Ranger is getting Alacrity in June patch

[Levetty.1279]

Hope they have also reworked the mechanics of the skills so they are more useful outside of raid bosses and more fun then just plopping down killable pets.

[Abyssisis.3971]

The words  “opt into” suggests the big spirit rework is literally a change to the trait to include alacrity, on top of or instead of current boons. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Abyssisis.3971

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, Levetty.1279 said:

Hope they have also reworked the mechanics of the skills so they are more useful outside of raid bosses and more fun then just plopping down killable pets.

Oh wow I was totally wrong, why alacrity though that has no synergy with anything ranger does. I mean it's has very low cooldowns as it is?

This should be exact opposite, warrior has a few quite long cooldowns and relies alot of skills for damage.

Thinking about it more sense since now we have quickness HB and alacrity Druid. Soulbeast will also now be able self-buff every boon in the game almost. 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

8 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

Oh wow I was totally wrong, why alacrity though that has no synergy with anything ranger does. I mean it's has very low cooldowns as it is?

This should be exact opposite, warrior has a few quite long cooldowns and relies alot of skills for damage. 

Heal Druid with Alacrity will entirely reshape the meta.

They should probably calm down on this kind of direct power creep though.

The game is beginning to get to where it's just too easy.

Even CM fractals are just easy now.

Arenanet would be wise to remember that sometimes less is more.

[Mell.4873]

2 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Heal Druid with Alacrity will entirely reshape the meta.

They should probably calm down on this kind of direct power creep though.

The game is beginning to get to where it's just too easy.

Even CM fractals are just easy now.

Arenanet would be wise to remember that sometimes less is more.

Honestly now that I'm thinking about alacrity is more OP on Rnnger since it already has alot of self quickness. I mean both Soulbeast and Untamed have good sources on there utilities. 

I guess they did this so Druid did not compete with HB now we have quickness healer and alacrity healer. 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

Honestly now that I'm thinking about alacrity is more OP on Rnnger since it already has alot of self quickness. I mean both Soulbeast and Untamed have good sources on there utilities. 

I guess they did this so Druid did not compete with HB now we have quickness healer and alacrity healer. 

What I want to know is, will this Alacrity share to 5 players or 10 players?

[Mell.4873]

4 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

What I want to know is, will this Alacrity share to 5 players or 10 players?

It will be 5 like every other boon in the game currently. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Gotta love quoting reddit on the official forums 🙃

Since alacrity is coming through spirits, I wonder how much of this will apply competitively since spirits absolutely melt there.  Will be interesting to see how it plays in group settings or if we just get more meme builds that bring sprits for self-alacrity only.  

The might and fury comments also mean boonballs are going nowhere lol.  

[Krispera.5087]

I'm sure the Alacrity trait gonna be a trait in Druid and not in Core Ranger. 

[Mell.4873]

30 minutes ago, Krispera.5087 said:

I'm sure the Alacrity trait gonna be a trait in Druid and not in Core Ranger. 

I don't think any elite in the game has a trait for core utilities, some might interact with them by extension of a class mechanic so maybe that at least.

[FarmBotXD.1430]

I wonder if spirits will lose their base effects, I liked ranger due to its unique buffs that no other class could provide.

[Draeyon.4392]

Spirits need the same treatment at the old scrapper gyros. An unlikable pulsing effect around the ranger with adjusted actives.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Draeyon.4392

[Levetty.1279]

7 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Heal Druid with Alacrity will entirely reshape the meta.

They should probably calm down on this kind of direct power creep though.

The game is beginning to get to where it's just too easy.

Even CM fractals are just easy now.

Arenanet would be wise to remember that sometimes less is more.

Heal Mechanist will be able to do everything a theoretical Alacrity Druid could do but better plus more.  Quickness Firebrand too but with a different main boon.

3 hours ago, FarmBotXD.1430 said:

I wonder if spirits will lose their base effects, I liked ranger due to its unique buffs that no other class could provide.

The change is specifically to remove the unique buffs from spirits and banners.

3 hours ago, Draeyon.4392 said:

Spirits need the same treatment at the old scrapper gyros. An unlikable pulsing effect around the ranger with adjusted actives.

I really hope so.

[Abyssisis.3971]

23 minutes ago, Levetty.1279 said:

The change is specifically to remove the unique buffs from spirits and banners.

 

That will pretty much suck then… 

[aymnad.9023]

That is a cool news, I love alacrity 🙂. There still are questions, how will the trait work? how will the active and passive effects work? 

Like any “druid” changes I am waiting for more (when they added glyph of stars and the reduction on ally I also hoped for more). Druid is still a very slow healer (skills have a delay / small aoe), locked behind a lot of conditions (full ca, lose everything on downstate).

I do not think power slb is going to bring alac. It already is a bit underperforming and cannot afford to lose sicem. Condi slb will probably be a decent option, even if it has less dps than the other alac providers.

I wonder how many spirits will be needed. 4 spirits with some boon duration? 3 spirits and 2 stances (moa + wolf pack) ? If spirits lose their effects (which I feel they will) I am curious how the “meta benchmarks” will be impacted.

Edited April 17, 2022 by aymnad.9023

[Rashagar.8349]

4 hours ago, Draeyon.4392 said:

Spirits need the same treatment at the old scrapper gyros. An unlikable pulsing effect around the ranger with adjusted actives.

But if it's unlikabe why would you want it? =P

[Lazze.9870]

They way they word it almost makes it sound like they're just gonna rework the trait to add alacrity in some form, and do very little with how spirits work (other than removing the unique 5 % buff, I assume).

I seriously have to stop hoping for anything good these guys will pull out of the hat regarding this class.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Lazze.9870

[AEFA.9035]

14 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

Hope they have also reworked the mechanics of the skills so they are more useful outside of raid bosses and more fun then just plopping down killable pets.

I wouldnt expect a "rework" for Spirits, just because of ANet's history. They will probably just include this boon buff on the GM trait for Spirits 😂😂😂

[Project exa.3204]

Boonbeast back on the menu?!

[Fueki.4753]

It'd be really nice if these kinds of things would be revealed on the official forums before being dumped on those anti-social media platforms.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[anduriell.6280]

I can guess short alacrity in spirit skill activation as Anet has been moving away from pulsing boons for years. In any case I expect the boon to be irrelevant or to bring back the Bunker druid and boonbeast 2.0

If that is the whole summer balance for the ranger nothing will change, such a wasteful.

 

[Lazze.9870]

11 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

to bring back the Bunker druid

By fitting a spirit on your bar an dropping Protective Ward to run the spirit trait? With the useless healing modifieres Druid currently has in PvP? Doubt it..

11 hours ago, anduriell.6280 said:

such a wasteful.

The funny thing is, they delay these changes a few months after the rest of the patch, and we still expect minimal changes with zero impact outside of PvE. 

Because Anet likes to favor classes and there is no way they would put as much effort into a spirit redesign as they gave the scrapper gyro rework. 

I'd love them to prove me wrong this time.

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

I’m sure it’s safe to assume that the ability for spirits to provide alacrity will come from Nature’s Vengeance in the Nature Magic traitline, seeing how unreasonable it would be for spirits to provide Alac baseline.

Obviously Druids will be taking this by default, but I’m curious what the dps tradeoff will be for Soulbeast and to a lesser extent Base Ranger and Untamed to take that traitline. The only other dps improvements in that line are Bountiful Hunter (1% strike damage per boon) and Fortifying Bond (pets gain boons you gain, not even sure if it’d be a dps increase).

Also unsure on how many spirits you would need to take to cover alacrity. If Alac ends up not being unique to a specific spirit you could easily bring Water Spirit + 1 or 2 others and still have something like Sic’ Em / Frost Trap and OWP, or some other elite as a non-SB.

I think Ranger will still have lots of utility it can use (Entangle, LB4, Stance sharing, pet utilities, etc), but I’m wondering how our dps and toolkit will compare to the other dps Alac sources that exist (chrono, mirage, Specter, mechanist, renegade, Willbender).

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

50 minutes ago, AlexndrTheGreat.8310 said:

I’m sure it’s safe to assume that the ability for spirits to provide alacrity will come from Nature’s Vengeance in the Nature Magic traitline, seeing how unreasonable it would be for spirits to provide Alac baseline.

Obviously Druids will be taking this by default, but I’m curious what the dps tradeoff will be for Soulbeast and to a lesser extent Base Ranger and Untamed to take that traitline. The only other dps improvements in that line are Bountiful Hunter (1% strike damage per boon) and Fortifying Bond (pets gain boons you gain, not even sure if it’d be a dps increase).

Also unsure on how many spirits you would need to take to cover alacrity. If Alac ends up not being unique to a specific spirit you could easily bring Water Spirit + 1 or 2 others and still have something like Sic’ Em / Frost Trap and OWP, or some other elite as a non-SB.

I think Ranger will still have lots of utility it can use (Entangle, LB4, Stance sharing, pet utilities, etc), but I’m wondering how our dps and toolkit will compare to the other dps Alac sources that exist (chrono, mirage, Specter, mechanist, renegade, Willbender).

Soulbeast loses too much. It can't afford to take much of anything from the nature magic traitline over skirmishing, wilderness survival, or beastmastery.

 

Condi druid doesn't provide enough to justify spirits and alac, and even then I think the loss to dps from taking nature magic isn't worth doing. Same with core.

 

Untamed is so bad as of right now that it might actually work, but why bring an untamed when you could have a druid?

 

It's definetly going to become a 'druid alac' thing and not really a 'Ranger alac' thing, especially since spirits do not exist outside of pve.

 

 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

For WvW...

I don't see current Druid builds taking it; current offensive ones that is.  Not sure you're replacing a FB or the like for support, so going to just simplify that to 'druid builds' in general.  Because at the moment the only effective druid build in WvW is immob and you don't take NM for that.

I can see Soulbeasts taking spirits again if it means an increase to boons.  As boonbeast still very much exists in WvW, and trading out NM for BM or Sk may be viable (bit of personal preference which one goes) if the loss to stats equals out to what you can gain through alacrity.  I've had great success doing something like Sk/NM/SB without the alacrity or spirit changes.

I actually do see Untamed taking this the most.  At the moment having very good success with NM on Untamed and placing spirits down could be game changing if they actually work.  That and you could actually have some kind of meme CD build if you took everything (skirmishing trait, untamed trait, and if spirits provide alac).  Not sure why you'd want that much CD reduction, but I'm sure there's a double bow 'arrow cart' build somewhere that'd love this.

Finally for core, maybe.  Core is hit or miss and niche really anyway, so who knows.