Guild Wars 2

I know its not a huge deal to most but when investing time into a character getting the “feel” right makes the game much more enjoyable. For example, when playing my Guardian I “feel” like a guardian, each swing leaves a trail of blue, my abilities feel guardian or when playing my Theif my attacks look dark/sinister, Mesmer- big purple beams! Necro Green/Black effects ect ect….

Now when playing the ranger I have a sense of being a ranger with melee attacks as they add a snake bite graphic, bee attack, bear maul ect, but none of these attacks leave any type of attack trail color other then grey!

Another gripe, the bow attacks are so generic they dont feel “one with nature” much as they are just plain attacks with hardly any type of graphical effect. The ranger class overall just feels generic and not very….magical.

What are your thoughts? Anyone else feel that the class could use a little boost to its graphical arsenal, I even noticed the warriors which is a plain jane class has a graphical color trail.

I do feel this too. There’s almost no skill/spell effects to most of their skills, and those that do are just white/gray/transparent. I don’t want it to be flashy, but just seeing a gray streak of arrows is just so boring… But I’ve always played a ranger class in every game I can, and will stick with it regardless.

Well the snake attack does leave a trail of green. The bear attack (on the greatsword) is a mix between tan and orange. The eagle (greatsword) leaves a huge white trail behind it. The shark (underwater spear) puts a blue shark fin and upper body over your character, as well as a really cool “jaws attack” animation when it hits its target. The spear gun piranha attack leaves a large red cloud of blood in the water with an entire school of the dangerous fish weaving in and out of it as they eat whatever was unfortunate enough to be in there. Even poison arrow on the short bow gets 5 green-trailed arrows. So as far as colors go, we do get quite a few.

As a ranger, we’re more attuned with nature. Magic and nature don’t go hand in hand. Flowers, wind, vines, leaves, wood, animals, etc. go hand in hand with nature. We rely on the forest and the animals to come to our aid when we need them. Magic users rely on, well magic (think lightning bolts and glowing orbs of death energy), to help them in fights.

Magic is usually very flashy (bright purple, pink, blue, green) and is more of a diversion/show than it is a weapon. The mesmer is a perfect example of this. Divert attention, distract, and destroy is how they roll. The elementalist uses magic to manipulate nature and move it around to their advantage (wind, water, fire, earth). Rangers work with nature, they don’t manipulate it or levitate it around like a fancy-pants showoff. Nature is natural and organic. Magic is scientific (according to Asuras), inorganic, and in some cases manufactured.

Rangers are more on the stealthy side, and all these big purple beams really do is say, “HEY! Look at this huge laser! I’m OVER HERE NYAH NYAH!!!” We are silent, swift and discrete. We don’t want attention drawn to us. When we fire an arrow all you hear is the quick sound of a sharp, thin wooden arrow slicing through the air. The second sound is the sweet sound of it sinking into its completely unaware target. It wouldn’t really make sense to add a string of vines or flowers flowing behind the arrows either, because we’re not trying to woo our enemies with fine roses and bouquets; we’re trying to kill them quickly and quietly with that which nature has provided us.

The “healing spring” skill is a beautiful skill. It’s the most nature-friendly skill I have seen in the game. Your character touches the ground, and a fresh surge of purified spring water seeps up out of the ground and begins to flow outwards. Vivid, green vines grow up out of the ground and encompass the spring. Moments later, this visually stunning effect is accompanied by random flowers that grow up and surround the spring you’ve just created. It’s gorgeous!

And, if you’re still not satisfied with ranger graphics, there’s always that unicorn bow that literally shoots rainbow arrows. lol!

I love the raining arrows from barrage. Also, I love the animation for rapid fire.

Arrow trails would be cool if they mimiced whatever skill/runes you have like orange fire arrows, red for bleedign, blueish for ice and so on, like now all are just “white” boring…

We need fire arrows. PERIOD!

fire arrows are warrior