Guild Wars 2

Detharos.3157:

Didn’t notice this before I posted my suggestions list. Great post, although the potential that could come from your view on sword/greatsword competing with each other greatly worries me. As a power melee ranger, I use both simultaneously. Running a sword+x/Greatsword build became impossible for condition damage builds when bleed was removed from maul. By either converting one of the two to more condition based damage output, you’d destroy the ability to run with both together, killing a few already rare but perfectly viable power builds and further feed an already massively fattened completely oversaturated condition gameplay style. Damage gained from power doesn’t scale as well as condition damage, and when I have finally found a build that enables to achieve respectable survivability to damage ratios while moving away from conditions spam, I am adamantly opposed to any change that involves tossing on more bleeds and poisons to sword or greatsword, especially if it came at the cost of physical damage.

As for the pet AI thing, I hope people understand that the pet autoattacks being negated via misses through sidesteps is just as much as issue as slow/misfiring f2s as well. People often in practice in mobile combat mitigate entire thousands of ranger damage through sidestepped pet auto attacks. It’s too much.

The AI/animations of pets not being able to “keep up” with player controlled opponents definitely is an issue that isn’t stressed enough yet in this topic, and that could probably use some discussion. It was never really truly discussed in detail within the ranger forum, which is why I held off on discussing it here, because there is always the counter argument for it that “a pet that would always hit with pets in their current state would be too powerful and take too much of a gameplay element away from the ranger by being an overly effective damage component that plays for the player too well making the ranger class too forgiving.”

Not that I won’t add it, I just want to see the discussion for it hahaha. As some key points to discuss: is the pet reliable? What is the current hit percentage on a moving target and how often do they hit? Would making the pet “stick” to a target for a 100% hit percentage be too strong? Is there some approachable middle ground between the two ideas?

My 2 cents on it is that I think that removing the rooting animation and allowing pets to attack while moving, but only for autoattacks, would be the best middle ground. Damage output balanced as necessary of course.

As for your concerns with my ideas for the sword, I didn’t really want to touch it’s damage output, but I thought that adding a blind to the initial dodge back on Sword 2 might be a nice feature that plays well with how melee ranger works currently, which is fairly evasive.

As for the torment on sword 3 versus poison, on condition builds, the poison ends up being redundant, and almost over maintainable, while in a power build, the poison doesn’t really fit well imo with how the rest of the sword attacks are basically about soft CC’ing and out maneuvering opponents. So I figured torment would be a nice condition that punishes opponents from moving, similar to soft CC, but that can be made stronger damage in a condition based build, and since it is the only other mainhand weapon aside from axe, I thought that it would be a good way to turn the weapon into a weapon that works in both types of builds.

Just to give you some reasoning, if you still don’t like the idea, I totally understand.

Thank you for the feedback though!

Durzlla.6295:

I’d say both Mesmer and rangers 1) should be bumped up to medium and rangers 2) should be medium/high because when you notice what your pets doing and react to that it can make you perform significantly better than a ranger who barely watches their pet.

I’d also say thieves 1) should be very low (they really don’t do MUCH in the APM category but my god do they have the highest requirement in the battlefield/position awareness).

All the others I think are about right.

I just don’t agree based on my personal experience is all. I feel like managing the ranger pet in combat versus any of the other mechanics is just plain easier, except for warriors getting an extra attack when they get enough adrenaline.

All the mechanic does is F1, go attack, F2, do something specific, F3, come back you’re too hurt/I need you here and not over there, and F4, okay you’re about to die time to go or I need a different pet. I personally find it to be the least active, least engaging mechanic in the entire game. Again, just my personal opinion, but the only easier mechanic is warrior, and mesmers are in the same boat as rangers for me, you spawn a minion, and then you have 4 different things you can do with them while they do their own thing.

This is an extreme step down from how active even a beastmaster build was in Guild Wars 1, which had a plethora of different active pet skills and conditions and effects that also effected the player and etc.

Thieves mechanics are down there too, but at least they have a bunch of different effects they have to keep track of, and can use their mechanic more tactically like choosing it as either an opening or an offensive stun breaker, or even using a slight of hand build for boon stealing and interrupting.

Of course it’s just my opinion after playing all of the different classes and having 7/8 80s taken care of.

If I had to rank how easy each of the classes mechanics are to use from lowest to highest, it would be like:
Warrior
Guardian
Necromancer
Mesmer
Ranger
Thief
Engineer
Elementalist

So, I mean, mechanic evaluation alone, rangers have a mid to high difficulty tier for their mechanic alone when I evaluate them against other classes, but the disparity between difficulties of the mechanics alone isn’t very high to begin with imo.

So when you combine the pet with having some of the easiest weapon skills and utilities to use and to use effectively in the game, it ends up with how I ended up ranking the ranger.

I still think Warrior and Necro are easier to play than any other class though. And I do also believe that the level of difficulty between them and the ranger does have a lot of disparity, which is hard to reflect based on just rankings alone.

For me personally though, if I could combine the elementalist with a pet mechanic that moved and autoattacked, but that you had 3 additional skills you were in control of to use, that would be my ideal class. Without a class like that in this game, I find myself bored because I don’t always have enough to juggle or to do at a single time lol.

I think I would rather just rate the classes in two categories than actually try to delve into every class any explain.

So, category 1, APM required in order to perform skills, skill shots, and combinations.
Category 2, situational awareness and reaction needed in order to play as perfectly as possible.

Rated from low, medium, high, very high.

Guardian:
1) low
2) high

Warrior:
1) low
2) medium

Engineer:
1) high
2) high

Ranger:
1) low
2) medium

Thief:
1) low
2) very high

Elementalist:
1) high
2) very high

Mesmer:
1) low
2) high

Necromancer:
1) low
2) medium

Granted those are just my opinions.

Fermi.2409:

Reading through the general suggestions, I only really disagree with a couple things, and your list of big issues is pretty decent.

For your suggestions, what you say about Signet of the Beastmaster. It should either be removed or have its function reversed (makes signets affect pets as well) in addition to being moved.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of the suggested pet overhaul. While pets do need work, I don’t like the idea of essentially making them timed summons in the slightest.

I agree with these suggestions as well!

I was just trying to take some of the suggestions that I’ve seen a few times, and my own suggestions list was just an attempt to keep this thread within the confines of the sticky’d forum rules/format.

The general ideas with explanations in the first few posts are the main focal points of balance for the class I think, and as long as they are adequately addressed in some sort of way, then I personally will be 100% satisfied.

felixdacat.3804:

Great write-up jcbroe, thanks for taking the time to compile this!

No problem! I just absolutely love the class. I played ranger in Guild Wars 1 for almost a decade in every possible format that game offered, and I would love to see ranger improved to the point in this game where I love it enough to play it for another decade.

I hope that the experience that the guild wars 1 ranger brought me, whether it was bunny thumper, or touch ranger, or dagger with evasive stances, or a ranger/ritualist spirit master, a turret build, or my absolute favorite, especially when I was heavy into the competitive aspects of the game, an interrupter, wasn’t just a fluke on ANets part when they made this game called Guild Wars 1 whose iteration of a ranger class literally stole my heart lol.

I want to believe that ANet can make me fall in love with a class named “ranger” again, and I hope that this thread can serve as a stepping stone in collecting and providing feedback from people in order to make that goal possible.

I’d like to thank everybody that has posted on the thread so far. I’m glad people are finding my write up agreeable!

Keep it up. Maybe it will attract some attention and we’ll be able to capture that elusive red post hahaha.

Neko.9021:

Erm, I’m still pretty sure that Spirit Ranger is one of the best, if not the best home point bunker in the game. The class certainly needs work but Ranger certainly has a role in team comps as a home defender.

To quote myself from the team composition section: “More prevalent in PvE/Dungeons and WvW than PvP…”

But yes, rangers have always had a working meta build in the PvP environment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t imply build diversity and it doesn’t translate to the rest of the games content, which are two issues that basically every class in the game (except maybe Guardians and Warriors, and even they don’t have the most perfect examples of diversity) faces in some way, shape, or form.

Update number 2: Links are always nice, aren’t they? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/first#post3481020

7)

• Stability on Pet Swap
• Heal on Pet Swap
• In general, give swapping pets out more of a function for players that can then choose to leave their pet on passive and turn the mechanic from a damage mechanic into a buff mechanic.

8)

• Merge Piercing Arrows with Quick Draw (stays in Skirmishing)
• Move Eagle Eye to Grandmasters and have it affect the Shortbow for 300 more range as well, turn longbow damage increase to 10%
• Move Signet of the Beastmaster to a Masters Slot
• Remove Honed Axe
• Move Trap Potency down to Master tier
• Remove Trapper’s Defense
• Move Trapper’s Expertise down to adept tier
• New Grandmaster trait, choose from:
  -Traps transfer x conditions per pulse
  -Activating a signet removes x conditions
  -Interrupting a foe either transfers or removes x conditions

9)

• Any changes here would be a direct result from anything else mentioned being changed.

An older suggestion thread I created with an already established in depth discussion: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Trait-Rework-extensive/

Also, thank you to those already responding

After reading over the forum rules more extensively, I feel like we should take this thread and make the format similar (albeit less length where necessary) to what I’ve just posted.

As an example, take the numerical number of where you think your suggestion is on the list, and then use that, so let’s say, to take Atherakhia’s ideas as an example, maybe going:

“5)
More burst is needed etc”

I think that this way allows me to keep and update the OP listed with overview topics as discussed and as necessary, but allows us to delve into specific suggestions and ideas as the forum dictates. Sound okay everybody?

If you’re up to formatting that is, if you just have a single reference point like Cufufalating, that is absolutely fine as well

Whatever it takes to sustain this thread and create a valuable discussion!

In order to keep the thread in compliance with the rules sticky’d in this subforum, I’m going to list possible solutions based on each numerical category that was posted above. Note that these are my own ideas and have not been as discussed by the ranger community as the compiled overview list. Getting everybody to agree on how to change something and putting it into a perfect balance perspective is a much more difficult task than first agreeing what needs to be changed, which is why I believe the information I have already posted in the OPs is necessary to begin with.

So:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

2)

• Pet Swap removes x conditions with a 20 second ICD
• Traps transfer x conditions per pulse
• Activating a signet removes x conditions
• Interrupting a foe either transfers or removes x conditions
• Make Carnivorous Appetite heal the player as well as the pet. Shift its function to “your crits steal health for you and your pet with an ICD”
• Make Honed Axes work for more weapons (maybe melee weapon specific, or even bow specific)
• Allow companions might to affect the player by giving might to the player when the pet crits
• Combine Quick Draw with Piercing Arrows

3)

• Damage reduction for AoE
• Addition of a pet dodge or a pet damage immunity option
• Less strict penalty for pet death than a 60 second cooldown

4)

• Rework “Guard” entirely. Maybe “for the next x seconds, pet attacks grant rangers x boons randomly” or even “for the next x seconds, damage taken by either you or your pet is split between you.”
• Rework “Protect Me” so that the pet only takes a percentage of the incoming damage, to the point where the pet can still be killed by damage overload when this is active, but the pet doesn’t melt and die, putting it on cooldown, basically just to break a stun, since the damage immunity/transfer can be so short it doesn’t make much difference.
• Rework Sic’ Em so it doesn’t get removed by anything during the time its active
• Change Sharpening Stone to either 2 bleeds per attack or torment or immobilize or something more potent in either damage or control than it is now.
• Increase the Direct Damage traps do, especially Spike Trap
• Reduce the cooldown of Frost Trap
• Make Signet of the Hunt’s active a Stun Breaker

5)

• Reduce the cast time of Rapid Fire and increase the damage, or reduce the amount of shots fired and increase the amount of damage done and vulnerability applied per shot. Rapid Fire should be stronger than autoattacking, period.
• Allow Barrage to be channeled while moving
• Blind on Hornet Sting
• Torment instead of poison on Serpent’s Strike
• Increase Hunter’s Call damage
• Increase Whirling Defense’s damage
• Turn Poison Volley into an area target skill
• Crippling Shot now has pet apply torment, based on the player’s condition stat

6)

• Empathic Bond should just be made to remove conditions on pet swap. This would allow it to be a more reactive skill, and it wouldn’t be killing the pet like it is currently
• “Protect Me,” see suggestion under section 4
• Let Signet of Renewal either just outright cleanse conditions with its active, or have it gain a boon for every condition the pet takes, then have this boon gaining function be applied to the player through Signet of the Beastmaster

A typo would be considered a type of bug, but it is bugged regardless of whether it is the description or the function.

Update: The thread has been added to the new forum. Let’s see how this goes. Feel free to add anything that I’ve missed over there, as there was a lot discussed. Also, it helps keep it bump’d

6) Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design – This one should be a bit more straightforward too. As the “pet class,” why do rangers have to go abusing their pets in order to gain survival? Signet of Renewal, “Protect Me,” and Empathic Bond all kill/harm the pet. The same pet which devs have stressed to the players the need to work with in order to maximize combat potential. It just seems very counter intuitive the rangers have more functional “pet killers” than utilities that actually allow players to effectively work with their pet. What happened to skills from Guild Wars 1 like Predatory Bond, Strike as One, Symbiotic Bond, and Companionship?

7) More functionality/gameplay options for pets – Why is the pet just a DPS option? There are quite a few problems that could be fixed with more options to build around with for pets. Why do they always just have to be a damage option? The game needs more traits like Mighty Swap and Vigorous Swap, where you can choose to use your pet for utility options like giving boons and supporting rather than damage. It sure would open up playstyle diversity to have more options to gear pets towards other than “damage or more damage.”

8) Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment – This one seems pretty straightforward too. Basically, Signets, Spirits (more so previously than now), and Traps all require 30 trait points to make otherwise pretty mediocre utilities useful (only 20 with Spirits now). Heck, signets don’t even work on the player without a grandmaster trait. For rangers, this is probably the biggest hindrance to build diversity that needs to be addressed. The utilities already require heavy investment in the utility slots to be worthwhile (Traps and Spirits both typically work better with at least 2, to even 3 slots). Adding another 30 point trait requirement on top of that makes ranger builds have to build with heavy investment in order to be successful, for the most part. Just as Spirits Unbound was moved down to the master tier, Trap Potency and Signet of the Beastmaster really should be looked at for similar reworks/repositions to open up more build opportunities.

9) Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions – This is more of a concept than it is a true issue. Basically, the ranger doesn’t have a whole lot that offers competitive options for a team composition to the degree where players think that rangers are worth slotting over other classes. More prevalent in PvE/Dungeons and WvW than PvP, but really, rangers only offer Spotter and Frost Spirit in certain circumstances like dungeons (this is mostly where you see this build selection). Outside of Spotter and Spirits, everything the ranger does is accomplished by other classes. But, as mentioned earlier, Spirits suffer from the same issues that pets do; not scaling well the larger an engagement gets, due to their killable nature. On top of that, most ranger builds require a trait investment that forces them to specialize more than other classes and in the process give up other offensive or defensive options that those other classes still have access to. Overall, every class should be able to compete for slots on a team composition equally, by either bringing something unique and helpful to that team composition, or by bringing something similarly competitive in function to other classes, while being able to provide more of a unique role/addition elsewhere.

Overall, this sums up where many people in the ranger community feel that ranger is at balance and as far as quality of life changes are concerned. Any feedback, especially developer feedback, is welcome.

The original discussion started within the ranger community can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/The-State-of-Balance-discussion/page/1

Discuss

The reasoning:

1) Pet Responsiveness – Last year, nearing the last balance patch, a developer response was kind enough to enlighten the ranger community with the information that the pet skill lag, particularly, the response time of the pet F2 key, is dealt with through the server because pet AI is coded off of the games creature AI. Essentially, this means that using this F2 skill basically just adds the unique skill to the AI action queue for the pet to use at its earliest convenience. This is a problem. Lack of true control over the single player dictated skill on a class whose pet AI has to be continuously be band aid fixed in order to improve basic functionality is a serious problem. This needs to be more reliable, especially since it is one of the only ways a player can actively utilize their pets skills to use the F2 skill on demand when needed during a fight. Without this skill taking full precedence and being reliable, its success rate has so much disparity that it ends up being more rage inducing than helpful.

2) Reliance on a small handful of traits for every working build – This area could be said to be aimed directly at Empathic Bond, since it is the only form of reliable cleansing that is strong enough, particularly for a competitive environment. That specific example aside, there is an issue that is not ranger specific with certain traits in this game becoming a “staple” for almost every build deemed viable by the community, which limits build diversity.

3) Pet survival not balanced adequately for large scale engagements – This area seems self-explanatory, but basically, the ranger, whose class mechanic is an “always-on” pet in which the players damage is balanced around, does not have functionality that scales well with how large engagements, specifically in modes like WvW. This often results in ranger players sacrificing what most would consider a fairly significant portion of their damage during these large scale engagements, either by way of having a passive or a dead pet. Being that this is the class mechanic and was designed with an always-on design, there shouldn’t be any instance in which the class mechanic is rendered as ineffective as it can be currently.

4) Utilities completely outclassing other utilities – There are a lot of utilities the ranger has access to that can just be considered to have a “null” function. The shouts really don’t do much and really don’t compete with the functions of the rest of the other utilities. Keen Edge (trait) is the only time Sharpening Stone ever sees any use. Frost Trap is very underwhelming for its cooldown. But just generally, there are utility slot options that just don’t functionally compete with other options that can be taken, which is very limiting to build diversity.

5) Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content – In a nutshell, weapons seem like they should ideally all be unique and have a specialty role as far as functionality goes, in order to get players to actively make the best weapon selections for the content and their build/etc. However, functionally, the ranger bows are very bland and unexciting weapons, and the ranger longbow especially, which provides very underwhelming functions and damage. Sword and Greatsword compete directly with each other, as both are power based melee weapons with evasive/defensive capabilities, and Axe (and Dagger) competes directly with the shortbow so closely that the only difference aside from an interrupt is deciding what conditional bleed application you want. This leaves only offhand weapons to compare. Really, the weapons just need to be more different from each other, and less subjectively boring in some cases.

First off, due to the lack of the lack of, or assumed lack of experience when it comes to balancing Guild Wars 2, this write up will push to make sure that the aim of the write up, which is to present an organized list of areas in which the ranger class could be rebalanced with explanations as to why these areas are being considered as having enough weaknesses to justify the potential rebalancing of them.

While suggestions are more than welcome for discussion purposes in order to create examples to make examples so that discussions can progress more smoothly, ideally, this thread should remain to discuss the Quality of Life and balance change areas being suggested for improvement, while debating whether or not any additional line items are in need of being listed. However, because specific example discussions are deemed in the developer sticky to be more useful than more generalized topics, suggestions should definitely be worked into the discussion and discussed, as to comply with this forums guidelines.

This is going to be the initial list of areas that has been discussed within the ranger subforum as having a need for either some sort of rebalance of overhaul. Here, they will just be listed, and later on, explanations will be provided as reasoning. Due to the earlier statement that essentially states that the playerbase, for the most part, doesn’t have enough information in front of them as far as direction/core balance/balance philosophies/etc goes, these explanations will refrain from making suggestions as to what to overhaul or rebalance things to. More so, this list is just a statement of where a portion of the ranger community has taken a stance of the position of the rangers class balance across various game types, versus other classes, and within itself.

The list:

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design
• More functionality/gameplay options for pets
• Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment
• Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions

Definitely. I’ll be compiling my final list and doing a writeup. I was taking the day off of Guild Wars 2 to spend with my significant other before she heads back out of state for another long semester, but I’m working on it and will have a thread going there immediately.

Edit:

Pasted for my own purposes:

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design
• More functionality/gameplay options for pets
• Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment
• Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions

Oh definitely. I just felt like running it as a pseudo bunker because reasons lol. Though I do have to say, I find it incredible the difference in survivability between spirit/bunk and trap/bunk even though the builds hardly perform different functions. Like, the difference is what, 2k health and 20% more boon duration? Along with some “artificial” survival by damage absorbed by spirits and a blind from sun spirit?

But wow, the difference.

Back to this threads setup to melt people. Offense is the best defense in this case.

I just went Settler’s Amulet/Carrion Jewel for the lols and wow, bunker all day. Given that it’s Solo Q, but still.

No, I definitely agree with where your changes would take the weapon. I was thinking of confusion on the shortbow too, but like you mentioned, it doesn’t really feel like it belongs on the ranger, so I was hesitant to suggest it.

The reason why I don’t want to see the interrupt removed by the way is mostly due to Moment of Clarity. Not that the trait is the most synergistic with the shortbow since the shortbow doesn’t benefit from the damage aspect of the trait, but ANet has been so hesitant to get rid of the trait (I mean, the community has suggested getting rid of the trait since the game launched) that removing interrupts might make it even more useless than it already basically is.

I don’t see why rangers can’t have torment though. I think that would be a meaningful change, something that evolves from the idea of controlling the opponent the way concussion shot does, but does so by discouraging their movement through a punishing and damaging effect.

This would also synergize well with sword 3 being changed to apply torment as well, which was in one of those “document” threads on the spvp subforums that I actually agreed with.

So maybe torment on the shortbow 5? 3-5 stacks? If you like that idea, since confusion is also appropriate, but probably doesn’t fit the class as well as torment maybe would possibly.

I’d take your version of the shortbow anyday over the current one. I like the idea of making it a little more AoE centric by default.

Some tiny changes I would like to see to your list (my opinion): For concussion shot, since you asked, I would make it less position based honestly. I’d like it to apply stun on interrupt, as opposed to just from behind. Not sure about the base function of it not on interrupt. I don’t feel like a player should be rewarded for throwing out an interrupt randomly and hitting nothing, so I would prefer the daze to be removed entirely. I don’t know, maybe just regularly, a higher than autoattack damage 100% projectile finisher that stuns for 1-2 seconds (as balance dictates) on interrupt. That sounds strong enough to me, and it would allow you to setup some good combos with shortbow 2 and 4.

On to 4, I was going to suggest making it a blast finisher, but I then reread and realized it was a blind field, and now no longer have any suggestions for changes

I would take this option any day.

My suggestion would be to combine them (opening up a slot for a new adept trait), and then take Carnivorous Appetite in the Masters slot and make it effect the player as well, but more like “your pets crits steal health for you, and your crits steal health for your pet.” That would also help power builds out a ton.

ANet has been on vacation for like 3 weeks lol, which means they only have had like 4 weeks to work on anything. Last “big” balance patch took 8 weeks and gave us the movement of Spirits Unbound.

And… And…. well, they moved that trait and added some minimal fury to a still unused trait. In 8 weeks. After announcing every change (and the only changes) made, 7 weeks earlier. And now with only 4 weeks and a break it’s supposed to be an amazing update.

Just lol’ing. Sorry. It’s just a funny concept to me. As far as I can tell based on past experience, ANet probably doesn’t believe that “the meta has settled” enough for people to realize the “true impact” of the prior changes made, so they won’t make any big balance changes yet until “people realize the potential of previous changes.”

I think most players would just be happy with the ANet offered up a little transparency for once and told us some of the things in the “pipeline” right now for future changes to the ranger class. Because at this point, most players don’t even think ANet knows where they are trying to take this class as far as balance goes.

@Sol;

That’s exactly what I like about the build, it really does compete with Engi very well. I’d say between the engi meta build and this build, the difference is really only the benefits of grenade kit that engi gets, versus this ranger build being able to outdamage a single opponent and apply the same conditions at a faster pace with better survivability against current meta builds than what engi has (engis have less condi removal and have to burn a heal to get it, for those that don’t know), while being able to break through Automated Response and the ever so rare unicorn Diamond Skin ele (lol, just lol).

And hey, when the spirit build first made its way into being the meta build, there were a lot of naysayers, including myself. I hated the playstyle (still do) and I didn’t think it was going to give people as much of an issue as it does, which I still find surprising even to this day. But it stuck around since like March/April 2012, and is still considered a top meta build going into January 2014 here, and unlike the Spirit Build, I see the immediate potential and results with this build versus the current meta and the way people play.

Actually, every single one of the choices makes sense. I’m not really sure what people aren’t getting about the build, I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only other person who has played it besides Sol lol.

The only person with a legit question is Ryan. To offer a 3rd opinion, the Vitality → Power option combines some sustained damage you would have with 10 in power for II with 1k more vitality and boon duration. I can see the protection being just as legitimately useful, I’d say one is just a damage option and one is a defense option.

I don’t really see how I can argue one way or the other, and also, I didn’t make the build, so I’m sure Sol has more experience behind his answers than I do, since I’ve only been playing with the build since the first time he posted it (a few weeks ago I believe).

Guys, in order to keep the thread from becoming toxic, I just want to say this; regardless of whether the devs are or are not doing the job we would like them to do, and regardless of whether or not we are of the opinion that they care about the community’s concerns or not, it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to avoid adding constructive ideas to a discussion in favor of criticizing the devs in a not constructive way.

Sure, they may not ever make some people happy. No, actually, they will never make some people happy. But the very least we can do is collect our constructive ideas and present them in a way that is explanatory but also creates an opportunity to have an open dialogue with the developers about concerns with the game that we are having in the hopes that they follow up and connect with the community in a way that pushes the devs and the community towards a better understanding, at the very least.

All I’m saying is that it doesn’t hurt to keep putting ideas out and being constructive (in any thread, for any class). At least at the end of the day, we can show that we as players have a voice and we can choose to use that voice.

If the devs never respond, or never make the changes that make us happy, then at the very least, we get to walk away from the experience knowing that at the very least, we were the ones who tried to help and to try to do something, even if the devs do nothing.

With that in mind, I haven’t had much to update the list with, but I will update this thread with another summary soon, so there is some visibility as to what has been discussed and we can continue discussing about anything that can be added afterwards.

Also, thanks to everybody for their discussion (and continued discussion) on this thread. It has been very civil and constructive, so it is nice to see the community come together and be able to express thoughts and ideas in this manner.

Keep it up

When I’ve been using the build I’ve found that the one spec that can consistently 1v1 against me is D/P trickery thieves. When played well (knowing when to stealth, steal, black powder, etc), they can consistently remove Protection and through blinds can avoid a lot of damage being thrown out at them because of it.

That’s outside of the bad matchup against Necros. Their condition output is astronomical compared to what only Empathic Bond (or EB + SoR) feels like it can deal with, but the real killer is how much damage Terror does. That’s the nail in the coffin right there, and without RaO up (and hoping they either aren’t running Corrupt or don’t use it on you/you dodge it), I think that the necro should probably always win the engagement, assuming equal skill.

Just wanted to say nice build again though lol. I mean, maybe it’s just because I’ve played everything else for so long, but coming back to traps after not playing since the first few months of the game in PvP (I run them in WvW but it isn’t the same environment), maybe I’m just a better player than people I’m up against, but I really feel like the ranger still has the capability to “condition overload” classes, and it feels terrific to play as.

Signet of the Wild is probably going to be your utility choice for every build. Personally, I’d also get myself either Runes of Speed or preferably Runes of the Traveler. Then you’re going to want to aim for an Apothecary build and mix that with either Dire (more so for traps or bunkers) or Rabid (more so with Spirits). Rabid and Dire works well together, but you will miss the 100+ regen per second more than you would initially think.

aussieheals.6843:

You need to change your pet to a cat or dog. Also you need to turn on fast casting in the interface. Try to save your dodge rolls and drop the axe for a shortbow till it’s fixed.

Wolf/River Drake is a very staple pet selection for the PvP environment. Fast Casting is a preference and not mandatory, as not everybody uses the same gaming setup, and everybody has a different comfort level. And Axe/Dagger is a much more effective weaponset than a shortbow at the cost of not being able to mindlessly pew pew at range.

While I can see the reasoning that leads you to make these suggestions, saying any option is better than another option between the way Sol is playing and what you are suggesting he changes wouldn’t be justified.

Anywho, great vid Sol, I may have to steal this setup, even though it is much less forgiving than what my preference usually is (still looks to have better survival ability than the standard bomb/nade engi build though).

I’ve been looking to transition back towards a trap focused build, and your gearing selection is probably the best that it’s going to be for the current metagame.

I don’t think that longbow is very useful for any of the projectile finishers rangers can create by themselves. Particularly, I find that most of the fields we can create serve condition or healing based gameplay the best.

Not that it is a bad thing, but again, it leaves the range of functionality throughout our builds very one dimensional.

If being able to blast in our fire fields was a little more on demand, and not dependent on a drake RNG’ing it or a long cooldown warhorn skill, it would be a different story.

But overall I think the the range of effectiveness of the projectile finishers we can create with bows through our own feels is very lackluster.

It would kind of just band-aid the real issue, which is too much crap on the screen. If the animations are so excessive on screen that certain animations can be “lost” or hidden, adding a cast bar to watch when you can’t see because of all of the AI and fields and clutter and flashes and sparkles would help.

…But so would just toning down all of that stuff and overhauling the game to a system where the strongest or most important to watch skills are the most animated and/or telegraphed, and the other skills are much less animated in comparison.

A big, big problem I have with the ranger class is how thematically correct it feels.

For instance, stepping outside of the realm of numerical balance for a moment, Thieves feel like a thief should feel when you play one. You can jump in and out of combat almost seamlessly with stealths and evades and steals while in the meantime, jumping in for an assassination style big damage move every once in awhile. You have thief style traps and support, and the class just flows well overall.

The same can be said for classes like the warrior, which, to avoid going into long descriptions, feels like a heavy armored DPS’er, and the Guardian plays exactly how a heavy armor supporter should play.

Necro, Engi, Ele, and mesmer all play thematically correctly as well, Necro with attrition style gameplay, heavy conditions, minions, and lifestealing, Engi with pistols and rifles and gadgets/gizmos and potions, elementalists as an elemental spell caster, and mesmers with clones and moves based around deception and illusion, and shattering those illusions for better damage and support.

And….

Then we get to ranger. The class is just all over the place. Sure, we have bows. But the bows are very bland and just come off as generic ranged DPS with nothing really “unique” thematically as far as feel or visuals or mechanics go. Truthfully, the warrior rifle does “feel” thematically more like a ranger bow should than our actual bow choices, which are all basically just “shoot an arrow, shoot some more arrows, shoot some arrows in a cone, shoot them in an area.”

The melee weapons (and Axe and Dagger) actually fit the ranger as far as the beastmaster aspect goes. They play off of the pet well, and get you in with your pet to do help it with it’s DPS while you DPS, or allowing you to jump in and out and skirmish with an opponent while being evasive while the pet is doing damage.

That’s as far as it goes though. The utilities, aside from spirits and traps (the shouts try but they don’t do much as far as function and mechanics go), are all bland and really generic in nature and function, and don’t really support any unique theme that differentiates the class from any other class.

Really, the bow mechanic for this class is actually the thing that feels the most tacted on. Aside from the name Marksmanship and a single trait (Eagle Eye), there isn’t a single traitline that allows Rangers to truly specialize towards bows (bows can be enhanced, but those same enhancements effect all available weaponsets), and there are no utilities that help ranger players specialize towards using a bow.

However, there are multiple options that allow rangers to specialize towards skirmishing and/or supporting with traps and spirits and pet enhancing shouts and signets, with multiple traits that enhance melee options (Axe and Dagger included) and offhand options.

That is the ranger conundrum, so to speak. That the class shows off the use of bows and psychologically appeals to people who are looking for a ranged bow archetype, but then the game presents them thematically with the perfect Beastmaster class that has a very bland archery option with poor supplementary options for the playstyle.

Either the name needs changing to Beastmaster or the class needs an overall revamp to bring up bows to a place the has the same “feel” as the melee options from a gameplay enjoyment perspective, allowing players to truly have the option to play with an archer focus, and take supplementary utilities and traits that support players playing in a ranged archetype playstyle.

Until then, it is the only portion of any class that I personally have found to be amiss and not be thematically correct, or even fluid, for that class.

Sube Dai.8496:

It was said in another thread but power rangers are actually balanced, ie. They can hit hard and die easy. Its warriors, thieves and mesmers that are unbalanced, since they have greater survivability even in full zerk.

Exactly.

Particularly though, I don’t believe that entire classes are imbalanced, but there are some repeat offenders throughout about half of the classes in the game.

Listing them:

• Healing Signet – Absolutely zero intuitive design. There is no reason to activate it, and because the heal is entirely passive, it offers no risk/reward gameplay and offers a very strong sustain heal with zero skill needed in order to make it successful. The active needs to be stronger, the passive needs to be much weaker, and then have a good scaling coefficient with healing power, and the cooldown needs to be reduced accordingly.

• 100% immunities – These are ridiculous. Nobody should ever be able to slot a trait or activate a skill and then just ignore damage or conditions entirely. If skills like this are actually needed in order for classes to be balanced, then the reality is that whatever environment that creates the need for immunities needs to be toned down so that having a “godmode” isn’t necessary for success.

• Stealth – Yes, it is a core mechanic that the thief class and certain mesmer builds hinge around, but the reality is that Stealth is a poor design, especially as spammable as it is, that allows for crazy amounts of fight resets and is completely uncounterable. Classes that have to rely on the mechanic for survival is also bad design, and these classes need to be balanced to have more sustain with no stealth, allowing the stealth mechanic to be toned down (missing a stealth attack still reveals, being hit in stealth reveals, 5 second minimum reveal period, maybe more).

• Stability access and excess CC – Certain classes are heavy offenders of having way too much control in a fight, and certain classes have too much Stability. Ideally, CC should be less spammable and be a “big” move, meaning it either needs to be a strong CC with weak damage to allow for the player to hold down the opponent and DPS them while CC’d, or it needs to be a weak CC with strong damage, meaning that it bursts hard and leaves the opponent vulnerable for enough of a time period to matter (they now can’t get their heal off in time, or it let’s a team mate burst on an opponent that would have otherwise required a setup, etc). Once this happens, Stability needs to be removed entirely, and immobilize needs to be drastically toned down to be as the other CC above is described.

I think that covers what I think are heavy offenders and/or what is poorly designed from that aspect, without pulling out a magnifying glass and examining every aspect of every class in the game.

Note that it is just my opinion though. The idea behind the topic is to extract general ideas about where rangers fit into how the game is balanced, and what can be worked on to make the Quality of Life and gameplay experience better. I’m only leaving this chunk here because this is personally where I would like to see part of the design philosophy for the game pushed, and I think it would overall be a better game that rangers would fit much better into and could be balanced into better than where the game currently is.

1. Skyhammer removed entirely, even from the history books

2. Heavy emphasis on balance. Infrastructure doesn’t matter when nobody is going to play a poorly balanced game.

3. An overhaul (remove/redesign) of all passive aspects of gameplay (anything that procs, or provides an RNG chance at something with an invisible counter).

4. Focus on infrastructure. Spectating, Rewards, Leaderboards, Game Modes, etc.

5. Any project involving additional content (skins, maps, etc).

I think that, after reading through a lot more topics throughout the community, that we need to define, or redefine, balance for players to understand.

Balance is not a single build being able to beat every other class and every other build in the game. Skill can make that happen, but there should never be any build ever that has a weapon to deal with every situation as well as a defensive option for every offense.

What is balance then?

Balance is accomplished by guiding classes towards certain combat roles that can be performed and giving them competitive options in each role. Not competitive in the sense that multiple classes are accomplishing the same function, but in the sense that when creating a team composition, there are multiple classes that can fulfill a given role, but in a variety of different ways.

Roles are numerous, but in a very general sense, there is all out DPS, roaming/dueling, bunkering, and team support.

The game shouldn’t be so linear that only one build can do one role at a time (meaning a build should be able to have multiple roles) and stat allocation helps to make builds specialize in a direction that may not suit all of their available options, but ultimately, every class should have the option that when min/maxing, every role they can perform becomes equally competitive to every other class at that role, even if functionally, they are performing different (single target DPS versus cleave versus AoE, etc).

Hey, look what happened to me! I got to fight invulnerable NPCs for enough of the match to make a difference. Great map.

This is the absolute worst map I’ve ever played in any multiplayer game. The skyhammer is an overpowering mechanic, and the map design favors classes with high stability uptime and/or large amounts of CC to use the map to troll.

There is no semblance of skill or balance on the map. Why is it even in Solo Q? It’s already been decided it isn’t a competitive map, which is why it isn’t in Team Q, so it shouldn’t have any bearing in any queue associated with a leaderboard.

Seriously, this is the kind of bullkitten that keeps the pvp population from growing (and is more than likely reducing the population). Get this kitten out of the queue, and honestly, I don’t think many people would be that sad if it was just disabled altogether and made unplayable from now until eternity, except for the skyhammer trolls, and let’s be honest, skyhammer trolls shouldn’t be your target audience, your competitive community should.

Not that there is much of a competitive community left because of kitten like skyhammer, but hey, better late than never.

Lol.

I just really don’t get the line of thinking. Like, the game already has classes like engi and ele that require some more APM to use than other classes at times, and require you to track more skill functions than just the 5, due to either kits or attunements.

So then, when allowing for classes with that level of depth and complexity (depth isn’t being added because you need more APM, but because of the larger amount of skill rotations being created by giving players more functioning options to work with at a single time), why is there no middle ground between that and a faceroll warrior class?

It seems like an entire contradiction for a company to go “well, we wanted to make a class that has to micromanage an entire always-on entity in order to maximize damage and support capabilities. But we want it to be as easy as possible for the players so we’re adding as little player controlled functionality as possible.”

It just inherently limits the performance of the class. You can’t have both a class that requires micromanagement and a class that’s as easy to play as possible. You end up with exactly what the ranger class is; a class with very limited pet performance potential and oversimplified weapon functions.

So at least there’s a “beginner” class in the game that almost invites players to create alts because the class can be so limiting to, for lack of a better word, “veterans,” that they want to try out something that either “feels” more fun or that they know investing their time in is going to produce better results because that classes output is higher due to better risk/reward balance scaling (which is terribly implemented to begin with or otherwise faceroll HS warriors wouldn’t be dominant in every single piece of content in the game).

Every class should scale with a players abilities. There should be functionality that works well for new players or players that don’t possess a high APM but still want to enjoy the game, and then as options open up or players get more adept at the game, there should be higher skillfloor/APM demanding options that produce a higher output, not necessarily one that overwrites the other outputs, but one that can be either more supportive or damaging or etc with a higher skill/APM investment, or even just requiring more skill shots.

Same thing with the pet. Players should have the option to take their pet more and more out of autopilot over time, so that while the player has to manage more things, they can also have more on demand functionality than a person who leaves their pet on autopilot.

Forzani.2584:

I have only ever used the Stone Spirit. So I don’t really understand how they are so effective. For instance Storm Spirit. It gives a chance to proc swiftness during a fight? What am I missing understanding why that is important. I see it has a /use every 20 seconds, but the damage shown on the tool tip(354) doesn’t look all that earth shattering.

Obviously I am missing something. Which wouldn’t be the first time

Before the dec 10th patch, Storm Spirit’s active hit for 3k base damage, 5k on a rare crit. After the update, it has been reduced to 2k damage base on active.

Those tooltips are garbage, and Storm Spirit has some type of crazy unexplainable damage scaling going on that has nothing to do with stat investment, which is probably the cause of why the tooltip is so bad.

Atherakhia.4086:

Could just make the attack command return as well.

If your pet is already attacking something and you tell it to attack a different target, it attacks that target. If your pet is already attacking something and you tell it to attack the same target, it returns.

You then can turn F3 into the secondary attacks.

I don’t know how many times us rangers have suggested this right here.

It just makes no sense that F1 and F3 need their own separate key. Just merge them into a toggle and open up the F3.

I would take any functionality on the F3 from another pet specific function to an on demand invulnerability (with cooldown) for the pet.

So yes, I think that at this point, if the devs respond to turning this into a toggle with the same “it might be too difficult for players” argument they used for more control over the pet, then I’m going to go and start pulling examples from Hello Kitty games, or Skylanders, to use an example as to how much they are drastically underestimating their player base.

Forzani.2584:

I am all for the nirvana of perfect class balance. Some people have great ideas. Some just like to whine with no realistic suggestions. I am not suggesting everyone that complains about class balance is bad at the game. It does apply to quite a few though.

What I am saying is for these types of games, every class seems to take a turn at being on top. I don’t think it is an accident. As most say, PvE Rangers are one of the better classes out there. PvP – All we do is get complaints from the rest of the game about being overpowered. WvW? Personally I think we are middle of the pack. Better than some, worse than others. GvG in WvW? Probably not the best. But that goes to the heart of what I am saying. There will only ever be the top 4 or so classes that will be included. Those classes are fluid depending on class balancing and/or the community discovering new strategies. Dungeons? I don’t do dungeons but what I read is Rangers likely not the best. See note above re GvG WvW.

Overall if you l ook at the above Rangers are not bad overall. Every class could use some tweaking.

I don’t believe everyone who posts in class forums always has the best interests in the game. Many are self absorbed that are only interested in their class only. At the expense of everyone else. Some of the suggestions are laughable overpowered.

I absolutely agree with you.

With everything you mentioned in mind, that is exactly what I personally am hoping to take away from this thread; a list of improvements that at its core is just an elaborately explained list of features that have improvement potential, and then put them in an eventual subforum designed for devs to get feedback.

The only intention there is hopefully to either present some new perspective to the devs that they may not currently have, or to point out a particular weakness that they might actually agree with, in order for them to, if anything, perhaps streamline it a bit within their patching process so it makes it down the pipeline to the players quicker than other potential things they are thinking (like adding a new water spirit heal) that just may not be “meaningful” or “necessary” in the community’s eyes.

I’m hoping that the whole system ends up being a nice collaboration between the players and the devs. As you basically pointed out, it’s pretty silly to just jump into a game and expect perfect balance, and then leave if it isn’t perfectly balanced for another game that will be in the same situation just because that’s how MMO’s are.

That, I think, is the biggest thing that keeps me coming back to this game. That more and more, I see the devs looking at the players and seeing more from our perspective, as we in the community start to see more and more what they are attempting to do for us. I’m not by any means saying they are perfect, and a lot of the time, I’m very unsatisfied with ANet, but I do want to be around when all of the collaborative efforts and discussions pay off, and all of a sudden, we are looking at a final picture at what the game should look and play like.

There is a huge chance that it will probably never happen though haha, but it happened for me in Guild Wars 1, so I’m hoping that ANet pulls off one of those sneaky patches where all of a sudden, I sit back and think to myself that they probably couldn’t make the game any better from that point.

Forzani.2584:

Have you ever considered that the Ranger class doesn’t exist in a vacuum? That if you go to every single class board right now, you will find numerous posts complaining about their class weaknesses and lack of attention from Anet?

No matter what Anet does, there will always be a current #1 class, a current #8 class, and everything in between….and those rankings change over the life of the game. It is impossible to be any other way.

Add to the fact that some players are freaking awesome. They can take any class and make you look silly. Conversely, some players are the opposite of awesome….although they don’t know it, and if they do know it, can’t admit it. So if they don’t do well, then it has to be the class is weak. It could never ever be their lack of skill.

So a bold prediction as people move on to the next best and greatest. Camelot Unchained….Elder Scrolls Online….Everquest Next …or whatever game you choose. It will be a rinse and repeat complaining that they didn’t get class balance right…and if it doesn’t improve they are going to leave and play something else.

The list I’m compiling is more generalized than a class tiering list.

Look:

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design
• More functionality/gameplay options for pets
• Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment

Not a single piece of this list states that anything is imbalanced, but rather, each and every single change on that list at its core is a Quality of Life improvement.

And so what if every single profession subforum has threads about their own classes weaknesses and requested improvements? Isn’t it entirely possible that every single class in the game is due for some Quality of Life improvements?

This thread has nothing to do with whining or crying or saying we’re weak. It was made with the intention for ranger players to be able to evaluate their own class so that when the balance subforum finally opens up, I personally will be able to, at the very least, take a list of improvements that has been discussed within the ranger community to that forum, so that maybe I can get a well organized topic into the balance thread before the forum becomes flooded with everybody just wanting their class to be OP and asking for buffs.

But instead of just dismissing this topic, why don’t you take the time to actually tell me (and everybody else) what you actually think of the list I’m gathering? Are there any points on it you agree with or don’t agree with? Or is the ranger class designed and implemented perfectly, which is why you are against the topic? Your opinion is just as appreciated as anybody else who shares their opinion here, as this is just a friendly discussion

I agree too, I just don’t have faith in ANet as a developer to implement even half of the suggested changes by the time this game has lost most everyone’s interest.

It’s too bad, and I wish they would have allocated the type of resources that the living world requires to fixing the games balance and broken mechanics before worrying about introducing new content, but I guess when a game isn’t a monthly payment and also has micro-transactions, that you aren’t trying to keep players playing and are only trying to get as many people to buy as much as possible before they get bored, and stop playing until the next living world patch, if they even log back in ever.

Sorry, just felt like offering up my criticism about ANet for a moment.

I agree with most all of the reorganization and reworking of mechanic ideas, so I do have the sincerest hope that ANet puts their best efforts towards streamlining big changes that would alter the gameplay experience in the future.

Sube Dai.8496:

I dont think I’d ever pick SotBM, even if it was lower, which is why I think it should be inherent. The signet actives just aren’t that amazing.

I agree personally, but I have yet to see that ANet agrees with us sadly. Outside of Signet of Renewal, I don’t even really see the purpose of ever activating a signet without Signet of the Beastmaster, and having to trait 30 points just to make signets worth activating is beyond terrible design imo.

Honestly, with pets hitting targets, I think the easiest coding change would be to make the pet unaffected by “in combat” movement speeds, and basically always have an out of combat movement speed (obviously this isn’t suggesting that they retain the warp they do when you return them from long distances or they hit their leash).

That way, you throw on swiftness, or Agility Training, or Signet of the Hunt, and now the pet has up to a 33% out of combat movement speed.

Then just balance damage accordingly for certain pets, because I think it’s pretty obvious that some of our pets hitting as often as I’m suggesting with as hard as they currently hit, is a bit ridiculous, at least without the pet scaling off of the players stats.

The “30 trait point or gtfo” investment issue we have with utilities is a very good discussion and is definitely going to get added to the summary the next time a summary post is needed.

Some thoughts on this design though (the 30 point one):

The two utilities we have the least need for 30 trait point investment are Shouts and Survival skills. The problem with each of these is that for shouts, the functionality of them doesn’t even warrant enough functionality to be able to build around. Each shout is very poor on its own, and all a 30 point investment does is add AoE swiftness and regen application, which is only useful for using Guard to apply 100% uptime on those boons, while Guard itself really isn’t even a good skill, and is being used only for Nature’s Voice.

For Survival Skills, there isn’t enough substance to them to build for a survival skill heavy build either, but they are the only skills we have that actually have good base functionality, and really, Sharpening Stone shouldn’t even exist outside of it’s trait form, which has a guaranteed higher usage than the skill itself, because the skill adds 5 bleeds for a 45 second cooldown that most classes in the game can accomplish just by autoattacking (not a single ranger weapon at its very base functionality applies a condition by autoattacking, and the one that does have a condition on autoattack has a positioning requirement).

Because our only two traitlines that aren’t really for heavy utility investment are Wilderness Survival and Beastmastery, it should come as no surprise that the large majority of players choose to invest in either of these traitlines as supplementary choices to the utility they choose to build around.

Skirmishing is a double edged sword because it “feels” like traps are in the wrong traitline, but that is mostly because Skirmishing doesn’t actually offer anything to power builds damage wise other than a 25 trait minor, and the stats acquired (precison/crit damage), and a few niche uses with Moment of Clarity that in totality makes one of the best direct damage traitlines for stats gained also one of the worst traitlines for trait selection.

All in all though, Traps, Spirits, and definitely Signets, require way much investment, and they force builds to specialize their functions in a game where ANet has turned almost every other class into a “swiss army knife,” meaning that they can accomplish or pseudo-accomplish both a wide variety of offensive and defensive roles/abilities with single builds, while Signets and Traps basically have to go full offense, and Spirit builds are basically full support.

Just my own thoughts on the matter. I think that each of the utility Grandmaster traits need to get a Spirits Unbound treatment and get a lower slot, then take an already strong trait, make it stronger, and then bump it up to grandmaster status.

Example: Move Signet of the Beastmaster down, and bump up Eagle Eye to Grandmaster, and on top of it’s current functionality, have it effect the shortbow’s range and damage as well.

Move Trap Potency down, bump Trappers Expertise up to Grandmaster tier and change the functionality to either transfer conditions to enemies on trap pulses, or to remove boons on enemies hit by traps, etc.

Just examples though, we could debate all day which traits need to be moved up and what their new possible functionality could be.

Excellent responses to everyone. This is the most up to date summary, please feel free to continue the discussion from this point or point out anything that may have been missed.

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design
• More functionality/gameplay options for pets

DoYourBestBear.6810:

jcbroe.4329:

DoYourBestBear.6810:

A lot of this has been off-topic and, to reiterate, it would be nice for more suggestions that are specific rather than generalized.

Fair enough.

I can’t speak for most classes on your list in depth other than ranger (not that I only play ranger, but that as my main when I first started the game, I know more in depth about it than other classes), so I’m curious where you think your changes would shift the meta too.

For instance, you only tone down a specific ranger build. I agree with your changes on that front, but what build would you believe replaces it in the new meta that your changes create? Do you believe your changes hit the power creep issues hard enough that builds like, say, the trap build, would be a warranted choice in the new meta, or are the changes meant to shift the “tiering” out of the ranger’s favor entirely because both the engi and necro can bring the same utility to a team, but can potentially build for options outside of how specialized a rangers trap build is.

Basically, I like that your changes address issues within the current metagame, but I don’t see how they open up many options for classes to build around to create more build diversity, which should also be considered as part of the balancing process.

The goal is not to make the spirit ranger build(s) obsolete, but to tone down their relative power so that making a clear and distinct choice between the builds spirit, traps, and BM can be considered within the overall team build to create a further sense of synergy rather than just “spirits are the best at the moment, on account of the team wide support and added damage to the battlefield, as well as incidental sustain on account of an aoe cap of 5 targets.”

Additionally, as things are incrementally toned down (as power creep is pretty evident, toning things down rather than buffing is the move here), things like power ranger and hybrid builds will still to appear with more regularity.

Moreover, the Wilderness Survival trait tree provides unparalleled sustain and is one of the best lines in the entire game – adding active play to this trait line will go along way towards extending the skill ceiling required for competitive play.

Totally agreed.

Thanks for the response. Not sure why there are people up in arms about your thread, but I’d support the suggested changes in a heartbeat.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

A lot of this has been off-topic and, to reiterate, it would be nice for more suggestions that are specific rather than generalized.

Fair enough.

I can’t speak for most classes on your list in depth other than ranger (not that I only play ranger, but that as my main when I first started the game, I know more in depth about it than other classes), so I’m curious where you think your changes would shift the meta too.

For instance, you only tone down a specific ranger build. I agree with your changes on that front, but what build would you believe replaces it in the new meta that your changes create? Do you believe your changes hit the power creep issues hard enough that builds like, say, the trap build, would be a warranted choice in the new meta, or are the changes meant to shift the “tiering” out of the ranger’s favor entirely because both the engi and necro can bring the same utility to a team, but can potentially build for options outside of how specialized a rangers trap build is.

Basically, I like that your changes address issues within the current metagame, but I don’t see how they open up many options for classes to build around to create more build diversity, which should also be considered as part of the balancing process.

Sarrs.4831:

jmatb.6307:

Casuals do not become competitive, because they don’t care enough to put in 20-40 hours a week to practice. Your idea that bribing people who don’t take the time to even learn basic damage formulas to transform themselves into competitive teams is… interesting.

They don’t compete, but they do watch. Espawts needs spectators, and adding more casuals is a very solid, if not the best, way to get them. I’m fairly sure that’s part of LoL’s success; the barrier to entry is very low.

There has to be a point to investing that much time into the game, and that means cash prizes, regular sponsored tournaments, and a skills/balance team that is concerned about PvP’s specific needs with a sense of urgency, not four month cycles where the problems are written off as “nobody adapted to the changes, so it’s not our fault.”

Those first two will never happen without spectators, at least not on the third party side. A quicker skills/balance cycle would be nice (though personally I think just balancing isn’t enough and new content needs to be added to the game regularly to revitalize it).

It’s not like Guild Wars 2 never had spectators. It’s just that none of the resources needed in order to make a game “esports” that were mentioned were utilized in that time frame (a simple urgency of balance would have been nice) and viewers lost interest.

We’re still dealing with issues of screen clutter and cleaning up the UI here, so overall the game just isn’t all that viewer friendly to begin with, and the amount of passive play that goes in the game creates probably the highest barrier of entry possible as a viewer, because there are important things happening in the game that never get seen or noticed by a person that doesn’t know the ins and outs of every build and every trait being used. Even commentators have a rough time explaining what passively proc’d at times because there are just so many things happening passively that it gets difficult to trace certain things back to their source.

Ideally, what jmatb is exactly what the game needed when the population was at its peak. But now, the population has been let stagnate so long that the game would literally need, on top of a huge balance patch, to then have some sort of crazy “hype” campaign to get the word out that the game might actually have a competitive atmosphere afterwards.

Sol.4310:

Yeah I’ve been trying to find way’s to improve the build more but there really isn’t much more you can do.

If there was a decent way to get Swiftness into the build without breaking it that would rock, currently all your swiftness comes from RoA and when your in combat weapon swap. I have been thinking Speed runes, but you lose your forge which is required to counter that burst damage (Protection).

Yeah with the LB/GS I always run 30/30/0/10/0 max DPS build, so HS and Renewal are my only options as condition remove. So many time’s I’ve been condition spammed and well no chance of keeping up I need Renewal for stun-breaks as well not just condition clear.

I’ve even tried using Lyssa Runes and when I’m maxed out with conditions on me hit my elite but normally I can’t come back from it due to how much damage I’ve taken how small heal from HS is.

If we had a different condition remove that doesn’t xfer or require our heal skill to remove we be in decent place.

I’m not exactly sure how viable it is but I’ve been running a Rabid Amulet/Carrion Jewel with speed runes and Triple Traps. A little less hp, a little more toughness, always on movement speed increase and a nice condition damage stat, 0/30/30/10/0.

I’m not sure how it fairs compared to this build, or if the build I’m suggesting was one you had already thought of and tested out, but I just don’t really like the whole Carrion/Forge (or just Carrion) setup. More of a preference than an opinion about viability though.

My own personal opinion on the pet matter is that they should count for more than just DPS. Currently, the system is set up where you either invest in the pet through BM traits, or you don’t, and either way, the pets have the same basic performance, while maybe hitting harder and living a few seconds longer when focused or in AoE.

That makes the design of the pet system extremely linear and simple, you either deal damage with your pets, or you deal more damage with your pets. Any functionality changes through traits involving pets are mostly all transfers to the pets, which is problematic because with the design the way it is, it means you are choosing to harm your DPS much more than the support you gain through the transfer traits, no matter how “needed” those traits are because of their defensive nature.

What I would like to see is for ANet to allow the pet mechanic to be built to be more supportive, through either traiting for F2 skills to have more functionality, or for pet swapping to have more functionality.

Mighty Swap and Vigorous Training are both very good examples, and if Mighty Swap was AoE, it would actually be a very good group support trait on top if it’s solo support functions. I think that adding more functions like this (gaining more boons on pet swap, maybe AoE heal on pet swap, condition removal on pet swap, or any of these functions on F2 activation) would be an incredible asset and would really help out rangers who would rather use their pets for something other than just a damage source, and it would help bandaid fix issues of pet survivability (like sending them into a zerg) because there would be more incentive to keep them on passive and use pet swaps for group support.

That’s just my 2 cents on it though, and that would be my preferred direction to push the pet mechanic in.

Regardless of the specifics, I think we can all agree that right now the pet mechanic is extremely one dimensional, which ends up being one of the things that hurts build versatility more than anything else; that you have this mechanic that no matter what is going to be doing the same exact function in every build.