Game Mode: PvX
Pet mobile combat improvements.
Many call pet a lost cause because of it’s inability to hunt down moving targets. With this in mind few changes can be made to improve it or at least make the situation less tragic.
Firstly as someone pointed already, pets being able to jump up and down after their targets would be great help in pursuit of human targets. Not every pet has to have it, but felines, canines, spiders & moas should have it, while birds should be able to chase their prey no matter the vertical distance, as long as there’s a clear air route to it and it’s not underwater.
The less fortunate families of pets, such as drakes, bears, boars and so on, should have a passive ability reducing their and master’s damage taken from projectile attacks, so anyone wanting to shoot down the ranger from afar, will face reduced damage output, bringing him closer to petless ranger dps.
As for horizontal mobility there have been proposals of increasing pet attack reach, which i fully support. Be it build into every pet henceforth, or achievable by easy to get trait, make it happen.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s Shouts rewamp
Idea behind shout changes
Let’s be honest. Majority of shouts are about controlling your pet behaviour and as such should be profession mechanic free of utility slot skill trappings. Since they’re not, at least proper reliability and additional effects are a must.
Proposed Functionality
“Protect me!” - to existing effects two more are added. Pet is healed for 50% max hp on cast, and it takes only 33% of incoming damage for the duration of the skill.
- Reason behind this change: This skill is not “let’s kill my pet for not being a bear” button.
With these additions it becomes your pet heal and emergency panic button as well.
“Search and rescue” - 15 sec cooldown. Shout works on deafeted. If you have a downed/defeated ally selected, pet will go to revive that person. Will not activate without fallen ally in range. Revival speed 30% faster then normal.
*Reason: I can have pet do attacking and revive defeated players myself without any fuss. Why should opposite scenario be a mountain climb? Using this shout costs utility slot and a cooldown, thus faster revival speed on it. Since pet sent to revive an ally can be killed and is a major damage loss to the ranger i see no reason to cripple this shout with long cooldown. Infact only reason it has one is to prevent shout triggered effects abuse when sorrounded by corpses.
“Guard” - instant cast not 1s. Pet ignores any enemies on it’s way to designated spot, and only after reaching it engages enemies in protected zone.
*Reason: Else why not just select an enemy and order attack without wasting utility slots?
“Sick’em” - this one works just fine.
And what about those people who like the Class but not the pet aspect of it ? Should your opinion trump theirs ? What I was suggesting was basically having the option to stow the pet permenantly if YOU choose to do so. The pet would be more powerful if you traited for the pet to be powerful, just as the Guardians Virtues are more powerfull if you choose to trait them that way, same can be said for every other class in the game.
Its a suggestion I through out there and I am more then entitled to suggest it. This is suppose to be a thread about our suggestions on how to fix or elevate the class, as stated it is not here for you to shut down other peoples suggestions because its not what you want.
You have the right to make a suggestion, why not try that instead of attacking other suggestions. There are plenty of suggestions here that I completely dissagree with but its not my place to tell those people or the Devs that they are wrong.
I just did make suggestion – improve pet rather then sweep it under the rag. In life there are people with opposite opinions for whom your own is a disaster made real, And they can vote too. I just did.
I can see your concern here but, the option to have the pet as such an integral part of the class is one of the largest faults of the class. Could it not be optional to have the pet as an option, basically if you spec wilderness survival your pet becomes a larger part of the class, if you choose to spec in something different to be more valuable to your group then either you don’t have the pet or it has minimal impact on the class.
That is completely valid feedback that I will relay to the designers. Thanks for taking the time to share it!
I can’t just stand around when something like this is passed to the devs, so here’s my counter-feedback.
The ranger is a class specifically designed around teamwork with pet who is to be ranger’s equal partner and not an expandible minion. Said teamwork is something unique to the ranger profession and spot on.
So if a pet fails at the role of ranger’s euqal partner due to sloppy defense/offence/Ai, then it is the dev’s job to up it’s game to intended standard, and not sweep it under the rug, reducing it’s impact on the ranger to a point where you have to trait for it to become an accual pet and not a visual aid.
I’ve already thrown you guys a few bones how to get the job done in this very thread.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s Signet improvements:
Goals of this change
Bringing signet of the hunt back from the dead as damage support utility.
Giving signets more unique boosts from signet of beastmaster.
Making signet of stone active meaningful without relying on signet traits.
Proposed Functionality
signet of the hunt - active: for 12 seconds ranger’s non critical attacks do 50% more damage (great for taking down structures and damaging crit immune bosses). passive: 10% chance for your critical attacks to become an opening strike.
signet of stone - active effect applies to ranger, and not the pet by default. With pet ward
implemented (check my signature for it), ranger can share it’s effects with pet from get go, making it a really useful signet to have even without any trait support.
Signet traits:
Signet of beastmaster - changed functionality. Increases signet effects when pet is out.
- signet of the hunt – passive and active affect pet as well.
- signet or reneval – passive effect removes 2 conditions every 10 seconds. Active removes 3 conditions from pet after pulling them off players.
- signet of stone – 3s extra duration. (This assumes pet ward mechanic is implemeneted for sharing it’s effects with pet).
- signet of the wild – same as now – signet active affects ranger as well.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s Trap skills PvE improvement
Goal of this change
Improving trap gameplay for PvE, in terms of utility, damage and group oriented play.
I. Manual trap control
Goal of this change:
Giving the ranger option to fire off trap combo fields without monsters around and to trigger trap manually for smarter usage then plain auto.
Proposed Functionality
Manual trap control could be achieved by pressing trap button once the trap itself is set. First press stops trap from triggering, second triggers it manually. That of course works only if trap wasn’t placed under a monster triggering it instantly.
II. Utility trap skill improvements
Goal of this change:
Improving each traps performance based on it’s combo field and general purpose.
Proposed Functionality
- Flame trap - increase duration to 5 seconds (for combo field), increased physical damage per pulse (210). This is the straight up raw damage and fire combo field trap.
- Spike trap - add 5 stacks of torment lasting 5s each. This trap is about brutal burst of condition damage and movement crippling. Tormet fits like a glove here.
- Viper’s nest - add 2 stacks of confusion (3s) per pulse for some serious condition damage.
- Frost trap - no changes here.
III. Trap related traits tweaks
Goal of this change:
Easier access to trait supporting trap group play, and clear separation of this trait from the one
focusing on offensive benefits for traps.
Proposed Functionality
- Trapper’s expertise: trap cooldown reduction 20%, Traps last 2 seconds longer (including combo fields). Traps can be thrown in 900 range (no ranger weapon matches 600 max range playstyle).
- Trap potency. Increased damage, radius, condition duration of traps. Traps immobilize on activation.
Physical damage per pulse +25%.
Trap & combo field radius +90.
Base condition duration +100%.
Immobilize duration:2 sec (PvE), 1 sec (PvP).
As you can see trapper’s expertise is the party play upgrade – longer combo fields, shorter cooldowns, and ability to toss it into the fray.
Trap potency offers far greater offense giving conditions 2x their base duration, and making trapping easier with increased trap radius (combo fields included) and immobilize on activation.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s Survival Skills tweaking
Goal of this change
Balancing survival skill’s usefulness with eachother and other trait boostable skill sets.
Proposed Functionality
Muddy terrain - additionaly pulses weakness (2s) each pulse. Being knees deep in mud means pretty bad startup for dodges, or landing powerful blows without firm footing.
Sharpening stone - cooldown reduced to 20 seconds. Grants 5 stacks of bleeding (10s) and 1 stack of torment (10s) to both your and your pets attacks.
Quickening Zephyr - no change needed.
Lightning reflexes - cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, since it’s self-skill only that doesn’t
boost damage.
Check out my pet secondary stats suggestion above.
Game mode: PvE
Zef’s weapon revamp suggestion – the Sword
Goal of this change
Increasing sword’s responsivness and reaction speed[/b]
1. Auto attack - No more rooting with each blow, preventing dodges from being used.
.2 hornet sting/monarch’s leap - Faster sting execution.
Evasion skills are immediate response tools, they can’t be sloggish before evasion kicks in.
3. Serpent’s strike - Added 3 stacks of torment (8s).
Sword is the main melee damage weapon of ranger. Adding some extra, escape punishing stacks of torment fits it’s theme perfectly.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s weapon revamp suggestion – the Dagger (offhand)
4. Stalker’s Strike – added one stack of opening strike to current functionality.
Being unique ranger mechanic that can support group damage Opening Strike should be more then just one traitline feature. It should be also available through some weapon skills.
Dagger is the perfect weapon for melee source of it. Lacking a clear group utility at bosses unlike all other offhands, and being the “surprise attack” weapon it fits like a glove.
Since we want to apply it at close range, Stalker’s Strike is the only choice.
It also adds some tactic to the move (use it as evasion, or pop it the second it goes off cd for opening strike).
Note Be sure to check my opening strike upgrade above.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s weapon revamp suggestions – the Longbow
#3 Hunter’s shot - Fires a powerful shot that deals damage, stuns (1s) and grants opening strike.
Cooldown: 20s.
cast time: 1s
Damage 700 (2.5 damage coefficient)
stun: 1s
100% projectile finisher.
Having stealth and swiftness is nice, but that’s not what longbow is supposed to do. The purpose of longbow are powerful, armor piercing, focused long range attacks, that yield tromendous effects if they hit. Hunter’s shot becomes just that, rather then pretending to be thief.
Game mode: PvE
Zef’s weapon revamp suggestions – the axe
Goal of this change
Adjusting mainhand axe skills to match it’s purpose. Dealing with erronous skill descriptions.
Proposed functionality
#1 Ricochet - increased attack power the closer you are to enemy. Reverse situation to longbow auto.
- Reason - axe auto deserves damage buff, but without putting sword out of business. Doing it this way gets the job done – more risk, more damage. It also greatly synergizes with rest of mainhand axe skills and longbow auto.
#2 Splitblade It’s good the way it is.
#3 Winter’s Bite Pierces opponents between ranger and target. Axe is about ranged mob damage, and conditions. Piercing is the hardest way to pull off mob hits, suitable for a move that has very valuable chilling and long weakness on a relatively short cd.
#4 Path of scars - Increased pull range when traited with offhand training.
#5 Whirling defense - Description adjusted to reflection rather then just blocking projectiles.
Reflection bubble size increased to 120, 180 with offhand training. Reflection bubble center always at average character height/2.
- Reason By picking offhand training ranger picks the “I want my whirling defense to be a group reflect”. The bubble positioning should ensure that after traiting offhand training, bubble’s max radius is still at height of the player characters and not 5 meters above them.
Game mode: PvE
Zef’s weapon revamp suggestions – the torch
Goal of this change
Increasing torch utility as damage and crowd combat weapon.
Proposed functionality
Explosive torch - throw torch with gunpowder sack attached that explodes on impact dealing aoe damage and burning.
Damage: 900 (2.0 coefficient).
Explosion radius: 180.
Burning duration 4s.
Blast finisher.
Cooldown: 15 seconds.
Bonfire - base radius increased to 180. Pulses blind(1s) & burning (1s) each second. With offhand training, radius increases to 240. Physical damage per pulse increased to 2x current value.
The torch is about damage and that’s what’s happening right here. Rather luckluster Throw torch now becomes an aoe with serious damage and blast finisher, retaining it’s cooldown.
Bonfire receives more utility for crowd melee situations, by adding blinds and larger radius.
Game Mode: PvE
Zef’s Opening strike improvement:
Goal of this change
Giving a ranger a unique crit debuff for monsters, and new ways to apply it.
Proposed Functionality
Opening strike – attacked opponent receives 5 stacks of vulnerability and 7% extra chance to receive critical hits for 10 seconds. (Now it adds extra crit chance for everyone vs affected monster). Can stack in intensity up to 2 times.
Weapons granting opening strike
Longbow (ranged), dagger(melee)
Utility skills affecting opening strike
Signet of hunt passive – 10% chance for your critical strikes to become an opening strike
Traits affecting Opening Strike
Opening Strike – no change.
Alpha training – no change.
Precise Strike – opening strike adds extra 7% critical damage vs affected monster.
Remorseless – regain opening strike when you crit at 20% chance. Opening strike can now stack in intensity up to 3 times.
Game mode: PvE
Zef’s Spirit rewamp
Goal of this change
Making spirits far more flexible and sustainable in PvE.
Proposed Functionality
Changes in general spirit mechanic:
- summoning a spirit is a ground targeted skill with 1200 range.
- spirits are treated like structures (immune to crits and conditions)
- spirits go on cooldown after they’re casted and not after they die.
- normally spirits get 75% uptime - 60s duration vs 80 sec cooldown.
- spirit actives can ignore their cooldown, but each “rule breaking cast” costs spirit it’s duration equal to active’s remaning cooldown. Cannot be used if spirit doesn’t have enough duration left.
Example: you just summoned the water spirit and used its aqua surge, putting it on 25 sec cooldown. Pinned to the wall 10 seconds later you can use it again, but it’ll cut spirit’s remaining time by 15 seconds, because that was the cd left on aqua surge.
Specific spirit changes
- Water spirit – check healing skills post
- Sun spirit - Passive gives chance to blind for 2s. Active burns enemies in 360 radius for 10s.
- Stone spirit - Active changed to aoe stun (2s) with 60 sec cd on it. Stun duration affected by traits and runes.
- Frost spirit - Damage increase passive effect buffed to 15%.
- Spirit of Nature - duration 120 seconds. cooldown 160 seconds. Nature’s renewal cd increased to 75 seconds. Passive healing per sec: 200 + 0.25 * ranger’s healing. Passive heal radius: 360.
Traits
- Vigorous spirits - hp enhance effect replaced with 25% spirit cooldown redution.
- Sprits unbound - asides from spirits following you, spirit actives have 20% decreased cooldowns.
- Unstoppable nature - spirits becomr untouchable (like warrior banners).
Game mode: PvE
Goal of this proposal
Making each healing skill unique and competitive with the rest.
Proposed Functionality
Heal as One - If pet is alive, then its healing x 2 is added into healing value formula. If it’s defeated, then only ranger’s healing is used, but pet is revived and healed for that value.
cooldown increased to 30s.
Base healing value lowered.
Note: check my pet’s secondary attributes rewamp idea.
Troll unguent - instant cast. Removes 1 condition with each pulse. number of pulses reduced to 7. Healing coefficient increased to 0.25. Cooldown reduced to 20s.
Reason for change - “keep yourself alive” is the song of troll ungent. Adding condition clensing to regeneration is doing just that, and giving healing spring some competition. Instant cast is a must because danger of death is not going away the moment you sucessfully cast it. You still have to keep yourself relatively unscathed for next few seconds to be out of danger.
Healing Spring no changes needed. It’s great as it is.
Water spirit - passive effect refreshing each 4 seconds , lasting 20 seconds. Unused passive charges can stack up to 5 times. healing value adjusted to give same average healing per second given shorter refresh rate.
check out spirit rewamp suggestion affecting spirits.
Specific game mode: all
Zef’s Pet secondary attribute change
Goal of this change
Better customization and meaningful values for pet’s secondary attributes.
Proposed Functionality
Pet receives 1/2 of master’s secondary attributes (critical damage, condition damage & duration, boon durations, healing) and 100% AR & magic find.
The percentage traits for pet’s critical damage, condition and boon duration stay as they are, and stack with ranger inherited values.
Traits that give flat number increase to pet healing and condition damage get buffed up to 800 at lvl 80. Current values do nothing for the pet and its value in combat.
With those two changes in place pet gets both a decent start with master inherited values, as well as it’s own, meaningful secondary stat customization via traits.
Specific game mode: all
Goal of this change
Making return command better at protecting ranger & pet.
Proposed Functionality
When using “return command” have pet stand right at ranger’s side, not few meters away from him.
It’ll position it to be inside whirling defense bubble when needed. No more mobs getting pulled because certain pet stands few meters too close unlike the ranger. Less headaches with huge aoe zones of death because pet and ranger get targetted but are quite apart.
Game Mode: PvE
Proposal Overview
Player skill based mechanic for defending your pet from harm.
Proposed Functionality:
On/off toggle command under F3, no cooldowns, instant cast.
When activated all attacks that pet would receive are delegated to ranger instead and pitted against his own defences, such as toughness, % damage reductions, evades, blocks, reflects, invulnerability or his own face if he fails to act on time.
Wheather damage is considered ranged or melee depends on distance between pet’s attacker and ranger himself.
Used right it can negate incoming attacks for both you and pet at same time. Used wrong in worst case scenario will have you eat up damage for both yourself and pet.
Possible Risks
Killing yourself hard.
Advantages of Pet Ward:
- player skill based. It’s powerful but not easy.
- BowBear not necessary – pet ward works with any ranger/pet setup
- improves damage – pet stays alive and doesn’t need to run for it every second
- more ranger builds – pet builds become an option, trait based tank builds don’t go away, because pet ward is risky option for the skilled.
- saviour of pets when swap is still on cooldown
- On/off skill. You decide if and when to use it.
- Lets you deal directly with “effects” of any pet AI stupidity.
- Doesn’t force pets to be changed from ground up to use it.
Specific date and time for thread opening was given. Unlike specific something regarding the reason for it being late. And yeah, it’s gonna be the most intense thing since certain small collision 64 million years ago;) Hoping necros will be next, they need their game upped too.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Trait suggestions post #3 (out of 3)
The End.
Trait suggestions post #2 (out of 3)
Trait suggestions post #1 (out of 3)
Dagger (offhand)
4. Stalker’s Strike - added one stack of opening strike to current functionality.
Being unique ranger mechanic that can support group damage Opening Strike should be more then just one traitline feature. It should be also available through some weapon skills.
Dagger is the perfect weapon for melee source of it. Lacking a clear group utility at bosses unlike all other offhands, and being the “surprise attack” weapon it fits like a glove.
Since we want to apply it at close range, Stalker’s Strike is the only choice.
It also adds some tactic to the move (use it as evasion, or pop it the second it goes off cd for opening strike).
Note Be sure to check my opening strike upgrade above.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Shortbow
To be done.
Longbow
#3 Hunter’s shot - Fires a powerful shot that deals damage, stuns (1s) and grants opening strike. Cooldown increased to 20s.
cast time: 1s
Damage 700 (2.5 damage coefficient)
stun: 1s
100% projectile finisher.
cooldown: 20 s.
Having stealth and swiftness is nice, but that’s not what longbow is supposed to do. The purpose of longbow are powerful, armor piercing, focused long range attacks, that yield tromendous effects if they hit. Hunter’s shot becomes just that, rather then pretending to be thief with longbow.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Sword
Goal of this change
Increasing sword’s responsivness and reaction speed[/b]
#1 Auto attack
No more rooting with each blow, preventing dodges from being used.
#2 hornet sting/monarch’s leap
Faster sting execution. Evasion skills are immediate response tools, they can’t be sloggish before evasion kicks in.
Serpent’s strike Added 3 stacks of torment (8s).
Sword is the main melee damage weapon of ranger. Adding some extra, escape punishing stacks of torment fits it’s theme perfectly.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Axe (mainhand & offhand)
Goal of this change
Adjusting mainhand axe skills to match it’s purpose. Dealing with erronous skill descriptions.
Proposed functionality
#1 Ricochet - increased attack power the closer you are to enemy. Reverse situation to longbow auto attack.
.
- Reason - axe auto deserves damage buff, but without putting sword out of business. Doing it this way gets the job done – more risk, more damage. It also greatly synergizes with rest of mainhand axe skills and longbow auto.
#2 Splitblade It’s good the way it is.
#3 Winter’s Bite Pierces opponents between ranger and target.
Axe is about ranged mob damage, and conditions. Piercing is the hardest way to pull off mob hits, suitable for a move that has very valuable chilling and long weakness on a relatively short cd.
#4 Path of scars - Increased pull range when traited with offhand training.
#5 Whirling defense - Description adjusted to reflection rather then just blocking projectiles.Reflection bubble size increased to 120, 180 with offhand training. Reflection bubble center always at average character height/2.
- Reason By picking offhand training ranger picks the “I want my whirling defense to be a group reflect”. The bubble positioning should ensure that after traiting offhand training, bubble’s max radius is still at height of the player characters and not 5 meters above them.
Zef’s weapon revamp suggestions
Torch
Goal of this change
Increasing torch utility as damage and crowd combat weapon.
Proposed functionality
#4 Explosive torch - throw torch with gunpowder attached that explodes on impact dealing aoe damage and burning.
Explosion radius: 180.
Blast finisher.
Burning duration 4s.
Damage: 900 (2.0 coefficient).
Cooldown: 15 seconds.
#5 Bonfire - base radius increased to 180. Pulses blind(1s) & burning (1s) each second. With offhand training, radius increases to 240. Physical damage per pulse increased to 2x current value.
The torch is about damage and that’s what’s happening right here. Rather luckluster Throw torch now becomes an aoe with serious damage and blast finisher, retaining it’s old cooldown.
Bonfire receives more utility for crowd melee situations, by adding blinds and larger radius.
Zef’s healing skills adjustments
Goal of this proposal
Ranger is a class with powerful healing options. But not all are equal or have unique functionality. These skill changes should help with that.
Proposed Functionality
Heal as One - If pet is alive, then its healing x 2 is added into healing value formula. If it’s
defeated, then only ranger’s healing is used, but pet is revived and healed for that value.
Cooldown increased to 30s.
Base healing value lowered.
Note: check my pet’s secondary attributes rewamp idea.
Troll unguent - instant cast. Removes 1 condition with each pulse. number of pulses reduced to 7. Healing coefficient increased to 0.25. Cooldown reduced to 20s.
Reason for change - “keep yourself alive” is the song of troll ungent. Adding condition clensing to regeneration is doing just that, and giving healing spring some competition. Instant cast is a must because danger of death is not going away the moment you sucessfully cast it. You still have to keep yourself relatively unscathed for next few seconds to be out of danger.
Healing Spring no changes needed. It’s great as it is.
Water spirit - passive effect refreshing each 4 seconds , lasting 20 seconds. Unused passive charges can stack up to 5 times. healing value adjusted to give same average healing per second given as the earlier 10 second version.
active: cooldown increased to 30 seconds. Triggers any inactive passive stacks for those in range.
check out spirit rewamp suggestion affecting spirits above.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Zef’s Shouts rewamp
Idea behind shout changes
Let’s be honest. Majority of shouts are about controlling your pet behaviour and as such should be profession mechanic free of utility slot skill trappings. Since they’re not, at least proper reliability and additional effects are a must.
Proposed Functionality
“Protect me!” - to existing effects two more are added. Pet is healed for 50% max hp on cast, and it takes only 33% of incoming damage for the duration of the skill.
- Reason behind this change: This skill is not “let’s kill my pet for not being a bear” button.
With these additions it becomes your pet heal and emergency panic button as well.
“Search and rescue” - 15 sec cooldown. Shout works on deafeted. If you have a downed/defeated ally selected, pet will go to revive that person. Will not activate without fallen ally in range. Revival speed 30% faster then normal.
*Reason: I can have pet do attacking and revive defeated players myself without any fuss. Why should opposite scenario be a mountain climb? Using this shout costs utility slot and a cooldown, thus faster revival speed on it. Since pet sent to revive an ally can be killed and is a major damage loss to the ranger i see no reason to cripple this shout with long cooldown. Infact only reason it has one is to prevent shout triggered effects abuse when sorrounded by corpses.
“Guard” - instant cast not 1s. Pet ignores any enemies on it’s way to designated spot, and only after reaching it engages enemies in protected zone.
*Reason: Else why not just select an enemy and order attack without wasting utility slots?
“Sick’em” - this one works just fine.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Zef’s Survival Skills tweaking
Goal of this change
Balancing survival skill’s usefulness with eachother and other trait boostable skill sets.
Proposed Functionality
[b]Muddy terrain[b] – additionaly pulses weakness (2s) each pulse. Being knees deep in mud means pretty bad startup for dodges, or landing powerful blows without firm footing.
Sharpening stone - cooldown reduced to 20 seconds. Grants 5 stacks of bleeding (10s) and 1 stack of torment (10s) to both your and your pets attacks.
Quickening Zephyr - no change needed.
Lightning reflexes - cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, since it’s self-skill only that doesn’t
boost damage.
Check out my pet secondary stats suggestion above.
Zef’s Trap skills PvE improvement
Goal of this change
Improving trap gameplay for PvE, in terms of utility, damage and group oriented play.
I. Manual trap control
Goal of this change:
Giving the ranger option to fire off trap combo fields without monsters around and to trigger trap manually for smarter usage then plain auto.
Proposed Functionality
Manual trap control could be achieved by pressing trap button once the trap itself is set. First press stops trap from triggering, second triggers it manually. That of course works only if trap wasn’t placed under a monster triggering it instantly.
II. Utility trap skill improvements
Goal of this change:
Improving each traps performance based on it’s combo field and general purpose.
Proposed Functionality
- Flame trap - increase duration to 5 seconds (for combo field), increased physical damage per pulse (210). This is the straight up raw damage and fire combo field trap.
- Spike trap - add 5 stacks of torment lasting 5s each. This trap is about brutal burst of condition damage and movement crippling. Tormet fits like a glove here.
- Viper’s nest - add 2 stacks of confusion (3s) per pulse for some serious condition damage.
- Frost trap - no changes here.
III. Trap related traits tweaks
Goal of this change:
Easier access to trait supporting trap group play, and clear separation of this trait from the one
focusing on offensive benefits for traps.
Proposed Functionality
- Trapper’s expertise: trap cooldown reduction 20%, Traps last 2 seconds longer (including combo fields). Traps can be thrown in 900 range (no ranger weapon matches 600 max range playstyle).
- Trap potency. Increased damage, radius, condition duration of traps. Traps immobilize on activation. Physical damage per pulse +25%. Trap & combo field radius +90. Base condition duration +100%. Immobilize duration:2 sec (PvE), 1 sec (PvP).
As you can see trapper’s expertise is the party play upgrade – longer combo fields, shorter cooldowns, and ability to toss it into the fray.
Trap potency offers far greater offense giving conditions 2x their base duration, and making trapping easier with increased trap radius (combo fields included) and immobilize on activation.
Zef’s Opening strike improvement:
Goal of this change
Giving a ranger a crit debuff for monsters, to compete with warrior’s banner of dicipline.
Proposed Functionality
Opening strike – attacked opponent receives 5 stacks of vulnerability and 7% extra chance to receive critical hits for 10 seconds. (Now it adds extra crit chance for everyone vs affected monster). It can stack in intensity up to 2 times.
Utility skills affecting opening strike
Signet of hunt passive – 10% chance for your critical strikes to become an opening strike
Traits affecting OS
Alpha training – stays as is.
Precise Strike – opening strike adds extra 7% critical damage vs affected monster.
Remorseless – regain opening strike when you crit at 20% chance. Opening strike can now stack in intensity up to 3 times.
Zef’s Spirit rewamp
Goal of this change
Making spirits far more flexible and sustainable in PvE.
Proposed Functionality
Changes in general spirit mechanic:
- summoning a spirit is a ground targeted skill with 1200 range.
- spirits are treated like structures (immune to crits and conditions)
- spirits go on cooldown after they’re casted and not after they die.
- normally spirits get 75% uptime - 60s duration vs 80 sec cooldown.
- spirit actives can ignore their cooldown, but each “rule breaking cast” costs spirit it’s duration equal to active’s remaning cooldown. Cannot be used if spirit doesn’t have enough duration left.
Example: you just summoned the water spirit and used its aqua surge, putting it on 25 sec cooldown. Pinned to the wall 10 seconds later you can use it again, but it’ll cut spirit’s remaining time by 15 seconds, because that was the cd left on aqua surge.
Specific spirit changes
- Water spirit – see healing skills
- Sun spirit - Passive gives chance to blind for 2s. Active burns enemies in 360 radius for 10s.
- Stone spirit - Active changed to aoe stun (2s) with 60 sec cd on it. Stun duration affected by traits and runes.
- Frost spirit - Damage increase passive effect buffed to 15%.
- Spirit of Nature - duration 120 seconds. cooldown 160 seconds. Nature’s renewal cd increased to 75 seconds. Passive healing per sec: 200 + 0.25 * ranger’s healing. Passive heal radius: 360.
Spirit Traits
- Vigorous spirits - hp enhance effect replaced with 25% spirit cooldown redution.
- Sprits unbound - asides from spirits following you, spirit actives have 20% decreased cooldowns.
- Unstoppable nature - replaces vengeful spirits. Spirits becomr untouchable (like warrior banners).
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
II. Utility skills improvements.
Zef’s Signet improvements:
Goals of this change
Bringing signet of the hunt back from the dead as damage support utility.
Giving signets more unique boosts from signet of beastmaster.
Making signet of stone active meaningful without waiting for signet traits.
Proposed Functionality
signet of the hunt - active: for 12 seconds ranger’s non critical attacks do 50% more damage (great for taking down structures and damaging crit immune bosses). passive: 10% chance for your critical attacks to become an opening strike.
signet of stone - active effect applies to ranger, and not the pet by default. With pet ward
implemented (check my signature for it), ranger can share it’s effects with pet from get go, making it a really useful signet to have even without any trait support.
Signet traits:
Signet of beastmaster - changed functionality. Increases signet effects when pet is out.
- signet of the hunt – passive and active affect pet as well.
- signet or reneval – passive effect removes 2 conditions every 10 seconds. Active removes 3 conditions from pet after pulling them off players.
- signet of stone – 3s extra duration. (This assumes pet ward mechanic is implemeneted for sharing it’s effects with pet).
- signet of the wild – same as now – signet active affects ranger as well.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Zef’s Return command improvement
Goal of this change
Making return command more useful defence-wise
Proposed Functionality
When using “return command” have pet stand right at ranger’s side, not few meters away from him. It’ll position it to be inside whirling defense bubble when needed. No more mobs getting pulled because certain pet stands few meters too close unlike the ranger. Less headaches with huge aoe damage rings avoiding, because pet likes it’s space.
Zef’s Pet secondary attribute change
Goal of this change
Better customization and meaningful values for pet’s secondary attributes.
Proposed Functionality
Pet receives 1/2 of master’s secondary attributes (critical damage, condition damage & duration, boon durations, healing) and 100% AR & magic find.
The percentage traits for pet’s critical damage, condition and boon duration stay as they are, and stack with ranger inherited values.
Traits that give flat number increase to pet healing and condition damage get buffed up to 800 at lvl 80. Current values do nothing for the pet and its value in combat.
With those two changes in place pet gets both a decent start with master inherited values, as well as it’s own, meaningful secondary stat customization via traits.
———————————————————————————————————————————
Pet mobile combat improvements.
Many call pet a lost cause because of it’s inability to hunt down moving targets. With this in mind few changes can be made to improve it or at least make the situation less tragic.
Firstly as someone pointed already, pets being able to jump up and down after their targets would be great help in pursuit of human targets. Not every pet has to have it, but felines, canines, spiders & moas should have it, while birds should be able to chase their prey no matter the vertical distance, as long as there’s a clear air route to it and it’s not underwater.
The less fortunate families of pets, such as drakes, bears, boars and so on, should have a passive ability reducing their and master’s damage taken from projectile attacks, so anyone wanting to shoot down the ranger from afar, will face reduced damage output, bringing him closer to petless ranger dps.
As for horizontal mobility there have been proposals of increasing pet attack reach, which i fully support. Be it build into every pet henceforth, or achievable by easy to get trait, make it happen.
(edited by ZeftheWicked.3076)
Gw2 PvE ranger Zef’s rewamp.
Hi all, this is my vision of full ranger profession overhaul in gw2. This thread is the “non chopped up version”, which i can source from when adding into CDI, and link to where needed.
Firstly i should speak of general path i’ve chosen with this – that is the “fix it” approach.
I like the idea of fighting as one with my pet and team action that follows. Just that the pet isn’t up to the snuff as it is now, so certain fixes are needed, and that’s what i started with.
Following that is utility skills balancing split by their types, with healing ones at end.
Weapon skills come after that.
Traits are generally not yet done in details, asides utility/weapon skill changes, where given trait is part of that change.
I. Pet improvements
Zef’s Pet Ward command
Goal of Pet Ward:
A player skill based method to share ranger’s fully fledged defenses with pet that can only facetank damage without it.
Proposed Functionality:
On/off toggle command under F3, no cooldowns, instant cast.
When activated all attacks that pet would receive are delegated to ranger instead and pitted against his own defences, such as toughness, % damage reductions, evades, blocks, reflects, invulnerability or his own face if he fails to act on time. Wheather attack is ranged or melee is determined by distance between pet’s attacker and ranger himself.
Used right it can negate incoming attacks for both you and pet at same time. Used wrong in worst case scenario will have you eat up damage for both yourself and pet.
Possible Problems
Former “Return” command needs to be combined with F1 “attack command” to make room for Pet Ward.
Advantages of Pet Ward:
- player skill based. It’s powerful but not easy.
- BowBear not necessary – pet ward works with any ranger/pet setup
- improves damage – pet stays alive and doesn’t need to run for it every second
- more ranger builds – pet builds become an option, trait based tank builds don’t go away, cause pet ward is risky option for the skilled.
- saviour of pets when swap is still on cooldown
- On/off skill. You decide if and when to use it.
- Lets you deal directly with “effects” of any pet AI stupidity.
- Doesn’t force pets to be changed from ground up to use it.
I will definitely agree with the point that would let pet jump up and down after it’s prey just like ranger himself. That would be a huge change for the better for any pvp rangers.
Ah ok that’s much better. Official confirmation from A-net employee. I’ll hold you to your word on that chris and get back to that ranger rewamp of mine then:)
I agree with few forespeakers on A-net dropping the ball with the ranger CDI.
It was to be at 17th. It’s 21st and still no CDI. Now i read someone (but not from A-net) say it’s on Monday. I can understand logic behind such a decision, sure.
But you were to “deliver the goods” at 17th A-net. You moved it to 20th and still nothing. If you didn’t deliver then it’s your sole duty to apologize and provide us a robust, sure date when it’ll happen, instead of sweeping it under the rug.
I’ll have you know i have major ranger rewamp ideas written down. That i had to slice to pieces and tag according to your “CDI post format” suggestions. Extra work i’m not getting payed for, that you asked for. But fine. I want to make the difference. And now the CDI for which i took quite the time out of my recent week to prepare material for is giving us the slip without any notice instead of being put up as announced.
Unacceptable.
Careful what you wish for there. You may say 150 words, but are you sure you want me to skip on things like:
- why am i proposing said change to a skill.
- what is wrong with it’s current version.
- it’s relation to other skill/trait/pet changes in my proposed ranger revamp.
Sure i can chop it up and have it refer to other posts, but it’s your choice to do this puzzle rather then have it all in one spot.
So where are those new CDI topics?
Well i’m talking PvE as WvWvW is not my cup of tea. And in PvE RaO is epic above epic.
Also you can get stability with nature magic trait (enlarge) and said signet of beastmaster.
We also got stunbreakers and lots of evades on melee weapons. You may complain all you like but RaO is extremely useful elite, only thing i’d add is 2 stacks of might per pet attack, since their attack rate is nowhere near our multihits.
And let’s be fair here. I main a ranger, but i also got lvl 80 necro, and i can sure as hell say we’re in no position to complain about our stability when there’s someone like necro out there who has to crawl on all fours and dig holes with his ears to get a sliver of stability.
Signet of rage doesn’t give epic stability, and most things that aren’t a signet don’t give passive effect, so nothing broken here. In fact RaO is one of the best elites in whole game overall. All boons from it (especially stability) are affected by boon duration and don’t get shut off the minute elite itself ends unlike so many other elite provided stabilities.
1. Necromancer (why everyone can apply conditions AND damage at same time (warrior prime example) while a necro – master of condition gameplay has to do either one or the other?
2. Engineer. I don’t know about late game, but early game i got slaughtered like a pig by early level mobs on my sylvari engi. Even worse then low level thief and that says a lot. My Condition attacks (burn) were doing 3x the damage of my normal attack per second, and that’s just wrong.
3. Ranger. Honestly i’m one of the few happy people with ranger. He’s amazing survivability talks, and healing spring is best thing ever. Still i got plenty of ideas for PvE ranger (like one in my signature), so sure i’m up for the challenge. That and he does have few traits and utilities that gotta go and make room for something that can compete with the rest of them.
Regarding opening strike i belive it should be a crit debuff on a monster.
Opening strike – affected foe has 10% extra chance to receive critical damage.
Now as for minor traits:
5 pts trait – when entering combat your first attack is an opening strike (8 seconds)
15 pts trait – opening strike raises damage from critical hits by 10%.
25 pts trait – opening strike grants attack of opportunity.
Grandmaster trait – your critical attacks have 15% chance to grant opening strike (3 sec).
New beastmastey trait (you decide the placement in line)- Smell of blood – your pet goes berserk and deals 20% more damage on foes affected with opening strike.
Well this is pretty rough, but more or less how i would do it.
While warrior is op, i did single out 3 things they don’t have:
1. Any source of protection. Rangers owning them hard in sustainability right now.
2. Any combo fields save one single one from bow.
3. Any sort of AI minion to soak up extra hits.
Everyone knows power ragers are screwed in this game right off the bat because:
a) you need at least 2-4 other power rangers for it to work
b) no megazord
Nuff said.
I did some testing and it’s as the tooltip says. It’s 10% bigger damage but at a given chance for all hits.
Went to heart of the mists, equipped pvp steady shortbow, and i let auto attack do the testing.
It’s base damage was 54 damage hit. When i popped untraited frost spirit it occasionally hit 59 damage (so said 10% more).
When i traited it for 70% success rate it was inteed hitting for 59 for more then for 54, but it wasn’t 59 all the time when spirit was up. So in general it’s less then 7% given how spirit dies and goes on small cd. Also while it leaves it’s effect for a bit when it dies, i also notice there are few secs from it’s spawning to giving the first stack of the effect to you.