Ranger changes previewed for Feb 3

[Infusion.7149]

• Emphatic bond - reworked to remove conditions from ranger and pet
• Rugged growth (PVP/WVW) - increase pulse heal from  155 to 196
• Wilderness Knowledge - no longer lowers survival cooldowns
  • Troll Unguent (PVE) - cooldown dropped to 20s, PVP/WVW dropped to 24s cooldown
  • Lightning Reflexes - cooldown to 24s
  • Muddy terrain (PVE/PVP) -  20s cooldown
  • Quickening Zephyr - cooldown to 35s in PVE, 32s in PVP/WVW
  • Entangle - reduce cooldown in PVP/WVW to 48s
• Windborne notes - no longer reduces warhorn cooldowns
  • Hunter's Call - 16s cooldown
  • Call of the Wild - 24s cooldown
• Brutish Seals - no longer drops signet cooldown, grants might
  • Signet of the hunt active now applies superspeed ; pVE/PVP reduced to 20s cooldown , WVW to 30s cooldown
  • Signet of Renewal grants resolution to pet on top of resistance , 35s cooldown
  • Signet of the Wild - 30s cooldown

 

Soulbeast / UNtamed

• Double Arc - WVW/PVP 6s cooldown
• Instinctive Engage - WVW/PVP 12s ammo
• Dolyak Stance (PVP) 4s duration ; 40s cooldown
• Moa Stance PVP - 30s cooldown
• Griffon Stance 25s cooldown
• Primal Cry applies poison now
• Eternal Bond base heal 487 to 584
• Unnatural Transversal no longer instant, cast time 0.25s

 

[Levetty.1279]

Well I doubt they are ever going to make Spirits actually usable but at least Untamed will remain fun for another patch.

[Drayke.3592]

Some initial thoughts:

- They didn't touch Fervent Force.  I doubt that they've forgotten about it. My guess is this is just a difficult nut for them to crack.

- No love for WvW zerg play.  It's still druid or nothing.

- And nerfs to roamers as well  :(

- The cast on Unnatural Transversal will hurt one of the few viable ranger PvP specs

[Krispera.5087]

Can't believe Untamed only had one change. 

[Hellion.2360]

cut them some slack, they are working based on outdated printed wiki pages here *hook hook* 🤡

[Infusion.7149]

1 minute ago, Hellion.2360 said:

cut them some slack, they are working based on outdated printed wiki pages here *hook hook* 🤡

You're welcome to update them.

[Hellion.2360]

i will sneak into anet headquarters and replace the A4 wiki pages with updated ones hehe 👍

sneaky sneaky yes yes 🐀

[Mell.4873]

@Infusion.7149Good job writing out all these balance threads. 🙂

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Will have to see about the Empathetic Bond range--if its X radius of pet it will be still useless, if it's just some baseline removal it still won't be as good as WK but at least better than it is now.  Still can't figure out why they made the ICD 20s and 'refreshing' on pet swap instead of just tying it to the swap CD =X.  

They mentioned Druid roamer in WvW in the stream and just now noticed it--when they nerfed it last time with the change to Druidic Clairity; but they think people actually use Muddy Terrain--the tldr; is they clearly have no idea how immob druid works.

Finally, the changes to Signet of Hunt means power untamed is going to be a bit of a nightmare now.  I think that change is way more impactful than adding a minor cast time to UT, when they could have just made it ground targetable (which would have baked in the cast time because you have to target and made it way more useable outside memes).  

Other misc thoughts are WH changes are a straight buff and good to see, and stance changes are so all over the place so as not to be really meaningful.  Do appreciate the update of Deadly archetype tho as that thing is kitten rn.  

[Peter.3901]

Rip Sharpening Stone, so much op that needed a nerf... -_-

[Gotejjeken.1267]

46 minutes ago, Peter.3901 said:

Rip Sharpening Stone, so much op that needed a nerf... -_-

 

This is actually a good point and something I didn't notice earlier.  Thought it was just Muddy Terrain, but if they don't add the CD reduction to sharpening stone that will be a huge nerf to bleed druid.  Sharpening Stone is literally the lynchpin of the build.

[Peter.3901]

2 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

This is actually a good point and something I didn't notice earlier.  Thought it was just Muddy Terrain, but if they don't add the CD reduction to sharpening stone that will be a huge nerf to bleed druid.  Sharpening Stone is literally the lynchpin of the build.

And I forgot to say about entangle... They fcked PVE condi rangers with no reason...

Edited February 4, 2023 by Peter.3901

[Gotejjeken.1267]

10 minutes ago, Peter.3901 said:

And I forgot to say about entangle... They fcked PVE condi rangers with no reason...

 

Yeah, the balancing on these seems overcomplicated for the end result. 

You'd think Entangle would be more potent in competitive than PvE, but they nerf the CD in PvE; and you'd think Muddy Terrain would only ever be taken in sPvP, but they randomly nerf its CD in WvW.

How about we just apply the CD reduction across the board to the survival skills, as the nerf to the Elite itself is enough.  As if you dissect it, you can get the condi clear now with Empathetic Bond without blowing your utility skills just to get condi clear, and you can get Fury from practically anywhere so it's useless to blow a utility skill for that.  

The main problem to all this is, I get they are attempting to pigeonhole Druid into pure support role but aren't addressing the serious glaring issues of lack of stability access and the literal pet being a hinderance in group fights.  

Edited February 4, 2023 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Also, just rewatched the stream to see if I missed sharpening stone there (it isn't on the slides), however the dev reasoning around Empathic Bond is actually ridiculous.  

CmC says he doesn't want too much value in birds, when merged bird F2 is 12s CD.  You can literally trait evasive purity 2 condi clear for 10s--which is better value.  Essentially if you stay merged and camp bird (taking swap out of the equation here) you are getting 4 condi clear every 24s, vs 4 condi clear every 20s with evasive purity.  

Now, if you unmerge and use Hawk or Eagle that's 4 condi clear every 12 seconds--which while seemingly powerful is also something I'd place squarely in the meme category.  Birds unmerged are super squishy making nigh useless because they also have no CC abilities.  You also have to camp a bird to get that, and you won't be camping the bird as they die in like 3 hits.  

The tldr; to solve all this, they could have just made the ICD 10s to match evasive purity, but they pull a figure of 20s ICD out of literally nowhere (logically that is; I get its 20s to be lazy and match untraited pet swap)

[Strider.7849]

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Also, just rewatched the stream to see if I missed sharpening stone there (it isn't on the slides), however the dev reasoning around Empathic Bond is actually ridiculous.  

CmC says he doesn't want too much value in birds, when merged bird F2 is 12s CD.  You can literally trait evasive purity 2 condi clear for 10s--which is better value.  Essentially if you stay merged and camp bird (taking swap out of the equation here) you are getting 4 condi clear every 24s, vs 4 condi clear every 20s with evasive purity.  

Now, if you unmerge and use Hawk or Eagle that's 4 condi clear every 12 seconds--which while seemingly powerful is also something I'd place squarely in the meme category.  Birds unmerged are super squishy making nigh useless because they also have no CC abilities.  You also have to camp a bird to get that, and you won't be camping the bird as they die in like 3 hits.  

The tldr; to solve all this, they could have just made the ICD 10s to match evasive purity, but they pull a figure of 20s ICD out of literally nowhere (logically that is; I get its 20s to be lazy and match untraited pet swap)

The mobility is far more important than the condi clear. I don't think people are going to suddenly start spamming swoop for cleansing conditions lol. I can see unmerged eagle/hawk F2 being a problem though with its short cooldown.

 

Just a side note, I can deal with birds being squishy on soulbeast, what I can't deal with is them running into melee range of the enemy and casting swiftness in their face, rather than attacking. The lack of CC is fine, not every pet needs that - black raven is incredibly useful with its blind and AoE pull. However the damage output doesn't match its abilities, a.i. capability, or survivability - especially since the nerfs to birds.

[Sandzibar.5134]

43 minutes ago, Strider.7849 said:

what I can't deal with is them running into melee range of the enemy and casting swiftness in their face, rather than attacking.

 

This. All day long. THIS

 

[enkeny.6937]

On 2/4/2023 at 5:03 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Also, just rewatched the stream to see if I missed sharpening stone there (it isn't on the slides), however the dev reasoning around Empathic Bond is actually ridiculous.  

CmC says he doesn't want too much value in birds, when merged bird F2 is 12s CD.  You can literally trait evasive purity 2 condi clear for 10s--which is better value.  Essentially if you stay merged and camp bird (taking swap out of the equation here) you are getting 4 condi clear every 24s, vs 4 condi clear every 20s with evasive purity.  

Now, if you unmerge and use Hawk or Eagle that's 4 condi clear every 12 seconds--which while seemingly powerful is also something I'd place squarely in the meme category.  Birds unmerged are super squishy making nigh useless because they also have no CC abilities.  You also have to camp a bird to get that, and you won't be camping the bird as they die in like 3 hits.  

The tldr; to solve all this, they could have just made the ICD 10s to match evasive purity, but they pull a figure of 20s ICD out of literally nowhere (logically that is; I get its 20s to be lazy and match untraited pet swap)

It is a a different trait line. You can use both trait at the same time. 
Well, for reference is ok. But evasive purity  sometimes clear only 1 condition, so as long as you only have damaging condition, it only remove 1. Also dodge can be spammed with the help of vigor / gretsword/ sigil / the never used griffon stance...
What CmC said is: hawk will cure you conditions every 6 seconds, while most pets will do it every 30 seconds. (F2 auto cast) 
And pet swap resetting the trait cd will be more common in the future, I think, because there are very problematic tracking th cd for traits ( for players) especially with chill. New pet, new cd, very clean.

Also unmerge is not count as pet swap! You have to trait Eternal Bond, so you have 1 pet swap in every 20 second while merged and you can swap pet unmerged. that is 2 beast skill in a short amunt of time about every 20 sec+ alac. 
(side note: eternal bond pet switch removes the cd on pet swap. But not the other way, probably a bug)

[Gotejjeken.1267]

9 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

Also unmerge is not count as pet swap! You have to trait Eternal Bond, so you have 1 pet swap in every 20 second while merged and you can swap pet unmerged. that is 2 beast skill in a short amunt of time about every 20 sec+ alac. 
(side note: eternal bond pet switch removes the cd on pet swap. But not the other way, probably a bug)

 

Think pet swap is every 15s in or out of merge if you slot beastmastery. 

[enkeny.6937]

16 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Think pet swap is every 15s in or out of merge if you slot beastmastery. 

16s, but good call!
but it is 3 trait line for max out 1 trait. Lets just use healing spring 😄