Guild Wars 2

All professions have problems, rangers certainly aren’t the most problematic one out there. Guardians have major range issues, necromancers have damage issues, engineers have build issues, elementalists have everything-issues.

The three professions that are best right now by far are warriors, thieves and mesmers. They’re leaps and bounds more powerful than the other professions, and offer far more variety in their build.

The main problems with the ranger is that they only have one single viable build, partially because their pets don’t function, pets are entirely useless in pvp since they cannot hit anything with their auto attack or other abilities, and their F2 abilities either don’t react or have such a long animation that they never hit. But at least we have that one viable build, that’s more than elementalists and necromancers have for example.

Ranger problems are relatively easily solved luckily:
- The spirits need to be unkillable (they’re ethereal spirits after all). -> Support build.
- Pets need to home in, attack on the move and F2 act quickly. -> Beastmaster build.
- The greatsword needs to do some more damage again. -> Tank build.
- The longbow needs to do serious damage again. -> Power archer build.
- The 1H sword needs to stop rooting rangers (remove cripple effect on second chain if necessary), and the #3 skill needs to home in on the target during the evasion so it hits. -> Survivalist build.

With five simple fixes, rangers get 5 additional viable builds, making it 6 in total. This gives me hope because it means Anet just needs to realize this, if they haven’t already, without having to put much time and effort in rehauling anything, since the fixes are so simple.

I’d like to keep the cripple for 1h sword bc that’s one reason why I love using it do much really reduces the enemies effectiveness by a lot but a simple fix is just that whenever u tap any other skill it overrides and immediately kicks in to interrupt whatever part of the chain u are in, that I think is what everyone has been talking about. And yep 1h sword skills like serpent roll and hornets sting misses alot, ESP on slight angled terrain and I don’t think that should happen bc we don’t hve full control and only a lock on to target and press a button kinda thing, it should hit instead of misses so often. And personally id suggest to separate monarchs leap so there isn’t a time out, just one and then the other whenever u want so u can use monarchs leap as just a gap closer or combo more from range before jumping back, that will make the sword so immensely useful and versatile and also entire ranger powerful

Also for pets people have been asking for ability to permanently stow pets, since a slight fall damage while traveling or something will pop the pet out again but that is still debatable

I would like to add “fix the pet skills and descriptions” to that list. Most of the pets F2 skills has a wrong skill description, and a lot of skill don’t even work probably. The drakes Tail Swipe skill is never used, the white moa only does a 1 second chill and the description says it’s a regeneration skill, the blue moa has a protection skill that’s suppose to last 10 seconds but it only lasts 4, none of the pet bleed skills says how many stacks they add, and it just goes on like this. Basically, all the pet skills needs to be checked.

I hope the devs realize how badly the pets are bugged and malfunctioning right now.. stopping before every attack, walking in straight lines instead of homing in, not attacking while moving, insane long F2 animations that also don’t home in on the target, horrible F2 response despite patches, F2 not canceling other skills by placing them on a short cooldown, or none at all preferable, pets having no aoe damage resistance, which is something every MMO needs for a pet class to work, skills wrongly described, skills not being used and I’m sure more experienced players can add a whole lot more problems.

The game just started, so I’m not worried, I just hope it’s being worked on.

Good op, that pretty much gets it. Another thing apart from Swoop, which is leap finisher the greatsword doesn’t combo. Instead of making it massively more damaging why not make it do a bit of AOE giving it a different role to the bows that makes it an attractive swap. e.g. Skill 2 Maul might be “Bleed your foes [plural] multiple times with a mauling strike.” and be a whirl finisher. Then you could cross combo or self combo with traps & healing spring. And greatsword really should be an AOE weapon.

The final thing a bow/greatsword build would need is a swiftness utility skill. Then you could use it in WvW with some effectiveness.

Hope Anet read this U_U

I agree, you make some excelent points and it would be nice to be able to use my longbow for some heavy DPS, as I think a lot of rangers are favouring short bows currently. And I wont even get started on the 1 handed sword issues…

“Also for pets people have been asking for ability to permanently stow pets, since a slight fall damage while traveling or something will pop the pet out again but that is still debatable”

Not debatable. This absolutely needs to be implemented.

The DEBATE is whether to give a boost/buff when the pet is stowed.

For the Record: I could care less about a boost/buff when the pet is stowed. In fact, right now I’d take a damage reduction if I could cage my pet.

Katz.5143:

What is the one viable build?

It involved using a shortbow, but don’t worry about that anymore. The shortbow got broke this patch. There are no more viable specs for rangers. GG roll warrior.

Love the idea of 4 separate roles. Im trying to get a discussion (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/What-role-s-does-the-ranger-play-in-WvWvW/first#post390503) regarding what we CAN do at the moment as Id like to stick it out with my ranger. All the while farming things to sell so I can power level another class to ~50 from crafting.

takatsu.9416:

I’d like to keep the cripple for 1h sword bc that’s one reason why I love using it do much really reduces the enemies effectiveness by a lot but a simple fix is just that whenever u tap any other skill it overrides and immediately kicks in to interrupt whatever part of the chain u are in, that I think is what everyone has been talking about. And yep 1h sword skills like serpent roll and hornets sting misses alot, ESP on slight angled terrain and I don’t think that should happen bc we don’t hve full control and only a lock on to target and press a button kinda thing, it should hit instead of misses so often. And personally id suggest to separate monarchs leap so there isn’t a time out, just one and then the other whenever u want so u can use monarchs leap as just a gap closer or combo more from range before jumping back, that will make the sword so immensely useful and versatile and also entire ranger powerful

Also for pets people have been asking for ability to permanently stow pets, since a slight fall damage while traveling or something will pop the pet out again but that is still debatable

i prefer monarchs leap the way it is its nice to either use it as a straight attack or a jump back examine the situation and leap back in after heal or whatever

i do wish that dodging would take priority over chain attacks and channels.as a matter of fact dodging should take priority over everything, no matter what.

Hmmm, sounds good but 3 of your 5 suggestions are the result of nerfs because (i guess) it was judged that those builds were too OP.

Greatsword damage was nerfed
Longbow damage was nerfed
Spirit hps (among other things) were nerfed

I don’t see how these things are just going to be unerfed- although I pretty much agree with all your suggestions.

I’m always left wondering if those ranger builds really were so OP compared to say the mesmer/thief/guardian builds we have now, and if not why these ranger builds were nerfed in the first place.

katz, shortbow. even that is fubared right now because someone thought it would be smart to reduce the attack speed without compensating it with damage.

the auto attack was the shortbow’s main source of power, the other skills do less damage and are situational skills.

poison volley only does its full damage if struck from point black fyi.

I think the problem honestly is that the devs probably did their damage balancing in very sterile environment. Like they probably lined up their testing ranger and had it firing at a non-mobile target and have a pet sitting there hitting that non-moving target and then they say: “That longbow ranger can do XXX damage in 1 minute, and wow their pet did XXX damage, that’s more than the thief so we need to reduce bow damage. There, it’s balanced!” Except, in the real world (pvp), no, no and no. Our projectile speed makes us miss 1/2 our shots, our pet is missing and running circles because the target is side stepping, or it’s just dead on a long cool down because of a bazillion AOEs blowing it up.

/sigh emo ranger is emo.

Depending on what you’re doing with the ranger they’re far from having only one effective build, although I’d agree that we had one weapon that was vastly more useful than the others.

1) Trap build with shortbow/longbow and axe is extremely effective at kiting with plenty of cripples and chills.
2) Longbow/shortbow build is still a favorite in WvW.
3) Hybrid pet+monkey tank builds make for really, really hard to kill rangers (incredible endurance regen + greatsword evades + shortbow evade). Also if your opponent is dumb enough to stand still your pet hits like a truck with these builds.
4) I’ve personally found hybrid builds (I usually go 0/20/20/15/15 or 20/0/20/15/15) to be particularly effective for “roaming” in WvW and sPvP.

To name but a few. But yeah, when longbow and greatsword were nerfed we lost our biggest two DPS tools, and shortbow power builds got hit hard from the speed change (condition builds are still fine, btw) . Right now sword is relegated to the gamble of committing to a kill or dying in the process. Axe, torch, and dagger have always been utility weapons suited to specific purposes, and I’m cool with having a couple of those.

The OPs suggestions would definitely bring all of our tools up to par, but the devs need to be really careful that they don’t create the ungodly powerful spirit ranger builds again. Those were awful in BWEs. They also have to be wary of new hybrid builds where, for instance, a ranger could spec into both longbow power and greatsword tank to create ranger Hercules. Rangers seem to be really good at hybrid builds anyways, so this is a very big concern that I’m sure is delaying some of these adjustments being put in place.