Guild Wars 2

Doesn’t matter to me, I’ve always preferred the longbow. But it’s funny to see just how many people are relying on the shortbows bleed spam. I think it’s a pretty huge sign that something is wrong here. Either the shortbow is too good, or other weapons are bad. I’m leaning towards the first option.

You can lean all you want, you’d still be wrong. Lean the other way because the general consensus is that the other weapons are bad.

Kasama.8941:

Doesn’t matter to me, I’ve always preferred the longbow. But it’s funny to see just how many people are relying on the shortbows bleed spam. I think it’s a pretty huge sign that something is wrong here. Either the shortbow is too good, or other weapons are bad. I’m leaning towards the first option.

Your leaning the wrong way. Our other options minus or offhands are crap compared to other classes. Our GS is terrible, id trade our longbow in an instant for warrior rifle, our sword is meak and bad, and our unique class mechanic of pets are just terribly implemented. On any target outside of PvE they just end up missing about 7 out of 10 of their attacks, may as well not even exist.

Btw, i cant find anywhere clearly stated that “this is bug” and that they are gonna fix it. did anet gave any info on this or im just hoping in vain ?

Devs posted they would look into it last evening. No updates yet.

arcaneclarity.5283:

Rangers: “Short bow is our only good weapon.”
ArenaNet: Nerfs short bow.

More or less.

LB Damage is pathetic and gets terrible within certain ranges (TERRIBLE)
GS does terrible damage
Sword does terrible damage
Axe is relatively meh, mostly its a just fun, not terribly effective. Only reason we use it is so we can warhorn on our offhand.

Our offhands are nice, but with terrible main hands, meh.

Any ranger would in 2 seconds trade our shortbow for ranger rifle. It does more damage, even at its slower right of fire. About 10% more damage but a bleed thats TWICE as long without any positioning requirements what so ever. And its 2-4 skills are far more useful for damage and has a knock back.

If that’s with full berserker gear, I’m shelving my ranger indefinately. Fudging atrocious how bad rangers are with no viable weapon except SB, which isn’t even that good anymore.

^ What Arintal said.

Warrior: Better Ranged Damage, Survivability, Significantly better Melee damage (ours is a joke at best), better unique mechanic, better support skills.

What did I miss?

DISCLAIMER: I won’t say the nerf was deserved or that it’s too much or anything, I’m completely antagonistic to this change as far as balance is concerned.

I haven’t played after the patch, nor have I played ranger before, but some of the complains seems to me to come from having a very vague of how much 40ms actually is.

MATH:

Someone before said that they used to apply 7 stacks of bleed before the patch. Given that the bleed duration is 3 seconds that gives at very worst 428ms per attack, at 400ms per attack gives you 200ms to actually observe 7 stacks on your enemy, then 200ms when it drops before you reapply it again, so I’ll use that number as an estimate for pre-patch cast time.

40ms on top of 400ms is obviously a 10% cast time increase, or a ~9.1% dps drop. It’s not strange at all that you do notice the difference, you’d have to be a vegetable not to.

Hope this helps to shed some light on it.

yeah in the beta it was good… why on earth did they screw it up so much. if it was OP a slight nerf would be enough

Can you post another video without QZ for comparison? I think that will better communicate your point.

To those of you who are quitting Ranger over this, don’t switch to necro, it has even less going for it in terms of quick-kills with autoattacks.

Terhix.4801:

(snip)
40ms on top of 400ms is obviously a 10% cast time increase, or a ~9.1% dps drop. It’s not strange at all that you do notice the difference, you’d have to be a vegetable not to.
(snip)

^ Exactly. Although my maths are not as precise as yours, here’s what I posted in a different thread whilst waiting for Devs to get back to us:

Ignoring the possible bug with QZ speed, this is still a really a crazy reduction to the shortbow. Although 40ms doesn’t seem like much, for a weapon that fires somewhere around (guessing) 2+ shots per second (I’ve read 2/sec as well, but I do not know exactly) this is a 10% nerf.

However, it get’s more drastic when you consider the main function of the shortbow. The shortbow is all about bleeds and conditions. Yes the auto-attack will bleed on hit, but unlike Warriors and Engineers, we have to be flanking the target.

Where this nerf hits hard is on the shortbow’s main function – behind with bleeds. Not only is our direct damage down 10% or so, but now we stack 10% less bleeding. For behind damage (the MAIN point of the shortbow) it’s actually a 20% (or more?) damage reduction!

Wow they changed literally like nothing.
•Crossfire: Increased casting time by 40 milliseconds.
Quit crying, those of us who want to play longbow are forced into shortbow or another class, and its still fine, literally you cant tell a difference. If you say you can then Im calling BS.

OP here. Few things to say.

First: Big thanks to whoever made the post about ser Peters noting that he’d look in to this. That’s encouraging.

Second: Some math. I clocked the old shortbow speed at about 2.33 arrows per second based on being able to stack to 7 3-second bleeds (7 / 3 = 2.3333…), or a firing time of ~.043 seconds per arrow (1 / 2.33). An additional 40 ms (.04 seconds) per shot should increase that to .047 seconds per arrow, or 2.12 arrows per second.

Unfortunately, this corresponds to a 10% nerf, which would account for the difference in bleed stacking. This might mean that the patch is “working as intended” for the base fire, though I hope arenanet considers fixing it with sheer respect to balance.

As for quickening zephyr, the old crossfire, firmly clocking a critical mass of 14 bleeds, correctly corresponded to 4.66 (14 / 3s per bleed = 4.6666….). The new critical mass is firmly 10, though it does not tick down to 9 between shots so I am going to treat this as 10.5. This corresponds to a firing rate of 3.5 arrows per second during quickness, or a 25% nerf to the old firing speed of 4.66 arrows/sec. This most certainly seems excessive. The correct firing speed, if quickness is to still double actions, and arenanet maintains their .04 second increase on the casting time, should be ~4.24 arrows/sec, 21% in excess of the 3.5 it is at the moment.

Third: I’m a bit disappointed in how some of the voices in this thread and the forum in general are handling their disappointment. Arenanet has been doing their best since day one to care for the balance of all classes. If you listen to the way they talk about things, they put considerable time, effort and thought in to everything. I understand your frustrations with balance issues that are currently affecting you, but so many of the requests I hear, in the way they’re worded, sound more like cries for attention than maturely stated requests.

I also don’t appreciate the sensationalism with which ranger is degraded. I have in sPvP developed a duelist build for, as the name might imply, 1v1 superiority. My damage is dependable if not sensational, but my mobility, utility, evasiveness, and adaptability -is- sensational, and I use it to win close to every duel I get in. Defeat isn’t unknown to me, of course, especially in tournament games, but this is frequently more a matter of learning strategies to fight a given class or individual than any fundamental flaw I’ve found with my build—I always feel like I have a very dependable fighting chance.
It’s very high-execution build, and its statistical advantages don’t sell itself, but played like an action game and used with skill, it’s so effective, efficient and versatile it makes me worry about the extent to which people degrade the class.

While I agree ranger sucks atm, the nerf to shortbow wasnt bad, quit crying. They dont want rangers only playing shortbow which is the direction they are heading. Now if lucky they will buff longbow.

Whoever doesn’t feel the change I am sorry to say this but you are a DUMB***…I’ve played around 500 PVP games with my ranger…and crossfire right now is slow as ****…THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE…to change the skill just because the animation breaks every once in a while? I don’t care if the animation break every day…every hour…just bring back crossfire!!! Rangers in pvp now are horrible…NO MORE DPS Spec…it feels as if I am shooting arrows in slow motion and whoever again disagrees that there is a change does not EVER use a short bow…!!!! FIX IT PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Its all in your head, if you didnt read patch notes you wouldnt notice any difference. Yes I know this is a fact not an opinion, they didnt nerf it by enough to make it dramatically noticeable.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Its all in your head, if you didnt read patch notes you wouldnt notice any difference. Yes I know this is a fact not an opinion, they didnt nerf it by enough to make it dramatically noticeable.

Way to not read any posts in the threads and then mass post your approval of this change in multiple threads…

Try reading the factual information that many are posting.

Was there any other source of bleed other than 1 attack? If not, then 13 stacks sounds exactly what you’d get with a 40ms increase (20ms on quickness).

I dont know about mesmers but Ive played warrior and guardian and I can assure people these 2 are not weak damage wise, I use a rifle warrior and a glass cannon guardian which people think suck and I do work, I dominate tournys with them. Ranger however is only viable as a shortbow, the nerf was nothing, they are not killing the class, just making other weapons viable, you will probably see buffs to longbow and GS soon.

I press it, it doesnt go any faster rangers are squishy and slow and now they have terrible dps

wtf do i do now just stand around and be a meatshield??

anet needs to fix this

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Wow they changed literally like nothing.
•Crossfire: Increased casting time by 40 milliseconds.
Quit crying, those of us who want to play longbow are forced into shortbow or another class, and its still fine, literally you cant tell a difference. If you say you can then Im calling BS.

Read up before you post about something you know nothing about. Just because they say they changed it by 40 milliseconds doesn’t actually mean that’s what happened.

I would love the longbow if they fix the strafing. I’m tired of people running right or left and my longbow would miss half or more of the shots.

“Wow they changed literally like nothing.
•Crossfire: Increased casting time by 40 milliseconds.
Quit crying, those of us who want to play longbow are forced into shortbow or another class, and its still fine, literally you cant tell a difference. If you say you can then Im calling BS.”

Maybe if you actually played ranger and used shortbow you would know that it’s definitely not 40ms.

Chesire.9043:

Honestly, this isn’t as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Using SB/LB in my build I’m nearly 1v2ing people and HAVE 1v2’d them today. It IS a noticeable change, I agree, however it isn’t as bad as you all are letting on.

Maybe I’m just in the zone tonight, but I’ve had no issues with it. It could also be that I just now started using LB in my build and wasn’t playing like a total nub like I usually do, but still. If I can beat people fairly easily with it I don’t understand why people are griping.

Besides, the SB did kinda need a small nerf and that’s what it got.. a SMALL nerf. I would be more concerned with how it’s working with quickness. That being said, maybe THAT was the intended angle all along; Quickness is still pretty OP.

Congrats on killing bad players bro.

“Cmn guys ranger is “4 the lolz” class here. First clue was short/long bow legendary appearance. "

As much as I hate to nod my head in response to this sentiment I find it hard not to. Allowing someone on the team to indulge their fetish for a particular internet joke by turning our legendary weapon into that joke is an amateurish move. That’s the only word I have for it. I know that’s not really the topic here but it had to be said.

A 10-15% damage nerf isn’t bad? Rangers are so kitten now it isn’t even funny. Shortbow was the only viable source of damage for the class.

let us hope that they will buff and/or tweak the other “weapon sets” of ranger,

maybe, just maybe, they will upgrade longbow’s attack speed (will be the same as shortbow’s speed)

You are an idiot if you think a 10% damage nerf to the only viable damage skill the ranger has is nothing. Ranger is so kitten now it is not even funny.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

While I agree ranger sucks atm, the nerf to shortbow wasnt bad, quit crying. They dont want rangers only playing shortbow which is the direction they are heading. Now if lucky they will buff longbow.

So the solution to Rangers using the one ranged weapon that actually keeps pace with those of other classes is to nerf it rather than address the lackluster performance of the other ones…

Brilliant!

Also, a straight 8-10% loss of damage over time (without even getting into bleed stacking or the QZ issue pushing it north of 20%) is quite significant.

Even if they didn’t lie and it is 40ms, 40ms is still around a 9% damage nerf. But it seems like they slowed it down more than 40ms.

As for quickening zephyr, the old crossfire, firmly clocking a critical mass of 14 bleeds, correctly corresponded to 4.66 (14 / 3s per bleed = 4.6666….). The new critical mass is firmly 10, though it does not tick down to 9 between shots so I am going to treat this as 10.5. This corresponds to a firing rate of 3.5 arrows per second during quickness, or a 25% nerf to the old firing speed of 4.66 arrows/sec. This most certainly seems excessive. The correct firing speed, if quickness is to still double actions, and arenanet maintains their .04 second increase on the casting time, should be ~4.24 arrows/sec, 21% in excess of the 3.5 it is at the moment.

How would it figure into your math if instead of halving the new .04 sec delay in Quickness it leaves the delay as baseline under Quickness. So instead of it being 20ms under quickness is stays at 40ms. That might account for the massive variance we are seeing between the 10% nerf under normal circumstances and the colossal 25% nerf under quickness. It appears what they may have done is instead of adjusting the actual time between shots on shortbow (adding in the extra 40s to the time between shots) they added a delay to each shot, which gets compounded when under quickness because the shots are going faster, but the new 40ms delay between shots stays the same.

its more than 10% if you are condition dmg

I think we may be looking at this wrong, Anet clearly want’s us to reroll ranged warrior’s. That way we don’t have to deal with a worthless pet mechanic, and crap damage values for most of our weapon’s. Just think if they completely destroy the ranger class, that’s 1 less forum section they need to moderate.

All I see in this thread is bad players, what decides a viable build is the player skill used with the build instead of running meta short bow learn you class the stats you need and the play style with the weapon I run both a Berserk and a Knight set with Greatsword/sword:dagger and a longbow specs for different instances in terms of WvW and generic PvE and have yet to run into a single "shortbow"meta that can out dps/tank in pve and can aoe farm the anywhere close to as fast running greatsword/longbow and in WvW at simple die from being tickled to death.

This whole “ones you nerfed my meta I don’t know how to play anything else” thing needs to go this isn’t a dps based game,sure my greatsword spec has say 300 dmg less auto attack but I have 1k more defense 5k more HP standard aoe on all attacks and fits my play style and allows me to easily handle all these meta shortbow players.Do to lack of skill.

What i do know is that my only viable options for my Ranger is to go glass cannon, if i actually want to kill anyone in wvwvw, and also another thing i do know is the only viable weapons for the rangers are shortbow / longbow, the other are absolutely crap.
And also i do know that while it takes me a LOT of time to kill a player in wvwvw (impossible to kill thieves btw, they just vanish and run away…), a thief, or warrior absolutely destroy me when the second i fail kiting them.
So please don’t tell me that every profession feels under powered, because that is bullcrap!

He’s telling it like it is, in “every” forum the people are complaining about their class being underpowered or lacking in utility. This happens in every mmo I’ve played. If the forums are to be believed, every class in the game is worthless.

FYI before you reroll (you should actually try other classes to see how green that grass actually is): Warrior rifle stacks up to 7 bleed stacks with 6 second bleed, shortbow still stacks up to 6 with 3 second bleed.

Assuming the worst attack times (it’s likely less for both):

Shortbow has a 0.5s cast time post nerf.
Warrior rifle has a 0.875 cast time.

“Theirs fires slightly slower, does more damage”

Slightly slower is a huge understatement, it’s almost twice as slow. Warrior rifle 1 attack is crap dps, especially if you consider there is nothing in the weapon to justify going condition damage. Volley and Kill Shot is what makes it good, outside of it the dps is mediocre at best.

• Shortbows have same damage and range as longbows.
• Shortbow autoattack hits much faster than longbow’s, applies bleeding and isn’t crippled by distance to target requirement.
• Shortbow control is better – cripple, swiftness+dodge, daze while longbow only has a knockback(that, of course, doesn’t work on anyone with Defiance).
• Longbow AOE is short, doesn’t hit hard and has a relatively long CD – while with a shortbow I can line up and pierce several targets anyway all while applying bleeds to all of them.

Basically, there is no reason whatsoever to use longbows unless you have a very big, but not very tough crowd of enemies, which almost never happens.

It’s not that shortbow is too powerful. It’s just that the longbow is complete garbage. This pains me, since I like how longbows look more and there are quite many good longbow skins. I’d love to get this addressed and use it for once.

Crossfire: Increased casting time by 40 milliseconds. This was done to fix some glitches in the animation that caused problems with this skill.

Seriously? No one on the Dev side don’t see a problem with this sentence?
If you are going to correct a glitch in animation, it shouldn’t affect in the damage output of a skill.

I feel the same way on my ranger. Short bow is awesome Long bow is rather lame on a ranger.

My first thought is “Fix the animation but don’t increase the casting time”, i’m just thinking they took the easy path.

I love the longbow and the greatsword skins. Too bad they are kind of lackluster in the state they are in now.

I see lots of undiscovered geniuses in the ranger’s forum that play anything else then a ranger and come tell us to L2P, or other elitist rangers that think that they have discovered all the solutions to the problems this profession has, but they yet have to get 100 kills in wvwvw.

Please guys, if your only reply to the issues presented is L2p, do yourselves and ourselves a favor and ignore this thread, go play your own profession and be happy when you kill a ranger in wvwvw (because you are so good at the game….).

I want to use the longbow and trait for a long-range play style, but compared to shortbows and axes it lacks utility. It’s only good for maximum range combat, which rarely happens outside of a boss fight. The shortbow works just as well at long range, but instead of getting weaker when you get closer it just shines even more.

Shortbow shot 120 arrows in 60 seconds before this patch. It was not more then that. The way you can tell is look at a video (ANY VIDEO) that you can find where a ranger uses QZ which gives 100% faster speed.

During QZ I’ve not seen a single video where our arrows using #1 shortbow spam shot more then 16 arrows. If someone wants to prove me wrong please show me the proof. Find a video. Show where during the course of a QZ it shot more then 16 arrows. I will believe the first person who can show the proof and join this “OMG TO THE GROUND BANDWAGON”

16 arrows in 4 seconds at 100% speed is 8 arrows in 4 seconds without. That’s 2 arrows a secon which is 120 arrows in 60 seconds.

If you go in game RIGHT NOW you’ll find a total of 117 to 118 arrows in 60 seconds. This is NOT a 30% decrease in damage.

However QZ only shoots 12 arrows now so THIS is where a nerf is.

People can claim that i’m ignorant or whatever but I have math ACTUAL math on my side. Math that can NOT be disputed unless you’re an idiot or just a troll.

andybmcc.8751

I like the greatswords, actually, even if their damage is subpar. Coupled with skills like Signet of Stone(traited to affect you as well), and Quickening Zephyr a ranger can hold off one or several tough enemies for considerable amount of time.

Block is always relevant – it can block AoEs as well, SoS will let you survive power attacks(if any), and the 1 skill lets you evade a LOT.

In fact, if you’re fighting one enemy, you can turn off autoattack, and wait before using the evading hit – third in the chain. When you see the enemy is starting to attack, hit it – and you basically have a constant manual evade for enemies that don’t hit too fast.

Moreover, Quickening Zephyr lets you hit faster and get more evasion frames per second – and, I haven’t confirmed it, but it might just be that evasion frames don’t speed up along with the attack skills themselves, meaning you have more evasion uptime.

Not to mention Swoop allows you to leap through your own healing AoE and give additional direct AoE healing to you and your pet on top of regeneration that’s already up.

You can’t expect to be a full-time tank with a greatsword, but I think it’s decent unless you just want lods of damage from it.

@JonasV I think you’re close! Let’s run the numbers:

Old firing interval: ~.43 sec (Or 2.33 arrows/sec; 7 bleeds)
New firing interval: ~.47 sec (Or 2.12 arrows/sec; 6.3 bleeds)
Old QZ firing interval: ~.215 sec (Or 4.66 arrows/sec; 14 bleeds)
New firing interval if QZ still properly doubled firing speed: ~.235 sec (Or 4.24 arrows/sec; 12.7 bleeds)
New QZ firing interval if the 40 ms change also applies as flat rate to QZ on top of the base firing rate: (.215 + .04 =) .255 sec (Or 3.9 arrows/sec; 11.8 bleeds)

The only problem here is that even -with- that consideration, while it gets closer to illustrating the problem, the live quickening zephyr crossfire is still a good bleed or so slower than it should be. Theoretically it should be ticking up to 11 between arrows, and only briefly ever ticking down to 10, but instead it remains stuck at 10.

That said, it does bring our data -closer- to an explanation for what’s happening live, so at this point it could be my math that’s at fault. Either way I hope arenanet will address it because it markedly impacts performance.

ionite.6234:

• Shortbows have same damage and range as longbows.

Shortbow range is 900, longbow range is 1200. [edit: 1200 and 1500, with traits]

Longbow does more damage per shot (but fires slower, so the shortbow actually does more damage if you consider just the auto-attack).

Longbow can apply vulnerability, which improves damage for everyone in your party.

I agree the auto-attack damage should be more similar between the two, but, even as it is, the longbow has advantages in several situations.

Othayuni can you prove that QZ fired more then 16 arrows in 4 seconds? By your numbers it should have fired pre-patch rougly 9 arrows every 2 seconds or 18-19 arrows in 4 seconds.

Can you find a video that shows the number is correct? I’ve not seen a single video that showed QZ fired more then 16.

Account.9832:

Shortbow range is 900, longbow range is 1200.

It’s 900 for thieves, for rangers both are 1200. See for yourself.

But the vulnerability part is true, I stand corrected. However, it’s still not enough to make it viable.

Also, there are a lot of situations – namely, most parts of every single dungeon – when you’re not able to gain enough range to have full power longbow autoattack – or are forced to move closer due to various mechanics and aoes.