Guild Wars 2

As an answer to the thread “List of nerfs”
Here is my list of Buffs
I had to short that list, there are less important buffs to the ranger i leave out here.
All in All i shortened the decriptions to make it easier to read.
Just remember not all Updates changed skills and traits, most of them just fixed ingame descriptions
15. November (Lost shores)
• Splinter Shot: damage is increased by 150% and bleeding duration increased from 3s to 4s..
• Maul: damage has been increased by 40%.

14, December (Wintersday)
• Sick ’Em: Increased the damage and move speed from 25% to 40%.
• Search & Rescue: Increased pet movement speed to 25% while under the effects of this shout and the revive rate for this ability.
• Lick Wounds: Revive rate has been increased.
• Signet of the Hunt: Increased the passive movement from 10% to 25%.
• Moment of Clarity: Now also increases daze and stun duration by 50%.
• Beastmaster’s Bond: Now triggers at 50% instead of 25%.
• Increased the velocity of arrows by 30%.
• Ranger melee pets now have improved melee attacks so they can hit moving targets more easily.

26. February (Flame&Frost – The Gathering Storm)
• Crippling Talon: Cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 18s to 15s.
• Path of Scars: Damage has been increased by 85% when not traited.

26. March (Flame & Frost – The Razing)
• Maul skill: Increased bleeding duration from 4s to 6s and base damage by 26%.
• Counterattack skill: Reduced recharge from 20s to 15s.
• Hilt Bash skill: Reduced recharge from 30s to 25s.
• Quickening Zephyr skill: Now breaks stun. Increased duration from 4s to 5s
• Pet-revive skills no longer fail to heal their target.

30. April (Flame & Frost – Retrebution)
• “Guard” skill: Reduced cooldown from 30s to 15s
• “Sic ’Em” skill: Reduced cooldown to 40s from 60s
• Lightning Reflexes skill: Reduced cooldown from kitten to 40s
• Signet of Stone skill: Reduced cooldown from 120s to 80s and increased passive toughness by 100%
• Signet of the Wild: Reduced cooldown from 120s to 60s and duration from 12s to 8s.
• Increased health of all non-elite spirits by 60%.
• Quickening Zephyr skill: Increased duration by 1 second.

25. June ( Skypirates)
• “Protect Me”: This ability now breaks stuns.
• Path of Scars: This skill now pulls enemies on the return flight.
• Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast from 0.5s to 0.25s. Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
• Rapid Fire: Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
• Point Blank Shot: Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
• Barrage: Increased the cripple duration by 50%.
• Man O’ War: The base recharge has been increased from 18 to 25.
• Counterstrike: The base recharge has been increased from 15 to 20.
• Swirling Strike: Increased damage by 33%.
• Crossfire: Decreased the range to 900.
• Quick Shot:. Increased the damage by 14%.
• Crippling Shot:Increased the damage by 14%.
• Concussion Shot Increased the damage by 14%. Reduced the aftercast by .25 seconds.
• Spirit-activated skill range increased from 180 to 240 (360 when traited).
• Call Lightning: Increased the damage by 150%.
• Solar Flare: Decreased the cast time from 1.7s to 0.5s
• Keen Edge: This trait now activates when the player strikes a target whose health is below 50%, instead of when the player’s health reaches 75%.
• Beastmaster’s Might: This trait now grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds.
• Spotter: This trait has been increased from 70 precision to 150.
• New Grandmaster trait—Nature’s Voice: Shouts apply 10s of regen and swiftness to allies in a 360 radius.
• Peak Strength: Damage bonus when the player’s health is above 90% has been increased from 5% to 10%.

23. July (Cutthroat Politics)
• Rapid Fire: This skill now applies vulnerability on each hit.
• Hunter’s Shot: This skill no longer applies vulnerability on each hit, but now grants stealth for 3 seconds.
• Point Blank Shot: Increased the range from 600 to 900.
• Maul: This skill now applies vulnerability instead of bleeding.
• Counterattack—Crippling Throw: This skill can now be used while moving. Increased the cripple duration to 5s
• Whirling Defense: This skill now grants 4s of retaliation for the duration of the skill.
• Call of the Wild: This skill is now a blast finisher.
• Remorseless: This trait now reapplies Opening Strike when the ranger gains stealth or kills an enemy.

15. October (Blood and Madness)
• Healing Spring: Reduced the field duration to 10s. It now pulses every 2s instead of 3, so it will still provide the same amount of regeneration and condition removal, just in a more condensed time frame.
• Vigorous Renewal: This trait now grants vigor to the ranger and nearby allies when the Healing Spring skill is cast and not on every pulse.
• Maul: Damage for this skill has been increased by 7%. Vulnerability has been increased from 3 stacks to 5 stacks, and the duration has been increased from 6s to 8s
• “Sic ’Em”: This shout now applies 4s of revealed on the targeted enemy.
• Vigorous Training: This trait now grants 5s of vigor to nearby allies (600 radius) when swapping any pet type in combat.
• Pet F2 improvements

10. December (Wintersday #2)
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.

Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet. (3 Stacks Might for 15s)

So Stop talking please rangers just get nerfed every patch and are all in all weak and QQ and so on.
Ranger is strong but when you have no knowledge of your class and the System you will never be a strong ranger. When you have Problems with something Train your skills. you lost a game? Dont argue the ranger class is weak, think what went wrong how could i improve my builds?
Look at actual metas of every class and think about it what is the best way to kill DPS builds, or condi builds, CC builds, Tanks.
and again, when u have Problems with sword autoattack—> Strg + Rightclick on #1 sword
Everything will be easier
Now let the flame begin \(-_-)/

Well, having played ranger since launch and having gear for most builds, I disagree with the idea that a ranger isn’t weak. On the other hand, it isn’t nearly as weak as many think.

The issue is that the traits and weapons are far from optimized in terms of synergy so you have to chase a trait at the expense of a needed stat or chase stats at the expense of traits. It is always a glass that is half or perhaps 3/4s full. Now you can make a good drink with half a glass if you are a good player, but the idea that a strong player playing a ranger will have as strong of a character as a strong player playing many other classes is just not quite so. In power rankings, ranger is less powerful and less forgiving.

Rangers aren’t weak, they just aren’t interesting. There is a lack of flashy looking skills, and the mechanic is just about the least fun mechanic in the game, mostly because it isn’t as interactive as most of the other mechanics, and is kind of just a tacked on AI DPS source that desperately needs some more options to be able to build for (Vigor on Pet Swap is a good start, along with Quickness on Swap).

I’d argue that rangers are actually one of the best survival classes in the game. As a matter of fact, because of the pet and our condition builds, I’d actually argue that rangers have the highest damage build when specced for survivability, and that other classes when speccing for survival either give up more damage than we do, or have to use very gimmicky tactics in order to be as successful as possible, where as the ranger playstyle doesn’t really change much when incorporating a survival based playstyle and spec into the mix.

So yeah. I’d say for most people the class just isn’t what they wanted it to be, because they were used to high damage sniper type characters from previous MMO’s, or having more gameplay options than what Guild Wars 2 provides, even though Guild Wars 2 advertised itself as a “play how you want” game and then forces classes into particular necessary options (rangers: pets, engineers: kits, etc).

Definitely, there is a problem with rangers and our conditioned expectations. When you try to play as you expect a ranger should play, you tend to get stomped. This is a whole different sort of ranger. I’m not sure that really was the going in premise of ANET at launch versus players figured out what worked and now you have something that works but is an oddball mishmash.

I will tell you the ranger build I am playing is not the one I thought I would play when I created the character. I really do wish a long range sniper build worked better.

There is not a lot of synergy. Look at how many threads there are on the fixes and the vast number of playstyles (pet v no pet crowd, melee v range crowd, spirits vs heck no crowd). There are so many unique facets to the class that it can lead to this sort of half cooked problem. Traps, Spirits, Pets all ranger. Now that makes placing traits difficult for ANET because you also have the fact that the lines are designed around Power, Precision, Toughness etc etc. So things always seem out of place and like they didn’t think about the full builds and skill/trait synergy. The overflows with weapon skills. What is the logical Spirit weapon? Traps? Typically, different trait lines logically lead to different weapons.

We have great parts. It is the sum of the parts that just lacks a little bit.

Reading boards I find the ranger class is a bit more fractured in terms of what they want. I would argue this is because our class isn’t what people expect a ranger to be and is such a mishmash that naturally you will have 4 people wanting 4 different builds/lines to be worked on first. That makes it tough to fix the class first, but it was a design issue from the start.

Bombsaway.7198:

Definitely, there is a problem with rangers and our conditioned expectations. When you try to play as you expect a ranger should play, you tend to get stomped. This is a whole different sort of ranger. I’m not sure that really was the going in premise of ANET at launch versus players figured out what worked and now you have something that works but is an oddball mishmash.

I will tell you the ranger build I am playing is not the one I thought I would play when I created the character. I really do wish a long range sniper build worked better.

There is not a lot of synergy. Look at how many threads there are on the fixes and the vast number of playstyles (pet v no pet crowd, melee v range crowd, spirits vs heck no crowd). There are so many unique facets to the class that it can lead to this sort of half cooked problem. Traps, Spirits, Pets all ranger. Now that makes placing traits difficult for ANET because you also have the fact that the lines are designed around Power, Precision, Toughness etc etc. So things always seem out of place and like they didn’t think about the full builds and skill/trait synergy. The overflows with weapon skills. What is the logical Spirit weapon? Traps? Typically, different trait lines logically lead to different weapons.

We have great parts. It is the sum of the parts that just lacks a little bit.

Reading boards I find the ranger class is a bit more fractured in terms of what they want. I would argue this is because our class isn’t what people expect a ranger to be and is such a mishmash that naturally you will have 4 people wanting 4 different builds/lines to be worked on first. That makes it tough to fix the class first, but it was a design issue from the start.

Exactly.

Personally, I would go at it personally from a weapon by weapon aspect first, as weapons are easily the biggest facilitators of what build is used.

Example: Longbow. The weapon idea is decent, but the final implementation is lacking. Fixes could either go two ways; making the weapon more defensive and better at sustaining its range component, or through traits and utilities that provide more active defense like condition cleansing and/or protection (we already have 2 damage deterrents, but one is a 30 trait point necessary signet).

Or, make the weapon able to burst damage better. It doesn’t have the best defensive sustain currently, but it doesn’t have a high damage ability in a short time period that’s capable of catching an enemy off guard (like mesmers Greatsword can iBerserker and shatter you for a nice, big hit in a short time frame). If Rapid Fire was either a more “rapid” skill, or a skill whose “fired” shots were much heavier hitters than they currently are, it could make a very huge difference for the weapon, with a very easily implemented number tweak.

I’ll do another, shorter example.

Greatsword: Almost a perfect weapon. It’s just a little too predictable for human opponents, and pets don’t really make up for it because you have to either rely on their RNG actions, or try to choose a pet that can lock down an opponent, which may not always be the best pet outside of that single fuction.

Best fix? Remove Greatsword 4s thrown cripple, and make it an immobilize. Instantly, the weapon becomes much better because you can guarantee some of your otherwise easily dodged Mauls.

It’s just little things like that could make a very huge, positive impact on the class.

I look at the list of buffs ankitten ot impressed. It doesn’t make up for the, in proportion, massive nerfs. S&R nerf alone was just mind blowingly bad to a Ranger’s worthiness to a group. The only “buff” thus far that was worth its’ weight was the pet de-aggro. Other than that they still have many buffs to go before they make up for the nerfing they have done over the last 300+ days I have been playing… but, given the past history, chances are fantastic that the buffs will never make up for the nerfs that have hit and the ones coming.

snow.8097:

So Stop talking please rangers just get nerfed every patch and are all in all weak and QQ and so on.
Ranger is strong but when you have no knowledge of your class and the System you will never be a strong ranger. When you have Problems with something Train your skills. you lost a game? Dont argue the ranger class is weak, think what went wrong how could i improve my builds?
Look at actual metas of every class and think about it what is the best way to kill DPS builds, or condi builds, CC builds, Tanks.
and again, when u have Problems with sword autoattack—> Strg + Rightclick on #1 sword
Everything will be easier
Now let the flame begin \(-_-)/

You might as well delete 50% of these so called buffs because they were gamewide buffs/changes to all classes or nerfs that you didn’t remove from the list.

I’m not complaining here I’m just saying your post is troll food or a pointless taunt.

Rangers aren’t optimal in zergs and dungeons or simply not as good as other classes because they have far less utility. Listing nerfs or buffs is pointless, it can be done for almost any class in the game.

Heal spring was not a buff.

snow.8097:

• Crossfire: Decreased the range to 900.

That’s not a buff… but it does illustrate a point. The nerfs hit much harder than the buffs. Shortbow range reduction from 1200 to 900 is a hard hitting nerf. The 14% buff to damage doesn’t cover it at all.

Another example, spirits were nerfed around release to the point that they weren’t used anymore. Spirit health was halved and it took them over a year to revert back on it in tiny steps. Now they’re used again.

Another example is the upcoming nerf to endurance regeneration. Yes the patch has 90% buffs, but the nerf hits so much harder and affects more builds.

Another hard hitting nerf was moving quickness on pet swap to Grandmaster and switching it with a worthless trait.

Another was moving Signet of the Beastmaster to Grandmaster from Adept.

Or the sudden pet damage reductions by up to 50%.

We could really go on and on about nerfs that outweigh their buffs. (Search & Rescue and Guard are other examples). You need to see the big picture and conclude that the Ranger has seen more hard hitting nerfs than hard hitting buffs.

A hard hitting buff would be Nature’s Voice and possibly the many small buffs to Longbow. I’m really struggling to see the hard hitting buffs. Well, Signet of the Hunt movement speed increase from 10% to 25% was probably the biggest buff we have had, but many classes got that at the same time, so it can hardly be called a Ranger buff. That’s about it. I suppose the buff to Spotter is worth a mention too.

Ranger needs hard hitting buffs, but gets small buffs and hard hitting nerfs instead. They’re doing the whack-a-mole balancing when it comes to Rangers. The nerfs hit hard and the buffs tickle.

as i said ist an answer to the other thread where all nerfs are collected
here are my answers to all of u

SUDDEN pet damage reduction?! SUDDEN?! the actual meta was the beastmaster and they needed to fix it, why? let me explain. with our 0/0/30/10/30 we were TANKS, while we used HIGH DMG pets who done more dmg then more Players. I remeber how i fought a Guardian and my raven hit him and over the half of his HP were gone! That was the reason why anet nerfed us, it was unbalanced, a tank ranger with high dmg pet? We needed nothing to do except let our pet deal more dmg then other classes

and omg i am so sry that i forgot to delete the line with the shortbow range decrease
but let us see the “big Picture”.
We have one of the strongest Bursts one RANGE, when u cant Play a longbow then ist your Problem.
We have one of the biggest Vulnerability pools ingame, give ur foe vuln. and ist like u have a power buff
We have an “berserker-line” with Prec/crit dmg
We have two traits in a line that help us against CC
We have almost full cleanse of Conditions every 10s
We have after the patch with bark Skin a trait thats like a 25% HP boost
We have Spirits which give us perma prot, burn on foe (still after patch) and an elite Spirit which can heal ourselfes from DOWNSTATE (right timed)
We can dodgeroll often (still after patch) and loose poison and blend, best way to heal full and Play against thiefes
We can have perma regen and Swift with natures voice, a buff to that grandmaster would be too OP, what do you want?
we can have two Utility skills to be unvulnerable for 6s (one when traited)
we have enough stun breaker and one full cleanse of conditions (why no one uses the green signet?!) as AoE
we have troll unguent on low CD so we can start a fight, activate them, gain over 8000HP in 10s and after 15s we can use it again) and the spring that clean in 10s 5 conditions of me and allies (while in spring and before the “nerf” it was every 3s)
Need more? we can deal perma weakness (its just the anti condition for power builds) with axe and pets
sword and dagger have evades on low CD, the greatsword autoattack have 1s evade every 2s
we can easily stack immob on foe and kill him with conditions or pure dmg, how we like it
it is extreme hard to kill us underwater and all in all we have downed the Chance to heal ourselfes faster then all other classes

so i cant understand the perma QQ of all rangers in that Forum, when someone cant Play rangers as they are they should learn it or reroll warrior where it is easy to feel like a pro with less skill.

You are not a good Player just because you Play the strongest class, you are a strong Player when Play the “underpowered” and “Permanerfed” ranger and can kill nevertheless other skilled Players

write what u want, i cant see it anymore

snow.8097:

‘’SUDDEN pet damage reduction?! SUDDEN?! the actual meta was the beastmaster and they needed to fix it, why? let me explain. with our 0/0/30/10/30 we were TANKS, while we used HIGH DMG pets who done more dmg then more Players. I remeber how i fought a Guardian and my raven hit him and over the half of his HP were gone! That was the reason why anet nerfed us, it was unbalanced, a tank ranger with high dmg pet? We needed nothing to do except let our pet deal more dmg then other classes’’

despite this nerf i still run beast mastery altrought i did wish arena net actualy made it viable again this time as a glass cannon build rather then a tanking build. Pets damage should be (like for mesmer phantasm) based on power and critical damage if not just the ranger stat itself. This would force player to actualy consider what kind of gear they wear. Do i need to wear a tanky style armor because i want my pet to stay alive or do i want to wear a zerker style armor because i want my pet to mirror my personnal spec as a glass cannon. Currently what we got is a puny joke wich can hardly crit for higher then 3k on auto attack when full might and basicaly wont score higher then 6k with a personnal skill (altrought from time to time i had the illusion of seeing my pet do a 8 to a 10k wich i mustve dreamed about altrought the cat bite does deal quite an insane load of damage and might have hit a maximum critical at that time from my signet of the hunt…) Ranger who realy want to specialise into damaging pets should be able to do so. Now look at this we have gone this low as to be using one handed sword to deal a chained auto attack spec (Guild Wars isnt meant to be played as a click and leave it running game it never was, weapons needs to feel like a set of tool to be used situationnaly rather then a click 1 to win bar using a generic spell rotation)… Ranger ranged spec needs a revalorisation on the damage basis and pets (this mechanics so many fools cry about) deserve some serious resiliance to boss or a good increase of damage so that beast mastery specialist who put all their energy into making effective pet builds stop behing looked at like if they are some noobs trying out random builds for fun. As for where marksmanship stands long bow damage needs a dramatic increase or an upgrade to control (hey what about you changed that crap trait that cripple foe for 10 second when hiting them at 25% to something like cripple foe on critical hits for 4 second with a 15 second cooldown or just no cooldown at all like the pistol trait for thief. Longbow is supposed to be a sniping weapon so please make sure that we can snipe x.x)

Bump for new and returning players.

You need to add the new heal Healing Spring to the list of buffs.
It is net new and powerful in the right situations (especially when using nature’s voice for the regen).
It adds options.

well its nice that ranger has how many things to use how ever there is no compromise between them you can choose one and make heavy sacrifice to another which no other class have .. you cant have dmg and at least solid tank/evades or tank and solid dmg .. 1 aoe skill with lb, not counting entangle as its luck based has long cd and every player with half brain will get out of it in second .. skills search and rescue and sick’em simply dont work
to all these prons you named ranger need 30/30/30/30/30 and then it may be good to compare with other classes not mentioning pet heavy kittenation
simple example having 2 master and 1 grandmaster trait juts for longbow being viable its just not right, good example is necro which need 2 master 1 adept trait for a staff and grandmaster trait may be used other ways, warrior is more effective with LB and needs 1 adept 1 master trait !!!!!!!
yes ranger has a lot of shiny things but he cant use them because trait line is a MESS
I’m talking about www environment because I dont care about stupid mobs or spvp because this is completely different world

Biggest thing to help rangers would be to clean up and consolidate trait lines so we could take more for less.