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Now that the shortbow has lost its range advantage, are we going to see the flanking requirement removed from the auto attack bleed?
Yeah poison and torment would be fine. You can remove blind from doing an auto-attack anyway.
snip
Sir, I guess you missed ‘Structured PvP’ part on the top of the page.
<- PvE forums are this way
WvW forums are that way ->
You’re completely misisng the point. None of the patch changes only affected the Rangers in sPvP. None of the Ranger nerfs were split between game modes. They’re affecting the whole game but they are only looking at sPVP, because here is the only place they’re involved with the community and interested in what they’re saying.
I posted it as a warning to them. It can’t stay this way. People are kitten ed off and rightly so. The Rangers have been annoyed since release, but I’ve never seen them this undivided in their anger at ANet.
Now that pet damage has been lowered across the board, will they bring up the ranger’s skill power scaling to be on par with other classes? Maybe then Rangers can use something other than a trap or bunker build.
PRE-PATCH
dungeons/fractals
Tier S
= Guardian
Tier A
+ Warrior
+ Mesmer
= Elementalist
Tier B
= Necromancer
= Engineer
- Thief
- Ranger
WvW
Tier S
= Guardian
= Thief
= Mesmer
= Elementalist
Tier A
= Warrior
Tier B
= Necromancer
= Engineer
= Ranger
Shame on you ANet. Shame on your for only looking at sPvP. You don’t even deserve this post I’m making to you as a warning for how bad you’re handling your game.
The ANet bug fix/skill/trait/signet/rune/sigil/balance team is the worst I’ve ever experienced in any game ever. The game is still riddled with bugs and even after a big trait update, there are still plenty of useless traits and bugs. Even new traits are bugged and not working at all, like Evasive Purity.
The worst part is that they are putting shame on the other hard working people at ANet, like those doing the design and sounds. Have some respect for them and fix these aweful bugs and horrible skills and traits and sigils and runes.
It’s been a year and the game is still one of the most buggy I’ve ever seen. In respect to traits/skills/sigils/runes especially. They can’t even fix all the tooltips. Half of them are telling lies. And if they DO fix a tooltip, they add it to the update list as a whole bullet point like it’s some kind of major achievement.
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You guys need to report this bug too.
Go to the bug forum thread and add a reply. Test it out for yourself if you have to. Also write a report in-game using /bug to bring up the bug report.
I can confirm this bug. It needs a hot fix. Don’t wait for next month
ok igor settle down, don’t be jumping to conclusions and don’t overreact.
Rangers, compared to other classes, don’t benefit much from Power, because Ranger skills are less affected by it. It’s said to be that way because Rangers have a pet. However, a pet doesn’t benefit from the ranger’s power stat. A pet has its own stats gained through the beastmaster trait line.
So, power is kind of useless to a ranger, compared to other classes. Precision and Power and crit damage go hand in hand, so they are kind of bad to pick for a Ranger. It’s possible, but you won’t do as much damage as other classes with the same amount. So the best way to squeeze damage out of the longbow is to go all out berserker and completely ignore your own survivibility apart from some utility skills. Even with this build the longbow isn’t that great, apart from its superior range and you die extremely quickly.
What’s left for the Ranger to pick, for personal offensive gain, is condition damage. Rangers do good condition damage with traps, so that’s a good build that’s been used since release. Rangers benefit as much from condition damage as any other class. (on a side note: Ranger trap traits are in the prescion trait line but benefit nothing from precision)
As for defensive stats, the ranger benefits from those as much as any other class. I’m talking about Toughness, Vitality and Healing power. These are all survivibility stats. Healing power only affects the heals used on you, so not the heals you use on others.
So a ranger can choose between condition damage, toughness, vitality, healing power and be on level ground with other classes.
The only way to make the pet deal more damage and have more health is by going into the beastmaster tree. This tree increases the pet stats based on how many trait points you put into it. This tree also increases the ranger’s healing power. Ranger have some nice healing skills with Signet of the Wild and Healing Spring, so that seems like a good way to go.
Then we have another trait line which has toughness and condition damage and some great defensive traits. So, that looks right up our alley. The Vitality line didn’t have any good traits so people steered clear of those. That changed in this latest patch though.
So, an almost obvious build would be to buff the pet stats as much as possible while keeping yourself alive as much as possible through toughness, healing power (and vitality). This was the 2nd viable all-round build for ranger next to the trap build.
That’s basically it. We had 2 good all-round builds: Traps or bunker+pet. Yes the bunker+pet might have been a bit strong compared to other bunker build classes, since rangers could be both very survivible and have a pet that can do the damage. The ranger could also cover both the power/crit type damage through the pet and the condition damage through his own weapons and stats. But it wasn’t like ANet left us with much choice. If a ranger can’t personally benefit as much from power/precision as other classes, then all that is left for us is condition damage, survivibility and pet damage.
Now pets have been nerfed by up to 50%, which is a nerf to the bunker build. Not everyone liked the trap build style, but there isn’t much left. Of course there is a slight over-reaction, because bunker BM is still possible, but it’s not as good as it used to be.
It’s like whenever the rangers have a viable build, ANet takes it away and even nerfs things that make no sense. Like bringing the shortbow down from 1200 to 900 range, which is the same range as throwing an axe. It’s been 1200 for a year now. No wonder we’re all kitten ed off at ANet. If not for the pet nerfs, then for the shortbow nerf.
I wanted to be a ranged expert. The wvw videos I’m watching with Ranger many people use a Lb/gs. What nerfed the Ranger so badly that Longbow is no longer a viable option? Looking through the forums there’s no way a game company could obliviously make one class so bad people are jumping ship on it like this. Surely there’s something the Ranger does well at 80?
You can still be a ranged expert. More than a warrior even. We have more range than the warrior with our longbow.
Because of this topic I put on my full berserker gear again with longbow and greatsword and headed into WvW. 30/20/20 traits. It was pretty fun. I always kept close to the friendly zerg and it really made me feel useful. I had some pretty nice damage numbers at superior range. I had to stay at range though or I’d die very fast.
I used to be full berserker even into high level fractals, but I wouldn’t do it anymore. I would now take my full regen build only. If you get Cleric gear you can still use the longbow and greatsword too, because they’re both power-based weapons. Maybe you can even sneak a longbow trait into the bunker build and still be good. Very survivible.
Open world PvE shouldn’t be an issue no matter what build you use. So have fun leveling up to level 80.
In summary, to be ranged expert:
- for WvW, pick full berserker gear with at least 30/20/x/x/x traits to pick up all longbow traits (Eagle eye, Piercing Arrows and Quick Draw). Stay at range.
- for dungeons/fractals/PvP(?), pick Cleric gear if you want to use the Longbow. Can pick up Apothecary or Settlers (is the same as Shaman gear in PvP) gear if you rather deal condition damage (not with longbow). Use Signet of the Wild and Healing Spring and if you can, get Dwayna Runes or instead get Nature’s Voice trait with the “Guard” utility skill. This makes you have a lot of survivibility.
That’s about it. You CAN have fun in all game modes.
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When I tested it, it seemed like any in-combat dodge triggered the cooldown, whether you had the conditions on you or not. Even if it did work properly, though, it’d still be a terrible trait.
I already tested this by not dodging at all until I got hit with poison or blind. It didn’t remove anything.
Don’t bother picking up the trait for now. It does absolutely nothing.
I made an official bug report here:
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/bugs/Evasive-Purity-trait-broken/first#post2294365
Feel free to test and confirm the bug in the topic and report it by using /bug in-game.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s still working like the old Spirit Knowledge trait, but I can’t be bothered to check.
The Evasive Purity trait (VIII) in the Nature Magic line for Rangers doesn’t work. It’s supposed to remove blind and poison on dodge, but it does neither.
I’m quite happy playing Ranger. ANet doesn’t want anyone to play Ranger though. They’ve been working hard to achieve that since the beta weekends. Don’t expect anything good from them.
There are a few strengths the ranger still has though (in no particular order):
- 1500 range weapon which can pierce. It’s nice for WvW, if you’re not caught on your own. Unfortunately this “build” requires 50 trait points in the power/precision trait lines to pick up all the longbow traits.
- Signet of the Wild. This is a passive regeneration signet that stacks with the regeneration boon. Pair it with toughness and healing power though your armor choices. Also find a source for getting the regeneration boon to stack with it.
- Healing Spring. This is possibly the best healing skill in the game. It heals, it gives regeneration (stacks with signet of the wild) and it cures conditions to both you and allies. It’s also a water combo field, so can provide extra healing with the right combo finisher.
- Evade. Rangers can have a lot of evades. 50% endurance regen trait, sword 2, sword 3, dagger 4, shortbow 3, and traits to get vigor.
- Pets. Not very good at hiting targets outside of pve. Not good at surviving in dungeons or fractals. But a good distraction and a nice source for some utility.
So if you go for the high toughness + regeneration builds you should do alright and have some fun.
Be careful with spending money and time on a build like this. I worry they might add an internal cooldown to the grandmaster trait or increase the cooldown on “Guard”. But if you can afford it, then why not.
Post suggestions in the suggestions forum or noone will ever get to see them.
The name Chopps raises red flags.
Everyone can get to high level fractals with full berserker gear. I did it too, but I wouldn’t recommend it. At least not with random people. A bunker build would have been a much more relaxed experience.
This build works quite well.
edit: this post makes no sense now that the topics are merged
(edited by Holland.9351)
I think the “360 degree radius” gives away that the notes aren’t real.
I find it hard to believe that a professional develeoper or community liaison would use such a redundent phrase.
However, random schmuck on the internet, absolutely!
You think far too highly of ANet. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
Can someone explain to me why BM builds are suddenly crap? I couldnt find something in the patch notes that said: now its unplayable
But I might have overlooked something.
I currently have 20 points in BM just to boost my pet a bit (since I have a build that gives all my boons to my pet, I dont want it to be completely cannon fodder). Still playable?
For one Zephyr’s Quickness will be moved from 5 points BM to 25 points BM! I’ve been using 15BM for a while but now I’m not sure if it’s gonna be 25BM or 0BM after the patch… mmm.
No it’s moving from 5 BM to 30 BM. It’s switching with a Grandmaster trait. So you have to choose between Natural Healing and Zephyr’s Quickness.
By the way, this is the 2nd Ranger trait that moved from Adept to Grandmaster in a patch. The first was Signet of the Beastmaster which allows signet’s active effect to affect the ranger.
Yeah I don’t PvP. I only do WvW and PvE. It’s funny though how with off-hand training you can throw a torch further than you can shoot a shortbow. I think they have their ranges all wrong in this setup. Maybe if they had let Eagle Eye change the shortbow range from 900 to 1200 it would have been alright. But it’s still an out-of-the-blue nerf either way. It’s an Indefensible change in my book. Chopps and Durzlla surprise me.
Durzlla is in denial. You can’t blame him, it’s probably a natural defense mechanism to prevent a nervous breakdown.
But honestly, some changes are really nice. I might like the leash change, because the pet tends to be out of my range from time to time and he walks too far to find his way around cliffs. Also some of our skills need the pet to be close-by or they won’t work (like Signet of Renewal). I also like all changes in the nature magic line. I’ll probably pick up Evasive Purity and the grandmaster trait might replace Signet of the Hunt and Runes of Dwayna. I don’t really care for any of the other traits, but some are nice.
The shortbow change I still hate. The reason I picked shortbow over axe was for its range. I don’t think there was any reason for this range change. They should have simply made the longbow 1500 range by default.
I also don’t like the pet damage nerfs. Mostly because they’re too big. They always used the excuse for their small balance patches that they didn’t want to play whack-a-mole and instead adjust things slowly. Sounds like it was just another lie. 50% is too far from a small change.
I have a plan for a build that noone seemed to have mentioned yet, but I’m going to wait for the official update first.
hahahaha. ha. ha. I thought so. It’s all true. What more can I say? Worst patch yet coming up.
I’m quite surprised Durzlla considers the leaked changes fake because some of the changes make no sense. It’s ANet. How are your expectations still this high? My expectations are as low as they can be and they’re living right up to it, as usual.
The list may be dated or incomplete, but it definitely has ANet written all over it. They announce with trumpets of upcomming changes in all trait lines and deliver it by nerfing builds that were used and by skipping a few trait lines.
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Stop telling us what to do and what not to do. Mind your own business. Everyone is going to have to deal with these changes. Period. Half of them are still ridiculous and uncalled for or over the top.
dude, you don’t even know that these notes are complete. Notice how there are a few trait lines left out completely and they said as recently as 2 days ago that every line was seeing changes. Maybe these are leaked from an earlier build? Maybe they are really good fakes. Maybe they are incomplete. You are crying the sky is falling and devoting all this negativity to something that isn’t even certain. Seriously, you shouldn’t go around making negative assumptions/judging things before they happen. It’s a waste of time and nobody wants to listen to other people compain. This forum is very childish
Tell us something we don’t know. We’re voicing our opinions of the “leaked” changes which may or may not be true or only partially true. There is no use for you telling anyone to stop complaining about it or to wait or to not voice their opinion about it. No use what so ever.
Stop telling us what to do and what not to do. Mind your own business. Everyone is going to have to deal with these changes. Period. Half of them are still ridiculous and uncalled for or over the top.
I’ve lost what little hope and faith I had in ANet. Now there is nothing left.
Longbow buffs look great and spirit changes look promising. Spider pet’s small damage increase looks nice and Evasive Purity becoming a Master trait is interesting too. Those changes could give one hope. But then:
Most pet damage nerfed by up to 50% (no small adjustment at all) and shortbow range changed to 900 on all skills. That makes me lose all hope and faith in ANet.
“Unparalleled archers”. Yeah right. “The Ranger is our ranged class”. Yeah right. Nearly every class has 1200 range. The mesmer Greatsword doesn’t even count as a projectile, thus making it impossible to block of reflect.The longbow should have become 1500 range by default (so it also doesn’t need 50 trait points to grab its traits – including a master trait in a grandmaster slot (eagle eye and piercing arrows)) and shortbow should have stayed at 1200. Then yes, unparalleled archers. Now it’s just rubbish.
Ranger power builds are rubbish because of pet and now pets are rubbish too.
1 step forward, 3 steps back.
I fully expect these leaked changes to be true, although it’s probably a bit dated, so there might be some small differences.
I do have some ideas for a new build, which is kind of nice, but the nerfs were over the top. 20% damage decrease, understandable, but 50%, no. And kicking the shortbow down to the range of the axe, no. Absolutely ridiculous.
Waiting 8 months for longbow, spirit and trait changes and we get it served with this nonsense.
The entangle elite is still there. I hope you don’t mean the Sylvari racial skill that used to work the same, but targetable at 1200 range. Now it’s single target and if the target is out of range it goes on cooldown.
I hope for some undocumented changes, like:
- the family restriction removed from the master pet traits,
- the flanking restriction removed from the shortbow,
- the out-of-range pet restriction removed from the Signet of Renewal,
- the living pet restriction removed from the Signet of Renewal.
- the out-of-range pet restriction removed from Protect Me,
- Search & Rescue not going on cooldown when it’s not used,
- Search & Rescue causing the pet to instantly blink to the target,
- Pets gaining an evade on ranger dodge.
- Pets becoming immune to AoE damage in dungeons and fractals.
- Melee pets being able to attack the Elemental boss in the snow fractal.
I don’t have a good feeling about this at all.
It sounds like elementalist, thief and mesmer got major buffs.
One thing we know for certain: Axe 3 just got even better.
I’m not sure, it also says they adjusted the duration of weakness skills. They might have made it 3 seconds.
O well let’s wait and see, but I’m excepting the worst update to date. You can’t have a low enough expectation in this game. I’m still really curious about the Ranger changes of course.
I just wanted to report this, but I’m glad it already happened.
I ran into someone with the mango pie buff, which made him impossible to kill. So I went out of the game and ate some myself and went back inside and then I was invincible too. It’s really that simple to do.
It ruins the game so get it hot fixed now. I can’t even play anymore until my food buff runs out.
Nice bug fixes to Eagle Eye trait. It’s interesting how many bugs this trait had on its own. It caused Point Blank Shot to have a longer cast time as well (they fixed it not too long ago).
That skills and pets are good without traits.
Spirits are bad, until you trait them, then they’re just kinda bad (costs 30 trait points).
Longbow is bad, until you get the 1500 range and piercing arrows and 20% cooldown reduction (costs 50 trait points).
Pets are bad and die easily to AoE and boss battles, until you trait into beastmastery. (costs 30 trait points)
Active effects of some signets are bad, until you trait for them (costs 30 trait points)
We have a lot of bad skills and pets, but to make them useful requires a heavy investment in traits. Shouts are bad with or without traits.
It’s an exceptional trait for forest spider and cave spider though. Too bad the awesomeness of it is reduced to nothing because of the poison aoe attack.
+1 i dont have this problem as i don’t wear a skirt but im a Sylvari so you got my support ;D
That’s the problem, they’re just regular male medium armor, but they look like that on Sylvari.
The skirts on sylvari male armor are far too wide. This looks like a bug, but it’s ugly either way and has been bothing me all this time.
See this topic in the sylvari forum, it’ll explain everything (screenshots included):
http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/races/sylvari/Sylvari-skirts-bugged-need-fix-bad/first#post2046824
This has been bothering me on my Sylvari for a long time. I just thought it was ugly. I didn’t know it looked this much different on other races.
If you want attention, this propably isn’t the right forum for it. Try the suggestions forum. In fact, I’ll post a link to this topic there soon and update this post with a link.
edit: link to the topic on the suggestion forum: http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/suggestions/Please-fix-Sylvari-male-skirts/first#post2058048
(edited by Holland.9351)
They should change “Signet of the Beastmaster” back to an Adapt trait again, like it was before they changed it to a Grandmaster trait. I could use the active effect of Signet of Stone, but I’m not going to put 30 trait points into it. I might consider 10 points though.
But to be honest, Signets should simply affect the ranger by default. Shouts already only effect the pet, why Signets too? I think it’s a really really bad decision on Anet’s part. Too many of our utility skills don’t affect the ranger.
Here I am writing another hopeful message, but I know I’m wasting my time.
It shouldn’t work while in the vicinity of a WvW tower, camp, etc. So if you can see the supply of the tower in your HUD, you can’t camouflage.
Camouflage should be infinite while standing still and while not being damaged.
It should go on cooldown after camouflage breaks.
It should probably be a passive trait, possibly grandmaster. It would go well with trap traits. For example: Marksmanship Remorseless becomes default behaviour and is replaced with Camouflage grandmaster trait. Or maybe replace Skirmishing Moment of Clarity, so you have to choose between Camouflage or double duration on traps.
Reminds me of Rytlock in the Black Citadel Stockades after he finished talking with Rox. He called my character something like “citizen” or “random person who got in my way and who I never heard of or seen before”. Even after all we went through in the personal story and we took down Zhaitan together (and dungeon stories).
It certainly left me unimpressed, although I think the real problem is that the player is a hero (to the whole known world) through the personal story. There is no way that everyone should be constantly treating your character as a known hero in the open world.
Still, it would be nice if Rytlock said something more interesting depending on which point of your personal story you are. Although technically, Zhaitan is still alive in to the open world, eventhough he is dead through the personal story. There are some major inconsistencies because of this split.
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the OP may be right.. when you ascend the karka shell, the main stat becomes healing while toughness and condition damage are the secondaries.
I did not know this, thanks for sharing. This seems to be proof that my assumption is correct.
The new back items which you can get through the achievements have the wrong main stat (Sclerite Karka Shell and Fervid Censer). They should have healing power as main stat, not toughness.
This assuming they’re supposed to be the first Apothecary back items.
A mini-pet equipment slot makes perfect sense.
I don’t think it’s needed for a mini-pet to do something extra.
tath, as a work-around, you can prevent a pet from being thrown into your collections by putting the pet in an invisible bag.
It’s the re-activating that prevents me from wanting any mini-pets.
I was looking into getting a full set of Apothecary gear with Passiflora jewelry (both healing power + toughness + condition damage). But the jewelry sells for nearly 50 gold per slot and the passion flower ingredient is over 60 silver each.
That’s far too expensive.
Good patch. It’s looking good on paper anyway.
I’m especially happy about the pet stat boosts as well as the cooldown reductions on some signets and shouts. Point blank shot bug luckily also got fixed too.
I’m not sure about the Search & Rescue nerfs though. I don’t think I’ll ever be using that again. Search & Rescue is too slow and prone to failure to be using it in time on downed allies in boss encounters. I feel that part nerf should have only applied to spvp as well.
I think you’re right, but it has all been said before ever since the beta weekends. It’s time to give up guys.
To quote myself from a certain 5 month old topic :
This is indeed great news.
But I’m still skeptical. I still remember spirits’ health being halved on a whim (instead of removing the double health trait – thus now requiring a trait to get the same amount of health as the previous untraited version) and spirits receiving an internal cooldown on top of it. Back then I already didn’t care to use spirits because of having to manually recast them every minute and requiring a 30 point trait to make them mobile. I also remember the long wait for our shouts, only to have the old ones return.
So no, I’m going to have to wait and see. Words mean very little right now and these problems were created by their own accord a long time ago and didn’t receive any attention since.
I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I’m going to have to be.