Guild Wars 2

Our focus of this patch is to bring the rangers survivability up and to allow the ranger to actively respond to threats. Due to the lure of rangers we have decided to grant them unique access to a small portion of immobilize immunity and active removal as their nature background has taught them a thing or two about coming unstuck.

Pets are a major concern of ours and we have decided to go with a ‘quick fix’ option I’m sure you will enjoy

Note – This patch is a maintenance patch and therefore won’t include any major mechanic changes or trait changes.

Weapons:

Greatsword

Hilt Bash – This skill is now has a short lunge animation increasing its distance.

• Reasoning – Activating at the current range is too RNG due to slow animation speed and any hint of in game lag.

Maul – We have decided to add the bleed stacks back to this weapon to open up hybrid build options. The stacks have been increased to 5 and the vulnerability stacks will also remain.

Longbow

Hunters shot – Fixed a bug causing the ranger to not face their target while casting this skill during immobilize.

Point blank shot – Fixed a bug causing your ranger to not face your target while casting this skill during immobilize.

• Reasoning: One of the rangers biggest vulnerabilities right now is immobilize. Allowing the player to actively and skilfully respond to threats is our aim of this patch.

Barrage – The cast time has been reduced to 2seconds from 2 & ¾ seconds.

• Reasoning: To bring this skill back in line after significantly reducing the damage

Sword

Slash – Cast time increased to ¾ of a second from 2/4 a second. Pounce has been reduced to 2/4 from ¾ of a second

• Reasoning: Currently it is difficult for players to free themselves from movement during the sword combo. Swapping the cast times allows us to give the ranger more time to cancel movement without affecting the damage output.

Axe

Path of scars – (sPvP only) – Range reduced by 33%.

• Reasoning: The returning strike is currently too difficult to land on a highly mobile target. Reducing the range effectively decreases the return time and therefore increasing the chances of a knock down. This is a pvp only skill change as it would unnecessarily nerf the weapon for pve.

Whirling Defense – Cast time reduced to 3 & 2/4 seconds from 5 & 2/4 seconds.

• Reasoning: The ranger is left quite vulnerable during this animation, reducing the cast time will upkeep its effectiveness while reducing the risk.

Pets

Due to this being a rushed patch we are unable to completely fix the mechanic in time. To temporarily resolve the issue we have decided on the following:

A) When pets are activated they spawn with a 5 second swiftness buff.
B) When pets are activated they spawn with a 4 second quickness buff.
C) These new buffs are not affected by traits, gear, or any other duration stacking item or trait.

• Reasoning – Currently when a pet is activated it remains idle for up to two seconds, this quick temporary fix will ease the issue by allowing the pet to ‘catch up’ to where it should have been or what is should have been doing.

Damage – Pet damage has been increased by 10% across the board.

• Reasoning – The damage is currently underwhelming and we would like to add a slice or damage at a time to test the waters.

Survivability – Pets now have ‘resilience’, this causes them to take 70% less aoe damage. Any conditions or damage transferred to the pet from the ranger is now also reduced by 50%.

• Reasoning – It is skilful play to hamstring a ranger by killing his pet, it is not skilful play accidentally killing the pet. By reducing the damage from transferred conditions we were able to bring a higher level or survivability to the pet without making them un-killable from targeted damage.

Utilities

Water Spirits (Aqua Surge) – Now cleanses 3 conditions.

• Reasoning – A step toward active conditions removal for rangers.

Guard – Now grants the pet 3 stacks of might.

• Reasoning – To give the ranger a reason to use the skill aside from the shout mastery trait line.

Lightning reflexes – Now cleanses immobilize.

• Reasoning – To allow the ranger actively react to imminent burst

Entangle – Recharge reduced to 120seconds from 150 seconds
• Reasoning – It was simply too long

Rampage as one – During this skill the ranger is immune to immobilize.
• Reasoning – Ever tried to stop the hulk with a rope?

Spirit of Nature – Healing % bug fix. – Nature’s Renewal now revives players with 25% less hp.
• Reasoning – To bring the elite in line with others.

tldr: What I would do to a ranger in a ‘maintenance patch’

You know, you actually had my hopes up that this was some kind of leak… QQ

Xukavi.4320:

You know, you actually had my hopes up that this was some kind of leak… QQ

haha, glad you liked them

yea… too good to be true

Xukavi.4320:

yea… too good to be true

I designed this thread keeping a few key things in mind:

a) Wherever possible Arena Net seem to choose the simple options over complete design reworks. I have seen quite a few great ideas that are potentially too good to be true due to them being very complex changes even when the idea sounds simple.

b) Functionality improvements tend to be looked at before raw damage changes as sometimes it’s not always the damage that is the issue.

The point I’m trying to make is, when planning these changes I did it with high hopes that it wasn’t actually over the top but rather stupid simple so they wouldn’t be ‘too good to be true’.

#believeinkarl

What this patch basically does is making spirit builds even more OP in tpvp than it already is.
You should state that this change to spirits should only affect PvE.

DanSH.6143:

What this patch basically does is making spirit builds even more OP in tpvp than it already is.
You should state that this change to spirits should only affect PvE.

Thanks for picking me up on this, I have removed the proposed resilience fix from spirits & adjusted some changes on the elite.