Guild Wars 2

In Lieu of the Ranger’s trait lines and how some skills don’t seem to mesh well with the actual traits, and the overall reliance on keeping the pet alive, I think these things would work well to balance things out.

If we want to play a build that has a lot of reliance on a pet, then obviously the trait line we’d spec into would be mainly BeastMastery. If we want to have far less focus on our pet for overall damage, then we spec else where. With this, I think the certain signets should be sitting under certain trait lines, while other signets should be added to other trait lines.

BeastMastery – Here is where I’d expect to see our following signets

- Signet of Tougnness & Signet of the hunt both of which benefit the pet far more than the ranger.
- Signet that adds a % of your stats to your pets overall stats

Marksmanship

- An ability like “snipe” which can be used from afar (much like a marksman)

Skirmishing

- A signet that adds to overall precision that when popped adds to critical hit chance
- A signet that adds to attack speed, that when popped grants the QZ ability (effectively removing the current QZ ability but replaced by this signet

Wilderness Survival (hard for me to comment on this as im not a trap user)

- Perhaps a signet that increases the radius of the traps that when popped increases the duration of all effects on afflicted users for a certain period of time

The way it is now, it’s no secret the trait lines are slightly messed up, and places far too much reliance on the pet and keeping them alive. Like somebody else pointed out in another thread, the pet is in fact the Ranger’s weakness.

For those that want to fully utilize the pet, putting 30 points into beast mastery, to me, should make your pet considerably tougher than it is now, and possibly deal more damage than you do, and be a pesky little prick.

Signets in general are way too focused on pets. I think Anet thought pets would be far more valuable than they turned out to be.

Just looking at Passive Abilities

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Signet of the Wild: Heals your pet for more than double the amount that you get healed.

Player: 62 health/s
Pet: 125 health/s

Lets compare to other classes. All lvl 80

Warrior: 200/s (healing signet)
Elementalist: 202/cast (signet of restoration)
Thief: 100/hit (signet of malice)

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Signet of Stone: Gives your pet 3.4 times the amount of Toughness that you get.

Player: 35 Toughness
Pet: 120 Toughness

Lets compare to other classes. All lvl 80

Elementalist: 90 Toughness (signet of earth)
Warrior: 90 Toughness (dolyak signet)
Guardian: 10% less damage (signet of judgement) ~ arguably better than all classes

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In conclusion, the passive effects of ranger signets are far too weak to even be worth the slot because pets take the majority of the benefit. Raising the player’s benefits would fix this, which could possibly be tied to Signet of the Beastmaster, even though I think the raise should be traitless. Like most Ranger problems, they generally have to do with one thing.

“Pets are the Ranger’s Weakness”

Keep saying it until Anet fixes it.

Clovis.7386:

Signets in general are way too focused on pets. I think Anet thought pets would be far more valuable than they turned out to be.

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In conclusion, the passive effects of ranger signets are far too weak to even be worth the slot because pets take the majority of the benefit. Raising the player’s benefits would fix this, which could possibly be tied to Signet of the Beastmaster, even though I think the raise should be traitless. Like most Ranger problems, they generally have to do with one thing.

“Pets are the Ranger’s Weakness”

Keep saying it until Anet fixes it.

Quoted for truth. I really miss how GW1 made pets optional (requiring a skill be placed on the skillbar to have a pet available, this was the only trade-off). Having one didn’t affect the Ranger’s actual DPS. Kinda like…how it should be.

Makes me wonder why they even steered away from the old system. It really was so much better.

I think it’d be better if we could just stow them and gain a portion of their stats. Some instances pets would be great due to the fact they can divert enemies, but we really need solid reason to use them other than being forced too.

I just don’t understand how say a warrior has a Signet of Might, but the Ranger doesn’t have a Signet that adds to precision, or even a signet that adds to the pets power? We have the Signet of Stone for toughness, but pets were not meant to tank and fall too quickly. At later levels, the enemies completely ignore your pets anyway, so to me the Signet of Stone seems completely pointless.

Then like you pointed out Clovis.. Signet of the Hunt… how effective exactly is 62 health/s when the enemy is B-lining towards you? What good is the 125 health/s on your pet that an enemy refuses to attack?