Guild Wars 2

5) Finally.. master all the skills. Weapons and utilities. Most of them have seemingly “unconventional uses” where they can be used in a way they weren’t designed for to gain an edge. Some people are familiar with, others not so much. Here’s some of the basics of the top of my head, as a melee ranger:

Distance closers: We all know the “Hit the esc key and reverse direction of the leap” trick on sword 2. Similarly with Lightning reflexes as well, if your opponent is fleeing you can use these distance creator skills as gap closers. Great for melee builds when used wisely.

Protect me: This skill is extremely underrated. If you build properly for it and use it wisely and with the right pets/buffs on the pets, it will rarely ever kill them. Also be advised that you do not have to use the pet to fully soak if you merely want to stun break with it. Hitting a pet commander after engaging protect me will break the skill, Ie. sending your pet to fight or hitting a skill. So if your pet is low hp, you just got stunned and want to fight back, hit protect me and then immediately hit a pet attack so your pet won’t soak damage.

Path of Scars, axe 4. “Stop shooting at where they are, but at where they will be!” Against skilled foes, this amazing weapon skill will be virtually nullified if you always have your foe targeted. Don’t be afraid to hit the esc key and throw it towards where they are heading. Get the projectile timing down right, and you can manage to land more pulls.

Greatsword 4 Block/Counter-attack: Many know this but for those that don’t, the counter attack can be extremely counter productive when you are fighting multiple foes as it roots you for pretty much a full second. If you are trying to escape multiple players/soak ranged damage with it, don’t use it when in close proximity to a charging warrior, he will trigger the effect and cause you to soak up all his ranged buddies’ damage.

Axe 5: Whirling Defense. This skill has much more to it than projectile reflect. Three words, boon share combo. With 15 in nature, this skill becomes extremely powerful with melee pets as your pet gains retaliation as well. If you’re running a bunker build, you can a new counter-mechanic to high-hit combo attacks. If you have enough defense(protection on roll is a good trait for this) hit axe 5 when a guardian uses his greatsword whirl on you, when mesmers use their sword flurry and you can double retaliate and reflect huge amounts back to them, in some cases upwards of 5k+.

Sword 1: Commonly known trick but always worth mentioning. Without a target, you can use the number 1 chain leap to create distances and aid escape.

All distance closers: When fighting melee against kiting players remember you can drop target and cut off their movements by aiming where they will be.

Guard: Guard does not merely exist for spamming regeneration and swiftness. I can’t tell you the amount of players I overtook with a drake F2 launched from stealth. (I use River and marsh drake for the range/poison.)

Know your heals. While Healing Spring is amazing, it’s extended cool down makes it weak against burst. If you’re already rolling with an EB equipped soldier shout/signet of renewal build+blind and poison removed on dodge you’re not really going to need the extra condition removal. Consider heal as one or Troll unguent in those cases, especially if you’re not running a s/x+gs build. If you’re running with the Vigor on heal trait, Heal as one becomes better by far as you potentially gain vigor much more frequently.

When fleeing multiple opponents: Keep in mind predictability can get you killed. Consider doing something unexpected now and then. What I mean is when you keep going in the same direction with distance creators, many people will be able to deal with that. Now and then, stop for a second, and use your sword 2 to fly, behind your opponents and escape in the opposite direction, behind them. Players with poor instincts will be slow in swapping their camera angles and easy to lose. It also looks completely kitten.

Edit: Great melee sa/gs combo using hydromancy sigils: When your pull a foe with path of scars, swap to GS the moment they’re at your feet and maul asap. The AoE chill will trigger, adding extra burst damage and almost guaranteeing the maul will make contact if they don’t use a distance creating stun breaker.

Final generic captain obvious suggestion: Make sure to use the most out of the combo fields your allies create. Leap in those smoke fields!

Disclaimer: opinions highly based on the build I play. Game experience may differ between rangers.

Ranger is most certainly viable as a roamer class, although we are far from the best at it. I’d say even the infamous kite-and-condi builds, as strong as they are rank maybe 4,, 3 tops in most consistently powerful roamer builds/classes. Still IMO it is by far the most fun class I’ve played in all the MMORPGS I’ve played, at least the current build I run.

1) So first thing, know your limits. You must accept that you will never be able to win some of the fights you see thief/mesmer roamers winning. Stealth when coupled with low cool down teleports is the strongest mechanics in the game in 1vx fights as it gives you the ability to completely control the positioning in a fight and brief unassailed periods to come up with quick plans of action. Yes, that is even far stronger than a single warrior chucking CC everywhere by far. So when you see thieves doing things that you simply cannot and boasting about winning 1v3s that you could not, do not get down about it. Everyone has things they can and cannot do.

2) Fight smarter, not harder. It’s easy as a solo roamer to get this pride where you want to take down a massive challenge (3-5 players at once) with all the merit going to you. Ie. you don’t want to be called “cheese build”, you don’t want people claiming you only won because you fought with camp npc backup, people laughing at you when you retreat from combat. Reality is, when your foes have to work hard for it, especially with a ranger due to the high amount of easy ranger lootbags, people can get anywhere from frustrated to downright infuriated. Sometimes they will party you to give you mad props for how far you brought a ranger, but a lot of the time those party invites are to kitten talk you and use every excuse to downgrade losing to a ranger, especially when they have the numbers advantage. Ignore the haters and use your surroundings as your edge. If you’re running a ranged kiter build, always consider wisely where you are moving your character to, get it down the instinct level of being in the best place possible.

3) Build up your instincts. I feel like there are other classes in GW2 that have a lot more time to think. More periods of invulnerability, bubble shields, stealth, time to think. With ranger I feel like every single split second counts in a fight, even on tanky bunker builds. In other words, there may be two kinds of skill out there: Skill where a player is specifically calculating timings on all their long cooldown burst skills and fighting almost mathematically. Another type of skill is like that of olympians where they practice a single physical art until they don’t even have to count down when they jump off a diving board in their head, their body almost automatically reacts like a machine. That second type of skill is what you need on the ranger class. As a ranger, you need fast reaction times to survive. And I don’t mean high speed uncoordinated APM like random button mashing, but doing the exact thing you need at the exact time you need it almost 100% of the time. It takes a lot of practice to get this class down since it’s so movement based. Harder still, your movements must be meaningful and not spontaneous panic.

4)Use your pet properly. If your pet is dying all the time, or at least dying without meeting some kind of high quality quota, no offense but you’re doing this class wrong no matter your build. As much as we hate the pet at times for legitimate reason in this phase of GW2, you must use it, you don’t have that choice to build independently of it. Your pet is a part of your character, and you must use it wisely. First and foremost, use pet swapping properly. There are so many crappy rangers out there that only swap pets to avoid them dying. All pets have a skill they will use almost immediately when called out, and if you swap immediately you can take advantage of that. For example with drake tail swipe. You could hit bash your foe, your drake does a tail swipe. Immediately swap to your other drake, and it will also tail swipe and if your opponent is locked down hard enough they may eat two tail swipes which combined with path of scars and/or maul is a huge burst amount. If possible, try to keep it attacking from behind your foes while they lunge at you. That will reduce the cleave damage it takes and enable it’s F2 skills to hit your opponents from their blind side. If you’re using a damaging F2, just as above always use it from behind your foes. Skilled players WILL watch your pet movements if it’s obvious, and they will try to for example, blink behind your drakes when f2 is charging to avoid it/teleport out of wolf howl range, etc. Don’t let your enemies see all your cards in play. Now, if they specifically try to kill your pet, don’t be afraid to expend a heal just to keep it alive. If you use your pets correctly they ARE WORTH IT.

AEFA.9035:

Detharos.3157:

I’d like to see pets evolve moving forward, and this idea of the ranger being “two controlled characters” being further expanded upon. Currently, pets die too easily in WvW and other game modes due to their lack of active defenses.

What I personally want to see in the future is ranger pets having their own endurance bar and their own player triggered evade that would work just as player’s do; interrupting their actions and skills and prioritizing the evade. This would make shared vigor actually meaningful. If it was considered OP for pets to have two evades, they could have one evade consume a whole bar of endurance. I also want to see all melee pets equipped with a distance closer skill (also player controlled) to help us fight against kiting players who can all too easily negate the majority of our melee pet’s damage. This same skill (be it a charge or a ground-target teleport) could also be used to bring the pet out of AoE circles faster.

The skill ceiling would go up, but the unwilling to adapt rangers wouldn’t get any weaker. Because honestly, I’ve seen half-bunker guardians whirling swords obliterate drakes with protection, regeneration, and signet of the wild. Pets would not become unkillable as far as I see it, and therefore would not be OP, we would simply have the ability to make it much more of a challenge for people chucking burst at us to do so.

Some good ideas there specially the gap closer for melee pets but I think the evade portion of your proposal would mixed it with skill que for pets? i dont really know how coding works but the way i understand it they prioritize certain actions and right now F2 is number 1? or so they said.

Yeah, I have similar concerns concerning the execution of such changes.. still I believe some form of active defense for pets should be feasible and is IMO a requirement. It’s only through such measures that players are able to survive some of the situations that pets currently cannot in any capacity. Currently the problem is that pets are treated in the same regard as another player character, but they do not have the same tools at their disposal that players due to aid survival. In exchange we have pet swaps, but honestly in many environments that simply is not fast enough. And while at this time there are other alternatives being suggested such as AoE and Cleave damage reduction for pets and such… personally, I’d rather just have the ability for skillful timing in active defenses to make the difference and simply having pets equipped with the tools to succeed would go a long way.

Another change I would love would be for “Guard” to instantly teleport the pet to the target circle location. Then we could use it as an evasive measure or a distance closer for our pet as well. Or if that could be added in to the nature’s voice trait and made to uniquely effect all shouts as an added bonus, it would be amazing.

I’d like to see pets evolve moving forward, and this idea of the ranger being “two controlled characters” being further expanded upon. Currently, pets die too easily in WvW and other game modes due to their lack of active defenses.

What I personally want to see in the future is ranger pets having their own endurance bar and their own player triggered evade that would work just as player’s do; interrupting their actions and skills and prioritizing the evade. This would make shared vigor actually meaningful. If it was considered OP for pets to have two evades, they could have one evade consume a whole bar of endurance. I also want to see all melee pets equipped with a distance closer skill (also player controlled) to help us fight against kiting players who can all too easily negate the majority of our melee pet’s damage. This same skill (be it a charge or a ground-target teleport) could also be used to bring the pet out of AoE circles faster.

The skill ceiling would go up, but the unwilling to adapt rangers wouldn’t get any weaker. Because honestly, I’ve seen half-bunker guardians whirling swords obliterate drakes with protection, regeneration, and signet of the wild. Pets would not become unkillable as far as I see it, and therefore would not be OP, we would simply have the ability to make it much more of a challenge for people chucking burst at us to do so.

Personally, I generally don’t roll with -condition duration food but rather mango pies.. and I’ve never found condition damage itself to be too over the top in WvW in most cases, solo roaming or small group roaming. The problem I have with the +40% duration food is the extensions it gives to soft CC and conditions that hinder my ability to counter attack and utilize active defenses; immobilize, chill and cripple and confusion. I’d think +40% duration would be totally fine if it was only applied to direct damaging conditions; bleed, burn, poison, torment. Hell maybe even throw confusion in there, because without the added extended soft CC support it wouldn’t be half as annoying to deal with.

Now, I’d much prefer if these “disabling conditions”; cripple, chill, immobilize and maybe hard CC stun duration were grouped together thrown into a different food to make players make a tougher choice between increasing damage or increasing control capability, only with a much smaller +duration.. probably along the lines of 15-20%.

Seriously, title says it all. This has been a long time complaint, but it’s time to stop ignoring it. Rangers and their pets simply do not need heals at the exact same time or the exact same rate. This current form does not add to strategical value it simply forces us to waste full hp heals to keep our pets alive and suffer for it. While yes, it does help to determine who the skilled rangers are, seen in the willingness by those to sacrifice heals for their pets.. this joint heal mechanic holds the class back in all PvP/WvW environments.

From the perspective of a ranger(admittedly more base hp than an ele), I’ve never found backstab in itself a big problem, but rather the nauseating amount of stealth and how well it functions combined with active defenses. That applies not just for thieves, but also for many popular mesmer builds. In certain scenarios, stealth durations feel just too high to counter effectively when playing a class that is not overloaded with AoE… and if we’re honest, some classes are simply built more around single target/target requiring skills than others.

I personally feel the best course of action would be a universal reduction of all stealth mechanics and buffing the affected classes’ visible fight mechanics. If a few seconds were shaved off thief stealth chains for example, they could be given more access to protection /limited block or other boons with a similar duration reflecting what was cut out of stealth. Then classes and builds that lack AoE CC could follow up effectively if played right with their single target skills, but thieves would be no less fearsome an opponent.

Best of luck with your new job Allie, and many thanks for the effort you put into improving the gaming experience and the relationship between the players and ArenaNet through consistent and realistic communication.

Surprised to see the odd complaint about this. Honestly speaking, it’s still an extremely potent rune set.

I’ve experienced 34 and think I know what it is. (Assuming I’m thinking of the same thing.)

There seem to be some areas in the ground in WvW maps where fall damage just randomly triggers. I don’t know if its due to some physics glitches with slight bumps/terrain textures, but I’ve definitely had areas where I ran over relatively smooth ground and got insta-gibbed/nearly killed/partially damaged by fall damage despite not falling at all. It may or may not have the character falling on his face animation depending on the intensity of the damage.

I also haven’t experienced it for a long time and have a hunch it was fixed.

I don’t exactly think 1500 range fighters should be given a 15k-20k death shot, or any capability for such, personally. Ranged fighting is too safe. Maybe a ranged, toned down version of maul could replace rapid fire, but it should be a little more limited in its ability to be buffed with first attack opener traits (I wouldn’t want to see it top 12-13k opener even on a berserker). The very short cooldown (Ie. if given one identical to maul) would then enable for consistent pressure in the 5k region. Again, 1500 range is just too safe, and a target should not be 95% dead before he can even close the distance or react. We already have an assassin style class, thank you very much. Also this ranged maul equivalent could be given a unique projectile graphic, maybe have spiritual bird attached to it like Swoop.

What the ranger needs for longbow in addition to that IMO is more distance creators, removal of the longbow AA limitations, and maybe some increased projectile speed and some kind of improvement for barrage.

As for distance creators Longbow number 3 for example could have backward leap effect similar to sword 2 in addition to its stealth, which would give longbow users a lot more repositioning utility while still retaining a level that melee players can fight against with wise play and timings.

Also all ranger stealth capabilities (which thankfully is not much) should be modified to include the pet (that is ranger side only, pet stealths should not stealth the ranger) so that pets can’t be used as a reference point to determine the location of a stealthed ranger.

Add a similar distance creator to shortbow only minus stealth and those lb/sb full ranged builds should be fine.

After that, the only issues that remain are fixing the pet and trait fixes. To the pet issue I say the usual: Improved AI if possible, but in a more immediately tangible change all melee pets need to be given at least one distance closer skill (this is not negotiable IMO, it is a literal necessity for melee pets to contribute when your enemies start kiting), improved projectile speed on ranged pets, and improved f2 responsiveness (which we are apparently going to receive soon anyways.)

As for traits, there are already plenty of good suggestions out there.

I also believe rangers should have more diverse condition removal options. For a man of the nature, we have no natural healing salves or anything that can remove specific conditions outside a roll poison and blind removal trait. We need something to guarantee a purge of immobilize in fitting with mobility being a strength of the class, and if possible we should have options to cure burning specifically. (OP Aloe Vera!)

Alex Behemoth.4952:

I’m new to Ranger and I main Mesmer. One problem that I faced is that of condition removal. I’m used to be able to remove conditions instantly and I think that is very important to survival as conditions can take your life out in an instant or make you incapable of fighting. So how do you guys deal with conditions.

My suggestion is to look for alternatives to using Healing Spring. While it offers great condition removal, its requirement of you to be relatively stationary can and will hinder you.

IMO the best counter-condition build for ranger is an empathetic bond equipped Regeneration Soldier rune shouts build and Heal as One(traited for vigor on heal). Trait for blind and poison removal on roll. Take Guard, Protect me and signet of the wild for utility skills and put on enough healing power to at least buff the signet to the 100 hp/s mark If this is in a WvW setting roll with mango pie for food. It’s cheap and incredibly effective. You also trait for reduced shout cooldown in beast mastery and you effectively gain a 12 second cooldown condition cleanse that offers permanent regeneration and swiftness when trained correctly in addition to the even more valuable effects of drastically buffing your pet’s survivability with pretty much permanent protection, regeneration and frequent stealth. If you roll a relatively tanky pet like drake, it enables you to easily match any condition user in 1v1 combat as long as you time your evades wisely and active defenses wisely. As long as you always swap before your pet dies it will easily tank well enough in most cases for you to make full 100% use of protect me and empathetic bond. Again, so long as you get all the timings right.

As for why heal on one, it’s much better at dealing with large burst damage dealt by physical damage than Troll Unguent when you do encounter it and much more well rounded when you are already equipped with ample regeneration and active defense. Every 20 seconds you can proc vigor which is vital to evasion rates.

This however, is in respect to small scale encounters. Just about any pet has serious challenges without using passive setting in zerg-scale combat.

Then you agree they need the nerf then. Because no one is asking to remove distance closers as you call them. We are asking they stop allowing them to be exploited as escape tools, which they were not intended to be.

Warriors are supposed to be weak to conditions, particularly chill, immobilize, and cripple. with one trait they can ignore them with their gap closers to escape using gap closers as escapes, which by definition is exploitative.

I agree that “Warrior distance closers” need a nerf, coglin. But ONLY for warriors especially considering the amount of areas they are vastly excelling at, and even then it only needs to be slight adjustments to distance coverage and frequency of use via cool down adjustments. Granted this is a warrior thread and that people say things with the warrior in mind is obvious , but some people did use wording in their posts that suggest they’d like to see a general across-the-board distance closer adjustment which means nerfs that affect all classes; these types of suggestions, I am adamantly opposed to. Nerfing every single distance closer across the board would hurt some classes, like ranger, that aren’t even in that great a place at the moment.

Hope that makes my stance clear.

I personally don’t see any need to remove distance closers or force the need of selected targets. That would just promote more lame kite-and-spam easy win tactics on the hands of ranged classes as you could only aim for where the class(being mobile) WAS, and not intercept to where they will be in the second, and in the first there would be no counter to simply taking a ranged beating every time someone kites and spams ranged attacks, outside wielding one of your own which some classes simply don’t shine in the same way. Lack of distance closers is one of the things that gimps ranger melee pets, applying that to all classes would be tasteless. It would dumb down fight mechanics needlessly and eliminate much of the need of CC variants like immobilize, stun, cripple.

Also, I think it’s completely fair to have escape capability on any class if you have traits/weapon sets to specialize in form them and maintain a mobility setup. You can say its about constantly panning your camera watching for incoming all you want but being caught up in a serious fight, but personally I think players should be able to have some real escape ability if some 5 man or massive zerg comes training in out of nowhere bloodthirsty for an easy meal, EVEN IF they are already engaged with a camp or player. Being in combat reduces your speed so there is already risk, and out of combat groups can so easily rush in and start chucking their ranged immobilize that catching someone with the mobility of say, a ranger, generally isn’t that difficult if they have any level of competence. And even despite that, such mobility at least for us comes at a COST. You do have to make sacrifices to make it work, and specific gear sets/traits for it.

Therein lies the problem with warriors, they have mobility in their mobility setup drastically surpassing the level of what is necessary for a CHANCE of survival enough so to turn it into a near guarantee of absolute survival. So probably the mobility needs to be dulled down a bit for warriors is all. But not by that much. I feel where a mobility ranger with gs/s and reduced sword cool down is at.. would be a good place for the warrior with mobility to be at. I’m running a tank heavy build but can only have a chance at escaping if I react extremely quickly, and one well timed immobilize can easily shut things down. I still die in retreat plenty of times. If the distance covered by them was brought down to about that level, it’d be much more manageable. Not OP at all.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I do agree. Their mobility is equal to Rangers & Thieves, who both are pinpointed “AGILITY” fighter. WvW should be about Scouts report, people support, some do special tasks, and warriors are kind of tanks who move slowly but they’re serious.
Slowing them down would make WWW feel mutch better at less rush.

It is time to make ALL classes needed for some kind of sieges. Just like in a BattleField game. Everyone is needed. If some messing from a fort wall, ask Rangers to neutralize them. Spotted the healers and commanders? Thieves will fulfill the contract.
Elementalists and Engineers are the two side of same coin, go ahead, let them do their job. Etc…

Their mobility is NOT equal to rangers. I have perma swiftness full GS/SA combo WITH reduced sword/gs cool downs and and can never, ever catch a mobility warrior that opts to flee from; this is with me properly utilizing all the leaps; sword 1 with no target, reverse sword 2 swap direction and forward with the second leap, swap and gs 3 swoop.. take it from me we can’t quite match that rate of movement warriors can bring to the table. We’re somewhat close and can indeed cover massive distances, but its a given a mobility warrior setup will always be ahead of us by that 800+ range or so and build that up more and more over time.

Any ranger with anything less than that setup won’t even cover half the distance these warriors put out.

And on a final note, don’t make me bring up the reaction timing and “instinct” arguments. There’s a reason that even with mere sharpened rocks and sticks in their hands as weapons, human being stood far above everything else and conquered the lands. Humans were prospering even while living in tents on the food chain for creatures like lions, tigers, crocodiles and all the most fearsome creatures that exist and even more fearsome ones that are no longer with us.. and not only did we survive and flourish, we outperformed in every way with a superior body design and intelligence and made these into our footstool, and even in some cases put THEM on the menu. And yet the intelligence and capacity of these AIs cannot even compare to those animals we conquered with the bare minimum of weaponry.

How do you think a class that is 30% based on such incapable functions can ever succeed when its pitted against characters controlled by the mightiest existence that currently roams the Earth? In PvP environment if we come up across a petless class with 30% invested in these AIs’ we’re toast before the fight begins with this handicap if our foe has any amount of fighting instinct. Just as someone else so fondly put it, human controlled characters can negate 85-100% of a pet’s damage output even when these are operated under the best rangers in the community.. by merely doing an L-step! Pathetic!

That’s the source of the hatred here. These AIs are severely overrated. Just imagine for example what a human would do to the giant zergfests if they controlled the boss characters that are currently managed by AI, with the same skillsets available? Nobody would even complete a single dungeon, let alone a Living World end boss. Can the AIs see some improvements and would it help the class? Sure. Can the class become powerful with other positive changes added in addition such? Sure. Will it be enough to compete on equal footing with the top tier players operating petless classes or classes with pets that are not “Always on” deadlocked? No, it will never do such.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ok guys, just wanted to clarify a few things.

Permastow is not impossible. I never meant to give that impression, so I apologize if I did. However, as far as priorities go for the Ranger, it is not high on the list. Why? Because it would require an entire re-balance of Ranger, but if we re-balanced, then the players that do play with the pet would be OP. See the dilemma there?

The reason why I latched onto the aspect idea was because it was an option that seemed we could maybe work around. Rather than having to rebalance the whole class, we’d just have to balance the aspects to be similar to what the pet does damage-wise. That seemed a little more viable.

Your choice of wording here is most surprising, Allie. With all due respect I’m sure you must know by now as well as I do that the majority of perma-stow suggestions don’t rotate around a mere tool to avoid aggro in dungeons but an alternate feasible playstyle. This usually revolves around the idea that ranger weapon skill damage coefficients are currently set 30% lower than every other classes to accomodate for the pet. People are not asking for the ability to put the pet away for good and lose their entire F-bar and that 30% damage basically remaining the same but without a pet, but rather they’re asking for the ability to not only put the pet away but upon the pet being stowed having ALL ranger weapon skill coefficients refunded to standard value reflecting damage potentials seen on other petless classes and an “Alternative” F-key set of skills thrown into the mix upon stow to make such play styles viable.

I hope that clears things up. In other words, pet builds could still play with the pet and remain the same. Less pet dependent builds could play without the pet and see drastic improvements while not becoming OP. Everybody happy. That’s the theory. Granted, there are some major programming challenges but with so many of the community playing rangers it should be a worthwhile investment with some promise of monetary returns following increased customer satisfaction, no? (After all when players are happy with their characters, they are much more set on purchasing enhancements through the Gem store.)

Now, I’m sorry for rearing away from the utility discussion you desire Allie, however it’s kind of warranted. What we of the ranger community feel you and the developers need you and the devs to understand is that in an PvP/WvW environment, it’s not fair to have a AI dependent class because no matter what tweaks are made, if we’re honest the AI WILL NEVER keep up with players. Are we clear with that?

Or, let me ask you: Can an AI controlled pet predict player movements based on past experiences and human patterns and plot an intercept course in the most efficient manner when a player starts kiting around while fighting you?

Can an AI hold back its AI controlled skills for the “perfect moment” while its stuck following presets and script conditions?

Can an AI controlled pet even avoid AoE damages like mines while simultaneously closing the distance to their opponent like players can? (Ie. dodging through mines TOWARD your foe).

Can an AI controlled pet activate its skills with considering to combos and synergistic with the player himself? Can it detect that upon that “Stunlock” is the time we want to unleash our bursts including the pet skills like drake’s tail swipe? Can moas run to us and unleash their heal in our most dire needs of it?

Let’s be honest Allie, rangers will always lagg behind in competitive environment outside the inclusion of skills that would be considered “OP” on other classes due completely to the pets. Enhance and augment those AIs all you want but they will still always lagg FAR behind the ranger and hold us back. AI development is still centuries behind what it needs to be if you want pets to contribute competitively in player vs player environments. These are not matters you can fix with more player control while still retaining AI, or adding on new skills. But also note in that department, the pets are VERY poorly equipped. Not a single melee pet even has one distance closer skill to use against kiting enemies.. but the sad reality is even if they did, they wouldn’t contribute enough.

It’s going to be hard to see balance in these areas because honestly, it’s complicated. For one issue, Condition cleansing options are hurting for some classes and builds yet overabundant for others. Just about every classes condition removal probably needs to be revisited and improved to be more customizable to their strengths/weaknesses in regards to new trait options.

Also, context, context, context. We must be careful when citing skills to prove points, because every class has its own synergetics and skill symbiosis that works differently in different situations and many who don’t main these classes are completely ignorant of them. The person who mentioned Emphathetic Bond for rangers failed to for example mention the risk of how it can effectively obliterate your pet and cripple your damage output. Despite that it is indeed a consistently powerful removal tool but only with the right pets (Ie. anything with drake survivability or higher which cuts out cats and canines.) and additional buffs to support the pet’s ability to soak the damage.. namely regeneration and signet presence, which must be built/traited for. Running with the ideal setup to support it in turn sees a potential reduction in CC/damage output and build options of the ranger. Similarily, other classes have their problems where they generally have to sacrifice something to gain the ideal cleansing, and it IS POSSIBLE to sacrifice too much with certain classes.

At any rate, for condition damage it actually needs better application/re-application options/improvements in Zerg-scale fights and boss fights to be more viable outside small-scale. It simply needs to be far less susceptible to mindless AoE cleanse spam. However at the same time they should not be buffed to such that individual level condition cleanse becomes any less effective especially when in many cases it’s lacking. Perhaps you could have “Plague” or “Infection” mechanics where certain conditions spread in clustered formations, but only up to a certain extent to avoid it becoming OP. These functionality improvements could be made universally available to all classes through traits so those who want to build zerg condi pressure could do so, but at a cost/sacrifice. Moving on, certainly PvE Bosses need to have condition limits removed or changed and so condition has its place in PvE even during high numbered events. Bosses can in turn retain resilience befitting their respective placements by being made to include more unique anti-condition and anti-physical mechanics similar to the Scarlet Holograms to add that complication factor to fights that we enjoy. (Only not permanent.. projectile reflect, condition reflect and physical reduction casted as boon skills instead of constantly active.) That would flavour up PvE a lot more if more bosses required you to do more than simply dodge attacks but watch your own attack sequence timing carefully as well.

As for survivability and how condition builds can get an arguably better ride out of it.. that’s its own can of worms. Since applied conditions continue to tick away even with the applier himself goes evade mode spamming his dodges and distance creators/blocks (until they are removed of course), it enables half and half and similar tanky-ish condi builds to retain survivability not quite befitting of their at times high damage output due to a lack of risk from the application process. This is also on account of many condition applying skills being extremely brief, 1 second or shorter animations whilst containing small stacks (1-3) that are easily built up with a few button mashes. There needs to be more risk and harder transition between survival methodology and reaping the benefits of massive condi stacking. The only true solution may be to limit the access of condition builds to active defense skills; skills that create distances, blinds, evading weapon skills, and skills that both evade and simultaneously build large distances. The risk in that though is that you could cut off access of builds that are more dependent on them to such survival utilities. In addition, condition builds obviously still need to retain a certain amount of these available through trait and utility sacrifices albeit maybe just a bit less of them in contrast to what they have now so we’d have to avoid overdoing it on the mobilility and active defense nerfs.

In summary, the whole issue is probably bigger than it should be because small things work together for big results. The direction to fix this is probably in the ways of a lot of small improvements and small nerfs, rather than a big miracle patch. It’s probably not going to see any quick fix.

I’m just curious if anyone else is having problems with immobilize, and desperately wants to see some change to it, or the condition system in general. What I mean is this: It’s no mystery that some classes and especially, some builds.. are extremely more reliant on roll evades to survive. They’re counting on those rolls to equate to say, the warrior’s ability to reduce the incoming damage and further mitigate with high passive regeneration, or say the ability of a thief to avoid attack sequences and reposition under a veil of invisibility, or the flurry of healing an elemantlist dishes out with water attunement. Hence said these classes’ at times excessive availability of Vigor boons and passive endurance regeneration, and a need for more of it than other classes. The point is, to have a mechanic that effectively disables dodge rolls with no direct counter in a game that’s supposedly all about skillful play and “Dodging threatening attacks/combos at the right time” and “Counter X with Y at the right time”, I find immobilize at times extremely imbalanced because it acts as a counter to the former while sidestepping the threat of the latter by being a condition.

Immobilize almost always has a layer of other conditions protecting it; burn, poison, cripple, chill, it seems the condition removal procs and active removal is always in the habit of removing something less threatening to me, and that is the problem. And even if it does succeed, it was hit or miss. Furthermore the active condition removal skills tend to not be instant in the same way stun breaks are which kind of defeats the purpose with immobilize if your character has to stick his arm in the air for 3/4 a second to purge a condition. In its current form, immobilize accomplishes the same job as stuns while avoiding counters like stun has in the way of “Stun breakers.” There is no “Immobilize breaker”. That’s my problem. I’d ideally have at least one method to guarantee the instant removal of an immobilize now and then. I’d like to see in the future direct counters added for immobilize, just as there are direct counters to stun. And these kinds of skills should be made more available to the classes where evading is more emphasized than others.

Also on a final note today, I want to emphasize an issue others have raised.. that pets are not able to receive food/tool buffs. While this is not a core issue, it is an annoying one for those of us invested in WvW/PvE. If this could be changed in the near future, it would be much appreciated.

How about making the ranger-pet damage distribution ratio player controlled, but through a toggle or via selecting a preset ratio (Ie. 90-10/80-20/70-30) chosen through an npc dialogue or book similar to trait reset books? I love the idea of reducing the role of the pet to what I desire, but I don’t think it’s fair to say for those who do find their identity in the pet to have to spec beastmastery to give it the stats they desire. Shouldn’t it be pretty easy to design such a mechanic to exist separately from trait investments? It would certainly make the ranger and his pet more unique. That way there could be trait freedom while still maintaining greater control of the role the pet plays.

At the same time let me outline that I believe it best to ultimately pursue an option that satisfies both those who desire pet-intensive play and those who desire more freedom from the pet. I’m all for fixing the pets being the top priority (and even dropped some suggestions for improving them) however it cannot be denied that there are players out there who would rather find their identity as a character in the utilities, heals and weapon play styles rather than the 24/7 presence of the pet. Surely we can come up with ideas that satisfy both parties without rearing away from the ideals of choice? But it’s no mystery that this is a sensitive issue for many. We’re dealing with class identity, how we define our play style.

I personally prefer a world where the ranger is defined by his attunement to nature specifically, but how that is lived out should be defined by the player. This can and is lived out in many different ways/possibilities in most games; in the ways of covering large distances quickly due to his understanding of the land, channeling the “spirits of the wild” to gain unique abilities, powerful nature-based healing spells, strong poisons, fast reflexes- both in attack/reactions and escape capability, accurate and deadly hunting skills (Be it bow or rifle or whatever), and the ability to include the presence of a pet. It’d be nice if ultimately we could highlight the areas we would define our style by for ourselves rather than having so much hard-built into the design for us.

Personally for me the one thing I could never lose as a ranger is the availability of high levels of mobility. These means more than just a passive 25% movement but specifically what we get from weapon skills like Swoop, and Monarch Leap. I’d love to see more options like that for bows. Ever since going with a melee setup I just can’t stand anything else, and the key problem is always the lack of skills like that. Sure, you could change weapon sets but by the time you encounter enemies, it’s too late to switch through the clunky inventory/equipment screen.. so I don’t even consider that an option or equivalent at all.

Blind Jimmy.1634:

I am really liking this Aspect idea, let’s keep brainstorming about it. Here are my random ideas:

What if the Aspect replaced the existing (and generally agreed problematic) F2 skill? What if it functioned more like an Engineer’s toolkit and replaced the player’s 1-5 skills until they either hit the weapon-swap key or actively used the pet again?

I am kind of envisioning a standard bearbow ranger sniping away, when his target (NPC or other player) gets annoyed and rushes the ranger thinking him an easy target once in melee range. The ranger suddenly merges with his bear and becomes much more formidable in melee having gained the bears hardiness as well as biting/swiping/mauling with increased attack power etc.

Obviously it needs to be balanced a bit because it’s kind of like giving rangers the ability to switch to additional weapons beyond their standard 2… and it’s possible encroaching too far into the Engineer’s toolkits mechanic, but it sounds like a lot of fun to me.

Yeah the idea really does sound fun to work with, huge room for variability which I think is something all classes need to see improved over time; more viable builds to play on = more fun.

I like where this idea of “Aspects” is going and just want to let everyone know I am in full support of it. I’m actually one of the bigger supporters of major improvements to pets; you can view my suggestions at increasing their accuracy in previous pages… yet I think the choice as to how critical the pets are to our character.. should be the players. I’d actually love to try a melee build that doesn’t have me and my pet stepping on eachother’s toes.. and unlike what some people think, it would be VERY different from warriors and thieves. Rangers are much lighter armored than warriors, relying completely on honed instinct and evasion.. giving a completely different feel. At the same time obviously despite high evasion we retain a unique identity from thieves by not relying on stealth mechanics. Pushing up our survivability with our evasion, instincts and nature-inspired quick regeneration, it shouldn’t be surprising that would be some rangers out there that are more of a “Beast-man” than “Man and beast” and able to swing a claymore with no less force than the warrior class. We should logically have options to choose a less pet dependent path, while still having options that rely on the pet that are also very powerful. It’s all about expanding horizons and build variability with “choice”.

I’d find it interesting from a roleplay perspective as well.

Aioros.4862:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ranger Design Philosophy: Please keep this in mind when posting feedback.
The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

So, a new profession concept to replace the old one from the main page. I think everyone got the hint of careful wording to exclude the “unparalleled archers” line. Can we take this as devs finally admitting we are not supposed to be a ranged profession?

On a more humorous note, if we cannot stow the pet permanently, can we have an option to stow the ranger? :P

The pet wouldn’t be a problem if it was equipped to contribute effectively to our damage output. Currently, rangers are mighty against any non-moving target but chumps when a player starts hitting their w,s,a,d keys as poor pet accuracy makes us only able to draw out 70% of our character strength. In addition to this there’s a myriad of threats that pets are not equipped to deal with: Entire area covering one-shot AoE circle attacks that certain bosses use, condition saturation due to empathetic bond, , pathing issues, pets not benefitting from our critical damage increases and others.

If this was changed, we’d be far more successful across the board. “Change the perception” as ArenaNet so fondly puts it. If we suggest viable ways to make the pets work properly, they wouldn’t have to be the weak point of the class.

For example, Empathetic Bond could be given another effect that purges all received conditions from the pet 10 seconds after they are received, allowing the ranger to still receive stress on his pet, but not so much that it simply gets obliterated the moment someone chucks multiple stacks of ticking death on us.

Pets could be made to receive an evade effect when we evade so bosses don’t nuke them so easily and pet’s don’t suicide charge into engineer-created minefields, bombs and grenades, etc. Obviously, ArenaNet WANTS the pets to be something that can be targeted and killed for PvP and WvW purposes, but they are far too conservative about how easily accomplished they want this to be. Treating our pets as though they were slightly more durable mesmer clones on a class that loses 30% damage capability across the board when our mechanic dies, for in general a period of 60 seconds.. is grossly unfair treatment, and not a realistic interpretation of the pet mechanic.

Suggested Game mode: WvW and SPvP

Pet attack accuracy improvements

Currently the pet’s are not properly equipped with the right tools to land their auto attacks, holding back the ranger class.

The changes I suggest are multi-faceted including all of the following changes added simultaneously, each to address its own unique issue in pet attacks:

1)Adding a fifth skill; ~10 second cooldown “Charge/Rush” skill added to all melee class pets as a distance closer utility. The range of this skill should be similar to the distance covered by GS3 “Swoop”. The skill itself should have virtually no damage output. Answers to: Distance creator skills and kiting tactics.

2)An instant cast short-range(150-ish-to 200) pounce/teleport effect added to the pet’s auto attack that drags the pet towards the center of the opponent’s character model before the attack animation initiates. Answers to: Problems with pets auto attack execution determinations. This would “override” its initiating from earliest point of attack so that it makes better use of its attack range.

3) A ~30% projectile speed increase in ranged pet auto attacks. Answers to: Slow ranged pet attack speed. The attacks are already highly telegraphed so I foresee no dodging issues with it at all.

4) All/more melee pets given default cleave to their auto attacks. Answers to: Accuracy issues with mobile targets sidestepping attacks.

Potential risks: Passively attacking “Fire and forget” condi bunker builds may appear to become overpowered with such changes. The answer to this: Reduce condition output to reflect the same “pet accomodation” our physical damage has seen to support the pet. Approximately -30% condition output across the board for rangers.

Stogzlol.4795:

runeblade.7514:

What I like about healing signet:
-It shows the warrior’s natural toughness that anet envisioned.

/gag

I doubt Anets vision was to make healing signet stupid strong. They just added a few other buffs at the same time reacting very poorly with a passive heal.

SO ANET, get rid of passive healing. <- Best solution

Seryi.7936:

Razor.6392:

Sorry but no. Warriors gaining a lot of ehp by doing NOTHING is not good design.

Warriors have too many layered passives that lead to their current state of being extremely strong while not having to put in as much effort.

I don’t think Healing Signet needs to be nerfed more then ArenaNet is already planning to do so. Rather, you should be advocating for less passive defense on traits that give such powerful benefits with absolutely no real input on part of the player, and no real downside (Cleansing Ire comes to mind).

Passive defenses in general shouldn’t be so widespread, but that’s another discussion entirely.

Well, you were on the right path until all the contradictions began after saying don’t nerf healing signet, but nerf these other no skill passives!

Bottom line, no one should have ‘passive’ healing, a.k.a. no user input for heal. I don’t even care for heal on hit signets. But they aren’t as easily abused as healing signet.

I don’t think Anets done with healing signet. 8% isn’t much and cleansing ire hasn’t been touched. Warriors will all still be running it.

8% off of 392 is about 31 HP/s
That brings Healing sig to 361 HP/s @ 10,830 HP/30 (only a 930 total health lost per 30/s)

All I can say is bring the nerf bat for round 2, because the problem isn’t over.

Complete balance in healing and active defense simply isn’t possible while maintaining class identity, it cannot coexist with class mechanics. The core idea is that other classes have different methods of survival and damage output that while delivered differently, in totality accomplish approximately the same thing. For example a ranger’s total combination of passive regeneration, moderate damage reduction and active defense via high evade frequency would in an ideal world amount to the same league of survivability as a thief’s stealthing/pulsing blinds/weapon evades or a warriors high passive durability/passive healing combination. Obviously some classes and builds shine more than others, which spells a need for number tweaking and greater accessibility to build variation being included more actively on ArenaNet’s part. A nerf to Healing signet may be in order, but completely trashing it or passive skills all together is not going to make combat any more exciting, believe it or not. This idea of everything having a counter would create insane predictability, which would in turn see a boring flavor to combat and eventual decline in popularity. There needs to be skills that cannot be directly countered, and hard to predict for PvP/WvW combat to be entertaining.. the numbers simply need to be toned in a way to make these skills viable/balanced, which is easily accomplish-able over time once the idea for what the individual classes and their builds represent gets completely understood by both the players and the developers.

I also notice a disturbing trend that these kind of ideas frustratingly enough tend to go hand in hand with a flow of suggestions for every kitten skill in the game outside auto attacks to be super-telegraphed high power burst skills with 2 second cast times. Not that I’m pointing the finger at you, but some people out there seem to think that outplaying someone needs to be quantified as reducing the Guild Wars 2 combat speed to a crawl and avoiding the exact same “threatening attack combos”. They want to get rid of every passive ability and make everything a matter of timed, coordinated button mashing. And the end result sounds like a crappy freedom-of-movement version of those corny old Final Fantasy games where “turn by turn” and “active combat” had a demon baby together for absolutely no reason. Even with a time limit punishment, “High Speed Chess” is still ultimately, Chess. While it’s personal opinion, I’ve no interest in High Speed Chess as it’s still slow paced in contrast the the combat pacing I enjoy. That includes certain abilities with no direct counter, some currently untraceable defensive mechanics, and attacks that are simply not ones you can predict and react to. If I could predict and react to everything, there would be no point in playing the game.

Chrispy.5641:

jcbroe.4329:

Just a heads up, Allie made a statement that the linked notes that people have started to discuss are fakes. Something that hasn’t been done in the past with notes that turned out to be true.

So it probably doesn’t have any merit to continue discussing them.

If we continue to discuss them, real or not, Anet might have to lock this thread, which I’m sure that none of us want to happen. Aside from that…

Taushullu.6180:

I’ve been working on some ranger trait suggestions for a while now and the leaked patchnotes (let them be real or not) wasn’t quite what I hoped for. I was planning on waiting and linking these suggestions to the ranger CDI thread, but as it got delayed (and delayed again), I’ll just link them here first. Check them out if you are interested!

Link to trait suggestions Warning: wall-of-text

Here’s a list of things I’ve tried to focus on with these suggestions:

• Compression of pet related traits.
• Reduction of “passive” traits & promotion of “active” traits.
• More impactful & supportive grandmaster traits.
• Changes to Opening Strike.
• Changes to condition removal.
• Synergy between traits.
• More fun!

I looked at it, and, I don’t like it. I automatically don’t like any suggestion that removes Nature’s Wrath as a trait.

They did make one good suggestion at least though, replacing crappy downed state quickness with pet gaining aegis on dodge roll. I’d much rather it just cause a flat out evade for the pet though.

CRrabbit.1284:

Already posted many times, here I post 1 more last time.
Use Siamoth as pet, keep feather/tuft in your hand.
The easiest way is simply stealth + back/flank maul, target will not see the animation until it land.
Of coz there is more combo related to stealth which can ensure you more and secured damage, use your imagination to create your own combo, it’s not that hard and it rocks in 1v1. Just remember — Siamoth is your best friend for GS maul build.

If the incoming patch note is true, enjoy.

Another good combo, if you land the pull is to have axe offhand out with your other set and pull them in with Path of Scars and quickly swap and maul. With hydromancy sigils firing off, I land maul just about every time with that combo.. although, landing the pull of path of scars on a moving target can actually be quite difficult. Although I’m not using a maul multiplier build, so s/a may not be viable for most gs users.

Bran.7425:

Rym.1469:

I believe patch notes which are bitter for us or kind of random are always fhe true ones.
However, after a year of “leaked patch notes” , I m almost 100% sure that ANet just either “post” these in data for dataminers or make it too easy for them to not dig out.
It’s some kind of weird-PTR/survey pool how people react to the changes.
These are not final, but a survey how people react.
IMO, they’d be much better just with setting some Test Servers, maybe PTR.

I can see it now, create a ranger on the PTR get the account achievement “Tested Your Patience” and if you warrior “Finally You’ve Made Our Job Easier”

And then when they add a “Convert to warrior” consumable for 3000 gems in the Gem Store, we can all enjoy the “Make the right choice” and “Mama’s golden child” achievements.

Bran.7425:

Detharos.3157:

Apparently Allie confirmed these notes were a fake, made by some usurper. Guard will thankfully remain as it should be.

Yes as guard the shout with a cast time is in such a good place right now.

Hey I’m all for more improvements like instant cast, but given the history and trends of how the ranger’s been handled… these days I’m just happy if we can avoid nerfs or more aquaman patches.

And like someone said earlier, it’s almost hard to believe it’s fake because randomly nerfing an already underwhelming skill sounds EXACTLY like something they would do.

Apparently Allie confirmed these notes were a fake, made by some usurper. Guard will thankfully remain as it should be.

So glad those were fake. I guess I jumped the gun with my frustrations, but nerfing a skill that there are currently zero problems with sounded.. kind of a typical of what I expect from ranger patches these days.

kyubi.3620:

Detharos.3157:

kyubi.3620:

guard wasnt designed as a mean for self buff you know… i guess they just caugh on to how often it is easy to spam for shout procs and decided to nerf it. However we could use a major dps upgrade on our weaponry and puting pierce in the same traitline as invis reproc to opening strike is outright silly. whos gunna get piercing Arrow to begin with? just remove that trait from the game and give bow shot the ability to pierce by default like enginer do or merge it with the eagle eye trait.

So your saying Guard and shouts only purpose in existing should to be buff 30%- of your character that is tied down by bad AI, predictable attacks and a whole variety of other problems, and needs a GRANDMASTER trait to even be worth using at all? And without proper cooldown effectiveness, returns to being just another useless pet skill?

All the while your character’s cast/animation execution time on them exposing you to interrupts and attacks?

If that’s what you think shouts should be, then you go enjoy that. Because I guarantee shouts will return to the gutter of disuse they were at before Nature’s Voice made them viable if those changes are real.

Attacking various ranger survivability methods is NOT the answer to toning down easy mode condi spam and run bunker builds. Nerfing condition damage output is a much better solution. The level of survivability we can achieve is NOT the problem and still far, far less to what you can achieve passively on a warrior or actively playing skillfully on a thief.

Also, you think those of us who use Guard are successful with it because of how it affects us? You are sorely mistaken. Its main use has and always will be strengthening the pet’s defenses, and now the frequency of that occurrence is down. If this the direction this company wants to go with rangers, then I have to demand that pets become optional.

Indeed the spell likely was designed that way. However i agree guard could use some buffing to compensate for the fact its only used as an ‘’condition clear and regeneration spam’’ utility. They need to make guard actualy worthwhile for the base purpose to begin with, like idk give pet retaliation and might stack gain for as long as he stand in his ’’guarded’’ area. Protect me simply put is a ‘’die for me’’ move and should be redesigned otherwise while Sic Em could use a increased attack speed buff to its effect. Btway i use Sic em in my build constantly despite the fact it is considered as ’’useless’’. Guard and protect me along with search and rescue however needs a beefing up. If SAR CD was reduced by 30 second and given to actualy work 100% of the time it would definitively become a must have in dungeon runs.

Ranger indeed should get some improved condition removal but i dont see it coming from our shouts.

Look, I’m sorry for the rude tone I’ve been leaking out. (Especially having read this quotation after I edited my post to make it specifically more rude, which I now regret but am too lazy to edit out/cover up.

I’m just frustrated at this point that my build, which isn’t even OP in any sense of the term and already one in a million may be getting a massive nerf on account of what I know are tweaks meant to take condi builds down a notch. I just wish ArenaNet would address the mechanics that those builds have exclusively, rather than the same mechanics that we power builds are able to benefit from but get far less mileage out of.

Well on one hand, these are not “Post-CDI changes” so if it’s lackluster, it’s to be expected.

This is just the kind of changes they come up with when the community is not given a say. We already knew the ranger class had no future if ArenaNet didn’t start listening to the ranger community, so our hopes were set on changes that may come in patches 3 months+ from now, rather than the next upcoming balance patch.

I do actually like the thought of Bark Skin buffs though, as its a direct competitor with Empathetic bond it NEEDS to be good. Still, how they perceived guard to be in need of a nerf is beyond me.

kyubi.3620:

guard wasnt designed as a mean for self buff you know… i guess they just caugh on to how often it is easy to spam for shout procs and decided to nerf it. However we could use a major dps upgrade on our weaponry and puting pierce in the same traitline as invis reproc to opening strike is outright silly. whos gunna get piercing Arrow to begin with? just remove that trait from the game and give bow shot the ability to pierce by default like enginer do or merge it with the eagle eye trait.

So your saying Guard and shouts only purpose in existing should to be buff 30%- of your character that is tied down by bad AI, predictable attacks and a whole variety of other problems, and needs a GRANDMASTER trait to even be worth using at all? And without proper cooldown effectiveness, returns to being just another useless pet skill?

All the while your character’s cast/animation execution time on them exposing you to interrupts and attacks?

If that’s what you think shouts should be, then you go enjoy that. Because I guarantee shouts will return to the gutter of disuse they were at before Nature’s Voice made them viable if those changes are real.

Attacking various ranger survivability methods is NOT the answer to toning down easy mode condi spam and run bunker builds. Nerfing condition damage output is a much better solution. The level of survivability we can achieve is NOT the problem and still far, far less to what you can achieve passively on a warrior or actively playing skillfully on a thief.

And I seriously think you know nothing of what makes many of us use guard. Stealth, Protection and regneration on our pet ups its survival rate drastically which is a godsend in a world filled with massive cleave damage, AoE spam that is to poor AI controlled pets unavoidable (Engineer mines and grenades). In other words, nobody rolled with Guard just for the regen and swiftness or soldier rune condi remove alone. If that was all it dead, it wouldn’t of been worth the skill slot. It was for how these things could be added to a utility that effectively increases pet survivability by leaps and bounds. With a reduction in the effectiveness of these added perks, Guard simply doesn’t become worth it anymore. There are other, better, ways to get regeneration and increased speed.. involving runes and trait combos.. and you only need 15 in nature to share that with your pet.

I can’t see how you fail to understand just how bad and uncalled for this change really is, if it’s true. These nerfs to guard if real effectively delete it as a skill. It will again no longer have a place in any ranger build. And for no reason, it was not overpowered to begin with.

jcbroe.4329:

The Spiral King.2483:

http://pastebin.com/dmACCzwx

Let’s hope that CDI works. Otherwise, we may be in trouble.

Oh wow…

Those are all really kind of not good, like, at all. It’s hard to believe the devs are even playing the same class as us if these are the types of changes they are considering.

Honestly, until the devs realize that power builds won’t be nearly as strong as they should be without the ability to remove protection (and regen and etc), then the only thing updates like this do is increase a players ability to kill trash mobs in PvE.

Until the devs realize that every single PvP and non-zerg build (if you are building intelligently/efficiently and not running glass. I consider glass a zerg build though so yeah) is going to run Empathic Bond for condition removal because the rest of the options for removal are ineffective, there won’t be any build diversity.

Kudos for them at least trying to improve pet responsiveness (I won’t believe it til I see it). Maybe now I won’t break my keyboard every time I want my pet to do their F2 skill exactly at the right moment I need them to (normally I have to F3 then F2, but that method isn’t as instantaneous as I need it to be).

Those types of notes (assuming they are accurate, which the ones I’ve seen usually are) are clear indicators of why we need the devs to actually read threads like these and interact with us, which hasn’t happened so far, so hopefully the CDI will force the necessary communication through.

I particularly enjoy the completely uncalled for Guard nerf and how it wrecks my build. kitten me for thinking out of the box trying to make a melee power build retain enough mobility, regen and condi removal and physical burst damage/CC to be viable at solo roaming right?

solrik.6028:

What the hell is your problem? These are pretty good changes! (except martial mastery)

Crossfire: This skill now correctly applies bleeding only when hitting from behind or from the side.
What??

Slash—Kick—Pounce: Improved functionality to allow players to cancel the skill chain with less difficulty.
There really wasn’t any problem with this if you turn off auto-attack.

“Guard”: This skill now has a recharge time of 25 seconds, up from 15 seconds.
There goes the awesome mobility. The skill should be remade into something else. I haven’t seen any ranger using this for it’s original effects. They always used it for regen and swiftness.

Skirmishing 5—Tail Wing: This trait now grants 9 seconds of swiftness, up from 5 seconds.
Good for kiting. Please do the same with furious grip!

Skirmishing IX—Honed Axes: This trait now reduces the recharge time on main hand axe skills by 20%.
Holy kitten this is awesome!

Wilderness Survival X—Martial Mastery: This trait no longer reduces recharge on greatsword and spear skills. This trait now grants 1 second of vigor when you successfully evade an attack with a sword skill.
If there isn’t any ICD, then it’s sweet. Otherwise, 1 sec vigor here and there won’t do much!

Wilderness Survival XII—Bark Skin: This trait now has a health threshold of 33%, up from 25%.
Empathic Bond is still superior. Except when you know who you will meet.

Beastmastery X—Ferocious Training: This new master tier trait replaces Vigorous Training. This trait now guarantees bird, moa and jellyfish pets to critically hit on every third hit.
This is so nice… I am serious. Every other Bird attack will crit. This trait basically increases Bird’s crit chance by 33%

On a side note, rangers were voted as the ones who need most help, but didn’t receive more fixes than other professions…. ???

Guard synergizes brilliantly in this condition infested environment when players equip themselves with 6 soldier runes, especially if they have Protect me or some other shout packed with it. BTW Some of us are* actually trying to make our pets work*, and supporting them with permanent protection and regeneration via guard plays into this.

And again, I guarantee this nerf was an account of the cheesy, crappy PvP builds rolling with spirit AA buff/condi spam kite tactics. For us POWER BUILDS, we have to expose ourselves to damage in order to do damage, we can’t just throw 10 stacks of cheese and go evade mode while our opponents get whittled down without us doing anything but kiting and stacking condi. In risk vs. reward philosphy, we still need a certain amount of survivability to not die to the hits we’re exposed to when we launch physical attack combos and chains.

I guess this is what I get for playing full melee on a class that is perceived to be a ranged one, but again this is a Travesty. No blinds, no stealth, no aegis. The more nerfs we see to range survivability on account of condi builds, the more physical melee ranger builds get destroyed.

Really hope these are fake.

I mean.. what? What… !? A guard nerf.. really? A GUARD NERF. 25 second cooldown? Are you serious? The skill becomes effectively 100% useless if you just change the cool down and do nothing to accommodate for that.

Cause what, you think Nature’s Voice perma regen and perma swiftness is op? Are you kidding me? Other classes already have perma swiftness, and there are other BETTER ways to get perma regen involving dwayna runes.. passively proccing regeneration for that matter which you don’t even have to waste cast time to call up. That is actually a superior method to Guard perma.

I was one of the first to roll the setup with soldier’s runes when they made it viable, so much for that. It was never even “OP” anyways, but I guess we need to see more bunker nerfs on account of easy crappy condi spewing builds. Why not just put a similar reduction on ranger condition damage as you did to physical weapon damage if the one-two bunker condi builds and their similarly boring wield so cheaply?

Or better yet, why not just delete the ranger pets, permanently keep us at -30% weapon skill damage, and nerf our condition output by the same amount if you want us to suck that bad, ArenaNet?

For the love of Tyria stop riding the condi builds balls in every kitten change you make to this class. S/GS melee power was already hard to do while retaining any level of survivability, and now you’re going to render it defunct at the rate you’re going.

The big pet changes I’m going to be gunning hardest for in this upcoming CDI discussion are massive improvements in attack accuracy. The first two are the primary changes I want to see.

“10 second cooldown Long-range distance closer skill added to all melee pets.” (Anti-kiting utility, just as any melee character has to have to succeed in this game.) Ie. a charge covering approximately the same range as the greatsword 3 swoop skill.

“200 unit range pounce/teleport effect added to the auto attack on melee pets to include a that pulls them into the closest range of the enemy character model center” (This while functioning as a partial distance closer is mainly to help quell the “Stop to attack at maximum range” issue that make the pets so susceptible to side-steps. You shouldn’t be able to dodge so many pet attacks just by means of holding down your a,d keys for half a second.) This attack would effectively pull them straight into absolute point blank range before their auto attack goes off, rather than having them auto attack from the maximum possible range.

I will hammering for BOTH to be added, not one or the other. Because again, they each answer to different issues. The first one enables pets to deal with the kiting eles, mesmers, (ironically rangers), bow spam warriors and other challenges they face where distance creator skills are frequently used in the same way any melee build character has skills to counter these. This is NOT overpowering them, it’s simply equipping them with the tools to do a job they are unfairly expected to accomplish at the current time.

The auto-attack pounce is because I perceive there will probably be some technical issues cited defending a potential inability to “make pets able to move and attack simultaneously”. If this is technically unfeasible with the animations system/massive AI overhaul that takes months… then this can be added in as little as one month and function as a reach around to enable melee pets to effectively land more hits.

The two others I want to see happen:

Cleaving effect added to ALL melee pets. I know some rangers are going to whine about this making the drake seem less special, but this is one of the effects that play a key role in making pets already highly telegraphed and predictable attacks less vulnerable to players mindlessly smash a,d keys while auto attacking. Other classes get a lot of mileage out of their auto attacks, in time we got ours. Since our pet plays a roll in that, it needs to contribute much more than it currently does.

Massive increase in projectile speed of all ranged pet’s attacks. These skills already have a very highly telegraphed build up, medium-slow projectile speed is simply unfeasible.

*Please note that I’d still like to see pets/pet to ranger damage ratios as an optional, rather than a forced decision if possible. These are merely suggestions to make pets viable and contribute the damage that they are already expected to contribute but fail to do so due to mechanical issues. *

I know I have a habit of rambling on and repeating things, so I can definitely cut a lot of my thoughts down to fit this limit. This suggestion sits well with me.

As a fellow ranger, I completely understand your pain, sorrow and frustration with how the pet and its lackluster AI holds back this class.

But hey, let’s at least look on the bright side. If AI development for such a major company progresses so slowly, then the human race won’t have to worry about anything like an “Sentient/Sapient AI Terminator Revolt” for another 1500 years.

They may pull that “Change people’s perception” thing again and in addition to a slight nerf to HS, add something like weapon evades and blinds to warriors and make them even more frustrating to fight.

But I think others have the right idea, it’s probably not that warriors need nerfs so much as other classes need buffs (and in cases like the ranger major class overhaul and major change) to be up to par. Skill should definitely be more rewarding vs. warriors though, and it’s hard to hit that mark when you can time a heal interrupt because it’s all passive.

Chrispy has a point about the buffs in a sense. Although TBH though, might on your pet isn’t that good; if its melee its liable to miss upwards of half its attacks on a moving target and even more if the target’s kiting.

For builds outside the realm of condi bunker spam builds, if you want to make your class work at all in the current game you need to build around supporting the pet with shared buffs. Namely protection and passive healing(Regeneration, Signet of the Wild or whatever else.)

That said, even thinking out of the box it is completely true the pet still holds you back with its low hit ratios. Even with permanent swiftness it just can’t keep up with moving targets, and kiting memers/pistol thieves/other rangers/engineers(especially engineers with their AoE spam) is a nightmare for the ill-equipped mentally inept pet with no distance closers. And frankly, that you have to trait spec just to share protection or regeneration with a TARGETABLE, KILLABLE pet that your own phyical damage is nerfed in order to support… is horrible design. It’s like having one of your own arms operate separate of your body. Protection, Regeneration, Aegis.. defensive buffs should be shared with your pet by default.

Hopefully rangers will finally get the attention to the areas they truly desperately need it; it’s core class mechanic. If it continues to be so unreliable, then it will simply have to be removed to make this class close to equally viable in all aspects of the game across all builds. Despite going against my own instinct in this, I have high hopes now. It’s no mystery our only ranger representative has not been a part of the balance team for quite some time. With a united agreement from all rangers and even with support of countless players maining other classes, the developers should have no choice but to face the reality before them, assuming they listen to the community, in this upcoming CDI discussion. That the broken part of this class is core and basic fundamentals, and not a matter of mere utility and trait tweaks. The class needs attention in every area, and simultaneously and not bandaid fixes.

EverythingXen.1835:

Detharos.3157:

snip

I hope you saved those posts somewhere, because this isn’t the thread they’re going to read.

Noted. In the very least, I can copy past them from this thread when the time comes.

4) Healing Skills

Currently ranger healing skills desperately lack added procs/and effects/traitable added affects that other classes have access to. Pretty much all but one of our heals is merely raw healing with a different delivery method. Please consider adding such perks to our heals as well. Things like Might, Aegis, “Evades next received attack”, active condi removal(Ie. cures poison and burn), Swiftness provided upon heal execution.

5) Traits Many ranger traits are functioning counter-productively due awkward placement or lack of benefits. Most of these you already will have heard about in the ranger suggestion thread you flagged, but here are some of my key suggestions:

Signet of the Beastmaster. As I mentioned earlier, affecting the ranger should be the basic necessity and affecting the pet should be the “traited icing on the cake”, not the opposite as it currently is.

Hide in Plain Sight This trait has lost its way, its purpose. If you are unable to move to receive its benefit, then you are simply liable to be killed by warriors mindlessly swinging at the air where they know you are anyways.

3) Utility Skill Improvements:

a) Signets

Some signets are lacking, in passive effect and active effect. At the same time let us address the problem with Signet of the beastmaster, and that namely it has the order wrong in terms of what’s viable.

Trait: Signet of the Beastmaster to be changed to include pet. All pet actives changed to effect ranger by default instead.

Signet of the Wild

Passive: I feel like the starting point of the healing is just too low. 58-60 is not enough to make the skill justifiable for most builds. The starting should be about 100 hp/second. The healing power scaling is fine however given its passive nature, assuming the starting point were to be buffed.

Active: In accordance with signet of beastmaster tweaks: changed to buff ranger by default. Pet inclusion to be traited for with the same trait.

Signet of Stone

Active: In accordance with signet of beastmaster tweaks: changed to buff ranger by default. Pet inclusion to be traited for with the same trait.

Signet of the Hunt: In accordance with signet of beastmaster tweaks: changed to buff ranger by default. Pet inclusion to be traited for with the same trait.

Shouts

Currently, shouts are super lackluster unless you trait for Nature’s Voice and roll with 2 shouts minimum with soldier runes on your gear for condi removal. This needs to change. Shouts need to see changes include that also offer some amount of buffing to the ranger from the get-go. Maybe a small amount of might, fury vigor or whatever depending on the shout.

Search and Rescue Out of all shouts, I feel this one falls the farthest behind. It still seems to have a cooldown reflecting the days when pets could revive dead players. With it only working on downed, I feel like 20 seconds need to be shaved off for this to be viable in any circumstance, and for some additional functions to be added for it to help protect the pet when it is attempting to heal a downed player. Also the fact that it will effectively only do it for one player makes it a moot skill in most settings where you get plenty of actual players healing downed party members.

Traps

As I recall, certain ArenaNet community members already hinted at the possibility of new combo fields to certain traps that lack them. I feel that this is a good direction for traps, and is the right venue to explore for these utilities.

Survival

Sharpening stones

With such over-saturation in condition, and the presence on traps and traits and certain weapon skills, I think it’d be nice if Sharpening Stones was changed to add a physical damage buff to the next 5 attacks instead of bleed.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

We tallied your votes, and Ranger came out on top. As such, we will have our first profession CDI focused on areas you would like to see the Ranger evolve in.

Thanks for voting!

I’m sure everyone is tired of it being harped about, but the key point you’re going to see just about every ranger going on about is the pet. The reason that this happens despite the frustrations of constantly seeing the same complaints is that we’ve been dealing with problematic AI and pets that are not equipped the utilities they need to succeed for over a year now. The time for drastic change has come.

Suggestions:

1)Major Pet Changes: Reducing forced Pet dependency:

First and foremost, until a ranger pet AI overhaul enables pets to attack while moving simultaneously and fire f2s properly and effectively at all times (Unless otherwise interrupted by a skill or forcefully by the ranger himself), then we need options to hold us over until that becomes a reality. Let’s be honest, I know in the past ArenaNet has been dead set on the pet being an integral part of the ranger class. However, that mechanic is simply not working. Asking us too endure with it for over a year is simply unfair treatment. This must get attention ASAP.

Why are pets a problem?

a)They cannot attack and move simultaneously, therefore melee pets cannot land upwards of 50-70% of their auto attacks against a quickly moving target. This is a huge problem in PvP and WvW when you’re fighting kiting players.

b)F2 cast times, inefficient execution on some f2s(Porcine), lack of control of heal and buff skills that certain pets have. (Moas)

Popular suggestions to help rangers out in the pets department include:

a) Making ranger pet optional; enabling rangers to have petless builds where weapon damage is scaled to normal standards

b) Reducing the pet damage ratio and enabling the use of pets as more of a utility. (Ie. for their stuns or additional pressure/buffs/healing.). Anywhere between Ranger 85%/Pet 15% to Ranger 95%/Pet 5% could see rangers no longer being held back by their pet. This could be introduced in a number of ways, as a ratio you effect by traiting into beastmaster, as a choice you get to make and change any time with a ranger specific npc like the skill book holders, something you choose during character creation (and are able to change throughout the game).

2) Enabling the pet.

a) Distance closer skill added to melee pets.

Even if there are difficulties making pets work as intended, we can better equip them to do the job. All melee builds and classes have some manner of distance closer skill to catch moving targets. All melee pets should be given a fifth skill similar to Rush, Pounce, Swoop on a relatively low cooldown (10 seconds or so) to enable them to keep up.

b) Make at least one ranged pet that is viable as a damage option.

Currently, devourers have nothing to make them appealing over spiders. They have around the same damage overall. One skill slot is wasted on an evade that is honestly a waste of precious pet dps time when executed, the F2s are too weak in contrast to melee pet f2s. (Compare Lashtail devourer F2 to drake f2, and look at the cast time. 4 seconds? It’s a joke.)

c) All critical pet buff/heals skills need to be made player controlled. In other words, the Moa heal, and similar pet skills that affect the player. The pet AI just uses them too haphazardly. We need to be in control of these types of skills to make the pets that have them viable.

Strengths:

*Consistent mobility when the right weapons are used.

*Bunker specs are very, very durable when played skillfully and not subject to excessive stun and immobilize.

*Decent escape abilities (Probably next below thief and mobility warrior, unfortunately significantly below them.)

*Condition builds allow for some very annoying fire-and-forget tactics that involve focusing completely on your evasive movement and dodging while you cheese your opponents to death. These builds are very, powerful and very easy to play.

*Very good physical damage output if built the right way.

*Very effective at kiting

Weaknesses:

*Power builds super weak against moving targets: Pet plays too critical a roll in them and will simply not be able to hit these targets as often as it needs to. Even if you pet swap and use F2 with perfect timing, the missed out auto attacks that your pet throws due to having to stop moving to attack will hurt your overall damage output in critical ways making dealing with any mobile build an uphill battle if you’re not packing dual spiders. (Which have damage output too low to justify with non-berserker power builds to begin with.)

*Ranger Active Defense(Weapon evades) is predictable meaning this class hits a lower damage to survivability ratio than other classes if it doesn’t build itself around kiting. These evades are easily countered by timing your stuns and immobilize, and skilled players have an easy time dealing with them after enough practice. You may have a lot between rolls and weapon evades combined, but good luck taking advantage of those rolls when you are immobilized. Then again, speaking as a melee ranger here, who has to be in proximity to deal damage. So again, kiting builds won’t have as big an issue with this. Ideally there’d be more in the way of pulsing blind AoEs and such to vary up survivability.

*Immobilize. This probably goes for any class, but when you are getting ganged up on by 3+ players, you’ll quickly realize how often it is the immobilize that ends you. This is probably the case for most classes, but classes that are built to be more dependent on evasion to survive with very few periods where your position is hidden due to stealth, you get mauled down like trash to a good immobilize and burst combo. And unfortunately, a lot of the stun-train builds out there alternate stun with at least one immobilize.

*Slow pet F2 responsiveness and occasional misfires from conflicting command scripts.

*Class is easily traceable in escape attempts. Little stealth and less mobility than warriors means you are easily hunted down when trying to get away from the 5+ people or more that WILL come after you when you are successful in solo roaming. You will have to know the terrain and how to work it better than your foes to escape.

*Many good survival skills and utilities harm the pet. The pet is a crucial part of the ranger, and for us to simply pass our conditions and damage to the pet that contributes approximately 30% of our damage output is bad design. Unfortunately these skills and traits are pretty much necessary for proper survival, so pets with low hp dying (namely cats) becomes a reality far too quickly for the ranger class.

*Heal is shared with pet means if your pet is low hp but you are not, you’re risking yourself by putting yourself on heal cooldown just to keep it alive.

Not to sound rude but even as part of the “anime crowd” as some call it, I wouldn’t rush to hype up any Asian-made MMORPG. Use extreme caution with those games. I’ve played quite a few in my time, and while they do on occasion offer some very intriguing gameplay, more often than not they are loaded with systems that don’t favor active positioning (Ie. auto-aim/semi-auto-aim, ‘left click and hit f-keys to kill’ mechanics that automatically move/attack skills that automatically teleport your character to your target when you hit your skill key, etc. ), “Buy to Win” cash shops that enable people to effectively spent $1000 dollars and become unparalleled in PvP systems by virtue of gear alone, PvP systems that often (and unnecessarily so) involve the possibility of dropping gear unless otherwise mitigated with cash shop items that prevent gear drops (cash cow pvp systems as I call them) and an extremely massive over-saturation of “Cash shop gamble items/Fortune packs” (Probably due to the popularity of the “luck/fate=luck” based theme prevalent in many Asian cultures and religions) These items often cost a good margin to merely offer a 0.03% chance or so at some really good items and a almost 45% chance of some piece of crap. (Which while you can say isn’t a problem because it’s of the player’s on volition to buy them, as you should already know from the problems in Vegas.. gambling addiction can become an equally present problem when such enticements are added in too great numbers with too much extreme rewards into MMORPGS. People love to be set on the thought and thrill of the possibility of gaining great fortune at little cost, and are all to easily enticed into throwing vast amounts of money at the wallet-devouring machine that is cash shop gamble mechanics.)

In other words, if ArenaNet ever takes a page out of the book of such MMOs, ONLY look at the combat system, assuming it lives up to its hype. For the love of God though keep the combat systems that are free of line of sight issues, massive amounts of gambling enticements, buy to win cash shop gear enhancements, moon obliterating obnoxious Final Fantasy like over the top “super skills”, laughable gear drop cash cowing pvp setups.. where they belong, in the MMO gutter. If anyone said a game with such systems was better than Guild Wars 2, I’d puke in my mouth. I mean no offense by this post to those coming from such culture, however again… I’ve played a lot of such MMORPGs, and these are issues that classically plague them. I’m by nature hesitant with them now, because so many of them boast youtube promos that look like skilled combat but in-game fail to live up to expectations.

Pretty much every good suggestion can be found here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/first