Guild Wars 2

Avonna.2140:

longbow next month?

Next year*

Good patch. It’s looking good on paper anyway.

I’m especially happy about the pet stat boosts as well as the cooldown reductions on some signets and shouts. Point blank shot bug luckily also got fixed too.

I’m not sure about the Search & Rescue nerfs though. I don’t think I’ll ever be using that again. Search & Rescue is too slow and prone to failure to be using it in time on downed allies in boss encounters. I feel that part nerf should have only applied to spvp as well.

Chopps.5047

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.

If you say so. Mine die before even reaching their targets or getting their F2’s off far, far more often than not. If you can keep yours alive then power to you. I’ll be sticking with reliability over usefulness or personal preference though because no matter what the damage and utilities are, a pet who is still alive is always more useful than a dead pet.

Best patch in a long time for rangers…but I still don’t think it’s enough to get me fully back to playing my ranger as my main.

Chopps.5047:

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.

I mained ranger since the head start until about a month ago and finished all the dungeons on exp and got to fotm 20. It’s not that I’m bad at the class it’s that the main class mechanic (pet) does not work with the way combat in this game is designed in PVE/Dungeons. Rangers bring nothing to the table for a team apart from limited CC, survivability and sub-par unreliable DPS, it is a selfish class and I felt bad bringing it to groups. My personal opinion of course.

Traps Awarw. If you use traps that help deal with certain problems mobs give you, the Ranger is far more useful. Frost Trap, Flame Trap, and Viper’s Nest are all fairly useful due to Chill, Burn, and Poison respectfully. Plus Healing Spring is the most powerful healing field in the game, just due to how often it pulls a condition from players.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

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)

The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.

To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.

What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance pass. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).

This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.

Over all a rather disappointing patch yet again. Not much good news for WvW. No lb improvements etc. Most pets are still dead in no time with minimal health increases other than the drake which had a large health increase. No mention if pets can hit a moving target yet or not with any reliability and pet f2s are still slow and now don’t track.

Not as good as I was hoping but that said they didnt break anything (I dont think) so it can only be good

SoS change looks like the biggest change – shame I dont run a signet build anymore.

7/10 A very good patch

I hope spirits and some weapons will get more love next time, but as it is this patch is a no brainer…

100% protection upkeep on pets in dungeons!? I will take that, thank you!

Dog, ‘Guard!’

Pet moving behind the target in PvE is actually worse on some boss fights that do PBAoE attacks…when I recall the pet he just has that much further to walk back to me before he gets blasted.

All in all, it’s a huge step in the right direction but not a cure all.

Tyops.5894:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

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)

The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.

To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.

What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance patch. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).

This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.

Wow, where did you get all this inside information from Anet? Did Jon Peters tell you all that? He’s a troll you know… :p

Chopps.5047:

No CD on frost…and “idiots”? Get that trash off the forums.

That isn’t in the notes
(still downloading the patch)
but it’s progress, that one unwritten tweak… short of that, from everything in the notes, it seemed that when they finally took the time to look at these utterly useless set of utilities they nerfed to the ground at the end of beta… after 8~ months of time to get a general idea of where the game is at… the patch only ended up throwing out a few minor buffs related to spirits, buffs that didn’t actually do anything on track to fixing any of the major problems with them in PvP…

I’d think that that is pretty stupid, wouldn’t you?

Bas.7406:

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.

Guard gives 10 seconds of protection to your pet, which is affected by the ranger’s boon duration. The reduced cool down is a huge improvement for pets inside dungeons.

Sic’em coupled with the jaguar is a devastating combo in PvP. Along with the Pet’s Prowess trait I’ve had that cat crit 7800+ against squishy targets, so a 15 second cool down would be pretty OP. A 40 second untraited cool down is great and this patch is a huge buff to BM rangers.

Search and Rescue doesn’t revive downed allies.
Wtf is the point in using the skill anymore?
Pretty boss unjustified nerf.

Daemon.4295:

Tyops.5894:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

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)

The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.

To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.

What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance patch. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).

This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.

Wow, where did you get all this inside information from Anet? Did Jon Peters tell you all that? He’s a troll you know… :p

They said it in the interview that the patches after this one are only going to be some small bug fixes and tooltip corrections.

Septic.4869:

Search and Rescue doesn’t revive downed allies.
Wtf is the point in using the skill anymore?
Pretty boss unjustified nerf.

And the cool down is increased for the fun parts of the game.

Overall the patch is the suck.

Septic.4869:

Search and Rescue doesn’t revive downed allies.
Wtf is the point in using the skill anymore?
Pretty boss unjustified nerf.

Yea, I just noticed that…

I guess they did that because pet survivability jumped up considerably to prevent a BM ranger with Guard from rezzing a lot in dungeons?

Still, I don’t think this was needed…kinda sad…

FrouFrou.4958:

They said it in the interview that the patches after this one are only going to be some small bug fixes and tooltip corrections.

If you’re referring to the SotG cast, I believe what was actually said is that the next month’s update was going to be less or no class balancing because they wanted to give this one’s changes a bit more time to get a better idea of how to balance the following month. Nothing like “balance is done”. And some bug fixes might go a long way for a class like Ranger to alleviate some of the more commonly complained about issues.

Septic.4869:

Search and Rescue doesn’t revive downed allies.
Wtf is the point in using the skill anymore?
Pretty boss unjustified nerf.

Maybe they made it so Guard can go in keep again (since that was the main problem, It ressing Mesmer’s)

I’m kind of surprised about the signet of stone buff.

Imo it was one of the best signets, even before patch.
With a certain trait your pet AND yourself are invulnerable for 6s.
6s invulnerability for you and your pet every 80s is actually very nice.
I hope the devs knew that, because otherwise i shouldnt have written this; FML

Anyways, the rest of the patch notes is really disappointing. I see that they’re trying to improve pet usefulness, but I’d rather have decent DPS on my ranger and not my pet.
And LB is still useless.

SilverShadow.3021:

Imo it was one of the best signets, even before patch.

I haven’t seen a respectable ranger run it ever since I came back from my 4~ month break from the game.
So I think they have a rough idea of what they are doing… this time.

Ah, the sweet kiss of disappointment—how I’ve missed you.

I suppose I’ll grab my morning coffee and wait for the white knight brigade to show up and tell us why this was such a great patch.

Daemon.4295:

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.

PETS DO GRAB AGGRO.

The aggro change just means that a mob won’t attack your pet if you haven’t gotten aggro from it. Once you engage it, like you will in dungeons, they will attack your pet.

And guess what, that lupicus aoe shower will still 1 shot any pet that is not a bear.

Besides the fact that they made it so pets can’t aggro until you do, something that had gotten many a ranger killed before now? You mean that WASN’T a much needed fix for the class? And that most pets have more health, and that QZ is actually now useful because we can still heal during it (albeit at 50% less than usual)? And that spirits are actually slightly more useful than they were before?

If you think that’s a bad patch, then need I remind you of the patches we had months ago that pretty much did nothing?

FrouFrou.4958:

Daemon.4295:

Tyops.5894:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

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)

The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.

To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.

What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance patch. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).

This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.

Wow, where did you get all this inside information from Anet? Did Jon Peters tell you all that? He’s a troll you know… :p

They said it in the interview that the patches after this one are only going to be some small bug fixes and tooltip corrections.

They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.

garethh.3518:

SilverShadow.3021:

Imo it was one of the best signets, even before patch.

I haven’t seen a respectable ranger run it ever since I came back from my 4~ month break from the game.
So I think they have a rough idea of what they are doing… this time.

I use it a lot in dungeons as a panic button.
Other than that the 6s while you tank can take lots of pressure from your team mates in boss fights or while pulling.

So the general sentiment is basically “nearly all buffs but not enough”?

I wanna try out a drake now, that HP increase…

I do agree that ignoring longbow is annoying but oh well.

Yeah sometimes I use stone signet as basically an oh **** button if I’m out of endurance or something. I may equip it more often now.

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

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.

PETS DO GRAB AGGRO.

The aggro change just means that a mob won’t attack your pet if you haven’t gotten aggro from it. Once you engage it, like you will in dungeons, they will attack your pet.

And guess what, that lupicus aoe shower will still 1 shot any pet that is not a bear.

Exactly, it’s a huge improvement. Not so much for experienced players, but a lot of newer rangers struggle to not pick up aggro from mobs with their pets as they run through a dungeon. Of course pets grab aggro once you attack, that’s a crucial part of their mechanic.

Septic.4869:

Search and Rescue doesn’t revive downed allies.
Wtf is the point in using the skill anymore?
Pretty boss unjustified nerf.

“Defeated” allies, but yeah… that still reduces the usefulness of this skill.

That said, this is overall the best-looking patch we’ve gotten, like, ever.

Did Signet of the Hunt get ninja nerfed? I am sure it wasnt 30 secs cooldown before.

Good Patch.

Seeing some of the negative comments here, it seems like there is really no way to please everyone….rolls eyes. Any improvement is better than no improvement. Balancing all classes and mechanics is a tricky thing.

Daemon.4295:

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

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.

PETS DO GRAB AGGRO.

The aggro change just means that a mob won’t attack your pet if you haven’t gotten aggro from it. Once you engage it, like you will in dungeons, they will attack your pet.

And guess what, that lupicus aoe shower will still 1 shot any pet that is not a bear.

Exactly, it’s a huge improvement. Not so much for experienced players, but a lot of newer rangers struggle to not pick up aggro from mobs with their pets as they run through a dungeon. Of course pets grab aggro once you attack, that’s a crucial part of their mechanic.

And they die shortly after because of it. Let’s see how many hits from a silver mob your jaguar takes before biting the dust.

I’m happy about signet of stone, and I was just thinking about how I might actually take sic em if the recharge was lowered substantially. Weapon sets still need some work, but I’m actually somewhat content for once with the health increases to the pet and some of the skill buffs. We still shouldn’t have to rely on the pet at all, but since it’s obvious I’ll lose that battle, at least buffing the pets is a nice bandage.

Diehard.1432:

Did Signet of the Hunt get ninja nerfed? I am sure it wasnt 30 secs cooldown before.

No, it was always 30.

SilverShadow.3021:

I’m kind of surprised about the signet of stone buff.

Imo it was one of the best signets, even before patch.
With a certain trait your pet AND yourself are invulnerable for 6s.
6s invulnerability for you and your pet every 80s is actually very nice.
I hope the devs knew that, because otherwise i shouldnt have written this; FML

Anyways, the rest of the patch notes is really disappointing. I see that they’re trying to improve pet usefulness, but I’d rather have decent DPS on my ranger and not my pet.
And LB is still useless.

Actually the overly long signet cool downs were a big problem, this will make power builds much more viable as they have very few useful utilities. Signet of the Wild gives you a 25% damage boost traited, but it wasn’t worth slotting due to the 120 sec cooldown. Now it’s been reduced by half.

Seda Khold.5428:

So the general sentiment is basically “nearly all buffs but not enough”?

It’s never enough. Even if Barrage could take out two zergs a second, we’d still whine about being rooted while casting or something along those lines. :P

monepipi.5160:

Good Patch.

Seeing some of the whining comments here, it seems like there is really no way to please everyone….rolls eyes

They seem to forget how bad the patches were earlier this year. It’s true what they say, gamers complain about everything.

Pets buffs are nice

Spirits buffs are lol and whatever

Sick’em cd reduce is a huge buff to BM build.

Signet CD reduce only benefits zerker rangers since no other build will actually use the active effect or even equip SoS, BM ranger use SoW as an all time regeneration as I see.

The only skill buff that actually helps most of the rangers are the LR cd reduce >.< and I still think they need to make LR can remove immobilize to can actually roll backwards during immobilize.

Daemon.4295:

They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.

remember this?

JonPeters.5630:

While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.

That was 6 months ago in reference to a patch that had no ranger fixes at all.

Also… it’s a complete CRIME that at this point pets dont remember their names when you swap. That should be basic and it completely ruins the feel of the class.

All in all, these changes are good for the ranger. I am unimpressed by the spirit buffs, given how weak spirits were to begin with, but the pet buffs and signet buffs are a fairly large increase. Drake HP doubled, bear health AND armor up, signet of stone CD decreased, passive doubled, signet of the wild CD decrease. These are good changes. I’m sad that there are no weapon buffs, but at least I have SOME hope now. I don’t see the purpose of the search and rescue nerf, but I rarely used it so I won’t really complain.

Things we still need. Longbow… duh!!! Everything about it is fail at the moment. Out of range, obstructed, arrow travel time, slower than intended firing rate, super long channels, low DPS, and a damage “bonus” that nerfs overall AA damage.

Spirits. Yea, spirits will still be murdered by AoE. There is only one fix. Spirits are immune to all AoE damage. Force people to single target them down. Make people work to eliminate spirits or suffer the consequences of ignoring them. Spirits using their active on death needs to be inherent as well. You can not pick up 4 talents out of a trait line. It is impossible. Please don’t nerf spirits by making it impossible to maximize their use.

Pets and AoE. Easy fix. Pets take 50% damage from all AoE spells. There. You can still AoE nuke them, but it’s no longer mindless except in the largest of zerg fights. Pets STILL need to be able to cast and use abilities on the move.

Sword 1. Make it so I don’t want to cut myself when using it… for the love of god.

Axe… lawl. And you thought longbow had problems.

Greatsword. 5 skill needs the stutter removed. Targets on the move are annoyingly hard to hit because I decide to stop before I hilt bash them. Auto attack could use a slight damage increase. Other than that, fine.

RyuDragnier.9476:

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

Lol no it isn’t.

Rapid Fire is actually a loss in dps vs long range shot if at long range, is on par at medium range, and is only better at short range. Not including any additional animation times that may happen at the start or end of skills. The only benefit to it over auto attack is the fact that it will continue to ‘track’ cloaked enemies. This, I think, is just a design flaw that they may or may not bother to fix. It’s also very niche.

Barrage can cripple but in any situation outside a zerg, it is easily interupted and you have to stop moving to cast or you’ll cancel the cast. On top of that, it is easy to avoid if they see you casting it and even if they don’t, it’s nothing to move out of. Leaving them with a mere 1 second of cripple.

Point blank shot only does its CC on enemies within 600.

The gs auto attack has an evade which means that in the time it takes to complete the auto attack cycle, you’ll spend about 33% or more evading. Swoop is a fantastic gap closer and if you set things up in options right, and deselect your target, makes a great way to escape.

CounterAttack will block projectiles for the full 3 seconds. Only when you block a melee will you kick them. You can also double cast it for the cripple.

Then there is hilt bash which actually doubles as a very short range gap closer.

Oh and your dps is higher with the GS.

Even comparing the LB to SB, the SB is better dps and has better utility. Unless you spec for the range with LB, there is no difference with range between the LB and SB. Also, I’m pretty sure the range trait is for the auto attack. I’ve been able to attack enemies at range by manually clicking while my auto attack wouldn’t function. Only after getting a bit closer will the auto attack work again.

The funny thing is that getting them close enough for the auto attack to work again also gets them in range of barrage which is stated to be 1200. This means that the increase in range doesn’t actually increase the range of the weapon but rather it increases the range of the auto attack function.

Unless, with it, you can manually attack out to 2000? I’ll have to check on this later. However, if it is only to extend the function of the auto attack, this means that it is a useless trait.

It also means the SB can reach out to 1500 too.

Manekk.6981:

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

i hope, that’s the case. Since only the cooldown mentions PvP

Times I actually use LB:

-defense of towers and keeps in WvW
-bosses in dungeons
-defense of small zones in dungeons (such as the CoF braziers)
-defense of nodes in PvP

Those are the only times I really use the LB, since that’s what its main focus is…defense of an area. It’s not to kill something with, it’s to DRIVE THEM BACK.

I love what they did to LB, it really needed it.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Times I actually use LB:

-defense of towers and keeps in WvW
-bosses in dungeons
-defense of small zones in dungeons (such as the CoF braziers)
-defense of nodes in PvP

Those are the only times I really use the LB, since that’s what its main focus is…defense of an area. It’s not to kill something with, it’s to DRIVE THEM BACK.

Barrage is fine in PvE because the AI is dumb. In pvp, when up on the wall it is nice to use against people using seige equipment. It’s also nice to use against zergs piled into small control point rings.

But even in those cases it doesn’t pose any real threat. Causes cripple? They’re not looking to move from that spot anyway. Damage? Not enough to make it worth moving out of if it’s your intent to stay at that spot.

The only thing that will get them to move is if you use the barrage→hunter shot→Rapid shot combo. Use the jungle stalker’s roar for the might. At the same time that is being cast, use Qz and go right into the above combo. You swap pets at the same time as you cast hunter shot. It’s about the best single target burst I could come up with for it and has the bonus of dealing damage to nearby targets with barrage.

But to be honest. The SB is enough to get a single target to back off of a seige weapon.

The only way defensive works is if they are faced with two options:

1. Move back
2. Die if they don’t

The only way you get that is through damage output and barrage just doesn’t do it.

Defensive against single target? SB is just as good and has better utility for when you are on the offensive.

Good patch for the Ranger imo, nothing I am disappointed with or there to complain about. On the whole pet improvements and signet buffs help my build so I’m happy

Beta.2045:

Bas.7406:

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.

Guard gives 10 seconds of protection to your pet, which is affected by the ranger’s boon duration. The reduced cool down is a huge improvement for pets inside dungeons.

Sic’em coupled with the jaguar is a devastating combo in PvP. Along with the Pet’s Prowess trait I’ve had that cat crit 7800+ against squishy targets, so a 15 second cool down would be pretty OP. A 40 second untraited cool down is great and this patch is a huge buff to BM rangers.

I didn’t even think about using Guard in dungeons, hmmm, that should make it interesting. I find sic em to be underwelming since you can essentially get a better utility with a shorter CD. 40 seconds is much nicer than the previous one, but it’s not enough to make me drop a signet or survival utility for it.

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

This is why I tried to get Chopps as the Ranger Podcaster :P. Now if I can just find a way to get him to do some ranger related events :P>

Tyops.5894:

Daemon.4295:

They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.

remember this?

JonPeters.5630:

While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.

That was 6 months ago in reference to a patch that had no ranger fixes at all.

Also… it’s a complete CRIME that at this point pets dont remember their names when you swap. That should be basic and it completely ruins the feel of the class.

Signet cooldowns, SoS toughness, Guard cooldown, Spirits buffs…. see, JP finally delivered on his promise! Now we just have to wait six more months for the “feel/pacing on certain weapons” to be adjusted.