Feb 14 Ranger changes preview

[Beddo.1907]

Stream screenshots:
https://i.imgur.com/FjhZ4h3.png
https://i.imgur.com/RY7lusJ.png
https://i.imgur.com/MyUi6kn.png

Ranger
-Emphatic Bond: This trait has been reworked. It now causes Beast abilities to remove conditions from the ranger and their pet.
-Rugged Growth: (PvP and WvW) Increased pulse heal from 155 to 196.
-Wilderness Knowledge: This trait no longer reduces the cooldown of survival skills.
-Troll Unguent: (PvE) Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds, (PvP and WvW) and from 30 seconds to 24 seconds.
-Lightning Reflexes: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 24 seconds.
-Muddy Terrain: (PvE and PvP) Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.
-Quickening Zephyr: (PvE) Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 35 seconds, (PvP and WvW) and from 40 seconds to 32 seconds.
-Windborne Notes: This trait no longer reduces the cooldown of warhorn skills.
-Hunter's Call: Reduced cooldown from 20 seconds to 16 seconds.
-Call of the Wild: Reduced the cooldown from 30 seconds to 24 seconds.
-Brutish Seals: This trait no longer reduces the cooldown of signet skills, and now also grants might in addiction to fury.
-Signet of the Hunt: The active component of this skill now grants super speed in addition to unblockable stacks. (PvE and PvP) Reduced the cooldown from 40 seconds to 20 seconds and (WvW) from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
-Signet of Renewal: This skill now grants resolution to the ranger's pet in addition to resistance. Reduced the cooldown from 50 seconds to 35 seconds.
-Signet of the Wild: Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.

Soulbeast
-Double Arc: (PvP and WvW) Reduced cooldown from 7 seconds to 6 seconds.
-Instinctive Engage: (PvP and WvW) Reduced ammunition recharge from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
-Dolyak Stance: (PvP) Reduced the duration from 6 seconds to 4 seconds, Reduced the cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.
-Moa Stance: (PvP) Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds.
-Griffon stance: Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
-Primal Cry: This skill now inflicts poison on each strike in addition to it's other effects.
-Eternal Bond: Increased base healing from 487 to 584.

Untamed
-Unnatural traversal: This skill in no longer instant and now has a cast time of 0.25 seconds

Edited February 4, 2023 by Beddo.1907

[Project exa.3204]

With a lot of things being nerfed around Ranger, these buffs feel like ranger is about to go T1 meta again.

I'm all for it. 

-Eros of Ascalon

[Gotejjeken.1267]

February 12th? 

Might want to change title to the actual date of February 14th.  

[Beddo.1907]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

February 12th? 

Might want to change title to the actual date of February 14th.  

Ah my bad. 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Guarantee you, nothing will change for Core Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast. Untamed is getting screwed however.

What they tried to do was give all Wilderness Survival skills the -20% ICD naturally instead of needing to take Wilderness Knowledge to get that, so other trait lines could be taken. But what they didn't understand is that in competitive modes at least, people will still need to take Wilderness Survival and Wilderness Knowledge for the 2 cleanse on WS skill use as well as the Fury procs.

These changes will not alter Core, Druid, Soulbeast setups, neither power or condi for competitive modes or even pve.

The change to Unnatural Traversal however, will bench Untamed. They are adding an animation cast time to UT which means the Untamed won't be able to instant teleport during something like a Maul animation now. It won't even be able to use that teleport to get out of CCs. This single change will completely eliminate Untamed tele-burst play.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

Secret Power Soulbeast Warhorn build buff

Free cooldown reduction LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO

[Mell.4873]

44 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Guarantee you, nothing will change for Core Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast. Untamed is getting screwed however.

What they tried to do was give all Wilderness Survival skills the -20% ICD naturally instead of needing to take Wilderness Knowledge to get that, so other trait lines could be taken. But what they didn't understand is that in competitive modes at least, people will still need to take Wilderness Survival and Wilderness Knowledge for the 2 cleanse on WS skill use as well as the Fury procs.

Most Elites already have pretty good condition cleanse skills with there class specific abilities. WvW Rangers can definitely benefit from this. 

I think the advantage will be in PvE, this opens up so many more builds and higher benchmarks. 

I agree with your Untamed comment though

[Peter.3901]

It's really sad that they stealth nerfed sharpened stone and entangle in PVE, no CD for those will hurt.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

Just now, Peter.3901 said:

It's really sad that they stealth nerfed sharpened stone and entangle in PVE, no CD for those will hurt.

No one took wilderness knowledge in PvE (other than open world people). People went for poison master instead, so not really a nerf.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

Most Elites already have pretty good condition cleanse skills with there class specific abilities. WvW Rangers can definitely benefit from this. 

I think the advantage will be in PvE, this opens up so many more builds and higher benchmarks. 

I agree with your Untamed comment though

None of that is a buff my dude, reread it more carefully. Absolutely none of that is increasing any power build DPS or condi DPS pve benchmarks, and the ninja nerf to Sharp Stone is going to lower DPS burst time in competitive.

Untamed in pvp might be able to figure something out, despite the UT nerf, but it's going to hurt them. They'll be able to use the new unblockable signet in place of the teleport, or Nature's Binding, or hell even Sic Em for larger Tail Swipes, but that tele-play will vanish. It will not be worth it with an animation time. <- Either all of this will happen ^ or people will just go back to Core Ranger for Marks/Wild/Beast play and run the usual WS utilities while maybe looking for a way to fit that unblockable signet in. Core Ranger will honestly probably be better than Untamed when they remove that tele play, due to the use of Wilderness.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Peter.3901]

8 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

No one took wilderness knowledge in PvE (other than open world people). People went for poison master instead, so not really a nerf.

There are a lot of build that use at least one of those or even both actually, i really don't see the point of those nerfs, if they don't want people to play condi ranger so just remove it completely...

Edited February 4, 2023 by Peter.3901

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 minute ago, Peter.3901 said:

There are a lot of build that use at least one of those or even both actually, i really don't see the point of those nerfs, if they don't want people to play condi ranger so just remove it completely...

Yeah I don't understand what the fetish is within the balance to team to MAKE SURE that Ranger is either mediocre or subpar in every mode, yet they just overbuff the hell out of other things and let them sit in alpha states for ridiculously elongated amounts of time.

[Mell.4873]

55 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

None of that is a buff my dude, reread it more carefully. Absolutely none of that is increasing any power build DPS or condi DPS pve benchmarks, and the ninja nerf to Sharp Stone is going to lower DPS burst time in competitive.

Untamed in pvp might be able to figure something out, despite the UT nerf, but it's going to hurt them. They'll be able to use the new unblockable signet in place of the teleport, or Nature's Binding, or hell even Sic Em for larger Tail Swipes, but that tele-play will vanish. It will not be worth it with an animation time. <- Either all of this will happen ^ or people will just go back to Core Ranger for Marks/Wild/Beast play and run the usual WS utilities while maybe looking for a way to fit that unblockable signet in. Core Ranger will honestly probably be better than Untamed when they remove that tele play, due to the use of Wilderness.

I guess I meant it will push more Rangers builds into higher benchmarks especially ones that provide boons and who could not take Wilderness Knowledge. Honestly only when the update comes out will we know. 

I use condi for my Untamed so I'm already using Wilderness Knowledge for condition cleanse. 

Edited February 4, 2023 by Mell.4873

[BumboJumbo.1308]

16 hours ago, Peter.3901 said:

There are a lot of build that use at least one of those or even both actually, i really don't see the point of those nerfs, if they don't want people to play condi ranger so just remove it completely...

For starters, it's literally impossible to use both wilderness knowledge and poison master at the same time.

For seconds, in PvE specifically, nothing changes for condition ranger. You'll still have condition soulbeast and condition untamed. No one uses core and condition druid still remains the same.

[Sandzibar.5134]

edit: cant be bothered.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Sandzibar.5134

[Zaret.1450]

On 2/4/2023 at 2:06 AM, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Guarantee you, nothing will change for Core Ranger/Druid/Soulbeast. Untamed is getting screwed however.

What they tried to do was give all Wilderness Survival skills the -20% ICD naturally instead of needing to take Wilderness Knowledge to get that, so other trait lines could be taken. But what they didn't understand is that in competitive modes at least, people will still need to take Wilderness Survival and Wilderness Knowledge for the 2 cleanse on WS skill use as well as the Fury procs.

These changes will not alter Core, Druid, Soulbeast setups, neither power or condi for competitive modes or even pve.

The change to Unnatural Traversal however, will bench Untamed. They are adding an animation cast time to UT which means the Untamed won't be able to instant teleport during something like a Maul animation now. It won't even be able to use that teleport to get out of CCs. This single change will completely eliminate Untamed tele-burst play.

That thing you said about untamed is presicely what they intended to do, making untamed unable to teleport with the skills already casting.

As for wilderness survival i guess its more of a roa/pvp line or a condi trait, i dont usually use it or see it on the builds i play, but many classes got the cdr reduction baseline so i guess they plan to do something arount that?

This patches are being too small, i mean that they focus on a couple classes for relevant things while the rest only get some adjustments on minor things so they arent so minor anymore, or at least i see it like that, on ranger i expect that the big untamed patch would have some pet CoL changes and some pet related traits and skills changes, i mean theyre suposedly still maintaining FF nerf for a later patch.

[Tourist McGee.2931]

I wish Druid would get some love.  CA is so short lived, i just stopped trying to use it entirely.

[Yatech.3984]

I'd love Anet to kinda rework Druid. It's the only Elite in the game that cannot dps, full zerker gear and Sick'em axe/axe rotation gives about 5k dps, the same as Soulbeast does auto attacking . The idea of "play how you like" is fundamentally broken here, because I'd want druid to be able to do the same as other healing/supporting Elites which is do open world content as a hybrid Support like Celestial Firebrand. Did I mention that it is THE ONLY elite spec that cannot dps? In that case I want druid to be able to output every boon, be the support God, otherwise what's the point. We have a good healer and that's it, useless as anything else 

[Beddo.1907]

13 hours ago, Yatech.3984 said:

I'd love Anet to kinda rework Druid. It's the only Elite in the game that cannot dps, full zerker gear and Sick'em axe/axe rotation gives about 5k dps, the same as Soulbeast does auto attacking . The idea of "play how you like" is fundamentally broken here, because I'd want druid to be able to do the same as other healing/supporting Elites which is do open world content as a hybrid Support like Celestial Firebrand. Did I mention that it is THE ONLY elite spec that cannot dps? In that case I want druid to be able to output every boon, be the support God, otherwise what's the point. We have a good healer and that's it, useless as anything else 

The thing is, why would druid be able to do support and dps, if dps specs can't support.

We already have 2 dps specs and that's plenty. In the end nobody will play druid as dps, unless it beats SB and Utd, but then what's the point of playing anything that isn't druid.

It's way better to have a full support spec and balance it towards one direction, than make it do everything and then be lacking in all of them.

[Yatech.3984]

I'm not talking about full fledged dps druid, but a hybrid. An elite spec that can be played in open world, story or events, like every other support elite in the game, someone who can deal with things on their own and heal a bit like Firebrand, Tempest, Mechanist, Scrapper, . Why can't druid do what others can?

[Levetty.1279]

On 2/8/2023 at 8:40 AM, Beddo.1907 said:

The thing is, why would druid be able to do support and dps, if dps specs can't support.

We already have 2 dps specs and that's plenty. In the end nobody will play druid as dps, unless it beats SB and Utd, but then what's the point of playing anything that isn't druid.

It's way better to have a full support spec and balance it towards one direction, than make it do everything and then be lacking in all of them.

DPS support is a role.

 

It's not really a problem at the moment because Untamed can be DPS alac but eventually they will want to add a Quickness support elite spec which means Alac will have to be moved from Core Ranger to Druid to keep Druid relevant but then Ranger will no longer have a DPS Alac build.

 

Similarly this hypothetical Quickness elite spec will need to be able to heal or DPS too so Ranger can be a Quick heal or a Quick DPS since core Ranger has almost 0 group healing.