Guild Wars 2

Everquest had rangers, shamans, druids, and beast lords… this game only has one magical-nature-themed-pet-archer-class. We’re all in the same boat, the boat is leaking, and we need to stop arguing about what name is painted on the hull.

Flytrap.8075:

Akisame.9508:

And no, the ranger class has never before used pets, the pet inclusion was something created by WoW if I remember correctly and adopted from there on other games.

Rangers could use pets in the original Guild Wars by slotting a specific skill onto your action bar, but they were by no means required to do so.

In fact, most Rangers decided not to use pets unless they were on certain team comps that were tailored towards minions.

ok, let’s read my sentence together. “the pet inclusion was something CREATED by WoW if I remember correctly”

There I cap’ed the ‘created’ part so you can understand. WoW was announced in 2001 and beta and full release was in 2004. GW1 was released in April of 2005, so yes, they most likely took the idea from WoW. Mind you, I never played either of these two games because I was still playing EQ1 and EQ2 at those times along with any interesting releases I may have seen.

Akisame.9508:

And no, the ranger class has never before used pets, the pet inclusion was something created by WoW if I remember correctly and adopted from there on other games.

Rangers could use pets in the original Guild Wars by slotting a specific skill onto your action bar, but they were by no means required to do so.

In fact, most Rangers decided not to use pets unless they were on certain team comps that were tailored towards minions.

phys.7689:

Sorry that anet is going to sacrifice ranger for marksman, i think the vocal minority is about to screw over 80% of the people who play ranger who play it because they have pets, or who have grown to like the class. I dont really believe the majority of people who play this class dont want a pet. But that seems to be what they are taking away from this.

I don’t know where you get your number’s from or where you pulled it out of, frankly I might not want to know where you pulled that number out off, but we do not want to change ranger for marksman, we want to change beastmaster for ranger. There is a difference, get it straight. Not only that but we are not trying to remove pets from the game entirely. Read the post’s instead of putting words in our mouths. We want the OPTION of a permastow, so if we do not want to use the pet, then we can stow them away and be more like a true ranger instead of a beastmaster. When stowing of the pet the 30% damage comes back to the ranger. If you and everyone else that wants to be a beastmaster wish to be gibbed by 30% because of the pet, well, for each their own. We are not taking the pet away from you, all we want is the option to be a true ranger.

And no, the ranger class has never before used pets, the pet inclusion was something created by WoW if I remember correctly and adopted from there on other games. But from D&D to Everquest, no pets. In books, Aragorn, no pet (unless you count Frodo as a pet), Legolas, no pet (unless you count Gimli as a pet), Will treaty, no pet (except for one book where he found a dog and trained him then gave him away in the following book), Halt, no pet, unless you count his apprentice as a pet.

Every time ranger’s are mentioned it’s an archer that is pictured wearing a green/brown cloak where they can conceal themselves in the forest, not a person who goes and trains animals to fight (frankly that is kind of barbaric and against the law in many countries, let’s not even mention that it goes against nature itself). Ranger’s are suppose to be one with nature, Beastmaster’s are suppose to be one with animals. Understand the difference of what we are asking for before you start pulling number’s out of thin air and putting words in our mouths.

Aesthetic Improvement:

Improve the ANIMATIONS of the Ranger when using the main-hand axe. Currently, when throwing axes- equipped back-pieces and offhand weapons just disappear for a moment, before magically reappearing at the end of the animation. Less a class balance, more aesthetics but I feel it has to be said.

when this ends I hope I am not the only one who wants a write up of what is being taken and the future direction of the class. So far everything is ambiguous and there is no real clear image of the future of the ranger.

SkiTz.4590:

1. You are usually in a party of 5. No pet is going to have a serious effect on a boss.

Then that is something that could be improved.

SkiTz.4590:

They will merely scratch it. When I’m in a party and about to come up to the boss fight, I switch out pets for purely buffs (might/fury stack pets). That’s all they are good for in that type of setting,

Because they are currently bad. Make them good.

SkiTz.4590:

I don’t want devs wasting times on how pets can be improved for bosses lol. They show up, buff me, than proceed to die in 3 hits.

And why would you be content with that? That’s unforgivable. Pets should not die in 3 hits or less during boss fights. It renders them completely useless.

SkiTz.4590:

2. Rangers absolutely suck at supporting a party , no doubt about it. There is only frost spirit + spotter + healing spring… you can compare those to what other classes bring to the table. Point is, it doesn’t matter ok.

Of course it matters. This is a balance discussion, and you just admitted that they suck at support. So…. make them better at support.

SkiTz.4590:

Improving bows for PvE to be on par with swords is probably a tough call for the devs… simply because if Bows do equal damage to swords, than every little ranger will just sit at range and pew pew away instead of actually being skilled and trying to be in melee range

So they are not skilled if they used ranged attacks? Why not? And if that is the case, don’t you think the ranger would benefit from changes that would add more depth and strategy to ranged combat?

I have just skimmed through the last pages VERY quickly…

• DON’T remove the pet!! I play beastmaster style (and I guess a bunch of other ppl do to) because I love to have my pet companion around. Without the pet the class would be broken if anything.

• The pets need to be looked over though.

• Perhaps ther could be a way to make the optional – by putting Points in Beastmastery traitline u get a companion.

I doubt any suggestions on weapons/pets that I could offer would be better than anything else everyone has said…so I only have one thing:

Could we please make the pets stand closer to the Ranger when they are idle/not attacking? It’s seriously annoying to dodge to get out of an AoE only to have Mr Whiskers re enter the circle of death because the ‘leash’ won’t let him sit right beside me where it’s probably safest.

Arghore.8340:

Substance E.4852:

The problem is that beast/minionmaster is an entire class identity unto itself. Shoehorning 2-3 different class designs into one body is what is causing a lot of our problems. We could be an archer/woodsman, a druid, or a beastmaster but we don’t have enough focus on any of them to perform those roles well. Beastmaster also suffers from the obvious limitations of the games unifiorm mob AI.

That is not true! If the F’s were 4 pet summons there would be more of a beast master vibe. If there would be a nature magic group the druids likely be fine, and with a bit of effort going into power there would be a viable archer.

The real problem is the ‘tag-team’ idea, which sounded nice on paper but doesn’t work at all! … See the best we could ever be is McGyver tag teaming with Justin Beaver, and just imagine them in a Pro-wrestling team, up against just a single wrestler like f/e Hulk Hogan (I know, it’s been ages since I seen any of that). McGyver in a ring without things to work with, and J.Beaver dire to get into any sort of trouble.

I would actually pay to see this happen…well, so long as 60% of it is bieber getting his kitten kicked. McGyver would turn biebers bloody remains into some kind of frickin’ laser and pew pew to victory though…

Arghore.8340:

The mental image I get from that is J.Beaver dry humping Hogan’s leg, like its Selena Gomez. And Hogan holding off McGyver at arms legth by the head while he is franticly trying to hit Hogan. And you know it’s only going to get worse for the two of them from there on out.

And to be frank, that isn’t even that far off of how the Ranger feels like playing in various game formats.

The nail, you just hit it…

Arghore.8340:

So, realy, I would rather be an Archer, Woodsman, Beastmaster, Druid rolled into one ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Suggestion-typed-out-for-the-CDI/first#content ) then to be this dysfunctional tag-team monstrosity.

And now that I am on this, I don’t want to feel like McGyver with a J.Beaver tag-team. I would rather like to feel like Chuck Norris, with the A-team on [F]-speeddial. Even if that meant I could only call upon 1 A-team member at a time…

Mental note, make Norn Mr .T…..

Aidenwolf.5964:

misterdevious.6482:

My personal preference is beastmaster first, druid second, wildman/woodsman third, archer fourth and it is quite clear that many people have those archetypes in the opposite order.

Had they named the class beast masters you’d be spot on. But we’re rangers which means we’re archers before pet handlers. My ranger in GW barely used her pet, but always had a bow.

My Ranger in GW used to teleport a Flamingo into battle to set everyone on fire. To each his own. In some early dev commentary they said that if the pet was optional it couldn’t be very powerful, and the pet had to be at a certain strength to be something that the enemy couldn’t just ignore. But buggy pathing and immobile melee attacks made the pet something that could be avoided which is practically the same.

As far as the power of names… it makes total sense now for a Guardian to be able to use a Mace and for a Ranger not to. But if you didn’t call it a Mace but instead called it Club, then it would make more sense for a Ranger to be able to use it (clubs sound woody and natural) and it would be weird for a knightly guardian to use a primitive club. The thing is we already have clubs and they are classified as maces. And I want one. The Ogre rangers (beastmasters) have them. sniff

SkiTz.4590:

Could care less about PvE, any class can be viable in this mode (unless they actually make challenging content but that is not happening, too many casuals would cry if they couldn’t do something)

Couldn’t disagree with this statement more.

I think the designers should put extra focus on the ranger’s role in PVE.

• How do pets work against bosses? If they don’t, provide a solution.
• How can rangers support their allies in PVE, and how does this weigh up against other classes?
• How can ranged combat be improved in dungeons?

SkiTz.4590:

snip

The DPS split is an interesting topic and I’m sure Allie has relayed to the devs that we’re not really huge fans of it.

The main problem I have with it is that the DPS split simply is not justified. If our pets were not such a liability, the point would be moot; however, this is not the case and I constantly feel like I have to work around my pet rather than with it in order to succeed.

Warrior’s Adrenaline is always beneficial. Necromancer’s Deathshroud is always beneficial. Even Phantasm Mesmers can see the benefits of the various Shatters. With Ranger, pets are most often a drawback and our traits are set-up in such a way that we need to invest in ones that enhance or center around our pet in order to make them even remotely worthwhile.

If ANet could find a way to make the pet actually worth having around, I would be on board with keeping them; however, I simply don’t see this happening after one and a half years of the same-old-same-old, which is why I’m in favor of implementing perma-stow or a completely new class mechanic.

Ok i must say something about ranger, just on how i feel about this all.

First of all, my ranger is the best geared char i have, i have spent so much on him and make him really what i imagine ranger to be.

But then again, first when i rolled a ranger i was wondering what class i wanted to be. I have play others mmos and i was like, “hey, why not a ranged dd,” cos that’s really my play style and what i love to play(from my exp on others mmos). After that i go on homepage and read about the classes, and hey, ranger, a char who rely on steady hands, bow and nature to survive and take ppl from distance, that’s definitely something for me.

I play him to lvl 80, never give up on him, give him the look what i wanted, best gears i can get and just, story and everything, grafting and stuff(trust me, that took time).

And now im here, and i have to say im really disappointed on how the ranger is now, to be honest i would not be here if i where happy about him. Hes not close what hes suppose to be, at least what devas says on homepage (that’s main reason why i play ranger). But i never give up on him cos i trusted the game designers to make him what hes suppose to be. After what? a year we finally get this treat, after a LOT of compliments. There is no coincident why ranger was what? 50% vote to remake or fix!

I just have to end this and say my hope are still here and i really hope i can get the play style i really wanted and i BUYED this game for.

PS: I really thought about reroll a gs mes cos hes maybe the closest think this game have for ranged damage dealers, but then again, it would not be the same.

Thanks<3

Tobias and Wolfyrk: thank you for your intelligent comment and not calling me a noob!

I accept what you say about the thief, my bad! Stealth is not a class mechanic rather the signature ability. Initiative and Stealing IS class mechanic. They cannot really avoid using initiative.

Tobias: About your comment: every other profession has absolute control over their class mechanic or signature ability by choosing to NOT press a button. Apart of loosing some utility/damage for a few second they are not punished for too long. Nobody is forcing a necro to stay in the shroud as long as their life force depletes. Nobody forces the thief to use any ability just to use the initiative or use the steal on cooldown. Even if you are a Fresh Air ele nobody holds a gun against your head to switch attunement. You have control over your class abilities.

And this is what I (we/they) want. To have a bit more control over my class mechanic.

You said that I should let my pet die and summon the second one when the time comes… Why not just keep the pet alive? If I die it’s my fault and sure: people are dying in zergs. But if I survive… what is the reason for my pet to die? I was only maneuvering with the commander. I wasn’t even dealing damage! I didn’t need my pet damage dealing or utility abilities. Heck I was fighting for surviving and if I did manage it I was standing there alive with a penalty on my damage and utility. Why must I loose my class ability for only being there?

I do hope that you understand my point of view. It’s like if an elementalist manages to survive a zerg… put their attunement swap on a minute cooldown. Or a warrior couldn’t use adrenaline for 60 seconds… I think you can understand my point better.

Allie Murdock.8152:

cainejw.7142:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

Not to be rude, but that analogy is horrible. The pet is not like a 2×4 breaking. As you’ve said, the ranger is balanced around the pet. This would be akin to a load-bearing wall giving way. The ranger pet holds up the ranger class and equalizes the load.

So what do we do? Replace the load bearing beam (here the pet) with a more functional beam, or do you just tell people to work around it and don’t look at it because you know it’s a broken beam, but you’ll get to it someday.

This is where rangers are. The load bearing beam has rotted. The structure is drooping. The foundation is not absorbing the load to continue keeping the house upright.

And you’re saying, “We’ll get to it eventually, but we won’t remove the beam. It’s a good beam.”

No, it’s a bad beam.

Fair enough. I don’t disagree with what you guys are saying, I’m just trying to help you understand the gravity of the suggestion. Didn’t mean for everyone to get so fixated on that part.

Sorry to harp on this, but help US understand the gravity?

We understand the gravity. Just please make sure YOU AND THE DEVS do.

Thank you.

@Sam.6483

Yes, indeed. The ability to stow the pet in combat (with or without any buffs) is a Quality of Life issue. It opens loads of utilities and tricks by itself. Jumping of bridges, running through trash, rolling through AoEs or avoiding them while keeping the +30% damage in our pocket means more reliable +30% damage.

Not to mention in WvW or PvP you can cause more surprise since the foe won’t know any of your pet choice. You can ress someone who is lying under AC fire, summon your moa and give protection to yorself. You can be a kamikaze, run into a zerg, summon your wolf and fear them then swap to teddy and remove the conditions. So you can hold the pet summoning back until it’s necessary or advantageous.

Note: it is NOT a permastow issue! Who on earth is so stupid to give up 30% damage?!
But having the option to KEEP this 30% damage called pet out of danger is essentially!

So +1 for you, I hope the devs will spend a few minutes to discuss this!

Nike.2631:

I get frustrated by the simple lack of synergy between skills. When you play a condi-necro and can dance through your buttons to put a bleed on the target & yourself with utility, then use your off-hand to move your bleed to them, then use a utility to copy all those bleed to all enemies in the area while putting conditions on yourself, then use your heal to cleanse those conditions and gain bonus healing for doing so… you know that playing those out of order or having to respond to changing circumstances will affect your performance.

Compared to that, ranger gameplay is just dull. You occasionally can stack up a few ‘on next hit’ buffs to pump a single maul, but their weapon skills and utilities mostly feel like oatmeal. There is no difference in what happens if I cast my traps in different orders. there’s no combos, no special order or special timing for many, many Ranger skills.

As a general statement there are also far too many ranger traits that reduce cooldown and nothing else – in other professions we’ve seen a steady march towards combing the 20% cooldown with a secondary flavorful effect. Rangers have good effects but they are spread out across too many traits. A little combining or making certain effects default behavior of the class would go a long way towards injecting not just raw power, but some cool into a class that sorely needs it.

Nike touched on some really good points here, which I hope don’t go unnoticed. The ranger could use a lot better synergy between skills. I think there should be more interesting combos that add more depth to ranger-combat. Plus some traits that have interesting side effects would really be a welcome addition. I’d like to see more overlap between traits and skills, so that one trait can dramatically alter the way other skills work. Because that’s what inspires interesting builds, something that many classes are currently lacking (not just the ranger).

In GW1 we had dual professions, which meant we could combine the powers of an elementalist with that of a ranger, to do fire damage. Or combine the powers of the necromancer with the ranger, to turn our pets into walking bombs. At some point a brilliant designer had the idea to change that, “cause pets aren’t meant that way”. Dumb decision, remove a clever cross-class skill combo.

Anyway, with the lack of dual professions, a large amount of depth is missing to the making of builds. Traits have sort of replaced the dual profession in my opinion but all those “reduce recharge” traits really don’t inspire anything, other than making a particular skill not quite as useless as it would normally be. I’d rather see traits do more than that, and add diversity and depth to the combat system.

Specific Game Mode
<All.>

Proposal Overview
<Permanent stow pet, included in combat without receiving buff. In many cases it is worth to have 30% less dps, but to have better control of the character played. All other professions can be played without their class mechanics, mesmer clones doesn’t spawn, because the character is attacked, etc >

Goal of Proposal
<Avoiding undesired obstruction of views, for example attacked on jumping pusle, trigering traps, etc.>

Proposal Functionality
<Ability to stow pets permanently without receiving any buffs>

Associated Risks
<None>

Aggrostemma.1703:

snip

The second problem is that I doubt that any of the devs ever tried the ranger class (only in sPvP). The new LA fights are just driving me crazy as a ranger. Basically I have no chance to save my pet but keeping it on passive and go longbow. All the AEs hit 900 where the ranger pets are staying. So even if I stay at this range and dodge backwards to avoid the holograms AE the pet stays inside the range and get one-twoshooted. If I dodge sideways out of the “energy beam of death” the pet stays inside! I don’t even mention the melee pets here since they melt before on the loading screen. I know this event can be done only pressing 1 but it’s still very annoying.

snip

This event and the ones like it, Tequatl, world bosses, and WvW zergs… Sometimes I think, yes, it’s just “pressing 1 and it’ll get done.” But then I think… What if everyone here at the event was also a ranger? Our damage is balanced with the pet, so without it, we’re said to be 7/10th of a full character. That means, if everyone was a ranger like me, the event would only have 7/10ths of what it’d have otherwise.

We would need (7/10 * x = 1 → x = 1.43) 43% MORE rangers to make up the difference, assuming all pets die and they make up 30% of our damage. That means if the event takes 100 non-rangers, then we’d need 143 rangers to match. That’s HUGE!

Of course, we’re not going to have a map full of rangers. But… then I think, gosh. If I just came with any other class, I’d be 1.43x more useful than I am right now. Even more, if I’m bringing a non-selfish boon-spreading class instead of my pet-supportive ranger. And then I feel incredibly guilty for gimping the team, because I’m in a situation that makes it impossible for my pet not to implode.

This doesn’t apply to all content. The Marionnet was pretty nice to our pets comparitively and we have our place with the Great Jungle Wurm (though maybe not so much at the final stage) – dungeons can be hit-or-miss but usually not that bad unless the bosses have rough spike damage—especially AoE—that has a shorter cooldown than our pet swap.

My first problem is that every other profession can be build and be played without the “unique class mechanic”. There are thiefs never entering stealth and necros basically never going death shroud or summoning any minions. You can play an elementalist only attuning to water or a “pirate” thief with P/P and never using stealth. You cannot do this if you play ranger. You are FORCED to have and use your class mechanic!

The second problem is that I doubt that any of the devs ever tried the ranger class (only in sPvP). The new LA fights are just driving me crazy as a ranger. Basically I have no chance to save my pet but keeping it on passive and go longbow. All the AEs hit 900 where the ranger pets are staying. So even if I stay at this range and dodge backwards to avoid the holograms AE the pet stays inside the range and get one-twoshooted. If I dodge sideways out of the “energy beam of death” the pet stays inside! I don’t even mention the melee pets here since they melt before on the loading screen. I know this event can be done only pressing 1 but it’s still very annoying.

The third problem is in WvW. Here I doubt again that any of the devs every gave a zergfight a go. Pets are so useless here that I cannot really describe the feeling of the uselessness of our pets. They just don’t make it! They cannot dodge through, they cannot avoid AE’s, they are useless on walls and under them. I cannot even use the pets after the initial zerg engagement to hunt down separated enemies or support my teammates because 101% that I’ve already lost at least one of my pets in the first few seconds of the fight.

I don’t want to be forced to play something I find frustrating. And the current FORCED pet system is frustrating, annoying, illogical and weak yet we are bound to this system.

Let me fix the class on some “easy” steps.

1.Remove the pet ;they can not be fixed they will never be,they are a handicap and a source of frustration.

2.A new mechanic Preparations:

How they work?:
They will be the new ranger f1 f2 f3
They will grant a bonus to the user while under each preparation.
They will also work as a weapon modifiers,so using certain weapons under certain preparations will make them have added effects or work different.
They will have a cooldown like elementalist attunements swap of 15sec
The beastmaster trait line will be removed in exchange of the preparations trait line.

F1 Read the wind: Get a bonus to power (+60) and extra 300 range ,while under this preparation.Use your bows and offhands at max range without the need to trait.

F2 Marksman Wager:Get a bonus to precision(+60) and 25% increase speed.

F3 Expert Focus:Get a bonus to toughnes(+60) and a small hp regeneration.

Rework and delete traits related to pet.

Remove shouts:they dont belong to a petless ranger.

Bring back stances:i still can understand that something so integral to gw1 ranger didnt make it to gw2.Escape,Dodge,Natural stride,Storm Chaser,Whirling defense….

Revert spirit functionality to gw1,and bring back FROZEN SOIL, EoE,and maybe Toxicity.Gw1 spirits were a double edge sword and that made it interesting to use,gw2 spirits are boring and passive.

Bring back Smoke trap.Because traps.

And last but not lest where is my D-SHOT? .Seriously ,where is it?.

The gw2 ranger is a shadow and a joke of what gw1 ranger was.

misterdevious.6482:

SkiTz.4590:

I don’t understand what makes it even sensible to have traits like “pets move faster” or pets do x, y ,z. in the skirmishing line. Like really? this trait literally might be used by 0.05% of the ranger player base

Theres literally 4-5 of these junk traits in every single line. And its such a waste. What on earth is the point of the beast master trait line? Literally every single trait line on ranger has beast-master traits in them….i don’t even.. just a big face palm..

If you want a melee pet to have a chance to hit moving players you want it to run faster… for example if you wanted to run axe/dagger, sword/torch w/traps… the agility training trait you complain about which is in skirmishing might be the only option for giving your pet needed pvp/wvw speed.

If all beastmaster traits were in the beastmaster line then you could only pick 3… not much variety, and the pet couldn’t get very powerful. Worse… if you wanted to do anything with your pet you would be forced to go into that line (which would be horrible). By spreading the traits out you can spec any way you want and still get some kind of benefit from your pets. The Mesmer pre/crit-damage line is similar… it has traits that generate clones and cause conditions with clones… not in the condition line and not in the illusion line. They have illusion/shatter traits all over. The pet is our profession mechanic so it is the same way.

My personal preference is beastmaster first, druid second, wildman/woodsman third, archer fourth and it is quite clear that many people have those archetypes in the opposite order.

The problem is that beast/minionmaster is an entire class identity unto itself. Shoehorning 2-3 different class designs into one body is what is causing a lot of our problems. We could be an archer/woodsman, a druid, or a beastmaster but we don’t have enough focus on any of them to perform those roles well. Beastmaster also suffers from the obvious limitations of the games unifiorm mob AI.

misterdevious.6482:

My personal preference is beastmaster first, druid second, wildman/woodsman third, archer fourth and it is quite clear that many people have those archetypes in the opposite order.

Had they named the class beast masters you’d be spot on. But we’re rangers which means we’re archers before pet handlers. My ranger in GW barely used her pet, but always had a bow.

Allie Murdock.8152:

DeceiverX.8361:

Sure, the ranger is designed to have a pet. That doesn’t mean it should be a constant requirement. Having so many utility skills and traits tied to the pet makes the class unique. Whether or not players wish to really explore this option for damage augmentation should be on them. Just like Warrior’s Adrenaline and Thief’s Steal mechanics, those can be built around, are always available, but are not REQUIRED. A 30% damage penalty at the cost of something players may not wish to build around is simply too strict, and honestly, is just bad design. This is especially because there are no alternatives to an archer. Longbow warrior/shortbow thief are simply inadequate archers from many perspectives and this leads into another fallacy.

A massive source of complaints revolves around the fact that there exists no viable archer role in the game, and has nothing to do with the pet dependency. Simply, the pet is a style of play and a flavor addition, just as is being a heavy warrior with a big weapon, a nimble assassin, a mage, or in this case an ARCHER. Yes, the issues with pets can be resolved by potential updating, but it doesn’t solve the inherent design flaw which forces a style of play upon players while denying them another. Pets being optional resolves both conflicts, especially if they are buffed such that beastmasters and pet users/pets in general retain their usefulness/utility while blatantly denying dedicated archer/DPS roles. The reason why pet removal has so much support is a combination of the notions that rangers in general want more viability/consistency, and players wanting to play a dedicated archer (or light/medium armor skirmisher in fewer cases).

I hope this helps explain the origins behind why so many players want the option to remove the pet. Simply, the alternative play styles need to be considered somewhere in the game, and that either means reworking thief to allow for a longbow/new weapon implementation while also reworking ranger to fix pets, or simply re-working the ranger class (which is obviously less work than both classes) to make literally everyone happy and resolve all of the current class problems.

Thanks for your dedication and I hope you take this post more seriously when trying to evaluate the credibility of the insight regarding pet removal/stowing.

All fair points. It seems a lot of people feel the same way. I have made sure, and will continue to, point out that the community wants a class that is like Ranger (archer) without pets, or even with more reliable pets.

I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).

Thanks again for the red posts on the single most important forum topic in GW2 history (in my opinion). In addition to pets and a Slot skills I would also like to help the devs make rangers (myself included) very happy.

The Fix for Sword 1 and a new weapon for offset in Dungeons

Without changing anything sword 1 does but giving us a reliable button to push in order to cancel the animation chain that makes swords a hastle, I present:

Sword Offhand as a New Ranger Weapon
-Skill 4 of the sword is a zero cool down, zero damage skill that adds 1 stack of vulnerability. It’s main purpose is to allow us to hit 1,4,1,4,1,4 without delay so we can can avoid the chain animations on MH sword which hurt us in dungeons.
-Skill 5 of the sword could be a DoT or anything you’d like, I don’t care really. Please give us something to make sword MH less clunky in pve.

The second weapon is a doozy.

Staff as a useable Ranger Weapon

Changing all of our weapons to make us more balanced is a lot of work. Simply add staves to the list of ranger usuable weapons, but, make them melee DPS focused. This is a huge QOL buff to all rangers as most of our weapons seem designed more for PvP than pve.

And finally, either fix pets or return the damage they steal from us. As a ranger, a master of nature, why would I tame a companion that made me weaker? Answer, I doubt I would.

Allie Murdock.8152:

DeceiverX.8361:

Sure, the ranger is designed to have a pet. That doesn’t mean it should be a constant requirement. Having so many utility skills and traits tied to the pet makes the class unique. Whether or not players wish to really explore this option for damage augmentation should be on them. Just like Warrior’s Adrenaline and Thief’s Steal mechanics, those can be built around, are always available, but are not REQUIRED. A 30% damage penalty at the cost of something players may not wish to build around is simply too strict, and honestly, is just bad design. This is especially because there are no alternatives to an archer. Longbow warrior/shortbow thief are simply inadequate archers from many perspectives and this leads into another fallacy.

A massive source of complaints revolves around the fact that there exists no viable archer role in the game, and has nothing to do with the pet dependency. Simply, the pet is a style of play and a flavor addition, just as is being a heavy warrior with a big weapon, a nimble assassin, a mage, or in this case an ARCHER. Yes, the issues with pets can be resolved by potential updating, but it doesn’t solve the inherent design flaw which forces a style of play upon players while denying them another. Pets being optional resolves both conflicts, especially if they are buffed such that beastmasters and pet users/pets in general retain their usefulness/utility while blatantly denying dedicated archer/DPS roles. The reason why pet removal has so much support is a combination of the notions that rangers in general want more viability/consistency, and players wanting to play a dedicated archer (or light/medium armor skirmisher in fewer cases).

I hope this helps explain the origins behind why so many players want the option to remove the pet. Simply, the alternative play styles need to be considered somewhere in the game, and that either means reworking thief to allow for a longbow/new weapon implementation while also reworking ranger to fix pets, or simply re-working the ranger class (which is obviously less work than both classes) to make literally everyone happy and resolve all of the current class problems.

Thanks for your dedication and I hope you take this post more seriously when trying to evaluate the credibility of the insight regarding pet removal/stowing.

All fair points. It seems a lot of people feel the same way. I have made sure, and will continue to, point out that the community wants a class that is like Ranger (archer) without pets, or even with more reliable pets.

I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).

I do have to agree that the Archer role, really is not being filled, least of all by the Ranger. Honestly, like the Necromancer, I think that Guild Wars had a far better take on it. Besides Signets and some of the high mobility skills, the Ranger took one giant step backwards in GW2.

One of the key restrictions for the Ranger as an Archer is the mandatory limitations on Range. You get 1200 range for the most part, 1500 if you invest in it, and that’s your lot. Which is completely pathetic.
I can understand generally why you’d want a limited range, for spells or bullets that travel instantly.

But arrows? Why on earth do they just magically stop after 1200-1500 range? Talk about immersion breaking.
And with all the massive gap closing abilities, it just becomes trivial to be at range.

Some of the best mechanics from GW were not only did you have the potential to have much longer range if you had the high ground advantage with projectile weapons, but through spirits and other skills you could increase you and your allies projectile speed, allowing you to have a much easier time hitting targets at range.
If these existed in this game, I don’t think we would be having this conversation about Archers not being viable.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@ Allie

It’s not so much that spammy specs are having too much impact, it’s that regardless of impact everything I do feels like spamming.

I’m on board with focusing on sustain damage as a concept, but how that’s being satisfied right now is just by focusing on autoattack.

Which is just a touch natively boring, makes weapons feel more like additional utility skills instead of playstyle experiences, and causes traits to be a schizophrenic mess trying to make the whole thing seem interesting expostfacto when they’re actually trying to be interesting at all.

While I do agree with you that pressing 1 all the time is not very entertaining, I do like those weapons more, where every skill fulfills a purpose. Like the Shortbow: You want to use the poison if the enemy tries to heal, you want to cripple him if he comes to close, you want to use your evade if an AoE is fired at you, you want to use your daze/stun if the enemy is channeling. Ofcourse, this get pretty pointless in PvE. The only thing that matters in PvE is who can press his buttons most rapidly.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Gotejjeken.1267:

I still think we are missing quite a bit of dev feedback here. Specifically in regards to the pet damage and leash nerfs. There had to be a reason for that, and obviously all of the posts here suggesting more pet usefulness will be tainted by whatever reason caused the nerfs in the first place.

In fact, prior to said nerfs I do not recall reading many complaints about pets. There has always been the survivability issue, and to an extent getting in the way during certain times, however nothing to the level we have now.

Oh, there were complaints about them, but only in sPvP, nowhere else. That’s what led to all the pet nerfs, QQing from sPvP about a class who is only good at 1v1s and holding points…which led to the destruction of the class everywhere else. It’s also the MAIN reason why I have always hated sPvP and the sPvP community.

Spend that anger as energy to lobby to try and get Anet to fully separate Pve/Wvw/spvp balancing instead of hating people and a game mode that hasnt done anything to you.

Lets just end the spvp talk and get back to rangers

RyuDragnier.9476:

Gotejjeken.1267:

I still think we are missing quite a bit of dev feedback here. Specifically in regards to the pet damage and leash nerfs. There had to be a reason for that, and obviously all of the posts here suggesting more pet usefulness will be tainted by whatever reason caused the nerfs in the first place.

In fact, prior to said nerfs I do not recall reading many complaints about pets. There has always been the survivability issue, and to an extent getting in the way during certain times, however nothing to the level we have now.

Oh, there were complaints about them, but only in sPvP, nowhere else. That’s what led to all the pet nerfs, QQing from sPvP about a class who is only good at 1v1s and holding points…which led to the destruction of the class everywhere else. It’s also the MAIN reason why I have always hated sPvP and the sPvP community.

They’re also the group of people that tricked Anet into powercreeping the hell out of the Warrior just because it wasn’t amazing at 100% of the game.

Hey ANET, thank you so much for the great replies so far! <3

My own question: A lot of players are worried that Ranger is held back because they tend to range foes, whereas everyone else stacks and melee. This results in the Ranger not giving or receiving buffs with the team.

If Rangers are intended to be the masters of Ranged damage, then this issue must be addressed. Is this currently a concern?

(My own personal idea is to synchronize buffs with the Ranger and his pet, so that the ranger could buff his party from a distance, as well as being buffed from a distance… E.G. If the pet receives might, so does the Ranger. The Ranger ranges, while the pet melees and gives him all the buff benefits of going melee.)