I’ve played several pvp matches with a melee ranger since patch-release, and I haven’t had a single problem with longbow rangers. They’re weak up front (obviously) and are usualy heavily invested to reach the longbow’s max potensial (something I’m not even sure that people realize).
A couple of tweaks and they went from being a laughing-stock to be op? Give me a break. Stop complaining and let the glass rangers have some fun until it wears off.
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/signed
The PvE ranger would be in a good spot with the old Frost Spirit back. Its personal single target dps post-patch is pretty good when adding Barrage and Rapid Fire from longbow into the equation before swapping to sword+axe. In that regard, the ranger has been given a pretty huge buff to its personal dps at the cost of the frost spirit. A bad trade off overall, but at least a “low personal dps” isn’t a problem anymore.
Wether the frost spirit gets fixed back to its former self or not, it needs some sort of change from what it is now. It’s just really bad at the moment. My guess would be that they revisit the spirit(s) in their next balance patch… Wouldn’t surprise me if they cut back on some of the buffs the ranger got in the meantime…
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Support tickets from players, and active threads about the topic in several forums. And no response.
Would it be possible to get a response on this issue?
I have seen more “NO RANGER” lfg postings than ever before.
I’ve reported the bug through all the channels and gotten no substantial response.
Even a “We read this, yo” would be nice to have.
This. Times 100.
well then if it was a unoffical i wouldn’t even bother doing the math …such a waste of time Just report it as not working as intended and leave it at that.
What are you talking about? The fix was discovered after someone randomly did the math.
They did a fix to match a tooltip that most likely wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Anyways… What’s important is to make Anet aware of what they have done.
Actually no one did the math to uncover this, I was just confused that there was an ICD (I rarely play ranger and just wanted to use it for CoE) and then tested Whirling Defense in Heart of the Mists, other peeps followed to do so and then someone did the math on how “useful” the new FS is, i.e. less useful than a stack vuln.
The first post about it I ever saw was presented with maths. Well. Whatever. Doesn’t change much.
You didn’t know the tooltip always had the inc?
Only use it in a few places TBH. No big loss. Put on flame trap or quickening zephyr for the time being.
I’m not gonna jump the bandwagon and say it’s a “legit drama”, but the skill doesn’t work as intended. That alone is a good enough reason to make Anet aware. Wether you think losing a 7 % damage buff is a loss or not doesn’t matter.
I’m pretty sure warriors wouldn’t be all like “whatever” if the same thing happened to their banners.
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Bump, bump, bump.
It was never the case that running a ranger was worth it over running another guardian or warrior anyways, or the even superior thief and conjure ele.
You must be talking specifically about fractals, because there are no dungeons where bringing a second guardian is worth more than having the FrostSpotter. You will never see speedrunners bring a second guardian for a dungeon because it was “the better option”. And for some dungeons, the guardian’s utility is redudant, and you’re better off not bringing one at all.
The difference between a second warrior and a ranger are in most cases so minimal that you won’t even notice it, so that’s neither here or there.
However, the ranger rarely had a place in an “optimized” group for any content.
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Stopped running it now.
Just got done with my Ranger ascended. Now time to start on my Guardian because I don’t think the upcoming feature patch changes are going to make it worth bringing the Ranger over the guardian to dungeons or high level fractals especially with the FS nerf… GG, Anet.
Even with FS Ranger spot in the meta was hardly vital. It was just easier to bring another guardian or ele or any class really that isn’t a necro or engineer.
Well. Not being “vital” can be said about most classes in most PvE instances, unless you wanna base everything around higher level fractals.
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Also your sword AA deals more damage than the offhand axe can offer in any way.
Axe #4 is a DPS increase when using sword AA.
Really disappointing to see this change.
It is apparent the balancing crew have no concept of recognising one key aspect in their balancing
Shoudln’t really call it balancing… They, intentionally or not, made a skill go from being meta til complete garbage in any game mode. They have stated before that balancing are supposed to be more like a shave than being an amputation..
And of course it hurts one of the classes that needed it the most.
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I wonder if we will get any sort of information from Anet as to why this change happened
They have been silent about this ever since people started mentioning it, so I guess not.
Better spam them with tickets until they at least bother to give a response.
Note that he’s currently playing the new patch so I have to assume if this was fixed in that patch he would have mentioned it.
I doubt he tested it, or even played a ranger for that matter.
They fact that anet has not said a word in response about this despite multiple threads on these forums and reddit leads me to believe they just have no idea how their own game is played and completely messed up. A change like this is not made by a single person on off-hours.
Unless they actually read their forum and fix this in the upcomming patch, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they just let it slip and don’t do anything about it before revisiting the spirits in their next balancing patch. So much for the excitement I had about the ranger buffs.
Has anybody tested this besides to OP or are we just taking his word.
Seems crazy this would happen as a dev in the past even mentioned there is suppose to be no ICD on FS
Several people have tested it and posted the maths w/ screenshots.
Do yourself and the party a favor and add Spotter if you want higher crit chance.
Bump.
Devs.
Bump.
well then if it was a unoffical i wouldn’t even bother doing the math …such a waste of time Just report it as not working as intended and leave it at that.
What are you talking about? The fix was discovered after someone randomly did the math.
They did a fix to match a tooltip that most likely wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Anyways… What’s important is to make Anet aware of what they have done.
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hasn’t frost spirit always had a 10sec internal cooldown (6secs up) overall only 4secs inactive?
i’ve got no idea where you got this info or reasoning from unless they changed it to go on Cooldown after the 6secs Of active buff time, nothings changed.
the last patch i know , didn’t even change frost spirit.
You misunderstand how the skill functions/functioned.
It’s an internal cooldown on the chance for its passive effect to proc. All the spirit have this in their tooltips, but the Frost Spirit was different in that it could proc on every hit (30 % chance if untraited, 70 % if traited). This was probably intended because the skill is complete garbage with an internal cooldown (and devs have even stated that its supposed to be a 7 % damage buff, however recent maths show it’s not).
With the recent “stealth fix/nerf” (it never was an official fix, and no patch notes mention it), FS also has an internal cooldown, which means the damage buff went from being a 7 % boost to be worth as much as a single vuln stack.
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The tool tip was always there but it was always ignored (how after all this time…)
They should change all spirits to: no internal cooldown/much lower % chance activation.
Since 1 stack of vulnerability is worth more than front spirit now.
RIP Frost spirit.
Changing them isn’t necessary There was nothing wrong with the previous Frost Spirit, except from the tooltip. Even devs have stated that it was working as intended. And it wasn’t imbalanced in any way.
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Bump, bump, bump bump.
Who need spotter? 100% crit is not a problem.
/laughs
Can we get a dev’s response to this? Please?
It shouldn’t be acceptable that they can stealth nerf/fix a skill this drastically without letting the players know. A skill that, according to a dev, worked as intended.
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Oh, and we can’t swap it to something more useful.
To put it like this: I would gladly take a subpar weapon skill if I could trade back my class only niché (beside spotter) in dungeons.
Except this affects more than dungeons for Mesmers.
“More than”… The third skill on your sword has no use outside a pvp enviroment, just like the frost spirit has no use outside pve.
The difference however, is that our most viable build for an entire game mode got nerfed to the ground. The ranger is, pve wise, in a worse place after the feature pack than what it was before the “stealth fix” happened.! That can’t be said about the mesmer, and at this point I can’t be bothered if you don’t agree with that.
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Oh, and we can’t swap it to something more useful.
To put it like this: I would gladly take a subpar weapon skill if I could trade back my class’ only niché (besides spotter) in dungeons, fractals and pve in general.
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So yeah, saying that this skill isn’t entirely useless is like saying that the new FS isn’t entirely useless. I mean, you can still use that to apply Chill and it does still add a damage boost, it’s just nowhere near what it used to be, because it was clearly gamebreaking, amirite?
Well, you keep jumping over the fact that one change had a profound effect on a build, the other one hadn’t to the same degree. Aside from that, FS right now is entirely useless. The damage boost isn’t worth mentioning (equals to one stack of vuln. From an utility skill. Seriously), and no one ever cared for the chill. In order to skill reset the spirit and have it off cooldown for your next encounter, you shouldn’t be activating it anyway.
And on top of that, a trait that previously boosted the damage buff from 3,5 % to 7% no longer grants a noticable difference! The skill as a stand alone is garbage, and we lost the most important part of our PvE meta build. When comparing the two changes, there is to me no doubt that the ranger got hit the hardest. A badly telegraphed immobolize on a weapon skill is better than a utility skill with no use whatsoever.
Just like how Sword3 on Mesmer got changed for no reason other than the tooltip, causing Anet to have to fix it without reverting it because that would be admitting to their wrong?
I don’t know the whole story behind the mesmer sword, so I couldn’t say.
But the change didn’t completely shatter (pun intended) one of your meta builds in process, or leave you with a skill that is now totaly useless. Rangers just got pushed far behind close to a patch that was supposed to buff them. My previous excitement for the feature pack is non-existent at the moment.
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If this is intentional, then it makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t follow what they said about design- balancing with “shaves”. This is more of an amputation.
+1
Edit 2: Nevermind, quickly glanced over the traits and there is nothing I can see better than NM for damage boosts. Probably still 6/5/0/3/0 unless BM can somehow be worth it.
You would still want Fortifying Bond anyways.
While I do disagree with the addition of the ICD, it does make sense from a purely bug fixing standpoint.
As some other guy put it in another thread:
I suspect the original designer carried over the 35% chance and 10s ICD from the other spirits, then did the math I did above and found out the spirit basically does nothing. So he “fixed” it by removing the ICD, but didn’t document in the code why he removed it. A new programmer was probably assigned to fix old bugs, saw the ICD was disabled on FS, and re-enabled it without understanding the effect it would have.
Considering how terrible FS currently is, I think this is just as likely as the skill now working as intended. Especially since the “bug” was never touched upon when one of the devs mentioned FS in a PvE ranger guide. He specifically said that the FS granted about a 7% damage buff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y8uGM1CGV8g#t=790).
Now you know how us Mesmarz feel about the Sword3 “fixes”.
Pats Rangers on shoulder we’ll get through this…
Not to sound too naggy, but the ranger just got dumped in the far bottom tier for dungeons (even with the buffs it will recieve in the feature pack), and the frost spirit just teamed up with Search and Rescue for being one of the most useless skills in the game. The mesmer sword is, to say the least, usable in comparison..
If we’re going to talk about utility skills, keep in mind Mesmers have skills like Mimic, Illusion of LIfe, and basically every Signet (bar Ether) which all have very, very niche uses and rarely bring something helpful to the table (worth a utility slot).
This is talking about Mimic both before and after the patch.
Well, it wasn’t I who compared the FS to the sword in the first place. But it’s not like any of these skills were changed and completely wrecked the mesmer’s position in any meta.
Now you know how us Mesmarz feel about the Sword3 “fixes”.
Pats Rangers on shoulder we’ll get through this…
Not to sound too naggy, but the ranger just got dumped in the far bottom tier for dungeons (even with the buffs it will recieve in the feature pack), and the frost spirit just teamed up with Search and Rescue for being one of the most useless skills in the game. The mesmer sword is, to say the least, usable in comparison..
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.
For dungeons you only need the adept tier trait. For open world content you might add so that they follow you. The grandmaster trait has no use in PvE.
As for the change to FS.. It has to be some kind of an oversight. It’s worthless in its current state, both traited and untraited.
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Any chance a dev can make a respond to this somewhere? Because this isn’t just a nerf. It’s essentially making the skill useless. Assuming it is intentional: the PvE ranger will be in a worse state after the feature patch compared to what it was two days ago.
GG Anet.
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Throw Torch should definitely get some kind of an improvement. Blind makes sense and maybe some kind of a finisher added to the skill would have been nice. Unless they were to totaly rework the weapon, which I doubt they ever will. Bonfire I don’t really mind as it is.
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rename the class in “archer”
Not that it’s ever gonna happen, but I can’t for the life of me think of any good reasons why a removal of the pet would make a renaming like that make any sense.
It’s not like the class is called a beastmaster (which it probably should have been called in the first place, because of how stripped down it feels compared to the GW1 ranger and pets being the mandatory class mechanic instead of an optional mechanic.).
A bit less off topic.. I never see Anet do a massive improvement or rework on something as lazy and sloppy as a mandotory pet AI. The class mechanic feels less than half done and not well thought out during development.
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Truth be told, unless you are doing speedclears, bearbow will work fine in dungeons too
There are very few things that don’t “work fine” in dungeons. Depending on what you mean by “fine”, obviously.
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Ironically the bottom classes are the two which many people claim to be really good for open world solos (pet AI is most likely the culprit). I can tell you from experience they are fine in open world but not better.
You see the best part of ranger and probably necromancer is that you can do other things while playing like watching a movie you do not need 50% attention on the game with them at least with ranger.
In the ranger’s case, that’s the worst part. It promotes bad gameplay and playstyles. Longbow, bear and full signet skill bar worked in open PvE, so that’s what inexperienced people bring into dungeons when joining pug groups aswell. The sole reason people hate the class.
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Starting from top.
Warrior
Thief
Elementalist
Ranger
Guardian
Mesmer
EngineerHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Guardian is the backbone of every PvE group.
1. No, they’re not. You can run several dungeons easily without a guaridan. Good players are the backbone of every PvE group. Good players being people who know that guardians aren’t a necessity for PvE.
2. OP is probably asking about open PvE. And in open PvE you can faceroll pretty much everything with any class.
You can run every dungeons with 5 necros, that doesn’t make them meta. Guardians are powerful in the current meta, and will still be, they are a great addition to most groups, at least for casual runs.
Bringing a guardian for every single dungeon run isn’t meta either. It’s actualy redundant. I should know since guardian is one of my two mains, the other being ranger. I frequently swap out my guard for a thief, an ele, a warrior, or the said ranger depending on our party comp when I’m doing a dungeon tour. I would have added an engie to that list aswell, but it is the only class I haven’t bothered leveling up yet.
The guy I was quoting stated that the guardian is the backbone of every single PvE group. That is simply not true.
What’s the point of talking about meta if you’re gonna bring up casual runs as a part of your argument anyway?
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Rangers are getting a significant boost for PvE come next patch. Removal of the SotBM and introduction of predators onslaught
Big deal the pet will still be dead most of the time unless you force yourself to use drakes.
Funny.
If your pet is dead all the time, it’s all on you. A good ranger doesn’t have any problems running around with felines most of the time.
Yeah right I’d love to see your streams in WvW or fractal 50 with a pet being alive 100%.
/facepalm
I would love for you to try and stay on topic:
“The ranger is getting a buff for PvE”
“The pet will still be dead all the time”
You quoted a guy talking about PvE. So we were obviously talking about PvE, right? Or do you want to change the topic to wvw because it fits your arguments? Pathetic.
Pets are trash in wvw zergs, but that is irrelevant to the topic. Drakes are good for fractals, so 1) why even bother complaining and 2) fractals level 50 is hardly where the average player is gonna spend “most of his/her time in PvE”.
Wake up and stop nagging.
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Rangers are getting a significant boost for PvE come next patch. Removal of the SotBM and introduction of predators onslaught
Big deal the pet will still be dead most of the time unless you force yourself to use drakes.
Funny.
If your pet is dead all the time, it’s all on you. A good ranger doesn’t have any problems running around with felines most of the time.
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Starting from top.
Warrior
Thief
Elementalist
Ranger
Guardian
Mesmer
EngineerHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Guardian is the backbone of every PvE group.
1. No, they’re not. You can run several dungeons easily without a guaridan. Good players are the backbone of every PvE group. Good players being people who know that guardians aren’t a necessity for PvE.
2. OP is probably asking about open PvE. And in open PvE you can faceroll pretty much everything with any class.
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Correction, in GW1 Rangers WERE forced to use bows. Ranger/Warriors, like the Aragorn reference, could use other weapons effectively. Make sure your information is completely accurate next time. =)
Are you seriously gonna clinch on the to the straw man argument? You never played the first game as a mono class, and second professions was never just a game mechanic, it was a part of the lore.
You would always get a second profession before any requirements for weapons even mattered. And every builds utilizing second profession weapons were always built upon some the the rangers abilities, mainly the Expertise attribute line.
Which by the way was the ranger’s primary attribute line. Marksmanship wasn’t. I’m gonna leave it with that, ‘cause I’m pretty sure people are tired of the off-topic nonsense.
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Sword is not a better weapon, its barely a rangers weapon. Lore matters, in Guild Wars Lore Rangers used bows. If you prefer other weapons more power to you..
However, I do not choose to accept it and play the class for its so called “strengths”. I will play it as a RANGER and maybe in time it will be fixed. Until then, I intend to use the forums for the purpose they were created. To discuss my concerns, to the community and to the game Developers.
All the facepalm… At least do the effort to look up what a ranger IS before making such silly statements.
As for the lore, GW1 rangers were never forced to use bows. Although it was its main and, for the sake of lore, preferred weapon (preferred being the actual word used in GW1), there were several viable builds in both pve and pvp using spears, daggers, hammers etc. Anet even acknowledges this by giving the ranger boss in AC Story a hammer.
I like how people are trying to explain AI builds as if they require skills to manage and play LOL. No seriously, i have played turret engineer, spirit ranger etc.. I haven’t tried minion mancer but there is literally no skill involved in these builds, its all passive, all you need to do is focus on staying alive which isn’t an issue since you can go the tankiest amulet with all defensive traits allowing you screw up a ton.
Not saying it isn’t an easy build to play, because it is, but are you gonna try and elaborate how a spirit ranger with passive, non-attacking spirits compares to any of the other AI builds? The player is still responsible for damaging the opponent.
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So I guess we’re back to 3war1mes1guard meta?
The ele out-dps all of them with or without the nerf to FGS.
3war1mes1guard isn’t even to close to what should be considered “meta”.
True but the majority of the gw2 player base still seem to think that Warriors do the most DPS. >.>
Not to mention bringing a glass ele is much riskier than bringing a glass warrior (well, a less bulky warrior there is no such thing as a glass one). Ele will still be in record speed running groups but there will be more “heavies only” groups in pugging.
That so-called “risk” shouldn’t even be concidered a factor, because there is none. Pug groups can faceoroll a dungeon in full zerk without bringing a single warrior or even a guardian unless there is a need for its utitilies. A nerf to the FGS doesn’t change that.
The only risk with pugs has been and will always be bad and uninformed players. These kind of people are usualy the same people asking for “heavies only”. And they keep asking for it even though there is a large amount of really bad warriors and guardians out there, as with all the other classes.
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So I guess we’re back to 3war1mes1guard meta?
The ele out-dps all of them with or without the nerf to FGS.
3war1mes1guard isn’t even to close to what should be considered “meta”.
Omfg, XD XD XD XD XD XD
I completely thought this was a troll at first. Ranger the best in PvE and OP?!?!?!?! What’s you /age? Like 3 hours?
No seriously I’m hoping rangers get buffed even more in PvE. They are THE worst. Yeah sure they can hide behind their pet in open world, but the ranger’s power is despicable. I urge you to play a dps warrior in PvE, then you’ll see what OP is. Also, have you ever tried to pug a dungeon as a ranger? See how that goes. And thieves barely playable? Ummmm….
My advice, learn something about the game before you make posts like this.
I was gonna make a comment about how stupid this post is (and why), but I realized I might aswell quote your last sentence.
“My advice, learn something about the game before you make posts like this.”
People that got an actual clue about the game would know that rangers by no means is the worst class to bring for a dungeon. Necromancer with its lack of group utilities is the worst class, by far. Ranger on the other hand is a valuable (again, valuable, not the best) member for speedclearing, if played right. And with the upcomming patch boosting their dps, they won’t be any less useful.
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The only thing rangers don’t suck in is open-world PvE, in which case yes, they are by far the best class just because pets can soak aggro so well, mob/boss AI is bad with pets, and the pets can take a LOT of hits before going down.
But the rest of the classes perform much better in everything else. Giving them a little burst and some more access to damage won’t hurt the other classes too much, either.
Sucks and outperformed compared to others in anything but open PvE?
You obviously haven’t played the class, have no idea about its capabilities, or you’re just really bad at it. I would guess a combination of the latters.
Only bad players use their pets as meat shields, and only bad players would name that as a positive thing about the class. It promotes bad gameplay, and is one of the reasons why there are so many bad pve rangers out there not followng the curent FrostSpotter sword meta for the ranger.
The ranger got its problems, but they’re useful in other aspects of the game outside open PvE. Especially dungeons. The learning curve however is steeper compared to a class like the warrior.
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