Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

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Posted by: Shiren.9532

Shiren.9532

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.

Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

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Posted by: Electro.4173

Electro.4173

Guard already gives Protection to the pet (8 seconds I believe), it just doesn’t list it in the tooltip. Adding Retaliation as well would be nice since Ranger otherwise has no way to apply that at all and it would synergize well with the general idea of having a pet viciously guard the spot, but I don’t know if Stealth + Retaliation + Protection on a 30-second cooldown would be too much. I wouldn’t mind ditching the stealth to pick up Retaliation instead, though.

I’ve been using Guard heavily lately for the exact fact that it gives a pretty long Protection boon. Guard + Spirit of Earth + Protection on dodge trait + Forifying Bond trait means perma-Protection on the pet, and you might be able to get by without Spirit of Earth if you were running the vigor on heal trait for more dodges. Coupled with perma-Regen from Fortifying Bond + Healing Spring, its a pretty good defensive setup.

Sick ‘em should give Might (as many stacks as it would take to be roughly equivelent to the damage boost it gives now) and Swiftness instead of just boosting damage / speed for a set amount of time, so that it would benefit from Boon Duration and would boost condition damage as well as raw damage to better benefit pets that rely more on conditions. It also needs a signifigant cooldown reduction, 60 seconds is way high for a simple damage / speed boost, especially one that only applies to your pet. I’d say maybe 20-25 seconds.

Protect Me I find useless, at least as a Beastmaster build Ranger. Pets are pretty decent at holding aggro on their own, and if enemies are going after you its probably better to avoid damage than just facetank and let your pet get smashed, especially considering the whole “pet makes up a good portion of our damage” thing. Doesn’t really seem worth it to let your pet get slaughtered to save yourself when you’re losing a portion of damage in the process. Though I suppose in PvP its probably more useful for surviving an initial onslaught that catches you off-guard, so maybe its just one of those skills thats not great in PvE but good in PvP.

Search and Rescue is great. Its unique, its effective (as long as it works) and even the cooldown is pretty reasonable compared to other revival utilities. It suffers from being situational as all other revival utilities are, but I don’t really think I’d change anything besides maybe giving the pet some boons as its reviving to give it a bit of extra survival. Maybe Regeneration + Aegis.

Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

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Posted by: Fomby.4295

Fomby.4295

Shouts are actually well thought out. IF people actually focused on pets and viewed them as an actual threat. But, since they do not (for good reason most of the time) see them as a threat, shouts are lackluster in most situations.

But I bet they are working as Anet intended, so they will not change them. Personally, I only ever use shouts in WvW siege situations.

Example. Enemy is building siege out in the field? Send your pet over the wall with Guard, granting 10 secs of invisibility. Most of the time they will reach the siege before they become visible again. A LOT of the time, people will simple ignore it and continue to fire the siege…. i don’t know why… Combine with Sick’em for some additional damage. If pet starts to get focused, activate that signet that gives them invulnerability. Rinse and Repeat.

But I usually never use the other shouts since i’m a Beastmaster Build and I can revive people quicker that Search and Rescue, and since my pet is most of my damage, it would be unwise to use Protect Me and kill said pet.

Maguuma [PYRO]
Kal Snow – Norn Guardian

Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

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Posted by: Xsorus.2507

Xsorus.2507

I don’t think the guard thing is an exploit, Since they changed it to do that in a patch where they said they were improving Shouts.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Xsorus/videos?view=0
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Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

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Posted by: OGDeadHead.8326

OGDeadHead.8326

I don’t think the guard thing is an exploit, Since they changed it to do that in a patch where they said they were improving Shouts.

Yeah, agree. Without this, ranger is once again gimped compared to other classes, since a large part of our dps is standing on the ground/up on the wall, unable to contribute at all (except for the ones that brings some buffs, but that is simpy not enough).

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Ranger Shouts - how would you change them?

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Posted by: Chopps.5047

Chopps.5047

Search and rescue: much more viable after the dungeon “rez rush” fix; guard: a powerful shout in pvp, both 1v1 and vs seige/group (1v1 I use guard to demolish people…the animal crits almost every (if not every) attack while stealthed). 1v1 you use it to control movement on the battlefield. Winning a fight in dubs requires the ranger to be constantly in motion. That doesn’t mean circling or mindless motion. It takes deliberate placement of ground targets and proper management of pet, stuns, and interrupts.

Once I stood at the top of enemy borderlands JP to prevent people from getting seige. When a guy would get close to the lower half key chest, I would “guard” my wolf on the rocks and then fear them off the edge (wolf knockdown first attack on guard in my experience…so they’d jump, get knocked down by stealthed wolf, then get feared off the edge. Gimmicky but fun. His buddy thought he had me until I knocked him into the water with longbow 4.

Protect me has obvious uses. If you really need invulnerability but don’t want to trait signet of the beastmaster (or risk losing your pet) you can combine signet of stone and protect me so your invulnerable pet protects you. Glass cannon builds use this sort of approach for survivability.

I think you should run shouts in a shout oriented build. I mean, of course you can’t just a bunker build, for example, and use more than “guard”. Well you can but only do it if it makes sense.

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(edited by Chopps.5047)