Curse

belshazaarswrath · Aug 17, 2010, 04:33 PM // 16:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

No, just the effect. Life stealing isn't game breaking but 50%AAP is?

I think not. It's like when sundering mods were all 10/10 and people thought that was great, then they changed it to 20/20 and people thought it was uber! And I was like wtf it's still crap!

50% AP on rubbish damage is rubbish damage so no, it won't break the game, it won't even make PvE bow rangers much more viable. It may just about make horn bows worth bringing once in a while, probably not.

Ok but that is a skill. You have to use a slot for that. You have to cast that. That isn't just a permanent buff on a weapon. Also those mods give you a CHANCE of armor penetration...Hornbows give you a guarantee.

Also at 50% armor penetration you are dealing 86% more damage. If you would deal 28 damage without the AP you would deal 52 with the AP. That plus say Barrage would give you +20 armor ignoring damage. Giving you 70 damage. Add ESoH and By Ural's hammer you'll be knocking out around 100 damage to 6 foes every second or 2. That's pretty damn powerful for a ranged class. That's not to mention the damage you might be getting from a conjure spell and splinter weapon (which will undoubtedly be on you).

Sounds pretty over the top to me.

gremlin · Aug 17, 2010, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by belshazaarswrath

Ok but that is a skill. You have to use a slot for that. You have to cast that. That isn't just a permanent buff on a weapon. Also those mods give you a CHANCE of armor penetration...Hornbows give you a guarantee.

Also at 50% armor penetration you are dealing 86% more damage. If you would deal 28 damage without the AP you would deal 52 with the AP. That plus say Barrage would give you +20 armor ignoring damage. Giving you 70 damage. Add ESoH and By Ural's hammer you'll be knocking out around 100 damage to 6 foes every second or 2. That's pretty damn powerful for a ranged class. That's not to mention the damage you might be getting from a conjure spell and splinter weapon (which will undoubtedly be on you).

Sounds pretty over the top to me.

I think they should let us play test it so we can see if its ott
Just for a year or two and we could probably give an informed view.

belshazaarswrath · Aug 17, 2010, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by gremlin

I think they should let us play test it so we can see if its ott
Just for a year or two and we could probably give an informed view.

*shrugs*

There are worse things they could do. They could give it a 42 damage cap and have it affect 3 foes at once.

Fay Vert · Aug 17, 2010, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by belshazaarswrath

Ok but that is a skill. You have to use a slot for that. You have to cast that. That isn't just a permanent buff on a weapon. Also those mods give you a CHANCE of armor penetration...Hornbows give you a guarantee.

Also at 50% armor penetration you are dealing 86% more damage. If you would deal 28 damage without the AP you would deal 52 with the AP. That plus say Barrage would give you +20 armor ignoring damage. Giving you 70 damage. Add ESoH and By Ural's hammer you'll be knocking out around 100 damage to 6 foes every second or 2. That's pretty damn powerful for a ranged class. That's not to mention the damage you might be getting from a conjure spell and splinter weapon (which will undoubtedly be on you).

Sounds pretty over the top to me.

How does that compare to Splinter/Barrage + PvE skills against 6 tightly packed foes currently?

Armchair calculations <> gameplay.

Besides, it appears we have now switched from game braking silly buff to "pretty darned powerful for a ranged class". See? Even when someone posts a completely absurd set of buffs to ranger, it doesn't even come close to the state the game has been in. That is the point, that is why bow rangers are so broken.

belshazaarswrath · Aug 17, 2010, 09:09 PM // 21:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fay Vert

How does that compare to Splinter/Barrage + PvE skills against 6 tightly packed foes currently?

Armchair calculations <> gameplay.

Besides, it appears we have now switched from game braking silly buff to "pretty darned powerful for a ranged class". See? Even when someone posts a completely absurd set of buffs to ranger, it doesn't even come close to the state the game has been in. That is the point, that is why bow rangers are so broken.

Well I could use that same rhetoric and say that you don't really know how 50% AP would fare against foes unless you tried it yourself.

Oh and yes that was poor wording on my part.

Pretty damn powerful in general and extremely overpowered on a Ranged class.

If you can sit back and put up warrior with a scythe numbers somethings terribly wrong.

But you might be right...it might not be a big deal. However I think Anet would see things my way, at least on a superficial level.

"50% AP wtf that's ridiculous we're not doing that!"

But this also probably isn't the way to go anyway in terms of buffing the ranger...and I think we can agree that it is a thing to be skipped (me because it's overpowered you because it's underpowered).

Eh?

Fay Vert · Aug 17, 2010, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Well I agree with your assessment of where ANet is and it certainly wasn't me suggesting such a buff.

But we need to get out of the "rangers do what they currently do" mentality, because GW rangers are silly, bows are just wrong, they made them wrong as a balance mechanism for PvP but they just don't make sense. So until we stop fiddling with numbers and rethink what a ranger should be then we will never fix bows specifically and rangers in general.

gremlin · Aug 18, 2010, 10:24 AM // 10:24

Sorry I mentioned my reasonable buff though I was joking

I think they made a fundamental error with pve pvp and the attempts to fix it have often caused even more problems than they ever fixed.

They did have alternative paths they could have taken.

The festival pvp events seem popular so having pre set pvp skills that are limited in numbers and remain balanced because they are pvp only.

Pve and pve skills developed independently, so when a change is made in one game it you do not even need to consider the effects in the other game.

There is little to be gained in pvp players dismissing the pve game and players as unimportant and nothing to be gained by pve players moaning whenever a skill is changed due to the needs of the pvp game.

We need to work together to get anet to stop all these silly changes and rebalances and try another method.
Perhaps separating pve and pvp completely is the way forward, it would seem to be a lot more work until you consider you probably wont have to repeat the balancing exercise ad nausium because of pvp pve conflicts.

AndroBubbles · Aug 18, 2010, 09:59 PM // 21:59

There are a few things I would like to see improved. Pet AI for one. They can wait more than 2-3 seconds upon reaching a target before they even attack. Wild, charmable animals have better AI.

Preparations should be stackable.. to a degree. Why can I not apply poison and make my arrows barbed at the same time? This is not for pvp, where condition spam like that would win every single match once you dshot condition removal, but playing to an advantage the ranger is supposed to have. Preparations should also be more varied. An idea I've considered:

Ignite arrows - 10e, 12s recharge; For 24 seconds, when your arrows hit, your target(s) is affected with "Ignited Arrow." After 3 seconds, that foe and all adjacent foes take X...Y fire damage and are set on fire for 1-3 seconds.

This in particular allows for the ranger to expand its aoe viability, making it beneficial for it to effectively target foes instead of just spamming. It also allows for versatility in preparations, letting different styles of play into the same weapon format.

Amy Awien · Aug 19, 2010, 06:06 AM // 06:06

To be honest, I don't like the particular change/nerf you are suggesting to Ignite arrows, which currently is the only useable AoE preparation in PvE - though only with help of other skills.

Beomagi · Aug 19, 2010, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedDog91

Ranger doesn't need re-vamping.
It works just fine for me and pretty much everyone else that plays as a Ranger.
Learn how to play as a Ranger before posting, and we wouldn't have this un-needed thread.

Do you have any suggesstions for him? Or others here who can't play a ranger optimally? Perhaps tactics you use in some of the tougher areas, skill combinations that seem to work etc?

You've given an opinion and nothing more.

TheRanger · Aug 23, 2010, 09:07 PM // 21:07

Rangers used to perfectly fine at PvE, but now they are horrible. They used to be very versatile, but over and over Anet kept nerfing skills related to ranger in some way while completely overpowering other professions such as the Assassin-- which was already overpowered since around the time they changed Moebius Strike and other misc skills. Yet still Anet kept buffing their skills despite them being fine. Do you know why? If you were there at that time you'll know that it was because people didn't know how to PvE and blamed everything on Assassins. That's despite the point though, I love assassins but Ranger was my first primary character since GW's official release. Rangers used to be alright, but now they're not because of 2 reasons:

1) nerfs to ranger related skills
2) buffs to other professions

This applies to both PvE and PvP.

1: I'd say the first point of downfall for the ranger profession was when they changed expertise. Before, expertise used to work for all non-spell skills, but now they only work for ranger skills, attack skills, touch skills, and rituals. What did this do to the ranger profession? Completely limited the rangers versatility. Over time Anet then began to nerf every useful skills available to the rangers bar. Nearly every single 1 second cast bow skill received an aftercast. Notable bow attack skills got their damage reduced significantly. Flails duration got reduced, etc, etc. Now rangers are useless. They have very little to no role in PvP- you decide on what type of niche to play and you realize that another profression can fill it better. The same thing can be said about PvE. Rangers are only viable for barrage-splitter like builds. Not very versatile if you ask me.

2: What the nerfs did was ruin what rangers had in game. Here's the real problem with the ranger profession though- all other professions got buffed while rangers stayed the same. If you here back when there was only Prophecies, skills weren't as powerful as they are now. Back then a person couldn't come and attack you and kill you in 5 seconds like today. Back then there weren't healing skills that were versatile and healed for so much. Back then, hexes were weak paled to what they are today. Around the time factions was released, Anet made the decision to balance skills by making them more powerful, rather than weaker. Faction skills were much more powerful than Prophecies skills back then. I remember looking at Starburst and thinking "wow! that skill is amazing. good damage, good recharge, aoe damage!?". Back then it was good damage. Then at that same time Anet started buffing existing skills. I remember the update where Anet buffed Shield of Regeneration. 1/4 cast, 40armor, +10ish regen. Completely amazing. I know I was not alone with these thoughts. These skills appeared overpowered.

With the release of nightfall, it appears Anet made the decision of going the opposite direction of Factions. Ever wondered why Paragons and Dervishes are COMPLETE FAIL? Well it's because Anet wanted to tone down their skills. Yet over time Anet decided that when they're going to buff skills, they're going to buff it substantially. In this point of time, hexes started to become awesome. Spoil Victor. Visions of Regret. Empathy. So much more.

The whole point of this historical lesson that every progressions got buffed significantly while only a few others did not.

Monk got buffed
Assassins got completely super mega awesome over powered x100 buffed
Necros and Mesmers got buffed
Warriors got buffed
Rit's got somewhat buffed
Ele's got somewhat buffed (with releases of a variety of new skills)
Rangers got nerfed
Paragons stayed the same (and are still horrible)
Dervishes stayed the same (and are still horrible)

*note that Anet attempted to fix Para's and Derv's with their respective PvE skills, although they're still pretty horrible. Para's fill a niche of Imbaway, but without it they're still horrible. Kinda like how Rangers fill a Spinterbarrage niche, yet that's the only thing they can do.

So there you have it. It's Anets decision to nerf every buffed profression so everything is weaker, or do the opposite and make everything stronger. Either direction would make the professions balanced.

miriforst · Aug 26, 2010, 04:13 PM // 16:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheRanger

Rangers used to perfectly fine at PvE, but now they are horrible. They used to be very versatile, but over and over Anet kept nerfing skills related to ranger in some way while completely overpowering other professions such as the Assassin-- which was already overpowered since around the time they changed Moebius Strike and other misc skills. Yet still Anet kept buffing their skills despite them being fine. Do you know why? If you were there at that time you'll know that it was because people didn't know how to PvE and blamed everything on Assassins. That's despite the point though, I love assassins but Ranger was my first primary character since GW's official release. Rangers used to be alright, but now they're not because of 2 reasons:

1) nerfs to ranger related skills
2) buffs to other professions

This applies to both PvE and PvP.

1: I'd say the first point of downfall for the ranger profession was when they changed expertise. Before, expertise used to work for all non-spell skills, but now they only work for ranger skills, attack skills, touch skills, and rituals. What did this do to the ranger profession? Completely limited the rangers versatility. Over time Anet then began to nerf every useful skills available to the rangers bar. Nearly every single 1 second cast bow skill received an aftercast. Notable bow attack skills got their damage reduced significantly. Flails duration got reduced, etc, etc. Now rangers are useless. They have very little to no role in PvP- you decide on what type of niche to play and you realize that another profression can fill it better. The same thing can be said about PvE. Rangers are only viable for barrage-splitter like builds. Not very versatile if you ask me.

2: What the nerfs did was ruin what rangers had in game. Here's the real problem with the ranger profession though- all other professions got buffed while rangers stayed the same. If you here back when there was only Prophecies, skills weren't as powerful as they are now. Back then a person couldn't come and attack you and kill you in 5 seconds like today. Back then there weren't healing skills that were versatile and healed for so much. Back then, hexes were weak paled to what they are today. Around the time factions was released, Anet made the decision to balance skills by making them more powerful, rather than weaker. Faction skills were much more powerful than Prophecies skills back then. I remember looking at Starburst and thinking "wow! that skill is amazing. good damage, good recharge, aoe damage!?". Back then it was good damage. Then at that same time Anet started buffing existing skills. I remember the update where Anet buffed Shield of Regeneration. 1/4 cast, 40armor, +10ish regen. Completely amazing. I know I was not alone with these thoughts. These skills appeared overpowered.

With the release of nightfall, it appears Anet made the decision of going the opposite direction of Factions. Ever wondered why Paragons and Dervishes are COMPLETE FAIL? Well it's because Anet wanted to tone down their skills. Yet over time Anet decided that when they're going to buff skills, they're going to buff it substantially. In this point of time, hexes started to become awesome. Spoil Victor. Visions of Regret. Empathy. So much more.

The whole point of this historical lesson that every progressions got buffed significantly while only a few others did not.

Monk got buffed
Assassins got completely super mega awesome over powered x100 buffed
Necros and Mesmers got buffed
Warriors got buffed
Rit's got somewhat buffed
Ele's got somewhat buffed (with releases of a variety of new skills)
Rangers got nerfed
Paragons stayed the same (and are still horrible)
Dervishes stayed the same (and are still horrible)

*note that Anet attempted to fix Para's and Derv's with their respective PvE skills, although they're still pretty horrible. Para's fill a niche of Imbaway, but without it they're still horrible. Kinda like how Rangers fill a Spinterbarrage niche, yet that's the only thing they can do.

So there you have it. It's Anets decision to nerf every buffed profression so everything is weaker, or do the opposite and make everything stronger. Either direction would make the professions balanced.

that post brough me to tears, what a drama

yes, agreed on that others can do what a ranger can but better, they need a buff but buffing nature rituals or traps will make other proffesions go "deeerp!" and take it as a utility skill on their MoP or SoS and move on instead of bringing a ranger... (yay for abused nature rituals.... not...)

Xiaquin · Aug 26, 2010, 04:57 PM // 16:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheRanger

Kinda like how Rangers fill a Spinterbarrage niche, yet that's the only thing they can do that the meta cares about.

There are plenty of good uses for them if you know what you are doing.

Desert Rose · Aug 27, 2010, 11:05 AM // 11:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheRanger

Over time Anet then began to nerf every useful skills available to the rangers bar. Nearly every single 1 second cast bow skill received an aftercast. Notable bow attack skills got their damage reduced significantly. Flails duration got reduced, etc, etc.

Most of the attack skills with a fixed attack time started with none, it was added because ANet seems to rather buff things into the stratosphere than tuning things down. I'm not sure if all attack skill with a fixed attack time are now more powerful then when they were released, but most are.

Quote:

They have very little to no role in PvP- you decide on what type of niche to play and you realize that another profression can fill it better.

Rangers are the kings of low end PvP and are present in nearly any build in high end PvP.

Beomagi · Aug 27, 2010, 11:59 AM // 11:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desert Rose

Most of the attack skills with a fixed attack time started with none, it was added because ANet seems to rather buff things into the stratosphere than tuning things down. I'm not sure if all attack skill with a fixed attack time are now more powerful then when they were released, but most are.

True, although you'd be right about turret builds from a few months ago, the addition of cast time to the main ones, and removal of bow's damage from power attack both hurt.

Former Ruling · Sep 23, 2010, 07:57 PM // 19:57

OK, here is an opinion from someone that has been out of the game for years and freshly coming back to take a look at things pve side.

Firstly, I don't mind if Rangers do less damage with each shot than say a melee based physical attacker. I think the design should be that yes they do less damage per hit but they either interrupt, apply condition/badness to enemy, or hit multiple targets. Beast Mastery has been hurting since the game launched years ago and they haven't found a good solution to make pets viable for anything.

[B]Attacks/B]:
Look at the elites. Most are useless or have drawbacks that make them undesirable. Quick Shot is useless, Punishing is just Savage Shot with an elite sticker on it, Magebane is just a less-powerful yet unblockable Distracting Shot, Prepared shot is unnecessary, Poison Shot just puts a condition on that's easily spammable with non-elites, Melandru's Shot effect is conditional, and Broad headed arrow has a huge drawback.

Burning/Incendiary Arrow and Crippling Shot both have their uses. Barrage - While it is effective at it's limited niche (All mobs huddled close and you have spl-weapon on you) it is rendered useless if there aren't two mobs together.

That normally wouldn't be an issue for a skill, except that there are no normal attacks worth hitting in place of just spamming Barrage (even against 1 target). So what do people take? Usually Barrage as the elite exclusively and then all their other bow attacks are just the standard interrupts. Everything else has drawbacks, doesn't do enough damage to give up a slot for it, or is so conditional.

Preps:
Often over looked entirely because they don't go with Barrage or the elite status. The elite ones all suck, either have effects that don't matter or are so conditional/situational that you don't care. Among ones you can use most need serious tuning as they aren't worth the hassle to reapply so often.

One major improvement would be to drastically up the duration (and recharge would go up too), but not reapplying so often would help get them used.

Traps:
Traps are gods in their very specific little niche. Where a person sets up and solos with them, or a team sets up and kills stuff with them. Outside of that niche and those specific traps they are useless. I think the original post still stands, they aren't something you can just throw in a build, you have to be a trapper to trap, and trapping outside of stacking is fairly useless. To not be easily interrupted every time you need an elite prep, which because its elite takes away the elite traps which are the ones you want to be trapping to use anyway..

Resign Trapper's Focus to be something else (doesn't matter), give it's anti-interrupting effect to Trapper's Speed. That's already got a drawback built in to prevent non-trappers from abusing it. The other problem is most traps just conflict with one another, Snare vs Barbed Trap is a funny example, redesign some of the traps to be more like Piercing Trap - more damage or conditional effects that make it have synergy with other traps/effects, not override them. This is one way to deal with a problem without wrecking the current use of traps to stack-damage.

Stances:
With few exceptions they all fall into 2 categories, Increase run speed or Block attacks, each with some conditional effect or something that differs it from the next. The block attack ones are alright - they need to tweak recharges and durations to bring more of them inline but that's easy. The run speed ones I don't like as much. Most aren't that much different from one another and you only need 2 (3 tops) to have one up all the time yet there are several copies. Change a few of them like people suggested.

Spirits:
I have to admit, I love nature spirits. The thought of my spirit affecting the entire playing field is an exciting venture. The problem is..most people don't follow my same idea there.

Spirits are long cast time/recharge, can't move them. The reason I heard Rit spirits were changed. So even if one is good you don't bring it because you'd be out of range in 1-2 pulls and it's wasted. Main thing, since they effect so many people potentially their effects are watered down - either so niche you'll never say "man I wish I had brought Primal Echoes" or were given conditional requirements like having to already be damaged (<90%) to get damaged by some, or already have a condition to get conditions spread. It's a very safe approach that I don't know if they'll change.

I do want to one day be able to create say..a conditions team build that uses spirits to spread and strengthen that degen. Open up spirits you open up a lot of opportunity..but since you also open up griefing I dont see it happening.

Xiaquin · Sep 23, 2010, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Former Ruling

Beast Mastery has been hurting since the game launched years ago and they haven't found a good solution to make pets viable for anything.

BM is tricky. Pets aren't very effective without investing a lot into the attribute, and that hurts the rest of the build. In a way, it's sort of like trapping, you have to go all in. The main problem is pet AI, it's just very sluggish.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Former Ruling

Attacks:

Pretty much agree all around. Elite interrupts are a joke in PvE and need to be powered up. Too many bow attacks are just not worth bringing, either, and need to be modernized. Compare Hunter's Shot with the assassin's Jagged Strike; the difference is staggering. In another case, Needling Shot got a ridiculous nerf that disables all other attacks for a period, that was complete nonsense and needs to be undone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Former Ruling

Preps:

Actually, Glass Arrows is an exceptional elite. You need a lot into Expertise, but it can have a long duration and adds a good punch to every attack. However, across the board I agree, Preps need to either activate quicker or last longer (in addition to some stat changes). Refreshing one every moment is painful, especially mid-fight.

Traps, spirits, stances could be debated to death. Yes, traps need to be made a lot easier to use and spirits need a total rewrite, and kittens look adorable in piles, what else is new.

LifeInfusion · Sep 23, 2010, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Rangers, Dervishes, and Elementalists suffer from the same problem it seems. Since the bulk of the damage is not from +damage or armor-ignoring it makes these classes worse off in Hard mode.

At its core, the Ranger is the "agile and wily survivor" but that is useless in Hard mode since mobs bash you for 200 damage and running from things isn't going to get you kills. The problem is compounded by easy bulk condition removal, which is where the bulk of ranger damage and utility comes from.

Personally I think quite a few of the Ranger skills could use a buff without making Hard mode ludicrous with ranger spikes from PVE mobs. For comparison, Spiritual Pain is not OP but better in PVE than PVP because spirit spam isn't viable in PVP. Something along those lines would be best.

A few examples of skills that could see vast changes
Archer's Signet: Since conditions are easily removed and few conditions are truly strong outside of daze/blind, this is a pretty bad elite.

Barbed Arrows: Apply Poison scoffs at this, especially with the -40 armor. THere should be a PvP/PVE split to remove the -40 armor at the very least. Granted you can spread poison and bleeding at the same time when using Barbed arrow with Poison arrow but Poison arrow is not a great elite and necros can mass poison with Death Nova and Oppressive Gaze.

Choking Gas: Outside of Practiced Stance, it can't be upkept and is very hard to use effectively compared to interrupts. It's the Ranger equivalent to mesmer interrupt spam with no damage. It is terrible in hard mode due to flight time of arrows (cannot use Read the wind to speed the flight time either).

Practiced Stance: Make it more useful outside of Choking Gas. Seeking arrows is the only other preparation that actually benefits. Make it attack 33% faster, arrows fly 2x faster, or add + damage like Read the Wind. Reduced energy cost could be another thing (maybe -0...1...1 energy cost for all bow attack skills).

Equinox: outside of ticking off elementalist teammates using meteor shower it has no use. And it is an elite???

Escape: Make it also remove cripple, reduce slashing damage taken, or something along those lines. This is mainly a running skill or an elite skill just to run a melee ranger.

Expert's Dexterity: +2 to Marks IAS is not worth an elite, though it can be stacked with preparations.

Debilitating Shot: It's debilitating. Add bleeding or other condition to reflect that, solely energy loss is too mesmer-like to fit the ranger theme.

Disrupting Accuracy: I use it when running a GFTE, Stand Your Ground command paragon...but it is mostly used on A/R so that poses a problem.

Dodge/Zojun's Haste: It's only projectile attacks. That's basically wanding, spear chucking, and Arrows. At the very least make it projectile spells too.

Dryder's Defenses: if this ever gets buffed it will be a total rework, because it basically makes you immune to everything

Throw Dirt: could be half/adjacent range instead

Arcing Shot, Focused Shot, Marauder's Shot: No synergy vanilla damage skills need a rework when they only do +20 or so damage...spears do +20 or so when at 12 spearmastery. Focused shot encourages attack skill spam so it is even worse. Marauder's Shot should scale the skill disable duration.

Power Shot: An armor ignoring damage skill wit 3 recharge on a ranger. What?

Needling Shot: Armor ignoring damage spam...

Precision Shot : Sucks because it is easily interruptible AND does crappy damage (+10 at 15???) for 10 base energy. Should be +5...17...20 like Crossfire.

Rapid Fire: Waste of a skill slot. Make it do something more than IAS that is unique to this skill.

Screaming Shot: earshot range...how about bleeding to all foes in earshot of target instead (PVE only version of course)?

Splinter Shot : Just not feeling it. Make it do bleeding to the target at least?

The trend is too much +damage that is crappy (+25 at 15 marks? Who runs 15 marks anyway?). Every single 10 energy bow attack has to compete with Sloth Hunter's Shot.

Barrage/Volley : This sees use and adjacent range is ok, but it only has synergy with Splinter weapon (and RT has spirits which benefit from expertise so Rt is the best general ranger secondary and since most Ranger spirits suck, Spirit Light makes a use of them). Judge's Insight Barragers were the rage in FoW but they are kind of dated, and R/E with conjures never were strong to begin with. It is not completely useless like many bow attacks that only do damage that is less than that of a spear/warrior weapon.

Beast Mastery skills are okay other than the pet AI and the skill disable when pets die and the fact that pets in HM are liabilities. The interrupts like Disrupting Lunge, Bestial Pounce/Savage Pounce, are good but hard to time with pets and faster cast times in HM make it bad.

BM/WS skills:
* Feral Agression: call of haste's 33% IAS overlaps.
* Predatory Bond: 25% IAS overlaps with call of haste and Feral Agression
* Heket's Rampage: make it end when you use a attack skill that is not a pet attack.
* Lacerate: a sad elite. -4 degen is nothing really elite. Perhaps a rework: Bleeding creatures take more +5-17 more from blunt damage, and knocked down bleeding foes suffer ___ damage when deep wounded? (Lacerations = irregular tear-like wounds caused by some blunt trauma. - wikipedia)
* Toxicity: like Lacerate without elite status, passable. Maybe slap on weakness whenever poison is applied?
* Brambles: not worth a skill slot
* Melandru's Assault: don't see how this is nearby range unless the pet has enormous appendages...but I'm not complaining
* Poisonous Bite: used to compete with Feral Lunge, now not so much. Make it deal + damage to foes suffering from deep wound or something.
* Predatory Season: no idea... the healing debuff is ok but it pisses off your own team and it can't be too good since it is a spirit.
* Primal Echoes: affecting only signets is a really niche use...it's kind of like Icy Prism
* Scavenger Strike: like most of the ranger skills, energy is not a problem
* Strike as One: weird elite but all the conditions aren't that spectacular in PVE
* Symbiosis: can't be good or it is broken
* Viper's Nest: as the only trap in beast mastery it has no synergy...I have no idea what to make of it
WS
*Conflagration: yeh... fire damage suck in HM so this is a waste of time unless we change the functionality.
* Kindle arrows: fire damage is bad.
* Healing Spring: every single trap is NEARBY. Make this nearby, it is a 2 second easily interruptible HOT (heal over time) that heals 5 times in total (with a maximum of about 300 HP). Then put in the shockwave-like mechanic of full heal for adjacent, half for nearby. If anything it would bring more utility to the ranger.
* Ignite Arrows: other than the annoying sound it makes, all this does is make people ticked off that they can't use shield swaps & spirit bond because it has 2 damage packets of different damage types. Shield of absorption and shielding hands make this suck though. Also in PVE it makes mobs run away just like AoE DOT.
* Incendiary Arrows: trying to make a ranger into a wannabe lava arrows elementalist with glyph of immolation isn't going to work. How is this an elite? Granted the old version of interrupting everything and setting it on fire is overpowered but tis needs to be fixed badly.
*Melandru's Arrows: bleeding isn't that strong a condition, but the conditional +damage is rather high.
* Melandru's Resilience: given that antidote signet removes stuff...this should at least negate Blind,weakness like Avatar of Melandru (daze/bleeding/disease/poison/deep wound don't really do that much when it is HP regen). The alternative is something akin to +24 armor like Resilient weapon. The goddess is displeased at how niche a skill named after her is. All jokes aside, seeing how most good teams will pull the conditions and hexes off you, this is more of a farmer's skill or crappy team skill.
* Pestilence: annoying skill to use. Maybe have it spread disease when things die as a pseudo putrid flesh, I don't see how anything spreads Blind/cripple. All in all it's a crappy concept.
* Roaring Winds: sideboard skill, like primal echoes but even more specific.
* Snare: slap some piercing damage on it to make it do something more than cripple (see barbed trap which has a cover condition)
* Troll Unguent: heal over time on 3 cast time is a pretty lame way to heal... the only saving part of it is that it can't be shattered unlike shadow refuge
* Winnowing: too little of an effect to put on a bar generally unless running minions and mostly physicals + pets.
* Winter: only synergy with elementalists...make it do something more
* Quickshot: horrible unless you are spamming it with buffs
* Magebane shot: a mini unblockable d-shot?
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The main issue at hand is that mesmers were buffed heavily , to the tune of less recharge on all their interrupts and AoE shutdown like Panic and Psychic Instability. (In PvE, each rank of Fast Casting decreases the recharge time for your Mesmer Spells by 3%. so -27% for rank 9.) This combined with the increased armor and faster cast time of mobs makes Ranger interrupts inferior in most cases.

Traps are a bad mechanic in the current time because everything is about speed and traps need prep time, just like the old Ritualist spirits before their massive buffs.

Bows can't be touched in terms of damage because it would change all bows in the game. Spears basically killed bows' attempt at damage.

Former Ruling · Sep 24, 2010, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Speaking of adding bleeding to stuff, why is it that Bleeding is so special for Rangers? It is one of the lowest degen conditions, some mobs are immune to it, and the only synergy is with other classes abilities - so why are almost every application of bleed in the Ranger skills plagued with drawbacks or conditional effects?

Everything is either elite (some of those even not giving it "free"), or something like Barbed arrows with it's -armor while activating. Screaming Shot even has a range limitation, despite Hunter's Shot being very similar in cost/recharge and not having such a restriction.

Voodoo Rage · Sep 24, 2010, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiaquin

BM is tricky. Pets aren't very effective without investing a lot into the attribute, and that hurts the rest of the build. In a way, it's sort of like trapping, you have to go all in. The main problem is pet AI, it's just very sluggish.

No kidding, I've been dinking around with my ranger, running a dagger/pet build. I've never played a pet before with any seriousness. First of all, it took me a while to figure out that pet attacks are NOT STACKABLE. That's a pretty major blow, meaning they you have to actually watch your pet or turn your speakers up so you know when you can call out another attack. Also the AI is indeed very sluggish. Many times I will call out an attack and it takes the pet longer than 10 seconds to actually do anything, thereby canceling the attack. Really, the only function I can see for the pet is to let you bring the IAS Sunspear skill (which in itself if probably enough incentive), but you'd probably be find just zero spec'ing beast mastery and just having him be a body to trigger Mark of Pain or to cast Strength of Honor on.