Guild Wars 2

I roll a power/regen melee build, and have the exact same problem. I carry my build with months of experience and good instinct, but in the tooth and nail fights its always stupid things like the pet holding me back against kiting targets, hence why I do admittedly spend a lot of time complaining. It comes a point where you realize the same amount of time, build experimentation and practice invested into certain other classes/builds could yield far, far greater results but for all the wrong things. Issues like pet AI, limited access to condition removal alternatives, lack of perks on healing skills, and some utility skills and traits that just plain suck.

Many others realize this, and the end result is a forum full of ranger complaints that never end because the balance team replies never seem to include anything that would amount to any level of empathy. Always some “Condi bunker ranger is good!” “Rangers have high participation in SPvP” reply variant is given. Even if you believe the team is aware of the issues and spending real time to address them; when they don’t indicate such on the forums, you start doubting, get frustrated/angry and make an ill-fated post in the spirit of disappointment/frustration.

As it stands, we’re in a never ending cycle. Just a few decent forum replies from the balance team could help relieve a lot of ranger stress, but I guess that would get our hopes up too much. The lack of communication is adding too much frustration to the ranger class. Judging from what I see daily on the forums, what the ranger class desperately needs now is some stress relief. The first step is too decrease your attachment to the game and class at least slightly, and take a breather. The second is for Jon Peters to stop making replies that sound indignant, misinformed or downplaying towards the serious issues. (Ie. 30% of your character being easily avoided by mindlessly spamming your left and right keys when you fight a ranger.) These are huge, extremely aggravating, issues. They are not issues you can sidestep by randomly citing some ranger spvp participation figures that mean NOTHING other than highlighting the fact that ranger is popular class, something the anniversary post figures showed long before that post was made.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

I gotta say, one thing I’ve noticed about ranger is in PvP it’s pretty mindless with a few weapons to be good (SB for example), so the skill ceiling is just sooooo low because of how kittening passive ranger plays. This really hurts the prof as a whole because there’s almost no difference between a good and bad ranger (some builds there is but that’s like 2, MAYBE).

I will say though that as simple (and demanded) as giving rangers full control of their pet would be to shoot up the skill ceiling it won’t help the prof as a whole , we need trait and utility reworks so we aren’t pigeonholed into 30pt investments to bring utilities up to par.

I’ve been playing with Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch, spirit build without Storm Spirit (so my spirits don’t do damage, only utility), and my pet on passive so I have to manage it’s targets, so nobody can say I’m just AA spamming and being carried, at least no more than engis running Incendiary Powder or Dhuumfire necros.

I have to say, that it’s the only time I feel like I’m using any sort of APM to be effective, but the thing that takes the fun out of it is managing your APM and multitasking and everything perfectly, but the pet still not “behaving” properly.

For instance, I get my wolf knockdown, and chain it into the fear to land, so, perfect, I switch to my river drake, hit f1, and f2, and the drake still decides it wants to look at and shoot it’s f2 at the wall because it takes like 5 seconds before a summoned pet is able to “think” and select the target you tell it to select.

Like, I couldn’t have had a more perfect input, but the mechanic itself is limiting, and it’s just frustrating, because I can pull off other combinations of skills like this on other classes, just not ranger.

I feel your pain…. I know I run a Longbow+ Sword/Dagger (or warhorn) for the same exact reason, and I recently moved into using only survival utilities because they’re the only ones that feel like actual utilities.

Our shouts are just, let’s be honest, lame, I still think they should effect your pet and 5 nearby targets (excluding you) and can be traited into boosting you. Our spirits are really lack luster, I would like to see them more like shaman totems from WoW aka really easy to kill, immune to AoE so you have to target them to kill them, but a really devestation effect if you don’t deal with them. Our signets shouldn’t need traits to be worthwhile, end of story, and then traps just don’t work well with any non trap build…

PS: I didn’t comment on the pets because I could rant for hours about how stupid our pet AI is

Shouts are good when traited with nature voice and shout cooldown reduction on beastmastery and further enhanced with soldier runes. Removing AE indicator circles can make casting shout feel a little more efficient and if you have a mouse with multiple buttons, getting the f3 skill placed to cancel out guard when needed can be decently comfortable and viable. With this setup, Guard and Protect Me becomes a setup to be respected. That allows you a controlled stunbreak and damage redirection every 48 seconds, permament regeneration and protection on your pet which greatly boosts pet survivability, near permanent swiftness, and perma regen(Regen when coupled with other traits you will end up having anyways). Stealthing your pet with Guard is especially valuable when timed and utilized right, especially setting up good ambushes with River and Marsh Drake F2 from stealth, although do to lack of pet control can be hard to truly utilize to its fullest. Shouts are actually be one of the utilities, that when traited and supported right, best promote synergy between the ranger and the pet. However, they are still lackluster in some senses from what they offer the ranger character. And some of them just don’t seem to live up to expectations in pratice.. Sick Em’, and Search and rescue namely.

So yeah. shouts. Good but admittedly not great. I agree that shouts they could use some tweaking. If additional condition removal could be accessed through other means or traits, I’d ditch this setup in a heartbeat.

i don’t think it needs anymore condition removal tbh if you grab that dodge – poison and other cleans ranger already has.

without poison you can pretty much outheal the dots if you are regen build.

I kinda want SB to give some more condition otherwise it really sucks without spirit fire.

Liza.2758:

i don’t think it needs anymore condition removal tbh if you grab that dodge – poison and other cleans ranger already has.

without poison you can pretty much outheal the dots if you are regen build.

I kinda want SB to give some more condition otherwise it really sucks without spirit fire.

It’s not about capability to reach high condition removal; it’s about the way it’s done and the lack of choices available to make in such. Many other classes, have for example heals on 15-20 second cooldowns that offer very similar levels of raw healing output while simultaneously removing 3 conditions, be it the full 3 or a specific 3: “Poison, burning and bleeding” or variations like that, in addition accessing some arguably much better on demand condition removal when traited right. Our condition removal from a non-traited ranger is laughable in comparison to certain classes. Healing Spring is extremely overrated, for one thing. It’s a great utility for team play, but on the individual level? Overtime it’s getting massively out healed by Heal as One and Troll Unguent as well if you miss any of the finishers, which is going to happen now and then especially when AE heavy classes are throwing hazardous red circles all over your precious field or you have to stop for a second and reposition swoop so as to not fly into a group of roamers engaged in battle while you are leaping that field. It sounds great in theory but in practice it really has its limitations. Especially in tankier fights over the course of say a minute and 20 seconds, but even in 20-40 seconds encounters. The healing numbers on it are not tweaked high enough to match the cooldown, and you can’t always abuse that water circle like you’d expect.

More condition removal options should be available from the default, and ones with decent healing to cooldown ratios included. Removing a couple conditions and healing maybe 8k-12k every 30 seconds is laughable. And some who roll with Vigor on heal or any runes proccing on heal actually want to cast heals more frequently, not less frequently.

I also like ranger because its a difficult class, more rewarding when you win. Playing mesmer or necro and killing a ranger was just so unsatisfying because its so easy.

I play a GS/LB power build too since I enjoy good dps when playing. Its not nearly as survivable as a regen build and I’ve accepted there are times when I am going to have to fight tooth and nail to survive and times when I will die. But when I get perched just right and everyone has either not noticed or given up chasing me and I can rain down death… oh yes… its worth it.

That said I know the feeling after I swoop in, stun someone and maul it feels a bit weak after with the lack of options with GS to continue a beatdown. The decreased cooldown trait helps a lot here, but perhaps more damage on #1..?