Guild Wars 2

Ranger
Black Widow Spider pet: Now has the correct amount of vitality.
White Raven pet: Now has the correct amount of vitality.
Drake pet Chomp attack: This skill no longer heals enemy targets.
Maul skill:
Increased bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
Increased base damage by 26%.
Counterattack skill: Reduced recharge from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
Hilt Bash skill: Reduced recharge from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
Ranger pet cooldowns are now properly preserved when stabled.
Feline pets: Maul now applies consistent critical hits.
Quickening Zephyr skill: Now breaks stun. Increased duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
Pet-revive skills no longer fail to heal their target.

You should add that the QZ “buff” is just an adjustment to the way quickness now works (50% instead of 100%)

And again the list is pretty short.

Your dreaming.

Real ranger update, fixed an incorrect tooltip.

Solid Gold.9310:

Your dreaming.

Real ranger update, fixed an incorrect tooltip.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-March-26-2013

Longer QZ to account for global nerf to quickness… plus stun break on QZ, decreased GS cooldowns and increased GS damage make this weapon even better.

Note the rune of orrian is better for rangers now since endurance can no longer go negative.

Quickening Zephyr skill: Now breaks stun. Increased duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.

THIS! O_O

I’m happy with just this change alone! I don’t have to go around without QZ anymore because I’m forced to pick LR or Signet of Renewal for stun break

Ranger pet cooldowns are properly preserved when stabled…

I suspect that this means that your pet’s 40s cooldown skill can’t be used faster by swapping it out and back in 16s later. The last patch made it look like the F2 was still on cooldown, and now it probably will be.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

While it isn’t mentioned in the Ranger info area specifically, we also added owner Agony Resistance to pets.

yes but pets still will die due to the lack of dodge or any evade with the low heath they have

My conclusion and comments:

Outside of the bug and common sense fixes, like agony resist to pets and pet revives working 100% of the time, most ranger builds took a hit because of the quickness change which cuts the speed in half.

Quickness from the pet swap did not receive a boost in duration and QZ only received a 25% increase in duration and now breaks stun like other quickness skills do, which makes it a less powerful skill overall due to the decrease in both overall damage and burst effectiveness.

The greatsword received a buff again which is nice, but when are we going to see changes for the other weapons, utilities, and most importantly pets which all need work?

• Black Widow Spider pet: Now has the correct amount of vitality.
• White Raven pet: Now has the correct amount of vitality.

Great! Now i can sport my black widow spider without feeling the lesser amount of vitality.

• Drake pet Chomp attack: This skill no longer heals enemy targets.

It’s about time. No more will I see a mob-wide heal.

• Maul skill:
• Increased bleeding duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
• Increased base damage by 26%.
• Counterattack skill: Reduced recharge from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Hilt Bash skill: Reduced recharge from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.

Welcomed changes, though I would have loved to see a slight increase in base damage for its 1 skill.

• Ranger pet cooldowns are now properly preserved when stabled.

Needed to be fixed, not necessarily wanted though. This will change the way pets are used in that pets with longer recharging F2 skills are no longer favorable if f2 skills recharge longer than 20s (if you’re traited, 15s)

• Feline pets: Maul now applies consistent critical hits.

Buff to cats, making them the superior pet choice depending on the situation

• Quickening Zephyr skill: Now breaks stun. Increased duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.

While the drop in attack speed from 100->50% is another issue, I’m glad we have another stun breaker at our disposal, though blowing your QZ trying to stun break on an escape = suicide as it will also increase the speed of your actions. Only escapes will be affected, though offensive applications will be better

• Pet-revive skills no longer fail to heal their target.

It’s about time! This means Search and Rescue and Lick Wounds ‘should’ be fixed now

On a lasting note: Why wasnt our F4 Pet Swap quickness trait (5 pts beastmastery) buffed? They let Warriors have a non integer amount of quickness (6.25s quickness on their trait), why can’t we have 2.5s->3s quickness on swap?

Not bad, but I still want some buff for LB

Do you think it’s still worth to put 5 points into BM just for quickness on swap?

Renowneddragookitten36:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

While it isn’t mentioned in the Ranger info area specifically, we also added owner Agony Resistance to pets.

yes but pets still will die due to the lack of dodge or any evade with the low heath they have

That largely depends on what pet you use, where you use it, and how you are using it. If you can cite a specific instance where you’ve tried several things and still struggle, please document it on the forums. Specificity is crucial to a healthy discussion.

Few decent fixes and buffs. Pets still broken.

I assume most of you only skipped str8 to the class changes and missed this part.

Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.
As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.

Nothing much else to say. So think again if you thought your quickening zephyr was buffed. It is actually semi nerfed, along with the 2second quickness buff off pet change.

PLEASE increase quickness duration we get from pet swap. PLEASE!!!!

I’m really pleased with the QZ stun break. I enjoy using it and sometimes I’ve felt obliged to take it off my bar for the signet or LR. Now I won’t have to.

Shame about the general quickness nerf but at least it’s global.

I’m glad there’s a white raven fix (although I’m mystified why it took this long) and the cat crit improvement. I avoided white raven because of the poor vitality and now I don’t have to.

Good to hear that pet AR is now included even if it didn’t make it into the notes.

Maybe Lick Wounds won’t seem almost useless now.

I’ll see what I think about the GS changes when I play. It’s not a weapon I currently use but that may change. And I’m still wishing for some kind of improvement to LB. I don’t mind playing melee as a ranger, but I’m still not feeling like the ‘ranged specialist’ that the class design philosophy states.

Uncle Salty.6342:

I assume most of you only skipped str8 to the class changes and missed this part.

Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.
As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.

Nothing much else to say. So think again if you thought your quickening zephyr was buffed. It is actually semi nerfed, along with the 2second quickness buff off pet change.

Not really, considering the quickness change was global and ranger was the only profession to get a buff on a quickness skill to compensate.

I don’t think this patch really touched one the reasons Rangers are so underwhelming. More than that, though, I feel the change to Quickness has only weakened the Ranger position even more since QZ/Pet swap quickness was one of the few things that made me fairly useful in some encounters. I can’t count how many times I rescued a group from a wipe because I survived rallying a downed teammate, standing in an AoE, only because I combined QZ and then pet swap.

I just feel like the update took a little bit of utility away from the ranger (something most people already say we don’t have nearly enough of) in exchange for AR on pets (which, let’s face it, pets are still in a bad spot relatively speaking).

And no, adding a stun break and increasing QZ duration by one second did not counter the nerf to Quickness. At least not in the sense of lowered utility for a group encounter.

The quickness changes, are really good tbh. You need to remember the other classes like Mesmer/Warrior that destroy under QZ, we now have chance to react and get away.

Means we can weapon swap to our sword and dodge.

It may have helped in PvP. It hurt in PvE.

Nothing about mele pets hitting more than 1 target I was looking for this but i guess i have to wait one more month.

Oolune.4357:

It may have helped in PvP. It hurt in PvE.

The days of F4 godly fast takedowns are over.

Oolune.4357:

It may have helped in PvP. It hurt in PvE.

It hurts mesmers and their silly 4 warrior 1 mesmer speed run more. Does that make me happy? Yes. I don’t like mesmers! :p unless they’re on my side!!!!!

Chopps.5047:

Not really, considering the quickness change was global and ranger was the only profession to get a buff on a quickness skill to compensate.

Thief recieved a buff to theirs technically as you can no longer have negative endurance. This is a pretty large change, being even stronger than ours receiving a stun break (like all the other quickness skills already have) as they will no longer go into -100% endurance if they use it while empty on adrenaline like before.

Because a nerf to Mesmers is a buff to Rangers? Ok.

Oolune.4357:

Because a nerf to Mesmers is a buff to Rangers? Ok.

It’s about how you are comapred to others, because numbers alone doesn’t mean anything.

As I said, I’m happy with changes. The only thing I want is MORE of them

So effectively the Ranger has had a few broken abilities finally fixed and quickness was nerfed with no compensation for the quickness on pet-swap. Not much of an improvement in my humble opinion as a lot of Rangers will deal even less dps now.

A few common sense fixes and a big nerf. And let’s not forget that the passive effects from Warrior banners got buffed by ~90% whilst Ranger spirits are left unchanged.

Color me unimpressed; but then again the ‘balance team’ doesn’t hold that much credibility in my book. They dropped the ball too many times now and seem to live in their own imagination.

Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.

Aveneo.2068:

Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.

THat would hold no meaning… He should bring a jaguar…
Or a bear…

GS buff – wonderful!
Quickness change – not so wonderful. Great for PVP players, not so great for those of us mainly in PVE. QZ was increased, it’s weaker than before but at least the time was spent to try to balance it. There is no mention of our Zephyr’s Speed skill getting a duration increase. I’m going to assume it was increased and wasn’t included in the patch notes (not the first time we’ve seen that happen). This must be correct, seeing as the quote from the section about the Quickness change says “while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills”. So after the patch, if it doesn’t last longer, everyone needs to make sure to BUG REPORT it, because obviously they meant to change it and forgot.

wasnt shortbow firing rate “corrected” because it was hitting too fast under qz previously?

- Nerfed quickness
- Buff greatsword skill for rangers (lol, where is Long bow correction?)
- No Spirit changes
- Traits Traps in crit line
- Warrior buffed again.
Arena need to see we have ppl playing pve and not only pvp.

As a beserker ranger, overall imo this is an average update that if anything hurt me significantly with the quickness nerf, but what i was not expectng much to begin with so oh well

- if you read the patch notes and saw all that was corrected with engineer, that made me frown since if anything i would love to see an update like that for us

naphack.9346:

Aveneo.2068:

Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.

THat would hold no meaning… He should bring a jaguar…
Or a bear…

The devs would just run circles around those pets, as a ranger, if you need something done, you have to do it yourself.

Back on topic, I’m surprised no one had blown up about persistent pet recharges yet. No more “on demand” knock down from wolves, tail swipe from drakes…

I play a ranger and a thief. This patch looks awful for thieves, particularly PvE thieves. Rangers get some necessary improvements but rangers still complain and whinge. There are plenty of threads already stating ranger problems and they are still valid and can be taken forward. This should be a thread for happy rangers.

naphack.9346:

Aveneo.2068:

Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.

THat would hold no meaning… He should bring a jaguar…
Or a bear…

At least with a wooden plank he could hit them, the jag or bear would just run in a poorly coded stupor and miss most of the time.

Paz Shadow.9715:

As a beserker ranger, overall imo this is an average update that if anything hurt me significantly with the quickness nerf, but what i was not expectng much to begin with so oh well

- if you read the patch notes and saw all that was corrected with engineer, that made me frown since if anything i would love to see an update like that for us

So long as dear Robert still has a job in ANet, don’t count on it. He’s pretty happy with the ranger so long as it “gets by”.

Do i sound negative? Has the patience to give devs the benefit of a doubt expired? Yes to both.

Game patches are usually exciting. They are, in other games. In GW2, it has been consecutively met with more disappointments than excitement.

Not a lot of changes but the ones they did are quite decent.

Quickness got hit but this applies to the other classes aswell. GS + feline beasmaster build will be very happy. I have to test the changes yet but this doesn’t put us that far away from warrior damage anymore.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

While it isn’t mentioned in the Ranger info area specifically, we also added owner Agony Resistance to pets.

That is very cool, Robert but in had to be done long time before like the other fixes you made this patch ( revive i.e. ). It must have worked properly from the beginning. So all we have is a relatively decent buff to GS, vitality to HoM pets which almost nobody has and a big nerf to our quickness. 2 sec on swap is not enough considering that 50% reduction.

What about out squishy spirits? Our stupid pets? Will they be ever fixed?

I mean I realy appreciate your involvement but comparing to others our fixes still suck.

war sligh boost, ele boost, engi big boost, mesmer nerf, necro didn’t read yet ..ranger update joke.. why my pet need boost if can’t even hit something, not mentioning extreme long f2 activation.. if it even activates ..
LB untouched, still same horrible weapon ..out of range and obstucted bug not fixed ..
dissapointed

Dojo.1867:

Not a lot of changes but the ones they did are quite decent.

Quickness got hit but this applies to the other classes aswell. GS + feline beasmaster build will be very happy. I have to test the changes yet but this doesn’t put us that far away from warrior damage anymore.

The difference is that, unlike for the other classes, Quickness was one of the very few utilities we had to offer a group over other classes.

In any case, I had been debating whether to spend time finishing gearing up my Ranger or else moving on to something else. I was holding out to see what the patch brought, and I think it convinced me I should just play something else for now. Maybe if even fewer people play Ranger there will be some more significant changes.

I’ll play him long enough to get my daily tokens on him. Oh, and to re-trait to get rid of the now terribly pointless 2-second 50% pet swap quickness.

This exact change to Quickness has needed to happen for a long time, and I’m very happy about it. the AR was a common-sense fix as well.

Now, they just need to address issues with Longbows and Spirits.

You should try a GS beastmaster build for wvw then. It is great fun.

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

Worst patch ever for rangers, what a colossal failure. WvW still will suck as a ranger due to fecal coding of pets. Lets get this solved already, anet can not program pets properly so lets give the majority if not all damage back to the ranger and re work the beast master tree to allow those who like the pets to get a better split with more power to the pets.

Nothing about the long bow that I saw either, may have missed it.

It’s becoming clear some people are just not going to be happy and when they talk about balance what they really mean is, “can you make it so we’re a face roll class”.

Why should be happy or grateful for fecal coding? It is obvious their team does not have the talent to program a decent ai so why not admit, move on and put a solution in place?

I don’t understand how the warr banners got that huge buff before spirits were even touched, you’d have to be insane to even think about rolling a spirit build in wvw with the condition spirits are in

Dojo.1867:

You should try a GS beastmaster build for wvw then. It is great fun.

What would you recommend as a build, talents etc?

ChillyChinaman.6057:

naphack.9346:

Aveneo.2068:

Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.

THat would hold no meaning… He should bring a jaguar…
Or a bear…

The devs would just run circles around those pets, as a ranger, if you need something done, you have to do it yourself.

Back on topic, I’m surprised no one had blown up about persistent pet recharges yet. No more “on demand” knock down from wolves, tail swipe from drakes…

I doubt that they will be able to run in a circle for a long time because they have
no sense of balance

ok Enginner get a big buff and fix
WvW Ranger still broken(hi pet)

kokiman.2364:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

naphack.9346:

Aveneo.2068:

Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.

THat would hold no meaning… He should bring a jaguar…
Or a bear…

The devs would just run circles around those pets, as a ranger, if you need something done, you have to do it yourself.

Back on topic, I’m surprised no one had blown up about persistent pet recharges yet. No more “on demand” knock down from wolves, tail swipe from drakes…

I doubt that they will be able to run in a circle for a long time because they have [Spoiler] no sense of balance [/Spoiler]

lol thanks for the laugh!

People its fine , its a low level trait . Rangers still get it super easy , and both you and your pet benefit from it . If you enjoy playing the ranger , keep playing . If not , play something else . I have played games online long enough to know to not expect good changes in patches . Developers are usually clueless , and will not listen to the community .

Have fun and enjoy the game for what it is