So I know they don’t suck and they certainly have their uses, but I don’t think we’ll ever see shout builds like a guardian or warrior. I also don’t think they offer the ranger much (most only boost or interact with the pet) and when not in use they are useless, when you do use them they have really long cooldowns.
Search and Rescue is pretty decent, aside from having massive issues with pet res not working on different elevations (it amazes me that ArenaNet still hasn’t fixed that bug, it’s a pretty serious one, especially in the downed state), this skill can be a big different. You can res someone much faster by having your pet help, you can res two different people at once (which can be the difference between one of them living and both of them living) and probably most useful of all, you can res people in locations that would be too dangerous for you or an ally to res. Some boss fights are like this, some AoEs etc. This skill is pretty cool sometimes. The cool down is far too long, given how it’s a res attempt, not necessarily a res, and the pet reses more slowly than a player, but it can be worth the slot. There are a few other token uses for this, like resing players in locations you can’t get to. It’s biggest problem is that it’s a dead skill most of the time.
Guard is a pretty horrible skill, unless you use the exploit to get the pet onto tower walls or onto locations it shouldn’t otherwise be able to reach. It’s often considered to be something we should have a command to do anyway. The stealth is a token help and it feels more like this skill is a half baked PvP inclusion that amounts to very little in other environments and probably not enough in PvP. It has the occasional use for controlling the pet better, especially if you need to be in more than one location at a time (maybe have the pet defend the Hodgins from the graveling burrow in AC for example) but generally it doesn’t offer much to the player for the cost of a utility slot.
Sick Em feels like it covers flaws in pet design. The DPS boost is helpful (although incredibly boring and generic) and the speed boost feels more like it’s solving problems with the pet landing a hit on moving targets rather than doing something new and useful that you want to drop a utility skill for it. The duration is short and the cooldown is very long. It’s not a terribly interesting skill.
Protect Me is probably the most powerful skill, largely because it has nothing to do with making the pet better but rather it gives the ranger himself immunity from damage for the duration (provided the pet is alive). The problem with this skill is that shouts were supposed to give the ranger more ways to play with their pet. This skill doesn’t do anything for the pet, it just saves the ranger. It’s an anti spike skill, an oh kitten button. That’s why it’s powerful, but it’s probably not what a shout should be.
I’d like to see shouts get an overhaul so that not only do they become more attractive for individual use, but there might also be some kind of shout build in the future for the ranger. One of the problems I have with shouts is that unlike Warrior or Guardian shouts, they offer no support for your party (Search and Rescue is the exception). There is no protection, no stability, no fury or might, no regeneration, retaliation or swiftness. Rangers are one of the worst classes in the game when it comes to giving out boons and the unusual nature of our shouts could be changed to be part of the solution. Even if the shouts only gave boons to the ranger and it’s pet (I have a dream of one day there being a powerful Fortifying Bond build, but we need access to more boons to do this) it’d be a huge improvement and would move these skills away from being very niche skills which offer nothing in a lot of situations, and towards being skills you would get more benefit out of in multiple situations. Give both the ranger and it’s pet swiftness and regeneration on Search and Rescue, protection and retaliation on Guard (I think it would need to be changed from it’s current active to something else for this to see active play in PvE), might. swiftness and fury on Sick Em, maybe transfer conditions and give stability on Protect Me. I might actually bring a shout build if I could see some benefit to myself as well as the pet. With Fortifying Bond these skills would be twice as effective on the pet, reinforcing the idea that this is a pet build, but it also boosts ranger’s effectiveness as a result. We want to play our class, not let our pets have all the fun. The signet build feels like it has more to do with ranger/pet synergy than any shout build.
Reduce some of their cooldowns (rangers have some of the worst cooldown to power level ratios in the game), add some more ways for them to buff the ranger and not just it’s pet, redesign the dead weight that doesn’t justify a utility slot and see if you can fill some holes in the ranger build diversity.