Keep in mind that Firey Greatsword got hefty nerfs, so the value of personal DPS as opposed to group DPS boost has gone up dramatically. You no longer have the FGS covering weaker weapon skills.
% wise the value would have been the same, simply ppl are doing less dps overall.
Taku, ALL projectiles function that way. Every single one. They all keep going past their maximum range, the auto attack just won’t fire at that range anymore.
I do it with my staff elementalist all the time to fireball enemies that are sitting just outside the range my Lava Font can reach.
I don’t think this is true for all projectiles. It works with ele staff auto & warrior LB yes, but it doesn’t work with warrior rifle for example.
Wondering how many threads have been created for this issue from the very beginning.
Ranger sword #1 is unique and it makes the class more intresting. It is not going to change because some people can’t turn auto attacks off and die, or simply because the animation looks ninja-ish on some classes.
PS: I should save the reply for future reposting…
I’m sorry but kitten uniqueness. Even with the auto off when you are mid animation you won’t be able to dodge without a delay and you gotta spam your 1 button to attack constantly, we aren’t suppose to kill our keyboards while playing this game, me thinks.
I never died from sword auto attack once I got used to it. The delay you are talking about is so small, it allows you to evade if you act fast.
The only “advantage” one can say I have, is that I use razer naga mouse, but then again you got 5 fingers, you can spam your skills with 1 and have 4 spare to decide which you will evade with…
There are certain attacks where the delay matters, for example at the Archdiviner. Plus don’t forget that as a ranger we cannot max range melee something like everyone else can.
Wondering how many threads have been created for this issue from the very beginning.
Ranger sword #1 is unique and it makes the class more intresting. It is not going to change because some people can’t turn auto attacks off and die, or simply because the animation looks ninja-ish on some classes.
PS: I should save the reply for future reposting…
I’m sorry but kitten uniqueness. Even with the auto off when you are mid animation you won’t be able to dodge without a delay and you gotta spam your 1 button to attack constantly, we aren’t suppose to kill our keyboards while playing this game, me thinks.
I made a second reddit post about this a few days ago, but I got downvoted to oblivion. I guess pve rangers are a vocal minority compared to the WvW warriors that think ranger is OP right now.
I’m sad that you would kick me out of dungeons, what’s even more sad that I’M pretty sure I’m gonna get kicked out several times for having a bow equipped :d
I don’t like that I get so annoyed every time I see vee wee make posts like these, talking in the 3rd person and such. No offense vee wee, I know it’s not really sensical of me. Uh, especially considering I literally just now found out sensical isn’t a word by typing it in here. Am I the only one who totally thought this was a word? Good to know I s’pose.
Anyway, what specifically about the sword are you referring to? The auto attack lock? I don’t think any ranger will tell you they like working around it (ok maybe some will, I sure as heck don’t) It is however, our highest dps weapon in pvE by a fair margin last I checked.
Could be wrong now since the patch, but Longbow was really the only weapon that received any buffs, and I’m quite certain it hasn’t taken over 1h swords spot as our highest dps weapon in pvE. I’ll let the number crunchers confirm that though.
Still, yes the auto attack lock has been brought up countless times. I find casting WH 4(which is usually my offhand), then dodging during the cast animation helps me. Some recommend turning off the AA chain, but personally it never really solved the problem for me.
Wah, Yah, Wahoo! Bye camrades!
^ this is my new trademark. Don’t you dare steal it vee wee.
Sword did get a 10% boost with predator’s onslaught & ppl are using Longbow in their rotation to maximize melee damage :d
Thank god, I wasn’t an idiot for expecting something like this. Frost spirit ninja nerf aside, I like this whole bow into sword thing, it gives our class some uniqueness. .-)
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 mean time…
(Frost spirit is still the same after today’s bugfix patch. )
I won’t be hanging around until the next feature pack
This will probably make rangers one of the most useless classes to bring in a dung lol..
All they have going for them is freaking spotter… outside of that, ranger brings nothing to the table in a dung/frac… RIP..will stick to using my ranger as a machine gun sniper in WvW lol
Yeah with the ferocity change, spotter is also much weaker than it used to be.
The saddest part is, they are right. There’s no point taking a ranger in any run, except if we find a niche use to any of their specific skills ( something around pets triggering something, I don’t know). So, if they could fix frost spirit, that would be great.
There is no evidence that anyone that has the power to help us is actually reading the Ranger subforums .d
An ele was better than a ranger in all cases. I can’t think of any record with a ranger in it pre patch, and even if there’s one, about all the records were done without. Obviously a ranger was better than a 2nd warrior. Everything is better than a 2nd warrior…
Think about this for a moment. If you ran 2 eles you often had 4x FGS in a fight. Frost spirit was a nice boost to the dmg of those fiery g swords + ranger used to be one of the best of not the best FGS holders, simply because you could boost the dmg with the active effect of signet of the wild + your cat kept attacking at the same time.
About world records here is one from a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQ-39_C8LI
Anyway, I’m aware of what rangers could bring in a speedrun. What I’m saying is, they were already few reasons to take a ranger over a 3rd/4th ele, and they just totally destroyed the viability of the class in pve. Frost spirit was the only thing that kept rangers in an average spot, and it was already nerfed relatively by the fgs nerf ( less party dps> less need for a party boost over a personal dps boost> rangers are nerfed). A buff worth less than a vuln stack is stupid.
Alright you have a point with the world record thing. Anyhow today someone told me that due to the FS nerf they don’t want me to part-take in their speed clear AC run & this hasn’t happened before. Yeah sure 4warriors+1 mes CoF pugs not wanting me was always normal, but this really made me sad. I spend most of my time in Gw2 with dungeons & now my main which I invested a ridiculous amount of time to make pretty is useless.
An ele was better than a ranger in all cases. I can’t think of any record with a ranger in it pre patch, and even if there’s one, about all the records were done without. Obviously a ranger was better than a 2nd warrior. Everything is better than a 2nd warrior…
Think about this for a moment. If you ran 2 eles you often had 4x FGS in a fight. Frost spirit was a nice boost to the dmg of those fiery g swords + ranger used to be one of the best of not the best FGS holders, simply because you could boost the dmg with the active effect of signet of the wild + your cat kept attacking at the same time.
It looks like (maybe) not all is lost for serious pve rangering. With a point blank Longbow + Sword/A,H rotation the dmg seems to be so high, that even spotter alone could make us viable. Needs more testing.
longbow will NEVER be viable in high end pve unless you’re afk bearbow soloing belka.
Using the initial burst on LB (in melee range) before swapping to sword seems to be a big dps increase.
No more than it already did…it adds vuln stacks like it always has.
The new meta will be 6/5/0/3/0 as it was, but with predator’s onslaught. And Frost Spirit will be replaced by SotW.
No more than it already did??? Both LB 5 & 2 are much faster than before. You can just use Barrage on pull & one rapid fire for a quick burst before swapping to sword.
Copied from the patch notes:
Rapid Fire:
Decreased casting time from 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
Barrage:
Reduced cast time by 0.6 seconds.
Not really, after running full zerker in WvW for a few hours it is pretty clear our damage output is very high. I don’t have any numbers, but a lot of bewildered bags to show for it… Pretty sure the frosty nerf was intentional, much like FGS alterations.
ANet wants people to use dungeons to learn team play, I think. Speed running dungeons is fine, but standing against walls and bursting things down too fast is too easy and doesn’t do much to teach team play. I think they are trying to make it so even the best groups will have to deal with dungeon boss mechanics, at least once, before squashing ‘em. Not really a big change. It’s not like we are going to be totally outclasses by anything at this point.
Any person trying a speedrun wouldn’t take a ranger, so the nerf to frost spirit isn’t a speedrun thing. Their only niche use was offensive support with some particular skills ( axe 4,axe 5, fire fields, great immob uptime mainly). The best groups have to deal with dungeon mechanics, and they had to before. We had to deal with them for 2 years, so we developped faster ways to achieve something. This has nothing to do with the frost spirit nerf. It just destroys ranger viability in dungeons, and enforcing the selfish bearbow playstyle.
It was a speedrun thing. A skilled sword ranger was better than a second warrior in almost all cases. Ofc pug groups didn’t take rangers, because most of them are bearbows & it’s a chore to deal with them. Speedclear records were made with 1 ranger in the party.
It looks like (maybe) not all is lost for serious pve rangering. With a point blank Longbow + Sword/A,H rotation the dmg seems to be so high, that even spotter alone could make us viable. Needs more testing.
longbow will NEVER be viable in high end pve unless you’re afk bearbow soloing belka.
Using the initial burst on LB (in melee range) before swapping to sword seems to be a big dps increase.
It looks like (maybe) not all is lost for serious pve rangering. With a point blank Longbow + Sword/A,H rotation the dmg seems to be so high, that even spotter alone could make us viable. Needs more testing.
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?
Yup, I didn’t know. That’s exactly how often I play Ranger. lol
I’m surprised though no one of those who main Ranger noticed this earlier; or it was “fixed” with a very, very recent patch.
I felt that something was off, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what. I almost always do the gate controller in CoF & I noticed that my dmg is much lower than before. (I always put down spirit before going into the chamber) Initially I thought it’s because I stopped using bloodlust stacking weapons, but then I tried with stacking again & it was still slower than normal. Also I played in normal speed clears too with my ranger in CoE & AC mainly & with all the quad FGS action things died too fast for this to be noticeable.
1. The nerfing of a key skill in the one and only widely accepted PvE instance meta build for Ranger.
2. Said skill is now so worthless that it has no place on any Rangers skillbar, ever.
3. Of all the classes in the game, this happened to Ranger.
Yes to all 3. I’m not a big Ranger player, I suck at it. However this is very detrimental to the class in PvE and needs to be un-“fixed” nao
And a week ago my only problem was the sword auto attack. Maybe I should just give up on the ranger, my warrior can use 5 out of my 6 legendaries.
Why did you make another copy of this thread?
It is even on the same page… Sigh.
And to quote the same thing I said there:
Even if you would want to continue this debate over the Sword #1, since it is such an old topic, why would we not just revive an old thread as opposed to posting a new one.
It is not like as if anyone has anything new to say.
Well, since we’re repeating ourselves, I’ll bring back the same counter to your argument that was brought up by several people on the other thread:
The squeaky wheel gets the oil. If people don’t speak up enough about the problematic nature of this mechanic, then the devs won’t receive the feedback they need to understand the issues it is causing.
People will complain about anything and everything on the forums, so popping in a single thread about an issue at one time and then leaving it won’t have any sway on making a change.
Also, because of the forum terms, thread necromancy is frowned upon, meaning that new threads need to be made.
But…yea, this OP could have certainly just posted in the thread on this forum that’s already active. =P
The other topic is about the “auto attack” :d, the issues do happen with that turned off.
You keep spamming 1 like a madman & when you need to dodge you stop for a moment and dodge with a delay. (preferably you need to predict when to dodge) If you had the autoattack on you might end up being on the wrong part of the attack chain when you want to dodge, or it would move to the wrong bit before your “dodge” command registers on the server. Overall it’s crappy either way, but it’s slightly better with the auto attack turned off.
Not having to constantly press keys and spam abilities was one of my reasons to move to GW2 from that other popular MMO.
Oh yeah, I liked that too when I started playing Gw2 :d Now I cannot play any class without spamming 1 .. :d
lol what else is there to talk about on the ranger forum?
Well nothing much I suppose. Use your imagination?
Even if you would want to continue this debate over the Sword #1, since it is such an old topic, why would we not just revive an old thread as opposed to posting a new one.
It is not like as if anyone has anything new to say.
Beacuse Arena net moderators are weird that way. Threat necroing is sort of a forum offense I think. Also it’s only fair that we want to keep this topic alive, in the hopes that someone with the power to do something might listens someday.
I watched an anet dev running thru the ranger profession. He had some interesting things to say.
1) sword 1 requires “Some geting use to it’s animation.”
2) Longbow does it’s best damage at maximum range, but that will also keep you out of range for boon swapping/sharing."
I stopped watching at that point.
Is that not a good sign? A developer acknowledging existing issues with the profession.
A bit overdue maybe. But then again, when was the last red post on the Ranger subforum ever since Robert Hrouda left?
Saying “it requires some getting used to it’s animation” is anything but good.
Congratulations!!! You are the 100.000th person to create a thread about ranger sword autoattack! fireworks
Like it or not, the sword is the best dps tool the ranger has. If you don’t like it’s unique animation, then either don’t use it or change class. With autoattacks disabled, you can normally evade like everyone.
And you are the 100,000th person to reply with “turn off the auto” while pretending that doing so doesn’t lower the weapon’s dps.
That in itself doesn’t, granted you are murdering your keyboard effectively enough. The problem is turning off the auto attack won’t solve the core of the problem, aka you still won’t be able to dodge while in mid animation and your toon will still leap even though you are literally standing inside your target. This in practice means a 0.5 second delay while dodging + you are going to murder not only your “1” but your dodge button as well. (some ppl won’t only became keyboard, but mouse serial killers as well .d )
That’s kind of the point though. Any attempt to simulate perfect rate of attack will defeat the purpose because you’ll still run into animation conflicts. Mashing slow enough to leave openings lowers the weapon’s DPS, potentially considerably.
You keep spamming 1 like a madman & when you need to dodge you stop for a moment and dodge with a delay. (preferably you need to predict when to dodge) If you had the autoattack on you might end up being on the wrong part of the attack chain when you want to dodge, or it would move to the wrong bit before your “dodge” command registers on the server. Overall it’s crappy either way, but it’s slightly better with the auto attack turned off.
Sigh, maybe one day it will get fixed. .. :d (probably not in this decade though)
Speaking of, anyone has the link of the twitch VOD where JonPeters talks about this “being looked into”?
What’s odd is that you can break out of any movement skill (like a leap) by swapping your weapons, but not with a dodge.
I try to post this every couple months just to keep it in everyone’s minds. I don’t hold out much hope for them fixing it. The problem isn’t really dodge; the problem is a bug with leaps. You can’t dodge during a leap – I don’t think anyone has a problem with that (though it is funny that you can swap weapons in the middle of a leap and cancel the leap).
The bug is that after you finish the leap, the game prevents you from dodging for about a half second. You can move, you can swap weapons, you can use skills, you can attack; you just can’t dodge. In fact if you tap a movement key or swap weapons immediately after a leap, you can dodge again even though you’re still in the time period the bug would normally lock you out of the dodge.
It’s not just sword that’s affected by this. I tested it with Swoop and a bunch of other skills from other professions’ leap skills. They’re all affected. Sword is particularly hard-hit by this bug because two of the three autoattack skills leap all the time, and the third one (supposed to not be a leap) will also leap if the previous skill hits something (that’s why when you kill a target and keep hitting 1, sometimes you will leap twice instead of just once). So you are always leaping or in this buggy lock-out period, and can’t dodge.
My hunch is that they’re overriding your ability to dodge in order to keep the animation fluid. That is, our gameplay is suffering so the game can look pretty. Unfortunately, fixing the bug won’t be as helpful as you think. You’ll still have to use sword with autoattack turned off. Because the skills leap, even if you do manage to dodge during the autoattack (you can sometimes pull this off by moving just prior to dodging), you’ll usually still be within leap range of the target so autoattack will just fire the next sword skill and leap you right back to where you dodged away from. Meh.
Don’t forget about the kick, same problem as with the leap.
Congratulations!!! You are the 100.000th person to create a thread about ranger sword autoattack! fireworks
Like it or not, the sword is the best dps tool the ranger has. If you don’t like it’s unique animation, then either don’t use it or change class. With autoattacks disabled, you can normally evade like everyone.
And you are the 100,000th person to reply with “turn off the auto” while pretending that doing so doesn’t lower the weapon’s dps.
That in itself doesn’t, granted you are murdering your keyboard effectively enough. The problem is turning off the auto attack won’t solve the core of the problem, aka you still won’t be able to dodge while in mid animation and your toon will still leap even though you are literally standing inside your target. This in practice means a 0.5 second delay while dodging + you are going to murder not only your “1” but your dodge button as well. (some ppl won’t only became keyboard, but mouse serial killers as well .d )
Ha, do you mean the 1h sword or the GS? I may try out the GS auto for the sake of pure damage, otherwise I’m pretty terrible at maneuvering with it >.>
Have had a ranger since pre. Currently have 3 80 Rangers. To this day I refuse to use the Sword. I don’t care about the paper dps, I don’t care how many talk about it’s dps, it’s greatness in wvw roaming, pvp, etc. The fact that it is a broken PoS is all I need to keep in mind. Whether you disable auto-attack and force yourself to press 1 and still get into an animation that locks you down or not, you are forced to struggle with using this weapon. To a point, I will debate, puts your DPS lower than on paper. We won’t talk about your lost dodge ability, your awkward movements in order to have auto disabled and try and move around even when the animation still locks you down, etc.
It’s rubbish. Anet has failed on this weapon, they have left it in it’s terrible state for 2 years.
Go ahead, use this PoS and rattle on about it’s paper dps.
The difference is pretty big, especially if you are a maximalist like me trying to do speed-clears on a ranger.
What frustrates me the most that it would be an easy fix, for example add a skirmishing trait that removes the jumping/kicking crap from skill 1, or change it that when you are 140’ or closer to your target the leap doesn’t occur, the later would be less good because we still wouldn’t be able to do max melee range + there is the kick thing also.
To be honest, sword is not about auto-attacking people to death. It’s more of a evasion weapon and the auto-attack should only be used when the enemy is stunned or the like.
Sword is the highest dmg weapon rangers have acces to in PVE and after 2 years it’s still broken. For example why do I need to be stuck in a leap animation when I’m standing literally inside Lupicus .. Why cannot I move around freely while attacking?
In dungeons half the fun comes from dodging boss abilities, dodge wars is one of the bigger appeals of pve & it’s just awkward with the 1H sword. Sure after using this weapon for god knows how long I can predict most of the bigger attacks & stop attacking preemptively (or react in some other fashion), but I totally understand why new players prefer bearbow builds over this :d
Edit: Funny thing is I still use GS like I use sword – manually hitting 1. I usually don’t bother selecting a target or pick a target that’s not in range (a trick to get your pet to attack something other than what you’re attacking) and hit 1 to swing. Sometimes you can use this to time GS’ autoattack evade to match with an opponent’s big attack. Only when the combat is predictable do I select a nearby target and rely on the autoattack.
Lol, I picked up the same habit, even when playing other classes I end up pressing the auto attack button.
Yeah my “1” button is already spent on my brand new Microsoft keyboard.
I have a question. Right now I’m running a sword, i feel the damage is great but not very fun to play, i was curious if I use a greatsword and the trait two handed training would the dmg be better then sword? Anything else i can do to make it better then sword?
Skills are more useful on greatsword and i feel I’m always using all of them. Not with my sword though.
Will the new damage buff also be enough you think to make greatsword another option?
The 1h sword has superior dmg in pve. Unfortunately the gap is so big that the feature pack changes won’t make a difference much. I don’t think the GS dmg will ever be comparable, because that would break pvp.
I just wish after 2 years they would change the sword auto-attack….
