Guild Wars 2

I would like the option for permanent stow for stuff like jumping puzzles where they get in the way. However, I have heard that in PvE the pet will normally stand between you and your target which should help defend you somewhat from ranged attack’s. Not sure how true or helpful this is but it’s something I guess.

thefantasticg.3984:

I’m confused though how you can be fine with the pet but at the same time not want it because not wanting it means you aren’t fine with it as it is right now.

I think he means the same thing as me, I don’t mind playing a class that has a pet, but as a ranger I would prefer to just be me and my bow. If they want to add a pet to the class then fine but I rather be without one.

Honestly, Since they already admitted that Pet is broken and they also admitted that they will not do any changes to pets anymore. This means that they have given up on the Pet mechanic for rangers. If this is true then the least they can do is return the 30% damage that the pet is SUPPOSE to do and give it back to the ranger so we are not handicapped anymore. Keep the pets in, remove the damage from the pets which we know they can do this since they have already nerfed the damage of the pets. By doing this you still have a pet class, the PC has full 100% control over his/her damage while the NPC/Pet has full control over the CC’s, stuns, knockdowns, buffs, etc. I believe this is the best solution to the pet problem right now and probably the easiest solution for ANet.

Yes, we have given ANet many idea’s. We’ve even asked for some compromises because of the pet AI problems which they admit does not work properly. But we get nothing in return. Very few, tiny, minimal buffs along with many hard hitting nerfs, the complete opposite of what we need.

Honestly, they have already admitted that pets are broken. They have also admitted that they will NOT be trying to fix the pet mechanics anymore because they are afraid it will screw up all mobs in the game. So in essence, Ranger’s are playing an incomplete/defective game while everyone else is playing a more refined, better tuned game. I would honestly be happy if they would just remove the damage from pets which is currently at about 70/30, and give those 30% back to the ranger. Leave pet’s with no damage output but leave them in for their abilities, like stun, KD, poison, etc.

Honestly, to admit something is broken and say to your customer’s that you will not fix it, when it’s been broken since day 1…I guess that tells you what they think about customer service. I know I will never purchase another game developed by ANet. I run my own company and when I ship something that is defective, I pay to have it returned back to me and I pay to have a replacement sent out to them. I didn’t build the item but I’m still taking the hit for it because I believe in customer service. That’s how a company should run, caring about it’s customers and it’s obvious that Anet doesn’t care, otherwise someone would be here now trying to work on a solution to the pet AI problem with us.

They don’t have to reprogram the creature codes, all they have to do is do what they did for all the other classes that have some form of clone/pet, and that’s write up the pet script for pet’s instead of taking the slackers road and copying off of the game NPC’s or using the same code as the NPC’s.

Big slow number’s has allowed me to do many one-shot’s on people on my warrior. Comparing the ranger longbow to the warrior rifle, the rifle will out-DPS the ranger any day because the pet which you claim is the key, is either DEAD or doing an animation for an attack on a person that is no longer standing where he was when the pet started the animation 3 second ago. IF, and that’s a big IF, Pets where fixed and actually HIT their target, then I could probably agree with you. Until then, warrior will always out-DPS a ranger 10 out of 10 times in range combat.

Dardamaniac.1295:

By fixed you mean fun to play?
Cause its a top tier class in spvp,pve and WvW roaming…

Just you know, so boring that i want to cut my right hand to make it more challenging….

Are we seriously playing the same game? You mean to tell me that we have no problems with Pets? ANet said we are suppose to be the ‘long range masters’ yet at range I do far more damage on my Warrior with rifle (which rifle has very very similar skills as the ranger’s longbow only with better damage attached to them). And that’s with my warrior in rare’s why my ranger has exotics. I WvW all the time, it’s all I do, and the roamer’s are really Thief’s with their infinite number of get out of trouble for free cards (AKA stealth) and necro’s with their fear while draining your life away, by the time fear wear’s off your scurrying to heal yourself before the finishing blow. Mesmers are a close second there along with warrior which for some reason, can outrun a ranger and has immunity during half the battle while his signet keeps healing him during the fight without ever having to click on the heal. Ranger brings nothing to the table that another class can do better.

30% of our damage is tied to a pet that either dies within 5 second of a battle or misses 95% of the time due to his target moving an inch to the side. We have to blow our heal to keep the pet alive and then when we need it for ourselves it’s on timer. Our traits are a mess and nothing compliments each other like they do on other classes. There is so much wrong with ranger that it’s incredible that anyone would say it’s fine. I will be the first to say that yes, I play ranger because I love ranger’s overall. All games I play are ranger classes (if available). I love the entire archery idea and that’s why I play ranger. Hell, I even read books about ranger’s like the ranger’s apprentice. Just because I love ranger’s doesn’t mean that I will be a fanboy to Anet and defend the kitten poor job they have done on the class. Sorry, but I’m blunt and I say it how I see it. Even Anet said we have issues and that they know our pet’s are bad but refuse to fix it because it could cause more problems for them if they try to fix it. So if they admit we have problems why can’t you?

Bran.7425:

Akisame.9508:

Well, all I know is that if they don’t fix pets or if they do not remove the pets and give the damage back to the ranger’s character…come April, I’ll be playing ESO and removing this game from my hard drive. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one. At least there I can play a ranger the way it’s meant to be played…without being held back by some stupid AI. Anet better get their heads out of there kitten before they have a mass exodus of ranger’s on their hands.

Come April I will still be accepting donations of gold.

I have nothing against you so don’t take this the wrong way, but why would I give you my gold when I leave this game so you can support Anet, who stiffed me with a kittened up broken class which they refuse to fix for over a year and then some? Nope, I’ll let the gold disappear and not allow it to be used in the gem store or anything else that may support ANet or have ANet believe that they are doing a good job. Sorry my friend, but if you need gold in EQ I’ll be more then happy to help you out there

Well, all I know is that if they don’t fix pets or if they do not remove the pets and give the damage back to the ranger’s character…come April, I’ll be playing ESO and removing this game from my hard drive. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one. At least there I can play a ranger the way it’s meant to be played…without being held back by some stupid AI. Anet better get their heads out of there kitten before they have a mass exodus of ranger’s on their hands.

Durzlla.6295:

Sorry to pop your bubble of delusions, but we have totally been buffed since that patch, and most of those patches have been us primarily being buffed. Now why do they keep buffing warrior NOW? I have no idea, when necros got buffed with Dhuum fire is when warrior was out too high and needed some toning down (not a lot).

That being said I’m still waiting on these kittening signet and shout changes they’ve promised us….

I guess I should have been more detailed with my reply but I was at work and took to much time finding the post. My main beef with them is that it’s been over a year that they knew about pets being screwed up and they still haven’t fixed it. Thus the reason I mentioned for them to fix the pets. I am sure that if they can get the pets to hit 90% a moving target 90% of the time instead of 5% of the time, this will help with our lack of DPS. But for over a year they have known as that post proves, that the pet has issues hitting moving targets and just recently they said they refuse to touch pets because it could screw up the AI on other mobs.

Also, in response to your post, the buffs we have received are small in comparison to the amount of nerf’s we have received. For instance, I have dropped the short bow from my LB/SB build because of the range nerf, not to mention the damage nerf which was supposedly an “animation fix”. The nerf’s has hurt us more then the buffs have helped. I now run LB/GS but to be honest, those two weapons don’t compliment each other very well. In order to make LB effective you need to run full glass cannon, but when going into melee, you need some toughness and when you switch weapons, you can’t switch armor. Our trait’s either let us go for damage in a LB build 30/30/10 or go GS with a 30/10/30 (I think it is..right? can’t log in at work to check) At least on my warrior I can run glass cannon on rifle, switch to GS and still take a beating without dieing.

You guys remember this?

JonPeters.5630:

Hi Anders, I’m totally not here so skip this post and read on…

We made the improvements we had time to test. There are still more ranger improvements but when our time is limited we have to focus on things we know we can fix. Signets and shouts are still on the docket, and I suspect some of each of these will get some love in the next time around. As you can see a lot changed in this build for every profession and we have to test these changes as well.

I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements. If we could fix everything at one time we would, but the reality is there are a limited # of hours to make changes.

I see a lot of talk about ranger weapons, but I don’t think that is the real problem. I think sword and longbow are both good weapons, which is why the changes take longer. The problems are deeper, in pets ability to hit moving targets, trait lines with not enough viable choices and skills that are often too specialized to really compliment the weapon builds. These aren’t things we can change overnight. The change to Greatsword block was in fact a very difficult change, but we made it because we knew it was the right thing to do.

There are >500 skills in this game, 480 traits, and 2 designers working on this. Even then often we are bottle necked by other issues. I’m not going to say we are not working on these things, nor can I say there are things we could have changed but just ran out of time on, but this was a patch that contained ranger improvements and it will not be the last one that does so. Maybe you want more than honesty but that is what I currently have to offer.

Jon

The part that gets me is “I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements.” And all we have seen after that patch are nerf’s. How is a nerf an improvement? If you ask me, these guys are working backwards…or maybe they are hitting the Jamaican brownies a little to hard if you know what I mean. I also think that 2 designer’s working on balance is not enough, they should have 2 designers per class. To hell with new content and fix put those designers to fix the kittening pets already, this is ridiculous. Give the ranger’s something that will make them wanted in groups for gods sake!

Man, I wish the human Racial Elite was half as good as this one Now your making me want to create a norn ranger just to have some fun with that

I actually did Claw Island with LB/SB. Completed it on my first try so it is doable. However, I completed Claw island faster with my other toons then I did on my ranger. Not sure if it’s because my ranger was the first one to do claw island or if the other toons (warrior and thief) just DPSed through the mobs a lot faster. Lately I have been using LB/GS, I would love to give that setup a try in that scenario and see how it works out.

That’s because pet’s are a lazy regurgitation of NPC code, which is why our pets suck. Mesmer clones and phantasm’s have their own unique code, something that ANet should have done for pets and did not. Thus you get good clones/phantasm’s, while getting Stupid pets.

They should recode pets as what they are, pets. Not a copy of an npc that will be causing global issues if tampered with. They coded Necro pets correctly, they coded mesmer clones correctly, they coded the thief elite that spawns two thief’s to help them correctly. They should have done the same thing with us. Now they admit to pets having issue’s but they refuse to fix it. You can’t get any lazier then that! In the end, ranger’s paid full retail for a defective game which they refuse to fix.

It should, but ANet is to lazy to code in a real pet for rangers so they use the same code that’s already there for the NPC version of your pet. They said that they won’t be touching pets anymore because if they try to change something in pets it also creates problems for them on the NPC counterpart.

Problem is, our pets use to do more damage and ANet nerfed the damage across the board (PvP, WvW, PvE) because they said that the bunker BM ranger was to powerful in sPvP. So instead of only nerfing the pet in sPvP they nerfed it across the board. Then they lowered the pet health across the board. then they only buffed the pet health in PvE after that. Now they said that they will not be touching pet’s anymore. So for those of us who purchased this game to play the ranger, we payed real money for something defective, something that they admit to being defective, and they said they will never fix. Our pets, using guard, use to be able to go down the fort wall and attack players on the other side, they also nerfed that so now when we’re on the wall, our dps is almost halved since we have no pet attacking.

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Ranger does not mean archer or attack for range. I went through the whole thing is this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Bad-class-for-role-playing/3372962

According to ANet, “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.” So for the sake of this game, yes, ranger’s mean Archer or attack from range. That’s what counts in this game, not some generic definition on the internet.

and that definition was AGAIN, by ARENA NET, changed when they were asked “what role is the ranger supposed to fill?”
The answer was “It is the pet profession”.

Now get rid of that “archer” archtype idea. It is outdated, it is wrong and it is irrelevant to the whole profession

The only thing I see from ANet is what I put down under class description. Once ANet changes the class description on their website then I will believe what you say. But according to ANet’s main website under professions, Ranger is suppose to be a ranged dps class with a pet that provides support. not the other way around.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Ranger does not mean archer or attack for range. I went through the whole thing is this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Bad-class-for-role-playing/3372962

According to ANet, “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.” So for the sake of this game, yes, ranger’s mean Archer or attack from range. That’s what counts in this game, not some generic definition on the internet.

Honestly, the pet is useless and ANet should get rid of it. When I play my ranger I want to play with my ranger, I don’t want to play with the pet and keep tabs on the pet, I have to keep my eye’s on my opponent to see what they are doing, not the pet!

kyubi.3620:

Please stop getting out excuses to justify that a cripple makes a weapon not dps style. Longbow actualy should be the top damage weapon to ranger, it is slow it needs damage to compensate it, the reason for the cripple is to keep mobs at bay so to keep sniping them for high damage because this weapon deals lesser damage at short range.

That is the two largest problems we have with the longbow. 1.) It’s suppose to be our best DPS weapon and it’s not. 2.) The longbow doesn’t do a proper job in keeping our targets off of us. It should have more ways to slow down, push away, or ground your target to help you keep at range. Right now it only has the #4 skill which has way to long of a CD to make it useful in a fight and the #5 get’s dodged before they get hit, plus again, a very long CD on it.

Tribio.8531:

The cripple on the LB: I don’t see why that would be needed? The LB isn’t a condition weapon, it’s a ‘raw’ DPS weapon.

There is only one problem, the weapon is missing the ‘DPS’ part.

I have a ranger, warrior, and thief maxed level with a mesmer half way there. I only WvW on the ranger though. The reason why I don’t play the other classes in WvW is because I’m old, I admit it. My reflexes aren’t all that and it’s hard for me to be in melee chasing after someone trying to hit them with a sword. For this reason is why I like playing ranger where I can be at range and still do damage. Last night we needed guardians and warriors for the zerg so I logged in my warrior and said what the hell. I got more badges last night with my warrior, not knowing what the hell I was doing on that warrior since it is set up for PvE then I have ever gotten with my ranger. I died less with the warrior being the middle of the fray compared to my ranger which hangs in the back with the casters. I’m actually thinking about using my warrior more often so I can get more badges to buy better gear for my warrior and finish my ranger’s set.

Axyl.9408:

Lexandro.1456:

Bombsaway.7198:

Well, I think it is quite clear that furious grip isn’t supposed to have 9 seconds of fury on a proc of weapon swap that occurs every 10 seconds if you so choose.

50% uptime is realistic. 90% is a bit much.

Tell that to warriors who can have 100% uptime of fury if they so chose.

We are not warriors, so stop comparing us to them. I hate when people compare classes. They aren’t supposed to be the same!

I don’t think he’s comparing us to warriors. What he said is a proper answer to that quote. 50% up time is realistic. 90% is a bit much. If warriors get 100% up time then I don’t see how 90% is a bit much for a class that does less damage and has less armor/hp and less group utilities. Sounds backwards if you ask me, in order to be fair, warrior should have 50 and ranger’s should have 100 since we’re the underdogs. But hey, I’m just an old ranger, what do I know right.

Ok, 20% where ranger’s, out of those 20% how many where using Longbows?

They do not intend to fix anything pet related, so they claim bugs have to be fixed yet they won’t fix the pet bug. kind of a double standard if you ask me. We’re still getting kittened either way, hey Anet, can you at least use some Vaseline!

I understand when people claim that it was a bug and bugs have to be fixed, but honestly, how long has pet’s been bugged with the problem of not hitting moving targets and bad pathing? I don’t see ANet rushing to fix the bug like they did to this one. The longbow NEEDED that damage buff to make it a viable weapon, and now it’s gone. And the best part is that ANet won’t even comment on it except to say that it was a bug and then closing the thread because they knew we needed this and they don’t want to give it to us, it’s almost like they want us to be a broken class. They said that in 2vs2 80% of the players are rangers which I don’t believe, but they won’t answer the question as to how many of those 80% actually use the longbow! According to Anet’s description of the class, we are suppose to be a ranged dps class. It’s funny how a ranged dps class has to resort to using melee weapons in order to do any damage.

We should do multiple ‘fix pet bug’ Threads. Enough threads that it cover’s the first page. I got $20 saying that they will close them and ban us from the site instead of talking to us and trying to work out a compromise with us for the broken pets. They want us to be broken. plain and simple! If they didn’t, instead of them saying that they know pet’s are broken and there is nothing they can do to fix it because of the code, they would rework pets using mezer’s code with a pet image. Funny how my bird won’t fly up the keep wall to attack a target, yet clones pop up there to attack their targets all the time! My pet won’t run down the stairs of the keep wall and out the gate to attack my target put clones appear outside with no problem. So now we’re screwed out of 30-40 percent of our damage due to a buggy pet that they know it’s bugged and they won’t fix and we’re screwed out of our ranged DPS weapon because of a bug they knew about and fixed. Honestly, looks like they are working towards hurting us in every possible way, doing things that will only hurt the class instead of help.

Talmor.9048:

What about, when your pet dies, you get 20s of fury? OMG! A trait that would actually make sense!!! A ranger getting angry about their pet kicking the bucket!

We’ll have full uptime then in WvW!

What I would like to know is if 80% of people in 2v2 where ranger’s, how many of them use longbow?

SuNin.3514:

Sorry if this has has been discussed or if I’m missing something. I’m relatively new to GW2, and totally new to Ranger, but here goes:

I have seen some discussions around here about how untenable either longbow or shortbow is. Now, I see that the damage for the Longbows tends to be higher, but unlike in some other MMO’s, they don’t express the damage in DPS, but in a range. Is that the ranger per attack or is that in actual DPS?

If it is just damage per attack, then Shortbow has to win out every time as it’s twice as fast as the Longbow.

Thanks for the input guys.

Both the Longbow and Short bow are most likely still the worst weapons for ranger’s to use since we do more dps with 1 handed sword and 2 handed sword. (1hander>2hander I believe) The reason for all the talk about the longbow now being viable is because it’s stacking fury which is helping with the output of the damage. I know I read somewhere someone saying that it’s almost in par damage-wise to 2handed sword but not as good as the 1 handed sword. Either way, this makes longbow viable for us. However, this is a bug according to Anet and will be patched. Once it is patched the longbow, like the short bow, will become a situational weapon. Some people might not agree with the short bow being situational but in my books it is. In order to make the short bow work to it’s full potential you have to be traited and geared towards condition and you have to be flanking the enemy at all times, otherwise it’s useless.

Once the “bug” is fixed, then short bow will beat out longbow again. until then, the longbow will do a little more damage then the short bow but not by much and at >500 range. Just remember when you see rapid fire, you do not add all the number’s from the attacks, the final number at the end is the total amount of damage rapid fire did.

Hope this helps.

It’s only because the LB with Eagle Eye has a bug that is giving us a bump to our damage. Anet has already stated that it’s a bug and they are going to remove the bug which means the longbow will be a useless weapon again.

Thief: http://youtu.be/rJZ3S2SmEMY

Warrior: http://youtu.be/fYMAB_wZS08

Engineer: http://youtu.be/del9A5Erb40

All of these took out the risen giant faster it seems then the ranger, and not one of them even needed to heal themselves during the fight like the ranger has to. Just an observation.

Like they say, whatever a ranger can do, another class can do it better and faster

None of this will ever happen. Anet has already said that they are to lazy to touch the code for pets because they will then have to fix all the code for NPC’s which is the same as the pet code. So they won’t fix pets, they won’t remove pets, they just don’t give a kitten about rangers. And instead of buffing us where we need it, they are nerfing us where we don’t need it! It’s been a year already and look at the state we’re in. What other class is as screwed up as we are? What other class is asked NOT to participate in dungeon runs? What other class is treated like a red headed step child?

I don’t understand why Anet can’t see that pets are useless in much of the game. They don’t hit moving targets. Their f2 ability has a horrible delay. If f2 does respond then the animation is to long and gives away their next move allowing people to run away instead of forcing them to use up a dodge/roll. 30% of your damage is tied to the pet which won’t scale up the wall, not even the birds will scale up or down a wall in WvW to attack your target which means 30% or your damage is GONE (no other class pays this price). Then tie that with your bow which anet coded wrong by tying height and length for total distance so unless someone is hugging the keep wall’s, you can’t hit them even if they are 5 feet from the wall. Our arrows can be dodged by simply sidestepping but the thief’s arrows cannot be dodge in the same manner because they have a built in homing device. The list goes on but I’m tired of depressing myself.

I honestly don’t believe that any game I have played has truly been able to capture the essence of the ranger. For me, EQ1 came close, but it lacked the ranged damage. Ranger’s there did better damage dual wielding 1 handed swords. Even the ranger epic was two 1 handed swords. Later, through AA points, you could increase your bow damage and even get headshot, which was great for farming AA’s on light blue’s and farming in general for crafting, but it lacked in the core game. I still play EQ1, and ranger’s now are in a much better place, but I still believe it doesn’t capture what a ranger should be.

The worse game I have played a ranger on is this one, GW2. I honestly don’t care what anyone says, this is not a ranger class, this is a beastmaster class. Anet should change the name of the class. At least in EQ1 I had things of nature that I could use, from camouflage to damage shields, armor buffs, speed buffs, snare’s, ect. With GW2 it’s either one or the other, and most of the time it’s either resisted, cleansed before it hits, obstructed or disappears after 2 seconds which is nothing.

I logged into the game last night to see if things had changed. Go into WvW, hop on the wall of a keep and see a warrior running by. Hit rapid fire, I see damage points over his head instead of the usual out of range message, but when I look at his health, he’s still at full health. I jump off of the wall, he turns towards me, I use skill 4 to knock him down, and it’s resisted, after dodging him twice and unloading another skill 2 on him and he’s still full health, he roots me, starts his little twirling dance and I couldn’t dodge, so he knocked me out and killed me. No DPS on the beastmaster side but godly dps and armor on his side. At least in EQ1 I would be able to snare him for a good 20 seconds, dot him, root him and fill him up with arrows. In EQ1 I only had to worry about other rangers and casters like wizards. There at least a ranger is survivable! Here, we’re just a redheaded stepchild, the punchline of a bad joke!

Bud.5617:

The problem is it takes no skill to play spirit rangers, but it takes a lot of skills and exotic builds (that’s practically useless vs. anything else) to outplay them.

That’s where the cry for nerf is coming from. Its risk vs. reward is out of range, and needs to be toned down to match that of other classes.

Oh as for asking to nerf a class in their own forum. Get used to it. All other classes had their share of critiques also, have you never been to other classes forums? Or is the ranger so special to be beyond reproach? I think not.

Bud, you are such a kittening looser. No skill to play the ranger? what about you playing your thief, because we all know that’s what you play. You are a kittening one trick pony, spamming one button to get your kill. Risk Vs Rewards? Thief’s don’t even have any risks, you guys pratically invis whenever you want. I’ve even seen builds that almost give you perma invis. Where the kitten is the risk in that in order to justify the INSANE amount of damage you do?

Take your Bullkitten and your stupidity somewhere else. The ranger’s don’t need trash like you in here talking kitten like if they knew anything about rangers, just because you suck so bad that you lost to a spirit ranger one time. Stupid kittening moron. And yea, report me, I don’t care, I don’t even play the game anymore, I just pop up here from time to time to see what Anet’s done about the worst class in the game, and it looks like they haven’t done a hole lot except listen to whining kitten’s like you.

Einlanzer.1627:

rchu.8945:

Stormleaf.1769:

Exocet.7306:

What would you expect from a Ranger? A balance between strong ranged skills and low survive at melee right? Why can´t you keep it as simple as that? Have you ever seen, in the hole history of humanity (or fantasy), an archer with a greatsword at his back and no range? I know its a fantasy game but there are limits to be respected for consistency. At the moment we have rangers with greatswords, low dps, and no range. We relly half of our dps in a pet that can´t hit moving targets, can´t dodge, and dies in seconds.
It should be a hard class to master rather than a warrior. I don´t expect to resist a hammer blow. If i am in that situation i am dead and its ok, blame me! but make me deadly from afar.

I´ve been a dev for about a decade now and i know how frustrating can be to get this kind of feedback from the ppl you want to satisfy. But honestly, what is a ranger in GW2? A warrior in medium armor shooting unicorns and rainbows? Come on, just tell us you don´t like them so we can pick another class or choose another game.

The class is called ‘Ranger’, not ‘Archer’. What you’re describing is an archer (which you admit to in your own post), making your entire ‘point’ moot. One of the accepted definitions of a ranger (as in, what’s in an actual dictionary): “A person who ranges or roves”. Going by that, a highly mobile, melee build—which is accessible to us—is more in the spirit of a ‘Ranger’ than a stationary bow-wielding build.

I am getting really tired of this ridiculous “It’s ’range’r not ’melee’r!” argument. It is laughable.

if you really want to argue about “ranger” or “archer” is more correct, please check this out:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

Lemme copy and paste the description for those lazy to click to the page:

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.

UNPARALLELED ARCHERS.
UNPARALLELED ARCHERS.
UNPARALLELED ARCHERS.

Thanks for the debate!

Yes, being able to use both Shortbows and Longbows (unique to Rangers) makes them unparalleled archers. However, that’s not all they can do. They can also skirmish, command pets, fight with a sword, lay traps, etc. Ranger means ‘versatility’ more than it means ‘archer’.

You’re wrong. The word ranger has nothing to do with using ranged weapons. The only reason they are “unparalleled archers” is because they are often scouts and huntsmen. Being good at archery carries no implication whatsoever that you are bad at everything else. The “it’s a ranged class” argument is dumb on multiple levels, period.

I wouldn’t say it’s dumb on multiple levels. True it does say unparalleled archers. But it also says bringing down foes from a ‘distance’ with their ‘bows’. And it doesn’t matter how many times I read it, the only ‘weapon’ I see in the class description is….wait for it…BOWS! No where do I read that he is an unparalleled swordman, or axe thrower. The description states the bow and archery, which means that according to Anet, they wanted this class to be an archery class and that bows should be it’s primary weapon. I am not saying that ranger’s should not use swords. I’m just trying to get you to understand that according to ANet’s description, the intention of this class was for it to be a ranged archery class. Why didn’t they call it an archer then? Probably because they wanted pets to be in the mechanic for us so they used the name ranger.

Honestly, don’t try to belittle someone because of their interpretation of Anet’s idea of a ranger. To be honest, that’s like belittling the dev’s themselves because they can’t even interpret their own definition for ranger. Lets just end it here and say…you say tomato, and I say tomato…that doesn’t quite come out right when you type it as when you say it does it, but you get the gist of it.

jubskie.3152:

So forgive me for being too emotional and escalating sarcasm into “verbal abuse.” I hate the state of this subforum is in and I’m doing what I can to make people see what non-constructive complaints and sarcasm is doing to the class and its players.

I don’t know where you have been for the last 9 months, but if you look back you will see that constructive criticism only get us nerfed. No one on here has gone off the deep end ‘threatening’ the dev’s, after all, it’s just a game. The majority of ‘Customers’ here are just very upset that after spending so much time leveling and gearing their character, which they have become attached to, has been nerfed so severly that it makes it harder for them to compete against other classes that can do the same as them with 1/3 the effort or time that ranger’s have to put in to achieve the same results. And this nerf came in right after the dev’s themselves said that ranger’s are in a bad state and need improvements. In reality, this patch we got no real improvements. Longbow got buffed you say? sorry, but by nerfing the shortbow to make the longbow a better weapon, is not a buff. The damage increase is on three skills only, not on the auto attack, so no dps increase there. They nerfed the pets dps without fixing the problem of them not being able to hit a moving target. In WvW I was lucky to have the pet hit my target twice, normally my pet only gets one hit in and it’s normally for less then 1500 points before it died. And because of this they get nerfed? meanwhile thiefs can still kill someone spamming the same attack 4 times in a row, killing that person in less then 4 seconds. Warriors can still use their rifle and do 25k crits, effectively killing another toon in one shot. To you, this is not overpowered and shouldn’t be nerfed… but our shortbow doing 1200 range is overpowered? Our pets that can’t hit a moving target is overpowered?

Come on now, get off of your high horse and stop being a fan boy. This nerf was not necessary and everyone is kitten ed about it. patch after patch its nothing but nerfs on us and constructive criticism has gotten us no where. Now we are kitten ed and we are going to show it, plain and simple.

you know, a lot of you guys are saying that your happy to see this change because your pet is melting people??? Well, I guess it’s because your using a BM build. You guys should think about those of us who are not using a beast master build, my pet sucks really bad as it is now because I have nothing in my pet trait line. A Nerf like this would kill my preferred play style because I’ll be loosing a lot of my damage…when the pet actually gets his damage off on the target. This would effect all builds, not just the BM Bunkers out there. So if they Nerf the pet so the BM Bunkers are more ‘in line’ (bull-kitten), that means all the other builds are below the so called ‘line’. This is just a bad move unless they are planning on upping the ranger’s DPS.

I bet 5 gold that patch day will come and the Ranger’s won’t even be mentioned on the patch. Then the following day we’ll see a post that looks like this:

JonPeters:

Poof! Someone called and I am here. We made some ranger changes this patch, but had to go back on them because of risk factor. There are some bugs being fixed and quality of life improvements coming in the next patch, as well as some other significant ranger improvements. I would Literally tell you but I think it would be considered a bit of a spoiler so you will have to be patient.

While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.

Then we’ll sit around and talk about how great it would be to have that stuff fixed and wait another 7 months without seeing any of them being fixed.

Sorry to be negative, but their track record for the ranger profession has not been very good, so I refuse to get my hopes high again.

Pardon my ignorance but while looking over the chart, it looks as if Critical Chance is more important (or has a higher effect) then Critical Damage. Is this true? I always thought it was the other way around.

stale.9785:

I hate that we have no option but to roll a BM based build – it can’t be escaped. 40% of our damage is attached to our pets. No other class in game has a handicap wherein if they don’t trait into their mechanic, they’re 40% less effective than anyone else.

Actually, this isn’t 100% accurate. I went from a Power/precision/crit build to a BM build because everyone is talking about having to go BM if you want to play the class correctly. When I jumped into WvW, the first thing I run across is a zerg, pet died before I had the chance to turn and run the other way. Then I joined a zerg and went to raid a fort…pet just sat there under the area effect and died, wouldn’t attack the targets I was attacking because they where up on the wall. Not even the birds will fly up to the wall to attack, talk about ridiculous! And since they nerfed guard, you can’t send your pet up the wall anymore to attack people, so as it stands now, BM is useless in WvW and Ranger’s will always be doing 40% less damage in WvW. Because of this I switched back to my lame glass watergun. Even when your roaming and you do come across one player and not a zerg or party, because the pet can’t hit a moving target and everyone that PvP’s/WvW knows never to stop moving, the only time the pet is useful is when you down the player. The pet will help you keep him down so you can finish him off…that is of course if the pet survives that long.

Plain and simple, in WvW, playing with an AI that is responsible for 40% of your damage is playing with a 40% handicap…in your opponents favor. There are many, MANY people that can make it work, and they do this by going melee. I’m sorry, but if I wanted to go melee, I would have rolled a warrior, guardian or thief. I don’t like melee combat, I like range combat. I’m not big into priest classes so I went ranger, you know, master of the bow (what a let down on that one right guys). Best thing ANet can do is remove the damage from pets, make them utility based (or make the pets the new and improved ‘spirits’ that no one uses), and give ranger’s their 40% damage back.

I have always seen the ranger as the off-tank. Especially in GW2 since we have the pet, it makes even more sense. The ranger should be the one to help with crowd control, so when two mobs get pulled instead of just one, then the ranger should stick his pet on the second one to off-tank that mob until the group is done with the first one. That’s always the way I’ve used my ranger, since my day’s playing ranger in EQ1 till today.

First, I want to say thank you to Robert. He keeps on coming in here knowing that he might either make a mess of things or cause an uproar, but he still comes up here and chats with us and has already helped us catch two problems with pet health which will probably be fixed on next patch. Thank you Sir.

My question to Robert would be, is there a ‘dev per class’ (one Dev responsible per class)? If not, shouldn’t there be a Dev tied to a class that should be here on the forums, asking questions and looking for feedback on their class and trying to fix the class? Or is it just a group of dev’s that work on whichever class they want that month? I’m sure the Dev’s can get more information, idea’s, and feedback on idea’s here on the forums from the people that play their game day in and day out. As a business owner I listen to what my employee’s suggest and even to what my customer’s suggests, because I’ll be the first to admit that I do not know everything. I especially like to listen to what my customer’s say because that is my lifeline, and every now and then I hear some great idea’s which I try to implement in my company. I honestly believe that ANet should give it a try. A lot like you have been doing here with us these last two weeks.

xev.9476:

My point about the 90/10 “solution” was just that it’s just a band-aid to a problem that’s existed since launch that doesn’t solve the core issue, namely, the broken pet mechanic that’s the supposed hallmark of the ranger class. I think it’s pretty sad that rangers are so eager to accept band-aids for gaping flesh wounds. Even if they implemented 90/10, pets would still die too easily, which means the ranger would still essentially “function” without a proper and useful class mechanic (not to mention the sorry state of ranger utilities). In other words, the 90/10 proposal would render our class mechanic even less useful than it is now.

I’d like to feel like a finished class, which entails more than simply upping our personal damage. I think it entails reworking utilities, a few trait lines, and a significant rework of our class mechanic. I don’t want a temporary solution – I want a coherent, finished class.

I understand what you mean about the band aid, But there are some serious problems with pets, and unfortunately, it will not be fixed any time soon. You have to understand that pet’s use the same AI as all the mobs in the game. To change Pet AI is to change the AI in the game overall. If your going to make the pets smarter, your going to make the mobs smarter. Also, I’m not a programer, but I am pretty sure that rewriting the AI for the game is not a simple task, it took them years to make the original AI, do you want to have a broken class for another year or two? or would you prefer the band aid until they fix the AI in a year or two? Personally, I’ll take the band aid.

xev.9476:

I’m just curious what the reasoning is behind asking for ranger/pet damage to be split 90/10, or whatever – what does this solve, exactly? The current pet mechanic is simply broken; tweaking numbers isn’t going to address the core issues, it’ll just make us slightly less handicapped. I suspect that just tweaking the numbers would do absolutely nothing to address the desirability of rangers for groups, either – why bring a class that’s going to have 10-15% of its damage dead most of the time when you could have a class unburdened by a sad core mechanic?

I’m sorry, but I read your post and I can take it two ways so not sure which of the two ways you meant to say it, but I’ll answer it in the way I think you meant to say it.

Currently, or last I heard, pet is responsible for 30 to 40% of the ranger’s damage, we’ll just say ~35%. A-Net said that this is a pet class and want us tied to the pet, which is why they gave part of our damage to pets. However, since the AI is so bad, a lot of ranger’s are asking for pets to do ~10% of the ranger’s damage and let the ranger’s have control of 90% of his damage. Only reason for the number’s is so ANet can keep face by still forcing the stupid pet onto us as a pet class but we will not be penalized as bad for ANet’s poor AI coding of pets. We will still be penalized by poor AI but not at the extent we currently are, it will be a more manageable number. It would be a ‘somewhat’ Win/Win scenario for anet and players. So to answer your question, that is what it “Solves”, somewhat fixing the class while letting ANet save face.

If we where to ask purely for our damage to be given to us 100% and to hell with pets like it SHOULD be, then ANet will not do it because it will be sort of like caving in to us and them breaking their “Idea” of what they want the ranger to be. It will also be a sting to them in the future as a failure which their programers could never fix, sorry, but they are to stubborn and to proud to admit failure, even though the failure is so apparent to people who aren’t even programers can see it. So we have to find a middle point with them…but even that isn’t working

yes, once you get your ranger leveled out and play some WvW and try (key word there, try) to get a dungeon group, you’ll be going back to your warrior really fast. The problems with ranger’s is not the low level game, it’s the high end game and the WvW battles where your pet (which is 40% of your damage) is either dead or sitting around doing nothing because it can’t go down the stairs and out the gate’s to attack someone, or it likes to run through area effects because it thinks it’s funny to die quickly leaving you with only 60% of your potential damage. Or spirits that are a joke and don’t last two seconds because they die in one hit. Or range damage that doesn’t do much damage at all when you compare to the burst potential of thief’s and warrior from range and gap closers that they use that put out high damage. Come back on here after your all leveled up and have experienced this, then see if what you wrote is correct or not.

If you think using f1 to toggle between attack and return is going to be difficult, then why do you want pet dodge on f3? You don’t have enough with just keeping an eye around your character and making sure there is no red ring around you but you want to keep your other eye on your pet and making sure there is no ring around him either? On top of that you think you can dodge both your toon and your pet quicker then that area effect can hit? Sorry, I for one do not want to go cross eyed, nor are my reflexes like they where 20 years ago, unfortunately, I haven’t found the fountain of youth yet

Arpheus.6918:

That way the pet wouldn’t feek so useless for many of us in PvP but we would enjoy it.
I also think that people wouldn’t ask to change our pets to deal only 20% of our dmg any more if the pet was reliable.

That’s the problem, if they make the pet hit more frequently to solve the issue we are having with pets not attacking moving targets, then it fixes part of the problem of PvP/WvW but it breaks PvE because the pets will be doing to much damage in PvE. This is the reason why many of us are saying to remove the damage from pets and give it back to the players. Then you can make the pets give buffs to the ranger/group and CC target’s and stuff like that. Doing it this way fixes the problem we have in PvP/WvW and in the same time it doesn’t break PvE.

I agree with Aridia. I have always been against pet’s having so much of our dps, it’s always a bad idea to have an AI responsible for so much of your damage. If you look at my post’s about pet’s, I have always mentioned similar stuff as to what Aridia just mentioned about pets. If we are going to have pets then make them give buffs and such, not dps. The dps should always be with the player that can choose what attack to do and when to do it, not some buggy AI.

I haven’t played in the last month because I don’t like any other class and because I’m tired of not being able to put up the damage I see everyone else put up because the majority of the time when I’m defending or attacking a keep or even a player, my pet is doing nothing or is dead, so I’m only putting out half of the damage that I should be putting out.

Honestly, I would love to see something like what Aridia said put into play before a pet dodge does. Heck, if that happens, we might not even need a pet dodge anymore!

Well, to be honest, I’m one of the ones that believes ranger’s shouldn’t have pets, but to be constructive to this thread, I have an idea for you. I think that ranger’s have enough going on with pet management to be not only looking for a red ring around themselves for dodging but now we will have to look for a red ring around out pets too? All the ranger’s in GW2 will become cross eyed very quickly. Why not have a function that works somewhat like this, on a successful player dodge, the pet gains a ‘dodge next area effect buff’. Give it an icon like opening strike does, then when he’s in a circle, he either takes no damage or moves away from the circle before returning back to combat. He won’t be able to get this buff again until the player character does another successful ‘dodge’. I think this is a better option then having to keep your finger by the f3 key and jumping back and forth between yourself and your pet to see who needs to dodge first.

Daemon.4295:

eoloe.4379:

Rolling conditional traps build with SB/GS
The bags are raining.

SB + positioning + Piercing Arrows + Traps + Entangle = annahilating AOE for zergs.
And you are still very survivable with all of it.

Rangers are amazing for wvw. Barrage is not your only skill…

Yeah, does anyone else have as many CCs as we do? In WvW I have Entangle (AoE), Muddy terrain (AoE), and Spike Trap (mini-AoE) on my bar, plus QZ for Barrage. Nothing kills faster in WvW than immobilize and cripple.

I guess I’d agree that other classes have an advantage in roaming and 1v1, but on my server I seem to spend the majority of my time either zerging, or defending against zergs, and rangers are great for that.

I spend alot of time in zergs, either taking or defending forts and stuff. I have to disagree with you because the only way I can feel useful is behind an arrowcart or some other seige weapon. Main reason why is because of our poor damage. I know, use your pet, sorry, but when I’m up on a wall, my pet doesn’t do kitten! he just sits there and allows himself to be hit by arrows. Then when I try to get on the ledge of the wall so I can use defend for pet to run down below, I get pulled down by a thief and killed because the range on it sucks. In order to get the green circle, you have to step out onto the ledge, if not you only get the red circle, same as barrage. And it’s the same thing when storming a fort, your pet is useless, he does no damage, and because of this you are putting out ~40% less damage then you should be, which is ~40% less damage then everyone else is contributing. Bottom line, we are useless there. better off logging out instead of tieing up the que line to get into WvW by a class that can contribute to your server.

Rummy, I’m not trying to get you upset or anything. I wasn’t trying to attack you either, please don’t get mad, although it might be late for that since your name is RummyTheMad. I was just stating a point that you left out in your equation, that’s it. didn’t mean anything by it personally. AkisameTheChillin (not to be confused with chili willy the penguin)

What Jk is saying is true. What your saying is not reality, it’s theory. And while it looks like ranger wins on paper over the long run, which the fights normally don’t last that long, it’s not reality because you are not taking into account that after a couple of seconds, the warriors burst starts all over again, leaving the gap between the warrior and the ranger further apart. Your theory would be correct IF and only if the warrior could only use their burst once in a fight. Honestly though, their burst is enough to take out most ranger’s without having to wait for the timer to apply a second burst.

Look at the warzones, warrior wins hands down. last week I got one shot by a warrior, his rifle did more damage to me then I had hit points. And I didn’t even know where he was hiding at, I was running to catch up to the group that was planning on storming a fort.