Guild Wars 2

Frost Spirit and Spotter were the major reasons why Rangers were desired in PvE before the nerf. FS was basically our banners. Even if Ranger’s personal dps is higher now, and is said to be comparable to Warrior, they took away our banner when they “fixed” Frost Spirit, so Ranger is still objectively not as good as a Warrior in a group. Without the group support, Ranger’s personal dps is meaningless, because there are still 3 or 4 classes who do more and also provide more to the group.

Honestly, Ranger is actually in a worse place in PvE now than it was before the FS change. A single Ranger was a staple in most speed clear comps, but that will no longer be the case without Frost Spirit. Traited FS was a 7% damage increase for your entire party. Even if they raised Ranger’s personal dps by 40%, it still would not make up for the amount of group damage we lost with the FS nerf. It was seriously HUGE.

I think that none of this is anything that long time Ranger players don’t already know, so those previous paragraphs are mostly to highlight how drastic of a negative change the nerf to FS was for newer Rangers or those who are not very familiar with the theorycrafting side of the game. Long story short: despite whatever buffs Ranger just got in the patch, the class is overall much weaker in a group setting, which is very bad for Ranger, who has always struggled to be accepted.

So we, as Ranger players, need to make more noise about this change. If it was changed by mistake, it needs to be fixed ASAP. If it was a purposeful change, then Anet needs to explain why they thought it was a good idea to completely hamstring the class’ group synergy.

Forums will probably be ignored.

There was a thread on reddit that got ignored too.

Maybe post on facebook and twitter? Or naked bearbows dancing around in LA protesting or something lol.

I highly doubt most employees even know about the “fix” except for the guy that implemented it since it is undocumented.

Reverting the nerf is not a “fix”. All spirits should be buffed to something meaningful.

On the other hand, rangers should have other options… like “Copy boons on your pet to nearby allies when swapping them” or “5% bonus damage to allies adjacent to your pet” (with a 150 or 300 range) or “Pet critical hits gives fury (or might) to nearby allies”
For defensive support: “Your pet and nearby allies gain protection when it reaches 33% health” or “Your pet and nearby allies gain retaliation when it loses more than 25% of it’s maximum health in one blow”

Then buff the pet’s health and toughness in dungeons and we’re all set

I made a second reddit post about this a few days ago, but I got downvoted to oblivion. I guess pve rangers are a vocal minority compared to the WvW warriors that think ranger is OP right now.

ANet have been ignoring ranger forums for a very long time. Still seeing “no ranger” parties for dungeons, and still get asked to bring alts if I join as ranger.

If you want to make a difference, jus corroborate the issue on the bugs thread. Maybe they think its an issue that isn’t affecting many people.

Yeah, you really need to post in the bug thread. No dev will read it here.

solrik.6028:

Reverting the nerf is not a “fix”. All spirits should be buffed to something meaningful.

On the other hand, rangers should have other options… like “Copy boons on your pet to nearby allies when swapping them” or “5% bonus damage to allies adjacent to your pet” (with a 150 or 300 range) or “Pet critical hits gives fury (or might) to nearby allies”
For defensive support: “Your pet and nearby allies gain protection when it reaches 33% health” or “Your pet and nearby allies gain retaliation when it loses more than 25% of it’s maximum health in one blow”

Then buff the pet’s health and toughness in dungeons and we’re all set

Adding/changing a bunch of traits that have nothing to do with Spirits is not a “fix” for the FS nerf either…

Tman.6349:

solrik.6028:

Reverting the nerf is not a “fix”. All spirits should be buffed to something meaningful.

On the other hand, rangers should have other options… like “Copy boons on your pet to nearby allies when swapping them” or “5% bonus damage to allies adjacent to your pet” (with a 150 or 300 range) or “Pet critical hits gives fury (or might) to nearby allies”
For defensive support: “Your pet and nearby allies gain protection when it reaches 33% health” or “Your pet and nearby allies gain retaliation when it loses more than 25% of it’s maximum health in one blow”

Then buff the pet’s health and toughness in dungeons and we’re all set

Adding/changing a bunch of traits that have nothing to do with Spirits is not a “fix” for the FS nerf either…

You misunderstood the reply. I first wrote what would specifically help the spirits. Then I begun a paragraph with “On the other hand”.

I the case that I am wrong, please qoute me on the bit of text where I say that spirits are fixed by adding features to the pet.