Guild Wars 2 Forum

Complete Ranger class suggestions

Posted by: Khayoss.2019

Khayoss.2019

Combo field contribution
Combo field interaction is basically a key component of group synergy – especially in WvW. Blast and Whirl finishers provide benefits or damaging effects to multiple targets and are thus suited to group play because it allows all members to benefit all others or attack all targets simultaneously. Physical Projectile and Leap finishers are single target and thus lend to solo, duo, single target style gameplay and encounters. Rangers have extensive access to the Physical Projectile finisher, but extremely limited access to others. On land, Rangers have 1 Whirl finisher available via Axe 5 and zero blast finishers. Via the Drake family, rangers are able to access a Blast finisher on land, but for reasons related to the pet system, this is unreliable. Pets have to be positioned correctly and be able to cast their skill in time in order to take advantage of the field – accomplishable when all parts of the equation are stationary, but extremely difficult and unreliable when all parts are in motion. More reliability can be attained in this respect by putting the pet on passive mode, but this sacrifices all other potential benefits of the pet simply for access to the blast finisher. And as in all other cases, even in that perfect case scenario, the pet still has to be alive in order to be effective.

Ranger is the ONLY class that has this limitation in combo field interaction and this is part of why Rangers have difficulty finding homes in group settings.

Combo field generation is a separate aspect of this equasion, and while Ranger has access to the best Water field of any class, this isn’t enough to make up for the lack of interaction options above. Fire and Ice fields generated by Traps are useful, but must be triggered in order to create a field. This adds an additional layer of complexity to the group while trying to interact with what the Ranger provides, and can be another reason for the group to choose another option in its place. Pet-wise, the Murellow’s Poison field is the only reliable access to combo fields provided because it is triggered by an F2 skill. Pets triggering other combo fields on their own is in fact more harmful than good because finishers can only interact with one field at a time. A pets AI driven field placement can block access to anther field that was strategically placed either individually or for interaction by a group.

Proposed solutions:
*Whirl finisher via Ace 5 is a great tool, but Rangers should have access to more diverse and group friendly finishers (specifically Blast finishers) either through skills or weapons. Ideal candidates are Warhorn, Torch, and Longbow. Access to Physical Projectile finishers via every weapon except the Sword and Torch is unnecessary overkill – especially Short and Longbow which each have 4 skills that access the same finisher. While it makes some sense that they do, it is not helpful to the overall usefulness and diversity of the class.

Khayoss / Khayotica / Mistasia
Ehmry Bay – The Rally Bot Vortex [VOID]

Complete Ranger class suggestions

in Suggestions

Posted by: Khayoss.2019

Khayoss.2019

Moving targets: Pets do not reliably hit moving targets, NPC or PC. Stationary targets are more common in the PvE space, but mobs still move with aggro. In sPvP and WvW stationary targets are few and far between. Options to assist the pet – such as pet movement speed enhancing traits and skills – exist, but put the Ranger at a disadvantage by using them because they are forced to use up point and skill slots that could be used elsewhere in order to try to make up for a bad mechanic. Pet skills outside of the auto-attack are more prone to missing because they involve the pet stopping its movement in order to cast the skill, allowing players to easily move out of range even without dodging.

F2 skills: In PvE situations F2 skills are more reliable because mob movement is predictable and slow. When fighting players, these skills are easily avoidable because the pet stops moving to charge the skill, and casting time of 1 second is more than enough time to move out of range even without using their dodge roll. Additionally, pets do not stop whatever they are currently doing to respond to your call for them to use their F2 skill, if they are already queueing another attack, they complete this first before responding to your command. I don’t know about your dog, but my dog would get in a lot of trouble if I commanded her to do something and she ignored me to finish whatever it was she wanted to do first…

General skills: Pets have 4 skills (1 auto attack), but players only have the ability to manage the use of one of them. Many other skills are situationally useful, but are used by the pet at inappropriate times. Players have a better understanding of how and when their skills could be useful than the pet AI.

Pet stowing: Stowed pets return to the world the instant the player takes damage, including fall damage, making travelling with your pet hidden an exercise in micromanagement. During combat a pet cannot be stowed at all, leading to situations where the pet becomes detrimental to the process. In instances where the pet absolutely will die due to the situation presented (be it a dungeon mechanic, an arrow cart or an AoE minefield created by a zerg in WvW), it would be more advantageous for the pet simply not to exist and thus avoid the cooldown timers, or to be called to their master exactly when they are needed once the danger has passed.

Pet to Player damage ratio: Pets can account for up to 40% of the players damage output on a stationary target. Because of the many factors above though, those are situational and infrequent circumstances. More often than not, the pet is not in a position to effectively use it’s damage output or its skills to contribute to a fight or is dead and unable to contribute at all. Tying such a significant portion of the players contribution to a mechanic hampered by so many issues is a detriment to the entire class itself.

Proposed solutions:
*Pet AI could be ripped out and re-worked from the ground up to address the issues above.
*Pet could be an optional component to the build (ala GW1) so that it could be avoided completely in game modes where it is more of a detriment than benefit.
*Pets could gain larger and larger slices of the power damage ratio with points spent into the Beastmastery trait line
*Pets could be replaced entirely by a utility skill and passive buff type component such as is present in other classes (ala Guardain F1-3 abilities)
*Pets could be replaced by specific summoning skills that would summon pets temporarily to help the Ranger (ala Hellhound elite skill)

Khayoss / Khayotica / Mistasia
Ehmry Bay – The Rally Bot Vortex [VOID]

Complete Ranger class suggestions

in Suggestions

Posted by: Khayoss.2019

Khayoss.2019

Let me preface this by saying that no one (or at least no one intelligent) is making any sweeping statements that imply that there are NO viable builds. But it also cannot be denied that Ranger in general is an outcast from the other 7 classes in the game. We are not welcome in many dungeon and fractal parties, we are not welcome in most organized WvW activities because we lack synergy with the group dynamics, and a powerful niche function that was available to us in sPvP has been altered quite dramatically. None of this is to say that the class is useless, that is simply a real current assessment of how our class is viewed by the general community. Rangers in supportive guilds, such as myself, would be able to get picked up by guild groups for any of the above activities without problem, but even in those instances it is because you are a known and liked guildie, not because you are being chosen for what your class brings to the table. Area Net may have ideas about what they think would be cool for the class, but what they think and what their customers want isn’t lining up. As a manager in a software company in charge of developing functionality and then gathering feedback on those developments from our customer base, I understand the frustration when you do something you think is great only to be screamed at by the people you did it for. But that’s reality. The only way to be successful is to eat your ego, listen to your customers, and alter your vision to more closely align with what they are asking for.

The June 25 balance patch was, by all accounts, meant to be a full pass at all trait lines of all professions for the purpose of promoting build diversity by fixing issues with broken traits, combining underpowered and often un-used traits in order to make them more viable, and replacing underpowered, unused and undesirable traits with more compelling options. No matter what your stance is on the specifics of the changes delivered to the Ranger class, I don’t know that there is any way that anyone could argue that those goals were met by this patch. While several previously effective builds still work with some tweaking and a bit more effort, fewer new builds have emerged than builds and play options that were eliminated. Fundamental aspects of the Ranger remain broken and unusable, un-useful and unused traits exist across all trait lines, the weapons that were adjusted were not completely fixed and brought into balance with other classes, and overall the state of the class has not changed significantly either in a positive or negative direction. In all, rangers gained some new aspects at cost of others, and overall lost more than they gained.

What I am going to attempt to do is address the whole Ranger class and highlight what people are unhappy about. There is a lot of hate and bitterness going on in the Ranger forums, and it’s not necessarily because we feel like this patch has broken our class, but because we had all been holding out hope that this was going to be THE PATCH that was finally going to fix the core issues that we have just been living with for the last 9 months. What we got instead completely sidestepped these issues and addressed very specific and minor problems associated with the class.

Game mechanics:

The pet system
Pet AI is subpar when compared to other games within the MMO space and no real improvements have been made since launch. In reality, pet pathing, AI and their ability to actually stick to moving targets was much better in Everquest – a 14 year old game – and others that came after it (WoW, EQ2, FFXI, and Vanguard to name a few). It’s really a bit mind boggling that in a modern MMO we are dealing with a problem like this… Major issues with the system include:

Pet movement/terrain interaction: Pets follow you around the world loyally, but have issues with terrain. Specifically, if you drop down even moderate elevation levels, even those that do not cause damage, rather than follow you your pet finds an alternate route that it finds acceptable. This is especially critical when in combat because your pet wanders off when you may need it. It’s also a detriment when trying to find a target because at times your pet will take long routes to the target because of minor terrain differences. Characters can jump, pets don’t seem to have the smarts to do the same. Downed state 3 skill is also affected by this in that the pet can still stand right next to you but be unable to interact with you if you are on an uneven surface.

Pet damage avoidance: Pets cannot dodge and have no intelligence built in to avoid ground targeted or area skills either when pathing to their target or during combat. Especially in PvP game types this makes the pet less effective because it will path directly through heavy damage areas in order to attempt to reach a target. If it survives, it reaches its target in a weakened state.

Khayoss / Khayotica / Mistasia
Ehmry Bay – The Rally Bot Vortex [VOID]

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