Guild Wars 2

… from the mid-october patch – especially for rangers?

I would really like your opinions what you hope the next big patch will bring us.
This should become a clear list to gather our opions.
I’ll start, feel free to add your thoughts (I’m gonna update the list).
Also, please comment what you think about the suggestions made.

-better responding pets (e.g. F2 priority) and pet AI
-Invention for pets to avoid damage while dodge-rolling, like invulnerablity/evade for the duration.
-visible buffs/conditions on the pet, without being forced to target it.
-option to fight without pets (without losing hypothetical dps)
-decent ranged pets.
-buff “protect me”, give your pet stability for the duration so it won’t be interrupted
by cc
-change “guard” so it will attack my target after breaking stealth
-change “seach and rescue” – the pet can ress defeated allies, but give priority to
downed ones and don’t intterupt it after the ally gets defeated
-rebuff [empathic bond]
-rebuff [zephyr’s speed]
-buff survival skills (e.g. “entangle”, “muddy terrain” and “lightning reflexes”)
-change the MH axe, make it either a power or a condition weapon, if this won’t work, atealst improve traits so we can decide if it’s a condition or power based weapon.
-remove range requirement from longbow
-remove cast time from “signet of the wild”
-increase shortbow range
-interrupt the swords auto-attack when dodge-rolling
-buff some minor traits (e.g. [insinctual bond])
-more party support (e.g. blast finisher on maul)
-more available aoe dmg (e.g. cleave dmg)
-MANLY legendary bows
-a mechanic similar to preparations in GW (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Preparation)
-more available weapons
-keybind for combat/guard
-give [opening strike] an integrated reset, not only when entering combat again (or killing a foe/going stealth when traited), like every 15 seconds atleast (I’m open for suggestions).
-improve [moment of clarity] for longbows, axes and swords, like proccing when attacking the first time after stealth or evading. (This 5 sec cooldown HAS to be ABUSED, I want it every freakin’ 5 seconds, that’s what it’s for!)
-burst-skills for shortbows and axes
-improved utility of “rapid fire”, like a daze at the last hit of chanelling (would work fine for [moment of clarity] aswell)
-Hylek blowdart utility skill It could provide conditions like poison, blinds etc.

I want the whole “stop to try and get behind the target” behaviour removed from pet AI.
I want, when I cast guard, for the pet to attack MY target when I’m attacking something, not the first thing it happens to see.
I want protect me to not be broken by CC on the pet, and for that matter not broken by ANYTHING aside from of course pet death/swapping or downing.
I want empathetic bond nerf and zypher speed nerf reverted back.
Also revert the guard z scaling nerf, would be nice to be able to actually be effective at helping take down siege again along with all the longbow warriors, staff necros, staff eles, scepter/focus eles, nade engis, turret engis, greatsword mesmers, focus mesmers, et cetera

I hope they change the 5pt BM trait to something that isnt garbage. Moving Beastmaster’s Bond to that slot would work I think, just a matter of replacing it with a different one in the Markmanship tree. Or make it 5s of quickness for your pet when your opponent reaches 50% health.

Better “pets” or the pets gone completely.

New content being added by ArenaNet has shown that the pet is completely and utterly useless and worthless.

I can’t see that changing in the future, I can’t see the pets getting any better.

They are just rubbish.

im a wvw player. i hope they give the ranger (and not to the pet) more party support and blast finisher, cc and aoe or cleaw dmg

They could make pets better but then rangers would be op. Image a pet that few can out run that has damage ranging 2k -15k. Keep in mind that this is only pet damage.

The pet is part of the ranger. Yes pet die in aoe often times its the same aoe that would down or kill the ranger. For WvW one should pick pets like they pick weapons.

If you are running long bow with extra range why have your pet run in to the middle of the zerg. Granted we need two things in my option 1. Passive and attack needs to be on a hotkey. 2. Range pets need to be able to match the range of the ranger. It doesn’t make sense for the ranger to pick of foes at 1500 unit and the pet to run in even at 1000 unit it makes a difference.

A rang pet on Tequatel and protection on dodge make a big difference. If your using your pet for buffs guard help. If all else you can trait long bow for 1500 range and stand at a greater distance you will have to manual fire but you can hit him and never have to worry about the waves.

Two things I’d like to see:

Perma-Stow pets during combat and DPS given back to Ranger.
Search and Rescue rolled back to res defeated players.

If they did the perma-stow option…. I’d be in Heaven and stop hating on the Devs for their views like those that Jon Sharp has pointed out in the STOG interviews.

If they would just fix the pets properly…

We already heard that the protection from dodge-rolling will apply at the end of the dodge to give us full duration but our pets will die even faster now.
ANet stated dodging as one of the basic combat-mechanics, but leave our pets excluded from this. That’s just not right.

@Serraphin Storm: The problem is we have to choose the pets for the abilities they provide, not if they are ranged or not. And even ranged – they just die. You see a red circle aorund you? better dodge-roll out of it. Pet keeps attacking…

@thefantasticg: What do you exactly mean with the “search and rescue”-thing? Why would you prefer ressing a defeated player over a downed one?

Fixed Longbow. Removed range requirement, fixed Barrage to not be lifetime cast, PBS to instant skill, -1 second on Rapid cast, +damage on #1 or giving it some variation under circumstances, like I suggested in my thread for Steady Shot. L. Reflex evading for 900 range, Muddy Terrain twice or 50% bigger, fixed Protect Me and I’m pleased

at 1500 range there are few classes that can touch you in zerg vs zerg. Yes your pets ablitiy is important it doesn’t help if its dead.

I pick Ranger because of the pet. Giving a damage boost and perma stow will punish those who rightly pick the class (based on what it is not what it isn’t). With a perma stow option any ranger not using this option would be looked down upon.

search and destroy if you wait to help your team when they are dead its to late. Plus a player res is faster than a pets.

@Serraphin: Suck it up, Snowflake. I said perma-stow option. You can still play with your we-todd-ed pet if you want. No one would be stopping you. Preception of those people who would still use pets is irrelevant. 2ndly, it’s not a damage “boost” it’s taking that the damage that Anet gives to the pet from the Ranger because they expect the pet to have a 100% uptime and giving it back to the Ranger. It’s not a boost. It’s still there just given completely to the Ranger instead of sharing with the pet.

Shirk.6421:

@thefantasticg: What do you exactly mean with the “search and rescue”-thing? Why would you prefer ressing a defeated player over a downed one?

Long time ago the Search and Rescue use to work on downed or defeated. Then they “fixed” it to work “as intended” which was to res only downed players. Problem is the time it takes for the pet to stop whatever it is doing, get over to the player, and then it actually work (they improved this slightly in one patch) made the skill pointless after the “fix” because 8/10 times the player was defeated by the time the pet got to them, and thats if they were in range. Now with the 2000 unit range limit is even more worthless to have. It was what I brought into dungeons and made it worth bringing my ranger (besides healing spring, of course).

Make me able to dodge during sword auto attack.
I kinda given up on perma-stow pets but I would hope for better AI so I wont have to macro so much.
And SB range perhaps.

thefantasticg.3984:

@Serraphin: Suck it up, Snowflake. I said perma-stow option. You can still play with your we-todd-ed pet if you want. No one would be stopping you. Preception of those people who would still use pets is irrelevant. 2ndly, it’s not a damage “boost” it’s taking that the damage that Anet gives to the pet from the Ranger because they expect the pet to have a 100% uptime and giving it back to the Ranger. It’s not a boost. It’s still there just given completely to the Ranger instead of sharing with the pet.

Shirk.6421:

@thefantasticg: What do you exactly mean with the “search and rescue”-thing? Why would you prefer ressing a defeated player over a downed one?

Long time ago the Search and Rescue use to work on downed or defeated. Then they “fixed” it to work “as intended” which was to res only downed players. Problem is the time it takes for the pet to stop whatever it is doing, get over to the player, and then it actually work (they improved this slightly in one patch) made the skill pointless after the “fix” because 8/10 times the player was defeated by the time the pet got to them, and thats if they were in range. Now with the 2000 unit range limit is even more worthless to have. It was what I brought into dungeons and made it worth bringing my ranger (besides healing spring, of course).

no the people would be punished if you would do the same dmg like a ranger that can play with the pet, cause its harder and needs more skill

An effective pet doesn’t need skill, it needs – unfortunately – luck.
The most it needs are fixes. I mean, seriously, you stand at the edge of a heightening, kick your foe down with PBS, your pet follows him and then you want your Krytan Drakehound to immobilize them, but no, it doesnt work, because your pet isn’t on the same level as you are.

I want pet synergy and for them to be some then just extra damage and cannonfodder. WoW has a really superb ranger/hunter class. Different names but same thing overall.

Hunters were capable of high damage without pets and had best range weapon dmf in game like its supposed to be. Pets felt more than added dps. They had there on stats and tons of skills. It wasnt even hard to micromanage pets in wow. Not saying make it exactly the same but hell. WoW has a good model for a hunter.

in

thefantasticg.3984:

Two things I’d like to see:

Perma-Stow pets during combat and DPS given back to Ranger.
Search and Rescue rolled back to res defeated players.

If they did the perma-stow option…. I’d be in Heaven and stop hating on the Devs for their views like those that Jon Sharp has pointed out in the STOG interviews.

Perma-stow pets is what I would like to see as well. Although pets are a rangers “thing” like virtues are to a Guardian, I doubt they will ever do this. In wvw the pet dies almost instantly unless its a small group encounter. If they did it just for wvw id be extremely happy with that. That or a rework of pets where they feel like an extension of the ranger and not the ranger being a forced extension of the pet.

Also blast finishers coming from the ranger and not the pet would be nice. I saw its speculated that maul will be getting a damage increase. I always thought a blast finisher on this skill would be great. This would synergize well with healing spring then maul.

This is my idea for pets and I think a few others have mentioned it; passive evasion.

-Feline pets have 30% chance to dodge incoming attacks
-Bears have 10%
-Drakes have 10%
-Canine have 20%
-Spiders have 15%
-Moas have 15%
-Birds have 30%
-Hooved animals have 10%

Or something similar. New 2nd tier Beast mastery trait called Combat Training which increases Pet dodge chance by 5 or 10%.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

at 1500 range there are few classes that can touch you in zerg vs zerg. Yes your pets ablitiy is important it doesn’t help if its dead.

I pick Ranger because of the pet. Giving a damage boost and perma stow will punish those who rightly pick the class (based on what it is not what it isn’t). With a perma stow option any ranger not using this option would be looked down upon.

search and destroy if you wait to help your team when they are dead its to late. Plus a player res is faster than a pets.

A perma stow would not change a thing for people that play with the pets. All it does it give back the dps your pet would be doing if it was attacking. We all know pets are great for 1v1, open world stuff, sure. We also know pets are usually dead on dungeons, WvW, and anything that AoE’s due to the pet not dodging or moving to a safe area.

What you miss out on by not having a pet out is utility from the pet skills. From tanking (somewhat), to cc, to posion, to buffs, etc. etc. Its a fair trade.

Warhammer had the best skill for this with the Squig Herder class. Using the squigs (pets) gave the Herder damage, as well as utilities (knock down, AoE, etc.). If you traited “All by meself” when your squig died or you stowed it, you would gain 15% damage increase.

All this does is balance the class. Pet up? Awesome. Pet down? No longer lose your F skills (yeah the only class that loses F skills AND dps due to AI), and maintain your dps. Win win.

A thing besides the perma stow for pet I would LOVE to see….

A LB skill that is a charged up high dps power shot. Like a Ranger class in every single other MMO has. Something that take a while to charge, but hits like a truck.

Take out Rapid Fire, and add a sniper like power shot that adds 5 stack of vulnerability with a high base damage. 1-5 second cast with damage increasing the longer you wait to shoot.

Why this is missing from the class is beyond me.

I want entangle to be on a shorter CD. 150s is kinda ridiculous for an elite that can be blocked and dodged easily. It’s not like the thieves Dagger Storm where it’s continuous, and it’s about the same concept.

• Dagger Storm: Applies bleeds and cripple while giving caster stability.
• Entangle: Applies bleeds, immobilize, and a very kittenty amount of direct damage. But is a one time hit or bust, and can be easily destroyed after the roots are summoned.

Other than that:

• I want Signet of the Wild to either be an instant cast, or apply its effects to 3 other players in a fairly tight range. Also, I want to be able to stomp while its effects are active.
• Get rid of the range requirement on LB or buff the damage.

The perma stow option could work if it was not a 1:1 ratio. Make it that and my guess is you would have too much damage and, at the very least, too little incentive to play with pets out. If it was 1/2 of the 40% (or whatever ANET holds the number to be) of the total damage that could work much better.

1. LB to 1500
2. SB to 1200
3. Pets Take 1/3 AE when not in combat with enemy (e.g. includes moving to enemy)
4. Longer duration for ranger conditions than most other classes (traps, traits, weapons)
5. Review of weapons in following order:
a. Longbow
b. Axe
c. Shortbow

They are not working as well as intended.

Bombsaway.7198:

The perma stow option could work if it was not a 1:1 ratio. Make it that and my guess is you would have too much damage and, at the very least, too little incentive to play with pets out. If it was 1/2 of the 40% (or whatever ANET holds the number to be) of the total damage that could work much better.

There’s too little incentive to play with the pets now. If there was I certainly wouldn’t be begging for a perma-stow option. Not to mention if they can balance around having a pet 100% up, they can balance around not having a pet at all. If pets were 5%-10% of our total damage output, then yeah, I wouldn’t care two flips about having the pet with me. Meat missle. I want to do as much DPS as possible in a fun play style. That’s what the ranger offers. If the warrior offered that, I’d be on my warrior much much more. Guardian isn’t as fun as the Ranger by far, but the party support is stupid-awesome. Guess who is glad that I run dungeons with my guardian (or warrior if they already have two guardians in the party) now? The people I run dungeons with lol

Thefantasticg. I understand. And then there is the issue of balancing spvp, wvw, and PvE. After all, this game was built on a pvp model. So DPS balancing at a 1:1 ratio more or less would kill pet usage. That would be overkill.

I really think they are going to need to figure out quick and dirty steps to make pets more playable. The trouble in part is how you make them less broken in say PvE may make them too powerful in PvP. That is a classic problem this game faces.

Also, Rapid Fire should channel faster.

Also, I would like to be able to see my pet buffs/conditions without having to click on it.

Vaxx.3178:

A thing besides the perma stow for pet I would LOVE to see….

A LB skill that is a charged up high dps power shot. Like a Ranger class in every single other MMO has. Something that take a while to charge, but hits like a truck.

Take out Rapid Fire, and add a sniper like power shot that adds 5 stack of vulnerability with a high base damage. 1-5 second cast with damage increasing the longer you wait to shoot.

Why this is missing from the class is beyond me.

This. I imagine #2 skill like that : It does way more damage, extra damage if casted stationary, 6 sec cooldown traited, resets every time you immobilize target.

- make it so dodge interrupts the sword attack chain.
- pet F2 skills work instantly.
- merge eagle eye and piercing arrows
- make pets optional.
- make pets optional.
- MAKE PETS OPTIONAL.

Also, fix our cleave effects to hit more than 3 targets. Every other class with cleave hits 5 – why not rangers?

All cleave effects only hit 3 targets. AoEs hit 5

I’d like to see pet DPS unnerfed in PvE. Spirits/Pets less squishy in PvE.

Sword auto interruptable at all times via other skills/dodge

Zephyr’s Speed brought down to at least a 15 point minor trait

Also, reduce Barrage to only hit 4 people, but increase damage by 20%.

A bow worth using.

Grok Krog.9581:

All cleave effects only hit 3 targets. AoEs hit 5

I’d like to see pet DPS unnerfed in PvE. Spirits/Pets less squishy in PvE.

Sword auto interruptable at all times via other skills/dodge

Zephyr’s Speed brought down to at least a 15 point minor trait

My bad. It just seems that my guardian hits a whole lot more in front of him than my ranger does.

-Sword not kitten ing.
-More Damage for GS autoattack.
-Pet dodge’defense.
-Heavy DPS ranged pet.
-Storm Spirit remade into something else.
-Lightning reflexes, AoE dazzing or blinding instead of that lame damage.
-Longbow damage buffed.
-Good looking medium armor, other then that kitteny underboob everyone and their mother uses.

• All pets need some form of defense, maybe they dodge when we dodge? (Some kind of special bond trait?). Or when we tell them to return, they enter stealth or have reduced damage until they return to their master.
• A ranged pet option that doesn’t make your skin crawl.
• An option to manually trigger traps; e.g; Hit button to drop trap, hit again to trigger.(Would allow you to create more combo fields from range)
• Some more medium armor than isn’t just trench-coats. I used to love trench-coats.
• A more forgiving range prerequisite on Longbow #1
• A legendary bow for men. (Ironically my favorite design so far is Eir’s)

The only realistic changes that could hope for would be

- Maul is a blast finisher
- Longbow autoattack is like that of the Mesmer greatsword auto; base damage is the same, but you gain bonus damage the further your target is.
- Pet F2 is instant and autofaces the target you have targetted.

preparations

Stop my pet from being totally F&K&*&g useless, give them some better ai or me more control. Give sb a burst skill, and that weird jumping with sword could do with a change.

So my fellows,

these are the things i collected from your answers. For the people being to lazy to scroll up – I’ll post it here :P

-better responding pets (e.g. F2 priority) and pet AI
-Invention for pets to avoid damage while dodge-rolling, like invulnerability/evade for the duration.
-visible buffs/conditions on the pet, without being forced to target it.
-option to fight without pets (without losing hypothetical dps)
-decent ranged pets.
-buff “protect me”, give your pet stability for the duration so it won’t be interrupted
by cc
-change “guard” so it will attack my target after breaking stealth
-change “seach and rescue” – the pet can ress defeated allies, but give priority to
downed ones and don’t intterupt it after the ally gets defeated
-rebuff [empathic bond]
-rebuff [zephyr’s speed]
-buff survival skills (e.g. “entangle”, “muddy terrain” and “lightning reflexes”)
-change the MH axe, make it either a power or a condition weapon, if this won’t work, atealst improve traits so we can decide if it’s a condition or power based weapon.
-remove range requirement from longbow
-remove cast time from “signet of the wild”
-increase shortbow range
-interrupt the swords auto-attack when dodge-rolling
-buff some minor traits (e.g. [insinctual bond])
-more party support (e.g. blast finisher on maul)
-more available aoe dmg (e.g. cleave dmg)
-MANLY legendary bows
-a mechanic similar to preparations in GW (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Preparation)
-more available weapons

Is there something more to add or to remove with a good reason?

Thanks for your feedback!
Posted it into the October 15th patch discussion, hope the’re going to read it.

Would it be OP if Master’s bond placed a self-renewing protection boon on pets? Or perhaps prevented a pet from losing more than X% maximum health from a single attack. Maybe even splitting all damage taken from either pet and master between pet and master.

@Shirk, you got this:

-Keybind for avoid combat/guard

Hmmm all of the above suggestions are good. For me I would love to see the following

1- Better health on pets

2- Much improved AI on pets cause right now they are really are “Eartha Kitt”

3 – Entangle to get a far better Immobilize time. 1.5 seconds is just laughable atm and is worse considering its very long cooldown penalty. Add a bit of cripple time to that mix it should be an elite skill to be feared. It should be an elite skill so make it so.

4 – Give axes the damage they deserve, just now power tree scaling compared to other classes other classes is severely lacking with those weapons. Axe should give really cool burst damage which they don’t even if you do scale for power and crits, its not enough compared to the power other classes enjoy and needs a serious damage boost as standard. Just now its like throwing butter knives at Optimus Prime. Also are axes a power weapon, is it crit dependant, is it conditions??? There are only so many points on a trait tree, we can’t fill them all and the damage in all of them are pretty bad anyways, so make axes do one thing and do it well
5 – better range and power on those shortbows, they also need a burst skill.
6 – More AOE damage options in the form of ground targeting. LB barrage is not an AOE skill, it is a sitting duck skill. We need to be mobile as well as offer good support to WvW parties.
7 – I would utterly love a Hylek blowdart for Ranger

I play a LB/GS ranger, so I don’t have much to say outside of this scope. There’s a couple things that bug me about my setup, mostly longbow-related things, but I don’t have any major hang-ups.

• Opening Strike Refresh is too long — Opening strike takes ages to refresh untraited. I’d like to see the refresh time reduced, or made instant upon exiting combat.

• Moment of Clarity & Point Blank Shot — This trait only fully benefits GS and SB. Since GS and LB are a sensible enough weapon setup for power builds, it would be nice to have this trait benefit LB as well. Perhaps increase knockback effects with this trait as well, which would be great for LB and make it a more attractive choice for GS as well since counterattack also has a knockback. I’d like to see more power builds that actually put 25 into skirmishing instead of leaving it at 25.

• Rapid Fire Lacks Purpose — This skill is fun to use, but unless you’re at super close range it’s not really worth using over normal autoattacks. It doesn’t need a supercharge in dps (just adding more raw damage is the boring/lazy way to make the weapon better, where new functionality could help emphasize its own unique purpose), but perhaps give it an extra effect on the final shot as a pay-off to using it similar to how HB works. It takes a while to channel this entire skill, and it’d be great to be rewarded more for finishing it. A condition on the enemy (immobilize would be cool, and make it a kindof control weapon, similar to engineer shotgun), a boon for the ranger, etc, something that makes it worthwhile to use this skill in more situations other than “I’m too close for my normal autoattacks to be worth using”, we already have point blank shot for that situation.
  Honestly, if we weren’t getting stealth reveal from sic em, I think this would have been a cool place to have it, since it’s already pretty useful for tracking thieves/mesmers when you know they’re going to stealth.

I’d like to see:

- Pet howls/roars/screeches (F2 skills) are now blast finishers.
- Damage boost on GS auto-attack chain. (The Maul boost is nice.)
- More active condition removal. Something like changing the ‘Wilderness Knowledge’ trait to remove one condition on Survival skill usage. Maybe do the same for shouts.
- Reduced channel time on Rapid Fire and Barrage. (-1 second on each?)
- Rework both Remorseless and Moment of Clarity grandmaster traits. Give’em similar functionality, but open them up for more weapon usage (especially Remorseless.)
- Condense Martial Mastery with the trait that adds GS/Spear damage boost. Add another trait to Nature Magic.
- Change Master’s Bond so that either the stacks are player-side or so that it’s just a flat % increase of the player’s stats. 5% or something — Not too strong, but hey, it’s an adept trait.
- Just fix all the shouts; They need a ton of work.

That’s what’s on my mind for now.

-have pets actually work or make it to were we can opt out of using them giving us their dmg so we aren’t handicaped
-have rangers actually be unparalleled archers like our class description says
-have longbow by default be 1500 range with trait to bump it up to 1800
-give longbow more dmg
-increase the projectile speed on the longbow so 90% of the attacks aren’t avoided simply by sidestepping
-essentially make the longbow a tool for raining death down on people from afar like it should be and make arrows arc a bit more to fix the obstruction issue on relatively flat ground

Great Ideas!

Everything mentioned; i want to see in Oct class balance patch.

So, this things will be added to the list:

-keybind for combat/guard
-give [opening strike] an integrated reset, not only when entering combat again (or killing a foe/going stealth when traited), like every 15 seconds atleast (I’m open for suggestions).
-improve [moment of clarity] for longbows, axes and swords, like proccing when attacking the first time after stealth or evading. (This 5 sec cooldown HAS to be ABUSED, I want it every freakin’ 5 seconds, that’s what it’s for!)
-burst-skills for shortbows and axes
-improved utility of “rapid fire”, like a daze at the last hit of chanelling (would work fine for [moment of clarity] aswell)
-Hylek blowdart utility skill It could provide conditions like poison, blinds etc.

Some of the listed things are already in the list, some were added to existing ideas (like blast finishers on howls for more party support).

Couldn’t add everything, like ChillyChinamans (what an epic name) idea for [master’s bond] – splitting the damage between ranger and pet taken from both, because you would just die within seconds when your pet keeps standing in all of this AoEs.
Even here, the best thing to keep the pet alive would be a fixed pet AI.

The overpoweredness is strong with this thread.

Of course it is, Mr. Ranger Cheerleader.

You worry too much, g. [Winter’s Bite]