Guild Wars 2

Honestly, quickness as a mechanic was horrible and needed to be nerfed – too many builds and channeled abilities were useless without it and overpowered (or at least pub-stompy) with it. It made the whole game more difficult to balance from a PvP stand-point and played an integral role in W/G/Me speed runs of dungeons. Nerfing or removing the mechanic was a requirement for ensuring a stable balance base for the game to move forward with and build on.

Now that quickness is brought down to a reasonable level (being pretty much exactly the same as the standard 33%, which was actually 50%, attack speed buffs in Guild Wars 1), skills can be rebalanced in a healthy way. We might just see Hundred Blades rescaled to be useful without quickness and not overwhelming with quickness. We might just see Rapid Fire not suck kitten without quickness and not be slightly underwhelming with it.

And we might just see Ranger weapon dps brought up to compensate for dps lost to the quickness nerf. Hell, the Greatsword buffs were enormous. Like …. Godzilla piggybacking on King Kong huge. The new Ranger GS may actually compare to the Greatswords of the Guardian, Warrior, and Mesmer. Hell, it has a higher utility value than any of the other professions’ greatswords (with the possible exception of the Guardian’s).

Overall, I’m happy with the patch.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

And we might just see Ranger weapon dps brought up to compensate for dps lost to the quickness nerf. Hell, the Greatsword buffs were enormous. Like …. Godzilla piggybacking on King Kong huge. The new Ranger GS may actually compare to the Greatswords of the Guardian, Warrior, and Mesmer. Hell, it has a higher utility value than any of the other professions’ greatswords (with the possible exception of the Guardian’s).
Overall, I’m happy with the patch.

I like the greatsword buffs, I really do. But I still have a few issues with the ranger greatsword. First off, maul does great damage, but only to three targets. Where’s our big five target AoE greatsword attack that guardians and warriors have? Hell, all of the guardian’s greatsword attacks except for the auto attack hit five targets. Swoop is a nice gap closer, but I would also like to see it hit more than three targets. Hilt bash doesn’t seem to apply its stun consistently, even when you’re always behind your target. I find that it only sporadically interrupts skills, regardless of where I’m standing in relation to my target.

So yeah, Maul and swoop need to hit 5 targets, and hilt bash needs to be more consistent in applying its stun. In fact, I would argue that hilt bash should stun regardless of orientation to the target. Daze and stun at the same time is a bit redundant.

Quarktastic.1027:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

And we might just see Ranger weapon dps brought up to compensate for dps lost to the quickness nerf. Hell, the Greatsword buffs were enormous. Like …. Godzilla piggybacking on King Kong huge. The new Ranger GS may actually compare to the Greatswords of the Guardian, Warrior, and Mesmer. Hell, it has a higher utility value than any of the other professions’ greatswords (with the possible exception of the Guardian’s).
Overall, I’m happy with the patch.

I like the greatsword buffs, I really do. But I still have a few issues with the ranger greatsword. First off, maul does great damage, but only to three targets. Where’s our big five target AoE greatsword attack that guardians and warriors have? Hell, all of the guardian’s greatsword attacks except for the auto attack hit five targets. Swoop is a nice gap closer, but I would also like to see it hit more than three targets. Hilt bash doesn’t seem to apply its stun consistently, even when you’re always behind your target. I find that it only sporadically interrupts skills, regardless of where I’m standing in relation to my target.

So yeah, Maul and swoop need to hit 5 targets, and hilt bash needs to be more consistent in applying its stun. In fact, I would argue that hilt bash should stun regardless of orientation to the target. Daze and stun at the same time is a bit redundant.

I can definitely agree on Hilt Bash. May as well make it always stun considering that the duration on it isn’t terribly long. As for hitting 5 targets….. I rarely find myself caring. If they want to make Maul a larger, 5 target skill, that’d be swell.

The big problem I see with the class right now lies in traits. Everything except for Beastmastery and Wilderness Survival (with the exception of some of the Skirmishing Line) is kind of hilariously crappy.

Key word “might”. Knowing how they’ve handled stuff in the past, I have serious doubts.

Yes, nerf quickness and leave the trait at 2 seconds on swap. That effectively halves my already abysmal DPS.

They need to stop nerfing things because of lack of imagination. Oh PvE was becoming too easy for SOME people, lets make a sweeping change for ALL people! How about selective changes? Ranger’s did not need another nerf by association.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Yes, nerf quickness and leave the trait at 2 seconds on swap. That effectively halves my already abysmal DPS.

They need to stop nerfing things because of lack of imagination. Oh PvE was becoming too easy for SOME people, lets make a sweeping change for ALL people! How about selective changes? Ranger’s did not need another nerf by association.

They should have increased the trait duration or buffed Ranger damage output. That’s a given. But these changes can still come – and probably will… eventually.

My point was – and is – that the quickness blanket nerf was a necessary change to establish a proper balance foundation that should have been implemented in beta. Even in the early phases of the game, it was blatantly obvious that quickness was causing issues in its pre-nerf form.

Longer duration, lower power quickness synergizes better with the Ranger’s role as a sustained damage class, as opposed to a burst class, anyway. The catch is that they actually do need to have longer duration quickness… or, because they already have the highest quickness up-time of any profession, an overall base damage boost.

Then get rid of quickness. If the mechanic is so broken, why have it at all? Also, PvP is one thing…what exactly was it trivializing so much in PvE? Running around Orr for hours?

The trait is totally busted now, the whole point of it was to give burst for a short period of time. It also gave a reason to alternate pets, now I guess they want us to run around with solely bears.

My point is, you cannot blanket everyone like this. Rangers overall damage output is so bad to begin with that the quickness ‘buff’ really did nothing super for us anyway. It simply gave the class a little speed and flow…now we have nothing of the sort.

I personally found 100% quickness to be too powerful, 50% being a better number, but my biggest gripe with this update was not doing enough to account for this decrease.

Quickness was the only form of burst damage many ranger weapons had and was an important part of many builds. A 1 second increase on QZ only accounts for a small percentage of its decreased effectiveness (it added 4 seconds of actions before, now it adds 2.5) and a stun break to bring it in line with other quickness skills, while the quickness trait remains untouched, is not enough to account for the impact this had.

Maybe if the balance updates were coming in at a good speed I wouldn’t mind this as much, but most of what we see are bug fixes with few actual balance changes in the 7 months this game has been out.

What is the point in using a buffed great sword when you get killed in two shots…

Pet does nothing and and we have very little condition removal, i don’t see a point in using it to die faster…even with my PowVT/Pre VT gear..