Guild Wars 2

When I look at the design of the ranger I can’t help but feel that its class mechanic doesn’t fit. It doesn’t synchronize well with other aspects of the class and doesn’t serve any important or fulfilling role.

Just look at the mesmer and thief to see how well a class mechanic can fit in with their overall design:

The Mesmer’s mechanic is all about distraction. It gets clones which look like the player which confuse the enemy, can stealth and teleport making it even harder to pinpoint the mesmer, and put confusion on the enemy to pressure their actions.

The thief’s mechanic is about mobility and quick attacks. The replacement of cool-downs with an energy system allows them to continually use skills for greater burst damage and mobility, they have access to a lot of stealth and mobility tools which allow them to effectively disengage or pursue targets, and stealth combined with a unique in-stealth skill gives them a very strong first strike advantage.

So much of those classes fit in perfectly with their class mechanics, but the ranger seems to lack abilities that would fit in well with the pet, and likewise, the pet lacks what would fit in with the ability of the ranger.

• The pet is like removing stealth attacks and initiative from thieves, leaving them with a lot of stealth and movement but little to do with it.
• The pet is like removing stealth, teleports, and confusion from the mesmer, leaving them with clones that serve little purpose because the enemy never loses sight or is pressured.

The role of the pet and how it relates to the ranger needs to be rethought. The ranger-pet combo needs a real design goal, one with synchronicity and direction.

Well, as long as they wouldn’t just flat out remove our pets I’d be ok with Changes to pet mechanics and how they are used+ I would REALLY like them to actually make pet names stick…I really dislike names being wiped whenever I switch pets…makes them feel less personal.

Another issue that rangers will be facing soon is with ascended armor looming in the near future the fact that the ranger’s mechanic does not scale with the ranger’s gear (to add to this problem most pets had the damage of their attack lowered earlier this year).

Also noting it seems to me that for a lot of the guild wars 2 has become a game of specialization (example most of PvE focus on damage i.e Berserker) where the ranger seems to be designed (poorly) around the idea of generalization, where we see some ranger personally specializing in their own defense (the bunkers) while using the pet as their source of damage, or the attempt a having a tough pet protect softer more aggresively built ranger.

Anet has basically given the ranger a bit of hint (with a bat) that this spilt attempt at focus is both what should be going on but also what they are worried of getting out of hand.

So where does this leave rangers? I for one would like some more transparency on what exactly they want ranger to be. That is if they have a plan I have a growing concern that we are just beginning to see a cycle of change for the sake of change to keep the Spvp meta from stagnating further.

We’ve been asking ANet to tell us what this class is supposed to do for a long time. All we know is it’s the pet class in a game where pets are an afterthought, they don’t work, and ANet has no intention of putting in the time or effort to fix them. These are the facts of this class discovered in the Dec 10th patch discussion thread.

It’s not just the class mechanic that this class is suffering with. It simply doesn’t have even the most basic of tools to survive in this game. It has no burst or AE, so a power build will never be a competitive option over other classes. It has a great condition spec, but with it being largely single target it’s no where close to what other condi classes are capable of. It lacks condition removal which keeps it held back in the current condi dominated world. Its group utility is very weak which limits its value in larger scale engagements.

What does this class do? It’s a strong dueling class because of how out of whack conditions are and the number of evades available. But as the numbers go up, the class’ value goes down. And I’m not simply talking 1v2… even 2v2, 3v3, 10v10, etc…

It’s a shame really… while this class needs a ton of work overall, little additions to the class would at least allow it to hold its own.

If this class got just a single skill to provide nice burst, a trait to reduce cooldown on weapon swap, active condi removal (even just 1 skill…), Pet F2 abilities going off when pressed, and some form of strong utility for WvW (Wall of Thorns for example) it would all be a numbers game and streamlining traits at that point.

And for that main reason, how i wish we had at least, one trait line that doesn’t involved pet. Doesn’t matter what trait line it is for as long as it doesn’t give a kitten about pet. When i say trait line means from minor to grandmaster

F I R S T.3976:

And for that main reason, how i wish we had at least, one trait line that doesn’t involved pet. Doesn’t matter what trait line it is for as long as it doesn’t give a kitten about pet. When i say trait line means from minor to grandmaster

Every trait line has 1 trait that gives the main passive benefit of the line to the pet as well:
Marksmanship: condition duration
Skirmishing: crit damage
Wilderness Survival: condition damage
Nature Magic: boon duration
Beastmaster: healing power

I think those are fair traits, but I’ll still count them:
Marksmanship has 2 trait that only benefit the pet
Skirmishing has 4 traits that only benefit the pet
Wilderness Survival has 1 trait that only benefits the pet
Nature Magic has 3 traits that only benefit the pet
Beastmaster has 10 traits that only benefit the pet

So it looks like Wilderness Survival has the least and is a pretty popular trait line.

What I can also conclude is that the Skirmishing line is such a bad trait line because it’s overloaded with pet traits. 4 traits in total that only benefit the pet.

The pets for one, should have their own traits in which you can tinker with. Make them tanks, dps, or a hybrid.

Secondly, they should be hitting a kitten a lot harder than they do. I mean, how can a bear swipe do 400-700 damage? To me it should be doing 4k-7k per hit. They’re bears, they hit hard.

The Canine and feline pets should naturally be really fast. They should be able to chase down anyone easily, even if their opponents have swiftness. Easily they should be running double the speed of any character. Birds shouldn’t take fall damage. Canines should be able to sniff out stealth.

It’s just things like this that make the pets seem like they aren’t pets. They are just punching bags for the enemy or AoE fodder.

DeadlySynz.3471:

The pets for one, should have their own traits in which you can tinker with. Make them tanks, dps, or a hybrid.

Secondly, they should be hitting a kitten a lot harder than they do. I mean, how can a bear swipe do 400-700 damage? To me it should be doing 4k-7k per hit. They’re bears, they hit hard.

The Canine and feline pets should naturally be really fast. They should be able to chase down anyone easily, even if their opponents have swiftness. Easily they should be running double the speed of any character. Birds shouldn’t take fall damage. Canines should be able to sniff out stealth.

It’s just things like this that make the pets seem like they aren’t pets. They are just punching bags for the enemy or AoE fodder.

The problem with that is balancing.

I have to disagree that pets are not a good mechanic.

They have great utility with their different attacks, control options, and unique powers. You can make great use of your pets for multiple situations.

The issue with the Ranger is one of balance. You cannot have a character that can do high DPS alone, and then adds high DPS pets to that as well. And balancing DPS, health, and toughness between the Ranger himself, and his pets seems to be posing a problem for Arenanet.

I recall during levelling my Ranger when pets were a lot stronger and did more damage. That was great fun. Now the pets do less damage, but have a lot more health.

The issue about AOE killing pets very quickly, and the unnecessary micromanagement required is another issue.

These could be due to technical limitations, balance issues, or sheer oversight by the developers. But I think it’s a large negative to playing the Ranger class in Dungeons.

The idea of the Pet mechanic between Rangers and several different pets is a great one. I wouldn’t want the class to be any other way.
But for it to work properly there needs to be a lot of time spent balancing. The combinations of each pet type, each pet unique power, and all the traits and skills of the Ranger is just mind boggling. And making sure that we don’t end up with a bear doing 4k damage, and the Ranger doing 5K damage and out DPSing everything in the game, is something that takes great care.

I still think that a blanket reduction in the Damage from AOEs on pets in PVE would go a long way to alleviating some of the problems. However, they gave us more pet health in lieu of that. And Ranged attacks…somehow those need to be made competitive for the Ranger class with melee damage. Would that be unbalanced? I don’t know. But it is the reason why 99% of people pick the class in the first place.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoyed levelling my Ranger? :-)

Here is some gameplay from another popular game that has their own version of a Ranger class. This is how I think many people expected the Rangers in Guild Wars 2 to play at range

Why are people whining so much about pets? I find them VERY useful!
Wolf’s fear has saved me so many times when I was downed in PvP, my felines crit hard and apply debuff’s.
And underwater my shark seriously does like 70% of my dps

If you think that pets don’t fit with ranger then you aren’t playing them right.

Astewart.8415:

Here is some gameplay from another popular game that has their own version of a Ranger class. This is how I think many people expected the Rangers in Guild Wars 2 to play at range

Nope. Many people who picked the ranger class expected the class core mechanic to be working as intended. Even a developer has said (in the dec 10th patch thread) that they know the pets F2 ability needs to be fixed, but they have no idea if or when they will fix it.

What I’m trying to bring up isn’t that pets aren’t useful, or that they have their flaws, but that they don’t fit the design of the ranger even if they functioned perfectly. You could throw in the ranger’s pet on any profession and it would work just as well, if not better, because the ranger doesn’t have the tools to create a natural harmony with the pet.

Just ask yourself, how does the pet support the innate abilities of the ranger and how does the ranger support the innate abilities of the pet?

A good analogy is the mesmer and its clones. Clones can deal damage and look like the mesmer so they can distract the enemy. This distraction is how the clones fit in with the class; they can stealth, teleport, apply confusion, and a whole bunch of other things which naturally support the class mechanic. However, take away this distraction factor and you sever that, creating clones which can still cause damage and take damage so they are still useful, but no longer fit in with the design of the mesmer.

This is what the ranger’s pet basically is; an ally which can chase, damage, and take damage, but has no natural link to the ranger’s abilities.

runeblade.7514:

DeadlySynz.3471:

The pets for one, should have their own traits in which you can tinker with. Make them tanks, dps, or a hybrid.

Secondly, they should be hitting a kitten a lot harder than they do. I mean, how can a bear swipe do 400-700 damage? To me it should be doing 4k-7k per hit. They’re bears, they hit hard.

The Canine and feline pets should naturally be really fast. They should be able to chase down anyone easily, even if their opponents have swiftness. Easily they should be running double the speed of any character. Birds shouldn’t take fall damage. Canines should be able to sniff out stealth.

It’s just things like this that make the pets seem like they aren’t pets. They are just punching bags for the enemy or AoE fodder.

The problem with that is balancing.

Giving the pets even everything I listed above still puts Rangers behind the ball compared to other classes because our damage still suffers due to their presence. That and they still die too quickly.

That’s how bad it is.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Giving the pets even everything I listed above still puts Rangers behind the ball compared to other classes because our damage still suffers due to their presence. That and they still die too quickly.

That’s how bad it is.

runeblade.7514:

The problem with that is balancing.

Stooperdale.3560:

In the thaumanova reactor the ranger pets can miraculously avoid falling through the floor when players characters would fall to instant death. I’ve seen both my story mode groups finish with 4 dead people, a ranger doing nothing more than running to keeping safe, and the ranger pet killing the boss. It’s an extreme example but things like that will happen everywhere as soon as you give ranger pets too much help in PvE.

Put Your hands where i can see them and step away from my profession

From another thread, thought it fits