Guild Wars 2

The list of bugs, complaints and general unhappiness with the Ranger class is entirely fixable. You don’t have to roll out 3 “fixes” at a time to do it either. Here is a list of things that can be implemented tomorrow that would turn this class on its head and bring joy to those that have long since shelved their Rangers.

TRAPS-
-Make traps enlarged by default. There is no reason to have to use a passive ability for this
-Double the trap effectiveness by default (CC length and condition)
-Significantly (100%) increase the damage dealt by traps (condition damage)

ABILITIES
-Make hide in plain sight an actual ability and not a passive ability. Give it a 10 min cooldown.
-Give Rangers access to control ALL of the pet abilities

PET
-Pet AOE taunt for PVE and make them actually hold aggro
-Get rid of half of the useless pets or make the useless pets usable (aka the pig and such)
-Give a pet the ability to detect stealth
-LET US STOW THE PET
-Make the pet stay on passive

General Ability
-Increase the shot distance of the longbow by 10% by default
-Make “Rampage As One” ignore conditions as well as CC

And finally!

DPS-
-Increase the general DPS by Rangers (off the top) by 25-30% and scale it accordingly with strength. The precision crit percentage should be adjusted to match the scale. Also the pets would need a significant increase to match this.

THIS is how the “significant changes” release should have looked. I would buy the dev that did all of this an omaha steak.

Nah.

Against a stationary mob in Orr, at ranged my Ranger and Warrior can kill the mob in about the same amount of time.

Have the mob start moving, that changes completely.

Rangers need some form of weapon-based burst (we shouldn’t have to change our whole spec and forgo having decent ranged damage to do what all other classes can do just by pushing “2”, for instance), and our pets need to work against moving targets.

I understand where you’re coming from, but if all your changes were implemented, the Ranger class would be brokenly overpowered.

Calavero.3420:

I understand where you’re coming from, but if all your changes were implemented, the Ranger class would be brokenly overpowered.

This, the ranger is the weakest class for tpvp at the moment but its not THAT bad.

I could live with all the issues, but the one that really bugs me is we seem to have no viable means of escape like most every other class in the game… I am WvW mostly and seeing other classes with 2 or 3 real options to escape (before a downed state) and we have… lightning reflexes… then in a downed state we wait to die while a couple favored classes can still run into a tower or keep.

Calavero.3420:

Nah.

Against a stationary mob in Orr, at ranged my Ranger and Warrior can kill the mob in about the same amount of time.

Have the mob start moving, that changes completely.

Rangers need some form of weapon-based burst (we shouldn’t have to change our whole spec and forgo having decent ranged damage to do what all other classes can do just by pushing “2”, for instance), and our pets need to work against moving targets.

I understand where you’re coming from, but if all your changes were implemented, the Ranger class would be brokenly overpowered.

Would you rather have a broken car that runs or a broken down car? It’s obvious that ANET isn’t going to fix the core issues with the class. I would rather have buffs on my broken class than four updates a month for the next 15 months. It’s absolutely unacceptable the way it is now. I fail to see how any of what I posted would make the class overpowered. It would put it on par with other classes.

Lol, you don’t see anything that would make them overpowered? I see three things that would be ridiculous.

•Trap damage increase
•Your rampage as one condition skill would destroy heavy condition based builds
• 25-30% damage increase off the top??? That’s ridiculous.

I do think that there are problems with the class, many of them coming from pets, which I know they won’t be fixing any time soon, if ever. So I agree that something’s should be looked at. But these things would make us more OP than thieves.

swilkers.5938:

The list of bugs, complaints and general unhappiness with the Ranger class is entirely fixable. You don’t have to roll out 3 “fixes” at a time to do it either. Here is a list of things that can be implemented tomorrow that would turn this class on its head and bring joy to those that have long since shelved their Rangers.

TRAPS-
-Make traps enlarged by default. There is no reason to have to use a passive ability for this

yes

-Double the trap effectiveness by default (CC length and condition)

no

-Significantly (100%) increase the damage dealt by traps (condition damage)

maybe

ABILITIES
-Make hide in plain sight an actual ability and not a passive ability. Give it a 10 min cooldown.

no, would make it useless with a cooldown of 10 minutes, you got to be kidding with this suggestion, right?

-Give Rangers access to control ALL of the pet abilities

maybe

PET
-Pet AOE taunt for PVE and make them actually hold aggro

aggro in Guild Wars isn’t equal to how it works in other games, leave it alone tyvm

-Get rid of half of the useless pets or make the useless pets usable (aka the pig and such)

agree, they need fixing

-Give a pet the ability to detect stealth

maybe

-LET US STOW THE PET
-Make the pet stay on passive

General Ability
-Increase the shot distance of the longbow by 10% by default

agree, but increase default distance even further

-Make “Rampage As One” ignore conditions as well as CC

maybe, would probably make it op though

And finally!

DPS-
-Increase the general DPS by Rangers (off the top) by 25-30% and scale it accordingly with strength. The precision crit percentage should be adjusted to match the scale. Also the pets would need a significant increase to match this.

not sure we really need a dps increase, IF pets get fixed

Pets not being able to attack moving targets is the biggest problem. People in WvW are starting to learn that “bird flying toward them” equals ouch, so now they just move around a bit and I can no longer bird bomb them. Between people strafing to completely avoid arrows, and this, against smart opponents there will be times where I can’t hit anything outside of melee. When a player can use skill to avoid being hit, but you can’t apply an equal use of skill to hit them, something is broken. I can’t do anything about my pets or how my bow fires. This needs fixing. (not the harpoon gun, seriously why did you go there first??)

Second off, something as powerful as stealth should totally have a hard counter. If our pets could continue tracking and attacking a stealthed enemy—one, we’d have a valuable and sought after niche as thief detectors, and two, it would bring some much needed balance to the game. Everyone is always whining about stealth, especially permastealth and supply camp trolling. Wouldn’t it make you guys smile to see people on the forums replying to that with:

“Bring a Ranger.”

Traps are actually in a good place. It is like the necro needing to spec to GT wells or increase the size of marks.

Works well on its own, works better when traited.

Only things that needs some love is to remove or greatly reduce the spirit internal timer. And move the grand master spirits move trait up to first tier and place something else there. Spirits are useless unless they are following. Since it is about impossible to get any milage out of them until end game no one ever really uses them and or have settled into other builds by the time it becomes viable.

Pets hitting on the run would solve ranger DPS tremendously. If they fix this there would be no need to fix weapon damage as we would be complete.

Pet aggro works just fine, I actually appreciate the aggro system of the game and how it prioritizes. Some fights I have to kite more than others, no big deal. I don’t want to stand in place and pew pew pew.

RaO fix… lol… yeah… that’s all I got. It works fine as is and can build up a nice combo with my pets. The stability is bonus.

I agree with this thread

If all what OP mentioned was brought in game, we still wouldn’t be as OP as a thief..

But all of this is useless, as this changes wont be in game any time soon.

Fomby.4295:

Lol, you don’t see anything that would make them overpowered? I see three things that would be ridiculous.

•Trap damage increase
•Your rampage as one condition skill would destroy heavy condition based builds
• 25-30% damage increase off the top??? That’s ridiculous.

I do think that there are problems with the class, many of them coming from pets, which I know they won’t be fixing any time soon, if ever. So I agree that something’s should be looked at. But these things would make us more OP than thieves.

Have you even looked at the damage that traps do?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Trap

“•Your rampage as one condition skill would destroy heavy condition based builds
-That is the point, this gives you a very short window to get away. You know, like every other class has.

25-30% Damage increase
Do you even play the Ranger class?? This wouldn’t even put Rangers to par with Warriors or Thieves. I have full exotics, 50% crit with over 2K power and only crit for (sometimes) 5K. So a 30% increase would put us at 6500 crit on average for myself at least. You are 100% absolutely wrong. I posted a video of my Ranger getting hit in three seconds by a thief for over 32K. Play a Ranger in WvW some more.

So yeah, I stand by my statement.

DaisyRogers.6837:

Traps are actually in a good place. It is like the necro needing to spec to GT wells or increase the size of marks.

Works well on its own, works better when traited.

Only things that needs some love is to remove or greatly reduce the spirit internal timer. And move the grand master spirits move trait up to first tier and place something else there. Spirits are useless unless they are following. Since it is about impossible to get any milage out of them until end game no one ever really uses them and or have settled into other builds by the time it becomes viable.

Pets hitting on the run would solve ranger DPS tremendously. If they fix this there would be no need to fix weapon damage as we would be complete.

Pet aggro works just fine, I actually appreciate the aggro system of the game and how it prioritizes. Some fights I have to kite more than others, no big deal. I don’t want to stand in place and pew pew pew.

RaO fix… lol… yeah… that’s all I got. It works fine as is and can build up a nice combo with my pets. The stability is bonus.

Sorry to break the news to you, pet aggro doesn’t work fine.

irishhaf.1692:

I could live with all the issues, but the one that really bugs me is we seem to have no viable means of escape like most every other class in the game… I am WvW mostly and seeing other classes with 2 or 3 real options to escape (before a downed state) and we have… lightning reflexes… then in a downed state we wait to die while a couple favored classes can still run into a tower or keep.

100% agree

We can’t run away from anyone and we can’t catch anyone. Really frustrating to see an enemy zerg 10+ units away. You exit stage left and 10 seconds later they catch you.

Fight a thief and are actually doing well ? He decides to leave the fight. He waves goodbye and there is nothing you can do.

-Make traps enlarged by default
-Double the trap effectiveness by default
No and no, can’t have you cake and eat it too, spec into this.

-Significantly (100%) increase the damage dealt by traps
Too much, maybe 50% tops. The reason traps feel underpowered is probably b/c your spec’d/geared heavy into Power/Precision to make our underwhelming weapons DPS more acceptable.

-Make Hide in Plain Sight an actual ability and not a passive ability
This would actually be really nice, Rangers have nothing for escape tools other than swiftness, backwards leaps, and praying you don’t get crippled/immobilized.

-Give Rangers access to control ALL of the pet abilities
No, god no. Improve Pet AI, don’t make me micro-manage them even more.

-Pet AOE taunt for PVE and make them actually hold aggro
No, this would be a complete rework of aggro mechanics. Remember, the Trinity is a lie, pets aren’t there to tank for us.

-Get rid of half of the useless pets or make the useless pets usable
Some pet abilities could use some love (I’m looking at you, 4 seconds of protection), most are fine. Now whether or not Pet AI lets us use them reliably is a whole different story…

-Give a pet the ability to detect stealth
It’s been said before that stealth needs a hard counter, I wouldn’t complain if ANet makes us/our pets that counter.

-Let us stow the pet
-Make the pet stay on passive
Perma-stow wouldn’t need to be a thing if Pet AI was fixed, having pets stay passive is one thing to fix. Making pets with F2 buffs use those abilities without having to run up to some boss that’s gonna one-shot them is an absolute necessity until pets either receive some sort of huge damage reduction to abilities the player is meant to dodge, or until the pet becomes smart enough to avoid the damage by itself.

-Increase the shot distance of the longbow by 10% by default
See ‘cake’ comment above, no one else has more than 1200 as their default max range, a little more arch to shot over castle walls would be nice though.

-Make “Rampage As One” ignore conditions as well as CC
Make it ignore movement impairing conditions.

-Increase the general DPS by Rangers by 25-30% and…
Too much, 10% maybe if they did. Again though, this is a Pet AI issue. Our weapon skills are weaker b/c we’re supposed to have the pets there to balance things out. As they stand now, pets aren’t smart enough too pick up the slack, default npc mob-style AI doesn’t cut it. We’re Rangers, we tamed and trained these animals, so why do they act like every other mob you see in game? Maybe ANet was just being lazy (doubt it), maybe they just ran out of time before release and just had ship ship as is (hopefully), but Pet AI is a huge quality of life issue that needs to be addressed.

—

Some additional thoughts:

-Lightning Reflexs should also break immobilize/cripple/chill, so that the leap back actually acts as an escape button for more than just knockdowns/stuns.

-Replace Bark Skin (Wildness Survival trait XII) with something similar to Warrior’s Defy Pain. Auto-cast “Protect Me” at 25% health.

swilkers.5938:

The list of bugs, complaints and general unhappiness with the Ranger class is entirely fixable. You don’t have to roll out 3 “fixes” at a time to do it either. Here is a list of things that can be implemented tomorrow that would turn this class on its head and bring joy to those that have long since shelved their Rangers.

TRAPS-
-Make traps enlarged by default. There is no reason to have to use a passive ability for this
-Double the trap effectiveness by default (CC length and condition)
-Significantly (100%) increase the damage dealt by traps (condition damage)

ABILITIES
-Make hide in plain sight an actual ability and not a passive ability. Give it a 10 min cooldown.
-Give Rangers access to control ALL of the pet abilities

PET
-Pet AOE taunt for PVE and make them actually hold aggro
-Get rid of half of the useless pets or make the useless pets usable (aka the pig and such)
-Give a pet the ability to detect stealth
-LET US STOW THE PET
-Make the pet stay on passive

General Ability
-Increase the shot distance of the longbow by 10% by default
-Make “Rampage As One” ignore conditions as well as CC

And finally!

DPS-
-Increase the general DPS by Rangers (off the top) by 25-30% and scale it accordingly with strength. The precision crit percentage should be adjusted to match the scale. Also the pets would need a significant increase to match this.

THIS is how the “significant changes” release should have looked. I would buy the dev that did all of this an omaha steak.

i’d rather hide in plain sight stay passive with its short cooldown than use once..for 3 secound, with a 10 minute cooldown.

controlling all of the pets abilities seems liek a good idea, but i would like an option to let pet choose if i choose to focus on ranger. so make it so pet’s abilities are shown to you and you can activate one if it isnt i ncooldown, but you dont NEED to select it to make it use it.

as for pets seeing stealth, i got an idea. if an enemy is stealthed near you pet will automatically leave what its doign and head to them, ranger can’t see the stealthed person but can see the pet attacking the place where the stealthed person is. this gives rangers the knoledge that something is there, taking dmg from pet, and wont make thiefs cry that we killed thier class, cause the thief can kill pet before stealthing. so its fair game.
and maybe if a stealthed target gets hit by pet a little red glowing orb will appear on them that the ranger can select to fire at.
because the pet has now found and marked the stealthed target, so the ranger now knows where to shoot.

Fixing Longbow #1 firing speed should be top priority, it is currently slower than it’s supposed to be for both rangers and warriors. So are pistols.

swilkers.5938:

DaisyRogers.6837:

Traps are actually in a good place. It is like the necro needing to spec to GT wells or increase the size of marks.

Works well on its own, works better when traited.

Only things that needs some love is to remove or greatly reduce the spirit internal timer. And move the grand master spirits move trait up to first tier and place something else there. Spirits are useless unless they are following. Since it is about impossible to get any milage out of them until end game no one ever really uses them and or have settled into other builds by the time it becomes viable.

Pets hitting on the run would solve ranger DPS tremendously. If they fix this there would be no need to fix weapon damage as we would be complete.

Pet aggro works just fine, I actually appreciate the aggro system of the game and how it prioritizes. Some fights I have to kite more than others, no big deal. I don’t want to stand in place and pew pew pew.

RaO fix… lol… yeah… that’s all I got. It works fine as is and can build up a nice combo with my pets. The stability is bonus.

Sorry to break the news to you, pet aggro doesn’t work fine.

Sorry to break the news to you, gw2 does not have a threat system which allows your pet to hold aggro and henceforth tank. Go back to your night elf hunter please.

Since pets cant hold aggro so that we can flank the opponent a welcome addition would be to bleed the opponent using shortbow #1 also face to face , without the need to flank .

Well, I disagree with just about every suggestion made by the OP — especially the DPS. Ranger is already a top DPS class. Pets can already hold agro really well now; if your pet isn’t holding agro, you’re using the wrong pet (hint: loose the bear). They don’t need a taunt — just how much of an auto-attack bot do you want ranger to become!? The entire point of stealth is that it can sneak into places undetected — detection would be severely game-breaking for the classes that can stealth.

Honestly, your lists reads like “I want to give rangers a god-mode button”. The class needs attention badly, but this is exactly the kind it doesn’t need.

One thing I think you’d probably like would be to REDUCE the auto-attack DPS. Then INCREASE the skill-based DPS. Net result: more burst, same overall DPS, and the most important part (to me) — more fun, since using your skills is always a good thing. It would be especially good if there were minor synergies within the weapon skill-sets themselves. This would reward not just active play, but clever play.

Part of the frustration of playing Ranger is that it limits the player’s contribution to maneuvering for a flank. That’s a gross over-simplification, but I think most rangers will admit that’s what it often feels like. It needs more “stuff” to do — good stuff, not fluff.

Most of these changes are bad and you should feel bad

Did you just throw in a bunch of crap that doesn’t make much sense into the class? I don’t even think you rationally thought about these changes

Hi folks,
Frustration is high regarding our beloved profession, especially around the bows which should be our bread and butter. Weird that bows in other professions are so loved and not ours… What I would like at a minimum?
1) shortbow being the bow of choice for cond dam build, we currently only have 1.5 skills that actually do conditions that damage over time (0.5 on skill 1 and skill 2). I would add a cond dam skill on the bar. For instance, cripple shot could also bleed (3 stacks). A reasonable humf.
2) longbow: yes, skill 1 rate should be improved. Skill 2: we should be able to dodge without losing our skill.
3) pets: more innate synergy. For instance, Fortifying Bond should work both ways: any boons my pet get is shared with me. Could be useful when I am at range and my melee pet gets boons from other melee players.
4) bows: all arrows should automatically pierce. How can we build a good trap build when piercing arrows are so useful? Can we explore something else than 20-30-20-0-0??
Good luck to us all :-)

I really like the idea of pets (and their masters) being able to see through stealth!

Effectively it should work only if the pet is Active (so not when limping back) but it would show every stealthed target as a transparent character with their name (just like you currently see stealthed allies).

That would make Rangers very valuable as scouts/spotters and finally bring an effective counter against the perma-stealth Thief.

swilkers.5938:

The list of bugs, complaints and general unhappiness with the Ranger class is entirely fixable. You don’t have to roll out 3 “fixes” at a time to do it either. Here is a list of things that can be implemented tomorrow that would turn this class on its head and bring joy to those that have long since shelved their Rangers.

TRAPS-
-Make traps enlarged by default. There is no reason to have to use a passive ability for this
-Double the trap effectiveness by default (CC length and condition)
-Significantly (100%) increase the damage dealt by traps (condition damage)

ABILITIES
-Make hide in plain sight an actual ability and not a passive ability. Give it a 10 min cooldown.
-Give Rangers access to control ALL of the pet abilities

PET
-Pet AOE taunt for PVE and make them actually hold aggro
-Get rid of half of the useless pets or make the useless pets usable (aka the pig and such)
-Give a pet the ability to detect stealth
-LET US STOW THE PET
-Make the pet stay on passive

General Ability
-Increase the shot distance of the longbow by 10% by default
-Make “Rampage As One” ignore conditions as well as CC

And finally!

DPS-
-Increase the general DPS by Rangers (off the top) by 25-30% and scale it accordingly with strength. The precision crit percentage should be adjusted to match the scale. Also the pets would need a significant increase to match this.

THIS is how the “significant changes” release should have looked. I would buy the dev that did all of this an omaha steak.

“DPS-
-Increase the general DPS by Rangers (off the top) by 25-30% and scale it accordingly with strength. The precision crit percentage should be adjusted to match the scale. Also the pets would need a significant increase to match this.”

You’ve got to be kidding me, do you know how huge of a damage buff 30% really is? Ranger’s damage is completely fine.