Guild Wars 2

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Sounds like it’s worth a try, but barrage from the walls has it’s own liabilities in my experience, not the least of which is that getting line of site to lay down a barrage can involve having to jump up on a wall, with can mean getting yanked off the wall, though using Rage as One helps a bit with that. My bigger concern is that both Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise are in the Skirmishing trait line, which means I’m giving up Quick Draw, which means my bow skills will take longer to recharge, right? It would be nice if I didn’t have to lose a trait that make bows more useful in order to do a trap build. Again, I’m looking to primarily be an archer, not a trap guy who uses a bow.

And here’s the problem many people have. They want their entire build to be optimized 100% of the time, but there are cases where that just isn’t possible (like what I described). People say that going full traps interferes with other aspects of the build, and, well…., its supposed to!

So I use Axes? I doesn’t mean that I have to have Axe traits instead of trap traits.

Edit – Another Example,….Rampager Gear! Do you invest more into Power or Condition Damage? Or do you try to find the happy medium between the two?

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Chrispy.5641:

Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.

1. I want them to revert the damage on the ranger, not the damage on the pet; I want to nearly nullify it.
2. I don’t think that the devs were totally brain afk while programming GW2.
They probably have some sort of damagechart, where they can see what skill does how much damage under what circumstances. Ofcourse they have to test it. But let me ask you this: If they implement a new class, doesn’t they also have to balance it out?
3. Noone ever said this would be easy or quick to do. ANet would probably like to take the easier route and just adjust some numbers. But I hope we made clear that they have to spend more time on fixing the ranger as they have initially planned.

So, what’s with all the conjecture from everyone going in Anet’s Direction? They have said before (late last year) that this stuff was going to take time. Do you want report cards every week on what exactly they are doing to the ranger all the time or something?

On the new class thing, of course they have to balance it, but they also have to balance the simplest of changes.

for example, what about the suggestion I made a week ago, about letting Heal as One benefit from Shout traits.

Currently, you get 6520 healing every 21.25 seconds, or 307 hp per second. If Anet did make it a shout, and it benefited from shout traits, the heal would be able to cooldown 20% faster, and suddenly the healing becomes 378 hp per second. Then there is the Regen that Nature’s Voice would give, which can add on an additional 130 hp per second. there’s the free swiftness from that trait, and then there are runes of the soldier to consider too.

What effects would that sudden 40% increase in net healing do to the game (from faster recharge, and regeneration)? Would it make Rangers too hard to kill? Arguably, no, because Warriors get roughly the same healing for free from Healing Signet, but, are Rangers supposed to get the same amount of healing? If there some other mechanic that justifies Rangers having less overall healing than Warriors?

Apply all that to moving the pet’s damage to the Ranger. Its not as simple as just giving them damage. For example, my Maul skill will be able to deal just over 25K damage in a single burst with that change, and also after considering the sigil changes. What effect is that going to have on the game now that I can suddenly 1 shot even defensive builds?

EDIT – And I’m not saying to think about that stuff with every single suggestion you yourself make, but, just consider that someone on Anet’s staff has to spend their time thinking about all of that, with every suggestion made in this thread that gets passed on to them.

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

My biggest problem with the Ranger is that while I’ve seen fairly strong Rangers in WvW, they’ve all been melee Rangers and I, like many others in this thread, really want to play an archer. I like ranged attacks. I don’t want to play a melee Ranger. If I wanted to play a Melee character, my 2 Fighters and 1 Guardian wouldn’t both be under 25th level. All of my 80s I’ve done largely with ranged attacks (Ranger, Thief with two pistols, Mesmer with greatsword) and it’s a preference I’ve often had in tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games, too. Heck, my Ranger even has 5 levels of ballista mastery. Apparently a lot of people want to play Rangers as archers, so why is it a problem to give them what they want?

So I don’t want an ANet employee to play a Ranger for 4 months in WvW with Axe, Torch, Sword, and Warhorn or other melee weapon combination. I want them to play with at least one weapon slot equipped with a bow and perhaps even double bow and see how that goes, since there are players who want to specifically play that way.

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.

Atherakhia.4086:

We’re nearing 55 pages of suggestions Chrispy. We’ve had no direction/input from ANet asking us to provide additional information on anything. We still don’t know if pets will be fixed, if we should work around them, or if we should plan for their removal. And that’s after 2 weeks of nothing but a giant circle [censored] on pets and little else in this thread.

Rangers need a lot more than a functioning pet for them to ever break out of 8th place in WvW. Find a niche they can fill.

At what point do you want us to actually hold ANet accountable for this dysfunctional thread?

accountable for what exactly? And after you remove hundreds and hundreds of posts that revolve either around attacking or defending Anet, there might be, 20 pages of suggestions, and half of them I can reliably say repeat the same basic ideas. Anet has made posts when necessary, and I don’t think its necessary for them to make another post saying the exact same thing as they did last week.

nethykins.7986:

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
  – “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.

You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.

Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.

I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosophy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

Muzical.1396:

Berk.8561:

A general observation:

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.” – Colin Johanson on Guild Wars 2 in the Months Ahead

(https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/)

Allie Murdock has, throughout this thread, stated that the design philosophy of the Ranger is slow and steady damage rather than burst damage and that the pet is integral to the class concept. I just want to make sure it’s not lost that based on the player comments, this clearly clashes with the way many people want to play their Ranger. So this should raise the question of why the game won’t let people play their Rangers the way many clearly want to. Specifically (these have been mentioned again and again in this thread)
(Snipped for post size)

^THIS. I cannot +1 this enough.

I’d argue that, before ANet should be allowed to change a class, especially substantially, spend four months, yes, months, maining that class, and I mean at least 10 hours a week. Spend a month on PvE, and I mean Living Story (reload Canach’s dungeon and play a ranger; have fun!) explorable paths of Arah, CM, CoE, Teq, Wurm, Fire ele, map clearing, etc. Spend a month in sPvP, and find out how fun that is under the mess its “roadmap” is for those of us who just did it for kicks. Then spend a month in WvW, and I mean on a T1 server, SoR, JQ, TC, etc. And, on and off during this time, also spend time in mapchat in a huge place like LA, pop your ANet tag, and talk to players about how we play the game.
Snip for length

That is an extremely important observation that Berk made. And I do hope that future changes to Profession Balance and new stuff added to Professions, will continue to let us play the way we want.

You mentioned that you want someone at Anet to only play Ranger for like 4 months straight. That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

Anet wants the Ranger to be a sustain class, but it is much easier to just do what other profession do, and burst someone or something down as fast as humanly possible. The way our traits are set up make this possible, such as Sharpened Edges and Companion’s Might.

Now, there is some, but very little sustain that comes into play. I can utterly destroy someone in WvW by stacking bleeds and conditions, burst style, using Rabid gear. The whole point is to throw down as many traps as possible, use the bleed stacking from axe, and use the immobilize from my spider to make sure that the enemy stays inside the traps. The sheer amount of conditions I can inflict alone makes sure than the enemy’s condition removals are all wasted while I continue to stack bleeds, cripples, burns, and poison whith no worry. (I’ve dropped more enemies with Throw Torch lately than any other skill because of the long burn duration. That sustain is secondary to my burst though, because I use it only after Burst fails (which is rare), where it should be coming first!)

If there was an opposite to Ludicrous Speed, that’s the speed that Anet updates the professions in this game.

afoot.6932:

Arghore.8340:

…or add spirits to pets (which I personally don’t like at all, but that’s some other discussion)…

Please, elaborate. The potential change to spirits is the topic I’m most interested in at this point.

What the Dev had written::

PvX
General:

1. Remove spirits. They clutter up the map and provide less strategic value with target changes.
   1. Instead, apply an aura to the pet that does the same thing spirits currently do.
      1. Obviously, this would be a huge rework and would require changes to spirit traits.

I personally don’t see how that could be balanced at all.

urdriel.8496:

arkealia.2713:

urdriel.8496:

arkealia.2713:

I don’t think we need more condition removal on healing skills, it should be on a specific weapon skill or an active trait on a category of utility skills (traps for exemple).

Ranger need a heal with condition removal.

You have Healing Spring already

To have all the benefits of healing spring you need to stay in the spot for 10 secs :P, we need a instant on demand heal cond. remove, like Warriors mending, we have “heal as one” as candidate.

While it looks good on paper, the amount of condition removal we have compared to other professions, but, in practice….we really don’t have that much.

We have…..

Healing Spring – which requires you to be standing in a tiny area in order to remove up to 6 conditions.
Signet of Renewal – which requires your pet to be alive and close enough to you to remove all conditions.
Empathic Bond – which requires your pet to be alive to remove 3 conditions.
Renewal – From Spirit of Nature which seems okay at first (it is quite powerful), except for how quickly the spirit dies, and then there is the very long cooldown to consider after it dies, etc.
Shake it Off – Which requires you to be close enough to it to remove 3 conditions.
Evasive Purity – Which only removes Poison and Blind, on a 10 second cooldown. (Which is pointless, because it is easier to just attack to remove the blind!)

Please tell me if I missed anything for Ranger Condition Remocal. 3 of them are tied to and depend on our pet being alive, and 1 to a spirit that dies way too easily. 1 of them only removes 2 specific conditions, and the last 1 requires you to stand in a tiny area and not move much at all, completely counter to how you are supposed to be playing this game.

Also, Mending heals for 1,300 less than Heal as One, but Removes 3 conditions. The Cooldown is the same. I would say that based on that,…Mending is a better heal skill.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Chrispy.5641:

I don’t want my pets to be there just to deal damage. I want them there to be able to support me in a fight, especially if I am running a full glass cannon build with no survivability. I would like for my pet to be able to provide me with some amount of survival and utility, not just be a mindless NPC drone that only deals damage.

Right now it’s the other way round. There are countless traits where your pet gains X if you do Y. This is what bothers me the most: I don’t want to play support for my pet; I am the one who should get supported.

While I like using some build combinations where I am the one supporting my pet and letting it do all the damage (Magi gear mostly), I only do it for a change of pace. Its just not really that efficient because you can do way more damage and condition damage by yourself, without your pet ever coming into the equation.

The Other way around, (if you were dealing all the damage), your pet does a terrible job of supporting you because the skills and traits where your pet does support you, are all self sacrificing.

Currently the only thing that works perfectly between Rangers and Pets is putting our damage together into one giant Burst. (see This Video on youtube.), and our profession isn’t even supposed to be about that.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Chrispy.5641:

Allie Murdock.8152:

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?

Why do pets have to deal damage at all for the Ranger to be considered a Ranger?

Would the Nature Loving Ranger really not be considered a Ranger if for example, you introduced new pets like :: (examples Op slightly to show Utility)

Some more suggestions:

Eagle F2: Marks an enemy – The enemy can’t stealth for the duration and all arrows shot at the marked enemy will hit (if not obscured or out of range).

Raven F2: Cripples an enemy for 3/4 seconds every 1/2 second for the duration of the skill.

Krytan Drakehound: Passive: Tracker – The drakehound can attack and use abilities on stealthed targets without breaking their stealth.
F2: Reveals all enemies in a small cone around the drakehound.

Bear AA: Knocks the target down
Spider AA: Removes 1 stack from stackable boons or removes 3 seconds of the duration of non-stacking boons.

Exactly like that. If I don’t have a High damage pet out (cats, etc.), and it really does remove up to 30% of my DPS potential by not having a cat/bird as a pet, then I should be getting an appropriate return on other aspects by using other pets, such as anti stealth, giving more boons, healing, more control, etc. It doesn’t really matter if its through new pets, or reworking old pets. All of our pets need to have a specific purpose, not just be mindless, unoptimized damage drones just because they aren’t cats.

Darkobra.6439:

I can craft full ascended ten times over before I EVER get a drop.

Which isn’t right….

The Time it takes for 1 character to make an ascended item (with no money or crafting materials), should be equal to the time it would take to get an ascended item just by killing everything in sight.

Crafting shouldn’t trump other aspects of the game when it comes to getting good gear. It should simply be equal.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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?

Why do pets have to deal damage at all for the Ranger to be considered a Ranger?

Would the Nature Loving Ranger really not be considered a Ranger if for example, you introduced new pets like :: (examples Op slightly to show Utility)

Lunar Moth – The Luna Moth is a Pet that Buffs Allies and Removes Boons from Foes.
F2 – Lunar Cadence – Fly in the Target Area, Transferring Boons from Foes to Allies.
(1 boon every 2 seconds for 10 seconds)(5 targets max.)(50 second cooldown)

Solar Moth – The Solar Moth is a Pet that transfer Conditions from Allies to Foes.
F2 – Solar Cadence – Fly in Target Area, Transferring Conditions from Allies to Foes.
(1 Condition every 2 seconds for 10 seconds)(5 targets max.)(50 second cooldown)

common attacks
Auto Attack – very low damage, steals health twice. (1s activation)(steal health for pet, and steal health for Master)
Skill 2 – Sacrifice 25% of your health to break stun on a nearby ally. (breaks stun)(on ally and pet)(5 second cooldown)(Is not used when below 50% health)
Skill 3 – Heal allies when your Master falls below the health threshold. (90%)(same heal as the Moa’s Harmonic Cry)
Stats – Very low attack stats like Power and Precision. Low Toughness. High Vitality, and has Healing Power.
…..

There is one attack total in that idea that deals any damage at all, and I did make the pet a little self sacrificing, but the Utility value of a pet like that would be massive.

I don’t want my pets to be there just to deal damage. I want them there to be able to support me in a fight, especially if I am running a full glass cannon build with no survivability. I would like for my pet to be able to provide me with some amount of survival and utility, not just be a mindless NPC drone that only deals damage.

Fancy Fool.1743:

Aggrostemma.1703:

Hi Allie!

Can you do me a favor? Take your ranger to the lvl80 content please! (If you don’t have any you can ask one of the programmers to"cheat" you one)
Equip full ascended with legendary weapon. No-no, gear does not matter, it’s a choice of you!

Done? Great!

Now take this ranger to the new LA event! Do you know what’s going to happen?
1st second: entering combat
2nd second: your pet goes into combat
3th second: your pet dies
4th second: swap pet
5th second: set pet on passive
6th second: pew-pew
7th second: AOE incoming
8th second you dodge
9th second: your pet dies

Great, isnt’ it?

Now head to a random wvw map!

1, pew-pew
2, zerg incoming
3 your pet dies
4, you swap pet
5, your pet dies

Even if you keep your pet full passive on the ENTIRE content it dies.

Try this and tell us the story about your experience. Until you did not try our shoes you have no kittening idea how frustrating this bullkitten is.

What exactly does your post accomplish?

That Pets die too easily, and the AoE damage nerfs to Pets in Allie’s post a few days ago would go a very long way to reducing that problem (otherwise, yeah, there’s a rather trolly post there.)

Arghore.8340:

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

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

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

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

I don’t like this idea, because there is no way I can see Anet keeping our wide diverse set of pets with the amount of work they would have to do overhauling pretty much everything to make this a reality. I see them reducing our pet selection down to 4, 1 for each F key, and then giving them very specific functions, like what the Mesmer or Guardian F Mechanic does now.

If that is the case, then I do not support this idea, because it gives us a much smaller toolbox to play with no matter how you look at it.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

CureForLiving.5360:

Anyway, from what I know EDs aren’t intelligent not in a conventional sense. They’re forces of nature with the sole purpose of consuming magic. They corrupt intelligent races and these races act as general, organising the army and forces. It’s like a queen bee, she just lays around all day laying eggs (in the case of EDs corrupting) and getting fed while the workers bees (the corrupted) do all the work.

They’re described as forces of nature by Tyrians – that’s not a scientific notion, it’s simply the way they’re choosing to cope/understand/deal with the dragons power. Pretty sure the dragons are quite intelligent.

One of them was intelligent enough to know that his champion was free from his influence and ending her life was the first thing he did after waking up.

…yeah, I’d say they’re smart.

This game isn’t supposed to be about fun!

Its supposed to be about keyboard shattering frustration until you figure out the one specific out of a million build/weakness that becomes insta-win every time, all the time…just like the first game!

Play your way? Pttf!! yeah right

It feels like Scarlet planned ahead for absolutely everything…..except for what the story writers were going to do to her. That was one fate she couldn’t change because no matter what kind of character she was, it seemed like there was a pre-determined time for her to get killed off anyways not matter how much story and development was needed/missing. I hate the character, but I hate the way they killed her off even more.

Aside from that, what we discovered at the end of that cutscene was pretty much guessed from a long time ago (And you can’t say “it doesn’t count just because people were saying it was Primordus!”), and while I was hoping that maybe something cooler was going to happen (explaining this for example, why were Steam Creatures part of Scarlet’s Invasion events, since we know they come from an alternate reality/future?),

but, I’m just glad that the Dragons are being put back into focus, (even if it was for one measily cutscene and we get a whole 2nd living world season about Scarlet’s opposite cousin Turquoise that tries to terrorize us while we attempt to guess what the Green salad is up to, even if its possible that we already guessed last year)

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I personally see it like this:
From a lore perspective, my character is the main character. And all other player characters are random soldiers/adventurers. And my alts simply exist in a paralell universe, hence why it’s possible to complete the same story more than once.

I agree with this point of view.

Consider that in PvP and WvW, you are stomping other players that are from alternate Tyrian realities. Anvil Rock is a completely different world than Black Gate, but all the events run parallel to each other, the only real differences being what heroes took part in those events,…and who killed Tequatl first.

So you know what? Yeah! My Game Client shows me a version of Tyria (out of a billion other versions) where my Character is the Pact Commander, Who killed an Elder Dragon, Broke apart Evil Alliances, and Fought an epic battle against a Red Salad. All the other players are Adventurers, soldiers, lackeys, and lesser commanders that are helping me while I play the game.

But in another person’s game, they are actually playing in a different reality of Tyria, one where they are the pact commander, who killed an elder dragon, broke apart evil alliances, and fought an epic battle against a red salad. In their game from their perspective, I’m the random adventurer, soldier, lackey, lesser commander that is helping him/her achieve great things.

Maybe in your perspective, and your game, we’re all just random adventurers, soldiers, lackeys, and lesser commanders, just following NPCs around while they get all the glory. There’s nothing in the game that says you’re exactly wrong, nor does it say that I’m exactly wrong either.

ASaturnus.4980:

I agree with the OP. It’s just silly not to say that the biconics killed Scarlet. It’s as if the main charakter of LotR wasn’t Frodo Baggins but [insert player name].

Wait, what about Strider? and Gandalf? And Sam? And Gollum? Why was half of the story (literally) spent on chapters talking about everyone else if Frodo is supposed to be the main character?

Erukk.1408:

Tanith.5264:

Erukk.1408:

I always wonder why he didn’t do this before the attack. The players and Anet like to portray him as a cunning businessman, but he spend months saying that Scarlet is going to attack LA, yet he didn’t do anything to prepare for it. He should have been moving his base of operations, or at least his goods, out of LA. He had more than enough money to have had bought and build warehouses and to hired security to protect the place.

How do we know he didn’t?

“My business is in tatters, and I’m surrounded by refugees who can’t buy my stock. Yeah, my day is looking up."

Those aren’t the words of someone you planned ahead.

Yet he somehow offers us something new every two weeks in the Gem Store, (most recently Tormented Weapons…).

Orpheal.8263:

The only thing so far i’ve to say about the summary on page 42 is.

I strongheartedly have to disagree completely with the BS thats said about, that Rangers would be the Masters of Poisons.
Thats complete utterly nonsense.

Thieves are the Masters of Poisons, they are the Class, which uses deathly venoms as one of their class mechanics, not Rangers!!
They are the assassins that use venoms to make their attacks even more deathly.

Wilderness Survival doesn’’t Make Rangers Masters of poisons.
Wilderness SURVIVAL should make Rangers the Masters of Condition Removal.
Thats for what freaking survival really stands for.

Rangers should be that class with super effective condition immunities and not the Elementalist, if you go full into Wilderness Survival.

Just breaking here for a point later on….

Orpheal.8263:

Each Trait Line of the Ranger should stand for some kind of Core Build.
I also want to remind here on my idea around Sub Classes, that the Devs please don’t forget that, that many changes, rebalances ect. could be taken into consideration through character progression.
That certain things that a Ranger can’t do now, could become in the future of our character progression possible features for the Class, if we specialize our characters into specific Sub Classes.

Example:

Marksmanship (+ Beast Mastery = Hunter)
Skirmishing (+ Beast Mastery = Scout)
Wilderness Survival (+ Beast Mastery = Strider)
Nature Magic (+ Beast Mastery = Druid)
Beast Mastery

And we would have 4 Sub Classes that way that could get improved into different directions, while keeping for each of them still the focus on the Pet Gameplay.
However, each of these 4 could use their Pets in compltetely different kinds of ways.

A Hunter would use its pet more as a Damage Dealer
A Scout would use it more as a kind of Support
A Druid would use it more as a Tool of Control
A Strider would be more of a Jack of all Trades providing from everything a bit.

I’m not trying to talk down your idea or anything, but, in what way at all does Nature Magic scream out any concept of “Control” to you? I mean, you went on and on about how Wilderness Survival should be only for the ‘Survival’ aspect, just a few paragraphs ago, so, why shouldn’t Nature Magic focus on what the trait line is meant for, which is boons and party support

Its like Allie’s Post that said that Nature Magic should focus on 2.Should focus on weapon swapping, stuns, dazes and mobility in combat….isn’t that exactly what Skirmishing does already?

Lately, we’ve been harassing an innocent red salad girl who was actually trying to help cure our boredom by giving us another Elder Dragon to go slay with a giant cannon and some cheap fireworks!

Terravos.4059:

misterdevious.6482:

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

Chances are that any pet is dead. That’s not a Moa issue.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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?

Nike.2631:

Bran.7425:

The pet seems more like the foundation than just a simple 2X4. And at this point the house is built and has been leased. With a crumbling foundation that the owner only patches instead of rebuilds.

I’m honestly aghast at how dismissive the whole analogy is.

If 90% of the people asked thinks Rangers need attention and the problem is just a single 2×4, then imagine how awesome all the other professions must be? I guess the elementalist has a porch light that’s not screwed all the way in (not even burnt out, just loose) and the worst the Warrior can claim is someone forgot to water the lawn this week. I mean really, why would anyone be fretting over a 2×4? Why would NINETY PERCENT OF YOU be worried about a 2×4? It’s nothing. All’s just dandy with the Ranger. Move along, move along.

I’m sorry, there’s almost 50 pages of people taking it seriously.

How about a better one then?

If Rangers were like an airplane, then Pets are the Wings. Wings are really Finicky when designing an Airplane, because you have to take into account a hundred different factors. In Order for the Wings to provide lift, you need to account for weight, drag, lift, thrust, aerodynamics, angle of attack,…all sorts of things. They all have to be spot on, or, it doesn’t work properly.

When the Wings work, The Plane will fly perfectly. When the Wing doesn’t work properly, the plane will still fly, but it will be a scary flight, and you run serious risk of crashing the plane and killing everyone on board.

…

Pets work exactly like that for a Ranger, there are a hundred different factors that must be taken into account when designing and balancing them, such as damage, the health, armor, movement, AI programming, utility, etc. It needs to be spot on, or the Ranger will be less than optimal.

When the Pet works, the Ranger is Perfect. When the Pet doesn’t work, The Ranger him/herself runs the risk of not working, and has the serious risk of failing without a trusty, working pet.

Terravos.4059:

Skills like Protect Me is awful for a Devourer, in fact Protect Me is pretty much awful in general unless you’re using a Bear, If ya don’t believe me, Go out into pvp right now with your Devourer, and have someone hit you while having Protect Me up, watch it die in a bout 3 seconds flat.., Also you’re not getting why I’m pointing out there damage is crap, Its because they have ZERO UTILITY to make up for that damage loss

Aside from Drawing Aggro from enemies, because they have more Toughness than your combined Armor does? Not every pet can be super useful and awesome in every game mode. Devourers just so happen to be better in PvE than other game modes. That doesn’t make them useless.

Terravos.4059:

Protection from the Moa is crap, 4 seconds on a 30 second cooldown? That is not good….Not good by any standard, and Harmonic Cry isn’t good either. Again its a 2 second PBAE daze on a 30 second timer…Their Healing also isn’t great…Know why? Because you have no control over it… and again..Its PBAE…

6 Seconds on a 30 Second cooldown to you and allies when traited. Combine that with Companion’s Defense, and an Earth Spirit, and you can have near permanent Protection Uptime. Also, Harmonic Cry is the Healing Skill, not a Daze. Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Did you even click on the link? That comment just made you lose some credibility!

Aside from that, you don’t need the healing 90% of the time if you are seperate from your pet because you are at range, mostly because the enemy aggro will be on your pet. in Melee, with your pet, the healing is very powerful when you have 2 moas.

Terravos.4059:

You need to go check Snow Leopard again mate, Their F2 hits twice, not once..Owl I think probably works the same..I’m not certain on that…Also those times are wrong (The tool tip will take into account your Condition Duration, including the 10% you get in Marksman to pickup Malicious Training) Ice Drake Chill you’ll never land on anyone

after checking,….Owl’s skill still recharges faster, meaning you can apply more chill.

Terravos.4059:

Black Bear has a 10 second Weakness on a 40 second cooldown, That’s not good… You can get a Poison Field as a base ability on Spiders pretty much, Not to mention Poison Field is incredibly common and often times you don’t want it anyway cause it will overwrite Water Fields

The Spider’s Poison field is weak, and doesn’t last long enough to get any combo effects (which you don’t have control over, anymore than the Moa’s Heal skill). You can with the Murellow’s combo field though. 10 seconds of weakness of 5 surrounding enemies is good, because that is damage mitigation, with a 25% uptime (38% uptime traited) Great in PvE and WvW. Also, if you need to have a water field up 100% of the time so no other field can be put down, you aren’t a good player[/quote]

Terravos.4059:

That Bleed is one of the worst Bleeds in the game….Do you know why? Because it has the most obvious animation in the game…If you get hit by that bleed..you’re afk

Wrong. I’ve actually landed Rending Pounce on other Players, plenty of times because the Lynx will do a homing leap attack on whoever you tell it to hit. It is a very powerful attack, and is the same attack (with a different effect) as the Snow Leopard you kept advertising as being so good. I already said that the Arctodus’s was useless.

Terravos.4059:

Companion’s Might won’t let ya keep 25 Stacks of Might on your pet easily, i don’t know where you got that at, You might be able to get 10 stacks…. but 25 from Companions might…No..Just no..

Yeah, it will. Take a high precision build, and use Warhorn/Sword. If you have over 100% crit chance, then Hunters Call will apply 17 stacks of might on your pet if all attacks hit. Then there is the might gained from just landing crits. You will always have 25 might on your pet. How about you go try it for yourself.

Terravos.4059:

If a pet doesn’t have damage, it better have utility, that seems to be a pretty simple concept, and yes using a Reef drake is stupid

I’m sorry you don’t know how to use Reef Drake properly, but that doesn’t make it stupid. Stupid looking…yes, but not stupid in concept.

And Utility is more than just CC. Its also healing, drawing Aggro off of you, removing conditions, applying conditions, etc._

Terravos.4059:

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

If you’re going to make a change to Hunter Call from the Warhorn line, Give it a Daze…as this would give offhand using Rangers an actual Daze to work with when ya consider Moment of Clarity.

Why? We have Greatsword and Shortbow that already inflict stun and daze. You can already maximize the Moment of Clarity trait by using those two weapons. If you can’t already maximize the trait using those two weapons, what is the point of putting a daze on Warhorn?

Both of those are non offhand weapons, By opening up Warhorn onto those weapons, You give for example..Trap builds decent access to Moment of Clarity (since some surprisingly won’t use the GTAE trap trait cause they dislike the targetting of it) You also open up possibly using things like Axe/Horn or Sword/horn for builds.. which would be interesting.

I already use Axe/Horn and Sword/Horn. Hunter’s Call as it is right now can apply a substantial amount of bleeding with the right trait, which combined with a Rabid gear trap build, can easily overwhelm just about anyone. It could also apply a substantial amount of might to your pet with the right trait, which combined with any high precision build increases your pet’s damage output in quite a dramatic way.

I don’t need that removed for yet another stun/daze (that will have the same disadvantages as Hunters Call does now), nor do I want Warhorn #5 to be nerfed just so we can have a daze put there.

Terravos.4059:

…snip…

Devourers – They have High toughness and are Ranged. They are not meant to deal high damage, which if that is your only concern (looks kind of obvious based on this post), then yes, they are worthless to you. Otherwise, they are great for drawing enemy aggro because of their high toughness, and skills like “Protect Me” tend to work better with a tougher pet around than a glassy cat or bird.

Moas – Fury, and also Protection, and also Harmonic Cry. The extra healing you get from having two Moas is quite substantial if you are good at timing the skills and switching them. Again, if your point is that they are useless because of the lack of damage, then you aren’t using them for their purpose (which definitely isn’t damage).

Pets with Chill – You are a little misguided on this issue. The Snow Leopard’s Chill is 4 seconds (6 with Malicious training), and the Owl’s Chill is actually 6 seconds (9 with Malicious training), with a lower Cooldown than the Snow Leopard. You also got the Ice Drake, which can apply 5 seconds of chill (7.5 traited) to up to 5 targets.

I do agree that the Alpine Wolf’s Icy Howl, the Polar Bears Icy Roar, and the White Moas’s Icy Screech could change, since a 2-3 second chill with that long of a cooldown is actually kind of useless.

Bears – Again, if your issue is damage, there are super glassy cats and birds right over there! I already talked about the Polar Bear. The Brown Bear is awesome for the condition removal. The Black bear’s F2 does 10 seconds of weakness to 5 surrrounding foes (15 traited). That is actually extremely powerful. The Murellow has a 7 second Poison Field, which is definitely useful with a few allied blast finishers for the weakness, and it inflicts poison anyways.

The Arctodus has almost the same F2 skill as the Lynx. It will also deal less damage because of the lack of precision compared to the Lynx. Its pointless to have a damaging skill on a pet whose purpose isn’t damage.

Eagle and Hawk – If you take the Companion’s Might trait, you can very easily keep 25 stacks of might on your pet. That equal to 875 condition damage. If you add Expertise training, the total becomes 1225, and having a constant, never-ending source of mid-level bleeding damage to compliment your build isn’t a bad thing.

Pigs -….yeah, their F2 needs to put the item in your hand, and give you the option of dropping it so allies can pick it up. And just like how Engineer skills were changed to always guarantee a certain effect, it needs to happen to Pig F2’s as well.

Drakes – For the Reef Drake, use the traits I told you about earlier, and you can throw on some pretty substantial damage from confusion. I guess I’m one of those idiots because I actually know how to use pets, huh? I’m not saying they are optimized though, because their F2 is kind of difficult to use unless you time it right, and also their inability to hit a moving target.

As far as their F2, since its a Channel skill, Dakes need to be programed just like any player’s Channel skill. It needs to track the enemy as they move around. There are some Aetherblade enemies that can already do this because the skill they use is the same as what a player has access to (Arc Lighting)

I will admit that the Salamander Drake is kind of not useful right now, because it doesn’t apply enough burning, as well as the issue I mentioned above.

We have pets that deal lots of damage (cats and birds), and we have pets with lots of cc (dogs and spiders). Please stop going on and on about other pets being useless just because Damage and CC is all you care about.

Terravos.4059:

If you’re going to make a change to Hunter Call from the Warhorn line, Give it a Daze…as this would give offhand using Rangers an actual Daze to work with when ya consider Moment of Clarity.

Why? We have Greatsword and Shortbow that already inflict stun and daze. You can already maximize the Moment of Clarity trait by using those two weapons. If you can’t already maximize the trait using those two weapons, what is the point of putting a daze on Warhorn?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

I’ve tried to summarize most of the feedback we’ve been getting. Most of this are the big points that are being made and the high level with a few smaller suggestions and tweaks for inspiration.

Now, many of you might disagree with some of the feedback that others have been giving, but if you guys are going to take the time to write it, we’re going to take the time to read it.

These are some of the notes that I’ve been passing around to the balance team. Please know that this is not all of the feedback we’ve seen from you or from this thread.

(Cut the rest, but still responding to it, click on Allie Murdock’s name to link to original post)

Yay! We got a post! Now I can stop telling people to be patient! Anyways, on the changes you listed, here’s my feedback on that…..

On Removing Spirits (and attaching effects to pets) – It would make killing the pet much more of a priority in PvP and WvW. Most pets are relatively easy to kill too, meaning that if you realy want to get rid of the Ranger’s buffs,…Kill the Pet! Ignore the Ranger for once in your character’s short life, and actually deal with his/her class mechanic first!

On Healing Skills All those things are nice to have, but please don’t nerf the healing amounts in order to make those changes. (Its why some of us suggested that those heals get tied to a certain skill type, and just benefit from traits that already exist, like what This post)

On Pet Stowing/Aspects – While I like some parts of the idea that was floating around, I would rather see the current problems with pets fixed. Adding an Aspect for each pet would mean that the Ranger has the mechanics equivelant of 4 pets, which would just make things more complicated, and would also make all the traits and skills that involve pets in some way even more complex.

On Longbow Changes – Alot of people are complaining about that one, because it cripples, immobilizes, and knocks down, but, if the Longbow’s mechanic remains, in that it rewards playing at maximum range, I don’t actually see any problems with it.

Warhorn – Changing Warhorn #4 to apply Protection, Regen, and Vigor would synergize well with Warhorn #5, which gives Fury, Might, and Swiftness. You are basically giving up all off-hand damage and Utility (dodges, crits, etc.) in order to regularly give a source of 6 different boons, which is awesome! There’s some serious support right there!

…..But, I do like the effects that Warhorn #4 does now. Depending on my build, I can give my pet 17 stacks of might (if every attack crits, and using Companion’s Might), or I can potentially apply anywhere from 10-25 stacks of bleeding immediately (With Sharpended Edges and an Earth Sigil). I am 100% open to it changing though because the skill stops hitting immediately whenever an enemy is out of our line of sight, which doesn’t make any sense at all, so either fix that, or change it to what you listed please!

I have no complaints about anything else.

gawker.8340:

Atherakhia.4086:

Another day without responses…. as if the Ranger community didn’t already feel alienated enough.

Lets have a goal tomorrow guys. No more pet posts until ANet comes back asking for more. We’ve gone in circles enough. Lets cover some new ground!

Silence speaks louder than words. In the case of this particular thread, it got too long to read. I couldn’t be paid enough to muddle through walls of texts written in mostly broken-English. Collaboration should have happened 1 hour over Skype with top member of the ranger community. This 41 page monstrosity here is a rotting and foul mess that is not fit for human consumption.

Yeah….you guys reading this thread don’t want to read my response to that, but someone needs to say it, so here it is :::

This 41 page rotting and foul mess not fit for human consumption is almost entirely the fault of the people who posted on this thread, and the vitriol that keeps getting sprayed in Anet’s direction by some of the posters in this thread has reached pretty insane levels. The expectations of many coming into this were way too high to start with, and the fact that people are getting worked up over the fact that there is no dev posting,…for a day or two, proves that.

You guys need to take a few deeps breaths, and show a little patience. And don’t give me this “I’ve been patient for over a year” crap! If you’ve been waiting all patient like for over a year, then you can be patient for an extra week or two until this CDI Thread ends.

Shiren.9532:

• Plays the combo game:
  • Only spiders have a land combo field and it’s a very short duration poison one.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Poison_Cloud_

Other than that, I agree with everything you said.

I don’t blame the developers for not playing a larger role in this CDI thread, and I suggest that you read the Fractal Evolution CDI thread starting here (if you haven’t already) :::
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Fractal-Evolution/3706456

The lack of dev interaction in our Ranger thread was addressed there. Apparently some of our suggestions have been talked about, but….nothing else was really explained beyond that.

I would say that everyone should stay patient,…and only start raising hell if during the next profession CDI, suddenly there is alot more dev interaction (and I’m not talking about a little tiny bit more, I’m talking about there being a dev post on every freaking page, etc). Then that would prove your suspicions. Because we cannot prove that Anet hates and ignores Rangers, and Until then, lets keep giving this corporate focused rapid fire thread the benefit of the doubt.

Yoh.8469:

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

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

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

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

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

Any class can stack bleeds relatively easy. All Classes except for Guardian have a trait that bleeds on critical hits. The only difference is in what the percentage chances are and how long the bleeding gets stacked as a result of the critical hit.

(also, @everyone, We have two traits for bleeds on critical hits btw, 1 for us, and 1 for pets, and if you have a buffed Lynx out there, its can deal some pretty substantial condition damage only through bleeds, and then there’s all the physical damage it deals too,…but it will never be as strong as your own bleed stacking is, and is totally useless against moving players, the biggest weakness of something with 4 legs in this game!)

The Poison thing has been mentioned before, and it would be interesting to see if it either stacks (420 damage per second using a point blank Poison Volley on someone with 0 condition damage), It reduces Healing further, or if it just does more damage, not too different from what the Necromancer’s ‘Terror’ trait does to fear.

We also have lots of access to Vulnerability, Chill, Cripple, etc (as does most other classes). If we could have a trait that makes them more potent…..

Khalic.3561:

Chrispy.5641:

Link:::
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/3699949

I would rather go this direction than the dull approach of simply providing boons for support as some others have suggested. I have to say that this proposal makes me think of a power based version of venom share (which is also pretty undesirable in organized WvW by most groups). However, the effects seem overall fairly weak and directed towards a more sustained approach. Which I suppose is in line with ANet’s vision for the ranger, though I can’t say I agree with it. I don’t think the effects need to be reduced so drastically on account of you being able to share them, take aura share for example.

Stone Skin – You take 100% less damage when struck. (Stacks 5 times when using Signet of Stone. Also Stacks 5 times when traited with Instinctual Bond, making for 10 stacks total on you or your pet)

This in particular would be an incredible nerf. We’d go from having one of the longest invuln skills to one of the shortest. Any skill that blocks only a set number of attacks becomes useless very quickly in any team fight, and even against quite a few solo builds.

Well, Geeze. Glad someone finally pointed that out! of all the effects, I was pretty sure that that one was the weakest I thought of.

On the other ones. the Changes….

I made to Attack of Opportunity does make it weaker, unless you know how to stack Vulnerability, in which case, it can be quite a bit more powerful than the original after you count the fact that you get 5 stacks of it, instead of just one chance.

Wild Strikes is a little weaker, and that is a result of letting the Ranger share the Signet from the start (but Stability didn’t change).

Renewal is also weaker, because you can only remove 5 conditions instead of transfer all conditions. My justification for that one is a little more complex, because you have to factor in no longer having to sacrifice your pet to transfer all conditions, and a few other things.

But, no matter which Signet suggestion Anet goes with (and hopefully they go with one of them! or if they go with all of them at once and combine them into some sort of super idea), they’re going to have to play with the numbers regardless. I am pretty sure I have an understanding of how the Ranger Profession works, but I’m not an expert or the expert on the class.

Khalic.3561:

As much as I agree that rangers need better group support tools, I don’t think I’d be willing to sacrifice their only true burst capability in order to achieve it. Losing the damage boosts on hunt and wild is very unappealing.

Heres a Signet idea from earlier in the thread that I posted. I tried to keep the burst potential there, while also adding group support capability, and expanding on our options for survival and condition removal. It quickly got buried in other posts, so it was never discussed after that post. Maybe you have an opinion on it?

Link:::
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/3699949

Terravos.4059:

like I said, you’re basically forced into using Axe Main hand cause you don’t have a viable option for your build, and then you’re using that 1 trait because most of the other traits aren’t super great for ya…also Hyena is just really bad…you’re better off with most of the other Dogs.

Which leads me into this Proposal::::

MAKING HYENAS MORE USEFUL (PvE and WvW)
- Hyenas are useless in the current game with very few exceptions.

• They deal half the damage of other Canines, Which is understandable due to its F2, but…
• You can’t pre-summon the F2, because the summoned ally disappears if there is no target.
• It disappears anyways after killing all nearby targets.
• The extra control from having two dogs out at a time might seem like a good idea, but, the Wolf’s F2 skill is a control skill, plus its damage isn’t penalized, making the Hyena a pointless and worthless pet to ever bother taking.

Changes and Benefits

• Hyenas have 66%-75%(1289) of Canine power instead of 50%(859). This way there is a small bonus to using the pet’s F2, not leave us with a penalty just for taking the pet until we use its F2 to bring it in-line with our other pets.
  - Summoned Hyenas shouldn’t disappear if there is no valid Target. Instead, they should be like our regular pets, or like Summoned Minions from other professions.
  - They should follow us around, and attack only our targets until it dies, or its 40 second duration ends. This way we can preemptively use the skill with no penalty instead of in combat.

• An Alternative idea is for Howl of the Pack to summon 2 Hyenas instead of 1, but one of them has their Control skills put on automatic cooldown so it can’t be spammed. This way, again, there is an actual purpose to using the pet’s F2 other than bringing it in line with what our other pets can already do.

Downsides?

• Sure, maybe the enemy might actually feel pressured when we use this skill now instead of just ignoring the extra animal gnawing at their side.

Discussion

• Yes, if you noticed, I have been using a different format than what the Devs suggested we use. I just find it way too cumbersome to have 5 seperate sections of this post, when there can be only 3 (4 with this section)
• All relevant information is still there.
• I did this, so that way, if an Anet Dev does respond to one of my posts, its because the post was actually read instead of looking for specific keywords, and hopefully this thread isn’t just a Corporate Focused Rapid Fire Meeting no more useful than our Rapid Fire is now.

Cufufalating.8479:

Jocksy.3415:

Your statement “Precision is not a bad stat for Traps, Crit Damage is.” is interesting, but I really don’t see how precision works with traps? None of these two stats do anaything for traps, as far as I know…

Traps can crit, which in turns means they can proc On-Crit effects, and since the Bleed On Crit trait is very handily in the same traitline as the trap traits, along with the Precision stat, it becones of the very few ranger trait setups which actually synergise together well, because suddenly with 1-2 traps pulsing, you attacking (probably with Sigil of Earth and often times a SB) you can lay down 10+ bleeds pretty much out of nowhere on rediclously low CD, not to mention the potential AoE element of the on-crit bleeds.

I’ve used pretty much every trap build I can concieve with dire, carrion, rabid, celestial, even apothecary for a bit, and for me nothing comes close to a rabid or celestial setup, because those on-crits are where its at.

Quoting for Truth. Rabid gear is extremely potent on trap builds, and our ability to stack bleeds is definitely awesome, but, at the same time, its not very unique.

blud.8174:

On a different note: The class really isn’t as catastrophically disastrous as some of these people will have you believe. Most Rangers seem unwilling to experiment and discover the versatility that the class offers. However, 18 months later and (at least what seems like) just two meaningful patches – Aquaman, and Incredible Hulk pet – it’s getting really frustrating.

I have 10 different sets of exotic armor that I use in PvE and WvW (Zerker, Assassin, Cleric, Magi, Settler, Soldier, Valkyrie, Rabid, Rampager, Shaman, and still working on a full set of Celestial and Apothecary)

Some of them are quite fun too. I will use Magi gear to basically buff my pet to beyond powerful, and I can take down almost anything, just by using the Lynx (I have tested to see if only my pet can take down Champions running around the open world, and it does actually work). I will use Settler’s gear with Melandru runes and lemongrass, and it is nearly impossible for me to die, even in a 1-2-3 v 1 scenario in WvW. I use Valkyrie gear for that 1 chance, 20K maul, and normally send even Warriors running away from me after doing it if I don’t 1-shot them.

Also, the Vast Majority of players in the game seem unwilling to experiment with new stats, and like to just stick with whatever they made first. Not just Rangers.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Or… Hero-tron for Council, acting as Evon’s puppet!

http://www.dramabutton.com/

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

…actualy, I would be totally okay with that!!!

Durzlla.6295:

Well traps aren’t classified as traps because they trigger when an enemy walks over them, it’s just “they’re triggered when a viable target walks over them” and healing spring targeting allies would trigger as soon as you cast it at your feet, just like it did as a trap in GW1, if it were thrown I doubt it’d trigger the spring unless an ally triggered it though.

Can you give me a quote and source on that viable target thing?

DiamondMeteor.8345:

I take it Chrispy compared “Guard!” to Heal as One due to the Nature’s Voice trait granting Regen… but even then it’s a bit embarrassing to defend the design of a skill that garners little to no group utility considering Regen and Swiftness are some of the least coveted boons in the game that are, nearly, granted in such an arbitrary manner from professions like Elementalists and Guardians.

Bottomline is that Ranger shouts, collectively, need to have some group utility without investing 30 trait points. Like every other class with Shouts.

Nope. I compared Guard to Heal as One because of how Heal as One works compared to our other heal skills. HaO gives us a massive spike in healing, but the activation time is 1 1/4 seconds, a little longer than our other heal skills. Now, why do you think that is? If the activation time was brought in line with our other heals skills, isn’t it reasonable to either nerf the healing the skill gives, or increase the cooldown?

Fenrir.6183:

Quite the stupid post there… Other classes have low cooldown shouts with NO cast time. Why can’t we ?

The lowest cooldown shout that Guardians and Warriors have access to has a cooldown of 25 seconds (20 traited). That is 66% longer of a cooldown than Guard has, and all we have to do with Guard is spend 1 second casting it.

Come on! Can’t any of you give me a better argument other than “Its silly that its like that!!!”

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

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. =)

I don’t know if I should like this or not. As Chrispy has already pointed out in this thread, the signets are actually pretty strong. They probably have to be toned down and I really don’t think a nerf shouldn’t be the outcome of this thread.

Yeah, the actives do have to be toned down in order for them to affect the pet and Ranger, but not as much as Yoh is suggesting.

Sigh….3,….2,….1,….. and…..“What the kitten Chrispy!?!” (I know someone was thinking of it!)

….Well, lets look at the Signet of Renewal suggestion. The passive effect hasn’t changed. It still removes a condition every 10 seconds. The Active, removes 2 conditions, with a 25 second cooldown. Under that suggestion, it is better, and more efficient, to just let the passive effect stay on without ever bothering to use the active. It would be like Warriors Healing Signet, where the active never gets used because the passive is so much obviously better.

That suggestion in that post is a nerf, not a buff or a positive change. The Original Active of Signet of Renewal broke stun on you, and would remove all conditions from allies, and transfer them to your pet. Sure, your pet had to be alive, and it would surely die after using the signet, but, if I had to choose between removing all conditions from me and my allies(and giving them to my pet), or just removing 2 from me and my pet….I would definitely pick the option that removes more conditions.

Glad for the Dev response, but, most of that suggestion itself isn’t that amazing. You need to work on it a little bit Yoh.

maddoctor.2738:

Before offering advice on how to “fix” pets, or discussing ways on how to fix them, let’s have a look at how Anet tried to fix the pet problem so far.

According to the devs, they didn’t want to buff ranger pets too much because they were very powerful “in certain situations”. The “best” update, that I can think off, that did something for the pets was the health boost update, almost every pet got more extra health, so let’s see how that “solution” helped fix the pet problems or not.

There are a few areas of the game that we can discuss about.
Open World PVE, roaming around the map, exploring, gathering doing random events and achievements.
Dungeons/Fractals
World versus World (large scale)
sPVP and also small scale WvW

So how did the only major Ranger update since release (buffing pet hit points) helped pets in the above 4 sections?

Open World PVE: Pets used to be strong here, the update made them somewhat stronger
Dungeons/Fractals: even if they triple the health of pets they would still be completely useless. There is no reason for pets to exist in Dungeons/Fractals, with or without the health update.
World vs World (large scale): instead of getting killed in 0.1 of a second, they die in 0.2 seconds, horay for progress. No, still useless.
sPVP, small scale WvW: The health update made the pets somewhat stronger in these two aspects of the game, at least it made them harder to kill while the ranger uses their downed skill3 and is underwater (can’t stomp)

So, the single change that has happened since release to buff pets in some considerable way, the health update, did absolutely nothing to make pets even useful in parts of the game that they were useless (hint: health won’t make them better) while buffing them, arguable but they did get some kind of buff, in situation were the pets were stronger…. So the whole health update was simply pointless and had the complete opposite effect of it’s purpose.

Also, I’ve seen in numerous patch notes so called “improvements to pet F2 skills”, honestly I haven’t seen any kind of difference, they used to be useless and they still are.

Pets only got a health boost in PvE as far as I know. My Stalker still has 14,000 or so health in WvW, but has 24,000 or so in PvE.

Jocksy.3415:

Chokolata.1870:

The players are not at fault here. There was no developer interaction or discussion here. Only one developer ever posted and her posts were few and far in between. We had no positive discussion steering towards the things the developers want discussed. No wonder it was a random suggestion posting bonanza.

CDI’s were first postponed because Chris (and maybe others) didn’t have time to manage their thread…
I stated I’d rather have a postponed thread than one with no dev interractions…
Still stand by it and hope the CDI was launched at a time at which it could get attention…

Allie logged in yesterday, for maybe an hour, posted in PvP forums, but nothing in our thread… that made me sad. She could just have dropped by and say she was busy but would try to catch up later… would have made us feel less let down

Or, maybe,….you know….developers, whose job it is to balance the Ranger profession, could make a post or two in there as well. I don’t think every balance decision is made by Allie.

(Continued)
CHANGES AND BENEFITS (Traits)
M-IV – Signet Mastery – Reduce Recharge on Signets(10%). Passive effects of Signets are 10% stronger. (Goal is to make it more desirable to take than what is almost always taken (stady focus))
M-IX – Beastmaster’s Might – Passive effects of Signets are 10% stronger. Activating a signet grants might to you and your pet. (Goal is the same as Signet Mastery)
M-XI – Signet of the (beast)Master – Active effect of Signets are granted to Allies.

S-XII – Moment of Clarity – Use Signet of the Hunt when interrupting a foe. Daze and stun durations you inflict last longer.

WS-VIII – Oakheart Salve – Use Signet of Renewal for you and your pet when you suffer from a number of conditions. (3 conditons?)

N-X – Enlargement – Use Signet of the Wild when your health drops below the threshold.

Instinctual Bond – When you are downed, your pet gains quickness and 5 stacks of Stone Skin. When both of your pets are downed, you gain quickness and 5 stacks of Stone Skin.

DOWNSIDES

• None that I can see yet, except for the attacks of opportunity. that could be extremely powerful when used in a group that knows how to sustain 25 stacks of vulnerability, but its that synergy between players that we need more of anyways.

DISCUSSION

• There is a much more substantial trait and signet rework in this thread ::: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Trait-Rework-ver-1/3647486
  *I’m just making small changes and moving it here piece by piece.

(Chrispy Ideas, part 3)
Warning – Wall of Text Incoming!

SIGNET REWORK (PvE, WvW)

• If Rangers draw from nature to support themselves and allies, shouldn’t 1) Signets affect Rangers from the start, and 2) Signets have a way to affect allies?
• The Problem is that signets are kind of powerful to just give to the Ranger by default (even the Ranger), so this proposal aims to tone down the effects of signets slightly, while also making them useful to give to allies.
• This Proposal also aims to create more synergy between signets and traitsm like how the Enlargment trait and Moment of Clarity trait works now.
• This proposal aims to Increase Rangers ability to sustain damage over longer periods of time, increase survival, and increase ability to remove conditions all at the same time.

CHANGES AND BENEFITS (Signets)
Signet of the Hunt
Passive – Grants increased movement speed for you and your pet
Active – Grants 5 Attacks of Opportunity for you and your pet
Active(traited) – Grants 5 Attacks of Oportunity to you, your pet, and allies.

Signet of the Wild
Passive – Grants health regeneration to you and your pet.
Active – Grants 5 Wild Strikes to you and your pet, dealing more damage. You also gain stability.
Active(traited) – Grants 5 Wild Strikes to you, your pet, and allies, dealing more damage. You also gain stability.

Signet of Renewal
Passive – Cures a condition every ten seconds
Active – Grants 5 stacks of Renewal for you and your pet. If you are stunned, this skill breaks stun and you are granted 4 stacks of renewal instead.
Active(traited) – Grants 5 stacks of Renewal for you, your pet, and allies. If you are stunned, this skill breaks stun and you are granted 4 stacks of renewal instead.

Signet of Stone
Passive – Improves toughness for you and your pet.
Active – Grants 5 stacks of Stone Skin to you and your pet.
Active(traited) – Grants 5 stacks of Stone Skin to you, your pet, and allies.

CHANGES AND BENEFITS (New effects)
Attack of Opportunity – Your Next attack deals 5% more damage, + 1% more damage for each stack of vulnerability on foe. (This effect deals much less than the original attack of opportunity, but it can potentially deal much more damage spread across the 5 attacks of opportunity, because the maximum damage increase could potentially be 30%. It also makes removing Vulnerability more urgent, which right now is pretty weak condition with zero cause for alarm.)(Between Signet of the Hunt and Moment of Clarity, you could potentially get 10 Attacks of Opportunity at a time, unless there are other signet sharing Rangers around. Pets can get up to 15 because of GS#5)

Wild Strikes – Your Attacks deals 10% more damage, + 1% more damage for each condition on foe. (maximum damage boost from this effect is 22%)(Stacks 5 times when using Signet of the Wild, and stacks 5 times when using the Enlargement trait(which itself uses signet of the wild), both skills of which also grant stability for 6 seconds)(This skill is actually quite a bit weaker than the original Signet of the Wild, but I believe it was necessary to make signet sharing possible)

Renewal – Your attacks cure conditions and heal you. (1 condition per attack)(healing should be low, like what you get on life steal effects(for example, 325 per hit with Omnomberry Ghost food, maybe lower than that))(Stacks 5 times when using Signet of Renewal, and stacks 5 times when using Oakheart Salve, making for 10 stacks total)

Stone Skin – You take 100% less damage when struck. (Stacks 5 times when using Signet of Stone. Also Stacks 5 times when traited with Instinctual Bond, making for 10 stacks total on you or your pet)

(Continued in next post)

Aioros.4862:

A detail? I can probably use one hand to count ranger weapons skills that are not a dps loss compared to auto attack.

and all of them are on Greatsword.

Masters bond works the same way. I’ll sometimes do that in WvW and change to different traits after getting the 25 stacks. As long as I stay out of the water, I normally don’t need to switch pets, and the stacks stay.

Mathog.3157:

szygum.2607:

Zylonite.5913:

…It better be a freaking huge dragon 5 times the size of Zhaitan with 20 times the health of Tequatl.

….and the event better not be have an overflow…

or what?

Or he’ll stop playing. Oh no.

I’d rather have no boss at all, but a good, believable story conclusion.

I bet that Scarlet is probably not going to die, and we have to deal with her in season 2.

….which is probably wrose than fighting a dragon 5 times the size of Zhaitan and 20 times the health of Tequatl….

I haven’t done the event in a couple of days, But I’ve heard that my server (Anvil Rock) has gotten to 1200, (which is actually kind of amazing to me, because the living world related events are normally empty within a day or two of release on that server)

FrouFrou.4958:

Chrispy.5641:

Bran.7425:

Chrispy.5641:

The thread was dead to me at about the point where I was clicking on the names of 90% of those posters in that thread, and realizing that most of them have never made a Ranger related post before.

I’m not saying thats bad, I’m just asking, “why did 50 + of you suddenly and finally pick this week to voice your concerns for the Ranger profession and finally post ideas?”

Were this people that post a lot elsewhere or brand new? If new then maybe lurkers, if not maybe people hoping to catch the next flavor of the quarter (year, with the major changes being spaced out so much).

Some of them were brand new, others have posted on every other profession, except for ranger. Some of them last posted over a year ago. Some had exactly one post before, etc.

Like I said, its not a bad thing, I’m just wondering why they stayed in the shadows until now? The shadows don’t really help us, that’s more of the Thief’s thing…

I think most of the people just realised that there is no point posting suggestions since no one has ever listened to us before. We have had massive topics with amazing feedback and suggestions, great arguments, easy and not so easy solutions to fix rangers but all we got a vague promise “there will be some good things and quality of life fixes coming for rangers in the near future”. 1 year later, still waiting. CDI topic is pretty much our only chance to get our voices heard. After it’s over, we will go back to being ignored.

Yeah….And I will say this.

There has been some amazing ideas that have come out of the CDI thread, and there have been plenty of awesome ideas in this suforum, but, at the end of the day, all those ideas don’t really matter as much as I would like, because, (With as little sarcasm as is humanly possible for me)…. “It is Anet’s Job to Fix the Ranger, Not Mine.”

videoboy.4162:

Chrispy.5641:

Arcane Mage and Chaos Mage? They work!

Hey! The word “mage” is nowhere in those Trait Line names!

and neither are the words hunter or druid for ranger, yet peoply try all the time to call us ‘hunters’.

videoboy.4162:

Chrispy.5641:

videoboy.4162:

Chrispy.5641:

videoboy.4162:

But they’re Hunters, not Druids, so that’s not really a strong reason.

They’re Hunters, Druids, and Beastmasters all in one! Little too much emphasis on the beastmaster, but still….

The only things they have, that come remotely close to druidic roots are the spirits. That might make up a 1/4 of their abilities. The other 3/4 falls reliably under Hunter. They’re actually very similar to a more historical version of Native Americans (I’m sure other Native groups could fit this as well) and even they took up the rifle once it became available.

oh I’m not against Rifle for Rangers (anymore), but seriously, having a focus, an entire traitline called “Nature Magic” isn’t enough to be called Druid?

And also, There is a very big difference between dropping a person at 300+ yards by making a sucessful headshot, and sneaking up to 50 yards of an animal before taking aim. For that reason, I say that ‘Marksmanship’ is also not the same as ‘Hunter’.

There’s a reason why Rangers arent called Hunters. For one Thing, Hunters just sounds weak and lame. For another, we do alot more things than hunting (of which, we actually do very little of in this game). Atleast let our name sound cool!

Haha, I get why they’re not called Hunters, I’m just saying that they lean much closer to that part of the spectrum, than they do towards the Druidic side.

I don’t really think the name of a Trait Line is a good determination of the role a class plays. I mean, the Elementalist has the Arcane trait line and Mesmers have one called “Chaos” but you wouldn’t really use those words as role descriptors. =)

Arcane Mage and Chaos Mage? They work!