Guild Wars 2

More of the issue of traits are how most effect the pet, but not the ranger and most of the ones that effect the ranger are weaker version of what other professions are given.

So if Anet wants to balance around the pet being up and active then they will have to re-balance how the pet interacts with the world. Better to make the ranger able to stand alone and have the pet be a mechanic that improves the ranger’s performance instead of the ranger being there to buff the pet.

Most of the issue with ranger pet is that the pets are overly vulnerable/fragile for the dynamics of the game. While a player can see a tell and dodge, the F3 on the pet isn’t always going to get the pet out of range of the attack leaving the only other option to swap pets (if not on cooldown).

Additional problems of the ranger include poor trait design in which the pet is getting most of the benefits from the trait (probably to deal with the pet not scaling with our equipment (or equipment of it own) and basically ranger with no equipment at 80 has the same jungle stalker (or other pet of choice)) as a fully exotic geared ranger.

Nope just looks like some thread necromancy.

Any chance we could get the ability to move while channeling this skill?

In before infraction.

Anyone else notice that swirling strike no longer has the watery current bubble (for lack of a better description), though the sound effect remains the same and it only reflects projectiles during part of the animation?

Probably the price for opening strikes working.

Azrhyel.3942:

Well, if they can mess up pet animations at least it means they must be somehow working on pets in the first place…. I like

Not really the LS patch broke traps and they were not even something being effected that patch I would just messing with traps just broke pet animations. I wonder how adjusting any of the other ranger traits/skills/animations will break other traits/skills/animations.

PearlGore.7419:

I want a land Jellyfish and Spears on land!

Spear got a stealth change Swirling Strike no longer leaves that bubble of water animation around the character that blocked projectile now it is a hope you intercept the projectiles on their way.

I remember getting much higher rewards in the lower level areas on my level 80 character. Did they adjust the rewards and so when did this happen?

I remember clearly getting larger awards (experience, gold, and karma) in the lower levels zone on my level 80.

When did this get adjusted?

We know they can work on aquatic weapons in a least a timely manner what changes would you want to see?

MosesZD.7428:

Reading the OP… Then all the hate and frothing at the mouth afterwards… I wouldn’t answer you either. It’s not the way to get a response. It’s a way to get ignored.

As for the changes. It’s an MMO. People cry. People cry all the time. Nerf this. Nerf that. Don’t nerf my favorite class/build which is so hard to play…

Not matter what a developer does, there’s always a small, unhappy contingent who have to have it their special snowflake way and can’t deal with the fact that what was nerfed was so kitten over-powered it was ridiculous. So there’s no point in continuing to address it. You’ll never be happy with the answer of: it’s fine and the design mistake that made it OP was corrected.

Instead, you’ll just keep whining about it. We all know it.

(Hint, a 100lb draw longbow should be significantly more powerful (and massively out-range) than a 60lb draw short-bow. That short-bow should have never been OP like that…)

While you make a good point in the how you ask matters in most things MMO’s it seems that continued complains is the only way to make sure an issue is not just brushed under the rug.

The complaining seems to come from the fact that it looks like short bow was nerfed not because it was overpowered in big picture, but because it was outshining the other ranger weapons thus further limiting diversity among rangers.

(Hint it is a game and just your need for short bow to be weaker than the longbow (because it is that way in real life is simply silly)

Traits: Unmentioned Traits are as current build of game or with the added companion in place of pet.
Marksmanship
Opening Strikes Increase the number of Stacks of Vulnerability it causes.
Alpha Training: You attack deal X% more damage to targets with 75% health or more.
Steady Focus: Damage increases by 10% when attack crippled, chilled or immobilized foes.
Malicious Training: Increases the duration of conditions applied from Companion Skills.
Beastmaster’s Bond: Randomly recharges one Companion Skill at 75% health.
Signet of the Beastmaster: Maintain the passive effects of signet when you activate them.
Remorseless: Regain Opening Strikes at X stacks of Might.

Skirmishing
Pet’s Prowess: Rename Companion’s Prowess: grant the ranger X% more damage on critical hit.
Companion’s Might: Grant Might to Ranger and nearby allies.
Agility Training: You move 30% faster out of combat.
Carnivorous Appetite: Allies Regain health (small amount) on critical hits.
Honed Axes You do 10% more critical damage when wielding an axe in you main hand. Axe main hand skills have longer range ranged.

Wilderness Survival
Companion’s Defense:You gain X seconds of protection when you dodge roll. Nearby Allies are granted 2 seconds of protection.
Peak Strength: Increase to 10%
Shared Anguish: Your companion’s absorbs one debilitating condition directed at you, this effect can only trigger once every 90 seconds.
Expertise Training: Companions deal extra condition damage.

Nature Magic
Fortifying Bonds: Single target boons granted by companions now effect all allies within 600-1200 final ranged decided by what is balanced.
Concentration Training Boon applied by companions last longer.
Two-handed Training:Renamed Martial Training: Sword, greatsword, and spear damage increased by 5%.
Enlargement:Companion enlarges when you reach 25% health (think of effect similar to a ward)
Evasive Purity back to removing all conditions (at least a 10s cool down maybe a 20)

Beastmastery
Speed Training: Maybe increase the effect speed of offensive companion skills.
Master’s Bond have it increase the stat bonus granted by the companion for each kill. Dropping the stack when you are down or swap companions.
Shout mastery: Removed Replaced with Companion Mastery effect of you companion are larger.
Compassion Training: Companion skills heal for more.
Might Swap: Grant Might to the Ranger instead.
Rending Attack Use of Drake, devourer and shark companion skills inflict bleed on foes.(cool down need)
Stability Training Ursine, porcine and armor fish skills grant stability (2s) when activated (cool down need)
Intimadate Training Activated canine and spider companion skill inflict cripple (cool down need)
Vigorous Training Moa, bird and jellyfish companion’s activated skills grant vigor (cool down need)
Instinctual Bond: Needs a complete rework maybe activating companion skill while down heals you.
Natural Healing Just add regeneration to the Ranger

Healing Skills
Heal as One: Heal for more the more Companion Skills are off cooldown.

Utility Skills: Shouts are gone, Search and Rescue made into a Spirit ability.
Signet of Renewal: Keep the cool down the same as the companion will get removing the group’s conditions
Signet of Stone: Increase the toughness it grants. Active ability effect the Ranger 60 sec cool down
Signet of the Hunt: increase movement speed buff to 25%, Active Next Five attack deal 10-15% more damage
(Added) Warden’s Signet: Grant’s faster endurance regeneration Active: Recharge Companion Skills
(Added) Smoke Trap (Trap Skill): Smoke Field Blinds and Dazes cooldown as best decided for balance.
(Added) Foebane (Survival Skill) Remove Boons with your next five attacks

Weapon Skills: all weapon skills will need some adjustments to make up for lost pet damage.

Greatsword: Hilt Bash Drop to a 25 sec cooldown

Longbow: Speed up the projectiles.
Hunter’s Shot add cripple. Barrage: add a 1s immobilize.

Shortbow: Crossfire: remove the facing requirement for the bleed, increase damage for flanking.
Crippling Shot: further increase in damage to reflect the bleed lose

Sword: Fix the rooting bug. Pounce (20% chance leap finisher) Might granted to Ranger and nearby Allies.

Axe: Ricochet allow for it to bounce off or more terrain to help with single target use.

Spiltblade: Tighted up the spread so it doesn’t need to be in melee range to get the 5 stacks of bleed.
Winter’s Bite 4 bounds First Target is chilled additional ones are crippled. Path of Scars: Dazes.
Whirling Defense allow for movement during.

Warhorn: Call of the Wild increase range base range to 900 (1200 traited) add immobilize removal.

Harpoon Gun: Feeding Frenzy: applies fury to allies within the area of attack. Mercy Shot add damage modifiers for target’s health, 100%-50% one value increasing for lower health targets.

Armor Fish: Stat Bonus: Toughness. F1- Group Protection Boon F2- Ranger Targeted Aegis F3- Group wide next hit recovers small amount of health

Bear: Stat Bonus: Vitality. F1- Short duration Defy Pain, F2-Weakening Roar, F3- Regeneration

Bird: Stat Bonus: Precision. F1-Group Swiftness Boon, F2- Single Target Blind F3- Single Target Vulnerability

Boar: Stat Bonus: Vitality. F1- F2- F3- Keeping Forage, but with the item replacing the F1-F3 for use.

Canine: Stat Bonus: Power F1-Immobilizing Howl F2- Fear F3- Howl of the Pack

Devourer: Stat Bonus: Toughness F1- Poison to next Attack F2- knock back F3- Cripple (from the burrowing spirit)

Drake: Stat Bonus: Power. F1-confusion F2- burn F3- chill

Feline: Stat Bonus: Precision. F1-Group Might Boon F2- Stalk F3- chill

Jellyfish: Stat Bonus: Vitality F1- Healing Cloud F2- Blind F3- immobilizing whirl

Moa: Stat Bonus: Toughness F1-Daze F2- Group Fury Boon F3- Protection Boon

Shark: Stat Bonus: Power F1- Fear F2-Swiftness Boon F3- Group Based Bleed added to attack.

Spider: Stat Bonus: Precision F1-Web (immobilize) F2- Single Target Weaken F3- Single Target Stun

If there are going be lots of these kinds of post then why not. Thanks to Sang post on a pet replacement idea (link below) I decide to write up some of my own ideas.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Remove-Pets-and-give-us-Animal-Spirits/first#post776136

Ranger Improvements

First I would like to mention that Sang came up with a brilliant start of a fix on ranger that could be used as a basis for overall ranger improvement. In ‘Remove Pets and Give Us Animal Spirits’ Sang outlined an alternative to the current pet as profession mechanic and with that in mind the Ranger profession could be rebuilt from the ground up.

Pets as they are currently would be gone, replaced my an animal spirit. The spirit would still be a model in the game, but no longer would it directly interact with the world instead it would be another of the Ranger’s connection to the wild.

Special Skill Types
Chains
Survival
Spirit
Trap
Signet

Animal Spirit Types
Taking the Animal Families as the example we can base the profession mechanic around what has already existed in the game. I would like to keep with the idea of Pets Providing a bonus to the ranger
as the Ranger ‘Pet Attribute Bonus’ could be Companion’s Boon and have it scale with point in ‘Beast Mastery’. That may prove to be a bit much for balance, but it could always be scraped and a new secondary trait line put in it’s place. F4 on the bar will remain the companion swap. F1-F3 would be determined by pet family. New name for Pet Skills is Companion Skills.

That may be the case. I wonder what fixing the pet AI would break as we observed with the current patch traps which had not been part of the fixes somehow were bugged by something they did.

Only slight on topic I logged in to do the jumping puzzles on my thief and I have some how in re-equiping dagger as an off-hand have lost CnD and have to relearn it. Wonder if that is subtle hinting on someone’s part.

I got one for using the word ‘glitchy’ or ‘glitch’. So there you go.

On the update side of things would it have been too much to tell us what changes are being worked on but did not make it because of time constraints. They could always be followed by the contingency of ‘this [insert change here] might not prove workable and will need to be dropped’. At least that way he have some idea of why the change is taking so long other than the fact that there seems to be the need to divide their attention between all 8 profession somewhat evenly and what we saw in this update was all they could come up with that didn’t complete break the ranger.

Kind of wondering are they not fixing some issues quickly as the fixes keep breaking something else.

Just image how the overall game community would take all monsters hitting on the run. First was the bot-based ranger hate, next would be ‘was this change worth it?’ hate.

It wouldn’t have to complete remove the trailing ‘pet’ In fact it could still be following the Ranger as a bit of a tell of what you are going against. Maybe a bit translucent, but still a companion.

I find working with this base concept an interesting alternative to what I could be post on the forums.

I like at this point some of the community would just like to here them say that instead of the “it was changed to fix a glitch or spamming 1 is not fun” that has been said before.

It has stopped being undo this or else and more just say the real reasons even if that reason is “Our bosses warrior got mauled by it too much in interoffice play and now hates Ranger for it?” (hypothetical example not my view; I think it was a case of the nail that sticks out.)

I think it would really depend on how much harder this would be to do than to fix the pets, if this would prove easier and equally time consuming you know what direction it could go.

Almost forget sense this removes the pet as a combatant aspect of the profession the shout and signets need complete reworking. Also the traits would need adjustments.

I’d say remove shouts as a part of ranger keeping Search and Rescue as a ‘pet’ skill or ‘spirit’ skill for trait related things.

In removing the shout that leave ranger with 3 skill that need replacing Guard, Sick’em and Protect Me.
Guard could be replaced with a trap, maybe the smoke trap from Guild Wars 1 (basically a smoke field that blinds and dazes.)
Replace Sick’em with a skill similar to sharpening stone, but have it be next 5 attack remove a boon.
Lastly Protect Me that is more difficult to replace. I’d say have signet of stone be reworked to take the place of that skill. Maybe Warden’s Signet: Passive increase precision or endurance regain; Active: Recharge the pet skills.

I’ll get to traits in a bit kind of hungry.

monepipi.5160:

But right now the pet has 3 other AI skills, how would you suggest working them in? maybe give us F1-F4? I do foresee some balance issues though.

Perhaps instead of just one ability per pet we could get pets bundled maybe by family or zone. So Bird F1 might be a blind, F2 the aoe swiftness boost, F3 a bleed and/or vulnerabilty. F4 Swap Spirit

Weapon would take a bit more thought, but traits:
Trait tree reevaluated to provide not just bonuses to the pet, but to the ranger as well.
All signet having an effect on the ranger baseline and Signet of the Beastmaster reworked as a Written in Stone style always have passives.

We are unparalleled no one but a ranger can equip longbow and short bow. How well these work… Jon think longbow is fine and spamming 1 on shortbow is not fun so… we’re need more of that limited attention so maybe next year we’ll be in that place where the developer’s fine and our fine..never mind can pull anything funny out of this.

Mag.7418:

<———Haven’t logged in to play since the SB/QZ debacle. And was holding out some hope for this update, but am sorely let down.

Question: Your team held off on any updates to the ranger in the last big update in anticipation for this!? Two thoughts come to mind. Either your team has no clue what direction to take the ranger, and this was merely meant to pacify the masses until something more substantial could be done. Or you are heavily under staffed to have allowed this to go on for this long. You obviously have a large group of disgruntled customers. Some of which are rolling alts to pass the time, but others like myself who are holding out to play the character they rolled when the game first went live. Do something about it. Something more than what you have done here, because this isn’t something I would expect from ArenaNet, this is more on par with Blizzards liking.

I do not think with all the re-rolling we will remain a large group. Maybe we are just the survivor of a wrath the developers have for bots. Would be interesting to see the amount of rangers before and after the bot purges.

I can’t think of any other profession that is so tied to there mechanic

I see it as a long term nightmare to balancing the game. If the pet AI is too good sPvP players will point fingers as the Ranger as “a skill-less” profession. If the AI is still bad then ranger players are balanced around the pet existence and then a 5v5 with on side being ranger could end up feeling like 2.5v5.

Slightly off-topic: Picture the ranger pets working as well as we would like, but all the improvement to that AI was also give to the creatures out in the world. Some how I could see a lot of backlash direct at the rangers for it.

I’m just taking this whole thing in stride, maybe with a bit of gallows humor, but other than complain or re-post “changes I/we/you want to see threads” What can we do? Maybe organize a mass ranger-only meet up/downed fest in the middle of water somewhere. Imagine all the floating rangers just disrupting the scenic views.

Cloud.7613:

I actually believe this, because lets be honest, It’s not a nerf and even more people would be here complaining if it was. But hey, at least it’s not a nerf.

That just brings me back to game of the past, where we cycled between “Changes I would make” threads to “Backlash on changes we didn’t want” to “nothing changed, we’re safe for a bit” then responding to everything: “Shut up so they just ignore us”.

I think they might be counting the greatsword counter attack as a separated point that would bring it up to 15/16

Amulrei.4973:

ShinraGuardian.8053:

We don’t want tidbits of information, we want to know why there are 2 people working on class balances and why Warriors and Engineers and nearly every other class got some significant changes while all we got was Harpoon damage increased by 50%.

My expectations of them fixing our utility skills was NOT a 10% increase in chance for a 100hp spirit to give me 2 seconds of +10% damage.

Not that I don’t feel your pain but Engineers got nothing but tooltip fixes and nerfs. Not sure why you envy us exactly.

They were honest with the nerf none of this ‘its a fix’ crap or spam 1 is not fun hand wave. I envy that kind of here is the nerf deal with it honesty.

Dokuroizo.5348:

SO you really think, that the ranger, which class description says: “Unparalleled Archer” , is SUPPOSED to be weaker then the warrior, the average sword and board/hammer pound away dude.

I think unparalleled is defined as Ranger being the only archer that can equip both types of bow.

Chesire.9043:

The only way Ranger could get worse is complete deletion, and even then I’m not sure that’s actually worse; sounds more like mercy killing.

I can see it now all the rangers jump into the water pull out their spear guns, turn them on themselves and button four.

I think I know what it is now. Ranger is the ‘at least that isn’t me’ profession they just skipped most of the reduction of power after release in favor of the massive drop in power during the beta weekends.

Either that or we are the ‘oops this is too easy to bot with’ profession.

Maybe we are being a little negative on the forums as a whole, they are taking baby steps… more like geriatric pushed the walker away steps.

I’d rather they just be honest with us from the start the shortbow nerf and how they handled it is creating a knee-jerk response whenever anything else suffer from a bug from changes.

Look at what happened with the trap bug.

Not to derail this or anything I think this is another of those take X from one profession take it from all of them as the Necromancer got hit too. Like how both your Tornado and their Lich Form lost stability.

Just thought that in could be useful for us to be able to craft armor skins based on the two components of the armor without the fine materials as a skin so we aren’t wasting fine materials to obtain the look we are after.

How does the shortbow compare to the longbow is it another ‘toy bow’ sized bow?

Finally got around to making that ‘What does ranger mean to you thread?’ Let’s see how that goes.

Link:https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/What-does-being-a-Ranger-mean-to-you/first#post689969

A few days ago I started a ‘What is the overall developmental theme or direction of the Ranger profession?’ thread (link at the bottom) in the off chance we could get a developer to reveal the what kind of place/feel they are working with for ranger. Kind of like they stated that necromancer is an attrition profession and how thief and mesmer are slippery/evasive.

So far not gotten a bite from the devs so I thought what does being a ranger mean to the ranger community?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/What-is-the-overall-developmental-theme-or-direction-of-the-Ranger-And-it-s-place-in-GW2/first#post651531

It might be considered a non-issue as the cooldown of the pets are sort of low and they do not keep conditions between swaps. The pet as a profession mechanic seem a bet underdeveloped/unfinished.

Hopefully they won’t hide behind the blanket statement of ‘Pet class’ as it none of the other profession seem to be so rooted into their class mechanic. I would rather see the pet mechanic aid the ranger in fulfilling the place rangers fills in the game instead of being the beginning and end of the design/theme/what-have-you.

Title says it all. Kind of silly seeing the never moving Top Demanded Lemons on the Trading Post.

I not sure that the theme being discuss would spoil anything at all. I was thinking more along the line of the developers mention that the theme or feel for Necromancer was an attrition profession.

Might be a good time for a ‘What ranger means to you?’ thread to see what kind of ideas are floating around.

Would not help in sPvP as there are no racial skill included there. Also as a racial skill Battle Roar is unaffected by the trait Shout Mastery.