Alphonia.5731

Please refrain from using only number statistics for your entire explanation/argument as in practice this is not really the case (don't feel like quoting like 3 different posts it's too tiring). Sure the distance might be better but you know what it doesn't come with? Here are a few examples of why this doesn't make sense in actual matches: Trying to Eagle (bird pet) Swoop with Greatsword 3 Swoop is pretty much only viable at the start of the game now as you can't swap pets during combat anymore. Many times if you were to rotate around with this you would get hit by a stray hit and now be unable to swap pets. Having Eagle (bird pet) merge in combat is suicide, the only thing anyone really does with it is to Swoop into applying swiftness (Bird Merge Skill 2) to move across the map. Also if a Ranger tries to leave a fight with a bird pet it simply doesn't work as they would generally already be merged with another pet anyways (since pets are virtually dead in teamfights due to their nature) so they would have to wait for 10 seconds to even obtain Bird merge.Thief Shortbow 5 has easily the best mobility in the game with no cooldown and only a mana costs of sorts. It can scale collision easily from bottom floor to a further up floor. It has a really fast cast time and still moves you if you were cc'd before fully traveling to your location, and don't forget you can easily aim this to port wherever you want.Shadowsteps of any sort (excluding like Swipe since the range it states is like false) are arguably better movement tech than Ranger greatsword 3 as they scale collision, provide instant movement, easy mind game potential for movement, and can allow you easy access to evasion.Bull's Charge and Warrior Greatsword 3 come with access to good evasion that comes virtually instantly and last immeasurably long. Bull's Charge in the first place shouldn't have even been considered as a movement tech as Greatsword 3 combined with Greatsword 5 on warrior should be enough as well as Bull's Charge is a really good CC skill. Greatsword 3 on ranger is pretty bad comparatively. No access to height scaling (can be used for some height scaling but only at near neutral height to where you are), the evasion trigger on Greatsword feels inconsistent (a small delay after casting it will provide temporary evasion instead of immediately) and lasts for a lower time than Warrior Greatsword 3, Greatsword 3 on Ranger has odd properties where it gets stuck on a platform (generally happens between like the first and second segment of the skill or something it is a bit hard to explain) when you land on a lower platform than one you started on.Also not enough people talking about these other things: Dolyak Stance 20 second increased cooldown on ranger is way too crippling to all ranger builds as ranger has arguably the longest casting times without Stability-like effects causing the class to be cc'd into the ground hard. The real problem is when boon rangers try and stack that stuff hard through heal as one doubling the stacks and with easy access to extending the boon via quickness +2 second duration.People who are complaining about getting hit for 12k by a ranger probably are the same people trying to tank the most easily telegraphed move in ranger's arsenal (Greatsword 2 Maul). The only real complaint that is reasonable about it is the fact that Ranger has way too easy access to quickness causing there to be less time to react to getting chunked.Survivability in the form of blocking on shield and reflects not getting nerfed much will cause bunker classes to have a field day on any ranged classes as each projectile will deal less damage and the maps have way too much stuff to hide behind (as well as obstruction issues like in Djinn's Dominion)Stealth needs to be fixed in some way as Thieves in permastealth hold too much of a presence. If you leave a point while the thief is in stealth they can just wait for you to leave and decap/cap the point for free. If you stay at they point they can rotate to another point and the only indicator that they did so would be a team callout or if the thief was in combat. It is a brainless way to apply pressure to the map and for whatever reason Shadow Arts got buffed causing Thieves to be benefited for doing this. And this even isn't mentioning the fact that stealth attacks are stupid and you can pretty much just spam them until you run out of stealth (which is often times never if the Thief chooses to) or if it finally hits. There is like no reason why using a stealth attack doesn't apply reveal to yourself if you miss it or they block it.If the team wants to make the format more decision oriented then they need to rework/fix all of the classes that have brainless rotations that end up being extremely effective with near 0 need to do anything but use a stun-break once in a while. Examples of these would include power Mesmer (being reworked I guess), Point bunker Weavers, Most Warrior builds (at least this one has a small amount of decision making), condi Mirage (mostly staff but may not need to care after the -50 max endurance lol), Dragon Hunters, etc.Saying things like there isn't supposed to be weapon skill changes is lying to yourself. Anet already mentioned that they planned on reworking power Mesmer in the patch notes. Making excuses for Anet not fixing things that are broken is asking for the game to stay as a broken mess. There are many obvious changes that should be looked at but they only went for a few out of the virtually endless list. (I mention a few In my earlier post on page 3)

It's nice to see boon intensive builds and builds that run bunker but still get insane dps mostly getting eviscerated from the meta game. Even better is to see boon soulbeast be (hopefully) entirely removed from the meta game (probably wont be with the change to stunbreak into protection and vigor). However with the pushes to lower power level, it means that bunker builds that exist just to stall are getting an insane buff. Most builds that are affected by this have their power reduced (which didn't matter on some of them as they had virtually no killing potential in the first place) while the healing/survivability of the builds remain mostly unaffected as the only thing for them that was significantly nerfed were the healing skills themselves and not the side skills that enhance survivability.As great as it is to see damage reduced so it isn't as much of a 3 second kill fiesta, there are still major problems that haven't really been addressed. Enduring Swing on Ranger should be reverted back to its evasion state rather than endurance state as it only feeds into the overarching problem of the Wilderness Survival tree being a requirement (way too good compared to most options) of playing ranger in PvP. The reasoning behind the nerf never even made sense in the first place as it went something along the lines of "feels luck based" even though it's just a auto chain that is easy to see and respond to. Sword on ranger needs more help than it has needed ever. Almost no one uses sword on ranger anymore as its evasion skill (Serpent Strike) has been locked behind using a suicide leap and the reason to use a main hand generally speaking is the access to off-hand Axe. It also doesn't help that Hornet Sting is way too slow to dodge anything effectively and pretty much is used exclusively for movement.Also feels like some classes were removed from the game while other classes were barely affected. d/p thief still does insane damage on a stat that they already pretty much max on as stealth still remains as a stupid mechanic that is extremely difficult to punish. Would like to see thieves become revealed if they go for a stealth attack and it misses (maybe exclude it to apply reveal when being manually blocked or rolled through) so they don't just keep trying for a stealth attack since they are completely free to do so. Necromancer pretty much just got significantly more health for free as all damage has been reduced for scaling percentages while the necromancer shroud health amount stays the same. There are probably many more things that I wont talk about in this post since it is already too long like blocking for (x) seconds is insanely strong in this meta game as well as rolling becoming closer to being on par as running tank stats.Now as for PvE, there are still things that need changing that people have been complaining about for years. Chronomancer still feels like hot garbage with Well zones being the main drawback of the class as the boons you supply via the wells are the pinnacle of your existance but since they are so small it sometimes makes it really frustrating/not worth it to walk to a smallish zone for like 1 buff. Druid in PvE still is as frustrating as ever as spirits are your main reason for existing but they are inconsistent as to how they work as well as Glyphs don't do enough to be run over 3 side spirits. It'd be nice if spirits were made more consistent as to what they are affected by, because as of this point Spirits sometimes take tons of damage from things and sometimes they don't take like any damage at all. An example of this is like during Fractals of the Mist your spirits die in seconds to flux bomb but take like 0 damage from being inside 5 fire AoEs from Molten Firestorm and it makes little to no sense for the difference between the two. Keeping Spirits alive is really frustrating too as applying regen (generally Healing Spring will be the regen applier) to spirits sometimes just doesn't work even though the game should be prioritizing placing regen onto that spirit as it is at significantly lower health (this happens extremely often/consistently with Spirit of Nature causing it to die unexpectedly). On the same lines of the spirits needing buffs, the trait in Nature Magic called "Nature's Vengeance" is useless/debilitating on ranger as -33% health decay reduces the amount you heal to the spirits as druid and thus makes Celestial Avatar bar regeneration slower as well as the spirit activated skills granting boons is irrelevant as half of them you already provide by yourself and you don't generally want to want to spam cast your activated spirit abilities as it's just a loss in dps and moves them all over the place. A nice fix for this would be making the trait increase the Max Health of the Spirits by like 3x and switching the health loss be a base amount rather being a percent of health (don't remember if this is already how it works or not) as well as making the activated spirit skill part being changed to whenever it reapplies it's passive ability.By the way, changing a triggered cooldown from like 90 seconds to 300 seconds is basically removing the ability entirely. Did you know that PvP matches last on average like 660 seconds? WOW! Not to mention that Stoneform being nerfed extremely hampers the ability of Power Ranger to make decisions for greedy dps or to even go into melee range to try and cleave targets.

Any build is "acceptable" but if you want to not get kicked from most raid groups then you should probably look on "snowcrows" to see what raid builds you should be running.

Some of these changes for ranger really don't help help any format and I don't understand why they are being pushed. Dagger off-hand changes are nice but what should be done should be a rework of offhand dagger overall instead of just buffing the skills. Anyone who has ever used off-hand Dagger on ranger knows how clunky it feels. If anything it should focus more on conditions so perhaps a viable bleed poison build could exist rather than some odd feeling offhand that only does minor niche things. The Sword changes look interesting in concept but if you actually use the weapon the only relevant skill for the most part is serpent strike. PvE and WvW don't use sword because it's better to just use other things while in PvP the only thing that people use it for is mostly serpent strike. Pretty much the only time that you use the Hornet Sting/Monarch Sting combo for is to move to a place faster (look backward from where you want to go press 2 move camera 180 degrees then press 2 again and hope it doesn't screw you over by ignoring your camera movement). Some people might say that hornet sting is a good running away tool but let me tell you that hornet sting basically evades ABSOLUTELY NOTHING the casting time before the skill actually goes into effect is too long for it to dodge anything and you'll probably go to under 50% health or dead while the stationary casting time is active (or even interrupted in that matter). Locking the most useful tool under Monarch Leap is also a death sentence for anyone using sword. Monarch Leap already has the issue of not evading attacks and still having the same leap time (unable to pretty much move or use skills) leading to just jumping into your death while dueling people. Maybe the issue could be slightly mitigated by making it so that Hornet Sting recharges Monarch Leap regardless if it hits a target though the correct changes should have been to just reduce the stationary casting time of Hornet Sting and sword would actually be more playable instead of just auto attack and Serpent Strike being the only thing you use. Going to Greatsword, the Counterattack changes are much appreciated, 10/10 change, should have came much earlier. However in regards to switching Greatsword 3rd attack in Auto-chain is going way too far. Saying "We hope these changes will make the weapon feel a little smoother while removing some of the frustrating random dodges that happen when fighting against it." is just saying that Rangers have peanuts for brains and disregarding high level decision making. If you're a actually good ranger the Greatsword 3rd attack of the Auto-Chain can be used extremely well to evade large bursts by hitting two hits on the auto chain and holding the 3rd for a short while to wait for the perfect time to use it (3rd attack generally lasts like 1-2 second or something, never really checked the exact time myself, but 1-2 seconds is enough time to be relevant decision making for when to use it). Giving endurance is non-existent compensation to removing the dodge. 15 endurance isn't a full bar of endurance to dodge something, in fact it isn't even half. My only assumption is that the Greatsword Auto-chain now ends with a endurance increase just for the Survival Trait tree. It's sad to see a once moderately great creature that is the power ranger (Soulbeast power) be pushed further and further down to have to run the Survival Trait tree to be more effective. It feels like a moderate sum of changes these days are just to force specs out of using specific Trait trees. Last one I can firmly remember is the nerfing of pets for druid by 20% making running Beastmastery become much less effective (used to be good as an alternative in random groups for Fractals of the Mist). Overall, please don't make unnecessary changes that either make the class more confusing or to force specific Trait tree usage.