Rangers have long been my favorite class in many different games, so naturally when I started playing GW, my first and favorite character is a ranger.
Forgive me if some of these ideas have been posted elsewhere, I haven't read every post in the forums. In the course of my playing, I've come to find a few things about the ranger class that need a little work.
Firstly, pets: there is a debate about how useful pets are, I'm not here to discuss that, but what can be done with them. I've found a pet to be a valuable ally in many situations, and extra baggage in others. There are a few simple things to be done that could streamline gameplay with pets
For instance, when your party dies and is resurrected by the nearest academy monk, your dead pet remains laying on the battlefield. The only way to regain it is to go back to the same location and use comfort animal, or leave the area completely, either way, you have to do a lot of fighting while missing the use of your beast skills, which are useless without the pet, just in order to get those skills back. The pet needs to be revived when the rest of the party is.
Also, in order to take a pet with you, it is almost mandatory to fill two skill slots before even adding any special pet attacks - charm animal and comfort animal. One fourth of your skill bar is automatically gone if you choose to use a pet, which if you are using any other class of skills, greatly limits your options. I would recommend combining the two skills into one, let the charm animal skill work as a pet heal/res skill when you already have a trained pet.
Next topic? Bows. Rangers have one weapon. Period. I don't want to hear the argument "but there are all different kinds of bows" - with the exception of some variation in speed and range they are the same weapon. I know all swords swing at the same rate. What's different about a ranger's weapon and a sword or axe or fire spells or blood magic is this: all other classes' weapons/spells/attacks each depend on one attribute. Sometimes, they may be affected by a second attribute, but putting points into swords will in no way improve your hammer knockdowns. Points in earth magic are not going to supplement your air spells. However, in order for a ranger to be a truly effective archer, he/she must put points into three separate attributes: marksmanship, expertise, and wilderness survival. Why? because there are arrow attacks which depend on each of these attributes. In order to be the best shot or have the most arrow tricks, marksmanship is not enough, and in a game where effective characters usually only have their points spread out into 3 attributes, your character becomes seriously limited and any secondary class attributes or beastmaster skills must be discarded for the true archer.
The answer to this is simple: Traps. Rangers are supposed to be very skilled with traps, they are supposed to be one of the main options a ranger has to use in combat. I've known a handful of players who have been extremely successful with traps, making characters who use nothing but traps. But traps depend on Wilderness Survival, as do some arrow attacks. That's right, one attribute affects two completely different sets of skills!!! The arrow attacks in Wilderness Survival need to be moved to marksmanship, and Wilderness Survival needs to be solely a trap-oriented attribute (ok, Troll Ungent can staty there too, that makes sense).
My point is that whereas other classes have one attribute for a set of skills, and only one set of skills for an attribute, Ranger has 3 attributes that affect one skills set, and two skill sets dependant on one attribute. The Ranger skills and attributes are so intertwined, that it makes for very few options. You must be either an archer or a beastmaster, not some combination of both, unlike say a warrior, who could be both a swordsman and a tactician, or a monk, who could choose to heal and protect or heal and smite, or smite and protect for that matter. With a ranger, the decision is made for you. If you will be a good archer, you must forgo any useful level of ability in a secondary class. To sacrifice points in any of the 3 attributes is to be mediocre at your primary set of skills.
These are my experiences with the game, please let me know what you think, am I way off base or right on target? For any rangers out there, do you think these suggestions would enhance your game and give you more options, or would this unbalance the whole system? I'd love to hear what others have to say on this.
b
What ranger's need is improvement on what they've got: traps. They're supposed to be an important part of the class, but there are no low level trap skills, and the traps' attribute affects everything else as well. I don't want new stuff for rangers, I just want to clean up what we're supposed to have.
