Guild Wars 2

Rangers are the best class in the game for rallying enemy players.

It’s so obvious ppl here are from NA…
Don’t listen to them. Don’t become another mindless zergling.
Just get on a map and roam a bit, enjoy the fights you will get; by joining voip and following blue dorito you will end up running from objective to objective spamming #1 skill – how can you call that fun?
The main thing to understand is, that point per tick means nothing and don’t waste your time on that.

..is that no one ever runs away from you! Anyone else notice this? I was roaming on my thief and it seems like half the people I run into don’t wanna fight and just run away but on my ranger, everyones game!

Solo roaming is all but dead. Unfortunately, it will just end in frustration. Not many players are willing to 1v1 you and you will constantly come across gank groups or 20+ blobs of players. There is a lack of build diversity, most players are running bunker builds of some description or you come across GC thieves that can and will down you in under 2 seconds. So many builds at the moment are frustrating to fight, Bunker Condi necros, PU Mesmers, Stealth Spamming Thieves, Warriors that are built like tanks but hit like trucks.

Unfortunately Guild Wars 2 is just devolving into Blob vs Blob, with aNet seemingly pushing players into this play style with there continuing focus on bunker type builds and less diversity.

I use to do almost nothing but solo roam, but it’s not very interesting anymore. The meta has sorta fizzled down to a half dozen builds. Most common by far is still two button d/p shadow arts thieves that will run away freely if you best them and can’t cc shadow refuge. Then there’s warriors, which can be kinda fun to fight and can have build variety, but they are also very tough to pressure, and many will also run away. Lastly there are condi pressure necros and engis that are over the top because of a food buff. Mesmers also have a troll condi build, but you practically have to kill yourself, and it was recently nerfed a bit.

I think you see way less solo roamers nowadays because of this lack of build diversity and meta builds that are not very interesting to fight. Perhaps equally discouraging is how ridiculous anet has allowed statistical imbalance to set in with stacks and ascended equipment.

Those problems go away somewhat if you have a numerical advantage in a group or simply play together better.

I am a prominent member of HIGH and I would like to go on record saying that I am extremely disappointed and angry at this. There has since been a message posted to our forums that if ANYONE is caught cheating, regardless of rank, they will be removed from the guild AND reported by the guild leaders to anet. I am going to personally spearhead the search for this offender. PLEASE DO NOT blame our entire guild for the stupidity of one member. Rest assured that when this person is caught, they will be held responsible for their actions. I am very sorry you had this happen and if you contact me in-game I would like to speak about this a bit in a more discreet setting.

I only see people supporting another Ranger I saw by the name of Max Range Leecher. Plus you can’t look at one 25 second recharge skill (when traited) to say the profession is good. As for the comment for mesmer pulls not being useful…they can pull people off siege and if your group has CC then it’s even better because you can kill people you pull that way, including commanders because yes there’s a lot of commanders that are that bad.

If you are just going to max range enemies to avoid being hit, you have to be doing something else to make up for it and I don’t think the damage ranger does is enough to be useful. And to the same guy that laughed at my comments, rangers do have a piercing trait….I’ve been using it on my ranger ever since I unlocked it.

Personally, I love rangers in WvW.
That heal my thieves steal from them before 2 shotting is wonderful

Aeonblade.8709:

Oozo.7856:

People who want to run with 20+ are zerglings, no matter where they are playing. Anyone who has fun doing that is a zergling by definition.

Someone got rolled.

Yeah, a bunch of bad DB players like the [GASM] players in the movie below. The reason why you feel the need to run with 20+ is to protect yourself from the good players who run under 10.

That isnt roaming. That is a mob without a purpose. Roaming is solo. Mobbing is what this is. Just running around with a large group (not zerg size) and just killing random things.

Kind of like how 20+ man guilds in one blob classify themselves as “havoc”.

People who want to run with 20+ are zerglings, no matter where they are playing. Anyone who has fun doing that is a zergling by definition.

Apparently having a few capitalised words is grounds for an infraction, well what do you know.

Okay, I’ll say it in lower case.

New WvW map, sweet. EOTM finally! Oh… Scarlet… Oh….

Not sure why they couldn’t just leave out “Scarlet”. Sure, at this point I just have a personal bias toward her; but she’s taken away from the aspects of the game I care about for far too long. How dare she actually invade them now.

Ruined before it began.

Dahkeus.8243:

Such a false dichotomy…

Mines bigger than yours….

Logan with Jennah is another lesbian relationship tb

FrouFrou.4958:

Kaos.9162:

Look at it this way, Victory, at least for two weeks we get to take it out on the poor PvE players who are just there for the living story

Luls ‘n giggles will be had. Prepare for the amusing party joins: Why did you kill me???? Plorks let me be, I’m here for the LS not PvP!

OHAI U!

On Topic …

PVE Commander meet WvW Commander … the tears are going to flow!

Well PvE farmers come kill mobs and we can kill them.

Agony.3542:

What concerns me most is that there will be Aethersh…blade on the map. Why can’t we simply have a wvw without pointless AI mobs running around?

I know, I’m right there with you.

ANet put Living Story PvE into WvW a few months ago and was met with huge backlash… so they decide to do it again? Mind. Blown.

What concerns me most is that there will be Aethersh…blade on the map. Why can’t we simply have a wvw without pointless AI mobs running around?

As a Ranger, with nothing to contribute to a zerg outside of a water field, I’m sad that a profession with so much wvw utility would demand more. =(

~ Kovu

“I play the way I want. But those guys over there are getting more shinies than I am. It’s not okay for them to play the way they want.”

7)

• Stability on Pet Swap
• Heal on Pet Swap
• In general, give swapping pets out more of a function for players that can then choose to leave their pet on passive and turn the mechanic from a damage mechanic into a buff mechanic.

8)

• Merge Piercing Arrows with Quick Draw (stays in Skirmishing)
• Move Eagle Eye to Grandmasters and have it affect the Shortbow for 300 more range as well, turn longbow damage increase to 10%
• Move Signet of the Beastmaster to a Masters Slot
• Remove Honed Axe
• Move Trap Potency down to Master tier
• Remove Trapper’s Defense
• Move Trapper’s Expertise down to adept tier
• New Grandmaster trait, choose from:
  -Traps transfer x conditions per pulse
  -Activating a signet removes x conditions
  -Interrupting a foe either transfers or removes x conditions

9)

• Any changes here would be a direct result from anything else mentioned being changed.

An older suggestion thread I created with an already established in depth discussion: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Trait-Rework-extensive/

Also, thank you to those already responding

After reading over the forum rules more extensively, I feel like we should take this thread and make the format similar (albeit less length where necessary) to what I’ve just posted.

As an example, take the numerical number of where you think your suggestion is on the list, and then use that, so let’s say, to take Atherakhia’s ideas as an example, maybe going:

“5)
More burst is needed etc”

I think that this way allows me to keep and update the OP listed with overview topics as discussed and as necessary, but allows us to delve into specific suggestions and ideas as the forum dictates. Sound okay everybody?

If you’re up to formatting that is, if you just have a single reference point like Cufufalating, that is absolutely fine as well

Whatever it takes to sustain this thread and create a valuable discussion!

In order to keep the thread in compliance with the rules sticky’d in this subforum, I’m going to list possible solutions based on each numerical category that was posted above. Note that these are my own ideas and have not been as discussed by the ranger community as the compiled overview list. Getting everybody to agree on how to change something and putting it into a perfect balance perspective is a much more difficult task than first agreeing what needs to be changed, which is why I believe the information I have already posted in the OPs is necessary to begin with.

So:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

2)

• Pet Swap removes x conditions with a 20 second ICD
• Traps transfer x conditions per pulse
• Activating a signet removes x conditions
• Interrupting a foe either transfers or removes x conditions
• Make Carnivorous Appetite heal the player as well as the pet. Shift its function to “your crits steal health for you and your pet with an ICD”
• Make Honed Axes work for more weapons (maybe melee weapon specific, or even bow specific)
• Allow companions might to affect the player by giving might to the player when the pet crits
• Combine Quick Draw with Piercing Arrows

3)

• Damage reduction for AoE
• Addition of a pet dodge or a pet damage immunity option
• Less strict penalty for pet death than a 60 second cooldown

4)

• Rework “Guard” entirely. Maybe “for the next x seconds, pet attacks grant rangers x boons randomly” or even “for the next x seconds, damage taken by either you or your pet is split between you.”
• Rework “Protect Me” so that the pet only takes a percentage of the incoming damage, to the point where the pet can still be killed by damage overload when this is active, but the pet doesn’t melt and die, putting it on cooldown, basically just to break a stun, since the damage immunity/transfer can be so short it doesn’t make much difference.
• Rework Sic’ Em so it doesn’t get removed by anything during the time its active
• Change Sharpening Stone to either 2 bleeds per attack or torment or immobilize or something more potent in either damage or control than it is now.
• Increase the Direct Damage traps do, especially Spike Trap
• Reduce the cooldown of Frost Trap
• Make Signet of the Hunt’s active a Stun Breaker

5)

• Reduce the cast time of Rapid Fire and increase the damage, or reduce the amount of shots fired and increase the amount of damage done and vulnerability applied per shot. Rapid Fire should be stronger than autoattacking, period.
• Allow Barrage to be channeled while moving
• Blind on Hornet Sting
• Torment instead of poison on Serpent’s Strike
• Increase Hunter’s Call damage
• Increase Whirling Defense’s damage
• Turn Poison Volley into an area target skill
• Crippling Shot now has pet apply torment, based on the player’s condition stat

6)

• Empathic Bond should just be made to remove conditions on pet swap. This would allow it to be a more reactive skill, and it wouldn’t be killing the pet like it is currently
• “Protect Me,” see suggestion under section 4
• Let Signet of Renewal either just outright cleanse conditions with its active, or have it gain a boon for every condition the pet takes, then have this boon gaining function be applied to the player through Signet of the Beastmaster

In my opinion, there are only 3 real areas a class is needed for groups: burst damage, AE, and utility. Nothing says a class needs to provide all 3, but if a class is deficient in one, you’d expect them to make up for it in the others. The Ranger is deficient in all three.

Burst is important because it’s the only real way to apply enough pressure to push an enemy off balance. If you’re hitting someone for the same damage every second, you become predictable. Even if that damage is 2k or 3k crits as is the case with a max range longbow. Without real burst, you’ll never do anything but site around hoping you outlast the opponent. There’s no way to outplay them.

AE: AE is important for the same reason as burst…. it applies pressure on an opposing team and forces them to use their cooldowns.

Utility: This is what you bring to either counter the opposing teams AE/Burst or improve your teams AE/Burst.

That’s it… and the Ranger doesn’t do any of this.

AE and Burst is obvious. There is none. The limited amounts the Ranger does provide is so poor in comparison to every other class and worse still is it doesn’t really compliment the Ranger class any either. Utility is something the Ranger isn’t necessarily weak in, but almost all of the utility provided comes from the pets which are borderline worthless and have been since launch.

I know this isn’t a suggestion thread, but I really do feel unless you provide this class with meaningful burst on demand, a real AE that isn’t weapon/spec specific, and find ANYTHING for the class to do in a group (especially WvW) there’s simply no reason for the class to exist. I’ve been asking for a year now what the Ranger class is supposed to do and the only thing I’ve ever heard is ’it’s the official GW2 pet class’ which is worrisome considering pets don’t work and after the 12/10 thread, fixing them isn’t on the radar.

6) Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design – This one should be a bit more straightforward too. As the “pet class,” why do rangers have to go abusing their pets in order to gain survival? Signet of Renewal, “Protect Me,” and Empathic Bond all kill/harm the pet. The same pet which devs have stressed to the players the need to work with in order to maximize combat potential. It just seems very counter intuitive the rangers have more functional “pet killers” than utilities that actually allow players to effectively work with their pet. What happened to skills from Guild Wars 1 like Predatory Bond, Strike as One, Symbiotic Bond, and Companionship?

7) More functionality/gameplay options for pets – Why is the pet just a DPS option? There are quite a few problems that could be fixed with more options to build around with for pets. Why do they always just have to be a damage option? The game needs more traits like Mighty Swap and Vigorous Swap, where you can choose to use your pet for utility options like giving boons and supporting rather than damage. It sure would open up playstyle diversity to have more options to gear pets towards other than “damage or more damage.”

8) Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment – This one seems pretty straightforward too. Basically, Signets, Spirits (more so previously than now), and Traps all require 30 trait points to make otherwise pretty mediocre utilities useful (only 20 with Spirits now). Heck, signets don’t even work on the player without a grandmaster trait. For rangers, this is probably the biggest hindrance to build diversity that needs to be addressed. The utilities already require heavy investment in the utility slots to be worthwhile (Traps and Spirits both typically work better with at least 2, to even 3 slots). Adding another 30 point trait requirement on top of that makes ranger builds have to build with heavy investment in order to be successful, for the most part. Just as Spirits Unbound was moved down to the master tier, Trap Potency and Signet of the Beastmaster really should be looked at for similar reworks/repositions to open up more build opportunities.

9) Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions – This is more of a concept than it is a true issue. Basically, the ranger doesn’t have a whole lot that offers competitive options for a team composition to the degree where players think that rangers are worth slotting over other classes. More prevalent in PvE/Dungeons and WvW than PvP, but really, rangers only offer Spotter and Frost Spirit in certain circumstances like dungeons (this is mostly where you see this build selection). Outside of Spotter and Spirits, everything the ranger does is accomplished by other classes. But, as mentioned earlier, Spirits suffer from the same issues that pets do; not scaling well the larger an engagement gets, due to their killable nature. On top of that, most ranger builds require a trait investment that forces them to specialize more than other classes and in the process give up other offensive or defensive options that those other classes still have access to. Overall, every class should be able to compete for slots on a team composition equally, by either bringing something unique and helpful to that team composition, or by bringing something similarly competitive in function to other classes, while being able to provide more of a unique role/addition elsewhere.

Overall, this sums up where many people in the ranger community feel that ranger is at balance and as far as quality of life changes are concerned. Any feedback, especially developer feedback, is welcome.

The original discussion started within the ranger community can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/The-State-of-Balance-discussion/page/1

Discuss

The reasoning:

1) Pet Responsiveness – Last year, nearing the last balance patch, a developer response was kind enough to enlighten the ranger community with the information that the pet skill lag, particularly, the response time of the pet F2 key, is dealt with through the server because pet AI is coded off of the games creature AI. Essentially, this means that using this F2 skill basically just adds the unique skill to the AI action queue for the pet to use at its earliest convenience. This is a problem. Lack of true control over the single player dictated skill on a class whose pet AI has to be continuously be band aid fixed in order to improve basic functionality is a serious problem. This needs to be more reliable, especially since it is one of the only ways a player can actively utilize their pets skills to use the F2 skill on demand when needed during a fight. Without this skill taking full precedence and being reliable, its success rate has so much disparity that it ends up being more rage inducing than helpful.

2) Reliance on a small handful of traits for every working build – This area could be said to be aimed directly at Empathic Bond, since it is the only form of reliable cleansing that is strong enough, particularly for a competitive environment. That specific example aside, there is an issue that is not ranger specific with certain traits in this game becoming a “staple” for almost every build deemed viable by the community, which limits build diversity.

3) Pet survival not balanced adequately for large scale engagements – This area seems self-explanatory, but basically, the ranger, whose class mechanic is an “always-on” pet in which the players damage is balanced around, does not have functionality that scales well with how large engagements, specifically in modes like WvW. This often results in ranger players sacrificing what most would consider a fairly significant portion of their damage during these large scale engagements, either by way of having a passive or a dead pet. Being that this is the class mechanic and was designed with an always-on design, there shouldn’t be any instance in which the class mechanic is rendered as ineffective as it can be currently.

4) Utilities completely outclassing other utilities – There are a lot of utilities the ranger has access to that can just be considered to have a “null” function. The shouts really don’t do much and really don’t compete with the functions of the rest of the other utilities. Keen Edge (trait) is the only time Sharpening Stone ever sees any use. Frost Trap is very underwhelming for its cooldown. But just generally, there are utility slot options that just don’t functionally compete with other options that can be taken, which is very limiting to build diversity.

5) Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content – In a nutshell, weapons seem like they should ideally all be unique and have a specialty role as far as functionality goes, in order to get players to actively make the best weapon selections for the content and their build/etc. However, functionally, the ranger bows are very bland and unexciting weapons, and the ranger longbow especially, which provides very underwhelming functions and damage. Sword and Greatsword compete directly with each other, as both are power based melee weapons with evasive/defensive capabilities, and Axe (and Dagger) competes directly with the shortbow so closely that the only difference aside from an interrupt is deciding what conditional bleed application you want. This leaves only offhand weapons to compare. Really, the weapons just need to be more different from each other, and less subjectively boring in some cases.

MFWIC.6091:

all rangers should quite the wvw or at least stop running with zergs because they are liability and are useless, and it’s not just my opinion… It’s 98% of gw2 wvw community opinion.
(of course hopefully assuming that rangers make only 2%)

Yes i’m sure that one ranger is a real liability in the 60 man zerg. It’s the ranger’s fault you guys wipe, stupid pets.

Ragnar.4257:

Dovgan.8605:

Vaxx.3178:

Dovgan.8605:

8 second fire field, 10 second water field both on reasonable cd’s. 2 second immobilize per 16 seconds(if specced for it) easy swap to fear group buffs etc. AoE vigor, good source of regen. Honestly I don’t think a lot of the “rangers” know what rangers can do. I was talking to another player the other day, an experienced WvWer that had no idea rangers had as much access as they do to these things.

Problem generally stems from PvE players trying to cross their PvE style/build into WvW.

8 second fire field. – And? Ele and engineer both do fire fields better, just for the fact they do more AoE damage, and can escape better.

10 second water field. – Point blank water field you mean. So you want the Ranger to roll with the heavy melee train, right? Sure build them tanky and watch them hit like a wet noodle, or build them dps style and watch them melt with weak coni clear, looong cooldown stability, and med armor. Again Ele can do it better at range, and more than one, and provide damage that trumps Rangers.

Regen. - Engi does regen better for a group, so does Guard, and is much better all around for a group.

AoE Vigor – Warrior warhorn 5 skill says hello.

Nothing you point out makes the Ranger class better, sorry. You can be in denial and try hard to come up with “reasons” for a Ranger to be picked over another class, aside from single roaming, and you will always come up short. Where are the good WvW guilds that have this class in their setups? Show me please.

Face it, Anet dropped the ball with the class, and seems to not have a clue how to get it on track.

So you are saying all you need are 3 separate classes to do the same thing 1 class can do? Got it..

That sounds clever….. if you completely ignore all the other stuff those 3 classes can do.

I can technically fire a gun, and I can also speak some French.

If you were invading France (with 2 people, should be easy), would you choose to take 2 of me, or would you take a trained soldier and a professional translator?

But I can do both!! Why you take 2 people, one who can’t speak french and the other who can’t fire a gun, when you could just take me?? WHY YOU NO WANT ME??

Honestly, I would take 2 of you. It’s France for God’s sake. You don’t even have to be good with a gun.

no ascended stuff for ranger. save them for your non-ranger characters