Guild Wars 2

Hi, first of all I’d just like to introduce myself as an experienced PvP and WvW Ranger who goes by the name of Benailim. I am all for creating more diversity for the class and in particular helping us become more favourable in group fights and team situations in general. As it stands at the moment we are excellent duellers however our ‘team support’ is rather poor, even spirits at the moment fall short. Anyway enough of the gravy, it’s time to get down to the beef.

Nature’s Voice

The trait ’Nature’s Voice’ is provided for us in the Nature Magic line which is our support line including traits such as ‘Spirits Unbound’.

• Nature’s Voice
  • Shouts apply regeneration and swiftness to allies.
  • Regen 10s
  • Swiftness 10s
  • Radius 360

The problem with this trait is that it isn’t really worthy of a Grandmaster title. Why do people use this trait? They are either playing a regen ranger in which case the regeneration provides a high HPS uptime, or they want permanent swiftness to get about. Other than this niche use for it, why should we use 6 trait points to get something that is only really useful on one shout (if you spend another 2 trait points to reduce it’s cooldown).

My first suggestion is to change this trait so that it acts similar to other grandmaster traits such as evasive arcana, where it produces a different effect per shout. I suggested this in the CDI but I believe it got buried somewhere so I’ll write it up here also. If the trait provided different boons per shout then a shout support ranger could become viable in small teams and it could open up doors for build possibilities.

New Nature’s Voice

• Guard
  • Shouts apply regeneration and swiftness to allies.
  • Regen 10s
  • Swiftness 10s
  • Radius 360

• Protect Me
  • Shouts apply protection and aegis to allies.
  • Protection 6s
  • Aegis 10s
  • Radius 360

• Sic ’Em
  • Shouts apply might and fury to allies.
  • 5 might 15s
  • Fury 15s
  • Radius 360

New Search and Rescue
We already have a revive on a 180 cooldown and this skill never works anyway so I suggest we reform it. Instead of attacking, your pet will seek out and support a weakened ally. Reduce the skill cooldown to 60s and have your pet run to the ally and heal them for 2,352 (+ 0.5 of pet healing power).

• Search and Rescue
  • Shouts apply retaliation and stability to allies.
  • Retaliation 10s
  • Stability 10s
  • Radius 360

The above suggestions would cover all of our shouts and make them viable to use in a support build. It would also open up new possibilities such as using Rune of the Soldier to remove conditions during team fights. However you may of noticed that I included the radius of the trait to each of the new skill facts above, this is because as they currently stand ranger shouts have a 360 radius whereas warrior and guardian shouts have a 600 radius. I believe we should increase the radius of all ranger shouts to 600 to unify shouts across all three classes and to increase the reliability of each shout.

If you have any other suggestions or ideas please just throw them below to see if we can get a discussion going about this, or if we’re lucky a dev response. I know it’s a bit late in regards to the next patch but maybe this, or any change, could be implemented sometime.

to be honest, i think they should remake “Sic’em” so that the next 10 attacks, not seconds, deal 40% more damage, give the pet long lasting swiftness (movement speed is capped at 40% unless using haste) and give the ranger and pet 5 stacks of might.

The cost of these buffs – 0.75 seconds activation time (0 aftercast) so it is possible to interrupt it, if nothing else.

Would be too strong with new axe change pumping 25 might stacks to pets.

Actually its the only thing making bunker ranger specs work, well almost work anyway. Its key to my spec only spec that can survive a theif atack, which happens all the time in pvp.

I think this trait is great. Don’t know about spvp it has limited stats combo’s. We don’t need a random boon.

We need things we can count on. Pigs have some great boon but because they are random many people don’t use them. I need to know exactly what im getting and not some random boon. That would be terrible for pvp. In pve any boon is a plus.

This trait can work in all game modes. Making a random buff would total ruin it for pvp. While skill don’t have to be pvp focused, we shouldn’t have them do thing that would just make them obsolete for pvp.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I think this trait is great. Don’t know about spvp it has limited stats combo’s. We don’t need a random boon.

We need things we can count on. Pigs have some great boon but because they are random many people don’t use them. I need to know exactly what im getting and not some random boon. That would be terrible for pvp. In pve any boon is a plus.

This trait can work all game modes. Making a random buff would total ruin it for pvp. While skill don’t have to be pvp focused, we shouldn’t have them do thing that would just make the obsolete for pvp.

The idea is that it isn’t a random boon but each shout provides different boons. Each shout always provides the same two boons, but different boons are associated with each shout.

scirocco.9805:

Actually its the only thing making bunker ranger specs work, well almost work anyway. Its key to my spec only spec that can survive a theif atack, which happens all the time in pvp.

You need this trait to survive thieves? Most ranger builds have an easy time against them…

I miss understood should of read the whole post. The change would be pretty useless. Guard is spammed because it help keep pets alive, the regen and the swiftness are added benefits. The other two skill have very specific roles and I doubt they would be used for the benefits provide by the trait as they have a bit length cd.

We finally got Anet to realize how stupid it was to have signets affect the character (100% of damage) for all other classes, yet on ranger it only affects the pets (30% of damage), and forces rangers to take a GM trait just to make signets work like they do for other classes for free.

Now we need to get them to realize how stupid it is to have shouts affect nearby allies/enemies for all other classes, yet on ranger it only affects the pets. You shouldn’t need a trait period (GM or otherwise) to get at least one AOE effect out of a shout.

The main complaint I see about ranger is that it lacks party support. Well duh. If you take the skills conceptually designed to support the party like shouts and turn them into pet support skills, of course the class is going to lack party support. Somewhere early in the design phase, some designer got so enamored with the idea that ranger shouts should be like shouting pet commands, that they lost sight of how detrimental that would be to the balance of the class.

The GM trait can add additional effects, but at least one of the boons you get from a shout should be innately AOE, trait or no trait.