Guild Wars 2

The two types of pets I’d recommend for a leveling ranger are bears and drakes. Bears are a crapload tankier, but drakes while drakes are less tanky than bears, that’s a hell of a high bar and aside from legendary mobs you have no business fighting, the drake will take hits just as well. They also have much better damage.

Yeah, a Break Bar like that would need a lot of fine tuning. Like in pvp, if another player could just do one CC and take your pet out of the fight for several seconds, it solves nothing, but if it can eat the effects of two, maybe two and a half CCs, suddenly it’s good without being potentially destabilizing in either direction.

I expect that’s something that would come up in beta testing. Given that break bar amounts are a sliding scale rather than a “you have it or you don’t” effect, it could actually be really focused on and refined if done right.

What animals Would Work as Large Pets?:
There’s actually a wealth of options for this question that already exist, both ingame and in lore. Among the creatures that aren’t already in the game, there’s hydras (they live in the crystal desert), junundu wurms (in the deserts of Elona, most prominently the Desolation), kraken (the jade sea and coasts surrounding Tyria), and Hippos.

Among the creatures that are already in game, we can look at any of the larger Saurians (though most notably Stoneheads and Arrowheads), Giant Devourers (Which charr already often tame as living siege weapons, and would serve as a ranged option), Drake Broodmothers, Karka, Giant Sharks, and Dire Boars. Any of these could easily have new spawn locations for juvenile ones added to existing areas the game with relatively little fanfare, though obviously their use would still be restricted to someone with the Tamer specialization.

What Niche would this Fill?:
I can think of two big things that’d really make a pet like this work. The first is DPS and CC; GW2 as a game is very focused, meta-wise, on the idea that you need to kill targets quickly, and a set of pets like this would easily facilitate that if given proper due – pets already deal fine damage, they just actually need to hit their targets, which we addressed earlier. CC is also something that a lot of pets lack entirely and in fact many builds outright ignore CC effects for the sake of damage.

The second niche they could apply is that of tanking, allowing the tamer (or their party, in group content) to act without fear of reprisal as long as the pet is actually kept alive. this could be particularly good for raids, as it could give Rangers an additional niche they could fill, though making the pets too powerful defensively would be a problem in its own right. A balance would have to be struck, but at least since players in pvp already complain about pets being high damage, a defensive buff would at least sidestep that issue.

In Conclusion:
I believe large pets not only work for the sorts of content we’re looking at now and want in the future, but that it’s also doable from a dev perspective, and would give players something they want (a pet rework) even if it’s locked behind the purchase of an expansion. Something to think about, and, if we’re lucky, maybe see something of the sort in the future.

Let me just preface this before someone complains about large pets; the ones we can tame (juveniles) don’t have to be full size, and the Devs don’t want pets to overwhelm player models. The Juvenile Bristleback is a perfect example of a pet that’s far, far smaller in juvenile form than normal. Additionally, if you’re worried about players being lost in the press of large bodies, that’s already a thing – a max size male norn with a set of bat or feathered wings, for instance, is humongrous and can overlap with other players, and recently I saw a minimum height asura minionmancer with the name “Bone Fiend” blending in with his minions. Both sides of this are already present in the game.

Now that that’s out of the way, lets get to the meat of this.

The Basics:
We’re never going to see a pet rework, or if we are it’s in such a far flung future we may as well not even consider it right now. Because of this, it’s important to note that this sort of pet would need to be made available with an elite specialization, as those are already meant to change the profession mechanic in some way, either minimally (mesmer getting another shatter) or majorly (Death Shroud turning into Reaper Shroud). This is something I’d consider a major change.

Larger pets, by dint of being, well, larger, make sense to be somewhat more powerful, but there has to be a way to balance that, and remarkably it’s actually a fairly simple solution. If you’re using one of these special sort of pets, it could take up both of your pet slots. In this case, the F4 changes from a pet swap to a heal and condition cleanse, and if the pet goes down, the F4 could go on a cooldown to resurrect the pet that takes about 20-30 seconds, giving you downtime between having your more powerful pet available if you let it get downed, which does happen.

I won’t get too deep into the rest of the idea of an elite spec for this. This thread is meant to be focused on the pet, rather the potential elite spec, which we’ll simply call “Tamer” for now as a matter of convenience.

How Powerful Should It Be?:
This is an interesting question that I’ve given a fair amount of thought to, and I think I have a pretty decent answer for it. We’d need the single large pet to be somewhere between 20% and 30% stronger than a basic pet stat-wise, but in the case of a beast mastery elite spec focused on this sort of thing we’d also have to eliminate an inherent problem with the way pets work currently; Kiting. A large part of their issue comes from the fact that pets have to be standing still to attack, which completely destroys the DPS they’re capable of, and that’s a problem. The way to fix this is actually two or three points, one which has been asked for several times by the community, and twp that make sense for large animals

The first is the idea of lunging attacks. This has been requested several times for the community due to the way player pets have to stop to attack enemies, which severely hampers their DPS is a ton of different scnarios. Recent pets (the Bristleback due to ranged action and Smokescale due to teleports) obviate this need but it hasn’t gotten any better for others. New pets means an opportunity to make this problem go away, at least for them.

The second part is cleaving. Currently unique to drakes, the idea of large creatures affecting several targets at once is not a difficult one to comprehend, and would make these pets more viable in horde scenarios, which is something that the current pet selection has a lot of trouble with outside of the aforementioned drakes.

The third part is the defiance bar, commonly referred to as a “break” bar. Adding this to a pet would mean that it can’t be slowed, immobilized, blinded, or a few other things as those get turned into defiance bar damage instead, and when they get through the pet would be stunned for several seconds.

Even just two out of three of these would solve the issue handily enough.

I swapped from Zerk to Vipers and I’m not even well kitted out yet, but I’m doing a ton more damage overall while being just as survivable. I’d definitely say it’s worth the swap.

the trick with the smokescale and bristleback, the only reason they’re used so much in pvp, is because you can’t kite them – one has ranged attacls and the other is a teleporter. That’s it – the reason they’re used isn’t because they’re efficient, it’s because they’re the only ones that are effective at doing anything at all.

I’ve actually started taking a Carrion Devourer into fractals. Not because devourers are good (they’re thoroughly mediocre) but because with expertise training their F2 actually does decent damage and creates a poison field I can combo off of, since I’m a viper ranger. Nobody has even commented on it, except to compliment the name I gave my pet once. I think that says a lot about the state of pets overall.

Dadnir.5038:

After many years, ranger pets have learned how to remember their own names, and you’ll no longer be required to rename a pet when you switch them out! In addition to some baseline improvements, our goal has been to improve base pet abilities during this update. With that said, there are definitely more pet changes that we’re looking forward to implementing in the future.

Quote from previous balance patch 26 july 2016.

Yeah at this pace, maybe in 20 years…

I’m not holding out hope for sweeping pet changes outside of an elite spec, personally. however, if they ARE looking into this, it’d be a good opportunity to do a beast mastery focused elite spec (sort of how Druid is a nature magic focused one).

I’ve been around since about two months after launch, and a real beast mastery setup is all I’ve wanted out of ranger since the beginning. And hopefully they don’t foist the ranger off on someone again.

Funnily enough, the balance changes we got today actually made my character better. As someone who despises playing druid, I’ve been playing a condition ranger in mid level fractals for a while, and I’ve honestly gotten stronger, not weaker, with this latest run of things because the abilities of the shortbow were enhanced.

I’m pretty sure this was a response to the fact that basically everybody ran druid because basic ranger sucks kitten .

Nefarius.9702:

^ this. I have an image coming up of a desert based ranger with sand/ dusttraps and a pretty swift playing style with MH dagger. Would really enjoy that!

Alright, stupid idea, but hear me out on this one. What if the ranger elite spec got Deception skills?

Not necessarily shadowstepping like a thief would, but Deceptions are characterized by their evasive maneuvers and stealth effects, which fits the Ranger as a “skirmisher” class to a T. A bit of stealth, some evasions, and you’re good. Condition damage on the mainhand dagger (maybe bleeding and torment with a little poison and weakness) since we lack a condition damage melee weapon right now.

Trick is, nothing here is really that spectacular. nothing that really sells the elite spec. Because every elite spec has at least one BIG selling point and one or two things you’re meh about. For instance, Berserker’s meh thing was torch, but rage skills and primal burst are awesome. Daredevil’s physical skills are pretty meh, but the staff weapon and the third dodge are extremely useful to that class. Reaper got Reaper Shroud, and while the greatsword isn’t bad most people don’t care at all about the shouts it got.

so what’s the big flashy selling point for this one? Yeah, deception skills would be useful, but I can’t see them being more amazing than most of what Rangers already have. Besides spirits, Rangers already have a ton of good utility skills, and a one-handed weapon is unlikely to get the attention of players. so… the change has to be to the profession mechanic. Buffs to the pet perhaps? I still like my idea of a more powerful pet taking up both slots, with the F4 being a heal and condi cleanse rather than swap. It could work, and would make it more of a beast mastery and skirmishing setup, rather than just one or the other. Given the fact that mounts were in the leak (wonder how likely that is) there’s even a chance that if the rangers gets large pets, they could even mount up on them, but I find that rather unlikely.

I suspect it’s just because they have no reason not to. Doesn’t really need much more. Plus, warriors would feel shafted if they didn’t get a full weapon set.

Ohoni.6057:

I do think that if they make a long range DPS spec, part of the core kit should be something that reduces the Thief’s mobility in exchange for better ability to stand and fight. Even a “melee” Sniper could benefit from that if played right, but a highly mobile ranged Sniper could be too problematic.

That’s something I’d actually go for, myself.; it’s actually something I simply assumed would be a thing if they did do a sniper rifle setup.

For the auto-attack, I’m thinking you could still move, sure, but the other skills would likely have high grade effects in exchange for making you stop moving while the attack animation goes off – risky business for a thief, but potentially valuable if the attacks are good enough. It fits the nature of the thief due to the high-risk, high-reward sort of playstyle the class encourages, just in a different form than typical. It’d encourage thinking about your position and where would be safe to set down for a moment to take action. I actually really like the sound of that.

Nike.2631:

Stealth before the shot isn’t the issue. Its that Thief is hands down the SINGLE BEST DISSENGAGE PROFESSION IN THE GAME.

The only thing remotely keeping them in balance is that for the most part they have to dive in to make kills. That’s the risk for the substantial reward. Eliminate that risk, and you deserve NO rewards.

Good players already do that. A little while ago when i was playing my necromancer, a viper/minions build that normally completely destroys thieves (and the majority of other classes), I got stomped on all match by a D/P thief that would blitz me and my teammates before moving on. Sometimes I’d see her coming and get my death shroud up, and then she’d still kill me because Death Shroud doesn’t offer enough protection against the kind of madness a great thief is capable of. Then, of course, there’s the recent Magnum Opus 2, which shows what a thief is capable of with the right build, quick fingers, and picking your fights.

The trick here is that thieves are a skill based class. Bad thieves are cannon fodder at best, and at worst they’re entirely useless cretins who actually help the enemy team by dying at bad times. good thieves are hard to pin down, capable of serious disruption, and will tear you apart if you don’t lock them down and deny their burst. Great thieves just blitz everyone they come across, potentially even in team fights if they’re using a more AoE focused weapon such as staff.

The only change giving thieves access to a powerful slow shot rifle would do is bring up the skill floor so that the crappy thieves can contribute in a meaningful way because they can stay far enough out not to risk getting slaughtered and do enough damage to make a kill now and then. That, to me, is a good thing.

Vukorep.3081:

From a strong warrior, to a raging zerker that sets everything on fire….to a dagger swinging..antimagic….something?

And how is the new espec suposed to get 2 weapon (slots)?

It’s not from zerker to antimagic, it’s from warrior to antimagic. The distinction is important, because you’re one, not the other; something a lot of players seem to forget. “Elite” things in general are designed to be mutually exclusive, and elite specs are no different.

I don’t see why getting dual daggers is an issue. Lots of classes can dual wield a particular weapon type. The core of it is that Warrior would simply be getting daggers made available; that they can use them in both hands is secondary.

I’m with Martin here. there seems to be a weird thing where half the detractors are going “but it’d suck!” while the others are going “but it’d be too powerful!”

Why? Why would it be either? I can’t really see them making a weapon we won’t be happy to use, unless it turns into another druid staff, which seems unlikely.

I personally like to run Transfusion when I’m pugging like that. Lets me pull their dumb butts out of the fire, and blood magic is good when you’re rolling with minions.

Electro.4173:

But I already like most of the Ranger weapons we currently have, so the new profession mechanics matter to me more than the weapon anyway, I suppose.

Like I’ve said before, the Devs have told us before (a while before HoT launched) that classes getting lackluster weapons as part of their elite spec are the ones looking at wider changes to their profession mechanics and utilities.

Personally, I really hope this means that we’ll finally be getting a beast mastery setup that actually makes the pet worthwhile. Pets are currently doing about 20% or less of the overall damage a ranger deals (sometimes as low as 5%) and this is a problem because Rangers are balanced against the idea that their pet is doing 40% of their damage, according to the devs. It’s the reason why DPS tests for all the professions showed that Ranger is waaaaay below par, sharing space at the bottom with the likes of the mesmer. Where most classes are putting out 22k+ DPS, A well made druid is putting out 15k, or even as low as 13k. That hurts.

Getting a spec that does better with pets, though, would be an opportunity to make said pets awesome. It’s a longshot, but it could result in some really nice changes, and improve the overall power of the class.

I don’t see why it’d be a problem. Rapid attack burst is actually very different from single-shot burst, and enemies deal with it in different ways. Additionally, I somehow doubt we’d be looking at another weapon capable of stacking might up to the nines like dual pistol is capable of.

The issue with pets is that they don’t keep up in any way. A recent look at pet DPS shows that pets, assuming they aren’t buffed to the nines, don’t break 1000 DPS. this is an issue because we as a class, even without any buffs at all, can hit WELL beyond that number, and when buffed up can hit over 10k DPS.

Except, the problem is, other classes are doing 20k+ at that point. The pet, buffed up, can only provide us about 3k DPS for DPs focused pets such as the tiger, so we’re WAY behind the curve.

our pet is supposed to be providing 40% of our DPS, right? Well, at the moment, it’s only providing about 20%. At most. And that’s against stationary targets; given the lack of hit tracking pets have, it’s safe to say they’re kinda screwed for that too if the target is moving at all.

Now, I do believe that at some point, we’ll see thief with greatsword. The idea of a (relatively) lightly armored warrior pushing into combat with a large blade is nice.

However, I don’t believe it’ll be any time in the near future. That’s a very “Samurai” ideal, which means it’ll only come around around the time we go to Cantha, or deal with a lot of Canthan stuff. Before then, it feels like it’d be out of place.

I’d much prefer rifle as most people think is going to happen.

One thing that irks me is people keep saying that 1200 range is the sensible max, and that’s not true. It’s the max for most classes yeah, like Warrior and guardian, but the actual max range for weapon skills is the ranger’s Longbow, at 1500. If we’re going for a “long range sniper” setup, I really, REALLY don’t see why we wouldn’t have the actual maximum ranger, which is 1500, given sniper rifles are renowned for their ability to hit targets accurately and hard at massive distances.

As for team support, yeah, that’s something thief consistently lacks. What about something similar to what Warrior does? Any time a thief grants a boon to themselves (maybe fury) they also grant it to allies.

You know, Rek, it’s surprising how people still dismiss minionmancers like this. I’ve actually run my condition/minions build up to diamond in pvp Where players realistically should know how to beat it every time and yet do not. In fact, it often takes two or three people to take me down.

The thing is, minionmancer characters are actually good. They never used to be, but conditions plus minions lets you deal as much more more damage than standard character builds while being much tankier; the only issue that your critters will sometimes die, which is unavoidable. Carrion and Vipers both work for this, with one being better fort tanking while the other is better for damage.

Dadnir.5038:

anduriell.6280:

Who in their sane mind would go to HoT with a carrion devourer as pets.. WHO!!!!

I’d do it… to be honest I have done it… the carrion devourer is one of my favourit pet… Sorry…

Devourers are one of the best animals in Tyria, being some unholy combination of prawn, scorpion, and scarab. They unfortunately are also one of the worst pets, but they’re great animals. It’s why I’m hoping we eventually get access to siege devourers. Because then they have a chance to be actually decent

maddoctor.2738:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

So the rumor is that thief is getting the rifle for their elite spec. Anyone else NOT excited about this?

Where can I read this rumor?

We’ve got a three week old “leak” by someone who claimed to be an Anet dev here

The veracity of the claims is suspect, but this individual did predict the Eureka mace before it was released, so shrug

What are you talking about, Yannir? I followed HoT’s development and leaks to the community, and of those three you mentioned, the only one that’s correct is “ele with sword”. DH was even clearly set up to use the bow from early art that came out of Braham using Eir’s bow long before the Dragon Hunter was revealed.

Dadnir.5038:

No more “shroud” like skill on ranger please. We’ve got Druid, it’s beyond clunky and let’s just say that i’m already fed up of this transformation thingy. So no! no shapeshifter ever again on ranger!

Yeah, agreed. I hated it the first time, i don’t want them to try and rehash it. Leave transformations and shrouds to the necromancers and stuff.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

wasn’t the whole concept of bows made to fire off those projectlies further? [and with more energy while at it]

Yeah, that’s right. It’s also why crossbows (for hunting) and guns are used today rather than bows; they’re weapons that will pierce through more things than other classes of weapon.

what’s even worse is the shortbow was lowered to its current range because it was on par with the longbow before. Since Longbow got upped to 1800 range, I see no reason why we can’t have the 1200 shortbow back.

LughLongArm.5460:

Cool ideas on commands and mechanic, but don’t you think that pet commands and and super pet, will be more suitable for a “beastmaster” spec with 2h hammer or 2h axe(if they ever make one, its very requested by players).

Bunny Thumper would definitely be a lot of fun, yeah. But while you say that, and I do agree that hard CC would let you hold down enemies for your pet to eat them, I personally feel that we have that covered on a minor level by the greatsword (#4 for counterattack, and #5 for pommel bash). We lack a condition based mainhand weapon entirely, and between cripple, immobilize, and chill, conditions can hold down enemies almost as well as CC can.

Oh man, I miss the Bunny Thumper setup. That would actually be pretty cool; it’s one of the three ranger builds I ran back in GW1 (the others being a barrage pet build, and my best one being a petmaster).

I could see hammers making a comeback, but given we already have a hard hitting two-handed melee weapon in the greatsword, I’d personally prefer a condition weapon. The only weapons we could get that fill that role are pistol, dagger mainhand, sword offhand, scepter, mace, and focus. Scepter, mace, and focus don’t really fit the ranger concept going forward I imagine (Particularly if we’re stepping away from nature magic), So that leaves pistol, dagger, and sword.

Still, if they do the beast master setup I’m hoping for, the idea of playing around with hammer to sort of hold down your target while your pet eats them has a lot of appeal. Ranger could use a lot more hard CCs.

LughLongArm.5460:

1)Druid spec was about defense, makes sense will get offensive spec this time.
2)druid got staff which is a range weapon, makes sense will get melee weapon this time.
3)Druid got staff which is a 2H weapon(5 skills), makes sense will get main/off-hand weapon this time/
]4)Dual Wielder is one of the ranger’s classic D&D feats( i think..)

I don’t really think they were giving thought to making it reverse from the Druid elite spec, else they wouldn’t be making another offensive thief or warrior elite spec. Still, I think you’re on the money for a few things; notably we’re overdue for some form of augmentation to our offensive abilities, and you’re right that dual wielding is a classic DnD ranger thing (Thanks for that, D’rizzt…).

The trick about weapon selection is that there isn’t actually a ton of things they can go with for the Ranger. I’ve said my piece on firearms in another thread, so I won’t harp on about that here, but they’re available. Other than that, classic skirmishing weapons seem like the best bet. Thing is, we already have all the good skirmishing weapons (save for shield), so simply proliferating one of our existing ones to the main hand makes a lot of sense, and dagger is one of the few off-hands we have that some classes can use in the main hand, meaning they don’t have to install any new tech to give us double warhorns or whatever. I’m sure plenty of people will be happy about that.

LughLongArm.5460:

I think this spec will feature main hand dagger/off-hand sword with stances as utilities(animal stances), not sure about mechanic, perhaps it will be a special move based on you and your pet preforming together based on pet type.

What do you think?

Stances were one of the biggest Ranger things back in GW1, interestingly enough. Serpent’s quickness, for instance, could be an elite stance that gives us alacrity, and there’s a number of other choices that are all quite good.

As for the pet, I’ve had my suspicions (and hopes) set on something else for a while; rather than having two pets you swap between (which always felt kinda wrong to me), my idea is that there could be a special subset of pet that take up both slots, but are of comparably higher stat values, about 170% or so of a basic pet. These could be juvenile versions of siege devourers, hydras, junundu wurms, drake broodmothers, stoneheads, arrowheads, spider queens, and dire boars. Just swap the F2 to healing and condition cleansing your pet and it works perfectly; the only real difference is that your pet can take part in a pitched melee without risking getting plastered by some warrior breathing on it too hard, it does respectable damage, and if it gets downed you can’t swap it out; gotta wait for your heal to come off cooldown. Most of those critters I mentioned actually live in the Crystal Desert and Elona, meaning if that’s where we’re going this is a good opportunity for them to become available.

As for the stances, I could very easily see said stances applying to the pet as well. that’s assuming, though, that we don’t get something else; Commands. Before anybody gets twisted up about “Commands” being too similar to Shouts, I’ll just point you to Rage skills and physical skills; very very similar concept that the warrior got. The idea behind commands is that they apply some kind of benefit to your pet instead of to you. for instance, Predatory Bond would make a good heal skill; your pet heals you whenever it hits. Bestial Mauling for additional damage and Daze. Brutal Strike, which makes your pet deal more damage – double the bonus damage if the target is below 50% HP. Call of Protection or Otyugh’s Cry to make the pet gain protection and become unblockable for a short while. Scavenger’s Strike, which makes the pet deal more damage for every condition on your target.

As far as the actual skills the dagger mainhand would have, i like to imagine it being a pure condition weapon. Pure condi is something that rangers actually lack somewhat, as far as weapon sets go; the only one we have for that is shortbow. I could see weakness, bleed, and poison all being readily available on a dagger mainhand.

Being able to heal your pet does not constitute it benefiting from druid, Lazze. The only trait in Druid that affects the pet is the one that makes you and the pet burst heals out whenever you use a heal skill, and that’s not so much “affects the pet” as it is “oh yeah, and there’s a pet here too”. Staff doesn’t have any skills that affect what the pet does, and the glyphs don’t either. The Pet was completely unchanged by druid so that they could tack on something new.

The worst part about druid to me is that it’s not even useful outside of raids. In open world PvE, the pet doesn’t take enough damage to justify popping over into a pure healer setup to heal it. In dungeons, a good team has self-sufficient individual members. In Fractals, there’s a bit of use on the very high end, but by that point, once again, your party should be largely self sufficient. Druid was built for raids, which are only played by a fraction of the people in the game at best. the only other place that Druid is useful is PvP, where it’s used as a bunker setup; can’t even handle burst because it’s a bunker that relies on being able to heal damage it takes rather than negating damage in the first place.

Druid does not help the pet. It does not make us a better pet class. It makes us a healer that has a pet. For the pet class, and with the idea that our profession mechanic should have been changed with the elite spec (which is what the Devs said they’re supposed to do), we should have seen some change, and we didn’t.

I play ranger because I want to be a beast master, but that’s not really a thing that’s been made available in the game.

People keep acting like Dual Daggers would be dumb, but I don’t really follow that logic., and it fits in with the theme of a “spellbreaker”

Think about this; what were daggers primarily used for on medieval battlefields? they weren’t used by so called “rogues”, since those tried to stay the hell away from a battlefield in the first place, instead preferring thievery or assassination if killing was their jam. In the hands of an actual soldier, a dagger is used for disruption, debilitating enemies by wounding them in the places where their armor had gaps, and parrying. They were primarily used when enemies negated their conventional weapons, such as lances or spears (which makes sense for a mage tossing fireballs at you from fifty feet away when you’re normally a swordsman)

Consider that in this context for a moment. Disrupting people definitely works for a “spellbreaker” sort of thing as it would mean interrupting the casting of spells and other abilities. Debilitating wounds, and ignoring armor. I’m willing to bet the idea behind this is less quick attacks and more disrupting the target, bleeding them out, and then keeping them from doing anything about it with medium or slow, high impact CC effects that require you to get up-close and personal, which is what the warrior does best. Hell, it’ll likely even have a distance closer or two.

So, I like it. It looks really interesting to me.

Unfortunately, thief is in a bit of a poor position when it comes to pvp, primarily because of its lack of staying power and ranged attacks. What it’s good for at the moment is moving quickly across the map and capturing and contesting points that the enemy team isn’t dealing with.

In stronghold, it can be a bit more useful, as quickly getting around the battlefield in that mode is vital for supply running and the like. But, really, that’s it; you are the high mobility character that can help teammates finish off enemies, and that’s really it.

Now, there are some high-end thieves that can duel well, but thief and mesmer are the two highest skill requirement classes in the game; if you’re bad, you’ll be a terrible thief. If you’re great, you’ll be an amazing thief. So, realistically, the only advice I can give you is either try to improve your skill (I certainly can’t do so, having tried) or wait for the next round of elite specializations to come out for you to play with and see if it changes your combat paradigm.

to those saying 1200 range, that’s actually pretty low, given that rangers can hit out to about 1800. that’d make 1500 or even 1800 a good range for a marksman type setup. something to keep in mind.

As for weapon skills, what about a charge mechanic? you hold down a button and for every half second that passes, you spend one initiative on the skill. Final damage is based on how many initiative were spent.

Cygnus.6903:

How would thief ever forfeit that, though? Our class mechanic, our utilities, hell, even a lot of weapon skills will always remain slippery. Unless they add something like ‘with this elite you can no longer shadowstep’, thieves will Always be slippery. That’s without even talking about stealth. For sure, the rifle won’t get an option to enter stealth by itself. If it does, the damage will be pathetic to compensate.

I actually like the idea of rifle for thief.

I do too. One easy way to do it as well, which is already in the game (though was dropped, but the files are still there) is camouflage. It’s stealth that lasts a long time so long as you don’t move; I could see, like, a #4 skill or a particular trait do that, maybe giving you up to 15 seconds of camouflage for an ambush.

I wouldn’t even call Druid power creep, really – it has a buffs that it can’t really make use of itself making it only good for a raid or dungeon group, and in dungeons/fractals it’s often better to just take another damager. When solo, or in other content than raids, playing druid I always feel like it simply would have been better if I didn’t bother, and to this point I haven’t been proven wrong.

If we got really powerful but slow moving pets coupled with a slight weakening of the ranger themselves, I could see the issue being alleviated completely, since in pvp you could just target the player to take out the pet, and in PvE you’d be at about the same level. I doubt it’ll happen because there’s rarely anybody willing to minmax like that, but I’d personally love the hell out of it. I play Ranger because i want to be a beast master; If I wanted to be a marksman, I’d be playing pistol thief (and then probably upgrade to rifle whenever that comes out for that class) or Dragon Hunter for the bow and traps. What i got out of the Ranger instead is a class that spreads itself too thin; the ranger needs to have the ability to focus on a particular thing, and if that was the case it’d cease to be an issue.

Yeah, I’m hoping that’s a thing soon.

They actually have an opportunity for a full beast mastery setup if people are right and we’re going to the Crystal Desert, as Siege Devourers, Junundu Worms, and Hydras will all be in the desert. Then, of course, Drake Broodmothers are also available, as are megalodons.

speaking of massive animals such as hydras, siege devourers, and potentially even Junundu Worms, I could see a special type of pet being a thing. I actually even mentioned the idea in another thread.

Basically, they’d be limited to this particular elite spec, and that’s largely fine, but essentially, they’d have 170% or so the stats for a standard pet (which should put them on slightly above the DPS that a ranger currently has, based on the DPS charts that someone ran, as well as make them quite tanky) in exchange for not having a second pet; the F4 becomes a heal and condition cleanse for your current pet, or a revival if they’re down. Give it a defiance bar and you’re set.

Pretty simple, and it’d make for a very effective tanking and damage spec in things like raids or dungeons, as a creature that large would likely have cleaving or AoE attacks, and be tough enough to tank several enemies at once, including bosses.

stale.9785:

This, despite the fact that, by thread count, having the pet be optional (so we could at least be functional without it) is the single most requested thing on the forums, ever.

Unfortunately, that’d require a full class overhaul, so it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it happen.

I mean it; go through the different weapons, utility skills, and traits, and count the number that have some component that requires you to be rolling with a pet. It’s staggering, and you might not immediately realize how prevalent it is. A rework of the magnitude it’d take to put together a petless ranger would be far, far harder to do than just making a stronger pet.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Harnel.6810:

An option to keybind the Passive/Aggressive toggle would be nice.

That already exists, it’s just not bound by default.

What?!

Rgh, I need to go find this thing.

An option to keybind the Passive/Aggressive toggle would be nice.

And then we get the question of what special thing the elite spec does to the pet, right? Easy. The most obvious source for rangers with firearms is the charr, which you’d know if you’d actually read up in the thread, and the charr have a certain thing about their pets; warbeasts of great size and power. Things like siege Devourers, or Drake broodmothers. Mechanically, these special warbeast pets would only be available for use when you’re in this elite spec. Stat wise, they’re about 170% as powerful as a standard pet, but take up both companion slots; the F4 becomes a heal and condition cleanse for the pet, with a Rez if they’ve been downed. Simple. Effective.

Djahlat.9610:

I probably won’t answer after that, it’s pointless to argue against something that is obviously not going to break through

No, you don’t get to take that way out. You want a debate? You have it. You want me to share points? I just did. So debate. Prove beyond a shadow of a doubt your point, since you seem so incredibly keen on it. I’m willing to accept being wrong, but you’ve done nothing but tell me I’m stupid and/or stubborn without proving anything. It’s someone who has a weak argument who goes to insults when he could instead be actually presenting ideas.

It’s funny you mention the idea of granting shield to thief; a friend of mine wants that quite badly because he’s enamored with the idea of a swashbuckler, and also likes the idea of a skirmisher, which also fits there.

Second off, not everything has to be about cosmic forces. not everything has to be about magic. that’s limiting if you think that’s the case, and we’ve already had an elite spec that pushes us into using natural forces; it’s time to go the other direction.

But you want examples of how firearms would work for a ranger? Sure, I can do that.

First, the suggestion of a shotgun style weapon. AoE is something that the Ranger consistently lacks in, so the application of a shotgun to the class would be good. probably around 600 range. #1 would be a basic cone AoE, power based. #2 could be a backstep blast, creating a small area around you doing Aoe damage as you jump back. #3 could be a blind. #4 could be a vulnerability applier. #5 would be a 1.5 second stun, which is long enough to pull out whatever other shenanigans you like.

Don’t like the shotgun? Let’s try the sniper rifle idea. It’s actually very easy to make it different from the Longbow; the longbow is essentially an assault rifle in terms of how it plays, while a sniper rifle setup would have you attacking slowly for high damage per shot. The #1 would be powerful, but slow; think like Plague Blast, from the vanilla necromancer’s death shroud. #2 is also pretty easy; Reposition. Make it a dodge skill. #3 would apply weakness to the target. #4 is a ricochet shot that allows it to hit multiple enemies with one attack, similar to how thief had ricochet way back when. #5 is the big interesting skill; The longer you hold it for a charge, the more damage and longer range it has. The Sniper rifle would be used for burst damage, which is in fact something that the ranger lacks. the only burst damage we have at the moment at all is Rapid fire on the longbow (which is arguable in the first place) and Maul, the Greatsword #2 skill.

the pistol, meanwhile, would make for a good close ranger weapon that can swap between melee and ranged. the autoattack would have something like a 900 range. #2 would be a pistol whip; brief stun or other CC, such as daze. #3 would be another repositioning skill; hit your target with immobilize and then jump away.

All three of these work for the ranger without significant overlap with other weapons.

And then we get into utility skills! Two types immediately spring to mind; stances, and Preparations.

Stances in general are self-buffs that last 6-10 seconds with instant activation. They grant such things as damage invulnerability, particular boons, and similar things. For a ranger, why don’t we look at the old stances from GW1 for a moment? Nature’s Blessing, a healing stance that affects you and all allies within a short range, granting you pulsing condition cleanses and heals. Natural Stride, Stance that makes incoming attacks miss and grants Superspeed. Serpent’s Quickness, granting you Alacrity, which would make a good Elite. Tiger’s Fury; Might and Fury generation. Dryder’s Defense; stance that grants you pulsing protection.

How about Preparations? These would work one of two ways; either as a temporary buff to all of the attacks you make, or similar to the way venoms currently work, giving you a set number of hits with which you can make these attacks. I personally find this one more likely for the sniper setup idea, as you’re attacking slowly and want to get the most out of all of the hits you can. Seeking Shots, making your attacks unblockable and cause vulnerability while active. Explosive Shots, making your attacks deal extra damage with a small amount of splash on impact. Choking Gas, which makes your attacks spread a small AoE cloud that dazes every time it ticks, which would make a good elite. Marksman’s Wager, which heals you and grants might every time you hit with it. Disrupting Accuracy; your hits interrupt the target. Kindle Shots; Inflict burning with every hit.

(cont.)

Djahlat, this sounds less like a ranger overall and more like a mesmer. Also:

Ok, but your point is not really a counter-argument to mine, if anything you’re agreeing with me. Rangers are tied to Nature Magic, there’s no way around it, and firearms have no place in their kitten nal of weapons.

Bull. I explained how it does work, on several levels, both pistol and rifle. And Nature magic in no way prevents someone from using their weapon of choice, even if they did have some kind of bond with it (Which they don’t necessarily have).

Ghotistyx.6942:

And for curiosity, what do you consider able to keep up with Ele Staff?

I’ll be frank; I don’t know. Ele staff’s AoEs are strong, long lasting, multi-hit madness. I know that Dragon Hunter’s traps keep up with Ele’s AoEs (that much is clear from pvp at least -_-) but a specific weapon – particularly one that admittedly has something of a dearth of vesatility, unlike magical implements – such as rifles can’t really compete with that on a reasonable level.

I’m not sure how you’d make a shotgun comparable.

Djahlat.9610:

Conal shotguns are still based on Projectiles. Besides, I’m talking about the kind of AoE that would be competitive with Elementalists staff, so we’re not totally useless gunk in WvW squads.

Actually, cones in this game are AoEs, which aren’t considered projectiles. The best example of this is Blunderbuss, the engineer #3 rifle skill. I’ll grant you that it wouldn’t keep up with ele AoE, but that’s a pretty kitten high bar to set.

Djahlat.9610:

Good luck with coming up with those skills on firearms. Why even use firearms if you’re not going to be shooting Projectiles with it? That’s the whole point of black powder and guns.
However, all of out current Ranged weapons do little damage but very fast, so we often die to Retaliation alone (in WvW). Having a slow hard-hitting weapon wouldn’t hurt for a change. That’s basically the only pro-rifle argument I could come up with that makes sense. But then again, I wouldn’t sacrifice the current Ranger aesthetic and vibe for black powder

This IS why I’ve been saying a sniper rifle setup works best. The alternative would be getting pistol and having it as a condition weapon. Additionally, the ranger “Vibe” means a lot of things to a lot of people, so you’ll want to clarify.

Djahlat.9610:

You guys are so obsessed with firearms and permanent pet stowing, why don’t you just roll a warrior or thief and call it a day

Now that’s just rude and ignorant on several levels, especially after I spoke of how it does work with the pet and could theoretically even make a pet stronger. Telling someone to go “play another class” is just being a jerk, so take it elsewhere if you’re gonna do that.

And I said:

So, if we go to firearms, well, it’d be moving towards an ideal we already have, which is actually what a lot of elite specs do (notably berserker and daredevil).

and then went on to desribe how firearms would still fit in with the ranger’s concepts of skirmishing, marksmanship, and beast mastery. Does it move away from the nature magic? Yes. But druid already moves away from marksmanship and skirmishing, so what’s the issue here? Or are you going to continue being facetious rather than actually debating this?

Oh, and for the record, Nature magic does not necessitate a bond with nature. unless you want to tell me that warriors and thieves have bonds with the essence of strength and shadow.

Alright, so, how does that negate anything that I’ve said?

Well CETheLucid, Rangers don’t even necessarily have a bond with nature. Druids do, certainly, but rangers themselves are just skirmishers that know how to tame and train animals and can use some life magic. Fluff it however you want, but that’s the bare bones of it.

So, if we go to firearms, well, it’d be moving towards an ideal we already have, which is actually what a lot of elite specs do (notably berserker and daredevil). Druid moved us more towards nature magic and wilderness survival, turning us into mages that channel the power of the heavens with control of plants, but we can take that several other ways. If we’re expanding on an already existing concept, then three pop to mind; Skirmishing, Beast Mastery, and Marksmanship

A pistol would lend itself to skirmishing. Hit someone on the head and then duck away and take quick shots that disrupt or debilitate the target while your pet hampers them. Ideal for a condition setup, so if you only get mainhand pistol your off hand could be a torch or dagger.

Marksmanship, on the other hand, lends itself to high damage hits to weak points; ie, a sniper rifle. burst damage with downtime in between shots would be the essence of this, as well as repositioning for a better shot – which, I’ll note, also serves well in the skirmishing role very well. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Hunters have a long history of utilizing hunting animals – dogs, primarily – to keep a target in place while they line up a shot; sounds familiar, doesn’t this? We do that a lot already, but the longbow isn’t a single-shot burst setup. It’s basically an assault rifle, which makes very little sense to me.

As far as Beast Mastery goes, there’s actually precedence in the world’s lore for characters that are high tech but use war animals; those people are the charr. back in GW1, the Blood Legion Homelands had something of a large number of siege devourers in their lands, and given those are effectively living, mobile battering rams, somehow I doubt that they’ve fallen out of use. Meanwhile, the charr are a pragmatic lot; somehow I doubt they’ll ignore the fact that guns take a lot less training to use properly than a longbow. there’s a saying; if you want to train a longbowman, start with the grandfather. A gun, by contrast, can be picked up in a matter of weeks; days, if you’re willing to skimp on the finer points.

If we do get an elite spec that deals with guns, I don’t expect us to lose the companion, If anything, I expect it to get stronger because of the nature of siege engine animals in the world and how they’re closely related to the sort of people that use guns. If you want to know how that’d work mechanically, I can give you a few thoughts, but that’d be going way off on a tangent and I’d rather address it in PMs than talk about it in a thread that isn’t about pets.

Glint’s lair doesn’t really count; it’s easily explained as a pocket dimension with the opening linked to a grain of sand, rather than inside it. A lot less problematic than shoving a large amount of rooms inside a tiny crystal.

Well, you say that, but we already sort of have laser cannon emplacements like the one in the tequatl fight. This stuff is available, but it’s not really practical unless you’re firing at some kind of superbeast. The charr and engineers also have mortars and the like. i doubt we’ll get anything bigger than that.