Guild Wars 2

Bob.8456:

Lysico.4906:

Well as a big time pvp warrior, I LOVE our cat form when I need stealth.

It allows me to get away and/or into spots without being seen. I don’t keep it up over my main elite all the time, but when coming up to a tower or when I know I am being chased down, I slot it, and time it for the stealth and get in or away.

Works great.

This. This. This.

People talk trash in general about racial elites because they aren’t generally as effective as class elites…but for any class that does not have access to stealth Norn is by far the most useful race to run in WvW for this reason alone. You can get off 3 uses of it per elite usage and the #4 skill can be used untargeted as a means of bolting out of any situation (invisible to boot).

I main Norn Ranger and let me tell you, Snow Leopard is always on my bar if I am not running with a well balanced group or a zerg army where I will run Rampage as One. It’s just too good an escape to not run it. Of course if you are a mesmer or thief you have no need of it whatsoever.

Yep …. Snow Leopard ….. my ranger loves it!!!!

I just wish they had a shorter cooldown.

health 15000. Is it difficult to stay alive? How do you manage dungeons / Orr?

btw. imo, torch deals better condition dmg than dagger.

What I want is that Anet takes a look at traps:

Flame Trap:
Set a trap that burns foes.
Damage: 73 (per pulse)
Burning: 1 s (328 damage) (per pulse)
Duration: 3 s
Combo Field: Fire

Frost Trap:
Set a trap that chills foes.
Chilled: 1 s (per second)
Duration: 5 s
Combo Field: Ice

Spike Trap:
Set a trap that bleeds and cripples foes.
3 Bleeding: 5 s (638 damage)
Damage: 49
Crippled: 2 s

Viper’s Nest:
Set a trap that pulses poison on foes when triggered.
Poison: 3 s (252 damage) (per pulse)
Damage (3x): 147

They are all CONDITION based. They should have synergi with MALICE and not precision or crit damage.

Now my original suggestion was (is) to put the trap traits in Wildernes Survival because you have malice there. But as someone suggested you could also swap the trait attributes instead (if that’s a better fix?).

Eg. Skirmishing (where trap traits are) could contain:
Malice (condition dmg) & Expertise (condition duration)

Marksmanship could be:
Power & Crit damage or Precision

Wilderness Survival:
Toughness & Precision or Crit damage

Engineer, guardian, necromancer and warrior have malice and precision in their respective “wilderness survival” tree. So should we. Though I would prefer malice with expertise in WS :-)

Either way, you have to fix the traits.

I assume you are the one standing at one of the pillars.

If you have 30 Marksmanship, use signet of stone in emergency.

I usually start with entangle, LB barrage, weaken, rapid fire. Spike trap, flame trap. swap to SB and just pew pew! By now they r all dead. (im a condition trapper).

BUMP!

Just a reminder to the responsible team for re-making the trap trait tree.

If we got skritts, I would leave my norn ranger and make a thief at the spot!

So ….. what happened to the AoE talking, nerfing???

As far as I could see, no professions got any real changes. Its just business as usual.

I’m really looking forward to the day ranger gets some decent caring!

As it is now, warrior (maybe guardian) seems to be the right prof to level for dungeons / Fractals. And thief for www.

Ranger, still the non-wanted kid on the play ground.

Yep, Magic Find is out!!! Or am I wrong? So far I know, MF does not apply to chests.

But if its true that MF is out : Hurray for that!
Now people in dungeons will wear the right armor!

Good job, and well done!

BUT, we still need a lot of ranger fixing. Traits, Spirits, Pet AI, pet AoE damage, omg I could go on for ever.

Lets just hope they fix those in the next patch.

Jazenn.7526:

awe extender.1908:

So once again, like pets not getting buff from consumables, runes don’t enhance pets stats either!

These two profession shortcomings should at least give the ranger more power or stronger condition output.

But why does the numbers on damage button (F2) change when wearing armor compared to not having armor?

The ranger and the pet are two different characters in the game. They work together, however they are not the same units. Consumables and runes do not affect your pet, just as eating food and wearing clothes does not effect my pet dog. If you want to change your pets stats/abilities, trait for it, there is at least one trait in every line that benefits pets, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

I understand what you say. But the problem is Anet has taken a percentage of the ranger atributes (power, healt …….) and given them to the pets. So everytime the ranger buffs his atributes with food or runes, only a fraction of the “unit” gets a buff. Other professions get a buff to their 100% atribute, but we get perhaps a buff to a 60%. Because 40% was given to the pet, but it doesn’t get the buff.
Now the real numbers for ranger : pet atribute sharing might be different than 60:40 but the problem is still there. You only get a buff to a fraction of you profession.

It’s like when you have a dead pet. A huge fraction of your damage output is gone.

We have made a new ranger that consists of all the awesomeness from these rangers and beastmaster!

Enjoy you new, balanced and well-earned, ranger!

So once again, like pets not getting buff from consumables, runes don’t enhance pets stats either!

These two profession shortcomings should at least give the ranger more power or stronger condition output.

But why does the numbers on damage button (F2) change when wearing armor compared to not having armor?

Are pets supposed to benefit from rune stats?

Or is the ranger profession neglected once again?

I did some testing in mysts. It’s kinda wierd. I hope others (and by that I mean Anet!) could shed some light on the subject.

When wearing full armor set with runes that enhance condition damage and duration, attack with Hawk / Lynx gave the same bleed duration and tick on golem as when being nude (no armor and no runes). This means that the runes neither enhanced the condition damage nor the duration. Altough when moving mouse over the F2 skill button, the damage number increses when wearing the runes. But it doesn’t show in neither duration nor ticks in actual fight.

If the pets don’t benefit from rune stats at all, then we are under a constant passive nerf compared to other professions.

Could someone try this so we can be sure?

A trapper (ice, spike) with pet’s mighty roar and fury (moa) + WH is a good contribution to the group, imo.
So at you need 30p in skirmishing. Also i love the piercing arrows from marksmanship (20p).
I would go: 20/30/20/0/0

If main-hand and off-hand both have sigil of force (+5% dmg) do you get total +10% damage?

Everything about Frostgorge Sound!
The music, the landscape, the foes, everything!

I would love to have 80 only levels like Frostgorge Sound.

Also love when NPCs drag you to an ambush! Its just amazing :-)

This has been mentioned as a reply in some other post, but it deserves its own thread.

Since our damage output and health is divided/shared with our pets, it’s only fair that our pets also benefit from consumables.
The other professions get a buff to their 100% damage output or any other attribute, but the ranger only gets the same buff to a 50% damage output (if we assume the ranger and the pet stand for 50% damage output each. Perhaps the percentage is ranger 60% pet 40%?) What ever the numbers are, we don’t benefit from consumables as other professions.

What do you guys think?

Even though Anet has made some professions superior compared to others, this guy has godlike skills!

/salute

I hope some day all classes will be balanced. Not that I want to solo Lupicus with my ranger, but have decent traits and skills (and a not so dumb pet!)

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Shiren.9532:

Robert, are you the head/one of the top people on the dungeon team (it’s possible I just made up “dungeon team”)? You are one of the most communicative members of the ArenaNet staff and you seem to post with solid and satisfying information (possibly a luxury when dealing with dungeon design as opposed to WvW culling or the ephemeral concept of class balance), it would be interesting to know if you are a minion or the guy holding the whip.

Even when I disagree with things the “dungeon team” does, at least I usually understand them from your posts.

After Fractals shipped and just before this last week, I have been the sole designer on the Live Team’s dungeon content. We have designers on the team for other content, but because I built a few of the dungeons we launched with, I am familiar with the current content. I am also a passionate dungeon player, so I feel like it’s been a good fit for me to update and upkeep the dungeons.
In a sense, I both hold the whip and and whipping myself in regards to dungeon content and getting things done (ouch). I have my leads that I answer to and get permissions from, but largely I am acting on what I feel is making the dungeons better. I am leading the charge on improving dungeon content, but I am not a manager or anything – I’m a “in the trenches” designer who just so happens to also post a lot in the dungeon forums to keep players up to date and keep an eye on things.

This last week I have been allotted a fellow designer (who sometimes posts here) by the name of William, who is going to help me with updating dungeon content and our plans going forward (we have big stuff coming down the pipeline for dungeons).

Shiren.9532:

Some TA paths might benefit from additional WPs. Just saying.

Yes.

Oglaf.1074:

I misread the last part as pleasure.

Oh myyyy.

Kudos to people who clearly love their job! It shows and we love that. I hope you and rest of the Anet team also share the same passion and caring!

Keep up the good work!

Hilda Raven.8641:

Knowing changes need to be made does not mean that you automatically do not know your class and love it.

Ranger is my favorite class, my beloved lvl 80. I do perfectly fine, and love my pet sidekick. I know it and use it effectively but recognize it needs a few tweaks. Anet is aware of this, thats not a QQ or Rangers suck! argument.

Agree. I love my ranger and my pets. But we do need some real fixing.

Short answer: power/crit.

But let’s see what Anet brings to the party on 28th :-)

WolfHeart.1256:

I’d love the ability to use a dagger as a main hand weapon as well as opposed to only off hand. Doesn’t it make more sense for a Ranger to be able to use dagger main hand than for a mystic class such as the Elementalist? :/

Agree! Dagger should also be a main hand.

Hi all!

I don’t know if it’s just me getting to old for this kitten, but I’m really tired of all those posts about “How to fix pets”, “Ideas for balance The Ranger”, “How to fix …” and so on.

First of all, it would be a really good idea to read the older posts before posting THE SAME topics all over again. I know there is a lot of reading material, but in order to be most effective and also to push your own boundries / ideas, you need to make some kind of research. It’s always good to know what others have said / done before you, so you can make a better development.

On the other side, maybe I’m actually (the real reason?) more tired of the lack of communication and ACTION from Anet’s side, than reading multiple posts on the same subject. I guess we have to wait for the next patch on 28th to see what they have cooked for us. Maybe our waiting will pay off. Who knows??

ps. I still hope people will make “new ideas” and “how to fix …” but just try to contribute with something NEW!

Honestly, if Anet hasn’t already been alerted about these and all the other ranger flaws / shortcomings, it’s no use to keep shouting here in the forums.

At this moment, EVERYTHING that is bugged or needs some attention & fixing has already been mentioned in the hundreds / thousands of posts.

If they really wish to balance the ranger, they have enough suggestions and ideas from player feedbacks on this forum!

We just keep repeating the same ideas and fixes over and over again.
Now it’s Anet’s turn to show some action.

We appreciate the good work and the communication!

Godspeed

Rangers do really really well in pve, well in dungeons and OK in www .
Mighty roar (5x might) and Fury from Moa, Healing Spring, Warhorn buffs, and traps all help your group. I have never experienced people trash my ranger or playstyle. But you can’t be like warr or guard, still you can be a good addition to your group.

The real issue is that rangers can only add some kind of “spice” to the group. In dungeons you can have 5 warriors in a group and they can do pretty well. But having 5 rangers, it’s a real challenge!

Eurantien.4632:

Honestly, I think the pets should take the conditions. Because rangers are a bit OP in the right hands.

He he, you are funny!

Yes, let’s help the pets die EVEN FASTER! Good idea!

I’m not an experienced warrior, but wouldn’t a warhorn traited with “Quick Breathing” be a better option?
Mace & Warhorn
You get +2 condition to boon options!

Just a heads up:

As it is now, ranger condition dmg is very much underpowered compared to power, prec, crit. Condition dmg doesn’t benefit from prec / crit sadly.

However, I have tons of fun playing a condition trapper :-)

Another example of awful trait design be devs. I really doubt they have thought through this!

How to solve: Remove family limits to BM traits!

I think all the rangers that still hang around know this and also the other flaws of the prof. But hey, what can we do? We all have mentioned and tried to make devs aware of these flaws but we just have to either wait or roll a new char.

Personally, I’m waiting for the next patch, if no significant changes for ranger, I’ll go fulltime warrior.

I wish you had separate builds for pve, dungeons and www. Like you can have separate build for pve and pvp.

Pve, dungeons and www are all 3 very different instances with very different requirements. If you had 3 different build options, you would always be most effective in that special instance.

Agadar.4931:

……… dying when being farted upon.

So poetic and correct!

Let’s see if the upcoming patch(es) make any significant changes to the ranger. If not, well, then my limit of endurance is all used up. I go with my alt warrior.

You can make a warrior build with around 29000 health and around 2000 power without all the might skills! (2600 power with food and might skills!)

No way you can do the same with a ranger :-( Also with the same build you can buff your entire group with banners! No kitten spirit can match that!

+1 to pierce by default!

Will the new patch be out on 28th?

So excited :-)

With the current restriction of one transfer every 7 days in place, make sure that you will be on the world you intend to play on before January 28th, because after that date, you’ll have to pay a gem fee to transfer worlds.

by Martin Kerstein on January 16, 2013

Please, I beg you, put the trap traits “Trapper’s Expertise” and “Trap Potency” in Wilderness Survival trait tree.

Traps have absolutely nothing to do with Skirmishing ( critical chance & critical damage).

Does traps benefit anything at all from critical chance or critical damage?!? Traps are condition based and should therefore be in the Wilderness Survival tree where malice is (condition damage).

You can swap “Trapper’s Expertise” and “Trap Potency” with eg. “Martial Mastery” (which benefits more from Skirmishing) and “Hide in Plain Sight”.

This swap will be easy to apply for you, Anet, and it will not have any impact on profession balance.

It’s really frustrating and unfair that rangers are forced to use 30 points out of 70 points in Skirmishing just to have a trap-build when neither critical chance nor critical damage have any influence on traps!

Please, just put the trap traits where they belong and where they should be in the first place: in Wilderness Survival!

I really hope to see the change in the next patch :-)

Then we must have one!

Anet, give us a new pet with boon removal!

No doubt the ranger needs some serious attention, but I wouldn’t say it’s not fun.

Even due to all the bugs, messy trait lines, useless spirits and stupid pets I still have fun with the ranger. Sure it’s a challenge, and you have to play smarter and better than other prof but, the needed changes will eventually come.

I forgot a Fractal issue mentioned by an another ranger:

• Pets should either be immune to agony or have the same agony resistance as the ranger

• Jade Maw should not be able to target pets. It’s not like the pet can grab a crystall and charge it and then hit the Jade Maw with it?!?! The battle takes much longer time when pets get targeted.

• Long range pets should have same attack range as longbow!
eg. spiders are imho long range pets. Therefore they should be able to attack target as the ranger using longbow.

• Pet names should be saved even after changing the two initial pets.

• Search and Rescue:
85 second cooldown is way to loong. It shouldn’t activate if there are no revivable allies. It should revive at the same / or faster pace than players.

• “Protect me” should not kill the pet. Why have a skill that kills your pet? Instead of the pet absorbing the damage, it could either “make the enemy miss ranger” or “pet draws the attention of the enemy” or “pet redirects the damage to air/ground”.

• Pet being attacked should not give a speed penalty to the player.

• The ranger must have the opportunity to change the inactive pet DURING a battle. Most of the time you find yourself in battle, but it’s a new and different situation. If you could change the pet to what suits the situation best, a lot of “pets are useless” issues would vanish.

• Make pets sense cloaked enemies.

As you can see a lot of the ranger issues are within the pets! Anet should seriously make some better coding for the pet AI.

But our special skills also lack usefullness:

• Spirits need all kind of buff / rework. I never see any rangers using them. This must be a definit sign that the spirits are useless.

• Make underwater traps.

• Increase trap (cast)range to 1,200.

• Traps are also in the wrong trait tree and should be placed in either the condi damage or condi duration tree. Traps have nothing to do with precision or crit damage.

• Spike Trap traited with Trapper’s Expertise only pulses once, contrary to what the skill description currently states.

Weapons

• Longbow autoattack should not have a damage reduction from being in close range. Why be punished for choosing a longbow? Most fights, especially in dungeons are in a limited space area. It’s not always even room to go to 1200.

• Make longbow barrage a combo. If Ranger staying inside field, ofc. Like rain of fire or healing rain. With our fountain we can be great range aoe healing power.

• Axe ricochet and split should not aggro peaceful npc. It should only attack already aggroed targets.

• Axe offhand, Whirling Defense should allow the Ranger to move, just like Dagger Storm allows the Thief to move.

• It should be possible to dodge while in battle with 1H sword. Don’t remove the rooting, it’s actually a good thing. But make it possible to dodge before starting a new sequence. If you press dodge it should be the first priority when the current sequence ends.

General

• Many traits in ranger trees that provide might usually gain only one stack whereas many other classes gain 5 stacks.

• Fix the tooltips, we don’t know what skills to report for not working correctly if we do not know what they are actually supposed to do in the tooltip. It will take a bunch of the burden off dev’s reading false bug reports due to incorrect information.

I have collected the most important needed fixes for the ranger from the forum. Some are my own, some are from other users. I take no credit, but just wanted to highlight the issues and make it easier for Anet to make the changes :-) Hopefully!

Feel free to add bugs / fixes not mentioned in the list.

Pet

• In general improved Pet AI!

• Masters Bond:
Beastmastery line strongly encourages the ranger to make pet swaps regularly with pre-chosen traits like Zephyr’s speed , and Loud whistle.
Please remove the reset when pets are swapped or when going from land to water and vice versa.
It’s like a sigil in a way. But your sigil stack doesn’t reset when you swap weapons?!?!!
The only time Masters Bond should be reset, is when the pet or player is defeated.

• Malicious Training:
If you start the fight then I guess your pet will benefit from the trait. But if you just stand passive and command the pet to fight with F2 ( while you don’t fight) the +350 cond dmg doesn’t work.
its a really sloppy way of handling a pet system in a game where you know you’re going to have a whole profession based around the things.
I almost always initiate combat with F2, and thats apparently a really bad thing to do based on these findings.

• Intimidation training:
The trait causes Canine and Spider F2 attacks to cause cripple.
I run mostly canines (wolves), and I don’t see why the canines have this as their trait. The wolf causes fear with his F2 skill (cripple doesn’t make that any better, and arguably makes it worse), the white wolf causes chill (Cripple not any help), the hound causes immobilization (cripple not any help) and the fern hound causes regen so the cripple could be beneficial there, but that’s 1 out of the 4 canines. I believe similar set of circumstances apply to the spiders as at least 2 of their F2 attacks cause immobilize.
The family requirements must be erased! It should apply to ALL pets!

• Ranger consumable should also apply to pets. When the ranger’s damage is shared by the pet, it’s only fair that the pet also get the consumable buffs.

• Reduced AoE damage intake for pets. Pets die to easily in dungeons and www, and we can’t do anything about it. The player can dodge in four different directions. But the pet only comes back in 1 direction. You can’t call the pet back when the red circles are all the same direction as the pet coming back to the ranger.

• If pet takes fall damage it should gain benefit from “50% fall damage reduction”

• “Stow pet” must do so until counter commanded.
When the pet is stowed away, it should only get back if the ranger commands so. Again a discipline issue!

• When pet is in Avoid Combat and you press F2, the pet will first run to the target and attack. It doesn’t do the F2 where it was standing (out of combat).

• Pets must stop right next to ranger!
Give the pets some more discipline. They should not just run wherever they feel like.

• Improve response time!
This one goes for all F skills and attack animation “Register hit from pets at animation’s start, not animation’s end”

• Signet’s are “actualized” every 10 seconds on the pet. So if the counter is at 10 sec and you switch the pet your pet won’t get any signet effect for 9-10 seconds.
That is horrible. Make it so that when the pet is created (switched) it takes over all the signets from the ranger immediately. That’s important.
If it takes 9 seconds until the pet gets the speed buff or the regeneration or whatever signet that is a real issue.

• Pet not attacking immediately after swapping.
If you’re ranged and using a melee pet the 2 seconds of quickness is totally useless for your pet. If you’re melee and using a melee pet it might actually use 1 second of that quickness.
This doesn’t even get into the fact that sigils may not be applied to a swapped in pet for up to 10 seconds, the general dps loss from a swapped in pet running to the target, or the fact that a swapped in pet can/will miss it’s F2 a lot of times because it will seldom appear facing the target but will leap/breath/whatever in the direction it’s facing if you don’t wait the 1-2 seconds for it to acquire a target. There’s other issues connected with pet swapping as well like lost boons/RaO/Master’s Bond stacks but none of this is new.

I don’t have 30 p in BM so in dungeons I keep my pets on Avoid combat. Therefore the Stalker (5x might) and Red Moa (Fury) buffs the entire group really well.
Last night we had 22x might :-)

In pve I love Eagle and Hawk. You get swiftness and their bleed is awesome.

www: Jaguar and Hyena (double knockdown)

It’s a ranger only secret ;-/

No one is allowed to make bacon out of my pet pig!!!! Hands off :-)

Dear all Anet people

Please remember to read our posts here in the ranger forum. There are a lot of great ideas for improvements, and we strongly need them!

+1

The family requirements must be erased! It should apply to ALL pets!

I’m a condition trapper and I loved it! It’s fun with traps and you feel useful in groups. But imo, condition damage is much weaker than raw power!

There are many limits with being a condition build ranger. The skills that deals condition are our traps and here lies the first problem: stupidity of our illogical dumb trait tree. If you want to be a trapper you must invest 30 points in skirmishing but you never use those precisions in a condition build!!! Condition damage is weak because it doesn’t benefit from precision / critical damage like raw power. Also in groups I often see the 25 stack of both bleed and vuln most of the time. Plus burn and poison is also on all the time.
Remember to have at least around 1200 in condition damage to have an effective damage.
This kind of build limits to have at least 30 p in WS and 30 p in Skirm (if trapper).

It’s a fun build to play and have fun with. You feel active all the time with the flanking and traps, but I think power/prec/crit perhaps with some BM is much better.
Unless Anet make condition improvements. I think they have mentioned something about improving condition dmg but they said the coding is a problem, or something like that :-)

Now, i’m going for a precision/crit build, maybe with BM. I’m waiting for the upcoming patch to see improvements for the ranger??!?!

Cole Winters.2764:

Who wants a Ranger on Jade Maw, with their dumb un-stowable pets being targeted by the beam over and over again?

Either make a permanent stow function, or pets not being targeted by Jade Maw!

Cole Winters.2764:

There should be perks to the ranger that will make groups WANT a ranger in party! Make the spirits better! make the pet smarter?! Make Duel-wielding axes a viable weapon combination! ANYTHING! Just do something! Something to help a “Ranger Lover” like me actually feel useful/beneficial to the parties I play with.

100 % agree!

My Sweet Lily.1952:

If I kill a foe, my pet would get rallied.

This would actually be really good! Of course in addition to reduced AoE damage intake for pets.