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How would you redesign the ranger?


Lonami.2987

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Do you feel like the ranger could be much more? That his mechanics don't do his theme justice? Maybe his elite specializations have a weak design? Or do you just want to post some crazy ideas? Well, then this thread is for you.

So, just for fun, how would you redesign the ranger?

Last update here: February 27, 2021

Few personal ideas to start the thread:


Ranger - Pet system simplification

There's way too many pets, and those of the same family do pretty much the same thing.

The idea is simple: One pet per family. So, only one bear, only one moa, etc. The rest of the pets become aesthetic skins you can select from a secondary panel inside the Pet Management panel.

Next, take all the animals from these families that weren't previously available as pets, and make them skins too, taking ranger customization even further, with no gameplay implications and balance to worry about.

What about the special skill? In most cases, nothing of value would be lost, so we could just merge them, but then there could be problems with some magical pets, like drakes, whose abilities cannot be merged properly. A possible solution is to let players choose from a list of special skills for their pets, instead of having the skills locked to the pet skin.

So now, you choose a pet archetype, then a pet skin, and finally an enhancement, determining the special skills.

I would redesign pet skills a bit too, making them more useful. Skills 1, 2, and 3 would be tied to the archetype, and skills 4 and 5 would be tied to the enhancement. Players would be able to manually control two of those skills, one from the archetype and another from the enhancement.

This new system is more flexible, and would allow us to add new pets with multiple skins, with far less work than as of now. Note that archetypes have a racial foundation, but not a racial restriction. They merely define skills 1, 2, and 3.

The final list would be something like this, including new pet archetypes (some of them used by NPCs ingame), and a few ideas for the future:

Avian set

Mammal set

Reptile set

Invertebrate set

Aquatic set

There would be a total of eight enhancements. You'd need to unlock an appropriate skin to unlock an enhancement for that pet. For example, the ice drake would unlock the ice enhancement for the drake. Not all enhancements are available for every pet, but their effects would be similar across the ones they're available for.

The enhancements would be as follows:

  • Physical
  • Fire (Salamander Drake, Fire Wyvern)
  • Ice (Ice Drake)
  • Lightning (Electric Wyvern, Jacaranda)
  • Earth (Sand Lion)
  • Poison (Marsh Drake, Murellow, Iboga)
  • Chaos (Reef Drake)
  • Smoke (Smokescale)

Pet collecting could be spiced up a bit too. I wouldn't mind if some skins required more than just walking and interacting with them. Some could be tied to achievements, dynamic events, etc. Would be nice if other professions got their own collectibles as well (engineer could get kit and turret skins, necromancers minion skins, etc).

Finally, I would rename pets to beasts, which sounds like a better name, and makes them distinct enough from minipets.


Druid - Partial redesign

I don't like the Celestial Avatar transformation too much, and instead of trying to improve it, I prefer to leave the transformation mechanic for something cooler. The ranger would welcome a pet-less elite specialization too, and by pet-less I mean no pet whatsoever.

With that in mind, I'll give druid a few mechanic skills and a temporary dual mode.

Let's begin with the modes. Located in F4 and F5, they would work similar to elementalist attunements, and represent the sun/day and the moon/night, changing your physical aspect much like the Celestial Avatar. Both would be about support, sun focusing on damage, and moon in healing. They would use a new resource, called the cycle. The energy would be obtained by spending time on the opposing mode, so, to get sun energy, you need to spend some time on moon, and viceversa. This forces you to cycle between the two modes often.

Like attunements, they would change your weapon skills, but said changes wouldn't be completely new skills, only an additional layer of effects on top of the originals, keeping the core mechanics and stats, and taking them to the next level.

The other three mechanic skills, F1, F2, and F3, would include various flower seeds. You would throw them into the ground, and then they would bloom and apply a different effect when you switch to either sun or moon mode. Glyphs would keep their variation for moon mode, and get an additional one for sun mode.

With no pet, the druid would now focus on mode management and seed positioning.


Soulbeast - Beast transformations

It saddens me that soulbeast isn't a real fusion between pet and ranger. You just get some green swirl and a few mechanic skills, far from what merging should be.

This idea turns soulbeast into a real shapeshifter, using beast transformations. Since we can't have a transformation for each pet, we would stick to the archetypes already used for the F3 soulbeast skill, or make a new archetype system.

The transformations themselves would turn you into spirit beasts, combining elements from different animals. Each transformation would have some unique model details linked to the race of the ranger as well. For example, charr ones would have horns, sylvari ones leafs, norn tattoos, etc. All of them would be green/yellowish by default, with a ghostly appearance, inspired by the original soulbeast artwork.

Transformation examples:

  • Panther: Ferocious archetype, some sort of feline hybrid, excels in DPS. Amphibian.
  • Serpent: Deadly archetype, a large snake with the head of a Hydra and the body of a Sand Eel, excels in condition damage. Amphibian.
  • Bird: Versatile archetype, a large bird of prey similar to GW1's Rainbow Phoenix, excels in support. Rangers can glide while in this form.
  • Stag: Supportive archetype, a deer with large branch-like antlers, excels in healing.
  • Crocodile: Stout archetype, based on the Scaled Drake, excels in tanking and crowd control. Amphibian.

Like Beastmode, these transformations would boost your base stats, and not be limited by a timer, so you can stay in them as long as you want. Like other transformations, they would replace your weapon skills with new skills, unique to each transformation. Slot skills would still be available, and being downed would cancel the transformation.

Also, I would move off-hand dagger skills to sword off-hand, and give soulbeast new off-hand dagger skills.


Just some random ideas to begin the thread. Waiting for yours! =)

Profession Redesign series:Elementalist - Mesmer - Necromancer - Engineer - Ranger - Thief - Guardian - Revenant - Warrior

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The idea of pet refinement sounds good. But the two suggestions for the E-Specs arent really my cup of tea and the druid one would mess hardly with all traits interacting with the pet.

Tuning on the pet mechanic and implement some kind of wardrobe system, amulet system and skill swap would improve rangers by a long shot.

I would improve things rather than redesign them. Improve ranger traits so they have good interlinking interaction. Improve on ranger MH weapons on skills and scaling, so you can use them as condi or power weapons.Introduce amunition mechanic to several skills to improve the overall performance.

Improving Soulbeast swap-in and out traits to insentify swapping beastmode.Petswap in beastmode for soulbeast to give it synergy with petswap traits.

Improvements on Glyphs for druid. Glyph of tides get the effects swapped and alignment, reinforcement, elite and the heal get straight up improved.

Some improvements visually and mechanically for traps and spirits.

Tgis would be probably all i would improve. Not really redesign.

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I wouldn't redesign the ranger at all. Given a magic wand, I'd give all pets a refresh pass and fix things that aren't working properly with traits, look at making some of the generally-unused weapons more viable, and tighten up some of the less useful traits. Otherwise, I'm happy with where the core ranger is, and druid and soulbeast seem to also generally work well as designed.

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I would give Ranger pets some tweaking if ever so that they are on par with new pets. Im sure ANET has data on which pets are being used the most and which ones are not COUGH Devourers! . Revisit some old traits and clean up the trash, then move on to skills that are not being use at all COUGH SPIRITS.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@InsaneQR.7412 said:The idea of pet refinement sounds good. But the two suggestions for the E-Specs arent really my cup of tea and the druid one would mess hardly with all traits interacting with the pet.

The trait system needs a whole redesign anyway. I would remove lines, and use some tree-like system. This would mean those conflicting traits wouldn't even be available when they're not supposed to. So, pet traits wouldn't be available when there's no pet to use.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just a random idea, what if the pet was removed from the core profession, and the entire beastmaster line was transformed into a new elite specialization, available for everyone? Seen a similar suggestion around for some time (for both ranger and other professions), but never seen it discussed too much.

This would let base ranger, druid, and soulbeast be free of the current pet mechanic, and focus on other gameplay aspects, including new pet mechanics. For example, a future elite specialization could be the falconer, and would focus exclusively on avian pets, with their own AI and pet mechanics. Each ranger elite specialization could have its own type of pets, and some could be free of the pet as well.

I like the pet from the design viewpoint, but I still think this could be interesting to discuss.

@corey.6451 said:I would give pets its own traits system, and equipments.

That can be somewhat complex, but it's a really interesting idea. I wouldn't give it classic equipment though, just a list of unlocked stats, free to switch whenever you are out of combat.

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One idea is also that core rangers gets acces to pet archetypes and you can swap them between individual pets of the same family.In addition to that you can swap the F2 arround in between pet family members (for more customization options and as additional motivation to get all pets).

Depending on archetype your pet has different stats. So a stout pet is more tanky, a supportive pets gets decent healing power etc etc.Best way would be probably that the archetypes resemble an amulet set. So like deadly is rampager, wild is berserker etc.

Now indipendend from the pet F2 are the other bar skills.

F1: This should be a ground targeted, similar to ventaris tablet you can command your pet arround if you want. On default it would follow you and bhave like it does now, but after a cimmand it will run to the targeted location and will attack the nearest target or revive the nearest ally. This could even be incorporated into traits, so you get bonusses when you command your pet arround or it will be a teleport if your pet has opening strike etc.

F3: This would be obsolete because the F1 covers this function too.I would give this button the keybind to change the pets behaviour.In addition to guard and out of combat behaviour i would add the supportive behaviour. Your pet only attacks if you attack a target if it has supportive behaviour.

Stow: Add a keybind option to this.Stow could also be implemented in a trait.I.e. Pet Ambush: Your pet is automatically stowed out if combat, entering combat unstowes your pet (petswap will go on CD though)

This is probably what i would change on the pet mechanic, without touching the petskills themself yet.

Probably doing a topic about this in the near future.

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  • 1 month later...

New ideas for elite specialization redesign, without going as far as in the first post:

  • Druid: No pet. Instead of a single transformation, now we have two, Sun and Moon. Sun is for DPS and CC, Moon is for healing and support. Both transformations use a new resource, called Astral Energy, which is divided in sun and moon, opposing each other. When you use a form for too long, the opposite form's energy increases, so you need to use the other one for a while to recover the energy. The idea is to reward good rotations between both forms. Astral Form gives a health boost now as well, to compensate for the removal of the pet.
  • Soulbeast: Similar mechanic, but now you can swap pets while in beastmode. Now beastmode skills only depend on the pet's archetype, and you no longer get specific skills for each pet. There's 5 archetypes, each one with a different beastmode effect and combat role. The idea is to get solid skills with a defined role instead of the current mess we have with dozen of skills that don't feel good enough.

I think these would work well and respect the original vision a bit more. We can save the other mechanics for new elite specializations instead.

@InsaneQR.7412 said:Stow: Add a keybind option to this.Stow could also be implemented in a trait.I.e. Pet Ambush: Your pet is automatically stowed out if combat, entering combat unstowes your pet (petswap will go on CD though)

That one idea is pretty interesting.

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How I would redesign the ranger?Remove the stupid pet-mechanic and put it in a bestmaster-specialization.Recreate the ranger core mechanic:Maybe some Skills called survival-mechanics. Poisons, preparations for the current weapon and a stance for more blocks/stability or speed.Simple, but effective and not as frustrating as the pet mechanic.

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  • 1 month later...

Revisiting the redesign ideas in a short way, plus some new elite specialization ideas to see how this redesign would improve future content too:

  • Ranger: The pet system has been simplified. Now you choose the species first (drake), and then an archetype (fire). The species determines the base skills and attributes, and the archetype unlocks additional skills and attributes, as long as it's enabled for that species. There's five archetypes: Common, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Additionally, you can now freely customize your pet's aesthetic with the appearance of any other members of its species, once unlocked. Off-hand sword is enabled by default, and off-hand dagger is made exclusive to soulbeast. Some pet species are merged, and new ones are introduced (raptor, griffon, eel, etc).

  • Druid: Now you can use mechanic skill F5 to temporarily transform your pet into a druidic wisp, disabling it in exchange of druidic skills. Once transformed, your mechanic bar will be upgraded, unlocking new druid skills in mechanic slots F1, F2, and F3. You can still swap pets using F4, swapping to the second pet's wisp. Each pet's archetype determines the type of wisp it will transform into and the mechanic skills unlocked by it (water would unlock healing skills, fire direct damage, etc). Weapon skills are not affected by the pet's transformation, but your character will receive a visual-only drudic form, its color determined by the current archetype. The pet is invulnerable while in wisp form.

  • Soulbeast: Pets are gone, replaced by animal transformations. You can equip two at once, using mechanic skills F1 and F2. The available transformations are Bear (crowd control, amphibian), Cheetah (direct damage, amphibian), Eagle (direct damage, glider), Eel (condition damage, amphibian), Scarab (condition damage, glider), and Stag (support). You can stay transformed as long as you want, only being forced out of the transformation when downed. Transformations change your attributes, increasing or decreasing them depending on the chosen one. Some transformations have gliding enabled, and others can't go underwater, forcing you to swim in the surface. You need to go back to normal to transform to a different animal.

  • Reaver: Pets are gone, replaced by a new mechanic, the swarm. Instead of a single individual, swarms include multiple smaller pets at once, and are commanded simultaneously. The controls are the same as those of pets, and you can swap to an alternate swarm much like when you swapped between pets. Swarm members can be killed individually, respawning automatically after a few seconds. There's six swarm types to choose from: Crabs (amphibian), Elvers (amphibian), Pocket Raptors, Pygmy Moas, Rats (amphibian), and Wasps; each including different skins and options to choose from. Venoms are the new slot skills, and they are applied to both the reaver and all active swarm members.

  • Bloodhound: Both pets are deployed at once, and swapping is no longer available. "Attack My Target" remains at mechanic skill F1, becoming a sequential skill alternating command of each pet. Mechanic skills F2 and F3 include each pet's respective special skill. Mechanic skill F4 includes a new skill, a combo attack involving both pets at once. Mechanic skill F5 includes the "Return to Me" skill, affecting both pets at once. Defeated pets despawn, respawning automatically after a few seconds.

  • Botanist: Pets are gone, replaced by a pouch of seeds. Mechanic skills F1, F2, F3, F4, and F5 let you equip 5 seed bags, individually selected from a list of 10. These seeds hatch when thrown, spawning magic plants with various abilities, including everything from direct damage to group support, most of them qualifying as combo fields as well. Wells are the new slot skills, and they boost the abilities of hatched plants.

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I cringed a little when you talked about changing pets by making a lot of them skins. I do however agree with the soulbeast. It was a bit upsetting to not actually have a transformation. I feel that would make rangers an actual viable class when you go against other classes. Warrior seems to mow down rangers which is why the soulbeast change would make them a little stronger to go head to head with.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am currently working on a ranger redux thread. It'll be huge.I incorporate a new mechanic called preperation which is basically just a bonus attack on the first strike (so basically a different kind of Opening strike), that can be modfied in various ways.Additiobally i declare certain weaponskills that include the pet as marking skills that can be modified via beastmastery.

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If ArenaNet wants to push and stick Pet mechanic to Ranger and future elite specs, then they need to be reworked to be meta 2018 standards.

Druid could been given an offensive side. I liked Lonami side of view, about Moon/Sun. Just by looking at some Glyphs (Glyph of Equality and Glyph of the Tides) and CA 5 (Natural Convergence), an offensive Druid probably have been on their mind, but they scrapped it.

IMO, Soulbeast should have been the real Pet-less spec, with only Beastmode Archetypes.

edit : dat necro tho

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  • 2 weeks later...

As someone that uses druid for frac pugs, what I'd appreciate most is better (i.e. more visible and safer-looking) visual cues for 1 and 2. 1 is so subtle people won't even notice, but when I try to place 2 in the direction they are moving, they often dodge it or do 45 degrees from it, likely thinking it's something nasty despite lacking a red circle. This is especially true in hectic places with toxic trail etc where heals are most needed.

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  • 1 month later...

@scerevisiae.1972 said:Get rid of the pet completely for a start, I hate everything about them. They're slow, unreliable, glitchy, the controls are really poor, and the AI behind them is really poor.

I love the ranger, but I absolutely hate the pet. Epic game design fail IMHO.

How about keeping the pet, but making it temporary? Like, you summon a beast, it helps you for a few seconds, and then it's gone. Nothing like necromancer minions, more like mesmer illusions instead.

Ideally, the best solution is to fix the AI, but that doesn't mean we can't explore other ways.

@Krispera.5087 said:If ArenaNet wants to push and stick Pet mechanic to Ranger and future elite specs, then they need to be reworked to be meta 2018 standards.

Druid could been given an offensive side. I liked Lonami side of view, about Moon/Sun. Just by looking at some Glyphs (Glyph of Equality and Glyph of the Tides) and CA 5 (Natural Convergence), an offensive Druid probably have been on their mind, but they scrapped it.

IMO, Soulbeast should have been the real Pet-less spec, with only Beastmode Archetypes.

I think an offensive/defensive druid rotation would have been the best. Right now it's useless beyond healing and support.

And yeah, soulbeast should have been a shapeshifting elite spec, with no pet.

@InsaneQR.7412 said:I am currently working on a ranger redux thread. It'll be huge.I incorporate a new mechanic called preperation which is basically just a bonus attack on the first strike (so basically a different kind of Opening strike), that can be modfied in various ways.Additiobally i declare certain weaponskills that include the pet as marking skills that can be modified via beastmastery.

Marking skills sound interesting. They could work similarly to the Deadeye's Mark, and change pet behavior depending on it.

Maybe the solution to pet problems isn't to improve the AI and the controls, but to streamline them so you only give targets plus roles, and then let them do their thing. If you can't micromanage it properly, then why bother with any kind of controls whatsoever?

@ThePolarTitan.4025 said:I cringed a little when you talked about changing pets by making a lot of them skins. I do however agree with the soulbeast. It was a bit upsetting to not actually have a transformation. I feel that would make rangers an actual viable class when you go against other classes. Warrior seems to mow down rangers which is why the soulbeast change would make them a little stronger to go head to head with.

Why? Pets are really pretty much all the same anyway, and normalization would open the way for new skins without having to make actual new pets.

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@""Lonami.2987"

Yeah i tied the marking skill traits mainly into beastmastery and gave beastmastery that pet defining line that focusses on pet enhancements/improvements. Maybe i change that later and spread it abit out, atm I mainly focussed on preperation strike, the other new mechanic. Nonetheless i havent got to the point of the pets (i decided to scrap the forum post and make a google file instead, i am currently on page 12 and i havent touched elites nor pets yet) but i am still on it although it stalled a bit due to finals.

The marking skills are actually already in the game they arent just classified. All weaponsets have a skill that interacts with pets (i. E Maul or Wintersbite etc. ) these are my new marking skills. Maybe i change sword AA onto another sword skill but mainly the idea is to mark a target that will automatically be declared as your pets target. Depending on weapons different effects trigger (pretty similar to the ones we already have).I am very fond of indirect commanding via attacks/gestures etc. It makes the gameplay more fluid and you still feel the pets healp, it should be an extension of your weapon. The interaction between preperation and marking could be interestibg too, but it will take time to finish, maybe i work on it this week a bit again.

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I'm largely satisfied with ranger as it is, and just desire tweaks to bring certain numbers into line.

I mained druid in pve and pvp for the longest time, and as a healer/buffer I never really cared that pet performance was lacking; druids' pets are really there for CC or boons. I know a lot of people don't like CA, but I never found it that clunky. Before the relatively recent spvp nerfs, CA was trollishly good. Although I feel it's unnecessary, I do find the Sun/Moon thing very, very interesting! I'd gladly have my druid give up her pet in exchange for such a mechanic.

I rarely run core ranger these days, but core is where I've made a lot of my best (and sometimes weirdest) off-meta builds. Again, if it suffers from anything, it's poor pet AI. Otherwise it has great sustain, generous access to cleanse, and decent dps output.

I currently main power soulbeast. Ended last ranked pvp season at 1600 rating, and if I care enough I can see myself taking it up to 1700 this season. I can duel warriors who troll me at the home node - I can evade a lot of their rampage, and stability through the rest. That, combined with the fact that I have options at both range and melee, means that a lone spellbreaker usually can't prevent me from capping a point, and I don't need help from my team to do it. This same spvp build also allows me to solo most dungeon paths in reasonable time as well.

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What I would do is make the pet fully controllable. Move to location, guard ally, jump of a cliff, whatever. I want to be able to have my pet and I working on different things at different positions on the battlefield. As it is now (and forever) he's just a DOT with a hitbox.

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I am willing to pay real money for the pets and other rewards from the Hall of Monuments, instead of being forced to spend GW2 time playing GW1. And I'm far from alone in that regard.

Improve pet AI, such my pet isn't running all over the place attracting adds. My pet should always stick close to me, by which I mean the distance to which it comes when I call it, unless it is actually fighting a mob. This includes fixing things like the rock gazelle's charge, which takes it seemingly halfway across the map and out of the fight for several seconds, and the interminable launch time of the fire wyvern.

I've been playing a LB/GS bowpet ranger, which is basically how rangers have been envisioned in the entire history of fantasy gaming, in the GW2 open world for over five years. I shouldn't have to abandon my favorite play style, the traditional ranger play style, just because a raid group is counting decimal points on DPS. Make a pass on ranger weapons to bring their DPS up to equality.

Out of all my pets, I've probably not used half of them at all in over five years of playing a ranger. Brown bear, fern hound, jungle stalker, tiger, jacaranda, rock gazelle, electric wyvern, bristleback and devourers for range, shark and armored fish underwater; that's pretty much it. All the others only get brought out for novelty value or specific situations. Clearly, a lot of pets need a pass made to make them more useful and/or less redundant.

We're long overdue for a dolphin pet. The model already exists in game. Ditto for the other colors of moas, and the "crocodile" scaled drake model from PoF zones. Many other pets that could be added, if only for new looks.

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