I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more lb builds after this update
The only reason I can see why is the shortbow is becoming one of the worst weapons in the game. A loss of 300 on your range is a massive nerf, on top of one of the worst DPS hits any class weapon has gotten in this game from a prior “animation glitch”. The longbow is still going to do kitten DPS (just like the shortbow did before and will continue to do now while in more danger) but now the pet will also do worse DPS, will have kitten survivability and ranged combat is further pushed out of the game (why have ranged combat if you’re going to make melee combat significantly better?). You can throw and axe the same distance you can shoot an arrow. Ranged weapons in this game are a kittening joke.
When the devs buffed the vitality of pets it was beyond me why they would make those buffs for both PvE and PvP. Beast master builds had no problems keeping their pets alive in sPvP so buffing pet vitality for sPvP was a really dumb decision while at the same time, it didn’t solve anything in PvE (pets were either OP in open world or walking corpses in dungeons, the vitality buff did very little to change this for most pets outside of BM builds). The devs say the vitality buff made pets too tanky in sPvP so they are bringing…. their DPS down?!?!?!?!?!? In both sPvP and PvE?!?!?!?! Why does too tanky = nerf DPS?!?!?!??! Now pets do less damage in PvE AND they have survivability issues. It’s so clear the devs don’t play the ranger class and have no idea how non-BM rangers or dungeon rangers work because they don’t see those builds in sPvP (and the devs balance around sPvP). The pet is the worst mechanic in the game. The insane survivability and auto pilot DPS of one build does not make it OP or even viable for most content, fix the build don’t nerf a bad mechanic.
I would be bothered more by the swapping of Instinctual Bond and Zephyr’s Speed but tbh, quickness sucks now. Two or (now) three seconds of it isn’t worth much, let alone investing 30 points in the worst class mechanic in the game that gives nothing to the ranger himself except healing power.
It is amazing to me that they didn’t merge Piercing Arrows (arrows pierce targets), Eagle Eye (longbows and harpoon gun have 1,500 range and do 5% more damage) and Quick Draw (bow skills recharge 20% faster). That seemed to be the most obvious trait merge, especially now that they’ve royally kittened over SB rangers twice. Ranged weapons are in a bad place already, making them worse without touching melee weapons (not talking about ranger melee here) is hurting all the people out there who don’t want to melee but are forced to because ranged DPS is increasingly less viable with almost no advantages given to it.
They need to change the behaviour of ranger support skills, not tweak the numbers. I don’t think any dungeon players are going to care about swiftness and regeneration (one of the worst party boons in the game), especially tied to a skill type designed to be incredibly situational. Shouts are some of the most niche skills in the game, a generic party buff when using them doesn’t support their niche use. Even a spammable one like “Guard!” forces you to tell your pet to guard an area… honestly, how often do you want your pet to stay in an area without leaving it without you also being in that area? Isn’t it an inconvenience the majority of the time that you have to accept this functionality to access the stealth, protection, swiftness and regeneration? Ranger shouts don’t work like warrior and guardian shouts, so adding a buff to them that assumes they do doesn’t help their existing functionality.
Maybe it’s because when I want competitive PvP I go play League of Legends, but whenever I see the devs work on balance, it reminds of those WvW players who are trying to take back a supply camp with a 15 man guild team with siege aimed at the choke points while the enemy main zerg is bashing down the inner gate to your fully upgraded keep.
I hope these are troll notes for this reason: “When possible, we try very hard not to take away too much potency from popular builds because we know that a lot of people enjoy them – but occasionally we do need to bring some abilities down in power. Why don’t we just increase the power of weaker skills to match the most popular ones? Well, the problem is that then we get into something called power creep; the power of all builds and classes keeps rising as we keep making improvements, which causes instability in game balance.” The shortbow is not a potent weapon.
