Guild Wars 2

Purpose:
There are currently many topics for Ranger suggestions ranging from pet specific threads to Shortbow alterations to Trait changes. I wanted a place where everyone can share their ideas in a single thread. I hoping this becomes a hit because personally I hate having to check 10 different posts to keep up with all of the suggestions.

Read First Please!:

GW2 Ranger Suggestions

I’ve been asked a few times to post this in non-google.doc link. The problem with that is…It’s seriously 5 pages long! That’s right, 5 pages of pure suggestions for the Ranger. Google.doc allows me to keep it easily updated as well. There are many things here that you may have seen elsewhere in the forums. All I ask is that if you have an idea to suggest please check my link to see if it was already addressed. If it was, just simply say something like, “@Sco I agree with XXX change because YYY and disagree with XXX change because YYY.” If you want to post a new suggestions please make sure it is sectioned nicely and easy to read. (Similar to my link’s format)
Lastly, it is important that all suggestions come with reasons. Explain why you think something should be changed and the intended goal of the change! Thank you!

First – thank you for making on thread for suggestions. Let’s hope for a sticky. I often make suggestions on various threads and I’m afraid they get lost in the din.

Pets: I couldn’t agree more. The pets not attack and moving at the same time is the single largest issue our class faces. I would pick my ranger back up if this were fixed today. With how mobile combat is supposed to be, this bug is the most glaring and frusterating.

I would also add that AoE damage – especially in dungeons is preventing rangers from using their pets, even ranged pets in most cases. Pets should initiate and avade or a block at low health to give rangers a chance to recall, switch or heal their pet. Additionally the VO “My pet is low!” should announce before the pet is actually dead. I find I spend more time looking at my pet’s health bar and less at the battlefield then I should – especially when Anet said they don’t want players watching lifebars as part of their profession.

Weapon Sets:
I’m going to go into a little more detail then you did, since this is one of the main draw of the class – Bows.
ShortBow:
Skill 1: Now that the SB speed was decreased, the bleed to be active regardless of position AND increase base damage while flanking. This would bring the SB more in line with other professions bleeding auto attack and still give the SB the niche – skirmish flanking asset that it has always had.
Skill 2: I would not change anything about this skill. It’s damage is good and the poison is a welcome condition
Skill 3: Add a pet swiftness to it. This way it can be used to distance ranger from target and allow the pet to better close a gap.
Skill 4: I wouldn’t change anything
Skill 5: This is the skill I think needs to be reworked. The stun/daze is a welcome means of control but since the damage is so low many rangers don’t use it unless to interupt. The damage should be increased so there is a risk/reward on when to use it, and when to save it for a clutch interupt. As it is right now, the ranger will always have it off cooldown.

SB is forced to spam 1 because there are no other skills that offer the same amount of damage. Increasing this skills damage would give us one go to nuke for the set. Also, in PvE, having a high damage ability attached to the stun skill would make up for the fact that most bosses are unstunable.

If increasing the damage is unbalanced, have the skill add confusion for additional condition damage or have the skill do more damage when it interupts to give the patient ranger a pay off for saving the skill.

Long Bow:
Skill1. Increase missle speed. This would make the easily dodgable or left-right-left juke move some people exploit less of an issue. This missle is the slowest and most projected skill in the game and since we get max damage at max range it adds to our damage loss. Furthermore, simple terrain can cause our arrows to be obstructed so increasing missle speed would make these issues less painful.

Increasing missle speed would be a DPS increase, but the arrows wouldn’t do more damage we would just do more per second. Making an unengaged Ranger a threat on the battle field. As it is now, a smart player can easily dodge the arrows and stay engaged in the fight.

Skill 2: I would increase the channel speed for the same obstructed, easily dodged arrows. A slight increase would (not more then 5%) would make dodged Rapid fires more easily to recover.

Make it easier to stop the channel. I hate that I have to activate another ability to stop the channel especially if a target is dead. The channel should stop when the target dies or when I press the button again.

Add increase damage or a cripple, immobilize or other condition to the final hit of the channel to give the ranger a pay off for getting through the whole cast. Again, it would make a ranger allowed to act as a sniper a threat and force teams strategy to counter the ranger. This is similiar to a rifle warrior – who if he is allowed to snipe from a battlefield will decimate another team.

Skill 3: Add a “draw” cast bar to hunter’s shot. Single click will not change the damage or effect of the skill. But a ranger can hold the button to draw the bow and release the button to release the arrow for increase damage and missle speed. This would fit the long bow “sniper” niche its supposed to have and give a ranger a high damage ability to go to if left alone.

Skill 4: I wouldn’t change anything
Skill 5: I wouldn’t change anything

Sword:
Skill 1: Remove the self root for the obvious reason.
Skill 2: Increase the active time of monarchs leap so rangers have more time to hold it as a gap closer.

Warhorn:
Skill 4: Add a blind to the damage

Utilities:
I won’t add much to you list since you have very good suggestions.

Spirits: Make them invulnerable and decrease their effectiveness. They would still be useful and would not require the heavy trait investment they currently take to make them even semi-useful (but still notsomuch). Spirit traits can still make them mobile and more effective and thuse give spirit focused rangers something to build on. As they are now, spirits are almost entirely unused because of the heavy trait requirements and their flimsiness in combat

Signets:
I’m less optimistic than you. I think our surent signets are the worst of any class.
Signet of the Hunt: Increase runspeed from 10% to 15%-20%. For the mobile hunter we are supposed to be, we should have speed to match it. I love you suggestion of adding the active effect be an immobolize instead of the weak damage increase it currently is.
Signet of the Wild/Stone: Aggreed. Decrease cooldown so rangers may actually decide to use them
I would like to see at least one signet where the active effect has nothing to do with the pet and will buff the ranger. Helpful for those rangers that don’t focus on pet damage.

Shouts:
Shouts should have an AoE effect that buffs the group and ranger on top of their normal ability to give support focused rangers a little more skills to go to other than spirits.
Sick ‘em: Gives AoE Might/Fury
Protect Me: Gives AoE Protection
Search and Rescue: AoE regen or retaliation (we don’t have a way to get this buff yet btw)
Guard Here: Reveals stealth in the guarded area.

Increasing any of these shouts would make them semi-viable. As they are now, they simply aren’t used except for Protect Me – and even then it’s situational. The shouts right now are just not useful.

Those are my suggestions. I hope we see something in the upcoming patch for Ranger.

I made a post in the Suggestions forum suggesting that we get daggers for the main-hand used for throwing, like axes; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Rangers-Dagger-Main-hand/first#post431473

I’d also like to suggest how the Greatsword could be improved.
Increasing the damage across the board is an obvious one, but it could use more work than that. First of all, its traits are split between Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic. Considering it has jack for condition damage and is more utility/defense, it does fit best with Nature Magic. I recommend Removing the greatsword/spear component from Martial Training and folding that into Two-handed training so it grants both the cooldown reduction and 5% damage (that 5% damage is horrid on its own, and many classes have an equivalent trait that gives the cooldown reduction as well as a tiny bonus like that). Martial Training could have some small similar bonus to one-handed swords added as compensation. Or better yet, if they did give us main-hand daggers then a cooldown reduction for that could be added in.
Now on to the skills themselves. The cooldown on the interrupt is longer than it should be, based both upon the value of the effect itself and other similar skills. I think it should be dropped to 20 seconds.
Finally, Maul; It’s terrible. Its damage is split with a weak bleed, but it’s the only condition damage the weapon has. This really screws with gearing, since the sole non-auto attack possessed by the weapon will be weaker without condition damage, but at the same time the weapon as a whole gains hardly anything from condition damage. This skill needs both to be buffed up -and- altered to have something other than the bleed.
The bleed should be replaced with a self-boon, which would work very well with its connection to Nature Magic due to the +Boon duration. Something like either several stacks of Might lasting ~10 seconds, or Fury lasting a few seconds. This would also be pretty cool because of the impression it would give that you have the power of spirits coursing through you, due both to the connection to Nature Magic and the spirit bear graphic that triggers during the attack.

Lobo.1296:

Signet of the Wild/Stone: Aggreed. Decrease cooldown so rangers may actually decide to use them

Argeed? Signet of wild heals pet for 125 p/c and ranger for 70(!). Signet of stone give 35(!!!!) thougness!!! U agreed with it? It’s sh…t, m8! It’s… nothing. This is worse than nothing, because it need a slot! And it all buffs only your pet, which useless in many situations. This idea in itself – a spit in ranger’s face. The only good signet – is signet of renewal.

MeGa…No I agreed with the OPs sugestions on them. The bonuses aren’t great, but they are useful in some settings but the click ability is terrible and it won’t ever be used. If the click was reduced to 30 or 60 sec I might actually click them once in awhile.

I used both signet of the wild and stone in my PvE builds. I don’t use them because they are great. I use them because they are the only signets we have and they are, without a doubt, worse then any other signets out there. Please read the whole paragraph to keep individual lines in context.

Let’s me, fierce hater, also write something.
First, let’s not head in the clouds and thinking like a realist. No one will change frnctional of weapons abilities, delete and add new ones, and even more so, no one will add a new weapon. This will never happends.
Humble with it.
Despair.
Ok.
Think of how to improve what we have. Not “overbuff” as everyone wants. To make class comparable to the others. Need to carefully compare.

I’ll start with the main thing: the class mechanic.
I understand that many people like pet-holders classes, as I understand the fact that many do not like them. So it’s logical conclusion: it’s devoted INORDINATE amount of attention to ranger’s mechanic. The entire class, however, ""shifted" to his mechanic", like no other.
Example: the elementalist can switch element, but can not to switch and play in one. Necromancer can actively use deathshroud, and may even forget about it. A warrior can use the adrenaline and can not to use it, etc.

Ranger CAN’T not use the pet. He is absolutely dependent on him. You might like it. I might like it. But this is not right anyway.

Let’s think about it: ranger, in principle, have just only 2 builds. It’s a glass cannon and beastmaster. Everything else – is just balancing between them. And for a normal game, the mechanics of the class are automatically entices you to its use, that is fundamentally wrong – your damage splited between you and your pet, and to safe your damage, you must reduce your own, in favor of the survival of damage.. emm…. running around nearby. Therefore have N points in beastmaster become almost mandatory. And “each ranger who has no points in BM – a fool.”© In addition, many ranger’s traits give buff only for pet and they are required because simply do not have a decent analogue (like 30% pet crit dmg)

I believe that 80% of pet’s damage should be moved back to the ranger and pet should be a kind of “meat wall” with F2 ability. damage and thickness pet should gain only buy a points in beastmaster traits.

Plus, in addition to (or instead of it) i have some interesting idea. Many people have offered to give the opportunity to remove the pet in return for a buff.
And what about more simple way – the non-active pet that gives this buff.

I imagine something like a natural spirit, walking side by side and giving to rangers, for example, 10% of the damage and -5% of incoming damage and giving some sort of preparation ability (many also wanted). For example F2 and your next “…..” attacks will do “………”.
Just as an option, thos pet modes can be removed altogether and make a simple visual effect on the Rangers instead. Animation like leaves falling from the hands or green glow. Sothing about it.

May be made several of these “pets”. Such kitten for each traits branch, giving relevant abilities. For example some:

spirit of hunt —- +10% damage -5% of incoming damage (F2 your next 5 attacks will push the enemy back)
spirit of summer --- +5% endurance +10% healing ( F2 your next 5 attacks will heal nearby allies).

It would solve a lot of problems at once. For people who do not want to play with pet, but find themselves close to the ranger class. People are annoyed by the constant unwanted pet aggro. People who are miss GW1 ranger and his abilities. And so.

==>

=>

Well stop dreaming. Back to reality.
First, if refuse to move damage from pets to the ranger, I believe that the ALL ranger’s damage need to be increased all by 5-10 percent. In addition we need to correct some weapons damage, and weapons itself.

Greatsword.
All of it’s damage need to be increased by 7 percent +. Besides, since it’s “deffencive weapon”, remove bleeding from Maul and give something deffencive instead. Like protection or retaliation. Or conversely: add bleeding for the first two autoattack strikes.

Longbow.
Damage in melee and middle distance increased by 10-15%, and the damage at the maximum range for 5-10 percent.
Increase the damage of rapid fire by half. Now it does less than 2 crit of auto attack and have 6 times more cast time… Or raise the damage by 20% and give vulnerability on each tic. Reduce it CD to 8 seconds. And to hunter’s shot, at all, change the functionality. I imagine something like a jump to an arbitrary point, instead. It would be super cool. Longbow immediately becomes 10 times more interesting

Sword. Everyone knows the problem of the sword. We need to remove the jump from the second strike. Replaced with something like the usual punch that gives buff of might to hunter and not pet. And voila! perfect weapon.

Axe.
I like it both but AA damage need to me icreased to. 10-15%

Shortbow
Shortbow, in principle, is good now. I see it as a weapon for the kite, not the main weapon for damage. All it needs it have to have. But the instant damage of poison wolley should be increased by 1/3 or more, then the skill will be usable.

Spirits

Not need to talk much about spirits. They sucks. Need to make them immortal. That’s all. Inactive target. And replace the 50% health trait on something useful. Some healing for a group or improvement invented by us “just-buffing-pets” =P. Ideally it would be good to raise the spirits biff radius. And increase the range of their abilities, in close combat they are not get they’r targets sometimes ).

Next I want to talk about the other utility skills.
Especially shouts. For example, I am absolutely sure that “guard” exists only in order to fill the missing slot for an equal number of other classes… I realy agreed that this skill should be part of pet panel.
I can agree with the idea proposed above that this abilityes should give buffs. At least for the ranger.
Search and rescue shoul to do pet immune to damage for the duration. Or, conversely, do targeted player immune. Or both. Otherwise it would not go to any comparison with the abilities of other classes. For example necromancer’s sigil instantly ress all within radius.

Ah… sigils………………………………………………… o__________O
As I said, all but sigil of reneval is very very bad. Useless. It all should give the same buff ranger and pet. And the effects of use must be given automatically to rangers. And trait must be replace with something new. Passive effects must be impruved. Sigil of hunt must give 25% speed. Or add trait which give 15% more.

While there are no more ideas (Maybe just forgot). Think about how to improve the shouts yet.

I accept constructive criticism.

Why are multiple versions of threads like these cropping up and saying the same thing that’s been said in hundreds of other threads (many of them now closed)?

These suggestions have been posted thousands of times by hundreds of different people and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers, including moderators and developers. Nothing has been said that hasn’t already been said. The reason why this has been going on since release is because we’ve had very little developer contact.

I actually wish these threads would be consolidated or, heaven forbid, we get some substantial response from a developer.

deepwinter.9015:

I actually wish these threads would be consolidated or, heaven forbid, we get some substantial response from a developer.

That’s the purpose of this thread if you did not read. I want to put everything in one place.

Thank you very much, all of you for your contributions thus far! I can not sit down and read them as much as I want to atm but I will get around to it and try to respond to everything I can.

So why did you make a new thread, instead of putting this into one of the several other threads of the same theme?

The other threads, as I already said, are not only labeled to be specific, have become that way, or reference a developer’s words in spite and/or impatience. This one’s title is passive and welcomes others, the OP explains why it is here and it’s goal. I do not see that in other posts.

Please stop distracting the conversation because that’s how these posts die. If you dislike it it, fine, then ignore it. Thank you.

Halloween isn’t up yet, might as well throw in my 2c on what needs to be done for the Ranger:

Weapons:

Longbow
-increase damage on LRS by X%.
Look, the Longbow is a hard-out DPS weapon. The only control it has is a defensive KB and AoE cripple, both of which are to keep enemies at Range where you can pound them. The other 3 skills need to hit hard. RF and HS are both great, but LRS is just awful. A mid-range LB should be slightly less than a flanking SB, but if a Ranger is sitting at max range undisturbed with a DPS spec, he should be dangerous. Max range isn’t easy to keep (outside of W3), so there needs to be substantial benefit to staying there and punishing players who ignore the Ranger.

Greatsword
-increase auto-attack damage
-Buff maul base damage, remove bleeds
Simple really, give slight buffs and remove the conditions so power-based melee DPS specs are a valid option, as opposed to 1h sword DoT specs or GS tank specs.

1h Sword
-remove leap from kick
Remove useless leap, fix sword self-rooting. No balance changes needed.

Shortbow
-Increase damage from Poison Volley, reduce spread to 3 arrows
Since spamming 1 is bland and generally no fun, buffing Poison Volley gives an incentive to push 2, while reducing the spread means you can still use it outside of point-blank range and not waste 4/5 of the damage. Crippling Shot will become useful if pets can reliably hit targets.

Axe
-Add some sort of chain to Ricochet
This one is just my personal little wish, and is by no means necessary. I’d just prefer if the axe skill 1 was a bit more exciting since it lacks the positional modifiers of the Bows.

Part 2: (rest was cut off)

Utilities

Signets
-Signet of Stone, Signet of the Hunt, and Signet of the Wild all affect the Ranger by default
Ok, having to trait 30 points to make signets’ actives usable is a bit silly. Pets and Rangers are parts of the same whole, having to trait our skills to affect the entire whole is not choice, it’s just bad design. Removing the requirement for SotBM alone would make Signets usable in a lot more builds, which would be a huge help for providing non-trap or spirit Rangers with utility skills that aren’t survival.

Signet of the Hunt
-increase runspeed buff to 25%
The first part just puts it on par with on the Thief equivalent, the Elementalist could get the buff too. It could also use some changes to make it more usable for ranged builds (most skills are multi-hit), but between a buffed LRS and new Maul, I think Power-Rangers could make use of it.

Signet of Stone
-Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds
-Duration reduced to 4 seconds
This just puts SoS in the same league as the other invincibility skills. Reducing the duration while reducing the CD gives Rangers more opportunities to activate the skill without feeling overly vulnerable without the toughness buff.

Signet of the Wild
-reduce CD significantly
-Remove Stability, shorten duration, or something of that sort
Once again, reducing the CD while reducing the effect gives Rangers more reasons to push the button outside of using it as a pseudo-elite skill. The effect might even need a nice overhaul to function as something other than yet another DPS boost.

Spirits
-increase Spirit health slightly
Remove proc chance, change proc as needed
Spirits. They stink. The health makes traiting nigh-on mandatory to use them in combat, and even then the procs are either too weak or never at the right time. Active effects are a whole other issue, all of which I would like to change in my proposed reworks.

Sun Spirit
-Active changed to give X stacks of might
This spirit is arguably the best-designed for procs. Having it scale with crit chance might be a better option, but would injure professions whose condition damage is not tied with Precision, or do not spec Precision for their condition build. The change to the active makes it a better choice for DPS builds, and the blind on the activation made timing it near impossible, and otherwise not helpful.

Frost Spirit
-Proc removed entirely
-Active now heals
On the other hand, the proc on Frost Spirit is just awful. A 20% chance for 10% extra damage is destined for failure, but just removing the proc leaves a 10% increase, which is quite respectable and not OP. The active change is a bit more necessary. Look, AoE chill is great, but we have Frost Trap for that. Another heal would fit the idea of constant combat Frost is built for, while adding another heal option to the Ranger arsenal.

Stone Spirit
-Passive now procs when being hit hit, not when hitting the enemy
-Active grants stability for short duration
The proc change just makes it more likely to proc when needed. Most of the time when you’re hitting the enemy repeatedly, you don’t need the protection. When you do need it is when half a pack of mobs decides to come play, a situation when you’re being hit. The active change gives it additional use, especially if Stability is dropped from SotW. More importantly, do we honestly need 4 skills that can AoE cripple? (Barrage, Spike Trap, Muddy Terrain, Quicksand)

Storm Spirit
Passive changed to give Swiftness guaranteed on Dodge Roll
Active removes Crippled, Chilled, and Immobolized and grants Vigor

The change to the passive gives players more control over when they get the swiftness buff, as opposed to absolutely randomly. The active better fits the spirit, while providing Rangers with an ever-needed snare-breaker.

Part 3:

(just the last of it)

Other
Lightning Reflexes
breaks crippled, chilled, and immobilized
Rangers got shafted in the snare-break department. Both of the other adventurer professions have a skill for removing snares (Roll for Initiative, Rocket Boots). The Ranger equivalent, Lightning Reflexes, apparently never got the memo. Adding the Snare break would do wonders for Ranger durability.

Shouts
Just leaving a few general words here.

Shouts need an overhaul. The only shout that adds actual utility is Protect Me. The others are wither highly situational (Guard, S&R) or are outclassed by other skills (Sic ‘Em). They aren’t adding anything to the Ranger’s utility. Why take Sic ‘Em when I have the choice of Quickening Zephyr, Sharpening Stone, Signet of the Wild, Signet of the Hunt. and even Sun and Frost Spirit for DPS-enhancing options? We are already saturated with DPS options, so Shouts need to add more. Adding a bit more movement or debuffing somewhere in Shouts would make them usable, but I don’t have high hopes for their future.

Right now, I’d suggest they either:
a) have Protect Me changed to a Survival skill and add 3 new utilities, such as Preparations, Stances, or Environment manipulation.
b) Keep the pet idea, but change Shouts to be more competitive options.

I might do a little write-up on traits and whatnot later, but I don’t think they’re that bad. Marksmanship needs better minor traits, and BeastMastery needs better Major traits in tier 2 and 3, but that’s about it. Traps would be better in Wilderness Survival, but that’s not a major issue atm.