Guild Wars 2

http://pastebin.com/2rrFg9pS

take it with all the disclaimers that normally come from leaked notes. what made it notable is a lack of a trait, anywhere, that would restore the range. and even if there was such a trait, it might feel mandatory, would likely be placed on eagle eye, which is mutually exclusive for 20MM with piercing arrows.

Yeah, it kinda sucks. But on the other hand, I was baffled that this change wasn’t in there from release. It made not a whole lot of sense for Shortbows and Longbows to have the same ranges.

Knowing Anet it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest…

I have to agree Blaine. On the bright side, this makes LB more viable. On the downside, SB just lost some range, which can and will hurt playstyles until people get used to the weapon again.

So…. why pick SB over axe now?

The LB was bad. Making our other weapons worse doesnt make the LB better (although I do admit the improvements they are putting on it will hopefully help).

SafiMoyo.5130:

So…. why pick SB over axe now?

Axe auto is terrible, so shortbow still does more sustained DPS.

Not so much, though. Ranger personal DPS will still be bad and we just ate 20-30% nerfs to pet burst.

Good! They now have definite roles, one for long range sniping and one for mid to close range skirmishing.

please edit your post to include the fact that if these notes are real, the SB received flat damage upgrades to compensate. The LB also received a lot of love. The sky is not falling

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Doug.9628:

please edit your post to include the fact that if these notes are real, the SB received flat damage upgrades to compensate. The LB also received a lot of love. The sky is not falling

This is so stupid. All of the shortbow’s DPS is on the autoattack. You could increase the damage of the other abilities by 40% and it would still be a DPS loss over just using the autoattack.

What love did the longbow receive besides projectile speed? You’ll still be dead as soon as someone gets close to you.

a ranger should be superior using ranged skills, dont nerf them :s if there wont be a trait to get this back up to 1200 im leaving ranger for a while

Doug.9628:

please edit your post to include the fact that if these notes are real, the SB received flat damage upgrades to compensate. The LB also received a lot of love. The sky is not falling

I know right? I can’t wait for my crippling shot to deal 230 damage instead of 200 damage at 900 range. Watch out virtually every other class, the Ranger’s back!

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

Still if you hit more you do more dmg….

As soon as someone gets close…swap to the melee weapon?

If the leaked notes are accurate, this this SB nerf combined with the pet damage and leash nerfs I find thoroughly depressing. They’ve gutted my build and play style pretty dang effectively.

At least I have 4/5 in AC Mastery in WvW. I think I’ll be better off just sitting next to an arrow cart from now on.

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

If the arrows go faster, people can no longer side-step away from them. Congratulations, you fixed one of the main problems with LB, the fact that people can side-step the arrows. If we’re lucky after this month they’ll actually buff the damage output.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

If the arrows go faster, people can no longer side-step away from them. Congratulations, you fixed one of the main problems with LB, the fact that people can side-step the arrows. If we’re lucky after this month they’ll actually buff the damage output.

The only time people sidestepped my arrows was if I was an iddiot and slotted for 1500 range and sat at 1500 range firing arrows.

My arrows didn’t miss at 1200-1100 range.

And this doesn’t even touch in pve where the arrows don’t miss at all, and a 1200>900 range difference does nothing, people will still not use the longbow in PvE.

You’re incorrect. The main problem between SB and LB was that SB had the same range as LB, with the LB being so slow that the SB could easily bypass it in damage dealt just due to the arrow speed. They’re fixing that arrow speed.

A 15% increase in arrow speed helps quite a bit, as does the drop in the aftercast. We’re seeing a much needed DPS boost for the LB which may very well make it do more damage than the SB in terms of power over a period of time. This could be just the thing the LB needs to make it viable again.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. When the patch hits live we’ll see the results in the forums. I’m pretty sure you’ll still be one of those longbow rangers sitting in a tower saying he does great while the staff ele next to him is actually doing the work.

Zenith, every post I’ve ever seen you make in this subforum has always been negative, so excuse me if I don’t take you seriously.

But here’s the question, will you outright state that you were wrong if this turns out to have helped LB enough to be viable?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith, every post I’ve ever seen you make in this subforum has always been negative, so excuse me if I don’t take you seriously.

But here’s the question, will you outright state that you were wrong if this turns out to have helped LB enough to be viable?

Yes. But when dungeons kick in and rangers are still persona nongrata, especially now since the damage nerfs, I want you in exchange to disappear from the forums if I am right

And let’s see how many team fight longbow rangers will exist when pets still die in mere seconds to the 40+ man zergs running around in wvw.

Hey, I never mentioned dungeons. I was talking WvW and general PvE. I consider dungeons a whole ‘nother ballpark, considering several classes that suck in general PvE are amazing in dungeons. They’re a portal to bizarro world IMO.

And for WvW, it depends on the server. I’ve seen multiple 5+ ranger teams in zergs raining down arrows on a section of the battlefield, massively damaging people in range.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Hey, I never mentioned dungeons. I was talking WvW and general PvE. I consider dungeons a whole ‘nother ballpark, considering several classes that suck in general PvE are amazing in dungeons. They’re a portal to bizarro world IMO.

And for WvW, it depends on the server. I’ve seen multiple 5+ ranger teams in zergs raining down arrows on a section of the battlefield, massively damaging people in range.

And killing themselves on retaliation trains.

But, hey, let’s leave guardians the gods of this game and nerf the most stigmatized class, because spvp babies took their toys home with them when they couldn’t tank a pet on a point.

I don’t like it. (If these changes will come) Only talking about pve.
I know it makes sense anywhere that a sb has a smaller range than a lb, but they could have handled it in another way (e.g. decreasing the sb range to 1050 and – but not necessarily – increasing the lb to 1350 OR only increasing the lb range to 1500 OR give us the possibility to trait for higher range).
No they just have to cut the range for the sb.. sigh.. ^^

Shortbow was 900 range in beta. I’ve already made the switch to axe/torch for superior conditions and if anything I was looking forward to a reason to reconsider the shortbow.

Well, the weapon I’m actually reconsidering is offhand axe… 1200 range pull with offhand training?! Axe OP!

I think there is a mistake in the notes, in the file says: “Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.”
It is probably for Ricochet since Splitblade have a 6 sec cooldown. Or with the “aftercast” they mean the cast time?

If I’m right then axe will get even better, and I already use axe in both my sets, I can’t get used to sword , and the auto attack get 2x faster is awesome.

Also, the LB changes looks very good IMO

Zenith.7301:

Doug.9628:

please edit your post to include the fact that if these notes are real, the SB received flat damage upgrades to compensate. The LB also received a lot of love. The sky is not falling

This is so stupid. All of the shortbow’s DPS is on the autoattack. You could increase the damage of the other abilities by 40% and it would still be a DPS loss over just using the autoattack.

What love did the longbow receive besides projectile speed? You’ll still be dead as soon as someone gets close to you.

I can tell you’re a glass is half full kinda guy.

The SB 1 did not receive a dmg upgrade, it’s true. I missed the part where it says that the new traits; most of which are pretty great changes, will not affect the shortbow. Clearly, the patch that changes the range of the weapon offers no way to possibly compensate for it.

I haven’t played in a while but I take it your extensive playtesting of the patch are how you know “you’ll still be dead when someone gets close to you” while wielding a longbow. You will find the other changes it received when you stop foaming at the mouth and read all the other little numbers in the patch notes that are obviously complete and finalized.

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

You must have missed the aftercast reduction. This will be a huge buff to the Longbow.

Most of these changes are awesome, including the changes to the SB. Anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong.

Belzebu.3912:

I think there is a mistake in the notes, in the file says: “Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.”
It is probably for Ricochet since Splitblade have a 6 sec cooldown. Or with the “aftercast” they mean the cast time?

If I’m right then axe will get even better, and I already use axe in both my sets, I can’t get used to sword , and the auto attack get 2x faster is awesome.

Also, the LB changes looks very good IMO

Aftercast isn’t the same as recharge time. Aftercast is a hidden amount of time after a skill in which you can’t use another skill. Basically, it’s saying that you’ll be able to use another attack skill after you use Splitblade 50% faster than you’re currently able to.

jcbroe.4329:

Belzebu.3912:

I think there is a mistake in the notes, in the file says: “Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.”
It is probably for Ricochet since Splitblade have a 6 sec cooldown. Or with the “aftercast” they mean the cast time?

If I’m right then axe will get even better, and I already use axe in both my sets, I can’t get used to sword , and the auto attack get 2x faster is awesome.

Also, the LB changes looks very good IMO

Aftercast isn’t the same as recharge time. Aftercast is a hidden amount of time after a skill in which you can’t use another skill. Basically, it’s saying that you’ll be able to use another attack skill after you use Splitblade 50% faster than you’re currently able to.

It’s still a DPS buff though because it means it won’t interrupt your Ricochet as much.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

If the arrows go faster, people can no longer side-step away from them. Congratulations, you fixed one of the main problems with LB, the fact that people can side-step the arrows. If we’re lucky after this month they’ll actually buff the damage output.

They did buff the damage output, significantly. They are lowering the aftercast, meaning Long Range Shot will have a significantly faster rate of fire. It will translate to about a 20% DPS buff.

Einlanzer.1627:

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

You must have missed the aftercast reduction. This will be a huge buff to the Longbow.

Most of these changes are awesome, including the changes to the SB. Anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong.

I have no idea what aftercast is and how it effects things

Einlanzer.1627:

jcbroe.4329:

Belzebu.3912:

I think there is a mistake in the notes, in the file says: “Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.”
It is probably for Ricochet since Splitblade have a 6 sec cooldown. Or with the “aftercast” they mean the cast time?

If I’m right then axe will get even better, and I already use axe in both my sets, I can’t get used to sword , and the auto attack get 2x faster is awesome.

Also, the LB changes looks very good IMO

Aftercast isn’t the same as recharge time. Aftercast is a hidden amount of time after a skill in which you can’t use another skill. Basically, it’s saying that you’ll be able to use another attack skill after you use Splitblade 50% faster than you’re currently able to.

It’s still a DPS buff though because it means it won’t interrupt your Ricochet as much.

I wasn’t arguing, I was explaining lol. The aftercast reduction is definitely a step in the right direction.

Einlanzer.1627:

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

You must have missed the aftercast reduction. This will be a huge buff to the Longbow.

Most of these changes are awesome, including the changes to the SB. Anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong.

What? The shortbow changes are nothing but a massive nerf to it and the pet changes is a massive nerf in damage across the board for pretty much every build.

Bad rangers need to play better
BM rangers need to play better

I love these patch notes

I hope these are not true. Did you guys notice the swap between instinctual bond and zephyr’s speed? These can’t be true!!

Forzani.2584:

I have no idea what aftercast is and how it effects things

Aftercast is the amount of time before your character can execute another skill in the queue. In more simpler terms, it’s the time the ranger takes to lower the right arm to pickup another arrow. The faster the animation finishes, the faster you shoot arrows.

EDIT: Also, to be on topic, losing 300 range on a shortbow suddenly made it’s DPS lower? It’s still the same weapon, but you have to more mindful of positioning. In dungeons and PvE, it’s not that hard to adjust. In PvP, players rarely have opportunities to stand 1200 range away and pewpew indefinitely. In WvW, the only time i see this as a problem is when zerging (but longbow is superior to shortbow when zerging anyway due to barrage). Most solo roamers are within 900 range of their enemies already.

Was the pet damage really that game breaking?

Being able to increase range for both LB and SB with a trait wouldn’t be unreasonable imo…as well as the cool downs.

My prediction ? The top players will still dominate. As Clint says, adapt, improvise, overcome.

Shaojack.3871:

Was the pet damage really that game breaking?

PvPers say so. While I don’t PvP, I’m under the impression that pets are bad against good kiters.

Perhaps this will give Anet an incentive to buff our weapon skills.

Maybe the shortbow’s 1200 range was an animation glitch that was just fixed to the intended range of 900?

I think the patch notes are real. Who would sit there for hours putting together such realistic sounding notes for EVERY class? If they wanted to cause mayhem they would have put in way bigger nerfs. We were already expecting massive pet nerfs from what the devs said themselves.

Sarision.6347:

Shaojack.3871:

Was the pet damage really that game breaking?

PvPers say so. While I don’t PvP, I’m under the impression that pets are bad against good kiters.

Perhaps this will give Anet an incentive to buff our weapon skills.

Well the biggest problem wasn’t the pet, it was the design. Rangers primary role has been backpoint defender with these build. So basically, they cap the point, while the rest of the team goes off and fights for mid/other teams point.

So now, players wanting to take the backpoint from the other team are literally forced to fight basically on point with the ranger if they want to contest it, or try to kill the ranger at range before they get team support (the only 3 classes really capable of even pressuring the ranger without getting on point are phantasm mesmer; deemed not viable for whatever reason, nade engi; strong, but more needed at midpoint than at back point, and necro; too easily focused down with its current builds, not enough mobility to traverse the maps well and contribute).

What the BM build allows a player to do, however, is to build 100% for condition based damage and survival and get the full effects out of that setup, while maximizing the power based damage on the pet, which at times could get pretty destructive (Entangle plus Jaguar Stealth for a constant stream of 1-3k crits) considering the player didn’t put a single point into power related DPS.

So, maybe the pets needed the change, maybe they didn’t, this isn’t the place to have that debate. The point is that the capability of the pet to do so much power damage should have always been on the player to begin with, and then by speccing for the pet, the DPS gets traded from the player to the pet.
And the biggest failure is going to be not putting any of the lost DPS from the pet back on to the player.

Jcbroe – your last sentence is the core of what is wrong with these updates. It seems that most players agree that pet damage, depending on build, is certainly at least 30% of a ranger’s output. Assuming these nerfs are true then Anet probably just made ranger the weakest profession in the game. They’re clearly paying little attention to the profession since they’ve just cut our total damage output by (assuming pet counts as at least 30%, and jaguar had its damage nerfed by half PLUS crit rate) at least 15%.

Bryzy.2719:

Jcbroe – your last sentence is the core of what is wrong with these updates. It seems that most players agree that pet damage, depending on build, is certainly at least 30% of a ranger’s output. Assuming these nerfs are true then Anet probably just made ranger the weakest profession in the game. They’re clearly paying little attention to the profession since they’ve just cut our total damage output by (assuming pet counts as at least 30%, and jaguar had its damage nerfed by half PLUS crit rate) at least 15%.

I know, that’s why I said it. BUT, that is only power based DPS. The pet really doesn’t account for much of, if any, of our condition based DPS.

I’ll just switch back to traps until somebody in the next SoTG complains our trap build is overpowered. At that point, I hope reality smacks ANet in the face; that maybe, they need to get some players on the SoTG that aren’t biased against rangers, because Traps are really going to be our last most viable option that haven’t been touched by a nerf yet, and if they nerf them without any improvements, then its like secretly admitting that they are trying to get rid of classes viability so that there are only 5 choices to pick from in PvP, and people don’t have to think anymore.

So yeah, normally I’m pretty easygoing until I focus my attention on those top players and the SoTGs, and then my allergies start acting up (I’m allergic to arrogance and BS).

On the other hand cluster bomb´s range on shortbow has been increased to 1200. Isn´t that skill strong enough already?