As part of an ongoing conversation with the Guild Wars 2 dungeon community, Robert Hrouda, ArenaNet Content Designer, mentioned Rangers in quite a few forum posts yesterday. The pet UI in Guild Wars 2 can be a little frustrating (poor Necros have it even worse), and this fact seems amplified when running dungeons and fractals as a Ranger. Pets have to be micromanaged fairly closely in order to even have a chance of staying alive, and due to the lack of overall survivability that pets have, even when micromanaged correctly, some pets don’t stand much of a chance in the more dangerous fractals.
These pet issues make some Rangers feel like they really don’t have a place in dungeons and fractals, especially since trading off stats and abilities to help their own survivability takes off a rather large chunk of their personal DPS.
Robert Hrouda made the argument that Rangers are actually in a decent spot for the most part. He offered a few tips for dungeon-aspiring Rangers as well as talked a bit about what the team plans on doing about the Ranger pet survivability issues. That is indeed an issue. Keep reading to take a look at all of his posts.
First off, here are his thoughts on the overall state of Rangers in the game:
Originally posted by Robert Hrouda (Source)
Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.
I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.
In another thread, he went on to admit there is a very specific stat ArenaNet is looking to find a fix for.
Originally posted by Robert Hrouda (Source)
As for AR [agony resist] resistance on pets and such, know that I am actively looking into solutions to that. It’s not something we are unaware of, and it is an issue we are trying to develop solutions for. I am at scale 52 in the fractals, and pet insta-death above scale 20 is something I am acutely aware of and trying to resolve.…
I’m of the opinion that your pet and summon should share the master’s AR. That seems like the simplest most straight-forward solution. We all agree the AR is a problem that has potential fixes, it’s just figuring out how best to fix it and making sure whatever we choose works.
This sounds like a decent solution.
Later on in the same thread, he also talked a bit about why a straight AoE damage reduction to all pets wouldn’t quite work. He also offered some tips for Rangers who find themselves frustrated during dungeons and fractals.
Originally posted by Robert Hrouda (Source)
We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.As much as they seem vestigial, the “attack” and “return” keybinds are really the only thing that can give the player any control, and they can be a bit unwieldy. I would recommend though that if you have never tried using those keybinds, try them out the next time you’re in a dungeon, your pet will thank you for it.
Also, I find that a ranged pet does better in dungeons. My typical pet setup for dungeons is Hyena (because having 2 knockdowns and another hyena is super good), and a Drake (almost any). I know this is contradictory to what I just said about ranged pets being good, but I use the keybinds a lot and that dramatically increases survivability when taking 2-3 hits is all you want the pet to do.
Spiders and devourers can be really good to bring because of the fact that they are ranged. Devourers have an escape from melee ability as well, and spiders have CC, which helps keep them alive while you reposition and pet-swap (or return) in a more favorable place. Tankier pets require more management, but once you get there and know how to use it (in combination with pet swap), you’ll find you’re not facing the death cooldown as often as before.
That and you can name your spiders “Cuddles” and your devourer “Citizen Snips” and get a good laugh out of people’s reactions.
If we start seeing hundreds of spiders with the name “Cuddles” we know who to blame! Anyways, what do you think about what he had to say, Ranger fans?
