Guild Wars 2

I really do love the ranger greatsword, but I can’t deny that it is currently underperforming a bit. For one, many players consider this to be a defensive or utility weapon, which should immediately show its lack of potential. Greatswords across all classes are meant to be high damage, bursty weapons. Currently, the greatsword isn’t our highest dealing damage weapon nor is it really bursty (it can be, but I’ll explain later). Our highest damage dealing weapon is actually the sword. Now, I would be okay with this IF the greatsword fulfilled its role to some point, but it doesn’t.

The only situation where the greatsword can achieve considerable burst is if the wielder is signet spec’d and has both Signet of the Wild and Signet of the Hunt popped, which have 48 and 24 second cooldowns if traited. Let’s also not forget that that the ranger “burst” skill (maul) isn’t a channel like 100b or Whirling Wrath, which means all its damage can be negated by a single block, blade, or evade. So, if all these conditions are met, then sure, the weapon is “bursty”. And even then, this burst is only repeatable every 48, and to a lesser degree, 24 seconds. No one should have to trait so much just to have their weapon function as it naturally should. With that in mind, I’d really like arenanet to consider a few changes I have proposed.

First of all, the auto attack needs a base damage boost. I’d suggest a boost of around 20%. As it stands, it deals little damage compared to the auto’s of other weapons such as sword and shortbow, thanks in part to its casting times and aftercast.

Secondly, I think that maul should be reworked a significant amount. It is too easy to negate the weapon’s burst, and the skill itself deals too little damage. And as such, I propose that Maul’s damage is increased significantly, probably around 25%, but in return, to prevent signet spec’s from having one shot bursts (I know I’m complaining about weak burst, but Maul can crit for over 10k in WvW on glassy targets), maul counts as two strikes instead of one. This way, non signet specs can actually have some decent bursts, signet spec’s don’t receive too much burst (the damage boost from Signet of the Hunt count’s on one strike, not skill), and a mere blind/block doesn’t entirely negate the burst. Also, it makes no sense to have vulnerability on Maul when it is the weapon’s burst skill. Instead, have the weapon weaken for around 3 seconds or so and move the vulnerability to Swoop. Because Swoop has twice as long a cooldown as maul, give it 10 stacks instead of 5. This would also give incentive to use the skill as more than a gap closer/creator.

Lastly about the greatsword, please allow the knockback portion of Counterattack to be usable while moving and reduce it’s aftercast slightly, as a QoL change.

Now, I think the Longbow is almost in a good spot. Its received numerous buffs over the past year, but is lacking in the same aspect as the greatsword. Burst. To make the longbow a viable damage weapon, you pretty much have to go zerk. And this is precisely because Rapid Fire is not a burst skill. Before the longbow buffs, this skill was used to maintain decent dps when within close range of your target. Now, this really doesn’t apply anymore. If it were made a burst skill, then you could stray from being glassy and actually have good dps with the weapon.

Fixing this isn’t really a tough thing to do. Simply reduce the cast time of Rapid Fire by 50% by making it only shoot five arrows, and in return, reduce its total damage output by around 25-33% to prevent the burst from being too strong. The rest of the weapon skills are fine in my opinion. Stealth and knockback on 12 and 15 second cooldowns are very good, and so is Barrage with its large radius, damage, and cripple. However, as I stated before, it doesn’t make much sense to have a weapon’s burst skill deal vulnerability. Instead move it back to Hunter’s Shot or to Point Blank Shot, since both these skills can be used to open up a Rapid Fire with.

And lastly, you would need to spend 50 trait points and acquire three traits to fully trait the Longbow, something that is atrocious considering we are supposed to be “unparalleled archers.” The Marksmanship line is the only trait line which should contain bow traits considering it’s name. Please merge QuickDraw into Piercing Arrows and leave it in the Marksmanship line. I think this would do wonder’s to open up more power specs for Rangers.

Flawless.
I know that Power rangers will be happy, and they deserve it, if few of yours points make it to a patch note.

Rapid Fire doesn’t really fit the long bow in my opinion. I would have really liked if they removed it for something like the charging power shot of the Snowball Mayhem Scout skill, the one with the damage scaling the longer you charge, giving it more of long range sniper feeling and i think will also combo well with the stealth from Hunter’s Shot

Rapid Fire is there because it gives you more damage than short-ranged shot if the enemy is closer. The reason rapid fire doesn’t really work as burst is because of the long channel time. When all is said and done, it does roughly the same amount as your normal auto attack would have done over the same period of time if at max range.

To make Rapid Fire fill the void as a burst skill you need to reduce the channel time but leave the damage alone. So with the OP’s suggestion is actually counter productive because reducing both damage and channel time is likely not going to have any real impact on anything.

I’m also not sure I agree with the OP’s approach to solving the greatsword. While I would absolutely love for the weapon to not suck and to lose its stigma as a support/defensive weapon, is it really going to be balanced for the weapon to do XX% more damage on the auto attack chain while maintaining the evade as well? I’m not sure, but probably not.

So then we have to ask ourselves… is getting more damage on the auto chain worth losing the evade? You’ll probably meet a lot of resistance with this from the Ranger community because a lot of people use the weapon as the Ranger’s ‘tanking’ weapon. I personally wouldn’t mind. But it’s still a question that needs to be asked.

Right now the reason the Longbow/Greatsword Ranger isn’t much of a threat is because both weapons are really support weapons in nature. They do poor damage, offer a reasonable amount of utility, etc. On top of that, the traits to support these weapons are very poorly designed, too numerous, and in too many different trees.

Atherakhia.4086:

Rapid Fire is there because it gives you more damage than short-ranged shot if the enemy is closer. The reason rapid fire doesn’t really work as burst is because of the long channel time. When all is said and done, it does roughly the same amount as your normal auto attack would have done over the same period of time if at max range.

To make Rapid Fire fill the void as a burst skill you need to reduce the channel time but leave the damage alone. So with the OP’s suggestion is actually counter productive because reducing both damage and channel time is likely not going to have any real impact on anything.

I’m also not sure I agree with the OP’s approach to solving the greatsword. While I would absolutely love for the weapon to not suck and to lose its stigma as a support/defensive weapon, is it really going to be balanced for the weapon to do XX% more damage on the auto attack chain while maintaining the evade as well? I’m not sure, but probably not.

So then we have to ask ourselves… is getting more damage on the auto chain worth losing the evade? You’ll probably meet a lot of resistance with this from the Ranger community because a lot of people use the weapon as the Ranger’s ‘tanking’ weapon. I personally wouldn’t mind. But it’s still a question that needs to be asked.

Right now the reason the Longbow/Greatsword Ranger isn’t much of a threat is because both weapons are really support weapons in nature. They do poor damage, offer a reasonable amount of utility, etc. On top of that, the traits to support these weapons are very poorly designed, too numerous, and in too many different trees.

Mate, I think you’re overestimating the impact these greatsword changes would have. 20-25% damage boosts aren’t going to suddenly launch us into OP territory, especially not without across the board survivability changes. I’m pretty sure it’s universally agreed that our greatsword lacks damage, so I don’t understand why you’d be against it. Yes, we have an onboard evade, but that is the advantage of the ranger class, quick and evasive.

Also, reducing the channel time of Rapid Fire by 50% AND the damage by 50% would leave you in the same situation as before. Not reducing the damage but reducing the cast time by 50% would leave you with way too strong of a burst, especially from range. My suggestion would improve the overall dps of Rapid Fire and retain it’s valuable utility as a stealth tracker.

Soilder.3607:

Atherakhia.4086:

Rapid Fire is there because it gives you more damage than short-ranged shot if the enemy is closer. The reason rapid fire doesn’t really work as burst is because of the long channel time. When all is said and done, it does roughly the same amount as your normal auto attack would have done over the same period of time if at max range.

To make Rapid Fire fill the void as a burst skill you need to reduce the channel time but leave the damage alone. So with the OP’s suggestion is actually counter productive because reducing both damage and channel time is likely not going to have any real impact on anything.

I’m also not sure I agree with the OP’s approach to solving the greatsword. While I would absolutely love for the weapon to not suck and to lose its stigma as a support/defensive weapon, is it really going to be balanced for the weapon to do XX% more damage on the auto attack chain while maintaining the evade as well? I’m not sure, but probably not.

So then we have to ask ourselves… is getting more damage on the auto chain worth losing the evade? You’ll probably meet a lot of resistance with this from the Ranger community because a lot of people use the weapon as the Ranger’s ‘tanking’ weapon. I personally wouldn’t mind. But it’s still a question that needs to be asked.

Right now the reason the Longbow/Greatsword Ranger isn’t much of a threat is because both weapons are really support weapons in nature. They do poor damage, offer a reasonable amount of utility, etc. On top of that, the traits to support these weapons are very poorly designed, too numerous, and in too many different trees.

Mate, I think you’re overestimating the impact these greatsword changes would have. 20-25% damage boosts aren’t going to suddenly launch us into OP territory, especially not without across the board survivability changes. I’m pretty sure it’s universally agreed that our greatsword lacks damage, so I don’t understand why you’d be against it. Yes, we have an onboard evade, but that is the advantage of the ranger class, quick and evasive.

Also, reducing the channel time of Rapid Fire by 50% AND the damage by 50% would leave you in the same situation as before. Not reducing the damage but reducing the cast time by 50% would leave you with way too strong of a burst, especially from range. My suggestion would improve the overall dps of Rapid Fire and retain it’s valuable utility as a stealth tracker.

A 25% increase would make the weapon our highest DPS weapon though. Highest DPS weapon + evade on one of 3 swings may be too much. I don’t know though, like I said. It’s a question that needs to be considered.

As for rapid fire… right now the weapon does something like 10% more damage than auto attack does. That’s including the vulnerability though. A 50% reduction in channel with only a 20 to 30% reduction in the damage would only increase this to the 15 to 20% above our auto. Still hardly burst when you consider what other classes are capable of.

It also wouldn’t be enough burst to make the weapon set stand on its own. Just like maul isn’t enough for Greatsword to stand on its own.

Ranger GS is not a dps weapon, why do you think it should be?
GS is not best dps on a single class. Mesmer gs especially is not a dps weapon too.
The burst comes from opening the fight with Maul, then switching to another weapon (Sword)

It’s not that I’ve got an issue with a Defensive Weapon, it’s that people feel pigeonholed into taking the Defensive Weapon as an Offensive Weapon because there isn’t any other game in town when it comes to burst.

That right there, sucks.

I honestly don’t know if Greatsword needs tweaking, so much as the other power weapons need to get their act together so that Greatsword can be allowed to serve it’s niche without being burdened with the expectation of serving half of another.

Truthfully, I think altering the nature of Attack of Opportunity to apply it’s effect for an entire Skill Button as opposed to just One Painfully Literal Hit is a small resource change that could have a big impact.

This works doubly well to getting Rapid Fire in a good place in a power building spec; because not only does it fully synergize with Signet of the Hunt, but Point Blank Shot can trigger Moment of Clarity. Although it does nothing for Sword directly, it might become better indirectly by allow Attack of Opportunity to affect a damage pet’s entire F2 instead of small fraction of it, which amplifies the effect of Sword’s might-stacking gameplay.

Soilder.3607:

I know I’m complaining about weak burst, but Maul can crit for over 10k in WvW on glassy targets

It’s not only on glassy targets, it’s on anyone/anything as long as it crits.
My maul build was guaranteed hit anyone w/o protection boon for 10k+ when crit, my record of maul is 19.5k vs a lv80 GC thief (someone got 22k , I haven’t got anything >20k yet)
GS can be specified to be an extreme DPS weapon for ranger, but it also casues the ranger to be extreme squishy too as compensate.

CRrabbit.1284:

Soilder.3607:

I know I’m complaining about weak burst, but Maul can crit for over 10k in WvW on glassy targets

It’s not only on glassy targets, it’s on anyone/anything as long as it crits.
My maul build was guaranteed hit anyone w/o protection boon for 10k+ when crit, my record of maul is 19.5k vs a lv80 GC thief (someone got 22k , I haven’t got anything >20k yet)
GS can be specified to be an extreme DPS weapon for ranger, but it also casues the ranger to be extreme squishy too as compensate.

Yes it’s possible, but it’s taking the weapon to a very extreme level. Ask any zerk thief, and they will tell you that backstab usually crits for around 4-6k. Are there 10k backstab builds however? Yes, but those are, once again, very extreme and not typical. And as you said, they leave the user without any defense.

We shouldn’t be talking about extremes, but more of the weapon’s effectiveness in general.

CRrabbit.1284:

Soilder.3607:

I know I’m complaining about weak burst, but Maul can crit for over 10k in WvW on glassy targets

It’s not only on glassy targets, it’s on anyone/anything as long as it crits.
My maul build was guaranteed hit anyone w/o protection boon for 10k+ when crit, my record of maul is 19.5k vs a lv80 GC thief (someone got 22k , I haven’t got anything >20k yet)
GS can be specified to be an extreme DPS weapon for ranger, but it also casues the ranger to be extreme squishy too as compensate.

1v1, you miss with that buffed maul and you die.
xvx, you will die from the other guy/s hitting you.

It’s a setup that makes for impressive videos that are heavily edited but isn’t practical in any real situation unless you love feeding the armor rep npc.

Would you mind if I folded a few of these ideas into my thread on Ranger balance? I can give you credit for the inspiration if you want.

Swagg.9236:

Would you mind if I folded a few of these ideas into my thread on Ranger balance? I can give you credit for the inspiration if you want.

Sorry mate but no. I think your thread is well designed and innovative, but I’m afraid my suggestions would get lost under a large cluster of ideas.