Guild Wars 2

Pet AI is still trash despite what you stated in the SOTG, you added in internal cooldowns to skills that didn’t need it, Spirits are STILL trash and will die in a few hits, not to mention their passive effects are STILL garbage, and Search And Rescue, our literally only viable shout, is useless now. Signets, are still trash.

Quickening Zephyr buff is “decent” it’s still subpar, Lightning Reflxes I am happy about, and the reduced cast time on pet skills I am happy about.

Seriously Arena Net, get your kitten together. You’re giving us useless “buffs,” the class needs a rework, not tweaks.

I find your definition of “nothing” very amusing.

If you watched SOTG then you should have known that this was going to be a slow process they want to see how we do before doing anything else? Sounds to me like ur upset why not just play 1 of ur other 80’s until rangers are of ur liking. I personally love these changes sure its not OMG were EPIC now but its a step in the right direction I played my ranger b4 the patch and ill continue to play him…I suggest Linnes just needs to take a step back and enjoy the game

For my build personally these tweaks added up and I suspect will have a fairly large impact. Aside from elite skill, my other three regularly used skills had some sort of beneficial change to them, and one weapon skill (longbow #4 traited) was fixed which does make a difference for me.

Did they make changes to weapons like I wanted them to? No. Overall though, compared to the last update, it looks like a step in the right direction on paper for me.

Jw, what build are you running and what do you want to see fixed mainly? I enjoy beserker build, so the signet changes, qz time increase, lr time decrease, as well as canine f2 decreases is way better than what last update was for me :P

Ursan.7846:

I find your definition of “nothing” very amusing.

It speaks the truth though, nothing worth any note in this patch, class is still garbage for any form of pve. I guess I’ll just keep working on my champion hunter title.

rpwolverin.2563:

If you watched SOTG then you should have known that this was going to be a slow process they want to see how we do before doing anything else? Sounds to me like ur upset why not just play 1 of ur other 80’s until rangers are of ur liking. I personally love these changes sure its not OMG were EPIC now but its a step in the right direction I played my ranger b4 the patch and ill continue to play him…I suggest Linnes just needs to take a step back and enjoy the game

So you mean play on my gaurdian, the superior PvE class like I already am? Why should my ranger have had to suffer for months and months due to Arena Net’s lack in balancing abilities? Honestly, get a new dev team.

Paz Shadow.9715:

Jw, what build are you running and what do you want to see fixed mainly? I enjoy beserker build, so the signet changes, qz time increase, lr time decrease, as well as canine f2 decreases is way better than what last update was for me :P

Basically the only viable build in PvE atm is traps and conditions. Unless you want to run crit/attack power rush down on most mobs, which does work, but your damage is still going to be nowhere near the same as any other classes. Rangers need GROUP SUPPORT, not self-buffs. For PvP I run standard regen trapper/semi-bunker.

Really, the only changes worth mentioning as good are the pet health increase and the signet buff – which only applies if you happen to run a fairly high BM spec and/or signets.

The internal CD on skills/traits is just rude.

Never did bother with S&R, because it never seemed to work anyway – kind of like lick wounds – I can count on the fingers of one foot how many times it’s actually worked for me. (Still say lick wounds should be changed to “companion’s sacrifice: If your animal companion is alive, it sacrifices itself and you rally in its location.”)

Longbow still desperately needs tweaks – mostly making long range shot’s damage static, making it’s activation time match it’s bloody description (right now it takes 1.75 seconds to repeat, instead of the tooltip time) and increasing arrow flight-speed by 50-100%.

Still, better than nothing.

So if anyone from Arena Net actually ganders at this thread, here is how you fix rangers:

Pets:
1. In PvE, pet’s no longer take AoE damage, pet’s only take AoE damage when their masters do (equal amount). This prevents pets from dying to any bosses AoE if the master gets out of the way.
2. Improve pet AI, or allow micro-managing of ALL pet skills.
-To add to this: Pet F2 skills should cancel out any skill the pet is currently using, and have priority.

Spirits:
1. Spirits need an improved passive buff, increase all spirit duration’s by (earth spirit’s protection at 5 seconds, etc).
-Frost Spirit: Increase damage on hit to 25%
-Stone Spirit: Increase protection duration to 5 seconds, lower internal cooldown to 6 seconds.
-Sun Spirit: Change to; when allies attack they have an x% chance of granting might to themselves. Make it’s activation a Fire Field.
-Storm Spirit: Change to; Allies have x% chance to blind foe when attacking, Make the internal cooldown 8 seconds.. Swiftness is useless in dungeons, as other classes can provide much better support with it.
2. Add a stunbreaker to the spirits line, earth spirit activation for example.
3. Increase spirits ARMOR rating, not health. Health does nothing when they have no armor.

Wilderness Survival Skills:
1. Quickening Zephyr; reduce duration to 4 seconds, this skill now heals for you for only 50% while active, increase quickness speed to 75%.
2. Lightning Reflex; reduce cooldown to 30 seconds. Remove damage (it’s superfluous). At the end of the roll, grants all allies vigor for 5 seconds. Allow this skill to be used instantly while knocked down (I think this is a bug currently, it has a cooldown if you’re KD’d).

Weapons:
1. Longbow; reduce cooldowns, increase flight speed of arrows, improve damage. There is no reason why Rapid Fire should hit for only 8k in a full berserker build (using the most DPS-oriented set) for a 5 second cast time. Auto attack can do better, assuming max range.
2. Warhorn; lower Call of the Wild’s cooldown to 30 seconds. Increase all boons duration to 20 seconds.
3. Warhorn; lower Hunter’s Call cooldown to 20 seconds, and inflict bleeding and blind to target.
4. Shortbow; improve bleed duriation on Crossfire.
5. Shortbow; make Poison Volley a ground-targetable AoE Poison Field (yes I realize poison field is the worst combo field, still an improvement).

Elites:
1. Entangle; this is more of a “nerf,” but allow the roots to be more easily targetable.
2. Rampage As One; lower cooldown to 80 seconds, allow it to change between pets on swap, increase might duration to 10 seconds.
3. Spirit Of Nature; this spirit now moves with master regardless of trait. The spirit now passively revives DEAD allies (not instant revive). Activating the spirit is still the same, revives downed allies. Increase passive heal to 450 (I realize it is 480 now, it’s most likely a bug, tooltip says 320 is the supposed heal).

@Linnes

Hate to nitpick, but rapid fire hits for well over 10k, without going in for a ’zerker set. (I run PVT gear with runes of the ranger, and regularly see it hit 12-16k in wvwvw.)

I like the idea of sharing AoE damage with the ranger, as opposed to how it is now.
Instant F2 response would be golden.

You’re asking for too much love to hunter’s call as well.

Bleed duration on Crossfire is fine right now – just remove the flanking requirement. Like the AoE poison field though.

Spirits should be like banners – not targetable nor killable. Problem solved.

Rampage as one – I didn’t realise it didn’t last through pet swap – I’m good with the recharge, just add pet swap. (Do this for master’s bond as well – it should only end on pet death.)

stale.9785:

@Linnes

Hate to nitpick, but rapid fire hits for well over 10k, without going in for a ’zerker set. (I run PVT gear with runes of the ranger, and regularly see it hit 12-16k in wvwvw.)

I like the idea of sharing AoE damage with the ranger, as opposed to how it is now.
Instant F2 response would be golden.

You’re asking for too much love to hunter’s call as well.

Bleed duration on Crossfire is fine right now – just remove the flanking requirement. Like the AoE poison field though.

Spirits should be like banners – not targetable nor killable. Problem solved.

Rampage as one – I didn’t realise it didn’t last through pet swap – I’m good with the recharge, just add pet swap. (Do this for master’s bond as well – it should only end on pet death.)

I have never once seen Rapid Fire ever hit above 10k, apart from dragons which rely on power and have lowered defenses. This is me running roughly 3.2k attack power and 45% crit rate (the ideal rate).

Hunter’s Call really does need the buff though, all it is now is a more-stable, but lower damage Rapid Fire. It would also make it a very viable weapon for condition builds.

I like your idea about spirits being like banners, but they STILL need an improved effect. Look at Frost Spirit for example, the damage on is only a 3.5%-5% increased rate when you account for internal cooldown and trigger rates.

April fools is over, my man. It’s time for may flowers. Smell them sometime.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, my Drake was practically tanking bosses in the new dungeon. My Jag survived most AoEs. Spirits are decent now, however they’re best when fighting from ranged.

Those all sound like good ideas, especially the pet AoE damage and spirit changes.
I’ve never had any PvE survival problems that didn’t stem from my own sloppy mistakes but the lack of group utility is something that always stood out. Healing Spring is certainly good, but it isn’t enough.

Has everyone noticed this tidbit from the WvW notes?

“•Frost Spirit (ranger utility skill) no longer applies 10% damage buff to siege weapons”

That was a handy little trick.

Yeah I’m done with this game for now.
And I seriously have nothing to do with my time but like read or sign up for a swim team or something.

Maybe in a year or two, or if they get a new dev team they will get their kitten together.
I’ve given these guys waaaay too many shots when it comes to PvP.
Shoulda just left this game when my brother and all my friends did.

Ursan.7846:

I find your definition of “nothing” very amusing.

I have yet to find the build that you are using Ursan – or videos of your conquests – the rest of us have serious concerns about the state of the “powerful” Ranger who should be lord of the wilderness but NEVER IS with a pet that has ONE THIRD the power it did BEFORE it was “TAMED”.

We do need a re-tooling – or a re-imagining of what a FANTASY Ranger is supposed to be able to do alone in the wilderness against ANY foe.

garethh.3518:

Yeah I’m done with this game for now.
And I seriously have nothing to do with my time but like read or sign up for a swim team or something.

Maybe in a year or two, or if they get a new dev team they will get their kitten together.
I’ve given these guys waaaay too many shots when it comes to PvP.
Shoulda just left this game when my brother and all my friends did.

I hear this from players around the web where I search for ACTIVE builds for Ranger – none of LATE exist – not many are posting to youtube – it seems to be a lost cause – Anet and GuildWars2 hates Rangers.

Wow look at all this whining. Robert Hrouda said this patch will be a step in the right direction. And personally I think that’s what happened with signets and pets, and reduced shout cooldown. If you think pets should still hit moving targets, and take less aoe damage you need to wake up. If pets with their curent hp/toughness would reliably hit moving targets everyone would roll BM and they would be pretty much undestroyable. Pets would become unkillable homing missiles that hit like a truck while you pretty much outheal everything and are unkillable. That is what a good d/d ele was like before, or a good shatter mesmer, or a good thief. I don’t want that to happen to rangers. We (pets included) are not perfect, but I think its a good first step. Now they need to sort out the mess that is our traits and we should be good. The 2 next changes I would love to see is longbow autoattack getting a buff of some sorts (cripple proc/speed buff/damage buff) and lighnint reflexes removing chilled, crippled and immobilized.

Linnes.2678:

Pet AI is still trash despite what you stated in the SOTG, you added in internal cooldowns to skills that didn’t need it

So stacking up swiftness and fury on you and your pet for ~ 40 seconds simply by picking up and dropping a bundle 3-4 times is fine to you?

Oh goody! I get to link my post last week!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Skills-and-Traits-Clarifications-Fixes/1869548

Agreed. Although I’d like to point out that he said the next patch is a STEP in the right direction and it WONT fix all of the ranger problems in one patch. Please remember that. I’m gonna have to link this post a few times next week XD

That said, these changes are big for signets. The main reason no one uses their actives is because their passives are really good (scaling regen, increased movespeed, passive condition removal), with ok-ish actives when traited but with horrible cooldowns. Now that the horrible cooldowns have been addressed, we might see more actives used. I mean come on, how many jaguar burst vids (that use Signet of the Hunt + Signet of the Wild + Sick ’Em) do you need to see before you acknowledge that rangers does have burst damage?

atheria.2837:

garethh.3518:

Yeah I’m done with this game for now.
And I seriously have nothing to do with my time but like read or sign up for a swim team or something.

Maybe in a year or two, or if they get a new dev team they will get their kitten together.
I’ve given these guys waaaay too many shots when it comes to PvP.
Shoulda just left this game when my brother and all my friends did.

I hear this from players around the web where I search for ACTIVE builds for Ranger – none of LATE exist – not many are posting to youtube – it seems to be a lost cause – Anet and GuildWars2 hates Rangers.

Because everyone running regen is afraid of a nerf. Look up regen ranger.

I also feel like these changes are not too big but good for the area’s where they are done in. Signets feel on par with other classes signets. Shouts still feel kinda meh and so do spirits. But the main thing Anet still needs to adress imo, is they way pets are used. The buff is nice but in alot of cases, is not gonna cut it.

Ursan.7846:

I find your definition of “nothing” very amusing.

QFT

Do you people have amnesia? Have you forgotten the majority of patches before this where the ranger community actually got subpar and trivial tweaks?

atheria.2837:

I have yet to find the build that you are using Ursan – or videos of your conquests – the rest of us have serious concerns about the state of the “powerful” Ranger who should be lord of the wilderness but NEVER IS with a pet that has ONE THIRD the power it did BEFORE it was “TAMED”.

We do need a re-tooling – or a re-imagining of what a FANTASY Ranger is supposed to be able to do alone in the wilderness against ANY foe.

It’s kinda amusing to see you try to call me out. You doubt the success I’m having with my Ranger?

Look me up on the PvP leaderboards. Ranked 289, 42-25 record. Most of my games (95%) is with my Ranger (Maiden Jeanne).

Ranger in sPvP is fine. Very strong. Dungeons? Sure, we have some problems. Zerg WvW? Sure, our pets die fast. But Rangers are very powerful in 1v1 situations in WvW, solo situations in PvE, and sPvP.

Rangers are far from unplayable. We have problems? Sure. Unplayable? This is a laughable notion.

For the record, here are the ranger changes from the patch that Linnes is referring to as “nothing”:

Ranger

Tail Wind trait: Now has an internal cooldown of 9 seconds.
Furious Grip trait: Now has an internal cooldown of 9 seconds.
“Guard” skill: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
“Sic ’Em” skill: Reduced cooldown to 40 seconds from 60 seconds.
Lightning Reflexes skill: Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
Signet of Stone skill:
Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 80 seconds.
Increased passive toughness by 100%.
Now allows capture of control points in all formats and communing in PvP.
Signet of the Wild skill: Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 60 seconds and duration from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
Spiritual Knowledge trait: Increased activation chance from 15% to 35%.
Swoop skill: Corrected the damage indicated in the skill fact.
Increased health of all non-elite spirits by 60%.
“Search and Rescue” skill:
Increased cooldown from 85 seconds to 180 seconds in PvP.
No longer revives defeated allies.
Point Blank Shot skill: No longer has an increased cast time when the Eagle Eye trait is equipped.
Quickening Zephyr skill:
Increased duration by 1 second.
Players are now healed at 50% effectiveness (increased from 0%) when under the effects of this skill.

Pet Attributes

Adjusted health and/or armor of ranger pets:
Ursine pets: health increased from 26,000 to 29982; armor is now 2061 (up 687). Polar bear’s power now matches that of all other bear pets.
Dogs: health increased from 13,000 to 14,868; armor is 2061 (no change).
Cats: health increased from 13,000 to 14,868; armor is 1374 (no change).
Devourers: health increased from 11,089 to 14868; armor is 2748 (no change).
Birds: health increased from 11,894 to 14,868; armor is 1374 (no change).
Drakes: health increased from 11,683 to 22,425; armor is 2061 (no change).
Spiders: health increased from 18,646 to 22,425; armor is 1374 (no change).
Pigs: health increased from 20,538 to 22,425; armor is now 2061 (up 687).
Moas: health increased from 16,781 to 22,425; armor is 1374 (no change).
Armor Fish: health increased from 16,781 to 22,452; armor is now 2748 (up 343).
Jellyfish: health increased from 11,089 to 22,425; armor is 1374 (no change).
Shark: health increased from 13,000 to 22,425; armor is now 2061 (up 687).

Canine Skills

Intimidating Howl skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Regenerate skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Howl of the Pack skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Chilling Howl skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Terrifying Howl skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Drake Skills

Lightning Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds. The lightning from this attack no longer tracks targets.
Fire Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Insect Swarm skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Frost Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Feline Skills

Icy Pounce skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Rending Pounce skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Jellyfish Skills

Immobilizing Whirl skill: Now sticks on its target instead of passing through.
Chilling Whirl skill: Now sticks on its target instead of passing through.
Poisoning Whirl skill: Now sticks on its target instead of passing through.