Guild Wars 2

Hi fellow rangers

The holidays are soon over us, and hopefully a new and better patch for us rangers. I’m sure we are on Santa’s good list. We deserve a nice present :-)

I thought we all could list 3 things we would like to have in the new patch ( or any patch in the future). I know a lot of issues have been discussed in other threads, but here is chance to keep it short and simple. Make a list of the 3 MOST important changes / fixes you really wish for your ranger. PLEASE do this on a serious and constructive matter. NO unrealistic suggestion like a 50% dmg buff . 3 things that would make your time as a ranger more fun and enjoyable. Suggestions that Anet hopefully will implement someday. Also make an effort to read previous replies to avoid duplicates and similar suggestions.
Cheers!

Here’s mine golden 3:

- Increase trap (cast)range to 1,200.
- Pet immune for 3 seconds when player dodges.
- Spirits have a 100% chance to grant benefits.

I would prefer they fix some of the more core ranger issues. Many of the ranger weapons suffer from poor damage, greatsword and longbow come to mind. In addition, ranger pets are often unresponsive to ranger commands. That and the fact that pets get essily killed in wvw and dungeon settings makes pets more of a burden than a assest to rangers in many cases. Simply having pets gain invunerabilty when a ranger dodges would not be a good fix for this. Rangers should not be forced to waste their dodges on the pet. As for spirits, it wouldnt matter if there was a 1000% chance for their effects to trigger as long as an internal cooldown exists. Beyond that, spirits die way too easily, have horrible range, and one is forced to spec 30 points in to a tree to make them mediocrely effective. Spirits simply need a complete overhaul in my opinion.

Overall,the three things rangers need to have fixed are there weapons, utilities, and pets. Although, traits could use some changes as well…

Three things I would like to see:

1.) No lock in place skills (1h sword swing)
2.) Pets being more of a support (meat shield, aoe absorb/dam% reduction, combo field) and not a major contributor in damage
3.) Rifle – (some of the best/detailed skins in game but only usable by two classes that do not show off the art)
For Rifle:
1) autoshot (see other rifles)
2) Rapid shot (see longbow)
3) Charged high damage shot
4) Melee daze (hilt bash)
5) AOE spray shot (see longbow)

For traits I would like to see:
2 trait lines for range (burst / conditions)
2 trait lines for melee (burst(sword/GS) or conditions (axe/trap)
1 Pets

Making trait lines linear allows for players to easily choose how they would like to play the game whether PVE or PVP oriented. You can cover five different play styles while still allowing players to mix and match weapon swapping without cornering them into certain weapons by trait line.

arrows projectile speed increase (while not actually increasing damage, this allows a much more reliable hit-detection for both long bow and shortbow)

increase the effect of spirits and increase their base hp. small incremental boosts to hp and effect bonus until a right medium is found would be nice.

fix problems with drakes. they still don’t use full move-set. what’s the point of having a new drake-pet when it still doesn’t work properly.

Fix the bugs. Fix them FAST. This should come before anything else, even events. It’s hard to enjoy an event after a patch introduces bugs destroying the build on your main.

Maintain internal weapon balance for each class; ie. each weapon should have sufficient strengths to merit seriously considering using it. Changing things should never move a weapon completely off the list of consideration. Ideally, there should be a truly serious quandary for a player about which set to use.

External balance between classes is the last thing I’d want. Once the bugs are fixed and each class feels good within itself, then it’s time to start looking over the fence at what the neighbor is doing. Make sure that while each class may approach things differently, they can all accomplish the same goals.

Yeah, these are broad and not only for ranger, but I’m really upset with both what they did and did not do in the last patch. They just plain ignored all three of those broad tenets after having espoused similar views in various ways in the past.

AFTER those three goals are met (that should have been done without saying)? Hell, go wild with some crazy fun events.

I’d really like to see the obstructed bug fixed. I was doing a skill point in cursed shore last night where you have to kill a turret and since I run lb / sb I couldn’t hurt it at all, only got obstructed. I eventually had to just run out of agro range (of course prompting more agro from the bazillion mobs there) and switch to a melee weapon to finish the skill point.

Your three changes seem a little lackluster and would still leave me dissatisfied, imo.

1) Increase long bow damage and arrow speed
2) Fix obstruction errors with bows
3) Fix Pet AI so they attack moving targets along with F2 abilities being insta-cast.

There are many other things that would count as a fix and not even a ‘buff’ as I seriously doubt the ranger is ‘working as intended’. But I would be happy to see those 3.

However, I think I’ve almost been converted to an elementalist for good.

Pets are the biggest issue.
1) Allow complete disabling of pets
Running in Orr and my pet gets couple of hits -> slows me down. It’s super annoying.

2) Fix their AI
Yeah, biggest issue. For example: I am running around, my pet gets hit. It’s in offensive mode, so I press F3 and call it back. I stop few metres away and we kill a different enemy. For some odd reason, after killing this enemy, my pet would track down the previous one and attack it. This is one of the reasons my pets are named “Braindead”

3)Greatsword and Longbow fixes

GS: Damage increase, “Swoop” should stun/cripple, “Crippling Throw”(skill after pressing “Counterattack”) should have a larger range of throwing. You can see it hit the target, but it is “too far away”.

Longbow: Damage increase. A tiny bit faster shooting.

- 10% increase in longbow damage
– 50% AOE damage reduction for pets
– 20% movement speed increase for pets

1. let our arrows move faster.
2. less “obstruction” hits when there clearly isn’t anything that is obstructing said hit. Given equal range, if someone is hitting me, I should be able to hit them.
3. Pets in general, the flow of our traits/signets, option to run petless.

awe extender.1908:

Hi fellow rangers

The holidays are soon over us, and hopefully a new and better patch for us rangers. I’m sure we are on Santa’s good list. We deserve a nice present :-)

I thought we all could list 3 things we would like to have in the new patch ( or any patch in the future). I know a lot of issues have been discussed in other threads, but here is chance to keep it short and simple. Make a list of the 3 MOST important changes / fixes you really wish for your ranger. PLEASE do this on a serious and constructive matter. NO unrealistic suggestion like a 50% dmg buff . 3 things that would make your time as a ranger more fun and enjoyable. Suggestions that Anet hopefully will implement someday. Also make an effort to read previous replies to avoid duplicates and similar suggestions.
Cheers!

Here’s mine golden 3:

- Increase trap (cast)range to 1,200.
- Pet immune for 3 seconds when player dodges.
- Spirits have a 100% chance to grant benefits.

Spirit issue is not the proc chance but the ICD between procs, boon limit and survivability. I literally ran with 50% uptime on Protection at 35% proc chance.

30% – available on armor runes(45% actually but I’ld rather have another 4 second proc early in fight) +15% going to transfer an additional 3 second to pet. 6 procs over 60 seconds with buff reading over 5 seconds on display. That’s alot of protection uptime with all our evades and dodges to fill downtime gaps.

Passive buff limitation, survivability, possibly modest ICD adjustment and condensing traits, would be my spirit list. Proc chance really isn’t a problem when you attack twice a second.

1.) Fix the bugs!

2.) Trait/Skill overhaul. Hopefully leading to more build diversity. (1h-sword/dagger skirmisher? spirit support? trapper? sharpshooter? beastmaster? …)

3.) Talk to us. Seriously, Anet. Please TELL us what your “vision” for Rangers is. What roles do you see them in and how do you want to enable players to fill these roles? And please also tell us what we the players get wrong in your oppinion.

1) Bug fixes! (no more obstructed when shooting a bow, make drake use their auto abilities, pet actually rezzes every time you use Search and Rescue, etc.)

2) Remove root mechanic from the sword. I like the high skill cap of the sword, but the root mechanic just gives a clunky feel to what otherwise is a very fluid mobile weapon.

3) Make support builds viable. As it stands, spirits just get killed too easily, especially in dungeons.

Also, I like the idea of giving Rangers the rifle, but I’m not sure how it fits. The short bow and long bow seem to cover our long range 2h option pretty well (although long bow damage needs a boost) and it really seems like we’re more in need of a good long range 1h weapon, but it would be awesome to be able to use a rifle.

You asked for three, but I added a 4th general one:

1. Pets: Faster (instant) cast for F2 abilities
2. Pets: Ability to hit moving targets
3. Pets: Smarter AI to get themselves out of AoE and make them more survivable in dungeons
4. Add a general option to the options page to insta-cast ground target skills at target foe location (rather than cursor location)

Orion Templar.4589:

You asked for three, but I added a 4th general one:

1. Pets: Faster (instant) cast for F2 abilities
2. Pets: Ability to hit moving targets
3. Pets: Smarter AI to get themselves out of AoE and make them more survivable in dungeons
4. Add a general option to the options page to insta-cast ground target skills at target foe location (rather than cursor location)

I don’t like your fourth option. That removes the skill from part of it and I believe is intended. Plus I don’t see many serious PvPers/WvWers using this as we all know people move. That’s the fun, juding where that person is going to be in 1 sec or 2…. or 3 with some of the bigger skills you see w/ eles.

You’re correct of course, which is why I wanted it as an option, meaning folks that don’t like it wouldn’t need to implement it. I just added it since the devs apparently had something in mind already with the current option to ground target instantly at the cursor location, however if you’re using your mouse for camera control, the cursor location is usually not where you want to cast, and the time it takes to move there can be detrimental. For PvP you’d likely never use a insta-cast at target location, but for PvE I see it being useful.

1. Thrown Traps no longer teleport away when you are over 600m from their intended spot
2. Traits + Signets reworked to be less pet-centric in PvP (PvE you might actually want a pet with 6 second immunity… who knows). Also many traits in ranger trees that provide might usually gain only one stack whereas many other DPS classes gain 5 stacks. Some trait balancing should be looked at beyond the “less pet centric”. Traps are also in the wrong tree and should be placed in either the condi damage or condi duration lines.
3. Pets scale with player statistics, beastmastery bonus is now change to % bonus pet stats at 1% per level. Pets will also have a base multiplier to the rangers statistics so that certain pets excel at different things, this will stop tank spec’s from having decent burst due to pets and warranting a nerf of all ranger survivability down the road.
4. Place pets last on the buff priority of “in range” targets, having to stow pets at the start of a PvP map so it does not take someone’s swiftness is a pain.
5. Fix the tooltips, we don’t know what skills to report for not working correctly if we do not know what they are actually supposed to do in the tooltip. It will take a bunch of the burden off dev’s reading false bug reports due to incorrect information.

1. Let some of our trait customization affect our pet traits as well.
2. Let us swap between 3 pets rather than 2.
3. Let pets ‘track’ targets in PvP after the target stealths/runs out of range.

What about the Silver 3? Or the Bronze 5? or the Copper 10!? Q.Q

Flat damage reduction for pets (or AoE dmg reduction), or put the option somewhere in Beastmastery spec. Nerf to base stats of tankier pets if needed.

More interesting passives from traits.

Reduction in damage when carrying/swapping to a melee weapon or somewhere in traits.

IMO we won’t see any huge changes, so let’s think about some minor improvements like:
- Crippling Shot (SB 4): Let it cripple for 5 sec instead of 3, and put 3 stacks of bleeding instead of 1.
- Sharpened Edges (Trait): it stacks 1sec bleedings on crit. How about 2sec bleedings? As far as I remember, warrior’s trait stacks 3sec bleedings.
- Rapid Fire (LB 2): It shoots 10 arrows, it’s casting time is 5sec. I suggest to reduce number of arrows to 8, and reduce casting time to 3,5 sec, but summary damage should be same as now.

I’m still thinking about changes for other weapons/skills/traits. What do you think about it?

neverborne.4736:

- 10% increase in longbow damage
– 50% AOE damage reduction for pets
– 20% movement speed increase for pets

Need alot more then 10% lol

Easy…

1. Fix pets so they can hit moving targets
2. Fix sword root bug
3. Increase projectile speed so we can hit moving targets

And because it’s the holiday season….

4. Increase pet survivability so they last longer in dungeons and WvW

Anything else is just candycanes, with those fixes rangers would be competitive.

Daemon.4295:

Easy…

1. Fix pets so they can hit moving targets
2. Fix sword root bug
3. Increase projectile speed so we can hit moving targets

And because it’s the holiday season….

4. Increase pet survivability so they last longer in dungeons and WvW

Anything else is just candycanes, with those fixes rangers would be competitive.

Yeup…
That and making beastmastery a legitimate tree past 5 points… it should have traits to buff pet dmg and reduce dmg taken from aoes.

Better responsiveness on pet F2s.
Oh and pets would either need to move slower or deal less dmg to compensate for being able to hit what they get in range of.
(I’d prefer the slower movement speed since then they would still involve skill to use well, timing cripples/chills or really speccing into them for the bonus movement speed and dmg traits.)

Spirits need to be good.
Signets need to be reworked to have worthwhile passives (short of SoTW) and then activations worthy of a tier 3 trait and 30-120s CDs.

Greatsword could still use some love, with ranger weapon swap CDs being 10s, having a weapon that is only for a few nifty skills just isn’t good…
It should either be offensive or defensive… either hilt bash leaps and maul imobs for a lil bit and does notably more dmg that and the spammable just needs to be better making it a mobile offensive weapon. Or they turn maul into a chill/cripple + weakness and make the spammable give protection (so its more defensive control). Either or would be great, having it be a hogpag of random nifty abilities with no real cohesion is just bad…

1. Tweak longbow so it is more desirable to use in more situations. Make rapid fire an actual dps increase and make the close range damage penalty on 1 less harsh.

2. Fix all the “obstructed” crap and other bugs associated with ranged weapons. I’ve been shooting mobs, had them move TOWARDS me, and gotten “out of range” on the next shot. The random “obstructed” in the middle of the open field is the big one though.

3. Improve the many sub par utility skills: shouts, signets, and spirits.