Guild Wars 2

Ranger

Condition rangers have been pretty potent largely on the strength of torch skills and Quick Draw. We’d like to preserve the tactical play of Quick Draw, so we’re nicking bits of burn duration from torch skills at this time. While we’re at it, we’ve taken the opportunity to revisit a few older weapon traits for short bow, axe, and sword to grant them a bit more synergy with the core weapon skill function.

Lunar Impact: The amount this skill scales with healing power has been reduced by 20% in PvP only.

“We Heal as One!”: Shared regeneration duration has been reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds in PvP only.

Resounding Timbre: Regeneration duration of this trait has been reduced from 10 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.

Ancient Seeds: The cooldown of this trait has been increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds in PvP only.

“Strength of the Pack!”: This skill has been reworked and no longer pulses boons on the ranger. When cast, this skill will now apply 10 stacks of stability for 8 seconds, along with 12 seconds of fury and 12 seconds of swiftness.

Smoke Assault: The damage of this skill has been reduced by 15%.

Bonfire: The duration of burning applied by this skill has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2.5 seconds.

Throw Torch: The duration of burning applied by this skill has been reduced from 6 seconds to 5 seconds.

Evasive Purity: This trait now removes one damaging condition and one non-damaging condition.

Honed Axes: This trait now grants a ferocity bonus whether axe is in the main hand or the off hand.

Light on Your Feet: This trait now enhances flanking/behind aspects for short bow skills.

Crippling Shot: This trait now immobilizes if you are beside your target, in addition to when you are behind your target.

Poison Volley: This trait now has increased effect if you are beside your target, in addition to when you are behind your target.

Refined Toxins: Reduced the effective cooldown from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.
Reduced the required health threshold from 90% to 75%.

Strider’s Defense: This trait no longer has a chance to destroy projectiles on melee attack. It has gained new functionality: when you evade an attack, gain quickness for 3 seconds.

Troll Unguent: Reduced total duration of this effect from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. Increased healing per second by 25%. Reduced casting time from 1 second to 0.75 seconds.

My observations :

RIP Remorseless build, because of “Strength of the Pack!” nerf. You’ll need Skirmishing or Warhorn to trigger Remorseless. A niche power build just became useless. If they wanted to nerf the pulsing Stability, they could have done it without touching pulsing Fury.

PvP Healing nerf.

Honed Axes, still useless if you don’t change the skills on Axes. I can see people using Sword/Axe more often now, because of Strider’s Defense nerf/buff/newfonction. (Meanwhile they give another BOUNCE and buff to Thief’s AA and SB).

Real winners :

Condi ranger (Despite Torch small nerfs). SB buff (solid) and Wilderness Survival buff.

in regards to that im more interested about

Light on Your Feet: This trait now enhances flanking/behind aspects for short bow skills.

anyone care to test this out? how enhance is this trait? or can someone explain the difference now?

and LOL at ANet buffing sword, already dominating with this weapon already, thank you ANet.

AEFA.9035:

Light on Your Feet: This trait now enhances flanking/behind aspects for short bow skills.

anyone care to test this out? how enhance is this trait? or can someone explain the difference now?

If you trait it, you don’t need to flank/behind anymore. So, exemple Concussion Shot without flanking was dazing and stun from flanking. Now you can just be in front and stun (traited).

The trait changed to ‘’Short bow skills always behave as though you were behind your target’’

Smokescale even more RIP lol

Krispera.5087:

AEFA.9035:

Light on Your Feet: This trait now enhances flanking/behind aspects for short bow skills.

anyone care to test this out? how enhance is this trait? or can someone explain the difference now?

If you trait it, you don’t need to flank/behind anymore. So, exemple Concussion Shot without flanking was dazing and stun from flanking. Now you can just be in front and stun (traited).

The trait changed to ‘’Short bow skills always behave as though you were behind your target’’

Tested it. it doesn’t work even if the trait is triggered. Can’t immobilize or stun foes/npc heading toward you.

AlanCMD.9205:

Krispera.5087:

If you trait it, you don’t need to flank/behind anymore. So, exemple Concussion Shot without flanking was dazing and stun from flanking. Now you can just be in front and stun (traited).

The trait changed to ‘’Short bow skills always behave as though you were behind your target’’

Tested it. it doesn’t work even if the trait is triggered. Can’t immobilize or stun foes/npc heading toward you.

Oh boy, just went to check and you’re right. It doesn’t work.

Interesting way of nerfing quickdraw, at least they tried to buff Light on Your Feet as well.

Krispera.5087:

AlanCMD.9205:

Krispera.5087:

If you trait it, you don’t need to flank/behind anymore. So, exemple Concussion Shot without flanking was dazing and stun from flanking. Now you can just be in front and stun (traited).

The trait changed to ‘’Short bow skills always behave as though you were behind your target’’

Tested it. it doesn’t work even if the trait is triggered. Can’t immobilize or stun foes/npc heading toward you.

Oh boy, just went to check and you’re right. It doesn’t work.

tried the trait as well and as you guys mentioned trait doesnt work, its supposed to be as if youre hitting from behind but it really doesnt work. well, i thought it would be a nice trait if it did work.

me reading about permanent “behind” status:

:-D

me learning it’s a fake change that doesn’t actually work:

D-:<

Edit: oh wait, it’s one of the traits sharing space with Quick Draw. Probably wouldn’t have used it anyway then.

Is Refined Toxins competitive with Ambidexterity now?

So balance team just want us to be stupid heal bot I agree with condi nerf but why on earth you nerf power build, honestly I wish you balance the balance team too much Mesmer love and less for the rest

BadSanta.6527:

So balance team just want us to be stupid heal bot I agree with condi nerf but why on earth you nerf power build, honestly I wish you balance the balance team too much Mesmer love and less for the rest

The Mesmer changes were crap. No nerfs so its better then Ranger but don’t act like Mesmer got anything out of this.

So I can’t get online at the moment, how does Poison Volley work now? Does being ‘beside’ mean just being close or are there other requirements for that effect? Like, if I am close to target but in front of it, do I benefit from new effect and don’t benefit from old effect?

I am easily most satisfied with the Troll Unguent change, personally. As it is my favorite heal, I really like the reduced cast time and increased effectiveness over a shorter duration. Not a huge change but still a very nice one.

Smokescale nerf is my biggest gripe. I believe it has been said enough in the past, stop nerfing HoT pets start buffing pre-HoT pets. It was done with the last balance patch but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have continued with this one.

BadSanta.6527:

So balance team just want us to be stupid heal bot I agree with condi nerf but why on earth you nerf power build, honestly I wish you balance the balance team too much Mesmer love and less for the rest

Mesmer changes weren’t even that good. It had a justified nerf to IR (though personally I’d rather do away with that trait entirely), and some other crap in it honestly. 15% damage boost on CoF sounds high, but remember that itscoefficient is 0.33 pre patch, its not like its damage boost will even be noticed. The changes to phantasms are superficial changes, won’t change anything.

Yep I agree, if the new trait for SB works anytime soon SB will be solid. Now just misses the 1200 range and sb#3 to become a leap (to combo fields) and give super speed if it hits to become a fun condi weapon in any gamemode (so you can replace the lb)

All the other changes I don’t have an strong opinion about it. The nerfs to condi aren’t that great(there are benchmarks already) and I do like more the nerf to StoP (however did they shorten the CD? ) than nerfing remorseless trait. The buffs are situational at best. I don’t play pvp so the nerf to traits don’t impact me mostly, I leave that opinion to experienced players.

I didn’t like the nerf to smokescale thou, I don’t get it, that pet was already low in damage, it being used just because its the only pet which can connect with moving players.

The shortbow trait amplifies the effectiveness of flanking benefits, like it says in the patch notes. The trait description might just be an old version that they were testing, the current effect causes all flanking components your shortbow skill facts to turn blue and have increased duration.

I’ve just tested it in-game, my 4 seconds of bleed on crossfire when flanking has increased to 6(1/2) seconds. Hunter’s Tactics doesn’t seem to be affected, but I haven’t tested it. It would make for a hell of a fun build, sharpened edges, hidden barbs and light on your feet for disgusting crossfire damage when flanking.

Anet: Let’s create a new Elite Specialization that will have a huge amount of synergy with the pet.

Also Anet: Let’s keep nerfing any functional pvp pets.

Strider’s Defense: This trait no longer has a chance to destroy projectiles on melee attack. It has gained new functionality: when you evade an attack, gain quickness for 3 seconds.

This could be kinda fun with greatsword evade auto-attack. Don’t think it will be very effective though.

Elenire.7306:

Strider’s Defense: This trait no longer has a chance to destroy projectiles on melee attack. It has gained new functionality: when you evade an attack, gain quickness for 3 seconds.

This could be kinda fun with greatsword evade auto-attack. Don’t think it will be very effective though.

I was excited for GS when I wasn’t in game yet, but it’s Sword only.

RIP Strength of the Pack.

Ranger is even more terrible in zergs now and we didn’t even get a cool down reduction to offset the massive nerf…

I’m starting to miss my spirit spammer from GW….

-.-

ANeT, the ranger needs a massive damage output boost not a nerf on anything.
You keep buffing the other classes to higher damage output(Revenant is even nastier) and nerf the ranger again(with small buff to SB). They keep slow boating ranger damage output.

I’d love to see a true warrior, thief, mesmer or necro nerf. Warrior is still OP with all the invulnerable, blocks and such.

But I bet this section of the forums is ignored since ANeT hates the ranger. They only want ranger to play druid in their raid meta.

Heibi.4251:

ANeT, the ranger needs a massive damage output boost not a nerf on anything.
You keep buffing the other classes to higher damage output(Revenant is even nastier) and nerf the ranger again(with small buff to SB). They keep slow boating ranger damage output.

I’d love to see a true warrior, thief, mesmer or necro nerf. Warrior is still OP with all the invulnerable, blocks and such.

But I bet this section of the forums is ignored since ANeT hates the ranger. They only want ranger to play druid in their raid meta.

Are you for real? Our core profession has been competitive condition DPS for a long, long while now and being pidgeon-holed into our elite spec would only bring us down to the same level as other professions. Since Ele’s meteor shower nerf, condi Ranger has been tied with condi engi for top DPS in raids with far more ease of use and since the group’s Druid can provide spotter to open up hidden barbs and condi engis lack a good replacement for pinpoint distribution, the rangers don’t lose effectiveness for running multiple. I’ve seen raid teams just running rangers in every DPS slot, just like they used to with eles. This nerf was justified.

I’ve not seen Power Ranger doing much in raids and the ranger really doesn’t have much going for it in that department, but I can only guess they were decent enough in PvP because they deleted remorseless rampage as one.

One positive change that came from this was Troll Unguent.

Strength of the Pack durations are odd choices. The skill lasts 10s and the stability is set to 8s while the boons are at 12s. Why not just have them all at 10s?

Honed Axes change is “too little too late.” Rangers wanted this change back when power sword & axe Rangers were a thing 2 years ago. Swap the ferocity with precision and everything will be cake.

Though the change to Light On Your Feet is appreciated, the traits are becoming excessively overloaded with functions. Even for a Grandmaster, Light on Your Feet is decent now, but does 4 things (recharge reduction, 2 weapon modifiers, and 1 additional effect).

For Pete’s sake. Why wasn’t it reworked to something with more synergy instead of converting it so that people could be lazy with positioning in a game where positioning is kind of a thing?

Something like: “Light On Your Feet: Shortbow skills recharge 20% faster and pierce. Gain Light On Your Feet (8s) when you apply bleeding to a foe. Light On Your Feet effect: +2% outgoing condition durations per stack. Stacks up to 10 times.”

Has synergy with other weapons with bleeding while allowing weapons without bleed to activate it if Sharpened Edges was taken. Cuts down on 4 functions down to 3 and makes it much more appealing and competitive to Quick Draw.

Other changes I’m neutral on or not surprised at. I knew condition Ranger was going to take a hit when people started to stack them like Elementalists.

HotHit.6783:

Heibi.4251:

ANeT, the ranger needs a massive damage output boost not a nerf on anything.
You keep buffing the other classes to higher damage output(Revenant is even nastier) and nerf the ranger again(with small buff to SB). They keep slow boating ranger damage output.

I’d love to see a true warrior, thief, mesmer or necro nerf. Warrior is still OP with all the invulnerable, blocks and such.

But I bet this section of the forums is ignored since ANeT hates the ranger. They only want ranger to play druid in their raid meta.

Are you for real? Our core profession has been competitive condition DPS for a long, long while now and being pidgeon-holed into our elite spec would only bring us down to the same level as other professions. Since Ele’s meteor shower nerf, condi Ranger has been tied with condi engi for top DPS in raids with far more ease of use and since the group’s Druid can provide spotter to open up hidden barbs and condi engis lack a good replacement for pinpoint distribution, the rangers don’t lose effectiveness for running multiple. I’ve seen raid teams just running rangers in every DPS slot, just like they used to with eles. This nerf was justified.

I’ve not seen Power Ranger doing much in raids and the ranger really doesn’t have much going for it in that department, but I can only guess they were decent enough in PvP because they deleted remorseless rampage as one.

So its all about raids then… I dont do raids. I dont want to do raids. I dont want to be told whats on my skill bar and how to play it. But since condi ranger were a little too powerfull in raids, ALL of the remaining non-raiding players will suffer from it. Nice.

Maybe, just MAYBE Anet should concentrate on fixing stuff instead of breaking it. (See the many other posts in the bug section for more details.)

Krispera.5087:

My observations :

RIP Remorseless build, because of “Strength of the Pack!” nerf. You’ll need Skirmishing or Warhorn to trigger Remorseless. A niche power build just became useless. If they wanted to nerf the pulsing Stability, they could have done it without touching pulsing Fury.

You were never dependent on the pulsing fury from Strenth of the pack to run remorseless builds. It’s a noticeable hit to the damage whenever you’re activating SotP, but not a complete “rip”. Tiger F2, taunt trait and remorseless combo’ed with some greatsword skills is still a massive burst with our without SotP.

That being said, they could and should have kept the pulsing effect on fury and swiftness, for the sake of synergy (it kinda fits the skill too for that matter). I doubt they even thought of it. With the ranger’s stability situation, it didn’t warrant a change at all as far as I’m concerned. Not with the cooldown nerf from earlier.

Man our elites stink now.

Wondrouswall.7169:

For Pete’s sake. Why wasn’t it reworked to something with more synergy instead of converting it so that people could be lazy with positioning in a game where positioning is kind of a thing?

At present the tooltip for the trait is incorrect. It increases the duration of the flanking bonuses of shortbow attacks as suggested by the patch notes. Concussion shot is the only exception, it now applies 10 stacks of vuln for 10 seconds when flanking, when traited.

terrorshard.3854:

Man our elites stink now.

The worst part is, Rampage as One got one of its coolest interactions removed because of an overarching change while Glyph of Unity was missed off in the overarching buff to tether skills. It woulda been fun with Krait runes and Light on your Feet boosted crossfire too.

Well, let’s make the best of it. Someone post their best take on a shortbow centered build. Maybe a hybrid power/conditions.

Wow, a few brutal nerfs there. I kind of suspect this is in prep for the next expac bringing a bunch of new stuff that they’ll want us to use instead of the old staples.

Strider’s defense looks very interesting though. Going to start seeing even more melee rangers than we already do in WvW.

I think the light on your feet trait works if you are flanking. You dont have to stand behind the target to trigger the specific corresponding effect. Dont tested it though.
I still wish for some useful dagger improvements and increased target cap on vipers nest. Still waiting on my melee poison ranger.

InsaneQR.7412:

Still waiting on my melee poison ranger.

Refined Toxins buff is a decent start. At the cost of a stunbreak or off-hand dagger trait, unfortunately.

Conditions are going to be everywhere, if we even try to dump druid our condition removal is complete booty.

HotHit.6783:

At present the tooltip for the trait is incorrect. It increases the duration of the flanking bonuses of shortbow attacks as suggested by the patch notes. Concussion shot is the only exception, it now applies 10 stacks of vuln for 10 seconds when flanking, when traited.

Yeah. Tested that in game just now. The tooltip and the rework seems all together odd to me. It’s a static boost to the condition durations other than Concussion Shot. 2s to Crossfire and Poison Volley, and 1s to Crippling Shot.

I still wish they did something better with the trait instead of adding more stuff onto it.

“Strength of the Pack!”: This skill has been reworked and no longer pulses boons on the ranger. When cast, this skill will now apply 10 stacks of stability for 8 seconds, along with 12 seconds of fury and 12 seconds of swiftness.
And there goes the only useful elite skill for power Rangers in WvWvW.

Resounding Timbre: Regeneration duration of this trait has been reduced from 10 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
I guess this was nerfed because of there was probably some Druid build that did well in PvP so core spec got shafted again.

I have no idea why we got all these nerfs on a bad profession again. If you want to nerf something just keep it to the Druid skill/traits.

*fixed a typo should have been sPvP instead of WvW for the Resounding Timbre part

The Flaminator.3879:

I guess this was nerfed because of there was probably some Druid build that did well in WvW so core spec got shafted again.

I have no idea why we got all these nerfs on a bad profession again. If you want to nerf something just keep it to the Druid skill/traits.

“Roaming Druid was decent so let’s completely kill the Ranger’s ability to function in group fights.”

Sounds like something they’d do.

The Flaminator.3879:

Resounding Timbre: Regeneration duration of this trait has been reduced from 10 seconds to 4 seconds in PvP only.
I guess this was nerfed because of there was probably some Druid build that did well in WvW so core spec got shafted again.

No, it’s to reduce the massive uptime of regen for druids in pvp. And ye, it’s pvp only. Nothing to do with wvw, nor did it affect wvw.

I get the feeling the new elite spec will have a one of its three trait lines devoted to surviveability. It must have if it’s supposed to be anything more than an one trick damage pony, or whatever else it’s supposed to be in the first place.

If this is as bad as it looks, I’m done with the game now. Absolutely ridiculous. This patch pretty much killed my shout, healing, smokescale build.

And all based around PvP . . . again.

I seriously don’t know what they’re thinking anymore.

Fluffball.8307:

Wow, a few brutal nerfs there. I kind of suspect this is in prep for the next expac bringing a bunch of new stuff that they’ll want us to use instead of the old staples.

I suspect you’re right, but this patch is just overkill.

Edit: From what I just experienced, it’s not so bad. I’m honestly wondering if these changes are PvP only. Shout build is still viable.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

If this is as bad as it looks, I’m done with the game now. Absolutely ridiculous. This patch pretty much killed my shout, healing, smokescale build.

And all based around PvP . . . again.

I seriously don’t know what they’re thinking anymore.

Fluffball.8307:

Wow, a few brutal nerfs there. I kind of suspect this is in prep for the next expac bringing a bunch of new stuff that they’ll want us to use instead of the old staples.

I suspect you’re right, but this patch is just overkill.

Those shout and healing nerfs are for PvP only (sounds like you’re talking about WvW roaming?) The SotP change I’m not even sure what to make of it. It makes the skill utterly useless against thieves, mesmers and necros. But thieves and necros we basically hardcounter 1v1 anyway.

Elenire.7306:

Strider’s Defense: This trait no longer has a chance to destroy projectiles on melee attack. It has gained new functionality: when you evade an attack, gain quickness for 3 seconds.

This could be kinda fun with greatsword evade auto-attack. Don’t think it will be very effective though.

The change they have listed isn’t written right, it only works while holding a 1-handed sword.

Ah. Thanks, Fluff. Was wondering since I wasn’t seeing any changes in PvE.

None of it really affects me. Neither positively nor negatively. I’m glad some of the nerfs are PvP only, which I don’t play.

Troll Unguent, Evasive Purity and Refined Toxins are worth reconsidering, but I don’t think it’ll change my build.

Strider’s Defense and Light on Your Feet are interesting changes, but will they be good enough to use? I’m not sure. Shortbow only has 900 range.

Holland.9351:

Strider’s Defense and Light on Your Feet are interesting changes, but will they be good enough to use? I’m not sure.

If you’re running WvW melee ranger and if you’re using quickdraw, strider’s defense is the obvious choice. It’s up against spotter and hidden barbs.

Since a lot of melee roamers use boon duration gear, that’s a really powerful trait now. Might even lure some away from nature magic.

Also writing all this out, I can’t even begin to imagine where anet pictured people using this new trait. Surely they didn’t make it specifically for solo WvW roaming, which is the only place you’d want to take it.

Honestly, this game just isn’t fun anymore with all these nerfs. We have a very limited set of skills and only 3-4 viable builds. Idk I’m just not having any fun when I spent 2 months farming vipers armor after work everyday and now Condi Ranger loses 4k dps.

Agent Mulder.4531:

Honestly, this game just isn’t fun anymore with all these nerfs. We have a very limited set of skills and only 3-4 viable builds. Idk I’m just not having any fun when I spent 2 months farming vipers armor after work everyday and now Condi Ranger loses 4k dps.

My advice is don’t bother with vipers. Do fun stuff till expac drops in a few months and everything changes. I’ve basically stopped “playing” and am saving mats for new legendaries.

We don’t even know if the next espec will be condi or power, or what kind of environments we’ll be using it in (i.e. triple trouble wurm type open bosses or etc.)

That nature magic trait evasive purity is so good im running base melee ranger just fine. That with sig of renweal that 2 condis removed every 10 secs on top of survival traits, hell for pvp I’m even thinking of a pure go kitten yourself condis builds with the new sigils

The new sword trait is quite gooood

The PvP changes really aren’t bad at all. The sustain reduction was bound to happen, it was going to be across the board, and I expected worse.

Resounding Timbre is annoying but understandable since now you’ll actually have to think about the regen when using shouts.

Smokescale was uncalled for imo, but the entire patch slowed the pace of the game down overall, so maybe it’s in line with some sort of intended baseline?

Troll Unguent is a strong change and depending on how the patch shifts the meta, might be worth making a build around again.

Overall, the biggest gameplay change (besides the across the board stab changes that hit us, making Entangle the clear WvW choice now) is the sigil changes in PvP. Meta druid builds were already attrition builds, but now the whole game just seems like it’ll be attrition based, which isn’t inherently bad with the removal of a lot of the passive procs, but it does change the tempo of the game significantly.

Shortbow still sucks as a pvp weapon when traited. Anet has its head stuck in the ground on what’s needed to make it work based on all the feedback here.

Amazing. To be truthful I haven’t been paying attention so the “balance” patch came as a surprise. Then I visited the forums to see what it was about for our Ranger/Druid and, well, not surprised. Nothing.

Perplexed maybe am I because I have no idea what the developers are trying to solve. But I have to question how one can say there is any “Balance” in this patch for the Druid/Ranger.