Guild Wars 2

Well, the thread title lied, what we REALLY need is to be able to perma-stow pets, and we won’t get it, I give you instead, my proposed ranger fixes.

Pet Fix:

Change the Ranger/Pet damage ratio from it’s current 60:40 to a baseline of 90:10. Then, make the pet stat increase for investment into Beast Mastery scale higher.

After all, if you’re investing heavily into Beast Mastery, you’re giving up raw damage or survivability from the traits you didn’t spec into.

Longbow:

Make Long Range Shot damage static across it’s whole range.

Speed up the longbow arrow flight by 100%, and reduce the channel time on Rapid Fire and Barrage.

Traits:

Marksmanship:

Change Piercing Arrows to be the minor master trait, and put opening strike into one of the Beast Mastery trait slots. (I’d suggest compassion training, myself).

Make Signet of the Beastmaster the default function of signets, and replace it with “Crippling Arrows” – critical hits with bows have a 50% chance to cause cripple for 5 seconds. (10 second cooldown)

Skirmishing:

Swap Trapper’s Expertise with Martial Mastery. Move Trap Potency to Wilderness Survival (Grandmaster Trait) and replace with “Master Skirmisher:” Critical hits while in melee range deal 10% more damage.

Wilderness Survival:

Trap Potency has been moved here, under my suggestions – move Empathic Bond to Beast Mastery, and remove Instinctual Bond.

Nature Magic:

Make spirits invulnerable and remove their internal cooldown. Change Vigorous Spirits to “Spirits grant vigor for 10s to allies in range. (30 second internal cooldown)”

stale.9785:

Skirmishing:

Swap Trapper’s Expertise with Martial Mastery. Move Trap Potency to Wilderness Survival (Grandmaster Trait) and replace with “Master Skirmisher:” Critical hits while in melee range deal 10% more damage.

Wilderness Survival:

Trap Potency has been moved here, under my suggestions – move Empathic Bond to Beast Mastery, and remove Instinctual Bond.

That doesn’t help balance at all.
Switching around trait lines because they seem to fit the stats/theme more is a terrible way to balance.

Everything else seems pretty mediocre short of the pet dmg change. It’d let them balance ranger raw power based dmg more, since they don’t have such massive innate pet dmg to compensate for in small skirmishes.

Changing the damage ratio would be an excellent start. I’d even start it higher than 90/10, with the scale sliding towards 50/50 with more trait points spent in BM line. That would allow us to basically abandon our pet in WvW where it is useless, but be the beastmaster some want to be in sPvP/PvE where the AI isn’t crippling.

Fixing longbow is the other major on my list. The flight time is far too slow and easily dodged, and also has no arc on it causing unreasonable amounts of ‘obstructed’ misses. And I also think it makes absolutely no sense that a longbow’s max range is exactly the same as a short bow without traits. Am I the only one that thinks that defies reason? Longbow should be 1300-1500 traitless, especially if it is going to have a minimum range imposed on effectiveness.

garethh.3518:

stale.9785:

Skirmishing:

Swap Trapper’s Expertise with Martial Mastery. Move Trap Potency to Wilderness Survival (Grandmaster Trait) and replace with “Master Skirmisher:” Critical hits while in melee range deal 10% more damage.

Wilderness Survival:

Trap Potency has been moved here, under my suggestions – move Empathic Bond to Beast Mastery, and remove Instinctual Bond.

That doesn’t help balance at all.
Switching around trait lines because they seem to fit the stats/theme more is a terrible way to balance.

Everything else seems pretty mediocre short of the pet dmg change. It’d let them balance ranger raw power based dmg more, since they don’t have such massive innate pet dmg to compensate for in small skirmishes.

Thosee trait swaps were purely about the stats – having high crit for a condition based tra kitten illy, ditto high condition damage on weapons that benefit more from pure damage.

My goal is to allow for rangers who don’t want to worry about the pet basically ignore it, while still have BM builds be strong. Trappers shouldn’t have to compensate for craptastic trait setup with gear alone – the traits ought to compliment the utilities they govern.

Spirits are self explanatory – as they are, nobody runs them, because random AoE just wiped all your utility.

Don’t know if my reasoning helps any, but there it is.

stale.9785:

Trappers shouldn’t have to compensate for craptastic trait setup with gear alone – the traits ought to compliment the utilities they govern.

Trap rangers aren’t having trouble making up for ‘craptastic traits’
My trap ranger runs beautifully in tournies and I am one of the top tier rangers in the game atm.

The real issue is though, your changes in these regards wouldn’t open up more builds.
Moving empathetic bond to the beastmaster tree would only force the vast majority of rangers to be 30 beastmasters. Empathetic bond is the only trait cleansing for rangers and trait cleansing is easily the best cleansing.

Your fix doesn’t fix the problem but force allot of competent PvP’ers from one build to another.
(I hope your starting to see where one of the real problems with the trait setup is)

Last I remember reading on the forums it was 40/60. 40% of our damage is from our pet while 60% is from us. I’m not sure if this is the average, or with full 30 in BM.

If our pet is going to cost us 40% of our dps by not being in the fight (not able to land hits, dead, pulled out of AoE to prevent death, etc.) then the dps swing should center around 100%. So with the pet engaged, we are at 120% but without the pet we are at 80%. If our pet is out of the fight (for whatever reason) about 50% of the time, then this would average out to be 100%. Currently, with the pet out of the fight 50% of the time, that leaves us permanently kitten by 20%.

I hate how our +healing is with BM. It should be with vitality to be honest. This way we can get a decent tank going with 20 pts in toughness and vitality and have 30 points to put into the other three trait lines as we see fit.

Look at the warrior traits. I can’t check right now but if my memory is correct, the +healing is with toughness. I don’t believe any of the others have this yet it is the best combo. Toughness reduces incoming damage while +healing can provide enough hps to neutralize the damage that does get applied. The only thing that the warrior needs to be concerned with are conditions since they ignore toughness. That means with just the one trait line, the warrior can invenst in both power and precision for some serious damage while not becoming all that much of a glass cannon.

Longbow: Just about any change would be good change. I agree that the damage LRS does should not depend on distance. I also agree that the LB should have a greater range than the shortbow by default. However, it should be LRS that has that extended range while the other skills remain the same (distance wise) to those found on the shortbow. Since the name is long range shot, it should have the long range.

I’d prefer if they did the following to skills 2 through 5.

Rapid Fire: Add the effect of pushing the target back a small amount with each hit up to a maximum of 600. After that, they continue to take hits but no longer get pushed. The amount they get pushed by should be enough that if they started right next to you, they would be exactly 600 away by the time the skill finished. (pushing them back is moved here from point blank shot and method is modified)

Edit: The push back would no longer be an interupt.

Hunter’s Shot: The target is crippled and your pet gains swiftness. (Cripple replaces vulnerable)

Point Blank Shot: The target becomes vulnerable and you gain might. (vulnerable replaces pushing them back)

Barrage: This should create a fire field. For the duration of the skill, the field applies burning every 3 seconds and each application last for 3 seconds.

Spirits: Honestly this needs to be reworked. They should be like banners. They can’t be targeted or killed. Since they would still expire and have to be recast as well as starting out anchered in place, the only trait that would have to be changed is the hp one.

Deamhan.9538:

Spirits: Honestly this needs to be reworked. They should be like banners. They can’t be targeted or killed. Since they would still expire and have to be recast as well as starting out anchered in place, the only trait that would have to be changed is the hp one.

I’m fine with them being killable.
Just make the active better (so if someone does go near it, it means something), and up the health a bit beyond 6k along with some innate reduced dmg from aoes.
Along with the better active and reduced aoe dmg, 8~k life would be fine with a trait for double.

When it comes to procs they should have a raw proc chance with 2~ second internal CD, something like a 15~% proc chance that can get buffed to 40~% with a trait, ideally its merged into the double life or moving spirits one.

That or if it was just for a slap together fix, up the buff radius, lower the internal CD, and up the health to 12-15k so you can just lay them down out of the way as a passive proc engine.

garethh.3518:

stale.9785:

Trappers shouldn’t have to compensate for craptastic trait setup with gear alone – the traits ought to compliment the utilities they govern.

Trap rangers aren’t having trouble making up for ‘craptastic traits’
My trap ranger runs beautifully in tournies and I am one of the top tier rangers in the game atm.

The real issue is though, your changes in these regards wouldn’t open up more builds.
Moving empathetic bond to the beastmaster tree would only force the vast majority of rangers to be 30 beastmasters. Empathetic bond is the only trait cleansing for rangers and trait cleansing is easily the best cleansing.

Your fix doesn’t fix the problem but force allot of competent PvP’ers from one build to another.
(I hope your starting to see where one of the real problems with the trait setup is)

Sorry man, I give 0 consideration to 5 on 5 pvp. Why would I? Most of the playerbase will never enter that format, and it’s every single other aspect of the game where rangers need help.

I’ve read enough of the other class forums to understand that some form of BM/Trap bunker spec is our shining point in the game – but again, if most of us aren’t going to play it, why on earth would I care?

EDIT: Unless I’m really missing some factor about critical damage, it does absolutely nothing to increase your condition damage. As far as I know, conditions don’t benefit at all from critical chance/+crit damage.