Guild Wars 2

[WvW/PvP/PvE] Reworking Shouts and (re)establishing Signets as pet focused skills

Proposal Goal

Shouts and Signets currently both emphasize utilizing your pet and therefore lack distinctiveness and purpose. Both are negatively affected by the pet AI. However, Signets compensate quite well because of their passive effect which always benefits Rangers. Shouts on the other hand are way too susceptible to the downfalls of the pet AI. Signets should be established as the pet utilities and therefore indeed focus on enhancing the pet and not primarily the Ranger while Shouts become group utilities. This would create a distinguishable purpose for those two utility groups. Shouts will be more appealing in PvE and WvW. Signets will remain attractive for pet heavy builds and solo builds in all game modes.

Proposal Functionality

Examples for new group focused Shouts:

• Hide!
  Stealth nearby allies for 3s and grant them Swiftness for 10s.
  50s cooldown.

• Seek!
  Reveal nearby foes and grant allies Fury for 10s.
  50s cooldown.

• Protect Me!
  Gain Aegis for 15s and Protection for 5s. Grant allies 3 stacks of Might for 15s.
  35s cooldown.

• Search and Rescue!
  Cure control impairing effects on nearby allies and double their revive speed.
  40s cooldown.

Possible trait re-allocations:

• Switch Shout Master (Beastmastery) with Concentration Training (Nature Magic).

Example for improved Signets:

• Signet of the Hunt
  Active
  Your pets’ next attack is an Attack of Opportunity and causes Reveal.
  (Hello, Sic ‘Em! Let’s hunt!)

Example for consistent Signet design with pet focus without animal cruelty:

• Signet of Renewal
  Active
  Cleanse conditions on your pet (untraited, can be traited).
  Revive your pet if dead instead of cleansing conditions (can’t be traited).

Associated Risks

• Shouts could become too generic and too similar to existing shouts
• Area reveals could have a strong negative impact on Thieves and Mesmers in group skirmishes

Specific Game Mode
All- Every gamemode, no matter what, will benefit this.

Proposal Overview
Instant F2 skills

Goal of Proposal
My goal is to remove the cast time in many pet skills.

Proposal Functionality
Many pets need a instant F2 skill. To compensate, put the cast time to the after cast time.

• Black Bear- Enfeebling Roat
• Brown Bear- Shake It Off
• Raven- Blinding Slash
• Fern Hound- Regenerate
• Black/Pink Moa- Dazing Screech
• Blue Moa- Protecting Screech
• Red Moa- Furious screech

What is not listed:

• Wolf and Krytan Drakehound- they are pretty strong with it.
• Anything I wrote here

Associated Risks
Strong pets and active play might be a risk?

[WvW/PvP/PvE] Giving Traps a unique identity and improving their performance.

Proposal Goal

Traps currently suffer from different issues. First, their baseline effects are underwhelming for utilities. Second, they require a very high trait investment which limits build diversity and partly is caused by questionable trait placement. Third, they lack distinctiveness when compared with, for example, Bombs or Grenades. Improving the utilities and reallocating the traits can overcome the first two issues. Changing the traits can create a distinctive playstyle. Encourage setting up Traps in advance and let Rangers lure their foes into their Trap. Let them be empowered to bring down their trapped prey instead of spamming Traps in combat. Let the prey be hit hard when triggering the Trap. In this context, reallocating utilities could reduce skill redundancy (Spike Trap – Muddy Terrain – Entangle) and introduce a bursty CC/hybrid Trapper in contrast to existing tanky condition Trappers.

Proposal Functionality

Trait and utility re-allocation

• Move Martial Arts to the Skirmishing Master tier
• Introduce new Grandmaster Major trait to Skirmishing (e.g. condition removal)
• Combine two pet traits on the Master tier
• Move Shared Anguish to the Skirmishing Adept tier
• Move Trap traits to Wilderness Survival (Adept and Master)
• Replace Spike Trap with Muddy Terrain (redundancy). Adjust accordingly to Traps.
• New Survival Skill replaces Muddy Terrain (e.g. condition removal, Blast Finisher, Stability)

Utility re-work

• Adjust base duration and make them ground targeted at 600 range by default
• Consider increased new traitline stat bonus when adjusting base duration
• Frontload physical pulse damage into the initial hit. Strong first hit, keep weak pulse hits for triggering crits. Conditions remain the same.

Trait rework

Trap Potency (New)
Wilderness Survival Adept Major

• Instantly recharge a placed Trap when not triggered within 10s
• Increase field duration/ticks by 1s

Trappers Expertise (New)
Wilderness Survival Master Major

• Increase effect radius
• Gain 3 stacks of Might and Swiftness when Traps are triggered

Associated Risks

• Setting up Traps in advance might be inefficient in some game modes
• 40-50 spare trait points might make Trappers too flexible and strong
• Trappers might become too tanky because of the stats provided by WS
• Reduced range on Muddy Terrain might negatively influence ranged Rangers especially in WvW

[WvW/PvP] Increase build diversity by adding sources of active condition removal.

Proposal Goal
Rangers lack active condition removal and also got few options when it comes to condition removal in general. This results in low build diversity because many Rangers perceive Empathic Bond as mandatory. Alternative trait/utility/skill options could open up new builds and emphasize active gameplay.

Proposal Functionality

• Add condition removal in form of traits. For example:
  Moment of Purity (New)
  Grandmaster Trait in Skirmishing
  Remove 2 conditions on critical hits. 10s internal cooldown.

• Add active condition removal on existing utilities. For example:
  Lightning Reflexes
  Survival Skill
  Now also removes Chill/Cripple/Immobilize.

• Add active condition removal in form of new utilities. For example:
  Cleansing Cyclone (New)
  Survival Skill
  Remove 2 conditions and whirl through the air.
  Damage/Blind nearby enemies with stirred up sand.

• Add active condition removal on existing weapon skills. For example:
  Bonfire
  Torch #5
  Cleanse 2 conditions on skill activation.

Associated Risks

• Too strong condition removal utilities/traits/skills could become mandatory and limit build diversity
• Too easy access to excessive condition removal could make bunker builds on Rangers too strong

In addition to my suggestions above to give this class much needed burst/AE, to redesign spirits to be more functional and straight forward, and to make traps fill a massive void in this class, I would also like to propose a couple discussion topics that perhaps ANet and other Rangers can respond to.

Discussion topic #1: Trait Investment and Utility Skills
More than any other class in the game, the Ranger requires a significant investment in traits before a large number of their utility skills are even worth slotting. Utility skills should be worth using on their own. Traits could then further specialize them or perhaps design the class in a way where certain utility skills are more valuable than others, sure.

But why should a Ranger need to invest 30 points in Marksmanship before their Signets actually work on the player and not just the pet?

Why should a Ranger need to invest 30 points in Skirmishing before their traps are worth using (Spike Trap is a great example of this) and, worse still, invest in the Crit/Crit Dmg line to play a condition spec?

Why should a Ranger need to invest 20 points (at a minimum, most would still consider 30) in Nature’s Magic?

Discussion Topic #2: Passive Play
Like my weapon suggestion above, and tying into mtpelion.4562 suggestion about redesigning Ranger weapons, one of the larger problems people voice about the Ranger class is it’s passive play. While some limit this opinion to the class’ reliance on pets and spirits, most of the weapon sets reinforce passive play because they don’t provide engaging or worthwhile gameplay. Nearly every attack for every weapon for the Ranger class does less damage than the auto attack of that same weapon. In some cases this is because those attacks also provide utility, but so do the attacks of other classes and yet their damage is still increased.

Without weapon combos to string together or weapon skills that do more than provide a weak condition the class just doesn’t feel very engaging. We just use a weapon skill because it’s off cooldown as the condition duration will last longer than the weapon cooldown anyway or just provide a cripple which is the least useful condition in the game by far.

Something needs to be done to make the class more engaging as right now most weapons feel like we just turn on auto attack and strafe around the enemy in circles until either the Ranger or his opponent eventually falls over and dies of boredom and not as a result of any real skill or effort.

[WvW/PvP] Proposal: Ranger Traps and the tree they belong in.

Proposal Overview
Many of the traits for the Ranger class don’t make sense where they belong, but the trap traits probably are the greatest example of this class wide. Why do most of the traps deal no upfront damage, all of them are condition oriented, and yet they’re in a trait line that provides neither condition damage or condition duration?

I propose 2 solutions… one is to simply move them to Wilderness Survival so they make sense in a tree, but this is unrealistic because that tree is already bloated with mandatory traits. Alternatively, why not make some/all the traps do a sizable amount of upfront damage in addition to what they currently do?

Goal of Proposal
Right now the Ranger class has almost no burst or AE potential class wide. It also has traps, which are largely condition oriented, in the crit tree. We could kill 2 birds with one stone by making each trap deal sizable AE damage in addition to their current effects. We already have this functionality with Flame Trap dealing 50 damage on top of its burn.

Proposal Functionality
I propose making each trap deal roughly the same damage of about 50-75% of the damage Arcane Wave does for an Elementalist while also providing their current effect. The lower damage is justified because of the added utility the traps have and the shorter cooldown. While some could argue the damage is too high in comparison, one must also keep in mind that the Ranger class as a whole has no other AE outside of Barrage whereas nearly every single attack for the Elementalist is AE.

Associated Risks
The risks are much the same as the current traps provide. By taking traps you’re forced to invest heavily into a tree to make them ranged and large enough to hit enough people. You also give up a great deal of utility by using traps over things like Quickening Zephyr, Lightning Reflexes, Signets, or Spirits.

[WvW / PvP] Proposal: Ranger Spirits, Mandatory Traits, and removing screen clutter

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

Goal of Proposal
The main advantage to removing the spirits using my idea is it will make the utility skills useful without any trait investment so the class can consider using them regardless of the spec they choose while still allowing players the ability to specialize in spirits if they want. It will also remove the screen clutter and body blocking problems spirits currently have.

Proposal Functionality
My suggestion is to remove spirits and instead simply give an ‘aura’ to our pet that does the same thing spirits currently do. Think of it as the spirits ‘possessing’ the animal in some fashion. Spirits will no longer have a duration and will be active 100% of the time until the pet they ‘possess’ dies or is swapped out. Once they ‘die’ they are put on a cooldown for XX seconds before they can be recast. A pet could have one or all of the spirits active at one time on it.

When the user activates a spirit’s ability after it has been summoned, a mini spirit will spawn at your pets current location and .5 seconds later it will detonate causing whatever effect the spirits currently do.

If you have the trait to activate spirit abilities on death, this will now activate when the pet dies or is swapped. Like above, a mini spirit will spawn for each active spirit on the pet at the time of its death/swap, and .5 seconds later they will detonate using whatever ability the spirit has. This had the added advantage of the Ranger getting some controllable burst (Storm spirit activated to spawn a mini spirit to explode for AE damage and then you swap pet to summon a second storm spirit at the cost of the XX second cooldown.

The current trait that is no longer needed because spirits will now always move can be changed to reduce the cooldown on death or simply replaced with some other trait.

Associated Risks

The risks of the current spirits remain because you’re sacrificing a utility slot for the spirit. Some of the advantages of the current spirits like their ability to soak AE or body block projectiles is also removed which increases the risk to the Ranger as well. It also puts enormous responsibility on the Ranger to manage their pet properly or risk it dying or needing to be swapped, which would remove all the spirits from play.

GameMode: PvX. Although you suggest only one game mode, I believe the following should apply to all game modes. Edit: But if necessary, PvP.

This proposal focuses on improvements to Master and Grandmaster Beast Mastery traits to improve pet performance.

General Pet Improvements

Change: Increase pet movement speed by 10%-15%. Replace Agility Training (Skirmishing-AdeptTier: Increased pet speed) with Vigorous Training, which was previously located in BeastMastery-MasterTier.
Reasoning: Pets have a hard time sticking to their target since they can’t attack and move at the same time. They can also have a hard time getting to the ranger’s side due to routing issues. Slightly increasing the speed of pets would help increase their damage (sticking to target), reliability (it is where you expect it to be), and survivability (it will get out of AoE faster when using F3). Agility Training is now mostly redundant, so it is being replaced with a viable alternative from Beast Mastery, which makes room for a MasterTier Beast Mastery trait. However, feel free to add the remaining 15%-20% speed increase from Agility Training to a different trait such as Natural Healing, a grandmaster Beast Mastery trait.

Beast Mastery Traits

The focus of these changes to provide some utility and/or survivability to pets via trait options instead of raw attribute changes. Pet AI is faulty, however there are instances where it works and it works extremely well (25 stacks of might from Rampage as One + Feline Pet). Pure stat increases would make pets overpowered in these instances. Instead, allow rangers the option to make their pet more sturdy, but require trait investment for balance.

Combined Traits: Combine Rending Attacks, Stability Training, and Intimidation Training (Beast Mastery master tier traits) into a single trait. Introduce 2D family symbols for each pet type (ursine, feline, etc) to aid players in figuring out which bonus a specific pet would get. Give Moas an effect (they are currently excluded). Have the tooltip function like the Elementalist’s Evasive Arcana trait where you right-click to view all the effects.
Reasoning: Having these traits separated makes it unattractive to mix different types of pets, hurting build diversity. Combining them will allow for new build options and make space for new traits.

New Trait: Beastmastery-MasterTier: Evasive Bond: Whenever you dodge, your pet gains Evasive Bond, allowing it to evade all attacks. Evasive bond is a buff that doesn’t interfere with the pet, similar in implementation to Master’s Bond.
Counterplay: Using weakness on the ranger to reduce its number of dodges, thus reducing the number of times this trait triggers. Or immobilizing the ranger, thus preventing dodging completely.

New Trait: BeastMastery-MasterTier: Cleansing Swap: When you swap pets, you lose 2 conditions. Internal cooldown of 10 seconds.
Reasoning: Gives rangers a good option for mobile condition removal outside of Empathic Bond.
Counterplay: When the ranger swaps their pet, that pet loses any boons it has.

Moved Trait: Zephyr’s Speed: Moved the Grand Master trait Zephyr’s Speed to MasterTier. Reduced quickness to 2 seconds to compensate.
Reasoning: Quickness is a strong effect, but is usually not worth investing 30 points in order to get it. Moving this trait to Master tier would make it more attractive and allow room for a new grandmaster trait.

New Trait: BeastMastersy-GrandMasterTier: Camaraderie: When you swap pets, the inactive pet gains the same boons as the active pet (boon values are capped). For example, if the active pet has 25 stacks of might for 30 seconds, the inactive pet would get 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds (cap value). If the pet has 50 seconds of regen, the pet gets 5 seconds (cap value).
Reasoning: Increases the amount of punishment pets can take via boon sharing, while reducing the penalty for pet swapping.
Counterplay: If you swap when your pet is dead, there are no boons to copy.

These traits would give rangers the ability to have sturdier pets. Important to note is that since these six traits compete for the same two slots, some decision making will be necessary when creating a build.

GameMode
Overall, its the core mechanic of the class

Proposal Overview
Ranger Pets (stats scale with ranger, range increase and survivability)

Goal of the Proposal
Pets have problems in every gamemode:

• WvW (roaming): Pets cant hit moving targets
• PvP: They are overpowered in condition builds, because cats for example give condition builds high direct damage burst, while diret damage builds dont get stronger with different pets.
• PvE (dungeons): They die because they cant dodge those telegraphed skills
• WvW(zerg): They die in AOE

Proposal Functionality

• increase melee Pets range to 250 (when they get moa morphed they hit more relyable)
• let pets scale with rangers stats, with different base stats and scaling.
  Cats: major stats(power, precision), minor (thoughness, vitality) and dont scale (healing, condi)
  bears: major (vitality, power), minor (thoughness, healing), dont scale (condi, precision)
  spiders: major (condi, vita), minor (precision, thoughness), dont scale (power, healing)
• because automated dodging of the pet would be to much work (I guess), lower the damage pets get from AoE and cleave attacks by 75%, that hit multiple foes.

Associated Risks
The pets could get unkillable and the damage output of the ranger+pet could get to high/low and needs to get readjusted.

Proposal Overview

Pets need help

Goal of Proposal

Currently, pets are useful for tanking open world PvE mobs but not much else. These ideas should improve the effectiveness of pets so that the ranger feels like he and his pet are one, not that his pet is a ball and chain that is holding him back.

Proposal Functionality

Pet stats should scale based on the ranger’s stats and the pet’s family, with a weight on specific stats based on the individual pets (some benefit more from power, others from condition damage, others from vitality, etc.).

Pet Melee range needs to be increased to 600, or the AI needs to be significantly improved to combat the current “Run>Stop>Begin Attack>Cancel Attack>Run>Stop” cycle that prevents the pet from DPSing moving targets.

Pets need to take 30% damage from AoEs, be immune to one shot mechanics, and take 25% damage from cleaves, when not the selected target for the cleave attack.

When Stowed, the ranger should gain the “Aspect of the [pet name]” effect, which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.
Speccing into Beastmastery should improve the pet stat scaling
Signets should always affect the Ranger and require a Beastmastery trait to also affect the pet (the opposite of the way it is now).

Associated Risks

Having a pet is a risk right now…

Game Mode
Pv[all]

Proposal overview

Wilderness experts should be masters of poisons. Therefore, Rangers should have the most potent poisons available.

Goal of Proposal

Currently Rangers have 15 different skills that apply poison. Necros are in second with 12 and thieves are third with 9. With all that access to poison, you’d think Rangers would have some traits that make it more potent, but they don’t. In fact, there are no traits at all for Rangers that improve poison performance or help Rangers do more damage to poisoned foes. This proposal seeks to reconcile the disparity that currently exists in the Ranger playstyle.

Proposal Functionality

Rangers should be given some trait options to improve poison in various ways. Between extended duration, improved healing suppression, higher damage values, and bonuses against poisoned foes, a healthy balance should be found that rewards rangers for applying and maintaining poison.

Associated Risk

I don’t see any real risks associated with the proposal, primarily because I’ve left it general enough to allow room for various functional applications of the idea that would not unbalance the game or disproportionately reward specific playstyles over others.

Guys, I fixed ranger a while ago..

I rolled a sword/dagger sb thief that never stealths and doesn’t use blinds, shadow steps I pretend are jumps and I recruit new guys to be my pet for a day.

Try it!

But in all seriousness, all I need is pet to be gone. I don’t know if someone posted this already, but why is pet not the first minor trait in beastmastery with major nerfs and make bm trait points scale it to where it is nowish with a 25/30 investment. This is a bandage I would support, despite it being that.

Or they could actually make the AI challenging…

Dave Pare.2069:

First of all, the “almighty” pet:
• the A.I. isn’t very good, we know that, but I think there may be other solutions to fix the problem without having to rework the entire “pet system”. For example, the pet would have better chances to hit something (besides the air) if the attack speed of our omnipresent fellow was buffed by default or added to a trait or something.
What about the “agility training” Skirmishing trait (VI) would not only give a 30% increased movement speed for pets but also a…let’s say 10-20% attack speed for them as well?

No, Right now ranger’s have to trait into everything in order to make them viable, because without the traits, their useless. If we are going to have to trait into our class mechanic in order to make it viable, it’s USELESS! Either it get’s fixed right off the bat or remove the useless pets! There is no in between. I’m tired of having to trait into things to make them useable, I don’t see any other class having to drop their points into a trait they don’t want in order to make their class mechanic viable, we shouldn’t have to either.

Anet already said they will not touch pets because it will break lord knows how many more things with NPC’s in game. That leaves two options, 1.) removal of the pet and the lost damage being returned to the ranger. 2.) rewriting the pet code which they said they do not have the resources to do right now. So the only option I see is option 1.) removal of the handicap!

I have not found any better suggestion that will solve the pet issue then this because all suggestions are like what you just said, traiting. Or doing things that Anet already said they will NOT do because it will break NPC code’s so I don’t even know why they are mentioning those changes. Yes, Anet said they want ranger to be a pet class, which is why I said they could leave the pet in as a UTILITY! nothing more, nothing less. Have the beast master trait line improve those utilities, like instead of 35 second cooldowns you now have a 30 second cool down on the f2.

Bottom line is pet damage needs to be removed and given to the ranger, the pets are unreliable and Fail in their ability to provide the 30% damage they are suppose to provide. In WvW they fail in zergs, they fail in keep defense, they fail in keep attacks, they fail in AoE damage…overall, they are an EPIC FAIL and need to be removed or address in someway. we have dealt with this failure for over a year, enough is enough.

PART 1
In these days I was thinking about changes I would like to see to Ranger class (mainly for Power and PvP orientated Rangers).

First of all, the “almighty” pet:
• the A.I. isn’t very good, we know that, but I think there may be other solutions to fix the problem without having to rework the entire “pet system”. For example, the pet would have better chances to hit something (besides the air) if the attack speed of our omnipresent fellow was buffed by default or added to a trait or something.
What about the “agility training” Skirmishing trait (VI) would not only give a 30% increased movement speed for pets but also a…let’s say 10-20% attack speed for them as well?

• Then, let’s talk about the F2 pet skill: it would be actually amazing if it would activate the first time the button is pushed, not after the fourth try!!!!!!! (I often die in Pvp just because my wolf decides that I don’t need him to send my opponents away with fear even if I told him to do so by pressing multiple times F2….very annoying).

Secondly, I would really love to see some more “might options” for Ranger: skills or traits I don’t care, but I would love to have the possibility to stack a bit of might from time to time without having to pop my elite, Rampage as One (and hoping that my pet hits a couple of times to buff me with some might – most unlikely to happen); or without having to spend 20 point in Marksmanship, taking the useless trait “beastmaster’s might”, running three signets and having to activate all three of them at the same time in order to have….hold to your seats….9 stack of might for 15 sec, 0 utility left, and 0 chance to survive the fight. Please don’t tell me I forgot the combo fire fields from torch or trap…cause…well, I can’t use them to buff might solo (only 1 finisher blast on warhorn on a 35 sec CD; and maybe the blast finisher from drakes, if you’re lucky… very lucky…very veeeeery lucky).

the most hilarious thing I find about Anet’s idea of pet is… lets give the ranger the ability to basically KILL his own pet by putting the only viable condi removal in a 30 point trait that , in fact DOES NOT EVEN CONDI-REMOVE. It’s a condi-swap for gods sake, we have zero, ZERO condi removal.

Everything is transfered to the pet and thus killed. And boom, there goes our “class mechanic”

Wake up devs… how hard is that to see that rangers absolutely dismal in soooo many aspects of the game

Aveneo.2068:

You ignored the Ranger because hey, what can a Ranger do? In WvW they are just free bags right?

And the swaggering Warrior; overconfident like Crom in his mountain dismissed the Ranger as if it was but an insect unworthy of his gaze.

This actually made me laugh, nice one. I admit I had a low opinion of rangers before today with their pew pew from a distance and cowering behind their pets. You’ll be glad to know rangers are now tied with engis for my least favorite class

tips imaginary hat

You ignored the Ranger because hey, what can a Ranger do? In WvW they are just free bags right?

And the swaggering Warrior; overconfident like Crom in his mountain dismissed the Ranger as if it was but an insect unworthy of his gaze.

But this one little Ranger was so tired of being downtrodden, ignored and ridiculed for more than a year and came prepared. And for just one single moment in time managed to pour every ounce of his rage into that single Maul with all the power he could muster, calling on the strength of the land itself! One Shot … One Kill!

Now you have experienced what most Rangers have been going through all this time.

Hope you like poetic justice… :P

(ps. this was in no way meant to insult you or anything; I just felt the need to try my hand at telling my fantasy version of David and Goliath)

ANIMAL CRUELTY
Please change all the skills that revolve around ‘kitten our pet’. At present time the GW2 Ranger is some kind of sadistic being who revels in animal cruelty for the sake of his own selfish needs. If anything we need changes to the skills that sacrifice/torment our pet.

The Ranger is a class that has to rely on his pet companion for ~30% damage. One of the main things I find odd about that is that the Ranger is also the only class that actively tries to kill his own pet all the time through his own utilities and traits.

Some quick suggestions:

• Shared Anquish – Change to “Incoming disabling conditions are transferred to your Foe instead.”
  Alternate suggestion: “Incoming disabling conditions Entangle your Foe.”
• Empathic Bond – Change to “Periodically cure conditions from you and your pet.”
• “Protect Me” – Change this to also grant Protection, Retaliation, Swiftness and Regeneration to the pet for the duration
• Signet of Renewal Active – Change to “Your pet cures conditions from nearby allies”

PETS
This might be another wild idea here, but has anyone at ANet ever considered separating Ranger pets from their npc animal versions?

The way I see it, the ‘juvenile’ pets and their npc versions are all linked. So a change to the pet would currently also result to a change in their npc counterpart. However, if they would all be added to a new separate ‘juvenile’ sub-class, they could then be reworked separately. This would allow ANet to fix the unresponsive F2 as well as ability to reliably hit targets etc. etc.

I mean, it’s the same way that Nightmare Court and Toxic Alliance npc’s are each part of a separate subsection. And a change to one would not affect the other.

I mean, we have a select number of pets to choose from (all with the ‘Juvenile’ header) so why not create a new group for them and move them there. Much easier to fix issues from entities in a separate group without having to worry about causing global issues to the whole animal kingdom of Tyria.

GLOBAL SUGGESTIONS I MADE OVER A YEAR AGO

• A Camouflage utility (be it as an opener or escape) – 3s Stealth + 10s Swiftness (similar to the Wintersday Scout ability). Could replace the active effect on Signet of the Hunt because currently that active effect is pretty pointless.
• Point Blank Shot: Change name to Sniper Shot and add a secondary effect. If you tap it once it will function as it currently does, but if you choose to press and hold the ability, it will channel and fire one shot dealing massive damage (as per the Wintersday Scout ability).
• Signets should apply their active component to Pet and Ranger by default without requiring you to use Signet of the Beastmaster.
• A utility or effect that allows Rangers to see stealthed targets. At present time stealth has no counter and is not fun to play against. The Ranger would be most befitting to provide that counter (being a tracker and having pets). See the video on Counterplay: http://youtu.be/BRBcjsOt0_g
• for the above, if signets would apply their active effects to Pet+Ranger without the need for Signet of the Beastmaster, that Grandmaster trait could be changed to Sight of the Beastmaster, allowing stealth detection as a passive ability and make stealthed targets appear in a similar fashion as we now see stealthed allies (that Predator like camouflage) if players spend 30 points in Marksmanship and choose the trait. In my humble opinion the Ranger should be the direct counter to a Thief.
• Some signet active effects need a rework because some of them are pointless (even dangerous) to use (try Signet of Renewal with Signet of the Beastmaster active).
• Some shouts need a rework as they mostly revolve around sacrificing your pet (~30% of your damage potential) at present time.
• A ‘fix’ for all the OBSTRUCTED messages when firing arrows when there’s absolutely no reason for them to become obstructed.
• More reliable AI and pathfinding for our pets and being able to hit moving targets (maybe increase their effective attack radius and cleave?).
• 75% reduction of AoE damage for our pets (with the option to trait it to 95%).
• F2 abilities that fire near-instantly. The pet just has to cancel any current action and immediately go through the F2 command.
• Some traits need to switch position as it makes no sense in having Trap traits in Skirmishing when they should be in Wilderness Survival. Same with traits like Martial Mastery which should have been in Skirmishing instead of Wilderness Survival. As stated above, trait lines are just one gigantic mess at the moment and make no sense nor offer any form of synergy.

Traits

As everyone knows, Ranger traits are a mess and along with our poor active condition removal, I think this is what plagues the class more than anything.

There are too many important traits in Marksmanship for power and bow Rangers. Piercing Arrows, Spotter, Eagle Eye, and Signet of the Beastmaster. One or more of these needs to be combined with other traits to free up some space here. Since we’re unparalleled archers (according to the class description,) I’d like to see the range boost from Eagle Eye baked directly into the class with no option to increase range further and the damage boost from it combined with Skirmishing trait Quick Draw, since most other professions have an auxiliary effect on their cooldown reducing traits.

Empathic Bond is not only necessary, but it is also a grandmaster trait. I’d like to see this trait dropped down to Wilderness Survival master tier and I’d like to see another trait improved and moved to grandmaster tier. Maybe add a neat effect to Martial Mastery and make it a WS grandmaster trait. Having easier access Empathic Bond would really help open build diversity.

Many Beastmastery traits need to either be entirely reworked or combined, they’re a mess.

Pet AI

ANet has stated that fixing pet AI is opening a can of worms that they aren’t really willing to do yet. I do not expect pet AI improvement and because of that, I think they can placate much of the Ranger playerbase by slightly increasing the damage coefficient of all Ranger weapon skills to make up for the poor AI. This will do a lot to help power builds, which is where the class really needs a helping hand.

Weapons

Aside from having a slight coefficient damage increase, there are a few skills that need improving. Rangers could use a little (read: a lot of) party support and this is a good opportunity to do that. We all have a ton of ideas for this, so I’m not gonna type a gigantic list, all that needs to be said is that we have to be better at support. (Also, replace Cripple with Weakness on Monarch’s Leap for me ANet, pretty please.)

Utilities

- Sharpening Stone needs a serious buff. Maybe make it every attack for X duration causes a stack of bleeding, increase CD if need be.
- Lightning Reflexes NEEDS to remove all movement impairing conditions.
- Make Viper’s Nest and Frost Trap scale well with power so we can have nifty power trapper builds that make sense.
- Put a blast finisher on an activated Spike Trap.
- Move the damage bonus from Frost Spirit to Storm Spirit, give Frost Spirit a chance to Chill on hit; Change the active to freeze (like Ice Bow 5) enemies in the area for 1 second.
- Signet of the Hunt active grants your pet 3s of stealth. (Got this from another thread.)

1) Ranger
2) Ranger
3) Ranger

Rangers need to be worked on badly. There are reasons Rangers are hated in WvW and dungeon because every other classes do thing better than Rangers and they are not stuck with a broken pet ai and etc. Rangers has more negative than they should.

Read it on Reddit and on the forum, its time something is done to bring Rangers out of the butt of jokes.

Jumping puzzles are discriminating against paled skinned male humanoids. I am one.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Well Eotm is build for zerging, door hp alone is a good example for that.

This ^^.

Also, WvW is in trouble. Why? This forum has given a ton of good ideas. A main rep for ANET (not allie) came and said we do not represent what people want and so most of those ideas are disregarded.

A perfect example of the CDI that was done here recently on population balance. There were a ton of ideas given. ANET barely responded and when they did, it was to ask about changing the transfer rate based on WvW population. That was pretty much it.

ANET has a vision for WvW. Unfortunately, it will be a vision that only they end up playing. Hint ANET: PvE is not the solution.

nirvana.8245:

Collaborative development is just a way to give people a place to complain logically in a nice manner and waste our time. The issues are pretty clear and the possible solutions are abundant and many of them simple.

^this^ about 100 times over

It’s simply inane to think that the devs haven’t been able to get a pulse of what’s wrong with WvW by now, and collect a few of the better suggestions from players on how to address those problems. Asking us to participate in one CDI after another with practically zero feedback or action from anything related to WvW is just a farce. Do I sound frustrated? kitten straight I am.

Collaborative development is just a way to give people a place to complain logically in a nice manner and waste our time. The issues are pretty clear and the possible solutions are abundant and many of them simple.