Guild Wars 2

Now the title might give you a wrong impression, but what I am meaning is, now that the Druid reveal is about to happen and since the reveal will come with some dev attention, do you think that the devs will revisit the criticism we have about the Ranger and give it another thought? Do you think that the Druid could reinforce the devs on tackling the shortcomings the Ranger has? Or do you think that the interaction will be solely about the Druid and that no manpower will be diverted to work on the base class in the future?

Ug. General balance passes (the ONLY thing that will “save” Rangers) take place separately from and alongside Elite Specialization development. And it’s an ongoing activity — it doesn’t just STOP because they’re working a new sub-class.

The balance pass info being announced at Twitchcon this weekend is the news to watch for if you’re concerned about Rangers.

Balance Preview during Friday. Stuff better be addressed, not just for Ranger, but for core professions across the board. Gotta say, when Irenio stated he was being restricted from communicating with the players on updates, I can see why due to the whole reveal at TwitchCon (if that’s not the reason then color me charrcoal).

After that event though, I expect full transparency and communication from him, not so we can complain in his ear, but get inside his head. The guy seems like he can add a lot to the class, possibly be our 2nd Robert Hrouda. I just hope he is allowed to speak with us more and share his thoughts and direction that he wants to take the Ranger, Druid, and future elite specializations.

Anyways, rant done. Carry on.

If you take the example of another class with a problematic mechanic (necromancer) you can see a lot of things:

1) They don’t changes it’s basical mechanic problems, only changed it in something more cool that “increase” the efficence of it. They “powered” the DS in a melee version buth weakening it against ranged situations.
2) They don’t gived him something to fix it’s basical issue like assence of defensive skills, only giving him a stability while in RS (out of RS you will not have stability, exeption for the elite, that is a situational stability, more good for the stun than other things). No block/immunity/evade skills added. Only a sort of little situational minion with low hp that take half of your hp, easy to kill with a single aoe.
3) They gived to the necro shout skills that will not be used in any spvp/www build and will be more or less useless still in PvE why there’s a large amount of better utilities skills (wells for example).
4) They don’t add anything to the class, only gived to necro a old really bad build trying to make it seems good. We steel need to see if that will work or not, expecially in spvp and www, where in PvE we can still see that if the mobs will not be affected by chill because it’s a CC and they have a breakbar all the strategy of a reaper will fall down to inutility if you fight a boss with the breakbat (more or less every single elite rank mobs still have the BB and every mobs more than a elite will have it for shure, making chill a useful to take the Bb down but useless for the reaper to make it’s combo and damage on it).

But we can see that the Reaper will be a great specializzation, cool and with a lot of efficent builds that you can build on it. Hard to see it’s future (expecially about chill in spvp/www and HoTpve) but we can really hope in something good.

Or Druid can be lucky like the warriors with the Berserker that will make them able to build up a new build on condition damage, making the Ranger able to focus in a total new playstyle.

Or, at the top of the top, you can hope to be like the Tempest: in 2 skill you obtain 15-20 stack of might and inflict 15-20 stack of burn. Plus a very great effect on the new kind of attunement system called Overcharge, that grant them very good AoE skills in damage, defence or heal.

You can find the Druid be a incredible change for the ranger or an incredible waste.
(something like the Dragonhunter that someone love and someone hate)

Anyway your mechanic will not change. You will still have a pet near you and you will command it in more or less the same way you do now.

The more probable thing about the Druid is the access to a new kind of pets catched around the Maguuma Jungle, nothing more.

Nike.2631:

Ug. General balance passes (the ONLY thing that will “save” Rangers) take place separately from and alongside Elite Specialization development. And it’s an ongoing activity — it doesn’t just STOP because they’re working a new sub-class.

The balance pass info being announced at Twitchcon this weekend is the news to watch for if you’re concerned about Rangers.

Well, some of the issues the ranger has are as old as the game. So they wont stop throwing out some tweaks. But substantial changes need more than just the normal balance pass.