Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone.

First, I want to say I’m really happy with devs work on Ranger. They listen players, it’s really pleasant.

But, there is always more to do, so here is my 2 cents.

In italic, less important changes or maybe lil too powerfull ones.

Weapons
Greatsword

• Vulnerabilty on Maul is great but 3 stacks is a lil too low, 5 could be better. Maybe another condition instead (like Weakness). Or why not a boon, instead of a condition.
• Maul : cast time decrease to ½ from ¾.
• Maul is now a blast finisher.
• Swoop now snare your foe for 3s.

Sword

• Evade during the 3rd strike of #1 chain.
• Serpent’s Strike : make the animation of this skill more reliable with foe movement.

Pets

• Pet should be able to strike while moving
• Decreased all pets stats but pets get now x% of your own stats
• Your pet will now dodge when you dodge.
• Possibility to name them permanently . Evolution (at least the size) with leveling.

Traits
Markmanship

• Opening strike : Cause vulnerabilty with your, and your pet, first strike when entering combat. (Merge of 5 & 15 trait) (Adept)
• Precise strike : Opening strike always critical hits. (Moved from Grandmaster to Master)
• Remorless is now the 25 markmanship trait.
• XII trait : new one.
• Seady Focus : Damage increases by 10% when endurance is NOT full. (More logical for a ranger who is a « dodger »))

Skirmishing

• Martial Mastery : Moved from Wilderness survival to Skirmishing (Master VII)
• Trait XI : new one. (ex : Your pet critical hit give you might for 5sec or heal you for X).

Wilderness Survival

• Shared Anguish & Hide in Plain Sight merged, cooldown 60sec. (Adept III)
• Bark Skin : Moved from Grandmaster XII to Master IX.
• Trapper expertise : Moved from Skirmishing to Wilderness Survival (Master X)
• Trap Potency : Moved from Skirmishing to Wilderness Survival (Grandmaster XII)

Nature Magic

• Evasive Purity : No internal cooldown OR removes snare & chill too.

Beastmastery

• Master’s Bond : Your pet get Y% of your own stats instead of X%.

Skills

• Signet of stone : this skill will now break stun.
• Signet of the wild : Cast time decreased to ½ from 1.
• Muddy terrain : Cast time decreased to ½ rom ¾.
• Lightning Reflexes: This skill now break root too.
• Entangle (elite) : This skill now « trap » the area during all the duration instead of ennemies when casted. Ennemies who come inside before the end can be rooted. (like D&D druid spell)

Nobody want to discuss about that ?

Well, alright, you asked so I’m going to go through your points. I can maybe see the 5 stack vuln on GS but I disagree with the rest of the changes on GS. I pretty much disagree with all the changes you mentioned.

I mean, the DPS pets not being able to reliably hit a moving target is a class mechanic, when you choose those pets, you need to CC/immob your target, or cripple them with sword, or use muddy terrain—you’re helping your cat land hits this way. Anyone I see asking for “pets hit moving target” I think is likely a new player. All the old rangers understand that interaction and why it’s there.

I think a lot of people might agree on remoresless being 25 but I don’t. With a power/vitality/crit dmg build, remoresless (when it’s fixed! Currently buggy) is very powerful in my opinion.

I don’t like your merging of HIPS and shared anguish since I use those separately a lot. Signet of stone is too strong to also be a stun break.

I don’t know, seems like you need a few hundred hours more play to understand why things are the way they are. I just don’t see any of this stuff happening.

Sorry I came down on it like that, I know you thought hard about it and formatted it well. It just needs…you know, you can’t make changes in a vacuum. There has to be a reason for these changes and that reason has to include interactions with other classes.

I’ve been around since the beta weekends. I like to brag about how I have almost 2300 hours on ranger. But I don’t even claim to know enough to suggest balance changes. Ot won’t stop me from complaining about bugs or annoying quality of life things (WHY YOU HAVE NO PET BOON/CONDITION MONITOR BAR???), but at the end of the day, there isn’t much substance that I (or you) can offer.

I know Chaplan is a nice guy and entertains our questions, as well as Hrouda, yet here’s an analogy: us trying to give John Chaplan Sharp game design advice is like us trying to give Phil Mickelson golf advice. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m a mechanical engineer, you’re whatever you are, and ANET makes games. Let’s all stick to our day jobs. They’re career professionals, ya know?

I hope that helps. Rock on dude

Greatsword is likely never going to get any more positive changes to it. It is a very strong weapon at this stage in the game and is an amazing tool for this class. While I would love to see Maul become a blast finisher, I don’t see it happening.

Sword I also am not a fan of the jumping around sequence and would much rather have full control of my character. I honestly don’t see the problem with serpent’s strike though. It’s always been reliable and certainly was 10x better than the Thief option until they finally fixed it. If you feel it has guiding problems then I see no problem with improving it. Really sword, aside from the leaping on the attacks toward the enemy, I find a good weapon option as well. The only thing I wish would happen is the leap after hornet’s was longer. Bump it to 5 seconds before you can’t use the leap.

Pets dodging when you dodge is worthless. The likelyhood your pet needs to dodge at the same time as you is almost nothing and I would absolutely never waste my dodge to save my pet when I can simply swap pets and lose nothing. If you were going to give the pet something on dodge, it should be aegis imo. Effectively does what your dodge does, but is actually reliable.

I’m on the fence with your marks change. While remorseless is less than powerful when used on the bulk of a ranger’s moves, it’s quite powerful on things like Maul. I’m not sure the trait is worthy of a GM spot, but I don’t think making it a minor one would be viable either. Personally, I’d much rather see piercing shots be a minor trait. This class lacks AE and if we’re not going to allow the shots to pierce to begin with, a minor trait allowing it seems reasonable. In another thread another Ranger brought up the fact that no other trait in the game affects specific weapons like this, and he’s right. So it may not be a realistic suggestion. Another problem I have with the GM traits for Rangers is Signet of the Beastmaster is just so insanely good I can’t justify using remorseless in many situations.

Some of the skill suggestions you make seem reasonable. I personally wish signets would affect rangers and pets at the same time regardless. I know this would end up nerfing a lot of them, but needing a GM trait to do this in the Marks line is very difficult because of just how bloated that line is.

I’m also not a fan of having Spike, Frozen, and Mud trap. While each has its niche, they’re simply all too similar to warrant having all 3. Drop Frozen and give the class a new skill. Something that either gives very strong burst potential or some AE options.

Spirits are also a major sticking point with me. They’re finally powerful (sort of), but still require 30 points to actually become useful outside of objective holding. They really should walk on their own. Needing a trait to make these things useful is very disappointing.

There’s no where else to put piercing though besides an adept spot. The reason is because you don’t always want to pierce, at least in pve. Examples are anywhere you need to control aggro like Candidate Trials t4 or arah. But if it’s a minor trait then you have to take it.

Chopps.5047:

There’s no where else to put piercing though besides an adept spot. The reason is because you don’t always want to pierce, at least in pve. Examples are anywhere you need to control aggro like Candidate Trials t4 or arah. But if it’s a minor trait then you have to take it.

I ran with piercing while leveling and never had a problem. But I can see your complaint. Something else needs to go though as Marks is bloated right now and things need to change. Seemed like a reasonable option since this class is the weakest AE class right now and there’s no real excuse for not allowing them to pierce from a balance side of things. Perhaps change Ranger bows to use the new ‘beam’ technology that Mesmers and Ele’s got several months back. Where the arrow would pierce all the way to the target you actually had selected. Taht way you could control the AE potential (which is what many of us do in WvW anyway when selecting someone at the back of the zerg given the pathing issues with arrows as they pierce).

If you think marks is bloated, what do you think about wilderness survival?

Chopps.5047:

I know Chaplan is a nice guy and entertains our questions, as well as Hrouda, yet here’s an analogy: us trying to give John Chaplan Sharp game design advice is like us trying to give Phil Mickelson golf advice. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m a mechanical engineer, you’re whatever you are, and ANET makes games. Let’s all stick to our day jobs. They’re career professionals, ya know?

I hope that helps. Rock on dude

I like this and find myself agreeing, altho I would say what is helpful is identifying issues to the devs and giving constructive criticism. Comments on why certain weapons and builds don’t work for you will probably help them, tho I totally agree I tend to avoid suggestions or keep them very general as I have no chance of balancing this game.

For example, the spirit actives annoy me no end, in pvp where you use spirits unbound they’re fine, but in pve when I’m in dungeons I want to hide them from AoE so the actives become pretty useless, I would like the devs to look into making the actives more useful in builds where the spirits are kept static as I feel you shouldn’t be punished for not wanting your spirits to move. I adapted to dungeons by putting them out the way in safe spots but would love to get play from the actives.

Also spirits should never be made to move automatically its so bad for dungeon runners, I specifically need static spirits for that content.

Chopps.5047:

If you think marks is bloated, what do you think about wilderness survival?

I have a similar complaint with almost everything but skirmishing (which gets the opposite complaint). There’s just no focus with a lot of the trees. I remember the first time I played this class I was given the impression they put a bunch of traits on a board and started throwing darts to decide which one would be assigned to each tree.

This class just has a lot of problems in my opinion and the main problem seems to be related to this class not really doing anything in this game. That’s why I would love to get ANet’s opinion on just what they invision the role for this class to be. Perhaps if we had a real answer to what they want this class to do we could focus our dicussions on how to better improve it to reach that goal.

I’ve made my opinion on this clear in other threads… I want it to be a ranged class with melee support. this is why I spend the bulk of my time with shortbow/longbow and a GS off-hand. It just supports the way I want to play the class. It’s just not fun or effective most of the time.

Not really worried about Greatsword. I think the change to Maul was a mistake, but short of putting it back I can’t really see a change that would make people happy. I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything with 3 stacks of vuln, but I don’t see 5 stacks making me happier. People definitely wouldn’t be happy with weakness because the majority belief is that you shouldn’t be getting hit in the first place, so if you’re putting stacks that effect target’s damage you’re doing it wrong.

I would love to see major changes to sword. I use greatsword because i can’t stand how sword is designed. I really want to run sword/dagger, but I’m willing to work with sword as is. At the same time that’s just me, I can’t expect anyone else to change their play because I don’t like it.

I’ve never had trouble with pets hitting things, so that I don’t care about, but the rest I would like. I want a variable thing though. I want Pets to specialize in something with their stats. Bears have crap damage and tank really well. If my bear was based on me, though, he’d end up with less vitality and more power. So I want their stats to take variable portions. So a tanking pet like bear will get X% of power in toughness to supplement the toughness it’s already getting. That kind of thing.

Marksman needs a lot of work, specifically in the minor trait line, because it’s crap. That is the only trait line in the entire game that can only take effect once in a fight without the addition of a major trait. That is not a uniqueness to be proud of. I also approve of moving trap traits to wilderness survival where they belong. Wilderness Survival is where you would learn about traps, not skirmishing, and it’s also the condition damage line which fits better too.

After that you pretty much lost me.

what i would love, is for the following to be added:

Hunters Call (Warhorn #4) to add 1 stack of confusion for 3 seconds/strike.
Rampage as One getting a “shout” status. allowing it to have its cooldown reduced.
Stalkers Strike granting stealth on hit

Chopps.5047:

Well, alright, you asked so I’m going to go through your points. I can maybe see the 5 stack vuln on GS but I disagree with the rest of the changes on GS. I pretty much disagree with all the changes you mentioned.
…

Don’t worry about my Ranger playtime, I’m playing it since the first closed beta too ^^

I’m not complaining about Ranger with my post, I love it, even during its “bad” days.
If you look more carefully, what I said is more about “design” points, I don’t want the ranger to be more powerfull than it’s for now.

Some of ideas I had before, like others players, are live now (moving during the GS #4, changes on Maul, some traits, add another kind of combo finisher, change on axe #4, etc). This kind of post is here to discuss about, and maybe, together, we can help Anet dev.
Thinking we can’t do that because we’re not devs (I am but it’s another story) is pretty strange. We’re ones who play with it, we can see what can be improved, or what is too powerfull.

You can disagree with me, I’m not telling the contrary, it’s the goal, to discuss about it.

About pet, and “strike moving target”, I don’t think it’s really what they wanted when they did it, it’s a game design problem (it’s true for mobs too). They had got many ideas for pets, but some points are missed.
Before the first closed beta, they said “killing pets ranger before the ranger himself must be a good idea”, it’s not what it is.

Despite what you think, those ideas are the result of long reflexions and testing (some more than others I agree). But there are always peoples who will disagree, that’s the goal

I think Maul should have gone from bleeds to Torment.

Tracker.6483:

I think Maul should have gone from bleeds to Torment.

That would be amazing, I’d love to see torment on Hunters Call as well though, would make it amazing!!

And I can confirm that torment is a GREAT way to get running away to become a horrible option.

Would make Greatsword a little more viable against runners if we had Torment on Maul.

As it stands, 3 stacks of vulnerability is an inadequate replacement.

Anybody else wish that condition damage gets nerfed like our direct damage, and pet stats get buffed? I’m tired of all of our good builds having condi damage.

Fomby.4295:

Anybody else wish that condition damage gets nerfed like our direct damage, and pet stats get buffed? I’m tired of all of our good builds having condi damage.

Uh, not really, no….

I’m fine with conditions being toned down in some fashion. Hopefully it’s done in a way that focuses more on the AE condition spam and not the single target spam as that way the Ranger won’t be collateral damage as Ranger condi is easily the weakest of them all.

But I’d love for non-pet areas of this class to be buffed. Power builds for this class, especially ranged ones, are awful in comparison to what other classes are capable of.

Tracker.6483:

Would make Greatsword a little more viable against runners if we had Torment on Maul.

As it stands, 3 stacks of vulnerability is an inadequate replacement.

Indeed, I actually preferred the bleeds. However, many were complaining that the Greatsword is a “power weapon”, and since most power builds don’t usually have much condition damage, those individuals favored the change. I don’t think 3 stacks of vulnerability represent any Mauling going on.

A pity, I love(d) to use Greatsword even in a trapper build. I like sword a lot, but miss my Khrysaor, the Golden Sword, which haven’t seen any use since the change. The bleeds accumulated rapidly over time, and it was fun to play (probably “ineffective” for many “leets” of course.)

Fomby.4295:

Anybody else wish that condition damage gets nerfed like our direct damage, and pet stats get buffed? I’m tired of all of our good builds having condi damage.

If you like direct damage, you can still build for it. You should want both types to be viable, not one over the other, and still, many people still believe that “zerk” is also the way to go for a Ranger (I believe anything is valid.)

Nerfing condition damage builds seems pretty bad to me, as they are not that overpowering, even though effective.

These are my changes. I think a lot of you might find them interesting.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Comprehensive-Ranger-Suggestions/first#post2550550