Guild Wars 2

• Improved the effect chance on ranger spirits to 35% base and 50% when traited.

while not good, still much better. half of the attacks will now activate. so pretty much spirits will provide near-constant buffs. while not completely fixing the problem this is a start

• Beastmastery minor traits now use the correct icon.

doesn’t help with balance

• Splinter Shot: This skill’s damage is increased by 150%, and its bleeding duration is increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.

This is a huge buff! 150% dmg increase (when i regularly do ~300 ish + on hit bleed) that is essentially 700 dmg for a reasonably fast weapon, that auto bleeds now for 4 seconds. i am happy with this.

• Counterattack: The blocking portion of this skill can now be used while moving. Ranged attacks will not trigger the second half of the skill.

great sword buff. an increase in mobility on a defensive skill is really nice. i’m considering switching to GS from sword because of this and maul.

• Protecting Screech: This skill now states the correct duration of 4 seconds.

…is this a moa skill? who uses moa’s?

• Call of the Wild: The Wilderness Survival trait Off-Hand Training now applies to this skill.

…it didn’t before?

• Throw Torch: The speed of the projectile has been increased.

great for torch users, means faster application

• Maul: This skill’s damage has been increased by 40%.

i’m happy with this

• Sun Spirit: The tooltip for this skill now displays the proper burning time of 3 seconds.

…it didn’t before?

• Whirling Defense: This skill was updated so that it interacts better with combo fields.

…never used offhand axe. i might have if it allowed us to move at the same time -.-

• Splinter Shot: This skill is now a small projectile combo finisher.
  Coral Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.
  Feeding Frenzy: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.
  Mercy Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.

seems like spear gun is much better.

-=-=-=-

from patch notes alone, any buff is a good buff. other than reports that there have been changes in traps, i’m happy. so why should i be outraged?

They never promised anything, just that we were going to be looked at and something was going to happen on the next patch.

Actually, we were promised significant changes after the last content patch which had ZERO changes, fixes, updates, or even tooltip corrections for the Ranger profession.

They didn’t address a single one of the core issues that are causing problems for the majority of Ranger players and making most of our utility skills and traits useless or near useless. The changes they did make are a joke.

They improved virtually nothing of significance and nerfed traps, which was a major part of one of the only effective builds.

Maybe that’s why.

My build was unaffected, so I guess I’m only a little disappointed. Majorly disappointed for everybody else though.

A few reasons

The greatsword buff isn’t much. The damage is still really bad and i can’t see it outdamaging shortbow autoattack. The buffs to the harpoon gun are useless for PVP unless you only play capricorn and just hang around in the ruins. Even then the thief shadow assault skill hasn’t been fixed so that’s useless. The spirits still die instantly, and they still have an internal cooldown.

And now, worst of all, traps are bugged. CD’s for them are stuck at 30 seconds and don’t get decreased by 20% from the trait. THis means that shouts suck, signets suck, and now traps suck.

i agree with the op, and even to follow up they gave a quick response saying they’re still working on the ranger, you can perhaps be a little dissapointed, but the outrage is uncalled for.

Why?

They have stated that they are well aware that Rangers are in dire need of fixing. And yet, they have issued tons of buffs/nerfs to other classes. Showing that they are spending large amounts of time with those classes.

Why wouldn’t you fix the most broken class first?

Traps are indeed nerfed. Most of these “buffs” buff things that nobody uses. And half of them are underwater. WHO FIGHTS UNDERWATER!?!?!

Have you ever played with spirits? It’s quite possibly the worst mechanic in the game. You drop a buff which may or may not work and if you are moving quickly through a dungeon or pve you get out of range real quick. The cooldown is so long that you’ll spend most of the fights without the possibility of a buff. Oh, and they can die.

Alright let’s lay it out for you!

Improved the effect chance on ranger spirits to 35% base and 50% when traited.
– Great! Now if we can let them survive longer then 2 seconds!

Beastmastery minor traits now use the correct icon.
- Oh wow! You are right, no balance, no meaning.

Splinter Shot: This skill’s damage is increased by 150%, and its bleeding duration is increased from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
- An underwater skill? Mighty fine I can do some damage underwater now, the thing is I spent no more then 5% underwater

Counterattack: The blocking portion of this skill can now be used while moving. Ranged attacks will not trigger the second half of the skill.
- I agree. This buff is a small albeit welcome one. Not game changing but beggers can’t be choosers.

Protecting Screech: This skill now states the correct duration of 4 seconds.
- Isn’t it dandy, I can use a moa now knowing the correct information on why it still sucks.

Call of the Wild: The Wilderness Survival trait Off-Hand Training now applies to this skill.
- Great priorities!

Throw Torch: The speed of the projectile has been increased.
- Well, mixed feelings, I mean, the animation is faster, yay I guess. Nothing has changed.

Maul: This skill’s damage has been increased by 40%.
- A welcome buff. The only real one though.

Sun Spirit: The tooltip for this skill now displays the proper burning time of 3 seconds.
- Not a buff, just a correction. Great patch so far!

Whirling Defense: This skill was updated so that it interacts better with combo fields.
- vague as hell. “interacts better”. What? You mean I can now use a combofield. Dandy!

Splinter Shot: This skill is now a small projectile combo finisher.
Coral Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.
Feeding Frenzy: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.
Mercy Shot: This skill is now a projectile combo finisher.
- Not even buffs, just combo finishers. and again FOR UNDERWATER. Who spents enough time underwater to actually justify prioritizing these changes?

What we really need??
Overall damage buffs,
Pet fixes,
Signet fixes
REAL spirit fixes

And last but not least some overhaul on the useless traits.

Thanks for reading, adieu.

Spirit buff doesn’t help at all because there’s a 10-second internal cooldown on the effect happening. Means that even if they put it to 100% chance, you’d still only see it happen once every 10 seconds. It’d be a big help if there was no cooldown (or a much shorter one) but as is… yah.

Splinter Shot and Greatsword buffs are nice.

Call of the Wild was bugged and not working with the cooldown reduction of Off-Hand Training, I believe. Its range is also unaffected by Off-Hand Training. Not sure which of those was changed (I’m hoping for range increase so I can use it from max Axe range and still hit my pet), though either way its a nice change.

Throw Torch speed boost doesn’t seem that impressive to me. It seemed to move at a decent enough speed already, IMO. But an improvement is an improvement I guess.

Tooltip / description fixes are needed and technically nice, but in a patch where people were expecting more meaningful bug fixes and the like, not great.

Whirling Defense boost I haven’t tested yet, but hopefully it means the attack will launch projectiles when used in a combo field as other Whirl finishers do, rather than how it was before where it only applied field effects to reflected projectiles. If that is the case, a nice change though one that won’t really effect me since I don’t use offhand axe much (Torch and Warhorn are too good).

Projectile finishers on underwater attacks is pretty pointless, considering the fact that there are barely any combo fields underwater. An improvement in theory, but in practice not really a meaningful change at this point (unless they’re planning on adding a lot more underwater fields soon).

There are SOME good changes, certainly, but not that many meaningful ones and by comparison the Ranger section was still smaller than the changelogs for some other professions (and thats counting for 2 months essentially, since we got nothing last month).

The fact that we didn’t get any changes last month due to reasons of “needing more time to do the changes right” and the general dev post stating that some fairly big improvements were in the works had people expecting more. That and the fact that many of our major issues are completely unaddressed (namely pet survivability and effectiveness in combat with players) is whats got many so worked up.

They promissed ranger changes being a 16 bullet point list. It were 14, out of which 9 are water combat based, something the pve crowd hates and the pvp people has succesfully convinced itself it doesn’t exist. 4 other points were “we fixed this icon/description”. 2 admitedly welcomed GS buffs, tho it still hits less than a warrior who has a lot more toughness.

And what about the 2 missing points to get to 16? Well, those were nerfs they didn’t even have the balls to make public, traps and… lets find out soon.

we were broadly promised changes but we were not promised a timeframe for said changes. jeez.

People aren’t angry about what did happen. (except the trap nerf which is actually a very huge nerf)

People are angry about what didn’t happen.

If you’re looking at what is in the patch notes to understand the rage of course you’ll be confused. You have understand what isn’t there and why it matters.

I agree and disagree with the OP.
First things first, rangers aren’t bad.

We may have a disadvantage considering the strength of the other classes, but it’s not like this guy https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Just-logged-to-my-L80-Ranger makes it. I have no problem with other classes, except for bunker elementalists and condition thieves.

We rangers have so many escape abilities, sword and dagger alone has three evades, and if you count weapon swap with the shortbow, four. Two abilities that can be used to get us out of the danger zone. If you time them correctly, you WILL win. Learn to cope with your disadvantages. Pets can’t reach your enemy fast enough? Trait them for 30% movement speed.
Sure, you may lose a trait, but that’s a necessary sacrifice for now.

Which leads me to our disadvantages. We need to complain, because we only have two builds that work well, and some weapons that are useless. Some signets that when comparing them to the other classes are complete rubbish. Thieves have a 25% movement speed, why do we get a 10% when we clearly depend on running?
I am tired of having to deal with bugs like F2 unresponsiveness, or obstructed arrows that clearly landed a hit, or having to waste a trait slot to make the pet useful.

So i agree, we need changes, but we are not useless.

Corpus.5347:

we were broadly promised changes but we were not promised a timeframe for said changes. jeez.

We were told the next major content patch would include significant changes to the Ranger profession. That was today. Where were the significant changes?

I get why you’re tying to put some positive spin on this patch OP, but really, it’s a lost cause.

They not only failed to deliver anything remotely significant in this patch, they’ve nerfed our traps, right off the back of an SB stealth nerf. Aside from a pretty major kick in the pants to trap rangers, the changes they’ve made are comically insignificant.

Basically ANet need to pull something out of the bag very fast, or the only rangers you ever see will be the ubiquitous bot train.

Seems to me they’re understaffed in the ‘testing’ department, as pointed out by Jon Peters that they ran out of time.

For a pay to play game. I expected ALOT more from a company that makes a sequel to GW1. Alot more.

You would only expect these sort of issues to happen in a Free to play mmorpg. But sadly, it’s evident here also.