Guild Wars 2

What I wonder quite a lot is : are the changes made to make the players enjoy their rangers again (lets face it, in the last few patch / nerf, ranger got hit pretty bad and the bug list is getting quite long) or are the changes made only to nerf the bots (yes, I know that botters user rangers as their prefered farming machine) with only a token amount of care for the actual players.
It seem to me that the latest attempts to “fix” the rangers were not taking the players in consideration very much and were only aimed at crippling bots.
Still, I will wait for this patch with hopeful optimism as usual. I really hope I am proved wrong with this patch since I really like my ranger (even with all the current issues).

So what we have to wait for late November if we are lucky for you to maybe fix our class that you broke?

I assume we won’t have to wait for the next big patch but that this will be rolled out asap since other classes got buffed. You can’t improve a bunch of classes and leave Rangers hanging out there for weeks with nothing, but I would like to hear that confirmed by someone at Anet.

Wow, a dev actually posts in a professions thread? How about heading over to the Elementalist page and giving us an update. You know, first profession announced, worst one in game? Just saying.

On a side note, nice to hear one profession getting some love, and he says they can’t do all at once, meaning maybe one day I will be viable on Ele!

Eles are powerful in the right hands and poor in unskilled hands. Rangers are “meh” in skilled hands and poor in unskilled hands.

Following up on my earlier post about weapon/utility changes, Rangers could also use some trait improvements. Many other classes get very powerful traits (10% greatsword damage, 50% bleed duration, chance to burn on crit, etc) and rangers are mostly left with traits that try and fail to make up for poor utilities and damage. Pet/spirit traits are mostly worthless outside pve. Most of the top tier traits for rangers are bad or broken. Pretty much the only ones that are good are x2 trap effect duration, signet actives affect you and transfer conditions to pets. Its sad that the signet actives affect you trait is one of the ranger’s best traits, since signet actives should work on rangers by default.

The true is: ranger is boring. PvE is boring. PvP is pew pew boring. All skills have low dps. Pet skills can help a lot, but they are so weak in PvP, and can’t hit movin targets (losing 40% dps of ranger).

Otaur.9268:

Wow, a dev actually posts in a professions thread? How about heading over to the Elementalist page and giving us an update. You know, first profession announced, worst one in game? Just saying.

On a side note, nice to hear one profession getting some love, and he says they can’t do all at once, meaning maybe one day I will be viable on Ele!

Lol Im sorry to be rude but learn to play. A few weeks ago I might have actually agreed with you. I fell for the eles are as bad as ranger rant by some players, then I ran into the pros, and played with them, fought them, watched them melt face. I can assure you, ele is a high skill cap class and amazing if played right, bad when played bad. I actually got overconfident on thief since I felt unstopable 1v1, I ran into this ele and we dueled….He killed me in 3 seconds if not faster, I was impressed. I dueled him many times after that and he was exactly like a thief, that opening burst is what kills most people, dodge that and they become easier to handle, so it became a game of cat and mouse. I ended up with a win/loss ratio of about 50/50, guy was pretty kitten impressive.

He wasnt the only one, Ive seen support, bunker, sustained dps, and burst eles alot lately and you can definitely tell the difference between the goods and the bads. So trust me when I say this, learn your class a bit more, get better, and you would most likely see your class in a different light.

Zsymon.8457:

Durzlla.6295:

Otaur.9268:

Wow, a dev actually posts in a professions thread? How about heading over to the Elementalist page and giving us an update. You know, first profession announced, worst one in game? Just saying.

On a side note, nice to hear one profession getting some love, and he says they can’t do all at once, meaning maybe one day I will be viable on Ele!

Um….Eles are totally viable lol, they’re just harder for people to play (unless you have ADD/ADHD and press ALL THE BUTTONS!!), and as a matter of fact eles just recently got buffed…. like 2 days ago…

No dude, eles are not fine, they are even weaker than ranger right now.

They can barely be leveled with in solo pve, due to extremely low damage and low survivability, and in any kind of pvp content they are just a free kill. For example in melee setup the elementalist does less damage than any other melee class, and on top they have no way to survive being in melee, unlike those other melee classes.

My first choice was an elementalist, the second a ranger, but now I can’t play either, since neither professions have a single viable build that can be used to defeat someone.

Even bad players will outdamage you just using auto attack, since elementalists don’t do any damage, so skill doesn’t matter.. you’ll never kill something with a feather no matter how skilled you are.

Rangers used to have shortbow that you could use to defeat bad player by kiting them and spamming crossfire, but now they don’t even have that anymore, and I doubt the coming “love” is going to increase any weapon’s damage enough to give rangers at least one viable mainhand weapon again.

The problem isn’t the skill flow, the problem is just the abhorrently low damage. If the pets would at least deliver their damage it wouldn’t be so bad, but they don’t since they can’t hit moving targets, and the devs find the code involved too complicated to fix this, they’d have to spend money hiring a better programmer, why do you think the OP made no mention of pets.

But for example even in pve, where pets more or less deliver some damage, longbow is still useless, because it does no damage at all. People want to use longbow because the skills are well designed and fun, but the weapon just doesn’t do enough damage, not in pvp and not even for leveling.. it doesn’t even do half the damage it should do.

But hey, if I end up totally wrong, and I hope so very much, I’ll play ranger again, since I love that profession lore-wise.

You are just bad, plain and simple. Friend of mine just started an ele and said the same stuff you are, lvling at a snails pace. The next day I see him he goes from lvl 13 too 34, I ask him what changed, he said he learned the class better and learned how to play it. In 3 days he is almost 55 and said that ele is amazing once you get good with it. So sorry if any non casuals believe you when you say ele is bad. It just takes alot of skill.

Rauphz.2869:

The true is: ranger is boring. PvE is boring. PvP is pew pew boring. All skills have low dps. Pet skills can help a lot, but they are so weak in PvP, and can’t hit movin targets (losing 40% dps of ranger).

Ah, my pet is more like 50-60% of my dps, I use a raven tho.

You guys are pretty much alone with your opinion on Elementalists…
leveled mine just fine, like all my guild mates.
You need to play it smart.
The ranger levels fine too, I agree. But thats only because you can tank the mobs so your pet can hit them…
Pet damage is ok imho, just the ability to land a hit is fail.

I like my bird alot, it hits pretty hard too, but the swooping animations make it frustrating sometimes. Pretty to watch but not efficient in pvp.

Ele is not as bad as you make it out to be. It does need some love but overall it’s a great class. Better than ranger for sure. I keep trying to level a ranger but it’s just so kitten boring. I have never noticed rangers needing a dps buff like so many are saying. They do seem to need better utilities and trait lines, though, and the class overall needs to be more interesting to play. And as a non-ranger I think ranger’s need more defensive cooldowns and survivability. And I say that as an Ele, a class with the least HP and defense of any class naturally, but we have a good amount of skills to help us out there. Every time I see a ranger out in Orr or in a dungeon or something, they are the definition of glass. They can’t handle getting aggro from anything, they have no ways of dealing with the mob or preventing/dealing with the damage.

They just die immediately which is a pain if they’re in your dungeon group and it’s a pain if you run into them in Orr and want to help them take down a mob. I tried to do a skillpoint the other day in Cursed Shore that had a bunch of quickly respawning undead and then a Champion in front of the skillpoint. I went in and started killing the regular mobs and then a ranger came by and started to help me with the champion. For a while we were fine since my Earth Ele had aggro but eventually the Ranger had aggro and didn’t know what to do with it. I tried to help out as best I could but the dude just backed up a few times and then died. I rezzed him, with Champion aggro and it happened again, so I started to rez him but by this time the mobs had all respawned so I just got the heck out (with several regular mobs on me and a Champion, and survived, weeee!). I have had similar experiences with rangers in dungeons – if they can’t just stand back and pew pew and be left alone, they don’t know what to do.

Please buff ranger survivability options Anet. If they don’t have any skills to handle a few seconds of mob aggro, they are just annoying in a game with no tanks or healers. Give them some CC, or some kiting abilities, or some defensive shields, or immunity, or something like what other classes have.

shrug I cant speak in terms of pve but from pve standpoint eles are quite amazing. I always felt they were pathetic in the downed state just waiting too die, but now they are actually good with such a simple change. Yea the problem with rangers vs champs is unelss you are using a tanky pet, which I never will, they die quickly, so you gotta keep swapping pets out and eventually they die too fast for the cd timer and you end up with a 50 sec pet swap time, and if you pull your pet back so it doesnt get hit you lose ALOT of damage. Id like pets to be super hard to kill for pvp purposes but it would be kitten nice if I didnt have to worry about pet being 1 shotted by champs and cutting my damage by half.

I know other classes, mainly melee have to deal with the whole well if we die we lose 100% damage thing but its not like the boss can take their sword or melee wep to decrease their wep, their spirit weps are unkillable yet still targetable. I definitely wouldnt mind that. I guess Ill see how JP plays this, anything atm is better than nothing.

This is the RANGER forum…please stop talking about elementalists in this thread and move it to the appropriate profession forum.

Does anyone think that increasing the normal, untraited, pet swap cooldown to 30s and decreasing the dead pet cooldown to 40s would be a viable change? Pet would still be dying and you’d still be better off saving your pet before a K.O., but your pet would be out fighting more often.

FYI, the traited swap times would be 24s, and 32s.

No, why would you think that increasing pet swap cd at all is a good idea? 15-20 secs is fine if they increase pet survivability and lower the dead pet swap cd to 15-20 secs.

Any chance our pets can use the F2 while on the move, 500y range and stopping? Makes the F2 pointless in pvp 90%time, great update look forward to changes.

Well, birds use their f2 on the move, their problem is the animations. agility training is apparently bugged too, and yea cats cant hit moving targets even with speed buffs. Its stupid.

birds do some 360 swoop prior to the F2, it’s a delay/stop.

Yea, which is why its frustrating, and it eats up an attack of opportunity even tho its not an attack, it swoops and gives swiftness.

Ranger here.

What i expect from the patch:

- spirits health increased by 10%
- skill added “Superior Giving”: you now drop a trick or treat bag on death, we removed Quickening Zephyr for that
- overall damage increased by 1.5%, attack rate decreased by 15%

Because of the huge impact this will have on other professions, we buffed Warriors damage and the duration of Guardian Shouts by 150%.
Hundred Blades can also be used while moving now.

With this, we will hope to see actual people instead of only bots playing ranger again.

Honestly all the quickness effects have very dangerous side effects except mesmers I believe. Warriors take more damage during theirs, but they break stun also, rangers cant heal during theirs, they possibly have the worst one since it doesnt break stuns, thieves break stuns but lose all ability to dodge, engineers get random effects, mesmers get an aoe quickness, amazing for group pvp and clones.

Id like them to add the breaks stun effect to QZ, would make it on par with others, although I admit its almost rough using because I cant heal during it, and sometimes I kitten and forget and end up blowing my heal during it…only to not be healed.

They could make quickening sephyr break every condition in this game and give it a CD of 10 seconds and the class would still be horrid.
At this point i don’t see them fixing it in years. After the disappointment this patch will bring even more people will run baby kitten like Guardian/Warrior.

@Arekai

They already said they are going to be improving the ranger next patch, which generally tends to mean fixing it. Look what they did with necros, now necros are insanely good, atleast the ones Ive foughten are. Same with eles, anet balances and tweaks very well. They made it so backstab thieves gotta work a bit harder for their super fast kills but didnt nerf their damage at all, just moved stuff around.

Xsorus, an elementalist needs about three to four times longer to kill a monster than any other profession except necromancer and scepter mesmers. I tried many times to get one up, but they die so fast while having such low dps, that it just isn’t any fun.

In pvp you play bunker okay, but you won’t defeat anyone as a bunker elementalist, not even the worst players will die to pitiful dps like that. All you get to do is survive a while so you can remove conditions from your mates, but in wvw for example there are no rewards for removing conditions from allied players.

That’s not true Zsymon, you just need to learn how to play the class effectively. It’s not as easy and straightforward as other classes but at 80 I love my Ele and feel like she can do anything But I suggest moving your discussion to the Ele forums. This thread is about giving the Rangers some love.

Are you guys going to make it so drakes use more then their 1 skill again? Because I really miss sparky using his blast finisher…. An that super sexy underwater tail attack…. And well you know healing himself with his 2…

Dante Dragonhand.2538

Did you factor in the fact warriors GS has 3 attacks that can hit for 5k+? 100b does insane damage, whirlwind has hit me for 9k, and blade trail can do 5-6k easily. Lets not forget blade rush which does an average of like 4k. So yea, you are forgetting something.

We were discussing the 1-skill not the 2/3/4/5 skills.

MeGaZlo.9516:

I am sure that they will not remodel functional of apabilities.

You clearly never played GW1.

Hi everyone,

Please refrain from going off topic. This is a Ranger thread not an elementalist thread.

If there is an issue you would like to discuss, please feel frer to open a new thread in the correct subforum.

Thanks for helping us keep the forums clean and friendly

I to also, play a ranger and have been totally disappointed in this class so far. So many issues and bugs with this class and yet we do get confirmation on all this stuff and are being told that in the next patch Rangers will get fixed. Well, it didn’t. If you look and the patch notes, every class EXCEPT Rangers got an fix. I guess we just keep on getting placed on the back burner and hope by X-mas we will get our patch that is long over do.

JonPeters

Poof! Someone called and I am here. We made some ranger changes this patch, but had to go back on them because of risk factor. There are some bugs being fixed and quality of life improvements coming in the next patch, as well as some other significant ranger improvements. I would Literally tell you but I think it would be considered a bit of a spoiler so you will have to be patient.
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.
Ok I can’t type more with tiny phone finger keypad. See you in game!
Jon

Hi Jon,
I would request for the team to fix the slow motion issue that rangers are facing.
This happens especially when the pet attracts visual contact with the foe.
Even if we are not crippled or anything, visual contact would slow our ranger down by a lot in terms of running speed.
Symptom can be easily recognized when you see the ranger holding the bow with both hands when running instead of one hand.
Please kindly help to put the request forward as I have tried highlighting it in the “in game bug report”, forum “bug report” and “wiki bug report” to no avail.

Thank you

Change the name Ranger to Hunter. It’s more appropriate.

“I would request for the team to fix the slow motion issue that rangers are facing.
This happens especially when the pet attracts visual contact with the foe.
Even if we are not crippled or anything, visual contact would slow our ranger down by a lot in terms of running speed.
Symptom can be easily recognized when you see the ranger holding the bow with both hands when running instead of one hand.”

Pretty much this, I find it very frustrating, in fact mobs overtake me, what’s that all about then !

next patch comes in the next year? And i cant play paid turne because the ranger is soo “kitten and full of bugs” thx for fix my faworite proff in the game beefore you start the paid turnes.

One thing I would love, is to have added to the major trait in beastmastery line,

Natural Healing now renamed Natural Companion.
Your pets have natural health regeneration, and take 80% less damage from area of effect skills. (30% in pvp)

I am 30 points deep in to beastmastery at the moment, and my bears die way to fast in instances, and not because of the vast majority of single target skills that my pet will not lissom to me and run back to me when I press “F3”. I have the fantastic 16s pet switch and I love it, but it is still not enough when a boss spams the entier floor with red circles and my pet “Captain Paw” dies, I then summon “Admiral Breeze” and he dies to Aoe too!

Now these are both Bears, and they defiantly care! The main boss I am thinking about is the one in HOTW with the two quaggan adds. His Aoe spam eats my poor bears and I’m fed up!

Fix the Sword Auto Attack.

EJAZZ.7286

“I would request for the team to fix the slow motion issue that rangers are facing.
This happens especially when the pet attracts visual contact with the foe.
Even if we are not crippled or anything, visual contact would slow our ranger down by a lot in terms of running speed.
Symptom can be easily recognized when you see the ranger holding the bow with both hands when running instead of one hand.”

Solid Gold.9310:

Pretty much this, I find it very frustrating, in fact mobs overtake me, what’s that all about then !

No doubt about it. Its really frustrating to play it with such a bug daily.
Which is why I hope JonPeters can help bring this up. No one is responding to this issue no matter which official channel of bug report I attempted to make.

My biggest problem with Ranger in tPvP, (and I’ve been playing ranger since release) is…
What is my role in the team?

When it comes to condition damage, Necro’s are superior to Ranger because of the AOE and awesome utility synergies. Engi’s are also better than Rngrs in this regard, by being able to apply many conditions very quickly.

Power builds for ranger exist, but are inferior/inefficient compared to those those of the other clasess. Warrior has good AOE pwr dmg, Thiefs have stealth and massive crit and mobility, Mesmers can build glass and can have enough utility to get away with it.
At most rangers have a 6 sec invul that requires you to use a bear, or a stone signet that also must be traited into.

When it comes to Support or Bunker, the ranger is not even a candidate in my eyes, with little access to stability, and condi removal.

In summation, I just feel that if I want to bring something to my team, be it Pwr, Condi, Support or Bunker, you are better off playing a different class. This is the biggest issues I want to see fixed.

Sabaz necros are not better at putting conditions on players or npcs but taking them off themseleves and spreading them to other players/npcs. They are slower then others at putting them on one target but epidemic makes it very easy for them to apply 20+ bleeds, poisons, burns, etc others stack for them they then spread it to atleast 5 players. I was trying to do testing in the mists but my bleeds would disappear off training dummies to quickly for me to verify if epidemic spread to 5 targets or more since sometimes it seems to apply to more and others it doesnt.

Sabaz.6978:

My biggest problem with Ranger in tPvP, (and I’ve been playing ranger since release) is…
What is my role in the team?

When it comes to condition damage, Necro’s are superior to Ranger because of the AOE and awesome utility synergies. Engi’s are also better than Rngrs in this regard, by being able to apply many conditions very quickly.

Power builds for ranger exist, but are inferior/inefficient compared to those those of the other clasess. Warrior has good AOE pwr dmg, Thiefs have stealth and massive crit and mobility, Mesmers can build glass and can have enough utility to get away with it.
At most rangers have a 6 sec invul that requires you to use a bear, or a stone signet that also must be traited into.

When it comes to Support or Bunker, the ranger is not even a candidate in my eyes, with little access to stability, and condi removal.

In summation, I just feel that if I want to bring something to my team, be it Pwr, Condi, Support or Bunker, you are better off playing a different class. This is the biggest issues I want to see fixed.

Yea that about sums up ranger atm, no viable builds.

Awesome news! Hopefully the bow skills will be fixed so I can really start to use my bows.

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

Awesome news! Hopefully the bow skills will be fixed so I can really start to use my bows.

since when are bow skills bugged?… rangers got nerfed and the short bow attack speed got nerfed to a slow attack speed…

Failname.5907:

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

Awesome news! Hopefully the bow skills will be fixed so I can really start to use my bows.

since when are bow skills bugged?… rangers got nerfed and the short bow attack speed got nerfed to a slow attack speed…

Aside from the obstruction bug that goes with projectiles? Crossfire doesnt work like it should with QZ, long ranged shot doesnt auto fire at max range, and projectiles move too slow, also traits for ranger weps kinda suck.

Yeah didnt think of that because it has always been like that…
anyway rangers need a massive overhaul , a jaguar pet can almost out dps me if it doesnt already (80 with exotic weap.. and taking out condition damage..)

@Failname um… the jaguar pet can outdps a lot of people, rangers and non rangers alike, that’s what the cat pets are MEANT to do, and then god help the person you throw a jaguar on that has 25 stacks of masters bond and 30 points in BM, hit your victim with an immobilize and hit jaguar stealth and laugh as they fall to bloody ribbons.

*Necromancer comes skulking in to your thread* JonPeters can you come to the necromancer forums pretty pleeeeease? ^^ *Necromancer goes Death Shroud and runs away from the evil Rangers*

Thanks for some good news. Hopefully sooner than later though.

I don’t think people understand the ranger. Especially those asking for a “fix” to the Sword. That’s like asking for a “fix” to Mesmer Greatsword because they don’t swing it in melee range. It’s a sticking weapon, its damage is higher than Greatsword, and the GS is a defensive weapon and does a really good job at it.

I think Ranger is in a good state right now, and if it’s getting updated, it can only get better.

Change or fix the Sword auto-attack please!!!