Guild Wars 2

Here’s 2 things I think would help the ranger class:

1. All pet attacks are bound to f keys (or bind your own option so if you had a naga could bind em to a button on the side or another key on the keyboard, etc) instead of automatically occurring. I think this has been brought up before but I think it will open up usefulness to pets that do have other good attacks but can’t be relied on automatically , this will put more options into the ranger’s hands and raise the skill ceiling up as well.

2. Empathic Bond as an active removal instead of passively doing it every 10 seconds. Make it to where it’s bound to a key that you have the option to activate and then it goes on a 10second cooldown instead of automatically doing it every 10 seconds. This provides more uniqueness but also raises the skill ceiling of the ranger class.

May help , may not , not sure, let me knwo what you think

Didn’t understand point 1.

For point 2 have you thought on running 6x Soldier rune for condition removal on shout, then invest 10pts in BM to grab the cooldown reduction on shouts, then bringing guard for a 12 sec active condition removal?

Point 1 is so you have complete control over your pet, and not to depend on that stuff happening automatically so instead of skills occurring randomly while you’re fighting, you can control every aspect of your pet. The reason why ranger isn’t as good as say a thief is because thief is hugely interactive which gives it a much higher skill ceiling , almost everything is active even down to stealthing for condition removal.

I meant to also add, no thanks on going 10 into BM / 6 runes and using up a utility just to have 1 condition removed actively every 12 seconds. This is the kind of sacrifices rangers shouldn’t have to make to be interactive with their class, I appreciate the suggestion though.

The thief has one F button.
The pet skills are not random.
Bear has condi cleanse, which I realised works quite well since my rage on it.

Still, your second paragraph is stupid. You DO have to sacrifice to gain something.
More Defense = Less Offense
More condi cleanse = less anything
and so on…

Would rather have “Attack My Target” and “Return To Me” merged with “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” so I can key bind the kitten “Stow Pet”.

Yet another suggestion thread with nothing new. Sorry to say but think about your first suggestion for a bit. Pets already react horribly to player input. Take F2 for an example and ask yourself this: do you really want every pet attack to have the same issues?

As for Emphatic Bond. It is currently a required trait for every type of competitive play. Why would you suggest such a thing to improve this trait? Is it really lackluster? Ranger lacks active condition removal, sure. But cornering every build further into Emphatic Bond because it is the only counter for conditions the Ranger has access to is not a smart idea.

And finally; why did you create a new thread for this when there are already countless suggestion threads on this forum? That is without taking the suggestions sub-forum into account. Did you really consider these suggestions worth creating another thread for? I am not trying to insult, it is just that these threads are dime a dozen.

I realize the skills being controlled by ranger has been said before, but it needs to be said again. Putting us in control of those skills albeit them being unresponsive or not adds depth to the class as a whole. That is what the ranger needs, depth and uniqueness. There’s too much automation in this class and anybody with a brain who knows that and knows the ranger class itself can destroy you because they have, for the most part, more active utilities. Look at thief for example, I think almost everything you do is active on that class for the most part. YOU have to do everything , YOU are in control of everything. I think that is one of the major weaknesses of the ranger class in general. You’re simply not in control of everything. Due to this, you rely on a majority of automation which hinders the class.

Making us in control of those pet skills adds combo options, makes more pets viable , more active utility instead of waiting for a canine knockdown then setting up a combo, etc etc.

As for the comment about buffing empathic bond. It’s not buffing it it’s simply adding uniqueness to it, it’s making it more useful and viable instead of automated and adding skill depth to it instead of just automatically happening every 10 seconds. You’re already pidgeonholed, why be pidgeonholed with automation when you can have active removal and raise that skill ceiling even higher? I’m talking purely for skill ceiling, empathic bond triggers if you have or don’t have conditions, that is useless if you’re able to dodge important things that apply those said conditions. Say empathic bond triggers while you don’t have conditions, then you miss a dodge and get chill or 5 stacks of bleeds – you have to sit there with that until it triggers again, when if it were active you could trigger it and get a 10second cooldown. I won’t disagree with you that we need active removal elsewhere but active condition removal is and always will be a unique defining attribute. Automation isn’t always good , spirits are good automation, but not condition removal. That should never be automatic. It just is so counter-intuitive to skill based play.

Automation is the bane of this class, it needs to stop.

1. F1 “attack my target” should be converted to “Sic Em” so that we don’t have to waste a utility slot for a reveal that pets should be able to do without the user. Our pets usually attack our target if we haven’t selected a target for it. I could care less about the buffs to our pet from the Sic Em, I just want the reveal. Pet damage and speed buff can be removed if Sic Em is used with F1.

2. Agility Training should be a passive thing and not needed in trait tree. In fact, all our pets should be able to move faster than that us considering I’ve never seen a human outrun a dog/wolf/bird or bear for that matter. Pet’s don’t hit often because they are easily kitable, make them faster and they should be able to hit more.

There needs to be a way to stow our pets while in combat.

I don’t think that I can stress this enough. I have been playing a ranger since the beta and had a lot of experience with large WvW zerg fights. This is the second most important thing the ranger needs right now, after some synchronization and minor balance issues with the other professions. When you have one pet being forced to stay out in combat, it tends to die on the first push, no matter how well you can micro your pet. Even with a BM build and having a bear out, it can die in the first or second push. This leaves me with 1 pet to work with for the duration of the fight. There are a lot of ranger builds out there that rely on the pet for survivability so this really shouldn’t even be a thing. We need to have more control over our pets. Believe me, if you mained a class in WvW who’s profession skill (some utilities, AND an elite skill) CAN DIE…then you would hear me out. An alternative to this idea would be something like giving our pets the ability to dodge with the F3 command. Please listen to me Arenanet/Ranger community, I see threads that suggest this kind of thing all the time. We seriously need it; being able to stow our pets would be a first good step into making rangers a little more viable in big WvW zerg fights.

Two things the ranger class could use

Direction→Overhaul

Sounds like pets need a First Strike option.

The pet won’t die if you fight correctly with the zerg. On the other hand, you shouldn’t pick a dps pet the same way as you shouldn’t be a zerker spec.