Guild Wars 2

Ok guys, lets get serious. How would you tweak rangers in a realistic way, which means taking what we got right now and doing non complicated changes. I hope this topic does not devolve into a cry fest, so here goes.

The issue with Ranger is that we have a lot of utilities that simply do not do anything. Builds, that have glaring weaknesses that makes the class almost there, but not just there yet. Asking for the Dev team to remove or remake pets is ludicrous at this point, so lets stick to simple tweaks-

The core changes

• Ranger becomes a high HP class. Basic HP is increased to Warrior and Necromancer level.**
  The reason for this is that compared to Engi, Thief, Mesmer the Ranger class has poor damage avoidance capabilities. Sure, we have evade frames but we are not the class with top vigor up time. We have solid but not good protection up time. We have some blocks and no reflects or blurs other then whirling defense. Furthermore this will put every armor class into having 1 low, 1 medium and 1 high HP class.

-Pet PvE HP bonus is translated into WvW and PvP
I think this is a no brainer. Seriously, the pets need the extra HP in WvW and in PvP there was a huge power creep that our pets now die even faster then before. It also goes with ANet goal of not splitting things between game modes. This needs to happen!!

-Increase basic pet condition damage
Since the latest big patch the formula for calculating condition damage has changed and thus a lot of pet abilities and traits that would do condition damage became worthless. I think that giving pets a baseline 300-400 condition damage would make it so that these pets and traits are useful again. Pets cannot overload someone on conditions anyway.

The lack of party support

I have been thinking a lot about what could be done to remedy this problem. The Ranger has tools to be a support character but they simply do not compare to some of the other classes that are out there. What could be done to give Ranger a proper niche of party support. Well I feel as if the problem can be fixed by tweaking a couple of traits and utilities.

The spirits
The spirits have mechanics in place that could be tweaked upon to make them much more reliable and desirable, all we need to do is make some simple yet elegant changes.
Ability to target the summon place, the same as warrior banners, choosing a place where to put them is very important and they can be used offensively then to dislodge or disable someone in a tactical manner.
Buffing some of the passive bonuses – Water spirit passive heal proc ICD reduced to 5s down from 10s. Frost spirit damage bonus increased to 15% from 10% damage on proc. Storm spirit swiftness changed to 2s of quickness. Nature vengeance might boon bonus changed from 1 stack for 1s to 6 stacks for 2s.

The traits
-Vigorous training gives 1 stack of stability AOE for kitten duration as well as the vigor
-Invigorating bond activates on pet swap in an AOE and not on pet F2. It also removes 2 conditions

The shouts
-Guard also makes it so that allies take 15% reduced damage in the AoE affected. The pet actually GUARDS people

Many more ideas to come from me and hopefully from other people too.

I like your suggestions. ranger especially needs to be a high hp medium armor prof. this would open back up the rabid and settler builds at least.

they also need to address useless weapons, utilities and GM’s. warhorn, OH axe and SB need revamps. traps need an associated defensive function to them (either built in or traited stealth, stunbreaker, condi cleanse, etc.). MDG, honed axes, poison master, empathic bond, etc. all need to be greatly buffed.

• Give pets more attacks that cleave multiple targets. At the very least increase the number of targets on auto attacks.

• Allow pets to benefit from consumables.

^I think SotP should give pets a huge cleave range for the duration and also enlarge them for the additional damage. they should just remove the might stacking portion of SotP because realistically the pet wont make contact with its target more than 3-4 times tops. you can also argue that if you want cleave, just use drakes. which sucks, but people will say that.

At least fix the bugs we have. We might be able to at least have some fun.
Because there’s tons of them.

“Ranger becomes a high HP class. Basic HP is increased to Warrior and Necromancer level.**” good change for ranger

Pet HP is fine for sPvP

Increase pet condition damage for what? My change : Expertise Training working as strike as one from gw1 by using f2 skills u port/shadowstep them to a foe 360 radius (20sec icd) http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Strike_as_One

Party Support:
~Water Spirit passive : “remove 1 cond by trigger , get 860 heal if u or an allie remove a condition (from spirit trigger)” active is fine
~Storm Spirit passive: “chance by trigger blind a foe (remove swiftness from passive)” active is fine
~Nature´s Vegeance increase buffs from 1s to 2s and spirits have no longer cast time or 50% faster (from 1s to 0,5s) + increase active radius from 360 to 480
~“Guard!”: “reduce protection from 12s to 4s grant protection to your pet and your allies”
~Honed Axes: "-remove ferocity +while wielding an axe in main hand blabla reduce casttime for Splitblade from 0,75s to 0,5s (maybe 0,38s) and Winter´s Bite from 0,5s to 0,25s like auto attack (50% faster) AoE and recharge are fine
~Light on Your Feet: “increase shortbow dmg by 50%”
~increase radius from Bonfire
~throw torch is a physic projectile or 3ppl target cap low radius

Pets : let us pick the skills which we want to use active for f2 (birds like slash,swoop,quickening screech or the normal f2 skill) or rework on all those pet attacks and let them work smoother start by reducing casttime for normal attacks/skills maybe as trait ~Zehphyr´s Speed: active =“gain might/quickness by pet swap” passive=“normal pet skill attacks 2 and 3 are 25-50% faster combat only"

Strenght of the Pack effects Allies
Rampage with your pet for 10secs, pet grants might on successful hits and you grant the pet might on successful hits.

Apply to 5 nearby allies including yourself.
Swiftness 3secs
stability 1 stack (3)
1 application per pulse every 3secs
cooldown 60 increased to 65secs(50secs traited) or 72seconds (traited 25% off 57secs?)

i’d like to see better Utility support for Rangers on the Core skills away from Traits because it is Restrictive having to choose between damage traits/ support traits and pet traits while other classes only really have to choose between two types of traits which improves the core support which we currently have no core support unless we Trait.

Pets : let us pick the skills which we want to use active for f2 (birds like slash,swoop,quickening screech or the normal f2 skill) or rework on all those pet attacks and let them work smoother start by reducing casttime for normal attacks/skills maybe as trait ~Zehphyr´s Speed: active =“gain might/quickness by pet swap” passive=“normal pet skill attacks 2 and 3 are 25-50% faster combat only"

This
Pets are really slow and they shouldnt be rooted by their autoattack only special attacks.

lots of good suggestions here, upvote the man.

Pets, pets, pets, pets, pets.

This is our core class mechanic, it should be noticed, it should be feared, it should be QQ’d about. There used to be a time when light armor classes feared our Jaguar even when atop a wvw tower wall. They used to range (!) away from their master, hunting down pesky thieves and distant catapults. These days they’re a glorified Fear/Taunt and a downed skill.

There’s tons of possible options (hp, aoe partial immunity, cleave, attack while moving, and don’t even get me started on the *$"£# leash range). When all the other classes have to complain about is our longbow, you know how weak our core class mechanic is…

Oh, and the pet family thing really gets my *%&£. When i rampage with a frigging BEAR, i’d expect it to maul faces, not be a passive oversized furry sock. Give me independence between skill/stats sets and pet appearance. I want to kill myself when an owl does more damage than my black bear…

tldr: buff pets until forum tears start to flow.

I don’t think 3k extra hp would matter much. which is like 1 second of life.

Maybe being able to divert maybe 10% damage to our pet would work out better in the long run (being that we have two pets.

Everything else sounds good

.

if spirits passive effects or boon sharing is improved then they should also buff the on death skills. no other class buff skill dies.

buff pets close to the previous level when everyone cried about how OP they where, some of us still remember that….sigh

the tempest rebound is what quickdraw should have been. period. fix it.

there are too many useless traits and some that are complete must haves in any game mode. build diversity is driven by having competing traits in the same range so that people choose based on preference or playstyle.

the same goes for weapons, not so much a dps change but a weapon mechanics shift. if RF was on shortbow but still stacked vuln as it does now it would be a great hybrid weapon. if LB had a burst skill like maul, sniper shot or w/e, it would be great.

i love the evades on GS and am willing to sacrifice some damage for that.

sword is also a good weapon but i can understand people not wanting to work around the mechanics of it just to get it to work, drop the leap and replace it with the same gs evades. even if that means losing some damage.

we have so much access to poisons but can’t even take the trait to buff them??? it was discussed during the CDI that we could be the “poison master” class. give us traits that allow poisons to have additional CC effects like slows and immobilize. let ranger poisons counter the quickness meta.

i’m sure i’ll think of more lol

Rangers have very high survivability for having very inconsistent trait synergy.

What we need is a number of weapon skill reworks, and better trait synergy to utilize them. As is it stands, most of our damage output is frequency based. The traits that add damage are also geared toward one specific skill, with the exception of our ability to get passive bleed stacks.

Thinking about it…. it just dawned on me that Ranger builds rely heavily on rapid rotations to proc effects, but many of our damage boosting effects are geared toward sustained use of a weapon or even singular attack. Its like an unfocused Revanent when it comes to traits.

Some things I think should be paramount?

- Opening Strike Minor traits need to be consolidated, and other minor traits added to open cross trait synergy.

- https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attack_of_Opportunity_%28effect%29 Needs:
-1. One additional source that proc it
-2. A trait that allows it to be Unblockable (given its limitation of only affecting “One Hit”, and our large number of high rate/low damage attacks)

-Signet of the Hunt needs a Trait or Conditional trigger that allows it to reset the cool down, enabling Rangers to proc the effect, and recover the speed bonus by the end of the engagement.

- The other ranger signets need major cool down adjustments.

- Light on your Feet needs a conceptual rework. The effects are at odds with each other, as condi skills are sustain, but the skill procs on dodge. I think the intent was to recover the DPS lost during the dodge, but its not intuitive, and I’m not sure if it does make up the difference.
Empathetic Bond: Could use synergy with Signet of Renewal, and add "Pet gains regeneration (2s) when that pet removes a condition.

Just wanted to point out….. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protective_Ward is genius.

Pets and Spirit issues have, and pretty much require their own discussion. So I won’t go into it. Shouts as a whole need some examination as well.

Any defensive buffs/modifiers in this meta need to be either blocks, or massive heals.

A 15-33% damage reduction isn’t going to make the team live any longer. A group wide aegis or resistance will however.