Guild Wars 2

This is almost identical to my trapper build for SPvP. Though I use sword/dagger as my offhand for a little more evasion. I might swap dagger for torch every now and again for more burning, though.

I also use a jungle spider/marsh drake combo for my pets, but that’s because I use Frost Trap over Snake Trap. That chill really makes a difference when fighting elementalists. And I use Hide in Plain Sight over Off-hand Training mostly because I find myself using my dagger skills fairly rarely, and I find the disappearing act to be a good way of throwing enemies off their game. Especially when it procs along with Shared Anguish, which basically turns your opponent’s attempt to crowd control you into free stealth.

The best part of this build, though, is no one expects it anymore. Last night I won four games in a row because enemy rangers kept trying to pick me off and the enemy kept wasting their time trying to focus me down, taking pressure off my teammates who actually are squishy. Then most enemies will immediately try to take cover when they see you giving you time to throw down your traps.

One enemy ranger gave me a solid 3-4 seconds of shooting him in the back with my shortbow because he activated Signet of Stone and thought he wasn’t taking damage. By the time he realized I was loading him up with bleeds it was too late.

I also beat a dagger elementalist three times in a row because Frost Trap kept ruining his rotation and my constant poison application was killing his healing potency. Hitting him with Entangle right after he left water attunement was the clincher though. Sadly I never got the stomp. He always disengaged and this build has almost no ability to pursue. Doesn’t matter since the point was mine.

Just finished watching your video. I just wanted to say I love you for your choice in music, it was fitting and hilarious.

I feel the tanky pets should all have cleave. Drakes, bears, and pigs having cleave would allow rangers to take tanky pets that have decent survivability for dungeons without suffering a large DPS drop.

I would love a large turtle pet with a good defensive F2. I like the idea of the spinning reflect move, but would be happy with a longer lasting projectile destroyer as well.

A defensive turtle pet would be more valuable in WvWvW as well, as a team protecting AoE field would be a nice addition that doesn’t require the pet to charge into the kill-zone.

I rather enjoy my charr ranger. The stance he takes kind of makes sense given they probably don’t have the same shoulder flexibility as humans.

That being said I suggest you make your charr ranger with small or folded back horns. It really bugs me when the horn is obviously clipping with the invisible bow string.

I’m leaning toward my charr ranger for my druid, but there’s a chance my sylvari ranger might take the role as well. Possibly both!

Force Of The Divine.5437:

Firstly off….very nice picture of those norns in animal form with weapons, very cool especialy the boar. But even if they wield a weapon they do loose their armor in those forms.

Perhaps Charr altough have a cat like appearance should be compared more to gorillas seeing the way they also move on both 2 legs and also 4 (2 legs and 2 arms). Or a cross between a big cat and a gorilla? As you say speculation since there isnt any animal comperison from the real world.

While they do lose their armor bear in mind (Get it? bear?!) that these are also supernatural transformations that are suppose to be definitively superior to fighting normally. Back in GW1 where norn were actually able to transform freely due to not having been neutered by the racial elites limitations just about every norn, no matter what armor they had, would transform prior to engaging in combat. It made them larger, stronger, and more difficult to harm. It wasn’t treated as “If I do this there are pros and cons that I must consider first.” It was just a power boost.

It’s also worth pointing out that in GW1 the player could get something called Ursan Blessing, which gave the player an armor rating of 100, where as the warrior armor had a maximum armor rating of 80 +20 against physical damage. Though the player didn’t get to fully transform, this does imply the power has some level of supernatural resilience comparable to heavy armor.

As for the charr species and genus, I think it’s fair to say that wouldn’t fit into any zoological classification we use in our world. Their build doesn’t suggest much in the way of agility or dexterity, but definitely screams power. There’s also lore to support that strength as a very old lore source from GW1 stated charr claws can rip through chainmail. I BELIEVE there was a source that said a lone charr warrior was worth three human warriors on the battlefield, but don’t quote me on that.

The problem is we have pretty solid evidence that the norn outclass the charr at their own game by a fairly significant degree. It does make sense, though. Norn are single combat warriors where as the charr are all about group combat.

draxynnic.3719:

This applies to both, but it’s particularly apparent in the charr vilification of Gwen “the Goremonger”. With a race that believes that victory justifies any means, just what could Gwen have done that justifies that title, when the charr destroyed most of the population of Ascalon through the Searing and planned to do the same to Orr before Khilbron beat them to the punch?

Given that Gwen was driven by a great deal of personal hatred (largely justified) for the charr, I always got the impression that she did things to captured charr that went above and beyond the “win at any costs” mantra of the legions. Like torturing charr purely for the enjoyment of torturing charr and for no other reason.

That’s just what I always imagined from all that. I don’t believe we ever learn exactly why she has the name Goremonger.

Letting people leave a match that is already a 4v5 might not be such a bad idea.

But all the other scenarios are no reason to leave.

I don’t think you fully understand the depth of the conflict between the human gods and the charr.

The human gods purposely tried to exterminate the charr race. They arrived on Tyria, looked around, and went “Look at this densely populated planet. Once we get rid of the unwanted pests this will be a good home for our humans.” It is because of the human gods that the charr lost Ascalon in the first place.

The animosity isn’t just the charr disliking the idea of gods. The gods tried to KILL them. It’s not a matter of being seen as a coward for relying on someone else, it’s a matter of worshiping entities that see you as a lower life form and that have attempted to commit mass genocide on your entire species at one point.

A charr dervish just wouldn’t work.

Tyreal.5230:

Ranger is physically shooting arrows, if your not shooting arrows how could they possibly fall?

TL;DR Elementalist is a ‘magician’. Pretty sure magic isn’t tide to such simple logic.

When one fires an arrow into the air it takes time to travel upward before reaching it’s maximum height, at which point it falls downward with the point facing down as it is the heaviest part of the arrow.

So basically the arrows keep falling because the ranger has already fired those arrows into the sky. They just haven’t fallen down yet.

@NinjaEd

Your Search and Rescue idea is interesting. Basically have the pet move the target ally out of the fray. If nothing else that’d give the downed ally more time to rally since the enemy wouldn’t be able to stomp for that duration.

As for Sick ‘Em, while I know fixing one utility won’t fix pets in general there is little to no hope of Anet ever fixing the pathing issues. They can’t improve the pet AI. At the very least making Sick ‘Em a teleport would allow people already taking the skill and who rely heavily on pet damage, like myself, to get the pet into position more easily. I’d prefer to not remove the reveal as well since I do use that quite a lot to mess with thieves.

I’ve started playing with double drake in PVP. River and marsh specifically for the ranged F2. It’s amazing how well it works with the new Rapid Fire. With a knights amulet my Rapid Fire will hit for about 3-4K damage, and with my BM build and some might on my drake Lightning Breath will hit for anywhere between 3-8K depending on crits. So a total of 6-12K in roughly 3 seconds, while still being built tanky.

It’s really hard to set up properly though. Still great fun when successful.

That’s the problem Daishi. Most days I have to go through five or six different games before I find a fair one without exploiters. It’s gotten to the point that you’re going to be in an unfair match for the majority of your play time, and that’s just not fun.

I also find the idea of having my friend learn through being a part of the brainless spam zerg to be a bad idea. That teaches a lot of bad techniques and strategies. Besides that, none of my friends are the kind of people to openly abuse an exploit in a way that hurts other players.

As of now Hotjoin is a pretty awful steakittenep sitting down ready to have a nice, quiet meal and always end up with a bad taste in my mouth.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had an alternative. But if I’m playing hotjoin it’s because I don’t have a definite amount of time I can dedicate to Solo Queue and need to be able to leave the match at the drop of a hat. That’s what hotjoin is suppose to be. A casual environment where you can enjoy the game’s PVP without worrying about hurting other players if you have to leave suddenly or disconnect.

Edit: Um… Huh. Apparently when I type steak it’s a swear word? What?

Edit 2: What?! I can type steak the same way twice in one post but it only gets censored the first time…

The longbow’s defense is it’s range. All weapons with a similar range are similarly limited in defensive options for a reason.

You also still have a secondary weapon set. Grabbing greatsword for the block and secondary burst works well. As does sword/dagger for the plethora of extra evades and mobility.

Apparition.1576:

Cat-like creatures with four legs are much faster and agile than any 2 legged creature… that’s a fact… there nullified your entire argument in two sentence.

Charr don’t have four legs, though. They have two legs and two arms that function as pseudo-legs when running. Their back legs are also built to support a bipedal stance easily, which means they aren’t optimized for a quadrupedal stance.

Your whole argument sums up to “But they look like cats so they are cats!” But they aren’t. They are anatomically different from cats. Very, very different. Their huge build, broad shoulders, and the curvature of their spine with their hunched posture all tell us that charr aren’t the most dexterous creature in the animal kingdom.

Daishi.6027:

As for auto balancing over its kinda lame but does it really matter? Maybe the guy is farming monthly wins and is pretty bad, oh well you as an individual still get your win as well, even if his is undeserved but again who cares? It’s like getting mad cuz you lost a game of smash with 4 people with items on >>

It matters because I can’t properly test my build if I’m getting steamrolled by a zerg because my team is a man short. It matters because I was playing hotjoin to relax and it’s not relaxing to get steamrolled by a zerg because my team is a man short. It matters because I was trying to play a game with my friend who’s new to PVP and show him the ropes, but he got steamrolled by a zerg so many times because our team was a man short that he gave up on pvp entirely.

Exploting the team swap mechanic is extremely harmful to the PVP community. There is absolutely no good thing that comes from the exploit remaining. Why would anyone argue that this SHOULDN’T get fixed?

As Shadowpass said, if you cancel the channel prematurely you won’t get the full number of meteors/arrows to fall, which means you’re getting maybe half the total damage potential out of it and still putting it on the full cooldown.

I play what I like and I do pretty well with it. I win more than half of my 1v1 encounters and never feel like I’m hurting my team in team fights because the builds I design are made with whatever role I intend to play in mind, which includes team support. There’s also a fairly big advantage to not running a meta set up, and that is most opponents you run into won’t immediately know how to go about fighting you.

More than a few times I’ve been on my beastmaster ranger and my opponent IMMEDIATELY dives for cover and hides there, trying to bait me in close to engage as if I were a zerker longbow ranger. Unfortunately because they are stationary that just lets my pet rip them to shreds. I run into a pretty similar situation with thieves who waist their burst on my 2.8K armored hide in a team fight, only to get hit by Sick ’Em and downed almost immediately.

Non-meta builds might not be as efficient as meta builds, but there’s something to be said for playing in an unorthodox style.

I am amazed at how many people are commenting “Lol you have to trait for all that noob!” when the very first thing the OP said was “Summary of steal when using the current thief build (30 0 10 0 30)”.

He outright states this is a fully traited steal.

Apparition.1576:

First time I heard this argument, so you are debating if a giant is faster than a lion?

Very interesting…

Are you implying that charr and lions are the same thing? Because they aren’t. Not even close.

Most of the anatomical attributes lions have that make them fast aren’t present in the charr. First off, charr are much larger and much bulkier than any lion, which means in terms of size you’re looking at something closer to a bear. Big cats can’t walk on their hind legs at all, which means charr and lions would have completely different spinal structure, which means charr wouldn’t be able to twist and turn as readily as a lion could. Lions also don’t have the broad shoulders of a charr, much less shoulders designed more similarly to an ape judging by the range of motion charr arms enjoy that a lion could never have. On that point charr arms and shoulders wouldn’t be able to reach the same forward acceleration that lions and other big cats have. Again, you’re looking at a creature that’s build is closer to a bear than a cat.

Charr are not cats. They are completely unlike any creature found on Earth. So you can’t apply attributes of animals from our world to them unless they’ve actually been shown to have said attributes.

And to the other fellow that addressed me. Actually yes, norn can use weapons in their beast forms.

I’d really rather not have my pet reduced to a boon bunny that can’t do damage. It’d basically ruin the beastmaster playstyle. And the fact every pet would have the same F2 ability based on the season would mean different pets would be reduced to different skins, removing the most interesting aspect of making a ranger build for me, which is deciding what pets compliment my build.

This idea doesn’t fix pets, it removes them from being at all relevant to the profession.

Wind Riders could be a solid long ranged damage pet.
Similar stats to the birds.
Family Skills:
Tentacle Slash: 1,200 range projectile, 100 damage.
Shock: 1,200 range projectile, bounces up to 3 times, 30X3 damage. 15 second cooldown.
Steal Boon: Steals a boon from the target. 1,200 range. 30 second cooldown.

Reef Special: Shocking Defense: 300 range AoE sphere that reflects projectiles for 4 seconds. 35 second cooldown.
Breeze Special: Empower: 600 range AoE boon to allies. Retaliation for 6 seconds. 35 second cooldown.
Wind Special: Eye Beam: 1,500 range single target beam. 140X2 damage. Causes 5 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds. 35 second cooldown.

Numbers could likely use tweaking but that’s the general idea. The goal is to have a pet that can do decent damage from a solid range so it doesn’t have to enter the fray, and that has a strong F2 ability that can either protect the ranger who is nearby or still deliver the F2 from max range.

Force Of The Divine.5437:

Norn are stronger then Charr. Even stronger then several as sea of sorrows stated.
Doesnt mean that Norn would win the fight.
Personaly i think charr would be more agile and perhaps a smidge faster in a fight.

This whole discussion is mostly based on melee combat and most norns arent armored entirely (except the norn male t3 armor) a mistake that any combat experienced charr would use to their advantage. And no i dont think the fully armored charr would be slower because they practice and basicly live in the armor wich would give then enough strengh and speed to use as fast as unarmored.

Although in game i strongly favor charr, i think the results would be 50/50.

There’s nothing in the lore that suggests charr are much faster than norn. Or any other race, for that matter. At least not in terms of reflexes and combat speed.

Also, not all charr wear heavy armor either. It seems a bit unfair to dress the charr in full plate armor and then have the norn be naked.

And as I said early on in this thread, in lore norn can change into their animal form and increase their already large strength advantage in addition to gaining the claws, teeth, and fur a charr enjoys. Norn literally have all the benefits charr have on top of being physically stronger.

Gotta catch ’em all!

Changing Protect Me into a buff skill wouldn’t be bad. Shouts can already be traited to provide some solid support, and this would make Protect Me and even better skill as it’d give swiftness, regeneration, and protection on one skill. Though I’d say this suggestion works equally well for Guard, which is a shout that currently has no use beyond keeping up permanent swiftness from spamming it.

I’ve felt certain pets could use a third mode for support. Moas, the fern hound, and maybe bears who all have support oriented F2 skills. My idea would be to have the combat mode be similar to passive, but rather than do nothing the pet uses a skill that puts out small, continuous pulses of healing for the ranger and the group. That way the damage the pet can’t do is offset by continuous heals for the group, and the pet’s F2 provides further support when needed.

I have no idea why so many people apparently hate cheese. Cheese is delicious.

Where did that term even come from?

Exile.8160:

Does not change the fact that players can grief their teamates by just killing them self which I seen and done before( when I get a 4v5 of other team is more spec for craphammer and my team gives up)

You can commit suicide on any map. Just run directly into the enemy team and don’t fight back.

Jumping off the edge is just another way to do it. One that doesn’t give the enemy team points, if I’m not mistaken.

Who goes hunting with a pistol?

I’ve already said that I’d like a tell on Point Blank Shot, so I’m fine with this change. Hard crowd control should have tells in general, to be honest.

I run warhorn all the time, though mostly to blast Healing Spring and provide at least some group support in team fights. Hunter’s Call is pretty lackluster for how long the cast is, I agree.

Maybe if each damage tick applied vulnerability. It would improve the warhorn as a support tool by increasing damage against the called target.

Or each tick could apply a second of blindness as the birds peck at the target’s eyes, making is a pretty strong defensive technique.

Or perhaps a more extreme case, the birds could strip a boon or two during the course of the damage to give rangers some boon hate.

Do any of us really know if anyone else exists?

The person in that thread is obviously trolling. At this point she’s literally twisting everyone’s words to make it seem like they agree with her when they clearly don’t.

I hope the hammer stays the way it is. Who controls the hammer makes a BIG impact on the match, and shakes up the usual rotations and team strategies you find on literally every other map.

I could do without the glass panels around points A and C, though. Stealth pulls aren’t fun.

Other than stealth pulls though, I like having to worry about being knocked off the edge as there’s legitimate counterplay to that. Positioning is important.

Should add conjured weapons to the elementalist list. Frost Bow is the only utility conjure that gets used, and the greatsword only sees use because the only competition it has is… Tornado and the elemental elites.

GUYS. GUYS.

I did not say elementalist was harder to play. I said the opposite of that. I’m merely saying rangers don’t press buttons as frequently as elementalists, and so there’s no reason why rangers can’t be trusted with more buttons to push if it improves performance.

Orpheal.8263:

@Shanks:
Please do show me the rule, where under a redesign must stay a Power Weapon a Power Weapon forever, or better said, where it is prohibited for a Power Weapon not to have also some condition hybrid effects, that would allow for a creative player maybe to turn the Power Weapon into a Condition Weapon???
I’d really like to know that, when you take such things somewhat as untouchable “rules”, that such facts can’t be changed under any circumstances >.>

I just wanted to say this one thing. Rangers already have two hybrid weapons. Sword and shortbow. Then we have torch and dagger which are also condition/hybrid focused offhands. Even axe mainhand gets a fair amount of damage from bleeds.

In your redesign keep in mind some people actually like power builds, and we only have two straight up power weapons as of now: Greatsword and longbow. If you change longbow into a condition weapon rangers won’t be able to make a power build ever again.

I’ll start this off by stating what we already know. We need more pet commands! There are many excellent ideas floating around on how to give us more ways to talk to our faithful companion, and here is one more to add to the list.

The main challenge is getting more commands to fit into F1 to F4. In another topic I jokingly brought up a game called Mount and Blade that combined the fun of a first person hack and slash and the epic feel of commanding large groups of enemies on the field of battle. It accomplished this with an interesting use of the F1 to F4 keys. This is how I’d transfer that system to GW2.

The basic premise is that clicking an F key opens a mini bar of commands that you click a second F key to activate. In this case clicking the F1 key would cause your next F click to activate one of four different movement commands. Clicking F2 would allow your next F click to activate one of three pet abilities. In the end the commands would look something like this.

F1 -> F1 = Attack target.
F1 -> F2 = Return to me.
F1 -> F3 = Move to target location.
F1 -> F4 = Leap to target location.

F1/F3 would allow the player to designate an area for the pet to go to and remain until given a new command, which would let the player keep the pet out of AoE heavy areas.

F1/F4 would allow the player to designate an area they want the pet to leap toward, which would work similar to any leap skill in that it’d let the pet jump over small obstacles and gaps that a player character could normally cross using leap skills or the jump key. Limited to 300-400 range movement maximum. Possibly with a five second cool down. I want it available when the ranger needs it but don’t want it spammed as a pet gap closer, I just want it to let pets deal with obstacles and small drops.

F2 -> F1 = Pet special attack.
F2 -> F2 = Pet species skill 1.
F2 -> F3 = Pet species skill 2.
F2 -> F4 = Cancel command.

This is pretty straight forward. It lets the ranger choose when the pet uses ALL pet skills minus the auto attack. F2/F4 would allow the ranger to cancel their F2 command incase the ranger changes their mind or clicked it on accident so they don’t have to use an ability if they decide not to.

This leaves F3 empty, as F1/F2 already covers what it use to do. So what to put here? Could be anything! Personally, this is what I’d do with it.

F3 = “Defend yourself!” Causes the pet to block incoming attacks for three seconds. The pet channels the effect and doesn’t move for the duration. If the pet is standing in a red circle the pet will automatically try to move out of said circle while blocking. 10 second cool down.

This would give the ranger an option to have the pet protect itself which would greatly improve pet survivability. I made it a block instead of an evade because I liked the idea of potentially using the pet to body block incoming attacks if you’re rascally enough to set it up right and stand behind the pet at the right time. Could be an evade too. Either works.

And of course F4 is pet swap as it always has been.

So what do you guys think of the suggestion? Too complicated? Too powerful giving the ranger access to all the pet skills? Post your thoughts!

Fluffball.8307:

This is a bit off-topic, but I think this is a myth. Ele button-pushing per minute isn’t actually that complicated. It’s pushing the skills after swapping attunements. Rangers push the skills just as quickly, only with more timing because of the pet. We have to push the pet skills and we have to push the weapon skills and we have 2 weapon swaps, which is pretty equivalent to pushing individual attunement buttons 1 at a time.

I would argue for neither class is buttons-per-minute particularly important.

Edit: And toss the whole sword exact timing in there if you want. Good rangers will not spam 1.

Edit 2: I should clarify I play a fresh-air ele so I’m used to smashing keys.

I never said it was more complicated, but it’s a pretty solid fact that I have to click more buttons on my elementalist than on my ranger. There are times as a ranger where using my auto attack is the best course of action, either with mainhand axe to build might on me and my pet, greatsword as I wait for Maul to come off cooldown but don’t want to let up pressure, shortbow when I need to apply bleeds quickly, or longbow as I keep pressure from a distance between Rapid Fire and Barrage cooldowns. As an elementalist the only time I’m auto attacking is if my opponents are completely ignoring my presence allowing me to use fire’s maximum DPS rotation (I use a staff). In any other circumstance I’m playing Mozart on my keyboard trying to keep up with my opponent who is just using ten skills to my twenty.

Is it complicated? No. It’s a matter of reflex. I’m making just as many active decisions per second as I do on my ranger, or any other profession I play. But I do have to make use of more button clicks, which the OP is stating is too much for the ranger.

The ranger doesn’t need to click buttons nearly as often as an elementalist. Therefore is stands to reason that rangers can handle more buttons to push if it means improving the player’s control over their AI. We don’t need to reduce the number of buttons pressed per second, that’s Anet’s flawed logic behind not giving rangers an F5 or F6 command for the pet despite us REALLY needing more ways to directly command the pet.

So basically my point is that if Anet can expect elementalists to play keyboard piano there’s no reason why they should be so hesitant to giving rangers more buttons to press if we really need it. Rangers aren’t inherently dumber than elementalists, and the way the game is played you need to keep thinking the entire fight whether you’re spamming skills or waiting for cooldowns.

Shoot, I’d be fine if they went with something as complex as the F1 to F4 commands from Mount and Blade for controlling the pet. Just as long as we get more control and more access to the pet skills.

I like this suggestion. It’d also help if you got a bonus for sticking with a single team a whole game, so that people will be less inclined to want to swap or leave just because they are losing. Lets say a 50 point bonus if you stay with the same team the entire game.

A penalty for leaving the losing team for 100 rank points coupled with a reward for joining the losing team for 100 rank points might also help, so that you lose out on rank points if you go to spectator mode and join the winning side, but if you go to spectator mode and come back to the losing team you’d end up with the same points at the end. That way players can use spectator mode and join the losing team without losing reward points.

At the same time if one team is ahead by more than 100 points a 200 reward penalty for joining the winning side (if not randomly assigned to a team) would mean leaving the losing team and joining the winning team would net you -300 reward points at the end of the game, win or lose.

So the end result would be someone joining a game and picking the losing team would get 350 points at the end (If they lose, winning would get 650! Huge potential gain!), but someone joining a game and picking the winning team and sticking with them the entire game would get 350 points at the end (if they win, if the losing team makes a come back it’d be only 50 points, huge risk).

Meanwhile someone who, mid game, leaves the losing side and joins the winning team by exploiting autobalance would be leaving the losing team (-100) and joining the winning side (-200) and lose out on the loyalty bonus (no +50), resulting in getting only 200 points if the winning team still wins, equal to the losing reward, and NOTHING if the losing team makes a come back while you’re on the winning side. Meanwhile the guy who got autobalance is going to get the full 500 points either way, making it a no risk situation.

The main goal is to make taking a risk (joining the losing team) more rewarding than trying to piggy back off the success of others (joining the winning team). I feel this would go a long way to making that a reality.

The game could also do with something that tells you how your reward points are calculated so that players are aware of how their actions effect the reward track. I ran into some people who thought that autobalancing would end in a net loss in reward track points because number of kills were factored into it, and that the autobalance reward was only an extra 15 reward points, equal to a single kill. There needs to be a way for people to learn how it’s calculated so they don’t make decisions based on false information.

Maybe it’s because I main an elementalist, but the idea that rangers are bogged down by too many keystrokes seems a bit absurd. If anything rangers need more available keystrokes to maximize pet control so the class feature is as effective as possible.

As for your suggestion, I’m not too crazy about giving up the pet for a passive buff. The game needs more active play, not more things like turrets, spirits, and banners.

Also, the goddess of nature in Tyria is Melandru, and she is only worshipped by the humans.

Personally I’d probably have your shout ranger actually take some healing power gear/runes. Damage is great and all, but the whole purpose of that set up is sharing regen to improve group sustain, so healing power would go a long way to improving the survivability of everyone in your group. You could also move the points out of Marksman and into Beastmastery for more healing power and a stronger pet, which will make Sick ’Em much more effective and compensate for the lack of offensive power somewhat. Make sure to give it Healing Spring and a warhorn offhand, probably coupled with axe mainhand, and you have some pretty strong group heals and can maintain permanent swiftness on the whole group with just one character.

You could also make your tank ranger a beastmaster if you wanted. It won’t effect his defensive stats at all, and will allow him to have additional damage coming from the pet in skirmishes that will likely exceed the damage he has with just longbow. Plus you could take Zephyr’s Speed for free quickness on pet swap that would increase the longbow’s Rapid Fire burst on mid-range opponents.

Probably wouldn’t advise them both making the transition to BM though. You want to keep your team as versatile as possible.

Might also look at having your spirit ranger take Spirit of Nature for a powerful condition cleanse and the ability to revive downed allies mid-battle.

That’s just what I think though. There’s likely a lot of ways you can make an all ranger crew work well.

That was very entertaining. A lot of those duels were pretty darn close, too, so it wasn’t a boring one sided stomp over and over again.

Would’ve been better if they included a few of their losses though.

These videos perfectly capture how I feel. Truly you are an artist.

I enjoy all these ideas. Particularly the improved level of control of the pet’s movement and location, and more ability to command the pet to use it’s special abilities. I also love the idea of giving pets their own mini trait build that lets each player customize their pet on a small scale.

How are they going to get the AI to understand capping and de-capping points if they can’t even get my pet to understand how to climb a ledge?

I feel like Guard could still use a bit more love. I’ve tried my best to find a use for it beyond perma swiftness and regen, but couldn’t. I like the suggestion of making it a taunt from the thread LostProphet posted. It’d give it a neat little role in dungeons.

The fact using F2 cancels Sick ‘Em is a bit ridiculous though. That should have been changed by now. The F2 for a lot of pets IS their burst, so naturally you’d want the damage boost on said burst.

On Protect Me giving allies around the user 8 seconds of quickness seems a bit much. Making the pet only take 50% of the damage would be a good change though, I feel. Especially since we now have Signet of Stone for a pseudo-invulnerability. Though looking at LostProphet’s link again, that suggestion for Protect Me would be incredibly overpowered in the current game state. You could use axe mainhand to get 25 might on your pet then use Protect Me and BAM! That zerker ranger has 25 might on it for a good 10-15 seconds and can switch to a greatsword and Maul basically anything to death instantly.

I really like the original poster’s Search and Rescue suggestion though. Rangers really need some special trick they can do that no one else can so they become appealing to the zerg scene.

I’ve suggested “Stack” before though I called it “Heel”. Same basic principle. A way to have the pet actively defend the ranger without running off to kill the target and thus leaving the ranger exposed would be a big buff for back line rangers in WvWvW.

The ability to tell your pet to go to a certain location without using the Guard utility would also be nice.

So you want to make sure a beastmaster ranger will never be able to beat you? How will nerfing BM rangers make you more capable against a longbow ranger who does NOT rely on their pet for damage?

All this would do is make your profession a hard counter to an already struggling build.

Evilek.5690:

Correct.
I have no problem with that, this is only game breaking problem

Given it’s been the same since the game first came out and people have only just now noticed after two years, I wouldn’t exactly call it game breaking.

Besides, the extra range for my shortbow and axes make a big difference when fighting longbow rangers on my beastmaster or trapper ranger, and this nerf would dramatically decrease my staff elementalist’s ability to hit people below while defending a keep in WvWvW.

All arrow based projectiles that is, and some magic projectiles. Bullets don’t for some reason.

But yes, this is something that all professions benefit from. Warrior longbow, thief shortbow, elementalist staff and scepter, etc. If you nerf it for the ranger longbow you better do it to every other weapon across all professions that get extra range on their projectiles.