Guild Wars 2

I have tried it and you are right it does give a better balance, I think what I am going to do is see where the update puts different builds and go from there. The regen build I tried out is not too bad.

Which “regen build” did you try?

Yeah, I’m waiting as patiently as I can for the patch notes as well while I continue amassing WvW, dungeon, and fractal currencies.

A bud was asking me yesterday and I have 21 ascended rings just sitting around ;-)

Faux’s “RRR” build, on the forum’s if you want to look it up, lol nice same here pretty much. Hopefully there is going to be something nice in this update! Personally, I’m hoping for they fix the appearance of the red and blue jellyfish, just so they look a little bit more distinguishable

Ah, ok. Yeah, we’ve discussed it before and I’ve used it as well. Faux is “Menorah” on Ehmry Bay. That’s why you may see me use that name on here from time to time.

Sebrent.3625:

@naphack: if you’re focusing on “rotations”, you’re already limiting your capabilities. That is an arbitrary restriction on how you use your skills that doesn’t do you any favors and limits your ability to get better. It also makes you predictable which makes you much easier to kill.

@Daemon: your post doesn’t make sense. Quickness works the same for one ability that does 5k over 5 seconds as it does another ability that has to be used 10 times in 5 seconds but also does 5k. Just because Rapid Fire is a channeled skill doesn’t mean that quickness operates different on it.

We are well aware that there are berserker rangers that thought they had to blow it all up in the first 4 seconds or lose. What we’ve been saying is that that is a bad playstyle that is going to get you killed against anything that isn’t a baddie.

What’s somewhat amusing to me is the fact that Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, so before the change quickness only affected 4 of those 5 seconds. Now quickness affects all 5 seconds.

Ok let me try to explain this again, sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. The quickness nerf affected players who built around burst damage (eg. berserker rangers) far more than players who built around sustained damage, because obviously the more damage you pack into the duration of your QZ, Time Warp, Frenzy, etc. the more you benefit from quickness. In contrast, the more linear and consistent your damage is over time, the less you’ll benefit from quickness in terms of damage boost.

Of all the weapons in the ranger’s arsenal, nothing compares to longbow in terms of spike damage with the possible exception of the harpoon gun. The shortbow, for example, might outperform the longbow over 30 seconds, but over the duration of barrage the longbow will blow it and every other ranger weapon out of the water. The percentage decrease in damage from the nerf is the same between longbow and any other weapon over 5 seconds, but much higher over 30 seconds due to the different damage distribution over time (burst vs linear). Is that a little clearer now?

Also, I think you should reconsider the utility of a berserker build before stating that it’s a “bad play style”. What use is a bunker build underneath a keep? How much damage are pets doing in dungeons, against zergs, or when you’re standing on a wall? How useful is regen when you’re safely sitting on a hill at 1500 range, or trying to spike down bounties with your guildies? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that berserker is any better than other ranger builds but it’s a lot of fun, and can be useful in many situations in both PvE and WvW. In general I would be careful about labeling anything as a “bad play style” in this game as there are so many different combat scenarios.

TL;DR – Quickness has a much larger effect on longbow than other ranger weapons because its damage fluctuates more, with a big chunk of its DoT coming from Barrage. Because you cast quickness during the damage spike, the reduction to 150% attack speed damages the longbow more than weapons that deal more consistent DPS.

In WvW it hasn’t changed my play at all. I miss the burst a bit, but other than that I just sucked it up and kept playing. It still helps raising downed allies and quick building siege, which was what I used it for 50% of the time to begin with.

Sebrent.3625:

Time Warp was not too good. It was balanced around having to clump your group up under it and its long cooldown. Not to mention people can simply move out of range of your group while you are standing in that timewarp … sadly many were too stupid to do so so they died to 5 people with quickness.

Or, since in spvp people have to fight over a point, time warp is a 10 second “You can’t cap this point or risk getting gibbed”.

That’s what people don’t get in this game.

Scepter eles are not particularly good in wvw or pve, and necromancer wells are not that amazing in dungeons and wvw — but in spvp, these tools become juggernauts, because people can’t just walk out of a circle without consequence. Forcing someone to walk off that circle loses them the game.

The 30/30/5/0/5 With sig of hunt, renewal, stone, is pretty decent. You have to play like a thief or an HB war and wait for your opening and then come in and get a 9k maul crit. In the meantime stay back and pew pew and use your pet to force the first dodge then get them to force another. Once that happens swoop, hilt bash, Start the maul use sig of hunt, finish the maul.

Zenith.7301:

Sebrent.3625:

Time Warp was not too good. It was balanced around having to clump your group up under it and its long cooldown. Not to mention people can simply move out of range of your group while you are standing in that timewarp … sadly many were too stupid to do so so they died to 5 people with quickness.

Or, since in spvp people have to fight over a point, time warp is a 10 second “You can’t cap this point or risk getting gibbed”.

That’s what people don’t get in this game.

Scepter eles are not particularly good in wvw or pve, and necromancer wells are not that amazing in dungeons and wvw — but in spvp, these tools become juggernauts, because people can’t just walk out of a circle without consequence. Forcing someone to walk off that circle loses them the game.

Timewarp was way too OP in PvE, I think that was one of the main reasons for the nerf. Dungeon farmers never wanted anyone but warriors and mesmers for speedruns, it was getting pretty ridiculous in gw2lfg and arenanet understandably had to intervene. Ranger just happened to take the collateral damage.

I agree with the statement by Daemon, the ideal of getting as much damage in as short of a time as possible is important with longbow skills which have have fairly long animation times (rapid fire, barrage). using qz and then using a pet swap one could previously unleash longbow skills 2-5 in that short time period, which is a massive amount of damage.

Sebrent.3625:

Yeah, his math was quite wrong.

Let’s assume you do 100 damage per second.
With +100% attack speed, you’ll do 200 damage per second.
So, for 4 seconds of old_quickness, you’ll do 200 * 4 = 800 damage.
We need a 5th second though, so you’ll do another 100 damage at the 5th second so 800 + 100 = 900 damage.

With +50% attack speed, you’ll do 150 damage per second.
So, for 5 seconds of new_quickness, you’ll do 150 * 5 = 750 damage

(900 – 750) / 900 = 16.6…% So you experience a 16.6…% decrease in dps. This is vastly different than the math given before. This is why some people are complaining like it’s the end of the world for Rangers’ burst and others are looking at them quite quizzically.

“Learn to math” or don’t try to explain things with math, people

I’d just like to point out that this isn’t accurate if you’re looking for the dps increase provided by QZ.

The reason? You’re factoring in damage you would be doing without the quickness. Quickness is only responsible for the additional attacks you make. Before the change, QZ gave you 100% more attacks for 4 seconds. After, QZ gives you 50% more attacks for 5 seconds. Using your 100 dps number, that’s 400 extra damage from old QZ vs. 250 extra damage from new QZ. That’s a 37.5% reduction.

If you’re doing the math right, it should hold true for all scenarios. Consider a bugged QZ that doesn’t provide any benefit. If you include the base attack speed, you end up with results that say QZ deals more damage after the change to 5 seconds, which clearly wouldn’t be right in this scenario.

Edit: Edited for clarity.

Killsmith.8169:

Sebrent.3625:

Yeah, his math was quite wrong.

Let’s assume you do 100 damage per second.
With +100% attack speed, you’ll do 200 damage per second.
So, for 4 seconds of old_quickness, you’ll do 200 * 4 = 800 damage.
We need a 5th second though, so you’ll do another 100 damage at the 5th second so 800 + 100 = 900 damage.

With +50% attack speed, you’ll do 150 damage per second.
So, for 5 seconds of new_quickness, you’ll do 150 * 5 = 750 damage

(900 – 750) / 900 = 16.6…% So you experience a 16.6…% decrease in dps. This is vastly different than the math given before. This is why some people are complaining like it’s the end of the world for Rangers’ burst and others are looking at them quite quizzically.

“Learn to math” or don’t try to explain things with math, people

I’d just like to point out that this isn’t accurate if you’re looking for the dps increase provided by QZ.

The reason? You’re factoring in damage you would be doing without the quickness. Quickness is only responsible for the additional attacks you make. Before the change, QZ gave you 100% more attacks for 4 seconds. After, QZ gives you 50% more attacks for 5 seconds. Using your 100 dps number, that’s 400 damage vs. 250 damage. That’s a 37.5% reduction.

If you’re doing the math right, it should hold true for all scenarios. Consider a bugged QZ that doesn’t provide any benefit. If you include the base attack speed, you end up with results that say QZ deals more damage after the change to 5 seconds, which clearly wouldn’t be right in this scenario.

You obviously failed math class a few times.
A 100% increase translates to multiplying by 2, a 50% increase translates to multiplying by 1.5.

Pre-nerf: (100*2*4)/(100*4) = 800/400 = 2= 200% aka, 200 damage per second
Post-nerf: (100*1.5*5)/(100*5) = 750/500 = 1.5 = 150% aka, 150 damage per second

Anyway, back on topic.
I still run the same build that I did before the nerf, simply because of how useful QZ still is.
It affects both you and your pet, so I’m given the option of either using it to drop a barrage in WvW during zerg warfare, hit Stalk on my jag>Sick ’Em>then QZ as the cat gets next to the target in a 1v1 situation for a nice little surprise from the cat, use it to rez, or use it to break a stun and then turn around and pummel someone in the face.

I still love my LB/GS combo more than anything due to the fact that while the LB may not be the very best sustained damage weapon, nothing says hello quite like a 2.5-5k auto attack crit delivered from 1500 range.

Oh, and by the way: Auto attack is roughly a 40% more damage over Rapid Fire at 1000+ range if you count purely shots fired, and closer to 50% if you count total time spent firing. They’re near even at 500-1000, and only sub 500 does RFS outdamage your auto. But really – if you’re sub 500 range you should have switched weapons by that point.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Oh, and by the way: Auto attack is roughly a 40% more damage over Rapid Fire at 1000+ range if you count purely shots fired, and closer to 50% if you count total time spent firing. They’re near even at 500-1000, and only sub 500 does RFS outdamage your auto. But really – if you’re sub 500 range you should have switched weapons by that point.

Is that right?? I’ve tested on golems in the mists but I only found autoattack to be marginally higher than rapid fire at max range, if at all. I’d still use rapid fire over autoattack though because it procs more on-crit effects due to the higher number of shots being fired.

I guess I wasn’t clear enough. Whether you have quickness or not, you still do that base dps, so it shouldn’t be considered when you want to find the change in contribution from quickness. Your math is showing the damage during QZ, not the damage from QZ.