Guild Wars 2

Ranger

Guard: Pets will no longer guard areas that should be inaccessible to them.
Crippling Talon: Cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
Empathic Bond: Fixed a bug that wouldn’t apply transferred conditions to pets. This trait now transfers three conditions to the ranger’s pet every 10 seconds rather than all of them.
Hawk and Eagle now have their own unique icons instead of sharing one.
Path of Scars: This ability’s damage has been normalized between traited and non-traited versions. Damage has been increased by 85% when not traited.
Icy Screech: The White Moa activated ability now applies 3 seconds of Chill, and the skill fact has been updated appropriately.

Discuss.

Every profession gets massive buffs while Ranger is ignored, what’s left to discuss? This is basically every single balance patch.

Sigh… Been playing ranger since release. Almost ready to give up.

Path of Scars buff is very nice. 85% is a pretty signifigant boost.

Guard nerf I assume is going to kitten a lot of people off. From the wording it probably means no more Guard bombing with pets from the top of walls and the like, which is apparently something a lot of WvW rangers were relying on. But doesn’t bother me, I only use Guard for Protection.

Crippling Talon buff is… alright.

Emphatic Bond probably got a whole lot worse. I never used it, but it sounds like before it was just making coniditons vanish and now they correctly transfer to your pet. Though its now working “as intended” so… I agree with it even if its technically a nerf.

Eagle / Hawk fix is a minor bug fix. Good, but nothing exciting. Disappointed they didn’t fix the Marsh Drake icon while they were at it.

Icy Screech… I don’t know how long it lasted before so I can’t really say whether its a buff or nerf, but either way its still worse than the Alpine Wolf’s (which is full radial AoE and I believe 4 seconds in duration, where Icy Screech is only a cone) so it needs to be buffed more if it was buffed with this change. I never use Moa’s anyway, though.

Overall, pretty lackluster Ranger changes all around. Better than nothing (or nothing but nerfs) though.

EDIT: Oh, but the Frost Aura / Flame Aura buffs are very nice for Ranger even though not Ranger-specific. The Ranger himself and a number of his pets have easy access to both of those through combos, and they’ll be a lot more helpful to proc now.

Discuss?
They nerfed 1/3 of rangers grandmaster traits actually worth traiting to, while buffing a skill on a weapon that still has almost zero synergy or viability with any weapon set.

The only thing left to discuss is what game I’ll be playing instead of guild wars 2.

Not to confuse this with me saying ranger is bad, since it is my main. It’s just that gameplay is stagnant, repetitive, and boring, and when there is still the question of the game needing mechanic fixes and ACTUAL balance fixes and all that gets changed for a class is a few minor discrepancies accompanying a nerf that affects all of rangers viable competitive builds, then I see no reason to log in until something about the game actually gets changed that merits the potential to find enjoyment with the game again.

The entire section named “balance changes” should be renamed to “profession tweaks,” because changes implies that something actually changed. In fact, all the just happened was that a trait was nerfed that made trap builds less effective, and then nothing was buffed to provide more viable builds, after the devs clears stated that rangers suffer from an apex predator issue with their builds.
Acknowledgement =/= change. There should be no new content additions to the game until the mechanic issues on EVERY profession page are addressed and taken care of, and THEN balanced accordingly.
Once that is taken care of, then it is time to move on to putting out new content.

Leaf.3156:

Every profession gets massive buffs while Ranger is ignored, what’s left to discuss? This is basically every single balance patch.

I wouldn’t say every profession got massive buffs, but for the most part they all got minor buffs and maybe some minor nerfs like RTL for ele’s. The problem is that Rangers need a big buff and were told to be getting one that hasn’t come in months… I would say Guardians probably got a bigger buff this patch and already were pretty solid in PVE and PVP. Little love for the Ranger this patch again…

Called the guard nerf last week and folks said I was off my rocker..

I don’t know if I can wait another month to be disappointing again at lack of ranger improvements. I’ll log on to check out the new guild features and pvp map this update but I’ve really lost passion for this game and my ranger character. Really looking forward to ESO at this point.

Electro.4173:

Path of Scars buff is very nice. 85% is a pretty signifigant boost.

Off hand axe is still an inferior choice.

it’s kittening pathetic

It’s unfortunate to see Empathic Bond get nerfed. I was like, oh kittens, I’ma have to change a few things.

This is what we’ll have to deal with. I’m still not going to have a problem in PvP. Sure, I wont be able to take on 5 people at once with an evasion tank build, but we’ll all learn to improvise. We have many ways to remove conditions. We’ll all just have to adapt a bit, is all.

I just want an AoE damage reduction for my pets!

Seriously, can’t Anet at least reduce the AoE damage from NPC’s?

dmbucs.1367:

Leaf.3156:

Every profession gets massive buffs while Ranger is ignored, what’s left to discuss? This is basically every single balance patch.

I wouldn’t say every profession got massive buffs, but for the most part they all got minor buffs and maybe some minor nerfs like RTL for ele’s. The problem is that Rangers need a big buff and were told to be getting one that hasn’t come in months… I would say Guardians probably got a bigger buff this patch and already were pretty solid in PVE and PVP. Little love for the Ranger this patch again…

You kidding right? Have you seen gasmask playing as a trap ranger? He can solo 3 guys and kill them, if you think rangers needs a buff I’ve bad news for you mate.

rylark.3418:

dmbucs.1367:

Leaf.3156:

Every profession gets massive buffs while Ranger is ignored, what’s left to discuss? This is basically every single balance patch.

I wouldn’t say every profession got massive buffs, but for the most part they all got minor buffs and maybe some minor nerfs like RTL for ele’s. The problem is that Rangers need a big buff and were told to be getting one that hasn’t come in months… I would say Guardians probably got a bigger buff this patch and already were pretty solid in PVE and PVP. Little love for the Ranger this patch again…

You kidding right? Have you seen gasmask playing as a trap ranger? He can solo 3 guys and kill them, if you think rangers needs a buff I’ve bad news for you mate.

People are not looking for trap ranger buffs. 1 build does not make a profession

People are looking for buffs to pretty much every single part of the ranger that is not used in trap builds because almost every single other part of the ranger is somewhere between mediocre and craptacular.

rylark.3418:

dmbucs.1367:

Leaf.3156:

Every profession gets massive buffs while Ranger is ignored, what’s left to discuss? This is basically every single balance patch.

I wouldn’t say every profession got massive buffs, but for the most part they all got minor buffs and maybe some minor nerfs like RTL for ele’s. The problem is that Rangers need a big buff and were told to be getting one that hasn’t come in months… I would say Guardians probably got a bigger buff this patch and already were pretty solid in PVE and PVP. Little love for the Ranger this patch again…

You kidding right? Have you seen gasmask playing as a trap ranger? He can solo 3 guys and kill them, if you think rangers needs a buff I’ve bad news for you mate.

When 60-75% of potential utilities on a class are ignored because of the remaining being more useful and viable, then yes, those 60-75% not being used need a buff to make them more competitive options to choose for slotting utilities.
1 build with 1 basic trait setup working well =/= a class not having the need for buffs.

Guard: Nerf.
Crippling Talon: Insignificantly minor buff.
Empathic Bond: Nerf
Hawk and Eagle now have their own unique icons: Who gives a kitten
Path of Scars: uh doh?
Icy Screech: OK.. here’s a bone now someone will use the dang bird. um no…

Just use 3 traps and you can literally kill anyone 1v1, even a bunker guardian.
And about the 60-75% spells being useless, that’s the same for many classes bro. This patch is just going to make a lot of people go to TERA and leave this embarassing “balance team” working on this game. How’s this even a “huge balance pvp update”?

And last but not least :

“Food items that gives special bonuses upon a critical has now an internal cooldown before they can produce special bonus again” ><

rylark.3418:

Just use 3 traps and you can literally kill anyone 1v1, even a bunker guardian.
And about the 60-75% spells being useless, that’s the same for many classes bro. This patch is just going to make a lot of people go to TERA and leave this embarassing “balance team” working on this game. How’s this even a “huge balance pvp update”?

1v1 .. wow.. that is like the whole point of spvp or wvw. And pve dungeons, yeah I can 1v1 a player wow.. omg rly ?! What r you thinking ?

rylark.3418:

Just use 3 traps and you can literally kill anyone 1v1, even a bunker guardian.
And about the 60-75% spells being useless, that’s the same for many classes bro. This patch is just going to make a lot of people go to TERA and leave this embarassing “balance team” working on this game. How’s this even a “huge balance pvp update”?

It isn’t a huge update and you’re right, useless skills isn’t a ranger specific problem.

That statement alone highlights the issue within itself, how is the fact that 60-75% of ALL utility skills in this game being useless not a GLARING balance issue.
The classes need their mechanics fixed and utilities reworked to make everything work and everything have a function that is competitive with any other choice you could slot in its position. Then, once the classes are balanced inside themselves, they should be faced off against each other to get results to then balance the metagame.

All of this should have happened prior to launch. Instead, the community is still continuing to test an unfinished game. The devs however, instead of being grateful, are choosing to ignore feedback and push their own agenda which equates to content over quality.

And a trap ranger isn’t useful for the team? He can defend 2 points at the same time, watch some videos from him and come back.

General

- Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.

Hmm, could this mean that pet resumes attacking of the target that drops out of stealth that it was attacking previously? Maybe a slight ranger buff by accident?

rylark.3418:

And a trap ranger isn’t useful for the team? He can defend 2 points at the same time, watch some videos from him and come back.

Learn to read.. I never said there is no build which is usefull in spvp. I just said that statements like “I can 1v1 (1v3)” are nonsence. The Ranger “update” is just bad as always. And other classes get lots of love again.

Well, at least this solved the argument I was having with myself whether I would take Empathic Bond or Bark Skin. Empathic Bond is pretty bad now.

Boomstin.3460:

General

- Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.

Hmm, could this mean that pet resumes missing moving targets that drop out of stealth that it was attacking previously? Maybe a slight ranger buff by accident?

I fixed this for you to make it a more accurate description of what could potentially happen now haha.

rylark.3418:

And a trap ranger isn’t useful for the team? He can defend 2 points at the same time, watch some videos from him and come back.

Trap rangers are good in sPvP. Nobody here is complaining about trap rangers in sPvP. Everything else we can do in every other game mode is borked.

well the fire/frost auras is a nice buff.

Informer.5213:

Ranger

Guard: Pets will no longer guard areas that should be inaccessible to them.
….
——————————————————————————————

Discuss.

good thing it’ll only cost me a few silver to respec. i’m sure SF and Ferg will be glad Whiskers and Scaleypants (not their real names. XD) will no longer be terrorizing the battlements. /sad /sigh

khadorian.6417:

well the fire/frost auras is a nice buff.

It’s really kind of sad when the most notable “ranger buffs” since launch have actually been game wide buffs that just so happened to affect rangers as well.

Guard was clearly an exploit even though it was the only time rangers actually enjoyed having a pet. Even if it was an exploit, it’s really sad to see they are making rangers worse when they so desperately need to be better.

Empathic Bond was bugged. I’m not sure about the condition removal cap, my understand is that rangers with this trait were far from OP because of it, so if you are going to take away a huge part of the trait’s strength they should be giving rangers something to compensate, otherwise you’re taking a class that is weaker than others in a similair role and you are making it even less viable. A lot of rangers running this also ran high Beast Mastery, so this could seriously hurt than build if it is able to shut down pets with the transfers.

The rest of it I couldn’t care about. I hate patches like this not because I hate all nerfs but because they continue to show the devs with an intent focus on taking things away and not offering up anything as an alternative. The devs themselves admitted the ranger is starved for build diversity, but now they are just picking off stuff that works (even if it was bugged) and they are doing nothing to give rangers new tools to create new builds. There is a problem, they are aware of it and nothing is being done.

Warriors gain 5 second of might on critical hit from a trait most of them will take (it also offers 20 second cooldown on greatsword skills) while rangers get 1 second of might for their pet on a critical hit. These developers have no clue what they are doing.

guess why we didnt get a major buff? they fixed our Laurel boxes….

jk jk, anyways, daggers might be worth using a whole lot more now…. trait offhand skills and you get like 10s cooldown or something

Leaf.3156:

Every profession gets massive buffs while Ranger is ignored, what’s left to discuss? This is basically every single balance patch.

Yes, Because warriors don’t count as a profession right as how useless they are, right?

Some “fixes”, slight buffs to little used abilities (but that is good as maybe it makes them more viable), but overall, my reaction is “meh”.

I don’t really understand where they’re going with buffin DD eles (overall they got a really good buff) while other professions that need more tender loving care gets a few small things thrown at them. I was expecting a good DD ele and thief balance at least for WvW, but the patch overall…doesnt do much for balance in WvW anyway. Bit disappointed tbh.

Through the good and bad, I will continue to be a ranger.

Prysin.8542:

guess why we didnt get a major buff? they fixed our Laurel boxes….

jk jk, anyways, daggers might be worth using a whole lot more now…. trait offhand skills and you get like 10s cooldown or something

It’s a somewhat solid skill and I seem to get a lot of crits with it for some reason, but It’s not very reliable. The projectile speed is slow as hell so it’s often not worth using unless your target is very close <700 or is running directly away from you. I wouldn’t even bother trying to use it at the traited 1200 range because it will never hit something moving.

So they buff a weapon that no one uses because it’s not viable in any situation, even with the buff and they ruin the one good things ranger pets had going for them in www? and they nerf our condition removal, the frack are you thinking anet?

You know, it’s kind of sad to see the changes and with the word of our traps getting nerfed soon (only rumor , nothing specific) I don’t know where this is going to end up for the ranger.

The problem isn’t any of the kitten they listed:

Pet ai, Spirits, Axe weapon jus to name a few… I could go on forever really.

Is it that hard and long and cost intensive to fix the pet ai? Don’t even bother working on bird graphics, you have hundreds of class fixes on the table and you guys kittening fix the bird icon? Let’s see how well the bird icon change does for me in combat, oh … I can see the same pet not doing kitten in a fight, just has a more noticeable icon graphic. thanks guys for helping us out with that.

Seriously?

Ryan.8367:

You know, it’s kind of sad to see the changes and with the word of our traps getting nerfed soon (only rumor , nothing specific) I don’t know where this is going to end up for the ranger.

The problem isn’t any of the kitten they listed:

Pet ai, Spirits, Axe weapon jus to name a few… I could go on forever really.

Is it that hard and long and cost intensive to fix the pet ai? Don’t even bother working on bird graphics, you have hundreds of class fixes on the table and you guys kittening fix the bird icon? Let’s see how well the bird icon change does for me in combat, oh … I can see the same pet not doing kitten in a fight, just has a more noticeable icon graphic. thanks guys for helping us out with that.

Seriously?

Hahaha.. Made me laugh while being kitten we got nothing to help us..

Ryan.8367:

Is it that hard and long and cost intensive to fix the pet ai? Don’t even bother working on bird graphics, you have hundreds of class fixes on the table and you guys kittening fix the bird icon? Let’s see how well the bird icon change does for me in combat, oh … I can see the same pet not doing kitten in a fight, just has a more noticeable icon graphic. thanks guys for helping us out with that.

Its a quick, simple fix that requires nothing more than an artfile path name change and maybe a bit of new artwork (if the icon didn’t exist and wasn’t just incorrectly displayed).

Its not like they pushed a dozen big fixes out of the way to fix it or anything. Its an easy fix that they can probably do in a few minutes (or a bit more if requiring new artwork, though thats not programming time, but artist time). They could have not fixed it and wouldn’t have had time to do anything else substancial. A minor fix is better than no fix at all or them just moving onto another profession and fixing one of their minor issues.

I’m just rerolling a mesmer

Informer.5213:

Guard: Pets will no longer guard areas that should be inaccessible to them.

Like it or not, we all knew this one was coming, and why.

Crippling Talon: Cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.

Okay.

Empathic Bond: Fixed a bug that wouldn’t apply transferred conditions to pets. This trait now transfers three conditions to the ranger’s pet every 10 seconds rather than all of them.

Okay, this one stings, I’m not going to lie. Still, it’s not necessarily build-busting, and can be worked around. Whatever.

Hawk and Eagle now have their own unique icons instead of sharing one.

Okay.

Path of Scars: This ability’s damage has been normalized between traited and non-traited versions. Damage has been increased by 85% when not traited.

Nice. I might give it go just for kicks.

Icy Screech: The White Moa activated ability now applies 3 seconds of Chill, and the skill fact has been updated appropriately.

Okay.

Overall… eh. Nothing great, nothing particularly build-busting (unless Guard was your only contribution in WvW). Well, at least we didn’t get nerfed into the ground like some Thieves were hoping.

rylark.3418:

Just use 3 traps and you can literally kill anyone 1v1, even a bunker guardian.
And about the 60-75% spells being useless, that’s the same for many classes bro. This patch is just going to make a lot of people go to TERA and leave this embarassing “balance team” working on this game. How’s this even a “huge balance pvp update”?

I am sick of waiting for this company to take it’s pvp seriously – they STILL don’t have Ranger to even “reality” standards let alone FANTASY standards – and all spells don’t work most of the time when hit – why do I still have to hit f2 six, seven, ten, times or furiously click the mouse a bazillion times to get any single thing to GO OFF????

so we get nothing again and thieves and d/d eles get buffed. WHAT

vespers.1759:

so we get nothing again and thieves and d/d eles get buffed. WHAT

Well, eles got actually quite a few nerfs, but it just seems they are missing from the patch notes. Just visit the ele forums for some ele tears.

vespers.1759:

so we get nothing again and thieves and d/d eles get buffed. WHAT

Neighter of them got specially buffed. Thieves are no longer able to spam stealth from wvw walls and mobs don’t drop agro even if thieves go stealth. Eles got a ride the lightning nerf which increases it’s CL and makes them a lot more CC-able.

I tried Path of Scars with precision/critical dmg equipment and Honed Axes trait (10% crit dmg with axe main hand). The damage that can be done is pretty substantial.

Honestly I rolled a Axe/Axe, Greatsword Ranger that also carries a longbow in her inventory not too long back. Offhand Axe actually isn’t bad at all and paired with mainhand axe you have a fair amount of improvised AOE damage. Not to mention that Whirling Axes is an ace projectile reflector that does fairly good damage and applies vulnerability. Obviously the immobility is something you take into account before using it.

Ate up quite a few people in WvW even at lower levels while leveling up. Being able to projectile reflect at will really trashes peoples day when you’re a class with fairly beefy ranged prowess. I used Longbow/Axe/Axe for the ranged engagements and Greatsword/Axe/Axe if I expected closer range foes.

I also suspect people are not getting thier mileage out of the pets. Our selection of pets is incredibly versatile. From the buff-centric Red Moa/Stalker setup, to Lynx/Eagle burst, to Fern Hound/Brown Bear support. With myriad other options abounding too.

Rangers are far better off and far more versatile than people give them credit for.

//Empathic Bond: Fixed a bug that wouldn’t apply transferred conditions to pets. This trait now transfers three conditions to the ranger’s pet every 10 seconds rather than all of them.//

As BM ranger, this really scares me, my DPS will get reduced a lot due to all the cc condition applied to my pet.

I’m glad i only made a ranger as a test in order to see by myself if all the tears around that class were as unjustified as the necro.

Sadly it was all real this time.

Talking striclty about pve, in pvp it’s honestly not bad at all.

Rangers bad…in PvE? Do you mean dungeons and fractals, or just straight up PvE? Because if you mean regular PvE…then I don’t think you’re doing it right.