Guild Wars 2

So the subforum is a great example of a house divided and all that, but what is the direction should the profession be going?

Let’s try not whine and be constructive, we are not all going to agree on everything, but perhaps with our reasoning outlined we could come to an understanding.

I dunno… but that new Nature’s Voice trait is an interesting direction.
…been able to take sig of the hunt completely off my Utilities thanks to a little bit of finagling. I don’t feel compelled to use Oakheart Salve trait in Orr anymore either.

You basically get a perma version of Incoming (from GW1) thanks to a really quickly recharging “Go To” command for the pet. Best part being that that nothing in it breaks just b/c the pet ignores you. …only thing missing is a way to cut down the activation time of shouts :p (y’know, none of the Guardian’s shout have a cast time…wth?)

I’ve always felt the rangers shouts to be kind of last minute tacked on as skills go. They are kind of like the other shout, but are more like additional pet commands.

If you remember ranger shouts in GW1, they were godly pet buffs. My GW1 beastmaster build made my pet more tanky than a full on tank. It was nearly impossible to kill them.

Unfortunately most of the GW2 shouts just add what should be default pet functionality. The ability to tell it to move somewhere (“Guard”). The ability to protect you (“Protect Me”). Those should not be seperate skills that we need to carry with us. Our pets should be able to do this by default.

I think that “Sic ’Em” and “Search and Rescue” are the only shouts that should be kept. “Sic ’Em” is the closest to how shouts were in GW1, bringing function and boosting the pet at the same time. The cooldown is a bit too long, though. “Search and Rescue” is another useful one, but the pet should gain more protection as it is rezzing. Because the pet isn’t protected at all, that makes the ranger’s dedicated res skill one of, if not the, weakest rez skill in the game.

Part of the baseline problem of the shouts on the ranger is the other shouts in the game have group utility (even if it is only cc in the form of Fear Me) and the Ranger is not really party/group designed, more of ‘My pet and I against the world.’

for me ranger should go to much more build viability!

much peoples hate the pet and much peoples love it.
so there is in my mind only one way to make all happy.

give the ranger only a pet and full pet controll when he go with beastmastery 10-30.
then old beastmaster builds can stay and other dmg builds can created.
full pet controll maybe like this way, when press f2 you can use the pet skills on 1234, press f2 again weapon skills back. so beastmaster is more hard to play, but you can do amazing things with the pets and not only random kitten…
or do pet controll on signet of wild or an extra sigil with no cooldown to swap between pet controll and weapon skills, thats like engin kits then.

when the ranger whant run something like 20/20/30/0/0 he should just not have a pet and all his dmg on his weapons.
also the ranger need generaly more f1-f4 skills viable… depending on weaponsets

longbow:
f1: stealth for the ranger, the next arrow from behind make more dmg, depending on
range
f2: the next 5 seconds the ranger have multishoot (5 arrows) nice combo with bow 2 :P
f3: ranger block or dodge the next attack
f4: scout, the ranger can see where are the enemy players running around and see invis

and different f1-f4 for the other weaponsets, that whould give much build viability.
well and much work for not whant to do much anet balance team…

also spirits should be something like create combofield ice, fire, light and dont know what.
but not low hp ugly ghosts running behind me.

and at least, combo finisher projectile is just a joke with this 20% chance.
with this we will never have amazing fire or ice arrow combos like in other games.

I see many wanting the removal of the pet. The ranger has, since reveal, been centered around the pet. That is a cornerstone of the ranger.

Is it that you want the pet removed or that you want the issues with the pet to be fixed so it doesn’t feel like a weight when it’s not behaving properly?

Both in the direction of long range combat and beastmastery.

- Longbow 1500 range by default.
- Shortbow 1200 range by default and removal of flanking condition.
- Useful pet menu with advanced settings for skills and preferences for AI behaviour.
- More default pet commands and the ability to assign keys to them (they’re currently in the form of shouts).
- Pet traits that aren’t family restricted, allowing for more customization.
- Pets doing low damage by default and rangers taking the full effect of their power stat on their skills.
- pet traits which allows the ranger to give stats to their pets at a partial cost of their own.

These are both my wishes and what I consider the minimal requirements for the Ranger class to be considered finished.

Holland.9351:

Both in the direction of long range combat and beastmastery.

- Longbow 1500 range by default.
- Shortbow 1200 range by default and removal of flanking condition.

Totally agreed.
Or as some had already suggested, include Shortbow in Eagle Eye.
We are Rangers, we should be specialised for these weapons. Not other classes.

Now that’s The Ranger that was advertised before launch.

If we are True Rangers, why do Warriors have one of the hightest Dmg Output with Rifle ( Killshot )

In a year or so, they will Buff LB and SB in a right direction but will we still play Gw2? i am not sure.

Hadrians.4567:

If we are True Rangers, why do Warriors have one of the hightest Dmg Output with Rifle ( Killshot )

In a year or so, they will Buff LB and SB in a right direction but will we still play Gw2? i am not sure.

Agreed too.
Dev keep forgetting that even for F2P mmos people would leave if they have No Regrets leaving these kinda mmo.
Like i’ve said it before quite sometime ago that the day would come where Rangers have no regrets leaving this game. Mark my words.

I quickly noticed that the ranger is centered around the pet, and so I chose to be a Beastmaster from day 1. Sure, it made me a healing ranger that did minimal dmg, but hey… I didn’t care. My pet rocked. This new patch made me realize that beastmastery allowed for the hidden DPS ranger via the pet, which has since been nerfed.

It seems like there are less and less different types of builds out there to choose from for ranger. I’ve never seen an importance in shouts because, like Synful said, many of them are skills the pet should AUTOMATICALLY do, and we should not have to have a specific skill with us to make them do it. Maybe, instead, these should be our f skills. We already have a guard/passive… but essentially we only have “use your special skill” and switch pets as our f skills. Maybe our “attack” (f1) should be attack an area or group of targets, and our “return” (f3) should be the “protect my area” or something of the sort.

I would also LOVE to see the birds and pigs have their own special abilities instead of having repeating abilities. Bleed, Bleed, Chill, Blind (and blind for white raven). Why the repeat when every other animal (save for the poor neglected pigs) have their own unique skill? Why not make the hawk or eagle have some kind of a shout instead of a bleed? And give the poor piggies love! Forage Forage Forage Forage. …huzzah?

The ranger and the pet are supposed to be one fighter. So our damage singularly was not meant to be awesome. Our damage with our pet, though… that is where we shine. I don’t want the pet to go away, I just want to see the pets get the love they deserve. (Especially the piggy, I mean… who doesn’t want the Siamoth runnin’ around with them? Fugly little thing only a mother [read: ranger] could love!)

Lyana Evrilow.8102:

The ranger and the pet are supposed to be one fighter. So our damage singularly was not meant to be awesome. Our damage with our pet, though… that is where we shine. I don’t want the pet to go away, I just want to see the pets get the love they deserve. (Especially the piggy, I mean… who doesn’t want the Siamoth runnin’ around with them? Fugly little thing only a mother [read: ranger] could love!)

I don’t want the pet to go away, but I want to see it become either completely or mechanically optional. Either give us the option to not use a pet and retain as much effectiveness as any other class, or give us a new type of pet that cannot attack, cannot take damage or be killed, and just gives us passive and active buffs to damage, other stats, and extra cc. That way, when we encounter dungeons like the aetherblade one, we can still be just as effective as other professions. Plus, I could use a pet weasel.

Anyways, the problems with pets (and therefore the ranger profession) are deep-seated. It isn’t just pet damage or toughness or the fact that they fail against moving targets. Even the pathetically inadequate controls we have (dwarfed by the hero controls in GW1, which were still pretty bad) are not the main problem. The main problem is that GW2 combat is based around constant repositioning, evasion, blocking, and timing cc and conditions properly. Gone are the days when my dervish could charge into a pile of enemies, plant his feet in place, and whip his scythe around until he was the only one left in a pile of corpses. Yet that seems to be what pets are made for: charge in, stand in place, and attack, relying on health and defense and healing to keep them alive. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work against enemies who can down a player instantly every third attack or so, and take off fully half of a bear’s health in one hit…with 20 points in beast mastery.

Jabronee.9465:

Hadrians.4567:

If we are True Rangers, why do Warriors have one of the hightest Dmg Output with Rifle ( Killshot )

In a year or so, they will Buff LB and SB in a right direction but will we still play Gw2? i am not sure.

Agreed too.
Dev keep forgetting that even for F2P mmos people would leave if they have No Regrets leaving these kinda mmo.
Like i’ve said it before quite sometime ago that the day would come where Rangers have no regrets leaving this game. Mark my words.

I already tried to leave, but there isn’t really any other mmo that I’d like to play. I kind of like the combat mechanics of GW2. The mobility and limited number of skills are nice as well as the generally mild setting. It has potential to be 10 times better, but they’re barely making any progress to achieve it. In fact, in regards to the Ranger profession it’s only been going backwards in strides. The game’s skills, traits and such are also still riddled with bugs. Most tooltips aren’t even true or incomplete or providing close to no information on what it actually does (for example: “Pets heal for more”). It’s been a year and these basic things are simply being completely ignored, yet it’s the only thing we have to interact with the game and are confronted with them every time we play.

So yes, if another mmo comes along that I like, I’ll be gone.

Holland.9351:

So yes, if another mmo comes along that I like, I’ll be gone.

Agreed, there isn’t much too exciting in MMOs these days, I am going back to some RTS games, GW2 is definately taking a back seat now, that won;t change unless ANet does a lot better over this mess.

How can they have an entire class in the game that nobody knows what the hell it’s for anymore? How the hell can you mess up an update so badly as that?

The update wasn’t all bad, but it did take more than it gave. It took SB range and pet damage. It gave a very minor SB damage buff and a significant LB damage buff. Unfortunately the LB buff only brought it up to in-line with the SB if you attack head-on. If you get any of the SB bleeds, the SB is still a superior weapon.

The LB should be the ranged weapon of choice for power-based rangers. It should be our hardest hitting ranged weapon that actually makes our opponents worry. Not a pitifully weak weapon that is outdone by a SB in all ways and that we only use because we want to attack at 1200 range and the option to use a SB that that range was taken from us.

The update itself, until we are given additional information, has firmly set that the developers will continue to balance the professions solely within the meta of sPvP.

Bran.7425:

The update itself, until we are given additional information, has firmly set that the developers will continue to balance the professions solely within the meta of sPvP.

I will continue to hope, as will most of us I think, that they will realize that balancing around PvP only will only destroy class balance elsewhere instead of unifying the classes across game modes. We have nearly a year of evidence to back us up. We can only hope that ArenaNet realizes their folly before PvE and WvW are completely untenetable with most classes.

Let’s see an average skilled pve warrior player…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11q2O4rT7q8

And now, dear devs, make rangers EQUAL!

…41k dmg on one hit? Holy… I need to make a warrior… O.o

SynfulChaot.3169:

Bran.7425:

The update itself, until we are given additional information, has firmly set that the developers will continue to balance the professions solely within the meta of sPvP.

I will continue to hope, as will most of us I think, that they will realize that balancing around PvP only will only destroy class balance elsewhere instead of unifying the classes across game modes. We have nearly a year of evidence to back us up. We can only hope that ArenaNet realizes their folly before PvE and WvW are completely untenetable with most classes.

Guild Wars 1 rangers suffered the same fate. They weren’t held back by the pet (it was optional) but GW1 PvE was all about AoE and rangers didn’t have it outside of the gimmicky splinter barrage build (and even that was nerfed for PvP reasons because it was used in Victory or Death in GvG). Rangers for the most part were left out of the GW1 end game meta. You could bring them, but it usually involved them using non-ranger skills (like Destructive Was Glaive) or much slower party builds compared to the meta. There was a couple of times where Barrage/Pet rangers were meta for Sorrow’s Furnace, Tombs, Urgoz and briefly for Slavers, but aside from that rangers were never in the meta builds (whenever they were using ranger skills, it was always barrage iirc). Izzy (the skill balance guy at the time, he seems to have been promoted since then) was notorious for hating ranged spike damage because he thought it was too hard to counter so he kept it weak. We are unlikely to see worthwhile bow attacks in PvE for as long as they share DPS values with sPvP.

If you’re hoping for ArenaNet to strike a balance between PvE and PvP, looking at how they handled the class in GW1 I’d say prepare yourself for disappointment or find a new MMO. Rangers were left behind in the dust there and it’s looking like it’s happening all over again.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Shiren. I mained a ranger in GW1 nearly from launch and always found it very powerful with a large number of viable builds. Even powerful builds that were ranger-only (Burning Arrow, Magebane Shot, Cripshot, and unkillable beastmaster builds). Of course GW1 was all about the hybrid builds and ranger excelled there as well with R/N, R/Mo, and R/Rt builds especially. Ranger was very viable and powerful in GW1 PvE. It even used to be the prime Drok’s run class, and always remained a viable Drok’s runner. So no, ranger was not as weak as you say in GW1. It was handled there well.

In GW1 the ranger started off strong but became more pointless as the game aged. ANet just loved to spam mobs more and more so serious AOE was needed and rangers didn’t have it. Sure you could survive, but you were rather pointless compared to other professions.

And yes, rangers were good droks runners, right up until god mode permasins and vow dervish made that a wast of time too. Power creep took GW1 away from the ranger. ANerf has already taken GW2 away from us. You can play, but don’t expect to be useful like any other profession. Enjoy stroking your pet in LA while the real professions play the end-game.

Rangers had insane AoE. Splinter Barrage builds were highly effective against groups, as were spirit spammer builds, which rangers were also highly effective with. As much as touch rangers became less useful in PvP, they remained highly powerful in PvE against groups in melee (my fave build in the last few months of the game; near unkillable). So no, I don’t agree that they are as weak as you claim, in PvE at least. I don’t know about PvP; I don’t play it.

Never once in GW1 was I ever told to change classes. I may have been asked to bring particular skills, which I pretty much always did, but I never was asked to change classes and never was kicked.

Ranger in GW2 was nerfed before launch and has only gotten weaker over time. But how they handled the class in GW1 shows that they can balance the class right.

Personally like to see Rangers become Crowd control and Party support but that’s me, i’m not holding my breath for either..

I had Ranger/Mes in GW1 and it was very effective.

Personally, I like the inside-outside mechanic that it seems Arena.net WANTS the Ranger to be. It needs a lot of tweaking (spirits still need a lot of reworking, for example, as well as Pet AI), but the general idea of bouncing in and out of melee range depending on the situation, and being reasonably efficient at both, is one that appeals to me.

Bran.7425:

The update itself, until we are given additional information, has firmly set that the developers will continue to balance the professions solely within the meta of sPvP.

Then customers will continue to leave until they stop doing that.