Nature Rituals

PvE focused, of course.

Since there are all these "Mesmers are baed" threads going around and Rangers are also inferior to other options in most PvE settings, I figured Rangers deserve a bit of attention.

While many aspects of the Ranger are ineffective, this thread is focused on Nature Rituals. Mainly because I can't figure out a way to buff traps without changing their purpose, bows aren't meant for DPS and their intended purposes aren't good for PvE, and Beast Mastery got updated recently (sort of).

Why Nature Rituals suck:

• Long casting times. Long casting times cause a Nature Ritual that could be useful to be neglected because it just isn't worth the effort (Favorable Winds is a great example). Summon Spirits could solve this, but it restricts you to either a R/Rt or a Rt/R. Also, casting times makes Rituals less practical because, if they die in the midst of a battle, you're out of luck.
• Terrible effects. Many Rituals are centered around damage conversion (usually not useful), energy denial (not useful), condition spreading (very unlikely to be useful), and increasing the effectiveness of conditions (not useful). In fact, most Rituals hurt a team more than they could possibly help.
• Better if used by Ritualists in many cases. Ritualists already have much to offer while Rangers have significantly less.

Solutions:

• Reduce casting times.
• Change effects.
• If possible, put important breakpoints at 13+ and buff Rangers so they have more to offer.

Suggestions:

Even though these ideas will probably never get read/considered by Anet and will only get skimmed by the masses of Guru, I wrote them anyway because I have nothing better to do.

All Nature Rituals:

1. Reduce casting times. I would go from 3-5 seconds to 1-3 seconds. Or, they could be given casting times similar to their Ritualist counterparts (I wouldn't prefer this as it seems a bit OP).
2. Improve Armor/Health. I would actually prefer this didn't happen (people should have to put some thought into their spirit placement).
3. Reduce recharge times of non-elite Rituals. Preferably 45ish for the strong rituals and 30ish for the weaker ones.

Brambles- Significantly increase damage on knockdowns or apply cripple to knocked down creatures who are already bleeding.

Conflagration- Give it the current effect of Greater Conflagration.

Energizing Wind- Revert.

Equinox- No good ideas. Maybe remove the current effect and give a penalty to exhausted foes or slow down spell casting speeds.

Famine- No good ideas for this one, either, but the nerf to 600 will render it useless. Maybe make it positively affect life stealing (steal an extra x health, gain x health, gain 1 energy, etc) or make life steal worse (gain no health, lose x energy, etc).

Favorable Winds- Make it affect spears and possibly projectile spells.

Fertile Season- Remove current effect and make it increase healing by x%.

Greater Conflagration- Remove current effect and make it increase fire damage.

• Makes Kindle, Ignite, and Fire Magic less useless.

Lacerate and Toxicity- Make 'em deal armor-ignoring damage per second instead of increasing degen. Beefing them up a bit wouldn't hurt, either.

Pestilence- When any creature in range dies, all its conditions spread to creatures of the same type in the area.

Predatory Season- Take away healing reduction. Add +5 damage with attacks, increase the healing, or change the +health to 5 life steal/drain on attacks.

Primal Echoes- Shouts and Chants last x% longer.

• Fantastic synergy with Paragons/Warriors and the name makes more sense. Win-win.

Quickening Zephyr- This is also made useless by the 600 nerf. But, a revert of EW makes this better again.

Quicksand- No good ideas. Random idea: Deals x damage per second to knocked down foes. Maybe throw on an Earthbind effect since it's elite.

Winnowing- Scale +damage with Wilderness Survival and increase it slightly.

Some Elite Nature Ritual: Hexes last X% longer for all non-spirit creatures in range. Hexed creatures activate skills Y% slower.

• Courtesy of Ugh. Great way to bring Mesmers into play (by making hexing better and interrupting easier) and make monks sometimes more viable than ER eles (for hex removal).

Muddy Terrain : You move X% slower for Y seconds. Muddy Terrain reapplies every time you stand still but cannot affect you if you are already moving.

• Courtesy of Ugh. Seems like it could help groups of casters or ranged attackers by making the mob more likely to stick behind the frontline. Possibly good with B/P groups, MMs, and tank n' spank.

GC: fire damage increase, burning duration extended
Quicksand: earth damage increase, speed reduction
Famine: cold damage increase, weakness duration extended
Lacerate: physical damage increase, direct damage while bleeding
Equinox: lightning damage increase, -special effect goes here-

• All courtesy of Shriketalon. Great way to allow eles to do something other than ER or ward. Also makes conditions (which have always been weak in PvE) more effective.

No ideas for Roaring Winds.

Your suggestions/comments/criticism/insults are welcome, of course.

TL;DR:
Nature Rituals suck due to casting times and poor effects. They should be buffed. Rangers are lacking in the PvE department and they need something to bring to the table. Nature Rituals have much potential and they're an interesting mechanic, but they have been neglected over the years.

Clarification:

Broad Head Arrow and Barrage, your argument of Rangers failing at PvE is invalid.

this
rangers are by far not the best for pve
but most certainly not the worst,or even bad

id give em a 4/5 general,3.5/5 in hard areas

Staying on topic, Nature Rituals do need to be looked at and revised. Your suggestions are interesting.

Off-topic, Rangers don't suck.

Alright fine, I'll edit that out of the post. Just pretend I never said it.

And if Rangers don't suck, they're definately inferior. I think Nature Rituals are an interesting way to help Rangers become more valued members of a team.

Also, BHA is only good in a few select areas. Barrage is good but it is inferior to the DPS offered by other classes. And in tank 'n' spank senarios, Rits are more effective with Barrage.

And this thread is about Wilderness Survival which is completely terrible except for like 5 skills.

While I don't agree to most of the effect changes to the nature rituals, I do agree that casting time should be reduced like they did with Binding Rituals and make the effects affect enemies and/or allies and not both friends and foes. Of course, this would mean a PvE split to all of them like they did with Binding Rituals.

I do agree that [[Lacerate] is bad though. 5 Second casting time, being linked to Beast Mastery, and additional degen being conditional makes it not worthy of being Elite. And bleeding is a pretty bad condition on its own.

I like a lot of these suggestions. These rituals definitely need their casting times reduced like the ritualists got their spirits casting times reduced. The only two I think dont need any additional buffs (aside from the reduction in casting time) are favorable winds and winnowing. I see both of their effects as being good enough as they are. Oh, and I dont think they should get improved armor either as a ranger should have to place them skillfully or be punished for it.

I agree that nature rituals need buffing. With a few, special, exceptions, I don't use them (frozen soil in Slaver's Exile, for example). As stated, most of them are either useless (winter, barring specialized builds), too conditional (Lacerate, brambles), or hurt you more than it hurts the enemy (most of them, since the enemy gets off more attacks than you do). Making them only effect friends or foes instead of both would be a step in the right direction, as would cutting the casting and recharge times.

In fact, generally speaking (as there will always be specific exceptions), I think the best thing about nature rituals is their ability to make expertise affect the cost of binding rituals.

On Topic: Most Nature Rituals are terrible. However, even with buffs, i don't see them being very useful.

Off Topic: Rangers are terrible in PvE. BHA is terribly outclassed by technobabble, or hell, even KDs. Barrage is used better on a rit due to the lolness of splinter barrage. Without splinter, barrage is meh.

rangers are inferior to wars, rits, necs, monks. but so is everyone else.
as long as they could use some small tweaks and buffs - as with cast times of spirits, that's a good example there - dervishes not being the best with scythes is by far much more concerning. the main problem is powercreep of some classes while others never catch up - rt/r is now essentially stronger and faster on splinter barrage than r/rt, though not to the scythe war's level. still, something's wrong.

on topic.
+1 to cutting the cast times. with rit spirits buffed this way, i see nothing against doing so.
famine - i'm not sure if 600/smite nerf will make it useless. i mean, if 600 will still be able to tank, just not deal enough fast damage through smite bonds, famine kicks in.
+1 on favorable winds. i was shocked recently that it doesn't affect spears. i mean, a new class is added, a one that's using a physical ranged weapon as well, and a skill like that isn't changed to reflect it?

QFT.

12 chars

After this, /thread?

I thought about this, but I feel like it would make many rituals overpowered or at least make them require less planning to use. But I wouldn't mind it, I suppose.

Reducing cast times: Definately.

Increasing armor: No, for the reasons you listed.

Brambles and Quicksand would probably be a bit OP with GDW or Earthshaker.

Conflagration: Might be OP since Greater Conflagration is used in farming builds. They're pretty minor, though, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

EW: Definately. This would buff traps, too.

Lacerate and Toxicity: Should've always been that way, IMO.

Winnowing and Favorable Winds: I don't think an effect change for these is really necessary, but your suggestions were fine.

Famine: Improving life stealing could be OP with the new Demonic Flesh.

Predatory Season: Pretty good.

I like your ideas for Greater Conflagration, Primal Echoes, and Fertile Season a lot. They seem like teams would be able to use them quite nicely in some areas. Also, GC and PE give buffs to fire magic and paragons.
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Some other ideas:

Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8...10 Spirit. Hexes last X% longer for all non-spirit creatures in range. Hexed creatures activate skills Y% slower.

Good for areas with little hexing from mobs. Buffs mesmers because it makes hexing better and interrupting easier. Also buffs monks since hex removal would be more important.

Muddy Terrain
Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8...10 Spirit. You move X% slower for Y seconds. Muddy Terrain reapplies every time you stand still but cannot affect you if you are already moving.

Kind of like a weakened version of Icy Ground.

i was pveing the other day on my ranger and i wanted to bring fw because then you can camp a flatbow (best bow with fw up), however it takes so long to cast, and i was just thinking about making a thread like this. i think with how much effort it would take to chage the effects and the possible balance issues, id say just give them a cast time simliar to the rit rituals. fw and winnow(great with h blades) would see a lot more play this way

But that would still leave ~20 skills to continue collecting dust like they've been doing since the release of their respective campaigns.

I think you spend more time putting up favorable winds for a fight than it saves you time while shooting arrows. I like your ideas, especially the casting times of spirits.

Revert some skills so you can old-school EoE bomb ! nuff said.

Perhaps make the elites have two effects? The damage idea for GC is a good one, and it could be extended along with an additional section.

So it would look like....

GC: fire damage increase, burning duration extended
Quicksand: earth damage increase, speed reduction
Famine: cold damage increase, weakness duration extended
Lacerate: physical damage increase, direct damage while bleeding
Equinox: lightning damage increase, -special effect goes here-

Thus providing elemental boosts across the board, plus synergy with conditions?