Guild Wars 2

If it were a sniping weapon like you want, how in the world does barrage factor in? Barrage has always been the ‘odd man out’ and doesn’t fit into the single target sustained model the weapon originally was meant to fill. It certainly doesn’t match what you want it to become.

At the start you mention you have issue with their strong kiting ability, but then you mention you have no problem with them? As an Ele you honestly find the Ranger’s kiting ability is in the same league as your own?

If their kiting were good they’d be more welcome in zergs and GvG’s imo. It’s just no where near what a Ele, Warrior, or Thief is capable of imo.

Oh I don’t think it needs a nerf, but I’m a Ranger so I’m biased. ‘IF’ it does get nerfed, I’m just warning the playerbase at large that the nerf is likely not going to be very big.

As to PBS, I don’t mind a telegraph so it’s easier to spot, but do you feel it needs an activation time too? Seems like most of these defensive cooldowns are instant cast with little/no telegraph or activation time.

I also agree with you that SotW is over budget. I would ask that if they do nerf the damage that they consider retooling SotH to do something other than a MoO attack and perhaps make SotW instant cast since the lack of an instant cast stability is quite a pain.

What kind of changes are you guys honestly expecting?

At most, RF will see a 10% damage nerf to bring it down to what volley is capable of. All skills should stop at their max range, so if ANet wants to fix staff, scepter, and bows for everyone, I’m fine with it affecting Ranger.

Beyond that what’s left to complain about? Despite the changes, the class is still horribly weak and in need of improvements elsewhere. Will dropping damage by 10% and adjusting max range to be really 1500 allow us to discuss the issues still plaguing the class? Or are people under the impression that all the class needed was a burst skill to make it complete?

Zord.6130:

They suck in sieges (especially if attacking). But they are awesome in anything else.
They are basically as good as a thief, with more damage, more range and more safety.
You are there just for one thing: single target damage.

More damage?
More safety?

If either were true they’d be welcome on GvGs and in WvW outside of a roaming role. They still aren’t. RF likely is a ‘tad’ too much and SotW is severely over budget for a signet. But that doesn’t magically make Rangers wanted unfortunately.

It’s still been less than a week though so we’ll see what happens as more people try and use Rangers in GvG’s and their organized guild groups for WvW. I’m not expected miracles though.

ANet should just reduce Rapid Fire’s damage by 10% so it’s as strong as volley and call it a day. The forums would be much better for it.

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Warrior is still the best all-around class imo, but each patch they’re nerfed which can be annoying as a player.

Specifically to Ranger:

Dungeons: The greatsword changes helped boost the damage of the weapon up above 1h sword and the class overall does more damage. On the downside, the only real value to the group was nerfed (bug?). So as a selfish DPSr, the Ranger is pretty good now. For utility and maximizing a group? Pretty useless.

WvW: RF has made power builds deal considerable burst damage, but given ANet’s track record, it will likely be nerfed. Like Dungeons, the class has no group value whatsoever. On top of this, the defensive options for the class are far too focused on dueling so the class is trained down easily and is useless in GvG’s still. Roaming as condi is likely going to remain the meta for Rangers once the longbow changes settle down some, but power will be more valuable roaming as well.

PvP: Power is good for soloQ but the lack of group utility is still going to hold the class back. Condi Rangers will likely make a comeback but things are too new to tell.

Now with that all said, I would suggest you just make one of each and play a bar in PvP with each of them. After 10-20 games you’ll get a feel for the class’s playstyle and if you enjoy playing it or not. If you enjoy playing the class, you’ll likely enjoy the class regardless of its relative power.

GS above sword?
What are you smoking man?
Those 10% on the 3rd rotation brings it close, but since sword has cripple on AA, IE – 100% uptime of Predators Onslaught, sword has 15% more DPS then before (counting in the fact that its cripple also boosts pet)….

So no, GS is not above sword DPS by any margin what so ever.

The final attack has a .72 coefficient now according to my quick math. That will make it do about 10% more damage than sword. You also have maul with an incredibly short cooldown and vuln on it which easily out dps’s warhorn.

Can just stealth with LB and swap to a GS with Int rune for the same effect and not deal with condi runes on a power build.

Also to Straegen’s comment on Quick Draw… going that deep in Skirm for the QD trait only makes the shortcomings of the power ranger that much more apparent as the condi options are limited to signets, bears, and healing spring.

ps. Is there an iCD on the trap stealth or the super speed??

‘Is it even that huge of a deal’… that attitude is why FGS took so long to nerf and why the Ele’s cried incessantly when the obvious abuse was finally fixed.

I haven’t verified any of the OP, but if he’s right I imagine any transitional swap probably triggers it. Getting on siege? Picking up summoned weapons? Activating various racial skills?

Fix them all, that’s fine. But also put the ICD check in there because the Warrior is only going to swap weapons once every 5 seconds at best anyway. Better to be safe than sorry.

He was responding to me and was specifically avoiding things that both the Warrior and Ranger share. That’s where he got the 35% from (sacrificing RtF for the new trait).

Warrior is still the best all-around class imo, but each patch they’re nerfed which can be annoying as a player.

Specifically to Ranger:

Dungeons: The greatsword changes helped boost the damage of the weapon up above 1h sword and the class overall does more damage. On the downside, the only real value to the group was nerfed (bug?). So as a selfish DPSr, the Ranger is pretty good now. For utility and maximizing a group? Pretty useless.

WvW: RF has made power builds deal considerable burst damage, but given ANet’s track record, it will likely be nerfed. Like Dungeons, the class has no group value whatsoever. On top of this, the defensive options for the class are far too focused on dueling so the class is trained down easily and is useless in GvG’s still. Roaming as condi is likely going to remain the meta for Rangers once the longbow changes settle down some, but power will be more valuable roaming as well.

PvP: Power is good for soloQ but the lack of group utility is still going to hold the class back. Condi Rangers will likely make a comeback but things are too new to tell.

Now with that all said, I would suggest you just make one of each and play a bar in PvP with each of them. After 10-20 games you’ll get a feel for the class’s playstyle and if you enjoy playing it or not. If you enjoy playing the class, you’ll likely enjoy the class regardless of its relative power.

Thanks for sharing. Can’t watch the video yet due to work, but saved for later. Did you guys ever find a role for Rangers to fill? Saw your GvG build posts over at WvW but only saw the meta builds. Didn’t know if you guys ran Ranger, Engi, Mesmer etc.

Rifle has access to 8 stacks of vuln though. Rifle also has a higher damage profile. Base, the 2 skills have a less than 10% difference in damage. The 2 skills are much closer than you guys are making them out to be.

And you’re right… everyone and their mother is playing a Ranger. Per the stats given by anet a year ago, the Ranger is the most popular class apparently. People are dusting them off.

warriorjrd.8695:

Atherakhia.4086:

Volley…

Same damage…
Same range…
Better class…

Rapid fire will finish far before volley thus, more burst, ranger LB can also do it from farther away, and when traited and the right set up, RF does plenty more damage than volley.

At the OP:
However it’s far from OP. 1. It can be dodged much easier because of the short cast time, one dodge negates 50% of RF’s damage. 2. It can be reflected, where other melee burst skills cannot. Given, reflect is not easily accessible to most classes, it is still a weakness to a projectile burst skill. 3. This is ranger’s second burst skill, and the other one requires you to blow nearly all your cooldowns and have specific traits, etc, all for one skill. So let us have our burst skills, because every other class has theirs.

Thank you.

PS: I honestly haven’t used LB since the patch, and have killed a few LB rangers myself. But the greatest thing to come from this patch so far, is not the buffs, but the delicious tears

They’re both 2.5 second channel spells. They both have access to the same trait to reduce cooldown by 20%. Ranger can get 5% from Eagle Eye and 10% from Hunter’s Tactics. Warrior will have 15% from power, 10% from bleeding, 3% if endurance full etc.

They really are quite close at everything but the range advantage if the Ranger runs EE.

SoLeciTO.3490:

Cufufalating.8479:

Actually in terms on zerging (which is what the OP seems to be on about), Killshot+Volley together are quite a bit better than the Rangers LB.

The only reason Rifle Warriors are relatively uncommon is because Warriors have better things to do in a zerg, which Rangers dont.

kill shot better or equal to rapid rie . . . come one man . . . seriously.

atse is perfectly right . . 1 aegis, 1 pet in the middle, 1 terrain issue and it’s done . . . rapid fire is waaaay better.

And don’t let me start with the cast time . . .

Volley…

Same cast time…
Same cooldown…
Better class…

Volley…

Same damage…
Same range…
Better class…

It’s hard to take the complaints about the damage or range seriously when the Warrior’s rifle volley does about the same damage and nearly the same range since launch. The problem is the sheer number of Rangers trying out the changes.

How is this different than volley or killshot for Warrior :/

I do agree with some of the arguments… it is a low skill floor issue. Perhaps it is ‘too easy’ to deal that kind of damage. But a lot of burst skills in this game fall into that category. Most of which because they’re instant cast. But if you look at the burst skills that aren’t instant cast, most of them are trivialized and aren’t used or are ineffective.

Is the issue perhaps related to how this skill lines up with other skills available to the class/weapon? Namely that they’re all instant cast and the Ranger relies too heavily on auto attack to account for the bulk of their damage?

I agree with the general opinion that the skill simply isn’t overpowered. It’s not blowing other similar skills out of the water in damage. It does much less than 100b. Only does about 10-15% more damage than volley. Etc etc. Players are just overwhelmed because the Ranger is the new toy that everyone wants to play with atm.

But how could you raise the skill floor with the class at this stage in the game without completely overhauling everything?

Forestgreen.7981:

People posting must be bad, it’s rangers did not get a 10% dps buff, they got alot more than 10%. Shortening LB2 by 50% means a straight up 50% dps increase, because you take less time to go through it. Also you’re forgetting the free grandmaster trait given to every range using signets, you don’t even need to trait for it, all signets now affect you too.

Also this is more viable b/c every ranger now has an improved version of endure pain/balance stance of their warrior counter part. 6s damage immunity + 8s stability/25% dmg increase/50% movement speed (you cannot boon strip the last two parts). Also warriors do not have a pet that deals damage and CC, and a free stealth and kittentier range.
Anyways I’m glad my bearbow got buffed, eating thieves and everyone alive lol.

Rapid Fire does X damage over Y seconds with Z cooldown.

X/Y is the DPS.
X/Z is the effective damage.

DPS went up, but effective damage stayed the same (it actually went up too, but you don’t care…).

Your signet comparison also isn’t valid. Stability for Rangers is on a cast time and they aren’t attached to stun breaks. Rangers are much more susceptable to burst condis as well.

Is it feasible for a Ranger to maintain 25 might stacks and the target to have 25 vuln stacks before RF and the target to be in 2000 armor?

Because that’s what it would take for a Ranger to hit the 20k you’re mentioning.

I can’t see the youtube videos so no idea what they’re showing, but I agree that the animation is very bad now.

Lets wait and see how things play out a couple weeks though. I have a feeling ANet will cave to the pressure and want to nerf RF and simply changing it to shoot 1 arrow for the full damage of RF after a 2.5 charge up may be their solution :/

Firing an arrow every .5 seconds would also be fine.

Shadow Step has a 1200 range. Inf Strike has 600 and will always move forward if a target is selected. 6 in tricks will give you a steal with a 1500 range and a 20 second cooldown or you can just stick to the 900.

Pick 2…

Rapid Fire only does 15% more damage base than a Warrior’s Volley does. The Warrior’s Rifle has more damage modifiers to boost its damage as well. We haven’t seen Warriors running around with rifles drawn causing any real problem and the skill has been there since release. The problem is this change is new, on a class that even ANet has said is the most numerous in the game, which also happens to be the worst class in the game up until now in WvW. People are curious so everyone is on their Rangers playing with the changes.

Give it a week and longbow Rangers will be just as popular as rifle Warriors. And if not, only then can we start entertaining ideas of nerfing it. Not after 12 hours.

It’s not that powerful, lol. It’s only 15% more damage than volley is for Warrior Rifle and we don’t see that owning everyone.

It’s patch day. Everyone who has a Ranger is playing a Ranger. On my server it feels like 1 in 3 players is a Ranger and we’re inundated by RF’s. Give it a few days and things will slow down.

It’s only 15% more damage than volley on Warrior so it’s not that powerful. I don’t know what your guys WvW looks like, but mine feels like 1 in 3 players is a Ranger currently. Thing will settle down.

I don’t know how to do it, but there has to be some way to reward more PPT if people actually defended the keep versus if a keep was taken without any defense at all.

Especially if the towers/keeps weren’t upgraded.

Mind sharing your spec Kilger? I’ve honestly never used Axe mainhand in a power build. May give it a shot tonight during rally time.

I’m known to be quite pessimistic about this class, but I’ll give my opinion…

A lot of the problems this class had at launch still remain. The class’s value in a group is quite low. A lot of the utility the class does have is tied up in pets that simply don’t work because of poor survivability in groups, poor AI, and limited control. The stronger specs for the class are all bunker or condi related.

Today’s patch will improve signets, will make axe more valuable because it will proc might on hit (though I think condi builds will get more out of it), and rapid fire will have its channel duration reduced while the damage remains the same. Those are the really big changes we know about. Some of the lesser ones are a new melee oriented trait in the marks line that allows us to do 10% more damage (and 5% more for our pet) to crippled foes (and the addition of a cripple sigil which may have further reaching implications). Read the Wind will also reduce activation time by 10%, but we don’t know for certain if this will yield a straight 10% damage boost to longbow yet (we’re hoping). Barrage had its activation time reduced so it may be more valuable as a kiting tool in addition to the AE role it has now. I think that’s about everything we know about so far?

If I were in your shoes, I think I’d wait until I saw the real patch notes and give the class a shot in PvP first. Personally, I don’t find the class that fun to play when using the bows (and the only reason I made Ranger was for the bows) because so much time is spent auto attacking and it can be quite ineffective plinking away at a single target for 1.5-3k for 75% of a fight. Hopefully RF makes the class a bit more engaging.

If you enjoy the playstyle of the class you’ll likely enjoy it. Just don’t go into the class expecting changes to be right around the corner. We get no real developer attention and things haven’t changed much in 2 years.

And this is where the thread gets locked

We don’t see many Rangers out there with RaO either though.

So you’ll run 0 stability?

I figure most will probably want SoS and SotW next patch which leaves just LR and perhaps Entangle. But once you have those 2, you’re almost always better with SoR for condi cleanse I’d imagine?

Playing as a power Ranger, it’s going to be very hard to make survival of the fittest work next patch because everyone’s going to want to run 1 or 2 signets and you’re still going to want RaO over Entangle imo. At that point, SotF probably won’t be worth it do you think?

If your goal is Dungeons/Fractals you’re doing pretty good so far. The above poster is right and you shouldn’t limit your weapon selection for WvW/PvP or open world PvE, I would argue that you really do need to focus on Sword+WH or Greatsword for fractals/dungeons though.

These 2 weapons do competative damage and are the highest DPS weapons available to the class. Longbow is a very distant third.

Everything else you’ve done seems pretty spot on though.

There’s also very little skill involved with retaliation in a WvW setting. For flamethrower and rapid fire you could stop attacking I suppose, but for skills like barrage where the spell has finished channeling before any damage is done to find out if retaliation was on the target?

It really does need an adjustment.

Not really related to the build in question, but I do have a couple questions since I’ve never used Celerity or Dolyak.

What is the heal for just the 6pc bonus? You mention 200 hps with pies, signet, and rune. So is the heal really only 50?

Does celerity still give a charge if you don’t land the killing blow? If I barrage a zerg is it possible to proc it 10+ times? No icd?

Does

GW2 has a pretty popular GvG scene now but the Ranger plays no real role in it. It’s simply trained down too easily and provides no valuable group support. People are hoping the RF change will allow them to play anti periphery so we’ll see.

I suggested this very thing several months ago. Ascended armor should be stat variable given the costs involved in getting it. If the legendary crowd want to lose their [censored] because legendaries don’t feel unique enough, simply put a cooldown timer on stat changes on ascended items.

Legendaries can do it whenever.
Ascended can only do it once an hour.

As to removing sigils and such, didn’t they make an item in the gem store to remove them without breaking the sigils? I doubt they’d give that to players for free.

But ascended armor most certainly should have variable stats now that it can be shared account wide.

Ehecatl.9172:

Atherakhia.4086:

+

It would also need to grant something to the class if we stowed it like what was discussed in the CDI at great length. It would also need to be quite powerful considering I’m giving up 2 knock downs, an AE immob, and an AE fear to get it.

I’m pretty sure the OP just wants our pets to not automatically come out whenever we take even the slightest damage. Asking for something to make a petless ranger viable would be an entirely different discussion.

If that’s all he wants, that’s fine. I’d honestly consider the fact that our current stow pet doesn’t work like that right now to be a bug.

+

My opinion on this is the same as the last time we had this discussion. I’ only in favor of perma stowing the pet because ANet has failed to improve the pet or class in 2 years for WvW. Ideally, the pet would actually be a benefit to the class and I’d want to use it.

It would also need to grant something to the class if we stowed it like what was discussed in the CDI at great length. It would also need to be quite powerful considering I’m giving up 2 knock downs, an AE immob, and an AE fear to get it.

This topic has come up numerous times. The most recent time I recall was when ferocity was being changed.

Imagine how much more balanced this game would have been if base crit damage was 50% and there was no crit damage stat at all. Players could increase it to 80% via traits and select few classes (Thieves for example) would have a trait in the crit damage line to grant them an additional 20% for a total of 100% crit damage.

But yes, you’re absolutely right… conditions in this game are a mess from the ground up. They are applied too easily and too frequently. Not every class is given equal access to condition clears. It’s far too easy to build bunker while also having access to burst condi application.

Personally, I’m expecting this patch to make things worse. The few classes capable of actually handling bunker builds because their burst is so high (Thieves, Warriors, and Eles) got nerfed in their ability to deliver that burst. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more Thieves and Warriors pick up condi oriented builds after the 9th and Ele’s have always been more sustained oriented with D/D as opposed to burst S/*.

Now that all said, there has to be some way to keep condi specs viable in WvW and PvP, and we see how futile they can be in WvW due to all the massed condi removal on Guardians. But yea, something needs to be done to make individual classes better equipped to handle bunker/condi builds imo.

spoj.9672:

Kind of funny how a single stack of vuln now does more than entire utility skill.

And that utility skill still kind of needs 2 (if not 3) traits to function even at that level.

As a side note, I’d also look at the Thief and Engineer some and see if these classes you like and how you like playing them. With ascended items now being tradable, if you can use the gear on multiple classes all the better.

That’s the dilemma I’m dealing with now. Trying to build a suit that works well on a power Ranger and a burst Thief in WvW.

You’d expect it to be easy, but I don’t generally play glass Ranger as opposed to my thief who can run full zerker without issue.

At least if you remove the stealth detection from Sic ‘Em the entire shout system for the Ranger class is total crap so it’ll be easier to redesign the whole thing from the ground up.

If it were me, I’d change it so it only has 1 charge and stacks in intensity. Same with confusion.

For example…

Retaliation makes it so the next attack against you causes X damage where X is dependent on how many stacks of retaliation you have on you. Once you’re hit, it is removed.

Confusion makes it so the next attack you do causes you to take X damage where X is dependent on how many stacks of confusion you have on you. Once you use a skill, confusion is removed.

Something like that at least makes the boon/condition more equal regardless if you’re using a fast weapon or a slow one.

Being selfish I’d be fine with this change because I want the 25% movement speed and any incentive to use the signet would be great. That said, you can always pop it for maul crits etc.

Something this game lacks is a hunter’s mark type skill from WoW. Not in regards to seeing a stealthed target, but more so you can focus fire a specific target with people outside of your group. If Signet of the Hunt simply made a arrow appear over a targets head for 10 seconds in addition to the current effect I’d probably use it more often.

Sorry, I mispoke. I meant PBAE water fields.

But if your tactics are miles above what I’ve seen outside of T1 then feel free to explain what role you guys have your rangers fill. Speaking honestly, I’d love to hear it.

I guess what they say about T1 servers doing nothin but PvD and spamming 1 is true.

The water field is the longest, sure. It’s also stationairy. Ele’s are far more valuable because they can provide multiple water fields at range while also providing other meaningful utility to the group. So useless? No. But useful? Hardly.

Survivability is a joke. Rangers are trained down in seconds. This is why no GvG will take them. This is why they’re outside of the GWEN.

And spectacular skill sets for defending and assaulting? You mean a ranged weapon?

Come on dude… show me those T1 tactics.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Atherakhia.4086:

Retaliation is one of several things holding Rangers back in WvW. Once barrage is fired, there’s no taking it back. It has a delayed time before damage begins (and next patch we’ll likely finish the whole channel before any damage is dealt) which means once you realize you’re being reflected it’s too late.

So each barrage will reflect 5x retal x12 waves of barrage. That’s one dead Ranger.

Now the obvious solution is to simply not use barrage on a zerg… well barrage is the only real ranged AE the Ranger class even has access to. Kind of need to use it to bring what little value the class actually has.

why would you use SB2 on them? SB2 will also proc a ton of retal and kill you. just face them, lay a black powder, and autoattack. it’ll still hurt, but not nearly as much as what you’re suggesting (mordrem wolves’ leap works like backstab, double damage from behind)

wut?

any chance we can get the full patch notes too?