Guild Wars 2

In between complaining about how we are so overpowered in sPvP because we have an easily blocked/reflected/dodged burst skill, we are constantly told that rangers are terrible. My question is what would have to happen before the community accepted ranger as a legitimate class for serious level play at PvE/PvP/WvW?

If you think it is multiple things, please indicate the most important.

As far as dungeons are concerned, key changes that would make rangers fit into the meta well would be:
*Allow dodging while attacking with 1h sword
*Give pets evade frames when we dodge
*Make pets not trigger traps such as volatile blossoms
*Increase the health on frost spirit (this would be minor though. Most good rangers can find clever spots to put it.)
*Boost the damage on greatsword’s autoattack chain by about 10%. At the moment, you’ll deal ~10% more damage using longbow in melee than you would with greatsword. This is just silly. This would make greatsword actually a viable alternative to sword in difficult fights.

If you want to go a step further and make rangers on roughly equal footing with warrior:
Banners currently add about ~15.6% damage (by my numbers, please correct me if I’m wrong!) to the rest of a group. Frost spirit + spotter adds about ~11.8%. If frost spirit’s damage bonus were boosted to 15%, then frost spirit and spotter would on average increase the group’s damage by ~15.4%. This would make rangers a perfectly viable alternative to a warrior in a dungeon group. You’d trade OP might stacking for higher personal dps.

Not that any of these changes would ever be implemented. :\

Anet needs to completely overhaul the pet AI.

Look at how hunter pets are controlled in WoW versus how they sorta do whatever they want in GW2.

Aye, if pets worked as they coulda/shoulda/woulda, we would be much better off, like fix the AI, make them more survivable and all traits that affect us, affect the pet too. I would be over the moon then.

Fix/Improve pets a lot, or an alternative to pets. Currently having ~30% of our dps assigned to a mandatory pet AI is just… not a good idea. especially with how bad the AI is.

Moving our primary damage away from just autoattacks (on certain weapons cough).

more utility/support options so we’re more viable in a team setting, and do more than spam autoattacks and selfish utilities and skills.

something that… defines our class better. the current problem is that in any situation, while a ranger can perform okay in most of them, another class simply performs better. If there were something useful to a team, that rangers were the best at, that would help.

this is coming from a wvw/pvp perspective. i’ve always been too lazy to actually try in pve ;P

Granted, in my opinion, this far into the game… no matter what changes are given to rangers, I think they’ll always be seen with a negative stigma. either the class is horrible, or the people playing the class is horrible, in some peoples eyes.

Hammurabi.5942:

Anet needs to completely overhaul the pet AI.

Look at how hunter pets are controlled in WoW versus how they sorta do whatever they want in GW2.

And make the majority useful while also reverting the pet skill dps nerfs.

Overhaul pets.
Give us a way to strip boons.
Give us a teleport to put our PvP mobility on a level playing field.
Give us a new melee main hand weapon that doesn’t lock us into jumping animations so we can fight 1vX on a point.
Overhaul shouts, add useful party boons, remove activation time on guard, increase range of natures voice.

Damage isn’t the issue. Its Defense. While there are some issue with pet ai it actually minor.

Pets do not benefit from food buffs.

Guard should be a class skill giving us more control of pet positioning,

1h sword is just a l2p issue. One can always change targets. And use the 2 to 3 evades on the set plus your nomal evades. Are you fighting or running.

PvE: Buff spotter. Fix sword auto. The common argument is that it’s amazing in pvp but that’s totally untrue. Most power builds use greatsword and they lack sustain in melee anyway. On condi builds it hits like potato and is taken only for defense/mobility.
WvW: Who cares.

PvP: Give rangers more melee sustain in power builds. Make the greatsword auto hit faster and scale damage accordingly. It’s shut down by blinds easily. Make maul a shorter cast time. Make hunter shot stealth even if it doesn’t connect.

General stuff: Make pet evade when the ranger evades. Give it a target cap of 2-3 people so it doesn’t explode in large fights. Make the AI better so it doesn’t eat all the aoe/cleave.

Most power build use gs because most ranger never learned to use 2h sword.

Having pet evade when rangers evade would be a nerf. If pets evade when the player evaded they would be out of position all of the time.

Smarter pets equal smarter mobs the ai is tied and even if pet could be smarter. Ai shouldn’t do most of the damage.

robertul.3679:

…Make hunter shot stealth even if it doesn’t connect….

…Make pet evade when the ranger evades….

Yeah, I’d love to see LB3 become “Camoflage”, a stealth skill that isn’t an attack, same duration etc but after you do stealth, it flips to Hunter’s Shot (ala thief AA), which would do something else like cripple as well as give you the swiftness, if it connects. It just seems backward to me, for the hunter to shoot, then get stealth.

Yes yes yes, pet evades when the ranger evades, why they haven’t implemented that is beyond me totally as it would near fix the problems with pets being insta-gibbed in PvE.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

…Having pet evade when rangers evade would be a nerf. If pets evade when the player evaded they would be out of position all of the time….

…Smarter pets equal smarter mobs the ai is tied and even if pet could be smarter. Ai shouldn’t do most of the damage….

You wouldn’t actually make the pet dodge, just give it 1.5s of evade when the ranger dodges.

Yeh, we don’t really want a self aware AI that anticipates every move a player or mob make, we just want the pet to be able to hit moving people and path to players/mobs properly instead of running all over the place. The AI is pretty kittened with mobs, you can literally stand in the one place strafing in circles with some in orr and they never hit you, this we want fixed on our pets.

If they ever nerf celestial amulets, I think spirits make a comeback. Right now the 3 main cele classes poop AoE all over the point and kill the spirits too quickly.

And that in turn leads us to the fact that spirit builds are boring…

If they ever buff pets/pet controls, I’d love Invigorating Bond builds to become the meta. That trait need a very slight buff to be awesome, but right now it’s in a weak traitline.

A lot of people are uneducatedly guessing the druid will be a team support build, so there may be some potential there.

If they added unblockable property to projectiles through the eagle eye trait I think we would be in a good place.

While I don’t really disagree with the comments above I don’t think any of those changes would really fix the ranger.

What the Ranger needs is almost a complete rework.

1) Traits – Too many ranger traits are straight up BAD. We also suffer from too many places where we are taking traits to make a skill useable. Traps for example are generally pretty terrible unless you take traits and/or use Rune of the Trapper (but then you aren’t really ‘using traps’ you’re using the rune). If you look at other classes they don’t NEED traits to justify using weapons/utilities. Their traits improve their weapons/utilities which they chose to use because they are good. Longbow on a ranger is okay unless you trait for it then it’s good but we have to suffer with 3 relatively bad minor traits (opening strike is bad compared to the majority of traits in the game) to get there.

2) Utilities – Seriously, our utilities are bad.

2a) Shouts are the biggest offender. Sure Sic ‘Em is great for trolling thieves but that’s hardly a universally ‘good skill’. Other shouts aren’t used because the shout is good. Guard is used to proc Nature’s Voice in some builds because it has a 15 second CD not because anyone cares about the actual skill. We have to give up a utility slot AND a grandmaster trait to make a useful utility skill.

2b) I don’t think I need to spell out the problem with Spirits. The idea is great, the implementation isn’t.

2c) Traps I touched on above. Take traits/rune or they aren’t worth using.

2d) Our signets and survival skills I don’t really have much to say about, they’re okay, not great, but okay.

3) Pets – Unreliable. That’s the single biggest problem I have with pets. I want to like my pet, I really do. I want to want to invest 30 in Beastmastery. As it stands though putting all your eggs in a basket that may just not hit anything isn’t a good idea. I can trait into things like Agility Training that makes it so the pet can actually keep up with people and maybe hit them but again I have to trait to make something useable. The pet should be good to begin with and traits should make it better (like every other classes F# skills).

Edit: I don’t hate ranger btw, 1,064 hours played on ranger of the 1,664 hours on my account (I have 5 other level 80s that share that other 600 hours). I have mained ranger since beta and will continue to do so.

Fluffball.8307:

If they ever buff pets/pet controls, I’d love Invigorating Bond builds to become the meta. That trait need a very slight buff to be awesome, but right now it’s in a weak traitline.

I think a slight radius buff and making the ICD apply on a per pet basis (20s per pet), rather than the blanket 20s, would make Invigorating Bond a really nice option. I don’t see it as an especially complicated fix, either.

Malhavoc.8976:

Fluffball.8307:

If they ever buff pets/pet controls, I’d love Invigorating Bond builds to become the meta. That trait need a very slight buff to be awesome, but right now it’s in a weak traitline.

I think a slight radius buff and making the ICD apply on a per pet basis (20s per pet), rather than the blanket 20s, would make Invigorating Bond a really nice option. I don’t see it as an especially complicated fix, either.

Very reasonable. If you compare it to vigorous shouts (I know I know, bad to compare between professions) IB is really a terrible grandmaster. I think healing every 10 seconds is extremely reasonable, especially considering many pets like wolf have very long F2 cooldowns.

Fluffball.8307:

Malhavoc.8976:

Fluffball.8307:

If they ever buff pets/pet controls, I’d love Invigorating Bond builds to become the meta. That trait need a very slight buff to be awesome, but right now it’s in a weak traitline.

I think a slight radius buff and making the ICD apply on a per pet basis (20s per pet), rather than the blanket 20s, would make Invigorating Bond a really nice option. I don’t see it as an especially complicated fix, either.

Very reasonable. If you compare it to vigorous shouts (I know I know, bad to compare between professions) IB is really a terrible grandmaster. I think healing every 10 seconds is extremely reasonable, especially considering many pets like wolf have very long F2 cooldowns.

That trait (and Restorative Mantras, to a lesser extent) was exactly what I had in mind when I made that suggestion. I do feel Invigorating Bond needs to be slightly weaker because rangers aren’t forced into taking specific utility skills to use it.

This would make IB more useful but not completely brain dead since spamming F2 skills off cooldown is generally a terrible strategy.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Yeah, I’d love to see LB3 become “Camoflage”, a stealth skill that isn’t an attack, same duration etc but after you do stealth, it flips to Hunter’s Shot (ala thief AA), which would do something else like cripple as well as give you the swiftness, if it connects. It just seems backward to me, for the hunter to shoot, then get stealth.

That’s a really cool idea.

Here are some traits that would greatly improve ranger if they were a baseline attribute of the profession.

Agility Training – Pets should move 30% faster baseline. If the enemy wants to kite your pet they should actually have to use cripples and other slow effects to do it. It’d also make the pet’s F2 far easier to line up.

Trapper’s Expertise – The ability to place traps strategically is vital, and if traps had a baseline larger radius it’d make them more appealing to use in other builds. I’d love to use spike trap or frost trap in a long range power build to keep enemies away but it’s just unlikely the enemy will run into the trap unless I stand right in the middle of it and let them hit me.

Expertise Training – Not all the pets, but at least the ones that rely on condition damage should actually have a condition damage stat. As is pet damaging conditions only serve to get in the way of another player’s conditions. Maybe the devourer pets would be useful if they could apply ranged bleeds that had some bite to them. Or you could just give some of them condition damage and keep this trait, thus allowing us to double up on condi damage pets to get a strong result. While this may result in a “passive cheese” build where the pet applies all the damage, pets are pretty easy to kill so it wouldn’t be without counter.

Vigorous Spirits – Spirits die way too fast baseline and are almost pointless to take when their chance to proc their effect is only 30%. With a baseline 70% proc chance and more health spirits could be useful in any build, even if they weren’t the focus. I could see a straight condi ranger taking sun spirit for the burning, or a regen bunker ranger grabbing stone spirit for the protection. It’d also let people take other traits in place of this one when setting up a spirit build. Nature’s Bounty or Nature’s Protection come to mind.

Compassion Training – Again if a pet has a certain type of skill they should have the stats to use it. Sylvan hounds and moas should already have healing power. You could replace this trait with… Another trait of the same name and function! Allowing a player to invest in this and Invigorating Bond to turn their sylvan hound or moa into a powerful healbot. That would sure be interesting. “FOCUS THAT MOA! It’s healing the enemy team!”

I would like to add they need to really rethink the spirit skills, that are a mess.

Pets. If they dont want to fix them, dont make us rely on them.

This kind of make me wonder how messed up the revanant would have been if they had released it at launch and wanted until they had better behavior ‘technology’ to design the ranger for a expansion release.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Pets. If they don’t want to fix them, don’t make us rely on them.

This.

The only things i feel ranger is missing now from a WVW perspective are:
1) build options. in WVW, it’s power LB or GTFO. Traps need range love. Pets need some level of AOE resist. SB needs some kind of buff.
2) group support. shouts could be a thing if the effects were more useful.

Thanks for great answers everyone. I picked Quin’s answer because it contained the most realistic options (we all know anet is never letting us drop pets), and winning respect in the dungeons will probably win us respect elsewhere.

Pets. I always have two suggestions regarding them:

1) allowing sigil and/or runes to be used on them;

2) having a more flexible split of damage output between the ranger and the pet, perhaps by way of traits. For example, a ranger can choose a 50:50 damage split or a 80:20 split depending on the ranger’s prefer play style. With a 50:50 split, a ranger can be a bit of a bunker and use the pets as a weapon. Whereas with a 80:20 split the ranger can be more of a dps-er whilst the pets take up a more supportive role. The overall damage output of the class remains the same. It just shifts the reliance and the dynamic of the ranger and the pets into a more flexible and useful ways.

I liked how the Hunter pets handled in WOW, no complaints there. So for me, it would:

1. Major damage reduction against AOE (maybe only in dungeons?)
2. Instant activation of F2 skills. Press→Execute.

PvE? Well, it’s also a reputation thing. Anything ranged is bad for speed clears since it inhibits boon sharing/buff sharing. Rangers (mostly bandwagoners) are now obsessed with pewpew LB, thus making the class, generally speaking, less desirable.

Pet alternative. Sorry, but too much damage is lost when the pet gets nuked because it can’t avoid an AoE from a boss. Even pet evade on player evade isn’t proper since the pet can be the target of a major attack/skill or not walk out from an AOE circle.

WvW: Poor group utility. A reflected RF can kill your own members, and the class itself offers very little group support. Maybe we’ll see druids address this with CC and water fields. Otherwise the ranger adds nothing to the fight and as above, its pet is definitely dead.

I think pet gains, say, about 1 – 1.5 second of evade on upon the ranger dodging should work. Pets may need a bit longer since on-location evade is not the same as dodge out of harms way. So a bit longer may be justified.

If the pet is being targeted, the quickest way to drop agro is to swap pet. The new pet will be spawn next to the ranger and the ranger can take over agro if necessary.

I think the trait Agility Training should be given automatically instead of having to spend a skill point.

1] Option out of pets. Mob AI means our pets will never be good enough for some of us, mainly myself. Personally, I see this coming through a future Specialization that gives 100% DPS to the Ranger.

2] Better utilities. Meaning shouts that instant cast like on my warrior and guardian. Also need utilities that aren’t pet based. I pretty much just use LR, QZ, FS, and SOTW now-a-days.

3] Better traits. Need more Ranger centric traits. Again, I think this can and will be addressed in a future Specialiazation that drops the pet as the mechanic.

4] Keybinds. Since we got a keybind for passive/aggressive it gives me great hope that we can get more Keybinds for stow/unstow and maybe even for pet skills one day.

Once those things are implemented I think Rangers, or whatever the future Specialization is, will be in a fantastic place.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

1] Option out of pets. Mob AI means our pets will never be good enough for some of us, mainly myself. Personally, I see this coming through a future Specialization that gives 100% DPS to the Ranger.

Actually they should improve the mobs AI because it’s almost not existent. Lately I’ve seen some nice improvements in the AI section, like the Taida’s pirates trying to get out from AoE and Son of Svanir dodging (although i could be wrong and confuse a player with an NPC ).
Improve the AI within the pets shouldn’t be too difficult.
case Fern Hound.

• If the foe uses a channelling skill try to use brutal charge. That could be nice to see and would be amazing if your pet could avoid an stomp because it can use the skill. Remember it has 40 seconds cool down so impossible to do it twice in a row.
• If the foe keeps running try to use Crippling Leap so won’t.
• If in AOE dodge. Give 2 dodge with cool down and should be fine.

Otherwise use bite. There is no point to waste a brutal charge at the beginning of the attack if the enemy is not using anything we need to interrupt.
Some indicators to know what attacks are available, and which are on CD, with the boons/conditions on our pets would be wonderful also.

Will this make the pets stronger? Yes it will. But is that bad? The enemy players will have to be aware of the pet whereabouts and stop just ignoring them.

Also some kind of rudimentary skill/stats system for more variety (nothing fancy is needed) within an established parameters (bears are tanky, cats are all about damage ) would be great. Maybe i like cats, and i wouldn’t mind sacrificing some DPS for more armour or HP.

I guess I should’ve said that what I would think it would take to make them better is strictly PVE related as I do not WVW outside of EOTM and pretty much zero PVP since I got the armor piece I wanted.

So, that being said, PVE mob AI could be better. They’ve already said that they use the same code so they general mobs are NOT going to get any better (like Orr was 2+ years ago). They’ve all but flat out refused to do any major changes to mob AI, up until HoT, revamp mob AI that is… But, I ain’t looking to buy ocean front property in Arizona. We will have to see if by revamp they mean pets finally get their own code or if they’re putting down new/much improved mob AI so by extension pets get better AI. Depending on how good the revamp is will obviously influence the general opinion of pets…. But honestly my pet won’t be good enough until the AI knows what I want it to do when I want it to do it (since I don’t have the controls to tell it).

If our pets could simply move and attack at the same time, they’d be leagues ahead of where they are.

If you want to test this:
(1) Send you pet a test golem in the mists that is standing still … watch it melt it.
(2) Send your pet at the test golem that is running around in the mists … be saddened.

I’ve always favored Aegis-on-Dodge for pets. Fact is, with how slow pet responses are coded, you’d need something a bit more than mere Evasion … unless the Evade frames were longer duration.
Past that, two things:

1. Separate pet and mob AI, please. It’s tiresome as all hell that pets can’t get an AI buff due to AI overlap with enemies.
2. More fine-grained control. Enough of the excuse that it’d be “too hard” for new Rangers. Here’s the fact: any “Pet Class” is known for its micromanagement aspects.
   As such, it’s arguably disingenuous to use difficulty as an excuse for lack of control options. /shrug

TheFantasticGman.9451:

So, that being said, PVE mob AI could be better. They’ve already said that they use the same code so they general mobs are NOT going to get any better (like Orr was 2+ years ago). They’ve all but flat out refused to do any major changes to mob AI, up until HoT, revamp mob AI that is…

Yes i remember.
We don’t want to pay more devs, we already have ONE! We don’t need anyone else he will have to suffice and the AI engine is not even ours so we don’t know where to begin with. Also isn’t great the dumb punching bags experience the NPCs deliver?

Sebrent.3625:

If our pets could simply move and attack at the same time, they’d be leagues ahead of where they are.

I can’t think of any creature in the game that actually attacks while moving at the same time. Can’t think of one. All stop moving to start their attack animations. I don’t think it’s an option the code. What they’ve done is make them move faster than you and/or given the NPC attack range more

@TheFantasticGman:
Aye, that is pretty accurate … which is one reason I strongly dislike that we have to use Major Trait to get Agility Training to have our pets move 30% faster so they can do the same as the rest of the bots in-game that simply innately have that to make up for their bad AI.

It’s a good example as well as to part of why the bird pets are better at landing hits on targets since they provide their own swiftness.

Instantaneous casting of sword skills 2 & 3 PLEASE… Even warrior 100B, one of the heaviest DPS skills in the game, is interrupt-able. Why can’t sword skill 1 for ranger, a much lower dps skill, also be self-interrupted?

Sebrent.3625:

@TheFantasticGman:
Aye, that is pretty accurate … which is one reason I strongly dislike that we have to use Major Trait to get Agility Training to have our pets move 30% faster so they can do the same as the rest of the bots in-game that simply innately have that to make up for their bad AI.

It’s a good example as well as to part of why the bird pets are better at landing hits on targets since they provide their own swiftness.

I remember in GW1 when pets were buffed to have an innate speed boost for these exact reasons lol.

Not really sure why GW2 gutted the system GW1 had for pets, they already would have had a good baseline if they had kept some of the ideas (the also introduced some additional innate damage resistance to pets if I recall correctly).

Dunno. I actually liked pets in GW1. Because they were both function if used and optional to use.

I wish that philosophy would have stuck (the functional when used, optional to use philosophy).

Vertical port and boon strip to compete with theif, or a buff to spirits to make them a viable support build again.

Even then they would probably still need more blast finishers to compete with ele.

I’d love for there to be more boon-stripping across the board in GW2. I’m sick and tired of how effective boon-stacking is in PvP.

Boon-stacking is essentially stacking stats. In a game that is supposed to have action-based combat, stacking stats isn’t supposed to be as powerful as it currently is. It is supposed to be much less about stats and much more about skill.

As such, anything that diminishes the power of boon-stacking in GW2 gets a “heck yes, please” in my book.

If that means classes currently “dependent” on boon-stacking need to be buffed elsewhere… fine. Just kill the boon-stacking garbage.

jcbroe.4329:

I remember in GW1 when pets were buffed to have an innate speed boost for these exact reasons lol.

Not really sure why GW2 gutted the system GW1 had for pets, they already would have had a good baseline if they had kept some of the ideas (the also introduced some additional innate damage resistance to pets if I recall correctly).

In GW1, pets moved 20% faster and it did stack with speed boosts, so they could move +53% faster max.

What I liked was the evolutions, because I wanted a Dire Wolf, a zerk wolf, and I would like that again! Being able to change the pets stats is very important.

And I think…

Expertise Training – “Pets remove 1 boon on critical hits.” 5s CD.

A pet menu something like this… With the training traits available there too, you get one for free.

I’d love that Heimskarl

• Faster pet … can land hits better against moving opponents (something that shouldn’t have been an issue)
• More pet customization … more options is good
• Boon removal … heck yes … down with the boon-stacking meta! :-)

Probably a bit OTT but…

Pets:
Improve Pet speed
Improve attack responsiveness
Add Craftable Pet Gear – 3 items? Which allow the player to further improve and focus the pets stats.
*Reduce AOE damage by 25% default +25% with trait

Longbow:
Remove close quarter damage debuff

GS:
Improve AA base damage
4 ability if knock back connects add remove boon effect
5 ability extend damage bonus to player

Sword:
Fix aa…. It is annoying

Spirits:
Improve health
*Reduce AOE damage by 25% default +25% with trait

As has been said pets really just need to move a bit faster and to have substantially better attack response time. F2 needs to go off as soon as possible to be effective. I’d like the pets, especially DPS pets, to attack faster so they can unload their damage in the brief time the enemy is slowed or immobilized long enough to score some damage.

I’d also like more weapon skills involving the pet. As the ranger we should be doing more to ensure the pet can hit the enemy just as the pet does the same for us.

Remove damaging conditions from pets. Pets have no condition damage stat and can’t be used to stack bleeds. Instead replace bleeds with cripples so the pets that currently do bleed damage will be able to inhibit the enemy’s movements instead of hindering actual condition users around them. Poison is still fine as that has value beyond the damage and can be useful in messing up enemy healing. Add more weakness to pet skills as rangers can further count on their pets to hinder the enemy and make the fight more in the ranger’s favor.

Have a few pets, like devourers and spiders, retain their damaging conditions but give them a condition damage stat of around 650. This is enough to make the conditions noticable, but will need traits like Malicious Training to give them the condition damage to be serious threats. It’d open the door to some very unique builds where the ranger does power damage while the pet administers conditions to keep up sustained pressure. It’d help rangers fit into a unique hybrid playstyle.

Give the Moas and the Sylvan Hound a healing power stat of around 650, allowing for people to build their pet to be a decent healbot with Compassion Training. It’d open up doors for unique support builds using the moa on passive to provide boons and healing to allies.

Make spirits immune to conditions like they were in GW1. They die too fast as is, and we can’t remove conditions on them. Spirits and shouts in general need a lot of work, though. We need more useful utilities.

Boon removal for pets is nice, albeit a bit unreliable…

Would make a support/bm ranger pretty handy though.

Sube Dai.8496:

Boon removal for pets is nice, albeit a bit unreliable…

Would make a support/bm ranger pretty handy though.

It would be magic if you could change pet stats too. Boon removal on crit, on a Spider with Assassin’s stats.

I wonder if they could just make each pet melee skill a PBAoE, unless its a leap, and give them +20% base speed, that would probably fix that.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Sube Dai.8496:

Boon removal for pets is nice, albeit a bit unreliable…

Would make a support/bm ranger pretty handy though.

It would be magic if you could change pet stats too. Boon removal on crit, on a Spider with Assassin’s stats.

I wonder if they could just make each pet melee skill a PBAoE, unless its a leap, and give them +20% base speed, that would probably fix that.

Trying messaging a dev with your idea, If they haven’t seen the thread.

I NEED SOMETHING NEW TO DO WITH MY PET.

About shouts, “Protect Me” should have been something like (from launch) :

Protect Me : Your pet purge all conditions on you gaining all boons for a short duration. Break stun. Instant. CD 60 s

Shouts need to be useful for allies (not all, like war maybe) while relying on pet.

Shout Master : Reduce recharge on shouts. Recharge reduce 20 %. Nearby allies gain up to 50 vitality based on your effective level when using a shout (6sec). Interval 3 s, radius 600, combat only.

Nature’s voice : Same.

Guard : Command your pet to aggressively guard an area. Your pet gains stealth and protection for a short duration. Curing a condition on allies (allies only) at a set time interval. Stealh 10 s, protection 10 s. Cure a condition every 5 s, radius 600.

Sic Em : Blind you foe 6 s. Your pet runs faster and does more damage., inflict weakness the next tree attacks 3 s. Range 1,200. Revealed 6 s .(Well need to be useful outside of stealth classes.)

Search and rescue : Same. You’re pet is immune to contitions and damage.

Either that or they could just make the pet optional and instead give us F1-4 of preparations. Ignite Arrows, Apply Poison, Barbed Arrows, Glass Arrows.

In PVE Rangers are pretty underpowered comparatively. But in SPvP I do not feel weak at all on my ranger. Of course I run into the occasional Hammer/GS warrior build that smashes my face, or a zerker thief that drops me near instantly, but that is all to be expected and not a discredit to the ranger class.