Guild Wars 2

Szin.1250:

You need to search farther and wider, then. Tolkien isn’t even close to being the original, although his conception of rangers has heavily influenced modern fantasy and gaming.

“Ranger”, according to the OED, goes back in English to at least 1455. It has quite a wide range of definitions there, with scads of quotations across the centuries before Tolkien. About half of the definitions do include some reference to managing wildlife and/or livestock.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in England, the term could be a mildly derogatory term roughly equivalent to “vagabond”. It had less to do with any fighting style than with the fact that they “ranged”, i.e., wandered about. My own take is that Tolkien was thinking of this term when he called Aragorn and his companions “rangers”, given the way the rest of the humans in Middle-Earth seemed to look down on them at first. Since the term has lost its derogatory force in today’s English, that nuance of the book is lost on most readers.

But really, that is all irrelevant. “Thief” in GW2 is not really much like “thief” the way non-gamers use the word. Neither is “Guardian” or “Engineer”. “Necromancer”, prior to D&D, meant “a medium who speaks to the dead to divine the future”, which bears only a distant resemblance to what it means in gaming.

“Ranger”, as ArenaNet uses the term, apparently includes having a pet as its core mechanic. It’s all well and good to request that they change that core mechanic (although my own preference would be for them not to), but appeals to outside sources should carry no weight in the discussion.

Well that is a bunch of good info right there, thank you.
I understand what you mean. I’m not sure outside sources shouldn’t carry weight in the discussion. I think that we can learn by example either in concept or in execution (inspiration and other games, respectively). Analyzing an outside should could make someone have an idea or inspiration, in my opinion.

Jestunhi.7429:

Munrock.3092:

Hi. I’m a member of anyone, and you don’t speak for me.

Ditto, I’m perfectly happy with pets & bows.

I guess I wasn’t clear on what I meant. I mean that pets or no pets, the ranger class isn’t in a good place at the moment, and I think it might have been because they tried to merge two different concepts. Whether you guys like the result or not, we can still argue that the class isn’t as good as it could be in relation with other classes.

Actually, it DOES work with Endure Pain… but Endure Pain itself is bugged.

Endure Pain should last 5s… but lasts 3. If you equip Sure-footed, it makes Endure Pain last a bit less than 5s.

But still, both are bugged.

Seras.5702:

What GW1 did with dual-class makes comparing that game to GW2 very difficult. A lot of players are saying that GW2 is limited because you can’t do something that you could in GW1 as a dual-class. W/R that used pets were not rangers. Neither were touch rangers. They were in essence, necros with reduced casting costs.

I think this is one reason we feel limited when compared to GW1.

Another is the sheer number of skills.
In GW1 you could go all the way from pure marksman to beastmaster. Here we are forced to be a hybrid.
I, for one, would like to have the same flexibility as before

riku.2091:

Removed the quote due to message size limit

I understand where you’re coming from, but I most respectfully disagree.
I’m not pre-conceiving anything on my head. I compare every ranger with the “original” definition of ranger. I don’t blame Anet for giving us their twist of the idea, not at all. But I can very well not like it. And I don’t. Me and many other people prefer GW1’s ranger over this one.
That said, we know pets won’t change.
That doesn’t mean they were a good idea in the first place, and it doesn’t mean the class is in a good state, cause it isn’t.
Ranger’s aren’t supposed to be true marksman/bowman neither in my conception nor in the “original” concept (I take it Tolkien’s is the original, I have searched far and wide and have not found any mention of rangers predating his works).
What the class doest suggest (I even have checked out GW2’s website, but they changed it…. but they still suggest rangers are marksmen. Even the character creation screen suggests rangers are marksman) is that it should be a skirmisher.
There is even a “skirmishing” trait line.

But at the moment, that isn’t true. The class is one of the less mobile around. Just from the top of my head I can say with experience that elementalists, thiefs and warriors are far more mobile and more capable of skirmishing than the ranger.

Another point is: pets are in a horrible state, and their AI doesn’t allow for efficient skirmishing. Their skills unreliability also prevents their use in skirmishing.

Things I would suggest for the class to be better, without moving away from the concept Anet has created:

• More mobility. Terrain negotiation, swiftness. Whatever it needs. Just more mobility. Rangers need to be able to skirmish effectivelly, not just act as turrets.
• More control over pets: remove the current F1-F4 controls and bind them to other keys. Make the rangers F1-F4 the pet’s skills. Let the rangers control every action of the pet.
• Different types of pet for different playstyles: pets that deal much less damage, but give the ranger a damage boost in form of buff, and their skills help the ranger with skirmishing (swiftness, condition removal, snares) ; pets that deal a lot of damage but require the ranger to support them in order to deliver said damage. That describes the current state of pets, but that is useless for skirmishing.
• Less utility skills that buff pets, more utility skills that buff both.
• More synergic attacks. Instead of the ranger’s attacks giving perks to their pets, make attacks like (Im just making up some example on the fly here): “flanking strike: ranger attacks for x damage, pet attacks for y damage. if both attacks hit, target is cripple for z duration”. That would actually make it feel like they’re fighting together.
• Preparations. preparations. preparations. written thrice for emphasis.
• Pretty much a return to GW1’s ranger (which is what most of us were expecting of Anet. Warriors “conversion” to GW2 turned out fine. Ranger’s were just botched.). Seriously, just check any list of GW1’s ranger skills and you’ll see how more interesting they were.

That’s it, hope it helps the discussion.

riku.2091:

Then people will complain about how similar the two classes are. Making such a big deal just because it’s called Ranger and it doesn’t match up with your definition of Ranger is quite petty. Anyone who has spent a few minutes on the wiki would have clearly known what they were getting into.

And the split and merge happened so early in development I don’t think it really made that much of an impact on how the singular final product came out.

You have a point. People will always complain.
That’s why I stated that we will just have to deal with it: pets are in to stay, as much as I dislike the concept.
I would like, yes, that the class would be called something other than ranger, because that would give me hope that in the future, a ranger class would make it into the game. (Maybe wanderer? roamer? pet-killer? one can only hope)
Now, that doesn’t mean we cannot argue and try to make the class more appealing to everyone, like I said.
I’m all in for a “remove pet, give buff” option, but I’m pretty sure Anet already stated that this is not happening. Ever.

So, why not try and improve the class by giving us options? I don’t think that is complaning a hammer isn’t a drill.
It’s more like: “hey, there’s this really cool concept called ranger, and this class could aim in that direction instead of the one it’s aiming at right now, how about that?”

riku.2091:

Good point. Next time my hammer doesn’t work like a drill, I’ll just go complain until it does, because I’m always right.

Well then it shouldn’t have been tagged “drill” then, shouldn’t it?
Maybe change class name to beastmaster and give us a real ranger in an expansion.

edit: trivia. did you know that the current ranger class is result of a mix between two planned classes: marksman and warden?
maybe they should just split them up again, because throwing the two into a mixer didn’t yielded good results for anyone.

I read through this thread and saw that there are some valid points and some utter garbage as well.

First off, a tip of the hat to the folks that point out that ranger is more than an archer or someone that attack at range. Lots of people seem to confuse that and it’s pretty frustrating.
I really dislike how the concept of ranger seems to have moved out of its original form (a fighter skilled in survival, in woodslore. not necessarily an archer and not necessarily the owner of a pet shop). But I digress.

Sorry if any of this may sound blunt. It’s not meant to be offensive or a rant, it’s just the way I write (english not being my first language) and I’ve been told it sounds a bit too harsh.

About pet as a class mechanic:
Yes, it’s the ranger’s class mechanic and yes, unfortunately we will have to live with that. I don’t like it, but I’m sure it will not change. Developers in general aren’t really known for admitting that something they did is bad and throwing it all out, so even if we managed to convince them that it’s crap, it would just stay crap forever. So yeah, change of class mechanic not happening.

Now, that doesn’t mean that just because pets are the ranger’s class mechanic, it’s what makes them unique. Well…. it doesn’t.
Pets are a completely generic mechanic found in every other MMO out there. Now just because you can switch between them and they each have a F2 skill that doesn’t make them or the ranger unique. Or even good. Much less unique. Every class out have mechanics that, at the very least, you can look at them and say: ok, they tried to create something here. Pet’s are just old MMOs recycled into this one, that should be “something new”, “something fresh”.

For good implementation of pet-centric classes, check out DAoC’s Cabalist and Bonedancer, and Aion’s Spiritmaster.
Those are solid pet classes. The ranger in GW2 is not nearly as well implemented as those at the moment.

The ranger seems to split a little bit too much between himself and his pet.
In my opinion, what could be done to help in that aspect is: give the ranger a choice on how to play with their pets. Right now, rangers swing a too little inside this spectrum. It could be open wide.
What I mean is: giving the rangers more option to go all the way to “pets deal the vast majority of damage, ranger supports pet” to “rangers deal the vast majority of damage, pets support ranger”
Right now, no matter how you are specced, it’s “ranger and pet split their damage”. Its not even, but it’s not 90-10 either.
Just like a previous poster said: rangers have low damage output because their pet is supposed to do the rest of the damage.
I propose we have a way to ajust this imaginary slider.

This way, I think even people like me who don’t like pets could finally be able to play the class they want.

This gets me to the final point and the main reason I’m wasting my time typing this: dont ever say: “ranger is not for you” or “go play another class”. I’ve had a dev say this to me. This is almost offensive.
Just because you share Anet’s vision that the ranger is someone who would love to work in a pet shop, it doesnt mean that there aren’t people out there that are very dissapointed that they didn’t find the class that they were expecting: a true ranger, a versatile fighter more at home in the wilderness than anyone else. And that doesn’t mean having a pet. Not at all. Usually it means pets are turning into BBQ to feed said ranger.

tl;dr: I hate how rangers turned out in GW2, but I know there’s no way to get rid of pets. Pet doesn’t make rangers unique. I propose letting rangers be more in control of how they wanna play with their pets (all the way from ranger-supports-pet to pet-supports-ranger). Also, I hate people that say “go play another class”.
thanks for reading.

I’m not complaining about the class, I’m just adding my input as to why people may be finding the ranger lacking or prefer GW1’s ranger, as the thread title suggests.
But since you asked for my opinion, here it is.
I’d prefer not having a pet.
I’d prefer for a ranger to actually be a ranger: having knowledge of the land, how to negotiate terrain and use the land to his advantage.
I’d prefer a style of gameplay much, much more focused on skirmishing and outmaneuvering your opponent, and much more self suficient.
At the moment, that is far from what is in the game, and probably it will never come to be. It’s simply not how Anet views the ranger. It’s a totally different playstyle. I don’t know if you ever played DAoC, but the archer classes there were much more akin to what I find interesting in a ranger. There were even different arrow types that hit for more or less damage in different armor types.
How the ranger in GW2 could be more akin to what I would like? Having much more maneuverability and snares would be a very nice start. Terrain negotiation skills. More access to swiftness (one of the reasons I play warrior: permanent swiftness), maybe even utilities focused on maneuvering (would have to be better than swiftness)
A class that can effectively hit and run. Strike larger forces and move away before they can react.
For the moment, I will keep playing with my warrior and my thief. Both perform better in the field that the ranger should, in my opinion

And finally, answering your question: the downside of having a companion is that, for balance purposes, my characther will inevitably have to be weaker in order to compensate for the fact that it has a pet. And I do not like some AI to play for me, if I would I’d fire up some chess on “demo” and watch that all day long. But that’s also personal opinion.

It doesn’t matter what’s your favorite ranger concept (I like Tolkien’s, where a ranger doesn’t equate to archer), they all share something in common: resourcefulness.

This is something I feel hasn’t been implemented well in GW2’s ranger, mainly because this class’ mechanic is the pet.
Now, when you look to other classes, you can see that Anet has tried to come up with different and interesting mechanics for them.
But the ranger gets a mechanic that is not special or different in any way, a mechanic that has been done so many times (and in lots of cases, much better. see DAoC’s pet classes for example) in so many games.
The ranger doesn’t feel as unique as the other classes, and as a result of that we see many posts here complaining that the ranger is a bland, boring class. I find that as well and I main a warrior! A class that people also complain that is boring, though I don’t find it so, and not nearly as much as the ranger.

Ever since they unveiled the class, I cringed at the notion of it being pet-centric. I was hoping for something new, something fresh and fun that Anet had been advertising at the time every class would be… and in the end it was the same-old pet.
Now, I’m not usually a fan of pet-classes myself, but I think it’s safe to say that even people that like pets were expecting something new, something different for a class’ mechanics, something that is so central to the class.

Added to that, there’s a lot of skills and traits that benefits the pet, mostly in the form of boons, which in my opinion only adds to the feeling that the class is bland and boring.

I really would like for a return to the concept of GW1’s ranger, a class that had as it main attribute “expertise”, not beast mastery. A versatile survivor, not the owner of a kennel.

Until then, my ranger shall remain forgotten in his character slot, reserving his name for a bright future that might never come.

Jazper.5247:

Does the trait Heightened Focus and Berserker’s Power even work? It says a +9% crit chance and 12% damage increased respectively if you have full adrenaline. I’ve tested this on golems, but I see no damage increase nor crit chance increase.

I’ve tested Berserker’s Power on Golems and noticed the exact damage increase the tooltip describes. Did not test Heightneded Focus, though.

DesertRose,
that is a very useful link.
it presents a different result than the tests I’ve made personally. I will assume made some mistake and will test again to see how it compares with the link you presented.

Eveningstar,
the first part of your response seems to be in line with the link DesertRose posted. Again, I will assume I did something wrong and am wrong on the matter.

For the second part, I personally dislike the whole symbol mechanic on the Guardian and, along with a small part of the community, have been arguing against it for months now. It is a matter of personal preference., I guess.
I have been very frustrated in the past with my symbols overlaping with my team`s fields, either making me waste a dodge in order to avoid my own symbol or messing up the timing on hard-to-pull-off combos (like with small fields that last only a few seconds, like the elementalist’s geysers). I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I think you might understand where I am coming from. In the end, I did worked around it: I rolled a Warrior, and have absolutely no problems pulling of quick combos in a pinch with my hammer now.

As for the last, about skills #4 and #5: I totally agree with you, they are supposed to be situational. I still do think that they lose a lot of their effectiveness outside of sPvP.
If #4 could hit more than one enemy (say maximum of 3?), then it would open up a lot of possibilities in larger fights. Maybe even making the cooldown higher, I wouldn’t mind that. I just find that it being single-target makes it lose much of its usefulness.
As for #5… the casting time makes it very hard to trap anyone with half a brain inside it, so its better used as a defensive skill, to prevent people from entering an area. Problem is, when you’re doing PvE or WvW, aside from the couple chokepoints, you really don’t prevent people from moving at all. Makes it next to useless, in my opinion. In sPvP, it is very useful to deny a capture point. It would be hard to buff this without messing sPvP balance, I do think so.

As for mobility goes, I find the Guardian very lacking. I supposed it’s intended, after all it is very though to kill when played by a competent player. In WvW the Guardian’s lack of mobility really shows, though. I’ve had 1×3 fights where I had to watch the one remaining enemy leave and could do nothing to stop him as we have limited access to swiftness. Except if you equip a Staff, but then I’d call you crazy

To end this,
I do agree with you that weaknesses should be covered by weapon switching (andkitten I would kill for a weapon-switch-redution on the Guardian), but we cannot let that cloud our judgement as whether or not a weapon is balanced.

TL;DR:
It seems likely that I am wrong about hammer’s damage.
I still don’t like symbols
I think #4 and #5 could use a buff. Namely more targets for #4 and cast-as-you-move for #5.

PS: I tip my hat to you, Eveningstar. It’s not every day that one can discuss like that and not turn things into a flamewar. I feel like this discussion is actually going somewhere. Cheers.

edit: I just figured out my mistake while testing. will redo the tests and see how they compare with the french test.

Just wait until you use Merciful Intervention and heal a Ranger’s pet instead of your intended target!
You’ll love it even more!

I see a lot of conjectures and experience here that seem to be only feelings, no actual data.
Measuring the damage output of the Hammer, I found it to be one of the lowest damaging weapons of the Guardian. Doesn’t matter that you hit like a truck on 1 strike, it does matter than you can’t do it fast enough. And I’m not even talking about the target dodging it. 1 handed sword, scepter and GS all have better damage output.

I don’t think OP is right about making the Hammer faster would break the 1-1-1-2 combo, can’t really see why it would. Symbol is created as the 3rd #1 strike hits, so you have plenty of time to hit #2.

What bothers me from #1 chain is not only the ridiculously slow speed on the 3rd hit, but also the fact that it creates a symbol of protection.
I think it would be much better if it gave the Guardian (and maybe nearby allies) protection directly from boon, not from symbol.
Why I say that? Simple. Try to coordinate with other classes for cross-class combos, and you’ll see that the symbols you create actually interfere a lot with #2 comboing with other fields.

skill #4 is a very situational skill and, aside from sPvP, I find it has way too few uses to even exist. Ofc, it’s very funny to kill somone by tossing them off a cliff, or when that one guy’s gonna stomp your ally and you banish him to the other side of the map… but when there’s more than a couple enemies around, the skill proves to be almost useless. Not only you’re using a melee weapon, but Guardians are NOT a mobile class, so most of the time you want your enemy near you, not far.

skill #5 is also very useful in sPvP but lacking in every other aspect of the game. And the fact that stability denies the skill completely just makes it even more lackluster.

the Hammer is not in a good place. Not at all.

Confirmed that tooltip doesn’t match skill duration for Endure Pain

Berserker’s Power : it DOES increase damage exactly as described, but doesn’t indicate so in any way. Already tested this.

Sure-footed (defense line): Doesn’t increase Endure Pain or Balanced Stance duration

Will test Empowered and get back to you.
Heightened Focus would take a LONG time and far too many note-taking for me to be willing to test, so sorry about that one.

edit1:
Just tested Empowered, it DOES work but DOESNT work with the Stability boon.
Tested it with the Warhorn (swiftness and vigor), and the damage did increase per boon.
If anyone is interested in numbers, here they are:
No boons (axe hit1 / hit 2 / hit 3)
43 / 49 / 50
1 boon
44 / 47 / 50
2 boons
45 / 48 / 51
edit:
In case anyone is wondering how I am testing this.
I go to the heart of the mists, get the char naked except for a Steady weapon (axe, normaly), configure the trait I want to test and hit the medium armor golem.
Axe hit1, hit2, hit3 means the damage on the first, second and third skill on the axe #1 chain.

edit2:
Battle Standard (elite skill) doesn’t re-apply stability, only fury and might, for the duration of the banner.

Further tests with Endure Pain and Sure-footed:
With sure-footed: Endure Pain lasts 5s
Without, Endure Pain last a bit more than 3s

Sure-footed does not affect Balanced Stance in any way.

Qbert.4197:

Tracker Wolf.2587:

the “Sure-footed” trait from the Defense line is also bugged.
already made a post in the bug forums and reported in-game during the headstart.

I thought so! Could never prove it though. I’m also pretty sure that the defense trait to automatically cast Endure Pain when dropping below 25% doesn’t work either. Never seen it go off. Also, I think the duration of Endure Pain is lasting much shorter than the 5 seconds it is supposed to last.

I also noticed Endure Pain lasting less last night, will test today and see how it goes.
Will also test Endure Pain @ 25% health… that one used to work, I really hope it wasn’t messed up.

the “Sure-footed” trait from the Defense line is also bugged.
already made a post in the bug forums and reported in-game during the headstart.

Warrior’s “Sure-footed” trait from the Defense tree is bugged.
It should increase stances duration by 25%, but currently doesn’t do anything.

the OP is right.
Hundred blades is not the problem, Quickness is.
It’s what makes thieves do insane damage with pistol whip. Take Quickness off and suddenly PW and HB become very situational abilities, kinda hard to pull them off by yourself but deadly if paired with someone else’s knockdown, stun or immobilize.

Quickness is also broken.
Notice that every skill’s range gets cut in half when you’re using Quickness: try using it and go for an Evicerate at maximum range and watch your Warrior fail miserably.