Since the last patch, there were a fair amount of Quality of Life updates on the Ranger done. We had some reductions (Search & Rescue), but overall, job well done, Irenio & gang!
Now, comes the 2nd entry of the QoL list. Much shorter than the 1st one I made since a lot of those were implemented! Not completely altering the purpose of a skill or trait, but (more or less) improving it within its current form.
If you have one to add, post it below! Irenio and crew seem to be reading up and taking notes. Let’s begin:
Tail Wind, Furious Grip, and Quick Draw cooldown reduced from 9s to 8s.
To be friendly with Rune of the Warrior. There is probably that one Ranger out there that uses Rune of the Warrior, and that’s fine. This is just to make the weapon swap cooldowns, on a whole, uniformed. Even Primal Echoes has an 8s cooldown.
This request also goes beyond the Ranger’s weapon swap traits and should also be applied to weapon swap sigils that currently have a 9s cooldown on them.
“Search & Rescue!” changed to have ground-target casting. (Land version only)
Since the reduction to make this shout equal to the usual 600 range, it’s been a bit more difficult to use. You (Anet) can keep it at 600 range if you like, but let the skill be a ground-target cast from the Player’s position.
Any ally within the target-zone will be teleported to you and the pet will shadow-step to your position and start reviving a downed ally. This will also make it much friendlier with ranged pets, as all of them are 900 range and above.
Hornet’s Sting (Sword 2) reduced cast time and Crippling Thrust (Sword 1b) to cleave.
A long-time request to have the cast time reduced so the evade can be accessed earlier and be more reactive and less clunky. Currently, the cast time is ½s. A small reduction down to a ¼s would be the sweet-spot. This would allow an opponent some time to react to the attack, as well as the player to use the evade.
As for Crippling Thrust, after the update it has since not been updated itself to cleave multiple targets. Yes, the cripple could be an issue, however, since the update, the sword chain has a bit more after-casts on it than before. Allow the entire chain to cleave so it can match all of the existing professions that use a main-hand sword (which cleave on all strikes).
Sharing is Caring: More Traits Pets Can Use.
-Hunter’s Tactics: Allow the critical hit chance increase when attacking from behind or the side to affect the pet when it strikes targets from the flank.
-Poison Master: Allow the increased poison damage to affect poison applied by the pet.
-Hidden Barbs: Allow the increased bleeding damage to affect bleeding applied by the pet.
-Oakheart Salve: Allow the damage reduction when the pet has regeneration.
Pets are the Ranger’s core mechanics. As with the update to Sharpened Edges trait, our pets should be able to benefit from more of our traits. In fact, if there is ever another trait revamp done in the future, more traits should incorporate a bond shared between the pet and its master.
Allowing the listed above traits (Steady Focus was omitted but could be considered) can give that small edge that players’ feel pets currently lack. It would not completely address many of the issues with pets, but it would be a small step in the right direction.
Note: Before anyone calls foul, I tested Poison Master and Hidden Barbs before placing these on the list. Currently, they do not affect their respective conditions when applied by the pet.
Astral Wisp & Vine Surge velocity increase.
Both these moves suffer in various ways. Not only do these skills have a decent cast time, but they are often slow to reach their target or destination. There have been many great suggestions to reworking these two skills, but for the sake of simplicity, a small start would be increasing the velocity of these Staff skills to be able to hit targets more reliably.
Astral Wisp to pulse its effect instead of passing through allies.
Currently, having the Wisp pass through allies can be awkward. Rather than increase the velocity of the orbiting speed or duration of its boon, have it be more straight-forward and pulse its heal to allies with in the radius.
As of right now, for allies to benefit the most from it is to have them move opposite of the Wisp’s orbiting direction while staying within melee range of the target. The reward is lacking to the risk and the manner to obtain maximum benefits are clunky. It also behaves oddly when attached to enemies with very large hit-boxes.
Altering the way it delivers its heals for allies into a pulsing area of effect that follows the target it is attached to will allow this skill to be more functional and less of a hassle, for both the user and allies.
Glyph of Rejuvenation’s player heal to also heal the pet.
This is a consistency issue. I’m tossing thematics out the window as this is the only heal that does not initially heal the pet. Say what you want, the initial heal should affect the pet so our core mechanic is not left out in the dust when 4 other players are within the radius.
Lower cooldowns of the core (Pre Heart of Thorns) Pets
The new pets that came with Heart of Thorns left the old, core Tyria pets in the dust. Only a small handful of them serve a purpose (relative to their game mode) while a majority of them are either used as a niche, or not used at all.
Rather than going through a complete Pet revamp or rework (search through the forums, there are many fantastic suggestions from the community), I will simply ask for all of the core pets’ F2 command cooldowns to be looked at and reduced.
I believe Irenio did a stellar job doing this with the Engineer Toolbelt skills – another class he is in charge of – by reducing and adjusting a lot of the cooldowns for quality of life purposes. No direct suggestions here, man. However, I will mention that a 45-second cooldown on the Polar Bear’s F2 is a bit of an extreme for what it does.
As a minor note/request: The old, core Tyria pets AND Tiger need love on their tooltip descriptions in regards to updating Condition Duration when traited with Expertise Training (Wilderness Survival – Adept). Boon durations work nicely on all pets, but Condition Duration only updates with the new breeds (Bristleback, Smokescale, and Wyverns).
Porcine Forage item to appear as the F2 rather than on the ground.
This would be a huge quality of life improvement for using a Porcine for the Forage item. Much like the Steal ability of the Thief, using Forage should play out the animation of the Porcine searching the ground as usual, then have the F2 icon flip to said item.
When the item is ready to use, the player can then press F2 for it to appear in the player’s hands to be used. This would be how the Ranger would deal with discarding unwanted items, if it comes to that.
With this approach, the item would not be lying on the ground for other players to use, other enemy players to use, or have the player be forced to use it if it were to automatically appear in the player’s hands.
Foraged items can then be used more effectively and strategically without being hindered or accidentally benefiting the opposition. This cannot be stressed enough. Equipping a Porcine and having an enemy retrieve the Foraged item makes Ranger the only profession that can provide an opportunity to aid an enemy while losing out on part of our profession’s mechanic!
Underwater stuff
-Evasive Strike (Spear 1c) to move while casting.
-“Guard!” recent functionality to work underwater.
-Druid Glyphs to work underwater.
Underwater doesn’t see much love these days, however, there are a few things to address since other professions had their elite specs fleshed out to be friendly when swimming.
It’s an odd design choice to have the Druid’s Celestial Avatar form work underwater but not any of the Glyphs. Glyphs are personal-based area of effect skills (PBAoE), so it would seem natural to work underwater. Even Seeds of Life functions underwater so Verdant Etchings shouldn’t be an issue when using Glyphs.
“Guard!” also needs to be looked at since its functionality was recently changed. It makes sense to have this skill work underwater since it no longer requires a ground-target cast or positions the pet.
Last, but not least. A minor change to the final Spear attack in the auto-chain, Evasive Strike, to be used whilst moving. This quality of life suggestion extends also the Mesmer Spear which suffers from the same issue of rooting the player in place on the final strike.
Seems odd to have an auto attack on a melee weapon root a player in place. (cough)
More accessible Opening Strikes
-Alpha Training minor merged into Opening Strike minor.
-Precise Strike moved down from Grandmaster minor to Master minor.
-Remorseless’ Gain an Opening Strike when you gain Fury as a Grandmaster minor.
-Remorseless makes Opening Strikes deal more damage and unblockable.
For the longest time, the Opening Strike minors had a major flaw of not being effective in continuous engagements as it used to only refresh when out of combat or relying on a Grandmaster trait, Remorseless.
These suggestions aim to make these minor traits accessible to various builds and play styles. By merging Alpha Training together with Opening Strike, and taking half of the current Remorseless trait and using it as a Grandmaster minor trait, the Opening Strike minors can finally be used without solely relying on the Remorseless trait.
As an added suggestion that was brought up in [this thread], Remorseless can gain a new feature in which it makes Opening Strikes unblockable. Since Opening Strikes only apply to the next attack, this can introduce an alternative for the Ranger profession to bypass blocks and aegis besides using traps.
Being held as a Grandmaster in Marksmanship will also limit its access and create a definitive choice for players when selecting a build and trait lines. It will not only create diversity within the competitive aspects of the game, but for all game modes, as well as with various gear and builds using low precision and different sources of fury; be it with pets, weapons, traits, runes, or group compositions.
This is the only suggestion (so far) that oversteps the bounds for altering things in such a way that the impact goes far beyond quality of life. It is both strong but limited, so it does not become too powerful. Please, think about this one.
Steady Focus applies 5% damage per 50 endurance.
(suggested by Lazze)
Yes, Rangers have access to plenty of vigor and evasion. However, all-or-nothing traits such as this feel outdated and somewhat punishing for using a core game mechanic: dodging.
Rather than completely alter the trait, what about dividing up the damage bonus to apply per 50 endurance the player has? It retains the purpose of using other means of evasion, blocks, and strafing to keep up the damage bonus while being flexible and not completely punishing for using dodges.
There are plenty of traits on other professions that have various levels of effectiveness based on different conditions and thresholds. Traits like Steady Focus could benefit from this treatment as well. This also extends to the Engineer trait, Excessive Energy (Tools, Grandmaster minor), which is similar to Steady Focus.
Sharpening Stone is outdated.
I won’t state the ways Sharpening Stone can be improved, but the general Ranger community find this utility lackluster. 5 bleeds to apply on the next 5 strikes on a 45-second cooldown is straight-up mediocre.
It’s a cross between a badly implemented Preparation from the original Guild Wars and Thief venom. This utility requires attention in some way. There have been some good revamps on skills recently, both functional and creative; so we can only look forward to what changes could be in store if Sharpening Stone were to see some love.
Visible Boons, Buffs, and Conditions on our Pet
Our pet is the Ranger’s core mechanic. Unlike other professions that have temporary minions, ours is a permanent feature. Players could benefit greatly by having our UI to display the active boons, buffs, and conditions placed on our pet.
This would allow a more streamlined approach on checking the status without the clunkiness of locating and clicking on our pet. This would also help players make smarter and decisive choices when to tactically use commands and/or utilities depending on a pet’s status.
Keybind for Stow/Activate Button
Many Rangers stow their pets before entering combat to activate pet swap traits tactically. Let’s add a keybind for this Ranger function for less skill clicking and fumbling with the mouse cursor to click this relatively small icon (varies depending on individual UI size settings).
Profession Mechanic Transformation Skill Previews
(suggested by Droog)
This is for ease of access in terms of information. Providing a preview to Celestial Avatar Forms skills in the weapon tab in the Hero Panel can cut down on time when experimenting with different gear and builds and checking out the numbers.
This will also benefit new players and new players to the Druid elite specialization, being able to see what each skill does to better familiarize themselves without having to build up Astral Force repeatedly in order to view them.
An alternative way to include preview of these skills can be done by having the 1st minor trait in the elite specialization display skills one-by-one via right-clicking. This is currently present on the Warrior’s Berserker elite specialization 1st minor trait that lists the different functions of each Primal Rage burst with different weapons.
This suggestion also extends to Necromancer & Reaper Shroud skills. Quality of life for all.
Edit: Added a more suggestions.
Will update once Path of Fire releases.
(edited by Wondrouswall.7169)