Guild Wars 2

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solrik.6028:

jcbroe.4329:

Not to mention warriors and rangers are different classes that are meant to be played completely differently and have those trade offs adjusted in their weapons and traits.

Since all the math guys are here, the most reasonable comparison that can be made between ranged weapons in the game is either comparing the damage output of the ranger Longbow to the Mesmer Greatsword, and the next closest comparison is to compare it to the Elementalist staff.

I’m sure people will find that, particularly with the Mesmer Greatsword, the damage is so similar that it matches the class philosophies ideals presented in the ready up podcast a few weeks ago.

Beside those, there are also factors like armor and health. Warrior’s base armor and health is higher, and their utilities are more aggressive.

Edit:
Same kind of argument works for all professions. They are built differently and the problem is that many players can’t see the big picture and have only a small tunnel vision directed at RF when thinking about balance

Exactly. Like, it’s bothering me right now that during that Ready Up, the devs stated specifically that rangers should be the best at range where they aren’t right now (at the time of the show), and cited mesmers as being the next in line for range damage.

We get the update that corrects that, and all of a sudden everybody loses their kitten because the devs did exactly what they said they were intending to do regarding balancing for the class philosophies.

Literally aneurysm inducing.

Not to mention warriors and rangers are different classes that are meant to be played completely differently and have those trade offs adjusted in their weapons and traits.

Since all the math guys are here, the most reasonable comparison that can be made between ranged weapons in the game is either comparing the damage output of the ranger Longbow to the Mesmer Greatsword, and the next closest comparison is to compare it to the Elementalist staff.

I’m sure people will find that, particularly with the Mesmer Greatsword, the damage is so similar that it matches the class philosophies ideals presented in the ready up podcast a few weeks ago.

Xillllix.3485:

Ya the point that a ranger auto attack makes 10k damage in 3 seconds while an elementalist auto attack will take the same time to PERHAPS hit the target and will do 3k tops full berserker (with a lighter armor) shows that Anet has no idea how to balance a mmo class.

I’m saying this and I do have a level 80 ranger.

I do the same damage as an elementalist in the same time frame with a cleaving autoattack.

I’m saying this and I have a level 80 elementalist.

solrik.6028:

jcbroe.4329:

FrouFrou.4958:

Why wasn’t RF a problem prior to the patch then? You needed 2 dodges instead of 1, it followed you to stealth and it hit as hard as it does now. The range has been the same since launch as well.

This (I’m just going to piggyback off of you from here and not direct any of this at you).

Same effects, same cooldown, same damage, less counterplay pre-patch.

Also, as mentioned prior to this, Rapid Fire now does the same damage as Volley.

Second fat text implying that it didn’t before.

You got contradictionED!

Not necessarily, though I can see how it can be interpreted as such and I will be editing it to clarify, since it is being said as though rapid fire never used to do similar/same damage to volley, which is untrue, it’s just a time frame difference that was corrected.

Thanks for pointing that out though! lol.

Fluffball.8307:

To be fair, spamming dodge on a ranger is a valid tactic since we have so many evades!

Picture this hahaha, I have an engineer with Adventurer Runes, the Speedy Kits combo (you get vigor on swap too), AND energy sigils. Not to mention shield block, toolkit block, and reflect on shield.

Evade spam forever!!!! lol.

So, you reject all methods of counterplay because “you don’t want to” and then say, outside of all of the mechanics the game gives you to counterplay something, that it’s ridiculous when not using any of the counterplay methods you can use to try to counter something outside of the numerous and many given counters available.

Sure glad to see ANet supports mentally disabled people playing their game, let’s just hope no balancing suggestions are taken.

Razor.9872:

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

2.25 seconds is an eon to any not-stoned, not disabled player

I usually play WvW drunk and it’s still an eon.

I wonder if people are used to just spamming dodge for a flat percent time of invulnerability rather than using them on appropriate skills. Like how many people dodge on recharge against a hammer warrior instead of dodging earthshaker? Is the solution to the whining that simple? Stop dodge spamming?

I admit I’m sometimes guilty of this, but at least I don’t complain about my own incompetence.

We all do it from time to time, I call it a preemptive dodge lol. You were expecting something based on a perceived enemy pattern for a certain class and “overreacted” haha.

Still, @Fluffball, yeah, I’ve watched people go straight up WvW zergling and double dodge my autoattacks and I just scratch my head thinking “…..okay, he’s about to die and go complain on the forums that a ranger killed him and that we need nerfs.”

And I wholeheartedly believe 100% it’s because people go so used to playing against the old Longbow where Rapid Fire’s cast was so long and boring and predictable that to most players with the old LB, they probably didn’t even distinguish between it and an autoattack until the end of the channel when the autoattack attack speed kicked back in.

I’m just extremely bothered right now by all of the players who are arguing that they should LITERALLY be able to facetank damage and ignore damage mitigation mechanics built into the game, simply because they used to be able to facetank the damage and it was dealt out to them at such a slow pace that a sloth could handle it. There isn’t a SINGLE solitary burst damage mechanic in this game that you can successfully facetank and not be put at a serious disadvantage or close to death. Ranged (mesmer can do it, warrior can do it, necro can do it) or melee. The fact that people are literally crying just because we finally got the Quality of Life change we’ve been fighting for since the release of the game to bring it in line with the rest of the similar functioning weapons and skills in the game is infuriating to me. Especially when these people don’t accept numbers, logic, counterplay advice, reason, or even hand holding. They are on a straight up witch hunt because they don’t like that their favorite class didn’t get changes and another class got changes that gives them one more thing to dodge.

It’s pathetic.

Oh, and @Chrispy, the Rapid Fire sound clip starts ever so slightly (it’s enough to react to) before you get by any arrows. Not to mention as soon as you see the rangers arm turn into a blur (it is VERY noticeable to me personally, I notice the combo of both these things more than Pin Down on warrior still) you should know you are within a second away (unless it’s point blank, then you have to rely on the sound clip alone) from being bombarded to the face.

BUT, as you pointed out, you’d have to be a fortune teller to be able to predict WHEN the ranger is going to use rapid fire. Still, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to play against it, like so many people would have you think, and I’ll match up any day against a glassBow before I would have the preference of fighting perma-stealth thieves, condi thieves, celestial warriors, and really every other AIDs build this game has versus glassBow’s effectiveness being entirely dependent on the skill of the user/opponent, which is one of the healthiest balance relationships this game has seen in a long time.

Can we get these threads consolidated or something? It’s just the same handful of baddies making the same complaints across the span of like 5+ different topics, ignoring logic and calculations because they de-mapped their dodge key (and on a serious note probably just refuse to adapt to the changes because they miss being able to faceroll 99% of rangers foolish enough to use the longbow prepatch because it wasn’t viable. That last 1% is the skilled population that could make it work).

1) Dodge
2) Dive
3) Dip
4) Duck
5) Dodge

See, I can do it too, though this fix will only apply to competent players. GlassBow still isn’t top tier viable and still has a hard matchup against most meta builds and compositions, and the complaining is only indicative that the game has now been successfully balanced for skill (where as previously there were no complaints because you could beat GlassBow one handed and the effects of the build were entirely negligible unless you were afk).

FrouFrou.4958:

Why wasn’t RF a problem prior to the patch then? You needed 2 dodges instead of 1, it followed you to stealth and it hit as hard as it does now. The range has been the same since launch as well.

This (I’m just going to piggyback off of you from here and not direct any of this at you).

Same effects, same cooldown, same damage, less counterplay pre-patch.

Also, as mentioned prior to this, Rapid Fire is now more in line with Volley (damage didn’t change and output is still the same, but the skill now mirrors Volley’s time frame).

Not to mention mesmers have a higher damage burst at range still.

Regardless of all of that, rangers still have the same exact matchups against meta builds as they did previously. Condition builds (like triple kit engis), S/D thieves, meditation guardians, D/D eles, and MOST warrior builds still have the edge in a pure 1v1 (not to mention that those 1v1 matchups accumulate against the ranger in teamfights).

Rangers just have more of an ability to catch people off guard, which gives people a shorter time time frame to react than previously. This ultimately means that the game and builds are now balanced for skill.

Also, top end competitive play in this game hasn’t had a meta shift since the patch. There is still only 1 ranger I know of playing glass effectively at a high end level, and he and his team are an outlier. The rest of the top teams and ultimately the players who popularize builds aren’t even running a single ranger in their composition. Probably because of the poor matchup between every single meta build and ranger builds.

The game is, as of now, balanced for SKILL (anybody who doesn’t understand needs to watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w).

Likely, most of these players haven’t noticed the minimal change made to Rapid Fire versus all the other functionality being complained about that has existed since launch because previously, Longbow was a poor weapon with a negligible output that could be dealt with easily by the majority of players and not even rank high on their threat meter, which is indicative of it previously being imbalanced because every weapon in some way should be threatening to an opponent, and longbow was not.

So, we now kitten the same weapon with the same damage output as before, but the damage occurs in a slightly shorter time frame (2.25 seconds is an eon to any not-stoned, not disabled player with any semblance of skill). The only thing that has changed is the reaction time, which essentially raised the bar for the skill level it takes because you have to actually be involved and not just strafing, dodging, yawning and scratching yourself.

So, the ONLY thing that’s changed is the amount of skill it takes to counterplay a mechanic, and not even the way that it is counterplayed. Why then are there so many complaints? Likely, the people complaining are experiencing a two-fold effect of an influx of players dusting off their rangers or trying them for the first time because the class (ANY class) is more appealing after being buffed. So, population is a factor.

Then, we have these players who are more than likely either getting caught off guard (just like getting hit by a backstab) or just being outplayed entirely, and because they haven’t adapted (and judging from some of the responses are mouthbreathers and probably forgot how to dodge anyhow and can’t adapt) their skill level to match the skill required in the currently low end balance, they are going to come on here and complain until the end of time because they can’t adapt to a shifting low end balance.

So, the options are to A. Get better, or B. play at the top tier where the build is insignificant for the current metagame (which A happens to be a prerequisite because no top team is going to want you if you can’t outplay a glass ranger).

tl;dr: It’s all important. Read it all. Likely, the people incapable of doing so are going to be the same people who it applies to.

Moment of Clarity is actually pretty amazing strong as a GM. Not even factoring in sigil procs, a Longbow interrupt with LB 4 can cause the next autoattack to hit almost as hard as a Maul crit (I hit a 3.4k autoattack today). Not to mention it can skyrocket Mauls damage into the 8-9k range.

BUT, I’d take anything so even if the merging of the two doesn’t make sense to me, I’d take it over having Strider’s Defense as a standalone trait.

New idea: How about we merge the idea for a weapon swapping related traits with the current effect? “Weapon swapping grants vigor for 5 seconds and causes you to destroy incoming projectiles for a short time period after weapon swapping.”

That to me sounds very Skirmishing related and attractive compared to the current effect.

Sarision.6347:

Nah DnT’s advocating for longbow in PvE now. Use SoW + QZ + Barrage + RF and camp sword + axe.

Was this before or after the fix to Frost Spirit? That utility bar could change, which is why I’m asking.

FrouFrou.4958:

One older topic where the dev says: “Intended. All ranged and melee skills have a 15% buffer range to take account for tracking.”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/List-of-Mesmer-Bugs-Older-Thread/page/3#post3750901

And that’s /thread.

Question answered, topic should be closed, moving on.

Hepatolith.6389:

Tman.6349:

Hepatolith.6389:

Tman.6349:

Also, you could get rid of the longbow b/c it’s crap and take Sword/Wh+GS which is a superior setup in every single way. Just an idea though.

Shooting down from a Tower. POW! there goes your every way :P

On a serious note tho. Had some pretty intense duels with a full melee ranger with my lb/gs Setup I’m running for months now. Think it was 3:2 in my favor at the end but all of the Duels could have ended either way (And before patch i would have lost them all i’d say). I think it’s just personal Preference going full melee or packing a ranged weapon and just saying LB sucks is not helping anyone here…

He clearly stated he is interested in PvE. Yes longbow sucks for PvE. Full melee is so vastly superior in every way. Outside of RPing a ‘range-r’ of course.

You are right, my bad! For PvE full melee will do a better Job of course

Yep, sorry, PvE is full melee. Missed the comment mentioned for PvE focus, glad you guys caught it.

The damage and range haven’t changed since launch though, so we should all assume you’re new here I guess.

Legitimately (though not believably at this point) fine if you are, but if not, well… the words “slow on the uptake” come to mind.

yolo swaggins.2570:

jcbroe.4329:

Yes, I am excepted from any and all possible faults (not trying to make fun, just an unfortunate typo that creates this amazing loophole)

Fixed it!

How embarrassing X3 lol

It happens to all of us lol. Good write up regardless I am always in 100% support of the reinforcement of the idea that in order to discuss balance, people need to first have the foresight to see beyond and below their own personal skill barrier as well as removing all bias any in game experiences have created.

People (in general) never seem to be able reason beyond “x happened when I was on y class” and then associate that as a universal constant because if it happened like that to them then that must be the only outcome, and wasn’t a favorable outcome that happened to them, then clearly it is either a hard counter or overpowered.

That is the problem when discussing balance at all in an open public forum. A million anecdotes won’t even necessarily reflect an accurate depiction of balance because people always discuss actual things that happened to them instead of actually discussing balancing for skill, which would involve things like determining theoretical perfect play to potential output, whether or not the skill level of players would ever equal that requirements need to attain theoretical perfect play, and how the output then suffers from non-perfect play as well as being faced up against another class operating at perfect at not perfect efficiency levels (who would also have to go through the same gauntlet).

And that’s just a basic, clear cut example to add to the discussion without over complicating it with all of the different factors that need to be balanced for lol.

Of course we could all just watch this video again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

This should be in the Profession Balance thread and should also be evaluating Mesmer Greatsword, Ele Staff, and Warrior Rifle, just to name a few.

Actually, any weapon with a non-tracking projectile has the same “range beyond listed value” issue.

Point is, don’t attack one class for something that is a global constant across the entire game.

Also, it’s a generally accepted rule that you add 300 range to any projectile with an arcing flight pattern to find out it’s true range (ele staff fire 1 being 1500 range, for example). If you don’t believe that than I encourage you to do the leg work, figure out a testing method, and do the research on an already widely known about topic across all classes with projectile weapon skills.

This also doesn’t belong in the Profession Balance page either if legitimately we aren’t discussing balance and only tooltips. This belongs in the bug report section.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

But yeah, in combat, Sword works much better as a repositioning tool. Not necessarily a good dueling swap set for the LB though.

I’ll disagree with you there, it almost seems two conflicting statements. Have you checked out that floppy koroshi duel I posted? He makes excellent use of s/d especially for respositioning.

Floppy has an entirely different style to me back when I knew how to use LB but at the same time I relate entirely to his s/d choice for the movement. You just need the movement for things like thieves and condi mesmers and engies.

I’m not saying you can’t, I should have worded it better. I’m saying that GS is better for dueling. GS gives you more options for controlling the fight, where S/D gives more options for reacting to the fight. The GS still allows you to defensively react as well however, and can capitalize better on an opponents mistakes better with the Maul burst, where as sword is near pure autoattack damage weapon, ultimately making your damage more predictable. GS is predictable too in the sense that it has a skill rotation, but you can still fake out opponents and catch them off guard, where as the sword it’s either autoattack or autoattack, and evade things.

You CAN use S/D with Longbow though for dueling. I just feel like that particular combination of weapons more on your opponent now knowing how to play against you than the LB/GS set where you can force people to make mistakes.

Like, one major important thing the sword will not be able to do is bait out dodges and evades/defensive cooldowns. At a certain skill tier of player, that is a HUGE advantage.

Fluffball.8307:

Well out of combat the movement is probably pretty close, not enough to fret about. IN combat, sword just blows GS completely out of the water and it’s not even remotely close depending on what exactly you’re doing. Obviously sword1 as a useful movement skill excludes just outright running away. Unless you ask FrouFrou who seems to enjoy running away by bouncing off of unsuspecting opponents…

Anywho, no need to rip your hair out (by the way what the heck is wrong with anet making this amazing game engine and not being able to make a functioning search feature on a website?)

I can see through some of the in game code too and can totally understand why the search function is…. well, not even seemingly functional at times (a good example of what I’m talking about is when ANet added a fury procs to our two handed training skill and all of a sudden Eagle Eye started giving fury on crit procs, indicating some unchecked or poorly inherited, not a shot at a dev we all make mistakes, code fragment).

BUT, yeah, in combat mobility I prefer the sword myself. That’s why I tried to make the distinction by using the term landspeed, which does matter to some people or when doing certain activities (I wouldn’t dream of map completion without using a greatsword at the very least, for instance).

But yeah, in combat, Sword works much better as a repositioning tool. Not necessarily a good dueling swap set for the LB though.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

I haven’t used dual birds since

I actually meant either white raven OR eagle because I always run wolf. But I’ve been having a blast experimenting with every possible trait, weapon, and pet in the update so whatever. Really loving all these possibilities.

Hahaha I was running dual birds on the build because I was maximizing chill output xD but yeah, I could do that, I still do run owl/wolf sometimes when I want to be a nuisance and chill people (and I’m running pirate runes for annoyingness sake).

I’m actually one of those few weird people that just likes spirits for their uniqueness more than their effectiveness (obviously I don’t disregard effectiveness as part of the equation).

Signet Survival ranger is just so… not show-offy at all lol. I’d put gold teeth and spinning…. rims? Rims on my wolf if I could, just to make it distinct (obviously ludicrous but you understand where I’m going hahaha).

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

Greatsword actually ends up being the better weapon for … general landspeed mobility.

I just disagree with this completely. s/d has 6 mobility skills and GS has 1.

Edit: Just to tag on to this, my personal ‘most requested’ feature would be a drop target hot key other than escape. Jcbroe I think you may be underestimating how far you can travel with things like sword 1 or sword 3 with no target selected. Dagger 4 is certainly no sit in place skill, you move forward with no target. It’s something I use often when outnumbered.

Dagger 4 generally only moves me about a regular movement paces step forward without offhand training, but with offhand training, I’d say Dagger 4 adds some much needed mobility (I use it to evade attacks, close the gap at the same time, and retaliate with Axe 2 all the time).

I remember a forum post a while back that I’m indirectly restating though where somebody tested the GS against the Sword in sheer landspeed and the GS outright won, though not by a significant margin.

Of course, that could be factoring in Martial Mastery, which may make an impact on those results, but I can’t remember those details, so the information could be inaccurate.

Anyhow, it is not my data on it, it was just something I remember we had a thread about a long while back. I’d try to dig it up but the forums search function isn’t exactly….. yeah, let’s just, not lose all my hair today.

So sad this topic is still going. I thought I would have ended it with the youtube link and the E. Honda remark. Some people just can’t be reasoned with even when looking at factual information.

I responded earlier in a PM about this very topic, but to kind of summarize because I’m pretty sure I wrote a thesis for them:

Greatsword actually ends up being the better weapon for dueling and general landspeed mobility. It maintains it’s damage capabilities on swap to keep up the pressure (or constant fear of incoming big damage) while providing enough defensive utility and escape when needed, in order to win fights or position and re-position accordingly.

However, what a set like Sword/x (dagger) has over GS is that it is just generally better for defensive maneuvers and gives comparable mobility. GS 4 against multiple opponents, for instance, can be a detriment as it can be triggered prematurely by a melee range attack and subsequently leave you wide open for an incoming attack, and Swoop, while amazing landspeed, can be hit with a movement impairing ability during most of it’s animation, almost entirely negating it’s landspeed advantage/mobility attempts.

Compared to that, the 2 in place evasion skills S/D offer are incredible “stall” tools and can be used to burn multiple enemy cooldowns making them waste their burst, and the evade on 50% of the two part sword 2 leap can be more reliable at re-positioning/escaping, allowing you in total to be more of a pseudotank but having less damage and dueling capabilities.

Personally, I run LB/GS in PvP and LB/Sword Warhorn (in a group, dagger with less people or no organization) in WvW.

I don’t think I need to further explain my decisions (like warhorn), but I will if needed hahaha.

Fluffball.8307:

Ah I see. I do like Eura’s build more. Regarding the rune choices, I have been using krait as my dueling rune lately and really quite happy with it. Celestial + entangle + krait rune + flame trap + maul is a nice little mini-burst. That adds literally nothing to the conversation as I haven’t used Orr runes .

Edit: One other thought, I’ve been really in to the white raven and the eagle lately. White raven does a great job with blind if that inspires anything for you with the new BM traits.

I haven’t used dual birds since I switched away from my chill build I used them on because warriors Dogged March/Hoelbrak runes (and Hoelbrak in general) became ridiculously overused.

I’d probably run cats again as a DPS pet, like a Snow Leopard with Intimidation Training, and keep the wolf swap as utility and a tankier pet in general.

I’m really enjoying SotF, SoR, LR, Entangle, and Healing Spring all on the same build in general though. You have MORE than enough cleansing unless you get hit by a condi bomb, and Empathic Bond wouldn’t protect you from that anyhow. There are no situations I ever think “I wish I had Empathic Bond” anymore.

Ummmmm. Don’t remember if I was responding to anything specific at all or not anymore lol. At least we’re semi on topic. People can derive ideas out of the conversation haha.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

I was playing around with a similar concept, albeit, more passive tanky-ness. Thoughts (anyone)? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0saLL+rQ1aABhaVA0+FS2u29RsEfdBbqA-TJhHwAPLDUc/BAPBgAnEAA

I’m not loving that you have two traits dedicated to a burning every slightly more than 10 seconds, especially when it can die without a swarm of AI. Even though it doesn’t move I might consider flame trap for the same thing, you can almost always get people to hop in to it even in WvW*. That would allow you to take something like nature’s protection.

Flame trap might even make you reconsider the torch depending on how it works out. Dagger as both offhands increases your tankiness quite a bit.

*I know you’re talking PvP, but I’m just saying people love diving head first in to flame traps, and conquest makes it all that much more likely.

I’d say Eurantiens non-spirit setup for the NM line is preferable then. I actually enjoy the blind a lot on my ranger. The burning is a nice passive and all, but the blind can secure stomps on certain classes and avoid bursts against others, and I like the plays I can make with it in those regards personally.

Then again, it does have all of the constraints of being a spirit and is less teamfight friendly in PvP which I totally understand, and I’m certain that’s probably Eura’s line of thinking on it as well, especially because a 6 second invuln is a pretty fair tradeoff (more than fair).

Variations of that regard aside, I was more curious about the differences in rune choice and therefore primary focus of the build (whether the Poison Master/Orr Rune combo would even be viable).

Eurantien.4632:

Top tier approved: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjEq0wa/KusQ1aADhq9JEsVNrAw9O8CX9FbUVF-TJhHwAAeIAILDE4MAAa/BA

I was playing around with a similar concept, albeit, more passive tanky-ness. Thoughts (anyone)? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0saLL+rQ1aABhaVA0+FS2u29RsEfdBbqA-TJhHwAPLDUc/BAPBgAnEAA

Yes, I am excepted from any and all possible faults (not trying to make fun, just an unfortunate typo that creates this amazing loophole)

A good idea is to send the pet out to go F1 a target when you stealth, so it doesn’t follow you through stealth. If you don’t want to send your pet into the fray, you can F1 → F3 → F1 → F3 repeatedly to hold your pet from actually going into the combat, but not being beside you.

If there is nothing else to target and you are using a pet that has a wind up animation on their F2 like a canine, instead of the pet being forced to follow you, you can do the same trick with F2 → F3 → F2 and constantly cause the pet to root itself and start the animation then cancel it so it doesn’t get used and go on cooldown.

While doing this, you can stealth and wander around and not be shown off by your pets location. A lot of times, this will even juke people out because they are very used to players letting their pets show off their location, so they will stick around your pet instead of you and you can gain some distance/close some distance (depends on where your effective range needs to be) and get the drop on them (or the escape if needed).

I hope that helps. It isn’t exactly an easy trick to get down though. Start by getting used to your pet being on passive instead of guard and then get used to manually controlling it. Once you do and you start to practice tricks like this, they become second nature.

Well I sympathize with the sentiment as a GW1 vet, ANet has basically confirmed we are stuck with the pet.

At this point it would better, considering they are always listening to feedback, to offer up better suggested implementations of the pet as the mechanic itself and they way it is implemented is very limiting to player controlled capabilities at a base level, and actual interaction with the pet itself is extremely minimal (as opposed to a game like GW1 where you could have a whole skillbar of pet skills and abilities, and in this all we control for a selected pet is what target they attack or run away from, and when to use a single given attack).

This last patch was extremely positive for rangers in almost every way. I would count my blessings that as many changes were implemented as there were, and an entire class redesign is probably not going to be happening any time in the near future.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

So I have been thinking about trying out Bark Skin just to see if I see a noticeable difference.

Because tanky builds are so popular in WvW (and PvP), it makes a weirdly large difference. If a tanky PVT character hits you for 700 damage normally, bark skin takes that down to 350. Natural healing, SotW, and mango pie heal for something like 200 per second. That could mean you’re almost unkillable before your heal skill comes off cooldown. You might even gain health while some attack you, like a zerg staff guardian noob.

On the other hand, if you only have a few thousand health left and someone lands an eviscerate on you, well good luck.

I run full damage in WvW hahaha. I have for awhile now. Zerker/Cavalier mix with 6/5/3/0/0. I run tanky stuff so much in PvP that I’m burned out on it. I prefer it there though where I feel like dueling capacity is much higher and fights between equally skilled opponents are more likely (because you fight more people in general so there is a higher occurrence rate).

In WvW though, I play anti-periphery for my guild on both my Ranger and Mesmer, and I’m just not going to regear when outside of an organized group, and I’m PuGzerging with another commanders guild/zerg, or if I’m solo, I either insta kill solo players or get killed by a group.

I haven’t had a legit 1v1 WvW fight in so long that I genuinely just stopped building for roaming and doing it. I can solo a not upgraded camp on my damage build anyhow lol.

I also don’t get satisfaction out of playing anything that isn’t a higher number burst build anymore. I’m not sure why that is lol.

Yeah guys, I apologize for this, life has been extremely generous with testing the capability of what a single person can handle at one time with me.

Weekends in general have been giving me zero free time, and weekdays Durz and I barely ever have a free moment between the two of us to knock out a podcast.

That being said, as certain issues are dealt with, my weekend availability will open back up (it should have been this past weekend that we did the podcast and we had one tentatively scheduled between the two of us, but I had a family emergency to attend to).

Tentatively and unofficially at this point, we are aiming for this weekend. I’ve already begun to prepare a bunch of discussion points, and aside from getting my car in the shop and working on some programming, I should be fairly free.

We will make the official post for it when we can give some more certainty, and I do apologize to you guys because as far as I know the only reason there hasn’t been a podcast so long is due to my availability and things going on with me.

It is nice to see such support for the podcast though, and it truly is motivating to me (us) to get it back on a regular schedule. I have some ideas for the podcast coming up to keep it fresh and possibly add some content to it as the ANet patch hype dies down and we wait another 4-5 months as the game starts to stagnate again that I think you guys will appreciate, if anything, just for keeping it fresh.

Also, I’m a college student living on a campus during the week (I go home this semester on Thursday nights – Monday mornings when I commute back) that would absolutely LOVE to set up a consistent gameplay stream for you guys. I’ve never configured a twitch stream though and even though I am a podcaster and fairly visible on the forums, I am a tad bit shy about showing my gameplay knowing that any mistake I make is going to be magnified and scrutinized 10x over lol.

Still, I run with a guild most nights of the week on my ranger for hours on end and would love to stream it for you guys if there is some support for that type of stream, and I PvP as well, though it’s been awhile since I solo Q’d since Skyhammer and it’s existence and all.. Just let me know and I’ll see if I can get some help setting up the stream (and making sure my campus network is even capable and stable enough to maintain the stream since I tend to periodically drop connection when I’ve been connected for a certain extent of time).

Thank you guys for the support again though, and we are very sorry that there hasn’t been more transparency on what’s been happening. I personally would like to say I appreciate you guys sticking asking for the podcast. I’m always very uncertain on how many people actually end up listening and how many people we actually help, so I enjoy seeing any sort of questions and feedback and comments (even negative).

Oh I was just posting thoughts in general, I’m not trying to dissuade anybody at all lol. Just ramblings of a bored college student

I think that Bark Skin could be a potential alternative in PvP in a condi based celestial build depending on what you’re up against. Probably with spirits too, more for the protection uptime from stone to maximize the protection output as well.

I’m of the mindset of Eurantien when it comes to Empathic Bond, as I get used to playing without it, playing when using it feels so RNG and wasteful if a burn a cooldown on another cleanse and it potentially wastes the cleanses due to the RNG.

So I have been thinking about trying out Bark Skin just to see if I see a noticeable difference. My perception could change entirely. I’d run a 2/0/6/6/0 Celestial spirit build with Sun/Stone spirit and SoR with Healing Spring and Elite Spirit to start and tinker with things as needed.

I just didn’t want the whole thread to revolve around the single opinion of the trait being undervalued and wanted to add in the context of basically “when trying to maximize its value, make sure you don’t sacrifice too much” from elsewhere. I figured it would be an important sentiment (and reminder to myself as I go to town with theorycrafting and testing when I’m on a GW2 binge).

As far as Poison Master goes, I’m going to see if I can get something going with Runes of Orr. I just wish we were “Poison Masters” in a different way (like, if you hit an opponent that is poisoned, x occurs. Or, poisoning an opponent also causes x to occur type things).

It isn’t necessarily the effect chance that’s underwhelming, it’s the effect and effect specifics. For instance, if it was just a straight up 20% chance to destroy projectiles at all times with no ICD, people might call it OP (I still wouldn’t since so much damage in the game is melee but still).

Mostly because it fits the Continuity of the traitline, I want the effect changed to a weapon swap effect of some sort. Then again, that might just be my OCD telling me that it makes the most sense because every traitline has some sort of not discussed theme for every class and traits usually very on track with that theme.

I’d focus less on maximizing the potential of Bark Skin and more on finding the sweet spot between damage output and damage mitigation. If you barely take any damage, then chances are, you barely deal any damage.

Also, it’s important to factor in that the more damage you deal, the faster something dies, and the less damage you will take, as opposed to doing no damage and killing something slowly, which over time could potentially make you take more damage.

There is no universal sweet spot either, it fluctuates from person to person, and certain people (like me) would argue that if you NEED Bark Skin, then you aren’t doing enough damage or positioning correctly or mitigating damage through other means effectively, or doing enough damage, which is of course an opinion formed directly for what works for me.

That being said, rangers have decent protection uptime and lots of evasion with the right weapon(s) already, which are much easier to incorporate into builds than designing an entire build around making a single trait that encompasses a single aspect of gameplay as effective as it can possible be.

The easiest generic answer is just go full PVT and pick up barkskin. Still afraid of dying? Pick up Survival of the fittest and run survival skills too. Still not enough? Run Melandru Runes. This is just about as tanky as you can possibly get. though be warned, your damage will suffer.

I think everybody needs to step back, take a moment, and watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

And remember that Rapid Fire, based on the video, IS the E. Honda slap.

Lopez.7369:

Rangers are extremely overrated. Dodging literally counters them.

This.

It’s literally a one trick pony.

People incapable of dealing with such a mechanic are incapable of making good balance decisions and have poor balance perspective in general (something that is effective in lower tiers where most of the populations lies isn’t necessarily effective in higher tiers).

Always comes back to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w

Rapid Fire IS the E. Honda slap.

Wow, so don’t change the damage output at all, and just increase the speed at which the damage is done, and all of a sudden the end of the world has occurred.

Truthfully, Rapid Fire used to be MORE guaranteed damage against a target because it cast longer and slower, so more of the arrows hit, dealing more damage to a target even with dodges.

NOW, the same skill, DOING THE SAME DAMAGE, has had its dodge priority changed because it happens in a faster time frame, and people start losing their minds, drooling all over their keyboard, desperately trying to remember how they were able to deal with any form of burst damage in the past.

Here’s a hint: They added a dodgeroll trainer to the game. So remember, just when you think something like this is OP, open up your keyboard settings and make sure your dodge is mapped to an easily accessible location, and then utilize said skill appropriately, like when a burst skill comes flying at your face.

Also, another pro tip, if you can’t react to a skill that at its base casts for more than 2 seconds (most of you probably let the whole prepatch rapid fire hit you and thought it was an autoattack or shrugged it off, because it cast so slow, even though you took the SAME total damage from the skill), then maybe this little word called “practice” comes into play.

To the few well known player who have already posted and might take my response as an attack, it isn’t, it’s a generic response. I’m assuming, for those I recognize, that you guys are just having an extreme kneejerk reaction or bought a new mouse and haven’t figured out which button your dodge is mapped to yet. Or, perhaps there is some saltiness that other peoples mains didn’t get the same love that this class did.

When everybody stops freaking out and remembers that they can dodge attacks and glass rangers still die to a breeze, people will be laughing about how they had such a huge kneejerk reaction over such a small Quality of Life improvement (previously, Rapid Fire did the same DPS as just shooting the autoattack and there was no reason to use it unless trying to get faster sigil procs or to stack vuln and was a bad skill).

Zefrost.3425:

jcbroe.4329:

Zefrost.3425:

jcbroe.4329:

Zefrost.3425:

Fluffball.8307:

Ok I’ve been tossing this challenge around for like 12 hours straight and not a single taker. I’m going to bed, but this thread will continue to exist. Great critiques Zefrost, you really proved you have any idea what’s going on.

You have a problem? I don’t have a ranger.

If you knew anything about balance then you would know that you don’t have a ranged burst that powerful – it makes any other melee burst in the game look like a job. Fresh air elementalist is even worse than ranger longbow because there isn’t counterplay to it. You just don’t have ranged attacks this powerful in a competitive game – but that’s why this game isn’t competitive, clearly.

Killshot and volley say hi.

Nice troll.

So those aren’t ranged burst skills? How about mesmer GS 2 -> GS 4 -> GS 3 -> Shatter?

It seems to me your biasing your definition of ranged, burst, and counterplay in your arguments favor.

Mesmer greatsword is actually viable unlike rifle for many reasons.

Next.

You weren’t arguing viability. You were arguing ranged burst and how it shouldn’t exist, and I was pointing out the multiple iterations where is has already existed before the patch.

Ranger longbow wasn’t viable before today’s patch, and now that it is, you seem to be on a total campaign to shut it down. Now, if you truly are of the mindset the Fresh Air is also an offender of what you are trying to change, than while you can be applauded for sticking to you guns and being unbiased across all classes, it is seriously doubtful your efforts will amount to anything.

However, if we are arguing that ranged burst is fine on things not considered viable by a metagame rating (as opposed to a rating unbiased by a player enforced meta), but not fine on things that ARE viable, that is extreme bias towards melee only gameplay.

Zefrost.3425:

jcbroe.4329:

Zefrost.3425:

Fluffball.8307:

Ok I’ve been tossing this challenge around for like 12 hours straight and not a single taker. I’m going to bed, but this thread will continue to exist. Great critiques Zefrost, you really proved you have any idea what’s going on.

You have a problem? I don’t have a ranger.

If you knew anything about balance then you would know that you don’t have a ranged burst that powerful – it makes any other melee burst in the game look like a job. Fresh air elementalist is even worse than ranger longbow because there isn’t counterplay to it. You just don’t have ranged attacks this powerful in a competitive game – but that’s why this game isn’t competitive, clearly.

Killshot and volley say hi.

Nice troll.

So those aren’t ranged burst skills? How about mesmer GS 2 → GS 4 → GS 3 → Shatter?

It seems to me your biasing your definition of ranged, burst, and counterplay in your arguments favor.

Zefrost.3425:

Fluffball.8307:

Ok I’ve been tossing this challenge around for like 12 hours straight and not a single taker. I’m going to bed, but this thread will continue to exist. Great critiques Zefrost, you really proved you have any idea what’s going on.

You have a problem? I don’t have a ranger.

If you knew anything about balance then you would know that you don’t have a ranged burst that powerful – it makes any other melee burst in the game look like a job. Fresh air elementalist is even worse than ranger longbow because there isn’t counterplay to it. You just don’t have ranged attacks this powerful in a competitive game – but that’s why this game isn’t competitive, clearly.

Killshot and volley say hi.

Every time I see somebody crying about the update for rangers, I am reminded why ANet has added a dodge roll trainer to the game.

I actually quite enjoy the new animation. Realism isn’t exactly a factor when we throw incomprehensibly unrealistic traps, go invulnerable, summon magical creatures by raising our hands and snapping, and pokeball an assortment of pets at our disposal.

Remember when the game first launched and people cried that Killshot was OP because if you facetanked it, it would hurt you?

Yeah, history repeats itself apparently. Baddies will always be baddies. Different day, something new to cry about.

Relshdan.6854:

i so wish there was a block button on here.
this OP does nothing but whine that warrior is dead because of adrenaline change and every other class is now overpowered.

Bads will be bads. Though you can’t blame people, most people have a difficult time removing their own skill level bias out of the equation when evaluating game balance.

I made 300 billion dollars this afternoon and bought microsoft, and I am now sitting as the head CEO of the company.

…..See how my anecdotal evidence is totally an accurate depiction of reality?

Artaz.3819:

Dodging, Blocking, Blinding, etc. did not save the nerf to Eviscerate or even 100B.

The difference between Eviscerate and Rapid Fire is Rapid Fire is spread over 10 shots so blinding the attacker only reduces damage by 10% but 90% of the damage is still delivered and again, Rapid Fire is done at 1200-1500 range.

The difference between 100B and Rapid Fire is it roots the Warrior for the entirety of the duration.

Now you say, well, Warriors have hard CC to lock the target down for the big punch. Well, Rangers have Stealth (at range) and a knockback at range (which is more than half the time of the target to recover from) AND you can’t predict what is hitting you and when. It’s no different than a thief Backstab but can be done from 1200 range.

That’s not balanced. Not balanced at all. It’s so OP.

The problem is ANet reduced the cast time on Rapid Fire for the same damage.

It did the same damage before the patch, and the only skill that had it’s damage buffed is the autoattack.

You must be insinuating that LB ranger has been OP since launch, because the only thing that changed is the time frame in which damage can be done, which made the skill more capable of being mitigated by a skilled player.

Eviscerate wasn’t nerfed by the way, the the Greatsword set had the damage shifted to make the new burst skill more worthwhile on the weaponset.

Before the “adrenaline QQ” argument gets made, Warrior weapon sets have more than enough damage outside of their burst skills to justify burst skills having a longer cooldown. Axe mainhand has one of the highest damage outputs in the game, and all warrior weapons have high damage coefficients.

It’s very different from a backstab, as backstab cannot be visually reacted to, and can be chained with steal and sleight of hand, AND heartseeker almost instantaneously from stealth.

So next time you see a ranger shooting at you from 1200 range, instead of facetanking the damage, hit that dodge key before coming and spreading blatant inaccuracies with obvious bias because your class didn’t get what you wanted for it.

GOSU.9574:

On the other hand the hype is likely due to the fact that LB has suffered for such a long, long, long, long………time. Finally it gets this damage burst boost and, even if over time it turns out to level out, it still seems quite powerful. After more long term adjustment it may not seem thus, but with a good amount of crit stacked and Air and Fire sigils……

Honestly though, why speed up the attack rate and not just improve the damage? All the developers did was allow you to pack more crit burst faster, which in my opinion is a bit overpowered atm.

Actually, I’d say that leaving the old cast time as is and boosting the damage would make the skill OP, and not the changes we got. Mainly because there was no counterplay to the old rapid fire on the classes without block skills. You could double dodge and still get hit by 50-60% of the skill.

A direct damage boost to the old cast time would have increased the damage way too dramatically while the counterplay being nearly nonexistent on classes with no blocks or that can’t chain 3-4 evades.

With the sped up cast time, the skill has the desired effect of being stronger, while also being extremely avoidable, and Rapid Fire is actually deceptively strafe-able outside of 1000 range on top of that, even with rapid fire.

These are the balance changes that the devs should have been making from day 1; improving what needs to be improved while making sure there is equal counterplay versus effectiveness.

Having the opportunity to already go up against some decent players, you barely even land rapid fire unless you chain it through like, a pet knockdown/immobilize or they exhaust their dodges entirely, which is a rare occurrence that only happens when somebody panic dodges. I ended up doing more damage in duals with people with the Autoattack than Rapid Fire, unless I baited out a dodge first.

People just don’t know how to properly play against it yet.

Also, something that everybody needs to know right now. Unless it has been fixed in a patch, Thieves Steal was broken with the patch to interrupt actions upon use, which is severely screwing with their burst combos at the moment. Until the thieves bugs get fixed (thieves being the ultimate matchup against glass rangers with their evasion and gap closers), rangers are going to have a great time against classes with less gap closers than that, though there is honestly no reason why warriors can’t win the 1v1 matchup, other than player skill.

Skill levels are never indicative of true balance. I can kill a player that never dodges or utilizes any of their stability/blinds/blocks/etc, does that make my class good, or the other class bad?

Or does that make the players good/bad, while the classes themselves could actually be truly balanced?

As usual though, WvW is not the balance litmus test. PvP will be where how “OP” (I laugh every time somebody says it is, it’s a joke) the build gets performance rated, where there are equally skilled players at the top tier, with equal gear tiered equipment, and no mouth-breathing zerglings in sight to come QQ on the forums because they don’t know how to dodge, don’t know how to utilize their available skills or build properly, and want to be able to facetank damage like they always used to be able to.