Guild Wars 2

This is my ranger diagnosis from a PvE view only. Ok so after playing level 80 for a while and doing event farming, dungeons, and just general PvE I’ve come to notice the ranger isn’t that bad. We have our niche in a team which is controlling groups and being a bit of support for our team with healing spring, our pets f2 skills, warhorn, etc.

However, there are still problems that need to be fixed to make this class up to par with the rest.
First, aside from trap ranger we have to real viable build variety. In order to combat this some fixes need to made:
1. Spirits NEED to be fixed.
*They are to squishy and need either a health buff or armor buff so that they can be used in dungeons or other high level areas without dying.
*The inner cool down needs to be reduced a lot or just taken out.
*The active effect needs to have a greater radius so that it is actually useful.
If these changes make spirits as OP in PvP as they were in beta, then just split the skills as PvP and PvE and make the changes to the PvE version

2. Signets NEED to be fixed. The actives aren’t worth using because we lose the passive for 2 minutes straight!
*Signet of stone’s recharge needs to reduced so that activating is actually worth it.
* Signet of the hunt’s passive needs to be boosted to at least 20% movement speed so that it’s actually worth bringing. The active needs to change to something more useful than just more damage on one attack, how about grant swiftness to our pets for 3 seconds?
*Signet of the wild’s passive needs to heal a bit more, I mean idk much about this fix but it’ll be nice. The recharge needs to be reduced because 2 minutes is way to long for signet, perhaps 90 seconds?
Other than that slot skills are pretty good. Some people complain about the shouts, I however find them each useful for specific occasions.

Second, there are still bugged or real lackluster trait skills. These should have been the first fixes to the ranger class! You can find list of them on the forums already so I won’t go into them.

Third, fix the rooting problem on the sword.

Fourth, this one isn’t too bad but fixing it would definitely add variety to weapon choice. The longbow’s 1 skill can use some adjusting on the damage/distance ratios because sometimes keeping that distance for good damage can be difficult.

Fifth and final, the traps throwing range needs to be increased! Preferably to the same range as muddy terrain, because right now we are having to go in throw it and run back to avoid getting mobbed on and by the time we turn around we have lost our combo field.

Just those fixes will improve the ranger tremendously PvE wise and would please a lot of people I think. Pets aren’t too bad right now aside from sometime the f2 doesn’t activate when you press the button but that is small compared to everything else.

agreed, agreed.

but you forgot pet needs to attack when moving, so they can hit things other than stationary targets

What is this imaginary niche you’ve found for rangers?

Every positive aspect of the ranger I’ve found, another class does significantly better.

i think you’re looking at signets all wrong

signet of stone’s recharge is fair for what it gives- 6 seconds of invulnerability for your pet. don’t just pop this every time you head into battle, use it when theyre about to die so you can get your heal off. I use it because i bring Master’s Bond for my pet, so it’s very important that my pets never get defeated. if you need it more than one every 120 seconds you’re doing something wrong haha.

Signet of the hunt- if you change it from a damage boost to a 3 second swiftness i will hunt you down and.. strongly disagree with you in a gentlemanly fashion. This IS on a short cooldown, but make sure you use it at the right time. the way I use it is as a great part to a spike build. Use a Jaguar, and his stealth grants 6 seconds of guaranteed crits. while in stealth hit the active SigHunt → 50% extra damage on an already guaranteed critical hit. (then if you hilt bash with the greatsword before the 6 seconds is up, you get another 50% extra powerful critical hit. All the while he has Sick em(30% more damage out) and possibly sigWild for some extra damage)

Also, the throw trap range is already at 900. That’s a significant distance and is in no way a problem. i played a trap ranger from 5 to 80, and i play it in pvp too. try a spike trap to immobilize them so you can get away better/hit them with another trap/make them stay in that fire trap

I do like Attack of Opportunity on Signet of the Hunt.
Signet of the Hunt is the only Signet I do actually use the active of on a regular basis. In fact, I’d almost say I use it too much, because 10% movement speed seems like such a small price to pay. But, I do also tend to think Attack of Opportunity itself could use a bit of revising. There’s such a small selection of weaponskills and pets it feels worthwhile to synergize with, and it’s just not available enough to make much of a playstyle or build around (..contingent on whatever the holy heck Moment of Clarity actually does when it’s working).

I think Signet of the Wild’s passive would be better if they worked with the Healing Coefficient, and reconsidered the active (which I’ve basically never used). It’s pretty key to getting pet survivability in Dungeons if you want to use your pet more like a standard Beastmaster, but you need to invest a good 500-700 Healing Power before you even start to see some real HP equilibrium. You can’t even comfortably bring anything other than a bear until 800-1,000, and even then it still needs to be a beefy pet. Personally, I think you should be hitting the Equilibrium point around 300 Healing Power, so that by simply going 30 deep into Beastmastery you’ve automatically got some guarantees about the survivability of your investment, lower level rangers doing dungeons would have an option for pet survivability, and the option for further healing power investment might make a broader array of pets viable for dungeon-play.

About the only problem I have with Signet of Stone is that it sort of only works in dungeon play when you pair it with Signet of the Wild. Up front invulnerability at the cost of long term defense does make for some interesting choices…once your pet survives enough for ‘long term defense’ to actually mean something. But all by itself that thing feels like using a pebble to stem the flow of a raging river.

They could probably fix signets by simply giving us a talent like many other classes have to keep the passive effect going even after you use it and put it on cd. However, they would probably have to tie this in with the cd reduction talent or something so you wouldn’t need to pick up a ton of talents just to support a signet build.

other than SoR and SoS actives, signets are completely useless and need a total rework. in fact, in PVE, both SoR and SoS are unnecessary. in boss fights where youre getting tons of conditions, your pet is either dead or the boss can reapply conditions instantly. and dont try to justify using SoW over a trap or some better skill for example.

Malleus Maleficarum.2603:

i think you’re looking at signets all wrong

signet of stone’s recharge is fair for what it gives- 6 seconds of invulnerability for your pet. don’t just pop this every time you head into battle, use it when theyre about to die so you can get your heal off. I use it because i bring Master’s Bond for my pet, so it’s very important that my pets never get defeated. if you need it more than one every 120 seconds you’re doing something wrong haha.

Signet of the hunt- if you change it from a damage boost to a 3 second swiftness i will hunt you down and.. strongly disagree with you in a gentlemanly fashion. This IS on a short cooldown, but make sure you use it at the right time. the way I use it is as a great part to a spike build. Use a Jaguar, and his stealth grants 6 seconds of guaranteed crits. while in stealth hit the active SigHunt -> 50% extra damage on an already guaranteed critical hit. (then if you hilt bash with the greatsword before the 6 seconds is up, you get another 50% extra powerful critical hit. All the while he has Sick em(30% more damage out) and possibly sigWild for some extra damage)

Also, the throw trap range is already at 900. That’s a significant distance and is in no way a problem. i played a trap ranger from 5 to 80, and i play it in pvp too. try a spike trap to immobilize them so you can get away better/hit them with another trap/make them stay in that fire trap

First of all, Protect me gives you 6 sec of invulnerability and when specced has a 46 sec recharge. You don’t need a signet to save your pet all you need to do is switch your pet… And if they reduced the cooldown it would actually help your master bond build. So… Idk what you’re arguing here?

Second, if the signet of hunt signet would change your pet would actually do more damage because it could get more attacks out faster which equals more damage in the build you mentioned instead of just one heavy attack. Also, it would help out with others who dont use that spike, which by the way uses all of your slot skills for just one spike not worth it in my opinion since it’s only a single target spike. Unless its a drake which they can’t hit f2 most of the time.

Third, try using both longbow effectively with the damage/range constraints and throw in traps. It really doesn’t work well… Traps right now don’t synergize well with all the weapons and if it was just brought up to the range of muddy terrain, which isnt much to ask for, it would improve build effectiveness.

Peter.9406:

First of all, Protect me gives you 6 sec of invulnerability and when specced has a 46 sec recharge. You don’t need a signet to save your pet all you need to do is switch your pet… And if they reduced the cooldown it would actually help your master bond build. So… Idk what you’re arguing here?

“Protect Me!” has two stipulations. One: your pet needs to be alive. Two: your pet needs to be within 600 range of you. In addition to this, using “Protect Me!” to absorb a big hit will likely down your pet, preventing you from getting the full 6 seconds of immunity. A traited Signet of Stone is vastly superior. Though, that doesn’t mean you can’t use both skills at the same time.

Quarktastic.1027:

Peter.9406:

First of all, Protect me gives you 6 sec of invulnerability and when specced has a 46 sec recharge. You don’t need a signet to save your pet all you need to do is switch your pet… And if they reduced the cooldown it would actually help your master bond build. So… Idk what you’re arguing here?

“Protect Me!” has two stipulations. One: your pet needs to be alive. Two: your pet needs to be within 600 range of you. In addition to this, using “Protect Me!” to absorb a big hit will likely down your pet, preventing you from getting the full 6 seconds of immunity. A traited Signet of Stone is vastly superior. Though, that doesn’t mean you can’t use both skills at the same time.

Signet of stone also has two stipulations to be effective. First, your pet has to be alive to use it untraited. Second, you have to be traited in Marksmanship to grandmaster in order for it to be used at its best. You are right for a big hit your pet will probably die, but have yet to encounter a situation like that. And with good pet control your pet will be in range. Protect me shines best when youre about to go down and you pop it up just long enough to heal, which if you’re using a healing skill other than healing spring it’ll heal your pet too keeping it alive. Aside from Kholer, no one has really killed my pet while using this. And this skill has saved me from Kholer multiple times if I happen to miss the dodge.

Quarktastic.1027:

Peter.9406:

First of all, Protect me gives you 6 sec of invulnerability and when specced has a 46 sec recharge. You don’t need a signet to save your pet all you need to do is switch your pet… And if they reduced the cooldown it would actually help your master bond build. So… Idk what you’re arguing here?

“Protect Me!” has two stipulations. One: your pet needs to be alive. Two: your pet needs to be within 600 range of you. In addition to this, using “Protect Me!” to absorb a big hit will likely down your pet, preventing you from getting the full 6 seconds of immunity. A traited Signet of Stone is vastly superior. Though, that doesn’t mean you can’t use both skills at the same time.

Protect Me is conditional, yes, but SoS’s cooldown is just too long. Even if I didn’t take Protect Me, there are a lot of other skills I would take before I would take SoS. Lightning Reflexes is definitely high up there since it has a low cooldown (traited), evades damage, and gives you extra dodges from vigor, which gives protection with 15 or more WS.

I think they need to also revise a lot of the trait lines. Although, I doubt that will happen.

Even simple things about it seem unthought out. For example, I still don’t understand why the MM line up’s your power and the skirmishing line up’s your precision. It seems like it should be the other way around.

I would also like to see a better main hand weapon. I like to dual wield, which leaves me the sword or axe for main hand. The axe is more aoe, which leaves the sword. I feel like the sword is so chaotic. You jump around like a madman. I don’t feel like I have much control.

I like the idea of the ranger more than the ranger class itself. I’ll keep playing it as my main but hope some substantial fixes come … even if they roll out slowly and gradually.

Yea, it really seems like Rangers could use a 3rd mainhand option. It’s not that I don’t like the axe and sword, but they’re both too conditional to really do well as a primary weapon, at least for PvE.

About spirits: IMO, they should be changed (at least in PvE), so that they don’t take damage from AoE spells, like hunter’s pets in WoW. That should be fair – if the mob targets them directly, it’s your fault for not having enough aggro, but you can’t move spirits from each and every AoE (even if they are traited to follow you), you can’t switch them as quickly as pets and you can’t heal them other then with AoE healing. This should be enough to improve there survivability, but not to make them effective.