Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: These days I spend most of my time playing my Guardian or my Warrior. But the first character I rolled in GW2 was a Ranger and, despite my better judgment, Ranger has remained a class I want to play even though I don’t particularly enjoy playing it.

Here are some fairly straightforward suggestions I think could go a long way improving the class.

Increased Range for Bows

Longbow should have a base range of 1500, and Shortbow should have a base range of 1200. The increased range trait should be removed and replaced with something else.

The thinking behind this is pretty simple: Give Ranger that intended niche of the ranged heavy hitter. As it stands, 1200 range is nothing unique to any of the professions really, but 1500 is. Rangers shouldn’t be forced to trait into the style of play that the class was originally intended for. Furthermore, 1500 range adds some value to the currently lackluster Longbow.

But the Shortbow should also have its range of 1200 reinstated. The Developers approached the popularity of the Shortbow in the worst possible way: they nerfed it rather than improving Ranger’s other alternatives.

Increased Greatsword Damage

Ranger Greatsword needs a substantial damage increase. Someone (I forget who, apologies) compared the DPS of all Ranger weapons recently and discovered that Shortbow out damages Greatsword. That shouldn’t be the case.

The GS autoattack chain should have its damage increased ~10-15% to fit in with the design philosophy of melee weapons dealing greater damage than ranged weapons. I’d also like to see GS #5 grant a short Stealth similar to the recent LB changes to provide a little added utility.

Troll Ungent

This suggestion might be more controversial, but I’d like to see this reworked into a Ranger version of Warrior’s Healing Signet.

It currently heals for ~8,500 over 10s every 25s making it a kind of hybrid healing—it’s not quite a burst heal, nor is it really a sustained regen. And that’s why I don’t like it. I’d rather choose and have either the burst healing or the sustain—Troll Ungent gives neither particularly well.

I think Warrior’s Healing Signet is great and would fit perfectly on a class like Ranger.

Pets

A lot—ok, a ton—has been said about Pets so I’ll keep this short: The Pet mechanic is broken.

Since the Pet controls are extremely rudimentary, there isn’t a real skill curve to help the Developers tune pets. What I mean by that is, the pet control system isn’t sophisticated enough so that pets can really be controlled well. Such a rudimentary control system that Devs are left with two choices: either (1) Pets are extremely powerful and are very, very difficult to kill, or (2) Pets are not particularly powerful and can be killed just as players can be killed.

The Developers clearly opted for #2, apparently thinking that the control system was sophisticated enough so that player skill controlling pets would be the thing that increased pet survivability. But, as I said above, the control system is rudimentary at best: player control is essentially pulling your pet in and out of combat to avoid hits, aoe, etc. Unfortunately even this style of play reduces pet DPS, albeit not as much as a dead pet.

But there would still be problems if the Developers had opted for option #1. Nearly invulnerable pets would bring about plenty of problems on its own. In PvE, Rangers could sit back while ~40% of their DPS handled difficult content while the Ranger sat back in safety. To say nothing of PvP and WvW where the problems of unkillable pets would be even more pronounced.

Both options are seriously flawed, and they both need to be scrapped altogether. My recommendation is make Pets a utility, non-combat companion. What I mean by that is, Pets neither take nor deal damage, nor do they draw any aggro. F1-F4 are replaced by various utilities that change depending on the pet.

For example, when using your spider pet F1 might cause your next attack to immobilize, F2 might cause your next 3 attacks to poison, F3 might cleanse you and nearby allies of poison and immobilize, etc. Alternatively a Feline pet might grant bonus damage with F1, a brief Stealth with F2, etc.

The developers could work some really interesting combinations into the pet utilities this way. Some pets might be more damage oriented, some more defense oriented, and others more utility and CC oriented.

But best of all, Rangers don’t have to sacrifice a huge chunk of their DPS because their pet is dead.

So much for keeping that part short. Thanks for reading.

the range increase would be way too much as a base. If traited with extra range, you’ll have 1800 range on longbow and 1500 for short bow…. it’s a short bow for a reason, its meant to be more of a close range type weapon.

CMstorm.8679:

the range increase would be way too much as a base. If traited with extra range, you’ll have 1800 range on longbow and 1500 for short bow…. it’s a short bow for a reason, its meant to be more of a close range type weapon.

Reading comprehension. I said the range trait should be removed and something else added in its place.

I’m not particularly swayed by the “it’s called a shortbow so it needs to be close range” arguments. Range is relative, so long as its range is less than longbow (see, e.g., my OP in which I suggest 1200 for SB, 1500 for LB) there shouldn’t be a problem. And as for arguments that Thief SB is currently 900 range—well, Warrior LB is 1000 range untraited, so there clearly isn’t a minimum/maximum range restriction applied across the board to weapons.

Not to mention that this is a game, so attempting to take literally the functionality of weaponry isn’t a particularly good idea. We don’t split hairs, for example, over the fact that Rangers have an unlimited quiver. Nor do we agonize over the mystical projectiles fired from Scepters and Staves, despite those being close-ranged bludgeoners in reality. Shortbow is “short” insomuch as it is differentiated from longbow’s “long,” that is, the terms have no real meaning other than what is given to them by the developers. Freed of the burden of such linear thinking, I think you would agree that Shortbow isn’t necessarily a weapon that has to be of “short” range (whatever “short” even means).

Changing TU to work like HS is an amazing idea

I like TU already, nothing to fix there IMO. Works nice if you know that you will be train hard and you can prepare for it with TU. Semi-burst semi-HoT is a great mixture.
I agree on bows tho

TU is really, really good, but I’d like to seem some reworking scaling it with Healing POwer a little better.

Pets will always be broken, because artificial intelligence isn’t advanced enough yet. There’s nothing Anet can do, except give us options to build our Rangers without pet dependency (something I already do).

I run around with a Snow Owl and a White Raven just for show. The little bit of autoattack dmg they do is a nice bonus, I suppose, and when I really have nothing else to do I’ll press F2 or maybe swap them around a bit – but for the most part, I ignore my pets because the control system for them is completely screwed, and always will be.

You can’t fix pets until someone creates an extremely advanced AI and that is a few years away.

In the meantime, how about making Rangers more independent of their pets?

I love the idea of increasing the bows range.

I play Long Bow/Sword-Warhorn, and I have a lot of fun. I use a lot of birds. Call Owl, Hunter’s Call, my Snow Owl and my White Raven.

I have lots of birds. It’s lovely, and the evasion of Sword is nice (I tried Dagger, but I really missed Hunter’s Call, so I switched back).