Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing ranger since launch and I love the class, I want to see good things out of it. Over time I’ve compiled thoughts I’ve had to make the Ranger class better. These suggestions are with sPvP in mind and a few will benefit other game modes too.

Weapon Skills:
Greatsword
· Auto attack chain needs a dps buff, its damage is very lackluster when compared to other classes’ great swords such as guardian and warrior.
· Hilt bash’s range is still too short for the indicated 300 range. bring the range up to where the tooltip says.
Shortbow
· Shortbow’s main problem is that it lacks pressure outside of auto attacks
· Increase the poison duration from poison volley from 4 to 5 or 6 seconds
· Change SB 4 from doing cripple on hit to 3 stacks of torment on hit. Take away the pet bleeding and make it so pet cripples.
· Add a functionality to concussion shot to apply 5 stacks of confusion when you interrupt the target.
Sword
· Auto attack is very clunky and the fact that the leaps lock you out of dodges is so hindering. Change it to act like other classes’ sword AAs and cleave each attack and just be slashes/jabs
· The interval in which you can use monarch’s leap is very small and forces you to use it soon after you leap backwards. The interval is 2.5 seconds right now, change it to 4 seconds to see how fluid it feels.
Axe
· The might duration on ricochet is short lived and its only purpose is synergy between it and fortified bond. If the might duration is increased to around ~5 seconds, the might will persist for a while after you stop auto attacking and help compensate for rangers lack of might stacking
· Whirling Defense is very lackluster, the biggest buff would be to let you move while using it so you can close the gap between you and the person ranging you down.
Warhorn
· I feel like warhorn can use the same treatment guardian shield got, reduce its CDs by 20% and keep the 20% CDR trait so you can get 40% CDR.
· Hunters call could apply vulnerability or blind per hit to give more incentive for using it.

Slot Skills:
Healing Skills
· Personally, I do not like how the new healing spring functions. My two biggest peeves are that if you are full health but have a condi on you such as chill or cripple, it will not trigger because you’re still at full health. Also, if you place HS down while running in a straight line, you will walk out of its radius before the arming time is over thus not triggering the regen or condi clear.
Shout Skills
· Protect me usually ends up in a dead pet and it’s strange that it prevents capture point progress. It should let you cap points and maybe have an added functionality of your pet gains protection or takes 50% less damage
Spirit Skills
· Making spirits immobile was not a good idea, it makes their active skills basically useless. Nobody will stand near a spirit unless it is on point and if it is on point, it will get easily cleaved out.
· Make spirits mobile and increase spirit health by 50% because normal spirits have ~5k health which isn’t the greatest.
· Having a spirit die when it uses its active promotes passive play in my opinion, why would you use the active when you can keep it alive and gain passive bonuses
Survival skills
· It would be an interesting concept if muddy terrain applied reveal to stealthed people who cross it (thematically it could be that you see the stealthed peoples foot prints). Increase the cooldown to keep it from being too powerful
Trap skills
· Flame trap could apply blinding to give trap rangers more defenses as they are fairly squishy as of now
· Frost trap can apply some vulnerability stacks to give more incentive to take it
· Reduce spike trap CD, it was increase by a lot just for a small knockdown
· Add viper’s nest tool tip to show it does 3 stacks per tip

Pets
• As a general change, the addition of F5 to ranger in which you can slot one of your pet skills such as a bird’s quickening screech or a drake’s tail swipe. This would allow better pet control and more depth to the class
• Pets also lack healing power and condition damage baseline even though there are pets that are obviously meant to have those stats. Giving pets ~700 of those stats baseline would help their efficiency especially when paired with the traits that give them more of those stats
• Fix pet chill bug where the CD counter for the F2 is on perma chill timer (even though it doesn’t actually affect how often you can use the F2)
• When pets die, they go on a 60 second cooldown (triple the normal CD). This is too harsh and should be lowered to 40 seconds, double the normal cooldown.
Devourers
• Increase the change to poison on twin darts to poison from 10% to 30% to give around a 50% chance to poison every auto attack
• Change devourer’s retreat to become an offensive skill. It will burrow to an AoE location like the gravelings in ascalonian catacombs and launch people when it resurfaces. Applies ~3 bleeds; blast finisher
• Posion barbs should be changed to tormenting barbs and apply torment on each hit for ~4 seconds
• Rending barbs should cripple on each hit along with bleeding
Porcine
• Forage should act like thief steal in which the item goes into the F2 slot instead of on the ground

Traits:
Marksmanship
· Clarion Bond proccing out of combat would allow for rangers to have more out of combat mobility, something in which they lack outside of warhorn
Skirmishing
· Similar to clarion bond, if tail wind procced outside of combat, it would help OOC mobility. Furious grip would stay combat only however
· Strider’s defense is an RNG trait and needs to be something concrete. I feel like something like “after evading with a weapon skill, block one projectile” would be nicer, it can be a buff with a 2-3 sec duration on a ~5 sec ICD
· The condi duration on light on your feet should be increased to around 20-25%
· Most Dangerous Game is planning to be under 50% health which is a bad attitude in my opinion, if it was like while over 50% health gain might every second and while under 50% give a boon such as retaliation (a boon rangers lack much of) or maybe even stability
Wilderness Survival
· Expertise training should give 450 condi damage like how natural healing gives 450 healing power. The condition duration only applies in combat but I don’t see a reason why, it should apply out of combat. The condi duration took a big nerf from 50% to 20%, this was most likely because of taunt but I still feel like it was over nerfed.
· When specializations came out, Hide in Plain Sight was deleted. I believe HipS should be brought back and shared anguish deleted. Shared anguish is a trait that enemies cant reliable keep track of due to its CD and most of the time the rangers don’t either. It’s effectively a random proc. With HipS the ranger was stealthed and was on a lower CD so it was more reliable. HipS also lets the CC go through so it is fairer to the opponent who doesn’t have to worry about getting outplayed by passives.
· Sticking both ranger’s condi cleanse traits in the same trait line was not a good idea, it pigeon holes them to an extent to go into WS, the only other viable option would be to take skirmishing and healing spring. My idea is to put empathic bond in nature magic, put invigoration bond into beast mastery, and put the axe trait in wilderness survival.
· The AoE chill from honed axes could be made baseline so a different mechanic to be put in place because honestly it is very underwhelming. The ferocity while wielding an axe should apply to offhand axes and stack so dual wielding axes gives +300 ferocity. To replace AoE chill functionality, I thought about what if splitblade bounced like ricochet, like if an axe hits a target, it bounces 2 times. I am open to suggestions on this trait
Nature Magic
· Bountiful hunter has to compete with allies aid, maybe change the modifier to 2% to get around ~10% damage buff from it regularly
· Instinctive reaction converting power to healing power is strange to me, I feel like gaining condition damage based on healing power would be more useful for builds considering the trait
· Let vigorous training be affected be either the pet’s or the player’s boon duration as right now it is affected by neither
· Make windborne notes apply 10 seconds of regen as listed instead of 5 (bug)
· As I suggested earlier, put empathic bond in this line. To fit the theme of boons, have the pet convert conditions it takes from this trait into boons
· Boons from nature’s vengeance have little uptime. Increase most boon durations to 2 seconds every 3 seconds. Adjust frost spirits boon duration so you can get 3-5 stacks of might from it after a while. Stability can stay at 1 sec per 3 seconds
· I feel like spirits pulsing the same boons their passives give is pointless. Storm spirit pulsing fury would make more sense. For stone spirit I had a thought, what if it pulsed stability and the nature spirit pulsed resistance, 1 second every 3 seconds, maybe every 5 seconds
Beast Mastery
· Natural Healing should affect the player like it did before the specializations patch
· Invigorating bond’s CD should be lowered to 15 seconds like beastly warden
· Change taunt so it can be dodged, in my opinion keep it unblockable as ranger lacks an unblockable CC

I Agree with pretty much all of your ideas, they are really well thought out, and wouldn’t make ranger op, but rather very balanced. Although we shoulda had all the pet ideas since launch.

Could have omitted some of the changes requesting bug fixes. One to point out is the Hilt Bash range increase you posted. It’s current 300 range is okay if it were actually 300 range. At the moment it’s 220. I have a feeling Anet might have another patch that says, “Corrected the range tooltip on Hilt Bash.” to make 220 official in the future.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Could have omitted some of the changes requesting bug fixes. One to point out is the Hilt Bash range increase you posted. It’s current 300 range is okay if it were actually 300 range. At the moment it’s 220. I have a feeling Anet might have another patch that says, “Corrected the range tooltip on Hilt Bash.” to make 220 official in the future.

Thank you for pointing this out, my friend Talgo also mentioned it but neither of us knew the actual range it was now

I would love these changes to happen, hopefully someone from anet dev will take a look at it. Currently in PvP the only viable builds are power based with some survival skills and/or some shouts. Our other utilities need some love or else they will pretty much be a waste of space in out list of utility skills.

The only changes I don’t agree with are the spirit changes. They should remain immobile unless we’re given control of where they are positioned.

Instead I’d suggest the range of their passive be doubled so they can be more strategically placed to keep them safe. Then make their activated ability ground targeted with a 600-900 unit range from the ranger so that when activated the spirit teleports to the designated area right when the skill goes off. That way we can keep the spirits away for the passive and still have access to the active skill on demand where we need it.

Then allow the spirits to auto cast their active skill upon death to punish enemies for going after them.

This would give the player more strategic flexibility in placing them and more tactical flexibility in destroying them, making for a more complex playstyle than what they had before. Given spirits only have a 20 second cooldown a ranger could be expected to go through at least two generations of summoned spirits during a fight, thus creating a playstyle of darting in and out of combat setting spirits for later use.

Ehecatl.9172:

The only changes I don’t agree with are the spirit changes. They should remain immobile unless we’re given control of where they are positioned.

Instead I’d suggest the range of their passive be doubled so they can be more strategically placed to keep them safe. Then make their activated ability ground targeted with a 600-900 unit range from the ranger so that when activated the spirit teleports to the designated area right when the skill goes off. That way we can keep the spirits away for the passive and still have access to the active skill on demand where we need it.

Then allow the spirits to auto cast their active skill upon death to punish enemies for going after them.

This would give the player more strategic flexibility in placing them and more tactical flexibility in destroying them, making for a more complex playstyle than what they had before. Given spirits only have a 20 second cooldown a ranger could be expected to go through at least two generations of summoned spirits during a fight, thus creating a playstyle of darting in and out of combat setting spirits for later use.

if spirits were to remain immobile, I agree that the passive range needs to be increased as 1k is too small. your suggestion on how to re-position them is interesting and could work. however i disagree with the notion to bring back spirit actives when they die. I think the removal of that was to add more counterplay to the rez spirit. before u had to interrupt it but make sure it didn’t die which is a little counter intuitive. keeping it so that

Did you ever used the spirits in the last time? The passive buff remains even after the spirit died, as long as the dead corpse lies on the ground. Cast your spirit near the opponent, use your active skill and your passive buff last until you only have 4 seconds left to cast the spirit again. Means even with a dead spirit you get 16 of 20 seconds buff-uptime.(Or maybe 16 of 22 seconds if you add the casttime for your second spirit.) Sunspirit is awesome in a condition build in tpvp. I have discovered that the sunspirit buff have an internal cooldown about 5 seconds until you can again cause burning. Thats the only restriction with a bitter taste while using sunspirit. I did not test it, but it should be similiar to the other spirits.

BlazinFyre.2410:

Shortbow
· Shortbow’s main problem is that it lacks pressure outside of auto attacks
· Increase the poison duration from poison volley from 4 to 5 or 6 seconds
· Change SB 4 from doing cripple on hit to 3 stacks of torment on hit. Take away the pet bleeding and make it so pet cripples.
· Add a functionality to concussion shot to apply 5 stacks of confusion when you interrupt the target.

Shortbow needs a complete overhaul, the weapon isn’t just weak, it’s boring.

BlazinFyre.2410:

Survival skills
· It would be an interesting concept if muddy terrain applied reveal to stealthed people who cross it (thematically it could be that you see the stealthed peoples foot prints). Increase the cooldown to keep it from being too powerful

I like the short cooldown immob. Sharpening Stone on the other hand needs some work.

Agree with your pet suggestions and most of the trait suggestions are similiar to what I’ve wanted for a while. As far as Nature Magic goes I’d like to add that Windborne Notes needs to do something that isn’t overloading the ranger with the regen boon, and that Evasive Purity should affect allies aswell.

Lazze.9870:

BlazinFyre.2410:

Shortbow
· Shortbow’s main problem is that it lacks pressure outside of auto attacks
· Increase the poison duration from poison volley from 4 to 5 or 6 seconds
· Change SB 4 from doing cripple on hit to 3 stacks of torment on hit. Take away the pet bleeding and make it so pet cripples.
· Add a functionality to concussion shot to apply 5 stacks of confusion when you interrupt the target.

Shortbow needs a complete overhaul, the weapon isn’t just weak, it’s boring.

BlazinFyre.2410:

Survival skills
· It would be an interesting concept if muddy terrain applied reveal to stealthed people who cross it (thematically it could be that you see the stealthed peoples foot prints). Increase the cooldown to keep it from being too powerful

I like the short cooldown immob. Sharpening Stone on the other hand needs some work.

Agree with your pet suggestions and most of the trait suggestions are similiar to what I’ve wanted for a while. As far as Nature Magic goes I’d like to add that Windborne Notes needs to do something that isn’t overloading the ranger with the regen boon, and that Evasive Purity should affect allies aswell.

what would you suggest for sharpening stones, I’ve personally never liked the skill so I don’t really know what would be a good change, perhaps a CD reduction to start with. I agree that regen boon is very ample for ranger. I use healing spring once and get 30 seconds of it lol. The good part about windborne is that its more team support. I would be all for making evasive effect allies as long as it only goes on CD when it clears something unlike ele’s stop drop and roll

I like some of your changes to shortbow, but I think Crippling Shot needs to keep a cripple or chill on the arrow, instead of moving it to the pet, as it’s often used on fleeing targets which the pet may not be able to reach before they escape. IMO, leave the snare on the arrow, and have the pet’s next three attacks apply one or two stacks of torment instead of bleeding, since Crippling Shot is about CC/penalizing enemies for moving some direction you don’t want them to.

slingblade.1437:

I like some of your changes to shortbow, but I think Crippling Shot needs to keep a cripple or chill on the arrow, instead of moving it to the pet, as it’s often used on fleeing targets which the pet may not be able to reach before they escape. IMO, leave the snare on the arrow, and have the pet’s next three attacks apply one or two stacks of torment instead of bleeding, since Crippling Shot is about CC/penalizing enemies for moving some direction you don’t want them to.

I wanted the condition to move from the pet to the player because right now pet condition damage is abysmal. If they make the change to increase base pet condi damage then I think your suggestion would probably be better. I suggested torment to give condi variation and to also punish people for running away.

Considering how bad rangers got in the specialization update, I guess it’s probably the same problem as thief acrobatics: you got nerfed to make place for your elite spec.

Pretty good changes.

I hope we can get some of them in a future balance update.

I do like what they did to traps but what I didn’t like is that we can’t throw them around us anymore and only “plant” them below us, I’d like to see the old mechanic for traps.
Also a good trap buff would be if we could get trap runes in spvp, it would be great for build diversity and traps would be actually useful and scary as they should be.

A lot of great ideas. Clearly the Ranger class needs a lot of love and changes.
Especially the weapons are quite odd.

Though I agree with Ehecatl, that spirits should be immobile.
- The passive effects and their range needs to be increased/changed though. Especially Nature’s Vengeance.
- The actives are more of less useless at the moment. Although they’ve never been good. Spirits shouldn’t die on active cast and the effect should take place either around the caster or the targeted enemy. Maybe both with trait?
- Storm spirit needs to be redone. Rangers can grant swiftness with other ways. I would be surprised if anyone actually uses it. Fury would be the natural choice.
- Perhaps spirits should even be unkillable? They aren’t attacking anyone like torrets and they are immobile as of lately, so why bother giving them health? Even if the enemy kills them, they aren’t punished enough.