Guild Wars 2

Rangers were hit hardest by the quickness nerf. There are only 10 skills/traits which give quickness, and rangers have 3 of them (though one is for the pet).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness

Pre-patch
Assuming you used each quickness skill/trait as often as you could, here’s what percentage of the time each class could be under the effect of the quickness boon.

Guardian: 2*3/180 sec = 3.3% of the time
Mesmer: 10/210 sec = 4.8% of the time
Engineer: 4/60 sec = 6.7% of the time
Warrior: 4/60 sec + 4/90 sec = 11.1% of the time
Thief: 4/60 sec + 2/30 sec = 13.3% of the time
Ranger: 4/60 + 2/20 = 16.7% of the time, could be traited to 4/45 + 2/16 = 21.4% of the time

Since quickness doubled attack speed, these percentages were equivalent to the increase in the class’ DPS from quickness. i.e.

Guardian = 0% base (unquickened) DPS (because they’re holding a book)
Mesmer = 104.8% base DPS
Engineer = 106.7% base DPS
Warrior = 111.1% base DPS
Thief = 113.3% base DPS
Ranger = 116.7% – 121.4% base DPS

Post-patch
Guardian: 2*3/180 sec = 3.3%
Mesmer: 10/210 sec = 4.8% of the time
Engineer: 5/60 sec = 8.3% of the time
Warrior: 5/60 sec + 4/90 sec = 12.8 % of the time
Thief: 5/60 sec + 2/30 sec = 15.0% of the time
Ranger: 5/60 + 2/20 = 18.3% of the time, can be traited to 5/45 + 2/16 = 23.6% of the time

Quickness now only gives a 50% increase in damage. So the increased DPS becomes:

Guardian = 0% (no change)
Mesmer = 102.4% base DPS (2.3% reduction from pre-patch DPS)
Engineer = 104.2% base DPS (2.3% reduction from pre-patch DPS)
Warrior = 106.4% base DPS (4.3% reduction from pre-patch DPS)
Thief = 107.5% base DPS (5.2% reduction from pre-patch DPS)
Ranger = 109.2% – 111.8% base DPS (6.4% – 7.9% reduction from pre-patch DPS)

So even though the change is universal, it hurts rangers the most because they had the most access to quickness. Compared to pre-patch, it reduces the DPS of the ranger class the most. And rangers benefit the least from the compensatory buff to quickness duration because their primary form of quickness (pet swap trait) was not buffed.

Commentary
First, will people please stop saying QZ got buffed by having stun breaking added to it. That was not a buff, it was bringing the skill in-line with the warrior and thief quickness skills which were already stun breakers. QZ was inexplicably missing the stun break, and this patch simply fixed that imbalance.

If you choose to fix a problem in the game not by directly addressing the problem but by changing a broader mechanic, you have to be careful of unintended consequences of that broader change. The reasons cited for the quickness nerf were double action speed making it impossible for other players to react (I assume this refers primarily to stomping downed players), excessive burst damage in PvP, and trivializing certain encounters in PvE.

Aside from stomping, I can’t see these as referring to rangers. Rangers aren’t known for burst damage. And considering the longest quickness lasted 4 seconds, it can’t have trivialized a PvE encounter in terms of damage, since all it would do is reduce a fight time by 4 seconds. The only trivializing of PvE I can think of is the double action speed making it easier to certain non-combat things in PvE.

So if the above assumptions are correct, ranger DPS wasn’t the primary target of the quickness nerf; yet ranger DPS is what took the brunt of its damage. That’s the type of situation which can crop up if you try to address a specific problem with a general change. To fix it, you need to buff whatever it is that was unintentionally hurt by the general change. In this case, you need to do something to bring ranger DPS back up.

Playing around with the numbers in a spreadsheet, increasing the quickness duration from pet swap to 4 seconds should accomplish this. It reduces the nerf to ranger DPS to 2.1%-2.8%, which would put it on par with the nerfs to mesmer and engineer DPS by the change.

An increase to 3 seconds would make the nerf 4.3%-5.3%, which puts the ranger DPS nerf on par with warrior and thief. But ranger can’t burst like those classes can*, so I can’t see how one can justify nerfing rangers as much as those classes were nerfed by this change. (* I suppose rangers can approximate warrior/thief burst if the target stands absolutely still so both the ranger and a cat pet can whale on them unimpeded. That’s a pretty restrictive set of circumstances though.)

Thanks for the calculations. I completely agree with your conclusion that since Rangers previously had the most quickness uptime, this was overall a nerf for us. Just glad that you laid it out with hard math.

Thanks for the hard facts on the nerf to our damage build.

Forget it Solandri! Either they don’t care or suck at balancing skills. Stun break? Really?

I wish the devs would understand the simple logic you put up there Solandri – well written.

I will up this post every day. I will write a petition to whoever I can. I ll make Hrouda’s PM full of my lists until he shows this thread to someone in charge. ENOUGH OF THIS. With every single topic my face becomes more and more doomed. I see no perpective here. Maybe one day they will fix us like engis, fixed this patch. But I have no time to wait. I ve waited for seven month.

The Warrior quickness trait only activate on an enemy at <25% health, with the 90-second cooldown. It’s not really feasible to attempt to calculate it into DPS, as you cannot account for the time it’s not active. I mean, if you want to assume that every enemy a Warrior runs into is already <25% health, you can, but that doesn’t make the calculation right.

I can’t speak for the other classes, as I don’t have knowledge of how their quickness works.

I play both a Ranger and a Thief (and Warrior and Engy for that matter) in PvP, and Ranger burst damage has the potential to far exceed the potency of any other class. Not due to raw damage, but due to the simple ability to cause so many different kinds of damage within seconds. It was very much imbalanced, and for a while, Rangers have dominated PvP. I feel the nerf was in order, and that’s coming from a dedicated Ranger.

My god I was not expecting this. I rely solely on quickness for my damage. This was a HUGE nerf to our profession. I’m done with this game.

i just tried QZ lol, wow what a piece of garbage, seriously. It doesn’t even feel fast at all, way slower than before. I cant believe this, now i am stuck with a useless class and lot of gold in gear, reason enough to not reroll.

Thanks for the math on this.

It really breaks my heart. Ranger was my main and I’ve worked quite hard on it; now it’s a sad joke with no punchline.

I’m feeling so dumb to put so many effort/time/money/care to a broken class like Rangers. I’ve been playing since first beta as a Ranger and this is a sad day for me.

There is one thing people are forgetting about QZ too; we now cannot heal for a second longer in addition to a nerf to attack speed. It’s not much, but it is another way this nerf hit us =(

Oh, well at least GS got buffed =/

Nice thread. And also to add to the point about it now being a stun breaker.. honestly I would almost never use it for that. If you’re stunned you’re probably in danger and taking damage, and the very last thing you need then is to be blocked from healing for 5 seconds. I’d rather wait out the stun for 2 seconds then heal than screw myself over by being without a heal.

My understanding was they wanted to provide players with more than 1 way to play a class and be viable. I take this to include WvW as well.

In WvW, LB SS/WH was already very difficult to work with and be viable against other classes, now it’s gotten even harder..

IMO we’ve got less than a fighting chance now in WvW when equipping LB (or even SB for that matter) with the nerf to QZ

The LB needs to be strengthened on the whole to become more viable.

As we like it or not, pets factor into the overall damage we can produce, and frankly since they’re mostly worthless in WvW, I’d almost support a build where a ranger doesn’t use a pet and instead the pet’s defensive/offensive output return back to the Ranger.

ah well less i play this class the data might show…

I just want to point out that this math favors the non-ranger classes.

-Warriors quickness from trait only triggers when enemies are less then 25% health. Meaning the uptime in practice is less then shown,

-Thief has only 10% chance on critical to trigger when IC of 30 seconds is up, meaning the effective time is less then shown.

So this just proves your point further, Rangers really did not need a DPS nerf regardless.

I would like to see the “negatives” halved to match the new quickness (rangers only heal 50% during duration)

and the traits adjusted in CD/duration (I.E warriors last stand 45sec CD, Rangers petswap quickness lasting for 4seconds)

I think the bigger problem is that if a profession is kitten so much due to one change in game mechanism, that profession probably needs serious work on all other aspects.

What I don’t understand is losing all your healing for double action speed (and any ranger who isn’t a dev knew that quickness didn’t double shortbow attack speed) was a fair trade off. They don’t like the effect of double action speed in the game so they nerf it. Fair enough. They increase the duration (of very select sources) – not fair enough. More importantly, while making the effect of quickness less powerful they did absolutely nothing to nerf the penalty these skills put you under as a price you pay for accessing increased action speed. Now rangers are facing five seconds without being able to be healed by any source. How is that reasonable?

I don’t understand how they can say their testing is thorough when they didn’t boost the non-skill sources of quickness (ranger pet swap trait, ranger downed trait, I’m assuming the sigil is also the same as before) and they didn’t seem to consider players are paying the same price for a less powerful effect.

ocfallwind.4821:

I think the bigger problem is that if a profession is kitten so much due to one change in game mechanism, that profession probably needs serious work on all other aspects.

I don’t think there are many people who would have argued with you before or after the patch. Rangers have needed patch notes that looked like the ones engineers got this patch. Most patches since launch have made the ranger worse and worse and haven’t touched on the parts of the class that are most broken.

I think the hardest part is that we have to wait for at least another month before anything happens… and realistically it’s going to be much longer than that :-(

I really feel like the quickness nerf should have been announced prior to the patch. My jaw was on the floor when I got home and realized it’s not worth playing my ranger at all.

Seems that they wanna nerf mesmer’s Time Wrap from being a meta at dungeons. But then rangers become the victim.
Well who cares? As long as ANet doesn’t, none of us can change that.

Well I played all night in WvW to give it a fair shake. I’m raging a bit right now, because I honestly feel like the “feel” of my class has been gutted. Quickness defined Ranger, at least for some of us:

•QZ is now utter garbage. Remove it from your bar if you are a WvW player.
•Greatsword, despite the love, still feels like a “meh” weapon. And now with quickness gone, you’ll never burst enough with it.
•I tried hard to find a reason to keep five points in BM for 2 seconds of gimpquick… but it sucks hard. Stomp/rev with it is basically useless. If you use it with crossfire, you won’t even notice it’s on. What a freaking joke.
•I stared at my traits for like an hour trying to find a single build that doesn’t totally suck. The only one that is still able to pump out damage is condition/traps and I hate that play style.

Despite the amazing culling fix, I’m going to bed with the heaviest heart I’ve ever had in this game. Despite being the weakest class, I’ve never strayed for from the ranger because I loved the playstyle. Now my ranger feels like total kitten. You’ve gutted it’s spirit. Nothing fun about it.

How does this dev team, who swears by incremental changes, go from 100% to 50% for one of the games most important boons? WTF were you thinking? Did you even consider how this would effect rangers, the bottom of the barrel class, the most?

FINALLY finished my Dreamer about 2 weeks ago. Put in the Sigil of Rage that I appreciated so much with the Lover.

I’m sure not going to stop playing my ranger, but it’s not because I am happy with the Quickness nerf, it’s because I spent all that time looking forward to rainbows and unicorns… I want to enjoy them! I suppose doing low level maps still has value…

PvP can bite my butt. I play PvE and I don’t give a flying two bit screwdriver if its too unbalanced in PvP. Make it DIFFERENT then, like you used to do in GW1! Don’t screw everyone .. making the class worse isn’t driving me to play WvW or PvP, it’s driving me AWAY from them.

Actually, it’s just driving me to the warrior I built. Clumsy but much more capable.

Why do you bother taking your time writing up and testing all these things? You seem to be doing more research into the class than Arenanet are doing, they seemingly don’t pay any attention to even well written, informative and constructive threads. I’m not sure what they’re doing, or what the Dev’s that do respond to threads are doing, but they certainly aren’t going around letting us know whether whatever is posted here is even reaching the Dev’s at all.

Too busy leaving us in the dark and using the “We won’t release anything until it’s perfect” excuse, yet they still release stuff that aren’t perfect.

Greatsword buff was greatly appreciated, probably not enough of a buff yet but a step in the right direction, our biggest issue however is what our class is based around, pets. Don’t know why nothing has changed, we can only speculate.

But really, it’s a RANGEr. If I wanted to use a greatsword, I’d take a melee class.

I had no idea that this patch will cause so much negative. Ranger community is obviously tired. Anet, soon you ll see that at last nobody plays the class you want to erase.

Another thing that ticks me off is I use pet swap to cast heal as one faster in pvp well that just ruins my quick heal. Also quickness stomp when swapping pets seems so much slower oh boy annoying. Not like we have any other way of stomping I mean pop elite for stability. But no invulnerable stomps like mesmers eles engys or stealth stomps or stability stomps besides the elite. So not only did it nerf our DPS but it nerfed our finishing capability.

I’ve posted it elsewhere and I’ll post the same thing here- this is the worst possible change they could have made to rangers damage output, and is probably as a result of a dev playing thief that got hit by LB2 under qz and got downed under his tent. OMG! Guys! We HAVE to nerf this way OP skill- my thief got downed in undetectable stealth mode!

Now we’re back to watching qz, LB3, LB2 and watching half the shots miss/dodged/blocked and by the time the longest skill in the game finishes qz is done too.

I swear they must test ranger damage on dummies (or is that tested BY dummies…), or in some abstract mathematical way that doesn’t take into account any actual gameplay mechanics. Even if they do test it, it’s probably in pve only, as they sure seem to have no clue how ranger (doesn’t)functions in wvw.

All I can ask them is to Completely Erase This UnWorthy Class Entirely from this game; that would help us a lot and to Not Waste our Time. It’s Obvious They Had Already Thrown This Class In The Garbage Long Ago; Well, It’s Time To Take The Trash Out

Well well well, a constructive thread with #‘s and the funny thing is Chopps and Durzlla aren’t here to troll in defense of the nerfs we’ve received like they do every month because hard facts and numbers are involved.

Good work looking at these numbers, it does show alot for sure especially in the light of how much our dps is altered by this as a ranger.

very accurate post, great to see the actual numbers. I would like to add that lowered quickness speed by 50% lowers our dps during quickness by a lot more, as crucially it is much harder to land skill now than before.

Many ranger skills have long animations and are difficult to land, they were balanced this way as with quickness you would get more reliable lands every 20 seconds, this is no longer the case.

First the Shortbow “Fix”..
Now Quiching Zypher. Well I ques Arenanet keeps on hitting with the “NERF HAMMER”.

You cant make me force to play OP warrior, when I still enjoy my ranger.
I even made a second ranger because I love them so much.

Now you can try to make this game as hard as you want for rangers, but I wont give up. I’ Shall work my way around other effective builds. And with that said.

Arenanet FEAR ME with your NERF HAMMER. Because this ranger inst backing down.
I’ll hunt you down in tyria, shoot arrows to your knees. And stop this madness!

(No but with out any jokes… When will you stop hitting the ranger so hard? Cant you go back to the PvE & PvP skills. Keep QZ 100% Quickness in PvE but with no stun breaker.
And give the PVP version of QZ 50%Quickness but can break stun.)

Now the pvp’ers will be pleased. And the PvE’s to.

Greetings,

~Doomshot Cindy.
A faithful Ranger!

Ryan.8367:

Well well well, a constructive thread with #‘s and the funny thing is Chopps and Durzlla aren’t here to troll in defense of the nerfs we’ve received like they do every month because hard facts and numbers are involved.

Good work looking at these numbers, it does show alot for sure especially in the light of how much our dps is altered by this as a ranger.

Lol wut? I’ve never once said the changes to QUICKNESS was a buff, I know it nerfed spike damage, I’m not denying that I’ve just said the SKILL QZ has been buffed. Huge difference… I have nothing to really add to this post, his math is accurate, no need to insult me for “trolling” when I’m just more adaptive with my builds.

All I can right now is to share what I’ve wrote in my topic:
Okay, I’ve tested the “new QZ”. ITS PATHETIC
50% attack speed can’t be even seen (maybe not even working), does not breaking stun (we’re mostly chained, not stunned!), and +1 sec of no heal.
BACKROLL IT BACK PLEASE

Very Thank you for this -.-’
One less useable ultiltiy skill. Hell Yeah!

The question is. How can Ranger kill the elem now? Quickness help ranger to kill elem and especially thief now reducing attack speed is a big pain to my ranger

gotta be honest, was trying to be optimistic with my beserker build that maybe slower quickness wouldn’t be too bad, just 1v1 some ppl in wvw and I gotta say it is awful

Durzlla.6295:

Ryan.8367:

Well well well, a constructive thread with #‘s and the funny thing is Chopps and Durzlla aren’t here to troll in defense of the nerfs we’ve received like they do every month because hard facts and numbers are involved.

Good work looking at these numbers, it does show alot for sure especially in the light of how much our dps is altered by this as a ranger.

Lol wut? I’ve never once said the changes to QUICKNESS was a buff, I know it nerfed spike damage, I’m not denying that I’ve just said the SKILL QZ has been buffed. Huge difference… I have nothing to really add to this post, his math is accurate, no need to insult me for “trolling” when I’m just more adaptive with my builds.

This is circular logic.

First, and foremost if you’re forced to use a stun break, get this; “you are being attacked” therefore using QZ as a stun break puts a detriment upon you, where you can not be healed. Why is this an issue you might ask? Well as I pointed out, you were already being attacked, so now you’re taking damage you can’t heal, and multiple classes in this game can easily kill you in five seconds, most importantly though, you can now be stunned, immobilized, crippled, or chilled, making it even easier to kill you. There are not diminishing returns for CC in this game.

Secondly, the nerf to QZ far outweighs what you call a buff. Therefore the only conclusion from this is that you’re choosing to rile peoples feathers by calling an obvious nerf, a buff. Why is that?

Using Quickness for ranger = Death
5 sec w/out heal and just for firing like normal

jkctmc.8754:

Durzlla.6295:

Ryan.8367:

Well well well, a constructive thread with #‘s and the funny thing is Chopps and Durzlla aren’t here to troll in defense of the nerfs we’ve received like they do every month because hard facts and numbers are involved.

Good work looking at these numbers, it does show alot for sure especially in the light of how much our dps is altered by this as a ranger.

Lol wut? I’ve never once said the changes to QUICKNESS was a buff, I know it nerfed spike damage, I’m not denying that I’ve just said the SKILL QZ has been buffed. Huge difference… I have nothing to really add to this post, his math is accurate, no need to insult me for “trolling” when I’m just more adaptive with my builds.

This is circular logic.

First, and foremost if you’re forced to use a stun break, get this; “you are being attacked” therefore using QZ as a stun break puts a detriment upon you, where you can not be healed. Why is this an issue you might ask? Well as I pointed out, you were already being attacked, so now you’re taking damage you can’t heal, and multiple classes in this game can easily kill you in five seconds, most importantly though, you can now be stunned, immobilized, crippled, or chilled, making it even easier to kill you. There are not diminishing returns for CC in this game.

Secondly, the nerf to QZ far outweighs what you call a buff. Therefore the only conclusion from this is that you’re choosing to rile peoples feathers by calling an obvious nerf, a buff. Why is that?

QZ was not nerfed, quickness was, theres a difference, if the changes to QZ had happened without the quickness nerf everyone would be singing praise to Anet and how amazing they are.

They did NOT NERF QUICKENING ZEPHYR, they nerfed QUICKNESS there is a huge difference. A lot of you aren’t seeing the difference, if Anet just flat out nerfs vigor to only be 50% endurance regen that doesn’t mean they’ve nerfed lightning reflexes, it means they’ve nerfed a boon it gives. Quickness is no different.

If you’re using QZ you should not be using it to break out of a stun that was place defensively -not- offensively.

EX: I’m about to kill the sneaky thief in a team fight, Mr. CC warrior goes NOPE!! skull crack i use QZ to break that stun and secure the kill with the burst from QZ, if i’m super low on health i’ll bail out and let someone else finish him.

If i wanted to bring a stun break so i could GTFO because i’m about to die, i’d take LR or Sig of Renewal.

JK, using your broken logic, -again-, sig of renewal and LR are stupid stun breakers because they make it so that i can’t break out of a stun offensively because it wastes one of my defensive CDs that i probably didn’t need at the moment!!

See how you need to think about the circumstances you use it in? I mean, i guess you -could- use it as an escape, or if you’re using a GS you could use it as an offensive defensive by spamming the auto attack for 2 seconds giving you nearly perma evade for that time (it still works despite the nerf), but for the most part you should be using QZ stun break more to secure a kill, IE the FIGHT half of fight or flight.

Durzlla

I look forward to your videos of using QZ as a stunbreaker, and making it work without it getting you killed. Shouldn’t take you more than a day, you think?

They should change the 1st five traits for BM. Like fear your enemy for 2 sec when you swap a pet. Or remove condition when you swap a pet or gain 5 sec regeneration when you swap a pet…

Although this doesn’t change the math you’ve show Solandri, I’d also like to mention that the quickness nerf hits us harder than other classes b/c it also applied to our pets who make up about 60% of our dmg. 2secs of quickness on pet swap is pretty much completely useless b/c of the downtime on the pet immediately after the swap, letting them get in perhaps one additional attack, if that.

Other points of note as people have mentioned is that it’s simply not a fair trade off getting no ability to regain health for only 50% increase in attackspeed. Healing is something we need to be concerned with for both ourselves and our pet, so the extra duration is a big pain in the kitten

They probably should have just replaced Quickening on TW and given it a TW specific buff. Or adjusted TW itself.

Overall, Quickening Zephyr is garbage now, and our benefits from pet swapping are really kitten

jkctmc.8754:

Durzlla

I look forward to your videos of using QZ as a stunbreaker, and making it work without it getting you killed. Shouldn’t take you more than a day, you think?

Personally i haven’t been using QZ much since the nerf to quickness because what i used it for (speed rezzing) it now no longer can accomplish in most scenarios… i’m cycling through our other kittenty utilities and seeing which one i hate the least… so far sharpening stones is winning xD

I did use it a small amount of time (3 tourny matches maybe?) and it was nice to get up off of an earthquake/updraft an ele throws out and pouncing on their face.

jkctmc.8754:

Durzlla

I look forward to your videos of using QZ as a stunbreaker, and making it work without it getting you killed. Shouldn’t take you more than a day, you think?

Durzilla is a good player, jk, I have played with him and seen him crushing opponents. He shouldn’t have to make videos for you. Just stop.

The offical reason for nerfing QZ was that users wasn’t skilled enough to react.
WHAT THE KITTEN ? ! !
Warriors, thieves still finishing you in a half second! Don’t let finishing move buffed by quickness, thats all. If a thief comes with quickness, there is DODGE, INTERRUPT, BLOCK, KNOCKDOWN/KNOCKBACK.

Players are skilless and nerfing the game because of this? Maximize dmg by 1 and we’ll have enough time to visit our toilet during a huge WWW Zerg fight. Please…. -.-’

Okay… Keep Calm and FIX QZ:

• Back to 100% Attack Speed
• 4 or 5s, but no self healing only
• Remove unuseful stunbreaker if needed

How do you account for the fact Time Warp is a group buff? :P

RoyalPredator.9163:

The offical reason for nerfing QZ was that users wasn’t skilled enough to react.
WHAT THE KITTEN ? ! !
Warriors, thieves still finishing you in a half second! Don’t let finishing move buffed by quickness, thats all. If a thief comes with quickness, there is DODGE, INTERRUPT, BLOCK, KNOCKDOWN/KNOCKBACK.

Players are skilless and nerfing the game because of this? Maximize dmg by 1 and we’ll have enough time to visit our toilet during a huge WWW Zerg fight. Please…. -.-’

Okay… Keep Calm and FIX QZ:

• Back to 100% Attack Speed
• 4 or 5s, but no self healing only
• Remove unuseful stunbreaker if needed

Well both Haste and Frenzy have a stunbreaker… and not everyone has that many ways to deal with a barrage of attacks, and i’m not gonna lie, 3 people charging at you and blowing quickness was a deathsentance, now 3 people charging at you and blowing quickness leaves for the possibility of escape, i know i fled from a pack of hundred blade warriors in WvW last night due to the QZ stun break (LR was on CD), QZ+ Hornet sting + monarch leap + swoop = good bye warriors, this is they day that you -almost- caught Durzlla.

Chopps.5047:

How do you account for the fact Time Warp is a group buff? :P

You just look at the group’s DPS instead of the mesmer’s, and the math ends up working out the same as with the solo quickness skills. 10/210 sec, the group is under the effect of quickness, so the group’s damage increases appropriately.

With 100% quickness the mesmer used to increase the group’s average damage by 4.8%.
With 50% quickness the mesmer now increases the group’s average damage by 2.4%

Hence the benefit of Time Warp has decreased by 1 – (102.4/104.8) = 2.3%. Which is what I wrote down.