Guild Wars 2

Step one would be to stop buffing the top classes while nerfing the bottom classes.

Step two would be to stop balancing based on sPvP or split the skills every time instead of just on a handful.

Step three would be to change their main priority to making the game as fun as possible instead of being greedy and chasing some pipe dreaming of getting esport money.

Longbow and Rifle Warrior was better then Ranger before this patch, after the patch there is no comparison. Who cares if Warrior GS is even stronger?

A Warrior with Longbow and/or Rifle. Probably with shouts.

The only reason minor buffs are thrown out to Ranger amidst these nerfs is so that people on forums who don’t play the ranger think we got actual buffs.

‘Yeah shortbow now has no range to it but you got 20 extra damage on a few utilities, massive buff’

‘call lightning now hits hard, massive buff! Who cares if it is a skill used by a spirit that can get one shot by any mob so impossible to get off’

‘Theif got a nerf this is the worst thing ever, at least your spirits that have a 10 second internal cooldown got an increased chance to activate its skills which was a never a problem anyway.’

All paraphrasing of things I have seen after Ranger nerfs (the third one obviously not being after this patch).

Culain.6495:

Aridia.3042:

Pedra.4381:

Aden Celeste.3650:

Im honestly baffled… i cant express my disappointment right now… Is there someone at Anet listening to this?

Yes.

And laughing all the way to the bank. And they will continue to until we hit them where it hurts and force them to listen. We should all stop buying gems and spending money on thier store.

Stop buying gems? That would assume that I’ve bought any in the first place.

I’ve seen nothing yet from this team that would warrant further monetary support on my part. Broken classes, zerg/pvd WvW meta, RNG skins? No thanks.

My $250 I pledged on Camelot Unchained is looking like a better and better deal on every GW2 patch.

I’m with you on Camelot Unchained.
They can forget about me buying anymore gems. After this Patch/ Ranger Nerf, as the Ranger is now a completely broken class I’ll be taking some time off from the game.
The ranger needed a 30% buff across the board, and reccieved a 30%+ Nerf. While the Mesmer and Ele needed a 50% nerf across the board, and got buffed. It looks like Anet is trying to force everyone into 3 classes (mesmer, ele, guardian).
Camelot Unchained can’t get here soon enough.

Mesmer got buffed? They took a big hit to phantasm builds and the shatter build got a nerf to blurred frenzy but mostly came out of it in the same position.

The only buffs they got were to create an interruption build and nobody has used it enough yet to see if it is any good.

Kichwas.7152:

snip

This post is just proof piled upon proof that you have never touched a Ranger.

So when can we expect Jon Peters to come in and make a thread with a smarmy title and promise a bunch of buffs that will never come?

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Guys. Guys.

It’ll be alright.

They fixed the icons on the Dragon Bash foods.

Ok I laughed.

I am really confused on when you would ever be able to hit people with the Storm Spirit, especially multiple ones.

But I played a Necro in GW1 and wanted to make one in GW2 at some point and I was honestly starting to think about it a few days before the leaked notes.

Also my Ranger who I have known since launch has just died, have some sympathy for me.

Quite frankly the people in charge of balancing should be fired. We have been waiting how long now since the original Shortbow nerf, sorry bug fix, for the promised buffs to come to our utilities and weapons? This was the patch where it should have happened. Trait changes, new traits, massive weapon rebalancing and new conditions across all classes with the aim in mind to bring about greater build diversity. This should have been the promised patch for Rangers but what do we get? Our damage is gutted across the board to stop one powerful build in sPvP. Range for shortbow is shortened for no reason then to make the crappy Longbow look better in comparison. none of the Spirits problems are addressed and the closest thing to added group support are two mediocre boons being applied by our shouts if we invest 30 points into it. And considering 2 out of the 3 shouts that would be usefull in a build utilizing that trait are focused on using your pet to attack enemies they got a massive nerf anyway. To top it off lots of other classes got buffs making the gap between Ranger and everybody else even wider.

Well thats it balancing team you had your chance. Rangers are in the worst state they have ever been and really a lot of the changes to other classes make no sense. You have officially proven you can’t do your job. Anet should do what every good company does and get rid of its inept employees that are dragging it down.

Advice for new Rangers:

Do you want to be a Ranger?

“Yes”

Uninstall game, buy any other MMO in existence. MMO doesn’t have a Ranger class? Still a better Ranger then GW2’s Ranger.

Well Ranger’s are officially dead.

Already the weakest class but now they have a massive gutting of their damage and Shortbow useless for its main role. A few tweeks here and there so people who never played the class can say ‘but but your stun on a 25 sec recharge now does 20 more damage you totally got more buffs’. Spirits still useless, Shouts slightly less useless but still based around a pet that now does no damage so hardly a buff there.

That isn’t even mentioning all the buffs other classes got further widening the power gap between Ranger and everybody else.

Mesmer changes are stupid too. They force people out of phantasm builds and back to Shatter. Interruption builds could be good now but that stills leaves us with the same number of builds pre patch. So much for this patch trying to encourage build diversity.

Compounding Celerity is stupid, Mesmers have been asking for increased run speed out of battle for getting around PvE and WvWvW but instead they have increased their in battle run speed. It should give you a 30% increased movement that drops down to 0 the more illusions you have out. Blurred Frenzy is a massive nerf too with the amount of retaliation being thrown out everywhere.

Edit: Also scepter auto attack is still crap and using a block to apply torment seems kind of bad. Will have to play with that first though.

I have 30 points in Beastmastery so I have to.

I imagine I will end up at Traps.

Yeah, the Illusionists Celerity change just makes 25 points in Illusion mandatory and when you are that far down you might as well give the extra 5 points and go full shatter.

Build Diversity the Anet way.

You know I didn’t think it was possible to make the Beastmastery traits worse…so congrats Anet.

I think the traveling away section should knock them away while the return brings them back. Both sections don’t actually stun or knockdown the enemy in either way though so he can carry on attacking.

I also think everybodies auto attacks should do this.

Man Anet really has beaten some of you down with the kitten Ranger updates since beta if you think a Longbow Auto attack bug fix, shouts looking like they may finally have a use if you invest 30 points into them and a pull are some amazing buffs that are going to open up tons of new builds. Especially as damage across the class gets gutted and our best weapon gets its only use taken from it (shortbow can no longer be used as an anti escape weapon).

If you think these notes are good your mind would explode if you ever read the notes for the other classes.

The problem is that it is entirely believable that Anet would give Thief about 50 buffs whereas they would nerf the weakest class in the game to the ground.

We have all seen previous patch notes that actually made it into the game, we all know Anet has no idea how to balance and doesn’t give a kitten about balancing when it comes to PvE and only slightly cares when it comes to WvWvW.

So yes I believe these are real, in fact the only reason I have a slight doubt is because they are finally bug fixing the Longbow auto attack.

Durzlla.6295:

I find It ironic, and funny, as hell that the forums kitten and moan for the ranger to deal more of the damage, and once they start doing that the forums cry about it…. Make up your bloody minds!

Because that isn’t what is happening in those patch notes at all.

They are getting a bug fix to Longbow auto attack and +20 damage on a few shortbow utilities in exchange for a massive range drop.

That is nowhere near the same thing as more of the Ranger’s damage coming from the actual Ranger instead of the pet.

Can you actually read the notes before talking about them next time.

Because I would rather not sit around for a month with 0 damage out put hoping that Anet finally sees what everybody can see right now.

Lets pretend for a second that BM Rangers should be nerfed and Anet should not be adding mandatory tutorials in PvP to explain how dodge works (which would cut out 99.9% of PvP forum whining).

Isn’t the problem that Ranger can spec for 100% for survivability then have pets doing decent damage in theory. Wouldn’t it make much more sense to lower Pet damage and increase weapon damage thus making Rangers have to make more difficult choices when choosing stats for BM and not completely nerfing every other sub par build that Ranger has?

And sorry but no, fixing the bug in Longbow auto attack and adding 20 more damage to the shortbow’s utility attacks isn’t compensating, especially as that is 2/5 weapons.

I find it pretty funny that people were saying Mesmer’s shouldn’t get increased OOC movement because they already had too much agility in combat, so Anet goes ahead and boosts the Mesmers movement in combat and leaves it the same out of combat.

Meglobob.8620:

All leaks 100% confirmed true by Anet themselves…

Uh oh…link?

Einlanzer.1627:

Zenith.7301:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Zenith.7301:

You don’t make longbow more viable by making shortbow crappier.

Luckily they’re doing all of this:

Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast on this skill from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Rapid Fire: Reduced initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased arrow speed by 15%
Point Blank Shot: Increased arrow speed by 15%
Barrage: Increased cripple duration by 50%.

Increasing arrow speed does not meaningfully affect the DPS of the weapon. It just increases the reliability of it hitting.

The longbow is not used because it does garbage DPS, and it has no defense.

You must have missed the aftercast reduction. This will be a huge buff to the Longbow.

Most of these changes are awesome, including the changes to the SB. Anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong.

What? The shortbow changes are nothing but a massive nerf to it and the pet changes is a massive nerf in damage across the board for pretty much every build.

Xsorus.2507:

Levetty.1279:

Hopefully the beast mastery traits get cleaned up. There is only 1 or 2 good traits there and I am being liberal with the word good.

What, you don’t think stability training is an excellent trait for your amazing pet pig?

That is the one trait I actually hope stays. It is so good that changing it would result in the game just not being Guild Wars anymore.

Hopefully the beast mastery traits get cleaned up. There is only 1 or 2 good traits there and I am being liberal with the word good.

Mesmer needs a main hand power based ranged weapon (aka Pistol)

Guardian could do with a better ranged option but just adjusting scepter might be enough there.

Ranger needs a hammer so it can bunny thump.

Nice to hear from a warrior.

wauwi.9162:

before this patch: ranger —> zephyr --> longbow skill #2 + #5 —> gg
ranger --> zephyr —> revives downed mate instantly
ranger --> friendly mesmer does time warp —> ownownownownown --> zephyr —> ownownownownown
a little bit OP, no?

i, a lv80 DMG+Survival hybrid Ranger named Aerrith, approve this balancing.

once, an “instant death”-button got fixed, everybody screams “NERFED!”.
why?

Rangers relied on quickness more then other classes to get them up to levels that were still sub par. As such they were hit harder by the quickness nerf. In other words a sub par class got hit hard by a nerf. And that isn’t including the Pets F2 changes.

Not hard to understand.

Several massive nerfs to Rangers that the small buffs don’t make up for and considering it was already the weakest class…

Yep looks like pets F2s don’t come off cooldown anymore when swapped, complete joke. So nerfs to pretty much every good (read mediocre compared to other classes) thing we have except traps. CoD is more balanced then this game.

No LB buffs, still no buffs to utilities, the gap in effectiveness between banners and spirits is made even bigger and the decrease in cooldowns on GS doesn’t make up for the now destroyed auto attack + quickness combo (neither does the random small boost to maul make up for the loss in damage). Stun break is nice though albeit should have been there from the start.

This is worse then the short bow nerf patch but at least they were honest this time.

Dog.1472:

You guys must have never played a Guardian. I really don’t think Mesmers are that slow.

Leveling up a Guardian at the moment and it is much faster then the Mesmer except for the stupid 6 centaur ruin build.

The flame aura buff seems nice, combined with our two flame fields.

Just wondering what trait is the path of scars change talking about? It seems to be implying one trait directly increases its damage.

The different realm of the gods would have looked amazing in GW2, shame they had to throw out all the GW1 lore to fit more charr in.

Skritt

Skritt

Skritt

Also Mursaat and Dwarves

The Dervish was kicked out to fit in with this games humans suck angle. If it was a class devoted to worshiping mass genocide, fur or whatever else the Charr likes then it would have been the first class in.

See also Cantha emperor being evil because it is a powerful human nation, no realm of the Gods as elite areas (how amazing would they look with GW2 graphics), Asuras being the experts in Orr, etc.

nelopp.6140:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Do any of the Mesmer clones have a Staff?

Because if so, there should be one (since that’s what the weapons are based off, and that’s why there isn’t a Foefire staff).

Strangely, the staff phantasm uses a secpter.
Hope they will take a look because it is the only phantasm using a different weapon from the weapon skill

Torch Phantasm has no weapon and Focus Phantasm has duel axes.

Vissarion.6509:

“Class gear – contains rare or exotic piece of level 70-80 class gear.(Ranger box gave 1 Rare Rifle and 1 Rare Medium Leather shoulder piece, Warrior box gave 2 rares, 1 helm and 1 warhorn. None of the skins are unique).”

source: http://dulfy.net/2013/01/28/gw2-laurel-merchant-items/

Ranger box gave a Rifle?

OMG Anet let a hint to next months update leak out, Ranger is getting Rifle added!

Oh…oh I see. Well now you have put it that way I can’t argue.

Daily Laurel Vendor made me laugh for some reason.

Solandri.9640:

awesomesauce.5980:

They are probably testing a nerf to remove the ability to reset the cooldown on swapping the pet

That would be a bug fix, not a nerf.

C’mon folks, it’s pretty obvious cooldown timers aren’t supposed to reset simply by swapping pets. You can argue it’s a nice perk for rangers to have until other problems get fixed. But calling it a nerf instead of a fix just undermines our credibility as impartial (rather than impassioned) players.

Maybe you should read this.

Krugan.7901:

When they nerfed the out of combat swap cooldown one of the reason for that kind of nerf was that they didn’t want to freeze the cd on f2 abilities and wanted to give a brand new pet when swapped… and now we get both nerfs

Rhysati.4932:

Levetty.1279:

Siofra Crumble.2098:

felivear.1536:

Highlighted for being the dumbest sentence I’ve ever read

• But because the skill level of the general PvP player is low and we have Portal, Mesmers have got a reputation for being some god tier OP class and that reputation has somehow seeped over to PvE even though it is the worst class in open world PvE and only brought to dungeons for boon stripping/portal/Time Warp.

Oh man, that whole post. I could barely catch my breath after reading it.
Thanks for that.

Oh yeah that definitely proves what I said wrong. Mesmers are the best that is why you don’t see all Guardian/Warrior groups.

Mesmers are godly in PvE. I don’t know what you are going on about. Not only are they beasts at soloing, but they are ALWAYS wanted in dungeons. They bring incredible utility to groups and offers amazing boons like timewarp. In fact, speed runs are designed with at least one mesmer involved to go along with the warriors and guardians.

In my own words only brought to dungeons for boon stripping/portal/Time Warp

I’d like to be a full class in dungeons, not a gimmick utility provider. Especially not utilities that are the most requested to be nerfed by the PvP community.

Mackdose.6504:

Open your eyes, you’ll see, your eyes are open.

I get what you are trying to do and wish it would work but not, this is a brony bow.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

felivear.1536:

Highlighted for being the dumbest sentence I’ve ever read

• But because the skill level of the general PvP player is low and we have Portal, Mesmers have got a reputation for being some god tier OP class and that reputation has somehow seeped over to PvE even though it is the worst class in open world PvE and only brought to dungeons for boon stripping/portal/Time Warp.

Oh man, that whole post. I could barely catch my breath after reading it.
Thanks for that.

Oh yeah that definitely proves what I said wrong. Mesmers are the best that is why you don’t see all Guardian/Warrior groups.

While not profession specific a lot of armour sets do tend to look like they suit one class over the other. As you said Masks are very mesmerish, the cash shop profane armour is Necro, as is the more tribal looking ones and the Tier 3 human cultural armour screams ele to me (at least GW1 ele). I don’t really see the need in making them profession specific.

Remove PvP from the game and enjoy the new found freedom to actually balance and bug fix classes.

Lower ascended gear stats down to exotic and make infusions only give agony resists. Infusions is a temporary fix while I think of a better mechanic then agony.

Give Ranger pets agony resist.

Add waypoints, hearts, events (including a major dragon level one) to Southsun Cove.

Add a Storyline where Magnus the Bloody-Handed gets killed and the rest of the Lionguard suddenly realise they aren’t actually the Lion Guard nor is this Lion’s Arch and the other races turn against them for taking the Centaurs side in the war.

Add a storyline where the Charr suddenly realise celebrating mass genocide and hailing murderer as heroes isn’t that great of a thing to do actually.

Other general changes to stop the Charr from being a mary sue race.

Add an open group system.

Add a new legendary shortbow.

Make dungeon’s storyline modes soloable.

Did I just read perma swiftness from spirits?