Guild Wars 2

All these discussions about the “hotfix” got me wondering. What do you think about the damage potential the Ranger had before the recent patch?

I tried an old Valkyrie geared power build and I enjoyed it very much during the last week. Having said that I do have to admit that while having the fury boon on my Longbow weapon set seemed relatively balanced, the duration it stacked was really too much. In an average battle I could easily get over 20 seconds of fury, which was just silly considering that fully covered my weapon swap cool down.

I would have personally loved the “hotfix” to actually be a change to the description of Eagle Eye to include a chance to proc fury on hit. Then again; don’t we all? -And that is exactly what I am wondering.

Since I recall reading that more options for maintaining fury are being looked at, what would you think is fair?

Seriously the best part was that we had perma fury and noone really bothered..Still we werent a threat in tpvp…
Even if we still had it we would need more to become eventually a threat as a power build….

They dont have a clue, they cant try new things, they cant risk cause they have no knowledge of the game..They are afraid that they will screw it up with even a small change…

Insecurities…..

I think eagle eye should give the fury buff to longbow but it shouldn’t be without ICD but 3secs of fury every 10s like the GS trait is definetly reasonable actually both those could be 5s with a 10s ICD.

I think we’d be fine if Concentration Training didn’t require the pet to be in combat, because the Red Moa can give 21 seconds of Fury every 25 seconds (or every 20 seconds if traited even more).

We’d also be fine if Furious Grip didn’t require combat mode and gave 9 seconds of fury like the tooltip states, instead of 5 seconds.

Those would both be acceptable sources for permanent Fury. Longbow could get buffed in other ways that don’t involve Fury.

Holland.9351:

I think we’d be fine if Concentration Training didn’t require the pet to be in combat, because the Red Moa can give 21 seconds of Fury every 25 seconds (or every 20 seconds if traited even more).

We’d also be fine if Furious Grip didn’t require combat mode and gave 9 seconds of fury like the tooltip states, instead of 5 seconds.

Those would both be acceptable sources for permanent Fury. Longbow could get buffed in other ways that don’t involve Fury.

Furious grap and his 9 secs are just a tool-tip bug, it was 5 sec since release its just on 9 secs cooldown

While I get everyone’s frustration about the actions that were taken for the sake of game-balance, I would like to invite you to try changing your perspective.
I could go ranting on and on about how ArenaNet hasn’t a clue about how their own game is played and how they should l2whatever… This has nothing to do with the current state of the game. Sure, it is far from balanced and the profession I like to play most is in a comparatively horrible state. I still like to play it most and when I get too frustrated, I quit. It’s that simple, really. Getting all psyched about game balance when the actual balancing is not up to me only leaves me with more disappointment.

Having said that, actual suggestions are obviously a lot more constructive in nature and I hold on to an idle hope that one day they may actually be considered.

Therefore this topic got me thinking of alternative measures to allow longbow Rangers to have the fury boon. One trait in particular seems perfect for this. I am talking about the Marksmanship grand-master trait Remorseless [XII]. How about adding the effect "Opening Strike now grants … seconds of Fury.’

It was a bug, so it had to be fixed. The issue here is not if this was good or bad, it was bad because the longbow needed a bug to be viable. It should be viable without unintended stuff and its not.
A buff should come in the form of trait compression and utility buffs to things that are supposed to keep a glasscannon alive !

Chokolata.1870:

It was a bug, so it had to be fixed. The issue here is not if this was good or bad, it was bad because the longbow needed a bug to be viable. It should be viable without unintended stuff and its not.
A buff should come in the form of trait compression and utility buffs to things that are supposed to keep a glasscannon alive !

Obviously the change was unintended and had to be dealt with. It did however give the Longbow some change in perspective. I merely wonder if others think that the fury upkeep was enough to make the weapon actually viable and not just the flavor of the week. I think we can all agree that the profession could use a buff (or two… and a whole lot of bug-fixes.)

If we could agree that fury was enough to get the Ranger’s direct damage up to where it should be, the real question would be how to implement it. So far I am only wondering and looking for other people’s perspective on the matter and trying to promote a constructive discussion.

Well , the longbow auto attack is quite decent at the moment and I would be worried if it got stronger simply because i hate auto attack spamming . Compressing rapid fire from 4 seconds to 2 seconds would be an amazing burst buff , but that would be only part of the fix needed , but irrelevant of other fixes the channel time is too long at the moment .

The 2nd part is with traits . Eagle eye is a trait that is definitely build defining and should be grandmaster in the MM tree , but it should buff the Shortbow as well.
Quick draw on the other hand is too high up the skirmishing line and it offers no other boons other then CD reduction , perhaps give it a 25% move speed when using a bow buff would be quite a good choice , or merging it with piercing arrows in the MM tree . This would make sense as it would not spread bow traits along two trees and put it in a place that makes sense .

And what is left is the utility skills . The big culprit here is Sig of the BM . It is unacceptable to need a GM trait to use signets . Removal of this would definitely make power builds viable , as you would be able to take 2-3 defensive traits , for example LR , Stone signet and protect me , which would be solid enough combined with stealth and LS block to keep you alive .

I understand when people claim that it was a bug and bugs have to be fixed, but honestly, how long has pet’s been bugged with the problem of not hitting moving targets and bad pathing? I don’t see ANet rushing to fix the bug like they did to this one. The longbow NEEDED that damage buff to make it a viable weapon, and now it’s gone. And the best part is that ANet won’t even comment on it except to say that it was a bug and then closing the thread because they knew we needed this and they don’t want to give it to us, it’s almost like they want us to be a broken class. They said that in 2vs2 80% of the players are rangers which I don’t believe, but they won’t answer the question as to how many of those 80% actually use the longbow! According to Anet’s description of the class, we are suppose to be a ranged dps class. It’s funny how a ranged dps class has to resort to using melee weapons in order to do any damage.

We should do multiple ‘fix pet bug’ Threads. Enough threads that it cover’s the first page. I got $20 saying that they will close them and ban us from the site instead of talking to us and trying to work out a compromise with us for the broken pets. They want us to be broken. plain and simple! If they didn’t, instead of them saying that they know pet’s are broken and there is nothing they can do to fix it because of the code, they would rework pets using mezer’s code with a pet image. Funny how my bird won’t fly up the keep wall to attack a target, yet clones pop up there to attack their targets all the time! My pet won’t run down the stairs of the keep wall and out the gate to attack my target put clones appear outside with no problem. So now we’re screwed out of 30-40 percent of our damage due to a buggy pet that they know it’s bugged and they won’t fix and we’re screwed out of our ranged DPS weapon because of a bug they knew about and fixed. Honestly, looks like they are working towards hurting us in every possible way, doing things that will only hurt the class instead of help.

Even as a bug, Longbow was still inferior to other weapons. Sad, but true.

Akisame.9508:

I understand when people claim that it was a bug and bugs have to be fixed, but honestly, how long has pet’s been bugged with the problem of not hitting moving targets and bad pathing? I don’t see ANet rushing to fix the bug like they did to this one.

The fury bug was a simple fix. The pet problem with hitting moving targets is a much more complicated bug. A friend and I encountered it in grad school while we tried having one robot chase after another to simulate a flocking behavior. You get a lot of emergent behaviors which aren’t all that easy to predict.

They said that in 2vs2 80% of the players are rangers which I don’t believe,

They said 80% of 2v2s had a ranger in it. So 0.8 * 0.25 = 20% of players were rangers, which is pretty close to what their 1 year anniversary stats said (19% if I remember).

They said that they do not intend to fix anything pet related !!! At least we know this

Ok, 20% where ranger’s, out of those 20% how many where using Longbows?

They do not intend to fix anything pet related, so they claim bugs have to be fixed yet they won’t fix the pet bug. kind of a double standard if you ask me. We’re still getting kittened either way, hey Anet, can you at least use some Vaseline!

The pet not hitting moving targets and being slow on f2 skill activation is not a bug per say. It’s a problem with the AI itself how it was implemented.

Okay, two sides of the coin here. With the fury buff, we theoretically had a 20% damage boost to all rangers who used longbow and eagle eye…let’s say 20% of all rangers although I’m almost certain the actual number is higher. Yet nobody posted anything about ‘omg rangers are OP’. Is this not a sign that we are currently at least a tad underpowered? Yes, bunker trap builds are the current meta in spvp, but the majority of people play pve and wvw, so what’s the point of one powerful build in a minor portion of the game when the profession lacks in all others.

On the other side of the coin, keeping fury on the eagle eye trait makes the trait beyond OP, so yes it needed to be removed. However, like I mentioned earlier, this mistake just goes to show how much love rangers need.

Anet needs to take a solid week or two and get the entire company to play ranger for that time, and make fixes accordingly. In fact, I think they should do that for every class. Put off living story content for a few months (and make them better) and just balance the classes.

Treehugga.2398:

Okay, two sides of the coin here. With the fury buff, we theoretically had a 20% damage boost to all rangers who used longbow and eagle eye…let’s say 20% of all rangers although I’m almost certain the actual number is higher. Yet nobody posted anything about ‘omg rangers are OP’. Is this not a sign that we are currently at least a tad underpowered?

This I am actually curious about. I can recall the situation with Elementalists going from not worth our time to overpowered without any actual changes made. One week was a very short time to test this bugged trait. My own experience (with Valkyrie gear, mind you. So I was getting the full benefit of fury.) was that fury did not make the Ranger overpowered. The duration at which it stacked, however, was.

I do take my own perspective with a grain of salt, though. For one, I like to think I do know how to play. I have always had a Ranger main character and managed to compensate for the class’ shortcomings by outplaying my opponents. So when in my hands the longbow became a lethal (yet risky) weapon, it was partially because it was played by a skilled player.
That is why I think maintaining Fury on the longbow was not too much.

honestly for me, I didn’t notice the fury bonus because I was critting on most of my attacks anyway. Despite this, they are still under-powered, so in answer to your question, the fury bug wasn’t too much. We were still generally under-powered compared to other classes.

Now, if the LB stacked might instead of fury.. now we might be on par with other classes.

JorneMormel.9850:

Treehugga.2398:

Okay, two sides of the coin here. With the fury buff, we theoretically had a 20% damage boost to all rangers who used longbow and eagle eye…let’s say 20% of all rangers although I’m almost certain the actual number is higher. Yet nobody posted anything about ‘omg rangers are OP’. Is this not a sign that we are currently at least a tad underpowered?

This I am actually curious about. I can recall the situation with Elementalists going from not worth our time to overpowered without any actual changes made. One week was a very short time to test this bugged trait. My own experience (with Valkyrie gear, mind you. So I was getting the full benefit of fury.) was that fury did not make the Ranger overpowered. The duration at which it stacked, however, was.

I do take my own perspective with a grain of salt, though. For one, I like to think I do know how to play. I have always had a Ranger main character and managed to compensate for the class’ shortcomings by outplaying my opponents. So when in my hands the longbow became a lethal (yet risky) weapon, it was partially because it was played by a skilled player.
That is why I think maintaining Fury on the longbow was not too much.

I’ve always played a lb s/a full zerker, and my experience this week (and I agree, a week wasn’t long enough to fully test it out) was that in pve, permafury was okay…maybe a bit OP. In wuvwuv, I was finally on par with other classes. Previously I’d have to pop absolutely every single skill and time it well to have a decent chance at winning a 1v1. With the permafury I could actually go toe to toe with others and not have to pray that entangling vines would buy me a few more seconds.

Solandri.9640:

They said 80% of 2v2s had a ranger in it. So 0.8 * 0.25 = 20% of players were rangers, which is pretty close to what their 1 year anniversary stats said (19% if I remember).

What the H is this? 80% of the 2v2 were rangers and they constitute 1/4 of the playerbase → 20% of players are rangers? That makes no sense…

Zorby.8236:

Solandri.9640:

They said 80% of 2v2s had a ranger in it. So 0.8 * 0.25 = 20% of players were rangers, which is pretty close to what their 1 year anniversary stats said (19% if I remember).

What the H is this? 80% of the 2v2 were rangers and they constitute 1/4 of the playerbase -> 20% of players are rangers? That makes no sense…

Alright, using the example provided:

If 80% of all 2v2 had a single Ranger, then 25% of combatants were a Ranger. Therefor, 20% of players were Rangers.

0.8 (80% of 2v2) * 0.25 (25% Ranger profession) = 0.2 (20% total Ranger population.)

Whether this is accurate or not is up for debate, however it does parallel with the previously stated population percentage released by Anet at the end of August.

It’s stupid to have permanent Fury uptime with the only investment being a single Master tier trait. That’d be poor design, no matter how you slice it.

I do think Eagle Eye could use a little fury or might love, though.

you do know that if you run dual bow as a 20 in skirmish you get to have perma fury/swiftness permanantly on your longbow anyway? So whats the fuss about

kyubi.3620:

you do know that if you run dual bow as a 20 in skirmish you get to have perma fury/swiftness permanantly on your longbow anyway? So whats the fuss about

That requires investing into Skirmishing, which conflicts with other trait choices available in Wilderness Survival or Marksmanship depending on your build. Assuming most people opt to put 30 points into Wilderness Survival to help manage conditions, that leaves 40 points, meaning you can either choose between a 15 point investment to get fury on swap and only have access to one major trait in Marksmanship, or put 30 points into Marksmanship to gain the choice between mixing Spotter, Piercing Arrows & Eagle Eye – or Remorseless, if you so choose. So it limits your choices between having either passive condition removal, on-swap five seconds of fury, or sacrificing increased longbow range and damage, piercing arrows, or an aoe precision buff.

kyubi.3620:

you do know that if you run dual bow as a 20 in skirmish you get to have perma fury/swiftness permanantly on your longbow anyway? So whats the fuss about

Its only 5 seconds, not 9 seconds.

Lunchbox.9543:

Zorby.8236:

Solandri.9640:

They said 80% of 2v2s had a ranger in it. So 0.8 * 0.25 = 20% of players were rangers, which is pretty close to what their 1 year anniversary stats said (19% if I remember).

What the H is this? 80% of the 2v2 were rangers and they constitute 1/4 of the playerbase -> 20% of players are rangers? That makes no sense…

Alright, using the example provided:

If 80% of all 2v2 had a single Ranger, then 25% of combatants were a Ranger. Therefor, 20% of players were Rangers.

0.8 (80% of 2v2) * 0.25 (25% Ranger profession) = 0.2 (20% total Ranger population.)

Whether this is accurate or not is up for debate, however it does parallel with the previously stated population percentage released by Anet at the end of August.

They said 20% had a ranger (not a single ranger) in it.

If x is the probability to get one ranger, 1-x is the probability to get NO ranger and (1-x)^4 to get no ranger in a 4 man grp. Therefore 1 – (1-x)^4 is the probability to get at least one ranger. If this probability is 0.8, x equals 0.33. (33%).

Sorry, just a random nerd passig by, ignore me if thats not relevant to the discussion.

Lack of fury is not what is wrong with Longbow. And 3 sec of fury on crit with no internal cooldown would have been pretty powerful for a trait that makes longbow a 1500 range weapon and increases damage by 5% as well.

Sevans.4619:

It’s stupid to have permanent Fury uptime with the only investment being a single Master tier trait. That’d be poor design, no matter how you slice it.

I do think Eagle Eye could use a little fury or might love, though.

About this, I could only repeat my previous post…

JorneMormel.9850:

Obviously the change was unintended and had to be dealt with. It did however give the Longbow some change in perspective. I merely wonder if others think that the fury upkeep was enough to make the weapon actually viable and not just the flavor of the week. I think we can all agree that the profession could use a buff (or two… and a whole lot of bug-fixes.)

If we could agree that fury was enough to get the Ranger’s direct damage up to where it should be, the real question would be how to implement it. So far I am only wondering and looking for other people’s perspective on the matter and trying to promote a constructive discussion.

As you can see, I am not trying to promote improvement to the Eagle Eye trait. All I meant to say is that Fury may, or may not be what the profession needs to get its’ direct damage to compete with other classes.

That said, Eagle Eye was not at all without investment. For it to work you were forced into using a longbow, distributing 20 trait points in Marksmanship and using the respective trait.
A few posts back I actually made a suggestion for the Remorseless trait, but that would still not bring direct damage up to par if we would agree that the Ranger needed more than just fury. This suggestion would only make the requirements for getting fury more troublesome because it would now require 30 trait points and a grand-master trait.

JorneMormel.9850:

Sevans.4619:

It’s stupid to have permanent Fury uptime with the only investment being a single Master tier trait. That’d be poor design, no matter how you slice it.

I do think Eagle Eye could use a little fury or might love, though.

About this, I could only repeat my previous post…

JorneMormel.9850:

Obviously the change was unintended and had to be dealt with. It did however give the Longbow some change in perspective. I merely wonder if others think that the fury upkeep was enough to make the weapon actually viable and not just the flavor of the week. I think we can all agree that the profession could use a buff (or two… and a whole lot of bug-fixes.)

If we could agree that fury was enough to get the Ranger’s direct damage up to where it should be, the real question would be how to implement it. So far I am only wondering and looking for other people’s perspective on the matter and trying to promote a constructive discussion.

As you can see, I am not trying to promote improvement to the Eagle Eye trait. All I meant to say is that Fury may, or may not be what the profession needs to get its’ direct damage to compete with other classes.

That said, Eagle Eye was not at all without investment. For it to work you were forced into using a longbow, distributing 20 trait points in Marksmanship and using the respective trait.
A few posts back I actually made a suggestion for the Remorseless trait, but that would still not bring direct damage up to par if we would agree that the Ranger needed more than just fury. This suggestion would only make the requirements for getting fury more troublesome because it would now require 30 trait points and a grand-master trait.

What ranger needs in order to compete with the direct damage of others is burst. Apart from maul rangers don’t have burst.

nagymbear.5280:

What ranger needs in order to compete with the direct damage of others is burst. Apart from maul rangers don’t have burst.

Would you consider fury to not add to the Ranger’s burst potential?

Just as an example; I understand most people consider the channel time from Rapid Fire to be too long, but you can combine this with Quickening Zephyr (or the trait Zephyr’s Speed, but I would not get into that too much.) Fury would also add to the burst potential of Maul, wouldn’t you agree?

Do not get me wrong, I understand and somewhat agree with what you wrote, but part of a healthy discussion is to elaborate your opinion with proper arguments.

I would consider burst dealing high amount of damage in a short amount of time. I don’t think you need fury on crit on longbow to do that. It would be nice, but I don’t think its what ranger needs. I also don’t think rangers will have proper burst ever. Its a class that was designed for dealing sustained damage (some would argue that there was no real vision behind its design at all, mind you). The question “Was lonbow fury really too much?” misses the point of what is wrong with longbow I think. Other professions have so many ways of getting into melee range, and lonbow can do only so much to keep them out. If the intention with longbow is for the ranger to stay at 1000+ range, than it needs more ways of doing that.

Unintended and a bug Yes
Overpowered No
All That Helpful? Not really. We have many sources of fury

I, for one, want them to tweak the LB a bit more intelligently than giving us a boon we have in abundance that stacks duration not potency when you have multiple sources of the boon.