12/12 Ranger Patch Notes

RangerSlash: Increased damage by 16%.Slice: Increased damage by 45%.Power Stab: Increased damage by 80%.Maul: Reduced the duration of the Attack of Opportunity granted from 20 seconds to 10 seconds.Hilt Bash: Increased damage by 42%.Precision Swipe: Increased damage by 20%.Whirling Defense: Increased damage by 15%.Steady Focus: This trait has been renamed Farsighted, and its functionality has been changed. It now causes projectiles fired by ranger weapon skills to deal 5% bonus damage. This bonus is increased to 10% on foes beyond a range of 600.Winter's Bite: Bleeding stacks have been adjusted from 3 stacks for 5 seconds to 2 stacks for 8 seconds.Throw Torch: Burning stacks have been adjusted from 2 stacks for 5 seconds to 1 stack for 10 seconds.Glyph of Alignment: Poison stacks have been adjusted from 3 stacks for 5 seconds to 2 stacks for 8 seconds.Grace of the Land: Reduced the might granted by this trait from 4 stacks to 3 stacks.Pack Alpha: Fixed a bug that prevented this trait from affecting new Path of Fire pet family skills.

Greatsword buffs, eh? Time to bust out the melee ranger again I guess.

@Soilder.3607 said:Greatsword buffs, eh? Time to bust out the melee ranger again I guess.

Indeed, will have to try it out!

I like they buffed GS and Sword, but Crippling Thrust is still one target.

Whirling Defense: Increased damage by 15%.

How many times they will buff it, lmao. Give us at least some stability or protection and you'll see more people using it ANet. Maybe you could make it traited with Honed Axes !

Throw Torch: Burning stacks have been adjusted from 2 stacks for 5 seconds to 1 stack for 10 seconds.

Maybe it's time to give more love to Throw Torch then. Make it AoE burn on hit. Something ?

Also, Splitblade still unsplit. PvP version hits harder than PvE, when most of the time it's the reverse... (PvE version is stronger than PvP).

In general, only impactful changes are GS buff and a little help for LB with Steady Focus.

@Krispera.5087 said:I like they buffed GS and Sword, but Crippling Thrust is still one target.

Whirling Defense: Increased damage by 15%.

I suspect people would use it more if you could move while whirling. Standing still is a death sentence in pvp/wvw, and not good for your health in pve either nowadays.

Melee got big buffs to damage and Steady Focus got changed into something actually useful in pvp.

Might be time to get back into WvW.

I was super excited for PvE power ranger buffs but then I realized that there isn't the 10% bonus dmg to melee skills from Steady focus because of the new farsighted. So the 15% buff to axe 5 is closer to a 10% buff etc while sword/axe 4 got indirectly nerfed by 10%... GS buffs are nice though.

However, I then remembered this..."Interrupts and Defiance: Skills, traits, and sigils that have bonus effects when interrupting foes will now activate when used against foes with defiance bars as though they had been interrupted. Note that this does not require a creature's defiance bar to be active, just that the creature be using a skill when an interrupt effect is applied. To prevent abuse against bosses with long attack windups, a 3-second cooldown between activations of these skills has been added to skills without existing cooldowns. This cooldown is only applied when interrupting foes with defiance bars. This change affects the following game elements:"

Moment of clarity replaces steady focus for a 50% bonus even vs enemies with breakbars now (3 second ICD). It requires an "interrupt" but still, that's a 50% bonus. I also bought 3 sigils of severance in case those go up in price. This change won't show up vs a golem and will require timing vs a raid boss but I'm excited.

Edit: Gotl nerf... don't think this actually affects anything. Frost spirit is 6 stacks. CA 4/2 is now 18 stacks. WH can easily still do 6. More than enough before glyphs come into play.

The only gripe had with GS ranger was that its AA was garbage, now its not :3 Time to make a new ranger

My condition SB build took a big hit. I'm really not a fan of arbitrarily making encounters longer. Those condition changes should have been split, like usual.

Not a fan of the GOTL changes either for the same reason. Applying less might is bad.

I really need to main something else and save my Ranger to be a healing Druid for high fractals and raids and that's it.

power ranger is back baby! GS changes and MoC is a great change and sword was already our best weapon. Druid s/wh can still stack more than enough might with the changes to GoTL and it might bring PS warrior back into the meta or double druids for constant might stacks. all of this makes power SB more viable as well as the reductions to conditions overall. Condi professions may still outdps power on long encounters but this puts power builds back into competitiveness.

Maul needed a buff in PvE as well. With Sic em (40% damage increase) in beast mode it was still hitting for less than my guardian's average Whirling Wrath.

nice, finally i can use my sunrise with my ranger again :D does this mean that GS might replace LB for power ranger builds?

GoTL base duration was stealth nerfed to 6 seconds too (Was 8 seconds pre-patch). Together with its reduction to 3 stacks, it might be worth bringing double druid again.

Did a little bit of power soulbeast testing too but so far I'm not getting any amazing results. I think it's about the same as before in raids due to the removal of steady focus. Will give this some more testing later on!

@Zenith.7301 said:Maul needed a buff in PvE as well. With Sic em (40% damage increase) in beast mode it was still hitting for less than my guardian's average Whirling Wrath.

It's a trade-off for the design differences of the skill. Whirling wrath has a far longer cast time (3/4s to activate the damaging portion of the skill, then another second or so to finish the actual channel) and twice the cooldown of maul. It is supposed to deal more damage.

@Soilder.3607 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Maul needed a buff in PvE as well. With Sic em (40% damage increase) in beast mode it was still hitting for less than my guardian's average Whirling Wrath.

Guardian has other damage sources besides whirling wrath. The traps are potent and fill in any gaps in damage. Ranger only has autoattack and maul, his utilities do no damage whatsoever, and you've got a single beast skill that does significant damage on a humongous cooldown.

Moreover, greatsword has no utility unlike the guardian's in PvE where he's got an aoe pull, and aoe blind, and rather pathetically the guardian also uses a scepter that does more DPS than our longbow regardless of range.

Power soulbeast is a purely selfish spec. Guardian has considerable utility and does way more cleave and damage to boot.

Yess gs buffs.

The might gen is awful (I'm running a 67% boon duration build). How are those running more feeling?

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Soilder.3607 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Maul needed a buff in PvE as well. With Sic em (40% damage increase) in beast mode it was still hitting for less than my guardian's average Whirling Wrath.

The "utility" that a power DH brings in raids is hardly worth mentioning compared to the utility a power soulbeast would bring. Besides, druid allows soulbeast to be selfish, as it can literally bring anything a power soulbeast would outside shared stances. Utility is a moo-point. The only issue with power soulbeast is number adjustment (which this patch fixed a lot of), and the change to Steady Focus. Power DH rotation still uses lots of autoattacks on both scepter and gs, it's not like the traps cover a bunch of downtime.

In the future I'd like to see the ferocity signet buffed. There is a reason that Assassin's Presence gives 225 ferocity instead of 150 like other similar traits, the stat is worth less. Sword also needs its first two autoattacks buffed, and a cleave on the second autoattack. The 10 % "scholar buff" from Loud Whistle should also affect the ranger in beastmode, which it currently doesn't. Farsighted should not be projectile based, if only because of the fact that its use is limited to one weapon for any noticeable/viable effect, a weapon that already has a dedicated trait.

Has vicious quarry always had 7% damage in the tool tip or is this something new? " Fury (4s): 30% Critical chance, 7% damage, 250 ferocity."Not listed on the wiki.

@"DuckDuckBOOM.4097" said:Has vicious quarry always had 7% damage in the tool tip or is this something new? " Fury (4s): 30% Critical chance, 7% damage, 250 ferocity."Not listed on the wiki.

It comes from Furious Strength in Soulbeast.

@HyperLooser.2698 said:The only gripe had with GS ranger was that its AA was garbage, now its not :3 Time to make a new ranger

it is still garbage, way too slow, sword aa is better sustained dps even if you trait the gs.

@Lazze.9870 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Soilder.3607 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Maul needed a buff in PvE as well. With Sic em (40% damage increase) in beast mode it was still hitting for less than my guardian's average Whirling Wrath.

The fact that the utility is not used because someone else takes care of it does not erase the utility. Guardian can be useful for slublings or to help cope with prisoners in Samarog, and the F3 group block IS useful. This utility becomes even more evident in fractals.

The traps don't just provide utility, but they also have a larger cleave radius than your usual melee on top of their inherent burst, making them ideal for Xera and Keep Construct adds that don't stay in place after a chrono pull.

Power soulbeast has nothing but damage. Most druids will still bring spirits anyways because it's their way to stack might with nature's vengeance, especially with the nerf to grace of the land.

There is simply no excuse for guardian to be doing the damage it does relative to ranger while being a far less selfish spec with flexibility in group support.

Actually, scratch that. It's soulbeast that needs further buffs, not nerfs to the guardian.

@Lazze.9870 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Soilder.3607 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Maul needed a buff in PvE as well. With Sic em (40% damage increase) in beast mode it was still hitting for less than my guardian's average Whirling Wrath.

agree with everything you said except about SB being a selfish build. Stance sharing, spirits and providing some boons is still available with Soulbeast, and yes Ferocity signet should be buffed but combining that with increased crit chance we already have may be too much.

@Krispera.5087 said:but Crippling Thrust is still one target.Also, Splitblade still unsplit. PvP version hits harder than PvE, when most of the time it's the reverse... (PvE version is stronger than PvP).

Yep. Was hoping to see this patch, as well as something to Hornet's Sting (such as a faster cast time or whatever) and still no dice.

Other changes are... there. As others stated, change to Steady Focus kind of negates the damage buffs to greatsword and sword. Far-Sighted is just a weaker version of DH's Pure Sight (5/10 vs 7/13), with FS being a Master major trait and working with moves tagged as projectiles while PS is a GM minor and works with all attacks.

Now, if they decided to have Loud Whistle's damage bonus and Pack Alpha's skill cooldowns to apply in Beastmode and its skills, all would be better.

Not sure why buff Whirling Defense again - for the 3rd time this year - and not Path of Scars in either damage, radius increase, both, or Honed Axes buffing all axe skills like some other weapon traits in the GM slot.

Still doesn't sit well with me Glyph of Alignment has poison. Wish they would replace it with a 5s Slow and bump the damage back up to match Equality like in beta so it would be 3 non-damaging debuffs that reduce an aspect by 50%. Fits better with how Druid is, but that's probably just me.

Overall, patch is all right. I'm just a bit salty the things I was looking forward to still haven't made it (sword & split blade).

Double delete

Another 15% to Whirling Defense?

Thanks for the Melee Love! I Feels like it benefits WvW the most, where GS and x/Axe was my goto frontline build.

Still don't see power ranger being useful in raids anytime soon