Guild Wars 2

With all the recent changes, I can’t help but feel the ranger is in a worse spot than before. They lost out on 10-20% damage from modifiers depending on the build, and now are heavily reliant on weapon swapping and remorseless to make up for it.

The pet got buffed a bit from traits, and we have a few on pet swap effects, so with all said and done, rangers are about as strong as there were before, only now they require far more management for equal effect.

However, there was also quite a bit of power creep caused by this patch for other professions. When you account for this, rangers may be competitively worse off now than they were before.

Bri.8354:

With all the recent changes, I can’t help but feel the ranger is in a worse spot than before. They lost out on 10-20% damage from modifiers depending on the build, and now are heavily reliant on weapon swapping and remorseless to make up for it.

The pet got buffed a bit from traits, and we have a few on pet swap effects, so with all said and done, rangers are about as strong as there were before, only now they require far more management for equal effect.

However, there was also quite a bit of power creep caused by this patch for other professions. When you account for this, rangers may be competitively worse off now than they were before.

Before clarion bond got slapped with that 30 second cooldown, I’d say rangers were in a better spot than before. But now that clarion bond can no longer be abused, I’d say we’re just treading water at this point.

Everyone got their damage buffed across the board due to stats being shifted from trait lines to gear. While my full zerk ranger deals more damage now than before the patch, my non-zerker guardian (currently using a mishmash of zerk, soldiers, and knights) deals even more damage than my ranger.

Yep. Everything got buffed, but rangers much less than others. Still staying around pre-patch dps, while other classes are leaping ahead. Really disappointed.

Depends. Utility-wise, Rangers are a little bit better than before due to the 5% increase chance of passive Spirit benefits for Frost Spirit (small but it’s something) and Clarion Bond trait for the extra blast and fury.

Damage-wise, Rangers are a little bit better there as well. We lost some damage modifiers, but one was changed to increase critical hit chance. Granted, that change was across the board for the former precision lines of all classes, but it helped dropping a bit of Assassin’s gear for more Berserker’s pieces (assuming you did slot any Assassin’s pieces).

Gained a bit more damage in fights under 10seconds with Remorseless and Greatsword + Sword/Axe swap combo. In longer fights, we gained a slight bit of damage camping Sword with double off-hand axes thanks to being able to fire off Path of Scars on each swap with Quick Draw.

So, to answer the question: No, Rangers are not in a worse spot PVE-wise. A bit better, but by no means worse.

Don’t forget Quick Draw. You could go double Maul into double Rapid Fire.

The rangers are in a worse spot, not because of them becoming bad, but because the top 3 classes for PvE just got much much better.

Warrior got a 35% damage boost compared to the base damage values when using PS (base values are without % damage modifiers)

Thieves damage got boosted, I cannot bother calculating by how much, because they can take many % modifiers, get 200 power on revealed training and 250 ferocity with no quarter.

Eles got better a tad.

So the optimal composition is: PS war, 2x staff ele, 1 thief and 1 guardian. There is no reason to bring any other classes in dungeon runs.

I believe that Rangers might become a thing if a content with Sinister Stats appear.

Till then, Rangers got behind from meta to viable, only.
Viable as not being a burden but still not suitable for record runs.

Personally, I find if you use long bow vs gs it is a damage loss in pve. Sword axe / greatsword is the higher dps wep set. PvE wise I feel that ranger brings more to the table then it did before and still has really good single target dps.

So about the same as before.

Yes Ranger is in a worse PvE spot than before. Ranger actually lost damage modifiers through the patch, although Damage is overall higher now due to new options when it comes to skill rotations it’s not that much of a buff compared to before.

What makes ranger worse now, is that pretty much every other meta class got HUGE buffs, further solidifying their spot in the meta, while ranger just got kind of better. Warrior DPS with PS (or pure damage builds for that matter) is bonkers now, Guardian just got one of the best DPS support skills in the whole game (I still really think the cooldown of it needs to be nerfed), thief is a monster now, and icebow got buffed too. There is no reason to take a ranger, even considering pure DPS only (group DPS support is basically the only gimmick the class ever had that made it interesting) Ranger isn’t really worth taking anymore.

Eirh.1439:

Yes Ranger is in a worse PvE spot than before. Ranger actually lost damage modifiers through the patch, although Damage is overall higher now due to new options when it comes to skill rotations it’s not that much of a buff compared to before.

We got one steroid buffed (from modifier to crit) and we haven’t lost any.
We gained one in return. Our pets got buffed, too.

But yes, it’s nothing really that would burn our way through the ceiling to the new meta.

I don’t think they’re necessarily worse, we got buffs.. But a couple things to point out from nerfs we also received: Vigor uptime, huge for us – ranger relies on this for survival.

An important thing to note about PvP meta and it’s shaping is burst dmg is MUCHHHH higher across the board for all classes which makes zerker ranger not as good.

Burn dmg will be nerfed so yes, there are some gimmick builds running around primarily based around burn dmg stacking and dealing unreal damage but this won’t last long. It will be nerfed for sure, but burst dmg I imagine will be the same which is absolutely fine it just lowers the viability of power ranger… Once ranger pops stone signet and then is focused, it’s over ESPECIALLY against good teams who know ranger.

Really, I thought bark skin would be 50% dmg reduction and not 33% which would make it good for the burst builds now, because dmg is insane right now between thief / warrior / mesmer and engi. The nature magic GM protective ward i think it is that gives weakness and protection aoe is pretty good but the radius is really low, needs to be bumped up a bit – it is decent for thief’s opening burst and warrior melee burst I’ve found but other than that, it’s really not that good at all. There’s alot of other things.

The ranger weapons themselves are very simplistic and provide no ‘wow’ factor or great cleave at all which is why he ranger doesn’t really have a high skill ceiling. Cleave is essential for power builds in PvP and ranger just doesn’t have any at the moment as well. The longbow is ALRIGHT, but easily countered by sitting on you (thieves) and blinding you (thieves). Right now, all it takes is to put pressure on you while you’re in longbow and you lose your edge having to fight the thief that is on you which is what most good teams will do and you are literally out of the fight, where as more tanky classes who run the same power builds (with more dmg also, keep in mind GS and longbow have much lower damage coefficients than any other class) have more depth to them . Also , AOE in PvP is huge therefore pets die very quickly even with the 50% dmg reduction from barkskin which is only at >90% anyway I believe.

I just think they’re in the same spot because everyone else got really good buffs and adjustments to their builds. I’m speaking primarily from a PvP standpoint.

Spirits were the reason ranger was good, primarily sun spirit/stone spirit and the elite… But with those nerfed into the ground, you really won’t see ranger in any top tier tournaments for a long time until they get some unique team viability.

EDIT: I’m dumb and realized after i wrote all of this out that the OP was referring to only PvE. My bad lol , but oh well I’m keeping it here anyway. :P

Tragic Positive.9356:

Eirh.1439:

Yes Ranger is in a worse PvE spot than before. Ranger actually lost damage modifiers through the patch, although Damage is overall higher now due to new options when it comes to skill rotations it’s not that much of a buff compared to before.

We got one steroid buffed (from modifier to crit) and we haven’t lost any.
We gained one in return. Our pets got buffed, too.

But yes, it’s nothing really that would burn our way through the ceiling to the new meta.

+10%crit chance while flanking vs +10% damage while flanking is not a buff.

If your crit chance is already 100%, this trait does exactly nothing. If your crit chance is less than 100%, it will increase your damage, but not by nearly as much as a flat 10%

Quarktastic.1027:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Eirh.1439:

Yes Ranger is in a worse PvE spot than before. Ranger actually lost damage modifiers through the patch, although Damage is overall higher now due to new options when it comes to skill rotations it’s not that much of a buff compared to before.

We got one steroid buffed (from modifier to crit) and we haven’t lost any.
We gained one in return. Our pets got buffed, too.

But yes, it’s nothing really that would burn our way through the ceiling to the new meta.

+10%crit chance while flanking vs +10% damage while flanking is not a buff.

If your crit chance is already 100%, this trait does exactly nothing. If your crit chance is less than 100%, it will increase your damage, but not by nearly as much as a flat 10%

It boosts crits – from which on-crit effects trigger more often (bleeds, sigils) – that’s a DPS boost by itself. Moreover, Ferocity increase my mg by 219% now. Which means 10% crit chance is more than 10% DPS boost without on-crit effects itself.

Feels like a nerf overall but still playing with stuff, compared to the other’s buffs Ranger is really smacked down and the better ranger builds are now nothing special. It also feels like you have to mash buttons a lot more to get to that level of poor mediocrity.

ANet always does this to rangers because thy know people will play them anyway so they can just focus on buffing warriors, which is all they seem to like to play.

Challenge to ANet, respond in this thread; it’s a challenge because I doubt anyone from ANet development/balance ever visits this forum,

current PVE content, record runs, etc are completely irrelevant imo, with all the sweeping changes coming in HoT. something tells me people wont be able to run full glass in Maguuma jungle.

mistsim.2748:

current PVE content, record runs, etc are completely irrelevant imo, with all the sweeping changes coming in HoT. something tells me people wont be able to run full glass in Maguuma jungle.

I think there will probably be 1 tank at best and Sinisters/Zerks all around. That’s my guess.
Even 50 fractals are played on full zerks.

Can’t really comment at the moment. In fact, none can as far as PvE goes.

Overall, rangers got buffed by a good amount. Other classes did as well. Things in PvE melt in 20 seconds tops now with a good group and coordination.

Did arah p4 with my group, Ele,Warr,Grd,Thief,Rnger(me). We cleared the whole instance, and every single monster group or boss died in less than 30 seconds tops.

PvE wise, things just went from very easy to complete 10year old faceroling with 4 buttons.

Gw2 was by far the easiest MMO I’ve played (pve-wise) but at the moment it’s a joke.

Percent damage multipliers are actually very powerful because the way they are calculated. They are multiplied so after a certain point, that “10% damage” trait can end up being an ~14% damage increase.

For instance, with Steady Focus, scholar runes, and a force sigil, you are currently looking at a (1,000 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 1,270.5) 27% damage increase, not 25%.

If we add another two 10% damage modifiers on there, which the old meta build had, we have a (1,000 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 1,537.3) 53.7% damage increase, not 45%.

If you add on the 25% from Signet of the Wild, 10% from potions, and 10% from night runes, to the old build, you are looking at a (1,000 * 1.25 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 2,325.173) 132.5% damage increase, not 90%.

So losing out on those two 10% damage modifiers is a significant hit, something an occasional 25% damage modifier from remorseless and faster weapon swapping might not make up for.

Edit: After doing the math on how much criticals increase your damage, if you have ascended berserker, ranger runes, and spotter, you should have 85% crit chance and 220% crit damage. With Hunter’s Tactics, which was converted from % damage to critical chance, you will have a 95% critical chance which will increase your DPS by ~11%. However, guaranteed crits from remorseless and precision from other sources that would put you over 100% would lower its effectiveness.

In short, Hunter’s tactics is around the same DPS as it was before the change as long as you don’t use remorseless or go over 100% crit chance, in which case its a lot worse.

Bri.8354:

Percent damage multipliers are actually very powerful because the way they are calculated. They are multiplied so after a certain point, that “10% damage” trait can end up being an ~14% damage increase.

For instance, with Steady Focus, scholar runes, and a force sigil, you are currently looking at a (1,000 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 1,270.5) 27% damage increase, not 25%.

If we add another two 10% damage modifiers on there, which the old meta build had, we have a (1,000 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 1,537.3) 53.7% damage increase, not 45%.

If you add on the 25% from Signet of the Wild, 10% from potions, and 10% from night runes, to the old build, you are looking at a (1,000 * 1.25 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.05 = 2,325.173) 132.5% damage increase, not 90%.

So losing out on those two 10% damage modifiers is a significant hit, something an occasional 25% damage modifier from remorseless and faster weapon swapping might not make up for.

Edit: After doing the math on how much criticals increase your damage, if you have ascended berserker, ranger runes, and spotter, you should have 85% crit chance and 220% crit damage. With Hunter’s Tactics, which was converted from % damage to critical chance, you will have a 95% critical chance which will increase your DPS by ~11%. However, guaranteed crits from remorseless and precision from other sources that would put you over 100% would lower its effectiveness.

In short, Hunter’s tactics is around the same DPS as it was before the change as long as you don’t use remorseless or go over 100% crit chance, in which case its a lot worse.

Same goes for Crits…
Edit: For a reason, the post wasn’t with your edit when I made the reply and I didn’t notice it in the quote. My bad.

Holland.9351:

Don’t forget Quick Draw. You could go double Maul into double Rapid Fire.

I’ll give you quadruple maul + RF and you still won’t match the dps of an ele or war or thief. And you are still happy with your pathetic double maul + RF.

Anet is genius when it comes to balancing ranger.

DPS feels about the same as pre-patch. Soloing things die slightly slower… slightly… Just barely enough to notice. I’m not using my Ranger though for anything other than WBT and open world stuffs. In fractals and dungeons I’m bringing Guard, War or thief since June 23 patch depending on party comp.

You will match the dps of a war but never of the ele or thief. They are in another galaxy compared to the rest

niconori.7235:

Anet is genius when it comes to balancing ranger.

And it will ever be so because they don’t play it themselves.

Sandpit.3467:

niconori.7235:

Anet is genius when it comes to balancing ranger.

And it will ever be so because they don’t play it themselves.

I think its more because the key people who are behind the class design decisions are also the ones who are behind structured PvP. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first thing that comes to their mind is how the changes will work in sPvP.

Then we have the developers preference with each profession. They have their favorites and some professions are designed better than others. The ranger just isn’t designed well and they rarely seem enthusiastic when discussing it.

Then they refuse to correctly balance for each game mode. Few skills are split for sPvP/WvW/PvE and not one skill functions differently between the game modes. This is a huge problem as certain mechanics are more important in one game mode than another. Some professions have many mechanics that are powerful in PvE, while other like the ranger and especially the necromancer, don’t.

If they want to balance PvE then each profession needs important and unique mechanics and roles. We can’t have professions that are weaker versions of another (ranger vs warrior, both have the same role which is largely group damage boosts and personal DPS, which the warrior does better), or completely lacking ones like the necromancer.

Bri.8354:

If they want to balance PvE then each profession needs important and unique mechanics and roles. We can’t have professions that are weaker versions of another (ranger vs warrior, both have the same role which is largely group damage boosts and personal DPS, which the warrior does better), or completely lacking ones like the necromancer.

Just wanted to ask – is this confirmed? We had better DPS before the patch. And I haven’t tested this myself, yet.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Bri.8354:

If they want to balance PvE then each profession needs important and unique mechanics and roles. We can’t have professions that are weaker versions of another (ranger vs warrior, both have the same role which is largely group damage boosts and personal DPS, which the warrior does better), or completely lacking ones like the necromancer.

Just wanted to ask – is this confirmed? We had better DPS before the patch. And I haven’t tested this myself, yet.

I’m not sure what personal DPS is like now, but I speaking more of those things combined. Rangers get frost spirit and spotter while warriors get 2 banners, Empower allies, and Phalanx Strength. The two essentially share the same role, but warrior has always been better at it.

Bri.8354:

I’m not sure what personal DPS is like now, but I speaking more of those things combined. Rangers get frost spirit and spotter while warriors get 2 banners, Empower allies, and Phalanx Strength. The two essentially share the same role, but warrior has always been better at it.

Well, this much I knew. Warrior’s banners and Phalanx Strength have always been superior team support to Ranger.

But Rangers were able to pull of higher self-DPS. I haven’t seen any Warrior DPS video or promotion post-patch so I didn’t have the chance to compare. I don’t play warriors. Not really my cup of tea (and the IRL friend of mine who offered me to play his character is out of reach atm)

EA PS Warrior DPS is a lot better now. That much I can attest to. Better than Ranger? Meh. Maybe, but the bonuses from bringing a EA PS Warrior vs a Ranger… lol, GTFarkO Ranger…

I only play PvE and so far I have not found a build that equals the damage of my previous set up. In low level areas my level 80 would often 1 shot mobs, now it’s 3 or 4 shots. I’m not saying this is a terrible thing , I was probably over powered before the patch in low area. Even though I know this it still ticks me off that I seem weaker. I’ll probably get over it.
The place that it’s seemed worst so far is dungeons. prepatch 3 of us running well spec’d Rangers could go through Twilight Arbor with a little effort. The night of the patch 5 of us got our hats handed to us about half war through. I realize that the point is to have to work at it little but that much of a change is a little demoralizing. I purchased the $100 upgrade and I’m finding that even before it’s gone live I’ve been scanning the web for something else to play. Maybe HoT will make me feel different when it goes live but at this point I’m feeling like they fixed a game that wasn’t broken.

I out DPS my warrior as well as my friends. I first noticed it when I went onto my warrior and specced PS/Rampage and it does very well. But the overall damage portion compared to what I got from my Ranger was close. I tested it against a friends warrior who is just running some sort of damage oriented build (only downside was them wearing Soldiers gear w/zerkers on everything else) and I was doing better.

When I was getting ressed over the warriors or guardians when I got myself caught up in “damage mode” in dungeon runs I knew I was doing something right and it was noticeable when I got back up on my feet again.

I’m not going to kid myself that Rangers are top DPS; but we are a long way from bottom. It’s still hard to see how it will all pan out but as far as I can tell I’m glad I spent the time/money going into ascended crafting on my Ranger rather than my Warrior and especially my Necro. Wow… So not impressed with my Necro.

Well, as far as it goes, my two mains are Mesmer and Ranger.

But from a very simple point of view – I can clearly see that Ranger is far ahead in DPS. And it still amuses me how people want Mesmer and Mesmer only for runs (when I ask which class they prefer).
And I first realized this in CoF (P2) when I tried to kill down the 2 Devourer Nests. And it took me twice the time of my Ranger.

Then I went out to the DPS station gollem (pvp area) and guess what – results were obvious. Mesmers had far superior burst but Rangers had far superior DPS.
From what I believe to be true – people never take pets into account. And of course – without them our DPS is weak. But with them – the DPS is high. Much higher than one could expect.

But as far as it goes – people will always believe in “numbers”. As it was pre-buff in rangers. Rapid Fire was considered powerful even at that time. Because it hit for 12K… Over 5 seconds… I know right? And people believed it was a huge damage ability!

But basic maths or analysis is not very common, so it can’t be helped. People play games to enjoy and that’s how it should be. It’s just that I enjoy being useful, useful as much as I can.

Quarktastic.1027:

Before clarion bond got slapped with that 30 second cooldown, I’d say rangers were in a better spot than before. But now that clarion bond can no longer be abused, I’d say we’re just treading water at this point.

Yes, we were doing nicely and finally able to stack a little bit of might on ourselves and fury but then A-net in all it’s stupidity nerfed it without reason! It’s not like we were OP, they just hate Rangers it’s a fact.

Let’s leave mesmers with insane burst and Engineers that can 1hit opponents in PvP, but make sure we nerf the ONLY viable PvE Ranger trait.

Grats devs … grats.

Ragnar.1546:

I out DPS my warrior as well as my friends. I first noticed it when I went onto my warrior and specced PS/Rampage and it does very well. But the overall damage portion compared to what I got from my Ranger was close. I tested it against a friends warrior who is just running some sort of damage oriented build (only downside was them wearing Soldiers gear w/zerkers on everything else) and I was doing better.

When I was getting ressed over the warriors or guardians when I got myself caught up in “damage mode” in dungeon runs I knew I was doing something right and it was noticeable when I got back up on my feet again.

I’m not going to kid myself that Rangers are top DPS; but we are a long way from bottom. It’s still hard to see how it will all pan out but as far as I can tell I’m glad I spent the time/money going into ascended crafting on my Ranger rather than my Warrior and especially my Necro. Wow… So not impressed with my Necro.

The issue isn’t one of DPS. It’s one of party support, which a PS warrior does better than a ranger while dealing similar DPS.

Rather than look at each class individually, try to look at the pve meta as a whole. The fact that winning means going as zerker as possible is what is wrong. They need to punish zerker players that go within melee range more. Dungeons shouldn’t be about speed runs for farming gold. If they want real team coordination the overall damage/AI of monsters in dungeons needs to be improved

FrownyClown.8402:

Rather than look at each class individually, try to look at the pve meta as a whole. The fact that winning means going as zerker as possible is what is wrong. They need to punish zerker players that go within melee range more. Dungeons shouldn’t be about speed runs for farming gold. If they want real team coordination the overall damage/AI of monsters in dungeons needs to be improved

You might have been correct, but you definitely are not.

Here’s the deal:
~Guild Wars 2
- This game has been made as a community game. A game where everyone is useful and everyone is free to play whatever he feels like.
- This game offers a vast variety of choices of game-styles.

Since this game offers different classes with different designs, different offerings and different mechanics, but most importantly, different numbers, there will be that thing called efficiency

While what you are saying is true – and developers of the game had a goal of “everyone can play what he wants and it’s okay” – you can’t deny that there’s gonna be the issue of efficiency.
No game in he world can be balanced as long as there is diversity. There will always be that one who has better potential/DPS/defense/mobility/utility/CC than others.

And that’s fine. As long as these numbers are not that distant, it’s okay. And we as the community strive to close the gap between differences of these classes and their builds.

While people like you are searching for enjoyable ponies (exaggeration, don’t take it seriously) in this game – there are those like me who search for results. And you can’t deny that people who spend hundreds of gold to create the most efficient armor, weapons and food have the right to point “selfish players looking for ponies” out – which are also the reason why zerkers die (if the boss doesn’t die in 7 seconds – the zerker does).

I find that if a player sacrificed his time and personal tastes of the game for efficiency – it’s absolutely correct and fine for him to ask the same of others. Because whether you’d like to admit it or not – players who play for own personal enjoyment at a cost of other people’s time – are nothing more than selfish players.
For role-playing system of builds – we have open world PvE.
_________________________________________
Which leads me to conclusion that looking at each class individually might as well be the right thing to do. And if a way of improving the diversity is found – and it helps people fit in with their favorite class or spec. than this is what we should search for.

And I fail to understand how Ele,Warrior overflooding the demand in dungeons is helping the system. After all, if I made an Icebow Ele and was able to 2-men every dungeon, I would expect everyone to do the same. Because if they don’t – they clearly ignore my time for personal selfish reasons.

Frost/spotter are always nice, that’s 9% crit chance and +7.5% damage. Also if you do plan on going the GSS/A route with remorseless and quick draw, you’re going to be pumping out a ton of DPS and vuln. Personally, I would totally play my phalanx warrior in dungeon pugs over my ranger, but ideally you would have both a phalanx warrior for might and EA and a ranger for frost/spotter and the vuln stacks.
Also in some situations you’ll want ranged DPS, and ranger does that great

I feel much stronger, but I’ve been a SB bleeder since the beginning. Suppose I’m the wrong ranger to ask.

Valderius Rex.4108:

I feel much stronger, but I’ve been a SB bleeder since the beginning. Suppose I’m the wrong ranger to ask.

No wonder, conditions got buffed a bunch with this update.
You are not a wrong person to ask. Sinister trapper with A/T + SB has the potential to become the meta. But none of us knows, yet.

A lot depends on the new HoT content. While the old content stays – Zerk still holds the upper hand.