Guild Wars 2

I just recently switched over my zerker gear to condi gear in the forge. It was a little scary I’ll admit as I love power builds. The condi ranger does do really nice damage though. I think the highest I ever got was 7K burn ticks with 4K bleed ticks. The poison was ticking low like 300 and the axe autos were critting for 500 ish. I modified the build a bit with nature magic just for the boon duration and might sharing with my pet. I noticed my lynx hitting for 4K after that on some its attacks. Probably a dps loss over DnT’s build though.

The really nice thing about it was the AOE on its attacks. It felt powerful in that regard. It is a little white knuckle for me, its really squishy and you do have to get pretty close to the big baddies to drop traps and bonfire. The precast animation on bonfire doesn’t help. Having traps ground targetable again would really help with this build I feel. Or mobile spirits. Or both.

As a new player for a base ranger you will most likely want to focus on berserkers gear (power, precision and ferocity) to start. The power ranger set up is still good and readily available. Later you may want to look at a condition build for higher level fractals and the newer content. That would be vipers or sinister gear depending on what you have available on your account. It has that highest damage per second in longer fights and really only requires 2 weapons so its a pretty easy rotation to learn.

As for druid the jury still seems to be out on them. You MIGHT be able to go condition bunker with apothecary build or settlers gear OR you may go full healer with something like clerics gear. Zealots gear would be a healer/ power hybrid but its really pretty expensive as it stands right now. I wouldn’t worry about it to start. Druid seems to really be designed towards raids which haven’t been released yet.

In WvW? Probably ranger. No one asks anything out of you and no one wants you in a party. You are looked at as a ganker at best. At worst a rallybot. Most of the time people leave you to your own devices so you can pretty much do what you want. Just bringing that class into WvW screams casual to most people who spend a great deal of time in WvW.

My tinfoil hat theory in that regards was that since esports were such a stated focus and balance seems to revolve around them ranger was determined at one point to not be dynamic enough for twitch views. That is there was nothing visually exciting about watching a ranger that screamed skilled dynamic play that leant itself to exciting audiences watching on twitch or whatever. So it simply wasn’t supported or pushed over more dynamic classes like ele and Mesmer. It doesn’t mean that this level of play never happened, just that it wasn’t obvious to interest casual viewers.

Thanks Rashagar, that makes much more sense. For a bit I thought there was some bug that I was unaware of that was effecting the degeneration rate.

I’m confused. Continues? Is there someway outside of direct intervention that it could change? Its programmed to degenerate. Shouldn’t it always continue?

In keeping with the functionality most of the community uses rangers for – store clerks!

A whole trait line dedicated to inventory management and trading post sales, reduced crafting times and auto crafting of consumables used by the classes the devs actually play! Grandmaster trait automatically deposits these item in your bank so they will be ready for use at a moments notice. Never run out of sharpening stones again.

I see rangers functionality increasing 100 fold with that elite. Closest we will ever be to meta.

Interesting. I was under the impression rooting the character was an aesthetic choice due to the way certain animations would interact with the root control movement. Sword auto attack 2 (kick) comes to mind. The animation has my norn perform a drop kick which would look awful (and really show the root control moving) if the character wasn’t rooted in place. Its… odd (in that its uncommon I guess?) that its a limitation of the engine.

From an animator’s point of view I always thought the sword was largely limited due to the way it was animated. Most attack animations will have an exit animation back to combat ready idle and an exit animation to dodge or a state animation tree that would allow the game to programmatically blend the attack animation with the movement animations (strafe, walk forward, walk right, walk left, etc) These exit animations would be for every attack in a chain. If there is a character deformation through space (or movement although poly characters don’t really move through space they deform through a skin deformer) Then that would complicate a re design in skills as the game would have to some how do an additive process in addition to the state machine to compensate for the characters inherit deformation in the animation. If that makes sense.

So if a character leaped ahead in the animation say 3 units but now you wanted to remove the root you would have to program it so that the game would move a moving character back three units and then figure out how far the player has moved the character in the direction the were moving. I think. The alternative would be to re animate the character so there was no inherit deformation in the animation but that would require animating an entire attack set. Either way its probably not an easy fix.

At least that was the way I understood it while looking at the animations. I could be completely wrong and the leap in the aa chain is programmatically added. But I would be surprised if this were the case.

Druid was very unlikely a concern. If so the heal would never have been released as it was and then it wouldn’t have been nerfed so quickly. The heal was a good idea that wasn’t vetted. The nerf was a knee jerk lazy fix that took the first suggestion thrown out in twitter and ran with it without regard to how it impacted the heal. Basically its the story a cluster kitten all the way around. Its no more complicated then that.

Pretty much what Heimskarl has said. The fixes for ranger aren’t going to be done in one day or even in one balance patch. There are major structural issues to the class that need to be addressed and those are going to take time. Further they certainly aren’t going to be addressed before the expansion drops, if for no other reason then it could suddenly introduce bugs that may derail the launch date.

Does it suck? Yeah but all we can do is wait and see what happens. We don’t really have any power other then to give constructive feedback. If they ignore it, well, that’s out of our hands unfortunately. Its better to become somewhat emotionally disinvested in it and enjoy the class for what it is. If it gets buffed hey great, if not well… I don’t really need to play with training wheels like some other classes anyways.

I don’t think there is any animosity towards the player base or community. At least not as a universal whole. That would be fairly petty and childish. I have never really bought into the idea that the developers have animosity towards a class or community.

However neglect can be a function of not having a clear plan or not having the right people in the right places. Jr. level experience making sr. level decisions for example. It can also be a function of someone caring but unable to provide the support required of them. The person that LOVES cats and takes in every stray cat they find even though at a certain point they are unable to provide for the cats’ needs. I don’t think this is the case as I don’t feel there is an abundance of love for the class.

I lean towards an unclear plan or a structure in which class balance is handled individually instead of as a whole, classes balanced in a vacuum so what would be good changes for the class become rather ineffectual when put up against a class that is being over balanced for whatever reason.

I’m not sure the community can make it any clearer that we feel we are underbalanced. If they don’t know by now they never will. Honestly if another game comes along that I like better I’ll move on to that. Trying to effect real definitive change on a forum is a herculean task and I play games for fun. Not work. If its not fun then see ya.

I tend to disagree. The free to play players won’t have access to druid and you need to liberate their cash somehow. Seeing as how every profession is someone’s favorite profession it would seem to make sense to give core classes some love so you don’t alienate potential income.

That said I don’t feel like the company puts a lot of stock in the whole “every class is someone’s favorite.” They really seem to fan boy certain professions more then others.

I honestly wouldn’t expect anything before HoT releases and if there were changes before then I would frankly be somewhat impressed. The more troubling sentence in Wolfey’s post is that they are still unsure of what action to take. So its not much that we’re being ignored, they could full well be paying attention to us. Its more we are being neglected. No fix for that.

At best I think there won’t be changes again until a balance patch to hide any revisions on the nerf so they can save some face. Also given how tentative they are playing it don’t expect anything great. Ranger sucks and they like it like that. Just take comfort that when you beat a player you outplayed the socks off that class.

I don’t see why anyone would give Wolfey a hard time about keeping us up to date. Its odd though that someone from outside the company is keeping communication open with the community but whatever, as long as its there I’ll take it.

I find it somewhat strange that they don’t know what to do. Our class sucks right now. We know our class sucks right now. The community and other professions know our class sucks right now. I really can’t see too many people complaining about rangers getting some balance tweaks. But hey I guess all kinds exist.

Really they should just make a change and let it ride for a while, see how the balance plays out. They sure aren’t gonna make a strides to getting ranger in shape by just reading the forums. Ooo Oooo! This is where I get to quote “Bring it On” Ready?

“Be aggressive! B-E aggressive!”

Ah, lame movie for a lame class. Feels right somehow.

Nah, power needs more than stats. The trick of power rangers is finding ways to sustain. Condi clear, crowd control, disengage mechanics, active damage mitigation, stability, etc. All those things are pillars in power builds at least in a competitive environment. Rangers really struggle with coming up with enough ways to sustain to be competitive. With the power creep in the game at the moment it gets to be an even greater trick.

Druid would require giving up the wilderness survival trait line which is a corner stone for a lot of that sustain or a power line. Beast mastery, marksmanship or skirmishing. However, druid could work, I’m not even saying that the changes will be bad. Its just in the single beta we got with the druid it synergized poorly with the base ranger for power for all the reasons given in the feedback thread. So without any more information than what has been given people are just expressing their concerns that if you have to go all in just to get decent heals out of it and you give up all these other things it will really be a separate entity smashed into the ranger class. I’m hanging my hat on how astral force generation works myself. How that is reworked will play a larger role in druid’s ability to find a home in core ranger builds and open up build diversity. At least that’s my initial thoughts.

As to zealot’s. Yep its a thing. A really expensive thing. The recipe goes for around 100 gold now about? It’s also not available in pvp. So that’s another concern.

Its not an assumption. The developer himself said on page 13 of the druid feedback thread that he would adjust the base heal down.

Now by how much we don’t know but people are concerned that they will be lowered enough that the spec will be impractical for power builds.

Well foo. Seems to decouple the trait line even more from a base dps ranger. Ah well, I’ll wait to see what they do with the astral force generation and staff before making any judgements.

I second that. Is our healing getting nerfed? Like skills?

Its kind of a sideways move in some ways. Really as someone who also plays guard the DH was a disappointment to some because its this ranged dps control spec that originally made the class abilities clunky to use. Much in the way the druid was a disappointment to some because it is this weird healing support spec that doesn’t really synergize with the rest of the base class abilities all that great right now. (I’m looking at you dps ranger)

Ultimately some guards were disappointed because they wanted great support and boons, that was how they saw there role amongst the classes. Some rangers wanted more control and dps as that’s how they envisioned their role in the grand scheme of things. Truth is dragon hunter is fun to play, offers a lot of mobility and is starting to feel pretty fluid with the rest of the traits and virtues. I’m sure druid will work its way there as well. Just may take a bit.

I blame Krumm. Roaming with Krumm and Deso makes everything 1000% more OP. Nerf Krumm.

Well for the sake of the druid I really hope they are not designing the spec to only be used in 1 instance in 1/3rd of the entire game. That would be tragic.

Druid is a nerf.

No more beta events. HoT goes live in 3 weeks. They are already finalizing and compiling code so I wouldn’t expect any massive substantive changes to druid before it goes live. Raids themselves may not be available before HoT goes live and may take a few weeks before they patch them in. If that’s the case expect any druid changes that aren’t hotfixes at the next balance patch. So far those take on average 3 to 6 months.

I was going to say that I believe I heard that there was going to be no LFG for raids so your experience was going to depend entirely on your guild. However it looks like someone more or less beat me to it.

I will add though that I’m not at all convinced that druid will find a home in raids. So far from the little I got to raid in the wee hours of the beta there was a need for boon stripping and condi application. Full on dedicated healers weren’t a priority. This certainly could change but I suspect that even if it IS the case the inclination will to be to take the class that provides the minimum amount of healing required while providing the maximum amount of dps. I am doubtful druid will ever fill this role.

I could and hopefully will be wrong as the entire spec seems to be geared to this endgame. Time will tell.

With 3 weeks until live they are already finalizing and compiling code. If you are expecting radical substantive changes to the class before HoT goes live, don’t. Really you may see tweaks to the numbers at best but you’ll probably end up with what we have in this beta weekend. DO however continue to post bugs, concerns and suggestions. I haven’t fully bought into the whole “Anet hates rangers” argument and I do believe our input is valuable if not always immediately enacted. After all why would they single out rangers for hate, we buy gems too.

The only downside is once the code goes live what they can or will change is going to be far more restricted. Its why I was always concerned if we weren’t playable by beta weekend 2. Expectations may have to be moderated a bit.

I think you were a bit confused about my post. I did role into beast mastery. I did actively use my pet. The problem right now with druid is that is JUST sustain through healing. In a game that focuses on active defense and large spike damage small chunks of healing may prolong a battle and may lead to a draw but they won’t win an engagement. I did understand the glyphs correctly, only the pull on glyph of tides, which is what I wanted to isolate a driver put me in a form that could not capitalize on the pull because that form had no attack component to it.

So far I like your ideas. I agree that the spec really needs some dps component to make it even slightly viable. Healing does no good if you can’t pressure an opponent to withdraw from the engagement or burn cool downs. Right now druid is the equivalent of the old guardian heal way build which hasn’t been viable for over a year. Only is probably slightly worse due to lack of group boon application.

Having now gone through a reset night on SoS I can say that druid is really the placebo effect. You see green numbers and think “Hey I’m being effective!” but honestly that’s not the case. I was really hoping that in a large group environment this is where the spec would really shine and pick up. A large number of my initial bad impressions still remain however.

What the druid needs is some sort of dps component. Despite the proclamation"zerk meta is dead" DPS is still king in this game. Without any way for the druid to actually force opponents to disengage you can heal all you want while the enemies merrily whack away at you and wear you down. All you are doing is ensuring you are one of the last to die. Nothing is really getting done. And with the spec so married to staff you really can’t even swap to a dps weapon set to try to pressure the engagement. Its further complicated by people’s natural reaction to roll out of the damage, this leaves druid exposed or largely out of position to be the most effective to the front line they need to carry them.

Water fields on Eles and even scrapper with their mobile blasting water field are far more desirable to a druid spec. They have the option to switch to heavy dps as well as sustain. This allows then to push or turn the engagement, something the druid is completely incapable of doing.

Glyphs are pretty useless, short in range, complicated alternating effects (Am I pulling in this form or pushing? I want to pull but now I’m in a form that cant do damage…) and no real damage component, no real group utility that others classes can’t bring to greater effect.

Unfortunately this late in the game there isn’t an opportunity to add any real functionality to the druid. The best we can hope for are numbers tweaks. Well unless healing is tweaked to God levels that can really sustain 20 people against 50. But that would be broken as all get out. Something this pigeon holed into a role probably shouldn’t have been one of the last to be revealed and openly tested. With such a narrow focus there are too many things that can derail that intended role.

All in all druid feels like a giant missed opportunity. 3/10

That’s a shame. I was hoping Bill could remove the D/D cele elementalist feature from the game in favor of bristle-hulk.

Please Bill, for the rangers? For the rangers? for the rangers?

With 3 weeks until live druid is not going to change. At best you can expect some small numbers tweaks. But hey, that’s what happens when you wait until the last second to get player feedback.

I second great sword, I was using the daze/ ancient seeds traits. Probably the only thing I liked out of druid and it wasn’t that great. I heard people were having some success running some sort of axe war horn / staff cele build as well.

We’ve indicated we like it. Its sure to be fixed now.

But all humor aside you get 4 or 5 of these things together? Mass hysteria.

Having played around a bit more in PvE and PvP I will add the biggest drawback to druid on a power builds is celestial form just feels so disconnected. I enter the form and want to do… something. But I can’kittens such an odd experience.

From a WvW perspective.

Druid is… ok… ish. It really locks you into one role and one weapon. I was hoping that it could function as a sustain line for power rangers in WvW, something we really need but without any condition removal outside of your form swap and the somewhat unreliable seeds its pretty hamstrung in that role. You need to camp staff to build the celestial bar which tanks your damage, the vines still seem to suffer from the problem Entangle does in that they hardly do anything to a group in a pvp environment. Enemies seem to blow straight out of them.

The move trait is meh. Everything still seems to be able to close the gap on me. Which then comes back to the age old complaint of rangers have little sustain on melee power builds. I don’t feel particularly tanky, but I do feel like a bigger troll essentially slowing players down for a few seconds before they rofl stomp me.

Also quick draw doesn’t work with staff? Doesn’t seem to.

I tried the glyphs with the daze and moment of clarity on great sword/ short bow. Just for lols. It… kinda works with the ancient seed trait. Odd as that is. I would be tempted to go staff for the daze on swap but the damage is so poor it doesn’t pressure enemies enough to burn cooldowns if they are out of range of the initial daze or back off. Still the daze is my favorite thing on druid right now. There might be the beginnings of something there. I may have to play around with it a bit more.

Ultimately it feels like a one trick pony. Its pretty straightforward, utterly dependent on other classes to carry it and predictable. It can be focused down fairly quickly if you don’t fully tank up. It feels if the healing is nerfed even a little bit more than a little bit the spec will fall apart.

The hammer stance is silly and should be scrapped asap. Like first blush, my god what is wrong with you, obvious silly. Seriously my norn looks like the village idiot. Like he cant figure out which way to hold this crazy hunk o wood. That hurts the aesthetic and makes me suspect the whole thing was rushed and ill thought out.

The pets are pretty, smokescale is amazing. No doubt will be taken from us.

I agree we need better control over our pets but we definitely need some sort of blanket aoe damage resistance. There are players that enjoy PvE and WvW where unavoidable aoe damage cripples a third of the characters effective damage regardless of that players skill. To not take this under consideration seems to do those players a disservice.

Thoughts?

Roy won’t allow it.

Its pretty hard to give solid feedback about the change when it is unclear what the change is trying to accomplish. The nerf wasn’t solely aimed at quickness and protection uptime as was advertised and seems to add very little practical personal benefit to the ranger all while making them a giant target for any number of hard counters the most dangerous of which would be corrupt boon. So in the end the buff was turned into a net nerf with no explanation. The change defeats the original premise of the buff so the only solid constructive advice I can give is to revert We heal as one back to the pre balance patch version. No boons, no crippling counter play to an already crippled class.

If we knew what they were trying to do we could give advice. As it stands there is no stated direction for the class so all you can do is wishlist.

I largely suspect that they are uninterested in any of our ideas though. It feels more like the greatest sin that was committed is that someone pooped in the punchbowl right before a beta weekend with druid. We all should be excited about playing the druid instead everyone is up in arms about an asinine change. This thread is largely dedicated to diffusing that anger and getting the hype train going again.

No offense but if they were interested in positive change they would have opened a dialog BEFORE getting stuck on stupid with the nerf hammer.

Besides, they have a whole CDI full of advice. I suggest that its not that they can’t make positive design iterations in regards to the ranger along the community’s desires, its simply that they don’t want to for whatever reason that they are unwilling to share.

The idea that they will revisit this skill before a balance patch is baffling, they made the nerf. Its a closed issue for them now.

I would like to provide feedback on this. I work as a gameplay animator, I collaborate with game designers daily. The biggest obstacle however is the complete lack of direction for the class. Honestly, if the stated concern was quickness and protection up time why was the might stacking capped? Why was the boon duration effectively capped to 2 secs? That doesn’t provide much support for giving up a heal. If its supposed to just add a bit of support or effect to a heal why make the skill so terribly complicated. This does X if only Y and Z conditions are met and only for W amount of time divided by 2. Why not just make the heal apply X boons and call it a day? I don’t feel as any thought was given to the fix, it just seems that there was a problem so kill it with fire.

The biggest problem to giving targeted advice is that no one knows where the ranger is going. Well I mean its going straight into the crapper but that can’t possibly be the intended direction. Or maybe it is? Without a roadmap for how the ranger is intended to fit within the gameplay environment or what you envision this skill doing you’ll get a lot of wish listing and ideas but you are just blindfolding the community and telling them to find one really specific grain of sand on a beach. The ranger needs sustain, the ranger probably needs damage. I’ve never understood why pets were a mechanic that brought us supposedly even with the dps of other classes but could be easily killed or avoided. Its like having a warriors damage proportionally go down when its class mechanic bar is filled. I always thought if a pet can be dealt with so easily it should be something people WANT to kill to level the playing field, instead rangers are constantly fighting at a 1/3 disadvantage. Nothing about the synergy of this class makes much sense.

The buff before the nerf was really open to counter play. Corrupt boon made my ranger kersplode in wvw. Yeah the durations needed to be tweaked so things didn’t get out of hand on a few select boons but that didn’t scream for a gutting of the change. So why then make the added effect so weak in the hotfix? It wont lead to a niche build or more build variety and its really susceptible to counter play when a necro sees your rangers hand go up in the air. Overall the change does way more damage then good, gives no real personal support, puts a giant “Corrupt me now” bullseye on the ranger and over complicates something as trivial as “My health is low, I need to heal” which is all the skill is good for now, burst heal. So Ranger gets a big nerf while being told we’re being buffed (well sorta, no one in their right minds would run we heals as one now)

Its like the patient is bleeding to death so you chop off another arm to even things out. Oh well, its done and wont be looked at again for 6 months or so. Just sad that an opportunity was missed because of knee jerk panic.

Dear Guardians,

We regret to inform you that as of the time of receiving your letter our dogs have unfortunately already errr… eaten… your tome. As such we are unable to facilitate its return. Please don’t ask for its return again as we consider this matter now closed.

Further we appreciate that you have found our old discard… errr… lost longbows. Feel free to keep them as an apology for the ummm… eaten… tomes. No need to continue to attempt their return as we have already replaced said longbows with newer models.

With the best of regards,

rangers.

I disagree that none of the elite specs matter until release. The feedback given by players during the beta weekends should be invaluable resources for gameplay designers. This represents informed opinions from players who have sunk more hours into a class then a designer reasonably could ever be able to. By missing these weekends the spec runs the risk of not addressing core issues that are problematic to the new spec. Guardians, necros, etc. are all benefiting from this feedback as players have been able to point out and identify issues with mechanics and weapons that the team is supposedly examining.

The opportunities to give this feedback are limited as there are only a limited number of open betas. Further these revisions to the already announced specs divert time, which is a limited resource. Ideally every ranger should want the widest playtest base with the most number of opportunities to give feedback on that playtest. That is to say we should want the most bites at the apple to get the spec right. So far we’ve missed one. If ranger goes two betas without a playable elite spec my hunch would be that it will most likely be a cumbersome buggy mess. Or that the class is thought of as a casual C tier fun class but never really going to be competitive. I could be wrong.

Come to think of it didn’t ranger get a number of nerfs during the stress tests and didn’t it launch with some of its utility skills missing? Shouts or something weren’t finished? Worked out well for us.

For what its worth here is my experience so far. I play mainly WvW and PvE second. I dabble PvP.
I still play power ranger although longbow pew pew seems a tad weaker since the update in WvW. It could be simply because everything hits so much harder. I do agree that my power build seems far more survivable, much to the ire of thieves. In PvE melee sword axe, greatsword remorseless quickdraw ranger is a blast to play. Its a very active build that keeps me engaged in the dungeon run or whatever.

The only spirit I ever take is the old frost spirit in the frost spotter build. Beyond that I agree that the spirit effects are lack luster with a long cool down. There are far better utility options available.

Beastmastery is far better. Pets still die quickly in WvW though. Of course I am on sos server and everything on our server dies quickly in those blobs. Still pathing is bad, pets aren’t particularly tanky and enemies seem to be able to simply stroll away from most of my pets attacks. The taunt is very odd and seems to work far better with certain pets rather then others. Works great with birds, awful with drakes. Birds die instantly in aoe though so… meh.

PvE I feel opening strikes build is better then longbow, Ranger still struggles frontline in a zerg though.

I tried a support ranger in frontline WvW combat, as I said ranger still struggles there. In PvE the ranger can give decent support to say a dungeon runs. Other classes do it better but the small boost to might and regen certainly doesn’t hurt the class.

Well, considering how many sources of stability the guardian has I’d say no. Hallowed ground (? it been a while since I’ve slotted that skill) pulse stability and can be traited to be ground targeted. Maybe a rolling rotating group of guards tossing hallowed ground and staking out kill zones. Tomes can be traited to have stability. Could tomes make a comeback? I kind of doubt it but anything is possible. Stability on virtue probably will fall out of favor and maybe stand your ground is less appealing then other sources of stability but ultimately I don’t see much of a change in the 0 0 6 4 4 guard from this change. Guardians will still be part of the group comp with a possible tweak to traits, slotted skills and rotations. If anything all the walls and rings will make them more valuable in controlling enemy frontline and hammer trains.

Phffffttt…. Bow Schmoe. I’m holding out hope for duel wield shields. Its dangerous to go out in WvW alone. My guard wants metal floaties.

I wouldn’t get rid of read the wind for piercing arrows per say but I have dropped spotter for piercing arrows when I’m running pick squad and commander sniping in wvw. I find that it helps keep constant pressure dps on my target by going through any body blockers allowing me to setup and execute bursts and negate heals by interrupts more effectively.

I run a power build in PvX content. I made Rodgrot (because that’s the precursor I found) and was originally going to just sell it but I’ve found it rather useful on my ranger. My guild tends to run ele light and so the fire field is nice to drop for might on resets. I find I have enough fury in PvE (I’d take off hand axe over both in PvE anyways) and good enough fury in WvW and the only other thing I find the war horn useful for is the might. But its only 1 stack if I recall correctly. All in all its probably half dozen of one six of the other. I prefer the fast passive damage skills of the torch over the war horn for the content I run but a solid case could be made for either.

I don’t see how great sword is falling further behind. The new trait isn’t exclusive to sword so great sword will get the 10% damage benefit from it as well. Assuming the same build the only damage increase would be the 10% from the new GM trait which BOTH sword and great sword would receive and the damage increase to the auto attack of great sword. Soft CC shouldn’t be difficult to apply even for just the ranger. Snow leopard has a chill, Alpine wolf has a chill and cripple, great sword has a cripple, owl has chill, etc. So all things being equal the only difference is that great sword gets a 3% buff, sword does not. Which would make great sword something like 9% less effective rather then it being 12% less effective or there about as it currently is.

I agree. That will be the test of it, great sword could run the 6 5 0 3 0 build or the current 4 5 0 5 build and still benefit from both. How much is up in the air. Things like the fury will allow flexibility in foods etc. But for the record I completely agree that 1 handed sword will just get better and still be the optimal choice. I just think great sword will be less, less optimal. If that makes sense.

The new trait will help 1 hand sword but in order to work it in say with a 6 5 0 3 0 build you will lose a 5% damage minor trait Bountiful Hunter. So yes, Great sword will close the gap a bit. It still wont be as good though.