Guild Wars 2

I thought Anet said they’d be buffing our shouts, no?
So exactly why are they even kittentier then before?

“Guard”, literally became “Protect Me” (wow….great job on that change….) except it blocks less damage for you, and if you have a significant amount of allies around, your pet will explode in a split second.
At least before it was a nice low cooldown so we could perma-swiftness+regen our allies, and also gain alittle protection with “Heal As One”, and a very nice party condition removal in conjunction with Rune Of The Trooper" (while it still worked…)

“Protect Me” – a 4 second protection, and one of the most unreliable cc in the game. Taunt the next enemy who attacks you, to AFTERWARDS (it will not block that attack or anything) attack your pet. So you basically have no control over the single person your taunting, and you better pray to god the next person who attacks you is in range or it does nothing.
The old “Protect Me” was garbage, expecially compare to Signet Of Stone, but now its absolutely worthless.

“Search And Rescue” – the only shout that actually got a change for the better….finally. Was about time they took away that ridiculous recharge. It did get an overly nice buff tho, and I won’t be surprised to see it nerfed to nothing again.

Come on Anet, honestly….rangers have the worst utilities in the game and all you do is screw it up more and more, first spirits, now shouts…cant wait to see your “buff” to Survival skills…

I’m more shocked “Sic ’Em!” didn’t get buffed or reworked in some way. It would have been nice to have it apply an AOE Reveal around the pet for a certain radius rather than be a stealth prevention upon activation.

Agreed. Previously I could get perma swiftness and regen with only 2 shouts: heal as one and guard. Now I would have to waste 2 utilities or go druid.

Sic ‘Em as is requires you to anticipate the use of stealth, or just prevent it when it’d be inconvenient. I prefer the proactive requirement to a reactive skill personally.

My issue is mainly with Guard – what they’ve done is just two flavours of Protect Me where probably one would suffice. Additionally, the option to actually guard an area has disappeared, which would be OK if a replacement had been added to the pet utility bar where it should have been from the beginning.

What Guard should do is cause your pet to follow an allied target, grant protection to them, and taunt anything that attacks them – i.e. very similar to what Protect Me now does.

Protect Me was an inferior version of SoS that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but could have been reworked to be a Ranger equivalent to Shelter – i.e. while the pet is alive, enemies without stability cannot approach.

I like the changes. Keep in mind Protect Me is also 24s cd with shout reduction trait. You shouldn’t expect it to make you invulnerable like Signet of Stone which is 80s cd. It also acts as a break stun for you and your allies, which is very helpful.

Guard also reduces damage by half for not only you but your allies aswell, which is pretty interesting.

Couldn’t agree more about the changes to “Guard” being a nerf. Before the patch this ability allowed a player to utilize their pet in a variety of offensive ways that were surprising and quite punishing to enemy players when executed properly.

Now the ability is next to useless as “Guard” is essentially nothing more than suicide for a player’s pet in exchange for stacks of might. Because the cooldown for pet swapping is increased when a pet dies then swapped out, the might gained from this ability will never be worth the risk.

To be fair the previous low 15s-12s traited cooldown was overpowered as it allowed a ranger access to nearly perma swiftness, regeneration, and pet invisibility off of one low risk utility slot. So the increased cooldown from 15s-12s to 30s-24s traited was needed, however the new mechanics make “Guard” an option that is only feasible for pets with high vitality and toughness. Even then the ability is a rather inefficient use of a utility slot that again does not allow any synergy with the majority of pets.

I hope that anet will consider reverting the changes to “Guard” aside from the cooldown increase, or possibly adding the previous mechanics of pet location control and invisibility (with perhaps a reduction from 10s of pet stealth to 5s) to the new “Guard” mechanics.

I disagree about guard being a nerf as it’s not even the same thing anymore, but I guess some will miss the old version. I personally never had a swiftness problem with Strength of the Pack and We Heal as One as my two only shouts.

They changed the shouts to help your allies, as opposed to be selfish which is what shouts are supposed to be, no?

Skullface.7293:

I like the changes. Keep in mind Protect Me is also 24s cd with shout reduction trait. You shouldn’t expect it to make you invulnerable like Signet of Stone which is 80s cd. It also acts as a break stun for you and your allies, which is very helpful.

Guard also reduces damage by half for not only you but your allies aswell, which is pretty interesting.

I like them as well.

Literally no one was using Guard for anything else but role-playing…
… Now it became a viable utility option.

And I see nothing but cries.
I’m only disappointed we didn’t get any fixes. I love the new shouts. Their use is amazing.

Huge fan of the new shouts. I didn’t like the old Protect Me at all, as it was too similar to SoS. The new version is a very nice, short CD stun break with a handy taunt. The new 50/50 split on Guard is seriously great if you don’t run with glass pets. The new Search and Rescue is beautiful on such a low CD… I cri.

Sick em is fine, even if a bit niche. There was no reason to buff it.

Guard I feel is more of a skirmishing ability for 1v1s or 2v2s to try and redirect the burst towards the pet. It also works really well with any heal or druid AoE healing sills as it is a burst heal so the damage that is split can be covered twice as much.

Protect me is simply amazing. We already have an invulnerability to damage but we lacked stun breakers. Now we have 3 on fairly short CDs all with different flavor and niches. It is also an AoE stun break, a protection application and taunt which is simply very good.

SnR I have yet to test it and I am really confused with the 5 man cap. Does it teleport up to 5 people to you but the pet only starts resing 1? or all 5? or teleports 1 and reses 1?

Are you even surprised?

All the Ranger related buffs are mediocre and the nerfs are excessive.
It has been a trend.

We’re not going to get Necro, Mesmer, Thief treatment any time soon.

Chokolata.1870:

SnR I have yet to test it and I am really confused with the 5 man cap. Does it teleport up to 5 people to you but the pet only starts resing 1? or all 5? or teleports 1 and reses 1?

It applies regen to 5 nearby targets and teleports the closest downed ally within 1200 radius towards you and starts the pet rez.

Shouts have been buffed across the board. I don’t think they’re strong enough to entirely push glyphs out, at least in pvp. 2 glyphs and 3 shouts seems like a safe bet for the new meta. Great to see all the utility that’s been added for rangers to play with.