Guild Wars 2

Enjoy

Ranger

Summoned creatures and pets can no longer draw aggro from enemies that have not already aggroed on their master.

Adjusted ranger pet AI when fighting enemies in PvE. Melee pets now attempt to move behind enemies as long as they are not actively being targeted by the creature.

Tail Wind trait: Now has an internal cooldown of 9 seconds.
Furious Grip trait: Now has an internal cooldown of 9 seconds.
“Guard” skill: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
“Sic ’Em” skill: Reduced cooldown to 40 seconds from 60 seconds.
Lightning Reflexes skill: Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
Signet of Stone skill:
Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 80 seconds.
Increased passive toughness by 100%.
Now allows capture of control points in all formats and communing in PvP.
Signet of the Wild skill: Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 60 seconds and duration from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
Spiritual Knowledge trait: Increased activation chance from 15% to 35%.
Swoop skill: Corrected the damage indicated in the skill fact.
Increased health of all non-elite spirits by 60%.
“Search and Rescue” skill:
Increased cooldown from 85 seconds to 180 seconds in PvP.
No longer revives defeated allies.
Point Blank Shot skill: No longer has an increased cast time when the Eagle Eye trait is equipped.
Quickening Zephyr skill:
Increased duration by 1 second.
Players are now healed at 50% effectiveness (increased from 0%) when under the effects of this skill.

Pet Attributes
Adjusted health and/or armor of ranger pets:
Ursine pets: health increased from 26,000 to 29982; armor is now 2061 (up 687). Polar bear’s power now matches that of all other bear pets.
Dogs: health increased from 13,000 to 14,868; armor is 2061 (no change).
Cats: health increased from 13,000 to 14,868; armor is 1374 (no change).
Devourers: health increased from 11,089 to 14868; armor is 2748 (no change).
Birds: health increased from 11,894 to 14,868; armor is 1374 (no change).
Drakes: health increased from 11,683 to 22,425; armor is 2061 (no change).
Spiders: health increased from 18,646 to 22,425; armor is 1374 (no change).
Pigs: health increased from 20,538 to 22,425; armor is now 2061 (up 687).
Moas: health increased from 16,781 to 22,425; armor is 1374 (no change).
Armor Fish: health increased from 16,781 to 22,452; armor is now 2748 (up 343).
Jellyfish: health increased from 11,089 to 22,425; armor is 1374 (no change).
Shark: health increased from 13,000 to 22,425; armor is now 2061 (up 687).

Canine Skills
Intimidating Howl skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Regenerate skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Howl of the Pack skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Chilling Howl skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Terrifying Howl skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Drake Skills
Lightning Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds. The lightning from this attack no longer tracks targets.
Fire Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Insect Swarm skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Frost Breath skill: Reduced cast time from 2.7 seconds to 1.5 seconds.

Feline Skills
Icy Pounce skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Rending Pounce skill: Reduced cast time from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
Jellyfish Skills
Immobilizing Whirl skill: Now sticks on its target instead of passing through.
Chilling Whirl skill: Now sticks on its target instead of passing through.
Poisoning Whirl skill: Now sticks on its target instead of passing through.

Don’t forget this very important point from the General Notes:

“Summoned creatures and pets can no longer draw aggro from enemies that have not already aggroed on their master.”

EDIT: And of course this one: “Adjusted ranger pet AI when fighting enemies in PvE. Melee pets now attempt to move behind enemies as long as they are not actively being targeted by the creature.”

So now Spirits can die in 3 hits instead of 2…
Seriously don’t think 60% is going to make them much better.

d-d-does this mean pets can hit moving targets now?? please?!?!

I’m glad they increased the QZ duration though. Might give zerker build another try.

..And now you can heal a bit too.. not like anyone would make the mistake of pressing qz and try and heal…

Well, that’s not very exciting.

So, my pet is still going to get blown up by AoE?
Gotcha.

And spirits still useless as ever.
lmao good patch.

I think those patchnotes sound pretty good.

I think this is a rather large goodie bag for us rangers. Is it EVERYTHING we wanted? No. But no more aggro from pets when we haven’t aggroed anything ourselves? I say that fixes one of our biggest problems in dungeons and PvE. Not to mention all the changes to signets, spirits, and our pet abilities. Spirit rangers might actually be useful now that the odds of the spirit skill going off can increase to 70% thanks to that trait.

I’m so happy I re-rolled to a guardian after giving up waiting for ranger to get fixed, this patch fixes nothing important.. ranger remains shelved.

Actually I’m pretty satisfied

And Wow 100% HP increase for drake :o

Good day to be in a beast master build

This patch!? Lol!! And this: “Adjusted ranger pet AI when fighting enemies in PvE. Melee pets now attempt to move behind enemies as long as they are not actively being targeted by the creature.” IT’S ONLY FOR PVE!! Signet updates!? “Signet of Stone skill:
Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 80 seconds.
Increased passive toughness by 100%.” This one is pretty awesome. Sick’Em is also pretty good. In sPvP. And this is it. This is the massive ranger buff.

Yea really good ranger changes. Hopefully the F2 skills can activate WHILE I am running now. Really excited.

Thrutian.7931:

So now Spirits can die in 3 hits instead of 2…
Seriously don’t think 60% is going to make them much better.

What two shots something with ~75k health?

1. Spirits are still useless. They die in two coughs now, not just one.

2. You ignored weapons problems again.

3. Increasing QZ’s duration by one second is nice for one second.

4. I see you’ve improved passive. Now when your pet is staring blankly in to space rather than running back when you tell it to, it’ll live longer.

5. You increased spiritual knowledge luck from 15% to 35%. It’s almost like you think that’ll fix the problem. I sincerely hope not.

6. You nerfed our search and rescue in PvP, removing another thing we could actually use to our advantage in PvP. It wasn’t very effective most of the time as the healing wasn’t… Well, fast. But it served it’s purpose and was working as intended in some situations, hardly in line for a nerf. Much like saying our longbow is in need of a nerf because it’s barrage is too barrage.

7. Amusing to see the elite spirit getting no love. Or fixes for the elite entanglement.

8. Perhaps I’ve already stated this, but you ignored weapons again. I sense a pattern.

9. You reduce the duration on pet abilities but do not address the fact that they rarely work when you tell them to. This is worrying.

10. To give them some credit, thank you for reducing the signet times. The stone signet needed a buff in cooldown to keep the pet breathing in some fights.

A patch that fails to address even more glaring issues with the profession adequately. Imagine that.

Awarw.5081:

I’m so happy I re-rolled to a guardian after giving up waiting for ranger to get fixed, this patch fixes nothing important.. ranger remains shelved.

Good, have fun with boon hate and boon stealing. See ya!

Pretty good? It’s a fantastic patch, much much better than I hoped for despite the lack of any improvements to the longbow.

Pet no longer grab aggro. Huge improvement in dungeons.
Pets move behind target. Huge improvement in dungeons, they are no longer susceptible to cleave. We have to see how this actually works though, it could be a little buggy at first.
Signet reduction times: Huge improvement across the board, particularly for power ranger builds.
QZ increased by one second: Very nice, although I would have preferred to have that extra second on pet swap with Zephyr’s Speed.
QZ heal effect increased from 0 to 50%: OK, good for regen builds but not so much for a hard heal as you’re unlike to pop a 50% heal rather than wait an extra couple of seconds.
Spirits: another boost to their health and activation chance. Still unappealing for me, but I could well be mistaken.
Pets: Higher health, higher armor, lower cast times. Great! The only very minor disappointment is that I was hoping the cast time would be instant (i.e. at start of animation rather than at end of animation).

Overall it’s an overwhelmingly positive patch, we really shouldn’t be complaining.

yeah this is slightly frustraiting, what does that pvp skill do for signet of stone I didn’t really understand it?

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

1. Spirits are still useless. They die in two coughs now, not just one.

2. You ignored weapons problems again.

3. Increasing QZ’s duration by one second is nice for one second.

4. I see you’ve improved passive. Now when your pet is staring blankly in to space rather than running back when you tell it to, it’ll live longer.

5. You increased spiritual knowledge luck from 15% to 35%. It’s almost like you think that’ll fix the problem. I sincerely hope not.

6. You nerfed our search and rescue in PvP, removing another thing we could actually use to our advantage in PvP. It wasn’t very effective most of the time as the healing wasn’t… Well, fast. But it served it’s purpose and was working as intended in some situations, hardly in line for a nerf. Much like saying our longbow is in need of a nerf because it’s barrage is too barrage.

7. Amusing to see the elite spirit getting no love. Or fixes for the elite entanglement.

8. Perhaps I’ve already stated this, but you ignored weapons again. I sense a pattern.

A patch that fails to address glaring issues with the profession adequately. Imagine that.

I see this patch as really great for the ranger, it might not fix all the issues the rangers have, but the ranger is in a far better position than it was yesterday. But more importantly, it certainly in heaven as compared to the elementlist for example.

A very nice update!

The update to pets is a good start, but more is definitely needed for them, especially in dungeons. The spirit health increase however will have no significant impact as they will go from melting in 2 seconds to 3.

This is an excellent update for us, especially with the signets and pet stats/skills/ai changes. The only ‘nerf’ with S&R is pretty well justified too.

Spirits still seem a bit on the neglected side with no ICD changes, but I’ll give them a test around various places to see how the hp/proc% buffs play out.

DevO.9854:

yeah this is slightly frustraiting, what does that pvp skill do for signet of stone I didn’t really understand it?

It seems more like formating error than anything else.

This update is good..I will just mention the buff in pets Hp and F2.I must test it but combined with the signet buff we can see something else than BM or condition Ranger

Richard.1498:

This is an excellent update for us, especially with the signets and pet stats/skills/ai changes. The only ‘nerf’ with S&R is pretty well justified too.

Spirits still seem a bit on the neglected side with no ICD changes, but I’ll give them a test around various places to see how the hp/proc% buffs play out.

Frost spirit has no CD

Chopps.5047:

Awarw.5081:

I’m so happy I re-rolled to a guardian after giving up waiting for ranger to get fixed, this patch fixes nothing important.. ranger remains shelved.

Good, have fun with boon hate and boon stealing. See ya!

I only play PVE, so yeah… I will continue having fun

silvermember.8941:

DevO.9854:

yeah this is slightly frustraiting, what does that pvp skill do for signet of stone I didn’t really understand it?

It seems more like formating error than anything else.

Maybe there was a bug preventing you from capturing / communing under the effects of traited SoS? I dunno, I don’t run signets in sPvP.

Patch notes made me realize why Drake was so ineffective… 2.7 second cast time?? I knew it was long, but in nearly 3 seconds even a crippled player could move from one side of the battlefield to the other.

I’m extremely happy with signet changes and very interested in pet AI/pathing changes.

I’m underwhelmed by the armor and hp buffs. The biggest buff came to the only pet that didn’t need it bear pets and armored fish. Devourers had a nice buff, might make them a bit more survivable. In any event, I think the only pets that are viable in WvW group conflicts are devourers and bears, this patch pretty much seals the deal for me because they are the only ones that got a good boost.

I’m skeptical about the reduction in F2 times too… will have to see how it works. If the range of the abilities is also increased then it might be a great change, but 1.5 seconds is still a hell of a long time for a moving target to get out of the way of an AI controlled animal that stops moving in order to cast. I guess 25-33% is a ‘drastic’ reduction, just not as drastic as I had hoped. In WvW I was picturing sub 1 second times in order to make them connect with moving players.

lol @ the armor fish, I wish I was my armor fish

ANet continues to not understand why spirits and pets are bad or is clearly unwilling to address the issues.

Chopps.5047:

Richard.1498:

This is an excellent update for us, especially with the signets and pet stats/skills/ai changes. The only ‘nerf’ with S&R is pretty well justified too.

Spirits still seem a bit on the neglected side with no ICD changes, but I’ll give them a test around various places to see how the hp/proc% buffs play out.

Frost spirit has no CD

I was referring to the others, should have mentioned that.

This is the patch what it should have been 5 month ago. Overall there are quite a few useful changes. Let’s hope they fix the longbow dmg next :-)

Disappointed about the elite spirit tho, that’s one that really could have used a little HP buff…

Khayoss.2019:

Patch notes made me realize why Drake was so ineffective… 2.7 second cast time?? I knew it was long, but in nearly 3 seconds even a crippled player could move from one side of the battlefield to the other.

I’m extremely happy with signet changes and very interested in pet AI/pathing changes.

I’m underwhelmed by the armor and hp buffs. The biggest buff came to the only pet that didn’t need it bear pets and armored fish. Devourers had a nice buff, might make them a bit more survivable. In any event, I think the only pets that are viable in WvW group conflicts are devourers and bears, this patch pretty much seals the deal for me because they are the only ones that got a good boost.

I’m skeptical about the reduction in F2 times too… will have to see how it works. If the range of the abilities is also increased then it might be a great change, but 1.5 seconds is still a hell of a long time for a moving target to get out of the way of an AI controlled animal that stops moving in order to cast. I guess 25-33% is a ‘drastic’ reduction, just not as drastic as I had hoped. In WvW I was picturing sub 1 second times in order to make them connect with moving players.

Bears and devourers are not the only viable pets in a zerg. Thankfully the toughness was left alone so aggro tables don’t kick up on pets in pve.

Keep in mind, Anet has always thrown in stealth updates that aren’t listed in the patch notes that can sometimes be better than the patch notes.

Well, the cast times are long but the real problem is pets’ responsiveness to the F2 command. I’m kinda hoping they worked on that too and it isn’t in the notes, but I am a very optimistic guy

silvermember.8941:

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

1. Spirits are still useless. They die in two coughs now, not just one.

2. You ignored weapons problems again.

3. Increasing QZ’s duration by one second is nice for one second.

4. I see you’ve improved passive. Now when your pet is staring blankly in to space rather than running back when you tell it to, it’ll live longer.

5. You increased spiritual knowledge luck from 15% to 35%. It’s almost like you think that’ll fix the problem. I sincerely hope not.

6. You nerfed our search and rescue in PvP, removing another thing we could actually use to our advantage in PvP. It wasn’t very effective most of the time as the healing wasn’t… Well, fast. But it served it’s purpose and was working as intended in some situations, hardly in line for a nerf. Much like saying our longbow is in need of a nerf because it’s barrage is too barrage.

7. Amusing to see the elite spirit getting no love. Or fixes for the elite entanglement.

8. Perhaps I’ve already stated this, but you ignored weapons again. I sense a pattern.

A patch that fails to address glaring issues with the profession adequately. Imagine that.

I see this patch as really great for the ranger, it might not fix all the issues the rangers have, but the ranger is in a far better position than it was yesterday. But more importantly, it certainly in heaven as compared to the elementlist for example.

You know, you’ve got a point. I should take what I can get, given how little we are addressed. This is a remarkable amount of fixes(and a remarkable amount of oversights, but I’m used to this with Anet at this point).

Not enough to do much more than RP on my Ranger, but improvement nonetheless.

This isn’t an excuse for being ignored or simply a lack of understanding on the part of the devs with spirits and the like, but I should probably be thankful that we got anything.

Daemon.4295:

silvermember.8941:

DevO.9854:

yeah this is slightly frustraiting, what does that pvp skill do for signet of stone I didn’t really understand it?

It seems more like formating error than anything else.

Maybe there was a bug preventing you from capturing / communing under the effects of traited SoS? I dunno, I don’t run signets in sPvP.

Ya, I don’t know. I don’t run signet of stone I think it sucks, for my build anyways.

Am i the only one that hates the “search and rescue” change? making it reviving only downed allies makes this skill useless. This skill wasn’t reliable before, since the pet would just randomly decide to attack your target again instead of rezzing.
it was a lifesaver in high level fractals or the volcanic (and depending on team the dredge fractal). The pet wasnt always able to rezz someone all the way anyway, since it could die while doing so.
Let me recap the skill “search and rescue”:
-Rangers lose part of their dps
-Not reliable and doesnt always work
-Doesnt always rezz all the way and high chance for pet to die in the process
-long cd
-Since patch: Only rezzes downed players.

i can accept the change they made..but not in it’s current state: Either reduce the Cd or give the pet protection and swiftness when you use the skill. or make it a long CD if the pet actually manages to rezz someone. If it doesn’t than give the skill a reduced cooldown. the changes that were made make the skill useless in dungeons/fractals now imo.

Not really impressed with this update. It doesn’t do what I think alot of PVE rangers are desperately wanting… Make rangers on par with other classes in dungeons.

Sure its great we see all these little buffs here and there but it’s really not made a dent in the usefulness of a dungeon ranger. I still await the day where I can take my ranger into a dungeon and not feel guilty because I cannot contribute as much as I do on any other class.

Good to see that they at least tried this time, with a whole host of little changes instead of none at all or ‘underwater skills need buffs!’ bs again.

In honesty I was probably hoping that they would do something amazing to spirits that would make them awesome for group dungeons, I think they have alot of potential and I enjoy using them in pvp… sadly they did not

Tyops.5894:

ANet continues to not understand why spirits and pets are bad or is clearly unwilling to address the issues.

pets move behind enemies; thats certainly a start (… well the better hitting on moving targets was a start… but w/e)
… i agree with you about them not seeming to understand why spirits are bad (though clearly they are trying to adress the issue)

Awarw.5081:

Chopps.5047:

Awarw.5081:

I’m so happy I re-rolled to a guardian after giving up waiting for ranger to get fixed, this patch fixes nothing important.. ranger remains shelved.

Good, have fun with boon hate and boon stealing. See ya!

I only play PVE, so yeah… I will continue having fun

I have fun with ranger in pve (dungeon master, sets of weapons or armor from each dungeon, beat Simin when Simin was in her hardest state to kill, FOTM level ~30 before I got bored of it). I’m sorry you don’t have the knack or fortitude to play such a difficult class. If it’s too hard for you to not be carried, I can see why you’d play gaurdian.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the Ranger is moving in the right direction. My biggest disappointment is no improvement to pet AI for pvp/wvw, but that’s a big challenge that’s going to take a lot of work to fix, I suspect.

I will like to see how Guard will work if its traited with 20% cd reduction…From 15 sec goes down to 12..Every 12 sec you can make your pet invis and give it protection

I may actually level my ranger now. It seems that you guys have the same complaints that Necros are having. They buffed the health of pets that don’t need it. Buffed the passive on signets that have horrible actives and that’s the reason they aren’t used ;p.

The concern that I have now is the response time of the pets when they are behind the target. Does this mean they will now run through a target you are trying to call them away from, and if they get hit by any aoe ability does that mean they will fight in front.

Does anyone use Guard giving a shorter cooldown doesn’t make it useful? Who really needs to use guard every 15 seconds?

Sic ’em the only good shout should be 15 seconds, 40 seconds for a shout that the signet is better than anyways.

I am still going to try Spirit Pets but 70 percent better proc chance just means ICD more often.

Search and Rescue change didnt made a sense to me..Who in the world is using this skill in PvP?

JanoRis.8703:

Am i the only one that hates the “search and rescue” change? making it reviving only downed allies makes this skill useless. This skill wasn’t reliable before, since the pet would just randomly decide to attack your target again instead of rezzing.
it was a lifesaver in high level fractals or the volcanic (and depending on team the dredge fractal). The pet wasnt always able to rezz someone all the way anyway, since it could die while doing so.
Let me recap the skill “search and rescue”:
-Rangers lose part of their dps
-Not reliable and doesnt always work
-Doesnt always rezz all the way and high chance for pet to die in the process
-long cd
-Since patch: Only rezzes downed players.

i can accept the change they made..but not in it’s current state: Either reduce the Cd or give the pet protection and swiftness when you use the skill. or make it a long CD if the pet actually manages to rezz someone. If it doesn’t than give the skill a reduced cooldown. the changes that were made make the skill useless in dungeons/fractals now imo.

It says the changes are for the skill in pvp, I also am pretty sure they said it would continue rez players at half speed if the pet dies during the skills activation

This doesn’t fix everything, obviously, but I am still more than content with the outcome of this patch. We are all in a far better place than we were yesterday.

Wow, they didn’t fix any of the issues accept for pet survivability but even that came with a nerf.

Oh and their AI fix is for pets to take longer engaging now that it has to position itself behind the enemy. How about if that enemy is a champ which has to be kited or is otherwise moving around and or turning around? They are going to spend more time getting into position behind then actually dealing any damage at all.

Longbows are still ‘warriors do it better’. The only benefit of worth is extending the range which is a very niche trait anyway.

Swords still root you durring half of the auto attack (time wise).

The skills that got the biggest buffs are ones that are the least often used. Obviously to entice players to use them. Here’s a hint Anet, their CDs isn’t why they are not used.

Spirits will now be two shotted by trash mobs. They’ll continue to be one shotted by boss fights since, well, the tankiest of guardians can be unless they block, dodge, etc.

Sorry ANet but this treatment of the class is B U L L kitten

Edit: Miss understood one statement. Pets that take the long way not grabbing aggro will be nice.

longbow next month?

The signet changes look pretty good. The state of the passive on SoS hasn’t changed any though. It’s great for your pet, but sub par for you.

Spirit changes are what I was expecting, but not what I was hoping for. It seems like you’ll still have to make a heavy investment in them to get any use out of them.

I’ll take whatever I can get on pets. I would have liked more armor increases than health increases though.

The QZ change is an improvement. I still think LR needs to break immobilize though.

Deamhan, Longbows are the equivalent of Greatswords. You use them for the utility.