Guild Wars 2

The applicability of attunement-based traits is a good issue to bring up. However, they could simply apply when switching to the different pyromancy sets.

This would mean that some trait lines might not have a place to which they link, so I’d also propose that the pyromancy sets automatically swap to match with the first and second trait lines you select.

Keep thinking about the rest, but please don’t even consider adding a pet. It’s been such an anchor holding down rangers ever since GW2 arrived, and I’m ready to say that pets just don’t fit in a game where mobility and dodging are important. Elementalists don’t need that burden added even in a specialization.

Eponet.4829:

I hated the old trait system too. The big issue that I felt was that they applied it to every single trait in the game rather than a single slot.

If it was just for Grandmaster traits, or just the elite skill, with the option to use a non-elite skill in the elite skill slot, I probably would have found it more tolerable.

Thing is, if you gave the option to use a non-elite skill in the elite slot, almost nobody would take elite skills at all.

Revenant legend #4: Pyre Fierceshot

Rytlock summons Pyre who in turn supports Rytlock for Khan-Ur in front of the other Charr.

Every member of the guild must have 250 Globs of Globby Goop in their inventory simultaneously. This unlocks a new guild upgrade option for the Super Bounty which activates every bounty target at once. If the guild successfully completes the Super Bounty, you may then start on a Tyria-wide scavenger hunt for random treasures that are now essential to guild hall construction. Each will be used to make various tokens (of Air, of Fire, of Spirit, etc.). Tokens are time-gated and can be made once per day. Finally, with 250 of each token in hand, the guild leader can trade for an Astral Sigil which will unlock the door to your guild hall.

However, you must first build the hall and its doors by returning to Dry Top and buying 100,000 Clay Bricks. Then…

Well, you get the picture.

I wanted to keep my previous post within the format of the thread, but I feel there are some other things that need to be said. These relate not only to the ranger but also to collaborative development in a broader sense.

Side comments

There seems to be a lot of trepidation on the developers’ side when it comes to making any significant changes to the game (lots of patches tweaking numbers here and there, fixing tooltips, etc). One of the decisions ANet will need to make is whether the game is made for ANet or for the players. The community seems to be quite vocal on certain topics (example: ranger pets, ele survivability, warrior’s blatant OPness in many situations) while dev’s will post replies essentially saying “thanks for sharing, but we’re going to leave that the way it is anyhow.” The exceptions for game-changing patch content have often been negative such as too-big nerfs to ele, too-big cumulative buffs to warriors, and a too-insulting Aquaman transformation to the ranger. This only serves to further frustrate the player base. Eventually, more meaningful large-scale changes need to occur. If this isn’t going to happen prior to an expansion’s release, let people know so they can spend their time on other things and maybe come back to try again after the expansion arrives.

Tell us more about what you are doing. Simply saying “we can’t do the things you request because our resources are tied up” accomplishes nothing. I’ll be far more understanding if you say “I can’t make the ranger’s arrows pierce by default right now because I’m too busy creating a new version of Cantha ruled by Bubbles the dragon. By the way, I’m hoping you can join me there when the expansion launches next year!” (Yes, that’s right, I’ll trade auto-piercing arrows for the next dragon realm.) I know you can’t reveal everything you’re doing, but this needs to start somewhere.

Finally, please consider giving the existing game some fixes and a higher level of polish before spending tons of time on new content which frequently comes with brand new bugs and game-mechanic-related problems. I’ve stopped following the living story forum as closely as in the past, but it used to be that players were very divided on whether the living story was worth it or not. Personally, I think the living story is awesome…in concept. I do not want it to disappear. However, I also believe that the game needs to be in total working order as it is before each new step in the living story. Otherwise, you get bugs on bugs created by other bugs introduced by fixing older bugs which…you get the picture. For example, ranger pets couldn’t survive in dungeons or WvW previously; why on earth would I suddenly want to hop into the Aetherblade dungeon or into new fractals or into the Edge of the Mists where the pet will be just as dead as ever?

Specific Game Mode
All

Proposal Overview
Add a separate archer/survivalist class.

Goal of Proposal
Allow the many players, including myself, who rolled the ranger because of the “unparalleled archer” description and have relatively low interest in the pets to play the game the way they desire.

Proposal Functionality
Quite simple: make a ninth profession.

Check out the description copied directly from the guildwars2.com page on the ranger profession:

“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

The ranger does not feel like a ranger because it’s not; it’s actually a beastmaster. Even the description posted on ANet’s own page only mentions pets like they’re one of many tools available to the ranger – not something setting the destiny of every ranger ever created within the game. Currently, the ranger is so closely tied to pets that none of the profession’s other tools are granted the attention and effectiveness they need.

Some people like pets more or less how they are. They could continue playing the existing profession quite happily.

Btw, the new profession ought to receive the name “ranger” while the current profession is re-branded to “beastmaster,” “charmer,” “tamer,” or something similar.

Associated Risks
The risk is associated with the larger amount of work it would take to do this – new graphics, entire new trait tree, new skills (keeping the non-pet ones just the same on a new class would be fine to me, though), and so on. All of these things would need to fit within the balance of the existing game.

I’d suggest replacing the pet mechanic (or moving it somehow into optional utility skills) and bringing back preparations similar to GW1 instead. The preparations could have static effects, effects varying based on weapons, or effects based on slotted utilities (like engi’s tool belt).

1 – Ranger (pet mechanic just doesn’t work when the game’s supposed to be about actively dodging attacks rather than just tanking)

2 – Elementalist (simply too fragile; doesn’t get the power to match, say, a thief in return for it; note burst is far more important than DPS when you’re a glass cannon)

3 – Engineer (you can either use a weapon which makes your skills relatively poor, or you can use a kit which makes attaining high level weapons useless in a game which pushes you towards spending tons of time obtaining ascended/legendary gear)

1 – Ranger (pet mechanic just doesn’t work when the game’s supposed to be about actively dodging attacks rather than just tanking)

2 – Elementalist (simply too fragile; doesn’t get the power to match, say, a thief in return for it; note burst is far more important than DPS when you’re a glass cannon)

3 – Engineer (you can either use a weapon which makes your skills relatively poor, or you can use a kit which makes attaining high level weapons useless in a game which pushes you towards spending tons of time obtaining ascended/legendary gear)

Thank you for giving the ranger some attention at last! Also, thanks for opening up and giving us all a chance to provide feedback ahead of the changes.

Here are my thoughts around the ranger changes:

For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound, so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere.

The move on Spirits Unbound is excellent. However, I think some of the other changes will ensure that build diversity is not increased at all. All the trait buffs appear to happen in Wilderness Survival and Nature Mastery, both of which are already popular for excellent things like Bark Skin and the spirit enhancements. The trait changes around Marksmanship and Skirmishing really won’t make much difference to me in a power spec because I still lack the thing that makes that spec work – power. Opening up more builds could be better done by one or more of:

1) Allow more things to affect both the ranger and the pet (I’m staring at you, 30 point requirement for ever using active effects on all those super-long-CD signets; maybe just lower the CD’s on them instead? Also, shouts take forever to recharge and don’t give much benefit considering pets are unreliable).
2) Pull some of the pet’s stats back into the ranger himself (bear gives toughness/vitality, cat gives power/precision, etc.).
3) Give pets some benefits from the ranger’s stats/equipment bonuses.
4) Combine some of the power-related traits, such as Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye in particular.

You might want to give Knight’s a try. It gives you damage without making you a complete glass cannon, which you don’t want to be in fractals anyway. You should get enough toughness to take a hit if you mess up, but you’ll still follow the main focus as the fractal level increases – making better use of dodges/evades/stuns/positioning to completely avoid damage.

Chopps.5047

Get off your high horse, please.

Here. This is exactly where you sounded like a jerk. It’s not getting on a high horse to answer someone’s question or reply in a discussion with no personal attacks.

Back on topic: Sebrent is right in that mesmer clones are easier to control. Also, don’t forget that they are non-permanent, even if you don’t shatter. They’ll just disappear after your current target is dead. However, I think the problem extends more from: 1) a dead pet removes a portion of a ranger’s usefulness for a longer period than a dead clone and 2) pets can be targeted by the maw’s beam even when they’re already down. Personally, I find the 2nd point to be more annoying than “game breaking” or anything of the sort, but that’s what the major gripe seems to be.

Additionally, lots of folks say there’s no recourse to a dead pet in the maw’s area, but you can back into the corner near the entry point for a few seconds to get out of combat and stow your pet. It only works if you’re not in the middle of a long cooldown, removes you from the battle while you’re doing it, doesn’t prevent your pet from popping right back out again when you go back, and doesn’t prevent the maw from knocking it right back down…but it helps…a little -_-

It seems the dev’s mostly stay off the profession forums. This wasn’t so much the case right after release, but I can’t blame them for changing. Essentially when they poked their heads out on profession pages, everybody went into the topics with guns blazing on “omg, my profession needs major buffs naow! You’re terrible for not doing this!”

The only one I’ve seen recently is Rob over on the ranger forum. Even then, he’s told us that he isn’t over rangers in development; he just visits, listens, and discusses with us because he also plays a ranger :P

Majik.8521:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

One of the reasons why the Ranger and pet are built the way that they are, is because if we gave the ranger all the power, then the pet would have to be useless and vestigial, or everyone would claim rangers are OP.

I have to disagree. IMO it will be impossible to balance the ranger unless more of the dps is distributed to the ranger. we all ready rely on the pets for most our CC and our only blast finisher is from a pet. as it is right now the ranger is to dependent on the pets. there are to many situations that the pet is useless putting the ranger at a huge disadvantage. even when you are not in one of the following situations the ranger is at a slight disadvantage because of how easy it is to kite pets in a circle.

1. large WvW fights
2. tower/keep takes
3. tower/keep defense
4. fractals
5. fighting a thief, its just a free C&D.

other classes are not so dependent on their class mechanic and sure don’t lose 40% dps for being in said situation. few examples are.

Thief – take steal away from them and they would still be good.

Warrior – can do good dps without using adrenaline. in fact have traits that give bonus damage % and crit % for not using it, someone probably even has a build built around keeping it full as much as possible.

elle – well they really don’t have a class mechanic, it is basically their weapon swaps.

mesmer – not really sure about them, however have seen them do great in zergs. so i would guess that have some builds not to dependent on clones.

Agreed. Many thieves only use steal as an extra shadowstep/teleport. Many warriors simply ignore the adrenal skills and get bonuses from having full bars all the time. Ele’s may not have a class mechanic quite like the other professions, but they get various buffs added when they swap attunements on top of having 20 weapon skills available. Mesmers can build lots of different ways, including having lots of clones up or having clones/illusions that cause effects when they’re killed.

There just seem to be far more options for any other profession out there right now. We can argue over whether or not the ranger can hold its own as a profession, but the evidence still points to a general “no” from the community. I have yet to see other professions singled out as undesired for dungeon runs the way the ranger has been (lots of posts on gw2lfg.com saying “no rangers”).

Still, my energy level remains high since we at least have a dev who’s willing to speak with us on issues here again

Swagg.9236:

Ranger is broken as it is. Making pets effective is going to take a LOT more than number games (which, unfortunately, has most often been the majority of what ANet has done with regards to balancing professions and skills). I’m just going to drop pic related here for consideration. All of the skill specifics aren’t really fixed ideas, I just think that there should be two modes for the Ranger as it is. If you really want to make the pet meaningful and effective on the field, you’ll need more than 1 F-skill (IT’S SERIOUSLY JUST ONE SKILL—IT’S EFFECTIVELY THE WARRIOR) to bring out a pet’s potential.

You would need an entire skill set to really maximize a pet’s presence. It’s seriously a second body for the Ranger. I can’t believe that no designer has taken advantage of that.

^^This is worth reading several times over. Also, see the chart Swagg attached. This sounds like a golden idea that not only makes pets more viable but also makes ranger play in general more interesting and varied while creating an option for players who want an archer rather than a beastmaster (just wouldn’t swap to beastmaster mode).

achensherd.2735:

Oh my god a dev. That mains a Ranger. In the Ranger forums. Engaging in active discussion.

CRIES

^^This a dozen times over! Thanks, Rob!

I realize this plea is unlikely to be acknowledged, but I’ve got to put it out there again:

Please, either create a separate profession that is better with the bows, change the class mechanic, and/or make pets optional.

I played ranger all 7 years of the original Guild Wars. The class had highs and lows and sometimes felt as though ANet forgot about it, though never quite the way it’s been for the previous 4 months of GW2 (again, thanks so much for breaking this trend, Rob).

However, through all those years, I almost never used a pet. I didn’t play ranger because I wanted a pet. I played ranger because I wanted somebody who was good with a bow. I played ranger because his chief attribute, Expertise, gave him the ability to adapt and use lots of different weapons and builds to fill different roles and bring along whatever a group needed. At the same time, it didn’t give him everything in one package and break the game.

I picked the ranger in GW2 looking again for somebody good with a bow and, hopefully, the versatility he also packed in the first game. Unfortunately, the current pet system forces us to be one-trick ponies who typically can’t even pull off that one trick.

Regardless, thanks Rob for taking a look at ranger issues and listening to the community sound off on our beloved profession.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Woah I steered this thread off track quickly with my ranger talk. I’ll see if I can squeeze in some time to go over to the class thread and make a post in there about it, but for now let’s get focused back on our dungeon talk instead.

Hi Robert,

Actually, THANK YOU for your ranger talk! It’s more than the actual ranger forum has gotten since the last developer post…approximately 4 months ago :/ I was going to repost and link to this discussion there, but somebody beat me to it. Please, please, please continue to talk about ranger whenever you may have the time (yes, realizing you do have a job) because most of the ranger community’s hard feelings seem to come even more from being ignored than from problems with the class (real or perceived). It’s great just to know that someone at ANet still remembers we exist and need some changes!

I like the idea of getting rid of DR. If the problem is that some of the game content makes it too easy for someone (normal or bot) to build a large amount of resources, that specific content needs to change (harder, less rewards, or something else). Implementing DR is just putting on a band-aid without addressing the root cause.

I like this idea! It seems like a very simple feature to say “ranger equipment” and have it sort for just medium armor and weapons usable by the class.

Please don’t forget that Quickening Zephyr is one of the few useful utility for rangers at the moment. Removing this mechanic can push the class even farther down that it currently is. I’d agree more with other posters about looking at individual skills.

Why not go to weekly updates, at least for a while, instead of monthly ones? Until the game is mature and has everything finely tuned like much of GW1 later on, we could probably all benefit from having balancing issues addressed sooner rather than later. It also makes it easier to experiment with potential changes: buff something, watch the effects for a week, and then decide whether to keep it, revert it, or even buff it further.

A fair portion of the current player base is unsatisfied simply because everything takes so long to address right now. This change could probably preserve the base and maybe attract some of those who have left back to the game again. None of us (well, very few) expect the game to be perfect so early in its life. Please, ANet, don’t be afraid to try mixing things up more than once a month when some features (ahem, rangers/necros/engi’s, cowapult, various bugged events) have lots of things that need fixing. Just because content expansion patches are monthly doesn’t mean balances and bug fixes have to be monthly.

My second suggestion is to provide more communication around what the development team is currently doing in regards to fixing existing content. I think communication around new content has been great and filled with detail. However, for items that need fixing or refining…not so much. It’s nice to hear in a State of the Game podcast that the developers realize how some things are wrong (ele strong, ele smash! ranger scared, ranger hide!), but it just makes everything worse to hear these things then get a patch weeks later that addresses none of them. It’s fine if the team needs more time to get things just right, but tell us what you’re considering – even if you’ve tested it and found that it didn’t work. Maybe put it out there for player suggestions/testing/vetting similar to what some other games have done in the past. Just knowing that you are actually looking at the issues on players’ minds instead of seemingly ignoring your customers will go a long way toward making the community more helpful and pleasant.

(Prepare for a bit of a text wall. TL;DR is at the end.)

Hello, everyone! As with many others here, I’ve been massively disappointed with the lack of support the ranger has gotten thus far. However, I’d like to suggest a change that hits a couple of problems.

The main problem the ranger faces in my experience is that the class offers so little in group play. It works fine for general PvE world farming (hello, bots!), but groups benefit from bringing a different profession along because about the only things the ranger can do for them is use warhorn skill 5 and healing spring. I’m not going to count boons from pets because they’re unreliable, and I’ll defer that discussion to the hundreds of other topics on it.

Next, rangers have a glass ceiling because their skills are less effective. I gather, hopefully without misunderstanding something the dev’s have told us all, that this was intentionally done in consideration that the ranger has a persistent pet with skills of its own (again, let’s defer pet discussion to other topics). However, this leaves the rangers sorely lacking in effective skills and build diversity. Signets and spirits in general seem lacking due to long CD’s, limited effects, and flimsiness in the case of spirits.

So, with all that said, here’s my suggestion: replace nature spirits with nature aspects. A nature aspect is similar to a transformation except that the ranger keeps all his other skills as they are. The aspect’s effect would be to provide specialized buffs to all allies (within some range, say 1200), perhaps with a more powerful version of the buff applied to the ranger. Some points on this:

1) The buff is not a boon and is not subject to removal.
2) Application to the group is crucial.
3) Effects are guaranteed to activate – no more of this X% chance mess. There can still be conditions for the effects, but meet the condition and its a guarantee – see the example.
4) Effects are in effect (see wut I did thar) the entire duration of the aspect.

This would be accompanied with some type of graphical effect on the ranger; I envision sort of a translucent overlay of the ranger’s body, slightly larger than the actual ranger, that has a color corresponding to the aspect that’s been chosen.

For example (and the final effects could, of course, be different), let’ kitten Sun Spirit. It’s now called Aspect of the Sun. Under this aspect, the ranger’s attacks deal an additional 10% damage. Additionally, allies in range are buffed to deal 10% extra damage to burning foes. This stacks meaning the ranger does 20% extra damage against burning foes while allies just get the 10% conditional buff.

So, what do you think? Does anyone have other ideas for reworking spirits? I toyed with the idea of just making them invincible but decided the X% chance to activate would still make ranger assistance far less reliable than simply bringing another class.

Dare I suggest…this could even replace our class mechanic of the “non-optional” pet? Taking a pet could then be made into a skill like in GW1 where you can pick to have it or not, maybe even replacing the Spirit of Nature elite.

TL;DR: Replace nature spirits with nature aspects giving guaranteed buffs to the party (maybe even make it the class mechanic) to improve ranger value in groups and create another viable build option.

Hello everyone,

Let me start off by saying thanks for giving some update to rangers at all. I mained a ranger for all 7+ years of GW1 and felt rangers received no attention at all during that time aside from nerfs to all the bow attack skills’ damage. That’s why the final state of the game practically leaves “splinter barrage” as the only option to get a group to allow you to join them as a ranger.

However, as many threads have mentioned, there’s still more to go. I’ll propose a few fixes here (no, I did not come up with all of these on my own), and hopefully others can add on later in a constructive manner.

1) Pets: This is actually several points together and is one of the 2 main issues for rangers. They need to be able to attack while moving – as players can. Buffing their survivability is almost impossible to balance without supercomputers to drive the AI. Pets will never dodge and make rational decisions like players, so the other option is to make them into super-tanks. This in turn would make them almost impossible to kill. Instead, give rangers the option to roll without a pet (again, 7 years as a GW1 ranger, and I can only remember using 1 build that included a pet). However, since so much of the ranger class is built around having a pet, something needs to take their place on the profession bar when they’re stowed. This could be something like a selectable buff or maybe survival skills (wilderness survival, anyone?).

2) Weapons: Rangers have little damage with weapons. I would say axes are the exception since they can bounce with #1 and pile on the damage that way, but that’s situational. The only other option seems to be longbow – rapid fire while barrage continues in the background.
—Sword is practically unusable with #1 rooting you in place; get rid of the rooting aspect but leave the rest. Movement will fix the sword as it is otherwise.
—Greatsword has some interesting abilities but suffers in the straight damage department. As mentioned in a couple of other threads, the regular sword does damage equal to or greater than its larger cousin. A direct damage increase on the greatsword across its abilities seems in order.
—Shortbow was nerfed to eliminate “single skill spam,” but that single skill is its only method of damage. The damage can either be re-buffed on #1, or the cooldowns could be decreased across the board.
—Longbow sees a lot of complaints because its #1 is sooooo slow, but #2 seems to recharge quickly enough (at least when traited) that you can mostly rotate between launching a new barrage and using rapid fire with some hunter shots in the middle.
—As an idea for bows in general, why not take barrage off the longbow and put in on the shortbow in place of #4. Then for the empty slot on longbow, slot in something with spread fire, similar to the warrior’s fan-fire (feels wrong to say, but feels like warriors are just flat out better with bows right now).

3) Utility Skills: Being the second major point for rangers, utility skills are mostly worthless now.
—Signets have fairly decent effects but require very specific traiting (doable, especially while they’re in the power line) and have very long cooldowns (hint).
—Shouts are worthless. Why would I take skills just to order my pet to move to specific tasks when those skills don’t even offer buffs to either the pet or myself (hint, hint…)?
—Traps work well but could use a secondary effect allowing you to activate them manually for on-demand combo fields (surely requires some extensive balance testing).
—Spirits got a buff to effect chances this patch (thanks!), but they still die almost instantly, even with traits. Why not make their effects always active a la GW1, or keep the newly buffed activation chances while making the spirits invincible (make invincibility a trait choice that cannot be slotted at the same time as the spirits move trait).

Thanks for the updates, Anet, but please don’t leave it here with so much still on the table. Rangers ended up as one-trick ponies in GW1 (at least outside of the PvP arenas) after being neglected for ages. It’s time to show them some love.

It feels like higher level enemies (as in vet/champ/boss, not 80 vs. 70) have a rather inane way of ratcheting up the difficulty. They introduce no new combat mechanics and exhibit no more skill or judgement than regular mobs; instead they rely solely on having a massive amount of life. Especially prevalent in dungeons, these enemies can take 5-10 minutes or more to kill, even for dedicated groups. There is nothing special about engaging them aside from the inordinate amount of time required to finish the fight, especially considering the rewards are typically on par with or worse than simply farming tons of standard mobs. Yes, there are some exceptions such as getting legendary precursors from chests after fighting the corrupted Orrian priests, but the (very low-chance) rewards bring no excitement to the fights themselves.

So here are the questions:
1) Would you prefer that veteran/champion/boss enemies have traits that make them unique in comparison to standard mobs instead of resorting to simple hp infusions?
2) If so, what would you do to set them apart in such a manner?

I don’t know the best way to address this issue, however I’d enjoy hearing everyone’s suggestions.