Guild Wars 2

Don’t play a power ranger

Condi Regen Bunkers do well against these things. Try a 0/0/30/30/10 type build

This is what happens when all of your utilities are defensive in nature. We need some offensive utilities added. Ones that don’t require a 30pt investment in a tree would be ideal.

Gufuu.6384:

Just turn off auto attack. You really shouldn’t have it on to begin with unless you want to kill yourself.

You’ll have it on if you want to maximize DPS…

This is what you guys are advocating here. Take a DPS hit so you can use a weapon for a class that already provides middle tier damage to live with a mechanic that no other class needs to deal with.

But as others have said… this is ANet’s desire as well so no reason to continue on with the discussion.

CETheLucid:

JonPeters.5630:

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

Too much typing for the bus, I’ll try and discuss more when I’m in.

Jon

P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Now as for the 12/10 patch, that specifically mentions power based Rangers as a focal point of the patch and yet the only changes that will directly impact power based Rangers are the longbow changes (which show only helps to normalize the weapon’s damage with shortbow). There’s also last patch where the focal point of that patch was to improve classes with a lack of group utility and again the Ranger got nothing.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to be optimistic with this class. I personally stopped being patient about 6 months ago when I saw nothing was changing to help the core problems with the class. But if you want to hang tough and be ignorant to the problems this class has with some kind of blind faith in ANet getting things done, don’t get in the way of those who want to voice their concerns in hopes ANet can’t continue to be ignorant. Don’t agree, that’s your right… but don’t sit there trying to tell us ANet will fix it when a year has gone by and problems from beta still exist today.

bri.2359:

Regarding the disappearance of Jon Peter from this thread.

Most likely he has been told by the higher-ups to stop posting. I suspect that publicly admitting the borked pet issues cannot/will not be fixed opened an internal can-of-worms at Anet. It makes whatever future tweaks Anet had planned for the class, and whatever suggestions we come up with, pretty insignificant and meaningless in light of this.

Anet steadfastly refuses to do what is necessary, they will not fix the broken pet mechanic, nor make it optional, nor delete it entirely for some other mechanic.

I suggested awhile back that the proper thing for Anet to now is to allow any account playing a ranger to be able to transfer all soubound kit, unlocked dyes, unused skill points, crafting professions, etc., to any other character. If Anet did this, I would delete my ranger in an instant, and I assume many others would a well.

Until then I am stuck with a class I stopped enjoying playing over 6 months ago.

I doubt that. While there’s no doubt that he mucked things up, I’m sure he stopped responding to this thread because they’re no longer taking feedback for the patch this thread is talking about. When they locked the main thread a week or so ago I’m sure they all stopped reading.

The only thing we can do is continue to present information and hope things will change with the next patch next year some time.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

All classes need to deal with their class mechanism. How effectively one uses them is up to each person. No class can drop their mechanism. Lets be clear what these are.

Mesmer’s = illusions (clones, phantasm) and shattering

Ranger’s = Pets

Guardian’s = Virtue (justice, courage, Resolve)

Necromancer’s = Life force and death shroud

Elemental’s = Attunements (fire, earth, water, air)

Warrior’s = Adrenaline

Thief’s = Initiative Steal and dual wield. and (not stealth)

Engineer’s = kits and turrets.

Some of these give extra life or damage even if you aren’t aware of them you are using them.

If you play any of these classes and dislike or refuse to use these mechanics then you are probably playing the wrong class.

No one is disputing this.

The issue is that none of those other classes have been told by a developer that their mechanic is broken and they aren’t working on fixing it. The 12/10 thread has thrown the whole class in disarray and has given justification to the players who are upset with the way ANet has handled this class.

The issue now is why should the players be penalized for a system ANet has no intention of fixing? At what point should players look at this class as a realistic option in Guild Wars 2?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Solid Gold.9310:

“The Nightmare Within”.

More like “The Living Nightmare” for Rangers.

And more proof that content being added renders the pet utterly and totally useless.

…you guys run through the tower with your pets on aggressive? Set them on passive, stow them, and run with Signet of the Hunt. Don’t try to kill anything other than the group event bosses in you way, and get to the center so you can reach the next section. The entirety of surviving the tower is dependent on you playing smart and avoiding fights whenever possible. Basically, the equivalent of learning to survive in WvW and in Arah (where you have to dodge a LOT of mobs).

Who in the world has their pet on aggressive…

jcbroe.4329:

Whoever on the Living World team decided it was time for more mine fields that my pets blunder into and trigger with the new Tower content; thank you, just thank you.

I greatly appreciate the time you take to make the content enjoyable across all classes, and the eye for detail and mindfulness you take when you create content.

/sarcasm

lol. I wish I had frap running sometimes. I was running in a straight line and my pet was trying its darndest to hit every single mine in the most obscure path imaginable.

The wells on that plant boss are also lolworthy since the pet can’t escape without swapping.

Solstice.1097:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Bronze league faces the same problems the other leagues do. Servers like SF IOJ HOD DH and GOM have so much more population/coverage than the bottom ranked servers of DR AR ET FC that a match ups are almost always a blowout in bronze league by one of the above servers. As for the FC guy above you guys just happened to get a very easy match up this week facing probably the two lowest populated servers of NA.

oh really? in the last 6 weeks FC has beaten every bronze server except HoD.

We’ve gotten 2nd place the first 3 weeks of the league (or is this the 3rd week?). Each loss was because we were horribly out numbered. The first 2 weeks we were paired with a server that gave up half way through and we couldn’t hold out in a head to head match-up. SF was lawlworthy at its finest.

Not liking bronze. As a fellow FCer I had very little fun last week because SF outnumbered us 3:1 at our best time. I’m not enjoying this week either because we’re doing the same to them. Next week will likely turn into the same thing the first couple weeks were like where it’s fun until one server gives up half way through the week and it turns into a 1 on 1 fight where, again… FC can’t hold out due to lack of numbers. Just like we saw the first 2 weeks.

This whole WvW league thing is a bust and I’d prefer never doing it again honestly. There are simply too many issues and ANet isn’t the least bit interested in resolving any of them. If you play on the top 3 you’re having fun. Bottom 3? What I’d give for some consistency from 1 week to the next.

This is a problem with the whole class. I would agree with you that the Sword and Shortbow are the worst of the bunch, but what’s gained by using the various skills of other weapons is largely underwhelming as well. This is why many people complain that this class is passive. There’s really no synergy or combo within each weapon or between weapon sets.

Longbow for example… you have a knockback but nothing to follow it up with. It’s purely a defensive ability. Rapid Fire does very little real damage compared to auto shot. It’s benefits are to put vulnerability on the target and to be used at min range. But why? What do you follow rapid fire with once you have vuln on the target? Same with Hunter’s Shot… a great skill that can be used in conjunction with remorseless which offers the weapon nothing because there’s no real burst available and no reason to reset opening strike. Longbow is just like Greatsword… it’s more of a support weapon than a primary weapon.

Axe also is mostly utility oriented. It has an AE shot that does low damage but bleeds (similar in effect to poison volley), it has a chill, which is powerful, but when all is said and done most of us look at it for the snaring and not the cooldown debuff. So it’s effectively the same thing as shortbow 4. Worse still is the fact that axe is so awful in damage it’s only really used as a condition weapon that overlaps so heavily with shortbow.

The whole class just doesn’t really ‘do’ anything.

Serdoc.7261:

Druidic.3146 (Lady Steamhawke is his ranger’s name) has been running a Power Longbow Greatsword build lately, got him fairly high in the PvP leader-boards.

The build looks to be even better after the Dec 10th patch, so maybe it is a potential option after the patch.

This post is kind of useless without a spec…

Dardamaniac.1295:

Atherakhia.4086:

Dardamaniac.1295:

Seriously i didnt want to be a kitten but WvW has minimun skill..I tried to watch some GvG and all i saw was a huge aoefest…..Ppl just spamming aoes and finishers, thats why they dont bring Rangers…..20 ppl spamming aoe and finishers at another 20 ppl is totally lame.
I dont mind enjoying it but dont tell me that this requires skills and synergy..Its not like if you miss a dodge, if you interupt a heal, its not like you actually watching what is happening…..
I dont even mention this skillfull door breaking……………

Obviously sPvP>WvW in skill terms

I’d hate to burst your bubble but again, we’re trying to compare the skill level between checkers and tic tac toe. There’s not much synergy or skill required in take-and-hold style gameplay either. When this game offers real arenas and guild vs guild options (something you can only do in a WvW environment currently) we can start talking about how class synergy and individual skill starts to have a noticeable impact.

But to pretend there’s much skill involved with the current sPvP condifocused meta dominated by a handful of classes with no representation from the other half? come on….

What i bolded is totally false..Theres a lot of synergy, you dont just walk around capping points..Not only synergy but full awarness of the map..Thats why soloq fails so hard..Ppl from WvW-pve keep attacking the far point.

Ive faced many times in sPvP WvW guys and i faced many times in WvW WvW heros..From my personal experience i can say this for sure..They suck….Zerging and 5+ fights makes you bad…You really dont have any impact in fights.
In a 20vs20, plz stop saying that every action you take matters so much….Plz. Its ok to like it, its ok to have fun but no…Dat aoe spamming aint skillfull.
I wont say that there arent any good WvW players, ofc they are…But in an average scale spvpers>WvWers…And im not saying in a 1v1 situations only, they have much better awareness of their class

Of course…

/me pats you on the head

I just wish there were ways to play with teams less than 5. I just want to queue up with my brother sometimes and get some games in together and it’s an absolute pain 90% of the time.

Bombsaway.7198:

It is an adjustment but I think you may find far more rangers using spirits.
After all, you don’t have to spec 30 in nature to get the spirits to move with you.

Those 10 extra points can create whole new builds leveraging spirits.

You need 30 to get them to use their ability on death which is also critical to the build. Nothing has changed for a spirit build. The condi/regen bunker builds got some improvements.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Seriously i didnt want to be a kitten but WvW has minimun skill..I tried to watch some GvG and all i saw was a huge aoefest…..Ppl just spamming aoes and finishers, thats why they dont bring Rangers…..20 ppl spamming aoe and finishers at another 20 ppl is totally lame.
I dont mind enjoying it but dont tell me that this requires skills and synergy..Its not like if you miss a dodge, if you interupt a heal, its not like you actually watching what is happening…..
I dont even mention this skillfull door breaking……………

Obviously sPvP>WvW in skill terms

I’d hate to burst your bubble but again, we’re trying to compare the skill level between checkers and tic tac toe. There’s not much synergy or skill required in take-and-hold style gameplay either. When this game offers real arenas and guild vs guild options (something you can only do in a WvW environment currently) we can start talking about how class synergy and individual skill starts to have a noticeable impact.

But to pretend there’s much skill involved with the current sPvP condifocused meta dominated by a handful of classes with no representation from the other half? come on….

sPvP is like checkers.
WvW is like Tic Tac Toe.

Neither that complicated.

When 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 arenas come out we’ll see what chess is like.

Given the scope of the game I don’t understand why they’d slow down leveling at all. I do agree with some of the earlier concepts that a mix of crafting, leveling, PvPing, etc should be the ideal way to level… but it certainly should be quicker.

Eurantien.4632:

Well the burst of power does lie completely in maul which is a shame but where power builds excel is in interrupts. It is possible to 100-0 any target with well timed interrupts between you and your pet if they don’t have stab (that’s another thing we lack is boon removal).

I don’t think we should have burst on longbow (though max range quickness autoattack is devastating against the right targets. I think the longbow has enough AoE with barrage and I feel it is a pretty solid weapon for PvP though I do think we DEFINITELY need to be able to move while barraging in WvW.

I think the idea to lower GS/LB wep swap would be really helpful to the build as well.

The main reason I advocate changing the weapon is there’s very little synergy within the weapon. Other classes have skills they can tie together and this makes the weapons feel more engaging and less passive. The Ranger weapons don’t really have this other than swoop+hilt+maul.

Longbow we have a stealth to reset remorseless, but don’t have anything to do once we do this but attack with effectively our #1 skill. We have a knockback but nothing to chain that up with other than our #1 skill. We have barrage that, as you mentioned, feels very out of place because of the root. I also feel Barrage is very weak for all the downsides to it but I’m not sure what they could do to it to ever make it feel like a good fit for the weapon. Though removing the root would certainly help.

Why not change one of our signets to do something similar to the Ele’s marks? If you have a shortbow equipped, activating the signet does X, if you have a sword equipped, it does Y, if you have an Axe equipped it does Z, if you have a longbow equipped it is a killshot style attack?

Could also just remove barrage and replace it with a killshot style skill and allow barrage to replace spike trap. If barrage were then changed to immobilize on the first weave of attacks and bleed on each hit it would be infinitely better than a fully traited spike trap.

The weapon swap trait is my least favorite idea, but it would also work.

IMO the class as a whole is teetering between useless and great and just needs some nudges to get us there. A single reliable form of burst to compliment rapid fire is really all I think a power ranger needs. F2 responsiveness and condi cures is about all the class as a whole needs to move to the point where number crunching and trait adjustments would finish us off and make us a complete class.

There’s tons of pet peeves I still have, but these 3 things would at least make the class whole.

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Cufufalating.8479:

I wouldnt have any problem with pets being forced on us if ANet was willing to put in the time to make them work properly and effectively, but since Jon has essentially told us he knows they dont work as well as they could/should but they arent going to fix it any time soon.. they really should consider reducing their part in the rangers playstyle.

This has been my complaint as well. I want pets gone simply because ANet can’t be bothered to get them working in the first place. If they could get them to the point players were happy with them I’d be fine with them being a part of this class. But given they have the same problems they had a year ago, ANet has made it blatantly obvious in the other thread that pets aren’t on their radar, and pets are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this failure of a class, I’d say it’s time to wave the white flag.

Ather, May i ask how many “ok folks its time to quit” posts you have made now???
I mean no offense, but, if you gonna spread doom and gloom, could you just silently reroll something and not ruin the mood for everyone?
If you could, thank you.

I haven’t said I’d reroll to my knowledge. I have one of most classes and I still come back to this class. But I’m also not an ANet apologist like many on this forum. Feel free to label me a pessimist if you must, but your attitude of ‘lets just have faith and things will work themselves out’ didn’t work for the first year. Perhaps it’s time to be a little more critical.

I can’t think of a single reason for someone to make a new Ranger today. If you can then preach on brother.

Eurantien.4632:

I think if rapid fire cast time was reduced a bit it would be really solid. While power ranger is a solid build it is lacking something. It lacks either damage, a way to lock down a target, or survivability. Changing one of those things will make it balanced imo. However, I do not think it is anything that should be done to the ranger or the skills the only thing it lacks in terms of survivability is sustain vs. condis. All that is needed for just a tad bit more sustain is one more condi clear besides SoR which I believe should be something given by traits. Something like grandmaster skirmishing: remove 3 conditions when you gain quickness so that QZ can be used to clear condis as well. This would open up build diversity a lot especially something like 0/30/0/0/30 a power BM essentially that is not reliant on EB. But I digress, the thing that the power ranger most lacks is pet control because if we could control just one more pet skill we would have the ability to lock down targets easier (since we wouldn’t have to have god tier pet control/timing like is needed now) which would also increase our damage and help with survivability via self peels.

I personally find the extreme lack of AE and burst a larger issue for power rangers specifically. The poor condition cleansing is a class wide problem. Same with the pet responsiveness. Even with strong condi cleanse and F2 that worked even half the time I still would say power Rangers are probably the least effective power based class in the game.

Without burst or AE there’s simply no way to pressure the target. Without sufficient pressure it all becomes a very mechanical process where the opponent isn’t concerned with timing heals or avoiding interrupts and things like this. He knows at 25% to cast a heal because even if the Ranger interrupted him, the Ranger couldn’t bleed the remaining HP before he could get it off again later.

I don’t feel the class needs tons of burst or ae added to the class. A single reliable source of burst would probably be enough. Give us an aimed shot for example to have some synergy within the weapon. Or just give us a trait to swap weapons faster so we could swap to GS and back out once maul is dodged.

Without burst or AE power builds simply don’t have any real use. They’re more of an annoyance than anything else.

Brett.4305:

It SEEMS as if the Dec 10th longbow buff will equalize the
damage output at all ranges. IT SEEMS.

Equalize it to the shortbow, yes.

Cufufalating.8479:

I wouldnt have any problem with pets being forced on us if ANet was willing to put in the time to make them work properly and effectively, but since Jon has essentially told us he knows they dont work as well as they could/should but they arent going to fix it any time soon.. they really should consider reducing their part in the rangers playstyle.

This has been my complaint as well. I want pets gone simply because ANet can’t be bothered to get them working in the first place. If they could get them to the point players were happy with them I’d be fine with them being a part of this class. But given they have the same problems they had a year ago, ANet has made it blatantly obvious in the other thread that pets aren’t on their radar, and pets are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this failure of a class, I’d say it’s time to wave the white flag.

Taku.6352:

mzt.3270:

Fluffball.8307:

The game isn’t only about damage numbers. Rangers have massive amounts of CC and massive amounts of evasion. That is worth an awful lot.

Also get yourself a 1 handed sword and stop using barrage in 1 on 1 fights with a warrior.

LOL…. that’s all I have to say is LOL. Do not even bother to answer this kid, its obvious he has never played a ranger and is too worked up that his any threat to toppling his guardian off the top spot means another underwear wash day for his mother.

He’s referring to soft CC aka chill, cripple, immobilize and those we have in every weapon set and in many utilities. Main problem with soft CC is that they are rather weak and very easily nullified whereas only way to counter hard CC is with stability.

If this class had a fraction what the other poster implied kiting would be a real thing in this game. It isn’t. There is no way at all for a Ranger to maintain a ranged advantage on any melee class in this game. It’s so bad the idea of a Ranged advantage only really has any real impact when fighting on a wall. Why then should ranged weapons come with a built-in handicap over melee weapons when melee classes clearly have numerically more, if not more powerful, ways to stay in melee range?

I wouldn’t necessarily agree that a full barrage and pet should kill anyone dumb enough to stand in it and take the full effect, the general point behind your post being how awful this class is can’t be stated enough.

With so little burst and AE available to this class you would expect what little it does have to pull their weight and that simply isn’t the case. From terrible trait design to ineffective weapon options there’s little reason to play this class. ESPECIALLY after the short sighted and ignorant responses from Mr. Peters in the other thread on this class.

Soilder.3607:

DaShi.1368:

Remove #4 and it’s a fine weapon.

1. is like the best skill on it. Knockback on a mere 15 second cool down or even 12 if traited. How can you not like that?

Pretty much.

The failure of the weapon truly is barrage. It’s a weak AE, it provides a very weak form of CC, it roots the ranger briefly to pull off, and because it does waves of damage it often gets the ranger killed due to things like retaliation. The only reason barrage is considered good at all is because of how pitiful the AE options for this class are to begin with.

Longbow will never be a viable weapon so long as the burst and AE capabilities for this class are so awful. This doesn’t mean you have to tie more burst and AE directly to the weapon, only it’s a power weapon with no means of actually finishing a target.

I imagine everyone gets a chest since everyone needs to achievements for the key. 1st will then get the gold trophy finisher, 2nd silver, 3rd bronze. Nothing else.

PvE? Shortsword.
WvW? Pretty much all viable as far as the Ranger goes.
sPvP? Shortbow+Sword/Dagger

Substance E.4852:

Vaxx.3178:

I assume with some of the issues brought up….the REAL issues….has scared the dev away.

Sit back, and wait for some dev replies next year I guess.

Mostly just people who saw the red icon and figured it would be a good time to rant and rave like lunatics and kill all sense of polite discourse.

We actually got him to consider a possible semi-fix for the 1H sword…

Are you implying the complaints aren’t justified? Did you miss where he said they know about our problems but can’t be bothered to fix them because they aren’t easy fixes? Despite the game being out a year?

I’m sorry but THE core mechanic this whole class is designed and balanced around doesn’t work and they have told us quite clearly it’s not on their radar despite these issues being around since beta.

I’d suggest reading the Ranger thread in the Ranger forums so you can nail the coffin shut and move on to another class.

Wow, you guys really must have busted your butts to get this thing polished this quickly. Can’t wait.

GS #1: Increase the damage substantially. If this requires the removal of the evade, so be it. The evade feels very tacked on and while helping in giant cluster[censored], it’s all just random to begin with. Rather the weapon offer me more than Maul offensively then a random evade that may (but probably won’t) help. Why not make the 3rd hit grant our pet Aegis/Evade. This way even if we’re taking a beating, the pet stands a chance of staying up.

GS #2: Whatever. It’s a great skill. It’s our only real option for burst class wide. It’s not a realistic option for burst because the rest of the weapon is so awful for damage. This means if our burst doesn’t kill the target, they have a huge amount of time to recover while we’re stuck in this pitiful weapon.

GS #3: An evade on swoop sounds fine. If you’re just throwing us a bone with this, it’s welcome. Not sure it’s needed but I’m not one to turn away gifts.

GS #4: This weapon is great when countering range. It’s great when countering a single melee target. It’s awful in other scenarios because of the rooting effect while we go through the animation to kick someone. It would be a huge improvement if we could move while roundhouse kicking someone in the face or we continued to evade while playing through the kicking animation. Obviously simply allowing us to move would be the best option for us as the weapon is almost a purely support/run away weapon as it is.

GS #5: It’s hard to hit moving targets that are running in the same direction as you. While it appears to have the same range as other melee skills, I did notice just now that shield bash actually has a leap and I don’t have any problem landing that skill on fleeing targets. Is there additional code on leap attacks to help them hit moving targets? If so, it would be nice if GS #5 were made a leap.

Chokolata.1870:

definately longer range , perhaps like the warrior shield bash

They have the same range according to the wiki. I wonder if the leap mechanic on shield bash comes into play. I’ve never had problems landing shield bash on a target running away. Half the time hilt bash misses.

Prysin.8542:

longbow has always been, and will forever be, viable as a secondary weapon in WvW. the 10th will just reinforce this position.

GS + LB is a good mix for zerg surfing. Works like a charm, especially in skill lag situations.

The problem with the GS + LB combo is you’re effectively using 2 support weapons. Neither weapon can stand on their own or excel at any single function.

Was this a troll post?

Holland.9351:

JonPeters.5630:

• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.

Coming back on this. Only the Longbow is really AoE and that only in 1 skill.
Shortbow only has Poison Volley which is a fan, not really an AoE.
Unless you count Piercing Arrows as AoE I suppose.

I would like to see Longbow get another AoE attached to it.
Sigil of Fire synergises really well with the longbow in WvW, it would be great if it could be default behaviour of a skill.
So in a sense like the Smoldering Arrow on Warrior Longbow. A single target skill with a radius (not a targetable AoE like Barrage).

The question is on which skill:
Long Range shot would be awesome if it had a small radius attached to it.
Rapid Fire would also be awesome if it had a radius, but it already does a lot of other things (multiple hits, no penalty to distance and vulnerability)
Hunter’s Shot could work, but it does a small amount of damage and already does other things as well (Stealth/resetting Remorseless and pet swiftness)
Point Blank shot is too short range and needs to be kept off cooldown if possible.
Barrage could be replaced with a single hit skill with a radius I suppose, but is probably too big of a change. I wouldn’t mind personally however.

Would a radius added to Long Range Shot be possible?
Otherwise Hunter’s Shot I suppose, since it doesn’t do as much damage and has a much longer cooldown. The problem is the stealth stopping auto-attack if you want to use it for damage.

My conclusion: I don’t know. A Sigil of Fire-like trait would be nice I suppose.

Why does it have to be a weapon skill? This class has such a poor selection of utility skills to choose from, why can’t we consolidate some of those and introduce new utilities that actually provide some offensive power?

Barrage is also awful in its current form so instead of trying to force a second AE on us, why not just make barrage a good AE to begin with?

Elenire.7306:

I agree with many other posters. I like the evade on greatsword where it’s at. With counterattack and dodge we have plenty of “active” evasions. I don’t have any issue with passive evade being part of the autoattack. I do think it could use a small damage increase to the auto-attack, something in the 5-10% range and a blast finisher on maul would be amazing. I don’t understand why it doesn’t have one, seems a perfect skill to put it on.

Just a thought for 1H sword Serpent Strike skill. Currently it inflicts poison on the target what if this was changed to weakness? With all the complaints about the auto attack chain and the difficulty in dodging with it, using this skill to avoid damage and then inflict weakness may give us a little more sustain if used properly. Heck this could maybe be done on Dagger 4 rather than sword 3?

Much prefer it on dagger and not sword 3 to be honest. Given the extreme lack of burst available to this class, poison is pretty much necessary if you ever plan to beat anyone to counter all the regen and healing.

Hedgehog in the fog.1053:

-_-, its annoying not game breaking….

When your pet accounts for 25-40% of your damage depending on what weapon and skill you’re looking at doesn’t work properly even half the time, it’s game breaking. The frustration is now doubled because they know about the problem and can’t fix it in the forseeable future.

Worse still is there are ways to ‘band-aid’ it until a fix can be done, but ANet isn’t willing to do it because the animation trigger is apparently the real thing holding back progress. I completley understand their reasoning for not fixing it (a lot of other stuff needs to be done that doesn’t require nearly the same amount of resources to fix) but it’s not fair for the playerbase to be the victim.

So how do you resolve it? ANet’s taking the approach that F2’s will remain broken for now. If we aren’t here in a year having this same conversation I’ll be amazed. They’re also taking the approach that even though we’ve waited a year for change, we can wait some more because the issues take effort to fix and none of our issues are eay (low hanging fruit).

I am very pleased ANet has been as open as they are in this thread. It’s just all very disheartening and lends justification for the people who quit the class and why this class is ranked 8th place in WvW.

Tynan.6279:

Only way to go is Asura, easily get lost in the chaos all while you pew pew pew.

I will admit, Asura are the only race that look good in that hat with the feather on it and the face mask. They look amazing. I’m making an Asura engineers solely for that look.

Hedgehog in the fog.1053:

First, thank you, and Im sorry if people are attacking you, and if my suggestions seem like Im telling you how to do your job, I apologize.

My question, removing evade on GS1 would lower its defensive abilities. It would make it more demand, yes but overall a lowering. Would the offensive capabilities be increased? I.E. if you removed the evade from GS1, would you increase the damage coefficients on GS1?

Another suggestion, I like the evade on the swoop, but maybe add a blind effect onto it afterwards. So, you get an evade, then a blind. That would give you the ability to avoid a decent amount of damage on demand.

My only other request is for a, I suppose update on the longbow, and the traits associated with it. I know ranger doesn’t mean using range, but Id like to.

Thank you again!

Honestly, I’d say drop the evade if the weapon could do competetive damage. Right now my biggest issue with the weapon is how it’s our primary source of burst, but outside of Maul the weapon is a utility/support weapon there strictly for defensive purposes. This is why I wish the class had a trait to reduce the cooldown on weapon swap. At least then the class’ burst deficiency would be made up some because we wouldn’t be stuck in a bad weapon for the full duration.

The evade is very tacked on. I understand it’s very powerful in zerg scenarios because you can run in and avoid all damage 1 out of 3 seconds, but are you accomplishing anything with the other 2 seconds other than being a body in the swarm?

JonPeters.5630:

OGDeadHead.8326:

JonPeters.5630:

No because in order for the creatures to attack they are going to use animations. For example I’m not going to spit fire breath out of a drake without it using its fire spitting animation.

Add quickness to F2.

Quickness is not the problem. The problem is the server delay which would also have to wait for in order to get quickness applied.

Well something has to give. Players are suffering because you guys won’t allow the skills to function without the animation. What if you change the concept of the animations?

For example… Ranger hits F2. It puts a Howl buff on the Wolf for 1 second. After the buff fades, it AE fears and plays a animation of a wolf howl much in the same way when we use Horn #5?

You could do this with every attack. A drake head appears spitting fire/frost/lightning/rings. Owls could show a large owl swoop by with 2 slashes coming out etc. VEry ‘final fantasy’eque’.

Rym.1469:

We could fire two arrows at the time we fire one now. You know, double draw

Sustained damage isn’t the issue though. If you compare just the #1 abilities, our weapons actually have the highest damage. Even higher than staff for Ele’s I do believe (mesmer GS may be higher, never ran numbers). The issue is every other class has things that add to that damage whereas the Ranger skills detract. Rapid Fire is only used because it also provides vulnerability. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be used either unless you were in short range.

I don’t think we’ll get the Warrior #1 ability. the Warrior burst ability on the other hand would be nice :/

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

But you do realize that Rangers are handicapped for their pets right? We know our damage is reduced because we assume the pet is up. Many of us assume the reason the class has such poor burst and AE is because the pets are supposed to provide it in some fashion. I’m not sure it’s fair to leave Rangers broken for another year while we wait for the core mechanic of the class to be made useful, do you?

Despite many players wanting you to wave the white flag and get rid of the pet, most of us realize that isn’t an option. What can be done for Rangers in the short term to offset the fact that pets are so unreliable or outright useless like they are in WvW. If the F2 abilities can’t be made to work should the pet just be a new ‘condition’ that is effectively a DOT that can be killed?

JonPeters.5630:

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

Too much typing for the bus, I’ll try and discuss more when I’m in.

Jon

P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.

This is the post I’ve been waiting to read for a very long time. Thank you so much. It’s nice to know that despite the patches coming and going resolving very minor things that the larger issues aren’t falling on deaf ears.

As you mentioned, there isn’t any quick fix for this class. The traits themselves just don’t make much sense where most of them are, others are incredibly weak by themselves and need to be merged, but you can’t just do that because you’d need to introduce whole new traits to replace them.

We realize the developers are limited in what they can tell the players, but this class is in a rough spot and could really use a 6month plan or a very high-level discussion on the direction things are going. Especially with power Rangers where it feels like the class just doesn’t have anything that would ever allow a power build to work.

It’s probably because you’re expected to get sharpened edges. But yea, who knows. The main draw to condition builds in this game is to bunker with them. Especially after dire gear came out and the horrendous returns on your investment with healing gear.

Just another one of those things you can chalk up to being a Ranger. Poor trait design is our specialty.

spiritus.7983:

Arpheus.6918:

All medium armor classes seem to be the least wanted classes in WvW. Thief, engi and ranger

That is pretty sad. Time to buff these classes for zerg fights.

yes, more buff for the thiefs coz god mode in not enough.
also thiefs are intended as solo class, to some extent all mediums are intended as solo-ish class.

This is an MMO. Solo class shouldn’t even exist. Thieves are strong roaming classes, sure. There are ways to improve their group value without impacting their roaming game though. Shortbow for example. Not a strong roaming weapon because it’s mostly used to escape with or travel fast. Give it more group utility. Allow trick shot to bounce off friendly players for example giving them a boon. Limited impact in solo roaming but would add some value to the class in zergs. Traps are another place. Completely useless by and large. Still wouldn’t be taken even if buffed for roaming because you need the defensive skills. Could provide very unique WvW value.

It should have the time reduced to 3.5 seconds instead of 4.5 seconds on the channel. The cooldown I think is reasonable though. Especially since vulnerability is on the skill now.

Can’t blame you. This class has no real focus or direction right now and these changes just further prove that. For a patch that was supposed to help power Rangers out, next to nothing was done for them. All they did was make LB slightly more viable for damage over shortbow.

We still have no movement on our horribly designed pet mechanics. We still need 30pts in a tree to make the vast majority of our utility skills worth slotting. We still have very obvious issues with this class going completley ignored.

I’ve asked for months and I’ll ask again… ANet needs to tell us what direction they want to take this class. It has poor burst, poor ae, poor utility, poor condition coverage, poor condition spread, and pets that are more of a hindrance than a benefit to the class. What is this class supposed to do? And how have we gone a year without doing it?

Peace out.

I agree with Choko… on paper it sounds great, but when you consider you need a 30pt trait to make it work on you it’s very underwhelming. The trait itself should trigger on both you and the pet regardless. But if it did that it still wouldn’t be something a power ranger would want to use and would just further overpower spirit rangers, which is likely why they are requiring you to get 30marks to use it.

Honestly speaking, without 30 in marks the trait is hardly worth an adept slot. If they moved it down it would be an easier pill to swallow for a power based build. But going 20 in Nature is a huge hit a power Ranger can’t make.