Guild Wars 2

I am going to have to agree the SB nerf seems a bit overboard. I hope anet comes to their senses

Can we get a response on this soon? Is it so hard to give us a status report or even some semblance of communication in the form of “Hey, we’re still looking into it!” or maybe come out and say it was a nerf that wasn’t announced in the patch notes.

Either way, I don’t care. I love my ranger, but I find it ridiculous that our best (and, only viable) ranged option was so summarily nerfed into dust by a FOURTH of its damage output. That’s ridiculous given the raw damage output of a Warrior’s rifle combined with the fact that they don’t even need to friggin position themselves for bleeds.

So please, can we get a status report on this ASAP? I really don’t like posting on forums because they tend to be a cesspool of insults and villainy, but this is ridiculous. How does 40 milliseconds (40 thousandths of a second!?) translate into a 25% speed firing rate reduction.

Its been 2 days since “I’ll look into it on the live client.” was posted here. It takes 2 minutes to notice. Can you guys please get around to giving us a status report? I would definitely (and I’m sure basically every other person here) would definitely appreciate this.

If it was a nerf then fine. We’re all big boys and girls (most of us anyways); we can handle the news. Albeit it was an unnecessary nerf, but by all means if it WAS a nerf and not just a screw up, then tell us. Otherwise, please get around to letting us know what the deal is with our Shortbows.

Thanks.

I gave up on ranger, because it simply has too many problems. Even if this gets fixed in a few weeks, the ranger is still plagued with problems that won’t be fixed within the next year, and a 40ms increase after they fix QZ still means a substantial dps downgrade.

So before I quit the game I decided to give rifle warrior a chance.. as I don’t want to melee.. and boy, did that return my motivation to play: I recommend it! It’s not necessarily overpowered, but it sure is powerful enough and more importantly it is incredibly fun. I don’t even use a second weapon set apart from the warhorn heh, I leave the first three slots empty.

It’s so much fun shooting someone down with auto attack, then rifle butting them back as they come close, letting loose an 8K volley on frenzy, then watchng your rifle line up to and seeing the pellets rush at the target to create this beautiful massive crit with kill shot.

Before you quit the game, with all its problems, I recommend playing a rifle warrior just for the sheer fun. I don’t really care about the bad management anymore really, I’m just going to rock my new rifle warrior until I’m bored, that way I get my money’s worth in the end, the game is good enough for that.

Agreed. I just started my rifle warrior. I could not be having more fun. This was basically the class the ranger wishes it was.

your getting off topic this is the ranger thread and i would prefer this not closed due to people talking about irrelivent things such as “you should play another class, and it should be _______” the point of this thread is to state there is an issue and it needs to be looked at.
thanks

You’re right Criminal, I apologize, I just wanted to motivate people to not quit yet.

next to Shortbow… the only other reliable damage weapon was my 1hand sword…which leaves me completely unable to dodge ..with it’s stupid “locked” jumping animation combo >_<
I’m going to retire my ranger of 450hrs and switch to my warrior… and die a bit inside.

It is appalling that ANet has the source code and testing environment is still “looking into it” without any meaningful and timely reply. It shouldn’t be hard to determine if the patch is “working as intended” or is some kind of mistake.

Please, arenanet, have the decency to tell.

To be honest, they could fix the issue tomorrow, because of this though I have realized Ranger is a waste of time. Warrior ranged is tons better for WvW.

Anet would have already fixed this issue if they were going to. Put your ranger on hold for a long time. I heard mesmers are fun……

again stay on topic this is only about rangers, if this goes off on tangents they will lock this thread and we wont get any updates here just like the other threads that went off to random stuff. if you dont have something constructive please dont post it.
yes we all know there are other professions, and yes people shouldnt flip out over something so small, there has already been a few posts on suggestions we dont need pages of people telling people to reroll.
alot of these people posting really like ranger and just want it to be on even grounds with classes that have high burst capability (again) and the short bow being fixed would help achieve such goals
steps off soapbox

I also enjoyed met SB Ranger before patch. Now it just feels like a longbow, it’s not fun anymore. I am specced as a condition damager (this whole weapon is based on that) now the damage output has shrunk big time.

I cannot even put more bleed then 6-8 stacks, before i could get it up to 16 with QZ.
Also that QZ skill is bugged, if you have selected a target it only shoots 3 arrows real fast, then the rest in slow motion.

Jon, you said you were looking in to this, is it so hard to give us all an update? Come on, you can do better!

I think Kiran has officially lost it totally….
Well time to go do gathering and crafting… 100 lvl more to max.
Any 1 need medium armours??

lets make some memes out of this.
Play ranger they said,it would be fun they said

Photo of a dev laughing: and then i said I’ll take a look on live right now!

No offense Anet im just want to put some humor in this really negative thread i know you are working for the best

Bemused.3187:

And we never saw Jon Peters again.

Well he hasn’t made a peep on the forums since his post on this topic. Maybe he went and looked at it and his head exploded from what a kitten the Ranger class had become. RIP Jon.

ORRR maybe he’s working diligently on fixing it, AND re balancing our longbow and greatsword while he’s at it!!!

Or maybe he took a nap and forgot about the whole thing.

neverborne.4736:

Bemused.3187:

And we never saw Jon Peters again.

Well he hasn’t made a peep on the forums since his post on this topic. Maybe he went and looked at it and his head exploded from what a kitten the Ranger class had become. RIP Jon.

ORRR maybe he’s working diligently on fixing it, AND re balancing our other weapons while he’s at it!!!

Or maybe he took a nap and forgot about the whole thing.

I think they have a few major issues that they are likely prioritizing over the annoying, but not gamebreaking SB issue.

Yasha.5963:

neverborne.4736:

Bemused.3187:

And we never saw Jon Peters again.

Well he hasn’t made a peep on the forums since his post on this topic. Maybe he went and looked at it and his head exploded from what a kitten the Ranger class had become. RIP Jon.

ORRR maybe he’s working diligently on fixing it, AND re balancing our other weapons while he’s at it!!!

Or maybe he took a nap and forgot about the whole thing.

I think they have a few major issues that they are likely prioritizing over the annoying, but not gamebreaking SB issue.

Like 1 out of the 8 classes being useless in PvP and them just nerfing the one weapon that was keeping them holding on?

And they say they want to make this an eSport. lol

Yasha.5963:

I think they have a few major issues that they are likely prioritizing over the annoying, but not gamebreaking SB issue.

Game feels broken enough for me that I’m sitting here talking to you gents rather than playing it. Although I guess invisible WvW should take priority. Why not roll the entire poosandwich of a patch back and save everyone a lot of grief?

So last night I tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps, build a bridge and get over the SB nerf. I went on the auction house and emptied my bank account, bought a gold greatsword, gold warhorn and a gold 1 hand sword. Now I’ve tried all these weapons while leveling up and found them all lacking, but figured I’d give it another shot.

I respecced, loaded up greatsword/longbow and headed out into WvW. A big skirmish was occurring on the western field near our garrison in ET Borderlands. I joined the melee. I ran in and plinked an overextended JQ beef cake with Hunters Shot, swapped to sword and Swooped into him. Dropped Entangle, rooting him up and QZ’ed and started swinging away at him. I’m downed. What? He’s still at 60% health. He distractedly wanders around for a second engaging somebody else and melting their face. I try to use my downed skill 3 to get my pet to pick me up, it wanders over and takes a leak on my head but fails to rez me… the warrior wanders back over and lazily spikes me.

OK. Let’s give this 1 hander a shot! I rejoin the fight a few minutes later. Warhorn! Ah so cool! I’m runnin fast! Buffin my friends! Callin down birds! Time to get in and see how this sword does! We’re makin a push! They are retreating. I blow my horn for speed and get up behind the nearest runner! Swing and a miss. Wait. Why am I rooted? AH! Friggin sword auto attack! He’s getting away. Maybe my leap! Hit hornet sting and jump way back and then lunge forward to some random spot even further away from the guy. My pet is engaging a moa for some reason. Aaaand he’s gone.

OKAY! They are pushing back, let’s show um what a melee ranger can do! Big fight in front of our tower. Jump off wall screaming like I’m in Braveheart. Takin damage. Start smashing evade skills. I’m flying all over the screen. Don’t actually seem to be hitting anybody, but I’m dying slightly slower. Camera swinging wildly as I flail around with Serpant Strike and Monarch leap. My snow leopard pet is hanging out back in the tower somewhere licking his privates. Pretty sure none of my swings are connecting. Downed! Thief exploded me. He goes invis and stakes me. Not a dang thing I can do about it. Wow that must be nice.

The night went on like this. I got owned repeatedly. I admit I am newb with these weapons, JQ has 3 orbs, and I’m wearing mostly berserkers armor… but kitten #8230; this wasn’t the character I wanted to be. A squishy ranger like me has no place being in the thick of the WvW melee.

So now I’m feeling lost, sad and dejected. I think I will go play Borderlands 2 for a while, checking back occasionally to see if Jon has responded. Drinking heavily. Maybe I’ll beat my kids when they get home from school. I dunno…

I don’t actually have kids by the way. But the rest… all true. Except the drinking… it’s 7:30 in the morning what do you think I am? An animal?

I noticed JonPeters (GD) responded on the first page, 2 days ago.

Did I miss a response on his “checking this out on live” or are we still waiting? I’ve looked at all 8 pages.

It would be nice to have fun with my Ranger again. I don’t like what they did with the short bow.

@neverborne (sorry sometimes forum won’t let me quote), but regarding your story above:

You should do your testing and practice in spvp, its also the only place you can really use to give as an example of something being problematic in the OP/UP way you are talking about because its an even playing field. Note that it should take you quite a while to get used to using all those new weapons, I find the one handed sword tricky but some people swear by it.

Nevertheless, it is hard to see a really decent non-shortbow build, no doubt that is compounding why everyone is so angsty about the SB nerf. If they had nerfed the torch or dagger I’m sure we would not be seeing this kind of response.

I can only shake my head at this…

GW1 all over again in regards to the Ranger class.

Those of you thinking this was some sort of mistake by ANet, need to wake up. This was intentional. The lack of communication should tell you that.

I’ve decided to try ranged warrior because of this nerf.

1. they can apply bleeds from any direction
2. they don’t have to worry about slow buggy pets

Still no answer, seems as I feared this and WvWvW or just us, are going to get patched next “monday”..

ANet’s silence on this issue is disquieting. The least they could do is say if this is a bug or an intentional nerf.

The SB nerf needs to be fixed. Just making a minor uptick in damage, and fixing QZ would solve the problem.

That said: I’m a mostly-PvE person, and use Longbow almost exclusively with a 20/30/0/0/20 build. I play a couple other classes, and don’t feel my ranger is at all kittened or useless. The Ranger is my main, I feel quite successful with it, having finished the personal story, reached 96% map (still doing the PvP areas), and having over 300 hours in the character.

The class needs some improvements/fixes. SB should be fixed. But Rangers are not irretrievably broken, either.

Ok, I’m in here a bit late but what was the problem with the shortbow? It never felt too overpowered to me considered you could miss someone who is just strafing left and right. In fact, ranger as a whole didn’t feel overpowered at all. I never felt like an unstoppable killing machine.

What was the problem?

I would very much like ANet to take out SB completely from the game, BUT give us the option to talk to our enemies, maybe we can talk ourselves out of battles and dangerous encounters, or at least get our enemies bored to death, just by talking to them.
Of course, the 40 min..ms sorry cast time can be kept as it is. It is not like we can talk that fast anyway.

I rolled a Mesmer this morning! Kin The Mesmer. You want to show them you’re serious? Then stop playing your ranger. Level 3 on a Mesmer and it’s already more interesting in PvE than my ranger was.

Dardamaniac.1295:

lets make some memes out of this.
Play ranger they said,it would be fun they said

Photo of a dev laughing: and then i said I’ll take a look on live right now!

No offense Anet im just want to put some humor in this really negative thread i know you are working for the best

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/28128703.jpg

This is exactly why I stopped playing this game weeks ago.

Absolutely no viable changes to the Ranger class since launch. Won’t even consider touching this game again for some time.

My ranger is collecting dust in my character selection screen, I started a necromancer im having a blast in pve havent tried pvp thou but at least is a lot of fun to play so far. I cant believe there hasnt been any response yet, this is starting to look real bad i could have expected this from many others but not from arenanet guess i was wrong.

!http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/28132924.jpg!

It’s sad generating memes is the only thing keeping me sane about this situation.

Playing my Ranger just SUCKS now.

Why is it so hard to get back to us on this?

well my thread on short bow’s in the general discussion got moved to the ranger forum…where things go to die.

edit: guess it went to the trash…oh well.

Say what you want..this change/nerf makes no sense. Shortbows were the only thing keeping rangers alive.

Hallelujah! A response! :O

I hope you all would consider improving the other skills to the showbow (coughandtotheotherweaponscough). While “spamming 1” wasn’t “the most fun gameplay,” it also was one of the few options. The poison volley is a bit lackluster for a single target and there are better weapons to use at close range.

Um….what? I pretty sure it’s not 40ms if people can feel the difference…
Either way started a mesmer for now, and to my surprise, they’re really funny to play. Trolling people with illusions and chaining stun.

I do look forward to them shaking up the skills for the SB though. Pretty much any change is better than it’s current form. Let’s just see how long it takes…..

JonPeters.5630:

Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.

The 1 key is the only move that does real damage on the SB! The rest are control moves! You need increase the damage on the other moves to compensate if you’re going to use “fix animation glitch” as a pathetic excuse for nerfing the weapon’s only real DPS source. It’s not our fault you guys made the 1-key the main damaging method – we’re stuck with what we have. Rework the skills, add more damage, anything – but don’t just flat out reduce the move that’s the entire purpose of the weaponset.

Also, how about giving the Longbow some life again? If people are moving in sPvP you can’t hit them! [Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed]

JonPeters.5630:

If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.

Please keep in mind that builds using shortbow tend to be around stacking +cond, so loss of bleed stacking for #1 is really a killer for shortbow. Maybe buffing the #2 skill could be an option…

Also, any updates on the sword rooting bug? That is another one that really cripples the condition build for ranger.

Thanks

I’m all for making the number 2 and 4 skills on the short bow better. Poison volley is pretty sad at the moment.

Still doesn’t reflect on the fact that we lose poison stacks which makes this nerf quite a bit larger than 7% in the scheme of things. Addressing this would go a long way.

I wonder how long it will take for their ‘data’ to show ‘that shortbow is now not effective’ considering it still hasn’t shown up the other weapons yet.

Yes..because insulting the man who comes in here and tries to tell you what is going on is a good idea. The best thing we can do is thank him for his work, advise what changes we would like and hope for the best. You catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar.

who want’s to catch flies…i’d rather my weaponsets be on par with every other profession.

The effect of 7% less attacks has a larger impact than 7% less damage, considering you cannot keep up the amount of stacks you could earlier and the loss of a stack (say 9 to is more than a 7% damage decrease for condition builds.

This post really for me solidifies its not worth my time and effort anymore to work on the ranger. Worked over the past two weeks to get one from 1 to 74 after realizing my guardian is nothing more than a buff bot for the majority of WvW due to no ranged. Guess I’ll try Warrior Rifle since warriors get everything,

Ditton.3149:

Yes..because insulting the man who comes in here and tries to tell you what is going on is a good idea. The best thing we can do is thank him for his work, advise what changes we would like and hope for the best. You catch more flies with honey than you do vinegar.

I don’t really think we should have to try and sweet talk Anet into balancing their game.

JonPeters.5630:

Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.

I would still like to see some more info on this so called “animation bugs” that not a single person complained about. What about the sword’s #1 attack problem that countless people have complained about? Will it be left alone?

i was going to say something dismal about class choice…but instead all ill say, is this is dissapointing.

I have to say.. fixing a weapon animation issue that then results in a 7% loss of damage and being ok with that unintentional nerf remaining in place seems odd.

The other attacks on the shortbow, particularly quick shot, crippling shot, and concussion shots, are very situational abilities that players would probably prefer saving for a time when best needed, and not something they’re going to toss into their attack sequence just because one of them happens to be off cooldown.

Even if the nerf remains in place, this change is not going to suddenly make me play in a manner that (I feel) is unwise by using my other shortbow skills when I don’t need them. So, if the intention is to coax me into using something other than crossfire and staying on my target’s back while using a shortbow, this is the probably wrong way to go about it.