Guild Wars 2

Many players will find this topic uneccesary, irrelevant, or a threat to your income because you make a ton selling precursors you are lucky enough to forge but I don’t care. I have been playing GW2 since early access (I was in beta too, but that doesn’t count) and I have forged 1000s of weapons, done countless dungeons, WvW, and events without a single precursor drop.

I feel like my account has a hex on it, some quirk in the coding that prevents nice things from being added to my loot table and I’m tired of it. It’s time to end the nonsensical RNG where legendary precursors are concerned.

Condi cleanse could be useful in certain situations and bow speed as well. I don’t see anything here that I’ll run 24/7 but whatever. They can’t or won’t fix pets and they give us garbage traits in comparison to what eles got. I mean seriously, a top tier meta class gets a buff and we get increased bow speed that we should already have? Defend them all you want, you’re alone on this one.

Working as intended.

As a level 80 character when I’m downscaled I should be at least equal level to the highest level mob on the map. I continually run into enemies that are higher level than I’m downscaled to which is ridiculous.

Zenith.7301:

Really? Our Marksman Grandmaster is basically to allow rangers to hit targets with the reliability of warrior and engineer rifles or thief pistols?

The kitten arrows don’t even hit a sidestepping target beyond 600+ range. The velocity should be increased baseline.

It’s incredible that for 1.5 years, Rangers have been telling you that they suffer because all their traits/utilities/weapons need heavy point investment to even function, and you go ahead and waste a grandmaster trait slot on a fix that should be baked into the weapon instead of paid for.

RANGER WEAPONS AND UTILITIES SHOULD FUNCTION WITHOUT TRAIT INVESTMENT, LET ALONE 30 TRAIT POINTS.

Moreover, the power line grandmaster only covers the longbow, when bows are not used to begin with in most game formats?

Bows are of little worth in PvE, where melee weapons will always be favored over ranged ones. And in PvP bows are at a disadvantage because of their crappy defensive capabilities.

And the longbow and shortbow not only have a failure in hitting moving targets beyond 600+ range, but unlike the engineer rifle the arrows don’t even pierce baseline, which they should.

Rangers lack immensely in the aoe department. It’s that plus utility and their low innate base weapon damage and power scaling that has made them undesirable for any group content, especially WvW.

100% agree. Arrows fly faster than axes. Fix the profession without making us use a grandmaster to have what should work already.

Not happy with this at all. I hate that precursors are kitten near impossible to get for most of us. if you’ve had luck getting yours through a drop or the forge, yay you. I have dropped hundreds of rares and exos into the forge and have played since beta and I have never had a precursor drop.

We were told that precursor crafting was coming in 2013 it didn’t and now we wait till who knows when.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

Aidenwolf.5964:

If you join a LFG dungeon your only option should be to leave a bad group there is zero reason to have a kick function if the player is not AFK.

The internet allows weak people to do things that IRL I’d break them in half for

What? No. Some people’s performance is so poor that kicking becomes necessary if you want a speedrun.

Also, lol.

TBH I should’ve kicked the guy in question.

knives.6345:

I maybe biased or clueless since random kicking never happened to me but I have been reading it for quite sometime now, but did you guys think for a second why they kicked you? Maybe wrong gear? Bad play?

I have kicked tons of guys just for satisfying the 2 conditions above.

But for the sake of topic, I agree with Oranisagu.3706 on 1 point:

party chat never disappears – if you were able to read it once, there’s no reason to delete it afterwards. if you leave the dungeon and then get kicked the text doesn’t disappear either

There’s no need to implement a complicated system – just the above I think would do fine.

In my case this is the first kick ever. My warrior is full berserker ascended and exotic running meta build and using a banner and melee. I dodged, never went into downstate. This was one of two things, either they let us clear trash until the end to let in someone else, or they were mental and decided to ruin the run.

Kicking requires only 2 which is stupid. Dungeons in this game are a joke anyways and players in PVT kicking actual players is enough to make me not use the LFG tool. After that I ran COF 1&2 with my guild without drama.

If you want an empty que keep letting morons kick without oversight

I joined a LFG CoF P2 group on my zerker warrior and it was a group of FA players. We got to the lava and the thief targets me and I’m kicked. I never died, although somehow the necro managed to, the run wasn’t the fastest but whatever it’s a pug and I didn’t care that they were slow.

I hate that you lose chat logs when the group is over because I would’ve set the world record for cursing. I reported the thief and the group for what I can only assume was kicking me to let another player from their guild in. Then I see the thief in LFG so I ask what the kick was about, and he said they kicked the group for taking too much time doing the dungeon… Which since he kicked the group he had to do over! And then he blocked me from chat. No one went afk and the run was smooth. If you join a LFG dungeon your only option should be to leave a bad group there is zero reason to have a kick function if the player is not AFK.

The internet allows weak people to do things that IRL I’d break them in half for.

It’s a release in China, I couldn’t give a kitten less. I hope Anet and NCSoft make bank, and turn our RNG back to how it was at launch… That’s what I care about.

One of the worst loot patches of the entire LS and they save it for the end. I swear I wish people would stop buying gems until they get rid of this RNG nonsense.

But seriously, my guild has felt half empty the last month because this stuff is boring.

4 out of 10

I only really loved Bazaar. And the payoff for a year was ehh.

62 pages of CDI is evidence enough that there’s an issue. And BTW when traited all shatters (which is the mesmer mechanic) work on you and dodging spams clones, so your burst is readily available.

Rangers are the ONLY CLASS whose class mechanic can die.

And we are the ONLY CLASS that gives 30% of our damage and stats from gear up.

30% is a high price to pay for something that isn’t “always on” as our pets are often called, as when they DIE THEY AREN’T ON.

Xaylin.1860:

Akisame.9508:

I am not sure if I understood you right, but all classes, with the exception of ranger’s from what I have understood from the dev’s, all classes start with 100% damage. I have not read any post’s or heard any statements from dev’s stating that mesmer’s damage is reduced because they expect clones to fill a portion of that damage. Or necro’s damage is reduced because they expect minions to fill a portion of that damage.

Look at the baseline weapon damage of Mesmers and then tell me that there is no damage re-allocation to Phantasms or no consideration of Shatters. Without Phantasms or Shatters a Mesmer deals lousy damage.

Of course, this does not apply to a Necromancer since Minions are not the class mechanic. But Phantasms sort of are. Also, assuming that Burst skills of Warriors go ontop of the weapon damage is silly regardles what a Dev said in the past and how people might interpret it. Not using your Burst skills on a Warrior will always make you less effective.

Rangers might have a bigger chunk of damage linked to their class mechanic than others and they indeed lack control. But they are not the only class where damage is integrated into their class mechanic. That is why I personally reject suggestions which go ‘Warriors got 100% damage + Burst skills, Rangers should get 100% damage + Pet’ because it is based on inaccurate assumptions. It is very naive to assume that other damaging class mechanics are not considered when balancing a class.

That being said, I’d rather go on discussing proposals regarding weapon changes or utilities instead of getting stuck on the class mechanic and how people interpret a statement which is not even backed up by numbers.

Akisame.9508:

Speaking of which, why is it that necro’s with all of their minions don’t have balancing issues when they can spec to not use minions and not lose DPS? What’s the difference between them and us if they also have pets and theirs is optional?

Again, it is not their class mechanic. They also lose a lot of utility when going MM.

Where to start. OK, I have a mesmer alt and your phantasm comparison to ranger pets is offensive. Yes mesmers get most of their burst from phantasms and shatters, but your sustained ranged DPS is way higher than a ranger’s, and if your phantasms die, they can cause AOE damage and are brought right back up in seconds. When a ranger’s pets die, no AOE and we can’t spam a replacement. Not to mention your phantasms can be summoned and locked onto enemies our pets cannot get to.

So in closing, an Apple may be a fruit and so is an Orange, but you cannot make Apple Pie with Lemons.

Substance E.4852:

Nike.2631:

Substance E.4852:

Bran.7425:

At this point I am thinking that it is past time for the CDI to at least move to a different phase as now vocal members of other profession communities are starting to plot generic *Well ranger needs help, but so does X". I just got caught up and saw a couple of those and it is a sign of more to come, might need to have people start flagging them simple as they do not add anything constructive.

The second I saw a necro start to complain like their class needs help I almost caved my skull in from how hard I facepalmed. Maybe they need condition help in pve but that’s hardly unique to them.

http://www.twitch.tv/gw2ascii/c/3575974

Necro “weakness” at work.

By that reasoning Ranger is just fine since they have the Spirit builds in sPvP. Just because you’re playing the dead last class doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody stuck in 7th.

Engineer, Necromancer, and Elementalist all need serious reviews and might actually benefit from theirs since its not a question of the entire class being built on crap AI. heck, even the Thief could use some improved relevance in group play – trading away some of their current strengths for team-wide benefits.

True but if you’re #5-6, you don’t go into #8’s thread to complain about how bad you have it.

We’re only the 8th strongest class until they add a 9th class so enjoy being number 8.

I use celestial since we’re not getting full damage from zerker. My DPS set is berserker just get my crit % high enough, the rest is celestial.

Anet wish to keep the ranger “status quo” which I understand. Unless they have never played a ranger they must also agree that our pets are hurting the class “as is”. I may have a solution that can keep rangers as they are, but fix the silly pet, and avoid perma stowing altogether. (I would love perma stow BTW).

PVE ONLY

Make ranger pets immune to damage via an adept trait
Rebalance the 70-30 damage split between ranger and pet to 90-10 and make pets untargetable, and immune to all AOE. The 10% pet damage is called for because the pet will no longer take damage. This will allow non beastmasters to, while still having a pet, have control over their own power to a greater extent while still being “rangers”.

Any build that wishes to absorb the power of the pet activates the trait, those that don’t want to don’t. This solves almost completely the issues with pets dying in WvW zergs and dungeons while not making rangers OP, since I didn’t even call for 100% of our damage.

Drawbacks to Proposal
Some builds will still use a pet with poor AI and it will die.

I came to to GW2 to play an arrow slinger. I play the hunter / ranger archetype in every MMO I’ve played. My first character and my account namesake is my ranger, and I’ve made alts because well, endgame. I’ve lost faith in this game’s desire to make the game more than a shopping hub for pretty skins and boosts, and so I tried Wildstar which I didn’t really enjoy plus it’s NCSoft. So now it’s on to TESO.

Flytrap.8075:

Please, no more pet talk.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, I don’t want this thread to be entirely about pets. We’ve seen a ton of great feedback about them, and I would like to hear more about utilities that need help (and aren’t viable unless spec’d into) as I haven’t seen as much on that front!

Thanks all

We’ve talked the pet to death at this point.

30% of our damage is tied to the pet so…. it’s the single biggest item to attack. When the pets start working or go away, I’ll stop.

Arghore.8340:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Frostfang.5109:

Arghore

U’r suggestion on Permastowing the pets and making them utility-skills….

NO thank u. That would ruin the entire class for me.

Then don’t stow your pet. The pet stow mechanic that is already built into the game changes the UI to remove F1-F4 completely. What is proposed is that the pet UI F1-F4 become something else when the pet is stowed, such as traps (my idea), and that the 30% base damage given to the pet be given to the ranger.

Again, if you don’t want to stow your pet, don’t. Permastow adds to the ranger if you stow, or plays exactly like what we have now if you like your ranger as it is now.

We are trying to get changes to the ranger that are both meaningful and easy to code because I for one don’t want to wait 6 months for a fix to a problem that is already 1.5 years old.

@Frostfang I would like to know which one you mean? suggestion #4 or #5 (from the post linked below). Now it so happens that I suggested both (though more then likely not exclusively, aka. more people may have suggested a similar suggestion, so credit where it is due please, aka. I will not accept full credit (or blame if you so desire) for these suggestions.)

4. is the one where 4 pets become linked to the F-keys, and you summon them for a period of time.

5. is basically how pets worked in GW1, with the difference that they now come with some of their own attacks.

I personally prefer #4 at the moment, mainly because it introduces something new (this is GW2 by all means), and somebody else (sorry that I forgot your name, and didn’t include that specific addition in my summary, I fixed that) suggested that once you summoned the pet of your choice, for the time the pet is up, the F-keys could turn into the current F-keys and let you have more control over the pet you summoned. I prefer it also because I favour ‘CHOICE’ over perma-pet/perma-stow positions, and #4 is the closest to a solution that has perma-stow, could come with a perma-pet (be it only a visual indicator of a ranger), and still keeps the pets the class mechanic of the Ranger (which seems to be high on the wish list for Anet). In this sense it is the suggestion that does the most for all those involved (except for those that want nothing to change, and trust on the a fix to pets to be sufficient, which I doubt will be the case else it would be fixed by now).

@Aidenwolf please read this post, if you haven’t already: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/58#post3750947 there are more then one options to deal with the pet, and a possible stow mechanic. Yours basically adds another, or you could see it as a different way to supply a bonus to a stow, though giving a whole new F-mechanic is more akin to a whole new suggestion.

Yes, I’m taking it to the next level.

I made a post last page about what I think should be done to our F1-F4 UI in the event that permastow becomes a reality, it calls for the F keys to be become our traps. While I would like that to become a reality, I would LOVE this one to happen. I hope you enjoy!

PVE

On Permastow the ranger’s F1-F4 become QUIVERS

The goal

To give rangers a chance to be rangers, not beastmasters, when the pet is stowed the F keys in the UI swap out to a new set of F keys. This new set F1-F4 now contain Quivers of elemental Arrows. We would also gain the 30% additional damage recouped from our stowed pet.

The Proposal

Each skill would have a cool down like elementalist attunemnets and would add an on hit chance to both melee and ranged attacks.

F1 – Explosive arrows – While active, grants a 10% chance to cause (non OP) AOE physical damage around the target. (Combo blast finisher with a 5 sec cool down)

F2 – Flaming arrows – While active, grants a 10% chance to cause single target burning.

F3 – Poison arrows – While active, grants a chance on hit to create a poison field at the targets location for 5 sec. (With a 30 sec internal cool down)

F4 – Blinding arrows – While active, grants a 10% chance to blind the target and create a smoke field at the target location for 5 sec. (With a 30 sec internal cool down)

How this is meant to work

The F2 is just a nice addition of a chance to cause burning with our attacks and needs no CD, because burning doesn’t stack so it’s the one that is “always on”. F3 and F4 are combo fields and have decent cooldowns so using them is a tactical choice, but when a field procs, you switch to F1 to use the blast finisher, and then back into F2 you go.

I tried to find a decent way to give us more finishers and I like this idea, it fits what a ranger does in my eyes, and the pets are still here if we unstow them.

Potential problems

In melee especially with traps, the F1 finisher might cause us to be a bit OP for one balance patch, but hey, warriors don’t complain so why should we, right?

Frostfang.5109:

Arghore

U’r suggestion on Permastowing the pets and making them utility-skills….

NO thank u. That would ruin the entire class for me.

Then don’t stow your pet. The pet stow mechanic that is already built into the game changes the UI to remove F1-F4 completely. What is proposed is that the pet UI F1-F4 become something else when the pet is stowed, such as traps (my idea), and that the 30% base damage given to the pet be given to the ranger.

Again, if you don’t want to stow your pet, don’t. Permastow adds to the ranger if you stow, or plays exactly like what we have now if you like your ranger as it is now.

We are trying to get changes to the ranger that are both meaningful and easy to code because I for one don’t want to wait 6 months for a fix to a problem that is already 1.5 years old.

Nike.2631:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Some seriously good ideas here Nike. But one in particular deserves further attention and should be moved to the top of the ranger to do list (right below permastow).

Shouts remove stealth from nearby players. It’s an AOE reveal and I love that.

Thanks . As a multi-targeting PBAoE reveal, its actually intended to provide some counterplay to Mesmers with their multi-target invisibility effects along with providing a way to cope with having 1-3 thieves all up in your business.

Reasoning behind the other trait changes:
Perfect Aim is there to deal with Guardians and other long duration Protection builds – it doesn’t strip protection but it does let you partially ignore it (this benefit does not extend to your pet’s attacks as currently imagined).

Marksman’s Speed is a big buff to the power of Piercing Arrows, but A: piercing should be highly desirable for ranger bow attacks as it introduces a lot more mobile/dynamic play and B: its competing with Spotter for the 20/30 marksman slots, one of the best traits we have.

Hunter’s Horn give you a bit of specialized boon removal tuned to help you deal with some of the things that will most hurt you as a skirmisher: retaliation wearing you down as you wear them down, swiftness letting them leave the party early, and vigor feeding their ability to dodge out of your attacks.

Nature’s Venoms gives a way to strip regeneration that works with a number of weapons, utilities, and pet skills, making sure that while the fight may be drawn out, it will eventually end, and likely in your favor.

Wilderness Knowledge addresses our dire lack of player-directed condition removal.

Martial Mastery give more access to vulnerability as the fight goes on – providing condition depth and really feeding into the idea that a long fight with a ranger should favor the ranger.

Speed Training is just a simple combine that helps you pet’s autonomous behavior on several levels. A great adept-tier trait to splash if you want to treat you companion as “fire and forget”

Commanding Voice granting a bit of stability gives you a MUCH better chance of you pet actually doing what you told it to instead of being bounced around like a pinball when you needed it most.

Once we are rebalanced to control 100% of our damage, the roll of the ranger will still be as an outlast class, so adding debuffing to our slot skills and weapons makes perfect sense.

But if we do more damage aren’t we a DPS class?
No, all classes do 100% damage so we’ll just be on even footing. As a medium armor class without real stealth or invulnerability, we need to counter the buffs of other classes in order to make fights last longer.

wolfyrik.2017:

urdriel.8496:

wolfyrik.2017:

phys.7689:

Ok the class mechanic of a class is not just whats on the f4 buttons, its the things/mechanics the class has that others dont.

theif = steal/iniative/stealth skills
these things are considered in every facet of theif. you cannot play a thief at all without considering iniative, and no other class has iniative.

If Stealth is part of the the thief class mechanic, how come three other classes have access to it? It’s as much the class mechanic as traps are the rangers.

Stealth doesnt have a counter -> Thieves can spam stealth -> profit.

Stealth is countered by AoE, engineers can utilise stealth. Engineers can also spam ‘block’ does that make block their class mechanic? Guardians have numerous sources of Swift, is Swift their class mechanic? Rangers can spam evades, are evades the ranger class mechanic?

F skills are the class mechanic.

Nike.2631:

WAY OF THE SKIRMISHER: TIME IS ON MY SIDE
As skirmishers, Rangers need to maintain consistent pressure over time. Recharge traits should be key to their performance but often lack secondary “flavor” effects. This is an attempt to update or combine traits to give recharge choices more flavor. New traits filling the resulting gaps are intended to enhance Ranger effectiveness as skirmishers by making it difficult to ignore or recover from pressure applied by Ranger attacks rather than increasing their raw damage. They focus on striping or countering boons that allow the enemy to endure the Ranger’s steady assault.

Marksmanship IV: Perfect Aim (NEW) – The damage from your attacks is not reduced by protection. (fills slot vacated by Signet Mastery)

Marksmanship IX: Mighty Signets – Activating signets grants might and signet recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Signet Mastery & Beastmaster’s Might)

Marksmanship X: Marksman’s Speed – Longbow and short bow attacks pierce and recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Piercing Arrows & Quickdraw)

Skirmishing VI: Hunter’s Horn (NEW) – Horn skills also randomly remove one of Retaliation/Swiftness/Vigor from up to 5 foes in range. (fills slot vacated by Agility Training)

Skirmishing X: Nature’s Venoms (NEW) – Each time you or your pet poison a foe, that foe loses regeneration. (fills slot vacated by Quickdraw)

Wilderness Survival VI: Wilderness Knowledge – Using a survival skill removes a condition from both you and your pet and survival skill recharge time is reduced by 20%.

Wilderness Survival X: Martial Mastery – Critical hits with sword, greatsword, and spear attacks apply vulnerability (one stack; 5 seconds) and recharge time for these skills is reduced by 20%.

Beastmastery I: Speed Training – Pets move faster and their basic skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (combines Agility Training and Speed Training)

Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 900 and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery)

Beastmastery VI: Commanding Voice – Pets gain stability for 4 seconds when you press f2 and f2 skill recharge time is reduced 20%.

Thank you for reading!

Some seriously good ideas here Nike. But one in particular deserves further attention and should be moved to the top of the ranger to do list (right below permastow).

Shouts remove stealth from nearby players. It’s an AOE reveal and I love that.

As it is now confirmed that Permastow is possible I think it might be time to come up with a replacement class mechanic, one that both minimizes the reliance on AI and makes us more viable.

PVX

Traps are the new ranger core mechanic

How it Works

Our existing traps take up our F1-F4 when we stow our pet. And 100% of our power is given to us.

Why it’s good to be a trapper even if you’re an archer

A ranged player should understand better than anyone that you’re going to get closed on in combat and how great it would be to be sniping from range while standing on a stack of 4 traps, just waiting for someone to melee you. As a melee player, even in dungeons you can drop traps on bosses for added damage. If you are a trap ranger already great news, you can still play the way you want, just don’t stow pet. If you do stow pet, you now have more slot skills available.

Why it’s not Overpowered

We would be shockingly good with this change I’m not denying that at all, but we’d only be catching up to everyone else. We are so far behind all other classes because we’ve been saddled with a non functional class mechanic forever.

Ask yourselves this, why is making one class as strong as all other classes so difficult?

Chrispy.5641:

Atherakhia.4086:

Chrispy.5641:

SkiTz.4590:

Ranger is a single target DPS class, that is the unfortunate truth and would take a lot of change to make it viable in terms of doing AOE damage like eles or necros.

I’ll give you the fact that they can’t spread them to other targets (again, this class is pretty much designed only for 1v1s). Traps aren’t big enough to be considered AOE. But rangers can apply/stack them pretty quickly…maybe not stack as high as a necro but who can? My ranger builds can reapply condis pretty much at will (poison,bleeds and burns that is) yea would be nice to have access to torment or confusion

Still, the build variety would be much better if anet could actually add something to make viable power builds for our class, but there is no such thing right now outside of the joke of a swop + bash + maul combat, which any idiot can see coming. and effectively dodge/block out of it

How big do traps need to be to be considered Aoe? Traps have an effective radius of 240 when traited, which is the same size as Barrage. Is Barrage not considered Aoe to you or something? How big does it have to be to be considered Aoe?

And what about Bonfire? Whirling Defense? drakes? What the heck else do you need to be able to do Aoe? (oh, let me guess, blast finisher like Thief shortbow….)

(oh, and necromancer marks are the same size as traps until you trait them to be bigger as well)

Take it in context. We were talking about AE application of condis between classes. Are you implying Ranger is even a contender when placed next to Engineers and Necros? Cause I have news for you… it’s not. It’s about on par with Warriors but can’t stack bleed to eleventybillion in .5 seconds every 5 seconds like a Warrior can.

Settle down…

(there’s been about a dozen other trap related posts since then, but it would take up too much space to quote them all)

I have news for you. The Ranger is a contender when it comes to condition builds, even next to Necromancer and Engineer because of how fast we can stack conditions. Just because we don’t deal bonus condition damage, or have a trait that gives us bonus condition damage does not mean that we suck at conditions. And we can definitely stack bleeds faster than Warriors. Just because of your refusal to accept the synergy between Traps and Sharpened Edges does not mean we automatically suck at conditions.

Here’s my trap build :::http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMEQRAnf3XjMqUuaHLerw1agYpQQ7vpITmn9wQO6RlcnoA-zECBYhDimWAgqI0k0Q5QFRjtaqIasqbY6YER1BAQA2ZdWnBYn7co7coJFAMLrA-w

It is my most used build, and I use it in PvE and WvW, and it is equally effective against all professions, and it is my 2nd highest dps build because I can hit multiple targets at once with almost all of my attacks, unlike, just about everything else the Ranger has.

So no, I won;t ‘settle down’, and yes, I am a little touchy when people try to suggest changes to traps, but fail to explain why beyond “Uh….it deals condition damage, so, it should be in wilderness survival…right?” (why do you want to move damage to a trait line that almost entirely focused on defense and force us to choose between one or the other?) or “It should deal more physical damage,…because, uh, BURST!” (which it shouldn’t because all skills have a maximum dps to consider when balancing. If traps dealt more physical damage, then the conditions would have to be nerfed because of gear stats like Rampager.) You should consider what Crit Chance and Sharpened Edges does for Traps before you go off blindly making suggestions to change it.

I run something very similar as my wvw roaming build but with sword as my off set MH for mobility and minor changes to healing as I run apothecary. I’m not a proponent of moving the traps to another line but if they increase the size of traps, I’ll be very happy.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ok guys, just wanted to clarify a few things.

Permastow is not impossible. I never meant to give that impression, so I apologize if I did. However, as far as priorities go for the Ranger, it is not high on the list. Why? Because it would require an entire re-balance of Ranger, but if we re-balanced, then the players that do play with the pet would be OP. See the dilemma there?

The reason why I latched onto the aspect idea was because it was an option that seemed we could maybe work around. Rather than having to rebalance the whole class, we’d just have to balance the aspects to be similar to what the pet does damage-wise. That seemed a little more viable.

Do keep in mind though, I am not a designer. I am a community coordinator. It is my job to help promote constructive discussion and make sure the devs know about how the community is feeling.

I will say this, though. I have seen some ideas blossom in the game that came directly from the community. We do listen to your feedback. Sometimes we modify and tweak the numbers a bit, but we definitely listen.

You guys really inspire us with your constructive feedback, which is why I’m always trying to emphasize the importance of it.

Since permastow is not impossible I would ask that you please make permastow a top priority. I understand that rebalancing is time and resource consuming but this is long overdue for the ranger profession. We desperately need to have the class broken down and rebuilt if it means we have a chance at being as effective as other classes have been since launch. I love my ranger in open world pve and sadly other than 1 build in PvP and my roaming build in wvw (which is not even as good as my thief or my warrior though it requires twice the effort) they are sub standard.

Weapon skills all need to be addressed as well as slot skills and traits but the pet is by far the greatest drawback to the class in organized play. Back to the drawing board.

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.

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Did you actually just call for a ranger Nerf?

If you as a thief cannot fend off a ranger pet I’d say it’s L2P issue. I don’t mean that to sound snarky, it’s just basic thief play.

Dagger 5 on the pet and you go invisible, or use any of your other stealths.
Teleport away by any of 5 skills.
Caltrops slow pets as you moonwalk away.
If you have the revealed debuff on, blind the pet which is on a zero second cool down and it cannot damage you.

I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll get zero sympathy on a ranger forum about your thief issues.

Ranger does not mean Beast Master
Rangers are solo or small group wilderness experts who can adapt to any situation, and that’s why we love them. This class is interesting and I don’t want to make them into a warrior, I already have a warrior alt. But this issue about pets is holding the class back.

Spirits are an important part of a ranger’s bag of tricks, but I only use them in sPvP and dungeons, it’s my choice.

Unless I run a beastmaster build, I don’t want my pet taking damage from me. I would like that choice.

Add a grandmaster trait that gives us 100% of the power for our class and this issue goes away.

Tia Silvensong.6840:

Area: PvE
Main comment is that i’ve seen you say that people like the pet just not how it’s controlled, but i love ranger, always played since gw1 release and i loved the fact that i could play ranger with the choice of not having that selected.

gw2 forces you to have a pet, and then when you want to stow it because it gets in the way ( so annoying) 2 seconds later it’s back again…
i think you should be able to select whether you want a percentage of damage to be given to AI or whether you want 100% of dmg through your bow ^^
sorry i love ranger, i just thought and have always thought pets a stupid XD

I completely agree.

If pet stow was permanent we would be in control of 100% of our damage

I’m not trying to kill pets or builds. If you enjoy your pet use it! if your build or playstyle or dungeon don’t require pets, stow them! It takes nothing away from the class in fact it adds viable builds.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

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.

As some others have pointed out the 2×4 analogy is a bit off as pets are closer to a foundation issue (houses are leveled to fix the foundation). While I can see the rebalancing of rangers as a lot of work I feel it is long overdue.

The pet stow idea fixes this issue as damage reverts to the player.

Rebalancing the 70% 30% fixes this issue.

If you can fix the pets attacking and F2 issues and give them more survivability then kudos and thank you. But unless those fixes are ready to roll out now, we are left waiting for a fix to an issue that should have been fixed in beta.

Again, thank you for your posts.

phys.7689:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

this is completely false, all classes are balanced with their class mechanics in mind.
A mesmer isnt doing high level dmg competitive with other dps classes without phantasms or conditions without its clones. Necro base power on skills is lower even on its dps skills because they consider condition/minions in their max dps. Elementalists skills are tied to swapping elements, and they specifically place finishers and AOE in different places to promote swapping. Theif inititative totally changes how and what skills get dmg, and its generally balanced around initiative costs. Every classes mechanic is figured into their DPS.

Sorry if you don’t understand that 30% of ranger base damage is given to our pets. I don’t argue facts I just point them out. As for class balance taking into account class mechanics you are correct in theory but 30% of our damage is tied to AI and that is out of our hands.

Players need the option to use 100% of the power not 70% which is why perma stowing pets was brought up in the first place. When your pet is not out you get the power.

Flytrap.8075:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

McWolfy.5924:

Warriors have +15% dmg and crit trait if not using the adrenalin skill. We losing dmg because the pet…

Akisame.9508:

Ranger should be set up the same way with pets. Ranger’s should have 100% control of their damage and the pet, while alive, should be able to deal an extra 15% damage.

SkiTz.4590:

Give rangers 100% of the damage, not this useless 70:30 split with our pet

wolfyrik.2017:

If ANET decided againsts Aspects/stow ultimately, I’d like to see this approach instead. I fail to see how a pet that can barely hit would be overpowered when wielded by a charater with 100% of it’s damage out put intact.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I would like to say;
100% Ranger DMG, X% Pet dmg ABOVE it. Control it well for effectiveness!

Gotejjeken.1267:

Not seeing a damage rebalance between pet and ranger is a bit worrying. I don’t want my pet doing more damage, or scaling with me. I want my pet to be a pretty utility skill. Give me 80% of the damage and a super responsive F2 from my pet, should solve every AI issue you have.

Tryxtr.6295:

1. The damage split is supposedly 70% / 30% between ranger and pet. Change that to 85% / 15%

Aidenwolf.5964:

What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

Much needed, often requested. Please ArenaNet, many want it and you could even keep your pets.

So… you and a few others have specifically said that you love having a pet around, but at the same time, you want ANet to nerf pet damage and put more of it on to Ranger?

I mean, I’m all in favor of giving Ranger more damage, but I’m just confused why you’d want a pet in the first place if its damage is going to be even more pathetic. It’s entirely counter-intuitive.

I just think it’s hilarious that self-proclaimed pet supporters are looking to move the pet’s damage onto the Ranger.

Substance E.4852:

And why should they? Pet AI has no place in groups that care about razor edge performance.

The pet won’t get smarter and they won’t increase it’s power as long as PvP and PvE remain joined so the rest of us should have the option to be effective if we choose.

I personally agree with this post.

I have stated many times that I want perma stow but if they will not allow that, and even if they do, I want the pet’s damage to be added to the ranger not to be subtracted from our damage pool. Her summary of ranger suggestions neglected this suggestion so I pointed it out.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

Chrispy.5641:

gawker.8340:

Atherakhia.4086:

Another day without responses…. as if the Ranger community didn’t already feel alienated enough.

Lets have a goal tomorrow guys. No more pet posts until ANet comes back asking for more. We’ve gone in circles enough. Lets cover some new ground!

Silence speaks louder than words. In the case of this particular thread, it got too long to read. I couldn’t be paid enough to muddle through walls of texts written in mostly broken-English. Collaboration should have happened 1 hour over Skype with top member of the ranger community. This 41 page monstrosity here is a rotting and foul mess that is not fit for human consumption.

Yeah….you guys reading this thread don’t want to read my response to that, but someone needs to say it, so here it is :::

This 41 page rotting and foul mess not fit for human consumption is almost entirely the fault of the people who posted on this thread, and the vitriol that keeps getting sprayed in Anet’s direction by some of the posters in this thread has reached pretty insane levels. The expectations of many coming into this were way too high to start with, and the fact that people are getting worked up over the fact that there is no dev posting,…for a day or two, proves that.

You guys need to take a few deeps breaths, and show a little patience. And don’t give me this “I’ve been patient for over a year” crap! If you’ve been waiting all patient like for over a year, then you can be patient for an extra week or two until this CDI Thread ends.

The lack of collaboration which is the C in CDI on Anet’s part has nothing at all to do with us. People for the most part have been surprisingly calm and constructive and I like more than a few of the ideas put forward.

Game Mode

PVX

Overview of Proposal

Balance the ranger profession’s Non-pet damage with other classes. A ranger in berzerker gear and traited for DPS should be capable of the exact same damage as any other class as this game has no class roles.

Proposed Changes

Ranger pets currently draw their damage from the ranger, which means we’re only capable of 70% of warrior damage on our own. In addition, a warriors class mechanic adds to warrior damage, where ours if the pet stays alive and hits with every strike (good luck) just equals a warriors base non class mechanic damage. This means that rangers are not capable of equal damage output with the other classes in GW2 because only our class mechanic subtracts from our DPS.

The Fix
Give rangers 100% of the damage currently split between the ranger and the pet. The pet damage must be an addition to ranger power and no longer a drain on our damage. The ranger pets should add as much damage to our class as they are traited for. A beast master’s pets do more, and an archer’s do less obviously, but that pet damage must no longer be drawn out of the ranger if you care at all about balance.

Potential Issues

Rangers would hit 30% harder on their own plus whatever hits the AI managed to land which is a nice buff, but this just gets us up to level footing.

Carighan.6758:

DeceiverX.8361:

If there is overwhelming support for certain changes

This is your logical fallacy here.
In games such as GW2, only a minority (generally 10%-15%) takes to the forums. These aren’t a viable representation of your playerbase, either. They are largely the angry players, which often means a majority of PvP players.

As such, your forum population is heavily skewed from what the actual playerbase thinks, at large.

Your forums might tell you that conditions are completely out of whack and need a nerf. Actually, they are only very strong in 1v1 in bunker setups, and your playerbase at large – who probably mostly plays PvE, extrapolating from other games – thinks that if at all, conditions need to be stronger.
If you were to just nerf across the board, you’d further ruin the game for the majority of players.

As such, this player feedback we’re giving here, it only tells the devs where to look.
Not what to do.

We all agreed that pets should be stowable (actually we didn’t, from reading the thread – not at all). But this merely tells ANet that maybe 8%-10% of their playerbase thinks pets should be stowable. So they take a look, and determine that no, too late to change the entire class mechanic and it’s fixable. Hence they state that it’s not going to happen, probably pleasing a lion share of Rangers who would feel massively alienated if all of a sudden (they don’t read the forums) their favourite class changes functionality entirely.

You began by stating that his/her assertion was logically falacios and then stated as fact that 10-15% of players even post on these forums, a number you’re guessing at (not a good start for a logic based argument). You went on further to claim that by NOT changing the ranger stow mechanic to permanent would “probably” please the lion’s share of players. There is no fact in your manifesto.

LunarNacht.8913:

Suggested Proposal Format:
Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Traits that buff a specific attribute of the pet.

Goal of Proposal
Pets already have strenghts and weaknesses but they stay that way and we can’t influence it in any way other than switching pets. This would give pets more depth since we could make pets into really heavy hitters or become good allrounder. Heavy damage pets could get some more defense and so on..

Proposal Functionality
Create traits that either buff a pets attribute (condi damage/attack/…) by a certain amount or connect this attribute to the rangers. I don’t know how often the existing pettraits (bleeding on crit for cats and all that) are used, but I don’t like any of them because they only help certain pets that don’t mix well and taking more than one is a waste so I would change them with the attribute ones. Doing that only minor or master would give the option to take 2 or 3 of these.

Associated Risks
Going for all damage or taking 3 statbuff traits could make the pet completly op.

Edit: Please delete all the posts that say “Remove the pet from the pet class”. One post would be enough.

Bad pet is bad.
Please remove all posts that ask to keep the ranger a pet class as we are unparalleled archers who use pets.

Rangers are described this way.

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.

So we are archers who use pets, not beastmasters.

wolfyrik.2017:

Pyrotechnic Hell.3209:

wolfyrik.2017:

Name: Oversoul

….I read Shaman King waaaaaay too much…

I suggested this a year ago, it went nowhere. Hopefully it will have a better response now. I really like the idea of aspects. My only problem with it now is the use of an elite skill slot. Spirit of Nature is kitten ed handy in groups.
Saying that it could be applied to the temp pet stow slot since pets no longer agro. The present temp-stow is basically useless anyway.

Rampage as One could then be used in with it. Perhaps, providing different bonuses in some way.

The Reasons for the “Elite Skill” Status is because it would be a “Form” you would merge with you pet.

Also the Devs said they will not implement a Perma-Stow option, being an elite would allow for a slightly longer active merge time than a utility skill and with that a longer skill cool-down period forcing the pet to be active for at least the down time of the skill avoiding perma-stow but allowing the skill to still be useful.

Oh I get the idea of temp, I was suggesting to replace the the temp stow option we already have, with the timed version you suggested, rather than costing an elite slot, which I think is a bit harsh, when we’re talking about bypassing broken mechanics. Why should the Ranger lose an elite slot just so that they can compete with other classes?

The sad part of the response we’ve had from Anet on this CDI is that the suggestion of changing temporary stow to perma stow would work, and is already coded into the game. The simple fact is that without a serious boost in power to the class we are far behind other classes. Play the way you want as long as you choose warrior or guardian.

Yoh.8469:

SkiTz.4590:

nagymbear.5280:

SkiTz.4590:

I think everyone in this forum and this game understands Rangers need an overhaul (absolutely broken class mechanic, see past 100 pages and threads on it in ranger forums)

The only problem is, Anet does NOT believe this class needs an overhaul lol.
Even if they do believe it does, they simply WON’T do it and CAN’T do it (priorities like LS and gemstore are bigger lol)

I don’t think ranger needs an overhaul. An overhaul would mean redesigning the pets completely, redesigning the traits, utilities. The pets don’t need an overhaul to be scary so that people start dealing with them, instead of just circlestrafing. If you have reliable control pets, you can force peoples defensive skills being played on your terms. If they defend against the pet you control them, if they defend themselves from you you control them with the pet. Same for damage. We don’t need an overhaul for that. We need more control over the pet. We also need some traits removed and some new traits introduced, but I don’t consider that an overhaul.

Respectfully disagree

They definitely need redesigned traits and utilities.
Everything about pet F2 is lack luster. ooo cool they can give me fury ever 30 secs or might
or immob someone for a few seconds every 40 seconds
You honestly believe that is worth 30% of my DPS?

They need an overhaul because
-They provide very little in a group setting which is what MMOs are all about (pets don’t do me any good in WvW/Dungs/Fracs and is pretty much dead weight in 95% of all game modes and will continue to be without overhaul)
-They hurt me more than they help ( 30% DPS taken from me, thieves just use it as an easy cloak and dagger target lol)
-Our class mechanic does not have 100% uptime – meaning when our pet is dead, we not only lose 30% dps, but we lose any kind of traits we could have associated with the pet, we lose abilities to perform any pet skill , etc etc. Every other class mechnanic in this game doesn’t “die”.
-We actively seek out killing our pet mechanic (you aren’t going to survive much without empathic bond, and thus, neither is your pet lol, shared anquish is another trait that further hurts pet.)

I don’t want to list more and more i’m tired, its almost 3 am.

But you get my point

The list is massive. And with a list this massive, it requires overhaul. You are simply suggesting that anet keep up with what they have been doing for the past 1.5 years. Bandaid fixes. I don’t want to see any more bandaids. No one does.

If you honest to god believe just making pets more responsive+ changing a few traits will make it poof, magically better, keep living in your dream world.

Well, idk about an overhaul, but I do agree that maybe switching directions and coming at this from another angle might be the way to go.

I’ve said this before, but all of the problems you listed stem from the fact that pets are always on. Which means they need to survive and do consistent damage, which they have a problem doing.
So if they were summons instead, that functioned a bit like a cross between Phantasms and Elementals, then it would go a long way to solving/working around these problems.
You can read what I already wrote about the subject here.

I like the idea as well and mentioned it somewhere in this mountain of suggestions. We are a pet class according to Anet and that could be make to work if what we captured when we tame a pet isn’t the pet, but it’s spirit. Make our pets ghostly like a phantasm.

I had this idea while using my PVP finisher:

PVX

RANGER SPIRITS PETS!

Rangers control animal sprits that grant the ranger boons based on each pet. The F2 for each pet unleashes an effect like the PVP wolf finisher and run over the target causing whichever effect is associated with that pet. They can still attack our targets and do minimal damage (just enough to allow agro) and are immune to control effects and AOE as they’re spirits. The majority of pet damage is reverted to the actual player.

nagymbear.5280:

SkiTz.4590:

I think everyone in this forum and this game understands Rangers need an overhaul (absolutely broken class mechanic, see past 100 pages and threads on it in ranger forums)

The only problem is, Anet does NOT believe this class needs an overhaul lol.
Even if they do believe it does, they simply WON’T do it and CAN’T do it (priorities like LS and gemstore are bigger lol)

I don’t think ranger needs an overhaul. An overhaul would mean redesigning the pets completely, redesigning the traits, utilities. The pets don’t need an overhaul to be scary so that people start dealing with them, instead of just circlestrafing. If you have reliable control pets, you can force peoples defensive skills being played on your terms. If they defend against the pet you control them, if they defend themselves from you you control them with the pet. Same for damage. We don’t need an overhaul for that. We need more control over the pet. We also need some traits removed and some new traits introduced, but I don’t consider that an overhaul.

There is zero reason for a player to worry about our pets now. If you’re proposing giving pets MORE power without an overhaul (based on Anet’s track record) they would siphon that power from the player to the pet which means we’d get weaker, as pets can’t hit anything now, especially if they’re dead. The class F2 ability, a core mechanic is just now being addressed so forgive me and others here if we don’t want to rely on an NPC to do damage for us.

There is little hope that the devs will fix this class, they haven’t in the 18 months since launch (and they released the game with broken pets even though in beta we told them they were broken). It seems all they intend to do balance skill power for foreseeable future and I think that’s a serious mistake.

Regardless of what you’re working on LS, expansion (ooh), or polishing the game by removing bugs, the core of this or any other MMO is the combat. This class’s core mechanic has never worked. If elementalist attunement swapping had a 3 sec delay or if thieves were unable to gain initiative these forums would be an inferno of rage, but rangers have had to learn to live with our broken core mechanic. It’s time to make rangers Work As Intended.

Razor.9872:

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger isn’t expected to do burst damage. By sustained, we mean that the Ranger should excel at surviving (resilient) through burst while still doing enough damage over time to take the opponent down.

If the Ranger is not expected to do burst damage, then the usefulness of traits/skills such as:

-Opening strike
-Alpha Training
-Precise Strike
-Beastmaster’s Might (signets have long recharges and the might provided by them is little)
-Moment of Clarity
-Peak Strength (the timeframe this trait remains active is really only utilized properly through bursting)
-Signet of the Hunt (Active)
-Signet of the Wild (Active)
-Hilt Bash (effect on pet)

Are in serious question.

All of these prominent utilities scream bursting — not so much sustain. Perhaps if Rangers had access to more stealth, the Marksmanship traitline would grow more viable. I cannot say what that would do to the balance of the ranger, however.

Also, being a master of sustain isn’t always a good thing. Bursting is far more useful as enemies often die before they can attack back. In the sake of build diversity, there should be enemies or reasons Rangers (or any profession for that matter) would want to consider going sustain inplace of burst.

Also the Nerf to our previously very good dodge pool without any increase in survivability to compensate. Message: Survive Less.

We have 3 ranged main hand weapons in a game that penalizes ranged combat, and one of our 2 melee weapons is a PvP weapon only (I’m looking at you sword). So in a dungeon our great sword is our only reliable damage unless you take sword off auto attack and click another button to break sword’s cycle which is lame. Our skills scream that we are a burst class, our weapon skills say we are ranged or dodgers, and a third of our damage is put in paws of crazy pets. The class feels thrown together and forgotten.

I completely agree with the idea of thinking about ranger pets as more permanent or even always on summoned pet. As you rightly point out no other pet sucks damage from it’s master to exist. If pets are to be constant companions that’s OK, but they should never subtract from the ranger’s core damage. If rangers get too strong (which will never happen in this game) then Nerf the pet, not the ranger.

I completely agree with dumping the pet and going with the aspect as well. You can keep your pet or put it away, it’s your choice. Anet saying that pets are important to the ranger and are a core class mechanic is a bit silly tbh because they’ve been broken the whole time. If you didn’t bother to fix them then why are you so against letting us stow them?

If all we get is a LONG OVERDUE fix to F2 response time then we’re still sub par. Take this a time to look at what players are asking for please.