QOL fixes for ranger

[scerevisiae.1972]

Ranger is an interesting and potentially diverse class, but virtually every WVW ranger has more or less the same basic longbow build, with the same traits/utilities, and is not at all wanted in groups/guilds that take WVW seriously.

This is really frustrating. While trait choices for Rangers IMHO are pretty good, the utilities are particularly unbalanced and, i think, not as generally useful as they should be.

There are a number of fairly small QOL changes that could improve the diversity and level of acceptance of rangers in WVW.

• Spirits. The recent rework introduced cool new mechanics (teleport) but sadly all the spirt are VERY under-tuned. the active casts WAY too slowly. should be 0.25sec (or instant) for the active effect, not 0.25sec to teleport then ~1.5sec for the active to occur. the passive radius is WAY too small. make it 1200 radius by default but limit the number of allies affected per pulse, eg: 3 allies affected every 3sec. spirits should be immune to damage, but still affected by CC, ie: health degen through passive/active uses should be the only way they die (they're spirits, right?)
  all the spirit actives should be some amount of AOE damage, and should be able to crit (storm spirit active can't crit). storm spirit active dmg is a bit high.
• Glyphs are fine but the AOE from Verdant Etching (heal/condi clear on Glyph use) is unreasonably small, just make it 240 (or 360). the heal value is already fairly small for the build investment required to make them work.
• Druid leans towards condi damage but Staff is a (weak) power weapon. Add ~3 bleeding stacks to the #4 and small amount of poison (1 stack, 2 sec) to targets affected by the #2.
• M/H Axe. Just make the #2 usable without a target (ie: fires in a forwards cone by default)
• Soulbeast M/H dagger. The #2 should be 5 targets in 150 AOE. The #3 leap is cool but why make it so short? just make it 600 (and buff the warrior m/h dagger to be the same). Current SB dagger is a good example of Anet designing a weapon to only have 1 realistic use, in this case static PVE fights. just make it usable and fun, please!
• Shortbow should have an AOE skill (as all weapons should) - the #4 and #5 skills are pretty similar - keep one and remake the other into a cone AOE skill, eg: 3-5 arrows in a cone that daze.
• Traps are almost there, i see no reason why the activation radius should be 180 while the effect radius is 240. just make them the same, and make the poison trap 5 targets like the others are. Building around traps virtually requires trapper runes though (which is annoying), maybe make the stealth or superspeed baseline?
• Since renaming shouts to commands, they've lost the 1 thing that made them slottable -- the interaction with shouts and Trooper runes. maybe consider adding something back to the Command trait, eg: activating a Command skill also grants regen and swiftness around your pet. Regeneration on pets is 100% more effective.
• and lastly, pets. All but a few are truly horrible, mainly because pets are so generic and ineffective most of the time. Pets should: have variable movement speed, matching their pet family - birds and cats fast, bears and drakes slow have some level of native AOE resistance, as WOW pets do. Tanky, slow pets like bears/drakes should be 90% immune to AOE damage, fast/damage pets 30%. Pets should still take full damage from attacks that directly target them. have active skills that activate in 0.25sec as a general rule, with the exception of strong CC skills like wolves. flying and burrowing pets should be able to move onto tower/keep walls.** I'd really like my choice of pet to matter, not just because of an OP active skill or just for looks.

Apologies about the wall of text.

[Beddo.1907]

"limit the number of allies affected per pulse, eg: 3 allies affected every 3sec."- I'd take more targets over better radius since they lose hp per tick.Damage changes are just a bad idea. The immunity sounds much better(and will never be a thing with damage).

"Glyphs are fine"- no they are not fine. I've only found use for the pull/knockback and stun Glyphs, but other Glyphs are really terrible.

"Add ~3 bleeding stacks to the #4 and small amount of poison (1 stack, 2 sec) to targets affected by the #2."- While I agree with more damage, I think staff just needs to be reworked for defence and utility while damage is done by pet and 2nd weapon/s, instead on making a bow/axe with some healing.

"M/H Axe. Just make the #2 usable without a target"-but... you can do that.

"Soulbeast M/H dagger..." this weapon will never be good in pvp/wvw with those skills. It has NO utility just damage, damage with damage buff and dash that makes you slower with that animation. So just two things to do: leave it be in pve or rework it.

"Shortbow..."- it has the aoe on skill 2. "3-5 arrows in a cone that daze."- that would mean that you can hit 5 cc in one skill, which does way to much damage to CC bar.

"Traps..."- no. The trigger radius is smaller because you could activate it with taking just 1 tick of it's effect if it was the same as effect radius. The stealth and superspeed would be fine if it was on trait.

"activating a Command skill also grants regen and swiftness around your pet. Regeneration on pets is 100% more effective."-Resounding Timbre already does that around you and regen on pet is stupid idea because it does nothing, since pet is mostly on full hp or instantly dead.

"and lastly, pets. All but a few are truly horrible, mainly because pets are so generic and ineffective most of the time. Pets should":

• Bird family already has speed buff and feline family has dash and when they are on target they are fast enough anyway. The other thing is just a nerf(Why?).-The aoe thing is stupid because why would I want my pet to take less damage for being to slow to move arround and do anything? Also the same thing as said in better regen. In WvW 10% damage taken in zerg from ~20 aoe that deals 3-6k damage is still big enough to kill your pet instantly.-Skill activation needs AI changes so pets won't cancel the skill 5 times on button press, not faster cast/animation.-No minion or pet should be EVER allowed to go up the walls (appart from Mesmer and Revenant summons)-The pet buffs and reworks are a must but probably won't happen since that would take too much time compared to the effect.

Overall Ranger needs reworks not just some buffs that won't matter since ranger skills are way to simple compared to other classes.