ranger elite spec icon speculate and theme

[Lazze.9870]

21 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

"can" - is a good word, too bad the animation team didn't get the request to make them so.

18 hours ago, Lazze.9870 said:

The old GS AA chain ended with an evasive swing, I'd say that's kind of elegan

Animation wise, at least on humans it was huge swing with rotation of whole body, that happened to have "evade" effect attached on it. no different from a brute trying to gain more force into the strike by exploiting momentum. Btw, animation didn't change, they just removed evade from the skill and replaced it with "gain endurance"

18 hours ago, Lazze.9870 said:

I would say ranger has a fine mix of more graceful martial arts/acrobatics and brutish attacks. Maul is the perfect example of the latter. It depends on what part of the archtype you lean into. Either way, it's not an argument against hammer being a good fit.

I would say that if you only look at descriptions of the skill I could see where the perception of elegance would come from. Issue is that none of that potential for elegance was translated into actuall animations. Which is why I am arguing against trying to paint rangers as sime elegant elf equivalent in GW2.

 

The game is full of copy paste animations and very little attention to details when it comes to these kinds of attacks. The mesmer doesn't look that elegant in its sword movements either, but it is definetely meant to be. The old sword AA was almost an exception to that, and one of the reasons it was kinda sad to see it go.

 

I don't see any of those evasive swings as any more brutish than they are "elegant". The old AA sword animation looked more brutish on a male norn, but very acrobatic on a sylvari/human female. Using your GS as a pole to swing around on and kick away your foe is definetely on the acrobatic side.

 

I'm not really arguing for "elegant" moves, I'm saying there is hints of it and that the ranger archtype in general are often depicted as a slightly more precise, graceful, nimble etc. in its moveset than the typical warrior. So I can see where that argument comes from and I agree with it to an extent. Obviously not to the point where I think a hammer is out of place like the other poster, though.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Lazze.9870

[Crackmonster.2790]

I will help you along to comprehend why elf is brought up a lot - its because the elf archetype incorporates many of the the same aspects as the ranger in gw2 incorporates, balance with nature, spirits, animals, etc. The gw2 ranger leans far more on the elf archetype than it does the aragorn ranger archetype for example, nearly its full arsenal can be ascribed to be somewhere between high elf and rainforest tribal warrior.

What is quite interesting about maul is that while its brutish its also cuts with edges and inflicts bleeding wounds - but even then its far fetched to say that because there is a bear attack, rangers are brutes too so anything brute goes. It is only in calling upon the spirit of the brutal animal that such a maul is caused.

The fact remains that unless someone just wanted absolutely to do it, there is no one travelling the lands the forest and protecting the land over great distances who does so with a huge hammer. It is simply not a ranger weapon from all logical angles. It is too heavy to carry around, too destructive in the way it works on the environment around and also its impractical to use in forests and tight spaces as it requires room to swing. Also, when you are wearing medium armor you rely on mobility much more, a hammer which work against you there as well. There are just so many illogical things about rangers and hammer.

You can say all you want, but so far i havent heard any logical arguments, all you have is "i want this so im going to say something distortive to argue". You are better served saying, "i love hammer and i always wanted  a hammer", which is fair, because it's not a logic choice its an emotional choice.

Well, in some ways it could a logical choice, as others have said the hammer might fill a different niche and that might be the logic of the choice far removed from a thematic choice, with rangers already having melee and ranged options - thereby watering down archetypes making the class a tad more generic - i really hope the specc itself then it something in line with ranger such as empowering the pet more.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Crackmonster.2790

[Talan Ondar.4150]

No speculation, just an imagination.

Cool would be a petmancer/packleader, where you go feral (berserker style mechanic) with several pets together. Like Tarzan storming the native village. No ranged weapons.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

1 hour ago, Crackmonster.2790 said:

The fact remains that unless someone just wanted absolutely to do it, there is no one travelling the lands the forest and protecting the land over great distances who does so with a huge hammer

Well it is not like on previous page you've got example of a legit druid in certain fantasy setting doing just that

1 hour ago, Crackmonster.2790 said:

also its impractical to use in forests and tight spaces as it requires room to swing.

you do realize this appliesto GS too?

1 hour ago, Crackmonster.2790 said:

Also, when you are wearing medium armor you rely on mobility much more, a hammer which work against you there as well.

And yet we already have a medium armor class with a hammer - a scrapper would want to say hi.

 

Bonus points - there was a speculation of cantha spec for rangers to be based off wardens - a sylvari-like plant people who roamed echowald forest, and got really upset with humanity over that jade wind petrification of their homeland. And they commonly used hammers.

And I still find your argumentation for how hammer is totally-not-a-ranger-weapon, not that convincing - and that's coming from the point of "I don't even care what will be eod espec for a ranger"

[Joncal.9623]

While y'all cry you want less pets and/or no "hammur plx" I sincerely wish they'd focus on a more pet reliant/heavy espec!

I don't want an additional pet out with my regular pet (pls no WoW BM hunter ripoff!), or new skills that summon additional pets for a brief moment, let that be with the Mesmers.

 

What I hope for is maybe an additional pet ability we can fire off? So instead of the one, we can micro manage TWO skills! *gasp* I know!

 

As for the weapon? Honestly I don't care at this point. Sure, I'd love to scepter, but I'm just as OK with a hammer. What else could they give us? A foci? that'd be neat, ngl... >_> *channels the spirit of nature into my -main hand weapon- and BOINK, you ded*

 

But in all seriousness, a defensive hammer espec would be swell. 

[Ehecatl.9172]

14 hours ago, Crackmonster.2790 said:

The fact remains that unless someone just wanted absolutely to do it, there is no one travelling the lands the forest and protecting the land over great distances who does so with a huge hammer. It is simply not a ranger weapon from all logical angles. It is too heavy to carry around, too destructive in the way it works on the environment around and also its impractical to use in forests and tight spaces as it requires room to swing. Also, when you are wearing medium armor you rely on mobility much more, a hammer which work against you there as well. There are just so many illogical things about rangers and hammer.

 

Garruk here seems perfectly happy carrying his massive bardiche around as his primary weapon and he's one of the most iconic and recognizable nature wizards in Magic the Gathering.

 

In the same setting this is Borborygmos, the cylopean ruler of the Gruul Clans, an ancient order of druids and shamans who seeks to return the world of Ravnica to a more natural state by waging war against the civilization that has paved over it.

 

How about Rexxar, the famous Mok'Nathal Beastmaster from Warcraft who is known for his powerful bond with his animal companions and his love for the wilds.

 

Or even Broll Bearmantle who, despite being an elf, prefers to fight by ripping people a part with his bear hands or beating them with the blunt force of his staff.

 

Here is a Pathfinder figure of a half-orc druid using a spiked cudgel as his go-to weapon.

 

None of these characters operate with the "grace and elegance" of an evlish warrior, but they are all nature warriors that can fall under the umbrella of a GW2 ranger.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Ehecatl.9172

[Gibson.4036]

On 9/2/2021 at 6:30 AM, Crackmonster.2790 said:

I will help you along to comprehend why elf is brought up a lot - its because the elf archetype incorporates many of the the same aspects as the ranger in gw2 incorporates, balance with nature, spirits, animals, etc. The gw2 ranger leans far more on the elf archetype than it does the aragorn ranger archetype for example, nearly its full arsenal can be ascribed to be somewhere between high elf and rainforest tribal warrior.

Weird dichotomy.

Aragorn had elven blood . He was raised by Elrond himself like a son. He married an elf.

The Dunedain rangers were descended from men who allied with Elves. It was common for them to be fostered by elves.

The original ranger archetype was heavily woven in with the original fantasy elf concept.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Gibson.4036

[Gibson.4036]

On 8/19/2021 at 10:05 AM, Nerthus.3592 said:

You know what would be cool? Shapeshifter. Shapeshifter(north theme) which can be useful at wvw zerg fights.

Changing forms on the fly...jump into fatty werebear for tankiness and cc, werewolf for dps\mobility etc, but I'm dreaming...it'll probably be something cantha themed with a shield.

How about shapeshift in to a treant with a massive wooden hammer? 

[Joncal.9623]

On 9/3/2021 at 9:18 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

How about shapeshift in to a treant with a massive wooden hammer? 

Yes. 

 

Just imagine: murder happy tree with a sledgehammer... 🤤 *nerdgasm*

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

On 9/1/2021 at 5:41 PM, AkantorCZ.8952 said:

I've been playing vanila ranger since forever because I don't like current elite specs. The druid basically turned ranger into something else and the soulbeast is a concept of devouring your pet.

For once I'd like to see elite spec that actually enhances rangers core ability. Having single stronger and more interactive pet seems like the way to go. If that is the case a shield makes the most sense to me. You know to focus on keeping you and your pet alive.

 

It would also be super cool have some kind of mount interaction with your pet. But I should probably lower my expectations. 🙂

I wouldn't say Druid turned the Ranger into something else, it seems the closest to an expansion to Core Ranger as you're ever going to get. If you take a look at Core Ranger skills, at least 12 of them are supportive. That's not counting the traits that also help allies in some way, including the majority of several traitlines.

 

Druid was a fairly natural extension of Core, and you can play it as non-supportive and its basically Core with a slightly weaker pet, an extra leap/teleport, Ranger-themed projectile hate and additional healing/CC.

[AkantorCZ.8952]

13 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

I wouldn't say Druid turned the Ranger into something else, it seems the closest to an expansion to Core Ranger as you're ever going to get. If you take a look at Core Ranger skills, at least 12 of them are supportive. That's not counting the traits that also help allies in some way, including the majority of several traitlines.

 

Druid was a fairly natural extension of Core, and you can play it as non-supportive and its basically Core with a slightly weaker pet, an extra leap/teleport, Ranger-themed projectile hate and additional healing/CC.

Dont't take me wrong there are quite a few druid skills or traits I like. It's just that I don't like the druid core ability - Celestial Avatar. It allows you to temporary turn into 'something else' and reduce pet stats. Sorry not my cup of tea.

 

For once I'd like to have elite spec that would give ranger pet bigger significance instead of weakening it or devouring it. Sure core ranger works but somehow I feel like missing out because it doesn't give you any extra stuff like elite specs. Anyway 'summoner-like' elite spec does make sense to me.

 

Shield would give ranger another block option (out of GS) that could better work for condi builds.

Edited September 5, 2021 by AkantorCZ.8952

[yanoch.7051]

Trained Choya Hammer Skin is a very natural hammer very fit for a Ranger.

[Levetty.1279]

Looks like we have to wait another month to find out. Rangers an after thought as usual.

[Dakiaris.2798]

The people who think hammer doesn't fit ranger hadn't played gw1 I'm assuming. Bunny thumper was a very very popular build in factions and the wardens of the echovald forest wielded them and used high beast mastery builds. Most of the wardens had a mixture of hammer and beast mastery skills doing very high damage with their pet while dealing only moderate damage themselves.

 

I could honestly see the hammer being a moderate damage weapon that has a bunch of skills that buff the pets damage output while doing moderate cc. The utility skills I could see being physical attacks based on gw1 beast mastery skills like feral aggression, ferocious strike, brutal strike to name a few.

 

The thing I wish they would give us is nature rituals or preperations from gw1 though... It's funny how both of those were HUGE things for ranger in gw1 yet we hadn't seen them on the class yet.

[Lazze.9870]

32 minutes ago, Dakiaris.2798 said:

The thing I wish they would give us is nature rituals or preperations from gw1 though... It's funny how both of those were HUGE things for ranger in gw1 yet we hadn't seen them on the class yet.

Rituals are the spirits. Sadly.

Preperations could have been a class mechanic, but they gave us the lame AI instead. As a skill type reminiscent to the orginal game I don't think they would work, or they would feel like watered down versions and function like vulture stance or something. The thief preperations are completely different.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Lazze.9870

[Kodama.6453]

24 minutes ago, Lazze.9870 said:

Rituals are the spirits. Sadly.

Preperations could have been a class mechanic, but they gave us the lame AI instead. As a skill type reminiscent to the orginal game I don't think they would work, or they would feel like watered down versions and function like vulture stance or something. The thief preperations are completely different.

I think the old preparations would have perfectly worked for this game, but instead of preparations they would need to use the venom mechanic from thief. Buffs for the next outgoing attacks of you, your pet, and surrounding allies.

I would have loved for ranger to get the venom mechanic from thief and it fits ranger perfectly when it comes to flavour. All the thief venoms are taken from creatures like skelks, lindwurms, spiders, etc. A ranger using various venoms extracted maybe even directly from their pet makes sense. Maybe ranger could also have had a different flavour by using plant poisons instead, for example from iboga, mushrooms, etc.

But the problem with that now are, as you already hinted, stances... the mechanic would just be too similar, especially since soulbeast also already can share their stances with allies through the grandmaster trait. So I guess there goes my flavour dream of a future ranger with venom skills.

[Dakiaris.2798]

I know nature rituals were spirits but they could easily bring back a few more as their own type that function similar to shouts but with a duration.

 

You know what I wanna see more than anything. A trap rework since right now guardians dragonhunter traps are so much better than the rangers.

 

Viper,frost and flame trap are fine as they are. Here's the changes/additions I want.

 

Spike trap moved to being a elite that stuns targets for 2 seconds and does heavy power based damage.

Dust trap added as a 2nd power focused pulsing trap that inflicts blind each pulse.

Barb trap added as a hybrid trap that inflicts heavy bleeding and does moderate power damage.

Tripwire a utility trap that knocks down for 1 second and inflicts 7-10 seconds of cripple.

 

I just don't like that the trapper class has some of the most meh traps in the game... I really wanna see this aspect of rangers get reworked and expanded.

 

For preperations they could have easily done them in gw2 functioning similar to how they currently have sharpening stone. Like apply poison, Choking gass giving 1/2 second daze for 2-3 attacks, expert focus giving you alacraty for a decent amount of time, ignite/glass arrows could just be renamed to ingite/glass weapon which would make attacks deal extra damage in a aoe *or just aoe bleed in glass's case*, Kindle arrows could be reworked to kindle weapon adding burning to your attacks for a alternative to sharpening stone... The list goes on and on there was so many skills they could have very easily adapted to gw2 but they didn't because they were focusing on trying to make gw2 a esport at launch which is why the core classes have so few skills.

 

Really I wouldn't mind if after EoD they decided that the next expansion instead of having more elite specs they went back and added a weapon or 2 to the core classes and reworked the core skills and added some extra.... A suggestion I gave was making it so the elite spec weapons unlock for the core class after the elite spec is fully trained for pve only.

 

But yea... There's a lot that could be done that I seriously doubt will ever be done. I mean we're still waiting for the great axe to be added to the game that they said would come back during the beta during one of the live streams lol.

[Kodama.6453]

24 minutes ago, Dakiaris.2798 said:

For preperations they could have easily done them in gw2 functioning similar to how they currently have sharpening stone. Like apply poison, Choking gass giving 1/2 second daze for 2-3 attacks, expert focus giving you alacraty for a decent amount of time, ignite/glass arrows could just be renamed to ingite/glass weapon which would make attacks deal extra damage in a aoe *or just aoe bleed in glass's case*, Kindle arrows could be reworked to kindle weapon adding burning to your attacks for a alternative to sharpening stone... The list goes on and on there was so many skills they could have very easily adapted to gw2 but they didn't because they were focusing on trying to make gw2 a esport at launch which is why the core classes have so few skills.

To be fair, some of the stuff you mention there got brought over to GW2.... but it is either thematically or not on the ranger class.

• Choking gas: thematically reintroduced with thief shortbow, one skill is literally called choking gas and applies poison as well and daze to enemies, it basically does the same the old choking gas preparation did, but just with a single attack instead of applying the disrupt to several outgoing attacks (which would be op in GW2)
• Kindle arrows: there is a skill which does exactly what you describe here, applying burning to the next attacks. It is just not on the ranger, but the engineer instead, called incendiary ammo (toolbelt skill of the flamethrower)
• Ignite arrows: power damage in AoE added to your attacks.... while it is just a single time instead of the next x number of attacks, explosive entrance works quite similar. Takedown round does as well. These 2 traits actually make me think that even if anet decides to bring back this mechanic of all next outgoing attacks dealing AoE damage, then it won't be for the ranger, but for the engineer with an explosive flavour once again. Something like sticky bombs being attached to enemies, which explode after a short delay and these are added to all your x next outgoing attacks.
• Glass arrows: AoE bleed is now less of a passive effect and more of the baseline of some conditions weapons... like renegade's shortbow shatter shot.

With these skills, I doubt that Anet will bring back these ranger preparations at all. They used the ideas already for other stuff.

51 minutes ago, Dakiaris.2798 said:

A suggestion I gave was making it so the elite spec weapons unlock for the core class after the elite spec is fully trained for pve only.

Already saw this stuff suggested, but the problem with it is that such a system is unfair towards some classes.

For example, engineers don't get to use the full potential of their sword in core, since the weapon has inherent interaction with the heat system, which core engineer can't access.

[Dami.5046]

yeah hammers were a thing in pvp in the GW arenas. Trappers and touchers  too. AH those were the days.

Anyway, since we aren't getting hammer, then i hope it's rifle.

pew.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Dami.5046

[Loules.8601]

39 minutes ago, Dami.5046 said:

Anyway, since we aren't getting hammer, then i hope it's rifle.

 

Lol, good (bad) news for you 😄

Edited September 14, 2021 by Loules.8601

[Xanhawk.3806]

45 minutes ago, Dami.5046 said:

yeah hammers were a thing in pvp in the GW arenas. Trappers and touchers  too. AH those were the days.

Anyway, since we aren't getting hammer, then i hope it's rifle.

pew.

Why do you think we aren't getting Hammers for Ranger? 

With current events, it would lean more into proof Rangers are getting Hammers.

[Lazze.9870]

7 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I think the old preparations would have perfectly worked for this game, but instead of preparations they would need

 

I mean, yeah, but like I said and like you agreed on, it just becomes a different name to something other skills already do.

 

Vulture Stance and One Wolf Pack are in essence mini preparations with internal icds.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Lazze.9870

[Lazze.9870]

7 hours ago, Dakiaris.2798 said:

For preperations they could have easily done them in gw2 functioning similar to how they currently have sharpening stone

That's what I said. But what's the point, really? I honestly don't want more of those kind of skills on ranger. Two of the stances are like that, sharpening stones.. It's boring. Preparations in the original game was build defining, and you only took one.

Our traps are fine imo, it just sucks that they are so heavy on the condition side. Frost trap needs more damage in pvp and wvw, that coefficient split is ridiculous compared to DH traps. An elite trap would be cool, obviously.

Hoping on something that shakes it up a bit on the new spec. Our stun breaks are good, but honestly, most of the utility skills bar those are pretty boring.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Lazze.9870

[Dami.5046]

3 hours ago, Xanhawk.3806 said:

Why do you think we aren't getting Hammers for Ranger? 

With current events, it would lean more into proof Rangers are getting Hammers.

Because i'm assuming that when we get the ranger spec the pic will be green, while the red looks like ele.

But i don't know just guess work.

[Dami.5046]

4 hours ago, Loules.8601 said:

Lol, good (bad) news for you 😄

whys that? I'm happy with whatever rangers get.