Guild Wars 2

just for the dream, and also if those from Aney read this forums when in the wash room.
what would you change in this class?
how would you like to play your ranger?
only conditions: the pet must stay (Aney has explicit clarified that already) and the druid must stay with the healbot thing.

other than that dont be afraid, for wonderful or fantastic is may seem.

i’d like the pet system to change completely:

• pets have a trait line with dofferent options for family that can change some skills or buffs for the pet.
• our pets are not juvenile and the name stay. it does not change when we change the familiy or the skin.
• for each family we have the skins we unlock with the scavenger hunt. Even some could be unique to achievements\events or sold for gems
• we have only one pet so we have another keybind available. they can be swap when out of combat using a menu in the hero panel.
• we can choose which skill from the pet goes in f2
• shouts are converted to commands with F1 to F4 so we can use those without wasting one skill slot.
• The new shouts can be designed more in line of streng of the pack or we heal as one.

ranger:

• beastmastery traitline reworked to give better sinergy between the pet and the ranger. some traits that affect directly to the pet are moved to the families traitlines so they are coherent with the family used, and there are some espace for improvements.
• new traits in BM should be in line of Zephyr’s Speed, traits that affect both the ranger and the pet. Traits like Empathic Bond should be in BM
• traits like Beastly Warden that affect only the pet should go to the appropriate pet families. the is no point of using this with spiders or any ranged pet for example.
• Nature Magic traitline should be reworked to be the traitline that bring team support to the ranger. the traits should be inline of Allies’ Aid or Protective Ward, traits that are meant to help your team instead only the ranger
• in NM traitline there should be trait to make spirits mobile.

Druid:

• druid have a trait that change a 1\3 of the healing from CAF skills to direct damage. So PVE druids or PvP/wvw druid can have more uses than healbot if they choose to.
• druid staff is reworked to apply better damage or better CC so it can be used as a normal weapon.
• druid heals with any weapon, it spam around the target to heal allies around it once per second.
• druid selfheal when heal every single time he heals. heal for less but more often so the druid feel good healing others.

Sure, I’ll bite.

1) Change most traits for synergy.
2) Add key binds to standard pet commands and have F1-F4 become pet skills.
3) Organize the kittening pet selection panel layout…
4) Diversify pets to have varying point:ratio attribute distributions. So, for example, the Fern Hound would be the only canine to have higher toughness than the rest and default Healing Power.

(sigh)

Sure would love to see that sword #1 reworked without that leap built in… But who am i kidding, the community be asking for years and nothing has come of it…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Change-Required-Pet-Buff-scale/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Change-Required-Pet-Stow/

Improved pet management allowing us to use more pet abilities manually.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Change-Required-Shout-Rewamp/
(or complete rewamp of shouts proposed in various threads, just like S&R pulling the ally to you, Protect Me applying taunt or retaliation…)

Useless traits buffed (Hello Predator’s Instinct, Honed Axes as Grandmaster)
MM minors made useful.

Sword mechanic improved.

And that’s it for starters. QoL changes are basically all that’s needed. There isn’t much numerically to improve.

Three big changes needed:

Shortbow buffs/reworks
Pet balance patch across the board so there is more synergy and not only like 5 viable pets
Core Ranger tweaks to bad traits like Honed Axes

Id get a rebalance of our trait lines to make the synergies properly with eachother. No more incredibly niche (this works with this and NOTHING else) situations.

Then I would get a rebalance of less used weapons.

Finally (and this is the biggest one for me) I would have the spotter and frost spirit damage buffs taken OFF of there current places and attached to our class mechanic. To expand upon that I would make it so that each pet FAMILY gave a unique buff to the party.

Birds would give spotter for example. But there would also be things like + power pet buffs. + Ferocity pet buffs. x % chance to proc x pet buffs.

The goal would be to give underused pets a purpose. As well as to free up our build diversity. Atm you build to maximize the number of + dmg modifiers you can bring not for yourself but for the party. Meaning in the end your builds are often designed around being a buff bot primarily. And an actual player second. This wouldn’t be too much of an issue for me. Except our more self centered builds simply can’t preform well enough in comparison to make it an honest question of (do I take the damage modifiers for the grp? Or do I buff myself and ensure my performance makes up for that)

Id like that question to not be necessary anymore. Though I doubt it ever will happen.

I would remap the pets so that every pet family has a specific thing it excels at and the different pets in the family perform that role in different ways. Make it so less used pets bring more to the table. Give bears an innate taunt, some damage immunity, and better health regen so they can fill the role of a tank pet even against PVE boss enemies for short periods of time, improve the healing power of moas so they function better as support pets as well as improve their boon spread on F2, make the porcine forage items go directly to the ranger’s hand in addition to dropping a second on the ground that only allies can pick up. That sort of thing.

I’d also make drakes able to rotate when channeling their F2, decrease the cast time for the short range drakes and increase the radius of their breath so they can actually hit their targets while also increasing the damage output to make them more bursty than their longer range brethren.

And I’d fix up the wyvern attacks so they can hit at least as reliably as the other pets, while emphasizing their use of the combo fields they generate more.

Then I’d completely redesign spirits so that they are more similar to the GW1 equivalents. Specifically I’d remove the annoying “On hit” proc concept and make the effects pulse on allies and enemies as they remain in the effected area.

For example:

Storm Spirit: Pulses Swiftness to allies. Whenever an enemy suffers from stun, daze, or is interrupted that enemy is struck by lightning, dealing burst damage.

Stone Spirit: Pulses Protection to allies. Whenever an enemy suffers from knockdown, launch, or immobilize the enemy gains bleeding stacks and weakness for a duration.

Effects that enhance certain skill effects allowing for a ranger and their team to build around that effect to maximize the benefit of the spirit. Something unique that no other profession offers. Drop Stone Spirit at mid and let your hammer warrior friend stack bleeds on an enemy that do damage based on the ranger’s condi damage for example.

Water Spirit could provide it’s healing whenever an ally receives healing, which would work very well with a healing druid. Doubling up on the druid’s own healing effects and letting the druid heal through it’s allies heals.

And because the spirits are persistent and immobile a ranger could drop a spirit and be contributing to point defense on on side of the map while fighting on the other.

> Ancient Seeds become Baseline Replaced with a Trait to turn CF from a healing form to a DPS form to give it value in DPS trees.
> Mechanic overall, Pet is tied to Beast Mastery, and make the Beast Mastery line more Pet focus’d in such of what its capable of. Make the base ranger mechanic Something more to do with the player, this would bring more difference then standardizing pets.
>Remake Sword Auto attacks, they’re annoying the animations really can prevent other animations and Shooting out randomly in a direction due to hitting someone in stealth or a Stealthing Thief as u hit once is obnoxious.
>Change Sublime Conversion into Something that Self heals or provides CC or both, its great in some niches but overall generally it turns into Ring a Ring a Roses.
>Remake Pet AI System to function alittle better then it currently does, its kinda irritating some of the things the pet pulls.
>Make Druidic Clarity baseline…. its so easily the top choice making the other traits useless accessible.
>change Spirits to mobile.
>Change Signet of Stone, Passive Defence sucks, take it out, Change it to i dunno, Condi Immunity for 6 seconds or something, the idea of passively nullifying all damage for a set timer is ridiculous tbh i dont see why any proffession is given this, it isnt that healthy as a whole to have.
>overhaul Shortbow, to become more effective, keep it as a Condi weapon ofcourse but allow it to hold its own power realistically.
>Overhaul Drakes, they’re too Slow and clunky they hold 0 purpose tbh.
>buff or overhaul traps to become something more useful and used.

i doubt everyone will agree with the changes i say, but they’re just ones i’d like to realistically see.

Removed my post because it was obnoxiously written.

Sharpening stone applying its bleed to all foes hit with an aoe strike at the cost of only 1 stone.

• Reduce the enormous cooldown for swapping a downed pet. 60 seconds is a ridiculous amount of time to be without a class mechanic. Another solution could be to make healing skills (any of them) rally the pet at low health, so that you can use the heal skill and immediately swap pets to avoid the cooldown increase.
• More ways to remove conditions from pets, change every ‘transfer conditions to pet’ into a straight removal instead. Also, make it easier to see what conditions our pets have.
• Give traps more utility (offensive and defensive) so that they’re at least somewhat comparable to dragonhunter traps.
• Make the shortbow an actual condition weapon: unconditional bleed on auto attack, some torment somewhere, and maybe one or two more additions. Rangers don’t have a true condition weapon at the moment, and that hurts.
• Fix the sword auto attack. Every other weapon skill in the game that animation locks you also gives evade frames, and there is a reason for that.

Get rid of the pet altogether. Although that will obviously never happen. But at least make it not terrible. ON THE VERY LEAST LET US KEEP OUR PETS STOWED IF WE SO CHOOSE. Also the post above mine has some very good points. And I’ll make his pets and swords points mine. The very reason I don’t use swords (Hell, I’d get rid of the animation locking altogether).

And something that at this rate will never happen, which is have the LOS problems fixed. It’s absolutely ludicrous that I can’t hit someone that’s on top of some stairs or some dude hiding behind a short wall even though the only part of them that I can’t see are his legs.

honestly I would not like to get completely rid of the pet, after all it does have its uses. But it should be reworked in order to address some of its faults, namely the lack of control on its skills, pathing issues and stat scaling towards gear.

I would make pets and pet mechanics an option. Do not kid yourselves, pet mechanics are beyond crappy. There are too many bugs in it to be effective. And pets are not “helpful”, they are “harmful” for us. Anet divided our dps and effectivity because of pets. A clever opponent can target your pet while you are running away and bounce her attacks from pet to you easily. (I still to this to hit rangers when I play ele)

There should be an option without pets.

I would also make sigil trait useful, change its place, add some flavor. Also rangers need a trait that give %25 speed. We are the bloody roamers, masters of the wild for turtle’s sake! We should be fast.

And weapons do need a little touch, like sword, axe main hand and shortbow.

But most important part is the glue eating, powder sniffing pets. Either change the mechanic ALTOGETHER and make it useful, or remove them completely.

ps: I can see how anet respects rangers when I look at my pet’s name and see " juvenile …." after all this time.

-Pets could use a rework. At the moment, in pvp, classes use maybe 4 pets total. Make the others relevant. Give each pet an advantage or a reason to use the other pets.

-CAF form -not lose its energy built up when you cancel the effect early. (it loses a huge chunk for cancelling early. Do necros lose the same?)

-Staff 4 VineSurge is slow, hard to use and has a long cd

-Spirits Make them not useless.

-Traps change traits to make them power based and throwable.

@alain.1659 there are plenty of ways to get speed. We are fast.
Travelers Rune,
or Natural Stride -Reduces the duration of movement-impairing conditions. Your movement speed is increased as long as you have none of these conditions.

or Resounding Timbre.png Resounding Timbre Shouts apply regeneration and swiftness to allies. Reduces recharge on shouts. (All Shouts)
Warhorn swiftness
Guard, Protect Me, Sicem
Signet of the Hunt
Even some Pets give swiftness
Sword 2=2 leaps
Gs 3 is a leap
Staff 4 a 1500 range blink

I want to throw my pets in the trash because they’re a waste of management. I also don’t want to now be forced to be a Druid because everyone makes me.

alain.1659:

Also rangers need a trait that give %25 speed. We are the bloody roamers, masters of the wild for turtle’s sake! We should be fast.

Natural Stride

Not to take away from your post tho.

I know that we are fast. But core ranger lacks it. Core ranger lacks many things though

alain.1659:

I know that we are fast. But core ranger lacks it. Core ranger lacks many things though

Did you choose to ignore everything I mentioned all the ways CORE rangers can get run speed?

What would I change? That we have our powers and abilities ‘balanced’ because of the whines and complaints of PvP players.

The day that PvE mob complains my pet and I hit it too hard is the day I listen to nonsense.

EnderzShadow.2506:

alain.1659:

I know that we are fast. But core ranger lacks it. Core ranger lacks many things though

Did you choose to ignore everything I mentioned all the ways CORE rangers can get run speed?

No I did not, but it seems you have missed my point. I was not talking about gaining speed, but having speed as a passive ability/talent. I can build perma speed with several builds, shouts, warhorn stacks + pack runes…etc But it is not my point. I misarably failed with my intention to use logic in this bloody game, and thinking that a forester should run faster " without investing anything, or using any skill" than other professions. Just like dnd barbarians/monks ability to move faster. Without skill usage.

But when I think about Anet’s attitude towards rangers, I feel that this will never happen. Or a fix on ranger skills, or pets, or sword. I know I should find a new game.

higher AA damage on GS,
Ancient Seeds to proc from traps,
many many more pets, including rares (like in wow)

A way for Zephyr’s Speed trait to proc without having to switch the current pet out. Let the pet swap go on cooldown without having to switch the pet.

niconori.7235:

A way for Zephyr’s Speed trait to proc without having to switch the current pet out. Let the pet swap go on cooldown without having to switch the pet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Change-Required-Pet-Buff-scale/

Some flavor ideas around pets that might be interesting …

Pet Corral
- ability to have a place to see and interact with all your pets in your home instance.
- each pet has it’s own stall.
- ability to train your pets at the corral to do tricks (sit, roll-over, play dead, dance, etc).
- ability to customize your pet’s appearance (see next section).

Pet Customization
- ability to adjust pet color and size.
- ability to equip pet special outfits and skins (mini-holo wings, mini-halo’s, mini-santa hats, footsteps, etc).
- ability to use a Mini as a pet skin (can use any mini you have unlocked in place of your pet – treated as an outfit).

Pet functionality
- ability to permanently stow pets (been asked for forever).
- ability to play with or feed your pet in the wild (doing so gives them a small floating hearts effect for a short while).
- ability to have your pet do tricks on it’s own when idle, or by command (learned at pet corral).

Tragic Positive.9356:

niconori.7235:

A way for Zephyr’s Speed trait to proc without having to switch the current pet out. Let the pet swap go on cooldown without having to switch the pet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Change-Required-Pet-Buff-scale/

Oh I saw your post it’s a great idea too.

I agree, but it’ll never happen. I can already hear the howling and whining from PvP players.