Guild Wars 2

StickerHappy.8052:

The dev who nerfed ranger was not even the Dev thats supposed to be doing that. what a joke.

I now understand why ranger will stay inferior forever.

Whenever any developer come out some ideas to buff ranger, Roy will come out and destroy it.

No wonder ranger can never have nice things. We have a developer who’s actively trying to doom ranger and make sure they stay in bottom tier class. (And he’s more efficient than any other developers, since it takes him 1 day, no testing, no wait and see, to destroy a spec created by other developers)

Druid’s nerf incoming. (Not like it’s strong to begin with)

Aomine.5012:

StickerHappy.8052:

The dev who nerfed ranger was not even the Dev thats supposed to be doing that. what a joke.

I now understand why ranger will stay inferior for so long.

Whenever any developers come out some ideas to buff ranger, Roy will come out and destroy it.

No wonder ranger can never have nice things. We have a developers who’s actively trying to doom ranger and make sure they stay in bottom tier class.

Druid’s nerf incoming. (Not like it’s strong to begin with)

Exactly, why not waste time on developing classes he manage?

cloudysan.4397:

OK first of all thanks to everyone crying about something because ranger finally got something fun to use even though it was very niche. You can go now, ruin other classes but please make it elementalists.

IF they were to use their efforts they could improve our existing weapon sets and skills as well as our shouts. But that’s too much I guess. No dev’s reading the ranger forum I guess.

So which one is it? The devs read the forum, saw the crying and acted immediately to nerf WHaO, or they don’t read it at all? You can’t have both, you’ll have to make a
decision based upon facts. See any red posts in the forum?

Puck.9612:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

We need general improvements over a lot of areas, not just one massive hit in one place.

When they actually start doing that they can look at what might need to be toned down. They are incredibly quick to nerf anything that benefits rangers as soon as it’s brought to their attention, and they are unbelievably slow to fix the problems. And as you well know we aren’t talking about a difference in weeks, we have had things that will remain broken for years, but something like this gets nerfed in under 24 hours. How can anyone justify that?

WHaO should never have been allowed into the wild with no cap on the boon durations transferred, that is their only mistake. The durations should have just been the same as FB. That being one improvement. Lots have happened with and since the spec patch. More will come.

I just can’t see the doom and gloom from this, although, I could see it would be changed to fixed durations as soon as Irenio said it at Twitchcon. I never actually imagined they would have allowed it to swap boons unrestricted.

Wolfs Shadow.7234:

SPESHAL.9106:

The nerf was definitely needed, but the fact that this went live to begin with evidences a problem internally that doesn’t bode well for Rangers.

It didn’t even take a super experienced Ranger to notice the ability to stack perma quickness within a few hours of the patch being live.

The fact that NOBODY noticed it internally tells you very few of them know the Ranger class that well and they must do almost no testing of changes prior to these patches going live.

In one respect, you have to give Anet kudos because overall the patch was pretty good…especially if they did limited testing…but it’s boneheaded mistakes like this that make you scratch your head and wonder how on earth it got live.

You do understand there are skills to remove buffs?
You do understand killing a rangers pet makes heal as one only apply self heal and doesn’t transfer anything?

I do agree the quickness needed to be addressed, but now they over nerfed it. It is absolutely useless to use in pvp.

Simply put this nerf was unjustified, untested, and unless you violate ToS, you’d need to use AutoHotkey just to be able to apply boons properly. The timing needs to be perfect to share boons with pets now.

This kinda reminds me of the overnerf of the Tempest heat sync even though it hasn’t been released yet. Tempest is one of the worst elites and yet they nerfed one of its few good things to oblivion.

I think that the devs are really afraid of quickness getting out of hand and simply swing the nerf hammer hard at whatever seems to generate too much of it, even if the nerf guts the ability in terms of other boons as well. Making quickness into a boon was a mistake.

There is a difference between something that is “strong” and something that is just a game-breaking flaw. They were so broken everyone just stopped playing pvp. It’s not as if rangers have anything to complain about: Their pet hits for 4-10k, they got a condi buff, they can still pewpew from1500 range for insane damage and they are getting the best healing in the game soon.

Xillllix.3485:

There is a difference between something that is “strong” and something that is just a game-breaking flaw. It’s not as if rangers have anything to complain about: Their pet hits for 4-10k, they got a condi buff, they can still pewpew from1500 range for insane damage and they are getting the best healing in the game soon.

Wow coming from an ele? What a joke.

Xillllix.3485:

There is a difference between something that is “strong” and something that is just a game-breaking flaw. It’s not as if rangers have anything to complain about: Their pet hits for 4-10k, they got a condi buff, they can still pewpew from1500 range for insane damage and they are getting the best healing in the game soon.

Game breaking as to never show up in TOL (chuckle)

Speak for yourself, you Ele main. (Yes, Xill is Ele main, and one thing he likes to say most is Ele is UP)

StickerHappy.8052:

Xillllix.3485:

There is a difference between something that is “strong” and something that is just a game-breaking flaw. It’s not as if rangers have anything to complain about: Their pet hits for 4-10k, they got a condi buff, they can still pewpew from1500 range for insane damage and they are getting the best healing in the game soon.

Wow coming from an ele? What a joke.

Doesn’t change anything who it’s coming from, it’s just the truth. And ele only have one good bunker build because of celestial amulet, all the other builds using marauders we get 1-shot all the time.

WHaO~ OK, so maybe the initial iteration of this skill was strong.

~criticisms~
That being said, arena net’s immediate reaction leaves a bad taste in my mouth. As someone who had switched from my longtime ranger main to a mesmer main about 2 months ago, the only way this effects me is that I will not be coming back to the ranger class for HoT as planned. My reasoning for this is that I now have the STRONG impression that if anything in regards to druid is worth using, it will be immediately “balanced” into irrelevance. I will take the 50% cut to PU and laugh it off, as the mesmer class remains useful. Give rangers something to bring them in line.

I also find the initial decision to communicate the class change to the public through twitter, rather than through the forum dedicated to the class, says volumes about the change. It leaves the impression that the change was done blindly as a reaction to appease complaints, rather than to affect balance for a class that badly needed any improvements.

~Balance Suggestions~
: (I will say that not all of these are entirely unique, as they are largly inspired by the suggestions of others, though I think my primary suggestion is unique when considered as a whole)

— I see a large amount of the "OP’ness of WHaO’s initial buff was caused by the fact that the ranger could stack boons very high when they were copied after being applied by other players. To ameliorate this, I’d propose to make only boons APPLIED by the ranger itself/its pet copy. I do not need guard/aegis from a nearby guard copied, or 25 might stacks copied from an ele standing on my pet. I would like to be able to maintain some of my own boons if I choose to sacrifice my durability/condition clear in order to acquire it.

I also see that having 8-10 seconds of quickness to be extremely strong. I’d propose a hard cap at 5 seconds for quickness from this, and a cap of 10 seconds of might (BUT NO CAP ON AMOUNT OF STACKS, 3 STACKS IS WORTHLESS). These additions I lifted directly off of other suggestions. Other boons should not be time limited. If I want to bring a worthless blue moa pet or sacrifice a utility skill to gain protection, it should not be a ridiculously short duration.

The problem with the current change, as I see it, is that 2 seconds of kitten boons are worthless. I would NEVER consider this skill over troll unguent as it stands. That being said, I am not even considering my ranger over my main as it stands either.

-Shoot N Loot… erm sorry.. Rofl Stompskin out!

Can someone please explain to me this.

Yesterday, I was able to get myself and my pet 14 stacks of might using 3 signets and Jungle Stalker’s F2, and then using WHaO 25 stacks of might.

Why, today after some weird patch, I get only 17? Did they nerf the transfer of the boons? If so, it must have been due to the kids’ cry in the forums, I guess.

I appreciate all the answers.

EDIT: Ok, having read some of the messages above, I went to the twitter (why twitter???). I guess some people were too furious in their childness to appreciate some positive changes to the ranger FINALLY! God, this game is getting out of hand. The devs should use their judgement patiently, not rush to unreasonable conclusions after reading how “RANGERS ARE OP, NERF” topics and posts. This is ridiculous.

A ranger having 25 might/50%+quickness solo to self and pet only is ok imo. This is the sort of thing that could really put us in a favorable light when it comes to PvE and PvP groups. It doesn’t make us be in a God mode like some players are fearing. Theory crafted builds and rotations have shown that. This means that at the very least we should’ve seen more time before the obvious knee jerk nerf. I’m confident in saying so because otherwise it would mean Anet put this into affect without much testing.

Few people I see here are saying Rangers shouldn’t have all that boon. That’s ok, but what other redeeming qualities do we have that I can boast to others to prove my worth other other professions like Ele’s and Guards? Tell me because maybe I’m so biased in my worthlessness and self emasculating that I can’t see correct.

I get that perm boon and all that stuff maybe OP, but maybe that’s exactly what we need. We really don’t have much else going on for us.
My ranger could finally be accepted in more LFG dungeons because players will think ‘oh although that ranger doesn’t have much group utilities and horribad AI pet but at least they can bring some nice dps’.

We need some give… And this shia surprise WHaO buff in all it’s not-intended-OP glory was seen as a buff to most rangers instead of something that’s not meant to be due to reasons which are, at best, subjective at this point. Ranger’s are not intended to be able to build up so much boon? Then what is intended for us that really makes us a reliable profession?
I also don’t see any bylaws saying a certain profession should have less than mediocre boon generating ability than others. Ele’s boon are one of their iconic defense mechanisms, sure. Light armor, smallest hp pool reasons etc. I think it can be Ranger’s, too – even if it’s a bit spammy, since it’s only affecting self and pet. It’s selfish yet not ‘Power Overwhelming’.

I see and understand Mcrocha’s point that if ranger needs to be better, it should be through balance and small steps that makes sense without ‘exploiting’(please correct me if I’m wrong/quoting wrong, I had a long day!). Mcrocha seems determined to be invested in Ranger with a different outlook than some of us and I can appreciate that.

But most of us seem to agree that it’s not an exploit and not overwhelmingly powerful that it overshadows other professions, in fact it could put us on par or near their level. Again, this is very subjective because it’s not something a single individual feels, but rather a sizable amount of people agreeing that it’s not so OP as it seems. You can’t just dismiss that. We can’t be all wrong and so convoluted in our reasoning to want it so. OR maybe we are all crazy for wanting it so, but at the very least it deserves a look in to by the Devs with some two-way communications before rudely announcing via twitter and make us feel disregarded.

When the majority are screaming to "retain this!‘, maybe it’s indicative of a concern that Anet should address by having a serious group discussed decision before completely disregarding our voice.

Just my opinion on this… Feel free to correct me if I’m misinformed or whatever. I’m going to sleep! Man what a day.

Xillllix.3485:

StickerHappy.8052:

Xillllix.3485:

There is a difference between something that is “strong” and something that is just a game-breaking flaw. It’s not as if rangers have anything to complain about: Their pet hits for 4-10k, they got a condi buff, they can still pewpew from1500 range for insane damage and they are getting the best healing in the game soon.

Wow coming from an ele? What a joke.

Doesn’t change anything who it’s coming from, it’s just the truth. And ele only have one good bunker build, all the other builds using marauders we get 1-shot all the time.

Truth as to “untested”, “theory-crafting” a potential boon-stacking build that sacrifices everything for just boon stacking, with so many glaring weaknesses, and at best an one-trick pony build. Where’s that OP build of WHaO you’re talking about?

What truth do you have?

Aomine.5012:

What truth do you have?

How about the truth that even Anet realized how broken it was and fixed it in under a day. And I have a ranger too btw (as of every other classes), I’m not asking for them to be nerfed or anything. The only OP classes in my opinion are warriors and mesmers.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

cloudysan.4397:

OK first of all thanks to everyone crying about something because ranger finally got something fun to use even though it was very niche. You can go now, ruin other classes but please make it elementalists.

IF they were to use their efforts they could improve our existing weapon sets and skills as well as our shouts. But that’s too much I guess. No dev’s reading the ranger forum I guess.

So which one is it? The devs read the forum, saw the crying and acted immediately to nerf WHaO, or they don’t read it at all? You can’t have both, you’ll have to make a
decision based upon facts. See any red posts in the forum?

The crying got so loud, it even rolled over to other class forums where they DO read as well as twitter and reddit, duh.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

cloudysan.4397:

OK first of all thanks to everyone crying about something because ranger finally got something fun to use even though it was very niche. You can go now, ruin other classes but please make it elementalists.

IF they were to use their efforts they could improve our existing weapon sets and skills as well as our shouts. But that’s too much I guess. No dev’s reading the ranger forum I guess.

So which one is it? The devs read the forum, saw the crying and acted immediately to nerf WHaO, or they don’t read it at all? You can’t have both, you’ll have to make a
decision based upon facts. See any red posts in the forum?

Puck.9612:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

We need general improvements over a lot of areas, not just one massive hit in one place.

When they actually start doing that they can look at what might need to be toned down. They are incredibly quick to nerf anything that benefits rangers as soon as it’s brought to their attention, and they are unbelievably slow to fix the problems. And as you well know we aren’t talking about a difference in weeks, we have had things that will remain broken for years, but something like this gets nerfed in under 24 hours. How can anyone justify that?

WHaO should never have been allowed into the wild with no cap on the boon durations transferred, that is their only mistake. The durations should have just been the same as FB. That being one improvement. Lots have happened with and since the spec patch. More will come.

I just can’t see the doom and gloom from this, although, I could see it would be changed to fixed durations as soon as Irenio said it at Twitchcon. I never actually imagined they would have allowed it to swap boons unrestricted.

I agree that it needed a cap at the first place.
BUT there’s no way WHaO was tested before it went live. That’s why a hotfix less than 24 hours after the change on an untested ability went so bad.

As a constructive feedback i would say that a slight increase in boon time is needed because you’re not only transferring boons, you’re putting your heal spell on a cd. Risk vs reward.

Xillllix.3485:

Aomine.5012:

What truth do you have?

How about the truth that even Anet realized how broke it was and fixed it in under a day.

Anet or “Roy ONLY”?

They saw some people posting quickness stacking in against a dummy who wouldn’t fight back and then Roy called it OP… LOL

Do you even know ranger?
In order to gain permanent quickness you have to:
- First get yourself in combat or Pet swap quickness won’t trigger.
- You get yourself in combat.
- You swap pet for no reason and put your pet-swap on CD.
- Quickly waste your stun-break + cleanse by pressing QZ.
- Start doing your might stacking Asap by using torch 5, then swap weapon for no reason and use Call of the Wild to blast fire field (Wasted 2 secs of quickness there already)
- Waste your heal skill for no reason to get that quickness and might stack up.
- Now try spamming that pitiful axe auto-attack because you have no burst.
- Repeat this whenever possible, ignoring all the pet management, and continue wasting all the crucial skills. Btw, whenever you swap pet, all your pet’s boon are gone and you have to do the above steps all again!

Now you have no cleanse, no heal, no stunbreak, but you get your quickness and might! Just spam chill, burning, and poison on him like you Ele always do and you get your free kill!

Not to mention one frost aura from Ele will render this build completely useless since you ruin his rotation because his heal will stay on CD for a long~~~ time.

So what proof do you have? You don’t even know the mechanic.
Just because someone says something =/= truth.

Xillllix.3485:

Aomine.5012:

What truth do you have?

How about the truth that even Anet realized how broken it was and fixed it in under a day. And I have a ranger too btw (as of every other classes), I’m not asking for them to be nerfed or anything. The only OP classes in my opinion are warriors and mesmers.

What about the truth the ele is still broken after nerfs?

No? Right you are gonna deny it because you gonna defend your broken class all day long.

In all honesty, why don’t you guys at ANet nerf Druid already, prior to its release? I am pretty sure that some unsustained criticism (or should I call it cry-out, for criticism means some thought process prior to its creation, whereas here all we got from most of the posters was “RANGERS ARE OP, NERF”) and cry-out is enough for you to make changes to something you guys have probably been thinking about for a long time, even before the Druid has come into realisation.
This is getting out of your hand, ANet. “Hey, 25 stacks of might for a ranger? That’s too much!” – if something like that is enough for you to change the transfer of boons, then I feel sorry for you, and myself. I miss the times when your dev teams had more control of what you were doing. Guess the f2p model, some staff changes etc. changed it all to worse.

Aomine.5012:

Xillllix.3485:

Aomine.5012:

What truth do you have?

How about the truth that even Anet realized how broke it was and fixed it in under a day.

Anet or “Roy ONLY”?

They saw some people posting quickness stacking in against a dummy who wouldn’t fight back and then Roy called it OP… LOL

Do you even know ranger?
In order to gain permanent quickness you have to:
- First get yourself in combat or Pet swap quickness won’t trigger.
- You get yourself in combat.
- You swap pet for no reason and put your pet-swap on CD.
- Quickly waste your stun-break + cleanse by pressing QZ.
- Start doing your might stacking Asap by using torch 5, then swap weapon for no reason and use Call of the Wild to blast fire field (Wasted 2 secs of quickness there already)
- Waste your heal skill for no reason to get that quickness and might stack up.
- Repeat this whenever possible, ignoring all the pet management. Btw, whenever you swap pet, all your pet’s boon are gone and you have to do the above steps all again!

Now you have no cleanse, no heal, no stunbreak, but you get your quickness and might! Just spam chill, burning, and poison on him like you Ele always do and you get your free kill!

Not to mention one frost aura from Ele will render this build completely useless since you roamed his rotation because his heal will stay on CD for a long~~~ time.

So what proof do you have? You don’t even know the mechanic.

You could stack over a minute of protection and plenty of quickness (which was a guardian issue too that was fixed); there is nothing that can justify that specially since they have some boon sharing skills planned.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

cloudysan.4397:

OK first of all thanks to everyone crying about something because ranger finally got something fun to use even though it was very niche. You can go now, ruin other classes but please make it elementalists.

IF they were to use their efforts they could improve our existing weapon sets and skills as well as our shouts. But that’s too much I guess. No dev’s reading the ranger forum I guess.

So which one is it? The devs read the forum, saw the crying and acted immediately to nerf WHaO, or they don’t read it at all? You can’t have both, you’ll have to make a
decision based upon facts. See any red posts in the forum?

Puck.9612:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

We need general improvements over a lot of areas, not just one massive hit in one place.

When they actually start doing that they can look at what might need to be toned down. They are incredibly quick to nerf anything that benefits rangers as soon as it’s brought to their attention, and they are unbelievably slow to fix the problems. And as you well know we aren’t talking about a difference in weeks, we have had things that will remain broken for years, but something like this gets nerfed in under 24 hours. How can anyone justify that?

WHaO should never have been allowed into the wild with no cap on the boon durations transferred, that is their only mistake. The durations should have just been the same as FB. That being one improvement. Lots have happened with and since the spec patch. More will come.

I just can’t see the doom and gloom from this, although, I could see it would be changed to fixed durations as soon as Irenio said it at Twitchcon. I never actually imagined they would have allowed it to swap boons unrestricted.

You didn’t have a chance to try it out in game. It looks stronger on paper than it really is. Rangers could already keep up regen, swiftness, and fury. And they could get a high amount of protection, quickness, and a short lived high stack of might with Strength of the Pack. This just made all of those a little better, but you had to either blow a skill early or hold onto skills and time it right to use them in conjunction with your heal.
It also made “Guard” a decent skill for the first time in the history of the game.

The things people were complaining about was crap that could only be pulled off on a training dummy. There was no real perma might or quickness. With the change they made no one will ever consider using the heal to get boons when they are at high health because the boons aren’t close to being worth the risk. Now it will be used like it always was, there is nothing fun or interesting about the skill. Guard will go back to being nothing but a way to proc swiftness and regen.

Honestly they may as well remove the buff completely at this point. Otherwise they may factor the boon share into some weird calculation that looks good on paper and use it as justification as to why we can’t get some needed buff in the future. The same way our damage coefficients are low because they assume our pet, that struggles to hit a moving target, makes up for the loss.

Well, it was still a very good patch for rangers: Next to condi-necros, they got the most useful buffs. Also, they were buffs that are decent for many different builds:

- We Heal as one, which was already pretty decent when traited, go a decent buff.
- Pet’s having condition-dmg is pretty huge as well!
- Quick draw is now much better bc it works as intended now and stacks duration-reduction.
- Warhorn got a decent buff.
- Some other minor things.

The “nerf” to taunt is IMHO totally fine, it now works the way it should work and taunt will still be extremely effective if you are a decent player that doesn’t just press it and hope for the best. It requires more skill, but if you have that skill, it’s almost as good as before.

Xillllix.3485:

Aomine.5012:

Xillllix.3485:

Aomine.5012:

What truth do you have?

How about the truth that even Anet realized how broke it was and fixed it in under a day.

Anet or “Roy ONLY”?

They saw some people posting quickness stacking in against a dummy who wouldn’t fight back and then Roy called it OP… LOL

Do you even know ranger?
In order to gain permanent quickness you have to:
- First get yourself in combat or Pet swap quickness won’t trigger.
- You get yourself in combat.
- You swap pet for no reason and put your pet-swap on CD.
- Quickly waste your stun-break + cleanse by pressing QZ.
- Start doing your might stacking Asap by using torch 5, then swap weapon for no reason and use Call of the Wild to blast fire field (Wasted 2 secs of quickness there already)
- Waste your heal skill for no reason to get that quickness and might stack up.
- Repeat this whenever possible, ignoring all the pet management. Btw, whenever you swap pet, all your pet’s boon are gone and you have to do the above steps all again!

Now you have no cleanse, no heal, no stunbreak, but you get your quickness and might! Just spam chill, burning, and poison on him like you Ele always do and you get your free kill!

Not to mention one frost aura from Ele will render this build completely useless since you roamed his rotation because his heal will stay on CD for a long~~~ time.

So what proof do you have? You don’t even know the mechanic.

You could stack over a minute of protection and plenty of quickness (which was a guardian issue too that was fixed); there is nothing that can justify that specially since they have some boon sharing skills planned.

Coming from a Ele who can upkeep protection forever, any time they want.

It doesn’t has to go up to a min, just whenever you needed is sufficient. One min protection putting your heal skill on CD, while wasting a utility slot putting Guard, which is worthless and ruin pet’s attack pattern is not even worth it.

And yeah, they got protection, but still 0 cleanse lol.
Waht good does those protection do when all their heal on CD and no cleanse lol…

Tell me the truth, do you really lose to that awful WHaO gimmick ranger yesterday? They’re free kills.

Levetty.1279:

Hey if other classes can stack boons it might step on the toes of the classes Roy likes to play.

except that balance is a team result, not a single person…roy was just the herald here (dehehe) anyway it was right…the stackability was insane and let’s be honest, the build wasn’t even that great so…not exactly a nerf but a fix. imho.

Gaaroth.2567:

Levetty.1279:

Hey if other classes can stack boons it might step on the toes of the classes Roy likes to play.

except that balance is a team result, not a single person…roy was just the herald here (dehehe) anyway it was right…the stackability was insane and let’s be honest, the build wasn’t even that great so…not exactly a nerf but a fix. imho.

A “fix” that render it useless.

Go read the description.

All the duration are too short to have any impact.
Might stack cap and 2s protection is the most laughable part.

We are not allowed to have nice things because people get what should be a L2P issue confused with broken programming.

This is for all classes

Was having a little of my own test with ranger yesterday by trying to run CoE story with myself. And I did it. Ranger, full berserk, axe/axe + sword/warhorn soloing CoE story with pretty decent record. Didn’t time it but it didn’t feel like it was taking forever. No exploits. Just pure facerolling.

Wasn’t completely easy but that’s totally news to me lol i.e. the skill did improve ranger dramatically. Don’t see much use outside PVE though. Running around with perma protection with heal skill being on CD is pretty risky and a total killer when that prot gets removed/stolen/corrupted. Plus you basically lose 1 utility slot to be able to do this. and you’re also pretty much obliged to go nature magic.

It borderlines OP but it’s not quite there yet and it has quite a bit of restrictions.

Let’s be dishonest -

Anet loves rangers. Rangers get a lot of respect from PvPers. This is why they are permitted to hold on to great buffs for years.

DavyMcB.1603:

Was having a little of my own test with ranger yesterday by trying to run CoE story with myself. And I did it. Ranger, full berserk, axe/axe + sword/warhorn soloing CoE story with pretty decent record. Didn’t time it but it didn’t feel like it was taking forever. No exploits. Just pure facerolling.

Wasn’t completely easy but that’s totally news to me lol

Please go search for the Ele solo dungeon footage.

You’d find plenty, it’s nothing new.

Aomine.5012:

DavyMcB.1603:

Was having a little of my own test with ranger yesterday by trying to run CoE story with myself. And I did it. Ranger, full berserk, axe/axe + sword/warhorn soloing CoE story with pretty decent record. Didn’t time it but it didn’t feel like it was taking forever. No exploits. Just pure facerolling.

Wasn’t completely easy but that’s totally news to me lol

Please go search for the Ele solo dungeon footage.

You’d find plenty, it’s nothing new.

…. I know someone would bring this point up. Read again, it was to point out that the skill improved ranger dramatically NOT who can or can’t solo dungeons.

did they ever say, why they dont have (P)TS for balance changes ? Every major patch being tested for weeks/months before release, so this kind of situation doesnt happen … incompetent ********

Way to over nerf something that’s not good to begin with. Shame ele balance isn’t really looked at yet. Maybe next year.

Shiren.9532:

I think WHaO was OP in it’s buffed stat. I played BWE2 almost exclusively on a herald revenant and I loved building up large durations of boons passively. The big difference between ranger and herald is the herald had to lock down a large chunk of their profession resource to do it (upkeep of several skills) and it was the intended design focus of the specialisation – sacrifice energy to maintain AoE boons. The ranger used a single skill which snowballed once you obtained boons from other sources that easily rivaled what the herald’s primary appeal is (admitedly the herald is AoE while the ranger was simply it and its pet). It also revolved around using a heal for something other than healing.

Having said that I think ArenaNet tapped into something with the change which I think could be really valuable when looking at the ranger in the future – game design which rewards the player with unique interactions between their character and the pet. Copying boons too and from the pet is a really cool mechanic! So few ranger tools fully utilize the pet’s existence in their design and there often feels like their is little or no synergy to most things the ranger does with the pet (the druid has almost no design space used on the pet and only helps the pet as much as it helps any other ally).

WHaO was unusual in that it embodied a strong bond between a ranger and its pet (similar to RaO) and manifested that in a way that rewarded players for investing time and resources into caring about what boons the pet had. It seems the devs struggle to find ways to incorporate the ranger’s profession mechanic into the game in a way which is fun and meaningful (it’s so hard the pet is almost entirely absent in druid design) but WHaO had that thing ranger skills and traits do so badly.

I’d like to see the mechanic removed from WHaO and maybe added to a Nature Magic GM trait or to Rampage as One’s base functionality. It was problematic as a low CD heal, but on a longer CD elite it could be really good.

Find another way to make WHaO distinct – the current nerfed boon sharing is worthless.

A good comment! In the sea of cry-out and lament, this is something valuable. While I do not agree with all of the points, like the majority of us now, I feel that “the current nerfed boon sharing is worthless”, indeed. It does not warrant using a heal skill for the sake of what, 3 mights? What a joke.

Xillllix.3485:

You could stack over a minute of protection and plenty of quickness (which was a guardian issue too that was fixed); there is nothing that can justify that specially since they have some boon sharing skills planned.

If you’re talking about Druid you need to do your homework better. Druid has 0 boons in its kit and nothing that allows for boon sharing. Druid is a straight up heal and condi cleanse machine.

Can we just make Fortifying Bond baseline already? This is just dumb. Why should I sacrifice my heal to share boons with my pet because of the 5 target boon limit cap.

The pet is a direct percentage of my damage deducted from all ranger power weapons, it should scale with all my stats if our weapons are going to have lesser coefficients for it.

Isn’t it lovely how you’ve got time to hotfix a gimmick pvp build but god forbid you actually fix the godkitten ed 1h sword autoattack locking out dodges or buff our miserable weaponskill coefficients for that matter.

While we’re on the topic of ranger grivances, why is Serpent Strike on a 15 second cd? It’s a 1/2 second evade that does a tiny fraction of the damage of unrelenting assault, pistol whip, or even blurred frenzy.

Why is Monarch’s leap a dodge with a cast time? It makes the dodge useless in pretty much most circumstances as most boss attacks are quicker than the cast time itself.

Why is Call of the Wild a 30 sec cd skill? 3 stacks of might and 15 secs of fury, an ele with persisting flames does an eruption>lava font and suddenly the group is sitting at the same amount of might stckas, with capped might from other people’s blasts, with permanent fury due to persisting flames.

Then this horrendous 3 might cap on we heal as one. Meanwhile Phalanx Strength caps might for FIVE PEOPLE with a single press of 100 blades, elementalist gives permanent fury with persisting flames and a permanent fire field with lava font.

But, nope, a gimmick pvp build using we heal as one selfishly, which didn’t even grant boons to allies, was the problem.

Good to know your priorities. Meanwhile nobody wants a ranger in PvE still, all our weapon autoattacks and skills besides longbow do pitiful damage, especially the axe autoattack, and our traitlines are still a mess, with incredibly garbage traits like Strider’s Defense, Most Dangerous Game (3 seconds of 5 might at 50% health lol, seriously what a stinker of a grandmaster) and nature’s vengeance (wow, 3 stacks of might from a spirit, totally worth a grandmaster slot compared to phalanx strength or persisting flames).

And it’s pretty clear you guys also have no intention of fixing pet survivability against the aoe/cleave spam in PvE, forcing us to stow away jaguars in favor of drakes/bears that do autoattacks which hit less than a 1-2 stack tick of burning damage.

Melee pets outside drakes still don’t cleave. Our pets do not benefit from rune or sigil bonuses, no food or potion bonuses, no ascended gear upgrade bonuses, the pets cannot reach the same ferocity levels the player can, only up to 70% bonus crit damage while the player is looking at 110%+.

And now you’ve turned our elite specialization into a one dimensional heal bot with no offensive options and traits that are only based on healing (and celestial form tied to healing over damage, making sure no druid not wielding a staff can make use of the traitlines and celestial form anywhere close to as well as a staff healbot druid).

I understand the nerf needed for quickness and protection uptime.

But

Really? Cap on might stack sharing with WHao? Might stacks from sword or axe mainhand are only 3 seconds long anyways. You’d have to invest in Str runes, Jungle stalker, off-hand warhorn while sacrificing your heal skill to maintain healthy lengths of might duration for you and your pet anyways.

Forceful GS + PS on warrior can easily dish out 25 stacks of might for the entire party
Scepter/focus eles can easily achieve 21 stacks of might for the entire party
Engis can easily achieve high amounts of might stacks for the entire party

panda the chop chop.4712:

You didn’t die to the ranger with stacks of might, in fact you laughed at the builds they ran because they didn’t make sense, you saw quickness and might and immediately grabbed the nearest salt shaker and pored it on yourself because when you died your literally thought it was “op”

petty

I give you a 8/10 for the intro! Da capo!

The problem with WaO was that it could stack long duration boons that were really powerful like protection and quickness.

The issue was not with might stacking. The might limit of 3 was a knee jerk overnerf that was not necessary. They should have just used the fortifying bond template of boon duration and the might stacks would have fallen off within 10 seconds with a maximum of 17.5 seconds if someone used might runes.

However, as with everything, they completely over reacted.

Chokolata.1870:

The problem with WaO was that it could stack long duration boons that were really powerful like protection and quickness.

The issue was not with might stacking. The might limit of 3 was a knee jerk overnerf that was not necessary. They should have just used the fortifying bond template of boon duration and the might stacks would have fallen off within 10 seconds with a maximum of 17.5 seconds if someone used might runes.

However, as with everything, they completely over reacted.

Exactly, overreaction is the new name for ANet Team recently.

Corpus Christi.2057:

snipped… whatever

If Ranger’s are good enough for you to roll three of them, you cannot complain. As they obviously must have done a good enough job for you to roll three of them!

The boon duration’s were ridiculous and we all knew it was going to get corrected, asap. So please stop the whining already? You’re making the Ranger community look pathetic.

Corpus Christi.2057:

Chokolata.1870:

The problem with WaO was that it could stack long duration boons that were really powerful like protection and quickness.

The issue was not with might stacking. The might limit of 3 was a knee jerk overnerf that was not necessary. They should have just used the fortifying bond template of boon duration and the might stacks would have fallen off within 10 seconds with a maximum of 17.5 seconds if someone used might runes.

However, as with everything, they completely over reacted.

Exactly, overreaction is the new name for ANet Team recently.

“Overreact” is not precisely the word.

“Ranger-hate” is more realistic.

They didn’t overreact to PU’s 2 mins stealth and took them 4 months to fix it.

I really doubt that they hate Rangers. When compared to the previous version of HaO, and i mean before the shout classification this version is vastly superior.

While I agree with using the FB boon template, especially considering that Quickness is not supposed to be readily available and is usually tied to Elites, short duration traits or long CD utilities like QZ, Berserk stance, etc.. , I disagree with the 3 might limit considering that it is not a duration stacking boon.

Before making a decision the Devs need to consider some key points:

EDIT: Are you serious? You nerfed it already? Please read this post so you can see why that was a completely unjustified move.

1. It’s been just two days since the change to the skill. This is not enough time for it to be tested to its fullest extent and integrate with every game mode. Additionally, it is not enough time for all other professions to become familiar with Rangers’ improved ability to stack boons. As such, other professions have not had enough time to determine any true potential ‘threat-change’ when fighting this new ability.

A personal note I would add here is that I have spent approximately ~8 hours in hotjoin PvP (I know – lol @ hotjoin) testing and tweaking my condi bunker Ranger build to make better use of the new WHaO functionality. Whilst this is not enough time to make any clear conclusions, I noticed only marginal improvement to my gameplay experience versus other players, and lost fights perhaps only slightly less frequently than I normally would – particularly during group skirmishes. I was also not once questioned about my new abilities, nor did anyone QQ about them. Though of course being PvP everyone is QQing about something or other.

2. Rangers have to sacrifice too much build functionality to truly incorporate the kind of “OP” boon stacking some are discussing. Other people go into more detail on this point. I have spent a couple of hours running around with the zerg in WvW testing the full zerker longbow build. While it is incredibly easy to build might stacks with things like traited SotW, Jungle Stalker, Warhorn, and SotP, it’s all just far too niche to be a viable build. You are cornered into taking very specific weapons, traits, utilities and physical positioning to make this work to its fullest extent. And even when you do all of that you will find your projectiles reflected back at you because of the ridiculous amount of reflects there are in the game now.

3. This ‘knee-jerk nerf’ reaction to Rangers on part of the Devs (I’ll add that this is by no means is this a dig at the Devs) has become common practice for our profession in particular. The main reason behind this is that Rangers have always been the least-viable, bottom-tier profession that many are used to beating because of the higher level of skill it takes to be a top-tier Ranger versus the relatively low skill ceiling of other professions. As such, skill buffs of the magnitude of the WHaO change are a ‘shock to the system’ for Rangers. Nobody is used to seeing Rangers getting a buff to this extent so everyone instantly assumes it’s ‘OP’. However this is the first time we have ever had the ability to accumulate boons on a similar level to other professions; even with that being the case, however, other professions still have better inter-skill-weapon- and-trait functionality to allow them to accumulate these boons without sacrificing so much in their build. It is buffs like these that bring Rangers to the same level as other Professions. Exactly the same response happened when Rapid Fire was buffed: knee-jerk calls for a nerf before anybody could be bothered to learn its counterplay. The change was given enough time however, and people soon realised that “actually… hey this isn’t as bad as we thought – maybe Rangers did need the buff!” You’re still seen as a total noob if you die to a Ranger’s RF.

4. If you do make any changes to this WHaO buff, you must ensure Ranger weapons (the shortbow and Greatsword in particular, along with Warhorn skill 4 and basically all axe skills other than OH axe 4), utilities and traits are re-aligned (read: buffed) to be more viable and more in-line with the strengths of other professions.

ohhh. LOL they nerfed it already? hahahahahahahahah I knew that wouldn’t last long.

Three things:

• Rangers in their current state are not as underpowered as everyone thinks they are.
• Rangers are actually extremely powerful in 1v1 situations in their current state.
• That Heal As One boon stacking wasn’t good and in no way was it OP.

DavyMcB.1603:

ohhh. LOL they nerfed it already? hahahahahahahahah I knew that wouldn’t last long.

Where’s the patch note? I’m seeing people saying it’s been nerfed but why haven’t they made an announcement? Where’s the Dev communication?

This is completely ridiculous and proves every Ranger critic right.

I can’t find anything – what change have they made?

Bryzy.2719:

DavyMcB.1603:

ohhh. LOL they nerfed it already? hahahahahahahahah I knew that wouldn’t last long.

Where’s the patch note? I’m seeing people saying it’s been nerfed but why haven’t they made an announcement? Where’s the Dev communication?

This is completely ridiculous and proves every Ranger critic right.

I can’t find anything – what change have they made?

In wiki & in game

I almost start play ranger doing build where you can get 25 might with signets. Now its gone and so is my motivation to play ranger :/ need to remember never get too exited when buffs happen because after buffs there is only nerfs.

DavyMcB.1603:

Bryzy.2719:

DavyMcB.1603:

ohhh. LOL they nerfed it already? hahahahahahahahah I knew that wouldn’t last long.

Where’s the patch note? I’m seeing people saying it’s been nerfed but why haven’t they made an announcement? Where’s the Dev communication?

This is completely ridiculous and proves every Ranger critic right.

I can’t find anything – what change have they made?

In wiki & in game

Thanks, can’t play as I’m at work but just seen the game release notes addition.

Ridiculous. No communication from Roy other than “We’re nerfing it without consultation”. He always seemed a much more reasonable Dev

Just found out they try to merge all the “constructive criticisms” from all forums into one Mega thread that no-one would bother reading, hiding all their indecent deeds and covering up Roy’s extreme hatred toward ranger.

I can understand a nerf by A-Nerf,

But not in the way you seemingly flipped out, and thus went: "OMG this is too much let’s destroy it! Completely!! Wait let’s break it as well… PANIC! PANIC! PANIC!

Fix it until it’s usable again. I do not need perma quickness or perma any boon, but make it so we can stack double the boons. just copy boons but not trigger the autocopy to pet or something.

I’be been trying the CotW, RaO, QZ and we heal as one and we get
12 stacks of might on the pet and 6 on the ranger…
(ranger : CotW(3) → WHaO(3) )
(pet : CotW (3), copy (3) → WHaO 3, copy (3) )
Stability same pattern

8 stacks of stability on the pet 4 on the ranger
-All the – duration stacking- boons last twice as long on the pet as they do on the player.-

This means If we selfstack 12+ might we only gget3 back not a full copy… why not? See mesmer: signet of inspiration?

Maybe you could have just copied
50% of the stacks (for stacking boons ) or
50% of duration (for duration stacking boons)