Guild Wars 2

tom.7468:

In the meanwhile cluster bomb hit too hard but is also spammable.

in the mean time ranger rapid fire does 5-7k with a full zerker set up and LRS does 1.2-2.2k crits… I don’t get why other professions complain about power builds as much, necro power builds are in the same realm as ranger power builds. remember they are just bringing you guys to the effectiveness of other professions, if you don’t want to be nerfed vouch for other professions to be buffed so they don’t have to “tune you down” to our level leaving condition builds as meta in pvp.

about the original post and #7
I will be happy when pets with 30 points in BM function the same way pets with 16 BM in GW1. pets being able to do spike dmg when properly set up and buffed… pets in gw1 could crit for half the health on a player with the proper buffing and set up. It made pet builds very dynamic and had great reward for good pet control, which is really could be used in this game since there is such a high risk with focusing on your pets for damage output and really no reward coming from boosting your pets or focusing on how you play with them.

I mean there is literally no reward for playing well with your pet it is just meh while you do less than mediocre damage. The only reason why someone would go 30 points into BM in gw2 is not to make pets good or to better incorporate them with gameplay, they only go to 30 if they are going bunker and want the additional healing power stats and passive health regeneration which is counterintuitive to “working with your pet” and focuses more on personal survival and overall attention to self and no one else, not the group you are in, not the zerg you are fallowing, not the pet by your side, just you and if your pet dies, meh you got the health regen.

If we are supposed to work with our pet why is it so underwhelming when we spec to give them more stats and have traits that relate more to them than to our self?

some skins like the PvP Masquerade Raiments or any of the PvP Masquerade armor are pvp only skins, there is no way to acquire them in pve or wvw currently, I just hit rank 30 before the cut off on glory and I am not able to gain or craft them with the mystic forge with the items I have because I am lacking tokens for chests and I am pretty sure I don’t have enough wolf tokens to cover the odds.

So will these skins become available through some means or are they going to be lost forever to those that did not get them?…. cause I really want that chest, I salvaged all of my light chests to try to get tokens to make it in the forge and it didn’t happen…

considering RaO is only a boon given elite and that the secondary function of it stops working if pets are swapped or killed it actually does make a lot of sense, compared to the other elites that grant stability there is no other utility that is offered to us in RaO other than the gaining of boons that can be stripped/converted/stolen.

speaking from another class I wouldn’t hold your breath for a change, hell we just spent a good 2weeks+ on the ranger CDI stating issues and the patch coming up only makes things worse for us… they completely ignored our need to heavily trait and too many traits to make builds/weapons work within the same line but they decided to add more traits to lines like marksman which already has a good 5-7 traits needed and only 2 slots that can be filled by them… word of advice if you are unhappy, stop playing till Anet fixes their kitten, that’s pretty much what the ranger community is doing by the sounds of a lot of us.

Cush.4063:

HAVE YOU SEEN THE BALANCE NOTES YET? NO? WELL STOP COMING TO CO CLUSIONS BEFORE YOU EVEN SEE THE BALANCE NOTES. ALL YOU SAW WERE ONE NEW TRAIT FOR EACH CLASS AND YOU DONT EVEN KNOW IF THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE BALANCE NOTES. WHOSE TO SAY THAT THEY JUST NERFED WARRIOR TO THE GROUND AJD GAVE THEM THAT TRAIT TO HELP THEM OUT? YOU CAN CAN QQ WHEN THE FULL NOTES ARE RELEASED. THX

we been waiting a year and a half with that optimism… hasn’t worked out yet and history tends to repeat it’s self, so yeah try playing underdog for a year and a half waiting to get fixed and having to deal with empty promises and being flat out told “no you guys are not allowed to do burst of any kind because that would just cause a power creep in the game” and to see burst potentials getting promised to other classes. The ranger optimism has run dry at this point and unless it is pointed out that there needs to be things changed and they should not be so rigid on their views of classes that are not fitting into any meta in the game.

Substance E.4852:

Criminal.5627:

so after we get told that we can not burst because it would be escalating the power creep in the game warriors get a boost to their dmg and bursting capability with one hand weapons…. How does this mentality make any sense in the game at all? it is almost like a huge middle finger to us and the CDI we had…

Sad thing is that it would be a big boon to our “sustained damage” model and they gave it to the one class that doesn’t need more physical damage nor do they need to be able to stack more bleeds in a S/S build.

exactly! what ticks me off is how they are allowing warriors to be the exception in this “power creep” while using the term to keep rangers down and do anything but buff our dmg output in the game and keep us from being in the burst meta that is very much what the game is about with the community.

Allie Murdock:

Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.

so given that why the hell are warriors getting even more bursting potential with one handed weapons?! How is what is going on with the new traits considered balanced? warriors attacking 10% faster when using 1 handed weapons when they already have some of the best burst in the game with 2 handed weapons is just flat out stupid. Where is the risk coming into play for them at this point? they are near impervious to physical dmg and conditions are now cured off of them at an ever increasing rate. WHY IS THERE EVEN CLASSES IN THE GAME?

Allie Murdock:

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

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

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

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

on top of warriors getting more burst ability rangers are still being limited to doing sustained damage ONLY the above quote was tossing any hopes of ranger burst dmg out of the window which will make it the only class that is lacking in burst of any kind in the game and we were told we would not be brought up to snuff to be on equal grounds with the other classes in terms of burst abilities because of a “power creep” which they some how keep on ignoring when ever they release content for warriors… making them do more dmg or attack faster is sure as hell a huge POWER CREEP necros have condition burst, engineers have condition and dmg burst, ele has dmg burst, thief has dmg burst, mes has dmg burst, warrior has dmg burst, hell even guardian can burst dmg… HOW IS THIS BALANCE BY KEEPING RANGERS FROM BEING CAPABLE OF DOING ANY KIND OF BURST IN THE GAME!!!!? THIS IS WHY THE RANGER COMMUNITY IS DEMINISHING WHY PEOPLE ARE PLAYING OTHER CLASSES, WHY THERE IS SO MANY GOD kitten WARRIORS. IF THIS KEEPS UP THERE WONT BE A RANGER COMMUNITY LEFT BY THE END OF THE YEAR THERE WILL BE A SMALL GROUP OF 5-10 PLAYERS WHO USE BEARBOWS. ANET FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIX THE GAME, BALANCE THE CLASSES FOR REAL AND GET THEM ON EQUAL FOOTING AND STOP… STOP! BUFFING THE GOD kitten WARRIOR DAMAGE IN THE GAME!!!

If anyone was wondering these were taken from the Anet representation in the ranger CDI

so after we get told that we can not burst because it would be escalating the power creep in the game warriors get a boost to their dmg and bursting capability with one hand weapons…. How does this mentality make any sense in the game at all? it is almost like a huge middle finger to us and the CDI we had…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Atherakhia.4086:

CDI was a total waste of time. It had absolutely 0 interest from ANet and wasn’t productive from the word go. We spent 2 weeks talking about removing the pets entirely when everyone with an ounce of common sense should have known was never going to be realistically considered.

We never even discussed why everyone in WvW despises the class.

If anything comes of this it will be a miracle. Especially in a timely manner.

Well, it’s not like people would drop it even after it was said. Or just sniped at how it was stupid. Or argued whether it was needed or not, right up until the end.

It’s at least partially our fault, the community, for wasting that time.

to be honest if we could police the forum better we would have had a lot less issues, also if we were more directed to discussion points it would have helped a lot… when there is no aim or goal you get a lot of the idiots voicing their opinion about how stupid the pets were and that they should be removed every time. I mean every freaking time we got in-between subjects they brought it up.

Atherakhia.4086:

CDI was a total waste of time. It had absolutely 0 interest from ANet and wasn’t productive from the word go. We spent 2 weeks talking about removing the pets entirely when everyone with an ounce of common sense should have known was never going to be realistically considered.

We never even discussed why everyone in WvW despises the class.

If anything comes of this it will be a miracle. Especially in a timely manner.

actually several things were mentioned about WvW like how pets are useless on attacking/defending towers and keeps because they can not attack foes over the wall or on the wall. Also the lack of burst/ spike abilities as well as the lack of support abilities was brought up.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I have an exotic shortbow (critter), and it kills bit pve1v1 faster than my ascended longbow (critter), due to slow ROF of LB. So far the best which would work well;
LB AA 1500 range, the closer your target is, the faster you cast. + overall faster projectiles, they’re veeeery slow, and 1200 range is just… not mutch.
But a gardener hoe does more dmg than my GS even

you forgot warrior banners do more dmg than our GS

Nektera.9425:

ranger PVE and sPVP is not in problem guys…
sure, in sPVP ranger dont have many viable build. and that is the problem. but ranger are not underpowered in sPVP

but… in WvW, they do not contribute much to the zerg. i mean, they dont do any real damage even if you are a zerker build. because you will die fast. if you use more versatile build. you don’t contribute to the zerg like any other class.
sure they can roam. but thief can roam better.

ranger pvp is a problem, we have a very gimiky build that is our only build that is viable… that is a problem, it would be the same if necros only had the MM build viable in pvp. we are pidgin holed into taking very finite things and not having any room for diversity, inspiration, or something more entertaining than throwing out spirits and spamming weapon skills. if you go to the pvp thread look at how much hate the other classes have for our one viable build, if we do not get another we might well be facing having no viable build if it gets nerfed from all of the other classes Q.Q over it leaving us with little to nothing to pvp with.

the whole thing about pets getting the spirit effect though is how would this function once multiple spirit like skills are used and how will the actives work? will the pet need to sit still for the actives to fire off?

I don’t think many play ranger, they still have not had any ranger representation in any of the pvp readyup matches

Specific Game Mode
< PvX.>
Proposal Overview
< Improve ranger ability to deal with immobilize and better deal with the spike builds that accompany them>
Goal of Proposal
< Currently rangers do not have the ability to effectively remove immobilization conditions, this is because rangers are not able to cleanse conditions fast enough to get through cover conditions to break the immobilize which is near impossible with the classes that use immobilize and the additional conditions they have access to with the same weapons which usually reapply cover conditions every second whether it be burning/bleeding/poison/blind out cleansing does not keep up. >
Proposal Functionality
< Add a functionality to the Tail wind trait to reduce immobilize by 90% and still grant the swap benefit as well. Keep the soft CC on full duration. It would be like how the warrior has immunity to soft CC but is weak to hard CC… also will help deal with the current builds that imob rangers and burn them while under 4 sec of imob. Allow ranger to come back from being hard CC’d with a condition that they cannot normally cleanse. >
Associated Risks
< well it will be harder to spike the ranger but in terms of risk, most of it can be overcome with soft CC or other conditions that can be dealt with better in terms of a more normal build such as fear, stun, daze, chill… something that does not require 1 skill to counter it for near every match in sPvP or WvW. >

Specific Game Mode
< PvX.>
Proposal Overview
< Swap the fallowing traits from the fallowing trait lines to better improve build synergy and survivability for builds as well as to please players (yes this includes “trap traits”)>
Goal of Proposal
< As most people already know ranger traits seem to be everywhere and do not always correlate with trait lines that would function with builds. Swapping these 4 traits from Skirmishing and Wilderness survival would improve both trap builds as well as power builds in terms of functionality and survival. >
Proposal Functionality
<

• Swap: Trapper’s Expertise (VIII Skirmishing) with Oakheart Salve (VIII Wilderness Survival) to allow for more relief from condition spamming specs when slotting for power removes most of the condition cleansing abilities for ranger.
• Swap: Trap Potency (XI Skirmishing) with Bark Skin (XII Wilderness Survival) to improve the synergy of conditions lasting longer and improving the survivability of raw power builds. Since ranger power builds do not work like the typical class cannon, putting everything into power/prec/critdmg and 1-2 shotting a foe while hoping you don’t get killed firing those 2 abilities I do not see bark skin being overpowered for power builds since the ranger is a “sustained damage class” a passive damage mitigation is almost needed for power builds to ever be played in pvp if we will never be able to do what the other power builds from other classes do in the sPvP portion of the game. Rangers cannot spike like the other classes. Also we do not have any traits that can be used for passive dmg mitigation in the builds that need them. >

Associated Risks
< Better build flow with better trait flows leading to a possibility of new trap builds as well as more power/crit orientated builds budding out into the sPvP world, chance at some becoming powerful if handled correctly but that can be handled with if the situation arises which it might not.>

we actually do need some offensive blast ability, blast abilities affect all targets in range and i do not believe we have any.
and i made the suggestion awhile back in forums that there should be a trait in beast mastery that reduces damage pets take for X seconds after using a healing skill by 90%
shorter duration for pvp but longer in the pve/wvw environment. this could be a minor trait since it would be one that would be one of those “have to slot traits” for anything really large scale and lets face it Instinctual Bond is usless.

Akisame.9508:

Flytrap.8075:

Akisame.9508:

And no, the ranger class has never before used pets, the pet inclusion was something created by WoW if I remember correctly and adopted from there on other games.

Rangers could use pets in the original Guild Wars by slotting a specific skill onto your action bar, but they were by no means required to do so.

In fact, most Rangers decided not to use pets unless they were on certain team comps that were tailored towards minions.

ok, let’s read my sentence together. “the pet inclusion was something CREATED by WoW if I remember correctly”

There I cap’ed the ‘created’ part so you can understand. WoW was announced in 2001 and beta and full release was in 2004. GW1 was released in April of 2005, so yes, they most likely took the idea from WoW. Mind you, I never played either of these two games because I was still playing EQ1 and EQ2 at those times along with any interesting releases I may have seen.

actually gw1 had a beta around the same time and even before that (first beta was in 2003?), at which time gw1 looked very cartoony and nothing like what we know it now GW1 started development shortly after WoW we know this because atleast one of the founders of Anet was an employee at blizzard and did work on the early stages of WoW. but in terms of development wise gw1 was in dev by i believe 2002 (should look up the early stages of gw1 it looked pretty much identical to WoW with the cartoon figures and vivid colors)? also other games have used the pet incursion but it was something to be opted for. In those games pets pretty much instent reserected and could be controlled/buffed much easier…. pets could actually kill players.

Flytrap.8075:

Akisame.9508:

And no, the ranger class has never before used pets, the pet inclusion was something created by WoW if I remember correctly and adopted from there on other games.

Rangers could use pets in the original Guild Wars by slotting a specific skill onto your action bar, but they were by no means required to do so.

In fact, most Rangers decided not to use pets unless they were on certain team comps that were tailored towards minions.

also for EOE builds since the spirt’s damage was tied directly to beastmastery

phys.7689:

Sorry that anet is going to sacrifice ranger for marksman, i think the vocal minority is about to screw over 80% of the people who play ranger who play it because they have pets, or who have grown to like the class. I dont really believe the majority of people who play this class dont want a pet. But that seems to be what they are taking away from this.

And yeah your class mechanic is supposed to define your class, id say 3 classes it doesnt very much, and to be honest they suffer for that.

I really hope the make a new class for the people who really wanted a marksman (after they make the martial artist class) instead of trying to warp ranger into something it will never be that good at.

You dont really want a ranger if you want a long range burst dps solo profession, just getting rid of pets isnt going to make long bow into a sniper rifle, or allow you to hit people like people hit backstab. you will in fact be just a warrior clone with archer flavor. They need to build a class from the ground up to give you the type of play you are looking for, with a totally different class mechanic/traits/playstyle.

dear god i hope not, a few of us have actually suggested pet buffs, and to be honest i think if they gave pets the ability to burst even if players cant more people would be ok with them, or even if they put their damage on the combat text so players can see how much damage they are doing. most of the pet “hate” i think comes from players not seeing what the pets are doing and because their damage and response time is not where most players would like to see them… also the fact that they like standing in fire.

when this ends I hope I am not the only one who wants a write up of what is being taken and the future direction of the class. So far everything is ambiguous and there is no real clear image of the future of the ranger.

DarksunG.9537:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

Allie Has there been any feedback from the team on making Pets more unique? Dyable, Armor, packs, something more about the visual customization?

I am curious my self, we can make ourselves look as unique as possible but our pets are generic, boring, unimaginative, and to get a pet to suit a look often relies on taking a pet you don’t really desire to take…. if only our cave spider was that lovely blue skin instead….

urdriel.8496:

Allie Murdock.8152:

phys.7689:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

this is completely false, all classes are balanced with their class mechanics in mind.
A mesmer isnt doing high level dmg competitive with other dps classes without phantasms or conditions without its clones. Necro base power on skills is lower even on its dps skills because they consider condition/minions in their max dps. Elementalists skills are tied to swapping elements, and they specifically place finishers and AOE in different places to promote swapping. Theif inititative totally changes how and what skills get dmg, and its generally balanced around initiative costs. Every classes mechanic is figured into their DPS.

Also, what this guy said ^

All other classes can choose, a mesmer can choose a phantasm build or not, a Necro can choose a minion build or not, we cant choose, we have an AI controlled pet that is a dps lost and we must bear with it each second we play GW2.

Ofc, we are frustrated, more than 1 year with a pet that is a debuff instead of a buff, the best fix that ranger class could have would be a “good pet” , but instead of that, Anet nerfed pet leash range,pet attack range and we have a severe damage handicap when we attack or defend a keep.

those examples are not pertaining to class mechanics those are utilities and we can do that too, we can take sigils, spirits, or traps. none of which are as useful as those classes have their utilities because of the heavy reliance they have for us in traits.

AEFA.9035:

Substance E.4852:

Allie Murdock.8152:

1. VII. Spotter – Should be moved to Skirmishing as Gradmaster minor.
   1. Rework to 5% crit chance & 3% crit damage
2. Change VII to Hunter’s Tactics – +3% increase damage on disabled enemies (stun/daze/knockdown/fear/immob)

Not sure who suggested this but unless “Hunter’s Tactics” is also an aura like Spotter or other classes’ auras, then this is a horrible tradeoff if we are to ever be more desirable in WvW. Crit chance and damage is virtually useless to a zerg of PVT heavies whereas a damage buff on a stuned target is a HUGE buff to the hammer train meta. Rangers go from the butt of every WvW joke to almost a must have for zerg combat. It’s just that easy to fix us.

We lose 2% crit chance and have it moved up a tier and to a different tree for something that is just another highly circumstantial trait that relies on our pets to land their very short duration stuns for us.

Im the one who made all of those PVE suggestions mentioned by Allie actually. If you can’t get your head around the changes and why these changes, sorry but you need to play more Ranger bro.

actually a lot of things have been mentioned several times by several people. the only real original things are mainly things involving pets do to the large numbers of posts that are against pets rather than for them. somewhere around 90% of the posts in this cdi are PvE or PvX so give credit to everyone else who mentioned any pve buffs because they are not solely original I can guarantee that. Also that is not everything, that is more of a reiteration of just some of the ideas that have been mentioned inside letting us know that those things have been mentioned for sure, now we just need to focus on things not on that list to make sure that ideas are reaching them if they have not yet been noticed…. such as the pet UI displaying conditions, boons and shouts.

I hope a better pet UI makes it into the game, it is already a pain when we cant see pet boons and conditions they currently have. not to mention to see if shouts are still affecting them.

BlackRose.1247:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Weapons:

1. Ranger weapon sets are currently lacking in focus and should be redesigned so that weapon selection synergizes with specific playstyles.
   1. Longbow: Reward max range and synergize with pet.
      1. Vulnerability instead of damage increase with range (s1), cripple (s2), immobilize (s3), knockdown (s5)
      2. Pet might (s3), swiftness (s2), regen (s5)
   2. Shortbow: Condition Damage
      1. Burning (s3), Torment (s4), s3 should be s5 w/ leapback + confusion
   3. Sword: Power
      1. Dodge overrides animation (s1), s2 jumps reversed (first goes in, second goes out), s3 cast time reduced to better time evades
   4. Warhorn: Group/Pet buffs
      1. s4 gives Protection, Regen and Vigor to nearby allies
   5. Torch: Condition application
      1. S4 sets location of target on fire (small aoe), s5 causes burning and blindness
   6. Axe: Multiple target/power
      1. Base damage could be increased slightly
      2. S3 causes chill at target location (small aoe), s5 shouldn’t cancel movement, but speed could be

PvP
General:

1. Some changes to Axe should be made to make it a more desirable weapon.
   1. Ricochet – Bounce your axe between foes, dealing heavy damage to the first target, and reduced damage to subsequent targets. [Vulnerability x2] 5s (With a buff to the base damage)
   2. Splitblade – Throw a spread pattern of five whirling axes that bleeds foes and grants swiftness if foes are hit. [Bleeding x5] 6.25s and *[Swiftness] 5s
   3. Winter’s Bite – Throw an axe that removes a two boons. Your pet’s next attack inflicts Chilled. [Chilled] 3.25s (Increase the base damage by a bit)
      Beastmastery & Pets:
2. Pets are overpowered in condition builds
   1. Cats give condition builds high direct damage burst, while direct damage builds don’t get stronger with different pets.

if you would implement this, it would srsly suck, because then the ranger would be there without any 1h condition weapon. this is why i would like you to either introduce the pistol as condition weapon or rework the axe so that it becomes a condition weapon

we don’t have any real 1 hand condition weapon currently and we still do ok this is how the spirit ranger build is working, would be nice but it isn’t something we absolutely need based on our current performance with our seemingly never ending burn with the poison and bleeds on top.

if it makes you feel any better every single ranger build that hit meta in Spvp has been nerfed leading to the current rendition of spirit ranger and almost nothing else viable for ranger pvp. hahaha at least thief still has options and many as that since you listed a several. this is how the ranger community feels as a whole, hell not even one dev played ranger in any of their pvp matches when they did the dev pvp tourney.

there was one spectator ranger that neither team captain picked for the entirety of the 3 matches.

Criminal Mastermind
Tarnished Coast
PvE, PvP, slight wvw

Allie Murdock.8152:

3. Pets can’t keep up in combat.

1. Melee range should be increased to 600 to accommodate the “run>stop>begin attack>cancel attack>run>stop” type mechanics you see throughout the game.

the only thing I am worried about with that is would they do the same thing that they currently do now just at the edge of the 600 range?
would it be possible to give pets a lunge in their attacks if said attacks are melee?

FZeroWing.2098:

I was in EoTM the other day, and I killed a ranger… this is what he sent me in whisper

If it makes you feel any better he is an idiot that does not know how to work around other class mechanics.

And if it makes everyone feel better people complain the only current viable ranger build is op. As they have done with every ranger build that hits meta since launch leading to each build getting nerfed to nearly out of existence or out of existence.

Aidenwolf.5964:

A ranger without a pet is nothing like a warrior. Our weapon skills are nowhere near as good as warrior. Lose pets and buff traps and redesign our bow skills and sword and then we’d be somethng special.

Pet AI hasn’t improved since beta so my suggestions to improve the class disregard the pet as Anet has done during the life of the game. They probably will improve F2 but it took a year and a half to do just that. As I’ve said before, with ascended gearing I want to only play my ranger, and they need to be fixed.

I know a ranger without a pet is nothing like a warrior, I am just using that as an example of a ranger without a pet is a class with no mechanic, low skill ceiling, and boring repetitive play style. Which is very much like other MMOs where you can press skills in order half asleep and still be competitive with someone widely aware of the fight.
…it is like Mesmer without any clones, or thief with no initiative if that makes it better for you.

it is clear no band-aid fix will improve our class we need something significant and meaningful designed for a fix rather than general balance. it would be better to fix and let it see where the meta sits as a whole then balance off of the fixed pets than to slowly build pets up to an acceptable level of Ai, damage, and responsiveness. That was pretty much how they buffed warriors since beta, they buffed the hell out of them then slowly tinkered with them as time went by.
the excuse that we get from anet is that any drastic change will throw off all the other classes, and the game meta. which imo might be a good thing since most of the other classes see rangers as a joke still. a drastic change and balancing after would put us in a better spot than their approach of testing the water slowly as they are doing now.

Buffing skills after losing pets will not make us special. we will still only be that gray area between the thief and warrior and still not be desired for group activities. Pets, like them or not, are what makes us special currently and we need them to work better and smarter such as avoiding red circles much like the AI anet tested in beta on game mobs which was later removed because of the chaotic fighting instances that occurred when attacking large groups of npcs.

I hate to say it but rangers have a bigger stigma than pets for group activities. There are more groups that will kick you if you have a LB as a ranger than if you have a pet solely because they expect that you will use point blank shot off CD and make fighting hell.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Welcome back. I wish you would consider thinking of the ranger’s pet as a mesmer clone and not as an extension of the ranger. The AI is bad, so bad in fact that giving pets such a high percentage of OUR power feels like a serious class Nerf. In PVE pets are meat shields which they could still be even if they didn’t posses a third of our damage potential.

Many of us are willing to get rid of pets in our gameplay just to recoup that damage but if you want to keep pets out at least consider nerfing pets and buffing the actual player.

a ranger without a pet is a warrior without adrenaline. if you get the base damage without the mechanic what is there that makes you, well you? Besides the lack of depth and skill ceiling.

Dropping pets would be a horrible move if you hate the Ai I think your energy would be better expanded on stating what you expect from the Ai and where it is falling short. What if the AI got fixed would you rather a pet with a smart Ai doing next to no dmg and looking pretty or would you rather it tearing through enemies while you focus on another aspect of the current combat you find your self in?

There are two sides to every coin. yes the AI is bad atm and I would like to see 18k crits from my own attacks without setting up for it. But wouldn’t that get dull? wouldn’t you crave a more interesting way to play? I do agree though that there should be a way to spec so you can play a more strait forword.. dull build by taking some grandmaster trait in marks that gimpifies your pet with a stat boost to you but it is not something that should be the norm nor should it be preferred. it should be something if anything that is easily countered, and makes you feel like a fish out of water while you have it.

on the flip side there should be a way to make the pet more of a part of you as much as Necromancer minions are when they run minion master or Mesmer phantasms when they run zerker. High damage and utility capability much more so than currently available with the benefit of it being there and fighting with you rather than being a hindrance to your or it’s own survival. We should be empowered to be fighting with our pets not punished…we should also flip out and smash more face should something happen to them and they should be the same should something happen to us. just think how K9 officers react should someone hurt their hound or how their hounds react if someone attacks their officer, they only get more aggressive, more passionate to the other and more lethal to the attacker.

After pet AI gets worked on and fixed could the addition of pet utility attacks be too far out of question?

Something that functions kind of like F2 and causes them to exiqute a special attack that can be ether devastating or apply some kind of effect much like a weapon attack but used by pets. Even an attack that functions differently given circumstances with triggers for double dmg based on foe’s hp or the presence of a condition or boon?
This could also increase the roll of pets and the desire to have them for encounters.

I am not putting this in the CDI format because it probably sounds like a crazy man screaming, but GW1 had utility for pets and some of them when set up correctly just warms your heart when you see your pet attack 8 targets at once in an aoe or take out the majority of someone’s health, or lock your foe out of their abilities because of a well placed attack by your pet.

DeceiverX.8361:

It appears I will not be picking up my ranger again any time soon, then.

Allie, I would like to humbly suggest that the dev team attempts to simply create an archer role in some other class, then, given time. Clearly the demand is there seeing as it’s a very large basis for why people want the pet stowed, and honestly, if that isn’t happening due to the developers’ vision, then something needs to be done to accommodate for it. Warrior Longbow and thief shortbow simply are inadequate alternatives.

I believe thief currently has one less weapon combination than most classes in the game (aside from elementalists due to attunements). Perhaps room could be made there for the possibility of longbow implementation? Simply, until the archer role is established, massive populations of players will be unsatisfied with gameplay for the game fails on all fronts to achieve accommodating for such a style of play. Ultimately, it’s ArenaNet’s responsibility for catering to such large demands and simply stating that entire forms of play options are not going to be allowed due to them not being within their vision is absurd and extremely unprofessional when backed by immense demand.

I just wanted to point out that the Thief and Warrior actually do make better “archers” than rangers. Both, the Thief and Warrior have 6 attacks with their bows, and both have better skill flow from one skill to the other on ether setting up combos or strait up burst dmg spam. In most occasions Rangers only use 3 of the 5 bow attacks for any given bow (in pve). Using the other 2 abilities will have one of these outcomes for a ranger.

kitten
1. off any melee member in the party for knocking the foe even if it was knocking the foe into a more favorable position.
2. to kill your self by running up to the boss.
3. to run for your dear life because something wants to kill you.

your assumption that there is no “archer class” is dead wrong by the proof of the success of thief and warrior archer builds (hell even the warriors have a very deadly pvp build that involves the LB and the combos/ burst it does). Basically what is being stated is there is no archer niche in another profession even though both of these professions are better with the bows than the ranger in terms of usability and damage output only because neither can use both of these bows right?

I am sorry that you feel that ranger was supposed to fill this archer roll, nothing about this class and its origins scream archer though, if anything it screams roamer and loaner since we are always so far away from the group when attacking with a bow rather than in the thick of the fight. If you look at weapon skills and traits before hand it would do you loads of good when you want to pick a class to fill a role you like. I would even recommend reading the wiki and all the skills and traits available.

Really the biggest disappointment with ranger is how unimpressive pets are, for reference in GW1 a well buffed/well stacked pet at max beastmastery could take off over half the health of another player with one critical, which was balanced because going that deep into BM reduced your own dmg output but made your pet something to fear. not to mention ranger pets didn’t die so easily and were much quicker to get back in the fight once they did in GW1 than they are in GW2.

Also I guess GW2 is missing a lot of pet utilities/traits that rely on BM to put pets up there in damage.

But back to your topic, go check out the 6 skills that both Warriors and the Thief have on their bows and look at how they can be chained to create openings, combos, and etc. Then go look at ranger bow skills and look at how often you use those abilities when you want to make something dead/keep something from escaping/get to your target/survive effectively.

to those wanting the spirit ranger to be nerfed consider this

• that is the only build rangers currently have that can at least keep them toe to toe with 4/7 of the other professions
• we know it is a gimmicky build but we have no alternative that is anywhere near as viable hence why the CDI page is now approaching 40 pages.
• try playing a ranger for a month and see how crappy our build options really are when you don’t want to be annihilated by the majority of other professions or even your own profession running spirits.

Specific Game Mode
< PvX>

Proposal Overview
< improve opening strike>

Goal of Proposal
< to make opening strike more valuable and making the grandmaster trait Remorseless in marksmanship more valuable >

Proposal Functionality
< Changing the function of Opening strike to cause + 225% damage on the next attack making it more of a strategic use of opening strikes rather than burn it while you got it buff that it is now. This change would be more in line with necromancer Dhummfire on command that they are getting because it puts strategy back into passive buffs and encourages combos to be made rather than encouraging thoughtless attack. >

Associated Risks
< This would allow for rangers to be able to get slightly higher damage through playing smarter but as far as risks it could open up ranger spike builds if planned very well but this is not much of an issue at the moment do to most of our harder hitting attacks being heavily telegraphed via animations.>

Specific Game Mode
< PvX.>

Proposal Overview
< improve rapid fire on the longbow>

Goal of Proposal
< allow rapped fire to be affected by damage multiplies for entirety of cast and reduce cast time to bring the attack in line with simular abilities on other professions. >

Proposal Functionality
<

• Rapid fire is currently a damage loss if you are standing at max range, the channel time is actually taking away from a harder hitting per critical auto attack at max range for the duration than the entirety of rapid fire. Many other classes have abilities that attack fast and with consecutive attacks such as the thief and warrior. If rapid fire was brought up speed wise down to the 2¾ sec cast it would be much more beneficial for our overall output of damage on the bow.

• Also currently only the first shot of rapid fire is affected by damage multiplied such as Signet of the Hunt, which leads to a wasted utility because it is only +150% on a 1-2k attack at best instead of the total damage for the ability. Allowing such abilities to affect every single arrow from rapid fire is all that I am asking.>

Associated Risks
< Rapid fire would be brought in line with similar abilities as well as be affected by all of our utilities for the duration, which may end up making longbow more valuable as a damage weapon. The associated risk is the shock factor from other classes until it is taken as the norm.>

Ok back to the cdi format please and back to constructive info about rangers, what they need, how they can get it, and how pets should work! Pets are not going away, it has been set in stone I am sorry if you do not like them but please stop suggesting they should be removed. Suggesting so is only starting a lot of arguments and is also not contributing to improving the ranger class… If we have no mechanic we would be more simpler than the warriors. And we don’t want to go there…

I would still like to see anet buff pets to the point that was near the damage output in GW1 with 16 beatmastery when you put 30 points in the current rendition of the beastmastery trait line… Also if we could get a list of ideas they had taken from the thread so we knew were to focus the rest of the week it would be grand.

The people screaming to remove pets still need a slap in the back of the head cause they are kittening off people who are trying to post ideas on how to fix the pet mechanics or possible ways to fix pet mechanics.

could we get a list of what is being taken from this thread so far by the Arena net team to see where we should focus on things that they might have missed or ideas yet to be expressed, there has been several ideas on things to help pets as well as to try to get rangers off of the bottom of the power build efficiency compaired to other classes on top of a lot of things with conditions, utilities…. and then a lot of useless crap.

So can we please see what is being taken from this thread (ideas that have been passed on to development teams) as of now so we can figure out what we should focus on for the duration that this CDI thread is open (ideas that have not already been passed on to development teams)?

Allie Murdock.8152:

I didn’t say Rangers are in the right spot. I just meant that we have to be very careful of the power creep.

We know what you mean but that is very hard for us to see that because the ranger power builds are some of the worst power builds in the game in terms of damage output.This is mostly because the pet damage is just not where it should be for these builds and most of the time the pet is not contributing when we play power builds. They ether die fast from aoe, have minimal damage, or remain on passive. Considering mesmer phantoms and necro minions share stats with the caster we find we are at an unacceptable level for damage output when we run power/zerker builds.

Specific Game Mode
< PvP
Proposal Overview
< Improving beastmastery and its usability within the game, making it more viable for multiple play styles. >
Goal of Proposal
< to bring pets up to speed with being a “weapon.” Increasing build diversity. Make pets an actual threat that needs to be dealt with or face consequences rather than the mosquito annoyance it has become to most of the ranger targets. As well as to give an alternative to the current bunker beastmaster. >
Proposal Functionality
There is multiple things that need to be done to bring beast mastery up to scale.

1. Improve pet AI to allow them to run out of AOE instead of standing in red circles that tick their health away. Much like the AI that was tested for foes in beta or the AI in GW1 where mobs ran out of AOE.
2. Improve pet pathing. They should be able to go over ledges and suffer the same falling damage as players and be able to go straight onto ledges below jumping height. Right now their pathing pushes them to the nearest ramp and will waste a lot of time getting to a target that only has to jump down and jump back up to avoid pets completely. Pets also already do suffer from falling damage currently in-game.
3. Scale pet stats to ranger stats or at least to stats added over base stats such as gear and traits. This would open a lot of utility to rangers since pet base stats would be less of an issue and make them more dependent on the rangers stats, allowing for pet utilities to be available much more readily without sacrificing damage in one case or health and toughness in another. This would also open up the possibility of conditions and condition duration to pets much more, as well as critical damage.
4. Change the functionality of the + pet attributes in the beastmastery trait line to be half of what they currently are and adding from 0.5% through 1% damage reduction for pets, to it for every point spent in the beastmastery trait line. With pets scaling from gear the attribute bonus would not be as needed but the damage reduction would be much more helpful especially with classes that have heavy AOE.
5. Change how melee pet attacks function/ their animations. Melee attacks would connect with moving targets much more if they functioned the same as the first attack from moa morph Claw, which causes the caster to “leap” at the target with each use much like how the one handed chain works currently with the ranger sword. It would allow the melee pets to stay on a moving target and to hit a target that is moving, currently a moa morphed pet hits more reliably than a non moa morphed melee pet because it will spam that move Claw and will stick to a running foe while attacking dealing significantly more damage overall than a non-morphed melee pet.
6. Replace Stability Training the master trait in beastmastery with one that grants pets damage immunity (or at least a 90% reduction) for 7-15 sec (this would be more dependent on game type, 7 sec in pvp but would be longer in pve and wvw to help mitigate AOE damage and allow pets to participate in fights that currently destroy them such as Tequatl and zerg fights) after the ranger uses a healing skill..

Associated Risks
< What are the risks of this? Well I would have to say other players complaining about pets being overpowered in other classes. Though it would be more along the lines of other players adjusting to killing pets intently rather than letting them run freely and as a counter balance to pets actually becoming lethal;

• I would suggest that the trait Master’s Bond in beast master also have the secondary effect of causing pet swap to go on cool down for 30 seconds should a pet with any number of stacks be defeated and locking the ranger out from pet swapping to their secondary pet that is alive for those 30 seconds. Also starting the minute long cool down for the downed pet once swapped after those 30 seconds. If the ranger gets out of combat within 30 seconds of their original pet dying that was under the effects of the Master’s Bond buff the ranger will still have to wait the remaining time of the 30 seconds until they can swap pets.

This trait would also be affected by load whistle reducing the down time by 20%. The pet down time would give time for counters to this build to be played out preventing it from becoming more powerful than it should and making pets both a target for other players and a real threat to players being defeated. >

A lot of this can also applies to pve and wvw aspects of the game.

I think they should just give us a staff weapon and have 2-5 be traps, and 1 be “launch you foe with your walking stick”

Rolyate.6753:

Just allow rangers to play without pets.

They’re such a wonky mechanic.

that would leave rangers without any mechanic and pretty much a gray area between thief and warrior, what would replace pets if they got rid of them? or what should? a while back we discussed and preparations we felt was a good option… make suggestions on things to replace if you would rather it be removed

McWolfy.5924:

No more pet updates pls!
Pets are just bad in wvw.

than make suggestions on how to make it better just sitting on your hands and saying no to other’s ideas does not help working towards anything constructive.

And if Buffing the pets like this that has to be the cause of changing how pet swap works so be it, would at least make them a threat to anything that is hostile to rangers and not so much of a pushover that they can be ignored. I would rather have a Powerful class mechanic over 2 things that can’t make a dent in any of my endeavors.

Make beast mastery a viable offensive spec
There are a few things that need to be worked on first though

1. Improve basic pet AI (getting the hell out of aoes!)
2. Improve pathing (pets should not have to take the long way around things that a player can jump from and live especially since they do take falling dmg, they should be able to chase foes off a 2 ft ledge without pathing for a ramp…)
3. Scale pet stats to ranger stats based on gear not base states (this can even be the passive trait replacing Instinctual Bond which is not very helpful in mostly all aspects of the game)
4. the Pet Attribute Bonus stats gained in the beast master line is not near enough for what it is, rangers are sacrificing their already low end dps to gain healing power and up pets stats which does no where near enough to keep them alive or make their dmg significant enough to make up for slashing weapon dmg .

If you put all of these together a ranger in dps gear with a pet would be as proficient as a decent dmg dealing weapon (ex Warrior GS, axe. Thief dagger, etc)

For a class mechanic ours is very lame in terms of battle, most people just ignore it or burn it down in aoes as they blast the area. Someone should be able to spec to have a pet as their main offense if they so chose. Would add more variety to game play, make pets actually a target to kill instead of a mosquito biting the back of someone’s leg.
Just using this as reference I know GuildWars was a different game but a pet with max beast mastery could kill a player in as little as 2 hits with nothing more than a knockdown coming from their owner, I even made a build to troll healers because everyone ignored the pet then even though they could hit harder than any weapon we had in one hit ( for the most part) the highest hit I got off was 280 with brutal strike after using gust and Bestial Mauling, which is a little more than over half health of most players in GW1 for those that never played.

Anet if you are out there and since we are stuck with the pet mechanic can we please get some buffs to make it a fun mechanic?

• And on a side note I would suggest replacing Stability Training the master trait in beastmastery with one that grants pets dmg immunity (or at least a 90% reduction) for 10 sec (or longer) after the ranger uses a healing skill

And for those of you that would complain that pets would be too powerful the whole gear to stats would also be there to keep pets from being able to do insane amounts of dmg on rangers built for bunker… IE would not have to worry about a toughness ranger’s pet critting 10k such things would be there to only worry about coming from zerker ranger. Would also mean that other zerker classes would have to actually care about pets before they line you up for that stupidly high crit and not look at rangers as a free kill with a crap mechanic.

And does anyone else want “rare” or “hard to get” pet skins? things that you have to really work for and make yourself look unique, even if it is not new skills. if it just affects looks? much like the moss spider, black widow, rainbow phoenix, jingle bear, and jingle moa in gw1.. where you had to do things to get those pets and not just walk out and find them with ease every time.

Yoh.8469:

Substance E.4852:

Yoh.8469:

Atherakhia.4086:

This is why when the CDI does start it’s important for ANet to tell us what kind of feedback we should be giving. If they aren’t going to be able to resolve the pet AI problems, they need to tell us so we can propose alternative solutions or start discussing how to phase pets out.

From Day 1 we should know if we’re simply wasting our time discussing the pet issues this class has.

Exactly. Thou I would rephase that to “discussing fixing AI for pets” is a waste of time, because it’s not the only way to solve the problem with pets.
There is more then one way to skin a cat.

There are, but most of them seem as equally improbable as a fix to pet AI. When Anet comes out and deliberately says they won’t increase our control over the pet so as to not overwhelm new players (keep ridding that casual gravy train) it really hurts the possibility of real fixes to a system that needs heavy work.

Can you source that?
I’ve never heard anyone from Anet say that, because then they are just shooting themselves in their collective feet if that is indeed the case.
It’s a stance that would have to change if this problem is to ever be fixed, and they can be made to change on occasion.

that was the official response when we originaly asked if we could change F2 attacks to other abilities or if we could have control over the other pet abilities, the response was " it would make it too complicated to pick up ranger" would be more entertaining though.