Guild Wars 2

Chrispy.5641:

- Healing Spring should be changed into a Trap Skill, so it benefits from the Follwoing ::

• Trapper’s Expertise - Ground targeting and increased Radius. (Ability to affect a greater number of allies.)
• Trap Potency - decreased Cooldown. (Make skill faster to access)(increased condition duration would not affect this obviously, maybe increase boon duration as well?)

I don’t know how you want this to get working since traps still need an enemy to trigger them.

SkiTz.4590:

The more responses I read from Anet, the more I realize how little they must play this classes compared to people who have put endless hours into ranger… I’m so close to re-rolling and starting a new main if this “keep rangers as a sustained DPS” nonsense is actually going to happen.

I have spent far too much work on my ranger to simply re-roll another class. I hope they hear what we have to say.
Especially this “We don’t want the ranger to deal too much damage” sounds odd to me since the ranger is the class with the smallest damage output.

Bran.7425:

Not to nitpick, but I can no longer restrain myself. Damage Output is two words.

There you go, thanks for the hint.

The Ranger and his additional pet

Pets need to assist their master by performing desired functions at a level of effectiveness that recognized the limits of the current AI. An AI will never be as good as a normal player. Therefore its very risky to entrust the pet with core mechanics such as beeing a huge part of the overall damage output.

The Ranger should be the principle damage-dealer as a base-line (having the damage potential previously expected of their companions restored to them). This keeps damage potential properly linked to gear selection and provides better parity with other classes.

The pet’s main purpose would be providing utility (healing, cleansing, CC, etc.). Traits can further develop the companion’s role or convert them into a second, lesser DPS threat, but the Ranger is never forced to rely on AI for damage.

Pet skills need to be sufficiently strong to offset their limitations. For example, players seek to position themselves to affect multiple targets. Pet can’t do this, so their skills might hit a 360 degree arc and/or have a greater radius to make up for the weakness in placement.

According to these proposals, the pet will be still usefull and hasn’t to be replaced, since all the aspects the pet provides are additions, which are nice to have but not mandatory in order to be competitive.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.

I don’t like this approach. From a ranger point of view, it would probably take too long to nerf all other classes. From the point of view of all other classes, you will get alot of hatred and I can understand them. Most classes doing fine IMO. Ranger is the one class who lacks of competitive damage. From an overall point of view I’m also agaist this approach. You may not believe it but any sort of grinding, dungeonpaths in particular, is not funny and you’re happy if you’re faster. Toning down every source of damage will just slow down the gameplay.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Tempus.9540:

Allie Murdock.8152:

To those asking how far we would redesign…

PvE Hat on
Out of interest, would you redesign it so Ranger’s long range weapons were nearer the DPS of other classes melee weapons. Across all classes we have that ranged weapons are much, much lower than the melee weapons (with the possible exception of Ele) which had lead to a complete melee dominant PvE Meta – bring melee or go home. If you say that you wouldn’t redesign it in this way, half of the posters here can go home now – bows are a big draw (HoHoHo) to the class, but if they are going to be suboptimal/unwanted for Dungeons, none of the changes to the Ranger will matter if we don’t get to play the archetype we’ve envisioned.

This, this, this, so much this. Is it possible for PvE bows to become just as strong as melee weapons? We already have bosses that have ranged AOE and can range one-shot hits, and mobs with defiance, making it impossible to kite, would it be reasonable to bring ranged weapons up to par with melee weapons? “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.” This is what I want.

I’m +1ing the kitten out of this idea.

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger isn’t expected to do burst damage. By sustained, we mean that the Ranger should excel at surviving (resilient) through burst while still doing enough damage over time to take the opponent down.

But that doesn’t matter in the current PvE meta!
Nobody cares about the ranger beeing able to kite like a mad man.
Damage is the only maxim. And we’re lacking of it.

Regarding petcontrol:

If you’ve played FF12, you may remember the gambitsystem.
Thats exactly how I want to control my pet.
For those who don’t know what I mean:
The gambits where an easy and fast way to “programm” the AI of your characters.
They are arranged according to their hierarchy.

As example: The first instruction (gambit) will be executed as long as the requirement is given (e.g. “retreat when below 20% HP”). If the requirement is not given, the second instruction will be executed as long as its requirement is given (e.g. “attack nearest foe”). So you can not only control how your pet will behave in certain situations but also remap your F1-F3 keys.

Atherakhia.4086:

Every time I read that ‘great sustained damage’ comment I get scared. It just seems like the extreme lack of burst and AE this class has is intended, which then means that a power option for this class will forever be irrelevent outside of PvE because burst and AE are all that matters.

I’m also not sure what kind of damage you think we’re capable of, but the numbers have shown our ranged DPS is about half of what every other melee class is capable of doing nothing but spamming their auto attack (which isn’t their maximum potential).

And then we have the very real problem that sustained damage is boring!

Allie, can you tell us what you think we should be capable of doing at range so maybe we can provide some targetted discussion on why we agree/disagree and why what we have now simply isn’t working?

The one thing I want to take out of this CDI thread more than ANYTHING is the assurance that a power Ranger will be a real thing in this game.

When I think about sustained damage, I think about the warrior. If I’m thinking about the ranger, crappy damage is the only thing that comes in my mind.

Bran.7425:

So you just aren’t ever going to be happy with this profession then.

Let’s see how this CDI turns out.

Nike.2631:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Nike.2631:

Lone Wolf: While your pet is stowed you gain a +25% bonus to Power and Condition Damage.

Change that to “Revert the damageloss caused by the pet” and I’m in.

Any earlier version of that proposal tried to do that with a straight damage buff, but that doesn’t actually work due to the differences in how Power-based and Condition damage are delivered. Plus pets are clearly intended to provide non-DPS contributions to Ranger gameplay, and “cashing them out for nothing but Deeps” loses some of that nuance.

The other thing that has to be acknowledge is that Aspects or Lone Wolf shouldn’t be better than… or even equal to… the advantages pets provide. They’re basically saying “I’ll pay a small loss in effectiveness to get rid of the annoyance of watching Fluffy die over, and over, and over…”

It should be a reluctant alternative, not the definitive solution to bad pet AI.

The advantage you would get while stowing your pet would be, that you deal the full amount of damage, you’ve invested in. If we discount the armortypes, there should be no difference in basedamage between warrior and ranger. However you lose alot of versatility if you go without a pet. You have no access to the F2 skill, the shouts wouldn’t work without a pet, noone would tank for you. Furthermore, if you invest points into the beastmaster traitline, you should be able to deal more damage with your pet than you would be able without your pet.

Bran.7425:

So you options you dislike are complete off the table and do not exist then? No, you just choose not to use them.

I don’t really know what you want to say with this sentence.
However, yes I don’t like the bowskills of th other classes from an archer point of view.
And yes, there are ranged pets who don’t have to close the distance. However those pets are far from daling good damage. Furthermore, they neither get effected by the gear I’m wearing nor the traits I’m using. They have their own stats which I can’t change. This undermines any attempt to squeeze the maximum damage out of the ranger as archer.
Let me explain my thoughts:
I want to play an archer, which relies not only on effective bows, but also on good melee combat. The archer could also have a pet, but not for beeing responsible for 1/3 of my overall damageoutput but scouting or distracting the enemy, giving utility or providing support. I don’t like no pet because of the pet itself but beeing just another, yet unreliable way of dealing damage. I rather want to deal the damage myself than rely on an AI to deal the damage.
However I don’t want to take away the possibilty for other players to use the pet also as a source of damage. Yet I don’t want to be forced to use it if I don’t want to.

mtpelion.4562:

The main gist of my suggestion back there was to give our weapon sets some better (or some) definition. We should have a weapon set that really complements the beastmaster, but it doesn’t have to be the Longbow. I just picked that one because it is so remarkably under…focused?…

You are right about the longbow feeling crude. But I do think it should be tied to the archer instead of the beastmaster. However I can understand your point about having a weapon specialiezed to support your pet.

mtpelion.4562:

Bran.7425:

I have no issue with bows or ranged combat existing, but the community going round and round with the same skritty argument is not helping the matter. You want bows “viable” make suggestion to help counter the overall design that lead to melee superiority.

In my suggestion back on page 1 I suggested that the Longbow become a dedicated “Beastmaster” weapon. You do damage from afar while buffing and synergizing with your pet. That would improve the bow’s viability without making it OP. Not a perfect solution of course, but I thought it was a good idea, which is why I suggested it.

I think Beastmastery and Bows are contradictory gameplays. The bow is tied to the archer, providing great ranged combat. The Pet on the other hand both offering and taking buffs in close range and depends on someone crippling the target.
Furthermore, if you’re playing with a longbow, your pet will waste a remarkable time closing the gab and staying on the target. The only reason to use a pet with a longbow is to keep the target on range, so you can deal max. damage.
The only bow that could be a beastmastery weapon would be the shortbow, since you can still be near your pet.
However, you can make the longbow also viable as beastmaster, but the main playstyle of the longbow should be the art of archery.

will de grijze jager.6594:

an idea let the ranger do 100% of the damage and let the pet do extra damage so like with pet you have 130% and not ranger 70% and pet 30%.
a second one is give ranger more aoe skills

This would be overpowered. However you could drastically lower the base damage the pet is dealing but also increase the power on beastmastery. So if you gonna play zerker ranger you will do alot of damage, while your pet doing nearly nothing.
If you invest points in beastmastery, your damage will be lowered but the damage of your pet increased.

phys.7689:

i dont mean what a ranger is in history, im saying in this game, its defined as a pet class. just like in this game mesmer is always going to be tied to illusions, and thief will always be tied to dual skills, stealth and steal.

The class mechanic is mainly what sets classes apart in this game. Everybody has support/tanks/ranged weapons etc, what really sets classes apart is how they go about doing it, and their class mechanics are a strong definer of that for most classes.

Im saying a lot of people like rangers/long range fighters in other games. but this ranger is actually defined more by its pets than by the fact it has ranged attacks or wilderness flavor.

so when people say they want ranger without the pet, they are kind of saying they want another class. Which im all for, but making ranger into not a pet class is essentially making a new class,

In contrast to other classes, the pet is not extending the gameplay (as much).
If you want to kill a mob, you go in and attack the mob, yor pet will probably do the same.
Without a pet, you would still go in and attack the mob. No difference there.
The only gameplay aspects that are tied to the pet are the shouts and the F2 skills, and both suck.
Another great “gameplay” aspect is keeping your pet alive, which isn’t any more satisfying.
As long as you don’t want to play beastmaster, you will be better off without a pet.
And that what I want to achieve. You can have your pet. But I don’t want it and I don’t want to be punished for not using it.

Tim.6450:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

While the pet is a huge part of the ranger mechanic, the ranger is not only defined by its pet. if you would remove the pet, the class would still work. Furthermore, the pet is the only classmechanic with drawbacks attached to it. You gain advantages but you also have disadvantages. Me and a lot more don’t want to use the pet.

Death shroud is also a class mechanic with drawbacks:
death shroud has several of them:
-no healing (both from itsef and allies)
-no condition removal
-no stunbreakers
-life force diminishes on its own
-no life force on death
-no utility skills

If you use DS you know what drawbacks you gonna take. Furthermore you have the full control when you want to use DS (and accept its weaknesses) and when not.
The pet on the other side can’t be controlled beyond the point of “attack/retreat” and has to stay at your enemy the whole time in order to be effective.
Seriously, DS and the pet are like day and night regarding to their controllability.

Kilger.5490:

There have been ideas presented that make the pet virtually not there.

ie a trait or option to switch pet to an impervious passive buff machine that just follows you around.

I think this is the closest to stowing we could hope for because they’ve said pets are here to stay. I would push this idea if stowing is what you want because its basically the same effect.

I don’t care what they do with the pet, as long as I get the damage back.

Xaylin.1860:

Stowing a pet and gaining some benefits is reasonable for certain areas of the game. Perma-stowing and receiving a 100% damage compensation for it defies the purpose of a pet class. If you don’t like pets, don’t play a pet class. It is a design decision by ANet that the Ranger is the pet class. You might like it or not but that is their vision.

While the pet is a huge part of the ranger mechanic, the ranger is not only defined by its pet. if you would remove the pet, the class would still work. Furthermore, the pet is the only classmechanic with drawbacks attached to it. You gain advantages but you also have disadvantages. Me and a lot more don’t want to use the pet. We should not be forced to use it in order to be competitive. We don’t suggest to remove the pet entirely. We just want to have it optional. Furthermore, this is was Allie said:

Allie Murdock.8152:

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

To get us on the same page again:

The omnipresent flaw with the ranger mechanic

The overall damage the ranger can deal, which should be around the level every other class can deal, is divided to him and his pet. This fact is the reason for all unbalances.
Even with a working pet AI, shared buffs all the way and a decent controllability over the pet this issue wouldn’t been gone.

• If you give one guy 100% damage, he has a 50% chance of failure and a 50% chance of success. He is either able to deliver his damage and wins or he isn’t able and fails.
• However if you split this 100% damage on two guys, they will have only a 33% chance of winning, since their chance of failure is doubled. If just one guys fails to deliver his damage, the other guy will fail as well.

This issue gets further increased by the fact, that one guy, the pet is controlled by an AI, which willl never be as respondive as a normal player would be, which increases the chance of failure.

Ohoni.6057:

Which problems, what would it mess around with? The whole point of the CDI is to kick ideas around until they’re either rejected as being completely worthless or honed to a razor sharp edge. If you see potential flaws in that idea, list them so that I can either try to figure out a way around them, or abandon the idea as unworkable.

If you’re using bows, your pet has to close the distance first, it has to stay in range of the target, it isn’t influenced by buffs (nourishment or stacking sigils), most of our conditionremoves just shift the condition to our pet, which would allow is to deal damage but hinders our pet to deal damage.
To put it simple: With a pet you have the same chance of success as without but you have a doubled chance of failure.

Ohoni.6057:

Our pet don’t die to beeing targeted. They die to massive AoE. Furthermore our pets aren’t even avle to hit most worldbosses.

Duh. The “non-targetable” element would be specifically to address the relatively few encounters in which you don’t want pets, clones, golems, etc. distracting bosses, like the Jade Maw fight.

To let them attack while dead would turn PvP or WvW small encounters into a mess and we still wouldn’t be viable for dungeonruns.

It shouldn’t. As you’ve noted, Rangers are tuned so that 30% of their damage is offloaded onto their pets, allowing pets to attack while dead would just ensure that Rangers would always be doing 100% damage, as I believe you thought they should. I don’t see how that would not be viable in dungeon runs, since you could effectively ignore the things that usually kill pets, since the pet would be just as useful to you “dead,” the only time you’d need to keep them alive is if you intended them to tank for you (which isn’t usually necessary in zergs and groups).

As for PvP situations, players would just have to get used to the new meta that there’s no reason to even try killing the pets, just focus on killing the Ranger, when he dies, the pet dies too.

We can’t just make pets invlunerable, that would be so OP, wouldn’t fix the obstacle issues and would still be a detriment in some boss fights.

Pets should just ignore/not trigger traps and environmental obstacles at all, there’s no reason why they should, given how out of control they are. Enemy mobs typically don’t set these things off, pets should have the same flagging or something.

Having immortal pets would not be OP, so long as they could not hold agro after death, since Rangers are already balanced for permanent pet DPS output. If that’s not the case, if that would be too much total DPs, then they could then tone down their DPS output a bit. They are essentially a type of DoT.

I can see the point you’re trying to make but I’m not convinced. You try to eliminate the damageloss simply by having an immortal pet. That however doesn’t fix all the problems I’ve mentioned in a previous post and I’m concerned that this will mess around with certain gameplay aspects.

Xaylin.1860:

Linking the effect to the animal family is a great idea.

I press for the aura to be additional to the damagerevert if the ranger stowes his pet. The whole idea of permastowing is to be more effective in certain encounters.
I do agree that using the pet should give you bonuses you lose if you don’t use the pet but the damage must be revertet if the pet is stowed.

Ohoni.6057:

Chokolata.1870:

No matter how good ones pet control is, there will still be game modes and situations where the pet is 100% useless or a massive burden. On the top of my head:
-WvW
-Aetherblade dungeon, now fractal
-Twilight arbor
-Arah
-Maw boss fight
-Dynamic molten duo boss fight
-Mai trin boss fight
-etc…

There are 2 ways to approach this. Perma stow or a massive pet survivability buff. WoW did it with a 75% damage taken reduction from AoE.

I would prefer the stow option with a minor buff when stowed. It lets people roleplay the classic archer arhetype that is missing from this game.

How about my suggestion that they be allowed to continue attacking even when dead (but no longer draw agro)? This would allow you to use your pet in all of those situations.

There are still the cases where you just don’t want the pet to draw any agro (like the Maw fight), but I would think the solution there is to just tweak those mobs’ AI to never target pets.

Our pet don’t die to beeing targeted. They die to massive AoE. Furthermore our pets aren’t even able to hit most worldbosses.
To let them attack while dead would turn PvP or WvW small encounters into a mess and we still wouldn’t be viable for dungeonruns.

Blind Jimmy.1634:

What if the Aspect replaced the existing (and generally agreed problematic) F2 skill? What if it functioned more like an Engineer’s toolkit and replaced the player’s 1-5 skills until they either hit the weapon-swap key or actively used the pet again?

While thepet is stowed (or turned into an auro), your F skliis could look like this:
F1 – Ingite Hit (like the Ignite the Flame Legion Stalker is using)
F2 – Poisoned Hit
F3 – Sharpening Stone Hit
F4 – Bilinding Hit
Each effect holds for 5 shots or 5 seconds.

Nike.2631:

Lone Wolf: While your pet is stowed you gain a +25% bonus to Power and Condition Damage.

Change that to “Revert the damageloss caused by the pet” and I’m in.

xallever.1874:

Overall, I’m betting that the majority of the ranger community will be extremely happy with just this change and the non-rooting sword attack.

In fact, it seems that the non-rooting sword attack has become the elephant in the room. Could any of the devs comment on this point? I think it’s a very straightforward point. The other classes could dodge through their auto-attacks, why not this one? I definitely can’t see how the Ranger would be OP just because of this small fix.

I suppose after these two are out of the way, the next major point of discussion would be the traits.

If we’re going to talk about the sword, I would like to bump a post I’ve made earlier in this thread.

I want to make a special post about the ranger sword despite having it mentioned in a previous post already to elaborate my thoughts, since it’s the strongest weapon of the ranger yet it’s the clunkiest one.

PvE

Overview

• Remove the leaps on sword #1
• Both leaps on sword #2 should ge forward
• Animationtime should match evadetime on sword #3

Current Problems

• Leaps on Autoattack can’t be interrupted
• Leaps prevent normal movement
• sword #2 too slow
• sword #2 backleap unpredictable if target is moving
• sowrd #3 unpredictable if target is moving

Proposal

• Sword #1

Remove the leaps. Even if you can evade while performing a leap, it would still prevent your normal movement.

• Sword #2

I would rework this to a double leap, same as the current 2. and 3. autoattack, which cripples your enemy if you hit him and turns into a tripple leap if you hit an enemy once. This skill would get a long uptime of 10 seconds, so you don’t have to leap immediately after your first leap to use all your charges, and a mediocre long cooldown of 20 seconds, starting after the first leap.

• Sword #3

Either the evade time has to be increased to match the animation time or the animation time has to be cut to match the evade time.
Alternatively, the animation could be changed, so you wont dodge around your target but through your target, just like a normal dodgeroll.

Risks
I can’t see any. The gameplay wouldn’t be changed much, the weapon would feel a lot smoother to use.

Shadowsong.4820:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not remotely true. There is not a single class that can completely ignore their class mechanic and still do their best. There are ways to shift them to more of a passive than an active role, just as you don’t have to trait into Beastmaster or slot pet-based utilities, but with any class if you don’t use your class mechanics at all then you’re leaving a ton of DPS on the table.

No other class get its damage cut to 2/3 just to make its mechanic work.
I would happily accept the drawback of noone tanking for me or no skills to use if I just get my missing damage back.

This is a common misconception that the Ranger itself is somehow “entitled” to the damage the pet deals no matter if it’s actually there or not. A large part of playing a Ranger is keeping your pet alive and there have been enough changes to pet survivability already to make this pretty easy everywhere except WvW zergs.

It’s not only the survivability aspect. If you’re using bows, your pet has to close the distance first, it has to stay in range of the target, it isn’t influenced by buffs (nourishment or stacking sigils), most of our conditionremoves just shift the condition to our pet, which would allow is to deal damage but hinders our pet to deal damage.
To put it simple: With a pet you have the same chance of success as without but you have a doubled chance of failure.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Or add the damage from the pet to the ranger when stowed and allow us to keep the F2 of that pet which casts on us or from us instead of the pet.

For instance, the juvenile brown bear when stowed would make our F2 shake it off as it would when the pet is used, but cast on our location. The spider’s poison attack would grant a poison combo field at our feet.

I don’t like this idea simply to the fact, that the stats a pet has are only influenced by the level you are. There would be no difference if you would wear white armorpieces or ascended ones. If the damagemodel would just be reverted to the “normal 100%”, you would be on the level other classes are right now.

KehxD.6847:

Angela Ranna.5638:

Karl McLain.5604:

mtpelion.4562:

Wilderness experts should be masters of poisons. Therefore, Rangers should have the most potent poisons available.

Great point here and I agree. I would be awesome to see a way to increase poison potency for the Ranger and it’s something we’ve been talking about internally as well. We’ll keep looking into it and see if there’s something that can happen here.

Mechanically I love this idea. Thematically I would have pegged thieves as the poisoners. Of the 15 poison skills rangers have access to, only 4 of them aren’t on our pets.

To make it really stick it would need a lot of traits and class balancing to support it.

Yeah it is true. Although I like the idea of more poison, I feel like poison is more Thief and Necro territory, whereas bleeding seems to be for the ranger… which is pretty sad if you think about it. I don’t think ranger should become the “main poison master”, but adding poison here and there and maybe changing a bit bleeding to poison would really be appreciated.

Since the ranger could also be seen as hunter, he should be the master of cripple and torment.

KehxD.6847:

For more read one of my earlier posts xD

Link would be helpfull, since this posts contains over 10 pages.

NemesiS.6749:

if you want a petless character roll a warrior (they are better at everything anyway)

I will repeat myself happily:
No.

Shadowsong.4820:

Allie Murdock.8152:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Gotejjeken.1267:

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class.

You may not be happy about permastowing. I would be absolutely. Furthermore, if you could stow your pet, you could still use it like you are used to. And people like me, who don’t want to rely on the pet can stow it. Simple as that.

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

Permastowing a pet really shouldn’t be the “solution” to clunky pet mechanics. The people who would prefer this over having the pet mechanics improved/reworked just shouldn’t play rangers, I guess.

I never meant to bypass the much needed AI overhaul. But even a working pet AI would not solve the issues I see. So I want the pet to be somehow stowable in addition to an updated pet AI.

Gotejjeken.1267:

An opt out for the pet totally breaks the spirit of the class. There are other classes (see: warrior) if you want to do big damage with no pet reliance.

Pet needs to be out, and there needs to be good reason to use more than a select few. They all have unique abilities, but they are so unresponsive that the utilities are useless. If you redistribute power and make the pet a sole utility provider then you get the best of both worlds. If it dies, the most you lose is the F2 ability.

The ranger is not only about his pet. Hell the ranger is unique in his design and the pet is just a small part of that. I have 2 lvl80 warriors and if I would feel like the warrior beeing the true archer, I would roll warrior all the way. Yet I don’t feel like that. The ranger is my archer and the pet is annoying and reducing my damage.

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m all for removing the pet (or keeping it…), but I’m very concerned with trying to find simple solutions to removing it like the often suggested ‘give Rangers +XX% more damage while the pet is stowed’ solution. Even in their horribly crippled state, the pet can provide a lot of utility. 2 wolf pets left on passive for example provides a ton of single target utility with their leap (which is always the first move used if in range of an enemy when told to attack when passive) leading to a howl, leading to a pet swap, leading to another leap, leading to another howl.

That’s the downside of stowing your pet. As I’ve stated before, you should still gain a bonus if you’re using the pet.

Allie Murdock.8152:

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

First off, glad to hear you take this approach into consideration.

Instead of simply stowing your pet, you could turn your pet into a ghost (or phase shift it, if you don’t like the ghost thingie), which would set your pet on passive mode and makes it immune to damage. You could still use the F2 skill but no other skill bound to the pet.

However I’m concerned about your understanding of the buff the ranger would get.
Would it give the ranger back his lost damage?
Or would it give the ranger additional stats based on the pet you’ve “stowed”?

Gotejjeken.1267:

IMO, the discussion on pets is becoming overcomplicated. Why not just redistribute the power, fix the F2 timing, and keep them as-is? The pet is not the problem if you swap it, its the pet hitting things that is a problem.

Also I am not super happy with the idea of stow buffs and even less happy with a perma stow. The pet is part of me as a Ranger, it is one of the core things of the class.

You may not be happy about permastowing. I would be absolutely. Furthermore, if you could stow your pet, you could still use it like you are used to. And people like me, who don’t want to rely on the pet can stow it. Simple as that.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

You would have to switch both precision and crit damage because otherwise we would have to invest into three traitlines to get max. direct damage.

mtpelion.4562:

Pets need to take 30% damage from AoEs, be immune to one shot mechanics, and take 25% damage from cleaves, when not the selected target for the cleave attack.

I’m thinking of Poppy’s passive (Character from LoL) when I’m reading your suggestion.
“Whenever Poppy would otherwise suffer damage greater than 10% of her current health all damage exceeding that threshold is halved; Poppy receives the first 10% normally.”

How to combine Archer and Beastmaster

The Problem:
Our pet is currently broken. This is one of the reasons this Thread exsists.
There are however different opinions out there how to fix our class mechanic.
The most common suggestions are to either romove the pet and get the missing damage back or fixing its AI, so it can fulfill its purpose as companion.

The Requirement:

• Pet AI has to be fixed
• Most of the traits regarding pets have to be moved to the Beastmaster traitline

The Suggestion:
The pet can be permastowed. While the pet is stowed the ranger damage will be raised to 100%
The ranger also gets new F1-F4 skills.
When you stow your pet you can’t summon it for the next 60 seconds.
All Skills who interact with the pet will lose the interaction as long as the pet is stowed.

While the pet is summoned the damagemodel will go back to its current values. (For the following explanation I will assume that this damagemodel is around 70% to 30%)
If you invest points into the Beastmaster traitline, you can increase the damage your pet is dealing up to 39%, so you will end up dealing 109% damage.

Conclusion:
The pets will never synergise completely with the ranger, espacially if you’re using ranged weapons. Therefore give us the possibility to bypass this issue. However, if you decide to play with your pet, you should end up dealing slightly more damage or beeing more effective in general.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not remotely true. There is not a single class that can completely ignore their class mechanic and still do their best. There are ways to shift them to more of a passive than an active role, just as you don’t have to trait into Beastmaster or slot pet-based utilities, but with any class if you don’t use your class mechanics at all then you’re leaving a ton of DPS on the table.

No other class get its damage cut to 2/3 just to make its mechanic work.
I would happily accept the drawback of noone tanking for me or no skills to use if I just get my missing damage back.

Ohoni.6057:

I play an archer Thief and it works great.

This twirling, exploding or poisoning arrows at crappy range shooting and shadowstepping is an archer for you? If you think so, you have your archer.
But for me an archer would be exact that what the ranger is offering with his bows.

Look, nobody is saying that you can’t play as a Ranger with a bow, but nobody EVER promised you that you could play as a Ranger without a pet, much less that playing as a Ranger without a pet should be just as viable as with a pet.

The ranger is described as a bow using class, which relies on its pet.
Yet you don’t have to use bows. So why am I forced to use pets?

If having a pet, and having to depend on that pet for a portion of your effectiveness, will always bother you, then your only option is to reroll, because so long as you have a Ranger, your pet is responsible for ~30% of your DPS. End of story.

The pet is a mess. You are losing damage so your can pet deal damage. No other class in this game has any drawbacks from not using their classmechanic. It’s me that losing damage every time I attack because my pet sits on 30% of my damage without using it.

If you’re determined to stick with the Ranger class, then get used to having a pet. If you don’t think pets currently work well (and many agree with that), then work on ways to make them less of a hassle, not on ways to remove them from your presence entirely.

No.
Actually I don’t want the pets to be removed. I want the damageloss on ranger to be removed. However I don’t mind if they have to remove the pet because of that.

Ohoni.6057:

I’ve created my ranger expecting an archer.

Then you picked the wrong class. The Warrior and Thief are the Archers, the Ranger is a pet class that can use a bow, really more Druid than Archer. Which other class you pick depends on what else you want to do, but either class is great and leveling to 80 in the current environment is fairly easy. Good luck.

You have given the answer to your question in your own statement. Ranger is the only class who can both use longbow and shortbow. And yes, I’m already running both Kudzu and The Dreamer. Ranger is one of the classes who reach 1500 range. I don’t agree with any other point you mentioned. Thief as archer? LoL yes, thief is the is the first class which comes in my mind if I’m thinking about archers… not. Or yeah, reroll a warrior… no. Gosh I hate those guys. “If u want to play archer, play warrior” is one of the most stupid things I’ve heard in this forum.
Rangers meant to be the archers of GW2, yet they get hindered by their pet.

PvE
Some small Trait suggestions

Eagle EyE should also apply to the shortbow.
Piercing Arrows should also increase the chance of physical projectile combo finisher to 40% (or higher).

Nike.2631:

I’m disappointed that one of the few responses we have seen amounts to an Open Admission that they’ve had their fingers in their ears about Ranger concerns since approximately forever.

In addititon to that I will sum up my philosophy about the ranger:
When I created my ranger back in the first days of GW2, I was expecting an archer.
I am dissapointed because the ranger is the only class who suffers from its unique skill, the pets. Furthermore the ranged combat is in a very bad spot in GW2. These are the main reasons why I am not satified with the current ranger class.
My goal is to make the pets optional and increase the effectiveness of ranged combat.

Einlanzer.1627:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Yeah, please buff the last thing of the warrior which might be bad so he’s overperforming all the way. Seriously, they should bring the warrior in line with the other professions before buffing anything.

God I hate these posts. The question of warrior OPness has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Dual Shot is extremely poorly tuned.

The warrior LB is a condition/hybrid weapon with access to burn and bleed on top of immobilize and blind. It is not meant to deal high direct damage.
Anyways people started to complain about this when hambow got viable.
tl;dr the newbs started ranging about the LB not dealing as much damage as axe or greatsword.

Guys… It’s 9 o’clock in Seattle… Can’t you wait one day?

Yeah, please buff the last thing of the warrior which might be bad so he’s overperforming all the way. Seriously, they should bring the warrior in line with the other professions before buffing anything.

SkiTz.4590:

OK, I’ll keep my poop together, than, after 48 hours, if there is nothing said by anet team, than can i release my poop?

No.

SkiTz.4590:

This CDI is absolutely pointless when no devs are going to jump in and relay their thoughts on all this… already 8 pages worth of viable suggestions and not a single person on anet staff bothers to give feedback….

that tells me 2 things.
1 – they don’t give a kitten about rangers (we already know this to be true because of their utter disregard for class mechanics)
2 – No one at anet even plays rangers – probably also true when I saw on of the devs live stream talk about rangers and he basically said majority of this class doesn’t make any sense and has very little synergy.

Honestly, someone from anet staff please tell me how many hours they have played on a ranger?? does ANYONE on this dev team even know whats going?

This thread is threehundretmotherfartingfifty posts long and its been out for not even 24h! Keep ur poop together, there is just one person (Allie) mentoring this thread.

xallever.1874:

Zatoichi.1049:

So its been about 24 hours at at this point, 7 pages of proposals, and very little response (pratically none) to said proposals from devs. I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly?) that devs would be active proponents in the advancement of the discussion in this forum. So far what im mostly seeing is people posting their own ideas and ignoring/bypassing the ideas of others. We honestly need some sort of moderation in here, motivation if you will, on the part of the devs, to move this thread in a direction of discussion, other wise by tommorow well be 20 pages in, floating in a sea of lost and forgotten proposals. Are the ideas good so far? are they way off base? What aspects of the proposals so far are peaking your intrest? More dev involvment please from here on out please.

This. +1

Otherwise, CDI or not…

It’s 8 o’clock in seattle. Just wait, you probably wont get response to your suggestion anyways since this thread is already 350 posts long.