Guild Wars 2

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.

I’m quite for real. I’ve experienced firsthand in WvW the ridiculous OP classes, and ranger isn’t one of them. Warriors can run into a zerg of 30 and survive. Thieves/Daredevils can 2 shot people and drop them in less than 3 seconds. Mesmers can chain clone producing what seems like 6 clones(just that they do it in a way that makes the existing not count to he max allowed) that can make your life a real pain. And lets not forget the ridiculous stealth that Mesmers and Thieves still have. Dragon Hunter traps are also OP, outdoing anything a ranger has. Being “baby caged” and hit with the primary trap will cause you to wonder why rangers even exist. Elementalists do massive DPS, can be invulnerable and have lots of stab when played right. Necro/Reapers are OP in DPS and Condi. Let’s not forget all those health pools they can have along with those nasty utilities.

Ranger has basically been slowly nerfed and relegated to Druid healer for raids. Yes, the condi meta for raids has helped open up another role, but most raids want the healer druid first.

As for PVP. Who cares. PVP is an entirely different animal and should have never been allowed to affect PVE and WvW.

Look what it took for ANeT to nerf perma-stealth thieves. A thief soloed one of the raid bosses. Their precious raid was broken by an OP class. And it wasn’t a glitch like the slyvari hound glitch. It was a stealth meta.

No idea how long you have played, but I’ve been at it since beta. Ranger has been neglected by ANeT. Pets AI is broke – we lose damage output due to it. Our big elite Entangle was truly nerfed long ago. And they’ve slowly nerfed our damage output on primary weapon choices while trying to get us t o use unpopular ones. They finally fixed our One-hand sword locked in the motion problem by nerfing it. And now they’ve come after our torch. Our axe was nerfed a while ago and no longer ricochets to as many targets.

But if you look at the other classes – big damage buffs over the past 2 years.

Agreed. It’s like they put a bigger and bigger hurdle to jump almost every patch. It’s why ranger players fear patches. Yet still, those of us that remain, seem to overcome to generate even more hatred in PvP. I suspect this hatred is because good ranger/druids are hard as hell to kill in PvP for the rather slower PvP players. We just won’t roll over like other classes if played correctly.

Again, all this ‘balance’ is based around PvP in a mostly PvE game . . . but that’s another topic.

Didn’t realise there was a balance patch comming up.

Last 2 years or so I’ve been raiding primarily. From that perspective, I think the balancing is alright. Shortbow got major buffs in one of the latest patches so didn’t expect it to have even more buffs.
Torch is too bad, but to be expected maybe looking at how popular condi ranger is in raids.
But maybe it opens up offhand dagger now?
I wonder how sword/dagger + shortbow would do now with poison master, ambidexterity or refined toxins and a poison oriented rune, like superior rune of thorns and superior rune of orr.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Again, all this ‘balance’ is based around PvP in a mostly PvE game . . . but that’s another topic.

A number of the changes are in PvP only so they don’t effect PvE, beyond that you can say the same (in fact even more so) about raids, the “PvE” “balance” changes they make in patches are virtually all about raids, something which makes up a tiny proportion of PvE and that most players don’t play or barely play.

It won’t open up off-hand dagger. At least, not in PVE. Refined Toxins seems to be a better choice on single target encounters.

It’s easy to stay above 75% health and the PVE pet damage reductions pretty much guarantees it will poison the target, too. It results in 8 stacks of poison every 20s; 4 stacks at 12s from the Ranger and 4 stacks at 8s from the Pet.

Viper’s Nest w/out Trapper’s Expertise on 100% condition duration nets 9 stacks at 8s every 20s, granted, the poison we apply will deal more damage via Poison Master.

Torch nerfs were minimal, and losing out the extra condition damage when on the axe/torch set and 3 extra seconds on throw torch seems like a minor loss compared to what we can get now with Refined Toxins.

Not sure about Rune of Thorns, but Rune of Orr is out except for core/f2p players. All theory, though. One of the few good things to come out of this patch for Ranger… maybe.

Still not convinced about Light On Your Feet. If the change ends up that camping shortbow while flanking a boss is the new meta, then we’ll be in the same camp as power engineers camping bomb kit while having Turrets out.

Whether that’s a good thing or otherwise has yet to be determined, especially when condition Ranger is already easy to pick-up-and-play. /shrug

They should not have buffed the NM traitline. I’m looking forward to the salt I will get in WvW, since I stopped bothering with more offensive builds.

The SOTP nerf sucks, but there are good alternatives…

Lazze.9870:

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.

Yeah thats the whole problem with poison ranger. I would like if they would give dagger more cleave capabbilities. Its inferior to torch just because if the lacking AoE. Every OH has the abbility to do some AoE dmg and has a ranged attack. I would like to see some kind of spin-jump attack that can hit multiple targets and would close a little gap for melee engagement.
Posion master is a weird trait as a grand master. I would like to see that you place a poison field on your position and that of the pet. Field last 3 s and pulses 1 stack of poison per second.

Heibi.4251:

I’m quite for real. I’ve experienced firsthand in WvW the ridiculous OP classes, and ranger isn’t one of them. Warriors can run into a zerg of 30 and survive.

That is because they have a not die button and an autoclicker duplicating the effects of the button. Their ability to do this was cut in half this patch. And I’m sorry, but I can’t render any more meaningful discussion about WvW balance and I won’t until the reward systems encourage me to actually look into how to win at the game mode.

Ranger has basically been slowly nerfed and relegated to Druid healer for raids. Yes, the condi meta for raids has helped open up another role, but most raids want the healer druid first.

Since I slowly lost interest until I left entirely from when Anet made sword boring until, wildly enough, the same time that Tragic Positive came back, I’m looking over the patch notes again between now and the specialisation change of June 2015 I’ll summarise each month where something happened, but I’m only looking for ranger specific changes that affect condi builds and not including bug fixes so there’s a good chance I miss some finer details.

July 2015: Brought back ambidexterity’s old range increasing effect as baseline for off-hands.
September 2015: Buffs to spirits, the Heal as One fiasco and pets gaining condition damage
October 2015: Say hi to the Druid and our new pets! Which opens up huge new avenues for our condi builds. And y’know, viper’s gear is more relevant to us than most.
January 2016: Hidden Barbs got a huge buff and Honed Axes now grants slightly more ferocity (ooo, so game changing), but every point of damage matters.
April 2016: We no longer kick people with our sword, a sad day indeed. Massive buffs to shortbow, increased might generation from ricochet and winter’s bite now bleeds.
May 2016: Nerfs to Seeds of Life and Lunar Impact, as well as a nerf to smokescale and I think an overall nerf to bristleback.
July 2016: Ricochet had its damage normalised for raids and lost a lot of fun, sharpening stone had a huge buff to its damage output. There were also a lot of pet buffs and nerfs to beastmastery and “guard!”. Quickening Zephyr got a small buff later in the month too.
October 2016: The Druid healing rebalance to encourage healing power. Massive shortbow buffs got hidden among the 0 healing power druid’s misfortune.
February 2017: The last set of changes before this month. Throw Torch got a physical damage buff (why?), our pets became much more reliable (unless they’re drakes), sharpening stone got its dps almost doubled, Grace of the Land got changed to its current form and sharpened edges had its dps cut in half.

2 prior changes nerfed condi specifically (though other changes can certainly cause knock on effects). Not even 2 patches on the whole, just 2 notes within all those patches. This was the first time condi ranger has been given a clear cut nerf and unfortunately it was to Bonfire. There has been no slow nerfing of condi ranger over time, no more so than would be expected from a balance team trying to balance out their game.

No idea how long you have played, but I’ve been at it since beta. Ranger has been neglected by ANeT. Pets AI is broke – we lose damage output due to it. Our big elite Entangle was truly nerfed long ago. And they’ve slowly nerfed our damage output on primary weapon choices while trying to get us t o use unpopular ones. They finally fixed our One-hand sword locked in the motion problem by nerfing it. And now they’ve come after our torch. Our axe was nerfed a while ago and no longer ricochets to as many targets.

But if you look at the other classes – big damage buffs over the past 2 years.

Same.
We are included in balance patches and our class actually has very few glaring issues left, our mainhands auto-attacks being boring isn’t exactly priority number one.
The idea that pets are worthless is an outdated ideology.
Entangle was hugely buffed. It was practically impossible to catch something in it besides PvE mobs for more than 10 seconds and despite the 1/4 duration, it has 2/5 the cooldown to compensate.
The sword changes drove me to going on hiatus they were that awful, but public opinion is praise for it.
The Bonfire nerf makes me mad, but a 17% damage loss on a single skill isn’t going to make me stop enjoying it.
I can’t understand why they removed what made ricochet fun to use instead of balancing around it.

Our class has also received massive buffs over the last 2 years, we haven’t been irrelevant or neglected since the specialisations change and the days of being auto-kicked from dungeons are long dead.

that’s not correct, you pointed out just the buffs, now lets see the nerfs

• Sb ranger reduced to 900
• spirits lost mobility, thus nerf to spirits
• sword dps nerfed due slower 3rd attack
• trait empathic bond moved to WS traitline destroying any build variety
• nerf after nerf for the dps of the only 2 pets that can be used for pvp.
• nerf in Axe4 making that skill completely unreliable to hit moving targets
• nerf to rangers main condition source sharpened edges in a 66%.

Druid

• nerf to druid healing, nerf to druids seed of life, lunar impact.
• nerf to druid access to CA, thus healing.
• nerf to trait lingering light.
• nerf to grace of the land, Now you do 5% less dps with 5 stacks.

And those are the ones i can remember.

Also the new trait light on your feet is a complete trash. How it is written in the description is how it should work, that is fun removes the unwanted flanking mechanic in a ranged weapon in a game that uses autotarget and autofacing and is a reason to get into the trait line severely nerfed because sharpened edges, and they can remove the condition modifier when dodge which is useless, who in their sane mind would be wasting dodges just for the 10% extra damage in bleeds.

New Strider defense is crap or bugged right now. That trait should work with any weapon and not just with sword\axe. You have to evade attacks for God’s shake.

Nerfs to torch, benchmarks shows the lost dps is around 1k. Standard Condi Druid can pull easily 35k in raids.

SotP should had it’s CD reduced to 60 after the nerf or even less. It is really easy to corrupt or remove the boon and you wasted 75 seconds skill.

That people at anet don’t seem to have any clue what they are doing… Just changes for the lol.

HotHit.6783:

October 2015: Say hi to the Druid and our new pets! Which opens up huge new avenues for our condi builds. And y’know, viper’s gear is more relevant to us than most.
January 2016: Hidden Barbs got a huge buff and Honed Axes now grants slightly more ferocity (ooo, so game changing), but every point of damage matters.

Not sure what your intent is here but you missed a metric ton of hot fixes on the Druid between this time frame. I know you are focusing on “balance patch” specifics but you can’t really do that when the Druid was patched almost daily there for a while. That is why you see a lot of hostility.

I personally don’t see balance. I see ad-hoc changes being made and traits being blurred between classes. At some point classes must be distinct and bring something to the table someone else doesn’t. Sigils and Runes along with food are supposed to balance or tweak the rest. My opinion.

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even necessarily look at what ranger got in terms of buffs / nerfs now as I know most of it is a nerf.

It’s that I now look at all of the other classes and based on the nerfs or buffs they received, I then know if my ranger is more or less viable without even needing to look at our patch notes to make an assessment , this is how bad our balance patches have gotten.

—

I think for PvE condi roles, it helps a lot of course.. Shortbow still will not be anything in WvW / PvP and it seems that is what they’re trying to do but it’s not bad for PvE and I like using my ranger in PvE.

—

Smokescale has been nerfed so much with not one buff compensation on other pets in regards to actual skill play. I don’t mind it being nerfed when I say that, but I do mind getting nothing of value out of the other pets for those nerfs to actually mean something. It would be different if it was a scenario of ‘We nerfed X but made Y , Z more viable to perform in light of X that was performing well over the others’ but no , it’s just a flat nerf with no compensation to bring other pets up to par.

I think overall, it’s not too bad given that a lot of other classes got shaved and they’re slowly trying to reduce the burst / passive skill gameplay but just feel , like always, they are not approaching ranger balance the right way in terms of PvP.

It has so much potential to be a higher skill cap class with the weapon ideas and pet abilities , but they just keep it locked down so much and very 1-dimensional.

AEFA.9035:

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.

All they did was return the skills to their previous state…

ZhouX.8742:

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even necessarily look at what ranger got in terms of buffs / nerfs now as I know most of it is a nerf.

It’s that I now look at all of the other classes and based on the nerfs or buffs they received, I then know if my ranger is more or less viable without even needing to look at our patch notes to make an assessment , this is how bad our balance patches have gotten.

—

I think for PvE condi roles, it helps a lot of course.. Shortbow still will not be anything in WvW / PvP and it seems that is what they’re trying to do but it’s not bad for PvE and I like using my ranger in PvE.

—

Smokescale has been nerfed so much with not one buff compensation on other pets in regards to actual skill play. I don’t mind it being nerfed when I say that, but I do mind getting nothing of value out of the other pets for those nerfs to actually mean something. It would be different if it was a scenario of ‘We nerfed X but made Y , Z more viable to perform in light of X that was performing well over the others’ but no , it’s just a flat nerf with no compensation to bring other pets up to par.

I think overall, it’s not too bad given that a lot of other classes got shaved and they’re slowly trying to reduce the burst / passive skill gameplay but just feel , like always, they are not approaching ranger balance the right way in terms of PvP.

It has so much potential to be a higher skill cap class with the weapon ideas and pet abilities , but they just keep it locked down so much and very 1-dimensional.

Smokescale had little chance of living in WvW as it was, with the nerf it becomes a ‘never use in WvW ever again’, pet.

anduriell.6280:

that’s not correct, you pointed out just the buffs, now lets see the nerfs

• Sb ranger reduced to 900
• spirits lost mobility, thus nerf to spirits
• sword dps nerfed due slower 3rd attack
• trait empathic bond moved to WS traitline destroying any build variety
• nerf after nerf for the dps of the only 2 pets that can be used for pvp.
• nerf in Axe4 making that skill completely unreliable to hit moving targets
• nerf to rangers main condition source sharpened edges in a 66%.

I ignored patch notes that are irrelevant to condition builds, but I tried to include as many changes as possible that weren’t directly related but relevant (like the base healing to bonus healing ratio on celestial avatar and bristleback/smokescale changes) as my summary of changes was in response to a statement than condi ranger is being slowly and repeatedly nerfed into the ground.

And as stated, since the specialisations patch made so many changes to game balance I wasn’t going to waste time looking back at the entire history of the game to discuss how ranger condi builds were nerfed before condi builds as a whole were even relevant.

Axe 4 is irrelevant to condi builds, shortbow has been 900 range since long before the specialisation update, while the reworking of spirits and the repositioning of empathic bond both occured during the specialisations update and therefore are not in the scope of my summary. Everything else I’ve mentioned. Funny that.

Druid

• nerf to druid healing, nerf to druids seed of life, lunar impact.
• nerf to druid access to CA, thus healing.
• nerf to trait lingering light.
• nerf to grace of the land, Now you do 5% less dps with 5 stacks.

As above, with the exception of lingering light which I couldn’t find the actual patch notes for and therefore couldn’t put a date to, these were all mentioned though I called grace of the land a rework instead of a nerf (since for a game mode like WvW affecting 10 instead of 5 is a big deal.

Also the new trait light on your feet is a complete trash. How it is written in the description is how it should work, that is fun removes the unwanted flanking mechanic in a ranged weapon in a game that uses autotarget and autofacing and is a reason to get into the trait line severely nerfed because sharpened edges, and they can remove the condition modifier when dodge which is useless, who in their sane mind would be wasting dodges just for the 10% extra damage in bleeds.

Scientifically speaking and game design-wise, no. Removing mechanics does not make something more fun. The flanking mechanic to the shortbow has been made into its identity and gives it a lot of power as a reward for good positioning and team coordination. Regardless of the extra bloat, the flanking powerup alone makes taking the trait a statement towards your perceptions of your own skill and your willingness to live the dream. “You always count as flanking while wielding a shortbow” has none of that same joy, dedicated shortbow players would simply turn up their nose and respond “I’m too good to need this handicap”.

anduriell.6280:

that’s not correct, you pointed out just the buffs, now lets see the nerfs

• Sb ranger reduced to 900
• spirits lost mobility, thus nerf to spirits
• sword dps nerfed due slower 3rd attack
• trait empathic bond moved to WS traitline destroying any build variety
• nerf after nerf for the dps of the only 2 pets that can be used for pvp.
• nerf in Axe4 making that skill completely unreliable to hit moving targets
• nerf to rangers main condition source sharpened edges in a 66%.

Druid

• nerf to druid healing, nerf to druids seed of life, lunar impact.
• nerf to druid access to CA, thus healing.
• nerf to trait lingering light.
• nerf to grace of the land, Now you do 5% less dps with 5 stacks.

And those are the ones i can remember.

Also the new trait light on your feet is a complete trash. How it is written in the description is how it should work, that is fun removes the unwanted flanking mechanic in a ranged weapon in a game that uses autotarget and autofacing and is a reason to get into the trait line severely nerfed because sharpened edges, and they can remove the condition modifier when dodge which is useless, who in their sane mind would be wasting dodges just for the 10% extra damage in bleeds.

New Strider defense is crap or bugged right now. That trait should work with any weapon and not just with sword\axe. You have to evade attacks for God’s shake.

Nerfs to torch, benchmarks shows the lost dps is around 1k. Standard Condi Druid can pull easily 35k in raids.

SotP should had it’s CD reduced to 60 after the nerf or even less. It is really easy to corrupt or remove the boon and you wasted 75 seconds skill.

That people at anet don’t seem to have any clue what they are doing… Just changes for the lol.

Time to change the name of the game to “Nerf Wars”.

ZhouX.8742:

I think overall, it’s not too bad given that a lot of other classes got shaved and they’re slowly trying to reduce the burst / passive skill gameplay but just feel , like always, they are not approaching ranger balance the right way in terms of PvP.

The problem is that I can pretty much guarantee you that this is them setting us up for a new wave of power-creep with the next Elite Specs.

If you thought we put out a lot of daze, just wait till the Spellbreaker drops…

Substance E.4852:

ZhouX.8742:

I think overall, it’s not too bad given that a lot of other classes got shaved and they’re slowly trying to reduce the burst / passive skill gameplay but just feel , like always, they are not approaching ranger balance the right way in terms of PvP.

The problem is that I can pretty much guarantee you that this is them setting us up for a new wave of power-creep with the next Elite Specs.

If you thought we put out a lot of daze, just wait till the Spellbreaker drops…

Depending on game format / choice of play, daze and conditions are already game breakers. No idea why they refuse to address this issue.

HotHit.6783:

Scientifically speaking and game design-wise, no. Removing mechanics does not make something more fun. The flanking mechanic to the shortbow has been made into its identity and gives it a lot of power as a reward for good positioning and team coordination. Regardless of the extra bloat, the flanking powerup alone makes taking the trait a statement towards your perceptions of your own skill and your willingness to live the dream. “You always count as flanking while wielding a shortbow” has none of that same joy, dedicated shortbow players would simply turn up their nose and respond “I’m too good to need this handicap”.

First of and for a thousand time the game is not only raids, that part of the pve gamemode has the smallest participation in game, it is said not being superior to a 10% of the playerbase, even with the legendary armor bait.

Condi druid is only good for raids and few portions of some fractals. The rest of the game and gamemodes can make use of the build because it is actually trash.

Now about the flanking thing. As it seems you don’t play much with the ranger outside from maybe raids i’ll spell it for you: this game is not an FPS like call of duty, it’s a tabbed target game with autotarget and autofacing that doesn’t require any skill to face the enemy at all times.
.

anduriell.6280:

First of and for a thousand time the game is not only raids, that part of the pve gamemode has the smallest participation in game, it is said not being superior to a 10% of the playerbase, even with the legendary armor bait.

Condi druid is only good for raids and few portions of some fractals. The rest of the game and gamemodes can make use of the build because it is actually trash.

Now about the flanking thing. As it seems you don’t play much with the ranger outside from maybe raids i’ll spell it for you: this game is not an FPS like call of duty, it’s a tabbed target game with autotarget and autofacing that doesn’t require any skill to face the enemy at all times.
.

I never once said raids. I was considering the use of the flanking mechanic in sPvP as well as keeping the language vague to include PvE. Yes, the flanking mechanic is pretty garbage for 1v1 fights because of how easy it is to look at a single person. But for an sPvP roaming ranger you can flank the opponent and dish out some devastating damage, coordinating with your team to maintain that flank is important (if they look at you you stand at range and force them off the point, if they look at your teammate you kill them, if they try to run they die).

From the standpoint of a game design, playing up a skill based mechanic is more fun than removing the skill based mechanic.

I still say the biggest nerf was renaming Survival of the Fittest

The idea that pets are worthless is an outdated ideology

Pets are useless.

Wuselknusel.4082:

The idea that pets are worthless is an outdated ideology

Pets are useless.

I like how they keep nerfing certain pets because they actually are useful and the players losing to them complain. We complain all the time about the OP abilities of certain classes and they buff them. The thief stealth was finally partially nerfed when ANeT’s precious raid boss was soled by a perma-stealth thief. So the answer to true balance is to have raid bosses beaten in ways ANeT did not intend.

So, ANeT instead of nerfing pets, how about fixing the kittening AI. They are part of our damage output. If you can’t fix the AI give us the same damage buffs you KEEP giving other classes. As it stands the ranger needs an across the board 15-30% damage boost to make up for the useless pets that get one-shot or wander around missing the target.

Oh, and how about a boost to our traps? Ours need to be on par with Dragon Hunter traps.

Heibi.4251:

Oh, and how about a boost to our traps? Ours need to be on par with Dragon Hunter traps.

lol @ Frost Trap and Spike Trap. Frost Trap should be the equivalent of Procession of Blades (The latter do nearly 4x the damage of Frost Trap). Spike Trap should also pulse. Aren’t Spike a real physical thing ? Then why is it doing such a bad damage.

This way, you have 2 condi traps and 2 power traps.

Levetty.1279:

I still say the biggest nerf was renaming Survival of the Fittest

that elite skill for survival that gives you 10 seconds resistance and pulsing fury and quickness?

ah no wait…