Its kinda good idea..But in my head is something more than Pets are spirits that attack with F1 and F2…F2 is the same skill as it is now and it summons a animal spirit in x range infront of the Ranger and executes the skill…If you choose a brown bear spirit it will shown up and remove one condition in a small aoe…The F1 skill will execute the same way another skill..If you have Drake it will do the aoe attack,if you have a wolf it will knock down your foe,if you have Moa it will heal aoe…This way we can control our actions,we can have back our dmg and opens so many possibilities.But i doubt this will ever happen,it requires a lot of work and i dont think Anet agrees with that kind of pets…Anet wanted pets to be this way,good or bad they make the game,not us
I really don’t care if Anet wants it this way…what about all of the GW1 rangers who want their playstyle back? Hell, does anyone at Anet even main ranger and care what happens to the profession? I tried to like the change, I really did, but putting a third of our damage and cc on something which can’t dodge or block, in a game whose combat system is entirely based on dodging and blocking, was fundamentally flawed. What were they thinking?
Of course, OP doesn’t take into account the people who want their Guild Wars 1 characters back. In GW1, there was variety with rangers. You could take a pet when it would offer an advantage (or if you just like the mechanics/aesthetics of it), or you could choose not to use it. Rangers who preferred not to use the pet have nowhere to go in GW2. My other favorite profession was the dervish…and those are gone, too. What the hell does Anet they expect me to do here?
Edit: I’m going to add that micromanaging often doesn’t work properly in my experience. If the big nasty you’re fighting targets you with AoE, recalling the pet doesn’t do anything. You can dodge the hit, whether at a distance or in melee range, but your pet can’t. The basic problem is that the combat system is entirely based around dodging and blocking, and pets cannot do either. The icing on the cake is that, despite the importance of moving while attacking, pets can’t do that, either.
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I have no idea what you just said.
We’re talking minor traits here… meaning Piercing Shot would be a minor trait.. given to you for free for putting 25 points into marksmanship. Which means they can replace it with something else entirely.
I love that idea. Right now, it’s enormously frustrating having to choose between remorseless and piercing arrows.
I want new support-based pets that can’t attack or take damage, and instead having them active boosts your damage, gives some extra cc or condition effects to some of your attack skills, and possibly also boosts your toughness or endurance regeneration or something. That way, the inability of your pet to dodge or block (which is the basis for the entire combat system in this game) won’t get it killed. Also, putting support pets in existing pet types won’t work, because all pets of a given type share at least 3 skills.
Add reflection to the list of problems with the ‘range is inherently safer’ theory. Some skills protect only from ranged attacks, not from melee attacks.
I don’t want to defend them too much, but what do you want? If they come here and say they are working on ranger, ppl are unhappy (for obvious reasons). They can’t come and say what they will change in next update. So why bother? They can aswell just don’t post anything, and it will at least make less ppl answer here, so they have easier job watching forum.
I want them to come out and say what they think is wrong with the ranger, I want them to listen to what we think is wrong with the ranger, and I want them to tell us what they plan to do to fix it. The ranger profession has been dysfunctional and clumsy since release, and their attempts to fix that have been unsuccessful. At this point, I think they should get input from the ranger player base regarding any changes they plan to make, because their closemouthed secrecy has only made things worse. They have lost the trust of many ranger players, including myself, and they would have a much better chance trying to earn it back if they started being open and honest for a change.
Besides, they said that ranger is the profession most in need of fixing, and then they come out with nerfs across the board. Then, they try to justify the SB range nerf using one of the most egregious abuses of logic I’ve ever seen, and refuse to explain the pet nerfs.
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No, I mean even compared to other range weapons and even back in Guild Wars 1. Ranger longbow has terrible DPS compared to pretty much every other single-target range weapon, and warriors tend to favor rifle over longbow (which I take to mean that it’s much better). In GW1, they killed bow damage due to ranger spike, despite the fact that there were many ways to spike from range (and many were unblockable or included deep wound). AoE damage from bows was terrible in PVP, and in PVE you needed to use splinter weapon to get much from it. Bows were pretty much limited to interrupts and condition spamming in PVP. And now, in GW2, they seem to want bows to be a weapon to use while closing to melee range, before pulling out a sword or greatsword for the bulk of the fight.
For some reason, it seems like A-Net hates direct damage with bows.
And also, I’ve been waiting. They have yet to fix problems that I predicted back when ranger was first unvelied for GW2.
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Still no follow up…
1. Ranger kittening pets – The control you get over them is terrible, they’re apparently designed for GW1 combat (little evasion that’s poorly timed, no blocking, can’t hit while moving/miss moving targets frequently), and we should honestly have been given the option to play the class without them in the first place.
2.No GW1 dervish – Self explanatory. I loved the flexibility that their skill synergies gave. Giving yourself constant buffs is nice, but I really liked deciding what order to use them in so that enchantment sacrifice skills would strip the right one at the right time. Also, deciding whether that boon is worth more to you than the immediate effect you get from stripping it. Plus, the aesthetics were awesome.
3. Ranged combat is underpowered – Yes, melee should do more damage. But it shouldn’t do that much more damage when melee skill sets have not only extremely good mobility but also much stronger cc and blocking/evasion. I like ranged and melee combat roughly equally, but as it stands now melee seems to have a considerable advantage unless the fighting is on very uneven terrain (walls, cliffs, etc.).
Warning! – These are my opinions. These are simply ideas I came up with on the fly when considering the current hindrances to the Ranger profession.
Simple, simple fixes to bring Rangers on par with the rest of the professions;
1.) Every time the Ranger dodge rolls, their pet receives a 1 second buff that allows them to evade all incoming attacks.
Do you agree/disagree with these ideas? Anyone else have ideas that would help the Ranger profession’s current situation?
I like the idea of dodging to give pets immunity for .5-1.25 seconds. Would be useful, but in the end poor pet management is the rangers fault. When was the last time most of the rangers healed at full health just to heal their pets? or dropped healing spring right on the boss for their pets? or dodge just to give their pets 2 second of protection while they are sniping the boss with a longbow at 1999 range. Most rangers do not even use f1 or f3 and i love being in a party with rangers who actually use f1 and f3 / stow their pets.
But instead of the dodging making the pet evade it would be nice if f3 would be more useful like giving the pet .5-1.25 seconds of immunity to all damage or linking the pet with our own evade would be awesome.
I do every suggestion you made except for healing spring (I prefer unguent), and it still isn’t enough usually. The kittening cave troll in Queensdale can take off half of my bear’s health in one hit, even with 20 points in BM. Calling your pet back at the right time can help, unless the pet is in the middle of an animation or you’re using melee (ranger melee weapons aren’t as obnoxiously underpowered as their ranged weapons). Also, in many cases there are nasty AoE effects even back behind the other players wielding your longbow…so calling your pet back to you just moves it from one deadly AoE zone into a different one. And stops it from attacking, gimping your DPS even before your pet drops.
Making pets hit while moving is absolutely necessary, but not simple. The reason it is the way it is is because they don’t have animations for moving attacks. They would have to do new attack animations for every skill of every pet. Remember being transformed into a fern hound or snow leopard, and how you couldn’t attack while moving in those forms? Same reason.
People have this preconceived vision of what a ranger should be, and it doesn’t align with ANet’s vision. That’s the main problem. Just look all of the “RANGE”-r threads. Until people can perma-stow their pet or their longbow does 20k rapid fires people will never stop QQing.
Not all of us, or even most of us, are demanding this. We want more viability. People are proposing some things as those are all they can think of to offer. We all simply want a viable ranger class.
Yes, people want ranged ranger. That’s how the class was advertised and honestly there should not be a problem with a class specializing in ranged. Note that I said ‘specializing’ and not ‘does range only’. That is a trap that too many threads fall to. People are not saying ‘ranger must only do ranged damage’. We are saying that ‘ranger should to adequate ranged damage’. Because right now we do not.
Perma-stowing? Some are crying for that, yes. Most of us just want pets to be fixed one way or another, whether it is fixing their AI, granting them AoE detection or partial immunity, or just removing them. They are part of the reason rangers are kneecapped and do need to be remedied, but as a group I think that we just want them fixed and not necessarily removed.
And yes, some will complain regardless. But if we always keep shutting down even the smallest complaints, ANet will take that the ranger community agrees with all the changes and we will never see the love that the ranger class deserves.
I agree with the first part of your post completely. As for perma-stowing (or my idea for unkillable, noncombatant buffing pets), I think that may be the only way to make rangers completely viable in all areas of the game. Even if they fix the pet AI (which they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to do for at least 3 years, probably longer), and the fact that pets can’t attack while moving and frequently miss moving targets, there’s the fact that pets rely primarily on health, defense and healing to survive, when the combat system in this games forces you not to. Even as a defense-oriented warrior or guardian, blocking, evasion, cc, and conditions are just as important to your survival as your health and armor. Basically, pets are trying to use GW1 combat in GW2, and that doesn’t work when every champion can take off half of its health or more in a single hit.
The ranger and the pet are supposed to be one fighter. So our damage singularly was not meant to be awesome. Our damage with our pet, though… that is where we shine. I don’t want the pet to go away, I just want to see the pets get the love they deserve. (Especially the piggy, I mean… who doesn’t want the Siamoth runnin’ around with them? Fugly little thing only a mother [read: ranger] could love!)
I don’t want the pet to go away, but I want to see it become either completely or mechanically optional. Either give us the option to not use a pet and retain as much effectiveness as any other class, or give us a new type of pet that cannot attack, cannot take damage or be killed, and just gives us passive and active buffs to damage, other stats, and extra cc. That way, when we encounter dungeons like the aetherblade one, we can still be just as effective as other professions. Plus, I could use a pet weasel.
Anyways, the problems with pets (and therefore the ranger profession) are deep-seated. It isn’t just pet damage or toughness or the fact that they fail against moving targets. Even the pathetically inadequate controls we have (dwarfed by the hero controls in GW1, which were still pretty bad) are not the main problem. The main problem is that GW2 combat is based around constant repositioning, evasion, blocking, and timing cc and conditions properly. Gone are the days when my dervish could charge into a pile of enemies, plant his feet in place, and whip his scythe around until he was the only one left in a pile of corpses. Yet that seems to be what pets are made for: charge in, stand in place, and attack, relying on health and defense and healing to keep them alive. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work against enemies who can down a player instantly every third attack or so, and take off fully half of a bear’s health in one hit…with 20 points in beast mastery.
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OP, the issue with your poll is that it was done right after a huge nerf to rangers. It’s only to be expected that people would have a knee-jerk reaction and claim rangers are the world profession in the game.
For-the-love-of-god, Anet, give people the ability to store away those dull, boring, uninspired pets.
That’s more or less the same as removing rangers from the game and replacing them with warriors. ArenaNet should fix how the pets work, not remove one of the very few elements unique to rangers (with the other being spirits, which, well…).
Leaving aside the fact that this still gives archery fans who dislike pets nowhere to go, ANet has tried to fix pets for three years and failed abysmally. Besides, rangers would still be a medium armor class that uses evasion and mobility to compensate for lower armor, and they would be the only medium armor class good at protracted melee combat (the thief’s initiative mechanic makes it more bursty; even in open PVE, I often find myself using a hit-and-run style of combat with thief). That’s like calling mesmers thieves simply because both have the stealth/deceit/dueling theme with teleportation/shadow stepping.
Regardless of whether we saw it coming or not, its still an infinitely disappointing thing to discuss.
Well I’ll agree with you there.
I just don’t see ANY evidence in their history on this scale of them ever completely repurposing any class from its original design or intended downsides. Elementalist is as close as it gets where it eventually (and unintentionally) became the weakest DPS’er due to Hardmode Armor Values, and then Stumme (b/c it was his main class and he was honest about that) kind of turned it into a Team-Buffing class with several team Utility changes that were unlike anything it had in the past. But that came so late in the game’s life that it shouldn’t even count. (plus it was obviously meant to support their Mercenaries cash shop deal).
I do think some major about-face is required here for PvE. But I also think there’s better ways to isolate this problem that won’t just turn Ranger into another Warrior clone. If your positional awareness of what your pet is doing, and what control and how successful your control is… timing wise… isn’t good, then you shouldn’t just be getting a free ride here on that DPS that’s missing otherwise. Every other class is also supposed to have situational THINGS that limit their DPS when they don’t play to their full potential. And your ideas I’m sorry to say…. just remove that entire skill-check from the game and make the class just an Ele/Warrior clone. That’s why I keep saying… if you want THAT playstyle, then roll one of those classes please.
Stop trying to make this one into just another Mage that summons a critter in place of a meteor shower or hundred blade storm, and then suffers no consequences for the care and positioning of that critter.
I have some issues with your view here. First of all, they did rework dervishes on this scale, and dervishes were far less clunky and flawed than GW2 rangers. What I want for them to do is to make a new group of pets which, instead of attacking or being attacked, would give passive and active buffs which would bring the ranger’s own utility and damage up to where the other classes are, without allowing the pet to be killed due to poor mechanics and lack of control.
You may want to force rangers to engage in 10 times as much micromanagement as any other class just to have the same effectiveness, but you’re missing the other problems: you can’t melee without giving up the only method you have for getting your pet out of nasty AoE (kittenty and inefficient as it is, it’s all we have), and ranged combat is underpowered in the game in general and even more so with rangers; pets cannot attack while moving and therefore miss a lot; the F2 skill is slow and clumsy to use; pets lack the evasion and blocking, despite these being the most important method of preventing incoming damage; you cannot instruct your pet to move to a specific area, and now the leash range that this last patch claimed to have fixed appears bugged.
The problem I have with the pet system isn’t that we suffer consequences for not looking after our pets (although they should have made the class with pets as optional rather than mandatory, for those who favor a precise archer but don’t care for pets), it’s the fact that we get punished for things that we have no control over. You see the champion you’re fighting charging up a powerful attack…and there isn’t a kitten thing that you can possibly do to prevent your pet from losing half its health bar instantly, because pets don’t have evade or block. Ranger melee skills are extremely mobile, which is nice…except that it causes your enemies to move, in order to follow you. Since pets can’t hit moving targets reliably, you get a DPS drop of ~20-40% whenever you hold aggro instead of your pet. Even if you can manage aggro perfectly, you get a choice between losing a third of your DPS (pet dying), or losing a third of your DPS (pet unable to hit enemy). This is a game which requires much more movement and positioning than GW1, yet we are forced to rely on an AI companion over which we have far less control than we did heroes (which had plenty of issues of their own, even in the comparatively static GW1 combat system).
I don’t want to see us become a mesmer clone with animals instead of illusions either, but at least if that happened we wouldn’t be punished for failing to keep the pet alive in situations which make it impossible to do so, nor would we be punished with a DPS drop when the only way to keep your pet alive is to keep them on passive.
MH sword has a clone that spawns on you and leaps to the target, and OH sword has a phantasm that does that.
Stop trying to make this one into just another Mage that summons a critter in place of a meteor shower or hundred blade storm, and then suffers no consequences for the care and positioning of that critter.
I think I can understand you sentiment, however, I don’t think it’s as easy as summoning a creature in place of a direct attack or spell, like the Mesmer, for example. The reason being is that the pet itself is completely fallible. Pathing issues, skill animation, and general AI problems prevent it from being so simple. Melee pets, unlike phantasms, have to get up to their targets, wading through attacks, and AoEs as a result. You can’t stop a meteor shower once it has been cast. You can stop a 100blades, however, that attack can be placed, exactly when and where the controlling player wants. It also scales better, for better or for worse, with the player’s stats.
The problems are: the AI sucks, ANet insists on balancing the entire game around an CP based aspect where most of the game revolves around a more TDM style gameplay even though they already have a system to separate the two in place. Finally, they balance the rangers damage and utility around a mechanic that is not always available which, to the best of my knowledge, is not something the other classes have to suffer.
There are melee phantasms, and they seem to do just fine. Remember the berserker and swordsman (GS and OH Sword, respectively)?
By whoring our selves as ranger pets.
Hahaha yes this is probably the way they want to change the balance, they will make a skill for the ranger that will sumon a random warrior to the field, then a screen will pop in the warriors screen that will say " rangerxxxx wants you to be his pet do you accept the request? y/n "
They dont even going to take warriors on the number of players anymore because we are now pets.
So we finally get pets that can dodge? kitten yeah! And I’ll trait to stack might and give you protection, and we can go wipe the smug looks off of some guardian faces. I like it!
I believe Anet thinks that they just fixed us two days ago.
It seems that we are not supposed to be a dungeon class at all. The more I think of it, the more I get this unsettling feeling that the Ranger is supposed to be a PvP-only class.
Either that or they just don’t know how to balance PvE while not breaking PvP yet. I will keep my fingers crossed and wait for the day that they figure it out.
Nothing new there…ranger tended to be much better in PVP than PVE in GW1, especially with bows.
I don’t care, I want to use a bow! I don’t want to use any of those other weapons!
Then do so.
No one is stopping you. Just keep in mind not every weapon is created equal. If your counter argument is “well they suck”, well, deal with it. Lots of weapons suck for different classes. Either adapt or change just like everyone else.
Leaving aside all of the time spent leveling ranger which you expect us to accept as wasted, there isn’t anything to change to for those of us who would like to play an archer archetype. I bought this game with the expectation that they would deliver on the claims made about it. They have failed to do so and, just as frustrating, have refused to be open or communicative about the continuing problems.
I think Versatility is probably the one thing rangers are not lacking in. However, of all the things we can do other classes can do better. I think ranger is one of the few classes that with the recent patch can work with all their weapon choices. Some classes just don’t use certain weapons. Our axe offhand and lonbow may not be the center of many builds, but with the latest patch new builds are coming that will utilize that. Our utilities are another matter, still not many people run spirits as them being easily destroyable makes them a very situational tool to use, and not worth building into.
It’s hard to consider a class versatile when they’re specifically weak in every area that punishes reliance on minions (and, in fact, are the only class which can’t overcome this limitation).
Guys Anet will never, NEVER, give you an option to drop the pet mechanic and just “transfer” the pet’s dps to the Ranger himself.
Because despite what the regular 30 to 40 Ranger forum posters and hardcore players would like, it would set the Ranger player base on fire. Let’s be honest here guys, 95% of the people that rolled a Ranger did so for 2 primary reasons: 1. Because according to the description, the class looked to be primarily a Ranged class, thus creating the perception of a safer class to play. 2. Because according to the description, the class would have a strong and helpful off-tank in Pets, thus creating the perception of a safer class to play. And nothing in what I just wrote is a criticism to anyone that rolled this class for those reasons. On the contrary, every single MMO I have ever played has always included at least 2 classes that fill this bill (one melee version, and one ranged version). In GW2 it’s Rangers and Guardians (obviously Guardians arrive at “safer” by a different means).
Well we only want the option to stow the pet, and transfer its abilities to the player himself, you say. Won’t wash … because it opens up a giant can of worms: such as, how much dps is transferred, is the stowed pet Ranger stronger than the beastmaster Ranger, will dungeons groups accept a pet ranger (if you think its bad now, let folks find out you don’t have to have a pet, and it will be the Ranger casuals – the 95% – that will take this hit the hardest). And guys, there is a large, and I mean large percentage of Ranger players that want a great deal of their dps/cc to come from their pets, and not themselves.
Lastly, MMOs survive long term by attracting new players, so these 2 classes, and the manner in which they are described/structured are not going to change in any drastic fashion. So any suggestions regarding pets really need to be on how to improve their ability to land attacks, and increasing their dungeon survivability.
First of all, you’re pulling numbers straight out of your kitten . 95%? Based on what, exactly?
I can’t speak for the rest of the ranger community (and neither can you, no matter how vocally you make that claim), but the reasons you give for people wanting to play ranger don’t match up to mine at all. In GW1, I preferred medium armor classes (notably dervish and ranger). The dervish didn’t come back for GW2, so I’ve been trying to find a class which incorporates what I liked about the dervish and the ranger. There is, as of now, no class for either except the ranger which, excluding the pet, has some elements of both in it.
Anyways, I find your claim that 95% (or even just a majority) of the people who play ranger (or guardian for that matter) started with the class because they thought it was ‘safer’ to be ridiculous. What about the people who just like a nature aesthetic? Those who want a medium armor class built for sustained melee combat? The people who just like archery? You seem eager to deny all of them a place in this game, and apparently out of selfishness.
Next you express concern that pets would not be viable in all areas (as if they are now) and that pet rangers would be excluded from groups. So? What if someone likes minion mastery? There are many, many places in the game where minion mastery is completely useless. Is it fair to exclude minion masters from your group for that reason? That is the difference between rangers and the other professions: when an area is difficult for a certain build type, most classes can change in order to remain fully effective. Rangers, however, are forced to keep a large, unreliable aspect of their character type the same…then are punished for using it in areas where it’s weak.
As for making pets more reliable, obviously I hope that they do that. But I still want to be able to play ranger (or a ranger-like class) without being forced to incorporate that into my build else lose out on effectiveness. Besides, they’ve been trying to make the kitten things reliable for around 3 years now, and have thus far failed utterly.
Do you really expect to receive an answer with that kind of aggresivity?
We’ve tried asking nicely for civil, rational discussion. They either ignore us or drop a one-line response saying ‘we do care!’ Their efforts to address the core issues with the ranger have looked, to me at least, half-hearted. The GW2 ranger still doesn’t have the smooth functionality of the other classes. At this point, they should be communicating to us what they intend to do next and probably asking for ideas from people who favor ranger. This closemouthed bullkitten is not helpful at all.
A Net’s nerf hammer has tunnel vision for spvp. They wont take the common sense route of separating spvp, wvw and pve skills.
Very strange, considering that they did split skills in GW1.
The silence from ANet is deafening…
If you think rangers only need a damage buff, you are looking at this game with a severely limited view of the mechanics that make the other classes so much better in design.
Few combo fields
No variety in combo finishers
Need to trait to use most reliable AoEs
No group support skills without traiting
No true condition cleansing outside of heal (passed off to pet)
No pet scaling with your own stats (as much a boon for bunkers as a bane for non bunkers)
Little utility in dungeons
Lack of support on numerous tiny, easily fixed, bugs
Too much reliance on NPC
etc etcSay what you want about “ranger being ranged”. I honestly have no more interest debating about that, so I won’t go there with fellow players. However, you need to take a big step back and look over a few of the things you mentioned in the OP. This class is amazing at healing. It is amazing at not getting hit. It is unbelievable at allowing for easy-mode PvE. It is lacking just about everywhere else – a farcry from needing merely a damage buff.
The problem with this class isn’t only the damage. The problem with this class and the reason so many people are upset about its state is due to the severe lack of group utility and the insane reliance on npc pets. It’s a class completely built around “me” in a game where you are severely limited in your options for gameplay if you aren’t viewed as viable in a group.
While the reactions on the forums are definitely blown out of proportion, it’s unfair to toss it all into the trash as “reactionary nonsense”. You’re basically saying to the many players, with very legitimate and constructive complaints about this class, that they should suck it up and deal with it.
The cliff note version of the above post is:
1)Rangers Lack verstaility
2)Rangers Lack viability
3)Rangers Lack Synergy
4)Rangers lack dmg
5)Rangers class mechanic hinders the actual classes ability.All in all – I’m not so sure I agree with the class not being totally broken at this point in time in the pve environment.
We truly do not have a place in PvE. Any other current class in game can offer more to a group in every aspect then we can.
PvP is a mixed bag. Some of the changes were needed but some went a bit to far.
Back in the days of yore, some 250 years in the past (in GW1, basically), I predicted that pets would prevent rangers from being as good as the other classes. Based on the AI, inability to swap out specific skills for your pet, and lack of control over it (you had tons more control over heroes in GW1). Now I’m simply appalled…the entire combat system is designed around evasion and blocking, and most pets can do neither. Even those that can evade can only do it once every 20 seconds or so, and don’t appear to time it very well.
All the Dwarves except Ogden were turned to stone to fight the first dragon that appeared in GW:EotN. So Ogden is the only one left. And Sylvari are the “Elf” race of Tyria.
Uh, Ogden was turned to stone, what with the gray skin and the fact that he is 300 years old.
Also, in the “had everything, got full of themselves, and thus is now in decline” manner, humans are kind of the elves of GW2 :/
I love the way they divided up ‘traditional’ elven and human attributes between the Sylvari and Humans.
Raging Forum Rangers: Dev’s you hates us!
Jon: No we don’t! We loves you!
Raging Forum Rangers (Lemongrab voice): QUIT TROLLING QQAnd you wonder why devs don’t post here too much? lol
We got more then we lost. It’s a good deal overall. One might even say fairly balanced.
‘Fairly balanced’? Look at how many people are refusing to party with rangers. Look at how pets fare in the brand new dungeon. Look at the fact that we asked for a civilized, open discussion about the state of the ranger and their future plans for it, and how he gives us half a kittening line in response. We want openness and honesty. We aren’t getting it.
Actually, this post is extremely wrong on several levels.
a.) Rangers are "unparalleled archers’ simply because they use both shortbows and longbows (as well as axes) and consequently have greater versatility at range than other classes.
b.) Being good at ranged is almost never balanced by being bad at melee, it’s balanced by having weaker defense and requiring more mobility. Being a “ranged class” typically means being proficient at range as well as in melee, not being proficient at range at the expense of melee. WoW is virtually the only game to feature the ‘archer’ class that can’t melee their way out of a paper bag AND they have poor attrition; this is why they were always terrible in pvp. I despise the way the hunter is designed in that game.
c.) In actual use, ranged weapons have a different role than melee weapons. Throughout history, most people with skill in one have some skill in the other because they have different tactical applications. It’s actually far less common for soldiers, warriors, scouts, etc. to be highly specialized in one over the other rather than being competent with both. The ranger in GW2, as well as the Warrior, represent this perfectly.
a) Warriors have pretty good versatility at long range: rifle for single target damage, longbow for AoE skills. The one thing that they lack is a medium-range weapon with high mobility. Sort of like the rangers lack a true long range AoE weapon.
b) Actually, many games seem to be like this. Runescape, Guild Wars 1, Diablo 2, etc.
c) They tended to be capable of using either, but they usually specialized strongly in one or the other. Mongol light horsemen carried 2 bows with which they did most of their fighting, resorting to melee weapons only when forced to. English longbowmen almost never engaged in hand to hand fighting unless forced to (as at Agincourt) by running short of arrows and being significantly outnumbered (and even then, their foes were disoriented and bogged down by mud, so it wasn’t heavy fighting so much as finishing off the enemy). Knights shunned ranged weapons in general, except during sieges when melee weapons weren’t at all useful. Roman legionaries used their pila as a shock weapon just before meeting the enemy in melee combat, after which they used their swords; they relied on specialized auxiliaries and siege weapons to provide long range support. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. One of the very few types of historical soldiers I know of that used both extensively was actually the samurai, who originated as mounted archers before becoming more well-rounded warriors, favoring the yumi (composite longbow), yari (spear), and naginata (pole-sword; more or less a glaive).
(edited by Unholy Pillager.3791)
Keep it up guys! The best way to motivate the ANet balance team is to insult them into buffing rangers! Forget about meaningful discussion, who needs that crap, amirite?
/rolleyes
He responded to about half a dozen legitimate concerns with the recent update, the ranger’s issues so far, and its potential future by saying, essentially, ‘Hi! You’ll be glad to know that I read at least some of what you wrote!’ How the hell are we supposed to respond to that? He couldn’t even bother to tell us whether or not the team considers our concerns important or reasonable, much less address them! We ask for an open discussion and he gives us half a line of text with no substance in it at all. When they want to give me meaningful discussion and openness (and perhaps earn back some of my trust in the process), I’ll be waiting. I haven’t yet seen them engage in such regarding the ranger class, so you’ll excuse me if I’m somewhat piqued.
I have a compromise: make a new category of pets which cannot be targeted or damaged, don’t have skills or damage of their own, but instead passively give a flat damage buff and some trait-like effects to bring the cc and damage of the ranger up to the level of other professions. This would keep the aesthetics of a pet class (and still make pet customizations work in case you want to swap to a traited pet in combat), while removing the forced reliance on an inherently unreliable mechanic. Besides, I want a pet weasel that sits on my shoulder.
Well I freakin love my ranger in GW2. I find him very dynamic and awesomely swift and agile.
I think a lot of people jump into playing the ranger as a ranged class in this game. It is true that they do have excellent ranged options but that shouldn’t be the only way they are damaging all the time.
Anet has said that ranged will always do less damage in general than melee because of the trade off in risk etc. So Not only is it the pet (about 20-40%) but also melee has a major role.
I see a lot of rangers (general observation) thinking they should be doing uber damage just with shortbow or longbow.. you’ve got to get your hands dirty on occasion especially for bursting, but thats all good because rangers have a crazy amount of evading options with all melee weapons so shouldn’t be getting hit.
In general I think a lot of players play GW2 with a one weapon mindset (from other MMOs) when there are 2 sets plus available to any class and should be used for all the different situations.
The problem I have is that you’re forced to trait either for melee or range, at least with the weapons I favor (longbow and greatsword). This more or less forces a one weapon mindset, as your traits are largely wasted with a range-traited melee weapon or a melee-traited ranged weapon. Of course, part of the problem is that ranger traits aren’t as good as those of other professions.
There are two problems with your next argument, the assertion that a safety tradeoff is the reason behind the damage imbalance: first, that this game has numerous excellent gap-closing, blocking, evading, and projectile reflecting skills for meleers to deal with ranged attacks. Given the lack of distance management ability with the longbow (on a weapon the can’t even deal am appreciable amount of its normally mediocre damage up close) and the axe, the only time you’re safe at a distance is on a wall or other difficult-to-reach place. The second problem is that many other classes seem to deal better damage at range, including the rifle warrior (which also goes back to the first argument; they get safe range AND heavy armor, as well as damage which doesn’t fall off as the enemy closes in). As for the pet, how is putting 20-40% of your damage and tons of trait points into a poorly controlled AI character which can’t dodge or block (in a combat system based around dodging and blocking!) and hence spends much of its time dead when you need it the most (in dungeons, for example) a good idea? Pets are pretty effective when they’re alive, but when it becomes impossible to keep them alive with any amount of skill, you’re stuck using a character that does 60-80% as much damage as a ‘normal’ character, and has 60-80% of the cc.
Anyways, to give my opinion on something the OP said: rangers in GW1 were better off than in GW2, but were still far from perfect. Bow rangers were incapable of dealing even mediocre damage in PVP except in very specific situations (Melandru’s arrows in arenas without reliable backline support, so mostly Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry). Almost all of their skills were completely useless. Despite the dozens (hundreds?) of skills available, there were 6 skills that were found on the bar of basically every single bow ranger in any PVP arena: distracting shot, savage shot, natural stride, troll unguent, apply poison, mending touch. In some arenas, the 7th skill was resurrection signet, and the last slot was for an elite bow attack, about 3 of which were useful competitively. The worst part for me (as someone who enjoyed playing a ton of FA) was that this forced role (conditions/interrupt) meant that having several rangers on a team gave a disadvantage, as conditions didn’t stack duration or intensity. Two or more rangers on the same target wasted most of their potential effectiveness.
PVE was even worse. Bow rangers were useful in PVP because of the need for splitting, toughness, condition spreading and interrupting all on one skill bar, but for PVE they were thoroughly outclassed. Interrupting and condition spread were basically useless, and their damage, while much better than in PVP, still wasn’t nearly good enough.
What was good, however, was the ability to not use a pet without suffering from a severe damage and cc deficit.
Charr are basically large cats. If you’ve sat next to a tiger or lion that’s tamed, I have, and they’re huge.
I can see where the inspiration comes from, tigers are big beasts, charr are just large cats with weapons and I think it makes sense that they’re almost 10ft tall.
On the threat from humans, it’s fantasy, people have ridiculous strength and armour and skill, might is what you make of it I guess. The sheer rage of a warlord can make him snap iron with his bare hands etc.
I agree with most of that, but the last sentence seems more myth than reality. I’m not sure whether someone’s muscles could become powerful enough to do that or not, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Even if muscles aren’t a limiting factor in that case, bones are. Muscles work by exerting force on bones to make them move; every bit of force exerted by your muscles is applied directly to your bones. Are your finger bones stronger than iron?
Dervish was enormous fun in GW1, but a profession centered around deities won’t work anymore. Still, something more about PBAoE damage spells and weapon skills in that vein might be interesting. I’m still hoping for another successor to the GW1 ranger, since being permanently shackled to your pet is not fun (as I predicted when they first announced the class…). Maybe a light armor class which specializes in martial weaponry, most of it ranged? Say, with guns, bows (I still want a better longbow skillbar), throwing weapons and maybe greatsword and sword/shield to round it out?