Guild Wars 2

PVE

Make GS do more damage than warrior banner

PvX

Greatsword Rework

To make the Greatsword function properly as a power based weapon

Functionality

GS1 >> Triple the damage, why? because with a full crit build a swing with my might sunrise does a might 1200 damage on a good day…this is against normal enemies with regular armor at level 80. With a bunker build, this does 200-400 damage. Not the GS is not a condition based weapon, so why it does little to no damage is beyond me.

GS2 >> Add an Aoe cripple cone or a knockdown

GS3 >> An evade during the duration of the cast would be nice and make sense

GS4 >> If i did not know better i would say the root was a bug, not sluggish animation. Make the knockdown super fast or don’t root us while were counterattacking .

GS5 >> A very underwhelming skill 5 … a 1 person stun for 1 second…what are we supposed to do with that? Yes with attack of opportunity it goes to a 2 second stun…even still it is 1 hard to land and 2 does very little damage with a very mediocre stun duration that is ONLY viable if you trait 30 points into skirmishing.

risks
None

Part 2

• Instinctual Bond must be activated on 25%-50% health threshold, not on downed state.
• Swap Instinctual Bond with Vigorous Training.

1. With this change it well synchronized with new Enlargement. Adept trait requiring downed state not good choice in many ways. I never use them.
2. Adept tier Vigorous Training is very good for support build like 0-0-30-30-10.
3. Master tier Instinctual Bond good source for raw pet damage and haste pet skills.

• All effects Healer’s Celerity combine with Circle of Life to create Healing tree when revive ally (20 seconds cool-down), instead of giving swiftness and staying to Nature Magic traitline.

• In Wilderness Survival branch Healer’s Celerity transforms to Hunter’s Celerity, giving on Ranger’s downed state 10 second of swiftness&vigor to allies.

1. Thieves have annoying Merciful Ambush, Guardians Resolute Healer, Rangers must be have something useful too.
2. For new Circle of Life trait effects, it bring back nerfed water-field source in some way.
3. For Hunter’s Celerity new trait, it’s going to nice utility trait too.
4. For example it’s good choice in everything, adding speed/evade source to allies (On WvW/PvP/Fractals it make people run away faster from thing what kill you (dodge it), or run close faster to revive you)

Associated Risks

• Moment of Clarity trait change:

1. Add minimum 3 new possible builds, combined with all variety of Ranger weapons (Raw damage on evade, poison stacks, with or without crit stacking, with or without traps and etc).
2. Easy balance, switching cool-down on proc buff effect Attack of Opportunity (5, 10, 15 seconds), Poison duration (+50%, +200%)

• Swapping Master’s Bond with Instinctual Bond:

1. Add potential to Beastmastery line on every game aspect, 5 points strong pet, no need change global HP for all pets for WvW/PvE/PvP/Fractal’s, 5 points minor trait do it for you.

• Instinctual Bond trait change:

1. No need strong pet AI coding – pet everytime can be hasted, when Ranger itself in real troubles (less than 1-99% hp), and it comes time for accelerated pet action
2. Again, easy trait balance – less than 20-70% Ranger hp, with 20-50 second cd

• Healer’s Celerity* and Circle of Life changes:

1. Traits and trait effects placed into right places, and become a great support traits on WvW/PvP

P.S.

Previously in my forum post’s, i also negate Remorseless, what at that time not have resumed crit on battle, now you change it, and skirmishing trait line became better.

Please, combine Piercing Arrows,Eagle Eye,Quicl Draw in any source of viable single trait.

Part 1

Specific Game Mode

PvE

Proposal Overview & Proposal Functionality

Changes in current Traits and balance of Ranger weapons with an eye on these changes.

I was completely satisfied with the current concept of the Ranger, I’m not satisfied only with the pet response and location&functionality of more than 50% Traits.

Goal of Proposal

• Moment of Clarity - All your changes not fix uselessness of this trait.
  As a first approximation, dase and stun effect only have Greatsword skill Hilt Bash, Shortbow skill Concussion Shot and Longbow Point Blank Shot. And their daze/stun durations extremely low – 1s each. And with improvements of trait, 2s not cool at all.
  200%,300% – it’s still be useless mostly for all weapons.

• According “The Attack of Opportunity granted to your pet by this trait replaces, and is replaced by, the Attack of of Opportunity granted by Hilt Bash and by Signet of the Hunt, according to which is applied last. They do not stack.” we have zero changes of this trait.

1. My suggestion to improve this trait – add Attack of Opportunity buff after dodge roll and evasion with Rangers weapons, without staking with multiple dodge/evades and save global 5s-10s cd.
2. Replace +100% Daze and stun duration. to +100% Poison duration (or add trait with this proposal)
3. Many of our weapon skills give concept Ranger, as a class use tactical/dodge concept – switching weapons, mobility, using pet and right place to attack, keeping enemy distance.
4. In that case, we have changes, what adds some new combinations, what’s really presented top tier Trait – for example, we have improve Greatsword damage in autoattack chain – if proc evade, third attack will hit 50% more.
5. Sword&Dagger also can use this change too. Ranger really have so many evade&poison skills, what affected only 1-2 traits and zero grand tier trait. Viper nest trap, over 7 (!) poison pet skills.
6. In many situations, we use dodge to gap distance close to enemy, and if we have dodge proc, our “Maul” from Greatsword will have some burst damage and big numbers, what all people want. And many other uses, and not just only at interrupt.
7. With this change and many innative endurance restore skills on Ranger, we have cool mobile warrior, which use brain for guaranteed bonuses every 5-10 seconds.

• Swap Master’s Bond with Instinctual Bond.

1. In current mechanics, the more you invest in a Beastmastery traitline, the more you need swap pet on every cool-down time.
2. It’s good to WvW and PvP too, making for 5 points strong non-swapping pet, without going deep into Beastmastery traitline (10 points without change).
3. That 5 saved points on Beastmastery will help keep it to spend for 20 or 25 points traits in the other branches, for many builds it’s good choice.
4. Yet it would be good to become not lost stats from pet swap, only lost from pet death.

lushy.5310:

I am really surprised with 90% of these posts. They show that most players just do not know how to play a ranger.

Since…

- Pets are Rangers, Rangers are Pets. Take another profession if you do not like to control 2 things (the pet and the ranger) at the same time.
- Pets do not die if you play well (not in Wurrm, Teq or any fractals 50)
- Ranger+Pet do an amazing direct dps in PVE [note: I am full berserker, full ascended, full infused (with +5p and +5 T in armour) SSS ranger (sword, spotter, spirit)]

So, what is the only real lack for rangers?
1) Safe our pets names!!! (we change several pets in each fractal run and they lost their names…)
2) See the buffs and debuff in our pets HP bar
3) See a casting bar of our target (right now we have to anticipate our actions just by experience) to see what they are exactly doing/casting/attacking in each moment.

Please, do not make rangers as easy to play as other professions.

Lots of players, myself included, can overcome the handicaps with the class and perform well with Rangers. That does not mean that Rangers are fine and don’t need help. The fact that the class was voted as “most needing help” in the Dev Poll supports the idea that Rangers are not fine and need help.

As for the “easy to play” argument, every class in this game is easy to play. This isn’t GW1 you know.

Specific Game Mode

• PvP/PvE

Proposal Overview
Making Ranger skill look more awesome.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to make ranger look cool. This is purely for cosmetic option.

Proposal Functionality

First is melee:
When a ranger is at a certain distance between his target, he will use a melee version of that weapon attack.

There are three ranged weapons: Axe, Longbow, and shortbow.

• Axe- Simple axe slash
• Shortbow- Punch → kick → Bow smack.
• Longbow- Shove, like in Skyrim.

Second is quickshot:

After quickshot is used, it will chain into needling shot. Which will stun the targeted enemy for each shot. The sound effect must sound like it has impact.

Associated Risks

Might be strong and too much fun.

ASCENDED PETS
With so much of the Profession’s functionality bound up in their companion, Rangers need a way overcome the Gear Progression gap introduce with the Ascended Tier by extending the Tier to their most important slot: their pets.

A Ranger’s Journey
Ascended Pets would represent the culmination of a long series of repeatable activities or challenges, comparable to the effort in creating a Vision Crystal. Ideally these paths/tasks would be distinctly Ranger-themed. Completing these tasks would allow you to select one of your existing companions and permanently upgrade it to Ascended status, with a small graphical tag in the pet management panel to identify promoted companions. This would give a 5% increase to base damage and all stats for the pet – the same benefits Ascended gear offers Player Characters.

A Long Road to Walk
Unfortunately, promoting your entire roster of companions could take a very long time. However, this is comparable to the effort all heroes face trying to collect a wide range of weapons or stat combinations for multiple builds.

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

Proposal Goal

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

Proposal Functionality

Examples for new group focused Shouts:

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

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

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

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

Possible trait re-allocations:

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

Example for improved Signets:

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

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

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

Associated Risks

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

Specific Game Mode: PvE
Proposal Overview: Improve Ranger utilities and traits.
Goal of Proposal: To improve the Quality of Life of the Ranger.
Associated Risks: Proposed changes might be too low-hanging of fruit to have a significant impact on the class.

Proposal Functionality:

• Hornet Sting (Sword): Quicken the animation so the evade can be accessed faster
• Kick (Sword): Allow it to hit up to 3 targets and reduce the Cripple duration to 1 second to compensate
• Evasive Strike (Spear): Allow movement while casting this skill
• Signet of the Hunt: Active also applies Stealth for 3 seconds for you and your pet
• Guard: Remove the cast time to match other Shouts
• Search and Rescue: Add 400 Toughness to the pet while this skill is active
• Lightning Reflexes: Removes chilled, crippled, immobilize
• Eagle Eye: Have it apply to both Longbow and Shortbow
• Fortifying Bond: Replace Vigor with Stability
• Vigorous Spirits: Add an increased effect radius by 20% (1200 range when traited)
• Move Instinctual Bond to be a minor Master Trait and Loud Whistle to be a minor Adept Trait
• Master’s Bond changed to reset only when the player is downed or defeated
• Speed Training increased cooldown reduction to 20% (up from 10%)
• Rending Attacks applies to all pets
• Stability Training applies to all pets
• Intimidation Training applies to all pets
• Aqua Surge (Water Spirit): Also removes 2 conditions
• Spirit default chance to apply effect increased to 40% (up from 35%)
• “Attack My Target” merge functionality with “Guard” (toolbar command)
• “Return To Me” merge functionality with “Avoid Combat” (toolbar command)
• Increase Opening Strike’s Vulnerability duration to 10 seconds (up from 5 seconds)
• Remorseless makes Opening Strike unblockable for you and your pet

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

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

Proposal Functionality

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

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

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

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

Associated Risks

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

Specific Game Mode
PvP

Proposal Overview
Pets need more utility and variety in F2 skills

Goal of Proposal
Most pets do the same thing. The worst offenders are the chill pets. This will increase the number of tools a ranger can use and every pet will be useful.

Proposal Functionality
Owl- Remove 2 boons
Alpine Wolf- Swiftness to ranger and pet.
Ice Drake- Keep it as chill.
Polar bear- Grants Stability and Retaliation
Snow Leopard- Grants quickness to the ranger
White Moa- Grants Vigor
Arctodus- Grants Aegis
Eagle- Put a reveal on targeted enemy
Hawk- Cripples targeted enemies.
Spider pets- Venom share to rangers.
Lynx- Torment.
Lashtail Devourer- Pull
Whiptail Devourer- Ranged Launch

Associated Risks
Rangers being strong might be a risk.

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

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

General Pet Improvements

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

Beast Mastery Traits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

snow.8097:

PvP

rework of torch #4

Making Torch more interesting for Powerbuilds

Currently the Torch is a condition based weapons. Thats okay, but i think with a Little rework a power build could use that weapon too.
My idea: make #4 a chain attack.
“Swallow the flame” – Gain X Stacks of might for some seconds/ one stack might per second
“Puke the Flame” – Apply some seconds of burn on ur foe

Maybe the combination of some stacks might with condition burn could be really strong

My poor Sylvari ranger

“The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.”

This is the problem with the ranger. Thieves, warriors, eles (and nearly everybody else) have better dps, team support and sustain as us. And in this game single target and pet gameplay is week

Proposal Overview
Some suggestions and things (changes) that could make the Ranger better than he is NOW.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to play WITH the ranger’s pet and NOT against it and making the ranger a better class in this game and new weapon ideas I have too.

Proposal Functionality
these are my suggestions:

Dear Allie and dear Forum,

these are my changes and my suggestions for the ranger I would like to see:

• 1st: Ranger should play with his/her pet and not against it! That means the current situation of the pet system is not acceptable (for me). You just target a foe and click F1 and maybe f2 for the pet’s skill. Thats all. Nothing really “special” I think. Because other classes do have a much more variety of the f-skills!
  That must change!

So my suggestion is that the pet becomes a part of the ranger’s playstyle. (At least more than it is now). That means my idea is to give each weapon 1-2 new “Pet Skills” that makes your pet do a special skill (like Mesmer got skills on each weapon for Phantasms/Clones).

One “Pet weapon skill” could be like command the pet to rush to your foe and knocks it down and causes 3 stacks of bleeding (this skill would be nice for catching a “running away player” in pvp or WvW.

The pet would get for the duration of the skill 50% more speed (for 5 seconds I think) And the skill would get a longe range like 250 Metres . I could imagine this skill on horn or GS! What do you think about it?

Another idea of me would be to make the ranger more “spiritual” and “magical”.
I think it would go well with him, because rangers already can call magical spirits (utility skills). This proves already that he has magical approaches.

• So my 2nd suggestion is:
  Give the Ranger a new “magical” weapon. Maybe a completely new one or a staff. The skills could call “nature spirits” (but not like the ulitity skills), these “spirits” help the ranger with attacking.

I see approaches on the GS skill 2/3 or sword skill 2/3. I find this idea of helping spirits on attacks very interesting and I think that we could still improve this idea a little more to give the spirits a more imporant role in gameplay.

• 3rd:
  New Pets:

I heard alot about the wish of new pets for the ranger and I think this is a very important question!

The variety of tameable pets for rangers is not big today.
I think it would be very nice if we would get new tameable pets! I do not want completely new pets but already existing ones! Like a firefly (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firefly) or an imp (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Imp) or a wurm (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jungle_Wurm_Hatchling). I hope that will come somedays!

So thank you for your attention and I like to hear comments from you or critics!

Associated Risks
Maybe some “too new things” but I think in general it would very well fit the ranger!

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Define the AFK policy.

AFK stands for Away From Keyboard. So if you’re AFK while an event takes place, and you get full credit for it, that’s a cheat/exploit of mechanics. Anet did not intend for players to just all stand around during a “Rescue” event. The very requirement of said “Rescue” event is that you go around saving citizens… hence the word “Rescue”.

I’m not sure why you’re so adamant with being allowed to AFK and gain max rewards. Perhaps you’ve been a victim of the mystery kick? All I know is that when Devs and GMs run with us, we respect them as we would any player. They don’t grant us favors. They don’t abuse their powers to help us. Heck, as it’s been stated, all actions are logged. So if someone were to activate the holy powers to smite AFKers taking up space on a map with a finite amount of player slots, I’m inclined to thank them by spending money on the Gem Store.

I look forward to running more events while this LS is active, and will be reporting more people standing around doing nothing. It’s within my player given rights to report these players, as is their rights to dispute any suspensions with Customer Support.

Zaxares.5419:

^ That would mean that every time the hackers used a dev command, it would also be logged, thus enabling them to be caught and banned extra quickly.

Yes, but it has been stated it only records if they teleport further than say a blink (1200 range) at a time. But what about those who become invulnerable or just “blink” under the ground in WvW… Or Walk through walls/teleport into keeps and just claim “mesmer hiding”. What about those who fly hack above towers / keeps until they are clear so they can port others in. If these are all truly logged, then why are they still so popular in WvW today?

Needed 1800 for a server transfer so bought 1600 and figured I would use gold on the remaining 200. Why are we forced to raise the price silver by silver until we find the exact number of gems we want to buy? Not to mention once I finally got it close to 200 the price of gems changed so I had to start over. Wouldnt it make more sense to just type in 200 gems and do it that way?

Do you guys do dungeons/fractals/wvw/spvp together? If you don’t, and you pug, how does your group react? Do they still do all the tricks people normally do to make dungeons go faster, or do they take an extra 20 minutes to look good and innocent? :P

And finally… are you even able to turn that anet tag off?

In GW1 Factions, you should become “Closer to the Stars”, the “Factions” equivalent to Prophecies “Ascended”. But zodiacal bodies was only for mobs during this questline, explained by shorter frontiere through “The Mists”. But Zodiacal creatures wasnt “alive”. In GW1 you could loot Zodiac Weapons on those mobs.

Magical thing in Tyria (the world, not the continent) are explained by the Bloodstones. Zodiac and other stuff by “The Mists”. Zodiac Armors bought by players in a cash shop are Lore Breaking. If only they earned it though a quest in “The Mists” to become “Closer to the Stars”… But no, then it’s Lore Breaking.

Does a cash shop with very very high magical stuff is lore breaking ? Yes.
Does we could see something like that in GW1 ? No. Because GW2 is not here to please fans, only to make money. But this is another story.

EDIT : Yes on this pic, Dwayna is wearing something close the the actual zodiac armor. But nobody is astonished ? Players looks like a GOD, but you’re saying to me it’s not lore breaking ??

it’s true, basic gw2 edition = kitten drops
heroic and above edition = good drops
RNG is scam

Opened 88 Exotic Dragon Chests from Tequatl at once.
This means 88 Tequatl kill on 88 days (88 days waiting for no overflow)

88: because 8 is a chinese lucky number … double 8 … double luck … not for my account

I thought that this can’t be true.
Only 1 Exo!! and 1 Mini (and the Mini was on the first try)
Thx alot ArenaNet.

In GW2 there are “light accounts” and “dark accounts”

I have the second one!!

Here is the proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxjbSAt9RQ8

Akisame.9508:

Does any other class loose 30-40% of their damage due to poor AI? Does any other class loose 30-40% of the damage due to targets being up on a keep wall? Does any other class loose 30-40% of the damage due to targets being on the ground while your on a keep wall? Does any other class loose 30-40% of their damage during the ENTIRE zerg battle in WvW? No, only ranger’s have to live with this handicap.

Mesmer’s and their clones are not in a much better position…
I kill mesmer’s clone with my fire trap :o effectively taking off a big chunk of it’s DPS… And clones are useless in themselves, only use fotr them is through F1-F4, and they die so fast in some settings that they are next to useless I’d even say more than pets in WvW, cause at least I can try to avoid melee and AoE to keep my pet alife and use it’s special ability, I can Use a shout to keep it off the battlefield – though loosing DPS, I’d gain support… They cant’t send their phantasms and clones away to still benefit from them…
Even ranger’s untrainted spirits give more advantages in a siege fight that memser’s clones…

I’m not saying we are in a good spot, but we are not the only class who’s class special ability is useless in bus… If mesmer didn’t have portal/veil/time warp, they’d be pretty much where we are at…

Back to ranger :
I do not feel like our damage is the problem (except on GS AA). Overall, it’s ok… I feel that the problem is that developers so much wanted the ranger to have a synergy with the pet, that it’s blocking us in too many areas…
I do not feel that the pet in itself is holding us behind – though I agree that pet is the problem.
Removing some traits specific on the pet, to make them more team friendly would go a long way. Beastmasters traits should go with pets, that’s a given, but other traits in other branches, such as “critical hits grant XYZ to your pet” should be “to your pet and allies”.
+ none of our skills should apply its effect to the pet only.
EG: shouts : pets get to do something, master gets advantage, traits allows for advantage to be shared with team
signet – untraited, apply to ranger, traited (in adept) to the pet; traited (in GM) half of their active effect apply to allies…

But, more skills should affect the pet also – in terms of the synergy… Like traps, it can be that poison trap heals the pet, spike gives it swiftness, ice gives it quickness, and so on.

Just plain taking the pet off and giving us the damage cannot work without a great rework of the class – because most traits are based on the pet being there… If I wanted to play an ranged class with no pet, I would take a petless class. Lots of work needs to be done to make ai-based classes viable in large-scale fights… for me, the first step to do that is to give those classes some ways to not have to rely too much on AI.

I don’t know why they didn’t go the WoW route with pets in the beginning and made them take like 90% less damage from all AOE. Such a simple solution. That literally solved a huge portion of Hunter problems there, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t do the same here.

In all honesty I have very little faith that pets will ever be unbound. And I don’t mind that. I would however like, the very least, some changes to the current proffession skills (pet control F1-F4) by combining some of them as listed below:

F1 – Attack & Guard
F2 – Pet skill
F3 – Return to me & Avoid combat (while in combat) / Stow (while out of combat)
F4 – Swap

I don’t get why we got a proffession skill with no key assigned which you gotta click if you need it when they can be easily integrated in other proffession skills they are already similar if not identical to (at least to me).

If anyone is unclear with what I’m trying to say here let me know and I’ll try to explain it better…hopefully that’s not the case.

Now, about the ranger itself. The official ANET description of the ranger is:
“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.”

As it stands, Ranger is currently the least adaptable of all proffessions. Rangers are very situational, which is why all the hate of other players towards them.

Unparalleled archers, again, they are not. I could see a big improvement in longbow if Barrage were changed so that you can move while casting it, for example. Also, I’d like it to add Weakness on hit besides Cripple.

Shouts are sub-par compared to their counterparts from Warrior/Guardian through their effects, let alone their unusually long cooldowns.

What other proffession requires you to go 30 points into a traitline until their own signets affect them?

Traps… I’d like to see a shorter cooldown on Frost Trap. Maybe 5s cooldown reduction.

There’s so many things to be said, so many things to add but everytime we try I get the feeling that our doleances aren’t getting through, so most people just quit the class alltogether.

One last thing, I’d like to see more access to other conditions, like torment, weakness for the weapons we have, or why not, in the future…access to more weapons (ie. dagger main-hand, sword off-hand)

Chrispy.5641:

from this thread :: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feature-Build-Balance-Preview/3667926

Ranger:
Ranger pets are receiving a responsiveness pass and will be much easier to command. For example: Activating your F2 skill will now break your pet out of its current action in order to execute that ability.

whether they specifically reference this thread/other threads or not, the influence was obviously felt, since this has long been a complaint from many, many, many posters in these forums.

unfortunately this is still useless. Until they get the pets to actually be able to hit moving targets and until they can get pets to avoid area effect, effectively keeping them alive for something longer then 2 seconds in WvW Zerg, this ability is USELESS and a waste of time. This solves NOTHING for us at all because the pet can’t make contact with moving targets. We are still at a DPS loss, we are still handicapped until they either fix the pet correctly or remove the stupid thing from the game!

Why do ranger’s have to be penalized with pets? Do thiefs have to wait 60 seconds to restealth if they failed at stealthing? Do warriors have to wait 60 seconds to use an adrenaline move if they failed to make contact with their adrenaline attack? Does any class have to wait 60 seconds to use their class mechanic if they failed using it? No, but ranger’s have to wait 60 seconds to use their class mechanic if we fail to keep the pet alive.

Does any other class loose 30-40% of their damage due to poor AI? Does any other class loose 30-40% of the damage due to targets being up on a keep wall? Does any other class loose 30-40% of the damage due to targets being on the ground while your on a keep wall? Does any other class loose 30-40% of their damage during the ENTIRE zerg battle in WvW? No, only ranger’s have to live with this handicap.

This update for the f2 is an attempt to quite the masses as ‘look, we’re working on it’ but in reality it does NOTHING for helping us with our core issues! If they where serious about working on pet’s they wouldn’t have wasted their time on this and they would have been finding a way to make pet attack connect with their targets. I still say if they can’t get pets to connect with their targets and avoid area effect’s then they should just remove the pets and give the DPS back to the ranger until they can actually get pets to work correctly, which probably won’t happen for another 3 years from the speed I see ANet working on this class.

I remember few months ago one of the devs/staff said that we will get a chance to spend our Empyreal Fragments and Bloodstone Dust, so I decided to save up any fragments and dust I got. I have currently almost 2 bank tabs full of these stuff and I’m wondering if this ‘sink’ they were talking about was ascended armor? If so 1.5k fragments and dust isn’t enough of a sink as you get these from literally everything you do. It would be nice to know if you guys have anything planned for these materials before I get rid of em.
Cheers.

RNG screws me in game and out of the game it seems.

If you tell me that only people with precursors drops received the mail I’ll personal come over there and punch you in the kahoonies.

CAPES !!! CAPES !!! CAPES !!!
Anet could make some money and we cape-lovers could buy those capes without any regrets, win-win

Permanent repair kit