Guild Wars 2

Devon tried to roam
Edge of the Mist has ledge
Necromancer feared him off

@Chris
If you are still here, lurking, can you and the developers please sit down and write a official statement as to what YOU envision the ranger to be.
Yes, Mr Peters, or i think it was him, did state it was intended by all purposes to be “The Pet Profession” however it is very clear that it does not fulfill this role appropriately. This has been stated so many times by now that the developers also should have noticed the blatant lack of pet performance.

What i wish for, is for ArenaNet LLC to make a proper official statement, as to their goals (Not your ongoing projects) for the ranger profession as a whole. What do you guys and gals think the ranger profession should excel at.
Why should you write such a statement?
Because we, the players, can make a billion suggestions, however we can make a billion suggestions suggesting something that completely contradicts you guys vision, and as thus, the vast majority of these suggestions will not be very helpful to you, nor us.

So in order to be as constructive, specific and thematically correct as possible, we, the players, should be presented with some official guidelines as to what you, the developers, want the profession to evolve into.
This is not a single skill, this is an entire profession we are looking at. Going at it without any proper guidelines to work with will only result in a pile of suggestions asking for power creeps and “make this into a warrior+guard+ele+thief with pet profession”.

Tell us what you want, and we shall in return tell you what we want.

now we just need a new thread describing why you you bothered to post this if you left.

The best option is to NOT make a ranger. The learning curve is harder then climbing everest.
And once you get on top of it, all you see is a barren miserable wasteland full of despair, misery, setbacks and nerfs.

On the other side, if you stay pessimistic about the whole class, never expect any improvement beyond correcting some descriptions, and expect the most ludicrous nerfs you can imagine the class is simply a gem. It will always get nerfed hard, and when you think it gets a buff, or that it can’t possibly get worse, the devs find a miraculous way to nerf it yet again.

Good luck, with your ranger. I advice you to take some anger management classes before trying though.

you did know that the bear take 2 conditions off 5 allies, and that the activation time (0.5 seconds) is almost instant, making it a VERY reliable skill. Not to mention low CD.

Mighty Roar takes 3 seconds to activate. THREE SECONDS of the pet being rooted. If it is damaged or you move out of its tiny tiny range within those 3 seconds, you loose the might.

Red moa has next to NO dps. Last night, i tested if it would use its healing cry similar to how drakes using their blast finisher (set pet to avoid combat, then tell them to attack manually). It does not, instead it waits and astonashing 50 seconds after initiating combat, to use the heal. Resulting in a few coyotes almost killing my poor ranger (i ran zerker).
Red moa fury does NOT work with compassion training (tested and reported it in the bugfix section many times over, nothing happens). Thus it will NEVER grant more then 14 seconds.

Pet boon duration does NOT scale with player boon duration. So while the tooltip reads “Fury 19.5 seconds”, you will still only get 14 seconds.
Moa DPS is laughable

Brown Bear, in WvW and PvP is a very good companion, but only as a supportive companion, you should be using it to cleanse conditions and tank damage (protect me), and leave the DPS to a cat or bird.

My preferred combination is Brown Bear + Krytan Drakehound for CC and Condi cleanse. The condi cleanse (well, really, it is a transfer, just like empathic bond).

Another EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THING TO MENTION is that while the bear offers lower DPS compared to other pets, it is pretty much the only pet type, able to tank mass condi spam.
If you use empathic bond, your pet will take 3 conditions off you. Player get 3 conditions less, pet have to take the damage from those instead. If you, like to use dogs, drakes and cats, like myself, you will find empathic bond very destructive. As it will simply melt your DPS pets.
Try fight a necro and watch what 25 stacks of bleeding, poison and chill does to your jaguar or jungle stalker. You would be lucky to even see the healthbar before the pet dies.

However, you are free to use whatever pet you want, but don’t come crying when Empathic Bond kills your moa, stalker, wolf, hyena or river drake. Because i warned you it would.

Since Arena Net wont let us perma stow pet, let us scrap the part that makes it all so broken. Remove the ranger, let us play the pet instead. All DPS to pet, armor for pet. Wanna be the ultimate pet class? BECOME THE PET.

For those who don’t get it, it’s a joke.

Casey.9687:

nagymbear.5280:

Casey.9687:

Well after 5,022 hours on ranger and this is all ranger gets?

Rly? Apart from all these changes being pretty sweet, there are quite a number of them too. Don’t be so negative. I think this opens up some build variety. There are a lot of possibilities if you look past the longbow changes.

Yay you zerg runners will finally be able to sit in your zergs and be helpful. It doesnt change anything for spvp ranger. They will still get destroyed. This isnt anything to celebrate. Wait till all the other class buffs and changes come out and ranger will be right back in its useless spot.

kk, then delete your ranger casey. Ive spoken with you ingame, and you are one of the thousands that relentlessly paint a black picture of this class, but still miraculously keep playing it.
Now for once, stop insulting every ranger player there is and do what you tell everyone else to do instead, your negativity is not helping a darn soul. These buffs are well deserved, they are needed. Most of them have been asked for since forever, and if you fail to grasp how much this means to the average ranger player, then i can only conclude that you are playing THE WRONG GAME.

Thank you ArenaNet, Thank you for listening to our wishes!
Not just myself, but most ranger players are HAPPY about these changes.

Let us not discuss, let us not bicker, let us just post our wishes, or +1 others with the same wishes. If you want to, you could include a short reasoning for why you want a change. I will make a simple template for you guys and gals to follow, just so we can keep the thread tidy. I’ll try to keep track of the top 5 wishes in each category, and i will send the end result to Jon Peters, and any other developer i can think of, a PM with the results. Just to make sure our voice is heard even clearer.

’s Wishlist for Ranger changes in 2014:

Pet
1st Wish =
2nd Wish =
3rd Wish =
4th Wish =
5th Wish =

Weapons
1st Wish =
2nd Wish =
3rd Wish =
4th Wish =
5th Wish =

Trait system
1st Wish =
2nd Wish =
3rd Wish =
4th Wish =
5th Wish =

Utility Skills
1st Wish =
2nd Wish =
3rd Wish =
4th Wish =
5th Wish =

Prysin’s Wishlist for Ranger changes 2014:

Pet
1st Wish = Greater diversity/animal families, EG; snakes, minotaurs, bugs
2nd Wish = The ability to mount certain animals through a grandmaster trait
3rd Wish = Better model scaling with Norn and Charr
4th Wish = Increasing base HP in WvW equal to what was done in PvE
5th Wish = Giving more pets the ability to cleave, ranged pets (Spider/Devourer) get cone attacks.

Weapons
1st Wish = The ability to use Spears (Offensive high DPS melee) and staffs (defensive buffing ranged) on land.

2nd Wish = Give “Long Range shot” 100% projectile finisher chance. If anything, this will greatly increase longbow synergy with other professions/players.

3rd Wish = Make Monarch’s Leap/Hornet Sting into a “Shadowstep” like move. Currently this skill is too random, and the jump-back effect more often then not causes problems.

4th Wish = Torch #5, allow it to become a AOE similar to traps when using the trait “Offhand Mastery”.

5th Wish = Warhorn #4, change skill. AOE blind X seconds, applies 3 seconds Fear on enemies with less then 50% HP.

Trait system
1st Wish = Signet of the Beastmaster, Make signets apply to the ranger, aswell as pet, without having to trait for it. Either remove this trait, or redesign it into something similar to “Trap Potency”, just for signets instead.

2nd Wish = Opening Strikes, merge the current Marksman Adept Minor and Master Minor. Make either Spotter, Beastmasters Might or Eagle Eye the new Master Minor

3rd Wish = Give us a Minor (be it adept, master or grandmaster) trait that increases movement speed while wielding bows.

4th Wish = Increase HP or toughness on spirits. Give them passive regeneration equal to the player through “Natural healing” trait. (125hp/3sec)

5th Wish = Allow rangers to become invisible when out of combat for more then 30 seconds if using the trait “Hide in plain sight”.

Utility Skills
1st Wish = Remove the healthbar, or summoning duration on spirits. Either they last for XX seconds/minutes or they last until they are killed (this system cannot be implemented into PvP as it would make spirits over the top OP)

2nd Wish = Allow Search and Rescue to instantly revive downed or defeated players on the cost of pet dieing. In WvW, pet’s should ignore NPC’s to avoid too much lord ressing.

3rd Wish = Give us back Preparations. They are great, and would let the ranger shine as a ranged profession. Removing obsolete traits in the Skirmishing line would open up for the ability to trait these utilities.

4th Wish = Reduce Cooldown on Quickening Zephyr by a few seconds. Now that the attack rate has been reduced, it is less effective and thus, deserves a lower cooldown.

5th Wish = Make Lightning Reflexes a blast or leap finisher and remove Immobilize, Chilled and Crippled conditions.

Iv’e been around here for a while, and honestly, the whining is starting to kitten me off.
This forum can be split in three pieces; willing, reluctant and unwilling to learn. The wast majority are completely unwilling to learn, or to explore how to play, build and level the profession. Then there is a large group that is reluctant to believe that this profession can ever do anything their “insert different profession here” can’t do better. Finally, we got a minute part of this community, that goes off, explores and tests stuff and become really good at playing this profession.

The main problem you lot face, is that you think this profession is meant to be everything it isn’t. A lot of you whine the DPS, compares it to the warrior. Well HELLOOOO the warrior is the DPS profession in this game. Then the others complain about us not having as good group utility as a guardian, well FACE IT, the guardian was designed to be a great teamplayer.. Then there is all the whining about thieves, well thieves are obviously designed to either screw you over or die trying. That’s actually what they do. Either they kill you, or they run away/die trying.

When will people realize that this profession are not built around the concept of " I R LEGOLAS" and instead realize it is a roaming/survival class. We don’t run around in shiny armor, because we aren’t supposed to be soliders.

Want to know what this profession is? It’s that stubborn old fart living up in the mountains with his trusty sidekick. That’s what it is. Not some shiny knight that went undercover as a adventurer.

Then there is the case about the devs. The devs, although partially to blame, tries as hard as they can to deliver on their promises, and listen to us. yet every single patch, people scream murder, even when they recieve a massive buff. Either you are all pathetic trolls, or too narrowminded to even understand how good a job the devs have done. All i can say is, the devs deserve a round of applause.

Shame on you lot.

/rant off

Only pets i would “argue” should be as slow as player chars is spiders, devourers and drakes. Because lizards and invertibraes does not have the ability to maintain higher speeds for longer periods of time due to biological limits.

Pet speeds that would make sense:
Dogs, bears, pigs – 15% faster then players
Cats, moas – 33% faster then players
Birds – 40% faster then players

Black Box.9312:

Miflett.3472:

We need to stop the wait and see approach as that leaves people in frustration for way too long and adopt a smaller, more frequent balancing cycle. You want a lower dps future with rangers being equal? Let’s start now.

This is exactly what I mean. Balancing in large chunks just leaves too much room for errors that won’t get properly addressed until the next big patch arrives months later. You look at MOBAs like Dota 2 and LoL and you see that they roll out multiple balancing updates a month, sometimes even on a weekly basis. This way there’s less that needs to be focused upon at once and it is much easier to build upon previous rebalancing to make a better game.

The sporadic updates every few months needs to stop. Balancing needs to come first and foremost, and additional content like living story needs to be secondary. People don’t care how much any new content has to offer when they feel handicapped by problems that are beyond their control.

A MOBA GAME IS DESIGNED AROUND ARENA PVP, NOT PVE. BOTH LOL AND DOTA2 HAS ONLY ONE OR TWO MAPS, THEREFORE, THEY DO NOT NEED TO BALANCE THE CHARACTERS FOR ANYTHING ELSE THEN PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER. A MOBA IS AT HEART THE PINNACLE OF GAME BALANCING. ONE WRONG STEP AND THE GAME ITSELF BREAKS.

GW2 is an MMO-RPG. It is a fantasy game, a online story telling game, with frequent STORY content being updated. It is NOT supposed to be a pureblood PvP game. No MMO is. The PvP section of GW2, GW1, Daoc, TESO, SWTOR, WoW, AoC, Rift, Aion, Runescape or any other popular MMO is NOT the main aspect of the game, it is the icing on the cake. It is what makes people keep interested inbetween the story updates.

We cannot do content updates with the same rate and “intensity” as a MOBA, simply because then PvE itself will be neglected. Once you neglect PvE and massive portion of the games player will simply stop playing after a while. Not because they cannot do PvP/WvW, but because a big number of people do not enjoy conflicts between players. They enjoy making their chars look sexy, or roleplay. However in MMO’s, you are free to do so without being plagued by the PvP’ers, this is why you see massive PvE populations while the PvP populations are mostly the ones who cling to the game to the bitter end, and the main reason for that is due to us humans being extremely competitive.

Michael Henninger.7451:

psizone.8437:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Send in game mail to GM Madi Walker.7520

I did that this time though last time I did so I received no reply and people kept seeing the hacker around.

I check them all, but most cheaters don’t cheat 24/7. That said I knock at least one out every day.

Look at how “Runescape” reports people.
You file a report for hacking/abusing glitches
You can write a small text to explain what is going on (think it was 300 chars long)
and the game automatically makes a video log file for the last 60-120 seconds of your game prior to sending report

It would solve so much. For us, for you, for everyone.

It will cost time and money to implement, but considering the time you guys spend, company time, running around manually looking for cheats if the logs arent clear. That time costs money, lots of money.
Not to mention, since it captures the players own game, any infringements done by the reporter him/her-self will also be revealed. (i know hackers often reports others of hacking if they get killed while hacking. Even if it is totally random)

RedCobra.7693:

Ostra.3927:

It is not hard to do.

Public event. in a radius around the camp (same as taking it over area), one that covers the tower and keep areas.

Now add in the tagging system of enemy players. Do enough damage to tag and you get credit for the event.

Will this lead to more people camping out in towers waiting on an attack? YES… good then we get scouts at the same time! Its not a hard system to implement they already have the foundations down with the defend timer now.

thats what already happens and no one does it, why? incentive is the answer but i just had a quick thought, what if it scaled the reward depending on how much you did during that defense, repairs/movement/kills/seigedamage/damage/healing/boonproduction

simple solution:

Towers:
Event trigger: Attack
Event description: Stop the enemy from breaching the wall/gate (wall/gate HP meter automatically selects the section with the least HP)
Event Win condition: Drive any hostile out of the area (set “safety zone” around the walls, say 5-6000 range so we cover any potential catapults and it should also help prevent forts overlapping their territories)
Event loss condition: Wall or gate HP reaches zero
Event reset: Wall and or gate is repaired to 50% health or all hostile players is driven out of the safety zone
Event reward: chest from supervisor.

Keeps:
Event trigger: Attack
Event description: Stop the enemy from breaching the Outer wall/gate (wall/gate HP meter automatically selects the section with the least HP)
Event Win condition: Drive any hostile out of the area (set “safety zone” around the walls, say 5-6000 range so we cover any potential catapults and it should also help prevent forts overlapping their territories)
Event loss condition: Wall or gate HP reaches zero
Event reset: Wall and or gate is repaired to 50% health or all hostile players is driven out of the safety zone
Event reward: chest from supervisor.

Event trigger: Attack
Event description: Stop the enemy from breaching the Inner wall/gate (wall/gate HP meter automatically selects the section with the least HP)
Event Win condition: Drive any hostile out of the area (set “safety zone” around the walls, say 5-6000 range so we cover any potential catapults and it should also help prevent forts overlapping their territories)
Event loss condition: Wall or gate HP reaches zero
Event reset: Wall and or gate is repaired to 50% health or all hostile players is driven out of the safety zone
Event reward: chest from Champion Supervisor.

Setting the reset to 50% repaired means that you got to burn a LOT of supply to get the event back, and it also makes the whole “farm the event system” much much less fun and much much more demanding. I havent paid attention to the difference in tower supervisor and keep supervisor loot, however if there is a difference, good. If there isn’t, there should be better rewards for taking a keep (items, not just karma and exp and such)

Dolyak defense:
Event trigger: Dolyak spawn
Event description: Stop the enemy from killing the dolyak
Event Win condition: Drive any hostile out of the area or successfully reach a destination (set “safety zone” around the dolyak, 2000 range should be more then enough)
Event loss condition: Dolyak dies
Event reset: Enemy leaves the 2000 range safety zone, dolyak reaches first destination (in the case of multiple deliveries)
Event reward: X World vs World Badges, liquid WXP bottle (250 wxp), a random item (low chance of rare quality) 80 silver coins, 2500 exp, 70 karma.

EDIT:
In the case of a wall and or gate being trebbed, the event will only trigger once players enter a “inner area” set forth by the area inside the walls, excluding inner walls and the area inside the inner walls, in the case of keeps.

for your own sake, do not ask such questions on these forums. 99% of your answers will be provided by the doom and gloom crowd that inhabits this place.

Any class is strong, if it suits your playstyle and mentality. The limitation of a class is first and foremost a physical and mental limitation, and you will reach those limits long before you reach the mechanical limitations (99% of the players here will try say otherwise, simply because they cannot overcome their own shortcomings and learn to approach things differently)

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

The only reason wvwers do not want it lowered, is because they are being selfish and they know that they now have something that most players cant get by any reasonable means (which is basically selfishness, and a disregard for gw2 as a whole). Wvwers call anyone who advocates that they want the rank req lowered on t3 armor as being “entitled.” Yet they are the ones who are acting truly entitled, because they were fortunate enough to have their activities tracked via wxp when so many other game modes in gw2 don’t track various activities with similar a system to wxp (just wvw’s).

I wonder how spvpers feel since there ranks stopped being tracked at r80 and some people had that within 3-6 months of the game launching. (guess they get nothing since spvp rank doesn’t go to r10k). If they release armor gated behind spvp rank 80, it would be quite easy for a new player to get r80 (the cap) vs r2000 in wvw. – Pve also doesn’t even have a ranking system like this of any kind. The closest thing is masteries and that’s hardly comparable to wxp or spvp rank, its also much less time consuming.

they think wxp = prestige/commitment, which is only partly true especially considering eotm’s existence/previous exploits, and the fact that k-train is by far the most efficient way to rank up (not zerg vs zerg, not defending, not scouting, not roaming, not havoc, not upgrading, though they do add to wxp to an extent). In addition to this wxp wasn’t tracked for the entire first year of the game, a time in which i spent countless hours and none of that was tracked at all.

This is why r2000 is unreasonable compared to all other game modes and was a design decision which needs to be re-evaluated.

So you are saying that people like me, who DONT have agony trinkets, DONT know the map rotations, DONT know the boss mechanics, DONT know the shortcuts, DONT know the gear combinations, DONT know where to even go to play fractals of the mist has it “easy” to get the PvE her0 gear?

Do i want a fractal backpack? yes
Can i get it without investing hugely into Fractals? NO

IS IT FAIR TO THOSE WHO SPENT HUNDREDS OF HOURS PLAYING TO GET THE FRACTAL BACKPACK, TO LOWER REQUIREMENTS FOR FRACTAL BACKPACK BECAUSE I DONT PLAY IT ENOUGH TO GET WHAT I WANT?? NO

Life isnt fair. you CHOSE not to play WvW when leveling was easier. Likewise i CHOSE not to invest into PvE and learning how to play fractals.

CHOICES HAS CONSEQUENCES

And FYI, my WvW level is below 750. I dont expect to hit 2k anytime soon given how little i play. But i am not going to cry-bully my way to making it easier.

WvW never gets anything nice. Our achievements takes YEARS to complete due to the ridiculous amount of kills/escorts/flips you need. And we get rewarded with nearly nothing. So when WvW finally gets a good reward for the countless hours it takes to get where we are, then you have no right to come here and cry bully your way to make it easy.

Your whole post is infact a giant “middle finger” to all WvW players, past and present.

yeah, pets… the topic is brought up again…

There are pro’s and con’s to pets, many would say it is mostly con’s as of now. But how about we do things differently?

As of today, we only have 1 pet out there at any given time, but two pets to choose from… stupid and weird if you ask me.

So, maybe, instead of fiddling with class balance related to pet damage and pet survivability (two factors that can make the ranger overly OP in PVE and sPVP), let us give the ranger pets some more “function”.

We got two pet slots, Slot A and slot B in terrestial, and an equal set for underwater. Instead of using one or the other, we use BOTH. yes, two pets, but the slots are given distinct purposes.

Slot A – Aggressive:
The pet selected into this slot will wander in a large area around you (up to 3000 max range? be happy thiefs, this way it wont follow you to the end of the world). The pet in this slot will have increased offensive power, condition damage and movement speed, but heavily reduced hitpoints and defense. It will attack anything that you attack (get rid of auto aggro).

Example to stat boost/nerf;
Offensive power +75%
Defensive power/Hitpoints -75%
Movement speed +15%

Slot B – Defensive:
The pet selected into this slot will always move around in a radius the size of traited traps (medium). These pets will have increased defense and hitpoints, a stability boon, aswell as “respawning” faster upon death, at the cost of very low offensive power. The pet in this slot will try to suck up as much damage as possible, and knock back enemies by utilizing fear/knockback/sink/float when the enemy get up-close and personal.

Example to stat boost/nerf;
Offensive power -75%
Defensive power +75%
Permanent Stability Boon

Instead of switching from Pet A to Pet B like today, we switch their roles. There will have to be a specific pet AI and skillset change. It is alot of work, however it would let us utilize pets better, without spending an awful lot of time micromanaging them.

This means that shouts such as “Protect Me” can be removed, as the pet in the defensive role will automatically suck up as much damage as possible, in return of a signet with some more… supportive use per say.

When using “Search and Rescue” the pets would BOTH answer the call, but they would be restricted by their role’s area (Defensive slot would heal those dead at your feet, while offensive role would be more flexible). Thus we can protect our selves more efficiently, or heal allies more efficiently then today.

The offensive pet could be traited to reveal the minimap ahead (check out the suggestion in this thread; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/New-ranger-skill-to-make-us-special-in-WvW/ ) at the expense of movement speed and offensive power.

The defensive pet could in WvW use, be traited into a “beast of burden”, of which you can carry some extra supplies at the expense of making the pet a few percent slower in movement, and loosing the stability boon.

Fellow rangers, do you like this concept? Please give me some feedback, as this is my idea on how to overcome the “micromanagement issue” which i struggle with in WvW.

short answer: yes
Long answer: Yes

Suggested Proposal Format:

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Making the profession reflect the development teams vision

Goal of Proposal
Change several weapon skills to apply torment rather then bleeding. Bleeding is a strong skill, however torment forces the enemy to move less, thus dragging out the fight, this is highly advantageous for a profession that is supposed to rely on sustained damage. It will also have an indirect effect on pet hit rate. Less movement/less abuse of movement (see; ADADADADADADA arrow evasion through rapid sideways motion) greatly favors the current pet mechanic, therefore requiring the developers to do less, to “achieve more”

Proposal Functionality
Change the following skills to apply torment rather then their current conditions. However, durations should be managed, as such that rangers can never stack more then 5 stacks with “autoattack”.
Sword 1:3 (last strike in chain)
Shortbow 1 (instead of bleeding, remove flanking requirement, introduce 50% chance on hit.)
Warhorn 4 – 1 stack for each attack. Reduce number of attacks, also drastically increase direct damage.
Spear 3 – applies very strong torment at end of attack.
Sharpening Stone (Survival utility + Keen Edge trait) – you and your pet apply 1 stack of torment on your next 3 attacks. The current trait/utility CD should justify a very long duration but medium damage attack)

Associated Risks
Rangers will become very strong against mobile professions such as thieves, warriors and engineers. On the flip side, they will be less about spamming insurmountable bleed stacks on everything that moves. In PvP the skill damage/duration may need to be reduced as the mode requires you to move constantly, therefore a broad specter of torment application that also have strong damage would be easily overpowered.

1. Elitist and unwelcoming guilds
2. Removal of match-up forum
3. In case of NA: too big gap between tiers. In case of EU: too many huge migrations from server to server causing an already very well balanced region to become far too unbalanced. Certain servers are now rising to tiers they do not want to be in.
4. Lack of a LS that engages you as a player. Yes, the lack of an engaging and challenging LS to fall back on when burning out has made many players quit the game entirely rather then just taking a break.
5. Its exams time. April to july always see a large reduction of players as people start prepping for their finals

ain’t nothing wrong with thieves, just ain’t no right with them either.

Actually that is a interesting concept. Allowing yaks to enter downed mode would make yak escorting more balanced in terms of likelihood of survival vs likelihood of defeat. Currently it is indeed far far to easy to kill a yak, ontrary to duccessfully escorting one

@archon
Hey, i play ranger, sometimes with LB. This is how you counter my cookie cutter 66020 LB build with a thief. Or any other variation of LB spam.

Solution 1:
Use Shadow Step skills to quickly teleport behind the ranger. This will cancel the skill and put it on cooldown. It will also let you perform a easy CnD + BS or Pistol Whip or basilisk + random skill.

Solution 2:
Drop a smoke screen. Not only will it block projectiles, but you can leap through it with heartseeker to gain stealth, then quickly perform a backstab.

Solution 3:
Daggerstorm.

Solution 4:
Throughout the fight, keep spamming Weakness (SB 4+SB2). EVERY power ranger build is depending on doing critical hits. If you apply weakness, their rapid fire will go from doing 15k+ damage, to barely 4k.

Solution 5:
Use the trap skill that grants you 10k teleport to target. Use it to instantly port ontop of roaming rangers and destroy them before they even know what to do.

Solution 6:
Find a tree/stone/building/bush to hide behind. This method is 100% more efficient then every other known counter. Simply teleport behind a solid object and let the ranger burn their rapid fire. Secondly, the ranger is most likely to cancel the skill and try use barrage, now by hiding behind a solid object, you have made the ranger waste 2 of the 3 most devastating skills they have vs thieves, even if they used Sic’em by this point it wouldn’t help at all.

Congrats, you now have 6 easy steps to beat a power LB ranger. If you keep returning to these forums to complain, it is simply a sign of how terrible you are as a thief. Perhaps you should play some other class. After all, even if you like the idea of a class, it still does not mean that said class will be the one you have the most potential with.
Why not try out engineers or mesmers? Both of these have very strong builds for roaming, and both can use stealth.

signet of stone does not prevent you from taking conditions or stuns. You can just chain immob the ranger until sig of stone is wearing off then blow em up in 2 sec.

you cannot counter what you cannot see. 2x thief with stealth = 2x enemies “not there”. you die. because two thieves can easily cover 1800-2500 range in seconds, even vertically, before all their stealth wears off.

who cares if utilities is on CD, if enemy is ded, it doesnt matter if you gotta wait 15-30 sec before you can go look for another ezmode target

Fluffball.8307:

Durzlla.6295:

How does us using LB from 1500 range make you take more damage?

Think duoing Lupi, just because it’s a really simple example. His kicks will 1-hit anyone. If both players are up there, they both have an opportunity to get kicked. If either one messes up there is a chance the kick is directed at the player that didn’t mess up and no one is downed. If the player that messes up gets downed, the other is there to quickly rez him.

If 1 player is melee and 1 ranged, the melee player gets all the kicks. He can never mess up because not only will he for sure eat the kick, the ranged character also can’t quickly rez him.

Dear forum user.

Dungeons was never intended to be solo’d, it was intended to be a 5 man group effort.

If you fail to do it with two people, then the dungeon difficulty itself is working as intended.

Sincerely yours, a actual player.

xallever.1874:

Besides, Mesmers bring something else to the table boon strip, stealth, portal.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Fixed that top line for you.

In WvW, people refuse to believe ranger can do anything, therefore it “automatically” are outperformed by all professions. It is false information spread by a vocal minority that eventually turned into bandwagon “truth” effect as the ranger community and players did not rise up to prove anyone wrong.
The whole “others do it better” is really only a “until proven otherwise” scenario.

However others can do similar stuff with less effort, that is true, in certain scenarios.

Yes, to all you people who feel that insane need to post “im rerolling” “i will reroll now” “deleting my ranger” threads.

Please, stop it. These threads are about as useful as “I QUIT” threads. They bring NOTHING to the table, except misery and boredom. It also does not help the ranger profession. If you want to reroll or delete your ranger in exchange of a different profession, go post in the subforums of the professions you are interested in. Do not announce your departure unless you have something positive to say.

Seriously, more time is spent discussing what professions to play OTHER then ranger in this subforum. I honestly hope the moderation team will take action and start closing these threads as they are adding the opposite of what this subforum should do.

a lot of the ranger hate comes from older days where rangers, indeed, were more or less useless in zergs, but brokenly strong in 1v1 (back around march/april 2013 when BM was so OP it would lay waste to anything 1v1).
However, since they nerfed pets, then nerfed quickness, then nerfed some other stuff, and some more stuff, and even more stuff. The buffs we got (important ones at that) kinda drowned in a sea of negativity fueled by the Q_Q from this forum. Rangers started to show signs of not being brokenly OP in 1v1 roaming, infact, for a long while, we were mid tier at roaming, because we lacked damage, but most importantly, we lacked some functional utility.
However, times change, and those who say “anything a ranger can do, profession X can do better” are partially right, yet they are also full of fecal matter.
You see, many professions ALONE can do one or two things the ranger can do, better, except when the ranger actually traits and builds for something, in which case it more often then not, far surpasses the other professions even if both professions spec for the same function (go figure how we are worse then them). A ranger does not do ONE thing, or TWO things or THREE things, it does MANY things all at once.

Take a warrior, your typical zerg warrior provides;
AOE condi cleanse (if using warhorn)
AOE heal (if using traited shouts)
AOE CC (stun/daze/knockdown/knockback. All of which is negated by stability)
AOE Fury
AOE Vigor
AOE Revive (can be used once every 240 seconds)
Multiple Blast Finishers

your typical guardian provides:
AOE Protection
AOE Stability
AOE Might
AOE Retaliation
AOE Aegis
AOE Healing
Piercing Immobilize
Mass condi cleanse

Your typical Ele provides:
AOE damage (From staff/scepter/conjures)
AOE Stability (if traited to apply on earth swap)
AOE Fury
Fire fields
Ice field
Water fields
AOE Condition cleanse (on water swap/when applying regeneration, if traited)
AOE regeneration (passive, when in water attune)
Multiple Blast finishers (however, they are on long cooldowns/channeling times)

Your typical necro gives:
AOE Protection (spectral wall)
AOE Fear (Spectral wall, marks/wells)
AOE Chill
AOE Bleed
Mass condition cleanse
Mass boon strip

So, what does the ranger do in ONE build?
AOE Protection
AOE Might
AOE Fury
AOE Swiftness
AOE Vigor
AOE Immob
AOE Revive (twice every 180 seconds)
AOE Regeneration (passive, spirit)
Mass condition cleanse
Water Field
Fire Field (if using torch)

Pet utilities (depending on choice):
AOE Immob
AOE Chill
AOE Cripple
AOE Fury
AOE Protection
AOE Might
AOE Condition Cleanse
AOE Healing + regeneration
AOE Fear

The whole “anyone can do it better then rangers” are so kitten outdated that it is not even funny anymore, and i dare say that those who preach that rangers are useless falls into the category of people who believe the holocaust never happened either.

Yes rangers are not the go-to for every function in game, but we can do the majority of what you want/need, in ONE build. However, it takes skill, a word that seems totally foreign for anyone who frequent these forums. Because the lack of skill, or rather the large “L2P” issue displayed here, are just astounding.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Preparation

What we need is this.
I’d throw away spirits or shouts or both to have a working version of this.

Justine.6351:

Yeah remove mesmers’ illusionary wave too. That’s about 5x worse but thankfully mesmers are rare.

Or warriors hammer whirly knockback skill.

Or guardians hammer launch, so annoying when trying to stomp.

Or necros fear mark.

or any of engis million random sources of knockback

i see you learned the art of quoting. I am jealous.

Does any one of you actually READ the patch previews or any developer posts? Pet AI fix, Sword AA Fix and a bunch of other stuff is already in the works (Sword AA may or may not make it to feature build, they didnt know if they could get it done by then)
So stop crying about pet AI, F2 responsiveness, Sword AA and stuff like that when it is being fixed.

Sit back, take a big bottle of patience and wait for their results (just 2 weeks left) and if you still are not happy about the result, cry AFTER the patch.

AOE “Condition trap”
By wielding a longbow, you can create a AOE “Condition trap” that will seriously hurt your enemy.
To “set” the trap, you will need to utilize multiple skills, but the effect can be devastating.
First you need a longbow, the more condition damage on it, the better (dont use this bow for anything but this trap).
The skills you need to use (in this order) is
Sun spirit (preferably with 15% spirit bonus trait)
Sharpening Stone (for bleeding)
Pet F2 – use a Forest spider with it’s F2 ability (next three strikes poisons your foe)
Quickening Zephyr (4 second quickness burst, makes the whole barrage fire in less then 2 seconds, instead of 5)
Barrage

This chain is quite good against gate attackers in W3 or against large numbers of mobs (Since you apply Bleed, burn, cripple and poison)

urdriel.8496:

Prysin, ranger are among top tiers dungeon proffesions??

Can you have more heal than a warrior with heal signet?? yes, you can, you must spend a lot of traits and gear only have more than 350hp/s, a warrior only must choose the signet to have 387 hp/s.

Another classes must spend 2+2+3 to have 7 we must use 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 to have 7 , why?? because this class traits/skills/weapons/class mechanic have ZERO sinergy compared with other classes, you must work x2 or x3 times to have the same than other classes have x1, and the question is, Why?

Urdriel, you are obviously not willing to give rangers a chance. I suggest you find some other profession(s) more to your liking. If you continue to play a profession without enjoying it, it will only bring frustration and anger, and i know from personal experience that more often then not, that frustration and anger spills over into real life.
If you don’t like rangers, don’t play them.
At this point, you clearly show you do not like them and you do not want to face the reality of what the ranger can do.

EDIT; healing signet is the most selfish of all things you can bring as a warrior. Wasting 30 points into a traitline to get 400hps healing, at the expense of not taking more group friendly traits is simply stupid. One player cannot change the tide of a high level PvE Content if all he/she thinks of is themselves. They will simply die if the team is not there to sustain them. PvE bosses have bursts so strong that the healing signet is useless.

BeardRex.6739:

Ranger pets are so messed up because they act as NPCs, not players. It would require much more work than tweaking numbers, but what I would really like to see is pets behaving (mechanically, not AI) like players.

That has the serious effect of “If pet has same base combat movement and the intelligence of a player” will that then become “two players in one”?
The more advanced the AI, the harder it is to ever reach a state of balance, and this is especially true unless they want to create different pets for different modes. If they run the same pet AI in all modes, with human-like behavior, then we would be great in PvE, good in WvW and completely off the charts OP in sPvP. Because having a small missile of a pet hitting hard each time without a fault and not dieing (pets can already be very tanky in sPvP since damage is lower, but pets remain the same across modes).
This means that any buff to any function that may or may not benefit the pet, but is hugely important for player performance would be very hard to achieve, as that buff may or may not tip the pet over the edge and make it super OP.

BeardRex.6739:

Pets need an option for “dodge when I dodge”, which would require additional animation work too.

Along with those two things, I really like the player ideas that pets should share consumables and share boons ( even if sharing boons is a beast mastery trait). Imagine a trait that’s something like “Every 5-10 seconds, one of your boons is copied to your pet”.

Agreed, and regarding boon-share it should go both ways, not just from ranger to pet, as it is today.

BeardRex.6739:

I just don’t think pets will ever be where I want them to be unless the changes made to them change their mechanics, and not just number changes.

You do know that every piece of “mechanics” is just numbers in a coded program? A new mechanic just means you need to change a whole lot more numbers then if you redo the other functions.

urdriel.8496:

Prysin pls, open your eyes…….a warrior axe AA have more damage than your and your pet( and more armor, and more hp…), anyway, when you play ranger and try another class you know how to avoid the pet, you lost 30% damage due to a poor designed mechanic.

Due to being unable to produce valid undisputable numbers on Jaguar crit rate without BM points, i cannot prove you wrong without making videos about this, however i am too lazy to bother to prove a very clear point, and you are too narrow sighted to even believe the video being real.

Oh, and i have spent the last 3-4 weeks playing ele and guard, grew tired of my ranger the day the CDI came out, knowing that all our suggestions will most likely never be heard nor even considered for anything but giggles over the coffee table.

Bottom line; Jaguar can easily crit 6k+, does not take rocket science, cheats, bug/glitch abuse nor special godlike skills to pull it off.
When you play other professions then rangers, you also learn how nasty it is to fight experienced rangers who knows what their doing, not to mention you learn how easy it is to play ranger on a defensive level compared to them. If you cannot make your pet hit reliably or cannot utilize the tools rangers got at their disposal then for the love of god, quit the profession right now and reroll ezmode warrior. There is enough scrub rangers around, we do not need yet another stubborn fool who refuse to L2P. Oh and if you don’t know how to make a rangers pet hit more reliably, then you don’t know your profession very well, at all.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Watch my twitter/twitch channel and maybe you’ll find out!

aslong as it ain’t EA :|

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Let me give you five things to think about;
Rangers, WvW Sentry Guards, Dragons and Skelks.

To those not familiar with how ranger pets and the ranger works;
The Bear pets have 2 survival attacks.
1 = http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bite_ Which grants regeneration. When the bear is taking moderate damage, it uses this skill
2 = http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defy_Pain Similar to the Warrior Skill. When the bear takes heavy damage (backstab or eviscerate) it activates this skill

Ranger Devourer Pets;
1 = http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Devourer_Retreat When faced with strong incoming damage/danger, the devourer automatically evades backwards.

The ranger also has the ability to remove 4 conditions every 10 seconds, as a passive.

For those not familiar with WvW Sentry Guards:
Whenever sentry guards drop below 15~30% HP, they activate a healing skill that instantly heals them for 15% of their total health.

Skelks;
Those incredibly annoying lizards that goes invisible and attacks you. Similar shadowstepping functions and stealth could be given to other NPC’s.

Dragons:
The Dragon-type bosses have multiple defense functions. Among which is knockbacks (Tequatl Waves), heavy damage aura’s (Claw of Jormag), imprisonment (Shatterer), however they got one in common. Massive AOE fear shout.

Applying these any or all 7 functions that i mentioned, would make it increasingly harder to simply facetank bosses. Because you would get CC’d more often, and the bosses would simply because conditions, raw DPS and grouping up against monsters would become harder. It would also make it a lot harder to corner an NPC and then just DPS it down. As the NPC could potentially use a “NPC Elite skill” and shadowstep behind your group. Or simply evade in any direction.

The notion of the NPC’s getting harder and harder to kill, and bosses even more so, is slightly thrilling. If PvE could potentially as challenging as WvW, then i would play PvE a lot more.

Straegen.2938:

. As for warriors, immobilizing one is almost impossible and often a favor (Dogged March).

They nerfed it, added a ICD…. now you only get regen every 20 seconds…. and that regen barely lasts 12.5 with full boon duration and isn’t that strong because you are more likely to run PVT then any form of armor with healing stats. Sure you got 4-6 points in Defense. But 300 healing power is meh when it comes to regen.

Also…. Entangle is not a super skill, but it has a side effect… if you cleanse it without breaking roots, you are not always allowed to move on. Warriors just smash the roots with the hammer, but the warriors are not the main “target” for immob. Its guardians….
Yes, even with a million cleanses, once you make them burn their cleanses, they just crumble during focus fire, as they do not have the HP pool that warriors has to soak up damage. However once the guard dies, the zerg loses might stacks, retal and burst healing by the loads, not to mention stability and protection too.
Warriors does not pose a big threat by themselves. However their ability to “lock” enemies in their own zergs AOE is what makes them scary… warriors without stability and a million cleanses isn’t scary, it’s simply mildly humorous to watch them flail around with their hammers, doing nothing productive at all.

Chaba.5410:

I like how castle outer walls in ESO have windows. That must be pretty strong glass.

Maybe they use Gorilla Glass?

atleast we know Apple is in no way related, or else that glass would break the first time someone spit on it.

and then there is yet another category that goes onto the forum to present a biased, illogical and ill presented, also often spiteful and hateful, post about why they do not like function X Y Z on their designated profession. They then parade around saying “i quit the class long ago, not playing it anymore. Lol warrior much better”

Flytrap.8075:

urdriel.8496:

All other classes can choose, a mesmer can choose a phantasm build or not, a Necro can choose a minion build or not, we cant choose, we have an AI controlled pet that is a dps lost and we must bear with it each second we play GW2.

Ofc, we are frustrated, more than 1 year with a pet that is a debuff instead of a buff, the best fix that ranger class could have would be a “good pet” , but instead of that, Anet nerfed pet leash range,pet attack range and we have a severe damage handicap when we attack or defend a keep.

I agree.

No other class has to work around their class mechanic; it is always beneficial. Our pet is just a drawback and a huge drain on traits that could be utilized elsewhere.
[/quote]

You get to “choose” between massive amounts of pet types. Your pets are not limited to brown bear, jaguar, lynx, jungle stalker, wolf and hyena. It ranges way beyond that. Each pet has it’s own usage, its own function. Each pet family has its own role.

A mesmer can choose to go shatterer or phantasm. That is two choices, but one way or the other it got to chose one of two to remain competitive.
A necromancer can choose to use minions, build around DS or marks/wells, it has to choose one or two of three to remain competitive.
A warrior can choose its function through choosing the right weapons.
A thief can choose to build around stealing, stealth or not.

We can choose between a DPS power Pet (Jaguar, Raven) or a DPS condition pet (Lynx, Marsh Drake) or a tanky DPS power pet (Drakes), a support pet (moas, pigs) or a CC pet (dogs). We also got the same choices of roles in ranged pets, however this option is a whole lot more limited.
In short, depending on what you need, our mechanic has the greatest choice of build diversity avaliable. We can spec full damage player side, only go for self sustain, and still get a considerable amount of party support from pets alone, on the opposite end we can build around strong party support player side, and pure DPS from pets.

The pet mechanic, as it is now, is hindering us from fully utilizing this, if F2 “accuracy” is improved, pet hit ratio is improved and pet survivability is improved then it would be a big step in the right direction, allowing us to capitalize on our mechanic instead of keeping it alive with a whole lot of effort.

OK Oddoad, you make a dramatic, but resonable point.
It is sad to hear that you are going to stop playing ranger because they will no longer be viable. Unfortunately as it is, if you no longer feel useful, you should try to be more productive in a different manner.

I wish you good luck with whatever profession you choose to reroll to, and i sincerely ask you to send me your stuff.

Good luck, and thank you for reading this post
- Lynx

kiwituatara.6053:

Warrior can reach 1,300hps self heal while pumping out perma total outgoing heal of 9,100hps in a 20+ group. Although it only works best when defending or sieging since banners aren’t very mobile.

Rangers are better in smaller group fights but cannot handle series of fights with short breaks in between as they have long CDs on the spirit elite (and are killable). They are unable to maintain the same stableness as warrior heals.

TLDR: For healing only, pick warriors for zergs, pick rangers for small groups.

its not 9100 hp/s. its 9100 hp IN a sec. HOWEVER all these skills go on CD which lasts 23 seconds (around average since 2x 20, 1x 24, 1×29 trait). so 9100 /23 = 395.65 hp/second
Which is strong, it is respectable. But it is NOT better then ranger.

Warrior self heal is also WRONG. because you are miscalculating adrenal health, which is once every 3 sec, not every sec (tool tip is wrong).
Warrior at full cleric, full life stacks, %healing power from toughness and vitality, banner boosting healing power is clocking in at 2119 healing power.
healing signet (self): 468 + adrenal health 678/3 = 226 – total = 674 hp/sec.

Max warrior heal/sec (2x shout + shout trait + signet + banner buff) = 437.59 (group) + 469 (signet self) + 227 (Adrenal health max adren self) = 1133.59 hp/second MAXIMUM OUTPUT WHAT SO EVER.
Arguably, you could get slightly more hp/sec with an extra shout. But it would not raise it by astronomical amounts.

And now for the same build for rangers
Spirit heal (60 sec lifespan, group): 320/second
Regeneration from shouts (group): 361.103/second
Troll unguent (Healing skill, self, 10 sec duration 25 sec CD): 1084/second
Natural healing (trait passive self): 125/3 second = 41.66/second
Signet of the Wild (signet passive, self): 179 /second

Ranger group heal (per second): 681.103
Ranger self spike heal (per second): 1985.76 hp/sec for 10 sec
Ranger permanent self regen: 581.763 hp/sec

However, warrior will have more armor, BUT ranger will have MUCH more protection uptime and evades. Therefore, through sheer mitigation, ranger self heal, while less, will do more effect. Another thing to mention is, if ranger chooses to drop some self sustain for healing spring, the group “healing” ability far outdoes whatever guardian or warrior can produce simply because 10 second waterfield with condi cleanse can be blasted so many times for 1350hp/blast AOE that its not even comparable to what the others can produce.
It should also be noted that when investing 5(25) points or more into BM, 10% of healing power is returned to the ranger as power. This further enhances power builds, allowing a ranger to far outdamage (remember BM pet is nothing to scoff at damage wise) a warrior.

I run healshout myself, warrior is an excellent healer, but much like healway guardian, it cannot SUSTAIN its allies, merely “drag em back up” from low HP.
While we are at it; Aquatic Benevolence + monk rune ele is VERY high up there with its group healing. Although, spike wise it is strong, CD drags it down a little.

For group sustain (10 man havoc in WvW)
1x Celestial staff ele with aquatic benevolence trait and monk runes (+35% increased healing to allies)
2x shout regen rangers running spirit and 30 into BM.
1x healshout warrior or healway guardian.
rest is whatever.

Setups used in comparison:
Ranger: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQFARnEqQvg2rCWsARLGQToaFAvnhS9UdnsbwDD-TlRDABGqEEq9HuU9nsU+BwDAQPdAkC4blRA-w

Warrior: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQFABjMd0CalHeeG4HoQTOYKASPFJeVA-TlRDABGqEEq9HuU9nsU+BwDAQPdAkC4blRA-w

the correct way to counter any type of thief: kill it
the wrong way to counter any type of thief: die

Even good guilds aren’t THAT good. But a feeling of superiority drives them, this feeling or aura or whatever, makes others think they are that great. Even though they aint.

Actually Otaking you are plain wrong:
Bottom barrel PvE – Necromancer by a massive margin
Bottom barrel PvP – Tied between Necro and Ranger

In PvE you will get 15% permanent boost to DPS thanks to sword mainhand. Our DPS will then be closer to mesmer/warrior. With signets working without investment, you will see a LOT more DPS from rangers due to 25% damage boost for 8 seconds without having to spend massive points in Marks. That is HUGE.

Rangers are already viable power roamers. They do require a bit of skill to be played, but glassbow, however trollish it is, wrecks people who do not actively counter the ranger. As a matter of fact, PRE PATCH power LB has a peculiar role to fill in PvP. It is that of a “destructive decoy”. If left on its own, the glassbow player will demolish most enemies quite effectively. There is no denying it that 2-4k AA spam IS going to matter. You will notice it, be it a super tanky warrior or a full glass thief. It hurts, and it cannot be left unchecked.
So, what is the purpose of glassbow in PvP?`To tie down the enemy roamer. Make the enemy roamer use time and resources chasing you. This effectively prevents far point captures, and also makes ganking less effective due to the enemy lacking a roamer.
It comes as no shock that when talking glassbow VS thief, it is first one to fire that usually wins. Thief will be forced to back down or to go all in and kill you. Your job as a ranger is simply to make that thief spend A LOT of time getting you down (use terrain to constantly hide from shadowsteps and steals. This slows down the thief A LOT).
So with enemy roamer tied up, your team will have an easier time. If the enemy team has no designated roamer (bad team) then you will probably be able to sit off-node and destroy anyone trying to hold it or force them off the node so a team member can decap.

Playing power ranger is not rocket science, it is essentially a game of chess. Each skill is a pawn on the board, The terrain and allies making up the “heavier” pieces. How you utilize your pieces decide the outcome. There is no absolutes in PvP, none at all. Those who cannot accept that reality have no place in PvP in the first place.

Allie Murdock.8152:

To those asking how far we would redesign – I can’t really comment on this specifically, but I can say that you should share your ideas because sometimes they inspire things to happen. Does that make sense?

It does make sense, yet it does not.

I am absolutely sure you guys know by now (through the CDI, the ranger forums, the WvW forums, the PvP forums) that rangers are beyond the point of “band’aiding”.

The majority of changes to the class is mostly bugfixes. Bugfixes caused by bugs, caused by band-aiding. More band-aiding and minor tweaks are not going to fix the current system’s problems.
The pets need a thorough work-over, even if you did what i mentioned above, fixed F2, increased sustain, decreased respawn on death, increased DPS. It would still only bring pets up to the point where we can tolerate them being a part of the profession.

So far there is only THREE pets i trust doing their job every time;
Brown Bear, thanks to short activation time of skill
Krytan Drakehound thanks to the F2 being AOE and immob allows it do successfully follow up with the knockdown.
Marsh Drake – Because the attack itself is “heat seeking” and ranged.

Now, you can look at the reasons i trust these pets and then you realize that if it hadnt been for special circumstances, they wouldnt even work.

I can tell you right here and now, that the majority to pet functions (internal skills included) are underpowered, badly chained, have little or no synergy with the rest of our attacks. Not to mention the god awful activation time and or after cast on most skills completely ruins AI reliability. However i KNOW, i KNOW you cannot fix these things properly without putting in massive amounts of time and effort, yet this is the core issues. The pathing, the after cast, the skill balance, synergy, basic functions, range, projectile speeds, attack radius, AI refresh rate…

I was kinda missing these non-objective and totally uninformed topics that OP tends to make.

So what is your argument this time Ragnar?

“Engi feel stronger”….

Well, i “feel stronger” when i get drunk, but i aint getting any stronger by drinking. So your feelings have little to do with balance i am afraid.

melee wise, we are fine at speed. We should have a speed while wielding bows added to one of our existing traits.

Entangle could be changed to a “thorn wall”. You enter and wines grasp ahold of you for 2 seconds. No AOE limit, but the “duration” of the people running into the wall is fixed. Wines HP are buffed a little, so that you can nuke them down with a 100b or something, but generally, you would be stuck for 2 sec. I would argue that a “line” immob, working like other line skills (line of warding, spectral wall).

Personally, i’d prefer them to do 5 things;
1 – move Sic’em and Guard to F1 and F3 respectively. Add a 15 seconds ICD to the effect from the former shouts, while the pet command effect will be possible to use at any moment (kinda similar to how trait effects linked to skills [invigorating bond etc] ICD’s work).
2 – add 2 new shouts; 1 gives AOE stability and heals for a tiny amount (personal suggestion; 4 sec stab and 700 HP heal with a 35(28) seconds CD).
1 gives boon corruption, turning 2 boons into cripple and weakness (personal suggestion; 6 seconds cripple, 6 seconds weakness. 25(20) seconds CD)
3 – Pet F2 effect overhaul. Most F2’s need a complete overhaul of the effects themselves, the rest needs a serious reduction in casting time and CD
4 – Give pets a dynamic boost to toughness and vitality depending on enemies nearby:
Personal suggestions;
10 enemies – +15% Toughness and vitality
20 enemies – +30% toughness and vitality
30 enemies – +45% toughness and vitality
40 enemies – +60% toughness and vitality
50 enemies – +75% toughness and vitality
60 enemies – +90% toughness and vitality

5 – Make Healing Spring add +5 seconds to all active boons (except regeneration) to players within the field. (making it the best waterfield in game without any doubt EVER)

it is not a lie, stating that playing a ranger is like playing two toons at once, and one of your toons (pet) is a underlevel with bad armor