(edited by Atherakhia.4086)
What’s the goal of this? To nerf condition damage or to level the playing field for power and condition builds?
If the goal is to simply level the playing field, would removing ferocity do it? If every class did a base 50% crit damage like now and could increase it to 80% via traits with select few classes (like thief) being given another trait to increase it to an additional 20% this would make it so power had only 2 stats to draw from against a condi’s 1 (though arguably 2) stats.
If the solution is to simply nerf condition damage, wouldn’t it be easier to start smaller? Like just having protection and weakness reduce condition damage (they don’t currently, right?)? Or, using the same idea above by doing away with crit damage, you could reduce condition damage across the board by 30% and simply allow them to crit.
Would these scenarios work at all?
Resolving the population issue on the lower tier servers you’d expect to be easy. Delete the bottom X number of servers, create a new one, and move them all there. The lowest tier servers simply don’t have enough players to queue even on reset nights in WvW.
You could also do directed moves where players from servers X, Y, and Z and move to server A only. This is much more productive than simply making it so anyone can move to any of these 5 servers for free.
But is this thread also going to discuss the enormous coverage issues that exists and solutions to those as well?
So don’t play ranger…….
It’s pretty much this.
I often tell people when they choose this class that a lot of your time is spent with auto attack on strafing in circles around your opponent. You figured it out first hand. If you don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t get better.
I’m not sure who the hell did the math comparing Volley and Rapid Fire, and I couldn’t find it, so I am going to show you my own math:::
Skill breakdown
Rapid Fire = 10 projectiles. Each projectile has a coefficient of 0.375
There is also 10 stacks of vulnerability applied. 1 on each projectile.
20% projectile finisher chance.Volley = 5 projectiles. Each projectile has a coefficient of 0.6
20% projectile finisher chance.Total Damage (@3000 power)
[only including power scaling, not weapon power, critical damage, or armor in the calculation, so the number will appear a little high. For this calculation, the power scaling is all that’s important for now anyways)Rapid Fire = Each projectile does (3000×0.375=1125) damage, for a total of 11,250
- As an added bonus, each stack of vulnerability actually increases damage slightly for each projectile, showing a noticeable damage increase by your last projectile.
- first projectile does 1125
- second projectile does 1136
- third projectile does 1147
- fourth projectile does 1158
- fifth projectile does 1170
- sixth projectile does 1181
- seventh projectile does 1192
- eighth projectile does 1203
- ninth projectile does 1215
- tenth projectile does 1226
- Total damage = 11753 damage.
Volley = Each projectile does 1800 damage, for a total of 9000 damage.
This means that Volley is actually 76.5% as Strong as Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire IS NOT 10% stronger than Volley. Its actually closer to 30% stronger. You can actually consider Rapid Fire even stronger when you consider that Rapid Fire has twice as many chances for Projectile Finishers as Volley does.
Lets Quash that statement that Rapid fire does the same damage as Volley, right now. Its not True.
Does this mean that Rangers are OP? Not necessarily. Rangers should have an advantage with Ranged weapons, considering that, not including offhand, 3/5 of our weapons are ranged (Longbow/Shortbow/Axe). The problem is that the advantage starts to get out of control when you start throwing other aspects of the Ranger class into the mix, such as Signet of the Wild.
Here’s where my confusion is from…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJAUEG4HQMLQjrVkqJA-TFBXgAA7PK/C1F0r+zjSQA-w
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATDGYPoWHALwZzEXbBA-TFBXgAA7PK/C1F0r+zjSQA-w
Now baseline, the 2 skills are only about 15% off since Rifle has a higher base damage. And clearly the coefficient will spread the gap as power goes up in favor of the Ranger.
But the 2 calculators above don’t consider the flanking or endurance bonus (20%) vs the bleed or boon bonus (10% + X%).
Still not getting 30% unless you factor in the vulns, but the ‘effective’ vuln between the weapons (not skills) is the same too.
Every example you provided is also a single direct damage attack as opposed to a 2.5 second channel. Perhaps the telegraph is you getting hit more than once in .5 seconds?
And again… I point the peanut gallery to exhibit A: Volley.
Hopefully never. They’re fine as they are.
hum… were have I heard that before…
AW yeah!! Thieves and Warriors when you guys came running to the forum begging for nerfs!
What happened to them?! oh yeah! that’s right!
But aren’t Thieves and Warriors still in the meta? Just like they’ve been for the past year? Where as Rangers, especially power Rangers have been? Where exactly?
Its the fact that the range is much higher, and the weapon set boasts even more tools to maintain that range. The OP doesnt come from this skill alone, its the weaponset in general. To balance rapid fire for this amount of power and survivability in the ranger longbow set you would need to reduce its damage by ~ 40% as well as increasing the cooldown by 40%.
And again I can’t help but question why?
What class are you playing where the Ranger has enough tools to maintain a range advantage against you? Because it can’t be Thief, Warrior, or Ele. It can’t be Engi, Mesmer or Ranger because they’re all ranged classes. This leaves Guardians, which should have very little difficulty against Rangers or Necromancer which were designed specifically to be the slowest class in the game.
We already know the damage isn’t the problem because Volley does the same damage and have similar vulnerability effectiveness despite the attacks being split. Both weapons also have a knockback which you’re now aledging is the problem, but instead of nerfing that to be 600 range instead of 900, you’re still harping on RF.
I’m just not seeing it, and I honestly feel RF is a bit much, but what everyone’s proposing in this thread is the absolutely destruction of a class that has been absolutely useless as a power build for 2 years and has only been barely functional (no where near competetive) for a week.
Want to be realistic?
Drop RF’s damage by about 5-10% so it is about equal to volley at that point.
Change SotW to only 10% for the Ranger instead of 25%.
Put the telegraph on PBS so it’s more easily recognized at a distance (someone mentioned the black arrow disappears with the EE trait, I’ve never tested?).
Change ALL projectiles (including Engineer grenades, Necro fields will now despawn/fade, traps etc) to be much closer to their identified max range.
And that’s it. The class will continue to be trash like you want it to be because it’s now a 1 trick pony for ranged burst and ANet can ignore all the remaining legitimate issues like they’ve done the past 2 years and we’ve now covered every legitimate argument that has been raised in this thread and every other over the past week.
If you nerf rapid fire then you also need to nerf frost bow and mesmer gs AA at the same time for the same reason.
Ranged attack with high burst, just target the ranger and have him killed in 1 second, move on. There’s no problem here.
Mesmer greatsword AA has like the lowest AA in game -.-
yet it hits almost as hard as Long Range Shot due to its design, but i am no mesmer player, so i guess even the GS damage is an illusion.
It hits like 500 after a 1s+ channel, it’s really not the auto attack that hits hard
Damage (3x): Damage if range is greater than 900: 348 (0.945)?
Is that not accurate? Cause that’s more damage than LRS, but at a longer cast time thus why LB has higher DPS.
How can it be ‘everything else’ when everything else existed before this change and Rangers were undeniably a free kill to every class in the game? The change to RF is just that good that it was the tipping point the class needs? And if so, why haven’t we seen Rangers dominating anything since the update?
The only thing Rangers really got, other than the RF change, is the change to signets. Only one of which reallly has any impact on damage.
As to the ‘not every class’ argument, the only class that’s truly at a significant disadvantage when it comes to being able to counter the power Ranger’s playstyle is Necromancers. But they also have great access to conditions which the spec is notoriously weak against. Plus they’re ranged.
Do you have an example of a class that doesn’t have enough tools at their disposal to close the gap initially and reclose it once every 10 seconds for however long it takes to deal with a glass ranger?
What does “long range” conditions or damage help at all, if the rangers “long range” is just 800 units bigger then the max range of other classes? Glass rangers are easy to kill when you get close and keep at it, its the sheer amount of tools the ranger kit offers to create distance, both regarding CCing the enemy and movement skills.
Necromancers currently have no reliable means of getting close. Mesmers (unless some PU cheesy thing) may have gap closers and some reliable long range damage, but rangers just have flat out more damage and more range as well as more tools to creating distance.
In the end it was the many small things that all caused a power increase to the longbow ranger to create this powercreep.
Again, you’re grossly inflating the values of these tools. Aside from easy access to signets, the Ranger gained no utility/defense skills in this patch. All they gained was burst on RF that’s only slightly more powerful than volley is for a rifle warrior.
If Ranger survivability was even a fraction of what you’re trying to convince us it is, the class wouldn’t be (and still is) the laughing stock of WvW, GvGs, and Guild groups. Even in PvP people are mentioning they’re seeing no new Rangers in higher ranked matches.
What you’re trying to sell us doesn’t mesh with what people are actually seeing in game.
Straight up lies. Rangers have always been a very good option, at least for roaming. Case in point: Gladomer. Just because not many people play Ranger doesn’t mean it’s under powered. There were many very skilled rangers I came into contact with on a daily basis. Even in Tpvp I would occasionally find excellent rangers. Among “top tier” Tpvp There has been a humongous influx of rangers. Unless you’re referring to sub 100, you’re flat out lying. For the most part I Tpvp every day (Team arena or solo queue depending on the day) and I generally sit around 200-300 rank in team arena and 500-600 in solo arena. Just yesterday I played two matches while queued up for Archeage. The first match there were three rangers on my team, and two on the enemy team. The second match there were two rangers on my team and two on the enemy team. This has been my experience ever since the patch.
You’ve seen this with power builds?
And in WvW, GvGs, or GvZ?
Now who’s lying…
And no, a 30 second cooldown isn’t suitable. Again, we can draw a direct comparison between RF and Volley. They are nearly identical skills now and it’s impossible for one to be as overpowered as people alledge and the other to be perfectly fine.
Especially when you consider the power Ranger’s standing before the update. From total obscurity to a top tier wrecking ball?
IF the damage is a problem, it’s more likely a result of SotW and not the skill itself.
(edited by Atherakhia.4086)
And lets go for the trifecta! You already have full celestial you said which means you cover a lot of what the apoth+whatever can provide. I’d suggest full dire.
Full Dire also has the added benefit of it being quite strong for Engineer and Thief should you decide to run an alt.
How can it be ‘everything else’ when everything else existed before this change and Rangers were undeniably a free kill to every class in the game? The change to RF is just that good that it was the tipping point the class needs? And if so, why haven’t we seen Rangers dominating anything since the update?
The only thing Rangers really got, other than the RF change, is the change to signets. Only one of which reallly has any impact on damage.
As to the ‘not every class’ argument, the only class that’s truly at a significant disadvantage when it comes to being able to counter the power Ranger’s playstyle is Necromancers. But they also have great access to conditions which the spec is notoriously weak against. Plus they’re ranged.
Do you have an example of a class that doesn’t have enough tools at their disposal to close the gap initially and reclose it once every 10 seconds for however long it takes to deal with a glass ranger?
What does “long range” conditions or damage help at all, if the rangers “long range” is just 800 units bigger then the max range of other classes? Glass rangers are easy to kill when you get close and keep at it, its the sheer amount of tools the ranger kit offers to create distance, both regarding CCing the enemy and movement skills.
Necromancers currently have no reliable means of getting close. Mesmers (unless some PU cheesy thing) may have gap closers and some reliable long range damage, but rangers just have flat out more damage and more range as well as more tools to creating distance.
In the end it was the many small things that all caused a power increase to the longbow ranger to create this powercreep.
Again, you’re grossly inflating the values of these tools. Aside from easy access to signets, the Ranger gained no utility/defense skills in this patch. All they gained was burst on RF that’s only slightly more powerful than volley is for a rifle warrior.
If Ranger survivability was even a fraction of what you’re trying to convince us it is, the class wouldn’t be (and still is) the laughing stock of WvW, GvGs, and Guild groups. Even in PvP people are mentioning they’re seeing no new Rangers in higher ranked matches.
What you’re trying to sell us doesn’t mesh with what people are actually seeing in game.
How can it be ‘everything else’ when everything else existed before this change and Rangers were undeniably a free kill to every class in the game? The change to RF is just that good that it was the tipping point the class needs? And if so, why haven’t we seen Rangers dominating anything since the update?
The only thing Rangers really got, other than the RF change, is the change to signets. Only one of which reallly has any impact on damage.
As to the ‘not every class’ argument, the only class that’s truly at a significant disadvantage when it comes to being able to counter the power Ranger’s playstyle is Necromancers. But they also have great access to conditions which the spec is notoriously weak against. Plus they’re ranged.
Do you have an example of a class that doesn’t have enough tools at their disposal to close the gap initially and reclose it once every 10 seconds for however long it takes to deal with a glass ranger?
You say in the OP that RF and Volley are different, but if you compare a fully traited RF to a fully traited Volley and ignore the impact of vulnerability, the damage gap between the 2 skills is quite small.
Given that Rifle has vuln on another attack and the full volley will benefit from the damage as opposed to only about 7% of the RF’s damage, mechanically they’re very similar.
So changing RF using any of your criteria, let alone all of them, is absurd. At most, we’d expect a mere 5-10% damage nerf. But seeing as how the game has survived 2 years with volley, and 1 year with the current RF (+QZ which made it identical to today without QZ), it doesn’t seem warranted.
Instead, why not remove osme of the things that dramatically inflate Rf’s damage? Like 25% from SotW which is nearly double the effectiveness of any other % damage multiplying signet in the game?
The stealth argument is the exact same argument for the excess range beyond 1500 units. Who cares?
I couldn’t care less if ANet fixes either issue or lets them remain in the game another 2 years. My only concern is that they fix these issues globally and don’t limit their scope to the Ranger class simply because RF is perceived to be overpowered.
I really do have to agree with what Chrispy is saying overall. In another thread he raised the point that the larger issue is probably related to SotW, and I would agree with that. 25% damage is simply too much for a signet. Especially when that signet also provides stability.
Full traited, Volley and Rapid Fire only deal about 10% less damage than one another. Even if RF were to be nerfed, we’re likely not looking at much more than a 10% damage nerf. I’d more than welcome that change, and a reduction of SotW down to 10% for the Ranger (25% for the pet) if it meant some of the other issues for the class could actually be resolved instead of left ignored simply because the class now has a single potent burst skill at range.
(edited by Atherakhia.4086)
I’d much prefer we revisit the Ranger class with a developer/CM that can be bothered to read and interact with the community before we move on.
As much QQ as we’ve seen over the past week and a half, do you honestly consider the ranger improvements a success?
Lets not…
Instead, lets compare it to a skill like Volley. A skill that really is similar to rapid fire.
ANet is trying really hard to kill this game 1 patch at a time.
Remove spirits and make them buffs on the normal Ranger pet. Always on until the pet dies or is swapped and at that point they’re put on a 20 second cooldown.
Then just give Ranger pets 50% less damage from AE in WvW only, make it so pets get .75 seconds of evade frames any time the ranger dodges or evades. Make it so all heals will resurrect a pet when cast or reset the pet swap cooldown.
Have I won the internets?
This was something I, and others, suggested in the Ranger CDI thread…
Remove the current form of spirits from the game. Instead, they are now a global buff to the Ranger’s active pet. They are 100% duration and are set to a 20second cooldown whenever the Ranger’s pet dies or is swapped. The Ranger, pet, and closest 5 allies will all gain the buff like they currently do with spirits.
The spirit’s active spell are all attached to the pet’s F2 skill. When the Ranger pushes F2, a ‘wisp’ will spawn at the pet’s location and after .5 seconds, activate doing the same thing the current spirit does.
Alternatively, you could remove the spirit actives and just make each have a 10 second iCD that procs something on your pets attack. Storm will have an air proc on your pets attack. Fire can proc a fire proc on your pets attack. Etc etc.
From a WvW perspective, the problems with the class have not improved. Rangers are still ostracized and completely irrelevant. On one hand I have seen some Rangers in GvGs since patch. On the downside, they’re still steamrolled and taken out of the fight in the first 10 seconds :/
I think a trait like empathic response would either require a big nerf to most pets or to ranger cc…
Right.
If you want to do something like this, it’s better to think of unique skills for each pet family.
Like all Dogs will do their current F2, but the ranger will cast a large AE cripple around himself.
things of that nature.
Fun fact, actually. P/P thief using unload twice has better DPS and burst than RF ranger in the same exact time frame, and provides a team with more CC and overall utility.
Yes but he has to come in melee range and therefore has a much more balanced risk/reward ratio from rangers which can do all that from a (very) safe distance.
This is also a very difficult concept to qualify. The melee class is designed to be in melee range and was given the tools required of it to get targets into melee range and keep them there.
The Ranger class is a ranged class. It has tools designed to get targets at range and keep them there. Unfortunately, the number of tools available to Rangers is far less than the tools available to Thieves, Warriors, and Ele’s.
The only class that can actually argue the range (dis)advantage, is Guardians. And they’re a slow class by design.
If Volley’s damage isn’t excessive, why is Rapid Fire’s? Fully traited, there’s only about a 10% gap between the 2 skills. Both have the same channel time, the same cooldown, and the same trait to reduce the cooldown. Both gain similar damage from vulnerability, though rifle requires a second skill to provide it. If damage is legitimately an issue, the problem isn’t from the skill.
The fact that you need to combine two of the Warrior’s rifle skills alone (and assuming both hit to fully benefit for them) AND still doesn’t add up to the same amount of damage should be a tall tell sign that RF is pretty ridiculous…
Vulnerability is a condition and isn’t factored into DPS figures for any skill/class because they effect everyone equally. A rifle warrior shooting volley at the same target the Ranger is shooting will do 10% less damage than the Ranger.
If you want to split vulnerability off like it was in the past, that would actually result in even more damage for the Ranger, not less.
But is that your argument now? That RF’s damage isn’t the problem, it’s the vulnerability it provides?
If Volley’s damage isn’t excessive, why is Rapid Fire’s? Fully traited, there’s only about a 10% gap between the 2 skills. Both have the same channel time, the same cooldown, and the same trait to reduce the cooldown. Both gain similar damage from vulnerability, though rifle requires a second skill to provide it. If damage is legitimately an issue, the problem isn’t from the skill.
While your ideas are certainly fun, what short coming of the Ranger are they trying to resolve? Changes need to be geared toward fixing some of the issues the class has. They would certainly make the class more engaging, but do you feel we need help delivering damage?
Take the RF change for example. While the class wasn’t really lacking in overall damage, it was severely lacking in burst. This is the problem the RF change fixed. Unfortunately it really didn’t do much to make the class more engaging or reward higher levels of play.
Changes we receive need to be geared toward improving our role in WvW, giving the class more functional group utility (which ties into WvW), improving overall survivability and manueverability, the condition dilemma, and finding a niche for the Shortbow to fill now that it has been outclassed by main-hand Axe. At least these are the areas I find most pressing at the moment since I mostly focus on WvW (as a guild group), GvGs, and roaming.
Only Warriors are allowed to have tools designed to hard counter their hard counters. Every other class is expected to suck it up.
Considering a fully traited volley only does about 10% less damage than Rapid Fire does, it’s hard to believe the skill’s damage, channel time, or cooldown is the problem.
If damage really is the issue we want to focus on there are only a few things left to look at. Either it’s the vulnerability stacks (which is unlikely because a warrior can stack 8 vuln via another skill) or it’s Signet of the Wild’d use in conjunction with the skill.
Seems to me the issue revolves around SotW more than anything.
I agree… lets change it to a 4 second immobilize and the Ranger leaps back 900 yards instead!
Depends what you want to do with it. Engi, Mesmer, and Thief are all insanely strong condi builds for roaming. Mesmer and Thief at least give you some versatility if you want to play an effective power build too. Thief is more valuable to groups.
So basically rangers are like Aquaman, great when in the water but absolutely worthless on land.
What’s ironic is the big class update they gave rangers 1.5 years ago was coined the aquaman patch because every other class in the game got real updates and all rangers got was an update to their underwater skills.
i think its more likely to be a shout since HAO was a BM elite in GW1, Curently BM doesnt have any incentive to spec into the shout reduction trait
Aside from the fact that every single shout only impacts the pet unless you’re traited for Nature’s Voice?
If you’re going to compare skills you should either limit the comparison to similar weapons or similar skills. The only thing in common with 100b and RF is they’re now both burst skills.
Either compare RF to arcing arrow since they’re both burst skills on the same weapon type. Or compare it to Volley on rifle, since they’re nearly identical skills on 2 different weapons that provide a similar playstyle.
For arcing arrow it does roughly half the damage, but is an AE and is also a blast finisher.
For Volley it does roughly the same damage once traited, but lacks the vulnerability application directly from the same skill.
The thing the class needs is a fast cast, high burst heal like Heal as One is supposed to be. If it was changed to a survival or shout skill (survival would be my preference) and had its cast time reduced, the skill would probably start being used.
It really all comes down to interrupting the pet both on land and in the water. If you can interrupt the pet to cancel the activation of the 3rd down state skill, the Ranger loses the second source of healing.
The issue is you presented a biased and ignorant argument to begin with. It’s very easy for the Ranger community to defend against your claims because the Ranger isn’t unique in abusing this mechanic. If your original post was aimed at every weapon for every class, you’d find it much more difficult to defend against the arguments you’re trying to make.
Like I said above… no one really cares about the point you’re trying to make. If you want it fixed, fix it for everyone involved and all at the same time. Otherwise there’s no reason to take these topics seriously.
Fact of the matter is no one cares. If you want to reduce the range, go ahead… just do it across the board and not specifically longbow for Rangers. And not piecemeal… all at once. And don’t forget the Engnieers who abuse this to a much larger extent.
Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.
The game is ballanced for a 5 man group. It is not ballanced for 30 ppl group nor a 60 ppl group. You do not need skills to win in those situations. If in ANY game AoE caps exist, the raid vs raid outcome will be won by the side with more numbers.
Zergs require no class knowledge or skill.
Not a class issue.
Even with just your 5 people on a point, the pet’s value is diminished to the point of being nearly useless. I’d also question if this game is balanced at all let alone at a 5v5 or even 1v1 level. But that said, this is why there’s so much support for a petless ranger option. Balanced or not, the largest segment of the population plays WvW at some level and the pets range from ineffective to useless there. I believe it was during it was the ToL tournament where GW2, at its highest viewership, was still dwarfed by the player ran GvG tournament hosted around the same time?
I also strongly disagree with your comment about skill or knowledge being involved.
What do you do when a Warrior uses volley? A single dodge doesn’t block the whole channel and volley only does about 10% less damage than rapid fire.
If it legitimately needs to be nerfed, focus your attention on things like Signet of the Wild which is a legitimate complaint with this update.
Please keep in mind that this game does have more to offer than just small group combat in PvP. In WvW pets really do have very legitimate issues due to all the AE that’s spammed without cause or concern. I would actually consider them useless there. Especially in GvGs or guild zerg groups.
Remove outnumbered from players and give it to keep/tower lords.
So long as the keep or tower lord is outnumbered, gates and walls have 10x their health and take half as much damage from siege. All friendly siege within 5000 yards of the lord deals 5x the damage and have 10x the health.
That should show those off-hour heroes who’s boss!
Many other classes also have other high damage attacks to chain after their burst skill. Longbow doesn’t.
A suggestion I saw in another thread (can’t remember who unfortunately) was to change the trait to have a 100% chance on dodge to reflect projectiles. Seems like a strong trait that would attract players to the tree for something other than traps. Could even add things to it like gain 10 seconds of swiftness when dodging.
IMO, all those things had a much larger impact on condi builds which I don’t really enjoy. Hoping ANet continues to push for power Rangers and improving group utility in WvW.
I agree, but that’s also my concern. With the change to RF finally giving the class some much needed burst, is ANet done paying attention to us for 2 years?
The problem is the combination of range, damage, and disengage all at the same time. A likely scenario player uses gap closer to get close, pushed back, fortuanately has another gap closer but ranger stealths and repositions. Player has 3rd gap closer and gets close again (this whole time he has been taking a constant stream of 1-3k autos and rapid fires), ranger pops signet of stone, swaps to gs and fights for a bit. If rangers target isn’t dead by the time signet of stone is up, then just swoop in the opposite direction, leaving opponent with little chance to catch him because he had to use 3 gap closers just to get to him the first time and they are all on cool down.
Now the player can either chase the ranger though he won’t likely be able to catch him, as gs ranger is very fast on its own, and the player has already used multiple gap closers eventually a large gap will be reopened, and the process repeats, this time, with the player at much less health, most likely gap closers still on cd, while hunter’s shot and pointblank shot have already come off their very short cool downs. and the ranger may very easily have never been touched.
My conclusion is they are like thieves with their ability to reset fights, however they never really disengage due to longbows incredible range which makes them wayyyyyyyy lower risk than thieves. Sure they can’t hold points but neither can you while either chasing them, or trying futilely to tank them on the point.
On a side note, comparing lb ranger to staff ele. Staff ele has higher dps assuming that: the ele stays in fire not switching to other attunements for defense or utility, and the enemy stands a sufficient amount of time in the lava fonts. Neither or those are really reasonable assumptions out side of pve.
Few classes would still have their gap closers on cooldown. Warriors, Eles, and Thieves would easily keep up. Engis, Mesmers, and Rangers are likely ranged and weren’t at a disadvantage to begin with. This leaves Guardians and Necromancers, both of which are slow classes by design. The guard will take a massive dump on the Ranger and if it didn’t work just spam blocks to safety. The Necromancer will legitimately have enormous difficulty, but they have high effective health and a billion condis against a power spec with limited/no condi cleanse.
IF (that’s a big if…) the skill itself is really ‘overpowered’ the more logical solution would be to simply reduce its damage by 10% and make it closer to what a Warrior can do with volley.
I agree with what Chrispy said earlier (or in another thread? I can’t keep track) that the larger problem really is Signet of the Wild. Another poster suggested simply changing it to 10% for the Ranger and 25% for the pet. This in conjunction with making it instant cast so the class has access to an instant stabilty seems reasonable to me and would likely fix a large number of complaints people have.
It’s also worth mentioning that from what I’ve seen, the status of the class hasn’t improved that much. I realize the patch has only been out a week, but I had about 3 GvGs and watched about 5 others over the past week and didn’t see but 2 Rangers (on the same team, and they were obliterated as I’ve come to expect). I honestly was expecting someone to bring in a group of 5+ on the first night given their performance in WvW.
It’s the same in PvP from what I’ve read (I’m not much of a PvPer). They’re very common in low rank soloQ but still aren’t being noticed at mid to upper levels or on teams.
Has anyone’s personal experiences shown otherwise?
Doing the math with just the formula, 100b does 20% more damage. It will all come down to which weapon has more traits behind it. Loongbow only has Eagle Eye, RtW/Onslaught, and flanking iirc? Warrior has 15% from a single trait, 10% for bleeding, 10% for 2h weapons? I’m working from memory here as I can’t access the builder sites at work.
Perhaps this is why they gave the Warrior so much access to CC skills and utilities?