Nature Rituals and Trapping

Power creep making conditions less useful is what has affected traps. I think that if there was just a mass nerfing (please anet, please!) of the powerful direct damage skills, conditions would be more useful.

As for spirits, I would suggest lowering all of their casting times to 3 seconds, making them last indefinitely till killed (ie, they dont die on their own when their time limit ends) and making their effects slightly more tailored to PvE through skill splits. Im not asking for a huge change in functionality, and i think some like winnowing and favorable winds would be fine with their current functionality. For example, I would like to see brambles inflict bleeding and a small amount of piercing damage when a someone is knocked down. Conflagration could cause all fire damage to do like 4 extra damage (kind of like the fire damage version of winnowing). Energizing winds could make it so that all skills, regardless of energy cost, cost 5 less energy and recharge 25-50% longer (this might need some tweaking). An elite ritual, like Famine, could have its functionality changed so that it does x damage to creatures each time energy is drained from them. There are all types of cool functionalities that nature rituals could have, and i hope that anet works to make some (particularly the elites) useful in PvE.

You can actually "disarm" traps by triggering them and backing out of the aoe without being affected by the trap; so this concept is already possible.

Ah, you younguns don't remember the glory days?

Back when spirits used to effect the entire map and cause DP?

Back when a Winter ranger was needed in the Fire Isles?

I do!

Traps/Spirits used to be kind of over powered. EoE bomb anyone?

I remember getting INSANE lag in HA battles against spirit spamming rangers many years ago. You used to be able to put up a barrier of spirits, heck if I can remember what we called that build. Plus I remember all the trapping builds in HA, like good 'ol fashion Iway and VIM ("Victory is Mine!").

I think trapping and spirits got nerfed back before skills were separated by PvE/PvP and were never looked back into.

I remember this. Actually, if I remember correctly, people didn't just want winter, other rangers would actually run traps there, and pull aggro. I was just a simple nuker at the time.

Cool excerpt from the GW2 Interview with Eric Flannum about Rangers:

"Q: How is large the area of effect for a ranger’s spirits and traps? Do they affect allies only or enemies as well?

Eric: We’re still balancing the numbers, so I can’t really give exact ranges for spirits or traps. Whether a trap or spirit affects allies, enemies, or both is based upon the individual spirit or trap in question. For example, Sun Spirit only buffs allies."

One of my colleagues just started playing GW1 PvE and made a ranger. I explained to him how weak they are in comparison to the rest of the other professions, opening up gw wiki, pointing out the proof... yea... Now, he made a new mesmer while his ranger now collects dust.

Echo-Arcane Echo-Dust Trap-Barbed Trap-Tripwire-Serpent's Quickness-Quickening Zephyr-Energizing Wind

Sigh - remember the days? SQ and QZ to lay as many traps as possible as quickly as possible then EW to mitigate the energy cost.

Killed by the EW nerf - rest in peace, echo dusting

Trapping is still pretty effective, there is a new UW SC featuring them. Being able to instantly kill important opponents is strng.

I noticed that new UW trap team thing too. Traps aren't bad or in need of buffs, it's just that they don't have what it takes for having a whole build around them in general PvE play.

Rangers are overall fine though, but I guess a couple bow attacks could use reverting in PvE and those spirits are crap. Winds is nice for Assault on the Stronghold, but that's not technically a ranger skill.

"Proof", or your own version of it? How about you let him do what he wants instead of form the same bias you have? No one would argue that the ranger needs a big update, but they are far from "weak".

Indeed they are not weak... Some updates would be nice.
I always try to make some new teams with my hero's so I can use them all.
This week I did some WiK bounty quests with my Necro.
with sec prof ranger. I used. SS, Ebon Battle Standard of Honor,Technobabble and Predatory Season + some other skils.
With that I had 2 Hero rangers with Barrage, one of them using Favorable winds.
And the other had Winnowing They both used poisontip signet and
had healing springs and defence skills. My last hero was Master as a
Ne/Rt healer and I had a Hench healer. I did the last Bounty Starting From LA
to get to Aleasio. And it went very wel. I used a summ stone for some extra.
Sometimes you have to take it slow to regen the monks. But it was fun.
I'll think with one guildy which is using also 2 rangers and a heal monk where he can be what ever he want. You would have a very nice team on your hands.

Simply put, there are 3 things that Anet could, but won't, do to restore the Ranger class to a level playing field:

1. Restore PvE skills so that a Ranger/Trapper using Ranger skills is of more utility and playability than a R/Rt running SoS and not a single Ranger skill.

2. Admit or acknowledge the RoK/AoE bug or botched implementation and fix it.

3. Provide 2 new skills - Discover Traps and Disarm Traps

Which of these are likely to happen, realistically? None of them

I always hope for nature rituals buff and revisit trap.
But it seems that dervish and paragon have priority.

Yes I'm very sure.
Why??? ... cause I playd it for a week with good results.
I don't say it is as fast such as for example. glaive, disc. spirits or what ever.
But it is strong and it works.

You don't have to play the usual builds which are used by the most to be effective.
Random made up team builds can be strong to and are often more fun because you need to think more. That might be hard for the lazy ones

In regards to a few comments about beast mastery: You can do over 100 dps with a pet build, right up there with spirit spamming and AoHM scythes. That +33% damage update goes a long way, but I don't think many ever tried it out. Even the developers (other than WiK, which featured any and every type of build) didn't seem to like pets too much. Beast Mastery is one of the least used attributes for PvE enemies, considering all of the rangers out there.

Otherwise, the mention of traps and spirits for the GW2 ranger left me a bit cold, since they don't work too well in GW1. Traps can do decent damage when stacked and condition spam, and I enjoy using them in h/h sometimes, but there's no way I'd ever get a pug to let me spend 60 seconds setting up traps, and then get a warrior to lead enemies into them.

That's the problem though. They aren't bad for GIMMICK builds. I want them to see use for actual balanced team builds. If you look at my OP you can see what I mean by this. If you decrease the casting times and weaken/strengthen some of both(traps/nature rituals) to counter running them solely as gimmicks, it would give rangers a better place in the game.

They should reduce the casting time, recharge and cost of traps BUT then limit the total number of traps that can be set by the players (similar to spirits) so that rangers can actually get them up quickly/in-battle but cannot abuse it to stack a billion traps to omfg pwn everything.

Don't really have a suggestion for spirits because nearly all of their effects are rather undesirable. No one would use them even if they only affect ally/mobs.

Use Barbed Trap on a normal Ranger and put it on strategic points (such as chokepoints) and you'll see they work just fine. This won't work in PvE obviously but then again, PvE is nothing but piling up as much damage as possible anyway.

Why does everyone want a Disarm Trap skill? I don't see the appeal.

100 dps is nowhere close to the dps of scythe builds, even vs. a single target. The strength of spirit spamming is in its bodyblocking, not just the dps (and its dps is ranged, anyway). And, if I can get 150+ dps from a turret build, why would I want a BM build that has 100 dps, is also single-target, isn't ranged, and is more clumsy due to having a pet?

I've tried it out. 33% is nothing compared to Asuran Scan.