I have far more respect for the people of the opposing team who have the courtesy to leave the members of the opposing team alone in the jumping puzzle.
I don’t want your respect. I want your fear.
Axe + Torch. Much higher damage in a condition build. Use Shortbow as your alt weapon to take advantage of your fire combo fields.
They acknowledged that it was a 40 ms nerf to Crossfire in the Oct. 7 patch notes when the change was implemented.
What they have not yet acknowledged is that Crossfire’s attack speed is now much slower than it should be under the effects of Quickness.
With the 40ms nerf to Crossfire, its new attack interval is .52 seconds. Therefore, under Quickness, its attack interval should be .26 seconds (1/2 of .52 seconds.) Instead, its attack interval under Quickness is .40 seconds.
This is clearly incorrect, and will hopefully be acknowledged and addressed by the dev team in the near future.
We were this amazing Ranger you speak of before BWE3 (minus the pet proposed pet fixes,) but now we are the laughing stock of spvp and slowly losing our pve prowess as well.
Right, so my point is, let’s identify the areas that need improvement and tell the devs about it. Anything else is just QQ, and it only makes it harder for them to hear the input that will actually help them improve things. So, to reiterate:
- Investigate and fix the bug causing Quickness not to properly reduce Crossfire attack speed
- Improve Pet pathing / AI
- Allow Pet F2 abilities to be cast on the move to make them more reliable
- Improve on-demand condition removal. Suggestion: remove range requirement from Sigil of Renewal’s active ability
- Improve Greatsword damage so it’s competitive with Shortbow
- Improve Longbow damage so it’s competitive with Shortbow
The class would be competitive and highly versatile with those changes.
All they really need to do is fix the bug that’s making Quickness not properly halve the cast speed for the duration of Crossfire. Every other aspect of the Shortbow (even the 40ms nerf to Crossfire’s attack speed) is fine.
Rangers have a lot of issues that need sorting, and almost none of them have to do with Shortbow (aside from the Quickness bug with Crossfire). It’s a great weapon. Greatsword needs a damage boost to make it a viable option over Shortbow. Same goes for Longbow.
Rangers need more reliable on-demand condition removal. Pet pathing needs to be more reliable, and they need to be able to use their F2 abilities while moving.
Shortbow isn’t the problem. Rangers are right on the brink of being competitive. If the above issues were addressed, they’d be amazing.
Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.
Thanks for the response, Jon.
Was your team able to look into the fact that Crossfire when under the effects of Quickness from Quickening Zephyr or Zephyr’s Swiftness is measurably slower than the intended 40ms change?
It seems like this point sort of got lost in the noise, but it’s exceedingly relevant; the change to Crossfire seems on target for the normal attack, but it appears to be applying a .4 second increase when under Swiftness, not .04. People better at math than I am made some good posts about it earlier in this thread.
Any chance that could be looked into as well? Thanks.
Pretty sure the devs never intended for retaliation to have anywhere near 100% uptime. It’s unlikely they ever intended it to have more than 10% uptime. It’s exceedingly likely that retal uptime on Guardians will see further nerfs in the future.
Implying a 40 milisecond nerf bringing attack speed to 2.04 per second instead of 2.2 (~8% nerf) makes a class useless.
If that were actually the case, you’d be right. Unfortunately, there’s a bug related to the change: the cast time of Crossfire under the effects of Quickening Zephyr and Zephyr’s Speed are measureably closer to a .4 second increase, not .04. When using their only real burst abilities, Rangers are doing ~30% less damage than they were before the patch. For a class that was already mid-tier (at best), that’s a pretty significant hit.
Pretty sure Jon Peters and Jonathan Sharp are the heads of the Systems/PvP team for GW2. If Jon Peters said he’s going to look into it, he’ll look into it. If they determine a mistake was made, they’ll fix it. It’s that simple.
It’s a crappy bug, but it doesn’t make the class unplayable. Deal with it for a little while or take a break from the class. Just relax and let them do their jobs.
Lot of misconceptions in this thread:
- The OP seems to be coming from a standpoint of PvE. And from that standpoint, yes, Ranger is viable. So is anything else, because open world PvE is a joke.
- Greatsword does less damage than Shortbow by a wide margin, and it requires melee range, where Shortbow works at 1200 range. There’s literally no reason to ever use it over a Shortbow, even after the recent unintentional nerf.
- Longbow does less damage than Shortbow by a significant amount. It’s only viable in WvW, and only there because of its ranged AoE capability. It’s awful in sPvP. (It’s viable in PvE as well, but again, everything is viable there.)
- People are upset about the shortbow nerf because it’s clearly bugged. Repeated tests have shown that, under the effects of quickness, the increase in cast time on Crossfire is closer to .4 seconds, not .04. This translates to a major damage nerf to a class which is considered by most competitive PvPers to be marginally viable at best.
- The Ranger class is underpowered. This isn’t whining or hyperbole; it’s simply how things are at the moment. If you don’t do competitive tPvP, you’re not going to notice this so much. When people say the class is underpowered, they’re talking about in a highly competitive tPvP environment. It’s simply a worse choice than many others at the moment. Bunker Engis, Guardians, and Eles make better point defenders, and Thieves make better Roamers. Outside of highly competitive tPvP, Ranger is viable, in the sense that a good player can do well with them, even despite the unintentional SB nerf.
TLDR; Open world PvE doesn’t matter, Greatsword is terrible, Longbow is only useful in WvW, and Rangers could use some improvement to be on par, but are far from unplayable.
(edited by mouse.1689)
Agree with points 1 and 2, disagree with point 3. Shortbow’s 2-5 abilities are fantastic. The fact that they hit less hard than our autoattack is a good thing, because it requires us to actually think about when we’re going to use them.
If they did comparable or better damage than Crossfire, you’d just spam everything on cooldown, which promotes less skillful play.
Aside from the accidental quickness nerf from today’s patch, Shortbow is pretty much perfect, imo. Definitely would like to see some damage buffs on Greatsword so we could have a viable melee spec again though.
LostMK.4089“sense of entitlement”
Sorry, there isn’t a more accurate way to describe the contents of your posts.
It is possible for underpowered classes to have overpowered abilities that require balancing, but in general I agree with you that Ranger is in a spot right now where it doesn’t require nerfs. Especially not before it sees some improvement to pet AI and reliable condition removal.
That said, a .04 second increase to Crossfire attack speed is really not a big deal at all, assuming it was actually implemented correctly. There’s clearly an issue with the way it’s interacting with Quickness at the moment, and that actually is a big deal.
Is anet so wracked with guilt they can’t even dignify our concerns with a response? Not surprising since they have no qualms with severely stealth nerfing a class to being unplayable.
They did dignify our concerns with a response. Jon Peters said he was looking into it. The sense of entitlement from some members of this community is kittening ridiculous. Mistakes happen, and they sometimes take more than an hour to fix.
ANet have absolutely no incentive to stealth nerf, they don’t have some irrational hatred for certain classes they themselves created, and there’s no conspiracy to wreck your personal hopes and dreams. A mistake was likely made, and a dev has acknowledged that they’ll look into it. Just relax and let them do their jobs.
At the very least there should be a place in the pvp locker to store pvp only items, like pvp salvage kits and tournament tickets. Having to go all the way to Lion’s Arch and then back again to retrieve these kinds of items is just silly.
Someone already said this earlier in the thread, but Rapid Fire’s end hit isn’t critting for 15k. The way that ability displays damage, it adds in all the damage the ability has already done. When you see a 10 or 15k crit at the end of Rapid Fire, that’s the amount of damage the entire Rapid Fire did, not just the last shot.
If you’re looking at it from a PvE perspective, Sigil of Rage isn’t that great. From a PvP perspective, it’s pretty solid, because the damage is very bursty. You can pretty much never have too much quickness in PvP.
Assuming we’re talking about PvP, Rage for Power/Crit builds, Earth for Condi builds.
All these ppl having problems with mesmers, just call target.. Should be the very first thing you do
Figuring out which one is the real target is not even remotely the problem. The problem, particularly for Rangers, is that if you focus the Mesmer, they have plenty of tools that let them escape and evade while their phantasms tear you to pieces. If you focus the phantasms, the Mesmer can simply keep pumping them out at will. Basically it’s a war of attrition that the Mesmer will always win. If you’re not finding this to be a problem, you’re fighting bad Mesmers.
The reason this is particularly difficult for Rangers is that most Ranger build have little to no AoE. Classes with AoE are more easily able to deal damage to both the Mesmer and their phantasms. Trap builds have an easier time, but it’s still no walk in the park.
It’s not just you. This thread already exists.
longbow
There’s your problem.
Range of transfer between ranger and pet or pet to/from ranger should be on the order of 1500 IMHO.
Not really sure why it requires a range at all, honestly. If your pet is alive (which isn’t always a given) you should be able to share whatever bonuses or abilities you have available. Does anyone think this would be abusable or overpowered in any way? It just seems like a basic quality of life issue.
I think people tend to forget about pets because of how incredibly unreliable they are. Until their AI is fixed, I consider them to be only useful for their F2 abilities and their ability to soak up damage and conditions via Protect Me and Signet of Renewal.
Agree with a lot of what was said here; it’s really good information.
- I’ll agree that Greatsword is awful, but it has the potential to be good. I don’t think it needs a complete rework at all. Swoop is awesome, the auto-evade on the 1 chain is awesome, and the stun on 5 is great. The 4 ability is a little wonky, but not so bad when you get used to it. Only 2 really feels lackluster to me. The biggest problem with the weapon by FAR is that they overnerfed the damage on it during beta. Its damage is far worse than other options, including ranged ones, which just doesn’t make any sense.
- Disagree with you about Protect Me. Stun Breakers don’t affect immobilize, which is one of the most common ways we get set up for burst against thieves. Rangers’ condition removal is so sparse and unreliable, you can’t really count on it to keep you out of harm’s way when you’re immobilized, and Protect Me is the next best choice. Since it’s almost always being used to defend against melee burst while immobilized, your pet tends to be in range anyway, which makes it plenty reliable in my experience. You can also swap pets in mid-Protect Me to keep them from dying. I strongly prefer it to Lightning Reflexes.
- One thing you didn’t mention which I think should be is that Signet of Renewal is both great and incredibly unreliable. It’s very useful against Pistol Engis and Necros, as well as any other condi-based build. Unfortunately, its active ability doesn’t work if your pet is out of range, and a lot of times, it seems like it just doesn’t work at all, even if the pet is in range and alive. If any devs are reading this, I strongly suggest removing the range requirement for this ability, and making it work reliably. It’s one of the Ranger’s only condition removal options, and right now it’s just completely unreliable.
Ace of Spades.6325Support ele, dancing dagger thief can render a mesmer useless in khylo. And in forest i would never pick more than one mesmer, since a necro or a ranger can bring much more in team fights, and thiefs/warriors are much better for beasts control.
Can you expand on what you feel a ranger brings to team fights? (Not a rhetorical question.) I’m curious what niche you feel rangers fill in competitive tPvP, and specifically what build they use to do it. Thanks.
Troll Unguent heals for more than either of the other two heals, but it has its drawbacks. It has a longer cast time which makes it easier to interrupt, and it’s a heal over time so big burst can damage right through it. But yes, it’s very good at 80.
It’s not as much better than the other heals as you described though. At 80, it heals for 8560 over 10 seconds, where Heal as One heals for 6520.
Second, I’m not a Thief hater. I actually have a Thief that uses P/D. That means that I (GASP!) have the ability to stealth stomp at will. It’s not an issues with Thieves. It’s an issue with being able to stomp another player with zero chance to fail.
Not trying to be a jerk, but how is it zero chance to fail? Are you talking about solely in a 1v1 scenario? If you are, it probably doesn’t matter anyway. If you’re not, then the following things can prevent a stealth stomp:
- An AoE Knockback
- An AoE Fear
- An AoE Pull
- AoE damage on top of the downed player if the Thief is at low health
- An ally using quickness to rally the downed player before the Thief can complete the stomp
- Ranger’s #2 downed ability on another nearby enemy, which will also daze the Thief
- Elementalist #3, Guardian #2, Thief #2, Mesmer #2 downed abilities can also be used to prevent stealthed stomps
There’s counterplay there.
EDIT: Was typing this while you were making that last post.
(edited by mouse.1689)
Entangle is just stupid OP imo (and I also main a Ranger). The reason it’s OP is because of a bug, though. Very frequently the game considers the roots to be behind the player, and because you can’t turn while immoblized, there’s no way to damage the roots at all. Hence you eat a full 10 second cc and a massive bleed, which is just silly.
They need to fix that bug, and they also ought to consider letting people turn when immobilized in general, because it’s unquestionably the strongest condition, and that change would impact its effectiveness without making it useless.
Stealth stomps are intended according to devs. They can still be interrupted by AoE cc like fears and knockdowns. They can also be prevented by just dropping AoE nukes on top of the person who’s about to be stomped. The stealthed person is still taking damage while they’re stomping.
Ranger does sustained damage more than it does burst damage. You have Warriors and Thieves and hitting for huge numbers, but the attacks that let them do that (Hundred Blades and Backstab) require setup that are on relatively long cooldowns, and also require melee range.
Rangers can do their damage from 12-1500 range, and while each individual hit isn’t nearly as large, their damage over time is comparable (although somewhat lower to compensate for range) than a Warrior or a Thief.
Crossfire may only be hitting for 400 damage, but it’s doing it 2.2 times per second, every second, not including bleed damage. That’s really not bad.
Rangers have some problems in sPvP, but it’s not their damage at all. Their condition removal is highly unreliable, and they have relatively poor group utility. Those are the balance issues that require attention for Rangers.
I understand your frustration, but it seems like the current setup is the most balanced. Thieves aren’t good point defenders for the reasons you mentioned. They’re phenomenal roamers, though. The best in the game, in fact.
They’re also one of the best 1v1 classes in the game, which makes them good at taking points from single defenders. Granted, you may not be ticking that point over while you’re murdering the person standing on it, but you can often kill them quickly enough that that’s kind of a moot point.
Long story short, a Thief’s role in competitive PvP is roaming. They’re not good point defenders. But that’s why you bring a Guardian or Engi, right?
The sharks on Capricorn are stupid and should be removed. Ranger/Necro/Mesmer pets are a core part of those classes’ mechanics and you need to get used to them and learn to play around them, because they’re not going anywhere.
this thread is becoming more about tactics and favoritism and not why they are so over powered. a class isn’t overpowered if a good player uses their skills right and has premediatated abilities built from experience. I still feel the game is far too new to decide if something is overpowered yet.
Competitive players have been testing tournament PvP in this game for close to half a year now. There’s been plenty of time to determine what is and is not overpowered. Like I said, ANet are more aware than people think about class balance issues, and will take measures they deem appropriate.
The ridiculous notion that only bad players don’t understand that release day was the day that all classes were magically balanced and everything is now in a perfect state of blissful equilibrium and should never be changed is patently absurd.
There’s no such thing as a perfectly balanced asymmetrical gameplay system. Games like these will always be a work in progress, and certain classes will always have some objective advantage over others, however slight. To suggest otherwise is just silly.
The key is to remain as impartial as possible, do your best to find counters to things which seem overpowered before complaining about them, and to be as constructive and objective as possible when suggesting improvements to perceived imbalance.
Would really like to see the aforementioned change to Portal. Just make people drop bundles when stepping through them. Balance!
I consider it mandatory for sPvP. Few things bring greater joy in this game than watching a Thief blow all his initiative on Pistol Whipping my poor spider to death.
And Rangers -do- just spam 1 to stack bleeds. Sorry. It requires little effort otherwise. Most of a SB Ranger’s effort is put into kiting, not bleed stacking, as that is entirely automated and efficient. You don’t setup Crossfire, you keep yourself alive while Crossfire does it’s work. I know, I play the kittening build, too, but at least I can admit it’s significantly better than most other condition builds.
You don’t need condition removal to beat a condition based Shortbow Ranger. It only requires two easy steps:
1. Face the Ranger.
2. Hold your S key until the end of the fight.
You’re welcome.
That aside, I agree it’s easier to play than a lot of other specs. But comparing it to Elementalist is unfair. Compared to Elementalist, EVERY class has it incredibly easy. Not saying they’re bad, but they require ten times the work for similar results in most cases.
(edited by mouse.1689)
Find a competitive 5v5 team that doesn’t run a Mesmer and I’ll give you a cookie.
you both misread my statement i said no class is better than another because they all have specific counters and have their own importance of a role to play. The only people who call a class op is because they obviously hit this margin and can’t kill it period usually these people complaining are the crit junkies who get steamed rolled via skill/strategy because their quick cap hits don’t work anymore. Or new people un intelligable of other classes and their capabilities.
They didn’t misread your statement, you’re just wrong and they disagree with you because of that. Some classes are currently objectively better than other classes.
Every class has a role to play, but some classes simply play those roles better than others. Bomb Engineers can play a bunker point defense role, but that doesn’t matter because Guardians do the job strictly better. Rangers can play the roamer role, but Thieves fill the same role better. A Necro can use and guard the treb on Kyhlo, but a Mesmer will always do that job better.
Some classes are currently better than others. That doesn’t mean that certain classes are unplayable — they’re not. But they’re not as good as certain other classes. A good player can do well with any class, but that same player is going to do the best with a Mesmer, Guardian, or Thief.
There’s a reason that these three classes comprise the majority of highly competitive tPvP teams like Team Legacy, Super Squad, and Team Paradigm. It’s because competitive players will always take any advantage they can get, and these classes give them an advantage.
It’s not a huge deal. ANet is far more aware of class imbalances than most people give them credit for. Appropriate action will be taken, those classes will be brought into line, and everyone will be kittening about some other class next month instead.
Right at this moment? Mesmer, Guardian, Thief in that order. Expect them to get toned down a bit in the next few weeks though.
Rather than rolling the strongest class, you really ought to try all of them for a few hours in sPvP and see which ones you enjoy the most. That’s what I did, and I chose to main Ranger despite the fact that it’s objectively weaker than some of the other classes.
While some of the classes are a bit stronger than others, you can do well with any one of them if you’re a good player and take the time to learn how to spec and play it.
I may be stating the obvious, but you know you can switch teams in sPvP, right? Hit B to open the scoreboard, and if there’s room on the opposite team, there’s a + icon you can click to join that team. If one team has more players than the other, then the one of you that’s on the bigger team can switch to the smaller team.
Even if you can’t do it right at the start, just check the scoreboard occasionally during the game to see if anyone has left or joined the game, then one of you can switch. My roommate and I play together in sPvP and end up on the same team about 95% of the time this way.
One thing to note: at the very beginning of the match, check the scoreboard and try to switch onto the same team as quickly as possible. If the teams are even, you need to close the scoreboard and re-open it for it to update with new players as they join. It doesn’t update as long as you have it open. Just keep closing and opening it until the teams are uneven, and use that opportunity to switch as quickly as possible.
kharza.3974Yeah I hate to say too it but it is a L2P issue and the above poster hit it spot on. Outside of a mesmer I haven’t lost a 1v1 fight in a very long time. The trick to being a strong ranger is to not go glass cannon. I bet you will find that most of the posters here that are saying we are fine are NOT playing glass cannon builds and have some form of defense (protect me, signet of stone, lots of toughness/vitality, condition removal, etc.). As I’ve tweaked my build and raised my personal skill cap I have even started doing very well in 1v2 and 1v3. I also play a thief and while stealth is nice, rangers have a disgusting amount of evasion.
This is all true. Glass cannon rangers are pretty awful. I run with a Knight’s Amulet and Berserker’s Jewel. I run with 20 points in Wilderness Survival. I dedicate 3 traits and 2 utilities to defensive abilities. I use pets with cc.
This class isn’t about spamming Sharpening Stone+Quickening Zephyr+Crossfire. If you play it that way you’ll get rolled. Dedicate a good portion of your build to defensive abilities, know how and when to use your slows, dodges, and cc, and you’ll do very well in 1v1 situations.
nldixon.8514It’s because it’s a stupidly easy spec. Positioning yourself is a joke, since any immobilize freezes your target in the direction they’re facing. If Rangers had some kind of immobilize that had a (potentially) long duration they could just unload a Sharpening Stone+QZ barrage in someone’s backside and have a 25 stack of bleeds in just a few seconds. Hrm… Anybody know of any abilities like that?
Yeah, I know of one with a 150 second cooldown. You’re really complaining about a combo that requires 3 utility skills, can only be used every two and a half minutes, and can be countered with a single condition removal? It’s as stupidly easy to counter as it is stupidly easy to play. Where’s the problem?
I really hate to say this, but you’re doing it wrong. Ranger is one of the better 1v1 classes in the game. Mesmers should be the only class that gives you consistent trouble 1v1. Thieves can be difficult as well if they have all their cooldowns up, but are still beatable if you know what you’re doing.
Before assuming that the class is broken and demanding an explanation from the devs, why don’t you tell us what build you’re using, and explain specifically what classes are giving you problems so we can provide you some feedback that will help you?
They just nerfed the hell out of Retal uptime on Guardians. What more do you want?
Kasama.8941That’s not to say the Ranger isn’t capable of burst damage, but a Thief or Elementalist can do it a lot easier.
With regards to Elementalist, it can definitely do more burst damage than Ranger, but easier? Definitely not. Elementalist has to work ten times harder to to put out similar damage, not just because of attunement swapping, but also because most of their big hitting abilities (e.g. Dragon’s Tooth) require setup or luck (or both) to actually land.
I’m glad I’m not the only one here that noticed how bad the grammar was in this Q&A conversation. Perhaps we should not take it too seriously, as it may not have been legit. After all, Jon’s forum posts are far more coherent and correctly written.
It wasn’t some organized Q&A session. He was in the Heart of the Mists on his character and people started talking to him and asking him questions. His answers were off the cuff and unscripted, but more importantly they were honest and transparent. Who cares if he’s a bad typer?
It’s legit, btw. There are screenshots of the conversation.
A bunker’s role is to stay alive against one or more opponents long enough for his teammates to arrive, thereby preventing the point from being taken.
If the only way to take a point from a bunker build is to slowly whittle it down with condition damage, then he’s fulfilling his aforementioned role perfectly and is not, in fact, being countered at all.
valdamus.6289congrats dough.. this is the first time that I see a comunity QQ and the Devs eat it right up.
Now because of this I already see topics forming up to pretty much dictate the next patch nerf.
rofl. You’re adorable.
valdamus.6289I wish this was blizzard they would have given you all a nice paragraph of “you dont know siht so sftu”
Oh, you wanted a quote from a dev on the subject? Cool:
Jon Peters
Bunker guardian has to much retal period. Obviously. Frankly, too much prot also. But that is not the heart of the matter. The core problem is retal. Because with it, bunker builds eliminate spike builds from the meta game, which in turn makes bunker builds OP. So the counter to them is being countered by them. AKA balance problem. Defensive builds are important, they help establish strategies. But they are also determining the entire meta right now.
In summation: “you dont know siht so sftu”
Why does it matter how many people are in the lobby if it has no bearing on the people with whom you can play? Not a rhetorical question, just curious what you’re hoping to get out of it. Conversation?
Devs are considering rewarding glory for point defense. I think it would be a very good change.
As for hotjoin 8v8 being a horrible cluster**** of a zergfest, it is what it is, and it won’t ever be anything other than that. If you’re tired of it, definitely play 5v5 tPvP.