Guild Wars 2

I am definitely worried the cele avatar become the tome of courage 2.0
Long cooldown because you have to build up the astral energy bar, only healing skills that will not tag any reward and quick burn down for what i saw in the preview.

The cele Avatar need more ways to spread damage and the form should last longer.
Or at least being able to cast it before the bar is full, that by the article in this site is goig to be case.

Future of the spirits: none. 0. nada.

Unless the go back to be mobile or they change the active abilities spirits have no place in anybody hearts.

glenndevis.8327:

Looks kittening amazing! Just… wow.
Now hope it’s actually gnna be useful.

I’m not too worried about no damage, that’s what your weapon swap weapon is for I guess?
And I thought the staff auto attack was dealing decent damage as well.

Actually we couldn’t see it but the staff do damage with almost all skills except the Staff#3 being for mobility and staff#5 for proyectiles.. Now if the damage is decent maybe i will have to stash my LB.. So good news!!!

I’m scared of the celestial avatar to became kitteneless skill like the tome though.

First i’d like to congratulate Irenio and say i was misjudged him, the Druid with the Reaper and the Herald seems to be the best and most fun specializations in game.
The concept is really cool, and an Celestial Druid theme is so cool in concept and has been so well portrayed in game.

But I think this has to be brought to the general attention. The Celestial Avatar seems to close for what the Tome of Courage from the Guardian was. And that Elite got scrapped because it lack of usefulness.

Having one form that only have heals with no damage (I know Cele#5 does damage but on long cast + Cd) i don’t think it’s interesting and feel underwhelming becasue how the rewards are being distributed.

We could popup in cele avatar heal and the leave the form but other the than i don’t see how this form would be useful other way. We need to be able to drop some damage as well somehow to have a reason to stay in that form.

My idea is within the AoE in Cosmic Ray deal damage to 1 random target inside. 1 target so the damage could be significant so we can get rewards, and random to avoid focused dps after all Cele Avatar is supposed to be mainly heal.
That way i could see Cele Avatar to be more of a use and not being completely underused like the tome.

Also, Didn’t the avatar form too short in duration? Wouldn’t be better if we could stay there for longer?

Celestial Avatar looks amazing. Have you seen the amount of detail that spec has? for example how the skill bar changes with the left to right curtain? Amazing!

I love the spec for what i saw, although i have to actually test it to see if it’s actually good in everyday content and not only raid because the must healer.

I hope the devs give more damage to the avatar, because now seems too close to the Tome of Courage from the guardian and that didn’t work well because it lacked some form of damage. Damage to 1 random target inside the AoE of cosmic ray would be an interesting mechanic to play…

Electro.4173:

The “multiple aspects” thing was theorizing based on datamined materials. I think the actual Druid reveal made it pretty clear there’s just one, or they would have shown the others off, since they stated outright that they’d shown everything Druid has to offer (and listed out all the new stuff in list form, which didn’t include more than 1 form).

Either multiple aspects was considered and then scrapped, or it never existed in the first place and it was just theorycrafting. Not sure which is the case, as I didn’t really follow the datamined stuff all that closely.

it weren’t much to go about, just a minor where it was pointed aout some CD reduction swapping aspects.
I mean the celestial for is what Tome of Courage tried to do (Guardian elite skill), you got transform with your book and spammed heals all around.
It didn’t work then, not even in WvW so it got scrapped for signed of Courage (much better Elite imo).

I’m afraid it will happen the same to celestial avatar, you are dropping your DPS (AKA rewards from kills and event) for a full heal avatar. Healing is cool but if we only will have one aspect we need that form to drop damage as well.
I hope Irenio sees that and gives the avatar some kind of basic attack when we are in that form.
For example giving Cosmic Ray damage (1 random target within the AoE to make the damage something substantial) as well as the healing would be in order.

Wondrouswall.7169:

anduriell.6280:

Which changes would you apply to the trait Honed Axes?

Would make Winter’s Bite AOE baseline for starters. Would also remove the Ferocity stat and change it to increase attack speed while wielding an axe (main or off-hand so it benefits all types of builds) by 15%. Keep it simple, straight-forward and effective.

Yep i agree. Actually make Axe#3 to have the same attack mechanic than Axe#1, but apply chill instead might i think is a better idea than AoE, I find AoE for this weapon boring and unappealing.
Attack speed should be increased more, like 20-50% because although the Axe is supposed to be 1/4 it has an aftercast animation that make it 1 full second being a really slow weapon. Same happens to Axe#2. The animation cause at least a delay of 1.5 second after you cast the skill.
Although i disagree about attack speed in both weapons, the increased attack speed should affect only AxE. Make sword faster could overbuff the DPS in the sword although is the highest already for the ranger.

Sword need fixing with the rooting AA and the Sword#3 missing most of the time but the damage is ok

Ye i agree Most Dangerous Game needs more than stacking more might.
Damage reduction is in order, playing with your 50% HP when we don’t have a large one is not fun.
Damage reduction depending on the percentage of HP left or a plain 20% when under 50% hp is in order to make this trait work. Right now is not viable because you can get hits of 7-8K so we can’t stay long enough under 50% to build up any might.

I hope they fix the pet’s AI to make them smarter so we actually have a companion instead a burden.
Because the new pets looks AWESOME!!!

Irenio only talked about Celestial Form, but in the talk they talked like there would be more than one aspect to choose form. Maybe i understood wrong but is going to be more aspects to choose from or is it just the one?
I saw an energy bar that control how long you can stay in that state
How does it work?

Guys calm your kittens. I know after all this years in silence and disappointment is going to be difficult to change our expectation to be screwed but let’s think about it.

we got what it was needed for the ranger : healing and cleanses plus the movement speed (i cried a little in my mouth when i saw that) and is a HUGE improvement to our class.
And then we can have LB or if the sword is fixed S/A or S/T as second weapon set.

With all that healing + cleanses we don’t need WS line anymore.

So if Irenio get the pets fixed we could go with BM. If he moves Empathic bond to BM we could have another source of cleansing although i don’t think it’s even needed.

So although it’s truth the staff don’t seems like it does much damage, wich is bad for us in term that the game only rewards the damage done, we can swap quickly to the other set and send our regards to the target.

I like what i saw, somehow i feel the seeds or hope growing back inside me.

Just i case Irenio read this thread and thinks the ideas here are good… Which changes would you apply to the trait Honed Axes?
I agree the trait right now is rubbish even more having in mind that compete in the same tier as the other grandmasters that are better designed and bring so much more to the table.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I stopped reading after I noticed Alpha Training was missing, therefore having ‘no changes’.

what is wrong with Alpha training? it’s a minor, a filler to be exact that could be merged with the Opening Strike minor, but what would you put in there?

It is a rubbish trait that is a total waste of a slot. Every trait that affects the Ranger should affect the pet too (otherwise its really only a 0.7:1 trait, not 1:1 like other classes). Merge it with Opening Strike, move Steady Focus to Master Minor and make a new Master tier trait that synergises with condi builds, something like extending the duration of cripple by 20% as well as applying vuln to crippled targets or something.

I see your point there and i agree there could go some master trait that apply vulnerability when you apply cripple. Greatly synergize with the other traits in the trait line.

I agree with you Steady Focus could go to minor master because although is 10% extra damage is very situational and once you are in combat you can’t keep up the endurance.

Applejuicey.4159:

Some just seem strange like Honed Axes but others, for instance having Trapper’s Expertise and Sharpened Edges in the same tier is really crippling.

I think that’s designed in purpose to make the ranger to choose if you want to be trapper ranger or another type of condition build.
I think choices like this are cool the problem is that ranger has the rest of the trait lines completely messed up so losing one of those traits feels so crippling and underwhelming. That would change with this new traits where you could have different ways to build your ranger.
Then the pain will come from not to be able to have all of them at the same time, but that’s another tale.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I stopped reading after I noticed Alpha Training was missing, therefore having ‘no changes’.

what is wrong with Alpha training? it’s a minor, a filler to be exact that could be merged with the Opening Strike minor, but what would you put in there?

Bran.7425:

If the way they responded to the trait Most Dangerous Game is any indication the only over buffing we will see will come from gross programming errors due to how rushed it was coded.

Can i see that? Link to the answer please?

What about, as i suggested in the OP about trait changes, to apply also damage reduction?
The problem with this trait is that is difficult to stay alive if we reach 50%HP.
With up to 50% HP 1 stack / 15% damage reduction
Up to 25% HP 2 stacks / 30% damage reduction.
Alternative to BarkSkin and also a chance to build up the might. After 9 seconds you could end up with 18 stacks of might and that it respectable.
Also with the other changes in the traits a tankier ranger would be viable, so that 25% could be something like 5K-6K health. That with the damage reduction and the new cleanses would make the ranger to have actually a chance to make this trait shine

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Ranger can survive and play well without Taunt its not Required to make a strong build .

what most people don’t notice is having to keep track of distances if they use a LB correctly they can control the opponents by using distance to their advantage by judging Ranged or the distance from the target know what ports/teleports normaly 1200yards a LB can easy out range that when distanced correctly or combo’d with Mobility CC can live forever and only those Ports/teleports or Hard CC will stop you.

the generic Taunt build is normaly Pure Melee just used as a distration there isn’;t much focus or judgement of distances , treated just like a Warroir attack>evade>damage>taunt> a basic Melee Rotation pretty simple to understand.

Here we have the definition of a pewpew from 1500 ranger using his teammates as a meat grinder giving nothing in return except a zerk glass cannon build. No team really wants selfish players like this and that’s why rangers have that bad reputation in PvP.

Rangers have many issues that make them subpar to any other class. Ranger is not really unplayable as they are simply subpar.
With a ranger you will win players in a lower level of the learning curve but that will happen with any class.
But it will not happen with same skilled players 1v1 with all those reflects, teleport, leaps, blinks, invulns that any other class have to close the gap. If you can land a full RF in any player that should be an indicative of a massive difference in expertise and the ranger should ragequit just out of respect.

Spirits like they were before the nerfs were in a good place.
Need the trait to make them mobile again in case you want to, reduce the ICD of the passive abilities to 6 seconds and change the master trait to proc 3 seconds boon.
If the spirits were mobile we wouldn’t even need to change the radius of the active.
Right now the passives are really bad because of the recharge + interval + chance.
Spirits should be reworked to apply consistently the effect, not so much random chance never ever actually works.

75% proc chance every 6 second for 3 second up to 5 allies. Scratch that recharge time that the spirit has. 10 triggers by spirit if not killed before. That’s something useful in line with other classes.

Tragic Positive.9356:

^
A cookie for Anduriel.
o/°
You earned it.

Thank you, i never ever decline a free cookie.

Any changes would be good. The OP (Opening Point) is that a bigger HP could solve some issues.
As i pointed out in another thread in this forums recently, could be enough making some changes in the trait lines and fixing the pets.
But until that is done any improvement is welcome any sign of Anet working to make this class more in line with the rest of the game is great news.

After pointing some fixes to the pet that i think were well received i’d like to point out some changes to the trait lines so they become useful and less subpar and broken in a sense that nothing makes sense in them.
[rant time]
Although i guess the head developer (Irenio) is really bussy now with the Druid would be good some form of communication from the dev team to let us know if the ranger is being reworked/fixed so i can be at the same bout as other classes and not swimming behind while the other classes have a free bar in the cruiser.

The actual spite in this forums in manly because of the lack of communication from the Anet developers leading as always to not fix or apply all the wrong changes like is being happening from ever.
So to fix this Irenio and his team (if there is any) should get involved in this forums, so the people that has invested thousands of hours in their toons don’t feel insulted and despised. That’s a really bad PR if you ask me.
[/end of rant time]
let’s begin:

Marksmanship

• Alpha Training merged with minor Opening Strike.
• Steady Focus changed to master minor.
• New master trait to apply +20% cripple duration and vulnerability when you apply cripple. 1 stack for 5 seconds. This way sword AA would be able to apply max of 6 stacks.
• Lead the wind: Change to apply piercing to both bows so we aren’t forced in one trit line if we choose Shortbow. Attack speed increased to 30%. LB AA would be attacking every 1/2 second instead 3/4 second. Not much of a difference but enough to be appreciated.

Skirmishing

• strider’s deffense: Change to 25% chance of evade 1/2 second while executing a melee attack. We have only two melee weapons: Sword and GS. Sword don’t have any evades in the AA chain, this is needed to make the ranger to actually have a chance against any melee class.
• Light on your feet. Change to apply piercing to both bows. The on dodge mechanic is fancy not adequate for the game. You have to waste one of your precious dodges to get just an 10% extra dmg for the next attack. change to permanent +10% damage and 10% duration in conditions would be in order.
• Most dangerous game: Another fancy but very impractical trait. Average ranger has 18K HP half of that could be taken with one burst. Not suited for this game i could say. Also 9 stacks of might is simply bad.
  To keep the idea of As closed to the death as i am the dangerous i became this changes would be in order: up to 50% HP : 1stack might/ 15% damage reduction. Up to 25% HP : 2 stacks of might / 30% damage reduction.
  This way you have better chances to build the might and also an alternative to Bark Skin.
• Quick Draw: Increase the buff to 10 seconds so some skills can finish the casting (Axe#5)

Wilderness Survival

• Oakheart Salve: conditions are very strong now. Burning does 130/tick with 0 condition damage. Change to cast 50% healing troll unguent (450hp/sec – 5 seconds) boon when affected by bleeding, poison or burning. CD 15 seconds. This is to avoid to merge with regeneration what would undermine the effectiveness of the trait. Move this trait to master.
  Apply Resistance Boon for 5 seconds when affected by bleeding, poison or burning. ICD 15 seconds.
• Expertise training. change to duration increase 50%. Pets don’t do hard conditions (torment, confusion(only pink moa), burning) and this would help with some of the shortest conditions from them. In numbers Pink moa would get only 1 extra second of confusion.
• Refined Toxins : change to apply poison on crit same way as sharpened edges. 33% chance on crit. Change poison duration to 3 seconds. Move this trait to Adept.
• Empathic Bond shouldn’t be here. Here should be the Horned Axes.

Honed Axes change to Increase Attack in Axe up to 30%. Right now the axe is 1 second attack and Axe#2 has 2 seconds delay after the cast. The weapon feels clunky and unresponsive. Axe#3 attack changed to the same mechanic as Axe#1 hitting max of 3 targets applying chill to each one made baseline for the Axe.

Nature Magic

• Rejuvenation seems to be a filler minor. Should be scratched out.
• Bountiful hunter. Another fancy trait that actually is not that useful unless you play with a shout guardian or a dd ele. Ranger don’t drop many boons and all of them are short duration. Change to a flat +10% damage when you have boons on you. That way we will have an alternative to Marksmanship and don’t loose to much damage output.
• Instinctive Reaction. Change to 7% Vitality to Power like it was before. So tanky builds would stop being so extremely subpar. Also give an alternative play for rangers that don’t want to depend in constant boons.
• Vigorous Training take the place of Rejuvenation Minor. Instead of this bring back Spirits Unbound. Some rangers like the idea of immobile spirits most of them find them useless because of the poor active abilities range and their weak passive.
• Natures Vengeance: change the duration of the boon to 3 seconds.
  Killing the spirit trigger the active effect like included Spirit of Nature. One free rally every 2 minutes is not much, and even less with the debuffs applied when you are downed. This is basic for the spirits that we can not see how long have they left.

Beastmastery

• Empathic Bond should be in place of Honed Axes. So rangers can have an alternative to Wilderness Survival to cleanse conditions. Also this trait need to work like Necromacer’s Plage Sending. When the number of condition in the ranger are equal or greater than 2 up to 3 conditions are sent to the pet. Then enter in a Internal CoolDown of 10 seconds. This trair is being always too RNG to be actually useful. This way the rangers can have more control over it.

What do you think? Are those changes good? Do you see another could be applied?

Nike.2631:

Keep enjoying my current Ranger builds?

Ahah you are funny.. Have you seen how the new classes will trash you even further than the actual ones?
PvE gets really boring and grinding after a while… Just letting you know.

Guys seriously, do you really play ranger? Are you reading after posting your comment?

The ones that keep telling themselves rangers has the best survivability in game stop playing kitten pewpew ranger from 1500 units and you will see how any skilled player with any class is a hard counter for the best ranger build.
You can get a tanky ranger, in a sense for a ranger because other classes get even tankier_, but will hit like a wet noddle. 1000 power and 500 condition damage (if any) will not take you anywhere but to steal stomps.

Listen to the reasonable and experienced rangers are saying here: Stop playing unranked PvP against noobs or Open world PvE and you will experience how subpar is the ranger.

I know most of the ranger is strong white knights here just play casual farming with this class and some random low level fractal/unranked PvP but please,
would you take this class seriously so we can concentrate in make the developers to fix it once for all?
will ya?

fenix.1860:

So u want the pets to become smarter and basicly have it so they react to for example when an enemy uses a skill and then interrupt it? In my opinion that would be rly bad, cause that wouldn’t make the pets more skillbased. You would just make it as ai based….. I would want to be able to activate the petskills myself and nuturally be able to see the CD of them, so basicly as long as i dont tell the pet to it wont do annything but autoattack, as long as u have “guard” active ofc. that would make pet usage a bigger part of the ranger profession, making it a more skillbased profession. Im looking at it from a pvp aspect with no thought of pve, but as far as i know this shouldnt be a nerf for rangers in pve.
-Foxfire Fenix

Yeah somehow you are right and an small niche of players would like to get driven crazy with the micromanaging of the pet and such.
In my experience the best way is to implement both: an actual smart pet and the possibility of micromanage if you feel ready for the task.

However i see more feasible to implement the new A.I. because the engine is already there (at least for HoT) so should be effortless to implement an smart decision tree for every pet, so it can become actually loveable.
Also Anet has stated hundreds of times that they want Gw2 to be a casual gaming interface, so the micromanaging things are not in line of an easy and intuitive interface to learn.

The changes in the keybinds interface i see them more difficult to do. As an example the community has been asking for a keybind to stash the pet for 3 years and that didn’t happen.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

I think from the outside looking in, PU mesmers are disliked at first sight now. I have never said great we’ve got a Ranger when queing. Afterwards maybe, but never before. Right now mesmer is the most overplayed class, and therefore there are a lot of cats that play it wrong. And actually when I am on Warrior and a Ranger uses PBS just before I drop 100 blades or Sword 3 it does make my soul rip just a little.

there are other classes that have push-backs, like the mesmer or there is another class that throw the mob away, don’t know which one. In any case is just so painful when you just dropped a bonfire….

First thing they need to do is to balance and fix the ranger. Unless the druid traitline is broken OP is not going to work.

Notes:

• Bad rangers are the ones that use PBS to kick the champ out of any AoE and when they should use it to stop an attack from mob they don’t.

Example: trasher get PBS at the beginning of the fight when i just dropped a bonfire. And when the trasher uses the vines the ranger just stayed there pewpew at 400 range… My god at that moment i had to bite my fingers to avoid sending hurtful messages to that noob bearbow (yes it was with a polar bear ).

Note:

• I love to burst downed players with PBS and then RF in WvW if i’m not close enough to use my unicorn finisher.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

anduriell.6280:

…Condition melee builds can use Axe main hand, the AA has a cast time of only 1/4 second so is even faster than the sword…

I think you are forgetting about the 3/4s aftercast, so it is really only one AA per second.

That’s working as intended.
Oh wait, are you saying that actually we have no good melee weapon we can use?

Lord Trejgon.2809:

anduriell.6280:

Druid MELEE staff master race is REAL!!!
We already have LB for pewpew, i need a reliable melee weapon to cast the vines of destruction.

I can see it, we melee staff rangers leaving a highway of mordrem corpses (or player corpers in WvW) on our way…

Nah i’m going to be disappointed…

we already have gs for that purpose :P
and really – you want THIRD melee staff in this expac? :P

We have too many ranged staffs already in game (necro, ele, guardian…) and YES PLEASE i mean YES BIRNG THE MELEE STAFF to the ranger.
We have too many ranged weapons aready: axe, longbow, shortbow.
Melee weapons we only have 2: Greatsword and Sword. And sword is deeply broken so actually we have only one weapon that fills that niche and it’s not even DPS oriented (not power not condi).

I’d like the staff to be manly melee to compensate the amount of ranged options we have.

The problem with ranged two handed weapons is that they are really slow in AA. I hope we don’t have another axe main hand. Although something like the guardian speed wise would be nice also.

Sube Dai.8496:

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Sure you can use a 1h sword in a power build. 1h sword with quickness can destroy someone quickly add that with path of scar and its good game. Unless their are saved by a passive.

While people focus on damage it defense that makes the difference.

S/a is not viable in PvP.

Dueling yes, conquest no.

You are using it wrong. GS is an utility weapon there is no sense to put more damage into it, because already have too many evades, blocks and mobility.

If you want DPS you can use sword, it’s an amazing weapon with 2 evades that work most of the time and an AA that stick you to the target no matter what. It is a great weapon in PvP and big bosses fights.

Condition melee builds can use Axe main hand, the AA has a cast time of only 1/4 second so is even faster than the sword.

I don’t know what you are all complaining about, ranger is the most balanced class in game.

Belarorn.9062:

Greeting all.. been noticing lots of click bait recently wondered if this would work

but srsly.. whats up with rangers?? We complain and complain to Anet about all of our flaws, shortcomings, bugs, pets, hair colour.. anything really. But why should they help us. We are a class based on fluke and rage. The majority of our rank are those annoying LB rangers that everyone depises that make you shake your head as they use it as a melee weapon.

Ok Sure every class has its share of new and inexperienced players but ranger is known for it. Bearbow being the most catch all phrase that I know of. So why should we get shiny stuff. Give it all to engi, ele, mesmer, classes that require skill and experience to bring out.

I feel that in order to give rangers a fair shake we need to give ourselves a fair shake first. TAKE PRIDE IN YOURSELVES. Do you WANT to be the lol noob bearbow kick em for the rest of your ranger career! Is ranger your main? No? Ok fine come on with a longbow and think you are OP cus that 1 skill that is 100% counterable on like every single class every 10s.

Is Ranger your main?? Then spread the wisdom! We have other weapons besides Longbow and Greatsword! like..umm sword? and umm.. maybe axe? and that fire stick thing. You want shiny things fine. Dont we all.. But we should deserve them! Other classes have pride because they take a difficult class or build and shine. Spam #2 is NOT a build. Show them we are more then that that we can thrive despite all those things we think is wrong with us.

Peace and Noveren

First Anet need to actually balance the class to lift it up to the same level as the other classes in game.
Second they have to give the ranger an unique mechanic that make the class to be desired in runs/ raids.
Then the rangers will begin to feel proud of the class.

Doing it so how you ask it’s like the delusional nerd at the school that he think he has a chance with the cheerleader. In case you are wondering or watched too many cheesy movies he does not.

I like the idea of a bigger health pool, that could help somehow.

If you actually get involved in the combat, and don’t play your Bearbow ranger pewpewing with LB from 2000 units while you use your teammates as meatgrinder actually we have a lot of problems surviving melee burst or conditions.

Anet should move Empathic Bond to BM, i still can’t understand what it is doing in WS. Maybe i don’t want to use WS and i’d to use BM. But right now WS is mandatory.

To whom think GS damage is too low, GS is an utility weapon. If you want DPS power melee use the sword.

Druid MELEE staff master race is REAL!!!
We already have LB for pewpew, i need a reliable melee weapon to cast the vines of destruction.

I can see it, we melee staff rangers leaving a highway of mordrem corpses (or player corpers in WvW) on our way…

Nah i’m going to be disappointed…

Actually those two skills weren’t shouts until the june balance patch. As the mechanics are not the same: the utility shouts only affect the pet behaviour while “Heal as One” and “Strength of the pack” affect mainly the ranger.

So actually i don’t see the need for them to change.

Now that with the new A.I. is coming with HoT i hope the devs will apply the new technology of decision tree for the pets, because if i recall correctly the pets use the same engine as the mobs.
So here are some hits that i think would be good to apply to the pets A.I:

• when inactive (not attacking or doing any actions) the pet should stay really close to the ranger. having a leash of 600 units in the pet is not good for WvW. Makeing the pet to stay at range of 60/stick to the ranger would help with most of the complains about perma hiding the pet.
• we should have 4 modes for the pet:
  -Attack: attack when i attack
  -Protect : attack to the ones that attacks me
  -Defend: Defend the area where it stands, same as shout Guard but for as long as this mode is.
  -Stand: speaks for itself. It stills uses the AI decision tree to avoid damage.

• Commands F1 and F3 will work like they do now. If i command F1 the pet will attack that target once the target is killed go back to prior state and position. F3 would allow to reposition the pet in case of Defend state or to cancel any attacks / bring the pet in the other states.

• every family pet should have a decision tree based on the skill instead cast them as soon as they can. Right now the pets behave like a noob LB ranger that hit all the buttons without any situational awareness.
  The interrupt/hard CC skills should be used when a foe is channelling an skill, having priority those focused in our ranger (a wolf could break an stomp like that).
  The healing/support skills should be used based in rangers health/ soft CC. Healing when the ranger needs it not when the pet wants, swiftness when we are affected by cripple… I wouldn’t mind if the pet stops attacking it’s target just come close and heal/protect me.
  If the pet is not ordered to attack one target (by the stance Attack or given command with F1) the pet should choose the lowest health target always.
  The Pet must have evades for AoE and be able to use it once every 5 seconds when in AoE. It has to be aware of the AoE areas and try to avoid them, even if it takes longer to reach the target. The evades should be kept only if there is no other choice to reach the target than to go across the AoE or if an AoE spawns under the pet so it can get out of the AoE area.

• the damage in the basic attack from the pet have to be instant on the melee pets. The pets have a rooting very slow animation for each attack and that is unacceptable for something that does 40% of our total damage (when lands consistently). The aftercast animation can be still there to make the pet attack with the 1/2 described but the damage has to be done as soon as the target is in range.
  The projectiles from the ranged pets must have same speed as DragonHunter longbow.

• The condition damage must be corrected in some pets.

• Some unique utility boon should be placed for each pet family. Right now all behave mostly the same so at the end we can only choose tanky or DPS. Things like spiders improve the rangers venom damage, birds improve passive speed, cats bleeding duration, bears HP pool, devourers ranged damage, canines melee damage, moas healing…

• Shouts should change to become commands instead. With the new utility skills that are triggers shoots should behave like them, one active at a time. Deactivate by changing command or pet swap/dead make they enter in 20 seconds CD.
  The idea is for the ranger that uses the shout system to give a fine grained control about the rol he wants for the pet enforced by the passive effect.

sick’em : improve speed and damage for the pet,. When activated again will apply the revealed debuff. Cd 30 seconds.

Guard: improve armor and speed. The pet can attack stealthed foes but don’t reveal them. When activated again will grant stealth for the pet 10 sec, Cd 20 sec.

Protect me: pet enter passive mode and transfer your damage to the pet.
30% of the physical damage is transferred to the pet, 1 condition every 5 seconds. Here the pet does not stay close to the ranger, but it has a leash of 1000 units to avoid soak in the same damage as ranger does. When active again full damage is transferred for 6 seconds. This is meant in case the pets is being attacked. CD 40 seconds.

Search and rescue: pet will try to revive downed players as soon as they are in range of 1000 units from the pet. Pet have as highest priority to ress the ranger in case he is downed. This shout revive a downed played at 1/3 of the real speed already so the downed skill has it’s use to make the pet to revive at full speed. If activated again get will get super speed for 6 seconds so it can move faster reach the downed player. CD 45 seconds.

We Heal as One as command: When this command is active the coping boon is in effect. Might changed to 1 stack instead of 3 per application. The ranger can still stack might but the pet would have to get 25 applications (one application can apply 5 stacks but only 1 stack will be copied to the ranger).
This makes easier also to develop the skill, only have to trigger when some boon is applied.
When this command is active it can be activated again which will cast the healing like now. 20 seconds CD.

Strength of the pack. When this command is active will do the following.
when struck will cast fury, stability and swiftness for 6 seconds. Internal cooldown 30 seconds.
When active and activated again will cast help from the pack. Another pet will spawn (same family and stats as the equipped pet) and will attack same fashion as the F2 for the hyena for 20 seconds. Cd 45 seconds.
I love that F2 but the hyena is a very weak pet, so it can’t be used.

• Trait Resounding Timbre : decrease the Cd of the active effects 20%. Apply swiftness and regen when active effect is cast.

• IT is much needed to show the active boons and conditions in the pet at all moments. They could be placed somehow, move the pet interface a little bit up and between the pet interface and the weapon skills smaller icons showing the active boons and conditions. This is must needed to have control over the pet, maybe it’s suffering of strong conditions and i want it back to cleanse them with HS. Otherwise we are playing blind.

I think this changes would make pets better suited to be in this game, also would help the ranger to be more sturdy. The trait Resounding Timbre should be reworked though.
Right now they only have buffed the pet’s damage and HP pool but solely that does not solve the issues with the pets.

did they already give away the new spec?

Jahman.1625:

Yea no, simply put, no other proffesion has close to the same ranged playstyle that a ranger has, dragonhunter included. So unless they change some other proffesions ranged weapon to 1500, there are always going to be players who want to play ranged without a pet and are left hanging.

Engies and eles has a range of 1500 units.

Mmm I like your proposals a lot although it will required a full overhaul of the class and that will not happen.

• I like the idea of the torment.. Although is not a condition that fits the ranger thematically . Torment should be something that the necro should apply but not the ranger.
• The problem with spirits are so many… Make a minor trait in Nature magic to make spirits mobile if the player choose to. They cast the active effect when killed/expired (nature spirit also) . The grandmaster must apply the boon for 3 secs every 3 seconds.
• Emphatic Bond must be in BM trait line.
• Honed axes should be a master.
• two handed training in MS.
• Bark Skin should trigger when above 90% and below 30%.
• refined toxins should proc 2 sec poison on crit, same as sharpened edges.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@Fluff
The soft CC you mentioned might very likely be the case.

You remember them saying that all the “on swap traits” is their effort to make pets wanted since the pet itself is garbage?
Of course they used different wording but that’s pretty much what they said.

If there’s one thing I miss from traits since the changes is the trait that gave you fury and might when your pet HP dropped below 50% (was back in Marksmanship).
… I mean … I wouldn’t argue if The Most Dangerous Game kept it’s current mechanic but triggered based on pet’s health (dead pet included).
I mean… Yea, I would consider this trait in WvW and some other environments that way.
Heck, it would be amazing for open world, too. Pet goes low way too often without any way to prevent it from dying. And it would beat Quick Draw in terms of DPS.

oh yeah, that actually seems useful. 2 stacks of might every second, so we can get back the DPS lost.

With all our defensive traits that only works when our health is above 90% they go and put this one when is below 50%… No sense at all.

Amante.8109:

Druid is being designed by the same person behind Scrapper, which—a couple of meh Gyros aside—looks fun, interesting, and borderline overpowered. So yeah, I think Druid will be ok

yeah the same guy that did the last balance patch for the engie and the ranger.
The engie become better than before with all the buffs and changes to traits and nades (it got one trait that reveal!!!) while the ranger suffered the biggest nerf of all his history.
The Dev talking about synergies and joking about the ranger profession insulting most of the players that use a ranger even just as casual.

He can say all he wants that he plays ranger, i’m pretty sure he does not. Otherwise we wouldn’t ended with a completely useless traits and trait lines, the only ones that work are the ones that did not get much changes. And didn’t fix any of the crippling bugs that the class has. And that’s bad, very bad.

Seriously i don’t trust that guy to deliver. I’m afraid the druid will be a deep disappointment with a lot of flashing trash and synergies were there is none.
My god i really hope to be wrong.

Personally i don’t find the piercing wrong. Actually piercing is always better than AoE, it requires you to be aware of what you are hitting and which angle. Perfect for the ranger.
If you have trouble to hit some targets with the piercing you are doing it the other way around. You target the general to be sure you hit it, then play with the angles to hit as many as you can on the way (this is my 2 cents ).

I think the speed attack could be improved, the downside of the Longbow it’s the lack of damage to close targets. This trait should get the speed to 1/2 sec at least, the trait need to reduce the aftercast animation that makes the actual attack to be every second or so.. Right now it’s not noticeable the benefit of this trait in attack speed wise..

This trait it is totally useless, it stops stacking might after few stacks, even if you are still under the health threshold.
I can not get more than 9 stacks of might with this trait which is total rubbish for the ranger.

First you have to play with your 50% health pool which is totally idiotic with our armor and lack of sources of healing.
Then you get max 9 stacks of might… Is there any synergy i can’t think of for this trait?

How do you deal with condis? Because lattely i only see condi glass canon builds around, and it the RNG cleanse and so low HP… How can you manage?

I think reveal is a must in this shout. Right now is mostly useless because you have to activate it before the thief try to stealth, and because it has that short duration is mostly useless.
That and the fact that if you do anything else with the pet you cancel the shout effects it make it utterly non-viable.

With the amount of stealth that the balance patch brought i can’t understand why this shout does not actually reveal. But in case they didn’t want to change the mechanics at least the revealed effect should last longer. At least 20 seconds of revealed in its 35 sec CD.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Last I checked, Ireno is still working on the Druid as well as the Scrapper. I really don’t have anything against the guy as the traits could use a bit of polishing here and there. What I’m glad to know is that Peters is gone, which means no more (or at least less) moving traits designed as Adept tiers into Grandmaster slots.

Yayyyy!!! /s

Tragic Positive.9356:

I might look into it.
But I mean… You guyz know me. I never sugarcoat things. If the druid is a disgrace I’ll say it straight even though I explain why. The problem is that people never want to hear the truth if it isn’t something they wanted to hear.

I might stick to the usual activity I do now. Observe and provide feedback.

I want to hear the truth. We trust you.

Tragic Positive.9356:

You were farming the toxic mordrem event with me, weren’t you?
It made more of us straight-talking never sugarcoating thing anymore.

Anyways, for starters, it would be much appreciated if breathing didn’t cancel Sick’Em hand in hand with protect me.
I can’t stand that for Beast Mastery Builds I’m forced to control my pet via dull shouts because if I touch the pet any other way, I lose all the effects from shouts overall.

Sick’Em would be such a good choice for roaming or PvP or WvW if it didn’t get cancelled by pressing the bloody F2. The burst pets – birds – should be able to scale their burst with that ability. But if you try doing so – you lose all the damage.
But after all, why do I keep saying things like this? No one from ANet cares anyways and all of us already know.

Ye i think so, although i only did the event like 5 times because an incremental migraine when i was doing it. Never could do the three events in a row.
The looking at your pet cancel the shout effect drove me away from the shout ranger, i stopped using Sick’em long time ago although is the only skill that we have that can avoid thief to stealth.

I agree with you, having to use our skill slots for using the pet is just awful. But there are so many things to fix in this class…

How i see it, yes.
I could give you numbers but the is no point of that. When i saw that a good necro build could do more DPS than my ranger i just cried a little.

My advise: if you don’t have ele, make an ele. If you want pets/minions you have the necro, the reaper it’s really fun. And last also the Scrapper seems to have minions.

The ranger is supposed to bring long range, but the ele and engie have the same range. The ranger is supposed to bring the pet as a game changer, but the pet is not there for quite a gap.

Let’s see if the Druid actually brings something new and make the class viable for anything different than casual farming.

Lazze.9870:

anduriell.6280:

Don’t be fooled

I’m not, I just happen to play the class better than you do.

Traited Troll Unguent ticks for 850 health per sec with no healing power for 10 seconds on a 20 second cooldown. To put it simply, that’s warrior Healing Signet levels on average just based on healing. Then you have condi cleanse and fury on top of it.

This info is misleading and wrong:
Healing signet heals 850 tick on the top of a burst healing when you activate it. So you have a passive healing and when you need it you can have the burst. For me this is ok, and more in the warrior that have many more sources of self-healing.

With TU you are limited to that healing for 10 seconds. You end up with the same or lower health than when you cast it and have to wait for another 10 seconds to be able to cast it.

Fury is irrelevant when we are talking about a healing skill, cleanse 2 conditions if traited is some help, but the problem of a weak healing is still there. ¿Seems you only play ranger in SW? HaO is better healing than TU even without the trait, simply because we don’t have another source of healing unless you trait shouts that in that case, why would you take TU?

Ryou.2398:

Your wrong in plenty of mmorpgs people accept people who can dps and not offer buffs, I have no idea where you get this idea from but that is simply wrong.

Again, rangers do worst DPS than any other class in game. I do better dps with my necro in condi and in power (and necro melee weapons are really bad).

And that’s only because rangers does not have access to stacking might.
In condition build rangers does not drop the same amount of stacks of any condition with no weapon.
Even necro with duumfire can drop more burning than ranger.
Also just to point out your ignorance, GW2 does not use the trinity any other MMoRPG uses, tanker, nuker and healer.
Everyone is a tanker/nuker/healer at the same time, and that make every class has to bring something to the table. Ranger does not.

So you have a class that does not enough DPS to be acceptable and has no sharing utilities but needs of constant support.
Sorry to break your bubble but it is like that.

Lazze.9870:

anduriell.6280:

• Ranger does not have good access to healing. The trap is just weird, the survival does not work because when you need healing is at the spot not when you finished the fight, the shout takes like 1.5 seconds to cast.

They ruined Healing Spring, but saying that Troll Unguent and Heal as One is bad is just flat out wrong. Especially complaining about Troll Unguent not being a burst heal when it is not supposed to act as one is rather ridiculous.

Appart from fixing Healing Spring, the Water Spirit is only heal skill with serious reasons to complain about. That skill was flat out crap before taking into consideration all the other spirit problems. HaO and TU are good, and even better when traited.

Those healing skills are just bad. Indeed comparing them to the other ones we have (water spirit and healing spring) HaO and TU seems they are really great.
Don’t be fooled: Heal as One has like a delay aftercast in the casting it supposed to take as long as the troll unguent but it does actually take longer to cast. What can kill you most of the times.
Troll Unguent is not supposed to be a burst healing that’s right. In any case the healing by tick is really low, although the total is higher than HaO is not going to save you in any circunstance. 900 healing per tick for 10 seconds is not enough when any player/champion can do +2K damage with the AA. Usually with our defences you are dead before of that time.
I can’t see any use for that skill other than casual farming trash mobs, which is not bad but not having a reliable healing skill make this even worst.

Ryou.2398:

ç
Ok about the stacking and buffs, why does a ranger who is staying at range need all those buffs to begin with? This sounds like an excuse for a bad playing getting to much agro so they need the buffs to keep them alive.

Thanks for all the answers I am just stating this is kind of what it sounds like, if a elementalist can play ranged why cant a ranger? And if your going to say no classes should do ranged in dungeons I am done, because that makes no sense what so ever, if anything that comes off as a mentality then a fact.

Because ele can drop 25 stacks of might by himself. Even Necro can get 25 might with the right traits.
So 25 stacks of might will make your ele do massive amount of damage + condi damage. Also you have to keep in mind the Fury + 20% crit.

Any player with some experience know this.

If you are 1500 units away from your group happens 2 things: You don’t get any boon and that’s bad because ranger does not drop boons by himself, but what is worst is that you don’t drop any boon/help in your team.

No one want in their team anybody that does not help the rest and can’t do a significant damage to ignore that fact.