Sword. As well as being able to trait for bulk life steal.

They need to give the pets a generous cleave radius. This would help the attacks land and make the pets more worthwhile when fighting groups.

@Fluffball;

I’ve been gathering ideas and having an inner debate about when to do another bullet list of things to address to the devs, but my decision has always ended up being to wait for the druid reveal.

So far the reveals have emphasized other classes specific capabilities while providing new options for gameplay to do things they previously couldn’t.

So if I make a list and it has the generic ideas of like… AoE cleave and boon manipulation on it (aid allies/punish enemies), there is the chance that Druid brings exactly that to the table.

So I’m saving the depth of my criticisms and ideas until we can look at the whole picture lol.

@everyone/everything else;

I’ve had a few of those sorts pet ideas myself. An autoattackless pet that has “stances” or “modes” you can put them in to generate actions when you perform actions for example. Or even a “summoned” pet that can be specialized more as a mechanic for things like upkeep or something I’ll coin “summoning prowess” (mechanics like halving the duration of the pet uptime and either doubling its damage or having 2 pets instead of one).

Regardless, without changing the existing mechanic, I’ve always thought that, especially for player versus player modes, the pet either needs an AI improvement or a serious baseline performance increase, or the rangers damage performance needs to be less tied to the pet, while the pet becomes more of an “added utility benefit” effect, although the side effect of that would be pet families becoming even less effective options while canines become even more apex predator options.

To cite an example, in GW1, pets ended up getting something like a baseline 50% movement speed increase and like a 66% AoE damage cleave resistance to try to push them to be chosen more often as options. And that was outside of the realm of skills that were used on top of those improvements to increase pet speed and damage resistance.

For GW2, not touching anything else, I think pets would at minimum need to perform actions (aka attack) 25-33% faster than they currently do at baseline, at least for their cooldown-less skills.

Not that pets are a bad mechanic, GW2 ranger pets are just really poorly implemented (pretty sure they are just inherited open world monsters with a custom skillset and controllable targetting, with slightly altered AI for F2s and pathing).

jcbroe.4329:

…To cite an example, in GW1, pets ended up getting something like a baseline 50% movement speed increase…

It was a 20% base run speed, so with maximum speed boost of 33%, they could move 53% faster than a player with no speed boosts. They also got a +33% outgoing damage increase and -33% incoming damage decrease in PvE.

Same thing needs to happen here imo, but even more base run speed because of all the movement/teleport skills.