Guild Wars 2

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
A rework of the class to give my perspective of how the ranger could look if various of the suggestion here were implemented. Obviously from my biased opinion.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Suggestion-typed-out-for-the-CDI/first#content

Goal of Proposal
All of the problems in this thread, besides the weapon issues and suggestions…

Proposal Functionality
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Suggestion-typed-out-for-the-CDI/first#content
Do keep in mind that in this proposal the pets function in a whole different way, meaning we should get 30% more power to our skills. Also remember that we can only slot 3 utilities and not all

Associated Risks
- Changing a class obviously runs into new balance issues, and some may not like the result of change.
- While I found it is hard to balance skills within a new format while not knowing exactly what balance parameters there are (mainly have existing skills to go by). I may still have made things to powerful.

ps. I have still to do the traits, and haven’t entirely come up with how to do them, I want to play a bit today as well, and thus that’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

Thank you if you waited to respond to this thread, I am now done copy pasting my work in here and reserving space for my yet to crystalize traits. :P … man, how being a fan can turn into something like a job real fast :/ hmmk hobby then :P

Nature magic (vitality, healing power; nature magic, spirits)
A – Gain regeneration when your health drops below the threshold
M – Gain healing power based upon your power.
GM – Decrease the recharge time of Spirits and Nature Magic Spells.

Adept
- Casting spirits uses ground targeting.
- Casting Nature Magic skills uses ground targeting
- Create Muddy terrain when you are downed
- Regeneration you apply lasts longer
- Gain power based on your vitality
- When a pet de-spawns or dies you gain regeneration.

Master
- Increases the lifetime of spirits by 2 seconds, ‘activated effects give 1 extra pulse’
- Increases the range of Nature Magic skills by +300
- Your pets have Natural Health regeneration
- Decrease the recharge time of your healing skills.

Grand-Master
- Increase the % chance on spirits to 50/50 to apply the either/or effect.
- Increase the amount of foes/allies effected by the Nature Magic spells by 5.

Beast Mastery (boon duration, pet stats; charms, shouts)
A – Reduces the recharge of pet calling
M – You and your pet do more damage while you have a boon
GM – Any boons you have, are shared with your pet when it is called upon

Adept
- Boons applied to your pet last longer
- Reduces the recharge on shouts
- Charms periodically (15sec) grant their passive effect to allies for 5 sec.
- Pets are summoned near the current target.
- All Pet skills recharge faster.
- The passive effect of Charms is stronger.

Master
- The boons shouts apply also effect allies near the pet.
- Charms also apply might to allies when they are activated.
- Activated abilities (F) for pets cause cripple
- You gain might, your Pet gains swiftness when a pet is activated.

Grand Master
- Shouts apply regeneration and might to allies near you and near the pet.
- You gain boons your pet receives, your pet gains boons you receive.

Skirmishing (Precision, condition damage; mobility, swapping weapons, traps)
A – Gain swiftness when swapping weapons in combat
M – Gain fury when swapping weapons in combat
GM – Gain Vigor when swapping weapons in combat

Adept
- Deal more damage while flanking
- Pets deal extra condition damage
- Use Poisoned Edges when you strike a foe below the health threshold. (75%)
- Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits.
- Spotter – Increases precision of nearby allies.
- The recharge of weapon swapping is reduced.

Master
- You gain fury and might when your pet de-spawns or dies.
- You and your pet gain 3 sec of quickness when you summon a pet.
- Reduces recharge on shortbow, longbow and harpoon skills.
- Trap skills use ground targeting and are larger

Grand Master
- The duration of pulsing by traps last longer by two pulses, Reduces the recharge on traps.
- Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer.

Wilderness Survival (toughness, condition duration, defensive combat moves)
A – Increases endurance regeneration
M – You and your pet gain protection when you dodge roll.
GM – You and your pet take less damage while your health is below the threshold.

Adept
- Reduces recharge of survival skills
- Gain vigor when using a heal skill
- A ‘successful Dodge’ removes a condition from you and your pet.
- Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets.
- Create a healing spring when you revive a downed ally, Increases revive speed.
- Gain Aegis when you are hit with a critical attack.

Master
- Receive protection and vigor when you take damage greater than a % of your maximum health.
- Gain regeneration when you suffer from bleeding, poison or burning.
- When your pet de-spawns or dies you loose 2 conditions
- Reduces recharge on great sword, sword and spear skills.

Grand Master
- Gain retaliation and stability when your pet de-spawns or dies.
- Applies camouflage when you are hit (cool down 12 sec)

Traits
I am entirely not yet sure if this is actually the setup I want to go with, this is mainly to supply my current ideas and to reserve space

Marksmanship
is the trait line that focusses on long range and doing damage
Power & Critical Damage

Skirmishing
is the trait line that focuses on mobility, switching weapons and the use of Traps.
Precision & Condition Damage

Wilderness Survival
is the trait line that focusses on ranger combat maneuvers
Toughness & Condition duration

Nature Magic
is the trait line that focuses on nature magic spells and spirits.
Vitality & Healing power

Beastmastery
is the trait line that focuses on improving pet abilities, shouts and Charms
Boonduration & Pet Attribute Bonus.

Power
A – Cause vulnerability with your first strike when entering combat
M – Pets have opening strike when they are summoned.
GM – Regain Opening strike whenever you kill a foe or successfully dodge an attack

Adept
- Damage is increased when endurance is full
- Apply cripple to foes you hit while they are below the health threshold (50%)
- Gain fury when you hit foes while they are above the health threshold (50%)
- Pets do more damage on critical hits
- You deal more Critical damage with an Axe in your main hand.
- You order your pet to ‘Finish them off’ when you crit on a downed foe.

Master
- Off-hand skills have longer range, their recharge is reduced.
- You and your pet gain fury when a pet is summoned
- Long Sword, sword, knife and and spear do extra damage
- You apply ‘sharpened edges’ when an attack crits (cool down of 10sec)

Grand Master
- You and your pet deal extra damage while your health is above the threshold.
- Increases the range and damage of Longbow, shortbow and harpoon skills.

Charms
The signets are renamed to charms, to give a more nature entuned thematic ‘ring’ to them, the choice they grant is between passive egoistic buffs and activated team buffs

Hunting Charm
passive: Grants a 25% increase in movement speed to you and your summoned pet
active: Grants all allies in range Swiftness and Stability.

Wilderness Charm
passive: Grants a small amount of health regeneration to you and your summoned pet
active: Grants all allies in range Fury and Retaliation.

Bark Charm
passive: Improves toughness for you and your summoned pet
active: Grants all allies in range Protection and Vigor

Shouts
Shouts stop the ‘countdown timer’ of summoned pets through F1-4, for the time the shout is active, it also gives (a) boon(s) to the pet during this time

Search and Rescue
Instead of attacking your pet will seek out and revive a downed ally. During this time the countdown timer is halted and your pet gains Swiftness and Protection. This skill remains greyed while there are no defeated allies in range. Slotting this skill increases the pets vitality and healing stats.

Finish them Off
Instead of attacking your pet will seek out downed foes and finish them off. During this time the countdown timer is halted and your pet gains Swiftness and Retaliation. This skill remains greyed out while there are no downed foes in range. Slotting this skill increase the pets Power and Condition damage stats.

Sick ‘em
Your pet will focus solely on the current target, During this time the countdown timer is halted and your pet gains Fury & Stability. Slotting this skill increases the pets Precision and Critical damage stats.

Spirits
Spirits are non-targetable, long range (1200 or so), AoE anchors, they also provide a combo field. They can be ‘changed’ to provide an additional (different) effect.

Shiverpeak Spirit (this spirit lives for 5sec, on a 40sec cool down.)
Summon a Shiverpeak spirit, the spirit grants allies in range a 33/33% chance to knockdown /or remove stability from foes. The area around the spirit (trap size) is an ice field.
-> Avalange the shiverpeak spirit releases 3 pulses of chill (1st, 3rd, 5th sec) to foes in range, during ‘this time’ the area around the spirit (trap size) turns into lightning field.

Crystal Desert Spirit (this spirit lives for 5 sec, on a 40sec cool down)
Summon a Crystal Desert Spirit, the spirit grants allies in range a 33/33% chance to inflict blind /or burning on attack, a small area around the spirit (trap size) is a light field.
-> Ablaze the Crystal Desert Spirit releases 3 pulses of fire (1st, 3rd, 5th sec) to foes in range, during ‘this time’ the area around the spirit (trap size) turns into a fire field.

Maguma Spirit (this spirit can’t be a target and lives for 5 sec, on a 40sec cool down)
Summon a Maguma Spirit, the spirit grants allies in range a 33/33% chance to apply weakness /or vulnerability, a small area around the spirit (trap size) is a water field.
-> Quicksand the Maguma spirit releases 3 pulses torment (1st, 3rd, 5th sec) to foes in range, during ‘this time’ the small area around the spirit (trap size) turns into a dark field.

Nature Magic
Nature Magic skills change an area (size = 600) to apply an effect to foes on cast, and one that pulses several times. On these pulses they also apply an beneficial effect on allies in the field.

Muddy Terrain (effect lasts for 10 seconds, recharge 30 seconds)
(changes the ground in a muddy patch)
Change the terrain in a muddy puddle, immobilizes foes, the field pulses several times and applies cripple to foes, and allies in the field gain stability.

Roaring Winds (effect lasts for 7 sec, recharge 25 seconds)
(wind picks up leafs and has them floating around in a slow tornado fashion)
Change the terrain in a windy place, blinds foes, the field pulses several times and applies chilled, allies in the field gain swiftness and vigor.

Rampant Growth (effect lasts for 5 seconds, recharge 20 seconds)
(adds all sorts of foliage in a green patch)
Changes the terrain in a lush place, Confuses foes, the field pulses several times and applies weakness, allies in the field gain fury and might.

Utility Skill
Utility skills are set up as sets of 3 instead of 4, giving the ranger more groups of utility, while reducing the choice between each group (if you slot all you use all 3, instead of the marginal choice a 4th now offers). Except for wilderness survival which now has 5 skills instead of 4 (3×6 = 18 + 2)

Traps
Traps offer a couple of pulses of damage, and condition application, The first initial damage pulse on trigger could be somewhat of a spike

Spike trap (a set of wooden spikes lunges from the ground)
Set a trap that damages, applies bleed and cripple on several pulses.

Vipers nest (various snakes escape from the target area)
Set a trap that damages foes and applies poisons on several pulses, for ‘this time’ it is a poison field.

Pollen trap (a cloud of pollen is released from the trap)
Set a trap that damages foes and applies confusion on several pulses, for ‘this time’ it is an ethereal field.

Survival

Lightning Reflexes
Evade back with a crack of lightning, breaking immobilized and stun (or float, sink) and gives vigor

Quickening Zephyr
You (and your summoned pet if applicable) gain quickness. Reduces healing on you (and pet) by 50%

Sharpened Edges (changed to support power build)
Your next five attacks pierce and apply vulnerability

Poisoned Edges (added to support condition builds)
Your next five attacks apply poison and weakness.

Beastly Roar (added as extra flavour)
Summon an animal native to the area, to fight by your side, for a set period of time.
this skill would work just like the suggested profession mechanic, a pet is with you for a certain amount of time, the skill changes into the [F] key associated with the pet once it is summoned, and it would even listen to your shouts like a normal pet would. The downtime could be considered to be a tad longer though.

Ranger ‘rebuild’ suggestion

• this suggestion is posted here to link to the ranger-CDI
• Weapons are left out of this suggestion

Profession Mechanic (NEW)
The pets are the actual profession mechanic, giving us the choice to slot 4 pets on F1-F4 .

- The pets are summoned and ‘up’ for a specific time frame, followed by a cooldown.
- The cooldown also starts when the pet is defeated before their uptime is finished.

- The ‘Portrait Icon’ would be a place to slot a ‘merely visual pet’ that is up when not in combat, and which would de-spawn when the Ranger receives agro.

- During the time a summoned pet is ‘up’ the [F] key corresponding with the pet that is ‘out’ turns into the current F-key-skill associated with the pet. The pet can only follow shout commands and F-key-skill use. (more AI controlled pet)
OR
- Once a certain pet is chosen the F interface changes to one that lets the ranger give basic orders to the pet, and lets us control the current F2-pet related-skill. Basically it changes to an improved F-key setup to the one we have now, and the pet will follow shout commands and F-key-skill use (more micro’ed pet)

This profession mechanic has an inherent ‘perma stow’. It retains the pet as the Ranger Mechanic. Pets are considered Allies.

Healing

Heal as One (REMOVED)

Charm of Renewal – Charm (it benefits from charm traits) (MOVED)
passive: Removes a condition from you every 10 seconds, you gain regeneration if a condition is removed.
active: All allies in range are healed and gain regeneration for each condition on them.

Healing spring – Trap (it now benefits from the trap traits)
Heals allies in the AoE of this trap when it is cast and removes a condition. Gives regeneration pulses. Acts as a water field.

Troll Unguent Survival (it now benefits from survival traits)
You (and your summoned pet if applicable) gain health over time.

Krytan spirit – Spirit (this spirit can’t be a target and lives for 7sec, on a 30sec couldown.)
Summon a krytan spirit that grants all allies in range a 40/40% chance on regeneration /or remove a condition on attack. The area around the spirit (trap size) is a water field.
-> Evaporate, disgard your spirit, the spirit gives off 3 pulses (1st, 3rd, 5th sec) that heal allies, during ‘this time’ the area around the spirit (trap size) turns into a smoke field.

@Tobias,
I am actually getting more enthusiastic by my suggestion further above, and I think in some form it has been suggested earlier.

The idea of summoning pets instead of ‘having one always active’, is actually more beast master like then having an active pet around all the time. It also has a perma-stow option build in, while still keeping the pet as a very defining Ranger Mechanic. It offers the ranger a selection of 4 pets, making the mechanic a lot more varied as you can slot pets for different situations. And by making the pets more of a situational AI aid, it will need a lot less micromanagement. Possibly only an ‘Aggressive, follow my lead’/‘Heel, passive (do not ever attack or do anything for the duration of your uptime)’ switch could be enough. And these ‘pets’ could still be assigned tasks through shouts (I already made a few in a full utility remake I am almost finished with). These shouts have a certain ‘power value’ to them (based upon balance) and thus you could assign an added uptime to the summoned pet (or rather a ‘stop the clock’) while it does a certain specific task that is related to the shout. Hopefully i’ll be done with writing it all out soon so I can link the suggestion. This all from the players’ side.

The other thing is, as pets become these F1-4 summons that help you out during a specific timeframe, ArenaNet can buff up their reliability considerably. As they do not have to take into account that the ‘profession mechanic’ needs downtime, as they can put that part into a recharge mechanic. They can also scale the pet attacks and recharges to the ‘profession mechanic’ instead of the ranger strength, and view that entirely separate from their ‘survival reliability’. Mainly, the pet needs to roughly be strong enough to apply the power/utility that is to be expected from the ‘profession mechanic’ during the timeframe the pet is around. Which makes the whole thing a lot easier to manage and monitor. This in turn would likely make the pets a lot more reliable, which in turn might warrant making the pets take a couple of % (like 5% or so) of the ranger strength on their ‘attack side’. As long as the recharge isn’t to ridiculous and the survivability increased by a lot. It is going to despawn anyways, so their left over HP do not cause extra uptime of the pet and thus do not unbalance the profession mechanic!

I personally think doing it this way makes everybody happy in the end. There is a perma stow (just not use the mechanic – which I doubt many would do with this kind of functionality), people get access to more combat pets (be it by giving up a permanent companion, which might sadden some, but that is largely during ‘non combat’ phazes, grab a mini ^^ ). And most important I think, ArenaNet gets to keep their Pet as the defining mechanic for the Ranger, they actually see more pets in the ranger mechanic, its just not always around. We all don’t get exactly what we want, but we also keep what we mostly desire, and our mechanic could well become fairly reliable and varied. More like a monkey up your sleeve, instead of a dog by your side. But is that truly something different from a beast master point of view?

Not entirely sure if this has been suggested already, it may have been but possibly not as suggested here below. This idea came to me after the previous two posts…

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Make pets the actual profession mechanic by giving us the choice to slot 4 pets on F1-F4.

Goal of Proposal
Make the pets function as a true profession mechanic and have the balance methods for this mechanic build into it. The Ranger remains the ‘pet class’ but functions more like a beast master, as it has access to more pets, but they only assist the ranger for a limited amount of time.

The ranger can regain a large portion of the power it shared with the pet previously, while the pets power can be scaled and balanced for the amount of damage it is supposed to do as a profession mechanic during a certain period of time.

Pet downtime is an inherent feature of the profession mechanic. And the actual mechanic has a ‘perma stow’ function build in. It could be ignored, but is more then likely utilized for it’s added functionality. By giving the option to slot 4 pets and retaining the F2 functionality, pets can be set to deal with specific situations.

Proposal Functionality
Make pets the actual profession mechanic by giving us the choice to slot 4 pets on F1-F4 . The pets are summoned and ‘up’ for a specific time frame, followed by a cooldown. The cooldown also starts when the pet is defeated. During the time the pet is ‘up’ the [F] key corresponding with the pet turns into the current F-key associated with the pet. Once a certain pet is chosen all other pets can’t be summoned until the cool down is over.

Associated Risks
People wont have a pet on their sides during normal playtime, aka. no companion with them.

continued long post, bear has long since died, hope your attention hasn’t

To line up with the post that Tobias made, just above mine…

The pet in GW1 was a slot skill, and consequently it was balanced around that principle. It was basically a walking weapon that did x-damage/s in line with all other skill balance. It wasn’t until late in GW1 time, where power creep likely warranted ‘comfort animal’ to exist (as it didn’t originally, and wasn’t until after a lot of lobbying from the ranger community). It improved the use of the pet a lot… as a necro/ranger I had a spider pet in my curses build, specifically to trigger ‘mark of pain’, as it needed specific physical damage to trigger, and the meta for a lot of physical providing classes made them have non physical weapon mods. As a pugger I needed reliable triggers of the Mark, so I took the pet. (and loved it, as it being an UnderWorld spider it felt thematically right, also ressing it a lot made it somewhat feel like a minion, which, made it feel thematically right as well)

The biggest concern with the pet in GW1 though, was the fact that the ranger had to take all the skills for it. And if you truly wanted a good pet, you yourself ended up being ‘just a weapon, doing x damage/sec’, while still struggling with the AI. The one Hammer/Pet build aside (in pvp). ‘We’ (as in the GW1 pet interested players) were rather stoked to see the pet get their own skills in GW2. ‘But’ (unforeseeable) due to the removal of tank/healer and the introduction of more dynamic (moving) gameplay, the pet suffered even more, no more ‘still standing’ targets around a warrior to hit, and moving while casting (so no catch-up time). And instead of having skills on the pet we could control ourselves, we have to rely more on AI. And all sorts of problems more, (also see the thread) likely caused by the issues raised in my previous post above here…

Which ‘to me’, makes me long for a situation where the pet is simply a utility again. So it can be balanced as a utility, and improved through going for beast master traits (similar to putting points in BM in GW1). No [F2] skill control, just a pet with a bit more stuff on it besides an auto attack, a ‘guard/’heel’ command build in the ‘capture signet’ and a ‘resurrect pet’ change of skill once it dies. In fact, I would love to have 3 of these ‘capture signets’ available, so that I can have 3 pets at a time. (a beast-master has always been a ‘white’ minion master, with beasts instead of undead, and never a ‘boy and his pet’, or rather ‘the guard and his dog’. ) Possibly with a set of direct commands as we have (shouts) now. Complemented with f/e the Wand & ‘focus’ with more pet commands put on them as a designated weapon set for ‘pet mastery’.

To then have our ‘class mechanic’ be 3 preperations and scavenge:
F1 Serrated edges (bleed)
F2 Poisoned edges (poison)
F3 Hardened edges (penetration)
F4 Scavenge
Or something along those lines…

large post, bear with me, also equipping bow * cough *

After seeing so many pet discussion I just can’t help myself thinking about the pet more. So here it goes…

On analysis of the pet, especially in relation to the argued ‘class mechanic’ comparison with other classes, I came to the conclusion that it is not the pet that is the class mechanic, it is the [F2] player controlled skill that offers the class mechanic… It is this small skill with recharge time that is mostly comparable with Thief stealing, with Clone shattering, with the Engineer F skills, also the Warrior burst and the Necro shroud… all these mechanics have some sort of downtime related to them, and based upon that downtime (or charge up) the ‘class mechanic’ offers a certain amount of ‘functionality’.

The pet itself is ‘part of the ranger’, that happens to be tied into the profession-mechanic, where it having it’s own skills contributes to the strength of the ‘profession mechanic’. This may well be ‘why’ all the F2 skills on the pets are far from spectacular. It’s because this F2 skill only takes part of the ‘profession-mechanic-strength’, and shares some of it with the pet skills. And to complement, the ranger shares some of it’s strength with the pet as well, to make up for the rest of the strength of the pet…

Where a problem lies is Pet UPTIME, and this may well be the reason why there are various mechanics in the pet that focus on killing it, and possibly also why pets are so darned squishy, and hit for crap, and have long recharges. It is because the ‘profession mechanic’ is designed to have down/charge-time build into it. The pet simply has to perform bad, and die loads, because else it would provide to much ‘uptime’ for a profession mechanic balance situation, OR, the pets should loose strength (and be even weaker) to compensate for the fact it is up all the time… Obviously the ‘problem’ that stems from this is that the pet also takes a considerable amount of damage from the ranger, and the downtime that the profession mechanic needs is counterproductive to the uptime the ranger needs…

In this sense the statement that Allie made, where the pet makes ‘the Ranger’, is not correct (in my view). It isn’t the pet that makes the ranger, it is the pet-death that makes the ranger. Simply because the pet HAS TO DIE, it has to have downtime, to compensate for the fact that it utilizes profession-mechanic-power which by balance demands it has to have downtime …

I think originally the Pet & Ranger had strengths to compensate for this, mainly, due to the profession-mechanic needing downtime, and the pet also having ranger strength build in (which needed uptime). The ranger and pet had more strength during the ‘uptime’ of the pet, while ‘suffering’ during the down-time of the pet. What we have seen though, is a continued nerf’ing of this extra power, as the ranger was (and was so by design) stronger during the ‘uptime-phaze’ than anything around, while there has been little to no compensation during the ‘down-time’ of the pet, or improvements to increase the uptime to compensate for the power loss. It is what pretty much made us the least desirable profession for most formats in the game…

And to make matters more exact, the community that likes pets, doesn’t like to kill of their pet! They prefer ‘uptime’, and see ‘downtime’ as a mechanical weakness. Which, after the nerfs to the uptime, they are claiming ‘somewhat’ rightfully so…

This leads though to a counter intuitive conclusion:
As the pet increases it’s uptime, and reliability, it should likely loose some strength (so it becomes more in line with 30% ranger strength – and yes I know it’s nowhere near that now); at the same time the [F2] skills should increase in strength, to come more in line with profession mechanic strength divided over 2x [F2] where the ‘down-time’ of the mechanic is fully provided by the recharge time of the [F2] skill.

Because as long as the ‘profession-mechanic-power’ is shared on the pet, the pet will remain to need ‘downtime’ by design, and seeing we are not getting ‘extra power during uptime’ to compensate for the loss of 30% power during downtime of the pet, and we all want more reliable uptime. It means the ‘profession-mechanic’ needs to have its downtime come from something else and thus it’s power increased.

addition to post on page 45 near the bottom

Also, i do not see a ‘condition axe’ as totally out of the question. IF all the weapons came with a set of ‘choice skills’ on the #2 and #4 skill. Then yes, by all means, increase the viability of the Axe to be used in multiple builds.

Something like:
overall buff to flat damage on #1 to #4

1. Ricochet: first axe 120% second 100%, third 80%
2. choice for
   2.1 Winters bite: hit foe and chill
   2.2 Beavers bite: knockdown on hit foe and apply cripple
   2.3 Woodpecker: channelled throw 5 axes in rapid succession at target foe.
3. Split blade: throw 5 axes in a cone, each applies one stack of bleed (unchanged)
4. choice for
   4.1 Path of Scars: damage foes on throw, damage + pull foe on return. (unchanged)
   4.2 Limbing strike, Hewing retreat (like runeblade suggested up top page 45 for ‘savage’)
   4.3 Felling Call, shout: give allies swiftness and protection.
5. Whirling defence, added movement, reduced ‘on melee’ damage to facilitate extended buff to damage beyond increased damage on axes in general.

so i realy realy hope and pray to the 5 that Anet will add choice skills on weapons

REQUEST to everyone in the CDI

hopefully I can manage to do this without upsetting anyone to much
While I fully understand that people suggest things for their favourite build and weapon setup. And while I understand even more why people would suggest things they themselves have experienced as flawed or broken or just under par. I would love to press everybody on their heart to keep it at that, and not start suggesting HUGE changes to things they don’t use themselves.

Why not? Because then I wouldn’t have to point this out.

1. Axe: I dont think, that the axe (mainhand) should be a power weapon, with bleed on S2 and chill on S3, it would be a great melee/shortrange condi weapon, which the ranger has no access to. Reduce damage of S1 and add a bleed would be the better solution.

And yes that wasn’t really meant as serious, (and it was ‘whyyou’, because it mostly stresses my point also see ps. further down). Because from my point of view, as an Axe user pretty much since day 1, the shortbow is the clear medium range ‘condition meta’ skirmish weapon. And the Axe is just fine as a medium range crit.damage alternative. There is no reason for two medium ranged condition weapons, so why even suggest that? If you want more conditions on your axe use sharpening stone by all means…

Have you ever played Axes? Apart from the flat damage on them they are largely fine.
Could they be flavoured up? sure, the ‘big hit on first and then lesser damage on multiple others was ok with me. Or walking while channelling #5. Even changing that annoying theme breaking wintersbite into something else like a ’in/out’ to facilitate splitblade, I could live with…

But turning it into a copy of the Shortbow, with just different stuff on it, so you can integrate the Axe into your condi.build and benefit from swaps without changing your playstyle, and totally neglecting the possible uses for the Axe to people that actually USE them… well I personally find that somewhat saddening. You don’t see me suggesting to turn the shortbow into a powerbased crit.weapon, just because I don’t see myself using the SB in it’s current setup.

ps. Just to point out to Whyme that I am not targeting him specifically with this
I have seen more people suggest this and I scares me, especially if Anet goes by numbers. And I feel like none of these people actually play Axes, which makes me wonder, if you don’t have experience with them how can you suggest such changes? Would it not, by all means, be better to leave these suggestions to the Axe users instead?

And while I generally favour all opinions to voiced, and still do, I still think asking for this is not reducing somebodies elses right to voice their opinion. By all means see this as a counter argument to your suggested changes! But also, see this as a challenge to your own suggestions or as a way to temper your change enthusiasm. Look at the traits associated with the Axe, it is clear what its intended use is (with an axe in your main hand you do 10% more crit damage). So any suggestions along those lines, or any suggestions that improve ‘that’ kind of gameplay are welcome to me. Changing the Axe into something it is not, just because ‘you’ don’t see a need for it and never used it, well that i am having a hard time with…

@Allie, well it’s not to bad for more ideas put forward in the thread being displayed on this page ⁴² it could be the answer to any ‘what is the ultimate QoL, the Ranger in the Tyrian universe and everything, taken from this this thread?’-questions … having us add the ones you couldn’t fit on there takes some work out of your hands, it’s a collaborative initiative by all means …

What would really help us as a community, is some answers from the Devs. they were posed by someone (else then me) ‘maybe 20 pages back’, but I think they still apply and would help us a lot (from memory so please don’t quote me where I missed something) :
- Where do you see the Ranger in regards to Dungeons?
- Where do you see the Ranger in regards to WvW?
- Where do you see the Ranger in regards to LS? (for as far as it is zerg content)
- Basically, where do you see the Ranger in any content that has a lot of Allies around, what should the Ranger bring in these formats, what should be it’s role…

Answers to these could help us a lot.

Hiya Allie,

Tnx for making this summary.I would like to make some additions and give some feedback:

PvX
General
1B. As an alternative i have seen various suggestions to make spirits non targettable
entities instead.

3. Ranger heals could resurrect the pet. (has a whole suggestion behind it, that could also improve pets from NPC beastmasters.)

Beastmastery & Pets
2.2. Pets could get a dodge mechanic, to avoid AoE or one-shots.

4.1 “on the pet family and/OR specific pet” (OR makes it a lot less work)
4.2 There could be pets (insect swarms) that are not so much a liability.

5.1.1 Signets passives should affect Ranger & Pet, Signets actives offer a way to supply
reliable teamsupport, and thus by design offer an interesting choice between activating signets (for allies) or keeping them on passive.

5.2.2 Traits currently focussed on pet families, might be better turned into general
pet effecting traits.

Weapons
Warhorn
4.1 I do not know about others, but i do know that I suggested a skill like that in a scenario where there would be choice skills on the #4 warhorn, and it would be a choice after the current 4 & 5 skills were swapped. Giving a choice between a defensive and an offensive ‘call’. I would NOT appreciate it if my birds were to be removed from the warhorn. And i doubt a lot of Rangers that use the warhorn would either. In my views it would hurt the ‘nature’ theme, and p-off beastmaster enclined players, and reduce instead of increase the likelyness of warhorn use.
Adding stability instead of regen & vigor might skew that back in warhorn favor, but it could still p-off beastmasters and hurt the nature theme…

Axe
6.1 addition, to accomplish this within balance it could be possible to ‘reduce’ the damage on the #5 skill axe skill, it feels as though the Dual Axe setup has been balanced as a ‘two handed weapon’, where a lot of damage moved to the #5 skill, which left the rest fairly bland.

Skirmishing
1. !!! Just as many, if not more, argued quite convincingly against this !
3. Improve traps by having all do some damage.

PvE
Beastmastery & Pets:
1. see PvX 2.2 suggestion above.

General
1. Rangers need more reliable group utility

Nature Magic
0.Rangers could do with more nature magic skills like ‘muddy terrain’, also see PvX:General 1B above.

PvP
General
Axe
1.2 I personally have no need for swiftness on my splitblade.
1.3 I like the Weapons:6-Axe:2 solution for wintersbite better. But I personally wouldn’t shed a tear if all (but the torch) elementally inclined skills on the ranger would be replaced with more nature themed skills.

@phys, that might well be the case, though I also think it has to do with ‘not thinking about pink elephants’, try it … first thing you think about is a pink elephant

Further I do not agree that the pet is the sole problem for the ranger, it may be the most obvious one as pets are this tagged on not to be avoided AI entity. As Flytrap rightfully put it:
We’ve talked the pet to death. We’ve talked about clunky weapon sets and how a lot of our skills (both weapon and utility) lack impact or “uumph”. We’ve talked about how Ranger is typically a selfish class and doesn’t really provide that much to his or her team. We’ve talked about awkward/terrible (both really) trait lines. We’ve talked about ANet’s vision of the Ranger and the whole sustained damage debacle. We’ve talked about how Ranger suffers in all aspects of WvW aside from roaming.
And to that he didn’t add, the Dungeon reputation for rangers. How a lot of skills are only ever useful if fully traited, and some traits to be ‘obligatory’ to deal with certain problems. One of which is the trouble the Ranger has dealing with the Condition Meta, which then brings me to the not yet mentioned ‘there is no power build’ for the ranger.

So yes, the pet is a large part of it, but the pet trouble is part of a bigger issues, which is ‘reliability’. As that is the trouble with pets, and with spirits as well. It also applies somewhat to traps, for as far as doing ‘reliable damage’ in various builds. And obviously ‘reliability’ also applies to Misses with the bows at range… This I think is one of the bigger ‘frustrations’ for Rangers, and I said it before in my posts, but no-one seems to have picked up on it specifically. Yet if you see a lot of the proposals and also the issues they try to solve. A large part of them DO concern ‘reliability’ while not directly being mentioned … and ‘viable’ (as in ‘builds’) is by all means, just another word for saying ‘reliable’ …

But I digress… I was merely pointing out that I wanted to come up with suggestions to cover Multiplayer (Dungeons, WvW, LS) solutions for ranger troubles, and try to do it so that it has the least impact on sPvP balance (and divert focus away from the pet). The first reasonable suggestion that comes to mind, is a pet suggestion :P

Why is it that when you try ‘not’ to think about a certain topic (pets in my case) you actually come up with things related to the thing you do not want to think about :/ … anyways, at least this could be useful in the area I was trying to think about, mainly multiplayer area’s of the game.

Specific Game Mode
PvX (mostly WvW, LS, possibly dungeons with foe downedstates)

Proposal Overview
Give the Ranger a shout or activated signet, or just another skill that does the following:
Feral Rage: “_search out downed foes in range, and defeat them, The pet takes 50% less damage from all sources for the duration”

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to give pets more useful commands that would actually offer an increased value to the ranger in certain game modes. Being able to task the Pet with defeating foes in downed state, will give the ranger time to focus on a new target.

It would also make players fear and respect pets a bit more, and it would be as useful as having the pet resurrect downed allies.

Proposal Functionality
The game would check for any foes in downed state in range, if there are none the skill icon would stay ‘inactive’ (this is why it would also work well on a signet/charm as activation effect).

After the skill is activated the pet searches out downed foes and finishes them off, during this time the pet receives a buff of 50% damage from all sources, to make sure the pet will actually successfully carry out the order.

Associated Risks
another shout may well have to make room for this one. Or a signet activation might have to be changed to make room, or any skill might have to make room for this one.

ps. oke back ‘hopefully’ to non-pet suggestions for multiplayer environment improvements to Rangers suggestions. I have now taken up the stance to try and ‘not’ think about these kinds of improvements, lets hope it will work similar to ‘not’ trying to think about pet suggestions :P ;D

Pet? It’s been said?
I’m getting a bit tired about the focus on the pet, and it merely stating the flaws, that have been stated over and over already. While identifying problems is a needed step into coming up with solutions, I think we keep hanging on the problem identification (combined with various levels of frustration), instead of focussing on fixes to combat the problems. Obviously within the constraints that are given to us…

Higher Priority isn’t Cancelling
In this sense I would also want to point out that Anet stated that fixing the pet is higher on the priority list than making a perma stow option, now obviously you can disagree with that, but I read that somewhat different than it being entirely off the table. Thing is though, that introducing a perma stow that is an integral part of the ranger, while in essence seemingly easy, does offer a lot of issues when you get to the details of skills and traits. In this sense putting in a good solution that would also work intuitively for new players, might be just as much work as giving the pets their own AI…

Unfair, Ranger did see change
I also don’t think it’s fair to blame Anet for not doing enough for the pet and ranger. We are likely the only profession that has seen 4 skills fully reworked, in order to give the rangers a bit more control and pet interactions (mainly the shouts). Now yes, I would agree, and apparently so does Anet (by own statements) that that may not have been enough. Still though, I were to reckon that each profession has a ‘budget’, and unfortunately the troubles with the pet likely make them exceed the budget for the Ranger already. So a full redesign of the ranger or the profession mechanic seems to be out of the question, for the foreseeable future at least.

sPvP and Powercreep
Another thing that puts the ranger in between a rock and a hard place is ‘Balance & Powercreep’. The ranger does fairly well in solo PvE (be it at a ‘sustainable damage speed’) and the ranger seems to do somewhat ok in sPvP (though in the current Metas, it seems to not have ‘burst’ capability, and it seems to not have enough condition removal to combat the condition meta, and what is there takes a considerable investment in traits which makes build diversity stall).

At the same time, mainly due to Rangers doing somewhat ok in sPvP and the concern for powercreep, makes that straight damage buffs that increase their power to improve the ranger in the area’s where it lacks, are somewhat out of the question (there may be some in some places, hopefully to make a ‘powerbuild’ more viable). This means that solutions to combat ‘Dungeons/WvW/LS-content’ problems, need to matter for ‘this’ content only (if possible) OR have minimal impact on sPvP strength. It would be great (in my opinion) if we could focus on that as well.

budget space
As far as the pet goes, any solution oriented suggestions to improve the AI of creatures in general would be a great addition to the pet as well. Assuming budget issues to complicate the Ranger improvement as well, we should go smart about this and try to use the ranger’s unique position to be able to ‘snoop’ budget from related features. Mainly creatures…

Hiya Runeblade, sorry for the delayed response (sleep and stuff).

I get the feeling you are to concerned with the actual details, instead of viewing the proposal for it’s conceptual quality. No blame attached to this, I think it’s good to look at the details, then again, when I look at these proposals I look at them for the concept and pretty much assume that Anet will obviously balance the concept to work for the game… but now getting to the details of your response.

1. Pet skills, I agree with you that these shouldn’t just (solely) concentrate on support, the conclusion of analysis was that maybe there were to few support skills, hence the suggestion was to maybe add more. (this is also where I think you are looking to much at the specific details, instead of the concept).

2. Defensive 2+1 makes the pets have zero weakness. Even if they somehow die, defensive 4 will let the pet continue attacking. So no, it is not an overstatement

Yes I do not think that defensive 1 & 2 should be combined in any way. (1 being a base reduction in AE damage, two being the dodge mechanic). These two are basically two ways to deal with the same issue, alternatives so to speak. (but as I was trying to do some sort of summary of the suggestions I could recall reading, I posted both).

Why I like the dodge mechanic over the base reduction is that the dodge mechanic can more easily be tuned (base reduction may need such fine tuning that it is easily ‘to strong’ or ‘not strong enough’). The mechanic of a dodge bar can be tuned for it’s size, amount of dodges available from the bar, the recharge speed of the bar, it benefitting from vigor or not, it can even be combined with a “if the pet looses more than 10% of it’s total life in one hit, it takes a hit of 5% of it’s current health and uses a dodge from the mechanic” , and more then likely other tweaks can be added to it. Another reason I like it is because if there are multiple hard hitters, from more foes or from the same source, the pet can not withstand them all (as opposed to a base reduction), and obviously the pet will ‘run away’ from the hit, which both makes sense, as well as take the pet out of the fight for a while similar to how the player can’t fight while dodging and in the case of melee would have to get back to the foe. Lastly, adding the dodge mechanic to the actual creature AI could make for an interesting mechanic for creatures we fight, so it add something there too. And of course, a base damage reduction is much stronger in a sPvP situation than it would be in WvW, while a dodge mechanic is equally strong in both cases, perhaps even weaker in WvW…

In a sense I feel all of these points would have likely been brought up would this suggestion have a thread of it’s own. Here it is lost in the fray of the total discussion (actually one of the reasons I hope the CDI will get a forumsection of it’s own and the option to split off issues in a separate CDI thread. But that’s a different topic all together, obviously).

‘Defensive 4’, I feel you still see this as a ‘any heal will insta resurrect the pet’. But this suggestion has some of the same optional balance mechanics as the dodge bar. Obviously the size of the ‘downed bar’ for the pet is debatable, how many HP would the pet need to be resurrected. Next would be, once the pet is healed, the bar also becomes to ‘tick down’ again, just like the players bar (it just wouldn’t go into defeated mode) and here the speed of ticks and the amount of HP lost per tick can be tweaked.

If the pet were to rez on an amount of HP from the ranger heal, then it would be similar to reducing the downtime of the pet (if both are dead) to 30seconds. Though with a penalty of the pet having 35-45% HP, and obviously having to ‘blow’ a heal specifically for the resurrect. Then there is the chance that circumstantial healing (mainly in zerg movement situations) heal the pet up enough to be resurrected without the rangers ‘aid’. So I would hardly say this would make the pet invincible, it offers another option to the ranger to compensate for it dying so easily in various situations, and does so in what seems to me to be fairly balanced in and of itself (given of course the downed bar isn’t ridiculously small).

3. Again, you go into a lot of details, while you respond to a summary I made from my mind, and those ideas aren’t even mine, just a suggestion of (a) concept(s) that I managed to recall after 30+ pages of discussion.

Tnx again for tearing the ideas to pieces in a respectful manner, forcing me to better them and provide more argumentation to them. (just please don’t do so for ideas that aren’t mine and thus I feel I can hardly comment on in ‘defence’)

runeblade.7514:

If I am reading Ally support 1 right, I think this is genius. Moving pet’s f2 skill for ranger only cast will increase the viability of f2 skills as pets can take 3/4 second to 5 second to cast their f2 skills because of bugs. A ranger casting the pet’s f2 skill will relieve those bugs and make it easier to cast. The downside is that rangers actually have to cast the f2 themselves.

I think you are reading it wrong, it merely states that the amount of Ally support skills on pets (including the F2 skills) could be increased (or shift from pet-AI-controlled to F2 controlled).

And while I agree that defensive 1 makes the rest obsolete, the other mechanics seem to be a lot more interesting. In a sense that they are actual mechanics, where no1 is just a flat damage reduction. And I personally do not see the problems with combining #2 and #4 together to make the pet more reliable, and personally think your statement of ‘immortal’ is fairly overstated.

Also don’t agree with your stance on offense #1 and #4 I don’t see any ‘perma cripple’ there? A cripple that actually lands due to #1 could then make it more likely that the rest of the pet attacks hit as well, at least for the time the movement impared condition works. After that it’s mainly a question of when the pet will hit again… (given that I haven’t tried a setup with all pet-speed skills combined to try and make hits more reliable).

As far as offensive 3 goes, I may have misunderstood the details, and perhaps they want the range increased or the reactiveness increased. These I think are mostly requested for Pet vs Human interaction and not Pet vs NPC. It was proposed in as part of the ‘I can hardly land a hit on moving targets’-discussion, so maybe something else was the ‘spear point’ of the suggestion.

@nike, great immersion killer there, tnx :P

While snow some posts above merely concentrates on Pets in WvW, I would like to dive more into Ranger & WvW. As I have seen very few directly WvW related suggestions so far. Sure various suggestions would also improve the ranger in WvW. But WvW as a focus of discussion and suggestions I haven’t really seen yet. And unfortunately I haven’t played WvW much on my Ranger.

What I wonder f/e is how well do these kind of builds work:
- Long Sword, signet of stone and wild, and some soldiers armour. Trying to roll with the zerg.
or
- longbow, 2 fully traited traps sharpening stone and do AE from the zerg side. Or even muddy terrain in there.
or
- warhorn/torch, healing spring – as zerg support.
- how could spirits be made more viable, do they need a way longer reach so they can be hidden somewhere safe?

These all sound like somewhat viable ways to contribute to WvW, but are they? I mean, the summary above should also somewhat deal with WvW issues as far as the pet goes. But a more integral look at the ranger and WvW may well yield some more improvements or areas of needed attention?

LOL

Risk: Rangers can just hide behind a wall while the pet kill the boss.

They would be there all day though ?

I mean I do see what you are hinting at, the ranger with ‘heal as one’ or ‘troll unguent’ and ‘signet of wild’ together with high healing stats could heal the pet every time it gets downed.

I am not sure if that is truly an issue, in fact, I would argue that that may well be what people would call a ‘full beastmaster’ approach, aka. where the pets do all the DPS work while the beastmaster buffs and heals. Also, like I said, it would take a considerable time to take down a boss with 30% of the damage of a real character. To a point where I would say, that it is pretty much a non issue, if you want to stand there all day, by all means…

If you mean this then has the risk of becoming a ‘botting’ issue, then I were to argue that something like that could be solved fairly easily by giving bosses an extended attention range when only hit by a pet. I should obviously search for the ranger behind it and go after it actively…

Still though, nice one !

PET SUMMARY from the top of mind sort of summary pet related solutions
These are all QoL suggestions put forth in this thread to improve the Pet. They are combined here (for as far as I recall them) to give an overview of what has been suggested specifically to improve the pet. Hopefully they give a combined package that Anet can work with, and perhaps even show flaws as to where we missed possible solutions to pet issues.
please let me know if I forgot an important suggestion so that I can add it

Offensive
1. Increase the pet base speed, so they can reach foes faster and keep up with running foes.

2. Give melee pets a bigger ‘hit range’ so they are more likely to hit moving foes.

3. Give certain pets ‘gap closers’ so they can at least hit moving targets, combined with

4. Give pets more movement reducing skills (freeze, cripple, torment, immobilize), so that they are more likely to land hits once they place one of these movement impairing conditions.

Defensive
1. Reduce the amount of damage pets take from AE.

2. Give pets a ‘dodge’ mechanic, where they have an endurance bar that takes a ‘hit’ if the pet is hit with an attack that does more then threshold amount of damage (10% f/e). The pet takes no damage from this attack, but instead takes a ‘hit’ on his endurance bar and dashes towards the ranger.

3. there was another similar to #2 but I seemed to not be able to recall the functional details

4. Make the pet’s defeated state one of constant ‘downed’ instead. The pet gains a downed bar that can be filled by any source of healing, it starts empty and once it has HP in it, it also starts to tick down like the normal downed bar does for players. Once the downed bar is filled entirely with HP, the pet resurrects with the amount of HP corresponding with a resurrection (I think that’s about 35-40% HP).

Ally support
1. The amount of player controlled buffs to allies on pet F2 skills, could be increased. In order to increase the ‘welcomeness’ of the pet class in group oriented gameplay. (f/e. an F2 swiftness on the birds)

I am sure to have forgotten suggested pet solutions, as this thread is huge (and I haven’t even read 100% of it, as I lost where I was when reading foreward and backward and thus I miss pages from the middle), please let me know which so I can add them

runeblade.7514:

Wrong. Pets have high health in all game format, except when zerging. In PvE, their hp is already buffed immensely.

If you don’t want pets to die, then why not just suggest to remove health pools from pets and make them immortal? It is a way better solution than giving pets reincarnation all the time.

While this may be true, in PvE the foes have also received a considerable buff, there are vets doing 12k+ and elites doing 20k+ damages in one hit. Pretty much one hitting players, not even considering pets…

But by all means keep going at it, as it forces me to improve the idea in response , what about this:

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Make the pets ‘defeated’ mode one of ‘constant downed’ instead. Give the pet a downed bar that can be filled up with any type of healing, and that ticks down similar to the player downed bar at the same time. If the pet receives enough healing (from any source) that the downed bar is filled, resurrect it with the amount of health a resurrect would warrant (I think that’s about 35% HP)

Goal of Proposal
To give the ranger other means of reviving their pet, then by swapping (or continued out of combat time). And have the pet benefit from all sorts of AE healing on the battlefield.

Proposal Functionality
already described above.

Associated Risks
waiting for runeblade to cut it to pieces

@Zardul, there is a thread created specifically to elaborate on the aura idea. I would urge you to make one worked out suggestion for it and post it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/NOT-the-CDI-Ranger-Aspects-an-alternative/first#post3701028
There, that way it can be commented on as a whole, tnx

I think a definite power plateau should be set, if warriors is where it is at, then so be it ( I personally think they are near OP, but that is ok). And ALL professions and build should be buffed to this level of power.

@runeblade, pets only have a high health if totally slotted for them, pets shouldn’t die within 3 seconds but the fact is they still do in various game formats (mainly Dungeons/WvW) due to AE…. Due to that I am also very much in favour of giving pets a ‘dodge mechanic’ as was described earlier in this thread by Nike.****

A solution to your issue (which by all means is rightfully brought up , I hadn’t thought of that signet). Change Signet ot Wild’s functionality to no longer provide a passive health buff. Or make it only ‘direct heals’…

And I do not think it is overpowered, there is hardly a way for any other profession to so easily loose 30% of their effectiveness. So why should the ranger suffer from it…

On shouts, an analysis.

Guard, while I think guard is mainly a ‘stay’ command, combined with an aggressive stance pet. Seeing it is the only way to tell the pet to ‘stay’ it is useful in that way. I do not sPvP (yet) so I have no clue how valuable it is as an ‘area alarm’.

Protect me, I think this skill fall under the ‘animal cruelty’ clause of the TAPF (Tyrian Animal Protection Force). From my perspective (as a supportive of TAPF Tyrian citizen) it should change.

S&R, while this skill is just great in design, for the long recharge that is on it, it should also have 100% protection during the revive time. It may warrant a larger range too, and perhaps a QoL-grey if no dead players in range, functionality. But even then I were to argue that the recharge might need to be brought down.

Sic ’Em seeing there is also ‘signet ot hunt’ and I think also a trait that lets pets move faster, and the mentioned ‘reliability factor’ of pets being increased with a higher base speed. I wonder if this shout isn’t an overdone ‘tripple’ functionality skill.

Shouts in general I think should be the accompanied by signets in the Beastmaster-line. Where they offer a more active approach/choice for managing the pet, as opposed to the mostly passive approach offered from signets.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Any amount of healing a pet receives is enough to resurrect it with the amount of health it gained from that healing

Goal of Proposal
The goal of this proposal is a work around for the pet reliability. By having the pet be ressed by any amount of healing means that the ranger can actively res a pet by using various healing skills.

But also, similar to how the pet dies from random AE, it now also benefits from random AE healing.

Proposal Functionality
If a pet receives any healing from any source, and the pet is dead, it is resurrected with the amount of health it would have gained from the healing source would it not have been dead.

Associated Risks
Non that I can think of, the pet will become somewhat more of a reliable source, and the ranger will have the option to resurrect their dead pet by using a healing skill, instead of using a swap. It actually reduces the risk of putting a res on a specific ranger healing skill and ‘bombarding it’ to the ‘must have heal for the ranger’.

sorry for interrupting the shouts discussion, this just popped in my head while going over the ranger skills for specific shout issues/improvements/sollutions, and seeing I think this can work in concurrence with other pet solutions I thought it best to just post it anyways, SHOUTS !!

While i think this whole thread is just troll … I will treat it serious non the less…

I think no build or class should be nerfed. There should be a clear power plateau set (decided upon) and all builds, professions should receive buffs to be brought to that power plateau.

Can we please leave the ‘Pet, No pet’ discussion out of this, if you want to argue about it, I think this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/NOT-the-CDI-Ranger-Aspects-an-alternative/first#post3701028 is currently the place to debate both stances. And I would hope this to be done in a constructive manner. Instead of focussing on a divide in ranks, which only weakens our common cause, we should stick together… In my views this means a solution where both sides can have what they want, mainly a no-pet option that still weaves in the Pet with the class, while at the same time a continued collaborate stressing of improved Pet (but perhaps more important, Creature) AI …

The improved creature AI can benefit the whole game, and it will benefit the Pet, Pointing this out as a front might well give Anet the incentive to improve Creature AI and Pet AI as a consequence, which makes the spending of resources cut on both sides. Smarter creatures make for more interesting gameplay, it could improve all ‘minion’ behaviour and it could improve the pet. I were to figure we can all stand behind this…

At the same time, as things stand now, ‘we’ do need a solution to where pets don’t function as intended. And we need to do it within the constraints of accepting that pets (in some way) are still a defining feature of the Ranger. This doesn’t necessarily mean there has to be a active pet ‘out’ all the time. But as I see people argue they want their 100% DPS. I can not but wonder if it would be WAY MORE INTERESTING, if we could strengthen our stats by selecting a pet-family. Increased strength in a ‘pet stored mechanism’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean more ‘DPS’. All the pet families offer a distinct stat. setup, and it may well be interesting to benefit from THIS setup when we store a certain pet.

As far as ‘I want a pet period’ people go, I would urge them to stand behind those that want a solution outside of improved Pets (because it is fair as a trade off of all those that will stand behind ‘you’ for improved AI). And instead of dismissing the idea of a stowed pet, try and work with the idea. Do not dismiss an alternative because it may not be what ‘you’ want, but work with it in a sense that the pet keeps playing an integral part of a stow solution. That there is an easy accessible way to get the pet out, as part of the stow mechanic, and perhaps an ‘as easy’ way to ‘store’ it, so it can be used as a protection mechanic for the pet. or anything else you would want as a pet person if the tables were turned on you, and the pets would just have been a choice option.

Going up against each other as seems to happen now, does nothing but divide us, it brings down the discussion to a yes/no-trenchwar, and for that it doesn’t help ANet in making up their minds (Do we do A or B, and disappoint the yes or the no). I think they should do A & B, and please the yes and no… and do it in such a way that stowing a pet is as much an integral part of the Ranger as is getting it out, where a the choice for a certain pet (stowed or out in the open) is as defining for your gameplay as the choice of a pet is (where it to function as intended) now….

@Shiren, tnx for this elaboration… I agree with everything you said, ‘but’ would like to add one thing to it reliability

And that Segway’s into one of the things I wanted to address here, and that is something I would like the Dev’s to consider. In objective (as much as possible anyways) analysis, the ranger has a lot of functionalities build in, and I doubt many other rangers would disagree with that (even though Shiren and other suggestions in this thread show that there are places on the ranger where it could improve, for specific ‘game format’ needs). But even those eventually stand or fall with how reliable the options are for the ranger, and/or the amount of control we have over the reliability.

f/e, the recharge time on pet swap in battle, it is a reliable way to get your pet out of a telegraphed boss skill. But as you swap out your pet ‘no1’ choice, you are then hindered after the skill is over, and have to wait for the swap to come off cool-down to get back to your game plan. And to make this matter somewhat worse, there is no real guarantee that the swapped in pet will survive. And a similar thing resides in the spirits…

And I think this is one of the underlying issues with the Ranger, and I have seen a lot of suggestions that mainly revolve around that reliability. I were to argue that ‘reliability’ could be a trade off, if the effects are strong enough to warrant a way to reliably get rid of the effects (for the opponent that is). But as Shiren points out in regards to the pets, and others have done for the spirits, their effects aren’t that overwhelming. And (criticising my own through train) the question remains if a higher ‘reward’ will actually do something for reliability. Currently there is hardly any attention to pets/spirits from foes, they will just die easily in the AE fray. But if the ‘rewards’ get upped, they will just become an easily dealt with ‘priority thread’. And as such, still not provide a reliable way to help the ranger improve…

@Yoh, but isn’t the idea to keep distance by ‘blowing’ dodges and compensate with high endurance gain and vigor boons ?

Yoh.8469:

I see these comments quite often that the Ranger isn’t ‘unique’ enough.
Exactly what is it that you are looking for that would make the Ranger unique in it’s own way and stand out from other professions?

ie, Like how the Mesmer has a lot of Reflection, Blinking and some Stealth relative to other professions.

I think that if the Ranger had more access to Quickness and longer durations, and maybe more evasion skills on their ranged weapons so they get the feeling of being quick and agile. They’re partly there already, and it is a branch of Sustained damage.

Maybe rework Poison to stack and be more effective, making Rangers the master of Poisons.

Idk if that would do it, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Well to me that would be somewhat weird, mainly because the Thief has 5 (I think) poisons one of which is even an elite (for memory; dang it’s been long since I played on my thief :P ) …

I think why most people think the ranger is ‘bland’ is because it does everything a lil bit. And there is no real defining feature on them. Sure it may be the ‘pet class’, but if you were to view ‘minions’ as some sort of ‘pet’ then all of a sudden that isn’t very defining.

I also think that when ArenaNet mentioned that Ranger wouldn’t have riffles, pistols because the ranger was a ‘nature magic’ inspired profession. People were expecting more nature magic… And I have read various suggestions here (even my own) which suggest giving the ranger some sort of ‘area control’ through nature magic entuned skills.

Another thing that may be the case, is that if you compare classes, the ranger doesn’t have much ‘razzle dazzle’ going on. And with that I mean visual display of power… like the Mesmer or Engineer, or Elementalist, all very visual distinct and diverse professions, even though the Thief doesn’t have much razzle dazzle, the large amount of stealth still gives it visual defining qualities (even though if they display them, you can’t see them ‘lol’). For the ranger, there is, well spirits, which are all the same things but some color hue difference. A lot of design went in the pets, but you only get to see one at the time. And while there is some decent amount on the weapons, with ‘aura like green skills’, I hardly ever see rangers use Long Sword, or Sword for that matter, neither knife. At least in PvE I don’t… so if those aren’t used, and the most utilities are signets, traps or shouts. Then yes, the visual distinction isn’t very high either… Or rather, it is there, but it tends to be on non used aspects of the Ranger…

And lastly, if you check the GW1 ranger, then you sort of have to conclude that the ranger mostly ‘lost’ defining qualities (preparations and interrupts), and got very little in return, or dare I say ‘new’. Sure it got a bunch of new weapons, but other than that the ranger got what it had and lost some things (possibly some of the more used things of the ranger class in GW1 – interrupt & preps). Perhaps that too is making the ranger in GW2 feeling a bit bland.

These are btw. all things that sometimes pop-up in my own feelings towards the ranger, and I do not pretend to know why others feel or think the way they do. These though were my things … and yet, silly enough, I still like my ranger and my build. I personally had hoped for a staff with some druid/beastmastery skills on them. I suggested some name changes to certain skills to convey a more nature’y feel to them, and I had hopes for these ‘area control’ skills under nature magic or in the form of spirits (as they worked on the GW1 ranger, but then visually more appealing). (while already old suggestions: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:User/Arghore/GW2_Ranger
and some in hindsight somewhat silly (boogy men * cough * and some others too btw :P … sometimes it is best not to go with ALL your initial ideas ;D ), you can likely see what I mean with the things I mention here.

@phys, I too think it’s better to be wielding an Axe in general

Gotejjeken.1267:

It does seem all control was lost of this CDI a long time ago—no one is even following proposal format anymore.

Is it possible to lock this, restart it, and only accept 100 or so properly formatted proposals? After that, lock that topic and start a topic of discussion only. As rightn ow this thread is super long and way out of hand.

That or a dev posts the top 10 ideas from this thread that they like. Something to tell us that this is not just another ranger sub-forum topic.

The last dev post was about signets so we had some more suggestions on those, not to bad ones either (leaving my own in the middle for somebody else to judge). Then some of us got sidetracked on axe use, which in the end lead to a new suggestion about the Hyena. So I dunno if we are spiralling out of control.

Also, the thread can’t just all be suggestions, else it’s just a rehash of the all suggestions of the ranger ever made (which is sort of is already). Tbh. I would hope we could stay focussed on a certain topic in a discussion format as well, sometimes mere discussion sparks new ideas, and if there is nothing to say about the topic anymore, then perhaps we should move to the next. Like we are now on signet; we had traps and some added damage to them (as well as some becoming combo fields) as well as some discussion about moving them to another line (which I think sparked the side axe discussion) and came to it maybe not being such a good idea…

Personally it be nice to perhaps stay on signets for a bit longer, and if most been said, then I really wonder what people think of spirits… And, or, I suggested a bunch of pages back to cut all skill catagories back to just 3 skills, and adding in another category, I seen various ‘area control’ suggestions as well, so that could be a new ‘nature magic’ category, to be mixed in with spirits. These ‘area control’ and spirits would have to do something with vitality and boons I think, and if spirits are the ‘buf’/support part of the nature magic line, then ‘area control’ could be the ‘CC’ part of nature magic.

But yeah, signets? any more thoughts?

@Terravos, yeah I know the Axe isn’t that powerful in it’s base damage, but for a med.distance player, which I found myself to be. And not being enormously thrilled with the SB, the Axe was the way to go. Then the choice was conditions, full power or crit. And viewing the axe with its low straight damage, and from my perspective not many damage doing conditions (without traits in opening strike and sharpen stone to back it up), going for ‘crit damage’ instead felt like the best option. In which case I found the honed axes line up better, especially since the ‘targeted traps’ don’t add much and they also require an extra action. And the way I play, which is mainly kite and in/out to place traps, or well/warhorn for support. What other master trait is there in the crit line that is better than 10% more crit damage, in a mainly crit build… esp. if you take into consideration that even going for some sort of pet skill, it would almost always need ‘more investment in pets’ to become truly valuable…

My pets btw, are a spider and a hyena. The spider for obvious ‘keep foes in place’. And the Hyena for when I get into over my head, same with my ‘take root’ elite. (more target means less attention on me).

Terravos.4059:

There is zero reason for you to be using that trait..Zero…

I’m sorry, its a bad trait…. And Axe is not a Power Based Weapon, Its a Condition Based Weapon despite the fact it “bounces”

Axes only has 1 condition and it is bleed, how can that be a condition based weapon ? The SB is the condition based weapon from my point of view, at least ‘it’ has condition on it’s attacks.

But I were to venture a guess it’s mostly a matter of perspective. If you think it’s a condition based weapon then please keep viewing it that way. I view it valuable for it’s increased crit chances due to multiple hits (thus multiple roles for a crit), on:
#1 – 3 roles, with 2 foes also a bounce back.
#2 – 5 roles, depending on how many hit.
#4 – 2 roles forth and back
#5 – a kitten ton roles.

Now if all those ‘hits’ don’t make the Axe a Crit weapon than I don’t know which weapon would. And with the build I run also nice damage on crit, and good distance…

Terravos.4059:

Honed Axes – Which is a god awful trait in the first place…Its a Crit Damage boost for a Weapon that’s primarily a Condition Weapon, not a Power Based Weapon…If you’re doing Axe Offhand, You’re not going Axe Main hand, you’re probably going to do Sword.

Ehrm, well maybe not? Obviously depending on whether you mean for sPvP because I don’t do that, but for my PvE I run:

axe + warhorn/axe – well, 2 traps (spike & frost/fire), reflex
traits: 10/30/20/10/0
crit-orriented.

The axe is NOT a condition weapon by far, at least in my views, the multiple hits make for more crit.chances, and the bit of frost on there, and sometimes traps is mainly to keep a distance. I do not want a sword because I want to keep my space between my foe and me, due to the crit oriented armor/weapons I am weaker thus I want to stay mobile while my foes are not. For me this build works just fine, and I wouldn’t know how to build for an Axe trapper any other way (aka. the shift would mean I have no way to trap and axe.) Also, I have honed instead of ‘traps are targetted’ on my master trait, do have the grandmaster trap trait. Also offhand training on master survival. No extra ‘stuff to do’ but cast, I will move to where my traps need to be, and the way foes work, that is usually at my feet, so I can move once the foes spring the traps.

And having read that ‘on crit’ argumentation about traps, I may well try that ^^

First off, thank you Roy for taking some time to respond in this thread. As per your ‘direction’ some of my thoughts on Signets. Seeing I already posted 2 suggestions ‘in format’ regarding them, a small reiteration, followed by my further thoughts.

1. Signets may well offer themselves to be renamed to ‘charms’, in order to strengthen the nature theme of the ranger.

2. Signets may well offer a reliable way to provide team support.

Other thoughts about signets:

• Seeing the Ranger and Pet are a unity, as per design, atleast passive ‘charm’ use should influence both by default. (this would make signet of renewal combo decently with Empathic bond f/e)

• The choice between activation or passive effect should be made more interesting. Pretty much all the passive effects of ‘charms’ are better than their actives. And to make matter worse, the recharge on most ‘charms’ is rather long.

• ‘charms’ are currently set in the Marksmanship trait line, when looking at atleast 2 of the charm passives (carrying some sort of ‘heal’ effect), PLUS that these signets are geared a lot towards passive pet ‘bonding’, they might be better off in the Beastmaster-line. Offering a choice between ‘charms’ and ‘shouts’ as ways to a passive (charm) and active (shouts) way to interact with your pet in a Beastmaster’y way.

Leads to which would lead me to conclude there are now two ways to interact with your pet in a category that has the ‘healing power’ stat linked to it. This, in my views, would make it logical to have ‘activated charm’ effects that affect allies. This could lead to interesting choices ‘per definition’ as you end up with a choice between you+pet OR your allies. (hopefully the exclusion of you+pet ‘as allies’ is an option in the programming).

THEN changing ‘Charm of the Beastmaster’ to read, activated charm abilities also effect you and your pet, would validate a grandmaster trait level, it would skew the choice towards ‘activation’, and as such could make ‘charms’ a more interesting mechanic. While at the same time giving the ‘charm’ user ways to support allies, which makes a lot of sense in a healing stat trait tree.

Results in the need to make room in the Beastmaster line. This can be achieved by:
- Move all ‘charms’ related traits to Beastmastery

- moving Mighty swap to skirmish
- removing the ‘beast family property’ traits and make them 2 ‘all pet’ traits instead.
- moving Zyphyr’s speed to skirmish

- remove Agility training (and give pets a higher base speed to buff them) or remove trappers defense, which ‘by all means’ is just a space filler.
- moving Moment of Clarity to Marksmanship

- This would make room for 1 adept and 1 master trait to be added to ‘Marksmanship’ which may well be what we all need to make ‘Power Rangers’ a more viable option.

freedom
- I will refrain from giving suggestions for activated abilities on ‘charms’ there are more then enough suggestion in this thread, and I am sure you are capable of coming up with useful, interesting, sensemaking and needed effects for charm activation.

RISK for this suggestion
The risk lies mainly in the option to exclude ‘pet and self’ from being perceived as ‘allies’ by default. But even without this, it would automatically skew the use of ‘charms’ for their activated ability, which I think is not a bad thing. It would just mean that ‘Charm of the Beastmaster’ would need a different functionality.

SafiMoyo.5130:

Asurch.9352:

snip

Wow, that’s a very interesting and out-of-the-box suggestion. While I haven’t considered the associated risks yet myself, I love the basic idea of it. The numbers might need adjusting, otherwise, neato!

It is somewhat on the same notion as the dodge bar mechanic presented by Nike.**** halve the thread back. Still though I agree with it being an equally viable alternative.

Maybe we those that would like to could come at this from the other side, mainly from the creature AI side of it. I mean, if the creature AI controls the pets, then any changes to the pet AI also effect the creatures. While I am unsure if ‘creatures’ also implies ‘NPCs’, but for that we would need some Anet info… still though, looking at the issue from the creature AI standpoint might give somebody some other idea…

kyubi.3620:

To be honest while pet stow is actualy an interesting idea Id rather have the pet stat scaling and making it deal considerable damage before implementing aspects as Beastmaster will be reguarded as a ‘’casual who wants to play a poorly designed mechanics rather then run the new usefull stuff’’ if the pet isnt given at least as much worth as the aspect mechanics wich is totaly wrong (if i want to play a pet build based on running a specialy traited pet i should be able to and it should be as much viable as stowing it for some buffs!). Regardless pet aspect should also be part of the beast mastery trait lists as major trait wich could be alternative to the pet themed major traits

If you read my opening statement you can see that I am all for this notion. The pet stow should be a solution to deal with issues as they are now. After an aura would be implemented the focus should shift back to the creature AI, it should improve, and consequently the pet-AI should improve alongside it.

Ultimately people that would rather not have a pet (from the 99% of comments I seen about it) want A CHOICE! Aka. they recognize that there is a large group of ranger players that DO want a pet, and from what I seen they have absolutely no problem with the pet being a valid option on the ranger! This is also my stance, and were there aura’s I would likely use both, obviously depending on the situation… Hence I do not see aura’s as a replacement for the pet, I see it as an addition to the ranger’s kit.

Consequently I fully agree with you, and the ArenaNet dev.team that creature AI should remain ‘high’ upon the priority list. It just happens to be so that I think that until there is an aura system, it should be lower on the list than creating the workaround. That way we get a fix for where the problems are biggest, so we can enjoy our gameplay, while Anet works on creature AI improving both the pet, as well as creatures there after.

In my honest opinion it is the only way ‘I think is right’ to deal with the current situation. (please note the nuance, I am open for different opinions as long as they are well arguemented.)

nagymbear.5280:

I’d like to remind everyone who thinks that the Devs don’t listen to the ranger community that the devs did merge spirit traits as asked, they reduced the aftercast on longbow as asked, they inceased the short range damage of longbow autoattack as asked, they added pull to Axe #4 as asked, they adjusted GS#4 second skill to be usable while moving as asked, they increased pet toughness/vitalitiy as asked. And a long while back they also reduced cooldowns on signets as asked (noone remembers 120 second cooldowns?). They don’t give us everything that we ask for, but don’t tell me that Devs don’t listen. That doesn’t make ranger in its current state allright by a long shot, but lets be clear on this.

Apart from the last sentence which I left out, and based upon my own experience as a long time GW player, I will have to agree with you (and I try and remind myself of this while my emotions run up) … then again, I also largely agree with some other people above here that responded to your plea.

One of the things that could really help the ranger is the implementation of some of the horizontal and vertical progressions suggestions. Mainly:
- Add two choice skills on the #2 and #4 slots of weapons. Which could open up the ranger to gain more viable builds in different proficiencies.
- Add ‘specialisation’ trees to the professions, these would be a branching tree added to all professions and while not being a second profession, would open up the ranger for different viable proficiencies that are mutually exclusive by design.
- Also adding a weapon to each profession, which for the ranger could well be the staff. Could also add an additional proficiency to the ranger.

But all these do need a different approach to the ranger philosophy, this philosophy needs to align with what the game modes in GW2 demands from the Ranger profession. Because if it doesn’t the ranger will still lack behind in the pointed at areas where it is currently not a viable option (LS, WvW, non solo PvE, Dungeons).

And the areas that cause this are the focus on sustainable single target damage (admits various burst damage professions) and hardly any AE, the problems with the Pet, and the weakness of spirits. There are hardly any ‘bandaid’ solutions to these ‘problems’. And thus I fully understand (and share) some of the frustration in this tread. Regarding:
- to ‘keeping priority on AI’ (where a band aid ‘aura’ could take care of this, while still keeping the pet part of the ranger).
- The scare to improve damage due to power creep (where your ‘warrior’ comment seems to be contra dictionary to this notion).
- Where burst damage isn’t being considered, not even on one weapon type, even though the game has hardly any need for this type of damage. It could work, but then the damage of the ranger needs to be increased, which I just pointed at in the previous ‘-’
- Where the ranger should have mainly single target damage, where various game modes (mainly WvW, but also LS more and more, and dungeons as well) don’t have a need for this kind of focus.
- etc…

So, where does that leave this CDI? My current feel and stance is that it wasn’t needed at all. Almost all truly important suggestions were already in the [PvX]Ranger-thread. And to top that, due to other CDI’s running at the same time, this CDI feels like it’s being shoved under the carpet. For which I wouldn’t even think to blame Allie (to make it clear, I do not want to blame anyone, humans are humans mistakes get made, etc. ), but at the same time it has been more then clear where the ranger fails, and it’s size and post frequency could have been seen coming from far away…

Could anyone inform me how we got to this CDI topic. I tried looking for a thread that shed some light over the way it got chosen, but I couldn’t find it.

BondageBill.4021:

We need direction in order to provide valuable feedback.

I fully support your notion, and these questions are extremely valid and valuable, because currently I feel like the vision of the ranger and GW2 as a game are so far apart that I question if they are even compatible. Maybe with answers to these questions I can better understand how Anet themselves view how the Ranger fits into GW2.

A good ‘alternative’ name for the Ranger would have been ‘Woodsman’, it would go well with other weapons, besides the bow. And would also warrant for various nature entuned skills. Obviously it would not have changed the longing for some to have a rifle on the Woodsman, as it would still imply some form of hunting…

saved in a .txt for maybe in a few days… I found it to negative and maybe not entirely fair in retrospect (aka. after taking some time away from my computer)

Laurelinde.4395:

… If they don’t have the time and money to do major coding stuff to fix what they already have for us, are they really going to have the time and money to make up a whole new system, new graphics and animations, new skills, etc. for what is, at the end of the day, a minority of players?

If you read my suggestion above here there is hardly any ‘new’ system. There doesn’t even have to be new grafix or animations, and if the aspect is represented by the same pet ‘but’ in a aura fashion, it is merely making one ‘aura’ layer, and copy/pasting it on all existing pet models. I didn’t include any effects on the pet skills that need some sort of animation, most of the existing icons can be used to represent the effects, and all the effects can be parsed into existing profession mechanics (if some of the effects are not possible, than others can be made up instead). I were to guess a decent team (5 to 6) can churn it out in a week or two. Then it would need a week of rigorous testing and stat evaluation. To then finalize it in the next week.

This is a whole different size project than prying the AI away from the creature AI, to then change it where it needs to be changed, and have all that AI running along side the creature AI taking up system resources. Which is almost all coding, and may still result in dodgy effects in various situations.

Also, once the aura would be done, I were to hope that efforts to improve the creature AI are not halted. I mean, the creature AI could do with improvements anyways, it would benefit not just the ranger pet, but it would benefit the game overall. The justification of an aura system is that it offers a solution in areas specifically for the ranger pet, it offers a solution to all ranger that would rather see it gone. And it can be done in a way that still involves the pets, where hunting for having all pets still matter, and in a way that fits with the ranger theme (be it somewhat wider than ‘the archer’, and more in a druidic shamanic way).

Specific Game Mode
PvX – problem mainly coming from WvW

Proposal Overview
Change the spirits to function like muddy terrain. Aka. a non destroyable effect that lasts for a decent amount of time, in a certain location. It could still harbour the 2nd spirit effect during the uptime of the spirit.

The effects of the spirits may well need to be reviewed in relation to what is actually needed in larger encounters.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to give the Ranger a more trustworthy way to effect the battlefield with spirits and support their allies. With a ‘non destructible’ effect, the time the effect lasts should be reduced, but now at least the ranger can trust on them working for this period of time (instead of being one shot bombed).

- This could lead to the ranger using these skills to turn the tide of battle, and quite possible give them valuable tasks in WvW fights.

- It also helps in regards to fast changing fighting locations in all game modes. And in some cases spirits could be used to steer the fight into a certain location, by ‘area denial’. A medium powerful effect lasting for a shortish period of time, for a mediumish recharge time.

Associated Risks
The ranger becoming to powerful in sPvP
These spirits becoming to much like other classes effects, this mostly has to do with them thematically becoming different enough, and keeping the spirit disperse effect can help distinguish these spirits from other AoE influencers.

Associated Benefits
Traits related to spirits can be used to trait other things, the spirit effects could benefit from the trap traits instead, especially if their cast location is at the foot as a ‘base’ casting location.