Guild Wars 2

awge.3852:

When I read that people say how they want more DPS than a warrior…

Actually I think most people just want DPS to be higher than a ranger; there is a lot of room for improvement.

SynfulChaot.3169:

All I know is that in GW1 I never once was not taken for a group in lieu of something else (the requisite 2 healers aside). I had the group utility and ability to run many builds. That is just how rangers were in GW1. They were always viable.

Many times I couldn’t get into groups on my ranger, and sadly it is now happening now in GW2

Part of the problem is that people are wedded to a notion of what a ranger should be, not what it is. The problem is that if you accept the play style of what a ranger currently is then you realise that practically every other class can do that a lot better than you can.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Rangers not viable in GW1? No. Sorry. Rangers were and are still very viable. You’re spot on on the Paragon, though. Paras were IMBA or not taken at all. Rangers, however, were taken for many builds and for their unique utilities. Ever tried running Slaver’s Exile without a ranger running Frozen Soil? GL!

Rangers tended to run full non-ranger skill bars (SoS) and all the times ranger skills were needed (Winter, Frozen Soil, EoE) it was taken by ranger secondary.

If only they would split this PvP crap out we might stand a chance.

Though not game breaking this really is annoying. Sometimes they names get mixed up. My fish had my dog’s name! Usually it just loses them.

Terkov.4138:

I don’t want to defend them too much, but what do you want? If they come here and say they are working on ranger, ppl are unhappy (for obvious reasons).

WTF!!!

kitten ed right I want them to say they are working on ranger.

I want them to acknowledge that there are serious problems with the ranger, especially (but not only) with dungeons and certainly with bows and pets which are garbage at,. The very thing that defines the class are the thjings most broken with it.

While they are at it they can talk about spirits, breaking bugs, traps and party synergy, all areas that are severely lacking with the rangers.

But for a start they could try talking to us, anything but what they are currently doing which is outright BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE.

So come on Devs, where the hell are you? Talk to us, tell us what you are thinking on this subject

ENGAGE WITH US

Heapheaus.5238:

reroll warrior. or pick up a warrior’s banner because it does more damage then any of our weapons
On topic: what needs to be changed to make power rangers viable damage?

Just one thing

ANet

PwnsFroggles.7561:

> player makes a thread asking for ranger fix
> dev trolls the kitten out of him with generic cover sentence

And Devs don’t even know or care because they don’t come here

SynfulChaot.3169:

I feel that with the ‘Melee > Ranged’ paradigm they have set upon the game, the purpose of the ranger is heavily muddied. How can you be good as specializing in ranged when the game says that you do less damage with ranged? Catch-22, IMHO.

I wonder if this might be at the heart of the problem. ANet thinks that range means safe, so should therefore be ineffective. But they added a number of things to discount that already. So many gap closers (pulls, shadow steps, leaps into melee etc.) and in PvE the mobs seem to all agro on the ranger by design.

And no, not balance PvE, every profession can stroll all over the open world PvE, I was referring to PvE dungeons, where rangers are now often not allowed into groups.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Played GW1 since beta good sir. Mained a ranger there as well. Please don’t look down on my statements out of a false sense of superiority and I won’t look down on yours out of respect. Capiche?

Deal. I was however responding to your implication that you were superior with all your powerful builds that I wasn’t able to create.

As for the GW1 ranger, the end was a joke with most PvE rangers playing SoS with NO ranger skills on their bar! Expertise was indeed powerful, but was itself the target of heavy nerfs to address that, and don;t forget, ranger skills also had very high energy costs built in from the start as part of the balance to the expertise effect. Then we have spirits, mostly pointless and mostly there for the mobs to use, rangers mostly used them very situationally. Bows too, very poor base damage so the same problems at range persisted. Then there are pets…. nuf said.

Best let GW1 ranger debate to rest though. I still maintain the point that ANet thinks that they are fine, and they never really have been. They just have no clue how to balance (or even design) this class and rangers just become a medium armoured warrior.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Sorry. Hate to burst your bubble, but it’s only been in the last year and only in GW2. GW1 rangers have remained highly viable with a large amount of powerful builds. A large number of builds I could provide you were you to ask.

Don’t even go there, I probably had GWAMM on my GW1 ranger before you were born, but that’s not to say that ANet didn’t manage rangers exactly the same as the mess they are dealing out here. In GW1 the main problem was power creep, every thing got better bur ranger stayed the same. The best thing to do with a GW1 ranger was to play non-ranger builds with it. And they never did fix the ‘obstructed’ bug with bow rangers, just like they will never fix the well protested bugs with GW2 rangers.

Over the last 8 years ANet have let rangers slip into uselessness, nerfed any hope and ignored bugs and broken mechanics.

Why? Because ANet thinks there is no problem, everything is fine.

This is NOT going to change. ANet thinks there are no significant problems with rangers, they will not improve them. Expect future balance patches to have virtually no changes to ranger skills, ever.

Horrible fudge for a broken mechanic, your pet would be on recall more than it would be in a fight and you (as the ranger!) would spend your life mashing that key to get nowhere.

Yeah, ranger is now a melee class.

ANet is mostly focused on PvP
Players are mostly focused on PvW and WvW

Which is basically why GW2 is nothing like what it should be and is going down the plug hole. Remember all that pre-release hype? What happened?

Oidmetala.8426:

then write 3 ideas
and rangers use this topic more :P
100 qq topics make anet not care much :/

You can write all the ideas you like, and there are many threads in these forums the do just that, but until ANet gives a kitten you have to realise that is is just pointless theory craft because nothing is going to happen and you are wearing your keyboard down for no purpose.

ANet really doesn’t care here.

Some people round here (very few) think that having a pathetic long bow is the price rangers have to pay to be able to also wield a pathetic shortbow, thus making rangers the unparalleled archers that ANet bills them to be.

Go figure that!

hyjaxxx.1584:

“Development thought process”

A somewhat oxymoronic statement in the context of ANet

1) ANet give a kitten
2) that’s all

Pets should be faster
Pets should have a closing move
Pets should attack and move

Tumult.2578:

Is it possible to get Looney Tunes to do the next balance pass?

Well they did the last one, look how that worked out for us!

I think the devs have clearly answered the OP now, may as well close this thread/forum.

The outcome is that they really don;t give a kitten about us. More warrior love coming, burn your shortbow, vague promise of longbow something sometime probably a year (or two, or never) and er, what are pets? I think he thought we meant minis, couldn;t really see the problem with minis.

Einlanzer.1627:

This is just semantics. I can turn your argument around by saying that by defintion rangers are ‘unparalleled’ merely because they are the only class that can use both bow types. This gives them more skills with a bow and unmatched versatility.

You frequently do, and guess what, nobody is buying it because it’s just kitten; so give up flogging that dead horse, until ANet gives rangers dual wielding bows that is an stupid argument.

rchu.8945:

then dont use it, what’s the problem?

That’s probably the best advice regarding the ranger profession, let alone a shortbow.

What’s the problem?

In GW1 the ranger started off strong but became more pointless as the game aged. ANet just loved to spam mobs more and more so serious AOE was needed and rangers didn’t have it. Sure you could survive, but you were rather pointless compared to other professions.

And yes, rangers were good droks runners, right up until god mode permasins and vow dervish made that a wast of time too. Power creep took GW1 away from the ranger. ANerf has already taken GW2 away from us. You can play, but don’t expect to be useful like any other profession. Enjoy stroking your pet in LA while the real professions play the end-game.

Battosai.5620:

Hey there guys,

things on my list so far are :
snip

While this is all good stuff it does miss the elephant in the room.

Rangers are broken, the last patch was a mess and the whole profession is in meltdown. What are they going to do to fix this mess?

From Witionary
ranger (plural rangers)
One who ranges; a rover.
1) A roving robber; one who seeks plunder.
2) A keeper, guardian, or soldier who ranges over a region (generally of wilderness) to protect the area or enforce the law.
3) (obsolete) That which separates or arranges; a sieve.
4) A dog that beats the ground in search of game.

I think ANet’s vision for us in No. 4

rogerwilko.6895:

=> If it feels “shallow” sorry, maybe ranger is not the 1 button win proff you were hoping.
IMO ranger is a pretty complicated profession, when played at it`s full potential.

All professions will benefit in the hands of a skilled player and a novice will die regardless of the strength of that profession. But no profession should require the player to be an expert to be viable.

Shame, I was hoping a dev would have posted something by now. THey are probably too busy laughing at us as they read this mess.

Holland.9351:

So yes, if another mmo comes along that I like, I’ll be gone.

Agreed, there isn’t much too exciting in MMOs these days, I am going back to some RTS games, GW2 is definately taking a back seat now, that won;t change unless ANet does a lot better over this mess.

How can they have an entire class in the game that nobody knows what the hell it’s for anymore? How the hell can you mess up an update so badly as that?

jubskie.3152:

People have this preconceived vision of what a ranger should be, and it doesn’t align with ANet’s vision. That’s the main problem.

The problem is nobody knows what that vision is. The one that players are going on is the one that ANet hyped and published, but clearly that isn’t it.

Until ANet come out and tell us what the heck they are trying to do here then that problem just isn’t get solved. Once we know, we can decide to stay or go on that basis.

Pedra.4381:

ToT.7018:

and have boycotted the gem store.

You and me both, brother. You and me both.

+1 here too. Really hard to find the motivation to play now. Mostly hanging around LA trying to move traits around and looking at other games out there.

It was bad enough waiting for some ranger love in GW1, which never came, so I am not going to wait around again for a buff that never comes. If they are going to fix this bloody mess then they need to do it fast.

Can only say that goes down as another “what were they smoking?” moments. This patch was really not thought out.

CETheLucid.3964:

XelNigma.6315:

There are different ways to interpret the title.

Nope.

Says one of the people who just likes to argue

Its a shame we didn’t have a poll just before the patch. I am willing to bet the ranger would show the same, except in PvP.

Yes, basically 900 is not ranged. Anything and everything can close and hit you, there is no range ‘advantage’, you are melee with the worst weapon in the game.

Well, to be fair it’s weekend now. The devs are all sitting round their pools drinking pina colada (j/k)

I’m sure we will get a full engaging dialogue with them tomorrow

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I believe it would be possible to throw an ax the range of a short bow. While shooting with accuratecy one wone be able to shoot a kill a target at 35-75 yards maxium depending on the bow. While a arrow can fly 300 -400 yards with a 45 degree shot it wont kill most anything except an rabbit but chance are you wouldnt hit it anyway.

With that said it is quite possible to throw an axe the distance of 50 yards in the real world. So why is it so hard to believe it in a game.

I can’t believe there is someone that believes that you can throw an axe as far as you can shoot a bow!

How does it work with “Sic Em” now then as that is supposed to have a range of 3000?

To me, this seems more like a nerf to fun than to rangers effectiveness, what problem were they trying to solve here? In PVE I don;t even know why we have a leash.

Well, there s a dreamer available for sale 500g less than last weeks cheapest dreamer, it’s been up for a couple of days now at that price and it isn’t selling. The only reason why nobody has posted a cheaper one is because it is now a bad ledg to craft if you are going to sell.

Informality.1279:

Maybe you should get better at playing a Ranger. The longbow works wonderfully and did before the patch as well. I’m no longer going to argue my point here because it’s clear that all of the complainers about the balance don’t seem to comprehend the necessity of what areanet did with the balance and why it was good. Good day.

Really? Learn to play is all you have?

I’m glad you are no longer going to argue. But please come back if you want to contribute to a rational debate instead.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

PS. did You even play ranger?

Really? Is that how you like to conduct a rational debate?

Fail

Maybe rangers should have heavy armour then if they are meant to melee.

That’s a lot of investment into a skin. And would it still have the animation arrows if you did that?

Even at 1600g I wouldn’t pay that just for the dreamer skin

Informality.1279:

The thing is, there’s a trade-off for every weapon. The shortbow before was op in comparison to the longbow, making the longbow not worth it. They had nearly the same range (once you’re that far back, just a bit more does not make that significant of a difference), but the shortbow had rapid-fire where the longbow took longer. This left the longbow weaker in comparison.

What they did was balance the weapons for Ranger. To get the rapid-fire, you now have to give up some distance. To gain the distance, you give up rapid-fire. To me, it was a good change. Both player wise and development wise.

the extra 300 for longbow is not insignificant. And if the intent was to make the longbow more desirable then buff the longbow skills, there is nothing in the longbow 5 that gives anything but different ways of doing slow pew pew. Nerfing the shortbow doesn’t make the longbow better.

And the trade off wasn’t for rapid fire (crossfire) it was to the whole weapon, even for different professions, so that isn’t it, you are just trying to make excuses for a really bad update.

Not denying longbow sucks, it still does. But the shortbow was not over powered, it sucked too compared to many other profession weapons.

Informality.1279:

Avigrus.2871:

They need to release a hot fix now to change the Short bow range back to 1200 – it’s not a question. The change was completely unwarranted.

If the longbow is that bad, then fix the kitten longbow and don’t just nerf the short bow – i still can’t believe this happened.

The nerf was needed. The longbow does not need to be fixed. It is not that bad. The shortbow was OP and the range should not be changed back. The change was warranted for balance purposes.

Just no, not even close. Are you REALLY trying to say that the pre-patch longbow was fine? REALLY?

OMG!!

swiftpaw.6397:

I guess you could try reroll thief and reskin it onto that

No you can’t, it’s soulbound not account bound

Informality.1279:

I do like the range changes for shortbow however. Realistically a shortbow can not shoot as far as a longbow due to the force exerted by the string itself. So it makes sense to me (as an archer in real life).

Longbow 1500 vs Shortbow 1200, they were not equal before.

Shortbow 900 vs Axe 900 and you don’t see a problem with that?