Ranger is Depression

[Absinthey.5340]

 

Quote

Ranger

We've enjoyed seeing the recent performance of the untamed specialization in PvP, but it's clear that the damage of the drake's Tail Swipe is a bit too high, and we're bringing it down a notch.

• Tail Swipe (Drake Family): Reduced power coefficient from 0.9 to 0.72 in PvP only.

 

•  

 

Every time there is a balance patch released I get quite excited to see if anything relevant has been done to improve the state of Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast/Untamed. And each time, scrolling through the walls of text for each other profession, I am left in utter disbelief. There is always one sentence, fixing something irrelevant to the overall problems with each Ranger specialization.  I almost get the feeling that not a single person working at Anet works on this class and it's been entirely abandoned and put into a state of maintenance mode... tweaking irrelevant skills a few decimal points every couple of months to give the illusion that they aren't just completely ignoring this class. 

 

Guess I thought I'd come to complain here, maybe others feel the same way? Regardless, just seems like nothing is going to change and any feedback is regularly ignored here so probably zero reasons for me to even write this. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Absinthey.5340

[mikexg.7329]

I hear ya...  Every patch I get excited that my class will be improved or have something new and it is either:

A.  A bug fix I wasn't aware needed to be fix because I never experienced the bug.

B.  A bug fix that I was aware of, however I am STILL experiencing the bug, AKA wasn't actually fixed.

C. A nerf.................................................................................................................................

I don't want to complain or be negative.  The ranger sub forum has enough of that (rightfully so...) But I do totally understand where you are coming from, the personal build up when you see patch notes and then the let down.  I am hoping that the big June balance patch with the spirit and banner rework is HUGE and explains why they kinda ignore the class right now since they know what is coming.   That is what I keep telling myself anyway... reading those patch notes could be really heartbreaking though lol

Edited May 12, 2022 by mikexg.7329
typo

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

I feel like the main problem with them balancing ranger right now is their balancing philosophy. They see usage, they think things are good. They hear outcry, they nerf things, even if in practice it wasn't that strong to begin with (which is honestly like 99% of rangers nerfs from a pvp perspective I feel- yes, soulbeasts can and should have amazing mobility with birds, if we give up our profession f1-f4 to become effectively a worse core guardian why would anyone bother playing soulbeast? Etc etc.).

 

I get this change specifically, somewhat. Since pets all have shadowsteps as untamed, drakes can drop in, hit with a (potential, pet crits are very uncommon and with any drake tail swipe build its either running marksmanship and hoping you dont waste the opening strike or not and having a severely lower crit chance) crit for 10k, and then rush back to the ranger. However, it's been the only real viable ranger build for a while, and untamed only slightly improved it. It ended up just being a worse willbender, and it got nerfed even still.

 

Druid literally has had no mention in PvP since I think the nerfs to glyphs to try and make decap druid less viable. Even in the most recent patch that changed specifically support classes, DRUID LITERALLY WAS NOT MENTIONED BY ANY CHANGES OR IN PASSING.

 

Ranger having decent usage through soulbeast and good raid usage with druids has made anet much less willing to change it, for worse. Anet, get your balancing in order. Ranger and elementalist are in different boats, but on the same sea. That's how bad this is getting.

[Beddo.1907]

7 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

I think the nerfs to glyphs to try and make decap druid less viable

I'd say it was rather the -20% pet stats and other classes just not giving a kitten about anything Druid does.

[Abyssisis.3971]

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

I feel like the main problem with them balancing ranger right now is their balancing philosophy. They see usage, they think things are good. They hear outcry, they nerf things, even if in practice it wasn't that strong to begin with (which is honestly like 99% of rangers nerfs from a pvp perspective I feel- yes, soulbeasts can and should have amazing mobility with birds, if we give up our profession f1-f4 to become effectively a worse core guardian why would anyone bother playing soulbeast? Etc etc.).

 

Willbender shits all over soulbeast using birds for mobility as well. I use sword/swoop and still nowhere near as mobile as a willbender. Anet must of forgotten that they nerfed swoop with an 80% increase in cooldown because it allowed soulbeasts to be too mobile… 

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

1 hour ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

Willbender shits all over soulbeast using birds for mobility as well. I use sword/swoop and still nowhere near as mobile as a willbender. Anet must of forgotten that they nerfed swoop with an 80% increase in cooldown because it allowed soulbeasts to be too mobile… 

That was my point. Soulbeast had amazing mobility, and it should due to the tradeoff of no pet swapping and you're on your own as a ranger (nowadays not so bad since the sPvP community can't seem to handle AI for some reason). And then they cut it to pieces. Meanwhile Anets Favorite gets even better mobility.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

3 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

I'd say it was rather the -20% pet stats and other classes just not giving a kitten about anything Druid does.

My point here was that druid hasn't been changed since then beyond making everything give 5 man boons. Druid has not had mention in ages other than a bulk nerf.

[Mell.4873]

The drake was pretty niche anyway I only ever saw it work on stacked plat tournament teams. Outside of stacking plat players to steam roll a tournament I never saw it.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Mell.4873

[Dadnir.5038]

To be fair, and because people tend to have a short memory, Tail swipe was a skill that PvP players have been complaining about a lot now and then for quite a few years already. I truly doubt it's Untamed specifically that led the skill to be tuned down all of a sudden (even if the "flavor text" seem to point out at Untamed).

A lot of the patch nerfs address long neglected "issue" perceived by sPvP/WvW players over the course of the whole PoF x-pack. Obviously I'd be overjoyed if the patch was addressing the fact that most core pets are simply bad in competitive modes instead of fixing "gimmicks" that annoy the competitive modes players but I'm pretty sure the devs have long given up on making the pets "good" there and prefer to just forget that more than 80% of the ranger's pets are already utterly useless in every single gamemode of GW2.

[Strider.7849]

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

To be fair, and because people tend to have a short memory, Tail swipe was a skill that PvP players have been complaining about a lot now and then for quite a few years already. I truly doubt it's Untamed specifically that led the skill to be tuned down all of a sudden (even if the "flavor text" seem to point out at Untamed).

A lot of the patch nerfs address long neglected "issue" perceived by sPvP/WvW players over the course of the whole PoF x-pack. Obviously I'd be overjoyed if the patch was addressing the fact that most core pets are simply bad in competitive modes instead of fixing "gimmicks" that annoy the competitive modes players but I'm pretty sure the devs have long given up on making the pets "good" there and prefer to just forget that more than 80% of the ranger's pets are already utterly useless in every single gamemode of GW2.

Untamed is the reason tail swipe can land reliably as well as the player having access to casting it. Before it was either random (where due to patching on the pet and slow cast, it missed a target that was moving) or cast on petswapping.

 

It is 100% the reason it was nerfed now. 

 

Edit: pathing not patching

Edited May 14, 2022 by Strider.7849

[Dadnir.5038]

59 minutes ago, Strider.7849 said:

Untamed is the reason tail swipe can land reliably as well as the player having access to casting it. Before it was either random (where due to patching on the pet and slow cast, it missed a target that was moving) or cast on petswapping.

 

It is 100% the reason it was nerfed now. 

 

Edit: pathing not patching

Yet people were already complaining about it from time to time way before Untamed existed. Keep in mind that complain about runes of the trappers existed since the vanilla game yet they only finally were nerfed in this patch. This is just a show of how slow the balance of the game is. Sometime the player base find itself with a "fix" that was asked years before about something that is no longer an issue due to the meta changing in a way or another.

[Absinthey.5340]

I just want to be clear, tail swipe was absolutely out of line and the nerf was warranted. My issue is that with each balance patch, the notes for ranger seem so disconnected from what the ranger community has been asking for for years. 

 

Is nerfing tail swipe a good thing? Sure. But that's it? That's all? I've waited literal years for positive changes to come to this class and to see miniscule things like - "Fixed a bug that was causing [insert pet name] to overperform" ... is just an absolute slap in the face. 

 

The patch notes for far to long have been so ignorant of the glaring issues with this class and the lack of identity it holds in the meta of ALL. GAME. MODES. 

 

 

 

 

[Puck.3697]

5 hours ago, Strider.7849 said:

Untamed is the reason tail swipe can land reliably as well as the player having access to casting it. Before it was either random (where due to patching on the pet and slow cast, it missed a target that was moving) or cast on petswapping.

 

It is 100% the reason it was nerfed now. 

 

Edit: pathing not patching

not rly true.

Tail Swipe has been a complaint since the moment i joined the game (in PoF) , the Nerf was Simply Late AF.

Before untamed. Ranger was Simply unseen in MATs/ATs. til boyce took Untamed in. to add in PvP Prior Untamed Soulbeast was more popular in ranked gameplay then Core, combined means Tail Swipe gameplay was Simply just not seen NEAR as much as it is now.

which means Sure. the current meta brought more attention to a problem and due to this that problem is having a larger impact on the game. Just because something was Ignored doesnt mean it wasnt overpowered. I mean do u consider Willbender to be Fine currently because Anet havent nerfed it?.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Daddy.8125

[Abyssisis.3971]

Tail swipe was only an issue after march 17th 2020 when soulbeasts lost 50% of the stat bonuses from beastmastery trait line and merging with a ferocious pet. We used to gain 600 additional power, then anet kitten all over us and cut that power in half, forcing soulbeast users to find alternative sources of dealing damage. Afterwards several pets were used as they hadn’t been nerfed into the ground but eventually anet caught up with them and nerfed their damage output with the exception of tail swipe, which somehow survived.

Soulbeats are a shadow of their former glory.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Abyssisis.3971

[anduriell.6280]

Tail swap was a long time coming  thing.

Let's see if we get anything worth mentioning (aka reworks) in summer patch notes.  

[Shaogin.2679]

On 5/14/2022 at 4:23 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

Yet people were already complaining about it from time to time way before Untamed existed. Keep in mind that complain about runes of the trappers existed since the vanilla game yet they only finally were nerfed in this patch. This is just a show of how slow the balance of the game is. Sometime the player base find itself with a "fix" that was asked years before about something that is no longer an issue due to the meta changing in a way or another.

To be fair, I am pretty sure Trapper Runes were only just recently nerfed since Guardians now have Willbender and didn't need Trapper Runes for Dragonhunter anymore.

[anduriell.6280]

On 6/13/2022 at 6:57 PM, Shaogin.2679 said:

To be fair, I am pretty sure Trapper Runes were only just recently nerfed since Guardians now have Willbender and didn't need Trapper Runes for Dragonhunter anymore.

Runes hasn't been nerfed yet, it is still 3s of superpeed and stealth, isn't that right? 

 

[Shaogin.2679]

1 hour ago, anduriell.6280 said:

Runes hasn't been nerfed yet, it is still 3s of superpeed and stealth, isn't that right? 

 

Stealth from the runes was nerfed from 3 seconds to 1 second in PvP on 10 May 2022.

[mistsim.2748]

Lol. I waited 9 years for ANet to "fix rangur". 2 years ago I decided that was apparently never gonna happen, quit and never came back. Last year I closely followed the atrocities of Karl's e-spec designs and double downed on never playing this game again.

[Baseleader.4128]

1 hour ago, mistsim.2748 said:

Lol. I waited 9 years for ANet to "fix rangur". 2 years ago I decided that was apparently never gonna happen, quit and never came back. Last year I closely followed the atrocities of Karl's e-spec designs and double downed on never playing this game again.

Then why on earth are you scanning the forums of this game and leaving a response on a profession thread? Go do something fun mate

 

[mistsim.2748]

On 6/16/2022 at 1:08 PM, Baseleader.4128 said:

Then why on earth are you scanning the forums of this game and leaving a response on a profession thread? Go do something fun mate

 

I like to check in on GW2 from time to time to make myself feel good about deciding to leave the game. For a while I had a small inkling of hope, but now I just come to scoff. I literally go hmph irl as I browse. This is fun. 

Having a blast in Lost Ark atm.

Edited June 17, 2022 by mistsim.2748

[Duglaive.5236]

2 hours ago, mistsim.2748 said:

 I literally go hmph irl as I browse. This is fun. 

 

Having a blast in Lost Ark atm.

 

Indeed ...

 

You do you, pal.

[anduriell.6280]

Yeah ranger is depression.  

[Dante.1508]

Yes it really is..

[Absinthey.5340]

This upcoming patch is literally a make or break for me. We will see if the intern dev. working on Ranger has been reading the years worth of feedback for this abandoned class. Current state of Ranger literally gives me depression to play it. And Untamed might have some decent applications in PvP but just doesn't feel fun to play. 

 

PvP -  Often feels more frustrating than rewarding. To much rock, paper, scissors issues with this game that make player skill irrelevant. Being beaten by the game and not the player feels awful. 

 

PvE - Zero reasons to use a Ranger over the Flavor of the Decade classes outside of subpar druid healing. 

 

WvW - Zero reasons to bring a Ranger to your zerg outside of Flavor of the Decade classes. 

 

Somehow I doubt the above issues will be resolved, but maybe I'm just cynical from the complete lack of developer transparency and communication over the years. And lets be real, this new "communication" from Arena Net, while is nice for PR reasons, just sounds like all talk and no action (***WvW Alliances When?***)

 

The problem for me isn't just with my favorite class but even the game. GW2 has always felt like a game full of ideas on the cusp of greatness but everything is just left right there. Complete and utter untapped potential, which just adds to the depressing feeling of playing this game and playing Ranger.