Guild Wars 2

The problem is not the normal auto attack! Is all about “Pop Quickening Zephyr… what is this?” That’s the real problem QZ doesn’t work properly on auto-attack, that’s what you need to address.

Anet guys, did you really read the 400 post and 44k views this post has?

Disappointed not to say the least.

EDIT: As well revamp a bit the class, is sad at this moment the situation of the ranger overall.

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.

Does your data shows the damage reduction on conition build because of less stacks?
Have you test out how useless Zephyr’s Speed is right now?

Well certainly not the response I was expecting, about as vague as can possibly be, no consideration or mention of the countless things the damage change affects, no mention of the quickness knock on effect or stacks lost.

My Ranger has now been retired, and although im going to try an Engineer or Warrior again, I doubt going through the game again on another character is going to hold my interest for long.

Haha, awesome! Guys, just use your F2 ability to recoup that 7% DPS loss. Oh wait, right, those skills don’t really work…

BTW, it’s a 7.4% reduction in just straight DPS. There is greater loss when considering bleed stacking.

My Guardian is level 69 now — I left the Ranger wagon when they announced victory on the Pet issues…

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.

Something I find funny:
“It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay.”

Who dictates fun factor? I can tell you feeling kittened compared to a warrior with a rifle is certainly not very fun, and this change you implemented magnifies our differences more so.

“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 understand that your proposing better game design, but you are willing to hurt us and analyze how hurt we are before offering improvements? The rangers have seen no real work since release and given it took 2 days to confirm what change actually took place, how long would it take for our other skills to be improved. Lets take a look at the current weapon line up rangers have:

Great Sword. No one uses this since beta test 2/3 where it was nerfed into nothingness. Its defensive nature is at odds with the fact that its melee and we can simply use ranged weapons to deal more dps from ranged (which is safer). Too little damage for the enhanced risk of being melee.

Sword. In general very meh; hard to build a strategy around it, used for snaring and keeping targets snared, but thats something rangers are very good at outside this weapon.

Longbow: Terrible attack speed, animations, and the kit in general. Damage is sub par to Warrior Rifle, never seen outside of WvW and even in WvW we only use it due to the traited 1500 range. Any ranger who has seen Engineer grenade spaming at 1500 range would gladly swap classes im sure.

SB: Every ability outside 1 does next to no damage. One relies on the pets hitting the target, which may as well never happen in PvP given our pets can barely keep up with mobile foes, let alone landing one of their painfully slow attacks or F2s.

Pets in General: Buggy, Slow, Ineffective in PvP and WvW. This is our unique mechanic, and outside tank and spank Pve they are pretty useless. Dungeons they get one shotted (even ‘tank’ pets).

So you made a change to a class that has one redeeming quality (our SB ‘1’ attack) and are now going to remain patient to see the fallout to determine next steps?

Let me ask this; wouldnt it have been a better decision as a game designer to come in here and make a post like

“Hey guys, we have identified some issues with SB #1, and are going to make changes to it, and wanted your opionion about Short Bow and what its lacking given that the dps on the auto attack might be scaled back a bit”. Then after a polite discourse and idea exchange, you would be empowered more and the players would be more content?

NOPE! THATS NOT WHAT YOU DID! Instead you ‘fixed an animation bug’ that no ranger I have talked to has ever noticed to disguise what would be an unpopular nerf to the class, and now that we basically are a terrible kitten class you are going to tell us you might review some data, which will spring the possibility for you to formulate a counter balance to the rest of our weak weapon?

If this is par the course for how you plan to introduce game changes, I may be looking elsewhere to spend my time.

Notice how he neglected to mention anything about the fact that damage of shortbow while using QZ dropped by 25%+

Spamming 1 might not be the most fun gameplay, but its a lot more fun to actually be able to do good damage with one skill than using broken weapons (sword) or weaps with bad DPS (everything other than SB and sword). SB was the ranger’s only good weapon which is mediocre to bad now that the good burst damage from QZ is gone.

Wow, I’m shocked right now. Been a loyal super-fan since alpha, but this was just incredibly poorly executed Jon.

You’re now telling us this was a thinly veiled nerf to make us use the other skills on the weapon. Jon, people do use those skills already! They are control effects and are used as such. How is nerfing the damage on the 1 skill gonna make people stop using it? We’re still going to use the weapon the exact same way (if anyone still plays Ranger that is). So you want us to spam our slow, evade, poison, and stun as soon as the timers up, so we’re not using 1 as much? Wha? What??? Your argument makes zero sense sir, and I beg you to reconsider.

I think what you are really trying to say (not say) is you didn’t want all rangers to feel like they had to use shortbow, and hey guess what, we agree… but you should have instead tweaked the other weapons upwards, not decimated the only moderately decent weapon into uselessness.

The fact that Quickening Zephyr’s buggy reaction to this change (which is a WAY bigger issue than the 7% nerf) isn’t even mentioned after you’ve had a few days of testing results is totally unacceptable. I don’t really know what to say. Very sad day for rangers.

Considering the response we got on this, I won’t expect any changes any time soon. This will just fall into the black hole of stuff they might someday get to. Since I can’t cancel my sub, I’ll protest in the only way I know how. No gem purchases from black lion until this is fixed.

So what he’s saying is if anything is going to change from this point, it will probably be in the form of adding damage to short bow 2-4 abilities…except those abilities should be used situationally, to dodge/interrupt as a part of skilled play. Adding more damage to those abilities is just going to encourage faceroll 2-3-4-5 as soon as you engage for damage and does NOT promote skilled play.

Spamming 1 might not be what you call “fun” for all other professions/weapon kits but this is how short bow was designed; Damage from 1, utility from 2-5. If I wanted to play whack-a-mole with cooldowns, I would use pretty much any other weapon from any other profession.

I don’t understand how nerfing the damage on #1 is going to make people use #2-5. #2 is a poor AoE attack, #3 is a retreat attack which is rarely needed, #4 is a cripple with pet bleed, and #5 is a daze effect.

So #2 won’t be used more often. #3 won’t be used more often. Pets are pretty bad, but this might encourage greater use of #4. And #5 probably won’t be used more often either, since most of the time you just want the thing to die faster, not mitigate its damage output.

So yeah, maybe #4 will be used a little more frequently. Although Id’ have thought people would use it situationally for the cripple, not to increase DPS.

I dont think we should either, I dont see this as sweet talking, I see it as basic courtesy.

I would like to point out that I use all my SB abilities except for #3 (due to it being flaky aka buggy) in PvE even when not kiting a mob around. Frost traps are for that.

In PvP I only use #2, 4 & 5 when kiting someone around. I always have my pet standing next to me unless I’m going 1v1 with someone. Sending it into a group of people is well… suicide as we all know.

Also thanks for the “we want you to play the game like you want to play only if it’s how we want you to play” excuse.

Jujube.4981:

So what he’s saying is if anything is going to change from this point, it will probably be in the form of adding damage to short bow 2-4 abilities…except those abilities should be used situationally, to dodge/interrupt as a part of skilled play. Adding more damage to those abilities is just going to encourage faceroll 2-3-4-5 as soon as you engage for damage and does NOT promote skilled play.

Spamming 1 might not be what you call “fun” for all other professions/weapon kits but this is how short bow was designed; Damage from 1, utility from 2-5. If I wanted to play whack-a-mole with cooldowns, I would use pretty much any other weapon from any other profession.

^support this
I was attracted by the speed of shortbow in this game, now its gone

@JonPeters: Sorry that I have to break [Obstructed] to you, but in wuvwuv damage [Obstructed] everything. The faster the enemy dies, the less [Obstructed] you need. You basically took away 7% of our [Obstructed] (much more for the condition damage builds or the builds relying on Quickening [Obstructed] for burst [Obstructed]) without giving us anything in return but “we want you to use other [Obstructed], lol”.

If you deem it necessary to take away from our damage, I guess we were just dealing too much damage compared to those noob [Obstructed] like thieves who can only deal 23k or more damage in less than 3 seconds. Cool, didn’t [Obstructed] that we were so OP.

As others have already said, the shortbow only has Crossfire for damage, since [Obstructed] other skills are conditions, control or defense. How is a shortbow using ranger supposed to kill his opponents? Discuss them to death? -.-" [Obstructed] funny.

Ranger already has so little to offer compared to other classes, now we don’t even have great burst damage. And to put it bluntly: sustained damage is completely irrelevant and [Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed]. I’d rather have a skill that deals 36k damage in a single shot and has a cooldown of 1 hour than a skill that deals 10 damage each second for the next hour. The first one gets you kills, the other is a mild inconvenience for the opponent before he tears off your face.

There’s a metric [Obstructed] ton of issues with the ranger class that desperately need attention (just take a look at the aptly named sticky thread on this forum, in case you haven’t). And you have nothing better to do than nerf the single burst damage ability we have? Seriously? How about fixing the really [Obstructed] pet controls we have? Or the not working skills/traits, like for [Obstructed] that Opening Strike doesn’t work at a range higher than 900? Or the kittenannoyingnerdrageinducing [Obstructed] obstructed thing which makes your shots miss even if the target is standing right [Obstructed] in front of you on plain ground?

[Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed] [Obstructed]!

<.<
>.>
-.-

any damage boost would be great but the thing that would be a better change would be extending the bleed on cross fire slightly longer, this would encurage propper positioning even more as well as be more rewarding for condition based builds, the only other place they could improve condition stacking builds for rangers is by fixing pet condition dmg, cause lets face it, pets only deal base condition dmg and before anyone says “there is a major trait that adds more dmg!” there is but its not worth it in the current format, insted of pet bleed doing 43 dmg a second it will do 48 dmg a second which is a very minimal bonus for a major trait, there are far more effective options to take when pet bleeds are as hard as they are to stack for the extra 5 dmg a sec per stack to make any kind of real impact on the fight when you are fighitng things that have 11k-28k health

Okay. Official Response: “We secretly nerfed the ranger and lied to you. We forced you to use one weapon by nerfing all the others and using auto-attack because your other skills don’t do any damage…. but we don’t want you to play that way”

Aka: We don’t want you to play a ranger.

Thanks for finally responding, even though the response is as frustrating as the silence.

Now, the million dollar question is what are these animation bugs? No one aside from you and your team was aware of any animation bugs. I’m not claiming they didn’t exist, but no one seemed to notice. The closest thing I can connect is players having issue with the SB shooting too fast..machine gun fast, but that’s not an animation bug..is it?

Anyway, thanks again for the update, as it lets me know that this is the way it’s going to be for a while. I can now go try another profession.

Jon I appreciate the time and effort that it took for you and the team to look into this. I can also appreciate the fact that you do not agree that a class should only spam just one button. I must say, however, that I am very disappointed that you claim the animation bug was the main reason for this 7% damage reduction – because I have yet to see any evidence of this. At the very best, it looks bad to the community as to the motives for this change. It sounds like you are OK with this reduction for now, which also disappoints me. I am interested in the upcoming changes/upgrades to the other abilities for the ranger…although I fear that they may be a long time coming. A sad day indeed. I will either focus on another class or take a break from the game – both of which bum me out to be honest.

Levetty.1279:

Then the change was intended as a nerf to the attack speed of the bow and they should have put that in the notes.

But that also leaves us with the problem that they intended the shortbow to be as mediocre as all our other weapons. So what exactly is Ranger supposed to do? I swear if they had made it so that Shortbow hurts yourself with every shot some people would be defending this horrible patch.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates:

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

First, as far as I have seen and according to the patch note, Crossfire is the only attack the shortbow uses that was changed. Since Crossfire is only one of five skills the shortbow has, changing that one skill does not remotely equate to a “nerf to the attack speed of the bow.” It amounts to a change to the attack speed of that one skill. In other words, they did not say they were changing the attack speed of the bow because they were not changing the attack speed of the bow.

Second, what is there about specifically stating that they have increased the “casting time” of that skill that does not communicate to you that they have changed the attack speed of that shot? The only distortion of the truth I see here is coming people, such as yourself, who are reacting emotionally and jumping to conclusions based on what they want to happen rather than what has actually been said.

Finally, I specifically stated that I did not like the change. I further stated that I expect that the change they made resulted in an unintended additional decrease in the attack speed of that shot. That means I expect them to verify that the shot is not working as intended and that they will fix it in a future patch. What is there about that position that remotely suggests that I am “defending this horrible patch.”

(Edit) Since posting this, I note that they have replied before I got to that. They said that they confirmed through testing that the 40ms change is working as intended. That is disappointing as I believe that this is resulting in an overall decrease in the effectiveness of that weapon beyond what they intend.

However, they further stated in that post that they are continuing to monitor the output of the weapon and that they may make addtional changes. Those changes could be to increase the per shot damage of Crossfire, or, more likely, increase the effectiveness of another shot or shots (i.e., change their cast times, cooldowns or damage per shot).

Either way, the point I was making is that they have not once lied about this. They have been forthright and honest about what they are doing. Just because you and I disagree with the change, doesn’t mean that you have the right to accuse them of lying or distorting the truth.

I really tried the last few days to convince people that the nerf was exactly what they said but pretty much was laughed at and ridiculed. I tried to press the point that it was qz that was bugged. But instead everyone cried about how they could “notice” the slow down on the bow. So instead of pointing a net in the correct direction everyone sceamed and cried about the speed.

So now does anyone realize how long its going to take for them to fix the qz bug? I doubt they’ll do it anytime soon.

I question the brain trust over at Arenanet. And i am truly not trying to be offensive or anything like that, but with months of beta testing and understanding that there were known bugs (which are still not fixed), how is it that things are still not going smooth?

And im not even that much upset about the speed decrease with sb, but just generally speaking about all professions and the changes that Anet has made.

Honestly, from an objective viewpoint, I see a lot more complaints than happy players with this game. But on the bright side, if Anet does a magic trick and comes up with a spectacular expansion some time soon with buffs and other things, then it will save them from having fans be discouraged from future games from Anet

I think the developper/designer just gave us a clear orientation about the ranger’s design —- it’s for PVE, not for PVP. I can still solo champins with my shortbow, it just takes longer although I become a moving badge in wvw. For PVP , yes you get nerfed badly, but never forget you are much easier in PVE, so over all, Anet is just making so called balance….

If they want us to not spam the 1 attack as much then the not-1 moved need to be on shorter timers. Beh, I guess there are other weapons that a Ranger can use, but it’s a real bummer that the Ranger class won’t be able to use Shortbows anymore and still be effective. You’d think if they would get one weapon combo right with Ranger, it would be the bow.

The only thing that gets me and is just a bad move by John Peter’s is that his first post sounded like there was a legitimate problem that would get resolved. Now his second post has a whole different attitude and that the 40ms was in fact intended and in short, lowered the shortbow’s 1 ability effectiveness.

John Peter’s trying to pull a fast one by the Ranger forum is more troubling to me than anything else.

How does his first post list anything other than he is going to check it out?

Maybe the fact that he acted like it wasn’t intended? Then comes back in and says yea…we nerfed you it’s all working as planned, you’re useless.

edit: If we all wanted to be spin artist’s, we could say.. So we just made all the bad weapons in the rangers arsenal better.

It’s just hard to miss the fact that our overall performance is now down 10-20%.
And after all, i don’t want to be OP in any way, just on par. Losing to a warrior and knowing if was basically scissors meeting rock…is dissapointing.

edit again: Nothing says tournament like being outclassed before the match even starts.

Dev 1: “Players are using the short bow 1 ability with no cool-down non-stop, what should we do about it?”

Dev 2: “We could add a cooldown!”
Dev 3: “We could make the other abilities more useful!”

Dev 1: “Nah, lets just increase the cast time on skill 1 without altering the other short bow abilities.”
Dev 3: “How does make them hit 1 less?”

Dev 1: “We’ll figure that part out later, just add the cast time for now.”

Jon,

With all due respect, looking at how or how often people use a skill is not the way to balance a game that’s supposedly PVP-centric. When you got rid of the trinity, balance should come from classes being able to spec differently and still remain viable and competitive. This is clearly not done currently in this game. Just look at how warriors and thieves burst down and mesmers dominate in pvp. I’ve seen numerous people in other threads including this one saying talking about class X, Y, Z etc is not conducive to the discussion, but I think those people are missing the point.

The measurement of class balance is what one class can do relatively when compared with another class.

Players are like the free market, it’s relatively efficient. People will find and gravitate towards setups that are effective and eventually to the optimal setup within the boundaries of the class. Just because everyone is doing X doesn’t mean the class is balanced or unbalanced; it just means X is the setup that works best given what people have to work with. If you find people are spamming skill one on the short bow, that’s telling you something; it’s that the other weapons and builds are not viable, at least in the PVP scene.

Go look at the WvW forum right now, there’s two threads about people being dealt 20k+ worth of damage by warrior’s killshot and thief’s burst down in mere seconds. There’s more at guru. The ranger’s shortbow wouldn’t do that even if you stacked all your bleeds while having multiple might stacks. I’m not suggesting those classes should be nerfed per se; I would suggest the team to tackle the problem instead by looking at buffing the other weapon and skill sets instead for the rangers and other classes.

If you feel spamming skill 1 is outside the definition of skill for something that’s destined for E-sport, then again, changing and buffing the skills which creates more complex combos and play style is warranted, but you can’t expect people to not have something to fall back on in the mean time. This one skill spam is just a symptom and not the problem.

TL; DR: Buff the ranger weapons and skills. You can’t blame the players for choosing the most viable route in a PVP-centric game when no real alternatives are offered to them, especially when the class pales in comparison to the burst down of some other classes.

Problem is the only really viable build was crit/power sb. This was only possible due to the synergy between attack 1 and QZ. That synergy is gone and therefore so is the damage, making the build useless.

We are now left without any real dps options in pvp because all the other weapons frankly suck.

Why could you not have buffed the other weapons whilst nerfing the SB? Instead you nerfed it and now expect us to play (arguably) the worst class till you get your acts together.

Kind of disappointed in the decision making here.

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.

And I’m done with this game. I’m kicking myself rather hard for buying the expansion and the gems that I have bought but atleast this happened and showed me ANets true colors before I bought copies of the game for my nieces and nephew for Christmas. This was a ninja nerf that rangers absolutely did NOT need. Oh well, atleast I didn’t waste too much time trying to farm for gear…. if they ever decide to fix the ranger class I might be back, but I doubt it. I hope for the sake of everyone that has posted here that they do fix this class and make it more on par with other classes.

Peace out.

Edit: I’m not quitting because of the change to the SB, I’m quitting because it was supposed to be ‘only an animation change’ that resulted in a supposed unintentional dps nerf – and then we are told ‘too bad so sad’. THAT attitude is what bothers me.

I’m amused by the plethora of Chicken Littles in the Ranger forums.

There are MANY viable Ranger builds besides power/crit shortbow, now and pre-SB change.

If you’re really gonna jump ship because ONE single weapon in the Ranger arsenal got changed…. Well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

“If you’re really gonna jump ship because the ONE single viable weapon in the Ranger arsenal got changed…. Well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Fixed it for you.

<3 just playin

@nldixon

I think a large portion of complaints stem from pvp players. Why is this, because the role they filled prior to the nerf was a damage dealing source with aoe root on foefire. Now they dont fill any viable roles, because every other class does it better.

I normally just lurk these forums, but you should all actually be glad that a designer actually chose to respond and investigate your skill issues and read your feedback. Yet some of you chose to berate them. Try running an elementalist. Try reading their forums. Until then — be considerate, be fair.

You can’t just increase the damage of our 2-5 skills without considering whether that will be effective. The 2 skill is only effective point blank, 3-5 arrows fire so slowly that you have to be really close range for them to even connect.

Jon, SB damage was fine previously. it was more than fine, it was middle of the pack in terms of damage output. you nerfed my power/condition build for absolutely no reason. i have high skill with this build and i never once felt OP against any prof. it’s not wise to nerf non-OP builds without compensating the weapon in any way. now i have to wait 2-3 months before this is addressed? gg.

Reroll a warrior, 4 rangers and me already done it and even at level 11 I’m facerolling rangers in WvW already, imagine at 80 with gears.

After reading about all the stealth nerfs to the game the past weeks I lost any interest and value I held towards my character. I invested 300+ hours into my ranger because I loved the shortbow, yes it was a spammable build but that’s what I enjoyed, mostly because having to combo for several hours straight one tires me a bit to much. Now that any invested time holds no value whatsoever and any class can be either be made or broken in a single patch, I decided to no longer care about this game at all.

Am I mad? Very, I’ve seen F2P mmo’s handle balance issues better than this supposed AAA company who actually dares to claim to work on creating a proper balance.

Yes 40ms is not much but if it’s the only weapon I really enjoy and any other options are rather weak in PvP, then it becomes a huge issue and since Izzy favors warrior, that’s the class to role in this 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.

Thanks for the response, Jon.

Was your team able to look into the fact that Crossfire when under the effects of Quickness from Quickening Zephyr or Zephyr’s Swiftness is measurably slower than the intended 40ms change?

It seems like this point sort of got lost in the noise, but it’s exceedingly relevant; the change to Crossfire seems on target for the normal attack, but it appears to be applying a .4 second increase when under Swiftness, not .04. People better at math than I am made some good posts about it earlier in this thread.

Any chance that could be looked into as well? Thanks.

So deleting posts now are we, without notification this time, why? The humour i’ve put in? Mentioning a certain company?

Well here it is again, adjusted offcourse.

7% DPS nerf on Crossfire (base damage).
25% DPS nerf on Quickening Zephyr and Zephyr’s Speed (base damage).

And with base damage I mean that it doesn’t include the damage done by critical hits and bleeds.

I don’t know what you guys have been smoking over at Anet but that’s just rediculous if you don’t make any other changes.

Gobsmacked that’s what I am. Why? SB Rangers weren’t the strongest by far.

Anyway i’m done with Ranger for now, and i’m also done with buying gems for the time beeing if this is what they do with money, and that is spending it on people who don’t wanna do their job WELL. I’m even considering buying games again from an unnamed company which has screwed up several AAA titles because they didn’t mess up this badly.

Also stop with the weekly updates, test the patches thorougly, do the balancing properly. Fix issues, especially events, skill challenges, etc… and try to make sure they DON’T break again.

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.

This goes against the testing of I and many others who have dps parsed the short bow. I ask you to please do real in-game testing. We have detected a loss of 30-35% damage from the front with statting Power/Precision.

Having all the damage put in the auto-attack is not bad when the short bow’s feature is that its other skills are situational. If you are going to put more damage weight on the 4 and 5 skills, you are going to need to speed the arrows so they can hit consistently.

Edge.4180:

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.

This hits the nail right on the head. I’m all for removing spam buttons in favor of real gameplay, but when 4 out of 5 of your skills are situational – that’s exactly what you get. I’d personally consider hitting my other 4 buttons right off of cooldown just because they were there “spamming” so it depends on how you view it.

There’s got to be a way to keep the acrobatic and situational aspect of the shortbow and adding more meaning to the other abilities.

I have to be honest. I have to add my own opinion.

My motivation went down so much when i saw this nerf. Now i see the philosphy behind the ranger, my motivation to play this class (and this game) is near inexistent.

Please do something, Anet! Please!

i love how this peter guy says it was a debugging issue. stop kittening lying. just next time do us all a favor and just tell us outright when your taking a kitten all over our class

faytte.1057:

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 8 ) is more than a 7% damage decrease for condition builds.

I agree that the shortbow nerf was unwarranted, but this here is terrible logic at play.

The effect of 7% less attacks results in 7% less bleeds.

The amount of stacks you keep up has no bearing on any calculation, the moment you apply the bleed, the damage is guaranteed so as long as your foe doesn’t cleanse it off or you didn’t hit the damage cap.

The loss of a stack is inconsequential, so to speak.

I agree that the shortbow nerf was unwarranted, but this here is terrible logic at play.
The effect of 7% less attacks results in 7% less bleeds.
The amount of stacks you keep up has no bearing on any calculation, the moment you apply the bleed, the damage is guaranteed so as long as your foe doesn’t cleanse it off or you didn’t hit the damage cap.
The loss of a stack is inconsequential, so to speak.

Very much this.

Each bleed stack is its own effect, and does the same damage independent of any other bleed stacks on the target. Attacking 7.7% slower means we do the same damage (direct damage hits as well as condition applications), only 7.7% slower.

When someone says, “I used to be able to get to 8 stacks, but now I can only get to 7; therefore it’s a 12.5% nerf!” what they’re effectively doing is artificially rounding to the nearest 1/8th.

The complaints about quickness may be a legitimate grievance, but I have no pre-patch quickness testing results to offer toward that discussion.

In all fairness, this is really a major issue only in PvP.

In all other aspects of the game, the pet does damage too. It’s unfair to compare weapon DPS of another profession just to skill #1 of our shortbow. Our pet is dishing it out too. While a 7% reduction of the skill, it’s less than that overall when combining the pet’s dmg output too.

In PvE, I run with hawk/eagle pets and they absolutely rip most mobs a new one. Plus, my BM build has a ton of health. I can run solo in Orr past all the mobs and I don’t have to worry about dying if I keep running. I hardly ever die in PvE actually.

In dungeons, bosses can quickly kill the pets. They can also quickly kill players too. Even if my pet survives long enough to take 1 or 2 shots, those are shots no person in the group had to take. And if my ranger does 7% less damage to a boss, oh well, a little bit longer to kill.

In PvP, it’s a different story. Especially in WvWvW which I’m most familiar with. In the zerg, it probably doesn’t matter as much. But 1×1 the game is burst damage. Too bad for us now. If our pets could attack moving targets, then we’d suddenly be more viable in PvP. Oh well. At least no other profession has DPS that can hit moving targets either. Oh wait…

mouse.1689:

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.

Thanks for the response, Jon.

Was your team able to look into the fact that Crossfire when under the effects of Quickness from Quickening Zephyr or Zephyr’s Swiftness is measurably slower than the intended 40ms change?

It seems like this point sort of got lost in the noise, but it’s exceedingly relevant; the change to Crossfire seems on target for the normal attack, but it appears to be applying a .4 second increase when under Swiftness, not .04. People better at math than I am made some good posts about it earlier in this thread.

Any chance that could be looked into as well? Thanks.

I know there is a lot of angst on the forum at the moment, but the above is likely the question on everyones lips; it would be great if you could give us a heads up about this.

Tibbel.3450:

Very much this.

Each bleed stack is its own effect, and does the same damage independent of any other bleed stacks on the target. Attacking 7.7% slower means we do the same damage (direct damage hits as well as condition applications), only 7.7% slower.

When someone says, “I used to be able to get to 8 stacks, but now I can only get to 7; therefore it’s a 12.5% nerf!” what they’re effectively doing is artificially rounding to the nearest 1/8th.

The complaints about quickness may be a legitimate grievance, but I have no pre-patch quickness testing results to offer toward that discussion.

To add on to this, and to my previous comment, the best way to look at the situation is to look at how much Crossfire does per cast in total. Not looking at the stacks you can put out before and after the nerf.

Before:

Crossfire does an average of 350 damage per cast for its physical damage component, then 100 damage per second for 4 seconds, and the interval between each cast is 500 milliseconds.

Over a 10 second period, I can do approximately 20 attacks. That’s 20 stacks of bleeding. Not maintained, but applied separately.

After:

Crossfire does an average of 350 damage per cast for its physical damage component, then 100 damage per second for 4 seconds, and the interval between each cast is 540 milliseconds.

Over a 10 second period, I can do approximately 18.5 attacks. That’s ~18.5 stacks of bleeding. Again, not maintained, but applied separately.

In total, it’s still only a 7.7% loss over a large sample size. Not more, not less.

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.

First of all Thank You for your reply sir, it took a couple of days but at least we had an answer I came from a game that GM’s wouldnt answer for weeks so thats a relief. Now with all due respect I dont think anyone except for anet have heard about that animation bug that was happening before the nerf. In fact i think you guys make that up as an excuse to nerf the SB just because you didnt want players to base their gameplay in just spamming #1 skill. Also saying that spamming 1 isnt the most fun gameplay is debatable, i didnt mind it back then and was having a lot of fun playing with my ranger, so much so that I didnt have an alt character, now i have one because the nerf force me to. I dont think the SB is the problem, the reason why all players use it is because quite frankly all the other weapons kind of sucked. In my opinion instead of nerfing SB what anet should have done was improving LB and the rest of the weapons rangers have at their disposal and even if you do that i dont think the class would be called OP.

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.
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This makes zero sense, Its being spammed because its the only bloody spammable ability…..

Honestly, If you don’t know anything about the class, Why are you bloody coming to this forum and wasting everyone’s time.

Cause its clear you’ve not actually played the Ranger.

Am I the only one that finds that their response makes absolutely zero sense?
They claim it was an animation glitch, his response completely contradicts that.
They claim that it was encouraging just spamming 1… the hell? using the other abilities LOWERS your DPS, why would you use the other abilities when the situation doesn’t warrant their use? Are these people even trying anymore? And they don’t even address the issue with QZ. It is funny how QZ has essentially turned into rapid fire from the longbow. The superior rune of rage (10% chance at quickness on crit) actually fires faster than the quickness on QZ, wonder why? I should probably keep quiet on that, they might nerf the rune too.