Making ranger secondaries workable: fix expertise

Over a year ago I made a mo/ra so that I could be a "beast master", at
this point, this class combination isn't a winner. In general most
classes with /ra secondary arn't winners. While, it is very common to
see a /mo or /me or even /wa. The reason why you don't see ranger
secondaries is that the impact of expertise on Ranger skills is
just too profound.

I propose that expertise is made roughly 1/2 less effective
(maxing out at 36% instead of 65% effiency), but that energy
costs of affected skills is reduced and/or their effects
increased proportionally to maintain game ballance.

To explain this proposal, let's compare Experitse with what I think is
the "next best" primary, Divine Favor.

Assuming a monk with 10+1 divine favor and 11+2 healing prayers, Orson
heals for 63 plus extra healing of 35 for the divine favor bonus for a
combined total of 98 healing. Hence, the divine favor bonus accounts
for 36% of the healing. At 16 divine favor and 15 healing, the bonus
gets as high as 39%, but this is as good as it gets. For a great many
monk skills, the efficiency bonus is much less, consider skills like
heal party in which the bonus only affects the monk. Finally, this
bonus is limited to only monk spells (not to signets or mesmer enchants
cast by the monk, for example).

With with a Ranger, even at 8 expertise, 2en is saved on 5en skills,
giving a "low end" efficency bonus of 40%. It only gets better from
there: at 11 expertise, pin-down (15en) is 15-8/15 or 46% more efficient
and for things like dust trap (25en) expertise tops out at 65%
efficiency. What is even more enticing is that this bonus applies to
almost every energy-based Warrior, Assassin skills, and Ritualist spirit
invocation.

The net result of this is that using /ra for secondary profession is
almost impossible: a 10en ranger skill is roughly 30% less powerful than
a 10en skill in any other profession. As a result, using ranger skills
as a secondary is just a horrible deal. Further, over the past year or
so many Warrior skills have had to be "nerfed" a bit to prevent
expertise abuse: all while making them much less valueable to the
Warrior. Ranger primaries, atm, simply have the best of both worlds,
they can use most other profession's secondary classes... while most
other primaries really cannot use the ranger's.

To understand this better, imagine if fast casting were 3x faster than
it is now... but perhaps limited to only _mesmer_ skills. Then, all of
the mesmer skills, for game balance, would take an absolutely huge time
to cast... since after the fast casting bonus, they would be zippity
quick. In effect, this would render just about every /me secondary
combination a very poor idea. Speaking of fast casting, it should be
applied to rituals... as these are more spell-like things that require
concentration and ajility.

If this is not fixed... when factions is released, expect ra/as to be
better assassins than assassin primaries: good energy-based attack
skills will be nerfed (or not buffed as would be required) as they get
abused by ranger's expertise bonus. I even think that a ranger/ritualist
will be a better spirit spammer than a primary ritualist given tiger's
fury, quickening zephyr, and the massive energy reductions on costly
rituals.

My proposal is to *keep* the existing worked-out ballance between
ranger skills, and between ranger and other primary professions; all
while bringing expertise down in relative importance. Without this
change, you'd be stupid to run a primary /ra. For more game diversity
and more interesting class combinations, this is an important fix
and I'm anxiously waiting to hear it.

85% of ranger skills are 10-25 energy. How exactly do you expect that any of these skills be used by people with 32 energy if they can only save up to 5 energy on them?

How exactly is breaking ranger primaries going to help you be a better Mo/R beastmaster? The reason why many people don't use Mo/R is becuase it doesn't provide energy management. Pure Beastmastery is terrible at any rate. Even with 16 beast a wolf will only do 20-30 damage, even using skills.Unless you're just going to use your pet for interrupts and/or energy managment, the whole idea is pretty poor.

Again, I fail to see what Expertise has to do with /R being a "bad subclass choice". This obviously has nothing to do with anything. The whole arguement is totally unfounded.

First off, A Monk Beast Master? And you wonder why it's not effective?

With your way of thinking then Divine Favour would have to be nerfed too and all skills and spells would be changed to have some inherant healing to them. Or Strength toned down and every attack skill have inherant armor penetration. Etc Etc...

Expertise is fine just how it is. Ranger skills are meant to be best used with a Ranger Primary. If you tone down Expertise's effectiveness and lower the cost of Ranger skills then it would effectively lower the usefulness of the Ranger class.

Also you'd be screwing with the already limited effectiveness of Expertise (since it doesnt work on spells) on secondaries. The only secondaries that Expertise helps are warriors and assassin and you want to mess with that?

Uhh name one.

Monk Beastmaster is the most idiotic build. A monk's job is to keep his team alive. *Pet dies* Oh crap I'm blacked out for 10 seconds, *team dies*, sorry my pet blacked me out.

plasmasword, a monk's job is not to keep the team alive, that is a healer's job, as a protector's job is to protect, and a smitter (yes there is a 4 attribute to monks) is to deal damage.
I do however agree that if you are operating as a healer or protection or even DF monk you should not have a pet with you.

However, cce, I seem to be missing the point to this thread. I don't see how expertise is broken. There are advantages and disadvantages to every combination - don't be too sure that R/A will become dominant over A/x simply because they naturally have reduced energy costs. Zealous daggers basically take the energy argument out of the works in that particular discussion.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, however expertise works only for skills classified as skills, I believe ritualist spirits will be "rituals" not skills, just like elementalists and mesmers have "spells". Fast casting btw, is limited to spells - they can't use it on other "skills".

Having played a ranger myself when I first started playing GW I know that despite expertise it is still easy to run out of energy. How this attribute is overpowered is really quite beyond me.

Unless you are going to buff your pet to tank for you in solo farming trips, I honestly think that having a monk beastmaster is not such a good idea. That isn't to say that Mo/R isn't a good idea - some combinations can work well. Of course having said that Pokeway runs with monk beastmasters of a sorrt, but this build derserves to stay in the arena where it belongs - I've yet to see it implemented well in PvE.

The title of your post should have been: "Make Marksmanship, Beastmastery and high energy Wilderness Survival skills (traps) workable on non-primary rangers".

rangers can be very good damage dealers, but their skills needed to do this can be quite expensive. without expertise, the only real option is the elementalists energy storage.

your argument for expertise could just as easily apply to ES. try make a mo/e fire nuker and see how far your 40-odd energy gets you.

the reason for these limitations is so that you make best use of your primary profession.

why do you think warriors only have 20 energy and 2 pips of regen? give them 4 regen and 40 base energy and suddenly every monk from here to cantha will be a wammo for the extra armour.

each class is buffed in one way to benefit it as a primary char, but gimped in another to ensure that using /X is not more viable than X/

Beastmastery doesn't even take alot of energy. All the pet skills cost 5-10, and one of them is energy managment.

Actually they do work... there is nothing wrong with them at all... You just have to be careful when you cast, but the same goes for any caster, elementalist to a lesser extent obviously. This is the point I fear the OP is missing. The primany attribute of the class is suppose to be individual to and benefit only that class. Expertise only benefits ranger primaries, if you want to use ranger secondary skills you have to pay the price for it.

I run a E/R in pve and pvp. She has her secondary changed every now and then depending on who I'm playing with and what we are doing, but generally she runs fire (or occassionally earth) and wilderness survival so that she can carry either greater conflagration or winter. Yes these spirits are more powerful if put up by a ranger and I don't carry them if I have one in the team, but ranger is a useful secondary when there is not, or you need a second set of spirits to make sure they stay up.

Our definitions of "work" are obviously very different.

I've actually done some UW trapping runs with my warrior. All you need is a staff and Energizing Winds :P

Expertise is fine the way it is. It is limited on what it saves energy on as Lady Lozza said. As a R/Mo you still have to spend the full points to cast healing, smiting and protection spell. A Mo/R isn't a bad combo if your team has another monk to do the healing and/or protection since (as been said here already) if your pet dies your blacked out. Other than that it's would make for a nice beast master. The monks get the same, if not more, energy as the ranger but with an extra energy regen and since most beast master skill are only 5 to 10 energy (as mentioned already) you shouldn't have an energy problem.

Beastmaster is a fine support role best done with a ranger primary and is a good setup in general despite what some think. Sagius you say you only get 20-30 damage with skills? I'm a Lvl 20 r/mo and have a lvl20 hearty stalker. With a minor rune of best mastery and maxed attributes in beast mastery I was able to do 80 damge with my pet using skills against a lvl24 troll. I've even reached 102 against an Ice Imp and I did this all just last night.

/not sighned; it's not a problem with expertise just bad casting.

Expertise affects binding rituals just like nature rituals.

We'll see about that, because I just tried playing as a monk yesterday (with my ranger), I had 13 expertise and heal other was still 10 energy, orision was still 5 energy, and expertise description does say your attack skills, so I dont think they will work on ritualist spirits, because they are not called nature's rituals.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

The author is right, ranger skills are not meant to be used at their original cost, making secondary rangers useless.
I don't think this is a big deal though and I don't think it needs any fixing.

Also I don't think it would be bad if factions brought some nice Ranger / xx combinations, seeing as at the moment they are not very popular for GvG.

You're wrong. Heal Other and Orison are unaffected because they're spells. A binding ritual is not a spell. Anything that's not a spell is affected by Expertise.

Just so everyone knows exactly what expertise does and what it effects here it is.

As you can see it doesn't have any effect on spells and doesn't even have an effect on any skills that are not attack. As for Preps and traps, they are ranger specific skills. It also has no effect on rituals.

/not signed

Keep the Ranger skills where they are most useful - on a Ranger. Unless like a lot of players use the Ranger secondary for Troll Unguent, Quickening Zephyr and Serpent's Quickness.

If you're going to be putting 16 into Beastmastery and taking your level 20 pet - you had better be bringing some buffs and attacks for your pet!!! I'd be giving 4 or 5 slots to my pet at the least.

Actually ranger-rituals are affected by expertise. I don't know about ritualists though.

Same goes for troll unguent, which as far as I know isn't an attack skill, preparation or trap.

Then I suppose it does need a fix but only so the description fits with what it does.