Guild Wars 2

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Tyops.5894:

Daemon.4295:

They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.

remember this?

JonPeters.5630:

While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.

That was 6 months ago in reference to a patch that had no ranger fixes at all.

Also… it’s a complete CRIME that at this point pets dont remember their names when you swap. That should be basic and it completely ruins the feel of the class.

Signet cooldowns, SoS toughness, Guard cooldown, Spirits buffs…. see, JP finally delivered on his promise! Now we just have to wait six more months for the “feel/pacing on certain weapons” to be adjusted.

I think most of our weapons are fine though, i think that some of them just need some bug fixes cough longbow attack speed cough cough and then we’d be in really good shape.

Because seriously, what weapon do we have that’s -bad-? None, longbows auto attack needs love sure, but it’s still a heavily used weapon (for the utility granted).

I reckon it’s used more for its tagging potential in WvW than for its actual utility, frankly, which might be misleading for the devs. My guess is that their discriminating factor for the state of a weapon is usage statistics, not forum complaints. People tend to complain more about the weapons they use then those they don’t. Remember the path of scars buff? I don’t remember anyone really complaining about that, but it got buffed (and rightfully so).

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

aeneq.1760:

As stated before this only works if the mob isnt targetting the pet, suggest you aggroing the mob and send in the pet after.

This has a slight interesting sideeffect, if you aggro the mob and the pet moves behind and then takes aggro then it should turn its back to you/your party.

/Q

Good point, useful in conjunction with shortbow and the hunter’s tactics trait.

Beary Bearington has been an amazing tanker for me on my glassy longbow, makes it sooooooo much easier to get +1000 units away + back shots now…

Do you mean you’ve tried it already and it’s working consistently? That would definitely be a big boost with hunter’s tactics and longbow.

slingblade.1437:

Arpheus.6918:

There is more:
Signet of Stone offers my pet and me 180 toughness. I think before todays patch the ranger got a really small amount of toughness.

Is this confirmed?

I thought it would be 70 for the player (35 X 2) and 240 for the pet (120 X 2). That’s based on wiki numbers.

The wiki says 180, but I haven’t opened the game yet. Did it used to be 90? I thought it was less but I could easily be mistaken.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Stone

“Notes
Gives both the player and pet 180 toughness at level 80.”

aeneq.1760:

As stated before this only works if the mob isnt targetting the pet, suggest you aggroing the mob and send in the pet after.

This has a slight interesting sideeffect, if you aggro the mob and the pet moves behind and then takes aggro then it should turn its back to you/your party.

/Q

Good point, useful in conjunction with shortbow and the hunter’s tactics trait.

Tyops.5894:

Daemon.4295:

They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.

remember this?

JonPeters.5630:

While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.

That was 6 months ago in reference to a patch that had no ranger fixes at all.

Also… it’s a complete CRIME that at this point pets dont remember their names when you swap. That should be basic and it completely ruins the feel of the class.

Signet cooldowns, SoS toughness, Guard cooldown, Spirits buffs…. see, JP finally delivered on his promise! Now we just have to wait six more months for the “feel/pacing on certain weapons” to be adjusted.

Remember they have to be melee pets and not have aggro. If you send them in with F1 then they likely have aggro. Try putting them on passive, engaging a mob, and then setting them to active.

Arpheus.6918:

There is more:
Signet of Stone offers my pet and me 180 toughness. I think before todays patch the ranger got a really small amount of toughness.

Yeah it got doubled, the passive toughness buff was stupidly low prior to the patch.

Bailey.6892:

Daemon.4295:

Bailey.6892:

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

Mug is easy to land so no I don’t think I need your “luck” and while kill shot now is a little harder it lands enough with a thief immobilizing the target.

Any skill that requires teamwork with another class has some serious problems, IMO. But you will land killshot a lot just by catching people off guard, in my experience the majority of players is unable to react effectively to more than one opponent simultaneously. And the game is still populated by lots and lots of players that don’t recognize other classes’ skills, thieves waste their initiative on my super obvious greatsword block all the time even now, seven months after launch.

I agree, it is fairly easy to get people who are not paying attention and their are a lot of them who focus on the person in their face and won’t notice you. When I run with the thief I like it, they push one button and it calls their target, applies their poison and mugs them making my life easy, hit T aim fire loot. As for mug I seem to only really miss it on guardians if their agis pops up. Disappointing I wont be able to crit with it now.

Sad part is the ranger is the class I want to play, but it just is not where it should be and with anet I am not sure it will ever be. Maybe EA can take it over, yes I am that desperate.

Heh, I sure hope they don’t! EA messed up SWTOR and to be honest GW2 is the most fun MMO I’ve ever played, and by far has the best combat mechanics. Ranger issues aside, the game seems to me to get better overall from patch to patch.

I’ll just highlight the main improvements for berserker rangers in today’s patch and let you all discuss. I don’t know whether it’s quite enough to resurrect my berserker build, but I’ll certainly dust off my CoF gear and give it a whirl.

- Lightning Reflexes skill: Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
I don’t use LR much but I know a lot of berserker rangers do for the extra evade.

-Signet of Stone skill:
Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 80 seconds.
Increased passive toughness by 100%.
The extra toughness is nice, but the 33% reduction in SoS cooldown is a little more exciting.

- Signet of the Wild skill: Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 60 seconds and duration from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
Very nice, +25% damage for you and your pet every 60 seconds. Cooldown time halved.

- Quickening Zephyr skill:
Increased duration by 1 second.
Players are now healed at 50% effectiveness (increased from 0%) when under the effects of this skill.
The two extra seconds (+1 in the original patch, +1 today) IMO compensates a fair bit for the quickness nerf. QZ now does 50% less damage (150% attack speed vs 200%) but lasts 50% longer (6 sec vs 4 sec). It’s not quite the same, QZ was a lot stronger before the nerf, but it’s definitely better now.

- Pet buffs
Pets should survive a little longer now, even with only 5 points in BM. This doesn’t affect me personally too much, but I imagine some people might have added points in the BM tree just to make their pets survive that much longer.

So what do you ex-berserkers think, are these changes enough to make you consider picking up your power-crit builds again?

Bailey.6892:

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

Mug is easy to land so no I don’t think I need your “luck” and while kill shot now is a little harder it lands enough with a thief immobilizing the target.

Any skill that requires teamwork with another class has some serious problems, IMO. But you will land killshot a lot just by catching people off guard, in my experience the majority of players is unable to react effectively to more than one opponent simultaneously. And the game is still populated by lots and lots of players that don’t recognize other classes’ skills, thieves waste their initiative on my super obvious greatsword block all the time even now, seven months after launch.

SilverShadow.3021:

I’m kind of surprised about the signet of stone buff.

Imo it was one of the best signets, even before patch.
With a certain trait your pet AND yourself are invulnerable for 6s.
6s invulnerability for you and your pet every 80s is actually very nice.
I hope the devs knew that, because otherwise i shouldnt have written this; FML

Anyways, the rest of the patch notes is really disappointing. I see that they’re trying to improve pet usefulness, but I’d rather have decent DPS on my ranger and not my pet.
And LB is still useless.

Actually the overly long signet cool downs were a big problem, this will make power builds much more viable as they have very few useful utilities. Signet of the Wild gives you a 25% damage boost traited, but it wasn’t worth slotting due to the 120 sec cooldown. Now it’s been reduced by half.

Zenith.7301:

Daemon.4295:

Pretty good? It’s a fantastic patch, much much better than I hoped for despite the lack of any improvements to the longbow.

Pet no longer grab aggro. Huge improvement in dungeons.
Pets move behind target. Huge improvement in dungeons, they are no longer susceptible to cleave. We have to see how this actually works though, it could be a little buggy at first.
Signet reduction times: Huge improvement across the board, particularly for power ranger builds.
QZ increased by one second: Very nice, although I would have preferred to have that extra second on pet swap with Zephyr’s Speed.
QZ heal effect increased from 0 to 50%: OK, good for regen builds but not so much for a hard heal as you’re unlike to pop a 50% heal rather than wait an extra couple of seconds.
Spirits: another boost to their health and activation chance. Still unappealing for me, but I could well be mistaken.
Pets: Higher health, higher armor, lower cast times. Great! The only very minor disappointment is that I was hoping the cast time would be instant (i.e. at start of animation rather than at end of animation).

Overall it’s an overwhelmingly positive patch, we really shouldn’t be complaining.

PETS DO GRAB AGGRO.

The aggro change just means that a mob won’t attack your pet if you haven’t gotten aggro from it. Once you engage it, like you will in dungeons, they will attack your pet.

And guess what, that lupicus aoe shower will still 1 shot any pet that is not a bear.

Exactly, it’s a huge improvement. Not so much for experienced players, but a lot of newer rangers struggle to not pick up aggro from mobs with their pets as they run through a dungeon. Of course pets grab aggro once you attack, that’s a crucial part of their mechanic.

FrouFrou.4958:

Daemon.4295:

Tyops.5894:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Tyops.5894:

ANet continues to not understand why spirits and pets are bad or is clearly unwilling to address the issues.

pets move behind enemies; thats certainly a start (… well the better hitting on moving targets was a start… but w/e)
… i agree with you about them not seeming to understand why spirits are bad (though clearly they are trying to adress the issue)

The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.

To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.

What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance patch. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).

This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.

Wow, where did you get all this inside information from Anet? Did Jon Peters tell you all that? He’s a troll you know… :p

They said it in the interview that the patches after this one are only going to be some small bug fixes and tooltip corrections.

They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.

Tyops.5894:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Tyops.5894:

ANet continues to not understand why spirits and pets are bad or is clearly unwilling to address the issues.

pets move behind enemies; thats certainly a start (… well the better hitting on moving targets was a start… but w/e)
… i agree with you about them not seeming to understand why spirits are bad (though clearly they are trying to adress the issue)

The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.

To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.

What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance patch. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).

This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.

Wow, where did you get all this inside information from Anet? Did Jon Peters tell you all that? He’s a troll you know… :p

Heh, I missed them all…

But to be honest I don’t remember ever seeing a frost spirit next to a siege weapon or I would have caught on.

Well, the cast times are long but the real problem is pets’ responsiveness to the F2 command. I’m kinda hoping they worked on that too and it isn’t in the notes, but I am a very optimistic guy

You were aware of this and didn’t tell your fellow rangers?? :p

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I had no idea you could buff siege weapons with a frost spirit or I would have been doing it all the time. Every time a patch comes out they seem to fix some clever trick I absolutely never thought of.

silvermember.8941:

DevO.9854:

yeah this is slightly frustraiting, what does that pvp skill do for signet of stone I didn’t really understand it?

It seems more like formating error than anything else.

Maybe there was a bug preventing you from capturing / communing under the effects of traited SoS? I dunno, I don’t run signets in sPvP.

Pretty good? It’s a fantastic patch, much much better than I hoped for despite the lack of any improvements to the longbow.

Pet no longer grab aggro. Huge improvement in dungeons.
Pets move behind target. Huge improvement in dungeons, they are no longer susceptible to cleave. We have to see how this actually works though, it could be a little buggy at first.
Signet reduction times: Huge improvement across the board, particularly for power ranger builds.
QZ increased by one second: Very nice, although I would have preferred to have that extra second on pet swap with Zephyr’s Speed.
QZ heal effect increased from 0 to 50%: OK, good for regen builds but not so much for a hard heal as you’re unlike to pop a 50% heal rather than wait an extra couple of seconds.
Spirits: another boost to their health and activation chance. Still unappealing for me, but I could well be mistaken.
Pets: Higher health, higher armor, lower cast times. Great! The only very minor disappointment is that I was hoping the cast time would be instant (i.e. at start of animation rather than at end of animation).

Overall it’s an overwhelmingly positive patch, we really shouldn’t be complaining.

Don’t forget this very important point from the General Notes:

“Summoned creatures and pets can no longer draw aggro from enemies that have not already aggroed on their master.”

EDIT: And of course this one: “Adjusted ranger pet AI when fighting enemies in PvE. Melee pets now attempt to move behind enemies as long as they are not actively being targeted by the creature.”

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Oh, and by the way: Auto attack is roughly a 40% more damage over Rapid Fire at 1000+ range if you count purely shots fired, and closer to 50% if you count total time spent firing. They’re near even at 500-1000, and only sub 500 does RFS outdamage your auto. But really – if you’re sub 500 range you should have switched weapons by that point.

Is that right?? I’ve tested on golems in the mists but I only found autoattack to be marginally higher than rapid fire at max range, if at all. I’d still use rapid fire over autoattack though because it procs more on-crit effects due to the higher number of shots being fired.

Writetyper.1985:

Well you miss out on pretty much the kitten as far as it comes to build. Trait for traits, not for stats, stats are always secondary to important traits.

Also, carrion exists.

Writetyper is right, trait for traits and don’t worry about the stats, you can easily build those up through gear. The trapper ranger is considered one of the strongest builds right now in high-end spvp so you certainly aren’t gimping yourself by going 30 into skirmishing. I agree it’s annoying, but I think Anet’s logic was that rangers would be too OP if they could maxx out traps, condition damage, toughness, and pets simultaneously. Anyway the stats aren’t completely wasted, you can go full rabid gear to build a high crit chance, high condition trap build that plays off on-crit condition damage effects.

Burnfall.9573:

Daemon,
I’ll take your word for it, however the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-H1zpdg7dU tells a whole different story. That warrior didn’t seem easy to kill, in fact his >33k kill shots were.

I’m sure everyone who were fighting that warrior made it easy for the kill shots.

I encourage you to tell that to any other class other than thief how you " feel that anet did a good job balancing them"; im sure the Engineer class would be Gracious to anet as well.

I guess I should have said they’re the easiest class for me to kill, personally I’d rather go 1v1 with a warrior than any other class but maybe that’s just me.

I wouldn’t go telling warriors in the warrior forum that Anet did a good job balancing them, I’d probably get the same response that people get here when they come in complaining that rangers are doing too much damage with their traps The only reason I made that comment is that rangers frequently compare their damage to warriors’ without considering the steps Anet has taken to balance against that high damage. If rangers could do the same burst as thieves or warriors we’d be grotesquely OP.

jkctmc.8754:

Daemon.4295:

jkctmc.8754:

In all honesty all new players should run Faux build. He designed an awesome healing/tankish/beastmaster build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Faux-s-RRR-Build-Detailed/first

Why would any new player want a tank / healing build?? You have tens of thousands of mobs to slay from lvl 1 to lvl 79 and hardly any of them pose a threat to you, it would be silly to run anything other than a build that kills as many mobs as possible, as quickly as possible. You can always respec once you’re big enough for dungeons or wvw, or if you just get bored and want to try something new. If I was rolling a new ranger, the only debate in my mind would be whether to go Berserker or Rampager.

You do realize any tanky beastmaster build will kill faster, with little to no downtime, far better than any other build in the game, IF you’re fighting in open world PvE, right? Especially if you’re using the drakes.

This will also allow them to be completely familiar with the build once they enter WvW, which is the most important aspect of any game for newer players hoping to one day PvP.

I disagree, in open world PvE you can clump mobs together and burn them down with barrage and piercing arrows, I haven’t found a build that kills trash mobs faster than full glass cannon LB, swooping in with GS and moment of clarity to finish the job. Maxing AoE is a lot more useful against open world mobs than maxing single target DPS.

Regarding PvP, by the time the OP or any other new ranger gets to level 80 he’ll have had ample time to experiment with any build he pleases regardless of whatever he starts out with. @OP: remember that in sPvP you are bumped up to level 80 with free maxxed out gear, so you can try any build anytime.

@Everyone discussing burst on LB: I agree that LB’s burst is low in comparison to half the other classes in this game, but it’s good AoE burst in comparison to other ranger options.

@OP again: regarding your initial quesiton of shortbow vs longbow, the shortbow does faster, lower damage attacks and condition damage, with a bleeding bonus for flanking that really stacks up. Longbow does stronger damage from maximum range if you factor in the AoE skill Barrage, and has a useful knockback. If you are running a condition build SB is probably better, if you’re running a power build you can pick either really as their damage is very similar, depending on which weapon ‘feels’ better to you. The best advice I can give you is to play around with both bows and decide for yourself, just keep in mind that the numbers you see on LB2 (RapidFire) are cumulative for all arrows landed during the chain so far. A lot of new players don’t realize this and think rapid fire is doing much more damage than it actually is.

Burnfall.9573:

jkctmc,

Wow! that video you posted, is quite Amazing of a Warrior using a Range rifle hitting “33k Kill Shot in WvW”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-H1zpdg7dU

Now imagine if a Ranger was hitting 33k Kill shot in WvW, they would’ve been severely nerfed in a heartbeat, yet it is ok for a warrior?

Not only the warrior is King of Melee, they are King of Range weapons as well, what a joke.

We should be King of Range in this game and Should have the highest hitting Kill shot.

When did a Warrior rifle Dare outperform our Range weapons?

When did a Thief bow Dare outperform our Range Weapons

There are reasons to be Depressed and Disappointed.

Yet they’re the easiest class to kill in spvp. I don’t have probs with warriors, given how easily I kill them despite all that damage I feel that anet did a good job balancing them.

Durzlla.6295:

Xsorus.2507:

To bad our Pets don’t work like Companions in SWTOR

I hated my companions… “Hey let me just tow cable that melee guy you’re kiting to us!”

I loved ’em, Khem Val was bad kitten.

Zenith.7301:

Sebrent.3625:

Time Warp was not too good. It was balanced around having to clump your group up under it and its long cooldown. Not to mention people can simply move out of range of your group while you are standing in that timewarp … sadly many were too stupid to do so so they died to 5 people with quickness.

Or, since in spvp people have to fight over a point, time warp is a 10 second “You can’t cap this point or risk getting gibbed”.

That’s what people don’t get in this game.

Scepter eles are not particularly good in wvw or pve, and necromancer wells are not that amazing in dungeons and wvw — but in spvp, these tools become juggernauts, because people can’t just walk out of a circle without consequence. Forcing someone to walk off that circle loses them the game.

Timewarp was way too OP in PvE, I think that was one of the main reasons for the nerf. Dungeon farmers never wanted anyone but warriors and mesmers for speedruns, it was getting pretty ridiculous in gw2lfg and arenanet understandably had to intervene. Ranger just happened to take the collateral damage.

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

jkctmc.8754:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This is why I kill shot people engaged with someone else, never anyone facing me. <winks>

Nerfed or not, I still hit regularly for over 20k, unless they’re insanely tanky, and it’s roughly 13k.

I love kill shot because its one of those moves you need to use skillfully or you’ll never land it, I think the damage it does is more than justified seeing as how it may be the easiest player skill to avoid in the game…

Barrage is way easier to avoid. You have to see killshot coming to avoid it, whereas barrage paints a bright red ring around you. That’s what makes it so hard to land in WvW, half the time your enemy doesn’t even know what’s being thrown at him but he sees a red ring and rolls out of it.

Um…. If everyone avoids my barrage I’m pretty kittening happy because it means I’ve just cleared out a pretty big area, if someone avoids a kill shot NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS. And barrage is hardly “easier to avoid” i guarantee that at least one shot will hit them and then they’ll blow a dodge roll to get out.

If you want to compare the ability of avoiding an AoE you should probably compare it to another AoE, like Meteor Shower, or Glyph of Storms, or Lava Font, not to a single target, reflectable, dodge able, LOSable, block able, and evade able shot.

You’re right, it isn’t really a fair comparison because AoE skills are generally indicated by the red ring, otherwise they’d be way too OP. I was just pointing out how easy it is to avoid the longbow’s theoretically high damage, which was the original premise of the thread.

EDIT: And you won’t hit them if they blow a dodge roll, you’ll only hit them if they decide to walk out of the ring and save the endurance.

No you’ll hit them because when the red ring appears they’ve already been hit by the first wave, a parting gift if you will…

And go to sPvP drop a super high damage barrage on a contested capture point, congrats! No one is going to want to leave that point and you’ve just done a TON of damage, and if they -do- leave the point you just helped your team cap it, it’s a win win.

I just sit on the point, using dagger 4 and sword 3. Then I usually laugh to myself at the ranger using LB against either of my builds (traps or BM) as I kill them while dodging all of their shots as they try to use LB as a primary weapon.

Of course that is my personal experience against rangers using longbow in spvp. When I get bored, I theorycraft longbow specs and run them and I definitely don’t feel as though I use it as poorly as the situation I described, but I feel like a lot of people in this thread do lol.

I think that to use a longbow in spvp you need to be in a team that can hold aggro for you while you harass a point from distance. I too find it ridiculous when I see rangers pug with a LB, it’s particularly silly when they try to attack me in a 1v1. They might as well be trying to TP my point

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

jkctmc.8754:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This is why I kill shot people engaged with someone else, never anyone facing me. <winks>

Nerfed or not, I still hit regularly for over 20k, unless they’re insanely tanky, and it’s roughly 13k.

I love kill shot because its one of those moves you need to use skillfully or you’ll never land it, I think the damage it does is more than justified seeing as how it may be the easiest player skill to avoid in the game…

Barrage is way easier to avoid. You have to see killshot coming to avoid it, whereas barrage paints a bright red ring around you. That’s what makes it so hard to land in WvW, half the time your enemy doesn’t even know what’s being thrown at him but he sees a red ring and rolls out of it.

Um…. If everyone avoids my barrage I’m pretty kittening happy because it means I’ve just cleared out a pretty big area, if someone avoids a kill shot NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS. And barrage is hardly “easier to avoid” i guarantee that at least one shot will hit them and then they’ll blow a dodge roll to get out.

If you want to compare the ability of avoiding an AoE you should probably compare it to another AoE, like Meteor Shower, or Glyph of Storms, or Lava Font, not to a single target, reflectable, dodge able, LOSable, block able, and evade able shot.

You’re right, it isn’t really a fair comparison because AoE skills are generally indicated by the red ring, otherwise they’d be way too OP. I was just pointing out how easy it is to avoid the longbow’s theoretically high damage, which was the original premise of the thread.

EDIT: And you won’t hit them if they blow a dodge roll, you’ll only hit them if they decide to walk out of the ring and save the endurance.

No you’ll hit them because when the red ring appears they’ve already been hit by the first wave, a parting gift if you will…

And go to sPvP drop a super high damage barrage on a contested capture point, congrats! No one is going to want to leave that point and you’ve just done a TON of damage, and if they -do- leave the point you just helped your team cap it, it’s a win win.

You’re right there, as long as it doesn’t get reflected at you you can’t go wrong with a barrage over a capture point. Personally I wouldn’t run longbow in sPvP though but that’s probably because I mainly pug, and with no group coordination I find I do better with other setups as I’m often left defending points on my own. What do you reckon, would you use the longbow in solo sPvP?

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

jkctmc.8754:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This is why I kill shot people engaged with someone else, never anyone facing me. <winks>

Nerfed or not, I still hit regularly for over 20k, unless they’re insanely tanky, and it’s roughly 13k.

I love kill shot because its one of those moves you need to use skillfully or you’ll never land it, I think the damage it does is more than justified seeing as how it may be the easiest player skill to avoid in the game…

Barrage is way easier to avoid. You have to see killshot coming to avoid it, whereas barrage paints a bright red ring around you. That’s what makes it so hard to land in WvW, half the time your enemy doesn’t even know what’s being thrown at him but he sees a red ring and rolls out of it.

Um…. If everyone avoids my barrage I’m pretty kittening happy because it means I’ve just cleared out a pretty big area, if someone avoids a kill shot NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS. And barrage is hardly “easier to avoid” i guarantee that at least one shot will hit them and then they’ll blow a dodge roll to get out.

If you want to compare the ability of avoiding an AoE you should probably compare it to another AoE, like Meteor Shower, or Glyph of Storms, or Lava Font, not to a single target, reflectable, dodge able, LOSable, block able, and evade able shot.

You’re right, it isn’t really a fair comparison because AoE skills are generally indicated by the red ring, otherwise they’d be way too OP. I was just pointing out how easy it is to avoid the longbow’s theoretically high damage, which was the original premise of the thread.

EDIT: And you won’t hit them if they blow a dodge roll, you’ll only hit them if they decide to walk out of the ring and save the endurance.

Sebrent.3625:

@naphack: if you’re focusing on “rotations”, you’re already limiting your capabilities. That is an arbitrary restriction on how you use your skills that doesn’t do you any favors and limits your ability to get better. It also makes you predictable which makes you much easier to kill.

@Daemon: your post doesn’t make sense. Quickness works the same for one ability that does 5k over 5 seconds as it does another ability that has to be used 10 times in 5 seconds but also does 5k. Just because Rapid Fire is a channeled skill doesn’t mean that quickness operates different on it.

We are well aware that there are berserker rangers that thought they had to blow it all up in the first 4 seconds or lose. What we’ve been saying is that that is a bad playstyle that is going to get you killed against anything that isn’t a baddie.

What’s somewhat amusing to me is the fact that Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, so before the change quickness only affected 4 of those 5 seconds. Now quickness affects all 5 seconds.

Ok let me try to explain this again, sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. The quickness nerf affected players who built around burst damage (eg. berserker rangers) far more than players who built around sustained damage, because obviously the more damage you pack into the duration of your QZ, Time Warp, Frenzy, etc. the more you benefit from quickness. In contrast, the more linear and consistent your damage is over time, the less you’ll benefit from quickness in terms of damage boost.

Of all the weapons in the ranger’s arsenal, nothing compares to longbow in terms of spike damage with the possible exception of the harpoon gun. The shortbow, for example, might outperform the longbow over 30 seconds, but over the duration of barrage the longbow will blow it and every other ranger weapon out of the water. The percentage decrease in damage from the nerf is the same between longbow and any other weapon over 5 seconds, but much higher over 30 seconds due to the different damage distribution over time (burst vs linear). Is that a little clearer now?

Also, I think you should reconsider the utility of a berserker build before stating that it’s a “bad play style”. What use is a bunker build underneath a keep? How much damage are pets doing in dungeons, against zergs, or when you’re standing on a wall? How useful is regen when you’re safely sitting on a hill at 1500 range, or trying to spike down bounties with your guildies? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that berserker is any better than other ranger builds but it’s a lot of fun, and can be useful in many situations in both PvE and WvW. In general I would be careful about labeling anything as a “bad play style” in this game as there are so many different combat scenarios.

TL;DR – Quickness has a much larger effect on longbow than other ranger weapons because its damage fluctuates more, with a big chunk of its DoT coming from Barrage. Because you cast quickness during the damage spike, the reduction to 150% attack speed damages the longbow more than weapons that deal more consistent DPS.

jkctmc.8754:

In all honesty all new players should run Faux build. He designed an awesome healing/tankish/beastmaster build.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Faux-s-RRR-Build-Detailed/first

Why would any new player want a tank / healing build?? You have tens of thousands of mobs to slay from lvl 1 to lvl 79 and hardly any of them pose a threat to you, it would be silly to run anything other than a build that kills as many mobs as possible, as quickly as possible. You can always respec once you’re big enough for dungeons or wvw, or if you just get bored and want to try something new. If I was rolling a new ranger, the only debate in my mind would be whether to go Berserker or Rampager.

Durzlla.6295:

jkctmc.8754:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This is why I kill shot people engaged with someone else, never anyone facing me. <winks>

Nerfed or not, I still hit regularly for over 20k, unless they’re insanely tanky, and it’s roughly 13k.

I love kill shot because its one of those moves you need to use skillfully or you’ll never land it, I think the damage it does is more than justified seeing as how it may be the easiest player skill to avoid in the game…

Barrage is way easier to avoid. You have to see killshot coming to avoid it, whereas barrage paints a bright red ring around you. That’s what makes it so hard to land in WvW, half the time your enemy doesn’t even know what’s being thrown at him but he sees a red ring and rolls out of it.

Naro, there are two types of pvp in this game, world vs world and spvp. A power crit ranger can do well in WvW but not so much in sPvP, the combat mechanics are totally different.

You’ll do just fine as a glass cannon as you level in PvE, and will kill most mobs quickly and painlessly. Also, remember that you can reset your traits at any time for a couple of silver (the cost of a waypoint at higher levels), so you’re by no means locked into your choices. Get piercing arrows as soon as you can, you’ll start killing mobs much faster.

Do you really need 30 in WS for pve and dungeons though? Wouldn’t you rather have the extra damage from traps, since I’m guessing you have around 1k cond damage?

Chopps.5047:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Dojo.1867:

Chopps.5047:

This is about to get a lot better if you can actually get the moa to successfuly daze post patch.

Doesn’t work for Moment of Clarity and also wont be influenced by + daze duration. You thought there would be synergies? Hah!

What Dojo said.

Ok, someone is running CC for their wvw team—running a daze build—but, apparently, dazing with Moa is a bad idea. Got it. Anything else I should take notes on?

All he’s saying is that the Moa daze won’t be affected by the duration increase from MoC, no need to get all prickly about it. Pet conditions are never affected by the ranger’s condition modifiers, unless they’re boons and you have Fortifying bond.

Minions are awful, coming from ranger pets. Conditionmancer on the other hand is awesome, I suggest you try it. Epidemic does insane AoE damage and you can melt down anything that throws conditions at you with all that condition transfer. Necro is tons of fun.

Khenzy.9348:

Pimp that cat pet with beastmastery traits and it will do enough damage to never worry about what weapon you are carrying in your hands.

I’d recomend either Sword/Horn or Greatsword, just for faster traveling.

GS5 boosts your pet attack damage even if you cast it into thin air, so it makes a big difference to beastmasters.

Oberon, I agree with you that in theory the longbow does good (not great, 10k chained is not great) damage, but the problem is that even the lowliest noobs can easily evade rapid fire and barrage. Other classes do superior direct damage that is much harder to avoid. Most of the complaints you’ll see about longbow are relative to its -actual- damage, due to obstructs / strafing / evades, not its -potential- damage. That’s the whole root of the problem.

I’d rather have a saved name per slot frankly, regardless of the actual pet. The current systm totally ruins immersion.

Retaliation was always too strong IMO, there’s just no way of avoiding it in large WvW battles. It’s not like you can pick out each guy’s buffs in a 30 man zerg, you just accept the fact that some of your AoE damage wil get thrown back at you. My issue is more with zerg mechanics than retaliation itself though, wish they’d work on that instead.

Anyway, chalk up another major change to gameplay mechanics 6 months past launch. At least this time it isn’t nerfing rangers (except poor Xsorus!)

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Sebrent.3625:

Yeah, his math was quite wrong.

Let’s assume you do 100 damage per second.
With +100% attack speed, you’ll do 200 damage per second.
So, for 4 seconds of old_quickness, you’ll do 200 * 4 = 800 damage.
We need a 5th second though, so you’ll do another 100 damage at the 5th second so 800 + 100 = 900 damage.

With +50% attack speed, you’ll do 150 damage per second.
So, for 5 seconds of new_quickness, you’ll do 150 * 5 = 750 damage

(900 – 750) / 900 = 16.6…% So you experience a 16.6…% decrease in dps. This is vastly different than the math given before. This is why some people are complaining like it’s the end of the world for Rangers’ burst and others are looking at them quite quizzically.

“Learn to math” or don’t try to explain things with math, people

Pretty much this. If Serbent didn’t satisfy you with a random number, we could use variables to show the exact same effect. The general equation would be:

(2x*4 + x – 1.5x*5)/(2x*4 + x) = fractional reduction in dps (where x is your expected damage). Then,

(2x*4 + x – 1.5x*5)/(2x*4 + x) = (9x – 7.5x)/(9x) = (1.5x)/(9x) = 1/6 = 16.66% reduction in dps

So regardless of what your expected damage is, the reduction of dps is a constant ratio.

The problem with berserker rangers is that they want to hit hard and be done with it, but this profession is built on sustained damage. Yes, ANet advertised it as a game where you can play whatever you want with whatever profession, but that is not the case. Berserker rangers were already subpar, and now they are only slightly more subpar. It’s not a huge difference from before.

It is a very huge difference. Berserker rangers have been explaining this on the forum since the nerf, but other rangers just don’t seem to want to understand. You can’t calculate the effects of the quickness nerf across the board for berserkers like you can for other builds, because it dramatically affected the damage output from two high damage, slow casting skills (Rapid Fire and Barrage) that berserkers rely on for spiking opponents down. No other weapon was affected this way. Sword, SB, Axe, and GS took a slight damage reduction to their standard attack chain, but longbow had its burst potential nerfed into the ground. Under no circumstances do you ever cast barrage without quickness, so essentially our primary source of spike and AoE damage took a full 25% damage cut from the quickness nerf. Every time you cast it you’re doing 150% damage now instead of 200%.

Paz Shadow.9715:

Since the quickness nerf, what all have you done? New build? Re-roll? Waiting for the next update?

-I have spent a lot of gold on the ranger class and enjoy the aspect of being a ranged class and the lore that comes with being a ranger, I am just not sure if I want to salvage all my armor and switch builds completely or wait for the update or do something else entirely.

Thanks for any comments all

I used to run a LB/GS power-ranger, full zerk. After the nerf I dropped wilderness knowledge (more uptime for QZ) for moment of clarity (more damage from GS), and tried to rework my zerker build around the greatsword. I did see higher GS damage than before the patch and did alright in PvE, but a glass cannon can’t melee in PvP and the longbow is just broken now, so after a couple of days I gave up and switched to a shortbow trapper.

If you want to change builds don’t salvage your armor, Anet wants each class to have multiple builds to choose from so berserker might become a valid option again in the future. I cashed in the karma I was saving for Kudzu to buy a full set of rabid temple armor, but I still run with berserker ascended gear for now.

But most 8-bit console games didn’t

I was in the same situation Lyndis, I had to drop longbow because it just doesn’t do the damage. After the quickness nerf I took most of the karma I was saving for Kudzu and used it to buy a full set of rabid temple armor for a SB trapper build. I keep seeing devs post that the longbow is a strong weapon, I don’t think they understand that you land around half the damage in PvP that you do in PvE, so I have no hopes for the weapon in the near future. Too bad about Kudzu, would have looked awesome on my sylvari ranger!

If you want to go berserker bows, typical set-up is a 30/30/5/0/5 with full bersker gear, LB+GS or SB (I’d suggest GS out in the open though), Piercing Arrows + Eagle Eye (siege) or SoB (field, for SoS and SoW), Quick Draw and Moment of Clarity. Traited SoW, SoS, QZ, and your choice of Entangle or RAO. You can trade SoW for Lightning Reflexes if you prefer, but remember QZ breaks stun now, although it also negates healing.

This build works really well against zergs if you like longbow, lets you do nice damage from the back line and it’s easy to get away with GS Swoop + stability from either RAO or SoW active. Throw up your block (GS4) after swoop, you usually won’t even need to pop SoS.

EDIT: Note that LB took a big hit from the quickness nerf, out in the open and depending on the size of the battle you’ll likely do better with SB. Consider using LB on/against walls and SB on the ground.

garethh.3518:

jcbroe.4329:

Personally, I think against evenly skilled players, the necro has the “easier” time in the fight, which is largely influenced by the health pool, the condition removal heal, and the condition transfer options.

Death shroud is almost more of a weakness than strength for most necro specs against at very least, my ranger.
I can stack up conditions against the guy to hell and back while they are in it, forcing them to have to either land a putrid mark or heal skill or die… nothing a well timed interrupt or dodge roll can’t deal with.

The main thing is just know the empathetic bond timer and to instant death shroud fear the heal skill if the guy is weak.
Empathetic bond removes 3 conditions every 10s, so if you stack up your kitten at the 9s mark it just goes poof, but if you do right after the tick, unless they are running one signet, they pretty much have to eat the conditions.

Necros have so much condition damage and manipulation that EB is hardly a problem, not to mention that you have to have 30 points in Wilderness Survival and sacrifice Barkskin to even have that trait. My main is ranger and secondary is necro, and I guarantee my necro would eat my ranger for breakfast if I pitted them against each other. In fact it’s the easiest match-up for me in sPvP as so many rangers run trap builds, I reflect all their condition damage and they can’t wipe it.

How successful? I’ll still play longbow with my trap build against zergs, but I’ll be honest with you, I do it for the tags. You can make longbow do some decent burning damage with a condition build, but I’m nowhere near as effective with it as I was with my glass cannon prior to the quickness nerf.

jpnova.4572:

Most people who criticize rangers to such an extent are those who- can not play the class well, have not been able to design a good enough build, haven’t taken time to actually learn the class and it’s mechanics.

I totally disagree with this. I think many rangers (myself included) complain about the class mainly because it doesn’t live up to the expectations that Anet generated in the original class description (“unparalleled archers”, “powerful spirits”, etc.). This notion was pointed out in another thread not long ago, and I think it’s spot on. Trap rangers are fantastic at 1vX, but much as I enjoy that build, I don’t like feeling boxed into a set role because multiple aspects of our class mechanic aren’t functioning as intended. My trap build works wonders in sPvP and WvW roaming, but I just can’t do the ranged damage that I and many others rolled a ranger for based on Anet’s description of the class.

Draehl.2681:

Not calling nerf here, but I would like to know what the weakness of this build is. I play a tanky necromancer with exotic/ascended soldier gear, wells, lifesteal, etc. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to deal with these guys in WvW.

-I can’t kill them because of Troll Unguent. No surprise as I don’t do a whole lot of damage and with natural vigor they can dodge most of my gap closers. Staff does laughable damage so staying at range is just as much a joke. The lowest I can get them is 50%, if that, then their health skyrockets back up.
-I can’t tank them because they stay at range, outside of wells and lifesteal range.
-I can’t run from them because they just swap to Warhorn to match my swiftness and/or concussion shot stuns/crossfire just bleeds me out.

Is there any exploitable weakness here for me to attempt?

Thanks!

You’re a necro, you should have no problem with trap rangers. Run through his traps, collect the conditions, and throw them back in his face with one of your many, many condition transfers (eg. staff 4, dagger 4, plague signet, etc.). Rangers do strong condition damage but unlike necros, they have horrible condition removal, so if you can transfer the trap damage back at them they’ll just melt. I run a trap ranger in sPvP and I promise you necros are bad news for me.