style="width: 200px; float: right;"
alt="Guild Wars 2 Land Shark"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/87078">

Hot
on the heels of the Healing
and Death details revealed for upcoming
Guild
Wars 2,
Lead Designer Eric Flannum introduced fans to the third
officially announced profession, the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/editorials/ranger-reveal">Ranger.
As a long time fan of
rangers in the original href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/47">Guild
Wars,
I for one was certainly
excited at
the prospect of having pets serve a much more vital role in how the
class will function in the sequel. But pets weren’t the only
topic of discussion, as many of the profession’s core
mechanics were also unveiled.

This week, ArenaNet has rounded
up the most frequently asked questions
on the ranger and as has become somewhat customary after many of the
larger gameplay reveals, Eric has given plenty of excellent answers to
them over at the official blog for Guild
Wars 2. Here is a quick cross
section of the topics covered:

On Rangers:

Q:
I want to play a ranger without a pet. Are pets mandatory for the
profession to be effective? Can you have a non-pet ranger like in GW1
and not sacrifice a lot of your effectiveness?



Eric:
Rangers must use their pets to achieve maximum
effectiveness. A ranger could choose to mostly ignore his pet and leave
it on “auto-pilot” so to speak and still be very
effective, but a ranger who doesn’t even have a pet out will
be a good deal less effective than one who does. There are many other
professions in Guild Wars 2 that have effective ranged damage or ranged
utility like the ranger for players who don’t want to use a
pet.

On Game Mechanics:

Q:
Do rangers have access to different kind of arrows, e.g. faster or
more powerful ones?



Eric:
Rangers don’t have access to different arrows, but they
do have access to preparations, which are utility skills that can cause
their arrows to have additional effects.

On Pets:

Q:
How does a pet’s level cap work? Could you explain what
you mean by “20 levels of evolution” in more detail?



Eric: Pets have two things that determine their power. First they have
a pet level; this determines base statistics such as health, armor, and
damage. Pet level always adjusts itself to the rangers’ level
to ensure that the pet is always basically effective. Next, the pet has
an evolution level. While a ranger uses their pet, it gains evolution
levels, which gives it additional skills and abilities. A pet can have
a maximum evolution level of 20.

Still no word on whether or not
rangers will be able to have a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Shark_%28Saturday_Night_Live%29">Land
Shark
version of their shark pets, though I suspect that much like
the terrestrial animals that cannot go underwater, sharks will no doubt
be usable only in the underwater locations of the game. Call it what
you will, but the inclusion of pets intended to function solely in
underwater environs does point to the idea that there will be more than
just one or two token underwater areas to explore.

Be sure to head on over to the
href="http://www.arena.net/blog/eric-flannum-fields-your-ranger-questions">official
ArenaNet blog for Guild
Wars 2
for the rest of Eric’s answers on how the Ranger class will
function, and if you haven’t already done so you should also
be sure to check out Ten Ton Hammer’s href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/editorials/ranger-reveal">Ranger
Class Reveal
Analysis!

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2"> src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/84716">