Guild Wars 2

i am quiet upset about what has happened to spirit-rangers. the problem i see there is not the nerf itself -though it made spirits totally useless in every area of the game.

the problem is that encouraging ppl to think out of the box, to advertise their own unique builds they have found, which they present to community at these boards is being punished.

a short history:
since beta and start of the game, everyone and their mother whined about how useless spirits r for rangers. most ppl didnt play them at all for nearly one year. a few ppl who came up with their own ideas of building and playing came up with spirit-builds for rangers they liked and that worked for them.
and then they did something, which has to be seen as a big mistake from now on: they presented their stuff to the community, wrote and explained their builds at these boards.
and time after time more players tried these builds and found out of a sudden, that they work and r doing good. though nothing had changed in this time since start of the game at all concerning spirits and their mechanics (same for bunker rangers btw, but they r still working, despite some nerfs).

and all of a sudden stuff happened, that always seem to happen here: others got killed by a rising amount of spirit rangers in pvp. and ofc, since most players cant come up with their own ideas how to deal with them (like with building a spirit ranger before), they whined at these forums. and instead to give it some time, so ppl know how to deal with spiritrangers, some “dev” listened to them and nerfed spirits into uselessness.

so why would anybody ever post a “niche”-build again, that is not flavor-of the-month/year and unusual? ….chance is that it will get popular and nerfed into total uselessness (for every part of the game, not only pvp).

Not gonna play ranger for anything other than crafting starting today, I suggest the rest of you rangers that have the gall to stand this abuse never give out your “working” builds to anyone……good luck.

I totally agree.
I had a full spirits build on my ranger for ages that I used to WvW with when noone else did and considered spirits useless. I came here and posted my build and tried to promote spirits just to make the horrible ranger forums a little bit of a better place. Where people help and try to be constructive rather than just whining.

Now I wish I’d never done it. My build is now useless with that recast countdown only starting after the spirits die. Goodbye beloved ranger, I don’t care about playing anything less sparkly. Also that was the last time of me ever sharing a build on these forums or trying to help people see their options.

Please keep this up people, its only gonna get worse from here.

Its obvious Anet will continue its ranger slaughter.

Common Knowledge for the betterment of all.

I’ll still help people by telling them to play guardian instead.

You mean lets go on a mission to help and improve all other classes and forget about this section of the forum and keep things to yourself? Although I think it’s a bit too much but I can understand this from a ranger point of view, a class that keeps looking at more things to excel at but find the effort maliciously hammered by ANET.

@OP

I understand your reaction, but all the horses left the barn. There is nothing left, all the possible rangers builds have been systematically nerfed.

All that is left for the class are a bunch of mismatched traits, utilities and weapons skills. Good luck finding anything that is remotely effective in that mess.

Cmon guys are you kidding right? So in your opinion is better to have few powerfull players than all on the same level (or about)?

Cmon the forum is where players help player not where player hide their builds to others in order to avoid nerf! If your build is overpower because based on and exploit/unintended/really elaborated builds what do you think is better?
to play like warriors with their mindless skull crack build? or to play with other rangers on a balanced build?
I can understand you only because ranger was the last class who needed to be nerfed while warriors can still use their … (insert offensive word here) skull crack build… really if you where right why are warriors still able to use their builds?

as far as I’m concerned i’ll continue to give my support to the comunity… better an entire comunity nerfed than a few op players this is my concept of MMO you can agree or not.

The point is that nothing was OP to begin with.
It was people on these forums whining and crying about spirits being broken to such extent (for almost a year!!), that a couple of motivated people stepped up and elaborated on how to make them work well. Because the ranger forums are a horrible place full of unhappiness and frustration, and we wanted to be helpful and improve this for the good of all.
So we pointed out options that had been there since the very beginning of the game, as in ONE YEAR, but a lot of people seemed to lack creativity to experiment themselves and up with the same results. Whining is always easier, you know.

Then suddenly when this became public, more and more people started using spirits, and other people started whining about spirits suddenly being OP while nothing had really changed about them. People who were simply not used to being confronted with spirit builds as they used to be so rare for ages. And again, whining is so much easier than having to use your own brain to adapt and come up with solutions.

What just really disgusts me is how Anet reacts with nerfs to whoever screams “OP” the loudest, even when there is nothing to back it up with but a bunch of upset crybabies.

Velkyn.5168:

What just really disgusts me is how Anet reacts with nerfs to whoever screams “OP” the loudest…

no! Anet didn’t… just look at warrior’s skull crack… that’s frustating not the ranger’s “nerf”

ps: i’m starting to think that Anet only want to make happy the more players as possible and since 18% of comunity are warriors… easy to understand why no nerf incoming (yes i know rangers are 14% but only about 2-5% uses ranger as main…)

I guess it’s because there is still enough people whining about how weak and useless warriors are in PvP, so they don’t dare touching that. Think they wouldn’t ever have touched ranger spirits either if we had just let people keep whining about how useless they are.

Velkyn.5168:

I guess it’s because there is still enough people whining about how weak and useless warriors are in PvP, so they don’t dare touching that. Think they wouldn’t ever have touched ranger spirits either if we had just let people keep whining about how useless they are.

… i don’t know if this “whining-system” is right… but i really don’t want to know. I’ll never say “we are weak if we are strong” and i’ll never say “we are strong if we are weak”… just the truth.

bri.2359:

@OP

I understand your reaction, but all the horses left the barn. There is nothing left, all the possible rangers builds have been systematically nerfed […]

well, i got at least 1 or 2 builds left that r great for tpvp. they have been there from the start of the game. i can win most 1v1s if not all on these builds. (not claiming that i am an awesome player or what, the build and my playstyle is “just” enough to beat ppl at tpvp-lvl). but, and that is my point, i am not going to post or promote them ever on these boards. lesson learnt. and i think a lot of ppl will feel and do the same, this does matter not only to rangers.

bri.2359:

@OP

I understand your reaction, but all the horses left the barn. There is nothing left, all the possible rangers builds have been systematically nerfed.

All that is left for the class are a bunch of mismatched traits, utilities and weapons skills. Good luck finding anything that is remotely effective in that mess.

Survival builds, trap builds (100% untouched by nerfs), BM bunker, Spirit (play it differently than you used to), long range harass, Melee ranger etc all work and are good in tPvP, just because you can’t come up with your own build that works and everyone else is refusing to share theirs doesn’t mean that ranger suddenly is useless.

Funny. Ever though ANet is a bit sluggish for doing such things. But now i can see it more clear. Seems game designer who is in charge of rangers is too cautious person. Most of previous changes was very conservative, because they are afraid of break something in mechanics. And they easily turns into panic when something appeals already broken. Sorry, it’s only assumption, but i find it probable.

Ghertu.7096:

Funny. Ever though ANet is a bit sluggish for doing such things. But now i can see it more clear. Seems game designer who is in charge of rangers is too cautious person. Most of previous changes was very conservative, because they are afraid of break something in mechanics. And they easily turns into panic when something appeals already broken. Sorry, it’s only assumption, but i find it probable.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Yes, they are cautious as they don’t want a ‘fix’ to cause more problems than the initial problem. And a lot of the potential fixes are not as simple as people seem to think they are.

Well, the ranger description does say “…adaptable in any situation” so I guess, we as ranger players must adapt once more. A toon is only as effective as the player behind the screen. Despite the nerfs, you’ll still see Rangers winning 1v1 or 1v2s and they’ll still be called OP to a certain degree. Sure there are stronger professions, but a skilled player is good regardless of the profession he/she chooses and a unskilled player will still be unskilled regardless the profession he/she chooses. There will always be those who hit a button and expect someone to drop a loot bag (me on an AC), and there are those who understand that loot bags are rewards.

We’ll survive this, look on the bright side, there isn’t much more they can take from us. the road only goes up from here

“A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship…”

I guess, it’s that day now?

Nothing to see here, all rangers go back to your woods, lol.

SynfulChaot.3169:

I think you hit the nail on the head. Yes, they are cautious as they don’t want a ‘fix’ to cause more problems than the initial problem. And a lot of the potential fixes are not as simple as people seem to think they are.

Sometimes they are more daring. Also, ANet never showed so lightspeed reaction for whining before. Correct me if i wrong.

Ghertu.7096:

SynfulChaot.3169:

I think you hit the nail on the head. Yes, they are cautious as they don’t want a ‘fix’ to cause more problems than the initial problem. And a lot of the potential fixes are not as simple as people seem to think they are.

Sometimes they are more daring. Also, ANet never showed so lightspeed reaction for whining before. Correct me if i wrong.

I’ve been watching the changes to the class since launch as I’ve not stopped playing a ranger as my main. I’ve yet to see any change that seems a ‘lightspeed reaction for whining’. Were that the case SB would be useless and spirits would have been nerfed into uselessness months ago. But SB is still our most powerful ranged weapon and spirits are still quite viable.

The only major problem with the recent balance is that it seems that it only takes sPvP into account and completely ignores all other modes of play. So PvE and WvW often need to adapt to changes that were unnecessary for their game modes.