Guild Wars 2

Division.9618:

TheUnseenJinx.5824:

Never fear the trap nerf was a fair trade for our underwater might the dev gods granted us in return. After all no one needs flame traps where we’re going.

I figure we rangers will own the seas and will harvest much seafood. Which in turn will enable us as a profession to become economically superior by opening a seafood fast food chain in every city! Soon gems will line our harpoon guns and spears! “Quaggan Cuisine” it’ll be included in the next content patch!

I can see it now. A new ranger skill

“kittenload of animals”

Release the hundreds of feral and rabid animals you hired some poor people to collect with your obscene wealth.

Cooldown depends on how many quaggan burgers were sold in the last quarter.

Yes, yes you understand! We shall dominate GW2 not with might, but with wealth! We shall outfit our castles/forts with superior anti-siege weaponry gained from our savvy business practices! You may see it as nerfs or useless fixes, but I and other see it as ninja buffing rangers into GODS among men!

At least you didn’t get nerfed, and they even said they plan to buff you more.

I put way to much time and money in my ranger. Im done with this game.

Just please fix the projectiles for bows. That’s all I ask. The current mechanics is utterly depressing.

Navzar.2938:

At least you didn’t get nerfed, and they even said they plan to buff you more.

That’s extremely debatable if you’ve followed this subforum’s concerns.

RIP Ranger.. It was nice knowing you…
Sick of being deceived and lied to
Anet give me my $60 back, this game is a waste of time now ^.^

I play warrior and I have no intention of playing ranger. (my wife does however)I think they need a serious buff. I am saddened that this patch adds little to the ranger. I have no rangers on my account at all by the way.

I understand that warriors do not like long bows but ranger needs some major improvements. How could this take priority? Warrior could hold out on using longbow.

I understand that balance is a delicate thing. I am not going to curse out Jon as I understand this is a game and perhaps my vested interest is not as bad.

I am betting the concern about balance is due to pets adding extra damage and defense. As necro and Ranger seem to be the two with the most trouble.

I would ask everyone to please stay focused on improving the game rather than complaining.

Let me see if I can shed some small positive reflection on this patch day. If the devs do end up overhauling the systems JP mentions, then we could be in a really strong place:

JonPeters.5630:

pets ability to hit moving targets

If this one thing was fixed it would be an incredible buff to rangers. A glass cannon ranger easily does the most pressure DPS in the game when you count the pet, and in every other build the pet can be used for a leg up in some aspect that other classes usually can’t achieve (example: beast mastery tank/damage builds). And this is on top of all the utility we bring with our weapons and pet skills. The only thing currently holding us back is that the pets can’t hit their targets.

JonPeters.5630:

trait lines with not enough viable choices

We’ve been saying this for a long time. Additionally, if the trait lines were changed enough then it could invalidate a ton of balance changes they spend time on now. So if this is the plan then I’m not surprised we haven’t seen anything yet. And when we do this will create many more “viable” builds.

JonPeters.5630:

skills that are often too specialized to really compliment the weapon builds

Yup. But again, from point #2 this would have to be completely reworked if they changed it now. Additionally this was supposedly the focus of this patch for rangers, which is where I think most of the sting comes from since there were no game-changing things done. This is another thing that could quickly create many more “viable” builds.

I’m still really disappointed, since every other class saw a really strong balance pass that should positively affect the game while rangers basically were left in the ditch. But if we see the things JP spoke to changed then we’ll (eventually) be a great class with fun mechanics – our DPS is fine with the pet factored in and every weapon has tons of utility baked in. But until these things are fixed I’ll keep twiddling my thumbs and struggling to master sPvP on hard mode.

Unfortunately I don’t think you’re going to see ranger fixes for a bit yet. If they’re doing some core class mechanic revamps that’s going to take a lot more dev time than the usual class fixes.

And then even after the revamp is done there’ll be the usual tweaking that’ll need to be done on top of that.

So if you’re not happy with rangers today, I doubt that’s going to change anytime in the next few months.

Zaith.9132:

Navzar.2938:

At least you didn’t get nerfed, and they even said they plan to buff you more.

That’s extremely debatable if you’ve followed this subforum’s concerns.

That’s true, who knows how long it will take for traps to be fixed, and they haven’t really held their promise of strong buffs, but at least what you got was positive (excluding the trap bug in hopes that they do fix it quickly). Then again, I can only say this because I main an ele.

This might have already been said and declared a bug, but recharge on my flame trap tooltip says 12s, but its actually 30s. Please tell me this is a bug. If its not, then we got a harpoon gun buff and that’s it? Looooool.

Hahahah instead of signet buff’s, we get another stealth nerf.
The activated part of the signet of the hunt doesnt provide improved damage anymore.

Making signet’s even more useless XD.

Made me laugh.

The adjustment to spirits was a step in the right direction. I’d double it again to 50-60%/100% traited, but actually having them trigger often enough to be worth taking is a plus.

The rest of it… well, maybe I should have another look at greatsword. Sounds like traps have gone from being the only good thing about the class to garbage, but it does free up some attribute points for Offhand Training and give me a reason to use a torch instead of fire traps, perhaps think about using spirits for once…

And then there’s the underwater buffs. The only place where a ranger was brutal, it’s now even more powerful.

We’re like Jaws. Whatever you do, stay out of the water.

Magiofdeath.2745:

This might have already been said and declared a bug, but recharge on my flame trap tooltip says 12s, but its actually 30s. Please tell me this is a bug. If its not, then we got a harpoon gun buff and that’s it? Looooool.

It’s a bug. There will be a hotfix for it tonight.

That he knows since the last patch day… .
Next patch day will come in 4 weeks and i am tired of been waiting for becoming usefull.
There are plenty of other fishes in the sea.

Navzar.2938:

At least you didn’t get nerfed, and they even said they plan to buff you more.

They are saying that for almost 2 months now. But we get the hint, we need to play a warrior, clearly the master of archery. Rangers are schmucks anyway

Add me to the list of the very upset. You told us we were getting something to make up for the lack of what you didn’t give us before, and instead, you just bailed on us without a word?

What the…?

I don’t like being lied to and then ignored.

Master of Archery?! There’s no such thing! For a ranger atleast.

Your pet gains “Attack of Opportunity” dealing 150% more dmg on the next attack.
I don’t know if this was changed but that’s the activation.

Extremely dissapointed. I believed JP and Anet so I’ve been playing my ranger these past 2/3 weeks running dungeons and getting armor. Complete waste of time.

Time to finish up my theif and start to work on my ele alt.

JonPeters.5630:

Hi Anders, I’m totally not here so skip this post and read on…

We made the improvements we had time to test. There are still more ranger improvements but when our time is limited we have to focus on things we know we can fix. Signets and shouts are still on the docket, and I suspect some of each of these will get some love in the next time around. As you can see a lot changed in this build for every profession and we have to test these changes as well.

I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements. If we could fix everything at one time we would, but the reality is there are a limited # of hours to make changes.

I see a lot of talk about ranger weapons, but I don’t think that is the real problem. I think sword and longbow are both good weapons, which is why the changes take longer. The problems are deeper, in pets ability to hit moving targets, trait lines with not enough viable choices and skills that are often too specialized to really compliment the weapon builds. These aren’t things we can change overnight. The change to Greatsword block was in fact a very difficult change, but we made it because we knew it was the right thing to do.

There are >500 skills in this game, 480 traits, and 2 designers working on this. Even then often we are bottle necked by other issues. I’m not going to say we are not working on these things, nor can I say there are things we could have changed but just ran out of time on, but this was a patch that contained ranger improvements and it will not be the last one that does so. Maybe you want more than honesty but that is what I currently have to offer.

Jon

I understand that there are time restraints, but in the last major patch Rangers recieved no changes at all. After that, we were promised SIGNIFICANT changes in the next patch. And what do we get, water skill improvements? None of the core issues were even touched in this patch.

I guess I shouldnt be suprised. The short bow debacle still hasnt been resolved. Do you know that quickening zypher still doesnt work properly with with it? I am sure you do because there have been countless threads on it. Why has there been no comment in regards to this. Or is this another intended part of the “animation fix” you graciously gave Rangers.

It is quite frustrating that after every patch you come here to do damage control and say, wait until next patch! Well, we waited! And what do we get. Nothing. Just another comment telling us to wait.

Also, you see countless threads about the problems with Ranger weapons, and you still dont think there is a problem? Do you think the sword rooting the player in place in fine? Do you find the longbow subpar damage acceptable. Does the fact that Rapid Fire does no more damage than auto-attacking make it a good skill?

Compare the Ranger to other professions. How can you honestly say that this is acceptable. It is nice that you acknowledge some of the issues, but you seem to be ignoring many other ones.

I am sorry, but I am very dissapointed with how Rangers are being handled in this game.

So like…. the 3 major issues werent fixed yet…
1Longbows still suck, damage and projectile speed, short bow.. lol what a joke
2Pets who do half of a rangers damage, cannot hit moving targets
3Spirits… cannot survive in an instance without getting oneshot

but hey if i ever need to combo finish an enemy underwater ill be sure to thank you Anet, we rangers obviously havent mentioned the things we want fixing 1000 times that makes 1000000 times more sense
projectile speed
skill damage
spirit health
pet autoattack
plain and simple

krojack.4920:

Joey.3928:

You guys are all a bunch of whiners. I play ranger as my main and yes I was hoping for the changes we all were hoping for too. But you all are acting like a bunch of babies.

They probably didn’t have enough time to properly test the changes so they were left out of the build. It isn’t lack of listening on their part.

I mean, pre-launch Rangers were pretty nice then like a week before they broke them. They have had 2 1/2 months.

Maybe they should consider what other companies do. Open up a public test server and also allow the player base to test out changes. That’s the one and only way to get real test out of changes.

What they should do is let the players who are better at this game than they are make the balancing changes.

i remember choosing the ranger class… reading Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation. Unparalleled archers))))))))))) biatch please, skrit throw rocks better then we shoot arrows

YumCHA.8706:

Just please fix the projectiles for bows. That’s all I ask. The current mechanics is utterly depressing.

Yeup… the terrible projectile speed is devastating… the class is outright bad at sitting to the side and sniping away into combat because of nothing but the fact half their shots just miss targets not even dodging…

So much for updating, really, anything…

Just dont play with ranger any more or play oher game,, look,, they can fix the Ranger, they will lauch a masive update, new tier, new dungeon,, and they can not give us a simple fix,, or a simple buff?

they dont want fix this class,, for some reason,, bots maybe? i dont know,, but the reality is that crying we will not get nothing….to get something you have to take action… dont play ranger or leave the game,,,,
in my case,, i cant roll other character beocuse i dont have time,,,,

“aquaman” jaaja thats good

sorry for my english..

TeHjAcKaL.2975:

So like…. the 3 major issues werent fixed yet…
1Longbows still suck, damage and projectile speed, short bow.. lol what a joke
2Pets who do half of a rangers damage, cannot hit moving targets
3Spirits… cannot survive in an instance without getting oneshot

but hey if i ever need to combo finish an enemy underwater ill be sure to thank you Anet, we rangers obviously havent mentioned the things we want fixing 1000 times that makes 1000000 times more sense
projectile speed
skill damage
spirit health
pet autoattack
plain and simple

I can live with the pet auto attack deal, you have to coordinate your cripples and chills for the guy.
To boot there are ranged pets, that and birds can hit moving targets while dealing good dmg all the while.
Everything else is pretty on target though…

I wasnt getting my hopes up for this patch, but this is kitten -.-
not 1 of the major problems was fixed, i was waiting for this patch to start playing again cause I only really enjoy the ranger class, was really hoping for sword melee fix and maybe alil bit more damage all around, maybe some better traits or smarter/faster responding pets. but this is just useless garbage.

oh and I was a trap ranger, they said they were gonna fix the trap thing tonight, wonder if fire trap will be back to 12seconds or if they do infact stealth nerf it.
if they do im gone forever, if they just fix it like its suposed to be then ill come back next patch when the changes they promised are in.

Ranger
Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation. This is what it says when you look at the official website at classes. They say UNPARALLELED ARCHERS

List of major issues the ranger community has been pleading with developers to fix:
Longbow speed, longbow damage output, shortbow damage output, shortbow quickness bug, pets tracking issues, pets aoe damage intake, 1h sword rooting issue, lack of stun breakers, lack of condition removal, lackluster trait options…

List of items that the ranger community agrees are working just fine: Overall underwater damage output, traps.

Guess which list developers chose to make changes to…

Silly, Rangers went to their respective hometowns and all got drunk. They can’t hit jack anymore with no bow. The warrior is now the unparalleled archer class.

With the next update the ranger class will be deleted and the warrior class will gain a optional pet addition.

There is a serious disconnect between Anet and the professions they’ve created. Please for instance, explain how longbow is viable? Anybody? Is its damage comparable to anybody without making yourself a subpar glass cannon? Does it have debilitating conditions? Reliable snares? Are its recharges balanced accordingly to make these skills viable?

The answer to all of these questions is no. It doesn’t even have enough synchronization with utilities, pets or elites to make it semi-viable. The best excuse it has is for stacking might with rampage as one.

If there is something I am obviously missing, Jon, please tell me. If there is some kind of rebuttal to the community’s complaints that NOBODY has thought of yet, please shine some light on it so that we may realize the viability of our profession. I’m not even being sarcastic; I really want a reason to have more faith in the ranger’s progress so far, and to come.

Da Poolp.6809:

I hope this is just the first step for ranger fixes.

Even if it is, when will the next one be? How many more patches like this pathetic one till we are viable? It took a month to get this out, and then it was crap, will the next one be crap? Idk. But Im not sticking around to find out, rifle warrior is just in an amazing spot, Ill play that.

Way too many complainers here. I hope you do quit playing your Rangers. You are giving it a bad name. If you can’t make your Ranger work ‘as is’ then your problem isn’t the in-game mechanics, sorry to tell you.

Not in favour of subs but this is what happens when you don’t sub they don’t give a ****.

These patch notes are a cruel jape. So glad I jumped ship and made a different level 80 character.

I am just hoping for an overall fix for both bows and a fix to our class instajib pets and spirits.

Bastionhawk.7120:

Way too many complainers here. I hope you do quit playing your Rangers. You are giving it a bad name. If you can’t make your Ranger work ‘as is’ then your problem isn’t the in-game mechanics, sorry to tell you.

If you’re MacGuyver and can turn a paper clip, rubber band, and drinking straw, into something amazing, then power to you. The rest of us aren’t as awesome as you are.

HAHA! I leveled a Thief after last patch nerfing, retired ranger cause I knew there was no love for us, guess he will continue to be retired ( I bought this game on the premise I would play a Ranger, as it was stated as the ranged class, and is my true profession of choice, but you give me no choice!) so I will continue playing my thief. Can ANET just delete the Ranger since you don’t want customers playing it and make our current lvl 80 Rangers something else, if so make my ranger a warrior, since it is the TRUE ranged class in this game and gets all the loving! And do new customers a favor, change your Profession description of the game stating Rangers are “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.” and put that under the Warrior Description, that way they don’t get confused on the true ranged class.

So essentially…nothing that matters was fixed and we’re being told that we don’t know what we’re talking about and that we should go away?

I can do that. Ranger is my main, as in my main time and resource investment in this game. If they don’t have enough time or resources to invest in that, then I’ve got nothing for them.

Nymkitten091:

So essentially…nothing that matters was fixed and we’re being told that we don’t know what we’re talking about and that we should go away?

I can do that. Ranger is my main, as in my main time and resource investment in this game. If they don’t have enough time or resources to invest in that, then I’ve got nothing for them.

Im starting to feel the same way. He makes the excuse that they are undermanned for the job, so either hire more, or stop focusing on content and focus more on some fixes. Ranger needs alot of lovin, ele apparently needs some, so does necro, but they even stated ranger is in the worst shape out of all of them.

Bastionhawk.7120:

Way too many complainers here. I hope you do quit playing your Rangers. You are giving it a bad name. If you can’t make your Ranger work ‘as is’ then your problem isn’t the in-game mechanics, sorry to tell you.

…have you actually bothered doing a side-by-side comparison of Rangers against anybody else? It would be one thing if we were competitively sub-par at everything. It’s another if we’re objectively the bottom of the heap at everything.

The physical mechanics of the Ranger aren’t obscenely broken. The biggest one is Pet AI being unable to hit moving targets, but otherwise you can just trim a few animations and up a few projectile speeds here and there. But the numeric balance? Too many resources expended to obtain obscenely poor results. There is absolute jack squat that makes us even so much as on par with any other profession in the game.

- Oh joy, Spirits proc more often! Too bad it’s STILL A PROC, and the spirit will STILL DIE INSTANTLY TO A STIFF BREEZE. Which basically boils down to having a slightly better chance at the first coin toss.

- Hurray, underwater weapons now have combo finishers! Wait, do underwater combo fields even exist? I’m not even kidding: I have NEVER seen a SINGLE underwater combo field the entire time I’ve played this game.

- Bug fixes to things most of us didn’t actually care about. Tooltip changes might as well be called non-changes.

- If only Throw Torch was actually useful for chasing opponents. Then the increased projectile speed might actually mean something. But throwing a Burn at someone isn’t exactly going to help you chase or finish the target.

- Splinter Shot does +150% damage? Cool, now the ability actually does more than apply a bleed…but it’s still pretty darn terrible.

- Counterattack is the only substantial change.

This is just utter disappointment, I loved GW1 and had faith in this game but… but… but.. Its just garbage, I mean @ only 2 months in they are putting out new content that technically makes the old content obsolete (dungeons which sucked to being with)… how is that good prioritizing…

I kept faith though cause MY ONLY kittenING LVL 80 which was my main profession in GW1 which I loved and want oh so badly to play here was supposed to be getting some love… Well I guess if you enjoy getting kicked in the balls you could still play your ranger…. worst part is now LB warriors will be the ranged spec in PVP making us more useless.

Anyway im done with this game and I vote we all make “My Ranger is Useless so Im not Playing anymore” Threads and see if them merge those…

P.S. ANET take a hint from kittening TRION get a dev devoted to each class… 2 devs for all the classes in the game is kitten considering the amount of bugs and problems there is… im sure your fancy content development branch could spare a few ppl…

Well, I will be rerolling a different Character… it is a shame that our damage doesn’t come close to most other classes. Instead we have a useless pet to help our damage output every once in a while. Anet, please go back to the drawing board on our damage output. We all want to play this class, however the lack of damage compared to other classes makes us kittened…

Jesus H. Christ, what the hell is this?
“Poof! Someone called and I am here. We made some ranger changes this patch, but had to go back on them because of risk factor. There are some bugs being fixed and quality of life improvements coming in the next patch, as well as some other significant ranger improvements. I would Literally tell you but I think it would be considered a bit of a spoiler so you will have to be patient.
While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.
Ok I can’t type more with tiny phone finger keypad. See you in game!
Jon”
Thank you for yet again lying to us, seriously I have had it with this BS. Glad to see our “buffs” were soooo amazing! But not, you buff the kitten out of warriors and then leave us in the dust? Time to shelve this class and game soon.

Pretty disappointing Anet, huge changes on nearly every other class, but ranger very little, again…

What exactly is the point of Rangers i must ask?

Nozcrow.2534:

Funniest quote I have seen yet:

Think the last bullet point was
•Reduced active ranger playerbase by 40 percent. 97 percent of active rangers are now bots.

While this would be a great way to filter out all the bots, this has made a positive difference in dungeons… I think. Will have to take another look at spirits and see if the numbers are looking alright.

Except for traps. I’m going to wait until the later update to see what happens to those before re-traiting – if the cooldown has been increased significantly it’ll affect synergy.

The idea of making rangers so unpalatable to general players that only bots would use them, and then just banning all active rangers is funny, but the bots would just use other classes and you’d hit a few legitimate players who only do open-world PvE in the process.

And of course you’d take out all the rangers who’ll be camping the lake and bay keep in WvW borderlands. With the number of sharks assaulting people we’ll see, it could be mistaken for Cronulla.

If you read the sections of every other professions, Guardians, Warriors and Elementalists have the least amount of whines.

Figures.

So I understand there’s lots of rage and angry in this subforums currently, for a very good reason. There’s lots of people talking about creating a new class, or moving onto another game, or anger at broken promises, jokes about underwater domination etc. etc. These threads I can completely understand why people would post them, but lets be honest here. They aren’t CONSTRUCTIVE at all.

I still love my ranger. I plan on playing her for a very long time, and I have a vested interested in seeing this profession improve. And I think that cussing out developers and such, no matter how much they deserve it, doesn’t help me advance this cause at all and may hinder it. My worst fear is that developers, seeing all this negative threads on the forums, start taking information on this forums as a grain of salt and writing it off as “players are just being angry.” Because lets be honest here, if you were arguing with someone, and your opponent started wishing your company would fire you, you’d be less likely to listen to his arguments rationally.

So I just wanted to make this thread so that people can post constructive and detailed posts and why a Ranger is so underpowered and what, specifically, can be changed to improve on the core Ranger gameplay. Hopefully we can get a good, constructive discussion going here, because I think that is the best way to convince Anet what changes are needed (as opposed to ranting and threatening).

So I’m going to get this thread started…

Reliance on Pets. I think this is a big one. I run lots of Dungeons, and pet taking aggro/dying too much is a huge problem. Many rangers would like to run builds without pets and such too.

Potential Solution: Let pets be stowed away even during combat. This allows for people who don’t wish to use pets in their builds to stow them permanently, and when people are encountered with situations in which pets are simply a nuisance, they can simply keep them stowed to avoid aggro.

Shortbow I believe I read somewhere from Anet once that they don’t “want to promote 1-spamming gameplay.” Which is a legitimate concern, but the problem with shortbow is 1 is the only way to do damage, because skills 2-5 are not built for damage.

Potential Solution: half the damage on shortbow 1, but increase damage on 2-5 Hear me out here. 1 should be changed so it does less damage, but its main function should be to stack bleeds on an enemy. Skills 2-5 damage should be increased to compensate, and I think skill 4 damage should perhaps scale with the number of bleed stacks. This way, Rangers can still do viable amounts of burst damage even in big teamfights when the boss already has 25 bleed stacks. This discourage 1-spamming, but still makes shortbows do a good amount of damage through buffs to damages of skills 2-5.

Obviously this is just a start, and there’s many many topics to be discussed like spirits, other weapons, etc. But I’m no genius, and I obviously don’t know every aspect of a Ranger. So hopefully more people will contribute and we can get a lively, constructive discussion going!