Guild Wars 2

I would say pets can be a very effective if not overly effective class mechanic but that discussion should be had in a different thread. This thread is about adjusting pets so that they are effective. A discussion about whether or not to change the rangers class mechanic should be had in a different thread.

I have a hard time understanding where you are coming from Megazlo. Are you saying that because (in your opinion) there are no ways to use AI successfully against non-AI class mechanics, then pets should be removed as the class mechanic?

I do dungeons for the level 80 exotics, as do a lot of players.

Anyone? cause i think artificers make more gold right now compared to armor and weapon crafters because of the lack of alternatives for players.

It is true that AI has problems, but with the ability to micro manage your pet a good player can overcome certain AI problems.

• What that means is that with good controls for your pet, that can be used to tell your pet what you want it to do and when to do it, a good player surpasses another player in ability to control AI.
• The problem is if their are inefficiencies in the pets AI that do not allow a good player to effectively control the AI.

But I also disagree that the ranger is a bland unimaginative mediocre class but that’s more of a difference in taste.

@AreeSoothsayer

I completely agree with your argument that Ranger skills affect the Ranger. There is not many utility skills that other classes have access to that directly affect their class mechanic. (the only ones I can think of are Signet of Illusions, Infiltrator’s Signet, Signet of Fury).

So why does ranger have 7 utilities that require our class mechanic alive (the pet) to use? I feel like the ranger as a class would benefit from 7 different utilities that don’t need the pet to use. And then make those utilities that were made for our pets built into our class mechanic. I want this great unique class mechanic that sets me apart from other classes while at the same time is a benefit to the class rather than a hindrance that I am forced to deal with.

Are there any plans to add accessories for tokens to the dungeon vendors?

1. Our pets do hit targets, when we help them. Even with a small cripple or swiftness to my pet my pet hits its target. Just not as often as I would like.

2. we have 2 leaps, one on greatsword and one on sword. Both provide great mobility to use between points and running around wvw. And we have a swiftness that last 15secs with only a 30 sec cd. This is not including the passive boost we get from signet of the hunt.

But yes I think that the ranger pets need to feel more like a boon to the class then a hinder.

1. I agree Ranger pets would greatly benefit from being able to hit moving targets and use skills more reliably. Sadly this would be hard to do without instant cast pet abilities and pets being able to attack while moving. But if you want your pet to hit your target more reliably try carrying frost and spikes traps or muddy terrain.

2. Rangers kindof already have this one with signet of the hunt. Having their own unique movement speed increase outside of combat would be unfair to other classes. Although Signet of the Hunt could really use a buff to 25% to be able to keep up with thieves.

3. I’m not sure what you mean by this one. We have a lot of great skills that work well with different play styles. Some of our weapons don’t feel well tailored though. Greatsword being the biggest concern.

Implementation

The implementation could be super simple! Change the pet attribute bonus to pet damage and critical damage bonus (1% per point). So our pets do more damage if we want to specialize into beastmastery! The only factor is changing pet stats so that they receive Vitatlity, Toughness, Condition Damage, and Healing power from the ranger.

But some players want their pets to do more dps and others don’t want to rely on their pets for dps at all. So how do we handle that? By allowing people to have the choice!

Ranger Design Adjustment

I absolutely love the ranger in GW2, having melee and ranged capabilities along with a pet allows a fun class that rises above any Ranger based class from any other game I have ever played. That being said I think the Ranger needs an adjustment to make it way more awesome. When I think pet classes I think of three main styles of play.

Play Styles

Balanced

• Ranger and Pet do the same amount of damage
• Both provide utility and protection

Ranger Damage

• Ranger does most of the damage
• You use the pet for protection and utility

Pet Damage

• Pet does most of the damage
• Ranger protects the pet and provides utility to the pet

This would allow the class mechanic to stay in place while providing different play styles within the class. Currently pets do a certain amount of dps almost regardless of traits. GW2 is great at allowing players to play how they want. Rangers need a little bit more of that autonomy. Players who want to do all the damage themselves and use their pet for its added utility could spec into a marksmanship style spec. If you absolutely love pets and want to be a Beastmaster when specializing in pets your pet would do most of your damage and you would provide utility to support your pet. Also players that want to play a balanced play style where you and your pet together do the same amount of damage as each other would still be able to balance the specializations and perform more balanced.

Traits

Glass Cannon

• This spec could be full ranger and full pet damage
• Both you and your pet would be “glass”
• Both would do a lot of damage, both would be easy to kill

Beastmaster

• This is where the pet would do most of the damage (roughly 80-90%)
• Ranger would build tank or utility to support pet.

Marksman

• The Ranger would do most the damage (same as above 80-90%)
• Pet would provide utility to the ranger(think Protect me)

The styles of play above seem to be the idea when I look at rangers trait trees and the class as a whole. It just doesn’t seem to have enough variability. I want to address ways to give it that variety (One way is the adjustment to 80-90% of damage). With these different styles opposing players would need to identify the priority of what to kill first (pet or ranger).

Pet Stats

Pets durability are based on the Ranger’s Vitatlity and Toughness

• Allows a Pet to be durable depending on the Ranger
• Pets still have their own stat spreads so that you can still have a tanky pet with a glass ranger (i.e. Bear, Boar, Moa)

Pet damage is based on specialization of the pet

• Pets damage is separate from ranger damage.

Condition damage and Healing power from the Ranger

• This allows us to finally have pets that do good condition damage and healing. yay!

Allows the different Traits to have the effect desired without becoming overpowered (a super tanky pet that does tons of damage).

Conclusion
Ranger has the foundation to make it amazing just allow a larger division between Ranger and pet. I have spent a lot of time since launch trying to figure out how to help the ranger reach its potential. I believe this will allow the ranger to reach that potential in its class mechanic.

I’m just trying to facilitate a DISCUSSION on why/if there should be a counter to stealth. All you guys have said is that stealth has a counter in player ability. And that only people who do not know how to play well have problems with stealth. Assuming equal skill between 2 players does the player with stealth have an advantage? probably, being able to go invisible is better then not being able to.

If a player wants to be able to counter stealth they should have access to skills that allow them to fight on equal footing. removing the advantage and then the player with more ability wins the fight.

I’m not “QQing” about stealth, I am suggesting it should have a counter built into the game. Maybe stealth should be more a utility with which thieves have the most access to. I believe the class mechanic of the thief, correct me if I’m wrong, is steal not stealth. The ability to gain an extra ability and teleport to your enemy.

you guys teaming up on the fact that you don’t like it as thieves and crashing on me because i main a ranger. Isn’t helping your case that it should be changed. Have you tried fighting thieves as other classes at all? The fact that there is no way to remove stealth in the game is the problem. Just because counters exist doesn’t mean everyone in the game will run one. The counter to the shortbow speed was confusion and retaliation but no one tried to counter it they just complained about it being op. Building in a counter is a much better way to balance a game then just nerfing or buffing classes.

I’m not really sure what you are talking about here kaimick, I have no problems at all with warriors. And I play at the paid tourny level, so probably a little above what you guys have experienced. Bruno what you are trying to say is that a thief will walk straight towards me while I’m shooting him in stealth. What kind of player walks towards projectiles? Non that I fight. They move to avoid damage while stealthed. And it is impossible for me to track their movements without any indicators or ways to counter stealth. Obviously indicators would defeat the purpose of stealth, but a way to counter stealth would be a reliable way for competitive players to compete.

So how do you stay out of reach from something you can’t see?

I never said I had an EASY time with thieves. I said I could beat them much “easier” on certain classes. You say there are counters to stealth, what actually counters stealth? being able to aoe an area isn’t a counter.

coun·ter/?kount?r/
Noun:
1. A long flat-topped fixture in a store or bank across which business is conducted with customers.
2. A thing that opposes or prevents something else.

so going with definition 2 here, what in the game is a counter to stealth?

Don’t misunderstand, I play a thief as well as ranger, guardian, engineer, and necromancer. I’ve spent considerable time pvping on a thief as well as the rest. Maybe the problem with thief is the reliance of stealth. That would be a completely different topic. Here I’m trying to suggest that stealth as a mechanic needs a counter. This isn’t like stealth will be unusable or completely worthless. If you think that giving the ability to remove stealth to a few specific skills will completely destroy should stop being immiediately defensive and actually consider the idea.

How do you dodge against someone you can’t see? Intuition? thats not reliable and only adds “luck” to the mixture of what is supposed to be competitive pvp.

This isnt a request for a nerf, its just a request for a counter built in the game. mesmers have stealth anyone with a smoke field and blast has stealth, rangers have a stealth. So before you knock on the idea and get super defensive its a COMBO field change. Would it be hard to avoid the stealth removal if you were a good thief?

It wouldnt be all classes and its specific purpose is to counter stealth which more then just thieves have access to.

Playing through the different classes trying to build counter specs to glass stealth thiefs. generally the only way I am able to counter them is with either block or blind.

• This is because of their 1 hit bursts from stealth.

I am only able to attempt to counter them on a couple classes. (outside of being a bunker). The lack of a counter to their playstyle hits certain classes harder than others.

• Out of all the classes I play Ranger has the hardest time countering stealth thieves. Because of a lack of blind that can be used and no access to aegis. The invulnerabilities of ranger get waited out in stealth then you have just burned a 90 sec cd for nothing.
• I have the easiest time dealing with thiefs on a guardian bunker or engineer.

Solution: Why not give more classes access to a stealth removal?

• One thing that strikes me as a clear counter buff is fire combo fields.
• This is amazing in that it gives the anyone with a fire combo field a way to alleviate the pressure by removing stealth in a area.
• At the same time it increases the skill of the thief by avoiding the skill. bad thieves are caught without stealth and killed, good thieves are forced to escape the area and adjust their attack
• It makes no sense for a thief to be stealthed in a fire (no shadows or any places to hide)
• This would give eles with their fire fields, rangers with their torch and flame trap, eng flamethrower wall, and guardian flame field all access to stealth removal.
• Yes this would nerf stealth thiefs
• It is not however a direct nerf to thiefs, its only gives some classes a more reliable counter to a specific buff

Playing through the different classes trying to build counter specs to glass stealth thiefs. generally the only way I am able to counter them is with either block or blind.

• This is because of their 1 hit bursts from stealth.

I am only able to attempt to counter them on a couple classes. (outside of being a bunker). The lack of a counter to their playstyle hits certain classes harder than others.

• Out of all the classes I play Ranger has the hardest time countering stealth thieves. Because of a lack of blind that can be used and no access to aegis. The invulnerabilities of ranger get waited out in stealth then you have just burned a 90 sec cd for nothing.
• I have the easiest time dealing with thiefs on a guardian bunker or engineer.

Solution: Why not give more classes access to a stealth removal?

• One thing that strikes me as a clear counter buff is fire combo fields.
• This is amazing in that it gives the anyone with a fire combo field a way to alleviate the pressure by removing stealth in a area.
• At the same time it increases the skill of the thief by avoiding the skill. bad thieves are caught without stealth and killed, good thieves are forced to escape the area and adjust their attack
• It makes no sense for a thief to be stealthed in a fire (no shadows or any places to hide)
• This would give eles with their fire fields, rangers with their torch and flame trap, eng flamethrower wall, and guardian flame field all access to stealth removal.
• Yes this would nerf stealth thiefs
• It is not however a direct nerf to thiefs, its only gives some classes a more reliable counter to a specific buff

What about making our pets attack while moving? Right now they do 1 attack every 4-6 seconds on a moving target rather then 1 attack every 1 sec even with the pet speed buff in the skrimishing tree. Or what about the beastmaster trait line being very lackluster? What I mean by the trait line being lackluster is that it adds little to no interaction with our pets which would be more “beastmaster” right now its just straight buffs to the pets which is very one-dimensional. Its more of a “beast” tree and less of a beastmaster tree. I really like the idea of a 30 point talent that allows us to mimic the pet ability. Not only would this add even more depth to using your pet ability it would be clearly a beastmaster.

I really would like to see pets attacking while moving and more interaction added to the beastmaster trait line.

Bots should be in no way taken into consideration when balancing a class. I am not saying they are taking them into consideration, but I have read a lot of posts about people assuming they don’t want to buff the “bots”.

I would say that if our pets and spirits and weapons were all good, then the worst trait line is the beasmaster. The entire group of traits that affect particular kinds of pets are horrible. and the 30 point traits don’t feel fun or strong enough for 30 point traits

Reply if you agree! (or disagree)

250 years later and the only change is having pets always with us. Shouldn’t our pet and our ability to use that pet be amazing and fun?

I have a couple ideas on how to fix our class mechanic specifically.

1. Pets need to be able to attack while moving.

This is so important in pvp because of our pets have almost no uptime on dps and not even considered threats. If our pets were threats then people would actually target and kill them. If necros have 2 healthbars why cant a major decision in fighting our class be either to burn the ranger or kill the pet to reduce his damage.

2. Beastmaster traits should be reworked.

Lets face it they are the worst trait line ranger has access to. The beastmaster trait line should make our pets DEADLY and AMAZING so that people would need to recognize a beastmaster and kill its pet.

Example: 30 Point Beastmaster Trait, One with the beast, Whenever casting a pet ability the player also casts the same ability.

This trait would be AWESOME and FUN!!!!

deepwinter.9015:

To answer this thread’s question: No.

If anything – between the bugs, the glitches and the quality of life – the Ranger class is the more difficult profession to find ways to get it to work!

Its like a lemon of a car that you love and want to work, but it just keeps finding more ways to make you curse the Six Gods, the Pale Tree, the Eternal Alchemy, the Great Spirits or that other charr that looked at you funny.

(I threw a little RP in there for fun.)

Bugs aside (hopefully will all be fixed) are you saying that a simpler class would improve it more then making it complex? I believe the lack of complexity is what makes this class hard to balance. Without complex skill sequences the ranger becomes a low skill cap class which will be easily picked up and nerfed out of viability against the complex classes.

Durzlla.6295:

Ranger looks shallow from a glance, it takes some exploring to really notice how deep and complex it actually is… after finding this out i have once again fallen in love with ranger.

How is it deep and complex?

I see a couple people discussing the use of many skills and positioning as complexity and I disagree.

Using a variety of skills doesn’t mean the class is complex. I believe almost all the classes have a large variety of skills but that doesnt mean all the classes have complex gameplay.

Positioning also doesnt necessarily mean this class is “more or less” complex then any of the other professions. Every class in the game deals with positioning and/or kiting and those factors contribute to every classes successes.

I challenge you as the readers and writers on this forum to come up with complex skill squences you can use as a ranger. This will help us come up with combos and share these sequences with other rangers to help us become more competitive in spvp and tpvp (which is my biggest concern).

One good sequence I use currently when experimenting was using laying a flame trap and when it is triggered use the greatsword block → knockback to knock the enemy back then leap with the 3 to the enemy adding the flame shield then switching to axe/torch and using the 2 and spike trap to add a lot of big damage conditions quickly.

This is a cool sequence but unfortunately its damage is easily mitigated or negated with any small condition removal because you are only applying bleed, burn, and cripple.

Do you feel like the Ranger Lacks Complexity?

I feel like that it is one of the major factors contributing to the staleness/competitiveness of the class. Without complexity our skills are either too powerful or weak. Complexity adds to the skill cap creating opportunity and “funness” to the class in pvp and pve. Our utility skills and/or weapon skills have few sequences. For example one cool combination (Necromancer) is the spectral wall and spectral grasp used together pulling someone through the wall adds the vulnerability. Our utilities are almost all 1 dimensional and need complexity for not only competitiveness but to make the class more FUN!

No bug fixes today and no mention of re-balancing ranger here on the forums. Do the devs have a Ranger on their sPvP team? If so, how good is he? I am getting the feeling that rangers are thought to be fine. Shortbow is our only weapon choice because our damage with other weapons is horrible. we are only even slightly competitive because we have lots of quickness. Quickness isn’t helping our balance problems.

I’m sure others have already suggested it but I want to make sure it is covered.

1. Add a way to have multiple saved trait trees. So we can switch between a couple different specs on the fly while in a town or in the heart of the mists.

Everyone feels “their” class is weak or X class that kill me is to op. But I feel like GW2 gives this great opportunity that most games don’t give. Which is the ability to be playing X class at 80 in pvp within a few minutes of creating the character. As such I have been playing many different classes. Ranger is always my first love and I will always love Ranger but in competitive pvp I always finding that I could have done a better job as a different class.

For example last night I played a couple tournaments on my ranger as my Hybrid condition spec. I constantly found myself fighting retaliation guardian, confusion mesmers, and bleed thiefs. As a ranger I wasn’t able to fare very well against any of those situations. As such if I was on my condition necro I would have sought out and fared very well against those specs/classes. You might say that my ranger had other classes that it did well against the necro would not. Any class that my necro was bad against as condition necro my ranger was even worse at fighting as condition ranger.

As Ranger lovers we need to collect data or hard information not subjective opinions in order to get more love for our class.

Do not: My class sucks warriors are op they kill me in 1 hit.

Do: The following situation is a comparison of Ranger Longbow vs Warrior Greatsword. Assuming equal player skill, negating utilities/heal/elite (meaning both players use utilities/heals/elites that nullify each others utilities/heals/elites), equivalent damage dealt through class mechanic, and equivalent second weapon sets.

Ranger burst is at a large disadvantage vs warriors in a 1v1 situation. Lets take the Ranger Longbow vs the warrior greatsword. The ranger is able to start doing damage at 1200 range and if the warrior is able to use charge we get 3-4 shots off before he is on top of us. Which equates to about 3k damage free before he has even done damage to us. At this point we can use our knockback then he uses his whirlwind and we get another extra shot from close range so we are up to 3.5k damage and he has done 0. For the sake of numbers we are going to assume he gets 1 hundred blades against us and we get 1 rapid fire against him. Hundred blades will do 8-13k damage on a 6 1/2 second cooldown where our rapidfire will do 3-5k on a 8 sec cooldown. At the time of the second hundred blades off cooldown placing in 5 auto attacks for each side we have done ~10k damage to the warrior and he has done ~15k. Most our our damage has been from being able to do damage to him before he could get to us. His damage is all from 1 well executed hundred blades. If his second hundred blades, a single whirlwind, or just 5-10 more auto attacks hits us we lose this fight and he survives with half health.

I agree Duckzor I play a Ranger mainly but I also play a guardian, necro and warrior in order of my skill playing those classes. When I want to bunker I play a guardian, burst damage warrior, and condition specs I play necro.

I defiantly agree with Angela that certain stats like condition damage, critical damage, and healing power have different weights then the big 4 (Power, Precision, Toughness, and Vitality). I don’t believe there are any pets that by default have Critical damage, healing power, or condition damage. That itself may be something that needs to be looked into. #9 was trying to get across the point that there should be a set value for the big 4 and then the different pets be distributed accordingly within those values.

Thank you Angela I changed 9 to pet attribute stat allocation (how varied our different pets are).

Ah so that is what happened to throw dirt. Really shouldn’t they just change our downed 1 skill to throw spikes or throw bramble for the bleed then make throw dirt a Trait to apply blind or its own utility.

22. The range on thrown traps increased to at least 900

20. Blind on Warhorn 4 skill.

21. Whatever happened to Throw Dirt or Dust Trap?

My builds for my Ranger:
Condition/Hybrid
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/kirbys-shortbow-sword-torch-spvp-tournament-hybrid-6638.html
Power/Crit:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/ranger-spvp-tournament-power-crit-6645.html

This is my Team, I play the guardian of the team because I wasn’t able to perform any of the rolls needed by the team better then a different class. 109/131 tourny wins since launch. Including dcs, game crashes, and testing builds.

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/clerk-psi-team-bleeder-bunker-mezmer-thief-6535.html

Rangers are currently outperformed by every class in all the different roles. Although its not all the same class for every role currently it only hurts your team to bring rangers. Rangers need a role to fill on teams any role that the dev team can give us would be great. I enjoy pet classes but Rangers in GW2 do not feel like they were created with the idea of FUN like a lot of other classes. Their traits and utility skills seem to have been created with the idea of what works rather then whats fun.

Just fixing bugs and changing numbers will not make this class competitive. Only make it either too strong/weak. Redesigning some weapon skills and utilities would work great. Below I list some of the ideas and changes that would be fun and/or competitive.

1. I can’t stress enough how important it is for melee pets to be able to attack while moving. Our pet is supposed to be a large percentage of our classes damage, but currently it seems to be 10% of the death recap even in 1v1s.

2. Greatsword 4 should just be a close range conal knock back with a cripple. Get rid of the block component it doesnt help the class being immobile. If you are super attached to the block make it a duration instead of a single hit and allow mobility.

3. Heal as one should remove 2 conditions.

4. At least 1 trap should become a stunbreak or a Major trait needs to give Trapper’s Focus where laying a trap breaks stun and if a stun is broken evades backwards.

5. Protect me could also absorb all conditions since we are sacrificing our class mechanic (which is supposed to be a large percentage of our damage) to avoid damage.

6. One of our spirits on use or a trait for our spirits should give us a stunbreak when running a team support spirit build. A different alternative is to give spirits a larger range (say 2400) that they apply the buffs so that we can place spirits in creative places to buff our team.

7. The on use abilities for Spirits would be greatly boosted by becoming targetable locations.

8. Guard could have a second ability which grants us the option of swapping places with our pets.

9. There is too many pets with less stats then others. Shouldn’t all pets have say 6000 or 8000 attribute points distributed into their 4 main stats. some pets like cats have 6130 stat points, canines have 6871, and bears have 8244.

10. We need clear values on our traits rather then the wordings of “Chance to”, “last longer”, or “increased duration”.

11. The pet talents in all our trees like 30% pet critical damage, 30% movement speed for pets, Pets heal on critical, and Increased duration for conditions applied by your pets should all be in the beastmastery tree. These are beastmaster traits please give marksmanship traits that apply to being a marksman and skrimishing traits that apply to being a skirmisher not beastmaster.

12. Remorseless changed to opening strike reapplys after a timed delay not every time you kill a foe.

13. Spike trap applying a knockdown

14. Muddy terrain applying weakness

15. Evasive purity changed to immobilize and cripple.

16. Marksmanship should have a trait like Marksmen’s Perch which increases his damage while standing still.

17. Lightning reflexes applying blind, confusion, daze, or cripple to those hit by the lightning

18. Why not a blowdart gun that applies lots of conditions like bleed, poison, confusion, blind, weakness, and cripple.

19. Master’s bond resets everytime a pet is deactivated or swapped. The trait line is built on swapping pets so why include a trait that counteracts that idea.

More to come.

Shrinkshooter.6715:

Medozorz.5920:

You just don’t know how to use it.

I don’t imagine mashing a number is all that difficult.

Sword jump is superior to the one greatsword has, as it has a longer jump, lower CD and a cripple at the end, you just need to use it properly.

The “sword jump” is not anywhere close to being as far as the GS jump. Swoop has a range of 1,100 while Monarch’s Leap is 600. This is on the wiki but also stupidly easy to see in any tests you do. Swoop is by far the longest jump we have.

The differences are mainly that while Swoop has a very long range and is instant, it has no cripple and the cooldown is longer. The issue with Monarch’s Leap is having to do that godawful dodge roll backwards first, which can make positioning and timing a bit stupid sometimes, especially for combo fields that don’t last long, and it doesn’t go quite as far.

You can use the 1 handed sword as a double jump. You roll away then turn, untarget, and use the leap. Moves farther then the gs jump with more control and an evade during the jump.

Will there be the option to keybind pet passive mode or stow pet?

Kirby 80 Ranger
Dragonbrand
After Marshaling the Truth I met back at Fort Trinity for “The Battle of Fort Trinity” and suddenly npcs were talking about apatia which I had not encountered. My next quest after the battle was liberating Apatia.

Major improvement today over yesterday with using pet abilities.

only started having this problem a couple days ago after I had to verify my files for gw2. Now it happens during large engagements in spvp and WvW.

Thanks Flameseeker your suggestion worked. I returned to the chantry and received my world completion medal and another chest for the zone since I already had the original chest from the zone.

What you described is what the ability does, what I want to know is why we are made immobile for the duration of the block. Being immobile allows an opponent to move away from you gaining crucial distance that can change fights.

Since I can only add 1 attachment here is my login screen.

I have the same problem. It as been over a week since I finished 100% map completion. My character has completed 100% map completion but it seems my login screen doesn’t agree.