Guild Wars 2

Ranger needs to get more viable group contribution skills / utilities.
As it is now, ranger is the ultimate solo pve survivor and versatile roamer (imo) . But as soon as you put the ranger in a group, it gets uncomfortable and messy (compared to other professions).

Anet have already made a great foundation for group synergy with pets, spirits and traps. Unfortunately only the latter (traps) are somehow viable in groups. Both pets and spirits suffer from severe liability. They add very little to almost nothing to a group in eg. dungeons / www.

The ranger with pets, spirits and traps should be THE most wanted / loved profession in any group composition. That is not the case! Why?
We surely do have the right elements. Anet needs to polish pets, spirits and traps in order to make them more beneficial for the group. There are numerous of suggestions and ideas to improve ranger’s group contribution.

For example, ranger doesn’t necessarily need higher dps from the pets or traps, but it would be awesome if they could contribute more to the group. A pet could eg. passively affect allies / group just by being around. High dps pets could increase group damage on foes, tanky pets could give the group more toughness, “condition based” pets could increase group condition damage / duration and so on. (You get the picture!)

Spirits: There are pages of posts about how to improve spirits on the forum. Bottom line is that spirits are worthless as it is now. They should be more beneficial for the group.

My point is, that it doesn’t have to be something that buffs the ranger, but something that buffs the group. This kind of improvement wouldn’t result in any kind of balancing issues. It doesn’t make the ranger stronger, but makes the group stronger. (win-win)

Healing spring alone is just not acceptable to be the only thing a ranger brings to the group. Ranger has a lot of potential, but the final touch is still missing.

I would love to se the ranger get better group attributes!

Moas can grant aoe vigor on swap and can aoe heal. Healing spring is water field that gives regen and condi removal. Sig of renewal removes conditions. Spirits buff.

Actually, 0/0/30/20/20 would do the job very well.

Stone spirit off to the side with his sun spirit buddy. Sig of renewal for stunbreak/more condi removal. Aoe vigor on moa swap. Stay close to moas for 3-4k aoe heal. Get prot and burns from spirits. Go tanky condition spec for traiting into WS and its GG. Plus two moas could mean aoe daze.

But other than that we don’t have anything to “support” the group.

If someone wants to go waste their time on your spirits in the corner let them go for it and then watch as they get stuck on the immo from killing the stone spirit.

As for wvw with moving spirits its not too hard to stay back and buff the back allies. But if you want frontline buffs then we are out of luck.