Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

JKLeetro.6935:

…However, I fail to see how ranger/druid doesn’t ‘lack’ as most of the boons we get is either selfish or it is not as impressive as other classes, which seem to be what people are saying. So please, so that I will no longer perpatuating uninformed and absurd statements, inform me on this.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Why do you need a druid to max boons? There’s not a single skill that gives a boon unless you count the blast finishers. What am i missing that you’re seeing?

Ranger can keep up 11 Might, Fury, Protection, Regeneration and Swiftness, with high uptimes of Stability and Vigor for the whole party. The Spotter & Frost Spirit. How is that selfish or lacking in boon generation? When you put in the Druid line, adding the healing, its as much support as any party needs. Like I said you just need warrior banners and a chrono for quickness and everything is covered, the other might will come from Tempest and blasting fields.

I have linked the build to do this several times in the last few days, I think you guys need to go to the build editor and do some theory craft because you are too closed minded to see what Druid is really capable of. Everyone else in a party can focus on DPS and not sacrifice for support because the Druid can do 80% of what’s needed and the other 20% is incidental, ie it happens anyway.

Thank you master. You have opened my eyes!! _

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

JKLeetro.6935:

…The issue is ranger/druid seems to lack a bit of support and dps. Support wise, healing alone seems to be a bit lackluster. The core ranger was selfish enough. Added healing addresses this problem quite a bit, but I do feel like druid needs to access some other abilities to support the group.

Ranger does not lack support, when you include Druid traits and Staff with S/WH it has the best support in the game, very little is needed from other players to totally max out all boons and effects. 14 Might stacks, Quickness and Warrior Banners are all that is required to cap everything. So you can take a Druid, DPS Chrono, DPS (no PS) Warrior with banners, a DPS Auramancer Tempest and another pure DPS build (like a revenant with Assassins Presence) and its about as balanced and good as you can get.

Please stop perpetuating the falsehood that Ranger and Druid have poor support, its just absurd and uninformed.

I used “lack” in relative term. However I seem to have given a wrong idea on what I was saying.

So I know ranger has frost spirit (gives out might for 3) and spotter.
I also know that call of the wild gives 3 mights, fury and swiftness with regen with trait plus the blast.
Traps give their respective fields except for the spike trap.
Survival skills are selfish skill with muddy terain and entangle as exception.
Shout give regen and swiftness with trait but other than that, it is only Search and Rescue that has groupd support.
Stalker gives 5 mights and tiger and red moa giving fury, bear cleansing condition, fern hound healing and lastly blue moa giving protection. Other pets apply different damage, CC or other conditions.

Which are good of course, but I’m not sure I understand fully on ‘maxing out the boons’. If you meant us getting all the boons that exist in-game, then it probably is true. However wasn’t support all about group support?

As far as damage is concerned, sword is often mentioned that it deals larger damage then others with longbow and great sword being mentioned just as frequently. Also with staff (I’ll exclude heals because I implied that druid has good healing) we do have one blast and a water field. So with the setup you mentioned, Sword gives might to the pet and pet only. Warhorn I mentioned and is probably one of the best support weapons ranger has. Staff has heals which are nice, blast finisher, aoe pursing immob + soft CC cleansing and water field.

So as you can see, most of our support is healing centric. Celestial Avatar is basically all about healing except daze+blast from number 3 and only damaging skill number 5.

These are what I think we both can agree on. However, I fail to see how ranger/druid doesn’t ‘lack’ as most of the boons we get is either selfish or it is not as impressive as other classes, which seem to be what people are saying. So please, so that I will no longer perpatuating uninformed and absurd statements, inform me on this.

Given how druid gains HUGE number of control abilities from glyph and staff skills, (though they should be improved of course), and the control ability from core ranger – ranger can inflic cripple and immobilize very easily and I would argue that it is one of the best, plus the pet taunts and other control ability like wolf’s fear howl, druid already have a strong position in the control side.

The issue is ranger/druid seems to lack a bit of support and dps. Support wise, healing alone seems to be a bit lackluster. The core ranger was selfish enough. Added healing addresses this problem quite a bit, but I do feel like druid needs to access some other abilities to support the group.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBMhZ6kQFolFskFwiVgqFskJYw30e6Q9ZyF5ecNJrAwBokF0F-TpxGABAcEAUZ/BYPEA5eCAeqMABPAAA

Just used this build on PvP.

Additional thought on druid:
With the build I’m using I was able to gain significant battlefield control. However it was getting exponentially ineffective as the number of people increased.

One of the main problem that was caused was that staff is not equipped to utilize some of the trait and skill: namely glyph of equality and trait Primal echoes. However in a conquest mode, against enemies who have less stability access, such as necromencer or ranger without signet of wild and strength of the pack, I was able to lock them down and let my pet deals damage.

Gear did not need healing power stat as the base healing was adequet in sustaining in small scale fight and amount of support it can dish out is quite significant. This portion is exactly what ranger needed, though I will admit I am not quite happy with the lack of pet interactions on any of the druid skills.

Currently while druid does have few tricks to deal with conditions, still the survival trait is the best and I am forced to take Wilderness Survival. I would like to see some of the traits and glyphs getting reworked to address this issue.

As for celestial avatar, I am conflicted. The fact we lose all our energy the moment we drop out of the avatar is a huge setback in the trait druidic clarity as we may lose all the conditions but it is just as easy to re-apply them thus forcing us to stick with WS. Possible solution would be this trait reworked to cure 2~3 conditions at a steady purse while we remain in the avatar or simply we gain resistance during celestial avatar.

Considering how in team fight, the energy does not regenerate quickly, just having a inferior version of Guardian’s contemplation of purity isn’t strong enough. At the very least, primal echoes trait much better option as it allows the druid to deal with melee attacker without swapping out of staff.

Also staff is in an odd place. It fills up celestial energy quicker than any other weapons, as was addressed and to use celestial avatar effectively, we MUST use staff or Troll Urgent which forces us to use certain set-up. As it stands, ranger really has one trait line free for customization. WS and Druid trait lines are the must.

As for celestial avatar, I found myself just spamming daze and waterfield healing all the time. Cosmic ray has very small effective radius and some fights, well many fights aren’t that static to use that skill effectively. Seed of life is a good condition cleanser, but it isn’t as effective due to the fact that it has a cast time. One more reason why WS is a must trait line. Ranger/druid still lacks on-demand condition cleansing that is free from interruptions.

Lunar Impact and Tidal Surge are skills that I am expecting a lot of people to QQ about , especially Lunar Impact as it dazes and heals. With the new pet buffs, I expect even more pretty soon. As for Tidal Surge, its less of an issue however it still does good healing and combined with Lunar Impact, it can sustain ranger quite easily (not the blasting water-field, but daze-heal).

Natural Convergence is quite nice. I like it.

As for staff I do have issues on its own, however others already discussed it indepth so I won’t say it as it will just be repeating. I just hope I didn’t repeat about other stuffs too.

TL;DR – Ranger/druid still lacks on-demand condition cleansing other than WS.
Celestial needs some touch but it is quite strong.
Other weapons must be able to give more celestial energy otherwise we are forced to use a weapon set.
Druid gained significant control ability and lacking damage I don’t mind too much.

One thing that I saw on forums that REALLY concerns me.

GLYPH IS NOT POPULAR.

Like seriously, it is not popular at all…..

One thing that bugged me, druid really feels like it doesn’t gain any benefits from weapons other than staff because of celetrial avatar’s refilling efficincy.

When I’m holding staff, enery builds up at a reasonable pace. However when not using staff, the rate feels slow. Very very slow.

Few other ideas include:
Healing glyph didn’t heal pet for me.
Unlike other people’s worry, celestial avatar’s daze was not OP. It could lock down enemies sure. However the rate of which the energy filled up and the 1 second cast time made it easy for enemies to evade (PvP) and deducting defiance bar wasn’t large enough to warrant OP QQ.
All of glyph is point-blank AOE around the druid but weapon skills of staffs are ranged making it some-what clunky. Druid keeps reasonable distance but to use glyph effectively, druid must get close. This is where other weapons like GS need to shine, but celestial avatar energy does not fill up fast enough. Considering how necromance/reaper can build lifeforce quickly with weapons like dagger, it does feel more difficult to utilize properly. I hope these points can be adjusted.
Overall druid is very support-heavy and the old selfish ranger actually works nice. Kind of going against what I said before, Troll Urgent fills up the energy bar really quickly.

Justine.6351:

JKLeetro.6935:

I suppose any skills that give stability should be a stun-breaker. Now that I think about it, isn’t every single utility skills that give stability are also stun-breakers?

No.

Right, Guardian’s hollow ground…

Kidel.2057:

JKLeetro.6935:

You forgot to add that it can only be casted in celestial form that needs to be charged and we also have no idea how long it takes to charge and how long we can stay in it. So… right now, my lips are sealed until I get to try them.

I didn’t forget, since I added that if the form lasts for more then 5 seconds then you can use it 2 times and then swap out for 19 seconds of daze.
If the form is more then 10 seconds then it’s 27 seconds. And so on.

My bad. I must’ve missed it.

I suppose any skills that give stability should be a stun-breaker. Now that I think about it, isn’t every single utility skills that give stability are also stun-breakers?

You forgot to add that it can only be casted in celestial form that needs to be charged and we also have no idea how long it takes to charge and how long we can stay in it. So… right now, my lips are sealed until I get to try them.

I really have to add though, given how we don’t have access to any kind of aoe daze/stun to make use of Moment of clarity easily, it should be tweaked. Not nerfed, but tweaked. If we can chain-daze multiple foes it is very close to being OP. Only reason I don’t say it won’t be OP out-right is because unlike warrior who can deal additional damage with higher critical chance on the enemies that are stunned or apply confusion when interrupt (geez warrior gets a lot) we gain additional damage on one hit from us and pet. Also it is NOT a weapon skill but is a skill of celestial avatar that MUST be charged before usage, it may not even be that threatening in the actual practise.

So hopefully A-net won’t kneejerk on this one like they did with WHAO

Kreed.2768:

Oh, so it was you after all, Makka. xD

JKLeetro.6935:

Hopefully with Stronghold pvp mode, sniper ranger may see more light than before.

As for current conqeust I use S/T and A/D with full on survival
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAnY8fjEqQLLWyCesAVLG+Dq91zgA4P+if47V4Z3hS2VBA-TJhHwAl3fAwZA4YZgAPEAA

Although I’m nowhere near ‘good’ on competetive level, this build has been relatively successful :P

I’d throw out QZ and take Signet of Stone instead. QZ doesn’t really do that much on a condi ranger build without shortbow, so I think the extra toughness and direct damage immunity of SoS would be more valuable for you.

Thanks!
I’ll give it a try next time i get in!

Hopefully with Stronghold pvp mode, sniper ranger may see more light than before.

As for current conqeust I use S/T and A/D with full on survival
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAnY8fjEqQLLWyCesAVLG+Dq91zgA4P+if47V4Z3hS2VBA-TJhHwAl3fAwZA4YZgAPEAA

Although I’m nowhere near ‘good’ on competetive level, this build has been relatively successful :P

My thought on this:

Guard – 15 Second CD w/o trait
Guard is no longer ground targetted AOE instead pet will remain near the ranger and only attack the target that is within 600 radius of ranger.
Pet will not chase the enemy unless ranger directly orders to which will end Guard discarding remaining time.
Pet guards an area pursing cripple for 1 second per second.
Pet and ranger gains protection for 1 second per second.
Pet casts (instant cast) taunt for 2 seconds on any enemies attacking ranger. (10 seconds ICD)
No stealth on the pet, but grants ranger stealth for 3 seconds.
Enemy’s point-capture contribution is slowed.

Guard should act as a mean for the ranger to protect him/herself during the cast. So pet should make any enemies trying to bypass the pet to go straight to the ranger during the effective duration. To compensate the effect should only last for 10 second.

Sic’em – 40 second CD w/o trait
Pet gains super speed and immune to condition for 10 seconds.
Pet periodically purses reveal and vulnerability for 10 seconds.
Ranger and pet deal additional 20% damage for 10 seconds.

Search and Rescue – 60 second CD w/o trait
Pet shadowsteps to the downed player, reviving for 5% per second until player is revived or pet is dead.
Pet gains 5 stacks of stability and 10 second of protection. Effects end immidiately upon successful revivial.
Pet applies Protection and Regeneration on the player and the pet itself for 5 seconds and 10 seconds.

Unlike other revival ability, Search and Rescue actually needs the pet to do the manual reviving. So it must have other functions to compensate. Not having cast time versus having 3 cast time is irrelavant in my opinion.

Protect me – 60 second CD w/o trait

Pet becomes Rampage (warrior skill) and casts weakness around the ranger.
Ranger gains invulnerability and gains resistance for 6 seconds.
Prevents capture-point contribution.
This skill is stun-break for the pet and the ranger.

No skills for the ranger should kill the pet or forces it to stop attacking with no benefit. Instead of pet taking damage instead and not attacking, ranger just becomes invulnerable and pet applies more pressure, but no damage enhancement as this is a defensive shout.

We heal as one – 20 seconds cd w/o trait

When used it activates the trait fortyfying bond.
Might share cap removed.

I believe the biggest issue with WHAO currently have is the might share cap. Remove this, and this skill will really shine on many different game modes.

Strength of the pack – 60 seconds cd w/o trait

Mostly stays the same.

Lastly, for Fortyfing bond: Ranger shares any boons which he/she gets to the pet and pet shares any boons to the ranger. This will make Strength of the pack seemingly overpowered but considering how rare might is for ranger compare to other classes, I don’t believe this will matter in any significance other than QQ.

xev.9476:

Shadelang.3012:

This would also be a MASSIVE step towards making hte pet useable in wvw for zerg fights. As what usually happens is the pet is crippled/immobd in a field of aoes and it can’t get out.. resistance would enable the pet to actually leave the death zone.

For large scale fights, this isn’t true in the slightest. Pets don’t simply get bogged down in soft cc – they instantly blow up from AoEs, they don’t last long enough to die from condis – and resistance wouldn’t do anything to prevent the pet from being hard cc’d to death, which is exactly what happens to players, let alone pets. To avoid having your pet in the thick of it you can use LB and pick targets that stray too far from the bulk of the herd, but zergs, like a flock of birds, change course quickly, and it’s been my experience that using a melee pet to pick off stragglers will still result in a quick death. Ranged pets have never fared much better; players have to change position quickly to avoid damage – pets, ranged or melee, simply can’t do that.

Some of these shout rework ideas sound nice for sPvP, but I think it’s delusional to think any of this will do much to alter pet survivability in large scale encounters.

Honestly? In WvW zerg fight scenario, pets will NEVER become useful in offensive capabilities. With druid spec, fern hound and F2 heal however, they MAY have some support capabilities. That is if you keep your pet right next to you and you stay out of enemy fire at all time, or at least, most of the time.

infantrydiv.1620:

Shadelang.3012:

I feel we have some decent ideas on protect me. But what about guard. Usually this is considered the most in need of rework. Or atleast tied with search and rescue.

Protos suggestion isn’t bad. But what if it gave resistance to the pet instead of protection? Namely. What if guard became a method of sustaining the pet through condition pressure. It promotes synergy with the wilderness survival grandmaster empathic bond. As well as the signet of renewal. And those conditions can be steadily cleansed off through trooper runes. It also gives heal as one limited anti immoblock capability. Which shouts in general DON’T HAVE AT ALL >.>. If you could copy a couple seconds of resistance over. That can be the difference of being locked down or “swooping” to safety.

Edit: This would also be a MASSIVE step towards making hte pet useable in wvw for zerg fights. As what usually happens is the pet is crippled/immobd in a field of aoes and it can’t get out.. resistance would enable the pet to actually leave the death zone.

In its current state, Guard is just kind of silly… Yeah the pet gets stealth and protection, but why would you need this skill? What if Guard revealed stealthed enemies in the area, I mean that’s what a guard dog is supposed to do right? This would be AMAZING on shadow refuge’d downed bodies and could actually be used somewhat well in wvw roaming as well.

I just remembered, about 6 months or even a year ago i cannot remember, there was exact discussion on ranger’s shouts. your idea was precisely what was suggested along with instead of Guard, Sic’em getting that ability. Well, you can see how well that feedback was received.

So I’ve been thinking lately and I realized that Ranger has atrocious access to might compare to other classes.

Warrior has a trait that gives access to might with GS. Just by slashing.

Guardian can gain might through critical hits.

Engineer has access to a BAZILLIAN blast finishers

Necro can gain might through life blast/hitting a foe with less than 50% health

Elemantalist…. well elementalists are like a new Hammer-bow warrior and we will just leave it at that.

Thief and mesmers I lack knowledge of any kind to say anything about them.

Meaningless to say, but what I mentioned are only a part of their access to might. Either for self or group access.

However, for rangers, it isn’t as easy.

So ranger can have: blast finisher from call of wild (3 might) (30/24 cd) and axe auto attack (1 might). Also there is signet mastery (3 might). Lastly per swap for 3 mights. (14 cd)

Most Dangerous Game trait isn’t something I tested yet, but at the moment, it isn’t too impressive compare to Quick Draw.

On the paper, it seems fine, but in actually play, I don’t find myself above 3~5 mights. (Higher might with axe main and running strength rune but that means I need to be auto-attacking 24/7).

In PvE, Signet of wild is used and it is on 48 cd. If I’m running berserker spec, torch and flame trap will not be used meaning I only get 3 might from 30 second cd. So even if I add jungle stalker’s buff, its 14 might for about 15 seconds. After that, I am stuck with maybe 3 mights for about good 30 seconds. If I fumble and boss’s aoe kills my pet, (which happens a lot more in SW events) than I might not even have access to that.

In WvW, you really don’t have much options. Regardless of what build, lightning reflex is very commonly used for a obvious reason, I even use them on my trapper build as shared anguish’s 90 second cd isn’t enough. Which leaves 2 slots of utility. One of them is mostly likely quickening zephyre to gain quickness for burst. So really, you have 6 mights total.

In PvP, axe/dagger and sword/torch is my favorite and with it I can get might relatively easy. However that might really drops quick and it isn’t something that is impressive and still the damage isn’t very impressive. Even if you gain 15 might stacks, which is possible, the moment you swap to torch and start bursting down, you only have about 3 seconds to take full advantage and it drops quickly after that.

So a lot of might gain options that rangers have are either completely selfish or it simply isn’t up to par with ANY classes that I can think of. It does not provide better utility either to make up for it.

Most of other might generation goes to pet. Guess what, the only way to transfer boons from pet to ranger was….. obliterated, which I won’t discuss here because there is a entire thread dedicated to it.

Honestly, I know we are getting druid and it looks brilliant along with new pets, I am still very concerned with ranger’s status. Even with all the buffs that ranger got with pets and so on, we are ultimately selfish class that brings very little compare to other classes.

Sure we CAN give buff to allies, we CAN stack vulnerability to enemies, we CAN provide fire and water field, we CAN rez other downed, but really, rangers are still underwhelming.

I put might boon on the title, but really, what rangers are not in short of, can either be provided with far better efficiency or it is only for the rangers themselves.

A-net please, tell me. Is this the ranger you really wanted?

Ranger balance proposal

1. Remove traps from utility
2. Give ranger a staff with traps as its weapon skill [Very much like Necromancer’s mark]
3. f1~f4 will summon different pets. They will also provide stat bonus.
– Tank pets that halves the damage from the ranger and the allies. Vitality bonus.
– Dealer pets that deals heavy damages to the enemy. Power bonus.
– Support pets that provides different boon to allies. Tough bonus.
– Support pets that gives different conditions to enemies. Precision bonus.
= Different pets can be assign to different areas such as bears and drakes on tank, moa and dogs on support boons etc.
4. Current shouts will be re-designed to work like guardian and warriors. There are a lot of good shout ideas so I will just move along.
5. Give rangers new utilities: Natue’s magic [All the names are just picked at random]
– Function similar to Guardian concentration and necromancer’s well
– Offensive ground: Grant allies 2 stacks of might and fury for 2 seconds and last 10 seconds.
– Defensive ground: Grant allies protection and stability for 1 seconds and last 10 seconds
– Condition ground: Apply poison for 2 seconds and lasts 5 seconds
– Condition removal ground: Convert conditions into random boon. Last 10 seconds.
= The idea behind this utility is to give rangers ability to provide support in group fight regardless of size.

This is just my ideas that I jumbles around with.

There was something that bothered me for a long time without knowing what it was.

Now I know what it is!! It is a testing arena/zone for devs to test stuffs and players give feedback!!

Because with all due respect, a lot of patch notes seem to hint that devs are not fully understanding the issue or the possible impact the changes can bring.

So give us a test arena or zone which we can actually try things out and tell you how it may may not work out!!

We won’t even really want anything in return!! [well, some acc bound minis or sth may be nice :P]

The… what was it, the mist sth that is coming out [sorry i just cant remember the name] for testing out wvw features, right?

So give us something for profession balance as well!! This arena will be so much fun for players to try something totally weird and also can lead to the players knowing that devs are not just sitting there making themselves pretty.

I was reading through the post and got me thinking about LB and I wanna put some of the ideas which really liked and expanded a little. I apologize for not mentioning the one who originally came up with the idea. If any of the lists are what you came up with, plz let me know

1. LB auto attack, removing range penalty

The way i see it is that ranger’s LB reminds me of a turret. LB does not provide mobility like SB but it deals a lot more dmg with much longer range. So i believe, LB’s dmg mid-range (I believe it was between 400 and 800) should be our base dmg and INCREASE the dmg output further target gets. So no penalty for close-range combat but advantage in long-range combat.

2. Rapid Fire

I actually like this skill. I do hear people complain about this skill, but it actually deals good amount of dmg and with zephyr’s speed and fury, it deals a surprising amount of dmg. Due to LB’s nature, this dmg will be from distance and that cannot be ignored. Added vulnerability is a bonus on my book.

3. Hunter’s shot -few more added condition

This is an interesting skill for me as it grants stealth on me and swift on my pet. Whenever I run with my LB i bring wolf and krytan hound and when they get swift, they are pretty good. Then i can either use rapid fire or switch to my GS and re-position myself. This already provides a large tactical advantage for rangers. I just wish we had longer stealth period, but I might be asking too much. Or immobilize is nice too.

4. Point-Blank shot – Dealing heavy dmg

This skill can be a life savor for many LB rangers and I’m pretty sure it already is. However with other classes access to ‘closing-gap’ skill, it is easy to get close twice, through pull and charge type, or even immobilize. So my idea is, let this skill deal HEAVY dmg. So other classes must take that risk of: 1. being knocked back. 2. getting nuked up close. The major problem with LB is that it is simply too easy to get close to LB ranger and make him/her run for life. What if though, there was a risk of suffering huge amount of dmg up close? That there is one skill which, if executed correctly, can kill or deal massive dmg in a very short period of time? Then I think it is gonna become much more interesting. Ranger LB is the single longest ranged weapon in GW2 (if traited). But there are too many factors in this game that make LB’s range irrelevant.

5. Barrage – longer cripple duration

I like using barrage to cripple large groups of enemies. If I use berserker amulet for my ranger in TPvP it’s great to barrage enemy mesmer from a far, killing his/her clones instantly, leaving mesmer vulnerable, barrage thief who’s health is low and used shadow refuge. But like I mentioned earlier, for LB operating like a turret, I simply think barrage should put more pressure on enemies who are approaching.

Warrior is the only other class with LB so I cannot help but to make comparison. Warrior’s auto attack is 100% projectile finisher and fires 2 shots. It can fire multiple arrows at once in a cone-shaped form. It has 2, not 1, TWO aoe that deals large amount of dmg with one being fire field and the other being blast finisher. It can immobilize and put bleeding. It can even blind the enemies. Compare to that, ranger’s LB lacks any form of quick and reliable dps REGARDLESS of your positioning. Being turret-like, positioning is of course the most important part. However, with lack of stability with ranger (unless you go signet build and use signet of wild you have to have Rampage. That limits possible utility skill combinations and elite skills) it is simply too easy to de-position rangers into less ideal state for them.

LB is a good weapon. But it lacks some really crucial sauce to make rangers use that weapon in pvp and wvw.

I would but with my control being so bad, i just cant give up the dagger’s extra evasion same reason with why i use soldier over berserker. my fingers just cant keep up T_T

I tried your build with my own variation. I usually run this build in a small group of 2~5 on WvW being complete nuisance to my enemy zerg :P. My sets are: Soldier and berserker mix for dps + GS&Sword, dagger. My rune set is actually focused on keeping my boon up. Monk, water and traveler runes to make my boon 75%. The reason for it was to get my Guard shout AND rampage’s boon maxed out. RaO, 35 sec of stability, fury, swift is, imo, kitten sexy XD

I’m just gonna post my own thoughts here…. posing before I go sleep so I didn’t read every single post.. although I really want to.

1. Ranged fights: Unless you are in PvE or WvW [Inside a tower of keep protected by the walls and gates], LB simply doesn’t do much. AoE deals significantly less dmg now, its much better to just use something else like GS. Rapid Fire is the only viable nuke-skill for range that doesn’t deal much dmg.
I go full berserk I die even before I get the chance, I go soldier, it deals around 5k IF the enemy just takes it.
PtB shot? Well, when I fight against ranger with my guardian PtB is simply nuisance but I really don’t care because I can close up my distance and if I have stability or block, it won’t even do anything really.
If I use shortbow, it has evasive ability to keep kiting for some parts of fight but really, that is about it. Unless I run condi-build SB really is not something I choose.

2. Tank-ranger: When I run bunker, I run spirit build with E-Bond. Plus I will rely on my one handed sword and dagger’s evasion for close combat.
Now you deducted endurance regen from 50-25%. GS evasion might get removed. Without any good sustainable condition removal or effective invulnerability, evasion becomes key to rangers.
Rangers need to dodge more than any other class yet you deducted the endurance regen…. It IS powerful build but it is also EXTREMELY vital in ranger survival.
I find rangers who can dodge more effective that much more scary than those who use signet of stone active ability. With the endurance regen deducted, rangers won’t simply be as surviving as they were.

Pets: I will be honest. I ABSOLUTELY adore pets. They are the reason why I play ranger really. However, it is simply too bad. I used to run Beastmaster build with wolf and krytan hound. But now, they are more for decoration or simply getting rid of mines, marks or traps.
They don’t deal as much dmg, they aren’t smart by any means and now they can’t chase target that is 2k distance away. Pets need serious improvement right now. Before BM was powerful build but it really was one of the few viable builds which rangers could use. Even then, when pet dies it becomes useless. WvW this happens all the time. PvP would be much less so but pets are simply not effective. [and here i thought necro’s summons were bad…]

My overall opinions on this matter:
I generally approve of what is there except endurance regen deducted. However, like I already read in other posts, ranger still needs more. Stealth and LB is NOT enuogh!

Just as a small desire, what about a race change contract?
If a user uses that contract, he/she will change the race, and begin the personal story from the beginning? I’m sure there are some people who regret not doing Asura or Charr or Human because of their cultural armor looks and so on…

Archer.1658:

Lol @ [HIS] and [REN] from Kaineing, can’t pvd us huh? Brb 5:19 in the morning and these noobs mad they cant pvd GG.

sorry. we couldn’t pvdoor ur tower so we pvdoored ur garrison. hope ur happy

edit: something to add