Guild Wars 2

Here is my input. This is the same thing that Bioware did to Mercs/Troopers. The class was basically a 1 button build consisting of gravity/missile spam. They said “we want the class to be more than 1 button cause it’s boring”. But instead of changing the class they just nerfed the damage on grav/missiles. This doesn’t make the class deeper or more enjoyable, it just makes the one viable spec less effective. So now you are spamming 1 button less effectively because there aren’t any other viable builds.

You wanna change the class, give us another option before getting rid of our damage. Quickening Zephyr took a hard hit with this nerf. NOBODY cared about this graphic glitch you talked about. Let me reiterate… NOBODY cared about a “graphic glitch”. I left Swtor because of how they treated the community. Don’t make me leave this game because I really like it.

Change the melee option to actually become useful in WvW or TPvP. Change the shortbow so that you have more than one attack option, a crappy poison option and 3 “ok” control options. Change spirit animals to actually become useful. Make the trap spec useful. Do something, don’t just nerf the kitten shortbow damage and call it a day. That’s lazy.

1. What data or information could we the players provide to the development team to help you see the diminished effectiveness?
2. Which other ability(s) of the Ranger are in your view the ones to take up the role of filling the reduced DPS?

Unfortunately, I think the SB nerf is indicative of a much larger problem with the combat mechanics of this game. Spamming #1 on shortbow ’isn’t fun’ in the same way spamming #1 on longbow or short sword ’isn’t fun’ while other skills are on cooldown or don’t fit the situation.

I think the problem lies in lack of skill synergy and an overall lack of skills. While weapon swapping does negate the problem a bit, it doesn’t completely alleviate it. I think a huge opportunity (for fun) is missed because the devs haven’t taken full advantage of skill chains, combo fields, weapon swapping, and trait synergy. With only 5 available weapon skills at a time, not utilizing each slot by adding chains, or increasing synergy seems like a waste. Instead of playing your character to its maximum potential, it feels like you’re constantly wrestling with it to coax your optimal playstyle (fun) out of it…which isn’t fun at all.

Spamming 1 wasn’t fun? What the kitten is that? Spamming 1 with quickness was the best thing about the ranger. All those arrows flying at once looked awesome. Another thing, you don’t decrease the attack speed of a skill (which I’m fairly sure the 40ms delay that was added to crossfire isn’t decreased to 20ms when under quickness, which is why it’s so kitten noticeable) without increasing the damage unless you’re NERFING the skill, regardless of whatever animation you’re fixing. Frankly, I want to know the actual reason this skill was nerfed, because the excuses “fixing the animation/1 is too spammy/1 is no fun” is bull kittening kitten.

Prolly they inhouse tested 4 SB rangers and 1 guardian and found out how op the build is.

Guys, it’s pretty obvious from Jon’s post and the lack of serious pvp alternatives that they have gone back to GW logic, we are to do nothing but spam Crip shot/Poison on the enemy, neither of which happen to be the “1” key that we were spamming too much apparently.

Seriously though, anyone who has played GW1 should have seen this coming. The only time we ever got any real love from the devs was when an entirely new game came out and we got new skills like Broad Head Arrow.

We oldbies also know all too well what happened anytime the Ranger started being any kind of damage dealer.

“We oldbies also know all too well what happened anytime the Ranger started being any kind of damage dealer.”

Well Arenanet had a few problems balancing particularly GvG in Guild Wars 1 and one of the early ones was ranger spike teams. Still the standard burning arrow / crip shot builds were very viable and probably still are for balanced PvP teams (and very good in alliance battles too). PvE became a bit problematical for rangers later in the game, since so many mobs were immune to conditions. Still you could usually spec something recently decent.

I dont usually post on threads, i just like to read the info and take it for what it is, but this time i was having great fun with the way the ranger was until this patch came out. It just feels slow now, like i had to kite already to not get ganked by mobs or monsters because the ranger doesnt do much damage. Like my gf has an elementalist and srsly she doesnt even move the avatar to take down mobs its just spam skills.

I hope it returns to what it was. Meanwhile ill go back to mesmer. It was fun.

I think with last night’s patch, ArenaNet changed the bleed effect on the shortbow to 4 seconds, up from 3. It doesn’t mention that in the patch, but I see it when I mouse over the crossfire skill.

I don’t know what happened, I used to be able to quote a post…but in reply to someone who said Anet thought the SB was OP..LMAO! I know it was sarcarsm, but at least before the NERF we were formidable adversaries…Now we’re just dust catchers.
I actually got excited when I saw a new update today….REALLY? The size of Asuran heads?? CMON!
I think Jon’s last post is the final word on this and we’re not going to get anymore feedback from them about this no matter the amount of begging we do.
Highly disappointed Anet

Highly disappointed!

bombs.9150:

I think with last night’s patch, ArenaNet changed the bleed effect on the shortbow to 4 seconds, up from 3. It doesn’t mention that in the patch, but I see it when I mouse over the crossfire skill.

says 3 3/4 for me. Unless you’re just rounding, I never really paid attention to the bleed duration on the tooltip.

My ranger is a LB / Axe & WH build and I find it generally quite effective. As others have posted, confined spaces such as dungeons restrict range, or areas such as Cursed Shore limit mobility and range due to the higher mob population, and pets are as much a liability as an advantage sometimes, but I still enjoy the class. What bothers me the most with this change is this:

JonPeters.5630:

It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay.

Clearly the Anet team should make every effort to provide the most fun gameplay, but it is quite a different thing to dictate to the user-base what is or isn’t fun for us. I have yet to see a single post indicating that anyone had an issue with “spamming 1”.

More importantly, if Anet feels it needs to make an aspect of the game more fun, the approach should be to improve that aspect, or to enhance its alternatives and lure players towards them. It should definitely not be to make that aspect less fun/less usable and drive users to the alternatives.

I think you must have duration bonus to bleeds mine says 3 1/4. No ranger love here

roqoco.4053:

“We oldbies also know all too well what happened anytime the Ranger started being any kind of damage dealer.”

Well Arenanet had a few problems balancing particularly GvG in Guild Wars 1 and one of the early ones was ranger spike teams. Still the standard burning arrow / crip shot builds were very viable and probably still are for balanced PvP teams (and very good in alliance battles too). PvE became a bit problematical for rangers later in the game, since so many mobs were immune to conditions. Still you could usually spec something recently decent.

The problem is no one wants “decent”. They want good. No one is going to take decent with them for high end PvE or any kind of PvP where every last point counts and especially not when there is another option that gets the job done faster and more efficiently.

Tynee.9427:

I think you must have duration bonus to bleeds mine says 3 1/4. No ranger love here

You are indeed correct. I completely forgot about the duration bonuses and was just looking at the tooltips to see if anything was different from what the base value should be.

Finally managed to get in to the forums. Yay!

Only for my first post to be that of another disgruntled ranger adding my voice to all of the others that have been protesting the stealth nerf of 7th October.

Put quite bluntly, I’m incredibly disappointed by Anets’ approach to the whole issue. It seems that when other professions get nerfed, at least Anet has enough respect for those customers to admit openly that’s what they’re doing. Why do they feel that the customers that choose to play the Ranger profession deserve any less?

I feel very disillusioned with Anet at the moment.

I do use all of the shortbow skills available to me and rely on constant movement, traps, QZ/RaO (when required) and situational awareness to keep my toon out of trouble. I’d like to be able to rely on my pet too… but we all know how risky can be…

Regardless, I was enjoying playing my Ranger, even with this alleged graphical glitch when combined with QZ. It was fun. Now, less so.

If Anet truly want Rangers to stop having to spam the #1 Crossfire auto attack skill for the shortbow… then they need to provide us with the means to do so. Not nerf the single skill in the shortbow skill set that enables us to maintain a consistent damage output!

C’mon Anet. You could do better!

I’d like to know why this change was made without any sort of counterbalance. If the purpose was to nerf Ranger damage, then tell us that you felt we were doing too much damage. Either we were balanced before in the eyes of the devs or not.

If they think we were 7% overpowered before, then they should say so. If not, I’d like some sort of balance to make up for it. I found shooting very fast to be something fun and unique about the class, and this nerf (it’s a nerf, even if it only came about as a bug fix) has lessened my enjoyment.

It’s lessened it to the point that I’d rather spend this time typing than playing my ranger.

Gonna add my voice to the (already many) voices out there protesting this change.

As several have already stated, the 2-5 skills on Short bow have situational purpose. Longbow is the only weapon skill we have where I can see spamming something other than 1 on a regular basis.

If it is the opinion of the devs to change how Short bow works, that is fine – but a nerf to one of our most effective weapons with no other change or compensation to the weapon is not going to make many people happy, nor does it change how Short bow really works (other than making it weaker.)

There is a real lack of alternative weapons too. Axe/Horn is (imo) the only viable alternative to Short bow for range.

People are upset because of the neglect in addressing our issues with the Short bow nerf, the lack of response to Quickening Zephyr’s bug with Short bow, and the fact that your supposed reason for this change does nothing to help us with the issue of us being shoehorned into few viable skills.

As this nerf happened, I upgraded from a lvl 71 rare shortbow to a lvl 80 exotic shortbow. I now see no noticeable difference in damage. What a great way to make my time/gold investment seem worthless.

Yes finally almost 2 months after the games release I now can login to the forums without a 401 error! Finally a modicum level of competence from the forum developers.

After reading all the replies to this animation fix to the ranger SB I just wanted to give my $0.02 worth. I started the ranger pre fix and was loving it, SB fit my play style instantly and was FUN, far more then my 80 thief and guardian! Now unfortunately this has been diminished just like the SB’s damage as Raffoon has said so eloquently.

“It’s lessened it to the point that I’d rather spend this time typing than playing my ranger.”

Reading the developers reply to this ‘fix’ carves in stone their incompetence in testing & validation procedures, ignorance in understanding the ranger SB play style (@ spamming #1 comment) and apathetic attitude towards players of the ranger profession.

This SB stealth nerf will never be fixed, based on the official statement replies from a so called “developer” JonPeters. I started GW2 thinking that finally a game development company that actually understands its player base, I was very WRONG! Just from the support (lack of) in game and out (forums) its apparent that I won’t be sticking around as much or spending any more money on this what promised to be potentially a great game.

I also don’t like this nerf. I’d like to come up with one of four solutions:

1. Return SB and to the state of before this “fix”. It was fun, not really overpowered with QZ and I really like this idea.
Btw. Imagine small Sylvari with that mushroom-hairstyle – it looks like little Chinese boy who whole life didn’t do anything but short bow shooting

2. Buff SB bleed duration/stacks – can be if you take it like 2x longer/2x more stacks, a little challenging, but still usable weapon

3. Buff SB so it can bleed even hitting in front of foe and buff SB and QZ damage. Don’t like it too much – it will make players lazy.

4. Add additional conditions to other weapons skills. Dunno how it will look like, it can make ranger overpowered like warrior/mesmer.

zappa zenovka.8641:

Saddened as I always felt the relationship players had with ANET was Player to Player, we were all on the same page, we all wanted to pull in the same direction. That is, “To have fun”.

The SB change has not brought any fun to my gaming and has removed a huge amount of fun I used to have.

At the moment, my feelings are hurt and I feel betrayed.

I know how you feel, I feel the same way. I cannot even login to play my other professions thinking that are they going to nerf this prof soon, so all my time and effort is going to be wasted again! The SB nerf really took the fun out of this game for me and all anet is concerned about is updating their facebook page with halloween crap.

The fact that that a actual nerf was covered up as a fix to animation keeps me thinking whether to continue playing the game or not.
The most fustrating thing is , the way it was explain by the dev .
It really sounds like “hey look here, it’s obvious that we are nerfing SB , so move on”.
Totally disappointed by the dev’s action. It was quite obvious rangers need some major rework and buffing in many aspect .
Currently , I am just casually playing with a friend who I am helping in his lvling.
Other than that, I not going to invest any more time or real money into it.
Not going to play another game by Anet .

What I don’t understand is how can something like this happen. No one in their dev team plays a ranger? No one told them they were nerfing the only good thing we had? It’s like they didn’t even realize what they were doing.

To the developers: I just wanted to chime in here (now that I can finally log into the forums)…

The “spam 1” approach to doing damage with the Shortbow (while continually attempting to maintain flanking position on your enemy) is exactly why I fell in love with the class, and to me was the exact definition of “fun”.

With all the other weapons in the game, you essentially play “whack a mole” with your big hitting abilities. With the Shortbow, the fun is in the need to position yourself properly to maintain optimal damage (while dropping traps and attempting to control your pet). The beauty of it is, as long as you are doing so, you continually feel like you’re putting out solid DPS – and the remaining abilities on the weapon help you control the fight or kite your foe.

I thought it was very elegantly designed, and I loved it. Since the whole usability of the weapon is designed around “spamming 1” – there really IS no other way to use the Shortbow – and almost the entire population of the Ranger class is up in arms about the “spamming 1 isn’t fun” comment… maybe you might want to rethink redesigning the weapon 2 months into playing the game. A whole lot of people really think it IS fun.

I’m also a little disappointed that this animation fix, aside from the damage nerf caused Quickness effects (from the pet swapping trait and Quickening Zephyr) – which were the only source of burst damage available to the weapon – to be diminished in effectiveness by 50%, and no one replying to this thread has even seen fit to acknowledge that it’s happening.

My Warrior is level 44 as of today. I’d really like to play my Ranger, but every time I pet swap (which is every 16 seconds while fighting), I get a big honking reminder that my only real source of good single target ranged DPS is borked right now.

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.

As many have said here before there are no other dps options with SB. So why would you make a change like this and say it’s a fun factor and do nothing about the other skills. This does not make me want to use my 3, 4,or 5 ability more.

I think when Jon said it’s not fun he was referring to the other classes, because now they can beat us much easier and are having a lot more fun doing it.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

bombs.9150:

I think with last night’s patch, ArenaNet changed the bleed effect on the shortbow to 4 seconds, up from 3. It doesn’t mention that in the patch, but I see it when I mouse over the crossfire skill.

says 3 3/4 for me. Unless you’re just rounding, I never really paid attention to the bleed duration on the tooltip.

One of you has 35% condition duration, and the other has 25% condition duration. >.>

3 secod base. 35% to get it to 4 sec, 70% to get it to 5 sec, 100% to get 6 sec. Condition duration caps at +100%. So our maximum bleed duration on shortbow is 6 seconds.

If you can get yor condition duration to +100%, that’ the sweet spot where our ~on crit – bleed~ trait lasts 2 seconds, and is worth taking in a precision/condition build because it adds 3-4 to your rolling bleed stack.

I’m rambling. Carry on.

Calavero.3420:

-Snip-

I’m also a little disappointed that this animation fix, aside from the damage nerf caused Quickness effects (from the pet swapping trait and Quickening Zephyr) – which were the only source of burst damage available to the weapon – to be diminished in effectiveness by 50%, and no one replying to this thread has even seen fit to acknowledge that it’s happening.

-Snip-

Actually I did the math and said this on page 5:

So Quickness doubles speed right? We know QZ gives us Quickness and we know pre-patch it was 16 arrows in 4 seconds and post-patch 12 arrows in 4 seconds.

So that means if QZ doubles speed we should shoot 8 arrows in 4 seconds pre-patch and 6 arrows in 4 seconds post-patch using “Crossfire”.

How many seconds are there in a minute? 60.

60/4=15.
8*15 =120. (pre-patch)
6*15=90. (post-patch)

120 – 90 = 30. ( outcome is the difference between pre and post)
30 is 25% of 120.

Maybe Quickness is bugged, QZ and Zephyr’s Speed are bugged and aren’t cutting the casting time in half for Crossfire, or they incorrectly increased the casting time of Crossfire by a time greater then 40 milliseconds.

I then went on to do some more tests and I have made two more topics.

This first one actually shows how fast we should be shooting and how fast we are shooting while using Quickening Zephyr and Zephyr’s Speed:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Do-these-numbers-lie/first#post418551

So no the effectiveness has not been diminished by 50% but by 25% when you compare post to pre-patch while under the effects of Quickness.

Then there is this animation bug that happens when using QZ and ZS:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Another-animation-fix-incoming-for/first#post419344

The best solution to SB nerf I could find was to shelve my ranger with 2 exotic sets (glass cannon and condition sets) and start playing a warrior. Only thing I felt sorry when I retired my ranger was to give up all those spvp ranks and glory points I obtained after days of spvp but seeing that my warrior can deal higher crits even at his lvl 20s with a green GS than does my lvl 80 exotic ranger with a SB, I think I found the best solution to this problem.

Qaletaqa Hania.2598:

Calavero.3420:

-Snip-

I’m also a little disappointed that this animation fix, aside from the damage nerf caused Quickness effects (from the pet swapping trait and Quickening Zephyr) – which were the only source of burst damage available to the weapon – to be diminished in effectiveness by 50%, and no one replying to this thread has even seen fit to acknowledge that it’s happening.

-Snip-

Actually I did the math and said this on page 5:

So Quickness doubles speed right? We know QZ gives us Quickness and we know pre-patch it was 16 arrows in 4 seconds and post-patch 12 arrows in 4 seconds.

So that means if QZ doubles speed we should shoot 8 arrows in 4 seconds pre-patch and 6 arrows in 4 seconds post-patch using “Crossfire”.

How many seconds are there in a minute? 60.

60/4=15.
8*15 =120. (pre-patch)
6*15=90. (post-patch)

120 – 90 = 30. ( outcome is the difference between pre and post)
30 is 25% of 120.

Maybe Quickness is bugged, QZ and Zephyr’s Speed are bugged and aren’t cutting the casting time in half for Crossfire, or they incorrectly increased the casting time of Crossfire by a time greater then 40 milliseconds.

I then went on to do some more tests and I have made two more topics.

This first one actually shows how fast we should be shooting and how fast we are shooting while using Quickening Zephyr and Zephyr’s Speed:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Do-these-numbers-lie/first#post418551

So no the effectiveness has not been diminished by 50% but by 25% when you compare post to pre-patch while under the effects of Quickness.

Then there is this animation bug that happens when using QZ and ZS:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Another-animation-fix-incoming-for/first#post419344

I think your post was partially ignored. I know I did, but maybe I shouldn’t be so dismissive.

It is more likely you know what you are talking about, and just conveying it in a less than optimal manner. I do that all the time.

There are some problems with the numbers you are giving, or possibly with the explanation of what they represent. You seem to be getting your rate of normal fire from the rate of fire udr QZ and extrapolating from there. Don’t. That will give you very wrong rate of fire rates. The method that works best is to shoot at something uninterupted for exactly a minute and calculate from there. (Which has been done, documented, and even video’d) The pre patch rate of fire was 0.48 seconds per arrow. Now it is 0.52 seconds per arrow. (7.7% damage loss, at base, not the reported 7% from our buddies)

QZ doubles speed, this is correct. However, it is not doubling the speed of crossfire post patch.

Pre-patch 16 arrows in 4 seconds. But with a standard rate of fire of 0.48 seconds. In all tests, anywhere, it was always 16. The exact number we should see is 1/0.48 × 2 × 4 = 16 and 2/3 arrows fired during QZ. The remaining fraction of an arrow does actually matter, as it gets partially affected by quickness.

Post patch, we can just throw that out the window entirely. Because it isn’t even close. We should see 15 arrows fired during QZ. The exact number we should see is 1/0.52 × 2 × 4 = 15 and 5/13. Instead we are getting 12.

Either way, the difference between then and now is 16.67 vs 12. And that is easy to calculate. The difference is exactly big, noticable, and game breaking. QZ is only giving 1.56 times the rate of fire now, and not 2x like it says it does….. and does for every other profession’s weapons/skills. Just not for Crossfire. Shortbow + Quickness = Fail.

Just to clarify what I was trying to say earlier (I’ve been following the thread since it was created, and have read every post):

Numbers are rounded for simplicity.
Original regular number of arrows fired in four seconds: 8
Original number of arrows fired during QZ: 16. Effect of QZ: 8 additional arrows
Post “fix” number of arrows fired during QZ: 12. Effect of QZ: 4 additional arrows

4 is 50% of 8, therefore the effect of QZ is diminished by 50%.

Also, the “no one has seen fit to mention it” thing was directed at the devs, certainly not the players who have repeatedly and eloquently pointed it out, as you have.

Calavero.3420:

Just to clarify what I was trying to say earlier (I’ve been following the thread since it was created, and have read every post):

Numbers are rounded for simplicity.
Original regular number of arrows fired in four seconds: 8
Original number of arrows fired during QZ: 16. Effect of QZ: 8 additional arrows
Post “fix” number of arrows fired during QZ: 12. Effect of QZ: 4 additional arrows

4 is 50% of 8, therefore the effect of QZ is diminished by 50%.

Also, the “no one has seen fit to mention it” thing was directed at the devs, certainly not the players who have repeatedly and eloquently pointed it out, as you have.

Your math is right if you round for simplicity. But when dealing with MS that isn’t the best strategy. If you round for simplicity then that 40 MS they added means nothing and wouldn’t even show up in any of your calculations.

0.48 rounds to 0.5 and 0.52 rounds to 0.5. That’s basically what you are saying he you say that we get 8 arrows in 4 seconds.

Pre-nerf we got 8 and 1/3 arrows per 4 seconds though. And post-nerf we get 7 and 9/13 arrows in 4 seconds. The common denominator being 39, we will use 156 benchmark for whole number comparison. Pre-nerf we had 325 arrows per 156 seconds, post-nerf we have 300 arrows per 156 seconds.

25 arrows over 156 seconds, that is what rounding does, you lose valuable information.

But more to the point. QZ went from doubling number of arrows fired for 4 seconds (Read: Adding 8 and 1/3 arrows) to multiplying arrows by 1.56 (Read: Adding 4 and 4/13 arrows)

If you want to compare, compare those.

By my caclulation, 12/16.67 = 0.72.

A loss of 28% arrows during QZ between pre-patch and Post-Patch. The same % lost during any other Quickness as well.

I don’t know what thinking ANet.
Ok, This proffesion is called “RANGE” and his best weapon for RANGE was nerfed.

And yea why other classes have range?Warrior have Rifle/Longbow Thief Pistols/Shortbow what have ranger special between this?Before this “animation update” ranger can make something against other proffesions, but now?

I make my ranger 80 I have full exotic items I buy with GEMS transmutation stones for my ranger and now I don’t like this class anymore because this “animation update” was full with lies.
Why ANet don’t nerfed first warrior, or thief?
Spamming with “1” wasn’t FUN?Come on only this skill have only decent damage and can play easy with him.Now is fun because all people need to switch build and weapons?Or maybe the profession?

And let’s take in antithesis with:

Thief:
-They can equip our Shortbow, but we can equip pistols? NO!
-They have a simple gameplay and FUN. Just backstab,stunning,attack and disappear!
-They have “ultra-mega-giga-stupid” damage and for they tougness is not a problem because they can really easy to run a full offensive build because they can attact some people and to disappear really fast.
-They have BONUS speed.What da …. is with “25% thief speed bonus”?

Warrior:
-They can equip our Longbow,but we can equip rifle?NO!
-They are so versatile with so many weapons which can equip, and yea all weapon of their don’t have “animation bug” and don’t need to be “fixed” aka NERFED.
-They can beat us in range combat, we can beat us in melee combat(with few exceptions)

My question is:Why to play anymore with ranger?

Hi Everyone,

Unfortunately we have seen a lot of off topic posts on this thread.

As it is really important for us to collect your feedbacks and opinions in the clearest way, I invite you to stay on topic and avoid posts that do not provide any meaningful contribution to the discussion at hand.

Thank you for your cooperation.

ok so since our posts are collected and you encourage us to contribute in meaningful conversation why didnt you change any of the bugs posted at the bug thread and instead you “fix” something that noone in this forum ever said?In the bug forum and in other forums too there are many posts that say how to fix spirits,onehand sword,etc and you go and change the animation glitch that noone cared about it.How you want me to believe that writting something in here makes difference?Offcourse i dont expect answer but im not stupid so first prove that you are listening us and then tell us to stay on topic

^^^ This. It glitches every other time for me and I stay in place and get pasted by whichever mob decided that chasing me around was more fun than worrying about my pet stuck in his F2 animation some distance off.

I’ve been playing ranger as my main since release, and after a few days of dealing with this damage reduction it’s not as bad as I thought – I can still manage almost any dungeon route with a decent team, which for me is the biggest factor. Forcing rangers to use something other than just SB is a great idea but so hard to balance, and so far I’ve just been swapping SB and LB and still doing enough for the team – I’ll probably try combat weapons if this SB nerf stays, although IMO bows should still be the best weapon for rangers, and we should be the best ranged class.

My honest opinion right now is to lower the time it takes to use skills 2, 4 and 5, and possibly increase their condition damage. 5 right now’s almost useless with any kind of lag, since even if I reduce enemy damage with it, the amount of damage I stop dealing by using it pretty much evens it out. Up longbow damage a bit, or even better its speed, and rangers will still be great at range for damage (LB) and conditions (SB) while not being so one-sided.

I read that as “I can still get carried by a decent team through dungeons”.

Although I do agree that increasing the bleed duration or emoving the positional requirement would be welcome changes, as would reduced CDs on 2-5.

But to be frank, the thing I want most is for the devs to be honest with the players, and for them to work on fixing mechanics that are actually broken first before fixing imaginary graphics glitches.

Please refrain from making posts that do not provide any meaningful contribution to the topic at hand.

Hmmm, well at least we know that the moderators are likely passing this feedback on, since it IS being read.

That being said, let’s try and make this about what the developers can do to make things better.

As an example, I felt that the fast fire rate was a defining part of the Shortbow experience for me. Each shot doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, but if I can get 4 off in the two seconds that a mob isnt chasing me AND proc bleeds on them, I can make a meaningful contribution.

Personally, it seems like slowing down the attack speed just changes the feel of combat. In fact, I’d rather take something like a 7% straight damage nerf and keep the defining speed, rather than trash the speed even if it meant my attack animation got switched with /dance.

So, bring back the speed, and tweak other things if you think we do too much damage. Speed was what made the shortbow fun, and I miss it.

Mr Moderator i think that this thread it never went of topic.Its all about the fixing in the animation glitch and ppl are constanly saying that they dont truly believe what Mr Peters said.They still think that its not 40ms and also affects the QZ skill.And by not admitting something like this they express their general thoughts.Its just my opinion about this thread i dont want to be offensive in any way

Figured I’d post this here too just in case the thread I just created is deleted…

Attention Developers!

I am currently a ranger (a low level one since I just started playing the game) and it is so very sad that I am on other class forums looking for a new class due to the shortbow nerf and how the entire situation was handled.

I am becoming very, very disappointed with the developers and unfortunately making these huge mistakes (and not owning up to them and fixing them) is inevitably going to run players away AND keep new players from joining the game. They are essentially shooting themselves in the foot.

I think it’s also important for the developers to understand that not everyone plays for PVP; therefore, when you nerf the freaking shortbow you start dying to mobs in regular game play—absolutely ridiculous.

Developers—-please tell me you plan to fix these huge issues and mistakes (and admit to them instead of just saying "we had to fix a graphical glitch so we nerfed your only skill with the only weapon that is effective) or let me know that this will continue throughout the future so I can just find another game to play.

Thanks…

With the shortbow attack speed nerf to “fix an animation issue that was never noticed by player’s”, I’ve had to respec and finish making my exotic carrion gear, except 3 piece’s of jewelry. Guess what I still use good ol #1 attack skill, the problem is I now feel I’m the slow motion charr baywatch ranger. Take’s about 5-10 more second’s to kill a mob.

I never really used QZ. But the biggest issue of the nerf is the blatant lie about the reasoning behind the nerf. Just my 2 cent’s.

Raffoon.2549:

Hmmm, well at least we know that the moderators are likely passing this feedback on, since it IS being read.

That being said, let’s try and make this about what the developers can do to make things better.

As an example, I felt that the fast fire rate was a defining part of the Shortbow experience for me. Each shot doesn’t do a whole lot of damage, but if I can get 4 off in the two seconds that a mob isnt chasing me AND proc bleeds on them, I can make a meaningful contribution.

Personally, it seems like slowing down the attack speed just changes the feel of combat. In fact, I’d rather take something like a 7% straight damage nerf and keep the defining speed, rather than trash the speed even if it meant my attack animation got switched with /dance.

So, bring back the speed, and tweak other things if you think we do too much damage. Speed was what made the shortbow fun, and I miss it.

I agree. The fast attack speed of the short-bow was something I quite enjoyed. It doesn’t feel quite the same anymore.

Revert the speed reduction, do a damage nerf if necessary, and rework the other shortbow skills to help encourage use of skills other than “1” in more situations.

So heres how i think this thread goes
Fix animation glitch with SB skill 1
Players test it and felt like it was more than 40ms and noone ever saw this glitch-made a thread
Dev said will check it
Ppl went crazy waiting for a answer
Dev answered and said that its also a dmg downgrade and it was made not to spam 1
Ppl argued with this till now,felt disapointed from the answer and asked more
Sorry i cant see how this thread has many off topic posts

Mr Coordinator, moderator and developer, just a friendly reminder that by the time I am writing this reply there are already 648 replies and 69083 views for this post, the most popular post in Ranger section ever, and different people already provide many contribution, details and maths repeat and repeat again for the below pts:

1. the damage decreased by this “Glitch fix” is far beyond 7%
2. the situation is getting worse when cross fire is using together with QZ

To give us a chance to continue contribute to this post, I think it is time for Anet to give us a proper reply for what u are thinking and planning to do to fix this problem. As this issue has last for a week aldy.

My 0.02$ :

Maybe it’s related with all bots you can see in each zone that are only rangers with SB and Bear pet.

They said they banned tons of accounts for bot using.
Nerfing SB is then a good way to “deal with thoses issues”.

I think that, in order to deal with those issues", they should have “fix” the bear “animation glitch” instead of the SB one. :°

(Just adding weight to the already 600+ posts)

I have played MMO’s for 6 years and this is my 1st post in an official forum in any game. I say this just to show how much I am put off with the SB Nerf. As stated by so many. Please fix the Nerf. I personally would prefer the SB mechanics returned their original state. Then a planned future fix of skills 2-5.

Someone mentioned in another post for the developers to take a look at our skill bar as set up for water battle.

In the mean time I have shelved an 80 full Exotic Ranger to explore Thief and Warrior.
However I fear Anet will just Nerf them in some strange way in the near future wasting yet another month or two of my time and money.

Mr. Developer the community has spoken. You say you want us to have fun then please let us have fun. As of right now we are all writing in the forums instead of playing your game which to me is NOT fun.

Lastly this is not the only GW2 related web site which is discussing the Nerf. There must be literally 1000’s of posts on this topic spread out on the Net.

Rangers were not OP neither were they Underpowered before the nerf, I was happy with Rangers just the way they were. Some people want to complain that something is OP so they won’t have to strain themselves so hard to beat it, but GW2 is a game of skill and I like that the Ranger doesn’t 2 shot classes, puts some skill in the recipe, but the SB nerf was uncalled for.

Also stop exaggerating people, this sole nerf didn’t make Ranger unplayable, those who say that this completly destroyed the class can’t either play Ranger or they want it to be easy faceroll and not so skill dependant, this didn’t ruin our class, however we didn’t deserve this nerf, but if it remains it still didn’t kill our class.

After branching out and using other weapons, while not amazing to the levels of some of the other classes we are still playable. Not that I agree with the handling of the SB glitch fix/ retroactive nerf.

As a side note, and I hope this doesn’t get removed for being off topic, but people often cite the Mesmer as being the best 1v1 class. Whole certainly powerful, I don’t think they’re dominating that well in that field. Can anyone explain this to me?