Guild Wars 2

Forum bug squash

Really disappointing to see this change.
It is apparent the balancing crew have no concept of recognising one key aspect in their balancing;

certain boss were made so reflect will not affect them. This decision was made because it was felt reflect was making some boss encounters trivial. So let’s look closely at what got made trivial here. 1) The boss complains it is being made trivial through reflects and feels that unshakable etc is not enough. 2) The players complain that the changes to reflect have trivialized reflect skills entirely. Who is better off here being trivialized? The lines of coding that make up the non real world boss who never complained in the first place?..or the very human players you depend on to keep a vested interested in your game?

Frost spirit is just another example of this. Who is truly complaining here about frost spirit?..the non living bosses with enormous health pools that are defiant and unshakable about the damage,…or the very real human players the game depends upon?

It seems entirely obvious, no matter what the thinking who should be appeased here. One of these groups are real people a-net depend upon..the other is a immaterial collection of coding that never complained in the first place. So who gets appeased?..yeah, the non real guy.

I wonder if we will get any sort of information from Anet as to why this change happened

Chokolata.1870:

I wonder if we will get any sort of information from Anet as to why this change happened

They have been silent about this ever since people started mentioning it, so I guess not.

Better spam them with tickets until they at least bother to give a response.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

Really disappointing to see this change.
It is apparent the balancing crew have no concept of recognising one key aspect in their balancing

Shoudln’t really call it balancing… They, intentionally or not, made a skill go from being meta til complete garbage in any game mode. They have stated before that balancing are supposed to be more like a shave than being an amputation..

And of course it hurts one of the classes that needed it the most.

Someone mentioned that a dev posted to say that FS was not going to have a 10s ICD imposed – I read that too. It was maybe a year ago? Shame our memories are better. Or did ANet change their minds?

I know ANet doesn’t like commenting when things start getting too toxic, so I’m not going to be helping, but I must say this (and this only applies if this change was intentioned as balancing and not erroneous “bug” fixing) is one of the most downright stupid changes I have ever seen. And it’s hilarious given the context of where Rangers are in GW2.

This has to have been a mistake. One of the dev’s probably added in the 10s ICD by mistake when doing tool-tip corrections and bug fixes.

Otherwise, they’ve essentially made it so any skill which can maintain one stack of vulnerability on a target is more valuable than this skill.

…The only way I can kind of figure it, is if it’s a back-end change that proceeds another change.

Like, remember how the Vigil Buff during the Battle for Lion’s Arch worked?
On the concept level it was the same as Frost Spirit – percent chance for more damage. But while Frost Spirit is just sort of this plain jane fire and forget glass banner, the Vigil buff gave you a window of opportunity you could respond to through a randomly determined short period of increased damage with a larger character model.

That sort of a thing makes total sense on a 10 second cooldown.
The effect as it stands now? Absolutely Baffling.

Stopped running it now.

Just got done with my Ranger ascended. Now time to start on my Guardian because I don’t think the upcoming feature patch changes are going to make it worth bringing the Ranger over the guardian to dungeons or high level fractals especially with the FS nerf… GG, Anet.

Really proves one of 2 things… Either they have plans to change spirits somehow and this is part of the prework for it which they put in a little too soon, or more likely they simply don’t think at all before changing things.

I can, in some ways, understand the fact that all classes have utilities which are useless. They are things which sounded good on paper but just never worked out when people started playing the game.. it can happen. But to take a skill which works well, is strong but not OP and to make it so SO bad where on paper or in practice.. thats just a whole new level of fail.

Half the problem with this whole insane mess is there’s a good chance that anyone who handles the bug tickets won’t know about how it’s “supposed” to work, will just compare the current effect to the tool tip, think “lol, working as intended” and just toss the tickets in the trash.

thefantasticg.3984:

Stopped running it now.

Just got done with my Ranger ascended. Now time to start on my Guardian because I don’t think the upcoming feature patch changes are going to make it worth bringing the Ranger over the guardian to dungeons or high level fractals especially with the FS nerf… GG, Anet.

Even with FS Ranger spot in the meta was hardly vital. It was just easier to bring another guardian or ele or any class really that isn’t a necro or engineer.

Zenith.7301:

thefantasticg.3984:

Stopped running it now.

Just got done with my Ranger ascended. Now time to start on my Guardian because I don’t think the upcoming feature patch changes are going to make it worth bringing the Ranger over the guardian to dungeons or high level fractals especially with the FS nerf… GG, Anet.

Even with FS Ranger spot in the meta was hardly vital. It was just easier to bring another guardian or ele or any class really that isn’t a necro or engineer.

Well. Not being “vital” can be said about most classes in most PvE instances, unless you wanna base everything around higher level fractals.

The lack of Frost Spirit won’t change much if you’re running regular speed runs instead of min max anyways. Just take Quickening Zephyr instead while they fix the kitten spirit.

With the incoming patch we’ll also be gaining more damage than we lose via predator’s onslaught and not having to trait to get the active benefit from signet of the wild, a big enough damage boost.

Losing frost spirit is no reason to say as the person I quoted that the ranger is not worth running over a guardian anymore. It was never the case that running a ranger was worth it over running another guardian or warrior anyways, or the even superior thief and conjure ele.

If you’re playing the ranger it’s because you enjoy the class and don’t mind putting in way more effort to achieve what a warrior does. Nobody will kick you from a group; I’ve been doing fractal 50’s every day and if I don’t get into a group it’s because it’s a “heavies only” group, which doesn’t care whether you have spotter or frost spirit.

Zenith.7301:

It was never the case that running a ranger was worth it over running another guardian or warrior anyways, or the even superior thief and conjure ele.

You must be talking specifically about fractals, because there are no dungeons where bringing a second guardian is worth more than having the FrostSpotter. You will never see speedrunners bring a second guardian for a dungeon because it was “the better option”. And for some dungeons, the guardian’s utility is redudant, and you’re better off not bringing one at all.

The difference between a second warrior and a ranger are in most cases so minimal that you won’t even notice it, so that’s neither here or there.

However, the ranger rarely had a place in an “optimized” group for any content.

Bump

I am dumbfounded by any Anet developer response on this issue, on any topic of forum that contains this question.

Support tickets from players, and active threads about the topic in several forums. And no response.

Still broken post patch.

This will probably make rangers one of the most useless classes to bring in a dung lol..

All they have going for them is freaking spotter… outside of that, ranger brings nothing to the table in a dung/frac… RIP..will stick to using my ranger as a machine gun sniper in WvW lol

SkiTz.4590:

This will probably make rangers one of the most useless classes to bring in a dung lol..

All they have going for them is freaking spotter… outside of that, ranger brings nothing to the table in a dung/frac… RIP..will stick to using my ranger as a machine gun sniper in WvW lol

Regardless of the patch nothing much was going to change for fractals. The truth is that fractal scaling at 50 does favor the heavy classes. Things like dredge and mossman/archdiviner melee simply do too much damage to light/medium armor classes to be efficient in melee.

And with FGS basically slaughtered, eles will join Rangers and Engineers and Necromancers now that fractal 50 ads in groupfinder will say “Heavies Only” instead of “Heavy or ele only”.

Just get in a dungeon guild that doesn’t mind you doing fractals on a ranger or just have a little patience with groupfinder for that fractal 50 group to appear that doesn’t discriminate against non-heavy.

Bump

SkiTz.4590:

This will probably make rangers one of the most useless classes to bring in a dung lol..

All they have going for them is freaking spotter… outside of that, ranger brings nothing to the table in a dung/frac… RIP..will stick to using my ranger as a machine gun sniper in WvW lol

Yeah with the ferocity change, spotter is also much weaker than it used to be.

Bump

Bump, still need a dev response on whether this is intended or not.

They removed the internal cooldown for Frost Spirit on Sep 9th.

“Frost Spirit: Removed the internal cooldown from this spirit’s passive effect.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-9-2014/first

Not that it stops you from being instantly kicked from any lv50 fractal group you join before you even enter the instance most of the time.

Ranger, Necromancer, and Engineer are still the redheaded stepchildren of fractals. And I can’t say it’s not without reason as in a fight like the fire shaman, ranger AoE is such garbage that you hinder your group. Really good for sitting on a longbow on classes like archdiviner and mossman where you can’t melee efficiently unless you’re a warrior with guardians rotating aegis.

But hey all the QQ with rapid fire probably means rangers won’t be seeing fixes to their dreadful AoE capabilities or crappy pets or QoL issues like mainhand sword melee animation locks on really twitchy bosses like archdiviner and mossman who melee too quick to reliably dodge even with autoattack turned off to control pounce.

It will only probably take them 2 more years when precursor scavenger finally arrives for the warrior/guardian/ele/thief meta to break.

Pugs balance= not actual balance. Rangers are in a good spot in casual runs, and we also use them in dungeon speedruns with good success. See iV’s stories record on the gw2 dungeon. I use my engineer pretty much all the time. Necros are the only class left out for speedruns, and they are fine in casual runs, and better in fractals than actual dungeons.

oxtred.7658:

Pugs balance= not actual balance. Rangers are in a good spot in casual runs, and we also use them in dungeon speedruns with good success. See iV’s stories record on the gw2 dungeon. I use my engineer pretty much all the time. Necros are the only class left out for speedruns, and they are fine in casual runs, and better in fractals than actual dungeons.

Fractal 50 =/= speed runs. The ranger is undeniably a liability in any fractal like fire shaman (completely garbage aoe, it’s why rangers in wvw are left out, especially in GvG) or mossman melee group. It’s even worse in dredge.

Most dungeon speedruns rarely have pulls that last beyond a simple aoe rotation. Fractal 50 mobs by comparison are real HP sacks with much more scaled up damage and the bosses are virtually anti-pet unless you switch out to a spider.

Fractal 50 unlike dungeon speed clears also have terribly designed mobs and bosses whose bulk of the damage isn’t in telegraphed attacks (unlike Lupi, etc) but just stupidly broken autoattack damage that there’s not enough vigor and endurance refunds to completely mitigate let alone dodge reliably. It’s about guardians rotating aegis for the warrior and keeping protection up and basically have the warriors burn down the boss to take at most 2 hits before they can be downed on the next attack after they’re out of aegis.

It’s the simple fact that warriors and guardians soak damage really well (and thief has a spammable invulnerability via pistolwhip on top of easy dodge access).

Your ranger eats an Archdiviner autoattack and there goes 70% of your HP. You can’t keep the offensive momentum like a warrior can. A full berk ele can be insta-downed by a single archdiviner or mossman autoattack. It’s completely lopsided survivability that affects DPS uptime on a target.

Actually ranger is quite useful in fire shaman. Especially if you use Axe MH and Horn. You also have a reflect. You use drakes on fire shaman.

The main problem with rangers in fractal is the sword aa pushing mobs and breaking max melee, forcing them to go greatsword. Ranger cleave isn’t that bad, and even if they are not the best class for the fire elemental, they still have reflects, party wide condi removal, and fast attack rate. They aren’t an utility class anyway, they are offensive buffer and good burster, with some good weapon skill utilities. They also have access to a lot of cripple and soft cc in general, wich is a qol improvement for the one tanking archdiviner.

Aa smart ranger would use skill 3 sword to get behind the target and push it towards the other melee players.
Even if the group complains about Omg that Ranger isn’t ontop of us and only 30yards away its wrong wtf , get back here.
those people are the Closed minded when it comes to real combat and survival using a ranger because they havn’t tried it in fractals sticking to the typical Gwen set up.

The main problem with Ranger is that there is an over abundance of bad ones that just spam their skills off CD. Have you ever been ready simultaneously burst a boss down and the stupid Ranger fires point blank shot just as you activate your skills? That is the reason Rangers aren’t welcome. It’s easier to kick them all then to filter the good ones from the bad ones.

I don’t know what it is about this profession but out of all the classes, ranger seems to have a higher % of really bad players.

Yes, that’s also a common problem. But even when playing with good rangers ( and trust me, I know great rangers), they are still problems with sword aa conflicting with max melee. IT doesn’t make the clkitten useful, but in casual runs ( and in fractals most runs are non records, at least in our guild), playing with a ranger will bring some annoying situations where the dps is surprisingly low because the ranger can’t sword ( yeah that’s a verb ok). But excluding that, rangers are a powerful class right now.

Zenith, I feel like you’re falsely under the impression that Warrior have the best DPS in the game.

If you’re having Guardians on rotation to keep you alive, then you’re better off playing a Thief, Elementalist, Engineer, or even Necromancer for damage output.

However, Engineer and Necromancer have many, many spots where they aren’t very strong.

Thief also doesn’t have very good range, but since we have “Guardians on Aegis rotation” it won’t really matter, so you can camp D/D (and potentially pick up an Ele Weapon with Improvisation for one of the highest damages in the game).

But I digress, having that sweet, sweet armor bonus from being Heavy vs Medium more than makes up for the damage loss. /sarcasm

Esplen.3940:

Zenith, I feel like you’re falsely under the impression that Warrior have the best DPS in the game.

If you’re having Guardians on rotation to keep you alive, then you’re better off playing a Thief, Elementalist, Engineer, or even Necromancer for damage output.

However, Engineer and Necromancer have many, many spots where they aren’t very strong.

Thief also doesn’t have very good range, but since we have “Guardians on Aegis rotation” it won’t really matter, so you can camp D/D (and potentially pick up an Ele Weapon with Improvisation for one of the highest damages in the game).

But I digress, having that sweet, sweet armor bonus from being Heavy vs Medium more than makes up for the damage loss. /sarcasm

I think the idea of PRACTICAL DPS is lost on you. If you eat a mossman/archdiviner autoattack on any non-heavy class, you have to range out to not get downed by the subsequent hit.

A warrior has enough HP buffer and the best heal ingame (signet) to have the most potential uptime on a target while under pressure.

Everybody knows conjure ele is top DPS followed by thief single target. The problem is that those 2 classes are heavily dependent on their group to keep them alive. And PuGs are not known for keeping your 12k HP berk ele alive. At least the thief can spam pistolwhip till a guardian gets them back up to full health.

But keep pretending like warriors and guardians don’t have some massive defensive advantages as melee against the other classes. That’s why the WvW melee trains are pretty much made up of warriors and guardians and once ina blue moon the odd celestial D/D ele.

If you hit a mossmand autoattack on any class, you loose a scholar buff and a crit is likely to down a guardian. If you can’t play anything else than warrior, fine for you, but again, non experienced groups will favor easy to play classes, nothing strange here. That doesn’t make them less balanced or underpowered. It’s great to have a group to protect you as an ele, but it’s not necessary. I can survive in pugs with my berserker ele, it’s just practice. Because less experienced players can’t play a class doesn’t mean that class should be buffed to make it more powerful at low gameplay levels, as it would result in a even bigger superiority when played correctly.

oxtred.7658:

If you hit a mossmand autoattack on any class, you loose a scholar buff and a crit is likely to down a guardian. If you can’t play anything else than warrior, fine for you, but again, non experienced groups will favor easy to play classes, nothing strange here. That doesn’t make them less balanced or underpowered. It’s great to have a group to protect you as an ele, but it’s not necessary. I can survive in pugs with my berserker ele, it’s just practice. Because less experienced players can’t play a class doesn’t mean that class should be buffed to make it more powerful at low gameplay levels, as it would result in a even bigger superiority when played correctly.

I’m sorry but to have 100% melee uptime as an ele against mossman or archdiviner or dredge you need a group protecting you.

And people were using runes of strength anyway not scholar.

If you create a game where some class only shine with a perfectly tailored group setup while others function just as well in either format, expect the niche classes to be marginalized.

Moreover, I’d like to see what fractal 50 group you run without a guardian at the very least, and even a warrior for banners whose benefits cannot be replaced by any class and are invulnerable to any damage.

You act as if people just bring warriors because they’re easy to play, when they are brought for banners, might stacking, easily the best cleaving capacity in the game, plenty of fury, and because warriors don’t require as much protection the guardian in the group can in turn carry a more offensive setup as well.

People don’t kick rangers from fractal 50 because they’re ignorant. The ranger’s lack of good aoe and inconvenient melee are large factors in slowing down a fractal rune.

MH axe for fire shaman? Please. Like a couple of bounces for 3-4k crits will do anything close to the aoe an ele or warrior or whirling wrath guardian is doing. And if you’re doing a whirling defense reflect as a ranger you aren’t doing any meaningful aoe damage in the process since it’s a channel unlike swirling winds or feedback or wall.