If you don’t me, this is gonna be based on PvP. Other perspectives from other aspects of the game would be appreciated.
Before pet damage was nerfed (I think) the leash range on pets was something amazing. You could have your pet kill the trebuchet while being able to decap far. The main issue with this was that your pet could keep your enemy in combat but you could be out of combat and free to heal up, etc.
It was often proposed that when the pet is in combat the ranger should be in combat to remove this problem while maintaining the leash range because it gave ranger something unique the other classes didn’t have.
I feel this was done because at the time condi BM rangers were very strong. The pets did insane damage and the pets could chase people as far as the pirate rune bird can now. However, ranger is no longer that unbeatable melee class. Buffs to war, engi, ele through celestial ammy, strength runes, and battle sigils have made these classes the new bruiser front liner specs that ranger used to be. At the moment, there is no ranger build that can go toe to toe with these classes on the node. Instead, the ranger has to kite around, LoS, and outplay these classes. Which, in my opinion, is how it should be, the ranger is a mid line class and it should fight accordingly. But since we’ve been forced out of our former position in PvP many rangers are now struggling to find a roll to fill.
Sure, there are some teams that still run Spirit Ranger as a team support, but everyone knows that a war, engi, or ele, could fill that same roll (albeit slightly differently) and offer a wider ranger of success.
On the other hand, there is another roll for the ranger that seems to be on the rise. DPS ranger. However, I believe power ranger is underpowered (yes, it can be successful) similar to mesmer. That being said, there are some players who are able to use these underpowered specs (Lord Helseth, mesmer, EU) and perform to great ability to help their team.
The main thing, that make Helseth successful as a mesmer for his team is that when needed he can use portal to move any number of his teammates to a position of his choosing from a position of his choosing, which is VERY POWERFUL.
If we compare mesmer to a ranger, which I would argue can compete for the same DPS roll, you would always want a mesmer simply for the ability of portal. Power ranger’s only team support at that point is really SoR and possible Nature Spirit (which I would only take if i had like two elementalists on my team so they could mist back to wherever I put my immobile spirit.
So really, I would say there is nothing that makes the ranger in the DPS roll highly unique. Which Is why I suggest a revert to the Leash range nerf. This allows for the ranger to kind of be in 2 places at once while giving up a significant amount of their survivability. If the pet is somewhere else, killing treb, training a target, taking out the front gate, etc then the pet is not available for self peels or condi clear through SoR. So it’s a risk, but at least it gives the ranger an edge that it is severely lacking atm.
Of course, this change would be coupled to the change that when the pet is in combat, so is the ranger.
Thoughts?
