Guild Wars 2

As i see most of the classes are more or less balanced, Will Anet spend any time to improve the ranger?

this profession had a very bad skills and traits design from the beginning because what i’d like to attribute lack of shared vision between the balance team and the design team of what it’s the role of this class in game. It feels like a jigsaw puzzle were none of the pieces fit together.

Obviously the ranger needs the team to sit together and to talk about

• What is the rol of the ranger is this game? Is about positioning, the pets mechanics, long range attacks, some of those or all of them?
• Once we got the rol, how can we help to the class to feel and play that way?
• And once the class got the feels, how can we balance that with the other classes in game?

For example: Out of 6 main hand weapons, 4 are ranged but the ranger don’t have any means to make that weapons to work with all the projectile hate is in game or their damage is negligible.

Another example: Although the pet is integrated in the class mechanic we found that some very basic aspects of this mechanic are not integrated in the class by baseline, like could be boon sharing from the ranger to the pet, share clear conditions, evades or stunbreaks. The dirty bandfix that is to make the pets fully inmune to damage in PvE i wouldn’t consider a good example because it takes out the micromanage the pet from that game mode.

Why did they stopped after the three shouts rework? Is that difficult to change this class over any other in the game that make them to need 4 years to allow us to save our pet’s names?

anduriell.6280:

As i see most of the classes are more or less balanced, Will Anet spend any time to improve the ranger?

this profession had a very bad skills and traits design from the beginning because what i’d like to attribute lack of shared vision between the balance team and the design team of what it’s the role of this class in game. It feels like a jigsaw puzzle were none of the pieces fit together.

Obviously the ranger needs the team to sit together and to talk about

• What is the rol of the ranger is this game? Is about positioning, the pets mechanics, long range attacks, some of those or all of them?
• Once we got the rol, how can we help to the class to feel and play that way?
• And once the class got the feels, how can we balance that with the other classes in game?

For example: Out of 6 main hand weapons, 4 are ranged but the ranger don’t have any means to make that weapons to work with all the projectile hate is in game or their damage is negligible.

Another example: Although the pet is integrated in the class mechanic we found that some very basic aspects of this mechanic are not integrated in the class by baseline, like could be boon sharing from the ranger to the pet, share clear conditions, evades or stunbreaks. The dirty bandfix that is to make the pets fully inmune to damage in PvE i wouldn’t consider a good example because it takes out the micromanage the pet from that game mode.

Why did they stopped after the three shouts rework? Is that difficult to change this class over any other in the game that make them to need 4 years to allow us to save our pet’s names?

I’m the first to agree that ranger/druid needs work, but all professions need work.

Every profession and skill and weapon needs to be gone over, along with certain things like condition and stealth systems. Other games have done class overhauls and it’s about time Anet did the same because the original profession designs are just not cutting it, and we see this by the low quality playable roles outside of dps, low quality pvp (wvw and spvp) combat experiences and low quality raid designs.

It’s going to be difficult to get favorable change with so many playing and liking druid while people continue to complain about druid’s staff and traits being obnoxiously good in wvw.

I tend to disagree in the respect that wvw has never been a driving consideration for balance iterations. However rangers, when they do see favorable changes, generally settle in the same place simply because the other professions benefit from a higher level of power creep. This is mainly due to our profession mechanic being flat out broken and honestly at this stage in the game’s life I don’t believe the pet mechanic will ever be fixed.

Simply put we are where they want us to be.

With ROM doing pretty well in money pvp they won’t fix anything.

I think we’re in a good spot though, Druid keeps the plebs happy for the most part.

Core Ranger is a little worse off but we have a few builds that can really be killer in skirmish. Which is the point of the class whether most of us like it or not.

Justine.6351:

It’s going to be difficult to get favorable change with so many playing and liking druid while people continue to complain about druid’s staff and traits being obnoxiously good in wvw.

The same type of people that can’t differentiate the druid from the core ranger. The druid is completely fine, viable, balanced both ways for the most part. The core ranger however, some of the traits and parts of the pet mechainc and the viability of the core pets…

I’m starting to think Predator’s Instinct is some sort of a cruel joke. It most be the worst trait in the game at this point.

Agreed Druid is DIFFERENT than Ranger. That’s why it’s so problematic; identity issues unlike other classes’s elites like Warriors, Guardians. Imo Druid IS fine; mostly, I can even see a nerf sometime BUT they have to fix/change Ranger core stuff first. But all professions due to elites let’s be honest have issues I see no profession forum with no complaints. I mean any MMO no profession is perfect; but more classes have the fractured issues due to elites. Where literally it’s elite or bust. Even classes that don’t require the elite to be viable still having the elite overall is preferred. I think as a whole that needs changing but – that’s literally money for the game, HoT, elite class, they want you to get it or feel like it’s necessary. Until they add a 2nd elite or whatever, I think esp for Ranger, Druid is just what is gonna be there.

Unless you are talking about possible incoming downward adjustments to our sustain, then no. I wouldn’t expect anything positive. Druids are pretty much like the original Guardian in that the slightest positive adjustment usually makes them broke or over powered on the scale of 10.

My personal opinion is that we’ll continue to see tuning of the type Druid players don’t like with positive adjustments to everyone else. Especially since they do not seem to be interested in trying to fix or balance Ranger / Druid and Pets. So take the path of least resistance and leave us alone, adjust everyone else.

Crapgame.6519:

Unless you are talking about possible incoming downward adjustments to our sustain, then no. I wouldn’t expect anything positive. Druids are pretty much like the original Guardian in that the slightest positive adjustment usually makes them broke or over powered on the scale of 10.

My personal opinion is that we’ll continue to see tuning of the type Druid players don’t like with positive adjustments to everyone else. Especially since they do not seem to be interested in trying to fix or balance Ranger / Druid and Pets. So take the path of least resistance and leave us alone, adjust everyone else.

I think this is why they only released changes for a few pets this last go around. They can make minor changes that have no real impact on the class, tweak the pets a bit, and it all adds up to a lot of filler in the patch notes without actually doing anything positive.

@ Jim – Agreed.

Side note – did you transfer off ebay? Asura by any chance?

Yeah haven’t had an account on ebay for a couple months.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Yeah haven’t had an account on ebay for a couple months.

If you see Lawless smack her for me J/K – tell her Johnny wishes her well. You on a server we fighting with by any chance?

Oh – to op, sorry – derailed this for chit chat

Nope, my main account has been on Mag for quite a bit, I moved my alt to AR since LGN was on JQ. Might end up fighting you guys soon though, I think I’m going to leave my alt on AR and see where it rolls to with the next merger, JQ is in no way worth the gems it would cost to transfer there.

Crapgame.6519:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Yeah haven’t had an account on ebay for a couple months.

If you see Lawless smack her for me J/K – tell her Johnny wishes her well. You on a server we fighting with by any chance?

Oh – to op, sorry – derailed this for chit chat

No worries, the point of this post is to bring attention to the fact that devs desperately to look to this class and spend time fixing it, and i think it somehow did live up for it’s purpose. It’s not about QoL (like the pet’s names that already i got used to “juvenil whatever”) Ranger needs straight up some kind of rework in many spots.

All the classes needs this, especially vanilla ones, but mostly they can hold their spot. Ranger is the most needed of this because ranger had never ever an spot. Even the Druid is no more than a buffbot in raids, not even brought by their healing because is so clunky to use.

When the spec came up this is something i told in this forum was going to happen although most people here didn’t want to believe me. Now i foresee even the buffbot role in raids will eventually disappear in exchange for the tempest as the raid groups will need less of this kind of buffs and more DPS that may heal when needed to make the raids go faster.

Right now i only see the use of the ranger as Afk farmer bot with traps.

Major problem is pets. Before any other thing, devs must fix the bloody pets. Or give an alternate option.

Signets would also be cool. But pets.

anduriell.6280:

As i see most of the classes are more or less balanced, Will Anet spend any time to improve the ranger?

this profession had a very bad skills and traits design

I think that many of our traits have more substance than other classes. We have traits like remorseless and quick draw that completely change how you play the class. I am not saying there isnt issues with ours.

Skills again functionally most of them are amazing. Long bow really stands above all our other weapons. Staff really is a truly flexible weapon. Greatsword and Sword would be absolutely amazing weapons if the coefficients were there. They are not tho. Personally I’ve always felt that shortbow and axe are confused weapons. They don’t functionally work. They are both ranged weapons that require you to be point blank to get the most out of them, with no way to close the gap.

We also have a lot of skills that are weaker versions of other classes skills but on shorter cool downs. This creates this whole visage of your pressing a lot of buttons thinking your doing something but you really are not, your just getting by, and some other class can do the same damage as your perfect setup rotation with just auto attacks. In many scenarios it leads to why would I bring a ranger when I can bring X instead.

We have pets, which for the most part everything excluding smoke scale still cannot hit moving targets. Aftercast changes are what ever. They don’t mean anything. The highest pet dps is just under 2k. Yet our coefficients on our weapon skills are across the board 50% lower than other classes on similar weapons. Our pets are supposed to make up the difference, or at least be 30% of our damage, not less than 10% in best case scenarios. Something has to change; pets scaling or our scaling.

Druid, many people have different thoughts. Personally I like all of it but ca 1.

The main issue with druid/ranger is its ok at a lot of things. It does not stand out at anything other then heal/buffing and that’s a problem. You cannot spec for damage and get decent numbers. Most of our utility is overshadowed by better tools that have longer durations.