Guild Wars 2

Forzani.2584:

Aridia.3042:

Chrispy.5641:

Aridia.3042:

Chrispy.5641:

Unfortunately, no.

Because of the new Survival of the Fittest trait, it can cure 2 conditions in addition to immobilize (and the usual evade and stunbreaker). It would be OP if it removed 5 conditions on use.

My ele clears more condi with just a single heal, and I don’t have to trait anything. When I trait for water and EA, I can get rid of 3 more on top of that….

And the Ele has lower overall health, and lower overall armor. More Condi removal is kind of a requirement for that class. (Also, Ether Renewal is somewhat vulnerable to interrupts, even though it can remove alot of conditions. Most Ranger Survival Skills (as well as signet of renewal) are instant and wont be weak to that.) While people want a profession to have more of this and that, I would say the balance is not that bad right now.

You speak as if there’s reason behind that balance. Pray tell, how do you explain the warrior then which has better HP/Armor/Condi removal than the ranger? You’re projecting things that are not really there.

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing if you think the classes are balanced.

No one cares about spvp so please don’t bring that up.

This has always been and will be my litmus test: can you solo roam as a power ranger on wvw and do is successfully? The answer is a resounding no, ever since the inception of this game.

I think what you, and many others would like to see is ..

1. Pick a class. It really doesn’t mater what class because it’s just a name…because there is only:
-1 trait tree in the game
-You can use every weapon in the game
- You can use any armor you want. Light, medium or heavy.

That way everyone would be the same (except for the class name). Everyone would be welcome in groups in all phases of the game.

Sounds fantastic !

You’ve never played a game before that has proper balance, have you? LOL that was so far off to the left field, I’m not even going to dignify you with a response.

Terravos.4059:

This game needs a PTS like every other bloody game does

Take SWTOR, it has a PTS, and when they were getting ready to add a really overpowered ability to Sniper in the coming patch, the PTS showed how overpowered it would be.

a Competitive PvP game with no PTS for the population to test and point out overpowered stuff before hand? Completely stupid

This 1000×.

It’s lol really. Like a perpetual beta test on live.

Nike.2631:

Berk.8561:

Nike.2631:

Yes, but you can’t see what it does, or if quick draw still exists. You have a name and a position, nothing more.

So I should assume that a trait called “Piercing Arrows” is not going to be the trait that gives rangers “Piercing Arrows”? No, I’m not going to ride the crazy train with you.

I’m sure it does. Just saying it could have additional effects too .

You were in crazy town before, but now you’re the mayor of the town. Because in that optimal universe it’ll mean both piercing and quick draw could lower bow refresh.

Dude, seriously, give it up. If it looks like a duck and quacks like duck….

If you’ve been playing rangers long enough, you should know this is just par for the course.

#DoMoreGetLess

Chrispy.5641:

Aridia.3042:

Chrispy.5641:

Unfortunately, no.

Because of the new Survival of the Fittest trait, it can cure 2 conditions in addition to immobilize (and the usual evade and stunbreaker). It would be OP if it removed 5 conditions on use.

My ele clears more condi with just a single heal, and I don’t have to trait anything. When I trait for water and EA, I can get rid of 3 more on top of that….

And the Ele has lower overall health, and lower overall armor. More Condi removal is kind of a requirement for that class. (Also, Ether Renewal is somewhat vulnerable to interrupts, even though it can remove alot of conditions. Most Ranger Survival Skills (as well as signet of renewal) are instant and wont be weak to that.) While people want a profession to have more of this and that, I would say the balance is not that bad right now.

You speak as if there’s reason behind that balance. Pray tell, how do you explain the warrior then which has better HP/Armor/Condi removal than the ranger? You’re projecting things that are not really there.

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing if you think the classes are balanced.

No one cares about spvp so please don’t bring that up.

This has always been and will be my litmus test: can you solo roam as a power ranger on wvw and do is successfully? The answer is a resounding no, ever since the inception of this game.

Solandri.9640:

Aridia.3042:

Err…this is how people stack normally, you stack with one weapon, and then equip your “real” weapon that has the proc sigil.

There, you’ll lose your stack.

Do you really think they’ll let you stack with aquatic weapon and keep it? They flat out said in the previous thread I quoted that they don’t want this.

I think the question was more what happens if I have bloodlust sigils on both weapons and swap? If you lose the stack, it’ll be the same as the ranger Master’s Bond trait which effectively prohibits you from swapping pets. Their “fix” would effectively prohibit you from swapping weapons, and practically nobody is going to use stacking sigils anymore. Just like practically nobody uses Master’s Bond.

Swapping weapons, as in going from main to secondary won’t make you lose stack. Unequipping it will however, will. (e.g. I run LB+GS on wvw. I would routinely unequip either one to use my horn to blast fields, doing that would make me lose stack post patch, if I happened to unequip the weapon that has Bloodlust on it.)

The only question remaining is to Nike’s point, whether stacks will remain if you stacked it with your water weapon and keep that speargun/harpoon equipped the whole time.

Or alternative, if you had multiple BL stacking sigils, would taking one of them away make you lose the stack? (e.g. one on harpoon, one on LB. I unequip LB would the sigil on my harpoon let me keep the stack?)

Given their stance and the minimum amount of whining that prompted this change, I would say the odds are not good even if that little loop hole is there. I have a very strong feeling that they will patch it to close any water weapon loopholes. Especially if someone starts a thread on WvW whining that the blue keep or BL host has crappy access to water mobs so my opponents have stacks but I don’t. Waaaaa! Nerf it Anet, it’s not fair!

Wanze.8410:

Aridia.3042:

Wanze.8410:

So everything except celestial gets a boost? Which stat you gonna change to, if you had the choice?

I would go full zerker.

They’re nerfing stacking sigils also so you lose stacks on unequip. Which means as an ele, I can’t run S/D anymore and pull my staff out for the zerg fests without losing my stacks.

The only logical choice is then just go full zerg and use staff full time.

So you are aiming for the stat combo that is trying to get a free stat change the most?

Given my context yes, and I don’t speak for everyone. What are my alternatives? Run a Condi ele? lol.

As I’ve said, as an celestial ele, it makes more sense to me to just run full zerk staff in wvw. The losing of stacks when you unequip weapon is the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

Wanze.8410:

So everything except celestial gets a boost? Which stat you gonna change to, if you had the choice?

I would go full zerker.

They’re nerfing stacking sigils also so you lose stacks on unequip. Which means as an ele, I can’t run S/D anymore and pull my staff out for the zerg fests without losing my stacks.

The only logical choice is then just go full zerg and use staff full time.

Chrispy.5641:

Unfortunately, no.

Because of the new Survival of the Fittest trait, it can cure 2 conditions in addition to immobilize (and the usual evade and stunbreaker). It would be OP if it removed 5 conditions on use.

My ele clears more condi with just a single heal, and I don’t have to trait anything. When I trait for water and EA, I can get rid of 3 more on top of that….

Nike.2631:

Hello? “Un-equip” and “swap” are different things. The change is “You may no longer benefit from gear that’s not even equipped.”

And there is definitely going to be some testing to see if having the matching stack-builder Sigil on your aquatic weapon will keep you from losing the stacks…

Err…this is how people stack normally, you stack with one weapon, and then equip your “real” weapon that has the proc sigil.

There, you’ll lose your stack.

Do you really think they’ll let you stack with aquatic weapon and keep it? They flat out said in the previous thread I quoted that they don’t want this. Even if the aquatic oversight is there, they WILL patch it. Go read that thread. There’s enough clueless people that’ll whine about it to get this “fixed” because apparently farming 10g is enough of a deterrent for players nowadays in this game.

Confirmed.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/runes-sigils-and-balance-updates/

This type of sigil will have more strict rules applied on them, so that a player will no longer be able to gain 25 stacks and then un-equip the sigil.

You’ll all be running stacking sigil on your main weapon. LOL, thanks for playing.

Clueless Devs > Creativity.

Atherakhia.4086:

lightning reflexes now breaking immobilize is likely the only real improvement coming on 4/15

…just immoblize? Does it cleanse chill or cripple?

Terravos.4059:

Anet, I have to ask a question, Do any of the balance devs actually main a Ranger?

Wrong question to ask. I fixed that for ya. You’re welcome.

And the answer is clearly, kitten no. You’re welcome, again.

Atherakhia.4086:

Chrispy.5641:

Atherakhia.4086:

Holland.9351:

This sounds like an excellent trait. There, I said it.

But I bet they will screw it up by putting it in the Marksmanship line, so you can’t have it together with Piercing Arrows and Eagle Eye.

…

It is in the marksmanship line…

Oh Crap! I didn’t know that! Now my build is all screwed up! Why is anet forcing me to intelligently decide which Longbow traits I must take?!?

This would imply you’re giving serious consideration to ever using this trait.

QFT.

I would never drop eagle eye and piercing because you won’t get better DPS out of this trait. Flight speed made it less reliable but not to the point that it’ll warrant taking it over the other 2 MM bow traits.

Same cast time with 2x flight speed means it’ll make the LB feel even more sluggish than before as you watch the arrow zip to the target but having a seemingly longer pause before you fire again.

Nike.2631:

Aridia.3042:

Still no piercing and quick draw merge I see.

Really? How can you tell?

Still no piercing and quick draw merge I see.

Yeah, that’ll be overpowered cuz no other class has that right?…let’s have 4 traits for a single weapon instead which you can’t even select them all. Wut?

WARSaints.1502:

to sacrifice Eagle Eye for Read the Wind? pretty upsetting…

Just par for the course which has been the MO of this class since day one.

#DoMoreForLess

Curious how this would feel on all the LB skills. Would it be the same as using the pre nerfed QZ?

Substance E.4852:

Pvp game modes are a direct result of balanced classes. The best pvp maps/modes ever made are worth crap if the classes in them aren’t properly balanced.

I’d go back a step further. They don’t even have a good mode yet in pvp. You need to work out a proper framework before you throw the moving pieces into the equation.

5 player node cap is flawed for an MMO, no matter how much Sharp thinks it has merit because even Counter Strike had secondary objective. And to balance the classes around that, is like letting the tail wag the dog. Doubly so when they try to transpose that “balance” onto other game modes that have nothing to do with spvp.

PVP should be about killing people, not how long I can hold onto a node, and secondary objectives like capping a node should not affect how a class is balanced. Look at the trap ranger, quite deadly on the point, when opponents are forced to walk into your traps to prevent cap, utterly useless in WvW when the target has the luxury of running away from you and your traps or when you run into 20 enemies. When you change the metric, you change the whole outcome.

A flawed starting premise could only let you arrive at a flawed conclusion. The ranger class is symptom of that larger problem.

Substance E.4852:

There was a rumor floating around but I can’t really see them doing it.

I’ll probably just mush in another accuracy sigil or a sigil of force. It’s not worth trying to get a full stack of buttlust in WvW on a ranger with a longbow anyway.

Doubt it’s a rumor. Devon said they’ve been wanting to implement that for a while.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Would-be-great-if-Arenanet/first#post2727334

Which makes all this new creative thinking useless since you’ll be running stacking sigil on it one way or another. They won’t let you put Air/Fire on killshot, maul, backstabs when they’re trying to nerf burst damage. There’s always a catch with this game.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Perma stow wouldn’t make pets OP. In rebalancing for permastow, it would make those that still want to play with the pet op. THAT IS, unless we design something that gives the player a boost to balance it out.

The aspects I think were a little different. They talked about having specific bonuses based on the pet that the player was using. That is different from just giving a damage boost, which could end up being difficult to balance.

Make the BM trait line act as a new kind of multiplier for weapons and pets. Like each trait therein is worth 5%.

Trait 0 into BM, damage goes up 30% on your toon. (Or whatever percentage value you deemed it to be fair on avg)

The deeper you trait into BM, the weaker your weapons get, to the point that, people can do a 90/10, 95/5, split or the supposed 70/30 split when fully traited into BM.

Revert the pet damage to pre nerf lvl when they’re 30 deep into BM to account for Ascended equipment.

THEN play with the numbers on the pets to fine tune the balance. Every proposal that doesn’t involve folding potential lost damage back into the toon is a lost cause because that BM line makes it like trying to build a house on shifting sands.

If the team insists in allowing the pet to do automated dps, then they should offer a sliding option as mentioned above so players can find the happy medium and playstyle that they want.

Substance E.4852:

While we are digging up dev posts, someone should find the one they made after they nerfed Sb range that described how they didn’t want us just spamming 111111111 to deal damage. Because we are the "sustained damage’ dealers of the game…

Actually, he said, spamming 1 was not fun. LOL. JP’s answer is even more hilarious and ironic given the design philosophy provided in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-SB-Nerf-Not-40-milliseconds/page/8#post398770

Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.

Prysin.8542:

Best solution is to nerf warrior and remove fast hands altogether and give it to rangers.

Fixed that for ya.

You’re welcome.

roamzero.9486:

I remember when Beastmaster Ranger was kind of fun in WvW. Back in the day the pet had enough range that you could send it out of a keep, or even on top of keep walls with guard. It was great fun to send a hard hitting jaguar against say, a squishy backline ele.

The sPvP people ruined all of that sadly Would it be too much to ask to revert the pet leash nerf in WvW?

That to me was the worst kittening nerf. Having that 5k range on the leash was literally the only thing this class had that no other did. I was actually friggin’ useful in clearing open field sieges in WvW.

The main reason why it was nerfed it’s because half wits were complaining that rangers could run off to to another node while leaving the pet on mid.

Think about how utterly stupid that is for a minute.

Pet = bot.

Bot = PVE.

If you have problems PVEing 1 target, you have no business in trying to balance PVP.

Yet, that’s exactly who Anet listened to, half wits that can’t manage to kill one bot.

sMihaly.1492:

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

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

This is the reason why we can’t have nice things.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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

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

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

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

Please propose these questions to the Devs:

1. How often should a pet land a hit on a pvp target?

2. Should the number of landed hits be affected by how deeply you spec into BM?

3. How do you propose to have a coherent framework of factoring avg pet damage for this class (and balance the weapon damage accordingly) when some pets hit way harder than another and you can’t predict what pets will be used and how deeply one will spec into BM? (e.g. 30BM Jag vs 0 BM Brown Bear)

I suspect when you get them to answer those questions truthfully, you’ll realize that part of the house never called for a 2×4 but rather really needed some concrete walls.

Flytrap.8075:

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

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

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

Having a pet buff and actually using a pet are not mutually exclusive ideas.

An extremely effective and yet quick fix would be to give passive pets an aura buff for the ranger so that if pets are on passive and not attacking, the ranger’s damage goes up. Like the damage from the pet is folded back into the toon. The moment you send your pet out, then you divest the damage. Call it Aura of the Hunt on the buff bar or something.

There are perfectly good times to use a pet in pvp, like using them for diversions, harrassment etc. But there are times when pets are utterly useless, like when you’re camping your tower against attackers or against a zerg. So yes, I want a buff, but I don’t want to get rid of the pet all together either.

If you understand what the fundamental problem is, you’d realize passive buff is the only fix there is. Because “fixing pet AI” involves you getting more damage sources but the target still only has the current number of dodges and mitigation. So it’s basically you’re asking for free hits that are automated. That should never happen in a pvp game.

ALL viable solutions involve this common theme: folding most, if not all of the damage back into the toon and away from the pet, and the pet should only be used for utility or as a stance that gets switched into.

The quicker people, including Anet, gets this, the quicker this class gets fixed.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The negative consequence behind “fixing the AI”, is that it would promote even more passive playing in PvP.

For this reason, the pet system DOES needs a redesign.

Making most pet skills requiring manual input from the player to trigger could be the solution. It could also promote rewarding skill sequences between the pet and the ranger, moving the profession away from too much passive, and more into a skill-sequence-driven profession (like an engineer, elementalist, etc). That would be healthy to the competitive side of the game, but also very fun by itself.

AoE resistance (but lower health so that targetted effects can counter it), innate faster moving speed, and a way to flag the pet would also be awesome.

Pet flagging could be a ground-targetted sequence skill that would force the pet to go to choosen location until the skill is clicked on again.

This. x100 times.

AI bots are not interesting to play with, boring to watch, and annoying to play against because it feels cheap.

These are not things you want in a healthy competitive scene. They introduce far too much randomness and skill debasement into the meta.

Stop and think about what “fixing pet AI” means. It means they should hit more consistently, in this case, without input. All that’ll get you is more QQ in the spvp forum, and get you less people interested in the game because the concept of watching a bot in doing what you’re suppose to be doing is frankly the antithesis to real competition.

Higher skill cap is a good thing, whether it be in the form of multiple pet/aspect rotation, (2 is not enough) or manual controlling both damage sources of the toon.

Yoh.8469:

Yeah well I am just throwing out wild ideas at this point.
I think that range just needs something to equal the odds, since melee have vastly more gap closers then range has the means to maintain range, both in distance covered, number of skills and cooldown time.
Unless there is something physical the prevents your opponent from getting to you, you can’t maintain range for very long.

For some weapons it’s not that bad, but since the Longbow requires you to be back as far as you can for the damage to be reasonable, it suffers the most by not having the tools to maintain range. Maybe this wouldn’t be as much of an issue if there were more skills like Lightning Reflexes in their kit, but sadly there are not.

This is why LB1 needs a chance cripple.

Why Predator’s Instinct should proc on crit instead of being HP based.

And why Rangers need a fast hand trait like the warrior so you can swap, leap and kite.

In trying to change what’s wrong with the traditional MMO, they completely swung the pendulum over to the melee side, while it’s unique, but it doesn’t necessary make the game design balanced.

Chokolata.1870:

Game mode: all

Proposal overview: Increasing pet survivability with the tools that are already in the game

Proposal functionality:

1) Every ability, be it a weapon or utility skill, that gives evades now gives the exact duration of blur or a 5 second aegis to the pet.
This includes:
- Sword 2
- Sword 3
- Dagger 4
- Greatsword 1
- Lightning reflexes

2)Pet F command call back now teleports the pet to the ranger in a poof of leaves and smoke (like when summoning a spirit). This is to help rangers pull pets out of AOEs.

3)Pet PvE hitpoint buff is translated to WvW

Risks: Increased skill ceiling.

I’ve asked for this before. But it shouldn’t be tied to a skill. That kind of fast teleport is what should happen when you F3 and pull the pet back.

There’s zero downside to this because you’re expected to pull the pet back with F3 already. Secondly, pets don’t function like summons like in other games where you have to kill the pet before you can attack the master. Plus having to reset your pet partly through the chase lowers your DPS already so checks and balances are already built in.

Taushullu.6180:

I’ve seen quite a few suggestions of changing the SotH active effect (Attack of Opportunity) into something more sustained or some other effect entirely. Currently I find it to work well with:

• Maul
• Counterattack
• Tail Swipe (drake)
• Swoop

It’s pretty obvious there aren’t too many possibilities out there. Still, rather than changing Attack of Opportunity into something entirely else, I’d like to see more skills from other weapons changed to benefit from it. Here’s 2 suggestions:

• Monarch’s leap has potential to become a burst skill as the skill itself is well telegraphed and visually looks like something that would hurt you. Simply increasing the damage coefficient would make this skill work better with Attack of Opportunity.
• Longbow could use a real burst skill. I’d suggest changing Rapid Fire to first fire 5 arrows rapidly (1½ second channel / 10s vulnerability per arrow) and then charge up a more powerful shot in the end (3/4 – 1s charge). Attack of Opportunity would synergize well with this last arrow.

These changes would make the Attack of Opportunity from SotH more useful but Moment of Clarity doesn’t work with them as you need to interrupt your target first. Thus, I’d like to see MoC modified a bit. (I’ve suggested this before in my trait suggestions list but once more.)

• Moment of Clarity: Gain Precise Strikes (your next 3 attacks crit) for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer. (100%)

So one of the 2 sources of Attack of Opportunity would still get cut… oh well. The proposed Moment of Clarity would see it’s burst nerfed but sustain and number of skill combinations buffed. It would also have great synergy with “on crit” -effects. I think it’s a fair trade.

Attack of opportunity is a bad concept to begin with in a game with so much mitigation and so little skills for rotation. And counter attack and Drake tail swipe are situational and not on demand.

Unless your opponent is in a coma, maul requires a hilt bash setup which would involve swoop to begin that chain anyway. So you can’t even consider swoop as a potential move that benefits this.

Let’s not conflate the issue. I agree that weapon damage needs to be bumped up across the board because rangers are playing with a handicap, but wasting a skill for an unreliable move which involves 1/3 of your utility is not the way to do it. That’s par for the course currently for the design. The epitome of this class is : doing more for less. (e.g. Like not having piercing and cool down together, having to trait for signets to work, having to stay at max range only with no kiting mechanism to do range damage, inability to control your pet, etc.)

Unless AoO gives 5 attacks like Arcane Power, it’ll not be worth it. But there’s no way they’ll give you that, at 150% dmg.

Bran.7425:

That the ranger shouts were (probably) not originally designed as shouts, but as the Pet Skill category and sometime during the development they shift them to shouts without any adaptation at all.

This.

Shouts would make a great F5 to F8 and should’ve came standard.

What kind of worthless beastmaster are you if you can’t get your pet to sit and wait? (e.g. guard)

Dardamaniac.1295:

Give to Rangers weapons access to immob.

We need to counter so many gap closers that is hard to stay ranged in spvp

Predator’s Instinct should proc on crit with ICD for this very reason.

Taushullu.6180:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

We have also been discussing this internally and agree that it is awkward to be forced to take a trait in order to receive the active effects of signets. Obviously some balance work would need to be done on the signets as well as redesigning the trait. Definitely a good idea and something we are thinking about. =)

Here’s what I would like to see done to signets.

Signet changes in 5 steps:

1. Signet passive effects affect both ranger and pet, active effects ranger only.
2. Signet of the Beastmaster merged with Signet Mastery. New effect:
   • Signet of the Beastmaster: Signets recharge 20% faster. Active effects of signets also affect your pets.
3. Beastmaster’s Might gets a more supporting role by granting might to nearby allies on signet activation (3 stacks for 15s / 600 radius).
4. New grandmaster trait to replace old SotB. New trait:
   • Primal Echoes: Active effects of signets also affect nearby allies. (Signet actives are (PvE: 50%, PvP: 33%) as effective on allies / 360 radius)
5. Few signet active effects need to be reworked.
   1. Signet of the Wild (active): Enlargement effect is removed and activation time reduced to 1/4s. Grants stability (8s) and breaks stun. 60s cd.
   2. Signet of Renewal (active): Removes all conditions from yourself (not from nearby allies) instead of transferring them to your pet. 60s cd.
   3. Signet of the Hunt (PvP active): Damage bonus changed to +30%.

If anyone is wondering about those percentages, this is what I was aiming for .

Primal Echoes (PvE) + Signet of the Hunt (PvE) = 25% damage bonus to allies.
Primal Echoes (PvP) + Signet of the Hunt (PvP) = 10% damage bonus to allies.

No idea how these changes would affect the current balance, though.

I like this except SoTH. The active damage is worthless unless you’re going for a cheesy double signet maul build. While it’s amusing, it should never be encouraged.

SoTH should give stealth camo when you stand motionless on something natural, and not man made. It’s good risk vs reward. Once you stealth, you can’t run away with speed and it fits the theme of the utility/class.

ItIsFinished.9462:

I have a feeling a long post is being typed up. A post that has a summary of all the ideas that caught the devs eye’s and will be discussed further. It should be arriving any minute now…..

You need to try this elementalist exploit.

blud.8174:

That’s not fair. People are providing a rather hostile environment so that Allie has to watch what she says.

Look what happened when Allie did reply: People fixated on one thing and prattled on and on about permastowing pet in favor of aspects. Now they’re fixating on her usage of “power creep”.

There are certain people here that are so fixated on their own personal goals for the class that they aren’t willing to have a proper discussion and are also preventing one.

I don’t blame Allie for not replying because whenever she does we essentially attack her without having an actual discussion. She’s also the liaison between us and the devs and unfairly takes a lot of the brunt.

That being said, this can’t be a discussion if the devs don’t ask us for feedback on the specific things they’re looking for. It’s too one-way (something more like the Fractals CDI would be wonderful). Some transparency with regards to their short-term goals for the class and what they would like to prioritize would be much appreciated. Unfortunately, I’m sure they have a lot of work themselves and there’s a ton of pages to read through here.

(I have to admit, I am also feeling disappointed. People became excited because we thought Ranger might get some much needed love, but I think Prysin is right about the devs having lost enthusiasm for this thread. This is most likely going to be as underwhelming as the underwater-buffs-patch.)

There’s no coherent discussion until the devs acknowledge the facts.

This is the core problem with this class:

There are too many variables to properly balance pets because of the BM line with the number of different pets. (e.g. 30BM stealth Jag vs 0BM bear). As a result they can’t even decide how often a pet should land a guaranteed hit because they don’t know what pet you’ll be using and how deep you’re traiting into BM. The pet damage is constantly in flux.

Because your pets supposedly account for some damage, which is not really set in stone, your ranger weapons’ damage are being low balled. Otherwise, it’ll be grossly overpowerd, like you’d be getting an equivalent of 1.3x the damage vs another class. The total damage as a result is being short changed because pets are unreliable, while weapon damage is nerfed.

Notice what the commonality is for the ususal suggestions:

Perma stow buff, aura aspects buff; bump up damage across the board; eliminating pet damage all together and make them sources of utility; hard capping pet damage to 5% and increasing weapon damage.

They all involve folding the damage back into the toon instead of divesting it to the pet because people who understands this class realize this is not an issue relating to opinions, but rather hard numbers; this class is getting short changed in the damage department.

They’ve rejected giving more control over the pets.

They’ve rejected perma stow.

They’re rejected buffs as being power creeps.

They even do things that are contrary to their own model, like having pet down time. Err, remember that pets were suppose to account for some of the damage that’s why my weapons are not hitting as hard? Why then should there be pet down time at all given the current framework?

This is not a hard problem to solve. It’s a matter of whether they have the will to do it.

Trying to use an AI bot as a main source of damage in a PVP game is a can of worms they should’ve never opened and one that they should move away from if they value the future of this game as esport.

I can’t even begin to imagine how silly you’d sound if you want to convince someone unfamiliar with GW2 to watch a spvp match with the current framework. Wait, so you’re not controlling the pet? When the wolf pounced the guy and you stomped him, it was all just a bot that did the work?

That’s the antithesis of skill, balance, or fun.

clint.5681:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I realize that many classes have high burst right now, but our intent is to limit power creep as much as possible. Just because the Ranger’s damage is more spread out, doesn’t mean it does less damage than the burst of other classes. Does that make sense?

For example: One class could, in the span of 30 seconds, do 15k damage in say 5-10 seconds, but then their burst skills go on cooldown so they have to wait out the rest of the time before they can try again. A sustained class should be able to do that same amount of damage in that same amount of time, but the damage is more spread out (hence sustained). This can be better in certain situations, and allows for the sustained class to fill a hole in a team comp.

I’m not saying this is a perfect system or that it’s even fully functional in the game, I’m just trying to explain why doing burst shouldn’t necessarily be better than doing sustained damage. It depends on the situation.

We also know that some classes right now are better at burst than others, and those are things that we look to address in balance patches so there isn’t a surplus of any one class.

The way this game is set up in pvp/wvw is that you want to down the opponent quickly as possible, especially so you avoid the chance of them calling in back up. Sustained doesn’t work for that.

Example:
You burst someone down to 30% in 5 seconds skills on cd for 15s, they heal to 60% you finish them off with second burst before they can heal again.

Sustained: you sustain them over 30 seconds they get to like 30% heal to 60% you sustain them and give them enough time to heal again because you took too long and now their buddy is there.

Sustain is a nonfactor outside of pve.

QFT.

Burst is what matters because you can’t out heal or out pot it. Doubly so when there’s no healer or hp pot in this game.

Sustain should never be taken into account for pvp balance. It’s a purely PVE concept, one that doesn’t particularly jive well with this game as pumping out consistent damage is a concept model for grinders, where people want to find the most efficient way to lvl a toon.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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

There’s a huge discrepancy in the theoretical design and the actual execution though because there’s far too many arbitrary choices made from the ground up.

You say rangers are suppose to sustain, if that’s the case, vigor should’ve never been nerfed on the class. How do you propose a class to have any sustain when they have less armor, hp, than the warrior but at the same time you give both classes the same number of base dodges? Not to mention there’s no gimmick like stealth/clones/ to carry you through.

Also why are only the sword and shortbow offering any sort of on demand build in evades? Even if you define sustain as just staying alive, which includes running away, the ranger can’t even do it as well as a warrior or ele, doubly so when there’s no proper cleanse for immobilize. It does not compute.

With Dark Souls II coming out in March, I implore your staff to check out that game and look at the checks and balances with their mechanics. That’s what’s missing from GW2.

In that game, armor choice matters, heavy being more damage absorbing, makes your stamina regen slower. Light armor offering better regen, more mobility, more and faster dodges at the expense of defense. Allocating more stats to stamina lets you dodge and attack more at the expense of lesser attack/hp/def etc. You also cannot spam attacks in that game as it’ll leave you without stamina which will prevent you from dodging, running or blocking when it’s out.

Armor and spec choices SHOULD matter. In a perfect game, you should be able to spec your toon however you wish to make it accomplish a goal. I feel the arbitrary choices that have been made thus far, not just within this class, is keeping the game from being improved.

Allie Murdock.8152:

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

Whatever you guys end up doing, I think you guys should strive to incorporate a way to let players hot swap pets on the fly instead of limiting the player to only two pets/aspects.

I find being limited to 2 pets while in combat to be very shallow. I run pure glass in wvw so I have zero margin of error and I have very specific pet pairs that I use depending on the situation. (spider+wolf for max cc solo, double drakes for open field zerg, stalker + moa for camping keep etc.) And those settings could change from one to the next within minutes.

Being limited to 2 pets because I’m in combat or essentially deterred from changing it due to a clunky interface makes for very frustrating experience in game play. Being able to identify the optimal pet to use in every game play situation should be a requisite skill of a pet based class. And you won’t get that if you don’t make more, if not all, pets available on the fly.

They should put camo on Signet of the Hunt.

As long as you stand on something natural and not man made, you’ll remain in stealth.

It’s suits the theme of the class as well as of the utility.

Specific Game Mode

WvW, but applies to PVE/SPvP also.

Proposal Overview

Give life to longbow builds by allowing players to kite via quick weapon swaps because it lacks the means to take meaningful subsequent shots due to the range penalty. Kiting is what’s missing to make longbow a viable dueling weapon.

Goal of Proposal

Improve longbow function.

Proposal Functionality

Give rangers a quick weapon swap skirmishing trait like Fast Hands from warriors. Given that every class has gap closers, range options and CCs, range is countered far too easily, often only within a move, so there’s zero reasons to disable kiting in this game especially when LB is already penalized on sub 1k range.

Associated Risks

None. Trait currently exists on warriors, which you never hear it as being an OP trait. Moreover, if a ranger can hornet sting/monarch leap, or swoop and attack with bows/axe consistently, it is a L2P issue on the part of the target, not a balance one.

Specific Game Mode

WvW, but applies to PVE/SPvP also.

Proposal Overview

F2 Pet buffs are unreliable and it’s counter intuitive to use in some cases. This needs to change given the context of how this class is suppose to function.

Goal of Proposal

Quality of life improvements for game play feel and to make the pet compliment the class.

Proposal Functionality

Problem:Why are F2 buffs counter productive to use?

For instance, LB users need 1k range to get optimal damage. But when you send your stalker/red moa out to attack, none of the F2 buffs will reach the pet owner. But if you keep your pet on passive to try and self buff, you lose the dps you’re expected to get via the pet damage. All F2 buffs of this sort are counter intuitive to use for range weapons, LB/SB/Axe, especially in large crowds.

Solution:: F2 pet buffs should ignore range for the pet owner and should be guaranteed to benefit the owner even in massive player filled events.[/b]

Associated Risks

None. It’s how it should be functioning given how this class is designed.

Specific Game Mode

WvW, but applies to PVE/SPvP also.

Proposal Overview

To have a coherent frame work with pets that makes sense, given the design of the pet centric class and to have proper balance.

Goal of Proposal

Give the class the flexibility in builds and to help balance the damage dealt by pets. To encourage proper pet management and to be selective in pet usage across the whole spectrum of changing game content.

Proposal Functionality

Problem: Damage from pets has too many variables to have proper balance, especially with Beastmastery trait line. (e.g. 30BM Jag vs 0BM Bear) As a result, weapon coefficient is being low balled but at the same time you can’t even decide how often a pet should land a hit despite the unreliability of pets.

Solution: Let players modify the weapon coefficient on a sliding scale. Let’s assume pets account for 15% of the class’ damage. The deeper you spec into BM, then the more damage pets will do, and less your weapons would do. If you spec 0 into BM, pets will be as is currently and weapon damage goes up 15%. If you spec 30 into BM, they’ll be faster and hit harder than they do currently at the BM30 lvl and the weapon coefficient will go down 15% accordingly.

Problem: Pets are part of the DPS calculation, then why should there be pet down time? It does not make sense given the damage model that we have currently as pets are expected to do some DPS, however little.

Solution: There should not be any pet down time. The penalty for ineffective pet management should be the inability to use the pet/utility that you want, but pet uptime should be 100%.

This could also play into traiting BM as mentioned above, like the way eles trait into Arcana, the cool down for the pair swap back to the one with the wounded pet would be lower the deeper you trait into BM. Change the controls as follows:

F1 = toggle for attack/retreat
F2 = pet utility, same as currently
F3 = cycles through pet pairs. (e.g. Wolf + Bear into Jag + Moa etc.)
F4 = swap pets within the current active pair, same as currently (e.g. Wolf to Bear.)

Associated Risks

Players might end up not specing into BM because it’s easier to manage. But that is a problem of not having a fully functioning pet system that works on a competitive lvl, not an issue with this proposal. The onus would be to improve pets to a point where players can find it advantageous to spec into BM.

Secondly, there should be a way to stop a player from cycling through all the pets and blowing all their F2s in spams. Perhaps maybe F2 of same type s will share a cool down across pet pairs? However I don’t see it as a severe issue given pets can’t CC chains even when all pets are used.

Spicyhash.7605:

People think that crit proc sigils will be so over the top, but they’re gonna be severely nerfed. Using a flame sigil it is possible to crit for around 2k, and air sigil is like ~1k. they also said they will be changing them to crit 100% of the time on crit, and then have a cooldown. so..

either a) they will get a long (30-60 sec cd) or b) damage will be greatly reduced with a 9 second icd.

they are only changing the way sigils work, not buffing them.

This.

And I have a strong feeling they’ll roll out the stack based sigil fix so you’ll lose your 25 stacks when you unequip the weapon.

I’ve been reporting this bug since the beta.

Doubt they’ll fix it.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Durzlla.6295:

I’m pretty sure I out ranger as #2, but that’s cause I play an ele and know they need a little more love than us… But it’s pretty unanimous that ranger and ele are the 2 that need most work

Eles? Who’re invincible all the time, but in exchange, they just full heal up by hitting 8k criticals? C’mon…

I agree with Durzlla since I alt an Ele. You do have more tricks up your sleeves as an ele but that’s not worth much aside from being able to annoy people. I run fresh air 0/30/0/10/30 with the usual cantrips and I can dance closer to the zerg and outlive my ranger but I can’t do kitten to them. The only thing Eles can do is go full zerk staff to zerg surf, or roam with bunker D/D, cuz otherwise you’ll get melted.

And it’s quite hard to land the 8k hits on people. Churning earth is basically a death sentence in a zerg, plus you need to blow a teleport to land it. Fire grab is even worse to land than maul. You don’t need to light someone on fire first before getting an 8k maul and it’s on a drastically lower cooldown vs fire grab. Plus there’s nothing to CC the person there like hilt bash.

Believe it or not, it’s actually easier to do damage on my zerker ranger than it is on an ele. The reward is not worth the amount of effort put into it. The concept of the ele is fun but it really lacks a lot of refinement. It’s the masochist in me that made me go from the worst class to the second worst one.

runeblade.7514:

Okay, lets give Warriors the ability to fly on their Greatsword that leaves a trail of rainbows with yakety sax music and the enemies are flying pandas from outer space that uses a rainbow friendship cannon because we don’t like realism.[/quote]

I think Anet met you half way already.

1. Ranger
2. Ele
3. Engineer.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Oh man, you want over the top?
I see Aridia’s BLESS Ranger, and raise you a Black Desert Ranger
http://youtu.be/TmhFBTHrt8E?t=2m11s

Darned Western Market and it’s love for crappy tab targeting. I can’t tell you how much I wanted Longbow to play more like this when I first heard about GW2.

Haha I was gonna post some Black Desert beta footage but I figured people would QQ about how OP it is, cuz I’ve seen clips of where it looks like the auto attack has strafe dodging build in for the archer.

And I’m confused about people’s concern over “realism” in class design, cuz little gremlins and people that can create clones are realistic? Do they not realize you can jump and shoot in this game? That’s like the antithesis of realism for a shooter…

This is how a bow user is suppose to operate. They’re meant to kite:

http://youtu.be/DGiRlGyuMkk?t=30s

I’m more convinced than ever that this class should get a Fast Hand trait like warriors. I’d actually argue that should be no swap cool down for this game across all classes but that’s for another thread. Again, every class has gap closers, range, and CC options. There’s zero need to disable kiting as it’s a L2P issue, not a balance one.

Notice also the channel time of the skills. Fast and furious, or slow and powerful. This is what’s missing from the ranger longbow along with the lack of CC. Lightning reflex doesn’t cut it with the long cool downs.