Ranger Redone: Another Ranger Rework (Part 1: Mechanics)

[InsaneQR.7412]

Preamble:

Greetings fellow Rangers and Lurkers

 

So i got some new free time and i thought i try to make another ranger rework/overhaul. I laid focus on giving more customization options for pets (mechanically and aesthetically) and give rangers more options to play with.

 

In this part i will focus on the main mechanics of core ranger and it e-specs. For core ranger i wanted to give a  more solid base to work from to create e-specs and give core rangers slightly more pet control in one way or another. For druid i wantedd to diversify the playstyle and give them more options for their avatar form so that more roles could be filled by different druid builds. For soulbeast i wanted to emmphasize on merge/unmerge playstyle. I wanted to reintroduce petswap for soulbeast butr estrict the additional stats so that swapping feels rewarding instead of punishing.

 

Annotations:

I wanted to thank @Lonami.2987 for inspiration.

 

On onehand is the inspiration for the improved pet panel and pet wardrobe system which i heavily endorse to be implemented and secondly is the mechanic bar re-design seen on page 2 of the "How would you redesign the ranger" trhead:

 

 

Core Ranger Mechanics:

For core ranger i wanted to add more pet controlability and thus reworked the F-skills. Additionally i added more mechanics to the pet which givey you more fine tuning capabilities and more possible traits that could be implemented.

 

Further, assume that the pet panel is designed as proposed above by lonami. So you first choose your pets family, the pets visuals (if you unlocked them) and then their Beast Skill. Additionally i want to change one small thing, which is that you can choose the pet archetype and pet skill independently from one another.

To unlock pet archetypes and skills for all family members, you have to tame the corresponding pet in the world. If a pet family lacks an archetype you cannot unlock it for that family.

 

F-Skills:

(Edit: I swapped the F skills arround so that everything left of the petswap is command oriented while anything right of the petswap is skill oriented for a more crisp UI)

 

F1: Attack or Rescue: Mark a target for your pet to attack or rescue.

CD 1s: This will function the following way: You can mark any enemy target or down state/dead ally. The pet will attack the enemy relentlessly until the target dies, you reassign a new target, you swap pets, the pet "dies" or you set it to "Guard" (more on that down below). The pet will revive any marked ally that is in downstate or dead. The revive ends if the pet "dies".  Both the marking of enemies and the revival of allies has trait interactions.

 

F2: Hunt/Guard Toggle: Set your Pet into Hunt or Guard mode. 

Hunt: Your pet is set to hunt enemies that it seems dangerous. Your pet is set to aggressive and will attack anything that attacks the ranger or that the rangers attacks. Outside of combat the pet is next to the ranger and ready to attack. The pet may gain certain benefits when hunting depending on traits.

Guard: Your pet is set to guard the ranger and stay next to them. The pet will only attack targets that the ranger explicitely marks to attack. Outside of combat the pet is stowed and will reappear when the ranger enters combat. This will count as a petswap and will trigger corresponding traits and cooldowns.

 

F3: Petswap: Swap from your primary pet to your secondary pet. 

CD 20s. Removed Penalty time if pet is dead. Has trait interactions.

 

F4: Pet Family Skill: Activate your pets skill typical for its pet family

These skills are determined by the type of pet you are using and is not changable (except when you change the pet as a whole). Pet families will be a bit more refined and some families will be merged together for more streamlining and ease of choice.

 

F5: Beast Skill: Activate your pets beast skill.

This skill can be changed like a utility skill. the provided choices depends on the pet family of your pet. Drakes for example could choose between all different breath weapons that all drake family memebrs provide. To unlock these skills, the OG pet that possesses that skill by default needs to be tamed in the world.

 

Pet Families, Stats and Archetypes:

So i wanted to simplify the different stats of each pet, the different number of pet families and the archetype of each pet family.

Each pet family is divided into 3 categories: Heavy, Medium, Light. Each category has a base armor value and a base health (vitality) value. All otehr stats are at 1000 base stats and are increased depending on the pets archetype.

 

Pet Families:

The following pet families exist with the following members:

- Carnivores: All canines, felines and bears.

- Porcines: All porcines

- Aerial: All Birds and Wyverns

- Arachnids: Devourers and Spiders

- Drakes: All drakes 

- Moas: All moas.

- Fish: Shark and Armor Fish

- Medusa: All Jellyfishes

- Special: All unique pets: Iboga, Jacaranda, Gazelle, Smokescale adn Bristleback (Note: these all have uique pet family skills and they cannot change their beast skill, but they can all be found in the same section in the pet panel)

 

Pet Categories Stats:

Pet categories can vary from family subgroups and are mainly based on the pets expected survivability, so that a bear is more tanky than a cat for example.

 

Heavy Base stats: Base Armor (without any toughness): 1271; Base Health: 44212 (3500 vitality, High Base health); 1000 toughness, 1000 precision, 1000 condition damage, 1000 power, 0 Healing power

Medium Base stats: Base Armor (without any toughness): 1118; Base Health: 35,922 (3000 vitality, Med Base Health); 1000 toughness, 1000 precision, 1000 condition damage, 1000 power, 0 Healing power

Light Base Stats: Base Armor (without any toughness): 967, Base Health: 26,645 (2500 vitality, Low Base Health); 1000 toughness, 1000 precison, 1000 condition damage, 1000 power, 0 Healing power

 

Heavies: Bears, Drakes, Porcines, Spiders, Fishes, Bristleback

Mediums: Canines, Moas, Jacaranda,  Rock Gazelle, Wyverns

Lights: Birds, Felines, Iboga, Devourer, Jellyfishes, Smokescale

 

I tried to balance damage potential with survivability. This is not a set in stone list but rather a proposal.

 

Pet Archetype Stats:

Stout Archetype: Sentinel Stats: +1173 vitality, +961 Toughness, +961 Power

Ferocious Archetype: Berserker Stats: +1381 power, +961 precision, +961 ferocity

Deadly Archetype: Viper-Like Stats: +1173 precision, +1173 condition damage, +633 power, +633 expertise

Supportive Archetype: Harrier Stats: +2381 healing power, 961 power, +961 concentration

Versatile Archetype: Celstial Stats: 639 to all stats (including expertise and concentration).

 

Notes on core ranger F-Skill changes: I wanted to incorporate the stowing mechanic more naturally into the pet controls. additionally i wanted to give pet controllability more options. Lastly, i wanted to say that the pet Combat behaviour toggle was always kinda unneccesary because you can just keep your pet on aggressive and recall it by spamming retreat if it did something dumb. This way i combined all of those aspects and gave them a more meaningful use. The pet stats are all pretty similar to players except their health and all archetype bonusses are similar to PvE armor values except healing power.

 

Additional Ranger Changes:

Lastly, for core ranger i wanted to add that i will include a new-old mechanic, the opening strike, that will interact with weaponskills and the F1 marking skill. I will go into detail on the second part of this series.

 

Druid Mechanics:

For druid i wanted to diversify their playstyle by just giving them more role options. Druids will be able to augment their CAF by their GM traits and focus on either Control, Buffing or Healing. 

I will go more into detail in the follow up parts when i focus on skills in part 2 and traits in part 3. The difference between druid and ranger will mainly lie how the pet skills can be used and how the CAF affects the pet. Additionally each pet archetype will have a specific role when the druid enters CAF. 

 

F-Skills (Druid):

 

F1-F3: As described above, no change.

 

F4: Pet Family Skill/Celestial Archetype Skill: When not in CAF this will behave as above. When in CAF this skill will change depending on the pets archetype. These skills will focus on Area support.

 

These skills could look roghly like this:

Stout Archetype: Celestial Earth: Area protection, resolution and barrier.

Ferocious Archetype. Celestial Sky: Area Fury and Quickness. Damages enemies in the AoE.

Deadly Archetype: Celestial Sun: Area Might and burn on enemies.

Supportive Archetype: Celestial Moon: Area heal and resistance.

Versatile Archetype: Celestial Void: Area Blind, slow and condi cleanse.

 

 

F5: Enter/Leave Celestial Avatar Form: As we know it.

CAF skills will be overall similar as to what they are now. But depending on GM trait their behaviour and visuals will be augmented. How the druid gains Af will also be augmeneted by those GMs.

 

These augments look roughly like this:

Avatar of Celestial Grace: Yellow/Solar visuals. Focusses on burning, blinding and buffing allies with might. Gain additional AF by applying burning to enemies or might to allies.

Avatar of Lingering Light: Blue/Lunar Visuals (vanilla). Focusses on healing, cleansing and concealing allies. Gain additional AF by cleansing conditions and while in stealth.

Avatar of Ancient Seeds: Green/Plantal visuals. Focusses on impairing conditions, bleedds and CC. Gain additional AF by dissabling or impairing foes.

 

I will go more into detail in the follow up parts.

 

Soulbeast Mechanics:

For soulbeast i wanted to emphasize on the unmerge/merge mechanic and juggling stat bonusses to better utilize your pet. Petless will still be an option but you will be more effective if you constantly switch back and forth. petswap will be back for soulbeast but all skills that contain the same slots do share a cooldown so that the soulbeast does have more options to choose from but needs more careful planning and skill to be effective.

 

F-Skills (Soulbeast-Unmerged)

F1, F3-F5 all stay the same as with core ranger.

 

F2: Enter/Leave Beastmode

As we know it the ranger merges/unmerges with its pet. The pet merge replaces the Hunt/Guard toggle. As a soulbeast your pet will always be set to Hunt when its out. If you want to retreat with your pet you have to merge with it. This is somewhat of a tradeoff but mainly I used this slot because it fits in mechanically very well and the traits that will interact with the "Guard" toggle will affect the beastmode soulbeast while traits affecting the "hunt" toggle only will affect the pet when its out. You will not be able to merge when your pet is down and you will have to swap first instead. You will now be able to swap pets when in beastmode. Petswapping while in beastmode will count as a normal petswap but will also have some implications for a soulbeast to juggle stats and certain skill cooldowns.

 

F-Skills (Soulbeast-Beastmode):

Edit: i also shifted the F-skills arround to match above.

 

F1: Archetype Skill

Use the archetype specific skill. this will count as a beast skill.

 

F2: Leave Beastmode

As described above.

 

F3: Petswap

As above. When you petswap in beastmode you immediately merge with your second pet. This will not count as entering beastmode and will not trigegr the associated traits, but it will still count as a petswap and will triiger all enabled petswap traits.

 

F4: Pet Family Skill

This will be the same skill as the one your pet will use when you activate the F4 outside beastmode.

 

F5: Pet family Skill 2

This will be the skill your pet would actively use on cooldown.

 

Stats in Beastmode:

As eluded before i wanted to change the soulbeast stat bonusses or rather their permanence. Stats gain by your pet will be based on their archetype as previously but with slight changes on the values. The duration of the stat bonus is 10s and you will gain this stat bonus as soon as you merge with your pet or when you unmerge with your pet. The stat bonus depends which pet you merged with or which pet you unmerged with. You can only have 1 stat buff at any time and the newer one replaces the older one.

 

For example: You merge with a ferocious pet and you gain the ferocious buff that grants you power and ferocity. During the fight you swap to your stout pet while still remaining in beastmode. After 8s you unmerge and you gain the stout stat buff and the remaining 2s of the ferocious buff get overwritten. If in this example the second pet would have been ferocious, then the ferocious buff would have resetted to 10s.

 

Stat Bonusses:

Stout Archetype: 300 Vitality, 200 Toughness

Ferocious Archetype. 150 Power, 100 Ferocity

Deadly Archetype: 150 Condition Damage, 100 Precision

Supportive Archetype: 300 Healing Power, 200 Concentration

Versatile Archetype: 87 to all stats

 

Cooldowns in beastmode:

Because i wanted to retain the ability to petswap while in beastmode i wanted to limit the soulbeasts accesability to all those tools a bit to keep it balanced.

This was done the follwoing way:

When you use either the F4 or the F5 skill it will set the F4 or the F5 SLOT on cooldown, even after you petswap this cooldwon would remain. So for example, if you would use smokeassault on your smokescale while merged and you would swap to your owl, you would not be able to use swoop because takedown and swoop share the same slot and thus the cooldown. This is not the case for you and your pet, so if you would use takedown while in beastmode, and then leave beastmode, your smokescale would be able to use takedown again.

 

Endnotes:

Edit: everything that my sausage fingers messed up grammar and writing wise.

 

If you have any suggestions or critique let me know. As a reminder there will be additional parts that will focus on the skills and traits and maybe i will make a fourth part focussing on all pet family skills.

I hope you had a good read, cheers.

 

 

 

Edited July 25, 2021 by InsaneQR.7412

[anduriell.6280]

The issues with ranger it is rooted in it's core desing which needs to be addressed. I am manly talking about PvP/WvW as in those game modes is where the mechanical design of the class is the most important thing, in PvE is about DPS/unique buffs. 

Right now ranger has this mecahnics:

1. Very long reach with long bow with a decent burst. 
2. Pets are sources or damage/effects indepent from the ranger. 

As balacing mechanics Anet has been nerfing the ranger in this aspects: 

1. No access to reliable stability (stripped away from core design) 
2. Lower base damage than other classes.
3. No access to reliable active defenses: blocks/immunities. 
4. No realiable access to unblockables ( nerfed by the projectile hate creep and the changes to unblockables)
5. No access to realiable group support skills.  (stripped away from core design)
6. No ranged AoE. (stipped away from core design) 
7. Very dependent on projectile weapons. 
8. Pets are very underwhelming with slow movement, slow attacks and low effective health. ( nerfed by the power creep done to the game during the years) 

Anet needs to fix/balance all that, otherwise it doesn't matter how much they rework/add with new specialitations, without a good base it doesn't work. 

[Lonami.2987]

Let me start by saying the new forums are so terrible I've stopped using them altogether. I only saw this thread out of pure luck. For reference, the original threads containing my ideas lost their format and became unreadable, so here's a summary of the two ideas you quoted, just in case:

 

---

 

Pet Management Panel redesign idea: https://i.imgur.com/ianA0Jx.png

 

Inside a family/species, all pets are the same, except for the F2 beast skill. This idea takes pets down to 18 (one per species), and allows free selection of skin (subspecies) plus free selection of F2 beast skill. Pretty simple and straightforward.

 

This idea is partially oudated, since the next one simplified everything even further.

 

Original thread: 

 

---

 

Ranger mechanic bar redesign idea: https://i.imgur.com/GFQ5IhM.png

 

F1: Swap Pets (formerly at F4, second pet is now displayed on screen).
F2: Attack My Target (formerly at F1).
F3: Beast skill #1 (formerly at F2, offensive).
F4: Return to Me (formerly at F3).
F5: Beast skill #2 (new skill, defensive).
Stow Pet / Activate Pet (no hotkey on default, can be assigned one manually).
Guard / Avoid Combat (no hotkey on default, can be assigned one manually).

 

Just like in the previous idea, pets are taken down to 18, but this time there's no way to customize the beast skill, meaning each species only has one beast skill, simplifying pets even further.

 

Instead, each species is given a secondary beast skill. This new skill serves as the keystone of the redesign, since it will be used as the bargaining chip for the elite specialization tradeoffs, which would no longer restrict other options, like pet attributes or pet swap.

 

Archetypes are limited to one per species. Pet attributes are no longer unique per species, and are distributed according to the archetypes instead.

 

Original thread: 

 

 

---

 

Aside from the above ideas, I think a good way to solve AI problems is to emphasize the pet's role as a situational tool, moving away from the idea of a persistent threat. This can be achieved by making pets less durable in exchange of a shorter pet swap cooldown. The general idea is you should be able to swap pets at the same rate elementalists swap attunements and revenants swap legends.

Pet death would undergo some changes as well. For starters, death itself would carry no cooldown penalties. Once a pet dies, it stops moving (and if you move too far, it despawns). If you don't swap, the dead pet would revive in 10 seconds at half the health. Pets can be revived early through revival skills too.

 

Druids are mostly fine, but the Celestial Avatar is far too simple compared to other transformations and bundles such as the firebrand tomes. I would give it x3 different variants (Moon, Sun, Nature), dependant on trait selection (just like daredevil can choose between x3 different dodge movements). All three new forms would be supportive in nature, but each on its own different way (healing, offensive boons, defensive boons) with their own different glyph effects. Also, make astral force regenerate naturally.

Fianlly, as for soulbeasts gaining an attribute boost on merging, if we adjust the pet to make it squishier and easier to respawn, there's absolutely no need for the ranger to have an attribute reduction compared to other professions, meaning the soulbeast would require no attribute boost either. Since the elite specialization is based on stances, we could replace said boost with some kind of passive effect instead, giving archetype skills a lingering effect when not in cooldown (just like signets or guardian's virtues). This would also make merged mode far more engaging to use.

 

---

 

Anyway, back to the thread, most of it is subjective, but I think the on/off skills should be either at F1 (the first slot) or F5 (the last slot). Having a transformation in the middle of the bar feels too weird to me. That's the primary reason why I moved pet swap away from F4 into F1.

 

I see you tried to salvage the different drake breaths too. Those were a real pain back when I started my own redesign, most pets can be simplified pretty easily, but then drakes ruin everything. My solution? Stop caring, it's not that big of a deal anyway. You can find ways to bring them back through other means, you don't need to design the whole mechanic around them, specially when the other species don't have that level of complexity anyway, and it would feel weird to have one species with x5 skills to choose from, then another species with just x1.

In my case, I left fire breath as the drake default. When a druid transforms into a Celestial Avatar, the pet transforms as well, gaining a new beast skill (for example, frost breath). On the Waywatcher elite specialization idea, both the ranger and the pet get a new temporary weapon skill right after using the elite specialization mechanic (same procedure as thief's steal attack and mirage's ambush skills).

 

I think that's all of it, I'll give it another read later, make sure I didn't miss anything :D.

Edited June 29, 2021 by Lonami.2987

[InsaneQR.7412]

3 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

The issues with ranger it is rooted in it's core desing which needs to be addressed. I am manly talking about PvP/WvW as in those game modes is where the mechanical design of the class is the most important thing, in PvE is about DPS/unique buffs. 

Right now ranger has this mecahnics:

1. Very long reach with long bow with a decent burst. 
2. Pets are sources or damage/effects indepent from the ranger. 

As balacing mechanics Anet has been nerfing the ranger in this aspects: 

1. No access to reliable stability (stripped away from core design) 
2. Lower base damage than other classes.
3. No access to reliable active defenses: blocks/immunities. 
4. No realiable access to unblockables ( nerfed by the projectile hate creep and the changes to unblockables)
5. No access to realiable group support skills.  (stripped away from core design)
6. No ranged AoE. (stipped away from core design) 
7. Very dependent on projectile weapons. 
8. Pets are very underwhelming with slow movement, slow attacks and low effective health. ( nerfed by the power creep done to the game during the years) 

Anet needs to fix/balance all that, otherwise it doesn't matter how much they rework/add with new specialitations, without a good base it doesn't work. 

Yeah i agree with that.

 

Here i tried to lay out the foundation of my whole rework.

I want to adress seberal of these points in the follow ups.

On one hand i want to improve the rangers damage output but mainly with trait choice. I dont wanna meddle with the modifiers. Second off i wanted to improve pet gameplay a bit so that you get rewarded by commanding your pet. This will be more explicit in the trait section comming later.

For group support i actually thought to shift some utility skilsl arround so that ranger gets stances, druid gets spirits and soulbeast gets glyphs. Some ppl might be opposed to that but i thought it fits thematically very well with all. Soulbeast wouldnt loose its stances, but core would still be able to group support. I wont switch them over 1:1 but this will be more explicit in the skill section.

I will add more tactical options such as stealth, unreflectable projectiles and more ranged AoE also comming in the follow up sections.

Pets hit reliability is something on its own entirely and basically needs anet to overhaul their mob base code the pets rely on. I did not touched upon all issues with pets in this section but yes pets need mire love apart from my proposed changes.

 

 

[InsaneQR.7412]

@Lonami.2987

 

Yeah the new forums are a bit of a mess. Especielly the notification system is kinda kitten.

 

On the pet survivability:

If you inspect the stats that i gave the pets you will see that they are on a defensive level more squishy now. But pack a bit more of a punch. Pets skills bring utility and they should be improved (and i will improve them in the skill section comming up).

I tried to atleast have some pet subspecies to be more survivable. Because having a bear as squishy as a bird felt weird tbh. Thats why i came up with the armor classes. Pets that are more squishy will just be more dangerous in raw damage.

 

Second on the soulbeast comment about the benefit of being in merge mode, yeah i could try to go that route instead but i thought this way i would not mess to hard on the initial design feeling of gaining more power when merged.

 

Tbh i didnt want to salvage the drake breaths in particular. I wanted to keep combinatorial experimentation high. Thats why i wanted you to allow to choose your pet aesthetic, skill and archetype independently.

 

I could place the petswap to the F3 to split the skillbar evenly in half tbh. So left of the F3 would be the commanding parts (Attack or Rescue & Hunt/Guard) and right of it would be the pet skills. This woul also clean the UI w bit up tbh. (I will change that today if i have time).

This would also keep the soulbeast specific parts (Archetype skill and merge) on the left side of the petswap and it would be cohesive as a whole.

 

If you have more inputs let me know^^

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by InsaneQR.7412

[Gotejjeken.1267]

A couple of my issues:

 

- Don't like losing attack/guard functionality under any circumstance; I know not a lot of people seem to do this, but desynch play is actually very useful in competitive modes (command pet to attack something, you attack something else).  "Return to me" has never been super important because normally by time you hit it your pet is dead anyway, and it is much safer to swap or merge to prevent this. 

 

I get the new version of F1 basically does this with marking but it is more confusing to me since it splits the functionality out into two places instead of one.  Might as well just have the current F1 be able to mark downed allies and the pet go rez them.  

 

- I don't think they will ever implement swapping while in beastmode, because the entire 'tradeoff' limiting that was aimed at beastmode. Even if you limit the CD's of the beast abilities, you can still get powerful effects by unmerge--for instance, swoop for a gap closer into smokescale's dark field; or swoop as an escape into porcines forage for boons / stealth.  

 

Essentially, anet seemingly does not want the choice here to have flexibility in beastmode at all, and wants this choice prior to combat.

 

- Not being able to merge with your pet when it is down on soulbeast leaves a huge possibility open for it to just die by random AoE and you not being able to enter beastmode.  That essentially kills the entire spec.  

 

- The CA rework I think would end with everyone using healing / conceal anyway--at least in competitive modes.  No amount of damage is going to replace the escape functionality that celestial shadow provides, or the healing / condition removal of seed of life / lunar impact.  

 

In short, if they would just rework the beastmastery line (to effectively use commands) and the WS line (to get some of our cleanse options out of it) and pet F2s to be more inline with today's game then mostly everything else will work as intended.  The elite specs pretty much work fine as-is, with any glaring flaws being centered around the pet which they have stated they can't fix.  

 

As a last thought, as far as stowing and whatnot goes, the ability to have an 'empty merge' while on core and druid would be nice.  Basically you merge with your pet and that's it--this already actually happens a LOT on soulbeast as a bug if you have your pet merged and jump into water.  If you then switch builds it is possible to have a perma stowed pet (I've done this by doing the SB bug then switching to Druid for instance); the only way to un-stow it for me was to either map change or log out / in.  

Edited June 29, 2021 by Gotejjeken.1267

[InsaneQR.7412]

@Gotejjeken.1267

I think you misunderstood the marking skill. Its basically the same skill as the current F1. Just that your pet gains additional benefits when you mark a target.

 

Second off: Guard/Hunt is basically just the active passive toggle, but the pas.ive has retreat ans the stow baked into it. Thats basically it. It does not really do morey

 

On your issue on soulbeast:

Not being able to merge while your pet i down is a tradeoff. Because of that you can swap pets. It just rewards looking out for your pet and requires a tiny bit more attention. After you merged you can still swap back. This is basically the counterplay against the flexibility. Thats why i doubt it would kill the spec, especially not when you have more options.

 

On druid: yes i designed the stealth focussed druid for competitive modes. Especially WvW. Because ranger lacks proper WvW capabilities. I would say that a bunker condid ruid probamly would prefer the ancient seeds variant more for sPvP or open world while the might form would be for group content. That one form is better in certain game modes is intentional.

 

Lastly, this is just a part of my rework and not the whole thing. So any interaction with current traits and skills is subject to change, atleast theoretically.

 

 

[Seb De Tyra.3421]

Not a fan of trying to add more micromanaging into pets as they can't be depended on as it is, are buggy as hell and die to aoe. I'd be happy if the new elite spec had no pet at all in it. 

[enkeny.6937]

well in PvE
pets has low target priority, 99% AoE damage reduction and immune to environmental hazards. 
they usually survive more than my other party members. 
but yes, I too want at least 1 core healing skill to revive my pets, waiting 1 minute for switching back to my primary pet in a fast pace game is too long.

[InsaneQR.7412]

On 7/1/2021 at 12:26 AM, Seb De Tyra.3421 said:

Not a fan of trying to add more micromanaging into pets as they can't be depended on as it is, are buggy as hell and die to aoe. I'd be happy if the new elite spec had no pet at all in it. 

Well tbf it does not addlmore micromanaging. It just streamlines it and gives it more depth and payoff.

I did not add any micromanaging functionality. I added just rewards for doing so.

[Dadnir.5038]

F5 is one to many key in my opinion... Also baking commands into the F skills is a big "no" for me.

 

Ultimately:

1. Most core pets need some skills improvement in general and skill balance based on the gamemode.
2. The 2 skills outside the AA that the pet use automatically have always been an issue for me, It would be nice if we could prevent the pet from using them. (Much like we could prevent skill use from "heroes" in GW1)

I'd already be satisfied with this much done.

[xDuckYx.4920]

Just make pets unkillable....

[InsaneQR.7412]

On 7/2/2021 at 8:04 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

F5 is one to many key in my opinion... Also baking commands into the F skills is a big "no" for me.

 

Ultimately:

1. Most core pets need some skills improvement in general and skill balance based on the gamemode.
2. The 2 skills outside the AA that the pet use automatically have always been an issue for me, It would be nice if we could prevent the pet from using them. (Much like we could prevent skill use from "heroes" in GW1)

I'd already be satisfied with this much done.

 

 

So far i didnt bake any commands into the mechanics except the naming convention. About 90% of what my core ranger proposal is, is streamlining and unifying functions. The only new functions are the possible autostow, the pet revival and that you have trait interactions with all F skills and not just the petswap and the beastskill.

 

I will change commands as a result in a follow up section but i havent replaced them at all in this section above.

 

Skill changes for pets are on my bucket list and will come in a future part.

 

First i go with weapon skills, then traits and then pet skills. Lastly i will compile them in one thread for simplicity.

[Arheundel.6451]

On 6/29/2021 at 11:22 AM, anduriell.6280 said:

The issues with ranger it is rooted in it's core desing which needs to be addressed. I am manly talking about PvP/WvW as in those game modes is where the mechanical design of the class is the most important thing, in PvE is about DPS/unique buffs. 

Right now ranger has this mecahnics:

1. Very long reach with long bow with a decent burst. 
2. Pets are sources or damage/effects indepent from the ranger. 

As balacing mechanics Anet has been nerfing the ranger in this aspects: 

1. No access to reliable stability (stripped away from core design) 
2. Lower base damage than other classes.
3. No access to reliable active defenses: blocks/immunities. 
4. No realiable access to unblockables ( nerfed by the projectile hate creep and the changes to unblockables)
5. No access to realiable group support skills.  (stripped away from core design)
6. No ranged AoE. (stipped away from core design) 
7. Very dependent on projectile weapons. 
8. Pets are very underwhelming with slow movement, slow attacks and low effective health. ( nerfed by the power creep done to the game during the years) 

Anet needs to fix/balance all that, otherwise it doesn't matter how much they rework/add with new specialitations, without a good base it doesn't work. 

And people still whine about current ranger😅