Guild Wars 2

ituhata.6830:

I’m not really sure what you guys are all doing, but before I could stack 9 bleeds, now I can stack 8. Not that big of a deal.

Please don’t lie, before the patch you could only stack 6-7 bleeds, not 9.. now you can stack 5-6.

I don’t think devs read the forums other than sporadically here and there.. the amount of dev posts on the forum is extremely low, maybe they just don’t have the time. But it’s hard getting feedback from the community if you don’t read your own official forums.

I also don’t understand why they didn’t test this change before making it live, they would have noticed this crippling damage downgrade right away, maybe the problem occured during the upload? Right now ranger profession is simply unplayable, pve or pvp.

I don’t think it is intended, as this change makes the ranger unplayable in pvp content.. it is a gigantic damage per second downgrade.. the damage of crossfire (at my level) is cut by something like 35% with this change. I’m even having problems with downleveled content (1-15 areas) right now.

I wouldn’t delete your ranger character yet, there’s no way that this can be an intended change. My dps with the shortbow was almost cut in half, so that can’t be intended.

It’s just frustrating because I can’t play anymore now, I just don’t do enough damage to partake either in pve or pvp, so I hope they repair this problem soon, preferably today.

Such a gigantic drop in dps can’t be intended though, it’s not like the shortbow was overpowered in any way before, it was quite weak compared to other profession builds.

I’m sure they will realize something went wrong (though I don’t get why they didn’t see this when they tested the change), and either speed up the shortbow again or increase its damage apropriately.

I don’t understand how this can happen, don’t they do any tests at all before they launch a patch? I panicked a bit first, but now I realize this cannot possible be intended, since it means ranger becomes entirely useless for pvp, it would make us too weak to do any kind of pvp.

I never noticed any “animation” problem whatsoever btw.

Go compare your dps with pre-patch numbers, you’ll be quite shocked.

Lol, the longbow is actually better now, and that is not a viable weapon, you cannot kill anyone with that when roaming in wvw.

I had hoped they would at least remove the root from the sword, so I could use that weapon for leveling instead, but no..

When I saw elementalists, the weakest profession in the game, getting another downgrade, (-33% whirlpool damage) that shoulda been a sign tho.

It takes me about twice as long to take down a monster now than before the patch went in… that’s a 50% dps downgrade.

First I read how the guardian greatsword gets ruined, which was the only other profession/build outside of ranger that I enjoyed, and then a bit lower I see that the ranger shortbow is completely destroyed into the ground, leaving me with not a single profession left to enjoy.

Good job Anet, good job ruining yet another profession with this overnerfing obsession. Instead of giving rangers more than just one viable build, you go and ruin that one viable build.

Faytte, go test it, you will find a massive dps downgrade.

I just took out my shortbow to test this “40ms slowdown”.. and noticed that my shortbow is really really slow now.. when I use quickening it’s almost twice as slow than it was before during quickening.. a huge drop in dps. During quickening it barely goes any faster than normal crossfire was before the patch.

I don’t get why they don’t just admit it’s a massive downgrade instead of trying to hide it behind an animation fix, do they think people won’t notice?

Did shortbow really need such a huge downgrade when warriors and mesmers are melting people left and right? Or did they think the longbow was too useless compared to the shortbow, and instead of changing the longbow they thought it would be cool to ruin the shortbow, which was the ranger’s only viable weapon?

I don’t really understand why they overnerfed so many things in beta for so many professions.. they should have made minor adjustments or at least waited for a while after release, now many profession builds for almost all professions are completely broken, and professions like elementalist are totally out of whack, with the lowest health, lowest armor and lowest damage.

I don’t use the horn for swiftness, I use it for the fury.

Imo, ranger horn is fine as it is.. there are plenty of reasons to use the other offhand weapons depending on your playstyle, right now warhorn is just the easiest to use for starting players. Once you start experimenting with different builds and you get experience, you also start using different offhands.

It’s like the warrior GS, at first every single warrior was using GS without even bothering with switching weapons, now more and more people realize how easily the weapon is avoided, and they start using other weapons.

I don’t think downgrading non-overpowered abilities is the right way to continue with a new game.. the swiftness is only 33%, not 60-70% like in other MMOs.

I hope the devs realize how badly the pets are bugged and malfunctioning right now.. stopping before every attack, walking in straight lines instead of homing in, not attacking while moving, insane long F2 animations that also don’t home in on the target, horrible F2 response despite patches, F2 not canceling other skills by placing them on a short cooldown, or none at all preferable, pets having no aoe damage resistance, which is something every MMO needs for a pet class to work, skills wrongly described, skills not being used and I’m sure more experienced players can add a whole lot more problems.

The game just started, so I’m not worried, I just hope it’s being worked on.

Dramatic drop off of players? Have you looked at the realms, they get more players everyday.. more and more realms are filling up completely. A lot of people enjoy WvW and sPvP and tPvP, and I’m sure they will adjust and improve the systems in the future.

The game has its flaws sure, it only just started, other MMOs weren’t even half as good as GW2 at launch, and even after two years they didn’t get as good as GW2 is at launch. I’d say have some patience, enjoy yourself in the places you can, and trust Anet will evolve the game towards player needs and desires.

Did anyone else notice that the greatsword is doing a ton more damage again? In the past my shortbow greatly outdamaged my greatsword, but not my greatsword is hitting for a lot more in any timespan than my shortbow.

I’m just level twenty right now with this char, maybe it’s just a bit skewed.

Aesseus, I assume you use the shortbow/axe build?

Try using longbow as your main.. the word of hundreds of longbow users complaining about how weak the weapon really is, has your insultive rant beat. You should also contemplate on what kind of a person it makes you if you go on the net to insult people you disagree with, I was just offering some thoughts.

It helps if you see the kill shot coming and dodge it as a ranger, but equally skilled ranged warriors will always beat rangers one vs one, they just do a crapload more damage than anything a ranger can dish out, and all the warrior has to do to avoid bleed builds, is face the ranger so he can’t flank.

I do think warrior damage might get tweaked once the balance patches come though, it can’t go on like this where warriors do over five times more dps than most other professions, both ranged and melee.

Once they see the numbers they gathered and compare the insane damage output to the other professions, things will probably change, it’s not like warriors have low survivability that needs to be balanced with high damage.. since they have the highest health and the strongest armor, as well as superior health regeneration, superior shield skills and superior utilities such as endure pain, wich offers a non-restrictive 5 second total invulnerability.. even the guardian elite renewed focus can’t come close to that.

60 second cooldown removal isn’t so hot.

<3 long shortbows.

On a sidenote, I just want to express my love of ranger in WvW, it’s so much fun to roam around and surprising people 1vs1 and 1vs2.. range rules in WvW, both for zergs, wall sieges and kiting the lone warrior or guardian who thought it was cool to go full glass cannon.

The only problem is I’ve no decent way to remove conditions.. I think with our forest magic we should be able to do some healing, or make a salve that removes 2 conditions on a 25s cooldown.. it’s also pretty hard getting stability.

Imo my guardian had the coolest utility skills of all professions, I wish ranger’s Lightning Reflexes was a bit better, or at least a shorter cooldown, or remove immobilize/chilled/crippled as well.

Birds like eagles are quite good because they don’t only put out a lot of damage, they also have a lot of vitality.

Does your condition damage affect your pet’s condition damage?

Is Troll Unguent as strong at lvl80 as it is at low levels?

At lvl1 it heals for like 900, where as other healing skills of other professions barely hit 150. I wondered if it stays so strong later on?

When you start playing as a ranger, the toy-like shortbows really put a lot of people off, and they take a longbow then even though it is far inferior for every purporse. A simple fix to this goes like this: Go to the trading post, buy a Resilient Krytan Shortbow and use one of those transmute stones you have from your other characters to turn your Resilient Krytan Shortbow into a Mighty Shortbow.. meaning you have the Krytan looks and the power stats.

The Krytan Shortbow is much longer and larger and cool looking than those normal toy-like shortbows, it’s almost as long as normal longbow.

You could of course just buy a Mighty Krytan Shortbow, but I have never seen those on TP, I only see Krytans with toughness or healing stats.

I’m going in the honor line personally, I want two handed mastery for faster greatsword skill recharge, and the extra health will help as well, since we have the lowest possible vitality in the game. The honor line means more dps and more survivability at the same time.

I think I will go 30 honor, 20 zeal, 10 radiance and 10 virtues.

To get the 3 spirit weapon traits, to get the justice blind, and two handed mastery.

And then balance my gear around high crit and power while still some vitality/toughness.

I dunno, we get an aoe interrupt that blows everyone away, and we get a symbol that greatly increases healing for a while, what more do you want? I’m not sure how other professions have better downed skills.

You’re not really supposed to survive if you’re downed and there’s no one to help you against healthy monsters. You can kill weakened opponents with #1 and you can interrupt killing blows with #2.

I guess the warrior has the best (surprise surprise).. with revenge that revives him at full power.

I dunno, I think the only thing I would like changed about the guardian for now, is getting access to the longbow as a non-support weapon, so that we can have more fun playing WvW.

Greatsword is a tank weapon, it’s not suited for damage. It used to in beta, but then it got nerfed so bad that it’s only useful defensively due to its block, interrupt and evasions. Like if you’re swarmed by a lot of melee monsters, you can switch to greatsword to survive, put down a firetrap, leap out of it for fireshield, and you’ll do decent.

Rangers without pet, is luckily not ever going to happen. I chose ranger because they have pets, it is their class mechanic, and once they get pets working properly so they are actually useful in pvp, it will be a powerful companion. No MMOrpg is complete without a beastmaster, there’s just too many people that enjoy having a controllable animal companion.

A warrior with a rifle will do a lot more damage; sustained and burst, than a ranger can do. The longbow is not a viable weapon right now, the shortbow will do more damage for example with its auto attack than the longbow does with its “burst” ability rapid fire.

The only burst we have consists of quickening plus shortbow auto attack. It’s not so bad, it’s not that powerful but if you are a skilled player and use your utilities right, you will be able to beat other professions, as long as they’re not mesmers and rifle warriors ofcourse, you have no tools to beat those if they are somewhat skilled.

With some minor changes we can have a lot more viable builds than just this one, but that’ll be up to Anet, right now only the shortbow build is viable, few serious rangers will use the sword or greatsword or longbow, as it means weakening yourself greatly.

Azi, all you have to do to avoid a pet from hitting you, is keep moving.. which is something even newbies do when they first start pvp’ing.

1) This is because pets stop dead in their tracks before they attack.
2) And on top of that they don’t home in on their target, they just run to last known location and update that every few moments, they don’t move in curves.
3) The third problem is the lack of reaction on F2, on top of the long animation and non-homing in of F2 abilities, meaning your F2 will -always- miss, often even mobs.

Solutions to ranger problems:
- Make pets home in when they move, make them attack while moving.

- Make pet F2 skills react instantly, canceling other abilities by putting them on a short cooldown, and make the animation short enough for the F2 ability to always hit unless actively dodge-rolled, interrupted, evaded or blocked.

- Make pets have a 75% aoe resistance, so they don’t die in 1 second during combat, since they have such low health. Include cleaving melee attacks in this resistence, unless the pet is targeted directly.

- Give shortbow a more fun to use #2 ability, it’s very boring, change #3 into a crippling
kick and rollback, similar to lightning reflexes, instead of this weird, often buggy jump.

- Remove the rooting effect on sword auto attack, remove the cripple effect on the chain if really necessary for balance.. no dodging and no moving makes sword useless.

- Increase greatsword auto attack damage to 80% warrior-level, make #2 very slow but very heavy hitting, kinda like the guardian hammer last #1 chain attack. To avoid QZ greatsword attacks, a simple dodge is enough to reduce damage to like 30%, so the ranger would have to root first, just like the warrior with hundred blades.

- Spirits need to be unkillable, they are ethereal beings after all, and hardly much of a threat, the boons they give should just be automatic pulse to everyone near, no % chance to apply, to put them on equal terms as banners, which even then will still be far superior.

- I’m sure better players than me can add more suggestions to make it easy for anet.

- Finally, the longbow #1 needs to be unaffected by range, arrows simple don’t do more damage at targets further away, it makes no sense. Make the #1 more damaging, I would say +80%, and make rapid fire about 60% of hundreds blades, but in a shorter duration so it can be more easily dodged, give it a telegraphed, increased charge up, so players can see it coming, it will be doing a ton of damage after all. Longbow will be doing a lot more direct damage than shortbow, but shortbow rules at condition damage, longbow cannot apply damaging conditions. Shortbow will still be viable at power builds, but longbows will simply be better at it, the way it makes sense. Longbow now requires timing, without timing you don’t do much damage, with timing you will do a ton of heavy damage: more skill based, more tactical based.

All professions have problems, rangers certainly aren’t the most problematic one out there. Guardians have major range issues, necromancers have damage issues, engineers have build issues, elementalists have everything-issues.

The three professions that are best right now by far are warriors, thieves and mesmers. They’re leaps and bounds more powerful than the other professions, and offer far more variety in their build.

The main problems with the ranger is that they only have one single viable build, partially because their pets don’t function, pets are entirely useless in pvp since they cannot hit anything with their auto attack or other abilities, and their F2 abilities either don’t react or have such a long animation that they never hit. But at least we have that one viable build, that’s more than elementalists and necromancers have for example.

Ranger problems are relatively easily solved luckily:
- The spirits need to be unkillable (they’re ethereal spirits after all). -> Support build.
- Pets need to home in, attack on the move and F2 act quickly. -> Beastmaster build.
- The greatsword needs to do some more damage again. -> Tank build.
- The longbow needs to do serious damage again. -> Power archer build.
- The 1H sword needs to stop rooting rangers (remove cripple effect on second chain if necessary), and the #3 skill needs to home in on the target during the evasion so it hits. -> Survivalist build.

With five simple fixes, rangers get 5 additional viable builds, making it 6 in total. This gives me hope because it means Anet just needs to realize this, if they haven’t already, without having to put much time and effort in rehauling anything, since the fixes are so simple.

Right now all I use in pve is shortbow #1.. but I am hoping that the devs will fix the 1h sword so it doesn’t immobilize you anymore, and once that happens I will use the sword as well as the shortbow, and I reckon playing will be a lot less boring then. I would use the greatsword, it has really cool skills, but it does way too low damage.

My shortbow isn’t bad for pve, it doesn’t do anywhere near the damage a warrior does, even to a single target, which the warrior does to 5 at once, but it’s good enough to not get frustrated with low damage as long as I update my gear every 5 levels with runes and sigils and jewels.

I think companion’s might only adds might to the pet if the pet itself crits.. I tried it out and my crits did not add any might to my pets boon list, otherwise we would be racking up huge stacks of might I guess.

Maybe you can give some ranger tips against thieves instead of saying L2P?

My trusty fern hound Bramble.

Once our pets are fixed, I plan to put like 20 points in beastmastery to offset the weakness of our weapons, maybe that will work. But I guess until then there’s just waiting.

What build do you use? I ask cuz we have some quite defective builds and weapons, and our pets not functioning doesn’t help either of course, rangers don’t have their class mechanic in pvp.

The +20% crit chance from the warhorn is quite nice too though isn’t it?

If you spec for 40-50% crit chance like most, then that gets you up to 60-70% crit for 15 seconds. A nice quickening zephyr and that’s a lot of crits in 4 seconds time. If you have a superior sigil of purity, then you become immune to bleeds and burns and don’t need any condition removal utlity or pet. Crit proc sigils work real nice on shortbows with warhorn buff.

ilJumperMT.4871:

1H Sword + Torch is great combo in sPVP.

You only use Warhorn for Call of the Wild, just switch to Torch when its on CD.

You can’t just say things without knowing if they are true at all. You cannot use 1H sword in sPVP because it roots you, which means you die the moment you start auto attacking with the 1H sword.

You can use the 1H sword against trash mobs in solo pve, but that’s its only use. The moment you start auto attacking, you cannot move or even dodge anymore, and that means in any situation but solo pve against trash monsters, you will die.

Giving your enemy a free immobilize that lasts as long as you attack = you die.

All a warrior has to do for example is run up to you and click #2, then you are dead, because you cannot even move or dodge out of the way, he doesn’t even have to bolas or bull charge you, you rooted yourself for him as a nice gift.

Even if you turn off auto attack, each attack still roots you for its duration, greatly limiting your movement, it’s just not a weapon any ranger should ever use in any kind of pvp. Against tough monsters it’s just as lethal, because you can’t get away from the heavy attacks then, and if you have AA off, you’ll get a really painful finger from hitting #1 thousands of times a day.

As long as Anet doesn’t say that this is just intended bad design, I still have hope they will fix the root. I do hope they don’t do it half-arsed by allowing dodging but still not moving.. imo the only way to fix this is by removing the root.. if it takes removing the cripple condition on the chain then I will gladly take that. No auto attack is viable if it stops you from moving.

I think the longbow should be viable in pvp for people that like going for power, and the shortbow should be viable in pvp for people that like going for condition damage. Right now the shortbow is better than the longbow with a powerbuild, and obviously better with a condition build as well.

As long as the longbow has this severe range penalty, it will never be useful for pvp even if you increase the total damage it does, because pvp never happens at 1000 range.

It would be completely unfair if a ranger could keep someone at 1000 range and kill them that way, there’s no counter for that and rangers would be overpowered. What needs to be changed is that the longbow is just as useful at close range with a powerbuild as the shortbow is useful at close range with a condition build.

Then longbow users would build skirmishing for pvp, and marksmanship for dungeons.

The only way to get serious players to actually use the longbow, is by either completely overhauling the weapon and giving it an entirely different skillset, or cranking up the damage to such near-overpowered extents that it is worth using again.

Though an important part of making it useful is getting rid of the severe range penalty.. giving it a range penalty like that, whatever else you do to this weapon, will always lock its purpose as a main weapon down to only dungeons. In pvp you always fight others at close and mid range, not at long range, and any weapon that is only useful at long ranges, will then become completely useless by default.

It also doesn’t make any sense, arrows simply don’t do more damage at greater range, they do less.. they do the most damage at closer ranges, as they haven’t lost any speed yet then. So imo the range difference should just be removed altogether so you can change the longbow to be useful as a main weapon in any situation, not just one or two. Many people don’t like the silly graphics of these small toy-like shortbows, and get totally turned off by being forced to use them if they want to be viable.

I don’t know why they overnerfed longbow like that in beta, they should have known it would become a completely useless weapon if they break it down that hard, they should have waited until a few months into the live game release.

SpectacularYak.6518:

Zsymon

…you’ll never be able to actually kill anything with it though…

That must come as tremendous comfort to the dozens of people I kill daily with it.

You must be quite an amazing player to be able to defeat players one on one with a longbow. Many don’t have any problems beating two longbow rangers at once, as long as the rangers don’t switch to shortbow.

Longbow does no damage at close range, and in no one on one fight will you ever be able to keep your opponent at 1000 range, it’s just not meant to be used in duels.

You can’t use sword in pvp because it roots you, it basically gives your opponent a free immobilize on you. Even if you turn off auto attack, each individual part of the chain still roots you for its duration. You can’t move or even dodge while auto attacking with the sword, so there is not much evasion to be had.

Keep in mind though, shortbow direct damage has to be quite high, because its bleed condition damage can be completely negated to 0 simply by facing the ranger. A lot of rangers go for power/crit because condition builds are not viable against good players, all they have to do to win is have low enough lag to be able to face the ranger at all times, since the condition ranger will do no damage at all then.

Recruit people by socializing, make friends in the open world, and ask them if they want to join your guild. They’ll be much less likely to decline then opposed to some random dude sending a guild invite.

We already have three battle mages in the game though: guardians, mesmer and dual dagger elementalist

I think a new profession would have to be more unique than that, which is hard because the current professions already cover pretty much every class type you can come up with.

We have three scholars, three adventurers and two soldiers, so the next new profession would have to be a soldier class. But between guardian (paladin/cleric) and warrior (fighter/barbarian/berserker), the heavy armor fantasy classes are all covered.

The only room I see would be for some kind of anti-paladin death knight class, which would just be a copy from WoW.

There might also be room for a shapeshifting class I guess, a druid/shaman version that would have four shapes F1-4 to choose from and switch between with a cooldown, like attunments, or else like the engineer kits have shapeshifting utilities.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

AH saying that rapid fire + QZ is our biggest burst might be debateable, Im a longbow man myself but QZ+Crossfire is about equal with rapid fire. Stupid but true. Longbow needs love.

QZ + rapid fire being equal to QZ + crossfire isn’t a problem.. the shortbow doesn’t have anything like rapid fire, all its damage comes from crossfire, so imo crossfire should do at least as much damage as long range shot, it’s just that rapid fire in general should do more damage than it does now, and long range shot should do equal the damage to crossfire.

I don’t think anything is going to change now though, because longbow is fine for its purpose, it’s just not useful for anything else except that purpose, and that is annoying to people who want to use it as a main weapon.

Longbow is just something you have as a secondary weapon set in WvW or something you use against stationary dungeon bosses, you’ll never be able to actually kill anything with it though, it just adds a bit support damage while keeping you safe so your mates don’t have to revive you. Anet overnerfed the bow before release, decreasing its damage greatly, I don’t know why. They did a decent job balancing the shortbow, but they probably should have waited with nerfing the longbow so fast.

I don’t think the longbow design was meant for this weapon on rangers to be useful for anything but dungeons.. kind of like the warrior longbow support build.

If longbow ever becomes viable in pvp, which would require a major changes of skills #1 and #2 to make it useful at close and mid range, I will play it right away. Longbow is so cool, but you can’t use it to play anything but dungeons, where its only purpose is keeping you out of harms way at 1500 range against stationary bosses.

The only reason people use longbows, is because they can’t stand the root of the sword, the kitten damage of the greatsword and the silly toy look of shortbows, they are just too small and short, and its boring skills.

I keep dying whenever I use it against tougher mobs, simply because I don’t get to avoid any damage at all, even tanky guardians and warriors need to move around to avoid heavy hits.. and in pvp being immobilized means you die, simple as that. So no, I don’t consider it valuable at all.. an axe is far more valuable. It also completely contradicts the game philosophy of reacting, dodging, moving and tactical play, since it prevents you from doing all that.

There’s a difference between one skill rooting you for a bit, like 100 blades, and being totally locked down in your auto attack chain, without even being able to end the chain to stop and move, once it starts it just roots you until either you or your target dies.

You can’t expect people to turn off auto attack and mash their “1” key until it breaks, and even if you turn off auto attack then your movement is still severely limited, since each seperate attack still roots you for its duration. Turning off auto attack just results in slightly more movement and a lot less damage, it is by no means a solution, it is horribly clunky and counter-intuitive. All I can do is hope they fix it, because I really want to use the sword.

I like the sword as well, but it’s not useful for pvp until it stops rooting you in place. Once it starts attacking you’re just helpless and you either wait for the monster to die or for you to die, permanent immobilize isn’t good.