“Some of these may not make it in for that release” scroll up on patch preview notes
Actually, pretty much all of the changes in the preview made it to release. What bugs me is that there was pretty much nothing else of substance in addition to them, despite this being billed as a significant balance patch, and being told there would be changes in addition to the highlights they previewed.
If the class is so crappy (it’ not), why do I see so many rangers in PvE?
Because the vast majority of players don’t play enough to notice balance problems (i.e. most players are fairly casual). Many average players will roll a ranger because ranger is a classic fantasy archtype and many people identify with that archtype.
They didn’t promise. They specifically said it might not make it in patch release.
There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview/first
And here are the “# changes to some of the Ranger weapons”: cough plural? cough
Maul: Damage for this skill has been increased by 7%. Vulnerability has been increased from 3 stacks to 5 stacks, and the duration has been increased from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-15-2013
+1, I’ve been a ranger in the GW franchise for over 8 years, and I want to see the attention this class deserves.
It’s really not very encouraging that all they talk about when they discussed rangers for the last month was the fluffy flavor bit about pets sniffing out thieves. It was clever the first time someone said it, but it’s really not something to be that proud of.
I agree with the other posters that you should speak for yourself as well. I am terribly disappointed by the ranger part of this patch.
I do appreciate the parts of the patch that apply to everybody, like better tab-targeting, better ground targeting, better condition floaters, Halloween content, etc.
It’s nice that they buffed pet health in PvE, but this was a problem with all minions/pets across most classes and not really a ranger fix.
But I do not appreciate how little was done to balance rangers. Half of the changes are mild number changes to pet F2 skills. Not so exciting given how often F2 skills misfire, have delayed response, miss because pets root, etc. A quarter of the changes are simply fixing tooltip descriptions. (Ironically they broke other tooltips in the process.)
The final quarter of the changes are actually the ones with substance. I’m willing to reserve judgment on Sic ’Em until I try it out in sPvP – actually kind of hopeful about it. The handful of trait buffs are nice. The damage buff in Maul is nice.
But they really let us down with how far these changes go. There are very few real changes, and they don’t really make a big difference. Pretty much everything was in the patch preview from a month ago. They told us there would be number balances on weapon skills, and the only single number balance we got was Maul.
Honestly, this really just shows that they don’t care about ranger. It’s really not very encouraging that they’re so proud of that fluffy flavor bit about pets sniffing out thieves in stealth that it’s the only thing they talk about when they discuss ranger.
(edited by Veron.8645)
Well, from the leaked patchnotes from a month ago, we know that at least at some point leading up to this upcoming patch, somebody considered this to be a good idea:
Maul: Damage for this skill has been increased by 15%. Vulnerability has been increased from 3 to 5 stacks and the duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
Since greatsword isn’t that impressive right now, I’m hoping at least this one change will survive through to the actual patch.
As for running berserker being dangerous? Yes. It is. Our survivability is then entirely based on our ability to position, heal, regen, dodge, and evade. But we cannot reach near as much direct damage running more defensive-statted armors due to our poor power scaling.
To elaborate a little more on this: there are many places were having more defensive-stats don’t really do you much good (e.g. bosses that will one- or two-shot you). Better that your party can kill the boss more quickly so he doesn’t have as much of an opportunity to hit you. Having defensive stats often just prolongs battles without offering you much improvement in survivability.
Once you get good enough at surviving based on position, dodges, and evade, your defensive stats become mostly redundant.
Warriors have access to a lot of weapons as a class mechanic. They’re supposed to be masters of physical combat. Presumably, the devs picked the current weapon sets for each class based on what they consider to be a balanced amount of build variety across all classes. Rangers have fewer weapon options than warriors, but we have the separate option for having two different pets, each of which have different sets of skills. Warriors have adrenaline, which really doesn’t add anything on top of whatever current weapon they already picked. Analogously, elementalists can switch between attunements, which adds a lot more skill variety despite having even more limited weapon choices.
The devs have hinted that they are looking at adding additional weapon choices to the game. If they do, I’m sure every class will get something new. It’s possible this will be a rifle for rangers, but it really could be anything.
tl;dr : They devs won’t just give rangers a new weapon because warriors have more options, because of class mechanics. Rangers might get a rifle when everyone gets new weapons, or might get something else instead.
At least for dungeons, I think you just need to get more familiar with them, get better at dodging, get better at positioning. Most experienced rangers in dungeons run even more glassy power/precision gear than you probably use (pure berserker), and primarily use a more dangerous weapon set, sword/warhorn. (Melee range and has weird rooting issues that makes it more difficult to time dodges.)
If you don’t feel comfortable with pure berserker (power/precision/crit dmg), you can mix in some knight’s (power/precision/toughness) or soldier’s (power/toughness/vitality) gear, though this will obviously decrease your DPS.
People will probably tell you to use sword/warhorn as a primary set over longbow. This is because mainhand sword is the highest DPS weapon available to rangers right now, and DPS is king under current game mechanics. You can get by with lower DPS builds if you get used to dungeon mechanics, so using what you like shouldn’t stop you from completing most dungeons successfully, though it will probably take longer or not go as smoothly. But keep in mind at least that more DPS always makes for better dungeon runs.
As for WvW, if you are running with the zerg, it is always good to use Soldier’s (power/vitality/toughness) armor, also known as PVT. Survivability in a zerg is most important, since there are just so many people around that extra damage for a few seconds before you die isn’t as effective as an extra living person for the whole fight.
If you are planning to do roaming in WvW, someone else will probably have a better answer for you.
Pretty good discussion and calculations in this thread so far.
One thing I don’t see that would be a consideration for something like dungeons and fractals is that you are playing in a party. Because of this, the vulnerability you apply with Rapid Fire has a higher effective damage output due to the fact that there are four other players taking advantage of it. Obviously what this number is will be highly situational, but can we get a reasonable estimate of what it might be in typical cases? I feel like this would be useful for comparing longbow and shortbow DPS for dungeons, since shortbow does not have an equivalent thing going on.
I wouldn’t be too excited yet. I’m pretty sure, but don’t have time to look up where, that the balance patch is actually the one in two weeks.
Hi jmaster,
I’m from the Jade Quarry guild Vintage Gaming [VG]. We’re what I consider to be medium-sized, with ~170 members in the roster and something in the ballpark of 40-50 members online during peak North America hours. We have a pretty active core group that plays together daily. I’m not sure whether this fits the size you’re looking for, but we are a friendly cohesive community, so you are welcome to give us a try.
We’re a mostly PvE guild, with many people who run dungeons, fractals, world bosses, new Living World content, etc on a daily basis. If there is anything you want to do but are less experienced with, our more experienced players are happy to show you the ropes. We have weekly guild missions on Saturdays and Wednesdays.
We don’t really have anything organized for WvW or sPvP. A bunch of our members like to WvW and sPvP and will usually do it on their own, but if we have multiple people in at the same time we’ll usually group up and run together.
We use Mumble for voice communication. You’re certainly not forced to join in, but being able to voice chat is a great way to get to know people better and get closer with the guild. It’s also highly recommended to at least get on and listen to directions for guild missions, though not strictly required.
I’ll contact you in-game, but feel free to get in touch with me as well.
-Veron
Hi Griever,
I responded to your post in a different thread about my guild Vintage Gaming [VG]. I’ll get in touch with you later today when I get in-game.
-Veron
Hi Carn and Griever,
I’m from the Jade Quarry guild Vintage Gaming [VG]. We’re an active, mostly PvE, medium-sized guild, with ~170 members and at least 40-50 members on during NA primetime hours daily. Our members are very friendly, and we’re a mature guild (everyone is at least college age or older).
We have a lot of members who do dungeons daily, and we also have people who do fractals pretty often. Even if you’re newer to dungeons, our experienced members are always happy to show newer players the ropes. We have guild missions twice a week – Saturday and Wednesday evenings. We don’t really have any organized WvW stuff right now, but a bunch of our members like to WvW once in a while and will group up if they’re doing it at the same time. We also do world boss events and new living story content actively.
We use Mumble for voice communication, and chatting on Mumble is a great way to get to know the guild community better.
I’ll contact you in-game when I get online later, but feel free to contact me as well.
-Veron
Hi Ras,
I’m an officer from the Jade Quarry guild Vintage Gaming [VG] and it sounds like we might be what you’re looking for. We’re an active, mostly PvE, medium-sized guild, with ~170 members and at least 40-50 members on during NA primetime hours daily. Our members are very friendly, and we’re a mature guild (everyone is at least college age or older).
We have a lot of members who do dungeons daily, and we also have people who do 26+ fractals very often. We have guild missions twice a week – Saturday and Wednesday evenings. We don’t really have any organized WvW stuff right now, but a bunch of our members like to WvW once in a while and will group up if they’re doing it at the same time.
I’ll contact you in-game when I get online later, but feel free to get in touch with me as well.
-Veron
I only use longbows in sPvP for two things:
(1) knocking people off in Skyhammer with point blank shot.
(2) if I’m fighting a thief and he uses shadow refuge, and I have it equipped, I’ll use barrage.
Otherwise it’s hard to get longbow to be as effective as other weapons.
Hi Carine,
I’m an officer from Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry. We’re a mostly PvE, medium sized guild, with ~150 members and a highly active ~40 member core. People in our guild are very friendly and also mature, with everyone that I know about at college age or older. Several of our players (myself included) have also been playing since the early days of GW1.
We have a guild website you can check out here, and we also have a Mumble server for voice communication. If you’re interested in making friends, there is a core group of us who get on Mumble every day and have become fast friends from chatting and playing together. A bunch of these folks are even players who joined in the last few weeks/months, so don’t be shy about joining in.
We get together every day to do dungeon runs, fractal runs, world boss event chains, new living world content, etc. It’s no problem if you’re new to dungeons; we frequently have more experienced players who show the ropes to newer players. We also have guild missions twice a week and occasionally have fun guild events like hide and seek or jumping puzzle races.
If you’re interested, feel free to PM or mail me in-game. My character name is Veron Oakguard.
Hi New Recruit,
I’m an officer from Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry. We’re mostly a PvE, medium sized guild, with ~150 members and a highly active ~40 member core. People in our guild are very friendly and also mature, with everyone that I know about at college age or older.
We get together every day to do dungeon runs, fractal runs, world boss event chains, new living world, etc. It’s no problem if you’re new to dungeons and fractals; we often have experienced players who show the ropes to newer players. We also have guild missions twice a week and occasionally have fun guild events like hide and seek or jumping puzzle races.
We have a guild website you can check out here, and we also have a Mumble server for voice communication. I know you only listed Vent and TS, but Mumble is a pretty decent popular software now and easy to download/install.
If you’re interested, feel free to PM or mail me in-game. My character name is Veron Oakguard.
(edited by Veron.8645)
Hi Sophie,
I’m an officer from Vintage Gaming [VG] on Jade Quarry. We’re mostly a PvE guild, though some of our members really like to WvW and spend a lot of time there. We’re a medium sized guild, with ~150 members and a highly active ~40 member core. People in our guild are very friendly and also mature, with everyone that I know about at college age or older.
We get together every day to do dungeon runs, fractal runs, world boss event chains, etc. It’s no problem if you’re new to dungeons; we frequently have more experienced players who show the ropes to newer players. We also have guild missions twice a week and occasionally have fun guild events like hide and seek or jumping puzzle races.
We have a guild website you can check out at here, and we also have a Mumble server for voice communication.
If you’re interested, feel free to PM or mail me in-game. My character name is Veron Oakguard.
(edited by Veron.8645)
Fix this please. I have been trying to finish these two achievements for a week and a half.