Guild Wars 2

Ramoth.9064:

Which really just means you’re wasting a lot of stats on precision when you don’t need to. For PvP anyhow.

I’m a wvw roamer/sniper i mainly hunt thieves etc trying to flip camps, it’s very effective when they melt to a single rapid fire burst even in stealth (if i fire quick enough)

For me precise strike and remorseless are useless as i have 100% crit chance aslong as i have fury so i’d rather the damage increase be moved to precise strike and maybe give remorseless a short quickness on fury instead

I really miss HiPS (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Plain_Sight), it was such a great trait for getting out of bad situations especially when they changed it so you could move without breaking it, i was so disappointed when it was replaced by shared anguish ;(

I had some ideas on CA form that might help make it feel more fluid and help us make use of all skills as i find myself only using 2, the other 3 feel too clunky/situational and difficult to use,

1st is skill 1 cosmic ray the radius is so small its immposible to heal a moving target with so i think it should be changed to something like this, (Cosmic Ray: Fire orbs of energy at the targeted foe bouncing to nearby foes and allies damaging and blinding foes while healing allies it hits) and it should fire 3 orbs at a time that bounce to 3 targets with a cooldown similar to solar beam,

2nd is skill 2 seed of life again i find it a bit clunky/difficult to use so i think something like this would be better, (Seeds of Life: Scatter seeds around you that explode on impact healing and cleansing allies of conditions) now it scatters 5 seeds in an area around the druid but increase the cooldown to 3 sec,

And finally skill 5 natural convergence, i find this skill gets me killed when fighting more than 1 or 2 enemies in wvw so i think this might help, (Natural Convergence: Channel your celestial powers trapping foes with a black hole immobilizing them while pulsing weakness on foes and protection on allies) this way the skill can turn the tides in battle and since it roots the druid it should apply the immob instantly,

one last thing i would change not with CA but with staff, sublime conversion feels clunky also trying to line it up properly, i think it would be better if it was a circular wall that converts projectiles from all directions b/c in wvw projectiles almost never come from one direction, thats all, thank you.

With the heart of thorns expansion arenanet are using the elite specializations to improve all classes in area’s they may be lacking, to make all classes more versatile and create more synergy between them and for good reason, balance is skewed so far off right now that rangers are the last choice for almost any group (or atleast we were, we may be slightly better off now since the patch) however i don’t think druid is going to give much if any support what so ever, infact i think staff is going to be mostly a control weapon (root’s, cripples) and maybe healing but won’t know for sure until it’s revealed, besides my idea’s would give us the ability to buff up our pet (such as when a commander call’s for empower) send our pets in along with the group, hit F2 and boom your team just got all the boons you stacked on your pet, next a condi class attacks you (because everyone goes for the ranger lol) so you swap pets and they begin stacking condi’s on you, but instead of your pet dieing in 2sec it clears 3 condi’s, turns them into boons and you hit F2 now you have boons to fight back with, thats just an example of how these changes would work and if they were made we may just see groups actually requesting rangers for a change.

I agree, i know we provide some powerful support in the form of long range, high dps, that is what i already do, i also provide perma swiftness/regen with high fury uptime and some might using resounding timbre, clarion bond and runes of the pack, i can also take down most builds 1v1 easily or run frontline and jump straight into the fray and survive because of how strong my build is, but i think we could do better as anyone can dps and most provide better support, i’d like to see our pets become more useful and be able to survive more than 5 seconds in a group because if my pet is supposed to account for 30ish % of my dps then i want it to provide reliable dps/support and it can’t do either if it’s dead, that is what i’m suggesting, other than my pet’s melting from empathic bond i am very happy with my ranger

Hey guys, i just had some more idea’s i wanted to share and it’s to do with signets, first of all i think that signets should continue to apply their passive effect after activation as i find myself not activating them because i find the passives more useful than the active in most cases and i think they could be changed to provide some nice team support too so i think they should go something like this,

Signet of the Hunt: Passive: Grants 25% increased movement speed to you and your pet. Active: You and your pet and all nearby allies deal 10% more damage on your next 5 attacks. (this change would make it more useful for channeled and multi-hit attacks for you and your team) edit: by changing attack of opportunity it would also make moment of clarity an AoE damage boost on interupting a foe

Signet of the Wild: Passive: Grants health regeneration to you and your pet.
Active: You and your pet grow larger, dealing more damage and giving stability to you and your pet and all nearby allies. (now we have a strong source of stability that we can share)

Signet of Renewal: Passive: Cures a condition every ten seconds.
Active: Your pet pulls all conditions from nearby allies to itself and converts them into boons. (this is a strong signet as it is but kills the pet and this change ties into my changes as mentioned in my OP)

Signet of Stone: Passive: Improves toughness for you and your pet.
Active: You and your pet take no damage from attacks and grant protection to all nearby allies. You and your pet are still susceptible to conditions and control effects. (we take no damage and now can provide nice protection to our team).

@Redemer.2601 tbh i don’t think that would be enough as not everyone likes spirits including myself, they just don’t fit with my ranger/play style but they are in a bad way right now and i hope they do get fixed for those who do like em, what my idea’s are designed for is to give us strong support that teams will want and give us options in how we provide that support.

@Raven.9603 Well the idea behind it would be taking advantage of Fortifying Bond as all boons applied to you are given to your pet and with my version of Invigorating Bond you would “return the favor” so to speak by hitting F2 essentially boosting the support of yourself and nearby allies or if you prefer a more solo roaming/self serving style of play you can take my Fortifying Whistle tranferring the boons your pet converts from empathic bond or that you apply to the pet to yourself on pet swap boosting your own support,

If you take Wondrouswall’s version of Windborne Notes (converting 1 condi into a boon on each nearby ally with call of the wild) you could support your team that way everytime you cast call of the wild (clarion bond/warhorn 5), also with Windborne Notes and Resounding Timbre you would apply regen with call of the wild and all shouts and your pet already heals on F2 with invigorating bond but my version is just better, that’s about it.

edit: i forgot to mention that if Signet of Renewal was also changed to convert the condi’s your pet pull’s from nearby allies into boons you could then apply those boons to your team on F2 with my invigorating bond.

@Raven.9603 Your point on spirits reminds me of a post i made 10months ago about turning spirits into floating coloured orbs that pulse when they apply their buff and emits a flash when activated and their icons already look like orbs but someone told me they were part of an old theme from GW1 and thats why they look the way they do, anyway i never was really into the whole spirit thing my suggestion was just to help those who were, however i think my idea’s decribed above are still solid changes to make pets more useful than getting in a hit or two and limp around dead or for those who like to keep them on passive they would still provide some valuable support, it would encourage pet swapping before it dies in order to boost not only your own support but the support of your allies.

edit: i do think you are right though, if natures vengeance and spirits in general are improved it would give us another option for support by either using our pets for support or spirits as spirits would apply their boons more directly rather than boosting the boons applied by ourselves or allies.

@Wondrouswall.7169 The main purpose for Windborne Notes is to apply regen with call of the wild and recharge it faster so that is an excellent idea because if you took clarion bond you could have the same effect on pet swap.

@FrownyClown.8402 I suppose a number of builds would be affected but overall i think this would make us far more desirable in PvE and WvW which personally is what i am experienced in, in any case i think alot of builds were changed in the patch and gave us some nice options i’d just like to see our class become the best it can be.

Hey guys, i just had some idea’s i think would make ranger a powerful support to allies in all game modes, just now i had a look at nature magic and it seems to me that for a boon based line it looks pretty weak, so here are a few idea’s i came up with that would boost the ranger to a whole new level in team based situations,

First off i looked at protective ward and thought it would make more sense if it was in wilderness survival as you gain protection on dodge in that line and protective ward would add protection and weakness on hit and would make bark skin a bit stronger as your foes attacks would be weakened for those who like to run melee so i think protective ward should be swapped with empathic bond and empathic bond should convert the conditions it takes from you into boons for the pet (i would do the same for signet of renewal),

Then i looked at the master traits and thought wow vigorous training looked pretty bad so i thought what if we replaced it with the new empathic bond and swapped evasive purity with bountiful hunter and increase the damage per boon to 2% but now you may be thinking what about the gap in the grandmaster traits, well this is what i came up with, (Fortifying Whistle: When you swap pets any boon currently on your pet is tranferred to you.) That takes care of the gap but what about invigorating bond, sure it has a heal but it doesn’t have anything to do with boons so i came up with this, (Invigorating Bond: Your pet heals allies and transfers any boons it has when executing a command [F2] ability.)

All of these changes i believe would make ranger a powerful support class and would make lingering magic stronger as right now there isn’t many pets that apply boons and the ranger is severely lacking in support as it is making it unwanted in most situations, i would also like to see a way for us to keep track of conditions and boons on our pets without having to click on them as they sometimes get lost in the fray.

The biggest problem i find with pets is they are far too easy to kill without even being focused on, we can dodge out of AoE’s but the pet can’t and with empathic bond as it is it’s an instant dead pet so i wanted to add these two changes as they have been mentioned before and would force players to treat pets as more of a threat than being mobs that’ll die anyway when they just focus the ranger,

1. Empathic bond should convert the conditions taken from the ranger into boons for the pet, it would help them survive longer as it does for us except when the pet is focused on, even with empathic bond we are still susceptible to high output condi builds but atleast our pets won’t just melt in 2sec.

2.Another issue is physical AoE attacks (as almost every class has some sort of AoE cleave/targeted blast) they just kill pets by staying on top of the ranger (except in the case of ranged pets but even ranged pets won’t move to avoid AoE’s) so i propose that Mistlock Instability: Playing Favorites be added to Beastly Warden,
Beastly Warden: Your pet taunts foes near them when executing a command [F2] abilty, Pets take 50% less damage from untargeted attacks.
this way pets will survive longer in heavy AoE attacks and will be focused anyway when they use taunt or by the other players choice and take full damage.

I think these changes would make rangers more viable in large group content such as wvw or even in dungeons as the tankier pets will still get focused more often but can handle it better than the squishy ones whereas in wvw the squishy ones that do more damage would get focused more by players as they are a bigger threat.

I know it’s a mechanic flaw and it’s not the only one but all we can do right now is help our pets out with whatever cc we can and hope we get lucky, the real problem is our pets were copy/pasted from mobs rather than designed independantly to act like “trained” pets, maybe we can hope for a fix in the next expansion lol

I use sigil of ice in my longbow for this reason, also predators instinct trait to slow them down when they hit 50% hp and it can also help to use beastly warden and pets that inflict chill/knockdowns or cripples/immobilize such as alpine wolf, snow leopard, owl, polar bear, white moa or ice drake even then thay can still have a hard time hitting if the player knows how to counter or is naturally resistant to cc’s but it helps out in the long run.

Kehlian.4380:

You can get a shout build, with rune of soldier, and cleanse conditions super effectively

Yeah i made a shout build with resounding timbre to stack regen/swiftness using a mix of cleric/zealot gear as a sort of power healing support build but it was alot squishier than my current build and the dps was fairly low and if i were to use the shouts/runes with my current build the regen would be pretty useless without healing power (not that its very useful even with healingpower since everyone does alot more damage after the patch), besides the only reason i got mowed down by condi’s in the first place was because of that bug that resets traits when you logout/change map after changing traits, as it is now i can run frontline or kill most power/condi builds easily in 1v1 so i think i’ll leave it the way it is, but thanks anyway.

yeah i just realized my traits had reset to a different build and i had no condi removal while 1v1ing the condi engi lol also i should’ve opened with hunters shot to prevent him/her pulling me into range, my bad lol

edit: there is one thing i would like to see changed, and probably everyone else too, either merge hide in plain sight to shared anguish or replace it, it was one of our best survival abilities against heavy stun builds and didn’t punish our pets while doing so.

Hey guys, ever since the change to conditions i have been finding it more difficult to survive against some of the heavier condi builds even with melandru runes and -condi food equipped and the condi removal traits feel a bit weak when enemies can just keep stacking those condi’s and i don’t like empathic bond because it just kills our pets and becomes useless so i had an idea, what if natural healing was swapped with zephyrs speed and buffed up a bit then merged with empathic bond so the pet can atleast mitigate some of the damage it takes when it cleanses you and then to replace empathic bond with this, Natural Resistance: Reduces the duration of conditions applied to you and your pet by 20% on you and 50% on your pet while your health is above the threshold (50%) just an idea as i felt rangers should be more resistant to condi’s and the current system isn’t very ranger or pet friendly.

It can’t even pierce at 900 unless 5 enemies line up in front of you and stand still (with their back to you just to even get the bleeds), we need the 1200 to effectively hit more than 1 or 2 targets, it can’t even hit targets on a wall unless they’re hanging off the edge all you get is ‘Obstructed’ and with half the velocity of LB and 10% of the damage it’s like shooting chopsticks, but if you like wet noodles then be my guest, i’ll stick to LB and roll in the bags (lol)

@runeblade.7514 i guess you never used shortbow before it was nerfed into oblivion (arrow velocity, attack speed, range and damage) it was one of our best weapons and longbow was the one that sucked back then lol but shortbow was nerfed to make longbow more “appealing”.

i wasn’t suggesting that the pet run back to the ranger but rather instantly teleport similar to how lick wounds teleports your pet back to revive you and i understand that it does currently have some functionality as you described but is far too situational imho, and i would rather have my pet at my side defending me than sending him off to sit in stealth for 3mins doing nothing.

edit: also it would make using porcine pets more viable as you could cast “Guard!” to teleport the porcine back to you and hit F2 so the foraged item would drop at your feet, and if they gave “Sic E’m” the ability to teleport the pet to your target you could send it right back into battle giving you a whole new dimension of control over your pet than just F1/F3.

I like “Guard!” too for the most part, atleast the traited version but i feel the ground target portion makes it more complicated than it need be and far too situational, however with the changes i proposed it would open it up to a whole new build/style (support shout ranger) aslong as other shouts are brought up to par,

as an example say you are in wvw and you’re running with a small group flipping camps etc and your group is attacked, you begin opening fire on them and next thing you know you get hit with a huge backstab but the thief then CnD’s on you and you can’t retaliate other than wasteing dodges/leap skills in the hopes of avoiding his next one to finish you off, however with the new “Guard!” when he hits CnD you hit “Guard!”, pull him out of stealth for 2 seconds, your pet teleports back to you gaining stealth and protection while you gain regen and swiftness giving you the chance to strike back and get back to support your allies, because what is the point of a support build if it can’t even support itself…

i like the “pet teleport to your target” idea but i think that would work better on “Sic ’Em!” and remove the movement speed increase and replace it with super speed, that way the pet would be able to stay on target easier and even avoid pathing issues, for “Guard!” perhaps it could teleport your pet back to you to guard you also it would help your pet if it’s stuck on terrain or to save the pet from getting mowed down.

Hi guys! today i decided to try a build that was recommended to me similar to one i used to love and play long ago before LB pew pew became “meta”, the condi survival bm, but by using “Guard!” with resounding timbre to apply regen and swiftness i can finally support my allies and run around a bit faster without wasting a utility on a signet, however, i find it’s functionality a bit clunky and irritating having to hit the pet return key everytime i want a bit of swiftness so i propose it be changed to this, ""Guard!“: Command your pet to return and guard you, your pet gains stealth and protection for a short duration and reveals stealthed foes around you for 1 or 2 seconds.” this way it would funtion as more of a support option to “Sic Em!”.

Also i would like to point out another suggestion that was made here on the forum about shortbow range as mentioned in this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Increase-range-please/ because right now shortbow feels like i’m shooting chop sticks, the arrows are slow and won’t pierce anything at 900 range.

Ah i see well i never played GW1 so didn’t know they were trying to mimic an old theme, my idea is based more like the genies from PWI or the espers of JD (which is what i played b4 GW2) and thought it might work better if spirits were the way i described above, perhaps someone else can come up with something that keeps them within their old theme then.

I had an idea for spirits also and i think they should be changed into glowing orbs of light that float around the ranger and follow by default (the utility icons already look like orbs), remove the health and make them untargetable, change ‘Vigorous Spirits’ by removing the health increase and adding a reduced cooldown on their abilities, (Trait IV Vigorous Spirits: Spirits abilities have 20% reduced cooldown and a greater chance to trigger their benefits.) and change ‘Spirits Unbound’ to (Trait VII Spirits Unbound: Spirits abilities affect twice as many targets.) and ‘Natures Vengeance’ to (Trait XI Nature’s Vengeance: Activated skills of spirits are larger and trigger when the spirit disappears.) and finally make the light emitted by the spirits pulse when their benefits are triggered so the ranger knows when it’s activating and emit a flash when the ranger triggers it’s ability.

That is true it may not work that way with the hyena but i think perhaps if they added an effect to the skill like an attack of opportunity, “Damage increased 150% on next attack” for both hyenas and the ranger and seeing as the hyena has much lower power than other pets this effect would be beneficial.

I’ve been thinking alot about the recent changes to the ranger in the feature patch and have come up with some ideas that may improve rangers in other ways, firstly i had thoughts about the ‘hide in plain sight’ trait and how i liked the idea of it but it felt a bit lackluster so i thought what if the ‘camoflage’ not only stealthed the ranger but allowed us to attack from stealth without being revealed much like the jaguars ‘stalk’ ability and as it is a short duration stealth i doubt it would be OP, just a small idea but i think it would be good and something unique to the ranger.

Another idea i had was aimed more toward the BM type ranger and it was a new trait for the beastmastery line, i thought alot about how some of the rangers weapon skills synergized with pets by applying certain effects and that got me thinking, what if we had a trait that would apply the pets F2 ability to the ranger and would perhaps go something like this:

Empathic Response: Active pets F2 ability is applied to the ranger.

for example, the spider type pets F2 ability would apply their effects to the rangers next attacks, the wolf F2 would cause the ranger to also apply fear increasing it’s duration, the jaguars ‘stalk’ ability would apply camoflage to the ranger or the porsine pets would allow the ranger to also forage item’s making it easier to pick them up etc,
now some of the F2’s may need to be adjusted/improved in order to make them useful but in my opinion it would improve synergy between ranger and pet.

- In game name: Ranger Flynn
- Server: Underworld
- Preferred game type: WvW & PvE