Guild Wars 2

Sorry for the negative sound of this post. I’m a player who has mained a ranger since GW1 and see the new elite class as wanting.

Okay, now that I’ve Hero Pointed up a few other classes I must say – "Who was in charge of the “elite” and what was he/she thinking" ?

The other classes all seem to have gotten MASSIVE damage output boosts with their ELITE classes. and the ranger got “Healing”. OoooooooooooooH, I’m drooling. Not.

Once again ANeT has made rangers the outcast class. As usual we can do everything good, but not great – like ALL the other classes can now.

In raids – Rangers are shunned yet again.
WvW – I’ve made adjustments to my build and perform better but the new elites are downright OP compared to the ranger/druid.
PVE – no problem – never had issues.
PvP – not interested. Heard Druids camp spots and are nuisance, but what else are they good for?

Come on ANeT ranger support, what were you doing when all the other class devs were making their elites – drinking in a bar or watching reruns?

We needed big damage output adjustments. Examples follow:
Mordrem snipers – You could have given rangers some of the same nasty abilities.
Give Rangers the ability to tracks stealth target and target them directly.
Druid – More offensive abilities – less AOE targeting. I’ve created an offensive build and don’t use staff. Very effective, but pales in comparison to Reaper or Scrapper, let alone Dragon Hunter boosts to their classes.

Anyway, the balance is way out of wack. You didn’t need to give rangers healing, you needed to give us the abilities that would make us welcome in any group. Raid groups shun rangers – you made it happen yet again.

Having that Mordrem Sniper’s Charge Shot would be pretty cool tbh.
Drawing lines to make areas into a no crossing zone or trying to line up some CC into keeping someone on top of a line with Ancient Seeds…hmm.

I think part of their reasoning for Druid was to make us “wanted” in parties with our buffs, “emergency heals”, and Grace of The Land. Those are nice, but not everyone wants to play as a heal/buff slave. DH, Scrapper, Tempest, Chronomancer…all added both offensive and supportive abilities to the core professions, but we only got the latter for ourselves.

I would personally have preferred something more focused on channeling the forces of Nature Spirits. Something that would allow the Spirits we have to roam and be commanded to a similar degree as a Scrapper’s Function Gyro for passive buffs, having an actively usable skill with a cooldown (maybe an attack with a pulsing field depending on what nature is invoked on use), or sacrificing it for a group-wide boon of some kind similar to Spirit of Nature. The traits could have complemented our core traits while still allowing us to customize what sort of support we bring to groups and keep for ourselves.

THAT, is what I feel would have been closer to a proper Elite Spec than our current iteration of Druid.

As much as i agree, The Ranger does need DPS buffs, the Druid was never intended to be a DPS Elite, it was Intended to be a support, not every elite HAS to be a DPS, so no i dont think adding DPS to the Druid is realistically the way forward, at the end of the day, Power Ranger shouldnt be using Druid, it is Stated as a Support/Healing specc it isnt ment to be ur DPS Choice, but the Option to a different playstyle.

base Ranger does need DPS buffs to be on par with those other proffessions though.

Yeah totally agree with you. I thought of alot if plant themed skills to improve both bows and ofcourse sword needs a rework and dagger an inprovement too.
After this they shozld distribute the druid elite spec in 3 distinct lines: Burst heal(CAF, staff) , sustain (buffs regen little heals) and cc (roots, cripplibg aoe eg thorns, conditions etc)
And finally improve the traitlines if the ranger and make them more distinct and give them more synergy with the skills.

Yeah please, what OP said.
This is a common feeling, ranger goes nowere.

Aney needs to bring ranger/druid in line to rest of the classes if they are thinking in having any relevance out of being a F2P game. Nothing more boring than seeing a match of 3 bunker mesmer and 2 bunker ele in each team in action.

The ranger needs more distinctive skills and traits and the druid needs more team support instead only healing. Being locked up in the staff and being the staff such a crappy weapon (we only use staff for the astral force and the Staff#3) really is a bad design choice.

Also i told you so about the raids, nobody wants a healbot in a game were everyone can heal. So raids will preffer something that heal less but bring more support and damage to the team (blame the countdown to mad boss).

PvP
Maybe you can ask the team Leader of Orange Logo, who plays a druid…whose team just beat The Abjured for 1st place.

Or I can get you the name of the legendary ranked Druid I talked to last night, he was a nice fellow.

As far as what we do in pvp, I take far in many maps. I contest the point, kill people who try to take it from me and I rotate, because I am fast.

Depending on the map, I kill the beast, or break down the door to Lords leaving an opening for my team or I go solo the lord myself after taking far.

As far as raiding, I’ve never really bothered. Never liked it. Takes way too long.

Try playing a tempest in PvE, then go back to your ranger. The damage difference is insane. Though for sPvP, I have to disagree. Druids are really good in sPvP atm, plenty of us here soloQ’d to diamond using only druid. They are really strong 1v1 and respectable in team fights.

Though, I have a feeling they will drastically reduce our daze duration numbers [though it is well deserved].

This is what I said since they revealed the druid elite spec, no one has ever rolled a ranger pre-elite spec thinking that they will play the healer role, they probably picked it for the bow-archetype and some others for the pet.

Ranger is a mess of a class, and why should the devs restrain themselves while working on the class when the premise of the class is faulty? The class needs to be reworked from the ground up, but we all know this will never happen.

Heibi.4251:

The other classes all seem to have gotten MASSIVE damage output boosts with their ELITE classes. and the ranger got “Healing”. OoooooooooooooH, I’m drooling. Not.

Once again ANeT has made rangers the outcast class. As usual we can do everything good, but not great – like ALL the other classes can now.

The other classes did get massive dps boosts from various sources, most of these specs were a damage focused spec though. Not a support focused one.

Ranger/druid is not the outcast class, i’ll explain why going over your small points. We are very versatile and we still have meh damage but can we do one thing really really well now(boost group dps), and its enough to warrant us a must in pve in group content.

Heibi.4251:

In raids – Rangers are shunned yet again.

No, not by a smart group at least. Druid can be played three different ways and all are good for a raid group (dps support/condi support/tank support) all three buff the group by roughly 20% dps constantly and can push up 32.5% group damage increase for burn/breakbar phases. On top of that we have huge cc’s for break bars and then heals on top of it.

I know what your going to say though, but I only do 5k dps! yea, and you boost 4 other members by 20%. If your other party members are doing 8-10k dps your boosting them another 1.6-2k per person, across 4 people, your contributing more damage than they are.

Heibi.4251:

WvW – I’ve made adjustments to my build and perform better but the new elites are downright OP compared to the ranger/druid.

Eh, I’ve had no issues with clerics mixes. I guess you have to enjoy being a healer here, you can be very slippery and put out tones of heals and damage. Again your comparing a support elite to damage elites, ofc they are going to do more damage.

Heibi.4251:

PVE – no problem – never had issues.

good I guess. I dont under stand how you dont have a problem with pve yet raids are such a problem.

Heibi.4251:

PvP – not interested. Heard Druids camp spots and are nuisance, but what else are they good for?

druid in pvp can be all kinds of things, support burst, bunker. My personal favs are the common crusader gs/staff and the marauder staff+longbow builds. Like wvw it’s what you make of it.

Eval,

Like I stated earlier, I play a hybrid offensive based druid. I’m no healer, though I can put out plenty of it just because of the druid elite class. I altered my past build using a few druid abilities. Though I had to sacrifice a few things I had as a ranger which I liked. But I can live with those.

In WvW I’ve run up against other classes in my updated build and can hold my own, but what the ranger class received compared to the other classes pales in comparison damage wise.

Why did every other class need a damage boost? Reaper is nasty, and giving those ridiculous traps to the Dragon Hunter(should have been ranger traps) was unnecessary.

In raids I play a condi build using full vipers now. I’ll hopefully have a successful run next time. But a ranger is still shunned in the raids due to other classes’ enhanced elite abilities – DAMAGE BOOSTS.

PVE – like I said I have no problems in pve. Never had had problems. Using some of the druid glyphs has added to my effectiveness.

Anyway, the ranger was neglected yet again due to the developer seemingly not knowing what the other devs had in mind for the elites they were working on.

Eval.2371:

Heibi.4251:

The other classes all seem to have gotten MASSIVE damage output boosts with their ELITE classes. and the ranger got “Healing”. OoooooooooooooH, I’m drooling. Not.

Once again ANeT has made rangers the outcast class. As usual we can do everything good, but not great – like ALL the other classes can now.

The other classes did get massive dps boosts from various sources, most of these specs were a damage focused spec though. Not a support focused one.

Ranger/druid is not the outcast class, i’ll explain why going over your small points. We are very versatile and we still have meh damage but can we do one thing really really well now(boost group dps), and its enough to warrant us a must in pve in group content.

Heibi.4251:

In raids – Rangers are shunned yet again.

No, not by a smart group at least. Druid can be played three different ways and all are good for a raid group (dps support/condi support/tank support) all three buff the group by roughly 20% dps constantly and can push up 32.5% group damage increase for burn/breakbar phases. On top of that we have huge cc’s for break bars and then heals on top of it.

I know what your going to say though, but I only do 5k dps! yea, and you boost 4 other members by 20%. If your other party members are doing 8-10k dps your boosting them another 1.6-2k per person, across 4 people, your contributing more damage than they are.

Heibi.4251:

WvW – I’ve made adjustments to my build and perform better but the new elites are downright OP compared to the ranger/druid.

Eh, I’ve had no issues with clerics mixes. I guess you have to enjoy being a healer here, you can be very slippery and put out tones of heals and damage. Again your comparing a support elite to damage elites, ofc they are going to do more damage.

Heibi.4251:

PVE – no problem – never had issues.

good I guess. I dont under stand how you dont have a problem with pve yet raids are such a problem.

Heibi.4251:

PvP – not interested. Heard Druids camp spots and are nuisance, but what else are they good for?

druid in pvp can be all kinds of things, support burst, bunker. My personal favs are the common crusader gs/staff and the marauder staff+longbow builds. Like wvw it’s what you make of it.

Well, is it just me that doesn’t like being stuck with druid? One thing is being able to provide support, another completely different thing is that being the only viable role for ranger?
Ranger personal DPS should be on par with everyone else (and it isn’t as far as most people claim). Condition Ranger DPS is very high, and much simpler than Condition Engineer for example, making it easier to obtain a perfect rotation.

Heibi.4251:

Eval, […]
In WvW I’ve run up against other classes in my updated build and can hold my own, but what the ranger class received compared to the other classes pales in comparison damage wise.

Why did every other class need a damage boost? Reaper is nasty, and giving those ridiculous traps to the Dragon Hunter(should have been ranger traps) was unnecessary.

You said it your self you can hold your own. I would argue right now ranger & druid are the most flexible and balanced class as of right now. We have a tool for just everything except condi at range. The other classes need toning down to our level rather than us being pushed to their level and adding to the problem.

I feel like I am beating a dead horse here, but the other elite specs are damage focused. We got the only support focused based specialization and weapon. Many people reguard most of the damage elites as pure power creep and unbalanced. Did those classes need that much damage? no. Do they have it yes. Does it make ranger useless? no, base ranger still has tones of burst, on low cool downs.

Heibi.4251:

In raids I play a condi build using full vipers now. I’ll hopefully have a successful run next time. But a ranger is still shunned in the raids due to other classes’ enhanced elite abilities – DAMAGE BOOSTS.

I’ve tried condi, tank, healing, and dps support builds in raids all of them worked. Yes we are piggonholed into druid as it is the most useful line next to skirmishing for our group. I think your being shunned because your playing with people that have no idea what is going on and just hate ranger because well its been a kitten to hate the class since forever.

My suggestion find people that actually have game knowledge and are not looking to place blame over there own mistakes and not follow stigmas. I don’t see how you don’t get it: ranger dps is fine, for being able to buff a group the amount it does and overall its a net damage increase. I’ve already gone over the math on how and why, its practically mandatory much like having a cronomancer is.

kzar.3079:

Well, is it just me that doesn’t like being stuck with druid? One thing is being able to provide support, another completely different thing is that being the only viable role for ranger?

Hate to say it for basically every class there is one build that is considered viable. There are always off builds that are very close. If your playing with pugs, they expect nothing other than meta zerk so that is your own fault for grouping with those people and not meeting the expectations.

kzar.3079:

Ranger personal DPS should be on par with everyone else (and it isn’t as far as most people claim). Condition Ranger DPS is very high, and much simpler than Condition Engineer for example, making it easier to obtain a perfect rotation.

We can’t have on par personal dps for three reasons.

One: Ranger is burst centric. Most of our high modifiers are burst focused: remoureless, MoC. To add to this many our our skills are on low cool downs but high damage, low damage in between such skills. While I do agree we do need some buffs but no higher than 0.2 and it couldnt be ontop of our already high skills because of our modifiers. If you were to go higher we would need longer cooldowns/animations to balance us.

Two: we have pets. They are factored into our dps, and in turn we lose dps because we’d be op with an extra damage source with no sacrifices. So a chunk of our damage is placed there. Pets vary dps wise and have different uses and they pets are very unreliable eg: They can die and suddenly our dps drops down.

Three: we have too much utility. Were one of the few classes that can ignore damage, we have tones of sustain, we have various control effects, group boosts etc and all of it is on repetitively low cool downs. If we had high damage on top of all of that we would be broken.

Well, two of our greatest modifiers are continous, not burst (Steady Focus and Predator’s Onslaught), both easyly maintainable by using sword, highest power DPS choice at the moment. But I was talking about Condition Ranger, to which said bonuses do not apply.
And after the last few patches, pets do not die as often as before, making them more reliable.