Guild Wars 2

My preference on a few skills and mechanics that could use a little help (this is based on the trait changes as well). I don’t main ranger but I do have quite a large sum of time spent on it for pve and pvp (mostly pvp).

-Hornet sting-> Monarch’s Leap: Flip flop the order of this skill to have the leap first, then the retreat and slightly increase the time available for the 2nd part. Right now you can’t utilize a gap opener with any off-hand to work with this skill, let alone use it for any set up aside from retreating and leaping through your bonfire. If it were flipped you could jump into the fray, dish out some melee dps, and get out or use it for a general leap finisher whether its a gap opener or closer.

-Swoop: Move the evade to the initial charge, not the leap. I’ve been able to utilize the evade but only when I’m a few feet away to where I know that when I use the skill, I will evade. An evasion skill should not be dependent on an time frame you have little to no control over. It’d be a lot more beneficial if this skill was an on demand evade and not only have the choice of melee range evasion.

-Hunter’s Call: Do something with this skill, anything at all. Right now its only a retaliation curse and doesn’t even do a lot of damage. For instance, make it not require LoS considering it has no projectile tied to it. A bonus can also be added while it is in effect so it can synergize with some other weapons like take increased damage from other sources while the birds are attacking you, or projectile skills will miss while being attacked by the birds, or simply apply vulnerability each hit. Anything….

-Rescue Me: I’m not sure why this skill has such a long cooldown considering it doesn’t rally on use, it relies on your pet to sit still and slowly revive your ally, and it isn’t even faster than a regular player walking up and reviving them. Who is this skill for, let alone, who uses it ever? It really should be completely changed or at least buffed to be of some use like apply invulnerability for a short duration when it starts to revive, or give it drastically faster revive speed like symbol of judgment or elixir R do. A 180 second cooldown for a skill that doesn’t do its job to the slightest just seems like someone on the balance team wanted to void this skill with no explanation.

-Spirits: Since spirits are being adjusted to not move at all, I’d like to make a quick suggestion on their rebalancing. Change them to be persistent effects, not boon applicator’s on a cooldown. GW1 spirits could be placed in far places and apply constant benefits like projectile speed or restricting resurrection or even extra resource generation. A small burn or minor damage increase on a cooldown just doesn’t justify a place on the skill bar even if its for your allies. The actives are neat but their passives should be a bit more unique like banners are to give the ranger a real benefit to their allies or themselves like projectile or attack speed, boon duration (a noticeable amount), increased healing, reduced incoming condition/stun duration, etc. The elite is the only spirit that applies something unique to the allies, every other spirit just doesn’t feel that valuable especially for how quick they can die.

-Soften the fall: To fall more in line with how thieves got their falling damage trait to have an effect outside of falling, and how little muddy terrain can be used in a falling situation to begin with, I’d suggest to swap the muddy terrain with a weaker healing spring and to also apply this when reviving an ally rather than keeping healer’s celerity. There is no use in swiftness when reviving and the benefits of even a 3 second healing spring would go a lot further especially being a water field. Not to mention both traits are meaningless compared to the other options if they are shipped out in the suggested format.

-Pet attribute traits: This is for the healing power and condition damage trait adjustments where the pet has 0 of the stat to begin with, and the small value trait makes up for nothing with how the skills scale off their respective stats. 350 healing power only gives 350 healing on the fern wolf, and the rest is nothing you can work with (harmonic cry, bite, chomp, pet’s activate those skills on their own terms). Then Expertise training still isn’t anything exciting because they can’t get condition damage or duration from any other source (except rare boons from npc’s or banners) so although its a trait the end result is hardly noticeable. I’d say look into these 2 traits so players aren’t picking a trait for something that they will never feel the impact from.

-Porcine Pets: I’m not sure if time ran out or there was no real plan for these but there are 3 pets with the same exact active. Unless this was an attempt to add pet skins and was abandoned I think it’d be nice if there was something different with their F2 abilities.

The longbow skills are clunky to use when close to ur target, but idk if thats as intended. I think we all have felt frustration when ur character is slightly not facing its target and ur #2 #3 #4 is activated without actually doing its dmg/purpose., and u burned a cd :P

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the whole thing, but how can I take this seriously when from the one paragraph i did read it’s clear you don’t understand ranger. Porcine pet F2s do activate different things….

Eurantien.4632:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the whole thing, but how can I take this seriously when from the one paragraph i did read it’s clear you don’t understand ranger. Porcine pet F2s do activate different things….

It’s a shame you didn’t because apart from that 1 mistake these would all be good changes, especially the changes to the sword leaps.

As far as the pigs go, I would love the f2 to be replaced by the foraged item the same way steal works on a thief. Or maybe have it forage 2, one that will replace the f2 and another to appear on the ground.

Alright the weapon changes are good, search and rescue will of course be reworked, spirits they said would be reworked, I have no idea how to make them worthwhile, and a healing spring on Rez, even a shirt duration might be too strong for wvw

imo, Hornet’s and Monarch’s should be like a toggle, you use Hornets to evade back and the skill flips and stays as Monarchs until you use it again. Once you use Monarchs, then it changes back to Hornet’s. Best of both worlds.

I think Hunter’s Call should get a short duration torment per strike.

Soften the fall; I think it should have the MT part removed, then merge with Trapper’s defense and healers celerity.
“Survivor Reviver”
Create a Flame Trap while reviving an ally.
Grant swiftness to yourself and your ally when you revive them. Increases revive speed. You take 50% less damage from falling.
Then make two more adept traits, such as a merge between Nature’s Bounty and Circle of Life and another for Skirmishing that would improve on Carnivorous Appetite like, “Predatory Bond” You and your pet are healed whenever it attacks, your pet attacks 20% faster. Scale with pets healing power for synergy with natural healing.
Search and Rescue I would change to Search and Destroy, shout that causes a 1s reveal to pulse on the pets PBAoE for X time as well as giving it super speed.

I’m not so sure about the change to Monarch Leap and Hornet Sting. My intuition tells me I wouldn’t like that as much. While the evade does have a delay, it is still a nice evade to have at times. I wouldn’t want to leap at someone just to get my evade skill.

A nice trick with using it as it currently is is to (very quickly) untarget your target, turn 180, roll backwards at them, retarget them, leap at them.

I would still want the evade on the end as well, else I’m going to get nailed when I hit melee distance of a smart opponent.

I think ArenaNet added the evade so that the skill is still useful even when you’re already in melee range of your opponent … as well as to keep you from being an easy target when you swoop into melee range of a melee opponent.

It has some synergy with on-hit/on-crit, but, yes, it can feel quite lackluster at times and sucks if your target has retaliation. I think we’ve had a few threads with ideas on how to fix this … though I can’t recall any one idea that’s made me think “yes, please, give us this!”.

Search and Rescue has an 85 second cooldown (not 180). This is drastically lower than most other rez skills in the game.

I somewhat agree with you on the spirits. If the boon isn’t that powerful, don’t make it a proc … just give it to us like a Warrior banner. Otherwise, make it a powerful proc actually worth noticing. I notice Sigil procs more than I notice Spirit procs … I think that’s horrible.

I would love to have a Healing Spring instead of Muddy Terrain when I fall.

Yeah, the pet attribute traits could be better.

The porcine pets each have different item table they forage from

S&R has a 180 CD in sPvP mate.

Are you sure? I’m in-game right now it in the mists it shows 85s.

Goes to show how much I use Search and Rescue in sPvP though :-p

He’s sure, its 180. The tooltip lies. I think if you hop in a game it changes.

I’m only basing my answer on the information provided by the wiki. Can’t get in game right now…

Eurantien.4632:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the whole thing, but how can I take this seriously when from the one paragraph i did read it’s clear you don’t understand ranger. Porcine pet F2s do activate different things….

The warthog, pig, siamoth, all have the same F2 where it forages for a random item. Whether there is a selection for those items or not, it doesn’t feel different for each pet is what I’m getting at. The design just seems lazy to throw a random item generator for 3 pets rather than giving them something distinguishable. Honestly though there are far more pressing matters for fixing ranger pets than this but I didn’t want to beat any dead horses with this thread.

For the S&R, it is a 180 second cooldown in pvp which is really the only place I can ever imagine this skill being used with how it appears to be designed. In wvw when you’re down you either get a banner or flash rez’ed, pets die really quick in a zerg.

As for sword #2 I’ve used it in a double “retreat” but it is very clunky between the 1st and 2nd use not to mention there is only a I think 2 second window to use the 2nd part. Additionally there is no off-hand ranger can use to where you would want to cause a gap opener use some ranged ability that is going to be followed by a leap back into the fight. With how sword feels power or condition based I think jumping in to dish some damage or throw a bonfire on them and to leap back out and swap to a ranged weapon like lb, sb, axe, etc would fit the flow a lot more.

No offhand you’d want to open a gap to use before jumping back in?

• What about Torch? Leap backwards, Throw Torch to apply some burning then Bonfire to leap through for Fire Shield. That’s not bad at all.
• What about Warhorn? Hunter’s Call is ranged and it’s nice to not be auto-attacked while you’re using Call of the Wild. Then you’d likely love to use that newly gained Might+Fury as you go back in to your target.

I think you’re splitting hairs on the Roll Backwards first versus Leap Forwards first. You can do the same things with either ordering via proper use except you can’t use the combination as an evade if the leap forward is first given you have to spend the time first to leap before you get the backwards evade and in that time you’d get hit by what you were trying to evade. This is inferior to what we currently have, hence why I still believe the current implementation (minus the delay before the evade) is superior to what you’re suggesting.

If you’re wanting to disengage from your target to swap to range, all you have to do is use the initial backwards roll and stop … or you can turn and use the forward leap to get even more distance before swapping. I do not see any reason why the ordering of the Sword #2 abilities needs to change.

Sebrent.3625:

No offhand you’d want to open a gap to use before jumping back in?

• What about Torch? Leap backwards, Throw Torch to apply some burning then Bonfire to leap through for Fire Shield. That’s not bad at all.
• What about Warhorn? Hunter’s Call is ranged and it’s nice to not be auto-attacked while you’re using Call of the Wild. Then you’d likely love to use that newly gained Might+Fury as you go back in to your target.

-It’d be a lot quicker to just engauge with a leap through a bonfire than to have to roll back just to set all that up. Throw torch will have its time to be used and it honestly is better to be used around melee-ish range as long as you’re careful with them going behind you because of how slow the projectile is.
-Warhorn #4 is a very weak skill all around, so landing it or not hardly makes a difference atm (hunter’s call is actually on my list).

The problem I have with the order is ranger does have a few combo fields to use or when you simply find one from an ally. I feel like having an on demand leap would benefit more for the ranger than an evade especially since we already have serpent’s strike. Not even looking at the values of each skill, just the set up potential of a leap 1st than evade could make things like x3 combo using a healing spring with something like s/wh GS much smoother or for sword/torch condi you could jump in with a bunch of conditions and back off to kite your enemy while they tick down.

It’s a preference is all, this is excluding the clunky transition for the 1st and 2nd use.

Both the leap and the evade are crucial parts of the sword, but the evade is more important imo. Still, having the leap for an opener would be great, which is why I like the idea I posted above about making Hornet’s/Monarch a flip/toggle sort of thing.

imo, Hornet’s and Monarch’s should be like a toggle, you use Hornets to evade back and the skill flips and stays as Monarchs until you use it again. Once you use Monarchs, then it changes back to Hornet’s. Best of both worlds.

You could setup for a leap opener by evading back and then running around with Monarchs, when you want to attack, leap and it swaps back to Hornet’s.

One of the dramas I see with Monarchs is that you use Hornet’s to evade back, then HS or kite some, but then the opportunity to use Monarchs closes as the skill goes on CD. Imo, I think Monarchs needs a CD as well, they would have separate CDs and essentially become two separate skills in the same slot.

The main problem the sword has is the AA, not the leaps. While they are not perfect, it wouldn’t help to just invert them.

And yes, only the jump on Swoop has an evade, but only the jump will be executed in melee range. So you already have your evadeframe in melee range.

Currently, is the leap still usable with it being the 2nd ability on Sword #2? Yes, it is quite useable.

Would the evade still be usable if it was changed to be the 2nd ability on Sword #2? No, as you’d have to first leap at your foe and then hit the evade; taking so much time that the evade becomes useless.

See the issue?

It is fine the way it currently is as both abilities are usable. If you changed it, you’d make one of them much less so.

Sebrent.3625:

Currently, is the leap still usable with it being the 2nd ability on Sword #2? Yes, it is quite useable.

Would the evade still be usable if it was changed to be the 2nd ability on Sword #2? No, as you’d have to first leap at your foe and then hit the evade; taking so much time that the evade becomes useless.

See the issue?

It is fine the way it currently is as both abilities are usable. If you changed it, you’d make one of them much less so.

It’s usable, its just very clunky and unreliable when you have to reposition yourself to use it. I think the toggle ashfiend suggested would probably be the best of both worlds it’s just hard to imagine how that would work. Maybe if you’re moving forward it turns to a leap and if you step backward it turns to the evade?

How would the cooldown work on that?

My intuition tells me that I wouldn’t be a big fan of that as now I’d have to double-check which one I was currently on before deciding if I needed to untarget/turn-180.

Both Monarch’s and Hornets would need to have seperate 8s CDs. So one can recharge while the other is up.

I would love that tbh, being able to setup for a forward leap in advance, by using Hornet’s and leaving Monarch’s up, would be fantastic imo and a split-second glance to see which is up when needing to retreat would be a very minor consideration for me.

Plus, you could use your leap 1st to retreat, or if Hornets is up, use that, then you have a lot more time to use Monarch’s, being able to use Stalker’s Strike and Serpen’ts Strike, dodge, dodge, then Monarchs would mean the CD on Hornets could be close to up to use immediately again.

Ahhh, dreams…

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Both the leap and the evade are crucial parts of the sword, but the evade is more important imo. Still, having the leap for an opener would be great, which is why I like the idea I posted above about making Hornet’s/Monarch a flip/toggle sort of thing.

imo, Hornet’s and Monarch’s should be like a toggle, you use Hornets to evade back and the skill flips and stays as Monarchs until you use it again. Once you use Monarchs, then it changes back to Hornet’s. Best of both worlds.

You could setup for a leap opener by evading back and then running around with Monarchs, when you want to attack, leap and it swaps back to Hornet’s.

One of the dramas I see with Monarchs is that you use Hornet’s to evade back, then HS or kite some, but then the opportunity to use Monarchs closes as the skill goes on CD. Imo, I think Monarchs needs a CD as well, they would have separate CDs and essentially become two separate skills in the same slot.

They just need to dramatically increase the window of time we have to use the leap. Something in line with the 15s thieves have to use Infiltrator’s Return would be fine.

Yeah, that would work, too. But I still like my suggestion far more as it allows the skill to be used as a leap opener.

Sebrent.3625:

How would the cooldown work on that?

My intuition tells me that I wouldn’t be a big fan of that as now I’d have to double-check which one I was currently on before deciding if I needed to untarget/turn-180.

I’d say the skill just be left as a normal cooldown for both sides. If you leap or evade wouldn’t matter, using the skill would put both parts on their respective cooldown. Atleast with it this way you get to have control over how to utilize this skill which comes down to good thinking and we should all be rewarded for using our noggin.

I like the separate cooldown idea okay.

I think I’d prefer the longer window suggested by Substance E … but I’d want the cooldown to start from the use of the Hornet Sting … not wait to start counting down from the use of Monarch’s Leap or the end of that 15s. Since the base cooldown is only 8s, I think the window of time would be fine at 6 seconds. Why? Because 8 * 0.8 is 0.64. So even with cooldown reduction you don’t run into cooldown issues.

Currently, the window of time to use Monarch Leap is only about 2.5 seconds. Increasing that to 6 seconds would be wonderful.

I’m still not a fan of this flip-flop where it’s essentially two separate abilities that share a slot on my weaponset bar.

Sword getting a little rework would make it more appealing for sure.
I’m just hoping for a little shortbow love. I’ve had plenty of time to come up with a few ideas.
A few of the major issues at the moment is having to flank for the bleed, and the range and attack rate. Now changing all of these things would make it OP, to be honest i’m fine with the current range, even if it will be just over half LB range, but having the old attack rate would be great. As for the bleeds, i understand that this weapon is meant to reward good positioning (harder with lesser range ;p) but the auto, when not flanking seems really rather weak.
How about a very short bleed attacking from the front, even 1 second? and a longer bleed from the side 3seconds (the current) then longest bleed from behind 4.5seconds
SB #2 would be cool if it did something like inflict 2s of torment when flanking. Thats long enough to be noticed and short enough tat it isn’t too strong. Only inflicting max damage if the enemy is on top of you and you manage to dart behind them.
SB #3 and #4. #4 is weak, and i think it should be mixed into #3. Make #3 cripple the enemy when the skill is used in retreat, thus increasing your chances of escaping, and give us a totally new #4.
I’m sure Anet could create a skill with far greater pet synergy as the bleed from your pet is weak to the point of uselessness.
5 as has been suggested should get confusion on a successful interrupt.

Shortbow is probably my favourite weapon to use, it’s far more fun i think than the longbow. And with the baseline improvements for LB on the way i just hope our SB isn’t forgotten.