Guild Wars 2

I love my ranger, but I too am starting to wonder if I should play something else for a while.

Just my two cents. Everyone was using a shortbow not because it was too good(warrior rifle was still better raw dmg) but because it was the absolute LAST option we had to do dmg comparable to EVERY OTHER CLASS. You guys have “balanced” the ranger almost every patch since BWE1. Every weapon we have has had it dmg lowered in 1 way or another. You have forced us down the shortbow path.

Ruien.9506:

Just my two cents. Everyone was using a shortbow not because it was too good(warrior rifle was still better raw dmg) but because it was the absolute LAST option we had to do dmg comparable to EVERY OTHER CLASS. You guys have “balanced” the ranger almost every patch since BWE1. Every weapon we have has had it dmg lowered in 1 way or another. You have forced us down the shortbow path.

Agreed. I would trade shortbow in a heart beat for a warriors rifle. I would trade pets in a heart beat for head shot.

Also did you know that everyone in the game can negate a rangers single target dmg 100% of the time? I posted the exploit in the rangers forums and how to 100% repeat it. That post got me a 3 day forum ban. The exploit( it really isnt an exploit, its ingame mechanics) works with NPC ranged as well. How about you FIX the broken crap before you try to balance.

Any updates from Devs on this?

Ruien.9506:

Also did you know that everyone in the game can negate a rangers single target dmg 100% of the time? I posted the exploit in the rangers forums and how to 100% repeat it. That post got me a 3 day forum ban. The exploit( it really isnt an exploit, its ingame mechanics) works with NPC ranged as well. How about you FIX the broken crap before you try to balance.

It it juking left and right? Same thing works against Guardian Scepter. Can negates about 9/10 hits by just dancing side to side.

Cant discuss it Faytte . Happening more and more daily in PvP.

Blast those exploiters using WASD to move their character!

They should be standing still!

:D

Not at all, but arrows should move a bit faster and I wouldnt mind them loosing their ‘stylish’ graphic that simply broadcasts out to targets which way the arrow is traveling for them to dodge.

“I’ll take a look on live right now!”

Sorry to spam but can we get an update this morning? Saying you would take a look right now kind of got my hopes up we would at least get a status last night…

faytte.1057:

“I’ll take a look on live right now!”

Sorry to spam but can we get an update this morning? Saying you would take a look right now kind of got my hopes up we would at least get a status last night…

You’d think it would only take a few seconds to assess the rate of fire of the weapon, wouldn’t you?

An update would certainly be nice.

Can we please get a response on Shortbow status?

I think some of you guys are forgetting that they gave a reason for this “patch”. They didn’t say they did it because the shortbow is over-powered. They didn’t say they did it because too many bots use this weapon. They said they did it to fix an animation bug. I hope there’s more reasoning behind that than they said because that sounds lazy but that’s what they said.

Governor Toothpaste.1582:

I think some of you guys are forgetting that they gave a reason for this “patch”. They didn’t say they did it because the shortbow is over-powered. They didn’t say they did it because too many bots use this weapon. They said they did it to fix an animation bug. I hope there’s more reasoning behind that than they said because that sounds lazy but that’s what they said.

Which is why I expect it to be fixed pretty soon, unless they had ulterior motives..

Yes I definitely noticed it’s slower than it used to be. I ran AC Explore last night and I started wondering if my computer was just lagging or something. Very sad.

Yeah, there’s no way this was purely to fix an animation bug. Fix the animation, not lower the speed.

I for one never once noticed any bugs with the animation speed. Asking all my ranger friends, neither did they. Did ANYONE notice an animation bug?

faytte.1057:

I for one never once noticed any bugs with the animation speed. Asking all my ranger friends, neither did they. Did ANYONE notice an animation bug?

Nope, can’t say I did..

faytte.1057:

I for one never once noticed any bugs with the animation speed. Asking all my ranger friends, neither did they. Did ANYONE notice an animation bug?

I noticed no issues either at normal speed or at QZ speed.

^Gorvernor Toothpaste

Do you expect film makers to reshoot a scene because the dubbing audio didn’t match the actor’s lip sync? You should read up on spin doctoring, and public cynicism.

I didn’t play Ranger all that much (got mine to 45), but I never noticed an animation bug with Shortbow. And 40ms must be between 4-8% DPS decrease — .04s longer per shot, and that weapon fired at least 1/s, and likely much faster (2/s?).

Am I the only one who’s never used the shortbow??

Haven’t gotten into PvP yet, but I find using LB Rapid Fire with the Piercing Arrows trait works pretty well if my pet is tanking some. And with cond fields in between the conditions can stack up fast.

For melee, sword and horn using traits that synergize with evasion, and with sword you can almost perma-cripple…just gotta save your dodge/skill2/skill3 for big incoming attacks.

But…LB dmg is a bit low I have to admit. My pet bird does more dmg than I do on a dps basis (for single target) using just the 1 skill. :/

Velkyn.9285:

I didn’t play Ranger all that much (got mine to 45), but I never noticed an animation bug with Shortbow. And 40ms must be between 4-8% DPS decrease — .04s longer per shot, and that weapon fired at least 1/s, and likely much faster (2/s?).

The wiki has it down as 0.5sec / shot (I don’t think it’s been updated for this change), which would be 2 shots / sec.

Obsidian.1328:

Am I the only one who’s never used the shortbow??

Haven’t gotten into PvP yet, but I find using LB Rapid Fire with the Piercing Arrows trait works pretty well if my pet is tanking some. And with cond fields in between the conditions can stack up fast.

For melee, sword and horn using traits that synergize with evasion, and with sword you can almost perma-cripple…just gotta save your dodge/skill2/skill3 for big incoming attacks.

But…LB dmg is a bit low I have to admit. My pet bird does more dmg than I do on a dps basis (for single target) using just the 1 skill. :/

Long bow barely does more damage per hit than short bow at close range. And does so at, according to the wiki, 1.25secs per shot compared to the shortbow’s (pre-patch) 0.5secs per shot.

It does better damage (per hit, I’m not going into dps) at long range.

Ya, this is ridiculous, why not add a few usefull buffs to the ranger instead of nerfing it? Just because the botters mostly use ranger you think the solution is to nerf the skill to make it more difficult for them? I’m shaking my head and now I’m not sure if I can continue to play ranger or continue with this game for that matter since all the funs been pretty much sucked out of it because of these nerfs.

I’ve also asked my friends and I. There was definitely NO animation bug. This is ridiculous.

So .5s/hit is 500ms. Adding 40ms to that is an 8% DPS hit just on the damage component. Coupled with loss of bleed stacks, and it’s probably over 10% loss. That’s pretty significant.

Glad I quit playing a Ranger a while ago… although my Guardian (L57) got hit with the nerf bat, too.

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

On topic:
I have noticed much more of a decrease from Sb than I was expecting considering the difference is in milliseconds

Safari.3021:

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

If you follow the plight of Rangers you will see that pets are very finiky. Especially their activate-able skill (F2). All pets have to stop moving in order to cast their move and therefore miss the majority of the time rendering their “utiliy” nearly useless.

Pets also run at default speed meaning simply moving will 100% negate their damage. Combined with the fact they stop moving to attack means the damage you get from pets is marginal at best.

Lower the damage of the SB to compensate for the pet? Well if thats the case they should lower the dmg output for the Ele and Guardian summons as well, because obviously they need balancing if you think the pet makes a viable asset in the later area’s….well I got news for you, it DOESN’T. Your pet is basically a meatshield while you pump out ranged DPS and hope that it can hold the enemy long enough so that your traps can finish them off, not to mention the range of the SB, if your taking the bloody chance of CQC then this nerf makes a significant change to playstyles, and honestly if they do this they should kitten well increase our passive movement buff cause now were officially the slowest and probably weakest of the classes now when it comes to dealing with mulitple mobs.

Strongfort.2451:

Safari.3021:

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

If you follow the plight of Rangers you will see that pets are very finiky. Especially their activate-able skill (F2). All pets have to stop moving in order to cast their move and therefore miss the majority of the time rendering their “utiliy” nearly useless.

Pets also run at default speed meaning simply moving will 100% negate their damage. Combined with the fact they stop moving to attack means the damage you get from pets is marginal at best.

Exactly what he said. In a game as mobile as this, our pets were designed for a game like WoW which is tank/spank. Our pets cant move and attack effectively, meaning most of the time they are just pretty decorations.

faytte.1057:

Strongfort.2451:

Safari.3021:

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

If you follow the plight of Rangers you will see that pets are very finiky. Especially their activate-able skill (F2). All pets have to stop moving in order to cast their move and therefore miss the majority of the time rendering their “utiliy” nearly useless.

Pets also run at default speed meaning simply moving will 100% negate their damage. Combined with the fact they stop moving to attack means the damage you get from pets is marginal at best.

Exactly what he said. In a game as mobile as this, our pets were designed for a game like WoW which is tank/spank. Our pets cant move and attack effectively, meaning most of the time they are just pretty decorations.

Dead, pretty decorations..

Safari.3021:

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

On topic:
I have noticed much more of a decrease from Sb than I was expecting considering the difference is in milliseconds

Heh My pet doesnt hit very often vs moving targets.

Safari.3021:

I just want to put this to all those people talking about ranger weapon damage being far below that of other professions:

Your pet makes up more than the difference, other professions do not have a constant additional damage from their f1 skill, the lower damage from weapons is to compensate for this, and rightly so.

On topic:
I have noticed much more of a decrease from Sb than I was expecting considering the difference is in milliseconds

Maybe if pets actually moved and attacked? Pets are useless. They miss 70% of the time and cannot even hit a moving target. Therefore making utility skills useless.

I don’t have any problems with my pets, they attack regular, do decent dps for me, crit for 2k and I manage to time the f2 skills right to hit the target. I seriously can’t see why theres so much hate for them. Don’t use bears.

Jestunhi.7429:

Velkyn.9285:

I didn’t play Ranger all that much (got mine to 45), but I never noticed an animation bug with Shortbow. And 40ms must be between 4-8% DPS decrease — .04s longer per shot, and that weapon fired at least 1/s, and likely much faster (2/s?).

The wiki has it down as 0.5sec / shot (I don’t think it’s been updated for this change), which would be 2 shots / sec.

Obsidian.1328:

Am I the only one who’s never used the shortbow??

Haven’t gotten into PvP yet, but I find using LB Rapid Fire with the Piercing Arrows trait works pretty well if my pet is tanking some. And with cond fields in between the conditions can stack up fast.

For melee, sword and horn using traits that synergize with evasion, and with sword you can almost perma-cripple…just gotta save your dodge/skill2/skill3 for big incoming attacks.

But…LB dmg is a bit low I have to admit. My pet bird does more dmg than I do on a dps basis (for single target) using just the 1 skill. :/

Long bow barely does more damage per hit than short bow at close range. And does so at, according to the wiki, 1.25secs per shot compared to the shortbow’s (pre-patch) 0.5secs per shot.

It does better damage (per hit, I’m not going into dps) at long range.

Well yeah, at mid-range short bow is king. I guess my playstyle tends toward keeping mobs at max range. I rarely get hit by melee attacks from normal gameplay becuase I cripple them (barrage and throw spike trap), push them back, or roll back to keep my distance up. If they persist I simply switch to sword and finish them off. Perhaps I just don’t mind kills taking a bit longer…I just enjoy the game that much for now. :P

Also, using Troll Unguent with Nature’s Bounty (+33% regen time), my pet and I are constantly being regen’d for 50% of all combat time…makes yer pet an excellent tank no matter which species you’re using. Healing Spring is great for groups, but I really dislike the lack of mobility it confers.

To be fair, even with the nerf, I still generated enough aggro on the Champion at the end of Plinx to pull him away from whoever he was attacking, and on to me.

As far as the slowdown goes, I’m OK with a slowdown, if they bump damage appropriately to compensate.

You guys speak of pets tanking as if, the other players will attack the pets first and then you… who cares about the pets tanking in pve ?

I can kite the mob all day, without the pet helping… try to send your pet into a mass pvp fight and see what happens to him, or if you think in a rarely 1v1 the other guy will try to kill the pet first, think again !

The pets are the most useless mechanic in the game, its broken, hard to fix and to make it right, and the majority don’t really care for them. they are only good for the pet lovers, who like to show their collection.

And to top it off, a wild troll comes in and say: If you don’t like it, make a warrior instead ! you can do range dps without the pet…

well, how about no ? That is suppose to be the ranger role.

What kind of test you guys do, that couldn’t see the SB got broken, and the players instantly pick it up ?

Hickeroar.9734:

To be fair, even with the nerf, I still generated enough aggro on the Champion at the end of Plinx to pull him away from whoever he was attacking, and on to me.

As far as the slowdown goes, I’m OK with a slowdown, if they bump damage appropriately to compensate.

I honestly don’t see why they didn’t do that in the first place. If the reason is actually the animation bug like they say it is, why didn’t they compensate? It doesn’t make sense to me that they can slow down a skill and just leave it at that because of an animation bug.

Anyway, I hope this is fixed BEFORE the next patch. I really don’t want to wait a week to play my main.

I did notice some animation issues when I swapped weapons. I have the trait that applies swiftness on swap and occasionally my arrows would shoot backwards over my head. I’ve also had issues getting “f” interactions to work when auto-attacking with the short bow (picking items up mostly). It wasn’t frequent enough to make a bug report on, so I’m unsure if that’s the issue they were trying to fix.

Governor Toothpaste.1582:

Hickeroar.9734:

To be fair, even with the nerf, I still generated enough aggro on the Champion at the end of Plinx to pull him away from whoever he was attacking, and on to me.

As far as the slowdown goes, I’m OK with a slowdown, if they bump damage appropriately to compensate.

I honestly don’t see why they didn’t do that in the first place. If the reason is actually the animation bug like they say it is, why didn’t they compensate? It doesn’t make sense to me that they can slow down a skill and just leave it at that because of an animation bug.

Anyway, I hope this is fixed BEFORE the next patch. I really don’t want to wait a week to play my main.

I suppose that’s where we differ. I’ll play it anyway. As I said, even with the nerf I’m still doing ample damage.

LOL rangers complaining about there auto attack being longer.. and stacks not as high?! Seriously in PvP you guys have the most outright troll auto attack there is.. Just stand slight to side and back and stack the kitten out of bleeds… I wish they would nerf how fast you stack bleeds to be honest.. b/c a ranger can stay at a distance and bleed me but once my condition removals are gone I am toast.

I think Equalizer pretty much summed it up, I would quote him with the forum if it were actually working. “What kind of test you guys do, that couldn’t see the SB got broken, and the players instantly pick i up?”

This was a stupid band-aid fix to a problem they were too lazy to actually fix. Much like other people have said, I never encountered this problem at all (I have a level 80 ranger that is my main… but not for long). Not to mention other people have already said the 40ms is about a 10% damage reduction, and that’s IF it actually were a 40ms reduction.

Going to take a break from the game till they fix the Ranger class.
I just don’t feel like leveling alts with the zones empty and the events and loot drops being so punishing right now thanks to the DR and anti-farm code.

Really starting to see too many rushed out nerfs and untested… not very well thought out changes.

So hard to love a game yet be treated this way.

TheZeus.8617:

LOL rangers complaining about there auto attack being longer.. and stacks not as high?! Seriously in PvP you guys have the most outright troll auto attack there is.. Just stand slight to side and back and stack the kitten out of bleeds… I wish they would nerf how fast you stack bleeds to be honest.. b/c a ranger can stay at a distance and bleed me but once my condition removals are gone I am toast.

Warrior Rifle auto attack stacks bleeds better.

Ontop of that it does better burst damage and has a knock back within one skill.

I suppose we got nerfed by accident since the initial description was :

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

So since they made the change for animation glitches and not for balancing out the classes we expect from the developers to give us back our DPS on the next patch (wont happen but just wishfull thinking) .

TheZeus.8617:

LOL rangers complaining about there auto attack being longer.. and stacks not as high?! Seriously in PvP you guys have the most outright troll auto attack there is.. Just stand slight to side and back and stack the kitten out of bleeds… I wish they would nerf how fast you stack bleeds to be honest.. b/c a ranger can stay at a distance and bleed me but once my condition removals are gone I am toast.

You realise that all you have to do is stop running away and showing him your back?

The bleed is positional and only works from the side & back.

Jestunhi.7429:

TheZeus.8617:

LOL rangers complaining about there auto attack being longer.. and stacks not as high?! Seriously in PvP you guys have the most outright troll auto attack there is.. Just stand slight to side and back and stack the kitten out of bleeds… I wish they would nerf how fast you stack bleeds to be honest.. b/c a ranger can stay at a distance and bleed me but once my condition removals are gone I am toast.

You realise that all you have to do is stop running away and showing him your back?

The bleed is positional and only works from the side & back.

On top of that you can quickly press strafe left/ strafe right so barely any of our arrows hit and our pet is too dumbfounded to attack.

they didn’t even tested the stuff they changed….
also john was going to “look” at ti right away on live, i guess he is still “looking”.

They are probably trying to figure out what to tell us.

This “fix” is pretty painful. I tried out a new build using axe/torch + (sword or axe)+horn. Seems to be pretty good burst. Offhand range is still 1200, and its a condition build. I may try it in PvE combat, but that will mean a whole new set of gear. I think I will wait before i do that, but if you guys have time, go to the mists and try this one.
Horn birds + torch burn + axe bleed is a lot of burst damage.