85s of recharge to ask your pet to revive someone ?
60s of recharge to make your pet passive and take the damage in your place, which is basically an inferior version of Stone signet ?
Use a skill to ask your pet to guard a zone ?
With the exception of the invul shout, which is now trash compared to the Stone Signet, I mean, did someone even bother to play them ?
Those skills look to me as being a bad attempt to fix the abysmal control and utility we have on our pets. Those things should be part of the pet mechanics, and we should n’t have to sacrifice utility slots for that.
Bad.. Just bad.
They wanted to put some shouts on Ranger but they didnt had the time to think over them. So they put random names and designs.. Shout that only your pet hears. More like a wisper to me
They almost feel shoehorned, if it wasn’t for the fact that rangers had shouts that behaved somewhat similar in the first game aswell. We even had a spirit that made the use of shouts less effective.
Ranger shouts need some overhauling, and the radius of Nature’s Voice needs to be larger. For starters. Or just scrap the idea and make them actual party wide buffers or debuffers like other shouts.
Sic ‘em is indeed the only shout that is somewhat useful. Still, it feels like it should be the active effect of Signet of the Hunt and not a separate skill. As already mentioned, when the game shiped the Ranger class was missing a set of utilities, which was later hastily implemented as the crappy shouts we have to deal with to this date. I wouldn’t even call them shouts, as by definition they should affect the allies around the Ranger and not only 33% of your own character (aka the pet). Search and Rescue did have some use in dungeons, especially in semi-coordinated groups, but not any more.
Shouts, along with spirits, are yet another lackluster set of utilities for the Ranger, which is why the majority of Ranger builds consist of a mix of signets and survival skills. Not because those utilities are insanely great, but for the simple reason that there’s no alternative to them.
The revive shout is even worst in sPvP 185s cooldown for a killable reviver. In general I agree with Girion it is simple about choosing the least bad option, and often the trait system feels exactly the same way.
My stance on ranger shouts:
The only reason I think there are even shouts on the ranger was someone was concerned that the Rune of the Solider (now called Trooper) where only effective on two profession and they felt the need to diversify the usefulness the the rune and to provide already designed traits to the profession so skills that make more sense as “Pet Skills” became shouts include what might be the only shout with a cast time.
Pets have been hidden due to rising Player complaints.
A warrior’s shouts are for allies while the ranger’s “shouts” are commands for your pet. Shout is perhaps a bad label. Maybe they should be labelled “Commands”.
However, as a shout, it is affected by Trooper Runes, and there is a trait that allows them to grant swiftness and regen to nearby allies but the range is pathetic.
However, as a shout, it is affected by Trooper Runes, and there is a trait that allows them to grant swiftness and regen to nearby allies but the range is pathetic.
Nature’s Voice wasn’t a part of the original design, it was Anet’s attempt at making shouts of the ranger better as a build option and to keep the trait number the same when they merged a couple of traits in that line.
Pets have been hidden due to rising Player complaints.
However, as a shout, it is affected by Trooper Runes, and there is a trait that allows them to grant swiftness and regen to nearby allies but the range is pathetic.
Nature’s Voice wasn’t a part of the original design, it was Anet’s attempt at making shouts of the ranger better as a build option and to keep the trait number the same when they merged a couple of traits in that line.
That’s what makes their design so sad. Guard is only used to proc NV, which wasn’t originally there. Sic ‘Em is used to troll theives with Reveal, which wasn’t originally there. I actually can’t remember, but I am not sure Protect Me was original a stunbreaker either.
ANet seems to know they are terrible skills, just the fixes they have put in place so far are just… really poorly designed, which is a shame because Shout’s on Guardians and Warriors are among their best skills.
Cufufalating – Ranger / Part-Time Mesmer
Gunnar’s Hold
There’s no doubt ranger shouts are way underwhelming. But it seems every class has a mechanic that is lackluster. Spirit Weapons on Guardians, Banners on Warrior (for anything other than a dungeon), etc. Still, I wish they would make them at least slightly tempting.
It gets better – in spvp “Search and rescue!” is on a freaking 3 minutes cooldown. Yup 180 excruciating seconds. Same as spirit of nature, except spirit of nature can quickly insta ress 3 ppl in a 600 radius, and that’s 2 times during it’s live.
Seriously, whoever is taking care of ranger balance in a-net, clearly hasn’t done any spvp or had the idea “let’s try these less used utilities and see if they make any sense in there!”. Cause this one most certainly does not.
Search and rescue used to rez defeated players. That;s when people ever used it. Then they murderered the skill for no reason — oh, wait, we know the reason. Usual spvp whine most likely.
spvp ruins this game for class balance. It’s also why mesmers and necromancers have been constantly kitten.
I disagree. If anything it’s the spvp that shows the glaring flaws of those skills. having ress skill in pve on 3 mins cooldown timer is bad, but how often do you have to ressurect someone in pve to the point that it’s a must?
In spvp deaths are all over the place and ressing a teammate under fire actually matters and may determine the outcome of the game. And it’s here where all those underperfoming traits and skills fail the hardest. Pve has it’s own set of issues mostly stemming from crappy AI.
Search and rescue used to rez defeated players. That;s when people ever used it. Then they murderered the skill for no reason — oh, wait, we know the reason. Usual spvp whine most likely.
spvp ruins this game for class balance. It’s also why mesmers and necromancers have been constantly kitten.
Search and rescue used to rez defeated players. That;s when people ever used it. Then they murderered the skill for no reason — oh, wait, we know the reason. Usual spvp whine most likely.
spvp ruins this game for class balance. It’s also why mesmers and necromancers have been constantly kitten.
In the specific case of the S&R nerf, they said specifically the reason they did it was it was never intended to res the dead regardless of the game mode it was used in, just the downed… of course, that was just the official line of why it got the nerf bat.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Shouts, along with spirits, are yet another lackluster set of utilities for the Ranger.
Frost spirit is a main utility in PvE nowadays. Can´t say much about the rest since I rarely play PvP or WvW but they used to be good in point holding but they were hit with the nerf bat.
