ArenaNet talk:Skill feedback/Ranger

filler

This is filler text so breadcrumbs work properly on the skill pages. -- Armond Warblade 21:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Rangers, overpowered and requesting attention

Let me start off by saying this is not a rant, rather a slew of changes that should be considered by those in charge of balance updates in guild wars. I and a majority of the community feel that rangers have been favored by many a game update. While whole classes and skill sets are getting changed rangers continually receive buffs with small nerfs after these skills become overused but the class as a whole is overused. With all their stances, interrupts, the ability to become the ultimate utility characters by making the most out of any secondary class they choose and their natural defense versus elemental damage makes this class at least the third hardest in the game to kill, next to dervishes and monks of course. Furthermore the damage output from a bow can easily exceed that of most melee weapons save the scythe and do so at a relatively save distance. If you cannot see that rangers are overpowered then I'm not quite sure were you get your balancing info.

If this trend continues then guild wars will be 80% rangers, a class should not be preferred to do a job of another class no matter what the reasoning. I am quite sure that Guild Wars balance department understands that if everyone is a ranger, somethings wrong.

I am not saying nerf/kill/disable rangers, only formulate a balance.

The following mechanics require attention:

Expertise itself allows rangers to use any manner of weapon and nearly any skillset (I'm not complaining about touchers, more so dagger and scythe rangers)However by changing the discount rate provided by expertise much of this would reach a more balanced state.

Interrupts: these skills have been used for some time to apply extra damage in between the normal long downtime for their next arrow to fire. This promotes spam, not your interrupt spam but damage spam. While the skills are the way they are for a reason, I suggest that these skill types have a limited damage output akin to how distracting shot works, or should any interrupt not interrupt/hit a skill it is disabled for X amount of time in addition to their normal cool down.

The following skills require attention:

Interrupt skills: see above

Any skill with a activation time of less than a normal bow fire rate: Changing these skills overtime promoted this spam I mentioned before. While you have made changes to your previous updates of these skills, they are still overpowered.

Traps: a small improvement in trap damage would make these more usable

Escape: can be maintained 50% of the time, 75% block rate and 33% speed boost make this skill heavily overpowered. lower abilities or increase recharge.

Melandru's Resilience: exceedingly powerful abilities, make the health and energy regeneration max out at a certain level.

Antidote signet: move to wilderness survivors and change it to a condition removal + heal, too powerful in its current state.

Distracting shot: change so that expertise affects the disable duration, others can utilize the skill for the same effect that are no ranger primaries

I hope that the Guild Wars team cares enough about its player base to at least consider these changes

Forgot to sign... Juraigamer 03:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow, what a bunch of terrible suggestions and I'm pretty sure you are not talking for the majority of players. And Expertise has the same potential for abusive playing like: Soul Reaping, Critical Strikes and Fast Casting... A. von Rin 00:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem stems from rangers being invincible. -- NUKLEAR IIV 15:49, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I frankly disagree, as a ranger I do not find any of those skills overpowered. Escape can be easily worked around, simply use wild blow or any one of those "never can be blocked, destroys stance skill", and mind you rangers are suffering on the healing side of things so by killing Melandru's Resilience you take away the only other viable healing source other than Troll Unguent which is interrupt fodder. Plus interrupts have a 1 second aftercast or something along those lines, and if they don't get their said bonus, they are rather weak. Mind you bows usually hit at 21 DPS (against a squishy). By nerfing expertise we should nerf Critical Strikes as well, and why not the critical sins as well? The nerfs you suggest are ridiculous, it would make rangers completely useless. If anything they should find a way to remove the toucher from the game. PS~Rangers are not invicible, otherwise I wouldn't have 1k+ deaths on mine User: Ema

I'm just arguing semantics here, but wild blow is not a viable counter to Escape. In PvP, they are nothing short of invincible. Their only weakness is, guess what, hexes. -- NUKLEAR IIV 21:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

+ Blindness everywhere and Cripple on Split. Pretty sure Rangers have never been invincible. They could be a little problem in low end PvP (I include HA here), that's all... A. von Rin 17:53, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

You obviously never heard of Mending touch of which actually gets a cost reduction for rangers... 69.247.22.37 19:40, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Any cripshot bar is immune to warrior damage becuase of cripshot. Any ranger bar is immune to casters becuase of dshot-natural +30 armor-and Mending Touch. -- NUKLEAR IIV 21:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I've got to agree with him. =\ Just because "low-end" PvP is not the "main point" of Guild Wars to you doesn't not mean that they can be left unbalanced. Otherwise Signet of Midnight would still have 3/4th activation. Rangers are problematic in 4v4 and HA mostly because of Expertise and their ability to resist attacks passively from elemental damage, and with Natural Stride, because let's face it no one really uses anything else for a stance besides Escape Scythers. One thing I do disagree with on the person who posted the original 'rant' - Dervishes are easier kills than Rangers. RitualDoll 11:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

>_>

I agree with two things- Traps need help, And never should a R/W outclass a Warrior with the same skills hes using, or Should he be preffered over using an actual warrior. I think that Blocking on ranger classes are way too prevalent, considering the only methods of ignoring blocking as a whole are either horrible recharge, too much energy, or are down/conditional 80% of the time.

I still say the Blocking cap should be 66%.

Again, I disagree with you on too many levels to shake hands with you, friend.

Ranger bow attacks and direct offensive skills LACK. Most rangers dont even use bows. when it comes to cross-class weaponry, at least 50% of that class should use their original weapons, simply for the proficiency and ability that comes with it. Bow rangers have not become useless, as a matter of fact, they never were really nerfed. (TY for killing sundering/Penetrating attack Anet, only exception) They simply fell out of grace because other classes/builds were much more preferable. Also, MR is fine, lost of builds stem from it, and a nerf would be pointless. also, Interrupts are also fine, considering the speed of which arrows fire, if every shot interrupted, they wouldn't even interrupt half the time. (You ever been shot with an arrow? im pretty sure your going to get slapped so hard you just might stop what your doing.) Again, I agree on a few points, but rangers are just too block-heavy. thats my only problem with them, ATM.

Oh yeah, and if your a ranger w/o Antidote signet, you deserve to die right when the "Battle Start" countdown ends. They ARE condition proof if you arent a dumbass, especially against blind, which antidote targets first and foremost(and it removes the cover-condition). Hexes are the only way to kill them, at least without pro-ing the ranger to death, and he's a complete idiot at the same time. Shoot, warriors cant even kill rangers in meelee, their ignore block skill fails due to a 1/6 downtime.

Phill Gaston 20:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Mend Touch kills conditions better than antidote sig. Cripshot makes rangers immune to melee. -- Armond Warblade 02:53, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Rangers cross class like any other, its just expertise makes it a bit easier for them. Oh and don't say most rangers don't even use bows, they do quite often actually. I'm sorry those scythe rangers are all up in you face and you cant see interrupt spam going on in the background. Mending touch is preferred for team based rangers because of their ability to support their team. Interrupts are crazy now, mainly due to their spamming for extra damage which does make them the most damaging ranged weapon, by far. It actually might come close to scythe damage if you compare the two in dps. Anti block skills are mostly carrying problems, such as lose all adrenaline and other such negative effects. So for example escape every 8 of every 12 seconds and lighting reflexes 1/3 of the time is a joke.

If you are primarily a ranger then you should take your bias opinion of the class and toss it somewhere else, I play everything but paragon primaries so I actually understand class balance. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:69.247.22.37 (talk).

Why dont you play Para's? They're pretty good, and they have ridiculous DPS for a ranged class, even with a simple skillset. I've only seen a Ranger(well, anyone carrying mending touch) Mend someone else on very few occasions, and only once in a while amongst that group, in HA. Saved me once too. But hey, I'm a selfish douchebag. that points I dont have to invest in Protection Prayers.

Well, I didn't say All, I said most. Rangers interrupt like no other, fella. Thats a given position that will always butter their bread. Most would prefer a Ranger interrupter over a Mesmer, with a few exceptions, any day. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Phill Gaston (talk).

What I hate is the spam from interrupts. If you don't get a skill your interrupt should take twice as long to recharge or something, or all interrupts go to expertise line and do crap for damage. An interrupt should only do its job really, besides if a rangers got escape, mend touch, and a billion interrupts your pretty much gone unless you got a certain hex or two. 69.247.22.37 05:47, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

You eve been shot in the neck? That's an interrupt.

Phill Gaston 07:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

If I chop off one of your limbs with an axe, I'm pretty sure you'd stop what you were doing. GW doesn't like life does, mate. -- NUKLEAR IIV 12:10, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Psh, I always get my arm chopped off. The limb is so loose, I dont feel the end of my fingers. >=O DW my ass!!

Phill Gaston 01:10, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

How to fix the balance issues- Make interrupts do 50% less base damage and increase the conditional damage. Nerf expertise to 3% per point of skill, make bow attacks a lot better(with a few exceptions) and decrease their cost and recharge. Change Escape so that you cannot critical with melee attacks while using it. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:71.174.22.233 (talk).

Cleanup Sequence Complete

Added some cleanup tags, mainly to pages with conflicting issues. Please check wheter your issue/solution still applies. Also, please try to keep comments in the talkpages. -- NUKLEAR IIV 09:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Up to date archiving complete for this section. DarkNecrid 19:17, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Ranger PVE needs against PVP

Ranger are quie possibly the class that stands to benefit the most from splits between pve and pvp skills. In pvp rangers have historically been the cause of more gimmick builds than any otehr class. Numerous forms of r-spike, thumper builds, trapway, and escape scythe have either contributed to or cause players to call for nerfs to various ranger abilities. I am not saying that these nerfs were not necessary, but they have had an extremely negative impact on PVE. Rangers in pve have been forced into specific templates. Single target bow damage is almost non-existent, and pve skills are mostly unavailiable to the class. PVE-only skills for the most part fall into two categories. Melee/touch abilities and spells. I shouldn't need to point out why this is a problem for rangers. Expertise does not affect most pve-only skills making them (with a few exceptions) unaffordable to rangers. Every other class is better off. Warriors get multiple close range abilities from the dwarven skills. Paragons are over-powered with imabgon (or however its spelled) builds. Every other class with the exception of ranger has 4 energy regen. The ONLY reasonable ranger pve-only skill is triple shot (and maybe asuran scan). Looking at ranger bow attacks the situation becomes more depressing. Basically three types of rangers exist in pve (ignoring area specifc builds): Barrage, Condition, and trap. Ranger elites are for the most part fine, but normal bow attacks are desperatly lacking. Arcing shot, Body shot, Crossfire, Debalitating shot, determined shot, disrupting accuracy, disrupting shot, focused shot, hunter shot (was fine until the recent nerf), Maurder's shot, and splinter shot are all unusuably weak. Beast mastery is even more depressing (so much so that I'm not going to mention it again). None of the skills I mentioned have been split pvp/pve. If they are, the pve side could be buffed to at least be semi-usuable, but in their current form this just doesn't work. Its absolutely pathetic that expertise deals more single target damage than marksmenship. Kumlekar 06:10, 30 May 2009 (UTC)