Guild Wars 2

So, and here me out because this involves logic which we know doesn’t exist in videogames, but thinking about it, I feel like there is a really simple solution to the longbow auto attack:

As the enemy gets closer to you, you fire faster.

See, logically, it makes sense because the closer somebody is, the less time it would be taking to aim shots, and the less time the arrow would spend in the air, so you would be refiring faster as they get closer. Secondly, it would balance out how poor the damage is up close. Not that it is supposed to be a close range weapon, but it would allow the auto attack to still maintain pressure, while rapid fire still being the better close range option due to superior refire speed.

What I’m thinking is this:
Long range: 1.2-1.25s aka what it is now.
Intermediate range: .9s or about 1/3 faster. Also, this kind of matches the damage scaling between ranges.
Short range: .75-.8s

Also, this would make it stronger than crossfire auto attack, which would mean that there would finally be some distinction between the weapons as to what intended purpose they serve (and how well they actually perform it).

Thoughts? I’m aware that there are improvement threads all the time, but I don’t believe something of this sort has been mentioned, so I’m hoping it gets some feedback/attention.

Liking this because it’s immensely better than what we have right now.

I always find these improvement posts depressing because they’re great but I know they’ll never be taken heed of by A-net. T_T

so many go under radar but even if a few get through it’s worth the effort

This need to get through cause its so obvious.
Dps decreases as target get closer but auto attack time remain the same. Thats what make it weak. Agreed.

And all arrows should fly at the same speed as longbow 3, I would really like a charged power shot on a longbow too, if not longbow then on my fantasy crossbow like a 2second charge and a big painful hit with some extra condition application vulnerability probably.

Actually I like the charge idea better for a no1 skill with 3 steps of damage in it if nothing a weaker faster autoattack then gain damage the longer you charge with the highest total dps always being full charges but then you’d also risk having the full charge get dodged.

Nice to see so many positive responses.

It really just occurred to me last night when I was doing some testing on my ranger with rapid fire against my short bow, and I realized that rapid fire shoots at the same rate as shortbows auto attack, but the shortbow hits consistently higher (up to kittenage higher, and 10s of vulnerability doesn’t bridge the damage gap, only narrows it) per arrow, with rapid fire having the same rate of fire as a shortbows auto attack.

The issue that gets brought to attention is that if rapid fire is the main damage dealer within close ranger, and it gets outclassed, then the shortbow will continue to fill the role of both a power and a condition weapon, and leave the longbow in the dark because without the suggested improvement with rapid fire in its current state, the only time the longbow is a competitive power weapon is at 1000+ range, and only by auto attacking or somebody standing in barrage.

That basically makes the longbow such a niche weapon with such a (my opinion on this one) dull playstyle to maximize efficiency, that it is easy to see why the shortbow is the preference, since each weapon is going to maximize damage from auto attacking, but one has a range requirement, and both weapons untraited are 1200 range weapons, meaning the longbow is only better as a power weapon for 200 range units at the far end.

Anyhow, thanks for the support from you guys. I wanted to post some thought processes (and also kind of bump this topic up onto the front page so more people see it haha). I can’t be the only one who feels some role distinction is needed between these weapons, because I would prefer to use a weapon that has a power design in a power based build and not feel outclassed by a weapon whose skills don’t serve the function as well.

I would agree that we were told we could play the game the way we choose, but weapons need to be tiered to specific roles. There’s a reason why nobody goes berserker scepter on a necro for instance, even though it is plausible, it isn’t the ideal weapon. So my suggestion is an attempt to boost the longbow while taking the shortbow out of being a top weapon over our other ranged weapon in every scenario.

Sorry for the text wall lol.

Manekk.6981:

And all arrows should fly at the same speed as longbow 3, I would really like a charged power shot on a longbow too, if not longbow then on my fantasy crossbow like a 2second charge and a big painful hit with some extra condition application vulnerability probably.

Actually I like the charge idea better for a no1 skill with 3 steps of damage in it if nothing a weaker faster autoattack then gain damage the longer you charge with the highest total dps always being full charges but then you’d also risk having the full charge get dodged.

I think we all enjoyed this playstyle at the wintersday event. I think that’s something ANet is (or should be) already aware of though, so I guess all we can do is hope that they retain that knowledge, get made aware of new ideas, and then maybe meld them into a working update sometime down the line.

Fingers crossed lol.

Good suggestion OP.

There’s no viable way to keep targets at 1k+ range. Even if they add chance cripple to LB1 I don’t think it’ll solve that problem entirely. So this is a nice suggestion to make the weapon more viable especially for 1 vs 1 encounters.

I actually like this idea, and hell would even make long bow viable for pvp

its really stupid how the closer you fire the LB, the weaker the damage it deals when it’s supposed to have more power, LOL

swiftpaw.6397:

I always find these improvement posts depressing because they’re great but I know they’ll never be taken heed of by A-net. T_T

Fomby.4295:

swiftpaw.6397:

I always find these improvement posts depressing because they’re great but I know they’ll never be taken heed of by A-net. T_T

Maybe true, but I have a good anecdote for this: OstrichEggs and I got into a discussion about Incendiary Powder (the trait for engineers) and how powerful it was in HGH builds (about 2 weeks before the last update). He and I were able to deduce that it could apply constant burn uptime, which really made the build strong.

Low and behold, with the update, they increase the ICD so the burning is no longer constant upkeep, reducing the effective pressure of that build by some amount.

Now, obviously I can’t say whether that conversation we had was seen and had an effect, but I can say that even if that wasn’t the changing factor, it was still better to have that conversation where the devs could read it and use it in their balancing ideas as opposed to just giving up having a constructive conversation about it, because there is also the chance that it could have been the deciding factor.

Back to the topic I started (I have to make this go full circle somehow), I think that the entire ranger community has been in agreement about the lack of competitive value the longbow has in the rangers weapon line up for a fairly long time (this doesn’t account for enjoyment factor, as in, just because its fun, it doesn’t mean it’s good).

So if we come across any ideas we like, its best to support them as long as possible (even if we feel like the devs aren’t listening) on the off chance that they do actually read something because they were perusing the first page of a forum and something was getting attention, and they wanted to see what it was all about. I’m sure that we all but scared away Mr. Hrouda because of the volatility of the community, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t read the ranger forum if he plays the class. So he might take some of our ideas to the balance discussions they have (or any other dev reading).

Basically, we shouldn’t give up just because they don’t respond to us, or pat us on the head whenever we have a good idea. All we need to do is provide constructive feedback for the class we play, and show each others ideas some love/criticism and support in general, with the hopes that maybe the devs can see what we see and implement it down the road. Cuz that’s really all we have lol.

I like the idea, but is long range shot strong enough at max range right now?

How do you deal with the piercing arrows trait?

Huh, that would actually make Ranger LB pretty good as an all purpose weapon. I am going to +1 your post.

Killsmith.8169:

I like the idea, but is long range shot strong enough at max range right now?

How do you deal with the piercing arrows trait?

I don’t see how piercing arrows would be affected at all. That’s probably just a clarity issue on my part, I apologize :/

As far as the long range damage, I believe it is very powerful. Granted, it shouldn’t be as powerful as a melee weapon, because there is a risk/reward melee system in this game, meaning that if people want to stay at range, they shouldn’t achieve as much damage as a person who goes in for melee.

As it stands right now though, long range shot (on my ranger anyhow) crits for between 1.2k and 1.6k, which is quite a bit for an auto attack on a ranged weapon.

If any damage needed to be increased, my opinion would be to do it on weapon skills (this isn’t exclusive to the ranger class) that aren’t auto attacks. That way it would promote “more fun” gameplay by actually challenging people to think about when they use their damage skills, and not just strafing and auto attacking until something dies (not saying that this shouldn’t be a viable method of killing something, but if you are going to put a skill on cooldown, then that skill should accomplish killing something faster or providing a worthwhile utility function).

The interaction with piercing arrows I was referring to is how it would determine the attack speed while you have this trait active. You’re hitting multiple targets, so how do you decide the attack speed when you’re hitting enemies in every range category with the same attacks?

1.2k to 1.6k every 1.25 seconds is not what I would call good damage, not in PVE at least. How much damage trade off should there be for dealing ranged damage? How many unanswered attacks can you fire off before they close the gap? You can reach 5k dps? (not sure, I’m no expert) with melee builds using various classes, and probably quite a bit more than that with a few of the warrior builds.

Killsmith.8169:

The interaction with piercing arrows I was referring to is how it would determine the attack speed while you have this trait active. You’re hitting multiple targets, so how do you decide the attack speed when you’re hitting enemies in every range category with the same attacks?

1.2k to 1.6k every 1.25 seconds is not what I would call good damage, not in PVE at least. How much damage trade off should there be for dealing ranged damage? How many unanswered attacks can you fire off before they close the gap? You can reach 5k dps? (not sure, I’m no expert) with melee builds using various classes, and probably quite a bit more than that with a few of the warrior builds.

You’re right, that isn’t excusable in PvE. I completely agree.

What I’m saying though is that if rapid fires damage, just for the sake of the point, was doubled, and the auto attack was left where it is, it would be the option that in my opinion would be more preferable, because I personally find strafing around auto attacking to make for boring gameplay, and would like to see the cooldown skills be made more worth using.

Basically what I’m trying to say (in a less anecdotal manner this time) is that the auto attack shouldn’t count for the pressure AND the burst. Auto attacks should merely provide pressure, while cooldown skills should provide the intended burst and utility.

As far as the piercing trait, I get it now! Haha. So there are two situations I can really foresee happening:
1) you are targeting the person close to you, and the arrows are piercing and hitting targets in a different range window
-for this I would think that the speed increase I mentioned and the damage would stay the same, and hit the farther target for the same as it is hitting the closer target
2) you are hitting the farther target, and piercing the closer target to get to the farther target
-same situation, the fire speed and damage should remain the same.

The reason being: if you are targeting the closer target and hitting the target behind you, what comes into play is positioning ability, which is determined mostly by player skill (the other part being environment).

The other factor is target management, which is also skill based. If you are hitting the person farther away but targeting the person up close, you shouldn’t be rewarded with higher damage on the farther target, when the reward is already that you are hitting them at all, and the fact that they are getting hit could be considered “splash damage” in a sense.

However, if you are target the person farther away, and you are capable of using skill positioning techniques to hit a closer target and deal more damage, then that is a good reward, and it isn’t an exploit because (and yes I keep using the pvp reference, but that is where the game tends to be balanced around, and the same situations can hold true for most of PvE) whoever is up close is closing on you to deal bigger damage than you are with your ranged weapon, and should be more mindful of their positioning if they are getting hit, instead of just bodying you and facerolling. If you jump in front of a gun, don’t be surprised if you get shot, in a sense lol.

That would be my take on it though. These are just my opinions as well, if they sound matter-of-factly or set in stone, I apologize, because I’m sure other people have their opinions on this, and those could be much better than what I think. I just want this to be as constructive as possible.

I think your reasoning is good on what it should do. However, I think the damage on long range shot is currently calculated for each target based on distance. There’s no way to do something similar with attack speed because you’re affecting the ranger instead of his targets.

I think basing it on your current target might work the best since arrows usually don’t go very far past the enemy you target, but that would only be with piercing arrows. Otherwise it would need to be based on what enemy you actually hit.

Killsmith.8169:

I think your reasoning is good on what it should do. However, I think the damage on long range shot is currently calculated for each target based on distance. There’s no way to do something similar with attack speed because you’re affecting the ranger instead of his targets.

I think basing it on your current target might work the best since arrows usually don’t go very far past the enemy you target, but that would only be with piercing arrows. Otherwise it would need to be based on what enemy you actually hit.

Very true. It would have to do the same thing that adding traits like Eagle Eye, Offhand Training, and the Throw Traps trait do (essentially creating a new version of the skill on the toolbar with different properties).

Well… These are the issues we run into when we decide to make a range based damage weapon that also can pierce.

I still think that calculation on distance needs to be reversed. More damage the closer the enemy is, less damage the further away they are. I know this sounds like it encourages close range LB use, but using LB in close range can be a death sentence easily. You can only fire on one enemy at a time (unless using Barrage), and Point-Blank Shot itself could be made to be a ‘burst’ attack if they did this. It would make the LB more viable in PvP and WvW because it would encourage the enemies to stay the hell away from the bowman unless they want some serious damage to the face.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I still think that calculation on distance needs to be reversed. More damage the closer the enemy is, less damage the further away they are. I know this sounds like it encourages close range LB use, but using LB in close range can be a death sentence easily. You can only fire on one enemy at a time (unless using Barrage), and Point-Blank Shot itself could be made to be a ‘burst’ attack if they did this. It would make the LB more viable in PvP and WvW because it would encourage the enemies to stay the hell away from the bowman unless they want some serious damage to the face.

While I agree that logically the bow would be more damaging at close range (physics and all that), it also has to be accounted for that the longbow isn’t rangers only weapon.
I would be much more agreeable to this idea in guild wars 2 if rangers didn’t have access to melee weapons for instance. Engineers actually already have skills like this (their rifle can be devastating at close range) simply because they lack melee weapons.

However, for rangers, melee combat is supposed to be the incentive if the opponent gets too close, just by nature of design (and not necessarily in practice in every scenario).

Though I do agree that logically, from a real life perspective this makes sense, and if rangers were a bow only class, I would be all for this type of idea.

From what I can tell, the main difference between our bows and our melee weapons is the simple fact that the bows are single target, while the axe, sword, and GS are multi-target. So this may not change the main meta as we know it since most Rangers already keep a GS or some form of close-range weapon on themselves. It just makes the LB more viable as a long-range weapon.

SOMETHING needs to be done, that’s for sure.

Crossfire benefits from flanking, longbow benefits from maintaining distance. These two design decisions make the auto attack on the weapons different from each other. I like that. Averaging out longbow damage so that it’s the same regardless of your distance (it just fires shorter) would actually make max range worse (less frequent attacks for the same overall damage makes it easier to dodge) and remove the importance of this being a long range weapon.

Personally I think the auto-attack on longbow sucks and there is nothing compelling about it. To add perspective, I enjoy flanking with the short bow and I think it makes it one of the more interesting weapons (admittedly, I would like it much less if it had the fire rate of the longbow). It helps that there are things like the Hunter’s Tactics trait and Runes of the Thief to further encourage this play style. I just don’t think maintaining max range is enjoyable or interesting. I also don’t think a DPS boost is a very good way to go about it (I’d rather inflict vulnerability or have a higher crit chance or something which interacts better with other elements of the game).

There is also better feedback on when I am fulfilling the condition of the shortbow than there is from the longbow. The longbow simply gives me more damage, the short bow adds bleed stacks (which feels a lot more important because it utilises two stats – condition damage and condition duration). The longbow feels worse because there is nothing really to visually or mechanically reward me for fulfilling its condition. Just a slightly bigger number which can easily be missed.

Shiren.9532:

Crossfire benefits from flanking, longbow benefits from maintaining distance. These two design decisions make the auto attack on the weapons different from each other. I like that. Averaging out longbow damage so that it’s the same regardless of your distance (it just fires shorter) would actually make max range worse (less frequent attacks for the same overall damage makes it easier to dodge) and remove the importance of this being a long range weapon.

Personally I think the auto-attack on longbow sucks and there is nothing compelling about it. To add perspective, I enjoy flanking with the short bow and I think it makes it one of the more interesting weapons (admittedly, I would like it much less if it had the fire rate of the longbow). It helps that there are things like the Hunter’s Tactics trait and Runes of the Thief to further encourage this play style. I just don’t think maintaining max range is enjoyable or interesting. I also don’t think a DPS boost is a very good way to go about it (I’d rather inflict vulnerability or have a higher crit chance or something which interacts better with other elements of the game).

If you keep an open mind about it, your suggestions (inflicting vulnerability or increased crit chance) are also elements that are basically increasing DPS, with vulnerability more so as an increasing rate(each subsequent hit would do x stack% more damage after applying the first stack of vulnerability, and continue doing so til the maximum stack number is hit) , and crit chance of course (more crits equals higher average DoT, divided by a per hit basis would equal more average damage per hit, which would increase DPS).

It’s just a different idea. I think many people would agree that maintaining max range isn’t a fun playstyle, but I think (even though it is still my opinion) that auto attack spamming as the main source of a weapons damage isn’t fun either.

Hence why my OP suggestion was only intended to increase DPS, because the auto attack ideally shouldn’t be the main source of damage (unless EVERY other weapon on the bar is a utility, similar to the shortbow). But it should be able to maintain damage as a competitive weapon, and if meant to be our ranged power variant, it should be doing this better than the shortbow at every range, which clearly isn’t the case.

Not that I don’t like your ideas. But they raise the concern of:
vulnerability: how fast and how high would it stack? Would it stack fast enough to make damage competitive?
increased crit chance: How much crit chance? It has the potential to either not matter at all to precision-less builds, or break builds that stack precision. Not saying it would, just the potential to.

By no means is my idea flawless either, just as Killsmith pointed out, there is a lot to have to take into account with these types of suggestions. Personally, I’m all for any sort of improvement, so sorry if I ever sound like I write ANYBODY off, because I find most people to have extremely good ideas. Remember, it is only natural to defend your own idea lol.

Somebody said it perfectly earlier, let me find it:

Jabronee.9465:

This need to get through cause its so obvious.
Dps decreases as target get closer but auto attack time remain the same. Thats what make it weak. Agreed.

That sums up my thought process behind this 100%, and was the biggest focus of where my OP came from.

That being said, I like your idea (and many of the other ideas) on this forum as well. Nobody is going to suggest something that will agree with how everybody wants something to be unfortunately

So what we’re left with is being trying to be as constructive as possible while respecting each others opinions on things, because just because I enjoy something doesn’t mean everybody else will, no matter how good of an idea I think it is.

Which is why I made this thread in the first place haha

But crit chance or vulnerability have a lot more interaction with other decisions a player can make. Vulnerability benefits from condition duration (although this probably wouldn’t matter much), it can act as a cover condition (so condition removal removes it first before something more important like a cripple, poison or bleed stacks) and it will buff everyone’s damage (because everyone hitting that target, including the pet, will benefit from the effects of vulnerability). It maintains the increase in damage, but it has far more strategic play and use than a simple DPS boost. Warriors can do this very effectively with a great sword and engineers can do this very effectively with AoE grenades, both of which are very solid weapon kits (the later even gets play in top tier sPvP).

A critical chance boost would help it scale better with crit damage builds as well as play it on crit effects (like Sharpened Edges, numerous sigils and Companion’s Might). It’s not just a boring DPS boost, it become important for you build choices and plays into strategic decisions about your traits and sigils in gameplay. Suddenly you aren’t just worried about losing a minor DPS boost if you are too close, you lose benefits from how it interacts with several different build choices.

Increasing the attack rate to eliminate the DPS loss at close range removes any advantage of being at long range (which is counter to the intended design of the weapon, whether that’s a good thing or fun to play is another question) and it actually makes close ranger better because it would be harder to dodge close range attacks. They want people using the longbow as close to max range as possible.

Shiren.9532:

But crit chance or vulnerability have a lot more interaction with other decisions a player can make. Vulnerability benefits from condition duration (although this probably wouldn’t matter much), it can act as a cover condition (so condition removal removes it first before something more important like a cripple, poison or bleed stacks) and it will buff everyone’s damage (because everyone hitting that target, including the pet, will benefit from the effects of vulnerability). It maintains the increase in damage, but it has far more strategic play and use than a simple DPS boost.

A critical chance boost would help it scale better with crit damage builds as well as play it on crit effects (like Sharpened Edges, numerous sigils and Companion’s Might). It’s not just a boring DPS boost, it become important for you build choices and plays into strategic decisions about your traits and sigils in gameplay. Suddenly you aren’t just worried about losing a minor DPS boost if you are too close, you lose benefits from how it interacts with several different build choices.

That wasn’t the issue I had with vulnerability, I was just questioning it in general.
-How many stacks do you think each attack should apply?
-How long should the stacks last?
-What is the highest amount of maintainable stacks you can get?

With crit chance, I have issue for one particular reason, it is only useful if you are going to stack precision. It would have no incentive for a person in clerics gear or soldiers gear. So while I agree that there are many things that can play off of it, it would also relegate it to a very specific build and not be appealing for every person building towards power.

And you really (ideally in the long run, since I know what I’m about to say is already the case for a lot of this games weapons) don’t want a weapon to only by viable for that one niche. You want it to be viable across a plethora of options.

Crit chance will be marginally beneficial to all power builds, crits are useful even without crit damage or on crit effects. Bows have a 20% cooldown trait in the Skirmishing line which a lot of longbow users will want, so that’s 200 precision and 20% crit chance right there. The longbow is a power weapon, power is always going to benefit (even if not as well as with crit damage) from crit chance. I don’t know why someone using the largest range weapon in the game would need soldiers or clerics stats, at some point you have to accept some weapons are better than others with certain stats and builds (there is a heal on crit sigil if for some reason you are running a cleric ranger, although I still don’t see many reasons to run a longbow on a cleric build). Plenty of rangers use the shortbow with little to no condition damage, having a bleed on flanking (you can get a respectable number of stacks) doesn’t force every ranger to run condition damage to make use of this weapon.

The issue of how many stacks or for how long etc is a balance one. It’s something that would be impossible to decide without testing it.

It doesn’t make the bow into a one build weapon, it opens up a variety of build options and choices. One might be the superior cookie cutter one, but all of them will be more interesting than “more damage”.

Shiren.9532:

Crit chance will be marginally beneficial to all power builds, crits are useful even without crit damage or on crit effects. Bows have a 20% cooldown trait in the Skirmishing line which a lot of longbow users will want, so that’s 200 precision and 20% crit chance right there. The longbow is a power weapon, power is always going to benefit (even if not as well as with crit damage) from crit chance. I don’t know why someone using the largest range weapon in the game would need soldiers or clerics stats, at some point you have to accept some weapons are better than others with certain stats and builds (there is a heal on crit sigil if for some reason you are running a cleric ranger, although I still don’t see many reasons to run a longbow on a cleric build). Plenty of rangers use the shortbow with little to no condition damage, having a bleed on flanking (you can get a respectable number of stacks) doesn’t force every ranger to run condition damage to make use of this weapon.

The issue of how many stacks or for how long etc is a balance one. It’s something that would be impossible to decide without testing it.

It doesn’t make the bow into a one build weapon, it opens up a variety of build options and choices. One might be the superior cookie cutter one, but all of them will be more interesting than “more damage”.

But that’s the entire point with crit chance, if it’s a static number, it’s only marginally effective in low precision builds, but it could have the potential to be too effective in high precision builds.

Also, when you responded to using a longbow in clerics armor, thats exactly what I’m talking about. Why should a person use a longbow in clerics armor? Well, not everybody wants to go melee, and with the dynamic of this game, using a longbow to stay at ranger with a full power/no precision setup should be a viable option (not super powerful, but not useless). With only adding a bit of crit chance to the longbow, it isn’t going to be an incentive for a person running this type of build (generally considered a bruiser build, and desirable for people who want sustain with survivability).

I’m not saying it’s a bad suggestion at all. I’m actually trying to suggest that it might not be enough of a change, even though it promotes lots of different interactions with current gameplay mechanics, because it wouldn’t boost the base effectiveness of the weapon enough.

I just came to mention one skill I had on an archer in a diffrent but somewhat similar game, it was a charged up shot that always pierced and it did more damage the closer to your target you got, that’s logical to me you take slightly more risk you get a benefit for it our longbow is just stupid as kitten ! that is all

:-)

ps. I want to kittening swear when I talk is this a kittening daycare center or what?

Manekk.6981:

I just came to mention one skill I had on an archer in a diffrent but somewhat similar game, it was a charged up shot that always pierced and it did more damage the closer to your target you got, that’s logical to me you take slightly more risk you get a benefit for it our longbow is just stupid as kitten ! that is all

:-)

ps. I want to kittening swear when I talk is this a kittening daycare center or what?

Yeah I’m not sure what the obsession with the word “kitten” is and why it couldn’t at the very least be asterisks.

Anyhow, yeah, most games with a bow archetype class have some sort of rapid firing weapon for DPS, and slow firing weapon with some sort of charge skill for big damage (or a combination if it was a game that didn’t have separate ranged weapon types, at least in my experience).

If rapid fire outdamaged crossfire, that would be the first step towards things making sense lol.

If they could figure out a way to do it, I would love to have preparations built into the longbow auto attack. Augmenting the auto attack with read the wind, kindle arrows, ignite arrows, or something else would be pretty cool.

Killsmith.8169:

If they could figure out a way to do it, I would love to have preparations built into the longbow auto attack. Augmenting the auto attack with read the wind, kindle arrows, ignite arrows, or something else would be pretty cool.

Nice to see that there are still people from guild wars 1 around.

Yes, I’m not sure why they scrapped this idea. Preparations were great augmentations (and consequently, one of the ways to build when a person desired to play something other than a pet build).

Lore wise, rangers feel like the only class in the game that forgot how to do stuff as time progressed, seemingly becoming worse (can no longer interact with the pet as well, can no longer get the bow to function as well, can no longer augment the bow, forgot how to summon the strong spirits, forgot how to go into defensive stances, AND forgot how to remove conditions on command).