Guild Wars 2

Ranger pretty much got glossed over. In short:

1. Jon confirmed shortbow range nerf is due to longbow not being ‘attractive’
2. Shortbow range increase may come as a grandmaster trait ‘down the line’
3. They can’t increase the range of longbow or it would break the game
4. Having more than one controllable skill for a pet would be too hard for new players
5. They may consolidate some longbow skills and ‘help power builds out’
6. Totally skipped the question about pet damage nerf

So…yeah. There was talk of flat increasing Warrior’s health pool, however no talk of why my pets do nearly 50% less damage.

1 – Yes. And that was kinda uncool. Bad design policy to remove options to force choices.
2 – May = most likely in this case. He can’t outright say anything, but the fact that he says it may means it will most likely come. And for ‘down the line’? This last patch was focused mostly on war and necro. Ranger is mostly likely coming in the next month or two. Hopefully the next as we are definitely in the most need of help.
3 – Completely understandable. If it breaks the game to extend the LB over 1500, then it does and would require an entire game redesign to change that.
4 – We already are forced to micro to be effective in PvE. A few more skills wouldn’t really change the skill floor. I think that is him being a bit … ignorant of PvE as he seems to only care about PvP himself.
5 – That means total weapon redesign. And the weapon needs that badly. That is a Good Thing™.
6 – That question was deftly avoided which makes me wonder what the reason for the avoidance was. It was very obvious to all of us.

You forgot the most important thing said. Splitting health pools for pets between game modes, more specifically adding more pet survivability for WvW and PvE where it is badly needed. Keeping the pet alive will do wonders for our DPS. That has the potential to massively improve the ranger’s quality of life in dungeons.

How were ranger utilities NOT addressed.

I have 1 offensive shout
1 defensive shout

and 2 I have NO idea what to do with in a PvE or WvW setting.

I really don’t want to be forced to take Guard for the sole purpose of just to spam Natures voice.
Can any additional utility be added to this? something unique like a 1 time stealth removal?

Can’t it be re-worked into something like
“Reveal” / “Smell”
or
“Protect yourself”

I have 100% interest in the boons to pets but not much in sending them somewhere.

Also 1/2 our utilities are for our class profession the pet/ Signets /Shouts
Does anyone else think this is slightly overkill?

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

GG holiday time, point 3 1500 range by default doesn’t break the game given with current arrow speed and damage

EvilZombie.6801:

GG holiday time, point 3 1500 range by default doesn’t break the game given with current arrow speed and damage.

1500 by default does not. But extending it past 1500 with the Eagle Eye trait could. I think that is what he was saying.

Here’s my notes from the discussion…

He felt longbow “doesn’t flow well” and wants to combine two (or three!?!) skills and add new ones that give it more burst potential. They will also be doing more splitting in pvp, wvw, and pve, and pets will get more sustain in pve, according to Jon (spirits and minions in general).

The basic conclusions were….

• the spirits builds are decent in PvP and horrible in wvw and pve. nothing we didn’t know
• They can’t make longbow range longer than 1500 for technical reasons and they felt shortbow overshadowed it at 1200 range
• Pet health and sustainability of minions in general (spirits too) will be going up in wvw and pve
• Rangers are currently, basically, forced into a precision/condi spec (usually traps/bleeds) and devs consider that a problem
• Longbow is going to get a make over at some (unknown) point in the future; considered to “not flow well” and will get a redesign combining two or three weapon skills and adding new “bursty” skills
• Player will not be able to use pet skills individually because that’s considered too much micro
• Empathic bond might get a redesign since passive condition removal is considered unfun. Jon likes fights where you try to save your condi removal as long as possible whereas your opponent is trying to make you waste it. They like that kind of tension in fights they like and will be adding more of

I hope that helps for anyone that can’t catch it.

Durzlla.6295:

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

Not in spvp, this would only be in wvw and pve afaik.

Chopps.5047:

Durzlla.6295:

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

Not in spvp, this would only be in wvw and pve afaik.

No. That is for sPvP/WvW. They are already tanky as kitten in PvE.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Chopps.5047:

Durzlla.6295:

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

Not in spvp, this would only be in wvw and pve afaik.

No. That is for sPvP/WvW. They are already tanky as kitten in PvE.

Oh, for real? I must have misheard. Oh well, warriors in the SOAC profession tourney got pwned by us 5 power/longbow rangers so that profession must be in awful shape. Either that or it’s a higher skill cap and/or we played lower skilled players. Also, we expected them to plan for condi removal so we went the other way. Silly warriors, too predictable. Maybe that’s their problem? hehe

SynfulChaot.3169:

Chopps.5047:

Durzlla.6295:

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

Not in spvp, this would only be in wvw and pve afaik.

No. That is for sPvP/WvW. They are already tanky as kitten in PvE.

They’re already tanky as kitten in those areas too, just because the warrior is too kittening stupid to realize zerker gear doesn’t give you survivability doesn’t mean they need a buff!

Shall we return to discussing the ranger instead of the warrior?

Oh good, another Empathetic Bond nerf….I look forward to bending over some more

Durzlla.6295:

SynfulChaot.3169:

Chopps.5047:

Durzlla.6295:

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

Not in spvp, this would only be in wvw and pve afaik.

No. That is for sPvP/WvW. They are already tanky as kitten in PvE.

They’re already tanky as kitten in those areas too, just because the warrior is too kittening stupid to realize zerker gear doesn’t give you survivability doesn’t mean they need a buff!

Well that reminds me of an interesting thing Jon said during the talk. Sometimes they make a change and the community doesn’t react to it or choose to utilize it. Maybe they’re reacting to the way people want to play warrior. During the talk, one high level player reportedly said he goes full glass in warrior because his hope is that he can kill one or two people before he dies. He basically just rez rushes and that’s their gameplay and it works. Jon didn’t like that and was just throwing out ideas to give the warrior more sustain. Obviously, you start with armor/health so maybe that’s why he threw that out there. It’s the most obvious “thing”, but he didn’t seem to really have an answer.

Chopps.5047:

Durzlla.6295:

SynfulChaot.3169:

Chopps.5047:

Durzlla.6295:

You gotta be kittening kittenting me…. Why would warriors health pool need to go up? They already have the highest health and armor in the game!

Not in spvp, this would only be in wvw and pve afaik.

No. That is for sPvP/WvW. They are already tanky as kitten in PvE.

They’re already tanky as kitten in those areas too, just because the warrior is too kittening stupid to realize zerker gear doesn’t give you survivability doesn’t mean they need a buff!

Well that reminds me of an interesting thing Jon said during the talk. Sometimes they make a change and the community doesn’t react to it or choose to utilize it. Maybe they’re reacting to the way people want to play warrior. During the talk, one high level player reportedly said he goes full glass in warrior because his hope is that he can kill one or two people before he dies. He basically just rez rushes and that’s their gameplay and it works. Jon didn’t like that and was just throwing out ideas to give the warrior more sustain. Obviously, you start with armor/health so maybe that’s why he threw that out there. It’s the most obvious “thing”, but he didn’t seem to really have an answer.

Ooooh maybe warrior damage (inherent) is going to get obliterated by the nerf hammer and they’re going to make them inherently tanky like in GW1 instead, that would be a fair trade off….

Warriors in general won’t be happy till they can run full berserker or soldier’s and have the same heals as a Ranger with full apothecary.

1. This point makes me lose what little respect I have for the balance team. Making a weapon worse to make a bad weapon “good” is pathetic and it doesn’t even make sense. This guy needs to be reshuffled in the company because that’s a kittened way to “balance” weapons. The longbow sucks, it has nothing to do with the shortbow. These guys are hopeless.

2. I don’t even know what to say about this, they should bring the range back to the shortbow without a trait if they didn’t remove it due to the range being a game balance problem. The longbow is it’s own weapon and it needs to be made desirable for it’s own reason. Warrior axe and main hand sword have the same range, yet both are able to co-exist. I can’t believe they used that reasoning to make such a controversial nerf. The longbow needs to be made better, the shortbow didn’t need be made worse. Hopeless.

3. Honestly, the longbow doesn’t need more range. At 1,500 it had enough range. Range wasn’t the problem. The weapon is slow and kind of dull. Rapid fire isn’t interesting (it’s just fire and forget, unlike the sniper skill from the snowball arena which was much more interesting) and long range shot is too situational to be worthwhile and unrewarding when it does work. The “must be at range” design of the weapon is half of what kills it, it doesn’t feel like you are rewarded (because even at max range the DPS is forgettable) it just feels like you are punished for being close. Fix the weapon, don’t make the alternative worse. Hopeless.

4. They’ve said this before.

5. Yeah, whatever. The fact that they said “may” shows how out of touch with the game they are. They’ve been talking about longbow buffs and “new defensive tools” for months (I think they’ve been saying they would come out next patch as early as April).

6. We all know it was because of the BM bunker build. No reason why they had to nerf the entire class to hit one build (or at least buff all ranger DPS and stat scaling to make up for the loss of pet DPS).

They’ve said spirits and pet survivability sucks for a long time. They’ve done nothing close to enough to make them viable. This isn’t even damage control PR for them, mentioning spirits and pet survivability is in almost every interview with a dev when the ranger is brought up since the game was released.

It becomes incredibly clear how little any of these guys know about the ranger class and how limited their understanding of it is every time they do one of these interviews. The ranger is a running joke in the dungeon subforum (we do more damage by auto-attack with banners than we do by using our own weapons) and this subforum is full of despair. With the reasoning for the shortbow range nerf, it’s not hard to see why.

Wanna make longbow more attractive?

How about letting it hit targets who can just stand at range mini-strafing.

They need to do that with pets, not warriors. Pets got a direct damage decrease without any sustain added.

Also, why is it so bad to have a class with a supposed high skill floor? If a player wants easy, they go PvE warrior, or Guardian in general. The ‘new players’ excuse doesn’t work here, since new players won’t pick the Ranger up in general due to how hard it already is to do well.

Not only that, but they could make it how it is right now with added functionality. So either I hit the button to make my pet do something or it just does it on its own as it is now. Something tells me they still view pets as OP so they will not do this; that is, with no real test server the pet is an unknown that cannot easily be analyzed on paper. It almost would become like another player if they gave the actual player ability to micro it.

Also on the note of the shortbow range, I hate how he used thief as a justification for the reduction. No theif is hitting me at range, they are all up close in my face and invisible. So how in the world does that even relate to a ranger? Unless you let me stealth with my jaguar or something, I simply cannot see the reason ranger shortbow has to match everyone else.

Finally, is it me, or would the longbow be a lot better if they would just give us rifles? It would synergize well, and you could then run a totally ranged spec. The risk would be people getting close to you, especially considering the pet is such an unreliable damage source.

what about warhorn and other weapons ? cooldown for most weapons are way to high for it’s damage output even it’s 40% damage nerf due to pet

need more spammable weapon skill like hunter’s call as it does less damage the longbow rapid shot but it’s having 25 sec cd

Gotejjeken.1267:

Finally, is it me, or would the longbow be a lot better if they would just give us rifles? It would synergize well, and you could then run a totally ranged spec. The risk would be people getting close to you, especially considering the pet is such an unreliable damage source.

You can already run two ranged weapons. If they added riffles, they would make the longbow better by making the riffle worse. Cause that makes sense. It’s like bullying, making someone else feel bad about themselves makes you better at everything you do. Totally sensible.

Maybe their higherups (marketing department?) has something shoved up them, that forces the balance team to listen to stupid “trends” rather than actual good balance.

Shiren.9532:

Gotejjeken.1267:

Finally, is it me, or would the longbow be a lot better if they would just give us rifles? It would synergize well, and you could then run a totally ranged spec. The risk would be people getting close to you, especially considering the pet is such an unreliable damage source.

You can already run two ranged weapons. If they added riffles, they would make the longbow better by making the riffle worse. Cause that makes sense. It’s like bullying, making someone else feel bad about themselves makes you better at everything you do. Totally sensible.

I mean two actual range weapons, not one range weapon and one skirmish weapon. Just like if you run swords you can totally be melee, if you would run longbow / rifle you would be totally ranged.

Basically would be in trouble if someone gets close, but for defending points / towers / keeps / etc. people would think twice before rushing up to it.

I wonder why they can’t increase the longbow range? It wouldn’t be OP because damage is still tied to our pets and people still can avoid arrows. They cant pull the technical card as ballistas carry a 3000 range, so 1800 or 2000 shouldn’t be an issue.

Surely the obvious solution to the SB issue is:

>Keep the SB range nerf
>Increase LB to 1500 always
>Replace the LB range trait with SB range to 1200
>???
>Profit

DeadlySynz.3471:

I wonder why they can’t increase the longbow range? It wouldn’t be OP because damage is still tied to our pets and people still can avoid arrows. They cant pull the technical card as ballistas carry a 3000 range, so 1800 or 2000 shouldn’t be an issue.

Ballistas only really exist in a few places. Most places in the game may not be designed for that range amount. And rangers would have that range everywhere.

SynfulChaot.3169:

DeadlySynz.3471:

I wonder why they can’t increase the longbow range? It wouldn’t be OP because damage is still tied to our pets and people still can avoid arrows. They cant pull the technical card as ballistas carry a 3000 range, so 1800 or 2000 shouldn’t be an issue.

Ballistas only really exist in a few places. Most places in the game may not be designed for that range amount. And rangers would have that range everywhere.

Which is fine because they don’t churn out the amount of damage that any other class can. 40% of it is tied to the pets who spend more time dead than alive, plus the arrows can still be side stepped. I’m not suggesting long bows have a 3000 range, but minimum of 1800 (while putting the shortbow back to 1200) would make it more desirable.

Either that or keep it at 1500 but make the arrow speed fast enough that it basically tracks to hit the player unless they physically dodge it.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Which is fine because they don’t churn out the amount of damage that any other class can. 40% of it is tied to the pets who spend more time dead than alive, plus the arrows can still be side stepped. I’m not suggesting long bows have a 3000 range, but minimum of 1800 (while putting the shortbow back to 1200) would make it more desirable.

Either that or keep it at 1500 but make the arrow speed fast enough that it basically tracks to hit the player unless they physically dodge it.

There are already places where having a 1500 range gives the Ranger the ability to shoot down an opponent with impunity (The Nightmare Tree in Twilight Arbor is an example). Extending the range even FURTHER means that EVERY ENCOUNTER would have to be readjusted to take that into account.

Shiren.9532:

The ranger is a running joke in the dungeon subforum (we do more damage by auto-attack with banners than we do by using our own weapons) and this subforum is full of despair.

I completely agree and it’s embarrassing. I’ve read what you’re talking about and other ones joking about rangers contributing to groups by holding a warrior’s banner.

I like the ranger. I like the general lore behind the idea of the ranger/ warden in books and movies. This is why I chose the profession. This is why I’ll play the ranger whenever I log in to the game.

I’ve always been very positive about devs coming to the forums and tried to have a balanced mind about the profession. However, we really need to not get our hopes up that changes will come any time soon. Little nuggets here and there … but the big changes we want like AI improvement (hitting moving targets and sustainability) I don’t see coming anytime soon.

IMO, our profession simply isn’t on the forefront of their overall planning.

My best advice … feel free to catch it or throw it back R. Burgundy style … is to try and make the best of what we have because I don’t see major change coming our way. Another option is to just ride it out until other alternatives are released.

The ranger isn’t a horrible profession … I’m not whining. It is what it is.

So… why don’t Arrow catapults break the game?

Cufufalating.8479:

Surely the obvious solution to the SB issue is:

>Keep the SB range nerf
>Increase LB to 1500 always
>Replace the LB range trait with SB range to 1200
>???
>Profit

I agree, that sounds like the obvious solution for me.

Cufufalating.8479:

Surely the obvious solution to the SB issue is:

>Keep the SB range nerf
>Increase LB to 1500 always
>Replace the LB range trait with SB range to 1200
>???
>Profit

Common assumption is just to use eagle eye for shortbow.

Another idea I had for this, I don’t think anybody has posted this idea.

Keep longbow range the way it is with the trait.
Maybe buff the trait from 5% to 10% damage..Maybe….perhaps like 10% if over 1000 range….
Rework longbow (doing it anyway???) into a better weapon so it can function without CD’s from quickdraw. (see below to understand where I’m heading with this)

Change quick draw to a grandmaster trait over moment of clarity
Remove cool downs for longbows and leave only short bows
Add “increases range on short bows to 1200”

Gotejjeken.1267:

Ranger pretty much got glossed over. In short:

1. Jon confirmed shortbow range nerf is due to longbow not being ‘attractive’
2. Shortbow range increase may come as a grandmaster trait ‘down the line’

That is the saddest kitten I have ever read. kitten logic.

I haven’t seen the vid myself yet so all I have right now is the notes from Gotejjeken and Chopps.

I find their reasons for nerfing shortbow quite disappointing. Them skipping the pet nerf question completely is even more disappointing. That’s really what I was waiting for them to address.

Too bad about getting full control over pet skills too Can’t there be a compromise for it? Like giving an option to control the pet or put them on autocast so the pet can use them on cooldown?

Longbow overhaul is exciting news though! Getting traits merged would make me a really happy ranger. So will more survivable pets in WvW and Dungeons.

First off: I will believe the changes when I see them. Especially the split of PvE and WvW from sPvP changes.

Secondly: If the Necros are getting an ability to get away and the Warriors are getting one to stay on someone why can’t Rangers have one too?

Thirdly: I get the feeling the Devs are hiding something from us rangers. They were mostly like look at these awesome changes for these awesome classes, and ignore the other classes behind the curtain.

Fourthly: Our underwater down skill “lick my wounds” was mentioned as op. Aka expect nerf.

Lastly: They never ever mentioned what they had envisioned Rangers to be, so the fight must go on.

Where can we get a recap of the episode.

Shortbow should have shorter range than Longbow. If the most range they can give longbow is 1200 (plus eagle eye), then it makes sense. He said that they brought it down to the same range as thief’s and that they didn’t want the shortbow to overshadow the longbow. This is important – You have to have pros and cons with weapon choice. The appeal of the shortbow is its fast fire-rate, people who just care about burst and condi would obviously choose shortbow. It needs to have a down side too. The point is to encourage different weapon choices for different purposes.

I think this qq’ing will cease once they improve longbow’s skills so that it’s a serious choice between the two.

Dante.1508:

Where can we get a recap of the episode.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/425001837

If they are seriously changing up the longbow build to help power builds then that in general is enough to make me happy. As a beserker build myself, would be amazing to get a sniper kill shot skill added in!

‘Having more than one controllable skill for a pet would be too hard for new players’ you know this game is aimed at casuals who play two hours a week when something as stupid is said.

blud.8174:

Shortbow should have shorter range than Longbow. If the most range they can give longbow is 1200 (plus eagle eye), then it makes sense. He said that they brought it down to the same range as thief’s and that they didn’t want the shortbow to overshadow the longbow. This is important – You have to have pros and cons with weapon choice. The appeal of the shortbow is its fast fire-rate, people who just care about burst and condi would obviously choose shortbow. It needs to have a down side too. The point is to encourage different weapon choices for different purposes.

I think this qq’ing will cease once they improve longbow’s skills so that it’s a serious choice between the two.

Dante.1508:

Where can we get a recap of the episode.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/425001837

The shortbow doesn’t have burst… it has a consistent rate of fire.

They didn’t make the longbow more appealing with this decision, they just made the shortbow significantly less appealing.

Nuka Cola.8520:

‘Having more than one controllable skill for a pet would be too hard for new players’ you know this game is aimed at casuals who play two hours a week when something as stupid is said.

Didn’t they also mention that LoL only has four skills? I don’t know, I never played LoL—only watched it streamed. Starcraft has no controllable attacks per se—only positioning/utilities (starcraft’s a weird comparison to make). Arguably, Halo 2 only has a few skills (shoot, swap weapons, throw grenade, hilt bash). I think Jon is striving for a game where there are less skills to worry about which I think we can all agree makes for a better game and an easier time with balancing for developers. I also think we can all agree that the ranger profession isn’t there yet. Pets are a little too much RNG for too little reward and for high level play, I can totally understand that.

chemiclord.3978:

DeadlySynz.3471:

Which is fine because they don’t churn out the amount of damage that any other class can. 40% of it is tied to the pets who spend more time dead than alive, plus the arrows can still be side stepped. I’m not suggesting long bows have a 3000 range, but minimum of 1800 (while putting the shortbow back to 1200) would make it more desirable.

Either that or keep it at 1500 but make the arrow speed fast enough that it basically tracks to hit the player unless they physically dodge it.

There are already places where having a 1500 range gives the Ranger the ability to shoot down an opponent with impunity (The Nightmare Tree in Twilight Arbor is an example). Extending the range even FURTHER means that EVERY ENCOUNTER would have to be readjusted to take that into account.

That’s fine also. You don’t find many Rangers in dungeons anyways, so perhaps this will encourage people to consider Rangers for more groups. I’ve actually never found any area anywhere in the game where I could attack without impunity.

Nothing needs to be re-adjusted. There are many areas in the game where we will be 30-40% down in dps. The longbow arrows still get side stepped, so extending the range isn’t going to be game breaking.

blud.8174:

Shortbow should have shorter range than Longbow. If the most range they can give longbow is 1200 (plus eagle eye), then it makes sense. He said that they brought it down to the same range as thief’s and that they didn’t want the shortbow to overshadow the longbow.

Where can we get a recap of the episode.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/425001837

The problems here are:

• They’ve nerfed the range without actually making the LB much more attractive.
• They originally intended that the SB would be a shorter range when they first released information about the Ranger. That had changed by the betas, because they found it was “more fun” that they had the same range, and that rangers had options for their long-ranged weapon.
• People have put in months of effort on the basis that the SB was a full-ranged weapon to craft the Dreamer. While skill damage adjustments were expected, changing/downgrading the entire purpose of the weapon was not. For those that used the SB as their long-range weapon swap, it’s no longer usable for that purpose.

The LB is still a very unattractive-to-use weapon. PvE – mobs run at you, so you’ll never get to stay at 1000+ range to keep it doing decent damage. I don’t do a lot of WvW, and almost no PvP, so I can’t comment there. It’s also power-based, and Ranger power-scaling is appalling “because of the pet”.

So they’ve left us now with our ONLY long-ranged weapon being…pretty awful (in PvE).

As for thief vs ranger + shortbow ranges…most other weapons have range differences between different classes. Scepters are 1200 on guardians instead of the 900 elsewhere. Daggers can be thrown for 1200 on some classes, while are melee only elsewhere. Axes are usually melee, yet rangers throw them. Even staves are not all long-range – on a guardian the auto is 600 range. I’m sorry, but the reason of making it consistent across classes – when nothing else is consistent across classes – doesn’t make any sense either.

The explanations given for the range nerf sound like it was made WITHOUT reference to the Ranger’s balance in the context of their place with the other classes. And THAT is not proper balancing.

If the longbow is performing badly enough that it’s overshadowed by other weapons (which when compared to other classes were not overpowered), then they needed to fix the longbow, not break/nerf the other weapons to try to force its use despite performing badly.

DeadlySynz.3471:

That’s fine also. You don’t find many Rangers in dungeons anyways, so perhaps this will encourage people to consider Rangers for more groups. I’ve actually never found any area anywhere in the game where I could attack without impunity.

Nothing needs to be re-adjusted. There are many areas in the game where we will be 30-40% down in dps. The longbow arrows still get side stepped, so extending the range isn’t going to be game breaking.

No, that’s NOT fine. I don’t care if you deal 90% less damage if you can do it without any concern of any of the boss’s mechanics. That’s breaking the encounter.

So yes, they’d have to completely redesign every boss mechanic just because you want LB to have more than 1500 range. And that’s not reasonable. Try again.

chemiclord.3978:

No, that’s NOT fine. I don’t care if you deal 90% less damage if you can do it without any concern of any of the boss’s mechanics. That’s breaking the encounter.

So yes, they’d have to completely redesign every boss mechanic just because you want LB to have more than 1500 range. And that’s not reasonable. Try again.

Another problem with over 1500 range: I don’t know how many of you try routinely attacking from 1200+ range in PvE, but most of the time you try you encounter the lovely ‘invulnerable’ message. That will only become more prominent. For the most part, in PvE at least, that additional range will be completely useless.

They simply do not care. Jon made it clear he used to play mesmer in GW1, so we know what he is biased towards. Not to mention he goes on a rant about how Guardian should get shatter hex which would change the entire meta (when Guardian is pretty much balanced as-is), however no ideas towards how to fix the ranger.

On another note, I’d rather the shortbow range be reinstated for all and just scrap the longbow at this point. Give us a totally new weapon. As I for one am against the whole grandmaster trait idea, as it would 99% be in marksmanship which I currently run 0 in. So either I totally ruin my BM build (trapper), or am still kitten with my shortbow when people run out of range.

I just hate how my chosen class is not only broken, it isn’t even being considered for fixing. It is however being considered when balancing other aspects of the game, leaving nothing but nerfs because of various complaints by classes devs care a whole lot more about.

chemiclord.3978:

DeadlySynz.3471:

That’s fine also. You don’t find many Rangers in dungeons anyways, so perhaps this will encourage people to consider Rangers for more groups. I’ve actually never found any area anywhere in the game where I could attack without impunity.

Nothing needs to be re-adjusted. There are many areas in the game where we will be 30-40% down in dps. The longbow arrows still get side stepped, so extending the range isn’t going to be game breaking.

No, that’s NOT fine. I don’t care if you deal 90% less damage if you can do it without any concern of any of the boss’s mechanics. That’s breaking the encounter.

So yes, they’d have to completely redesign every boss mechanic just because you want LB to have more than 1500 range. And that’s not reasonable. Try again.

The Nightmare Tree has always been an atrociously designed boss, it has nothing to do with the ranger class. Within the second week of the game the meta strategy for that fight was to equip a max range weapon (1,200 was enough) and auto-attack. I literally walked away from my computer to do an errand while this was going on. The bow’s range isn’t the problem, the boss encounter was poorly designed and poorly tested for one of the most obvious strategies against a stationary boss. Fortunately, most bosses are not stationary.

1. “Jon confirmed shortbow range nerf is due to longbow not being ‘attractive’”

In Better term

“Rangers were Punished for not being actractive of using Longbow”

Nerfing shortbow because longbow isn’t attractive is simply the stupidest thing I think I have ever heard of. Rangers had one good weapon, a couple of mediocre ones, and one bad one, and in order to make more people willing to play the bad one they nerf the good one? And LB does not need a range boost, it needs better damage and utility potential. That would make it more attractive, and people like me who REALLY, REALLY want to play LB might actually do so. Simply unbelievable that they thought this was a good move!

If they don’t think they can give pets more control commands (that don’t require utility skill slots), then they need to improve the pet AI so that it isn’t such an annoying thing to have along. I love the idea of having a pet, but I hate the fact that they can be such a liability if anything goes remotely wrong, and I fail to see how the current issues of learning to control a pet with such atrocious AI is easy for beginners. And for that matter, if they are so concerned about having classes be easy for beginners to learn to use to best potential, then why the really high skill level needed for proper use of ele attunements (for example)?

They need to do more/better than just consolidate longbow skills to help out power builds. I would LOVE to play a power/crit LB ranger, with a feline pet and power/crit traps. That is what I have always wanted to play. But right now that simply is just a very bad idea. Feline pet is far too quick to die if you don’t go heavy BM, traps deal half as much damage with pure power/crit compared to pure condi, and LB power/crit in general is one of the weakest directions a ranger can go right now, and has been more or less since the beginning. Viable build variety in general would be great to have with the ranger class, especially if it will let me play a ranger with the weapon set, stats, skills, and pets that I really want to without feeling completely weak and useless, but I think it will take a lot more than a small rework of LB skills.

As for the pet damage nerf, I’m not that unhappy about it. I’ve never wanted to rely heavily on my pets for damage output. You really can’t rely on them too much in PvE and dungeons anyway because they die so quickly (unless you go with bears, which have low damage anyway, or are very good at micromanaging them), and if something does go wrong, then you’ve just lost a big chunk of your DPS which wasn’t that great to begin with. I can completely understand why other people are unhappy though, considering one of our exceptionally few decent builds is full BM.

why is sotg always heavy on spvp stuff?