Guild Wars 2

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Oh, and I want to add to my last post:

Everybody can simply roll over their buttons and play a class well enough, but when you start to get to the higher tiers that doesn’t fly as much. You need to time your stuns/condis/stability/heals/etc. if you want to “play with the big boys.”

I know that there are some specs right now that are particularly spammy, though. We’re hoping that some of the changes we make in the feature build will help with a lot of that. One step at a time!

That’s exactly the point!
Our pet behaves like rolling over buttons all the time and no matter how much you will tweak the AI, it will never become as skillfull as the player and that’s the reason why the pet oughtn’t be burdened with dealing our damage.

If the dev’s dont figure out that this class needs less pet crap and more actual ranger synergy, than you can kiss this class goodbye.

If they seriously honest to god believe that pets will EVER be worth 30% of my DPS, I will just cry. I’m convinced no one on anet has put more than 20-30 hours on a ranger.

I would be MUCH happier if they did no damage what so ever, only used as pure support (just give them all different buffs when they are out like eagle gives you and your whole party fury for xx seconds than switches over to a prec based buff to whole party after the fury time is done… or something like river drake cleanses + heal when swapped into battle and than gives all nearby allies condi cleansing every 10 secs + some hp regen like ele attuned to water.

I don’t care what you have to do to pet as long as my ranger is the main focus (give me 100% DPS back or at least something better than what it currently is because its laughably awful)

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Nike.2631:

Allie Murdock.8152:

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 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 effcts 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.

I don’t think anybody questions that some classes, or should I say specs, are easier to play than others.

I do think the ones that are easier to play shouldn’t be so rewarding, though. It’s hard to balance that correctly in our game right now, though.

I’ll make a note to bring up the trait discrepancies.

I think the biggest flaw of the current ranger traitsystem is:
1. Traits regarding the pet are scattered all over our traitlines which reduces the possibility to build a build which doesn’t rely heavily on the pet-
2. The traits can be divided in “promotes pet” or in “promotes ranger”. If we want to trait for a beastmaster spec, we should be able to promote both us and our pet.
I also want to add Nike’s proposals regarding the traits since he summed up the whole mess quite nicely.

+1 this.

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..

Rename this class to beastmaster, don’t call this a ranger.

We have so little to work with if we actually want to be a ranger

Allie Murdock.8152:

Oh, and I want to add to my last post:

Everybody can simply roll over their buttons and play a class well enough, but when you start to get to the higher tiers that doesn’t fly as much. You need to time your stuns/condis/stability/heals/etc. if you want to “play with the big boys.”

I know that there are some specs right now that are particularly spammy, though. We’re hoping that some of the changes we make in the feature build will help with a lot of that. One step at a time!

That’s exactly the point!
Our pet behaves like rolling over buttons all the time and no matter how much you will tweak the AI, it will never become as skillfull as the player and that’s the reason why the pet oughtn’t be burdened with dealing our damage.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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.).

:) This is fantastic to hear that we’re on the same page. Even if nothing changes or the balance team disagrees – knowing that you understand our issues and can relay them is great.

I don’t necessarily care that the ranger isn’t an archer (though that’s why I made one), but I definitely care that the pet is preventing me from getting the “don’t touch beamz” achievement in Battle of Lion’s Arch and prevented me from getting Canach’s “don’t touch my bombs” achievement. But it can also be irritating to be 70% of a full class for high end content since our pets are dead for most high-end content.

Sorry long post. Basically pointing out a few flaws in out utility skills from a range play-style (I know range isn’t viable, but if it ever does become viable, having utilities for it can’t hurt)

One of the major things I noticed was the utility skill issue. If you want to play a range-focused build (it’s not viable at all in game currently dps-wise, which is another issue), there are very few utilities to support this.

The shouts are for the pet and someone wanting to play range won’t benefit much from the pet most of the time and likely won’t be traiting into BM to make the pet more likely to survive.

The traps, you need to trait deep into to have them work and playing a range build makes them less potent as using the fields is harder (blast/leap finishers generally being better than the projectile ones). While this is the choice that struck me as most logical, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

The signets would be a good choice but again require a massive investment just to have them actually affect the character.

Spirits can be useful in cases untraited (a couple of places in dungeons), but outside of fights in a small area with safe spots or no AoE, the value of spirits drop. In WvW, PvP or PvE/dungeons where you’d need to move a lot, an unmoving spirit is not a good choice. Traiting deep into spirits again is a lot to just make a utility useful, particularly if you don’t bring a full set of spirits.
An additional issue is that with the spirits following close while traited, they will likely get hit by any AoE the ranger dodges. Traiting 30 points into spirits should allow positioning (leaving a spirit by an ally or in a safe spot while the ranger fights)

The survival skills are somewhat useful, but also there are a few issues with them. Both Sharpening Stone and Lightning Reflexes have very long cd for effects that don’t seem to warrant it. Sharpening Stone can add a bit of pressure but unless you keep the pressure up with other conditions, it’ll get cleansed fast. In a power build it can tip the scale if not cleansed, but it’s a rare thing and it’s a long cd.
Lightning Reflexes is a great skill (just to get that clear first), but with the massive amount of hard CC in game, the cd seems excessive. However, this could also be contributed to the cd on CC abilities on other classes (warrior) being too short.

Quickening Zephyr isn’t as efficient after the changes to quickness, also it comes with a healing debuff which does make it a high risk/low reward skill the way I see.

Muddy Terrain is great for a range build by at least slightly improving chances to stay range a few seconds more, but I’m left wondering why this isn’t the way all traps are. This skill triggers when cast and is always ground targetted. I’m left wondering why it doesn’t count as a trap and even more so why all traps are not by default like this.
Traiting for traps should give the option of placing them ahead of time and manually triggering instead of the current way. That way traiting traps would still be worthwhile but traps would be more viable without traits.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

I wouldn’t hold your breath. If just a quarter of the suggestions made in this thread are taken into consideration, we would have to wait a long time to see some core-mechanics to be improved.

I’m still waiting for that big dungeon overhaul that we were promised. I mean all this back and forth between the players and the developers is nice. But it’s been over a year already. I can’t help but feel a bit skeptical. Skeptical that the problems with the ranger will be fixed, double skeptical about the ele-fix, and triple so for a necromancer way down the line.

And lets be honest, the balance team hasn’t exactly got a good track record with fixing balance issues (I’m looking at you warrior). Which makes me wonder two things:

Why the sudden interest in the other classes now?

And why after a full year? Why not sooner? Why not right after release?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Now now, MQM, let’s let the Rangers have their time. Eles are next, and then it’s us necros.

I wouldn’t hold your breath. If just a quarter of the suggestions made in this thread are taken into consideration, we would have to wait a long time to see some core-mechanics to be improved.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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.).

Allie, would it -after all possible changes- be possible to still get a permastow for Pets even without a buff?

The reason is quite simple. There are some points where I simply prefer not to have my pet pop out. Some examples are if you’re running through a crowded zone, it’s easier to do this solo. Other examples are Achievements. The recent LS has not one but two Achievements that can’t be obtained unless the pet is put on passive, one of them can still be lost if the pet decides to wander a bit. This isn’t the first LS to introduce a mechanic like that, Canach’s mines were similar.
Another mechanic that has seen popular reuse is the “Jump Waves” trick introduced in the Molten Alliance LS, reused several times, like with Tequatl. It’s quite simple, Pets currently can not/do not avoid obvious AoE Markings and can not jump attack patterns like that.
While for other classes, AI controlled minions are optional and most of the time easily replaced, continued use of mechanics like this that are “anti-pet” sometimes make us wonder if someone on the team tested the content with a Ranger.
Of course it would be best if Pet AI got buffed to avoid obvious markings like mines, announced AoE attacks and jumped all waves flawlessy, but let’s be realistic here and assume they can’t. The easiest solution I can think of to deal with these situations is either Permastow or untargetable, immortal pets. The latter might also be justifiable since Pets are essentially part of a Ranger’s DPS and it shouldn’t be possible to reduce the DPS of a single class so easily.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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 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 effcts 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.

I just hope that we’ve made clear that the pet is indeed promoting the beastmaster playstyle, but criples all other playstyles.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I do want to say though, just because it’s an emotional reaction doesn’t make it invalid. Some have been unhappy with the balance of the class for a long time, so I think reacting emotionally is very human and I don’t fault them for it.

A whole year of neglect to an entire class will do that. It rubs some players the wrong way. Speaking of which, necromancers called, they’d like to have a word.

I think the fix to rangers was just long overdue, just as the fix to necromancers is long overdue too. But meanwhile we are expected to enjoy the new Living Story, while the unbalances still run rampant. I’m not surprised to see some very angry posts and bitterness.

On the GW2 Homepage this is what is written for Rangers as a description;
“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

We need emphasis on reach of our weapons and base damage at ranger.
I know the devs what to keep GW1 separate but maybe they should look at how they built the Ranger there, in my opinion it was a well balanced class in GW1

Greatsword doesn’t really need much. Just bring the auto attack in line with other weapons with similar defensive capabilities (spear and guardian hammer).

Chrispy.5641:

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Sounds like it’s worth a try, but barrage from the walls has it’s own liabilities in my experience, not the least of which is that getting line of site to lay down a barrage can involve having to jump up on a wall, with can mean getting yanked off the wall, though using Rage as One helps a bit with that. My bigger concern is that both Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise are in the Skirmishing trait line, which means I’m giving up Quick Draw, which means my bow skills will take longer to recharge, right? It would be nice if I didn’t have to lose a trait that make bows more useful in order to do a trap build. Again, I’m looking to primarily be an archer, not a trap guy who uses a bow.

And here’s the problem many people have. They want their entire build to be optimized 100% of the time, but there are cases where that just isn’t possible (like what I described). People say that going full traps interferes with other aspects of the build, and, well…., its supposed to!

So I use Axes? I doesn’t mean that I have to have Axe traits instead of trap traits.

Edit – Another Example,….Rampager Gear! Do you invest more into Power or Condition Damage? Or do you try to find the happy medium between the two?

Since I learned that rangers’ pet wouldn’t get a fix in a near/foreseeable future (in what? november?) I’ve been levelling other classes… and I mean, all at the same time… (yeah, I’m crazy like that).
My level 48 necro with found gear and only partial trait selection is doing more damage and have more survivability in WvW than my level 80 / exotic ranger. I can go with my level 40something war into pack of mobs of 5+ levels than I, and still survive… the bow feels more deadly than my ranger’s one on my war and more funny on my thief… and these chars are not yet 80.
Anything I put in the competency bar is useful as is, intraited. (except, maybe, for ground-targetting of necro’s marks… and engie’s too… untraited engie is not so great) But for pretty much everything else, untraited works great, traits are just nice addition.

Rangers (and engie) need to be traited for things to work half as expected, in terms of range and damage and utilities… How is it that 6/10 profession feel like traits are optional, while 2 seem balanced around traits being taken?
You know the WvW skill points? One is easy, two were pain with my ranger; went with an uplevel (38?) staff Ele… took a long time to kill the things, but hey, didn’t fall once!
If all professions were balanced around their traits, all professions would feel the obligation to trait for what they play….
Now, admittedly, they are all unstuffed uplevels… maybe they will feel differently at 80, maybe other players find that other class also are worthless untraited… but from my experience most of the other professions’ competency feel useful untraited – though they might be more when traited – I feel with other professions I can swap things around on the skillbar without paying a price, while I feel on my ranger (and engie) that I need the traits for something to be on the skill bar…

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Move the trap traits Trapper’s Defense, Trapper’s Expertise, and Trap Potency under Wilderness Survival.

Goal of Proposal
Skirmishing boosts Precision and Critical Damage, which are irrelevant to traps and using them. Wilderness Survival boosts Toughness and Condition Damage, the latter of which is relevant to traps. The current orientation, makes it difficult to combine a condition trap build with other types of builds because to get the trap traits and maximize Condition Damage, a player needs to maximize both Wilderness Survival (for the Condition Damage) and Skirmishing (for the trap traits) making, it difficult to combine improved Power, with beastmastery, or with bow-related traits found under Marksmanship.

Proposal Functionality
Move the trap traits Trapper’s Defense, Trapper’s Expertise, and Trap Potency under Wilderness Survival instead of Skirmishing.

Associated Risks
Would make it difficult to combine a trap build with Empathic Bond.

Chrispy.5641:

And here’s the problem many people have. They want their entire build to be optimized 100% of the time, but there are cases where that just isn’t possible (like what I described). People say that going full traps interferes with other aspects of the build, and, well…., its supposed to!

Yes, I get that. But I said I wanted to be an Archer. That’s not the same as wanting to be a trap guy who uses bows. I would like to specialize in bows and be effective that way, not have it be some stylistic color applied on top of a trap build.

It’s like saying you want to visit New York City so I send you to Las Vegas to the New York themed casino where you can see a reduced scale replica if various famous buildings in New York City all mashed together around a casino. You didn’t ask for a casino with a cheesy replica of New York City wrapped around it so would you be happy if that’s what you got?

I did some sample builds in a build editor and to really do the trap build right, I’d also have to drain the Marksmanship trait line, since it doesn’t add to Condition damage at all, which reduces Power and eliminates all of the traits that would make a bow worthwhile to use. It would be nice if the Trap traits actually added to Condition Damage instead of Precision (fairly useless with traps) and Critical Damage (also fairly useless with traps). If the trap traits were in the Wilderness Survival line that added Condition Damage (which actually goes with traps) and Toughness, it would work much better and I wouldn’t have to sacrifice every bow trait to optimize the trap part of the build, just Quick Draw.

Chrispy.5641:

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Sounds like it’s worth a try, but barrage from the walls has it’s own liabilities in my experience, not the least of which is that getting line of site to lay down a barrage can involve having to jump up on a wall, with can mean getting yanked off the wall, though using Rage as One helps a bit with that. My bigger concern is that both Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise are in the Skirmishing trait line, which means I’m giving up Quick Draw, which means my bow skills will take longer to recharge, right? It would be nice if I didn’t have to lose a trait that make bows more useful in order to do a trap build. Again, I’m looking to primarily be an archer, not a trap guy who uses a bow.

Chrispy.5641:

Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.

1. I want them to revert the damage on the ranger, not the damage on the pet; I want to nearly nullify it.
2. I don’t think that the devs were totally brain afk while programming GW2.
They probably have some sort of damagechart, where they can see what skill does how much damage under what circumstances. Ofcourse they have to test it. But let me ask you this: If they implement a new class, doesn’t they also have to balance it out?
3. Noone ever said this would be easy or quick to do. ANet would probably like to take the easier route and just adjust some numbers. But I hope we made clear that they have to spend more time on fixing the ranger as they have initially planned.

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

My biggest problem with the Ranger is that while I’ve seen fairly strong Rangers in WvW, they’ve all been melee Rangers and I, like many others in this thread, really want to play an archer. I like ranged attacks. I don’t want to play a melee Ranger. If I wanted to play a Melee character, my 2 Fighters and 1 Guardian wouldn’t both be under 25th level. All of my 80s I’ve done largely with ranged attacks (Ranger, Thief with two pistols, Mesmer with greatsword) and it’s a preference I’ve often had in tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games, too. Heck, my Ranger even has 5 levels of ballista mastery. Apparently a lot of people want to play Rangers as archers, so why is it a problem to give them what they want?

So I don’t want an ANet employee to play a Ranger for 4 months in WvW with Axe, Torch, Sword, and Warhorn or other melee weapon combination. I want them to play with at least one weapon slot equipped with a bow and perhaps even double bow and see how that goes, since there are players who want to specifically play that way.

I’m in the same boat… but to take it one step further, I want to play a power Ranger. If I wanted to play a condi class I certainly wouldn’t choose an inferior one like the Ranger. I want to be a RANGEr. The second thing I want is to have fun while playing it. There’s no enjoyment for me turning on auto attack and strafing around opponents until one of us dies of boredom. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing the Ranger offers unless you play Axe+Dagger/Sword+Torch, and even though that set is more engaging, it becomes more mechanical than skillful after awhile.

Why is it too much to ask, after 55 pages, to expect this class to have a power oriented build that works at range? I couldn’t care less if you do it with the pet or without at this point. I want to know after 55+ pages that more will be done for this class than fixing a pet.

Chrispy.5641:

But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

What can be worst than 30% of our damage on a Pet AI that is hindering us in all aspects of the game?

They had well over a year to reckon ranger’s problems. All we had was “We know it’s broken, but can’t repair it”. If repairs can’t be done without breaking the game, what is bad with asking for a working class mecanic… Maybe not the best, but at least one that works in all situation.

There is a ton of ideas in this CDI, and a ton more in the ranger’s subforum; they are basically the same since the game came out, and even since before it came out.
They only now come around saying, yeah, we will try and fix your pet…

Most people started asking to get rid of the pet after anet said they wouldn’t have the resource to fix it. Now that people are asing to get rid of it, Anet says, what if we can fix it?
They can’t, then they can?

Now, I love my pet, I’d love more control over it (stay there, do there, attack this), i’d love more meaningful synergy (no more kill it to save yourself, no more you OR your pet in traits… ) I’d love my pet to not get one shotted in WvW zergs… Every time they said awesome things are coming for the rangers, we saw nerfs.
Give any class a 30% loss on stats for one minute, and allow them to use their F skill only once every minutes… or, make achievements where one player needs to be at two places at the same time, to make up for the achievs our pet stops us from getting…
I’d love to see an Anet’s video of rangers getting the laser’s achievement…

So yeah, as much as I love my pet, the way I can give it little task, would it be kill a mob while I cut that tree, or attack that player while I cap the point, or anything else, the fact that it is always dead in my main game mode, and that it will not go up/down walls make the DPS loss too much… If I cannot keep it alive, what is the point of being in the obligation to keep it?
For the pet to work
1) they have to get their AI off the PVE mobs
2) they have to recreate AI – better faster reaction
3) they have to change traits that hurt the pet
4) they have to lower the ratio of pet only/ranger only traits. Make more pet and ranger / pet and allies /ranger and allies traits (so that we are welcomed in groups)
5) they have to make it so the pet does not die in 2 seconds in heavy melee settings settings

For the ranger to work without the pet :
1) does not apply
2) does not apply
3) they would need to be changed
4) They would need to change
5) does not apply
6) they need to make another class mechanic… Easy way out “F1-F4 are utilities that a player can choose among the old ranger’s pet special abilities”

5 points to change keeping the pet, 3 by getting rid of it…

Easy for players to expect a new class mecanic instead of a pet fix… and most are just asking for a perma stow option, with a little bonus… not eve a trait rework, just a possibility to not have pet in the way anymore…. until anet finds a way to give us a working class mecanic…

Chrispy.5641:

That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

My biggest problem with the Ranger is that while I’ve seen fairly strong Rangers in WvW, they’ve all been melee Rangers and I, like many others in this thread, really want to play an archer. I like ranged attacks. I don’t want to play a melee Ranger. If I wanted to play a Melee character, my 2 Fighters and 1 Guardian wouldn’t both be under 25th level. All of my 80s I’ve done largely with ranged attacks (Ranger, Thief with two pistols, Mesmer with greatsword) and it’s a preference I’ve often had in tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games, too. Heck, my Ranger even has 5 levels of ballista mastery. Apparently a lot of people want to play Rangers as archers, so why is it a problem to give them what they want?

So I don’t want an ANet employee to play a Ranger for 4 months in WvW with Axe, Torch, Sword, and Warhorn or other melee weapon combination. I want them to play with at least one weapon slot equipped with a bow and perhaps even double bow and see how that goes, since there are players who want to specifically play that way.

Chrispy.5641:

nethykins.7986:

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
  – “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.

You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.

Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.

I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosphy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

I understand the calling out for change but not knowing how to do it – and having them spend months on something that eventually turns up not working, but isn’t the point of taking suggestions is to eventually use one of them…it could be anything. It could be spirit buffs from stowed pets, or just a permastow option that increases attributes, and any single one of them could cause the same outcome.

They’ll eventually waste time and money on something. We could even say they’d wasted time and money on the current iteration of the ranger as it stands now, if they have to have a CDI a year or so into the future to have players tell them that what they intended isn’t working, then a few things in the past would be a waste in the grand scheme of it all.

On a lighter note though:
I’m pretty sure AFKing in LA was something players spent 1/8th of their time doing in game.

I think developers miss why most rangers run condition builds. And the answer is that unlike power builds, ranger condition damage doesn’t take the arbitrary 30% damage penalty for having a pet.

A ranger’s conditions do the same damage as any condition class. A rangers power attacks do significantly less damage than any other power class. No changes to pet AI will ever make up for the fact that pets will never live up to that full 30% potential damage that the rangers paid for them, so the ranger’s penalty needs to be reduced significantly for power specs.

In fact, I don’t even understand why the penalty is so stiff given that most pets noncrit autoattack for about 700-800 damage at best. That’s literally an engineer’s burning ticks with a few might stacks. The penalty to the ranger’s power based attacks is completely disproportionate to the actual damage contributon of pets. So you end upwith two low damage dealing entities that even when put together don’t match single functioning entities like warrior, thief, or lightning hammer elementalist. Hell, not even guardians.

Furthermore, power rangers will never be viable so long as their defensive options are nonexistent, and they have no ways to deal with boon spam since they have no boon removal. Condition specs are the ranger’s only answer to the protection boon spam.

The defenses rangers have are solely tied to toughness stat stacking and regen. Serpent Strike and offhand dagger #4 mean nothing when you can lose a third or half of your health as a berserker ranger to a single attack. The only other alternative is a 64 sec traited signet invulnerability. Power rangers are all glass and no cannon.

Chrispy.5641:

nethykins.7986:

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
  – “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.

You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.

Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.

I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosphy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Re: 2×4 vs foundation!

The seeming difference in scope is not necessarily because there’s any workload misunderstandings between us, but because as customers we only experience the surface of the game and as a developer their daily lives are the deeper infrastructure.

It’s like talking to a fish about lillypads covering the surface of a lake. From your perspective it’s obscuring the entire lake, but for them, it’s the thin green roof of a much larger world.

No, ANet is only experiencing the surface. We as players are the one who notice that something doesn’t work as intended. ANet has everything on the paper. And maybe it looks nice on the paper but in terms of the ranger, it hasn’t payed out the way the devs thought. And yes, we don’t have any information about their workprogress but we do know better than the devs to what’s OP, UP or balanced.

Hah.
Hahahah.
You think any of this ever mattered to begin with???

If you read carefully, my post doesn’t actually imply so. ;P

Iason Evan.3806:

If you were just going into hotjoin then it wouldn’t rank you. My “no drawbacks” comment was about having a profession specific leaderboard which would be wholly independent from the ladder. If we are going to have metrics we might as well go whole hog.

Hotjoin is a zergy clusterkitten with no matchmaking at all.
That is much different than an unranked queue, to the point where it is just it’s own game mode.

And ‘we might as well go whole hog’….
Seriously?
I’m not trying to be rude, just like, have you seen how these guys work, at all??
Piling on more work just because it relates and is nifty (not even all that practical) is a massive no no.
It’d extend the release by many months and cause a few dozen bugs.

As easy and simple as can be is the only way to go.

Master of Timespace.2548:

If the game balance doesn’t change then none of this matters a rats kitten .

Hah.
Hahahah.
You think any of this ever mattered to begin with???

Iason Evan.3806:

Drawbacks I can’t really think of any.

What if a person just wants to kitten around on a class instead of play the one competitive spec it has?

There is the obvious fix to this problem that next to EVERY other game uses… have ranked and unranked queue.
SPvP is an entirely different beast.

There already are split queues in TPvP, instead of having ‘Skyhammer-Q’ and ‘everyone else’ they could make that split mean something, they could have an unranked queue based entirely on glory and a ranked queue that has a glory requirement (like every other game) and then bases matches on your MMR….

There’s a reason next to every other online game does that…
It works.