NERF RANGERS

[aymnad.9023]

@Daishi.6027 said:

@aymnad.9023 said:

@Daishi.6027 said:Even without the auto GS offers a large block and an evade follow up and it's not that hard to land in a team fight, and a flat 30% recharge to a single evade isn't what I'd call "mediocre". But let's say I concede that point and ignore auto, even then; with WS alone you get a passive 25% endurance regen,You do not throw away your evade counter in a tf. That will be a sign of "hey guys, time to go on me". Yes the GS auto effect is mediocre. Committing to the end is pure suicide, the benefits are so small they barely exist. You play it like you can stay on it, it just does not happen, give it a try.Not 100% sure what you are trying to say here, but: Sure you do have to switch off it, but it's hardly a "time to get me" moment because there are a lot of other defensive tools a ranger can employ; including switching to longbow pinging literally anything, and breaking target to re-position.Ranger tends to get focused, I was just saying to wait than using it asap as any defensive skill.

lol, the point is that the line gives to much sustain. It doesn't need to give all that endurance regen and health sustain, that is far superior to any other class, and

then

fix the need to spec into cleanses and stunbreaks.I agree that WS is overloaded. As I said,I would love to have more options but that will requiere a full change on core ranger. Issue is still that ranger has no other option and it only puts them around other profession level.

There is a significant reason why pre-PoF 1v1 tournies were banning the use of WS+BM forcing people to pick one.Did they really forbid those 2? I stopped almost a year before PoF then came back. From what I remember druid was a thing in HoT and the start of PoF with Nature magic not BM. Maybe for core but still. WS and BM serve completely different purpose. I will trust you on this.

Also your point about troll unguent is the exact one I'm making, it's covered by all this sustain, and then made better with all the passive regen built in. I agree that troll unguent isn't that strong alone. Anyone saying that, that is what needs to be nerfed clearly doesn't understand what's compounding with it.We agree on this point but the only thing I want to repeat is even with this ranger still struggles to survive an aggression or a 1V1. So if they really want to decrease it they have to be really careful.Against the stupidity of current Weaver, pre-nerf holo, and war. Sure, but against pretty much anything else you can play defensive and contest a point. If you don't allow a decap, or push them off point you win. You don't need to "win" a fight to win in conquest, and that's part of the problem why stuff like this is problematic. Things like this needs to be pointed out especially now in this transitional time, otherwise we set a precedent for unhealthy play.Outside of burst builds of this meta almost all of them can defend a point some time. Trapper dh, dodge thief , condition rev. core necro ... They just will move after some time vs a full duellist.

I mean... I didn't really want to get into a class based comparison, so I'll try to be brief. I've said Condi Mirage has balance issues, but I don't think evasion is one of them and frankly; No. It's not to much. Evades and blocks are superior on Ranger.Mirage has: 2 evades, 1 hard on demand block or evade with 1 out of 2 weapon sets; regardless of spec, distortion which costs all your resources, and a mirror on heal which tells you exactly where and when he's going to evade, with less endurance regen via worse vigor uptime, and no passive. While Ranger gets 2 evades, multiple hard blocks and evades on 1 of 2 weapon sets (and has historically had meta builds that had 2 weapon sets with on demand block/evasion), passive regen, AND better vigor uptime, Then utilities where you can have your pick of signet of stone or lightning reflexes, and then smoke assault if soul beast, on top of GS auto regen.Even if Mirage had more on demand cooldowns, which it doesn't; Ranger still wins out with endurance regen.Mirage is still ahead when it comes to evade. Only way you would be higher on ranger would be going for a specific build (vulture stance) and you deal way less pressure while evading.

Just to compare: Even if we were to go the absolute worst, with traited scepter (which no one does because everyone is obsessed with chaos) we are still talking about a one hit counter. Compared to ranger GS which can block multiple hits and multi hit attacks, and can delay the flip over evade to deny multiple important cooldowns... All while the cooldown difference between those block skills being 4 seconds, on account of BM being almost as bloated as WS so everyone having it traited.Number of block is definitely on ranger with gs but that is the only source. Mirage does get some blocks with aegis. Chaos armor/storm, while random, do still pump a good amount of damage mitigation.

The stealth roamer classes that are the primary users of stealth, should probably be able to stealth. Yet ranger out paces untraited mesmer with 1 weapon, and traited only adds 1.5 seconds to every 3 second cooldown; so great 4.5 seconds of stealth for a 30 second cooldown. This is still far inferior to 3 seconds on a 12 second cooldown.Even then, the only build that can make use of it is a core build, that builds itself to hide a frankly easily avoidable one shot that is countered simply by map awareness and sound, and has LESS evade than even mirage.Let's not go down that route. Map awareness on a out of range invisibility no idea of when the damage can drop, killing someone with 2.8k thoughness in less than a second…

Regardless I strongly disagree, with the notion that ranger suffers

more

from being revealed. With the amount of defensive cooldowns, and passive sustain for both health and endurance afforded to rangers; Thief and Mesmer are far more at risk when revealed. Although, admittedly thief may have more evasion than even ranger; but usually not if they are specced for perma stealth.Lb ranger is hit harder than a dagger or sword thief or a sword or scepter mesmer on reveal. You cannot compare those and say they are on the same level. Lb is clearly designed to not stand close combat and that is ok.

As for not mentioning AoEs for the others, that's because you can simply move out of it or your opponent has to guess where you are. Only Shadow Refuge (and I guess veil; lol) require you to sit in an obvious location for 4-5 seconds.(Also it's funny that you mention it being dispelled since ranger is one of the biggest offenders of dispelling it. So not only to get they get the best easy access stealth skill, but they also can remove it from others.)Ranger has nothing to do with dispell. It has 1 on druid and nobody uses it. You are probably thinking about sicem which does not reveal someone already stealthed, It only prevents future applications with a big warning sound.

Everyone needs to blow their defensive CDs to avoid burst, and everyone needs to cover their heal.Ranger just has a lot of tools for a long heal, which means they live longer; which is unhealthy for conqeust. Either way by the end of that process, Ranger passively out paces the resources of most classes that don't just naturally dunk it... Which is still most of the roster.It does have a good anti burst and is definitly strong vs physical builds.But the reason they do is because they switch range / close combat. If they stood in 1 they would be considerably weaker than other professions.

Plus unreliable because it doesn't proc on a defensive cooldown? I mean my entire premise is about the survivability being to much. If you've forced your opponent to block or defend themselves in someway, that is more time given to the ranger for cooldowns and regen to come back. If a player blocks and you don't shoot, you have the stealth and the time they spent blocking.If they block your shot, you still get the time they spent blocking. Also this is comparing defensive skills to counter something on a 12 second cooldown that isn't a main source of damage burst.Hum how often do you see people dodging / blocking the arrow on purpose? Most of the time (probably > 95%) people do not even block/dodge it intentionally.You could say the same thing about any skill in the game, unless it's a big hit that's actively avoided. If you didn't shoot it at a vulnerable time that's a bit on you; and it doesn't matter anyways it comes back up in 12 seconds. Besides it's easy to ping a different target occupied with someone else, or ping a pet.Very few classes have reflect, most reflect is obvious, anyone who reflects it is probably going to instantly reveal themselves since as you pointed out "no one particularly intends to avoid it", and I hardly consider "hit someone with this every 12 seconds" to be much of a weakness unless your goal is to stealth out of combat, because in combat: Even if you whiff twice you're still getting better stealth than any of the skills I mentioned, bundled into 1 weapon that is also a good damage weapon.So outside of a pet the stealth is in no way guaranteed. I agree about reflect but not the benefits. If you have to wait 12 more seconds to get stealth or just cannot weapon swap right away, you die. You can use a point blank hunter shot, survive the cleave but then you have to leave the fight.

Symbol Gaurds cleave, but if the pet is not right on the ranger and being harassed the guard has to pump it's cooldowns into the pet and requires both to be in close proximity. (I personally have used this to make symbolgaurds blow cooldowns while kiting them, and when pet was close to dead I swapped and went aggro.)Yes the positioning comes into play. But it does not deny that it gets cleared quite fast and without any specific focus.

Condi mirage is mostly single target outside of staff, and bounces prioritize allies. If a mirage wants to condi your pet they have to focus it.That is true. It does not kill it not as fast as other specs I mentioned but still does not care about its existence.

You're right, it isn't the best 1v1er but it has some good matchups. I wouldn't call it the worst team fighter but sure, it's no necro/gaurd, and it may not be a support class.But you do know what it is? A bruiser that is dangerously close to a bunker, and for the few matchups you lose you can out-sustain the rest of the game while sitting on point. This is unhealthy for conquest and why it will be a problem if it's not one now.It does have some bunker builds even if they got nerfed hard (they were pretty lazy, I did not like them but so much for build diversity). It still has a long way to reach the level of a bunker spec. I did give druid an other try recently, it still is a better bunker than support but is not on the level of others.

I have been thinking about slb for a while and I could suggest something like this : Pets get regened for 10% each second on merge but pet swap takes 0.75s to cast. This way you do not get a pet as often, force the slb to stay merged and it does loose a benefit of quick swap + you can stop him. I know non ranger players are going to say "lol is that a joke?" and ranger players "do you want to destroy it?". You clearly do not want to stay merged on slb, you loose a lot and opponents want to kill pets faster than it already dies, those are heavier nerfs on something already struggling than some might think.

Edit : I still want to see more variety on ranger so reworks / buffs on some stuff to make it viable. Condi, while strong, is not viable at all and healer builds are non existant.

[Daishi.6027]

@"aymnad.9023" said:Mirage is still ahead when it comes to evade. Only way you would be higher on ranger would be going for a specific build (vulture stance) and you deal way less pressure while evading.

Back around season 9ish prior to any Mirage nerfs there was a comprehensive comparison between DD and condi Mirage's evasion. DD came out far ahead of on demand access and evasion uptime, over the course of a time period (I think it was 2 - 5 min). This included blocks, invulns, aegis, blinds, vigor, and endurance regen. When speculation of if it was still "overpowered" came up they included ranger, and found this was really close to mirage. Mirage won out on overall uptime, but ranger still won "on demand" options. This was BEFORE mirage's survivability was heavily nerfed (including heavy hits to vigor, 1/4 second chopped off evasion [rightly so], increased cooldowns to select skills, and traited blinds were set to only one shatter ) while ranger did not get such changes. With basic inference you could come at least to the conclusion that mirage has less on demand defensive cooldowns.

Let's not go down that route. Map awareness on a out of range invisibility no idea of when the damage can drop, killing someone with 2.8k thoughness in less than a second…

We don't need to go down it, but players have learned to anticipate it in an attempt to counter it. You see this in high games involving these types of mesmers, and quite often some are successful.

Lb ranger is hit harder than a dagger or sword thief or a sword or scepter mesmer on reveal. You cannot compare those and say they are on the same level. Lb is clearly designed to not stand close combat and that is ok.

I mean Mirage wouldn't want to get close either, and dagger thief wants to hit on their terms. Sword thief okay sure; but that's because of sword 2 abuse (which I argue needs to be nerfed too). Ranger's lack of teleport makes this argument a bit more valid, but I hardly see much of a distinction; for the most part it puts all three in a disadvantaged state.

Ranger has nothing to do with dispell. It has 1 on druid and nobody uses it. You are probably thinking about sicem which does not reveal someone already stealthed, It only prevents future applications with a big warning sound.

I was using reveal synonymously with your use of "dispell", sorry if that caused confusion. Either way it denies it, and if the skill has a cooldown and is used for whatever reason that's a full cooldown for the mediocre secondary effect. (if it has one)

It does have a good anti burst and is definitly strong vs physical builds.But the reason they do is because they switch range / close combat. If they stood in 1 they would be considerably weaker than other professions.

Well... There are a lot of physical builds, and frankly I don't think condi is properly balanced in comparison to power anyways; being a poor matchup to something like that isn't exactly a ringing justification, although it may because of some potent builds, but hopefully they will be toned down as well. Also getting pushed off point isn't so bad when you can passively pressure it with pet outside of LoS (assuming not one of the few classes that kills it for free), and can reliably attack anyone on it yourself with LoS.

So outside of a pet the stealth is in no way guaranteed. I agree about reflect but not the benefits. If you have to wait 12 more seconds to get stealth or just cannot weapon swap right away, you die. You can use a point blank hunter shot, survive the cleave but then you have to leave the fight.

It's not 100% guaranteed, but the ability to try every 12 seconds is more than enough; and on average will net wayyyy more stealth than the 30 second cooldowns.Let's change the context of your words a little "You can use a 30 second cooldown, survive the cleave but then you have to leave the fight." The only difference here is that if you even got off the cooldown (got off in terms of being used before a channeled skill) and are chased; you wont get another chance within 12 seconds, or a second chance on the 24th second; and most classes don't have the regen for both evasion and hp the way ranger does.

Also frankly, and this statement here may 100% just be my bias, so feel free to disregard this, but: 3 seconds of stealth every 12 seconds 100% guaranteed vs anything that has a pet is pretty unfair, particularly if those classes are reliant on single target damage.

Symbol Gaurds cleave, but if the pet is not right on the ranger and being harassed the guard has to pump it's cooldowns into the pet and requires both to be in close proximity. (I personally have used this to make symbolgaurds blow cooldowns while kiting them, and when pet was close to dead I swapped and went aggro.)Yes the positioning comes into play. But it does not deny that it gets cleared quite fast and without any specific focus.

Eh, I find this to be quite a bit debatable, but I'll concede it to you; in that if you aren't actively trying to deal with heavy pressure on average this is going to cleave both the pet and the ranger.

Condi mirage is mostly single target outside of staff, and bounces prioritize allies. If a mirage wants to condi your pet they have to focus it.That is true. It does not kill it not as fast as other specs I mentioned but still does not care about its existence.

I disagree, it cares more than you think. It only seems that way because it's trying to hard focus you before pet can do any work, and if they ever did try to single it out, pet swap will just waste their cooldowns.

It does have some bunker builds even if they got nerfed hard (they were pretty lazy, I did not like them but so much for build diversity). It still has a long way to reach the level of a bunker spec. I did give druid an other try recently, it still is a better bunker than support but is not on the level of others.

Either way I don't think that type of play is healthy for the game on both a player an viewer level, and if we're toning stuff down; I strongly feel that needs to come with it.

I have been thinking about slb for a while and I could suggest something like this : Pets get regened for 10% each second on merge but pet swap takes 0.75s to cast. This way you do not get a pet as often, force the slb to stay merged and it does loose a benefit of quick swap + you can stop him. I know non ranger players are going to say "lol is that a joke?" and ranger players "do you want to destroy it?". You clearly do not want to stay merged on slb, you loose a lot and opponents want to kill pets faster than it already dies, those are heavier nerfs on something already struggling than some might think.

That is a very interesting change... I think that might be more extreme than what I'd suggest, but it also might tidy up the play style and functionality since A-net seems to be thinking towards "trade offs". I probably wouldn't be the one to go around advocating for that specifically, but I do like the way you are thinking.

P.S. I do want to take a moment to thank you, it's really nice that we can have a civil discussion, and actually talk it out instead of throwing out ad hominems, and trying to win on fallacious arguments, or hyperbole.

We clearly had different opinions and different biases, and that's fine; it's why these discussions are important.

[aymnad.9023]

@Daishi.6027 said:

@"aymnad.9023" said:Mirage is still ahead when it comes to evade. Only way you would be higher on ranger would be going for a specific build (vulture stance) and you deal way less pressure while evading.

Back around season 9ish prior to any Mirage nerfs there was a comprehensive comparison between DD and condi Mirage's evasion. DD came out far ahead of on demand access and evasion uptime, over the course of a time period (I think it was 2 - 5 min). This included blocks, invulns, aegis, blinds, vigor, and endurance regen. When speculation of if it was still "overpowered" came up they included ranger, and found this was really close to mirage. Mirage won out on overall uptime, but ranger still won "on demand" options. This was BEFORE mirage's survivability was heavily nerfed (including heavy hits to vigor, 1/4 second chopped off evasion [rightly so], increased cooldowns to select skills, and traited blinds were set to only one shatter ) while ranger did not get such changes. With basic inference you could come at least to the conclusion that mirage has less on demand defensive cooldowns.Ranger weapons and utilities do offer a good amount of evades. I think the reason they are not used as much is because they only give a small additional effect. If some day a build makes a good use of evade (getting more damage or regen), it could be ridiculous. Because Boonbeast and bunker druid were already going in this direction I think it made the dev clean few of things.

It does have a good anti burst and is definitly strong vs physical builds.But the reason they do is because they switch range / close combat. If they stood in 1 they would be considerably weaker than other professions.

Well... There are a lot of physical builds, and frankly I don't think condi is properly balanced in comparison to power anyways; being a poor matchup to something like that isn't exactly a ringing justification, although it may because of some potent builds, but hopefully they will be toned down as well. Also getting pushed off point isn't so bad when you can passively pressure it with pet outside of LoS (assuming not one of the few classes that kills it for free), and can reliably attack anyone on it yourself with LoS.Ranger definitely has a good amount of matchups in solo queue (I still think in teams it falls of).

For the pet + LoSIf you are out of LoS it also means you cannot use range weapons, then you also miss pet buffs. I hate Niflhel because it is almost impossible to damage a sidenoder here. People are always in a corner waiting for me to go down and just kill the pet. Without dealing range damage + pet first, no way you go on a point. Coliseum, while beeing closed too, allows me to kite so I find it more fair.Now in general : if you only look at pets auto it is weaker than throwing a few condi but if it lands its damage skills, then it is higher. So I guess you should have more skills requiring ranger LoS and give ranger more control over pet skills? This has been a suggestion on ranger side because this is one of the multiple reason why so many pets are bad/not viable (bugs, weak spells, stats are the other reasons). They have autos, maybe 1 thing that could be good but is slow, you cannot control and that's it.If you remove the damage and add utilities people will still see it as a passive source of bonus. Most of the utilities on pets are weaker than a utility and have longer cd so here rangers are the one complaining X)EDIT : outside of cc which are still a utility in some way. Guess that part should have longer cd if ranger can control them.I am pretty sure if pets were the same (stats and skills) and only difference was a skin, they would still be complains.

Also frankly, and this statement here may 100% just be my bias, so feel free to disregard this, but: 3 seconds of stealth every 12 seconds 100% guaranteed vs anything that has a pet is pretty unfair, particularly if those classes are reliant on single target damage.You are right. In a fight VS another ranger (non merged slb so >95% of the time) or a mesmer (even if a strong mirage uses a dodge to avoid the shot that is good for the ranger team) this is a full "save me". I hate magebane tether guaranteed on pet because it feels cheap and this is the same thing. But since pets / summons are supposed to be both a strength and a weakness I do not see it getting changed anytime soon.

Condi mirage is mostly single target outside of staff, and bounces prioritize allies. If a mirage wants to condi your pet they have to focus it.That is true. It does not kill it not as fast as other specs I mentioned but still does not care about its existence.

I disagree, it cares more than you think. It only seems that way because it's trying to hard focus you before pet can do any work, and if they ever did try to single it out, pet swap will just waste their cooldowns.I am no mirage players but this how I felt fighting them for the past seasons.

It does have some bunker builds even if they got nerfed hard (they were pretty lazy, I did not like them but so much for build diversity). It still has a long way to reach the level of a bunker spec. I did give druid an other try recently, it still is a better bunker than support but is not on the level of others. (quite frustrating when he is decent/good because you cannot win)

Either way I don't think that type of play is healthy for the game on both a player an viewer level, and if we're toning stuff down; I strongly feel that needs to come with it.I am not a fan of bunker but most of the current ones are not the unkillable monsters they used to be. I think just some small damage nerf on some skills would be enough because you can at least fight weaker players.

P.S. I do want to take a moment to thank you, it's really nice that we can have a civil discussion, and actually talk it out instead of throwing out ad hominems, and trying to win on fallacious arguments, or hyperbole.We clearly had different opinions and different biases, and that's fine; it's why these discussions are important.Thank you, I also appreciate this discussion. I think the forums are the best place to take some times to think about the all pvp experience. This is also why I answered you and not some comments which are the same you see after a loss streak in the pvp lobby.

[Shagie.7612]

Bambi's pretty dumb. I crit a weaver (psure he was a standard burn weaver) for like 11k with a head toss a couple days ago lol. Hilarious, but also pretty stupid.

I'm curious what players actually want from Ranger though. Or rather, what they're expecting to happen when they fight against it.Pets have similar issues to WoW, in that nobody wants them to actually hurt, because they're annoying and AI and can put some hurt out with essentially zero input from the ranger himself, but if you change them and start giving the player more control over their damage and abilities or restructure where damage/CC comes from, I don't think people would be particularly happy about that either.

Throw long range and high spike on top of that and it's really not that hard to figure out why there's calls for nerfs. But in the same way, if you start adjusting those metrics and making changes elsewhere, I don't think that'd be particularly well received either.

Also, I think ultimately it was a bit of a mistake to have pets have their own set of non-scaling stats. I think having them have been based on what the player puts on for gear would have been a better move, way back when they were first being created. It's probably a minor issue in the grand scheme of things but I think it's made it harder to adjust the class because you have this static chunk of a class that doesn't change whether you're condi, power, bunker, or whatever.

[apharma.3741]

@Shagie.7612 said:Bambi's pretty dumb. I crit a weaver (psure he was a standard burn weaver) for like 11k with a head toss a couple days ago lol. Hilarious, but also pretty stupid.

I'm curious what players actually want from Ranger though. Or rather, what they're expecting to happen when they fight against it.Pets have similar issues to WoW, in that nobody wants them to actually hurt, because they're annoying and AI and can put some hurt out with essentially zero input from the ranger himself, but if you change them and start giving the player more control over their damage and abilities or restructure where damage/CC comes from, I don't think people would be particularly happy about that either.

Throw long range and high spike on top of that and it's really not that hard to figure out why there's calls for nerfs. But in the same way, if you start adjusting those metrics and making changes elsewhere, I don't think that'd be particularly well received either.

Also, I think ultimately it was a bit of a mistake to have pets have their own set of non-scaling stats. I think having them have been based on what the player puts on for gear would have been a better move, way back when they were first being created. It's probably a minor issue in the grand scheme of things but I think it's made it harder to adjust the class because you have this static chunk of a class that doesn't change whether you're condi, power, bunker, or whatever.

The way I've always seen it is rangers were meant to be similar to engineers, covers a lot of bases, OK in a lot of areas but not really masters of anything. However that isn't an excuse for how obscenely overloaded the class has become, ranger has:

One of the lowest cool down true blocks in the game, especially traited.Some of the highest evade time on weapon skills baked into it.Some of the highest ranged damage, longest range which usually needs a port or block to deal with.Also on longbow one of the lowest cool down stealth skills in the game.Very high non invested sustain.Wilderness Survival giving high condi removal and Child of Earth instead of having an ICD like every other class has no ICD.

The problem is this is the default class so when elite specs are added in you have the problems that we saw with druid and soulbeast. Though at least you guys are playing PvP, if you want to see how completely unfun and disgustingly broken they are/were hop into WvW where they have been barely touched.

All in all I think pets should have damage reduced on a few offenders at least, no-one likes an AI doing 90% of the work (look at mirage) and then shaving down a few of the above by increasing cool downs and maybe looking at the evade uptime on weapon combinations.

To be honest all classes could do with redefining in role and play style.

[Curennos.9307]

@Shagie.7612 said:Bambi's pretty dumb. I crit a weaver (psure he was a standard burn weaver) for like 11k with a head toss a couple days ago lol. Hilarious, but also pretty stupid.

I'm curious what players actually want from Ranger though. Or rather, what they're expecting to happen when they fight against it.Pets have similar issues to WoW, in that nobody wants them to actually hurt, because they're annoying and AI and can put some hurt out with essentially zero input from the ranger himself, but if you change them and start giving the player more control over their damage and abilities or restructure where damage/CC comes from, I don't think people would be particularly happy about that either.

Throw long range and high spike on top of that and it's really not that hard to figure out why there's calls for nerfs. But in the same way, if you start adjusting those metrics and making changes elsewhere, I don't think that'd be particularly well received either.

Also, I think ultimately it was a bit of a mistake to have pets have their own set of non-scaling stats. I think having them have been based on what the player puts on for gear would have been a better move, way back when they were first being created. It's probably a minor issue in the grand scheme of things but I think it's made it harder to adjust the class because you have this static chunk of a class that doesn't change whether you're condi, power, bunker, or whatever.

I want rangers to have to rotate back and forth between pet preservation and their own skills.

'Rotate' is a weird word, but...Okay take revs. They have to rotate between legends. Getting a kill - or the rev's overall skill - is based on how well they can manage rotating through their legends. Doing so at the proper time, withdrawing/kiting and re-engaging when needed, stunbreaking, refilling energy when needed for more pressure, etc. Like how Shiro has a clearly defined role in getting kills and how the rev defends themselves while channeling Shiro, while glint has different ways.

Back to rangers. Their class mechanic is the pet. Except...they don't seem to really have to rotate, or fight, around the pet. Don't get me wrong, the pet is definitely there, there are commands to control it, pet swap can be traited to give swiftness, and so on.

But take boonbeast - the pet can die and it doesn't really change anything. Meld rezzes the pet. The pet is a nice bonus that's good to have, but not really a big - or even a - loss if you accidentally get it killed. Mostly, the pet seems to exist primarily as a boon-bank to give the ranger boons when melded. As a ranger's opponent, my interaction with the pet is...relatively meaningless, aside from ensuring I pay attention if it's the damnable one pet that hits super hard or something.

I want ranger pets to actually be more than essentially an AI that follows the enemy around and sometimes does stuff, and is sometimes tossed out the window for other mechanics (boons -> meld).

Definitely agreed on the whole stats thing. Anet is really...cramming the game's meta into weird places by how they lay out stats. Anywho, as for an actual fight? I imagine it would revolve around the ranger capitalizing on their pet. Say the ranger engages, then kites. I'll be able to attack the ranger, in which case the pet is free to attack. If I attack the pet, the ranger should have to manage that somehow - either by being forced into capitalizing on spending resources on their pet (instead of them) and attacking or something, or...say, recalling the pet. It would be nice if pets were more involved with what the ranger is doing - dodging when the ranger dodges, for example. If killing the pet is allowed to impact the ranger more, I am definitely game for having there be more ways to mitigate threats to said pet.

I, as the ranger's opponent, want more opportunities to interact with the ranger's own mechanics (in this case, the pet), and a want the ranger to have opportunities to more fully customize said mechanic to their liking. Really, I think the pet swap mechanic as a whole has really...limited this, as it means less power is stored in each pet because you have two of 'em, and one pet dying isn't really all thaaaat bad because you can just whip out another.

Say the ranger is focusing an enemy along with their pet, going for the kill. The focused target runs towards some allies, who proceed to vomit out AoE. The ranger can choose to continue charging in with their pet...charge in alone...send in just the pet while plinking from range (long/shortbow)...or withdraw entirely. Currently, the choice here would depend almost entirely on the potential danger to the ranger (heh, rhyme). Ideally, they would be forced to put more weight on each choice, as the pet is more involved in the ranger's win conditions. They have to choose if they want to go all in, but as a result become very vulnerable to AoE because there's two of them, making AoEs more effective, pick to risk themselves or the pet, or pull back entirely (and maybe plink from range).

In short...sometimes, the pet isn't really involved as the ranger's win condition the same way other classes' main mechanics are involved in their win conditions. On the other hand, sometimes the pet is TOO involved (See - AI-random CC, 11k hits from the pet, and so on). Ultimately, I imagine this would require anet to re-allocate stats and the class's overall power between the ranger and their pet, plus fiddle with how the pet scales.

Anywho, off the top of my head - things like pet choice need to be more of a thing. How would a pet's power have to change if the ranger only got one pet?

Something akin to health-sharing btwn pet and ranger would be akin to the feel I'm going for (not saying it's a good idea, but bear with me - wanted to at least provide an example). Imagine how a ranger's gameplay would change if they shared a health pool, and damage mitigation (to some extent - toughness, dodging, boons like regen, etc) with their pet? Ultimately more health and armor to chew through, but overall more vulnerability (like holo's overheat - some noticeable drawback if you hammer things hard enough that the pet dies, as part of that dmg and such has gone over to the ranger).

Sometimes (more and more often, unfortunately) my ranger feels like a warrior but with boons and a second, smaller warrior who is a total idiot that I sometimes find useful but ultimately have little control over...and sometimes I sacrifice the smaller warrior on the altar of boons and steal their stats. Not a good feeling.

Hopefully that made some sort of sense xD

[Kuma.1503]

Rangers are one of the classes I have the least problem with.

Are they strong ? Yes, if they go Soulbeast. If they pick Druid, they're... playable.

Are they easy to play? Yes

Are they broken? No.

Even if they were. Next patch is expected to tune down sustain and boon spam. Both of which should hit the bunkery Soulbeast builds. Sic Em builds have already been nerfed and are not as bursty as they once were. Druid, I'd argue could actually use some buffs. Not just in PvP, but in general. I'd like to see them tone down spirits so they're less of a must have in raids, and undo some of the nerfs they've done to the class to compensate.

[Fantasylife.7981]

I been praying for a nerf on ranger for like 1year now soooooooooo GG.

[ZeteCommander.4937]

Ranger is God Mode

[MrFrusciante.2438]

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:at the very least anet should nerf some of the kitten ai damage. mainly gazelle.

just this gazelle and bird pets are the only ones that need dmg nerf on f2s

everyone that says GS needs nerf right after they buffed don't understand the lack of defense skills rangers have unless you kit utilities/traits and if you do go that way the lack of sustained burst on pew/GS.

those that complain about troll ungeunt don't understand how easy it is to interrupt/outdamage 1k ticks with consistent dps especially condi. Condi hard counters rangers so hard its silly to the point where wilderness spec is a must or youre just asking for death 90% of time. Also no one seems to be mentioning that Troll ungeunt is literally the only viable heal skill in competive play. heal as one is niche and only works with 1 type of boonstacking pew build/bear stance is trash/ healing spring only works on trap builds with WH on 1 offhand/nature to stack regens/combo healing field which no one runs because theres no stab and water spirit is a joke.

Most of you peoples problems with ranger(specifically SB) is your lack of build knowledge and awareness wasting stunlock bursts on stab/protect/dolyak/sotp and suddenly 2/3rds of your bar is on CD because you cant read UI or don't play chess with skills. Its really bad considering 90% of pew rangers CDs are stupidity spread out in any kind of combo minus maul+hilt bash refresh so if they miss their combo or get interrupted its easy. switness/superspeed away from GS its useless. Los/invuln/dodge roll pew 2 its useless all they have left is bow 5 to dmg while they wait for CDs or wep swap. getting caught inbetween wep swap CDs/bad swaps is death for rangers.

rangers are also one the least used classes in competitive teamplay behind reaper which only one person I know of plays well(shoutout to R U WHO U). It means a lot, we have almost no use that another class cant do better in the right hands. sidenode 1v1ing/bunking/+1ing/teamfighting. The fact that 80% of ranked Sbs are pewing is just a sheepy desire to pewpew with no sense of danger with extremely low skill cap because its easy to pat yourself on the back from 1500m away with clarity block while enemy is 1v1ing excluding the handful of plats that are the exception and if your dying to smoke f2 + Gs3 +GS 2+GS4+GS2 +Bow4+bow2 combos in between their stab then its a you skill problem.

I say this as a p2 ranger main who does not touch bow inb4 someone cries that im biased. Theres about 3 bow users that are hard to pvp against(all are plat 3/top 15 every season they play) and 1 of them that is highly unbeatable(Euratien) any other is free evade bow 2 stab for bow 4+hilt and stunlock after boonripping stab. For those of you that don't have immediate access to rips should look at your sigil options.

anyways this is all nonsense to begin with, the only people complaining about pew ranger are g2/low g3.

[kratan.4619]

Play a ranger then?

[Crab Fear.1624]

My only complaint is the damn gazelle and birds.

That gazelle hit for 10k charge and 9k headtoss on me lol.

Bird morph is support and extra gap maker, but separate it is like a little mini thief whacking away at you.

Gazelle and bird damage is only complaint.

[Eurantien.4632]

People seem to be mad that ranger is a jack of all trades master of none. It's finally able to hold its own as a jack of all trades yet is still outshined in teamiights and 1v1.

@MrFrusciante.2438

Thanks for the shoutout, and I have to agree. Gazelle dmg needs a nerf and I'd say bird swoop needs a longer cast time or shorter distance. I think bird damage is kind of ok, because it's just that one skill that does damage - and birds are super squishy already.