Guild Wars 2

seeing how ranged pets have the lowest base attack in the game and the slowest attack speed to preform attacks isn’t it really gimping us?
i mean this is how i see it, pets are seposed to be a decent bit of ranger dmg %, rangers are balanced around the fact that pets are seposed to be there to provide the dmg support to our own attacks.
ranged weapons are already balanced to be less powerful than melee weapons.
ranger range attacks are balance to be lower than any other class’s ranged attack since the pet is being factored in for damage support. Isnt having ranged pets do significantly less damage per attack really gimping ranger’s ranged preformance since they both attack slower and attack for about half of what melee pets hit for? its like a double nerf for rangers using ranged attacks with a ranged pet, and before anyone crys that it would be too OP to have ranged pets do more damage if you used melee weapons. it would not, ranged pets do not attack your targets at their max range, they will fallow you up to ur target and start hitting it after you do, essentually ranging it in the face at point blank distance…. i just feel that ranged pet attack speed should be upped or the base damage should be upped to make them deal at least the same out put as melee pets can do since THE RANGER CLASS IS ALREADY BALANCED TO HAVE LOWER DMG ON WEAPON SKILLS TO ACCOUNT FOR THE PET DMG ALREADY… having range pets deal so low dmg is almost a double nerf for our class when whe need to stay at range and cant have pets up on our targets, which if you are a good ranger you will never try to use a melee pet in 100 percent of your fights.

lol has anyone else ever thought about this or have any imput about it?

I think all the rangers that still hang around know this and also the other flaws of the prof. But hey, what can we do? We all have mentioned and tried to make devs aware of these flaws but we just have to either wait or roll a new char.

Personally, I’m waiting for the next patch, if no significant changes for ranger, I’ll go fulltime warrior.

awe extender.1908:

I think all the rangers that still hang around know this and also the other flaws of the prof. But hey, what can we do? We all have mentioned and tried to make devs aware of these flaws but we just have to either wait or roll a new char.

Personally, I’m waiting for the next patch, if no significant changes for ranger, I’ll go fulltime warrior.

I’m doing the same as this. I’m waiting till the end of month patch. If there’s still no effort put in for Rangers then I’m deleting my Ranger completely and going Thief. I enjoy Ranger profession personally.. PvE and just running around having fun I really enjoy it. Theres a lot to enjoy, finding pets. Naming pets. Feeling connected to them. But then as soon as you jump into WvW or PvP… Your instantly the Pawn on the Chess Table… And instantly you’re completely useless no matter how fun it is. This is really annoying. Especially since Ranger is supposedly a DPS Profession… We have no support capabilities and no DPS capabilities… So what do we have? Useless pets which we can name and pretend have an effect, when really they don’t have much effect at all. They either do good damage and die in an instant. Or they can live a fight but do awful damage which has next to zero effect on target.

Ranger is currently not on par with other classes when it comes to dishing out raw damage. And that is probably also due to the fact that pets are still shaky.

The way I see it, the ranger plus the pet should be able to do similar damage to a different class, say thief or warrior, given a similar build (eg. berserker). But as it is now, the ranger itself still does lower damage than a warrior rifle build and the pet…well…it can’t even keep up with the target if traited for it, let alone without the buff.

I’m sure other classes are lacking in some departments as well, but as far as I’m concerned the ranger is the least versatile class at the moment. Due to lack of build choices (spirit build is globally useless), pets are sometimes a nuissance more than a benefit and the weapons could use some polishing (obstructed, random target changes, etc.)

awe extender.1908:

I think all the rangers that still hang around know this and also the other flaws of the prof. But hey, what can we do? We all have mentioned and tried to make devs aware of these flaws but we just have to either wait or roll a new char.

Personally, I’m waiting for the next patch, if no significant changes for ranger, I’ll go fulltime warrior.

This. My plan is exactly this. If the next patch doesn’t do SOMETHING to help fix the broken crap that Ranger class is, I’m switching my main to a Warrior.

Then, if enough people abandon Ranger for Warrior (which really 90% of what a warrior can do ranged is what a ranger SHOULD BE) then maybe Anet will open their eyes and help fix Ranger.

But I doubt it. Doesn’t even seem like they care about Ranger BECAUSE it’s such an under-played class… except by bots!

Ranged pets are sub-par, I agree. Like you said, weak attacks and fairly slow attack speed. I mean yes, the whole game is balanced around the idea of melee being stronger than ranged in general and that does indeed make a lot of sense since ranged attacks have other advantages, but the ranged pets are a little too weak even taking that into account. It just goes too far.

And pets can’t really benefit from of all of the advantages ranged attacks offer, they don’t kite on their own and its kind of hard to micro-manage them to kite (not to mention you literally can’t get them to kite if you yourself are melee). So I don’t know if the “ranged vs melee” thing should really apply to pets at all, or if anything it should apply to a lesser extent.

Its strange that both of the ranged pets we have right now have stronger defensive stats than offensive, as well. Not to say all ranged pets have to be offensive-based and fragile, but its more typical that ranged attackers would be less defensive, and the fact that both of them are defensive is odd. Maybe thats actually the problem (or at least part of it), not nessicarily that ranged pets are being balanced to be less offensive by pure design but simply the fact that both of the current ranged pets are more defensive. Hard to say until they introduce a more offensive ranged pet. Maybe even with the slower attack speed, a ranged pet with the stats of a cat would be good.

right now as it is if you are a ranger using range weapons and a range pet you are suffering from a large dmg reduction.
your taking a hit for damage for using a range weapons
and you are taking a hit for using a range pet :-/
rangers get a double nerf for being all range compaired to all classes, its still fun being the under dog though

WolfHeart.1256:

Ranger is currently not on par with other classes when it comes to dishing out raw damage. And that is probably also due to the fact that pets are still shaky.

The way I see it, the ranger plus the pet should be able to do similar damage to a different class, say thief or warrior, given a similar build (eg. berserker). But as it is now, the ranger itself still does lower damage than a warrior rifle build and the pet…well…it can’t even keep up with the target if traited for it, let alone without the buff.

I’m sure other classes are lacking in some departments as well, but as far as I’m concerned the ranger is the least versatile class at the moment. Due to lack of build choices (spirit build is globally useless), pets are sometimes a nuissance more than a benefit and the weapons could use some polishing (obstructed, random target changes, etc.)

I think rangers are at a good balanced point atm in sPvP and tPvP. Other classes should probably be balanced at the level where ranger is and the game would be much better of.

Rangers have at least 3 viable builds in low to mid level tPvP (don’t know about high level play): Melee, condition and trapper builds. Bunker build gets mentioned often as well. That’s a lot more than most professions have.

As for the OP, I really can’t say. And I know nothing about PvE.

Ranger is underplayed because they don’t care.
They don’t care because Ranger is underplayed.

That’s why Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers and whatnot get the most attention. Because it’s the classes that matter the most in either PvE or PvP.

well it kinda sucks that we take the hit for ranged dmg being less than melee, take the hit from our ability skills to account for the pet, and take the hit for having a ranged pet that deals half the dmg as a melee pet, i could understand if it just attacked slower and did the same dmg, would make melee pets still desirable in situations that they can be used safely, and the use of a ranged pet when meleeing a boss is a very bad idea but the dmg loss is extreamly significant right now when using a ranged pet compaired to a melee pet… they just attack slower and deal about half the dmg that melee pets do, exp the devourer, spider can atleast break 1k on a hit, im 20 in beastmastery and the decourers are doing about 700 base damage on the double attacks, its around 340(x2), compaired to the cat which is dealing 2.3k…. since our abilities are balanced around our pets wouldnt it make sence that all pets have the same base attack dmg with the exception of pets that have more natural power in their stats?