Big Important Discussion For State Of Ranger Competitively - post 11/28 - beta maces included

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Some of us do still care about the state of balance and how the game feels. Here we go:

1. Ranger has received too many nerfs over the course of recent patching. Not only has it received much direct nerfing, but also indirect nerfs due to how other classes have received some significant buffing. And I'm not even going into new beta weapons yet, but rather the actual effects of the 11/28 patch in conjunction with what the new rune/relic system has done to enhance certain other classes/build structures. Lately, the role of Ranger in any semi-competitive meta-viable environment has been reduced to the role of a side node bunker. Untamed & Druid can hold sides, but they lack the damage to win sides or even decap sides, unless they are against some build that shouldn't be siding against them to begin with, like say a DP Daredevil. In the case of "meta-viable semi-competitive scenarios", Ranger builds will lose in time to other side noders such as a Hammer Catalyst or a good Condiserk, ect ect. This is because the Ranger has no damage compared to these other side noders. Hammer Catalyst or a Condiserk has an equal amount of staying presence on a node as the Ranger but these other side noders have quite seriously triple the damage output or more. That damage output also holds value in team fighting, whereas the Ranger has no valuable damage for team fights if stat as a bunker, which it has to do because it has no choice in this recent patching.
2. Why does Ranger have to stat as a bunker? Because too much damage has been removed from Ranger for it to be viable as a DPS roamer. The DPS that Soulbeast/Untamed once had was important because they relied on the mechanic of "Our offense is our defense". But once that DPS was so graciously mega nerfed, Soulbeast & Untamed are too squishy without that bully damage and have become a liability to run in the face of a super bruiser team fight meta. They simply get the short end of the stick in nearly every engagement unless the Ranger player is capable of significantly outplaying the opponent. You probably wonder: "Why doesn't the Ranger just also stat as a super bruiser?" Well, that's because it can't. The way Ranger as a whole is setup, it either has to go full DPS to have any value as a roamer, or full bunker to have any value as a side node. There actually isn't a sweet spot in between to stat as bruiser/team fighter for a plethora of reasons of how traits & utilities are designed around each other, which I won't go all into here. The point being is that no matter what you do with Ranger right now, you're either playing an underpowered roamer or a side noder that entirely lacks damage. When you try to stat for a more bruiser/team fighter, it only results in builds that are far less valuable than things we have going on like current Reaper, Scourge, or anything else for that matter that is a proper bruiser/team fighter. And so we have to choose between underpowered roamer or a side noder that can at least hold, which again, means you have to take every defensive option possible and then you have no damage to realistically deal with those other meta side noders. You can only hope to hold against those other meta side noders when it is your color, but you will not have the CC or damage to actually push them off or kill them for a decap. Keep in mind I am referencing plat+ play environments like in ATs where you can really see the strengths & weaknesses & limitations of classes/builds. Of course a veteran player could go into an unranked game, run something dumb like a mace/mace hammer Warrior, outplay a bunch of new guys and make that build look disgustingly effective. But in a sweaty final round of an AT, a mace mace hammer Warrior would hold 0 value to the point that his team may as well be considered 4v5. So let's INB4 discussion on "the casuals and their experiences" because that's not what I'm talking about here.
3. The removal of Smokescale's CC in-merge and out of merge was a detrimental nerf. First of all, Smokescale has been the primary pet to use for so long that Ranger as a class has widely been being balanced around the defensive values & utility that Smokescale provides. All Ranger specs need the smoke field. Without it, there isn't enough disengage to survive certain encounters or ability to spam blind for defense. Soulbeasts need the smoke assault evade frames for counter-offensive/defensive reasons. Without it, they die like a Thief who didn't bring shadow step. The Smokescale's natural CC was very important for chasing & securing kills as well as for a Ranger's ability to disengage when needing to retreat. This is because the CC reliably landed directly after the Smokescale would use smoke assault. Other pet CCs do not land reliably at all. The Smokescale's CC could be timed for landing a burst, or when someone is trying to retreat and the Smokescale chases & CCs, or when the Ranger is retreating and the Smokescale lands that CC so the Ranger can actually get a jolt ahead. Without this one CC, it is harder to land bursts, it is harder to chase kills, and it is harder to retreat. Keep in mind that Ranger NEEDS the Smokescale for the reasons I've already explained. There is no other pet to use, even after the 11/28 patch, that replaces the sheer value that the Smokescale brings. So in other words, Ranger is still pigeonholed into needing to use Smokescale. When you start ripping off important aspects of this pet without compensating the Ranger directly in its trait lines or utilities, you're just nerfing the class because it can't replace Smokescale. In the case of Soulbeast merge, I found this to be extra debilitating. This is because the Soulbeast isn't just losing the CC off the Smokescale itself, but also the CC from its in-merge skills. In the case of Soulbeast, it is losing 2x CCs from this patch. Remember, there is no way to replace Smokescale. We HAVE to use it due to the smoke field and the evade frames. Nothing else even begins to be nearly as important as these two things. An example statement of how detrimental the removal of Smokescale CC is: While playing ATs today, the removal of those 2x CCs was allowing Necromancers to very forwardly & aggressively chase me, putting me into a forever ranged kiting type situation where there is no interval of time to actually secure a kill on the Necro "unless I'm greatly outplaying it" because there no longer is enough CC in the Soulbeast's kit to deal with a Necro when it gets close range, so you just have to run and stay ranged, and in this case you can't finish up a melee side burst to secure a kill because if it gets close you die, because you don't have enough CC. This same thing was happening vs. good players on any class really. The loss of the Smokescale CC was a bad move guys. This was not a tiny nerf or alteration. No, this is a big glaring nerf that really hurt Ranger competitively. Before someone brings it up, I'll state now that I don't care what metabattle.com says. The site is no longer an accurate gauge on the actual performance value of classes/builds for several reasons that I'm not going to get into here in this thread. What I'm telling you about the performance of Ranger here in this thread is true.
4. Changes to the other pets on 11/28 patch. There were so many non-ranger mains who were like: "Look at these big buffs to the pets! Imagine all the new builds that will appear!" which couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is that very very few of any of those changes/alterations could even be seen as buffs at all, whether pvp or pve. Where they went wrong is that they strangely altered a bunch of the actual useful pets like Smokescale, to where the alteration is definitely a nerf competitively, not a buff. And then they tried to slightly alternatively buff unused pets in very strange places, which changes nothing because the buffs were incredibly insignificant and they still won't be used. Again, we HAVE to use Smokescale on any viable build, if you don't want to be a trashcan. Outside of Smokescale which is mandatory, we have the only other good pets as: Gazelle, sometimes Pig, Ibolga, Jacaranda, Turtle. Gazelle & Pig get paired with Smoke for power DPS. Ibolga or sometimes alternatively Jacaranda gets paired with Smoke for condi DPS. Turtle gets paired with Smoke for side noders. Any other combination of pets is suboptimal & hopeful at best even after the 11/28 changes. This is what REALLY happened to Ranger with this patch: 1) Nerfed Smokescale. 2) Pig was already nerfed. 3) Ibolga gets nerfed again. 4) Jacaranda, nerfed its health. 5) Turtle, threw some insignificant alterations at it that changes nothing. These are still the only pets that will be used as they are the only good ones even after the patch, and they were nerfed with this patch, and Ranger received NO compensation anywhere for these nerfs. This patch was a big fat nerf for Ranger, again. People were excited for the changes to say Bird swoops. But this is a great example of an empty buff because it won't be used. The swoop has a longer CD still than a Gazelle charge, same range, and no CC. The Bird itself also had its F2 put from 6s CD to a 20s CD. People will use the Gazelle over a Bird every time. And the one thing they could have done to make some of these pets actually viable, was the one thing they didn't do at all, and that would be to increase the freakin health pool of some of these pets that explode immediately when summoned, like Birds. This was aaaaall just a big fat nerf to Ranger.
5. NOW WE DISCUSS NEW RANGER MACES. Boy oh boy, ok, where to start. I don't think the mace skills themselves are bad. In fact, the main-hand mace is actually good for Ranger sustain play. The off-hand mace 4 is nice but the off-hand 5 is clunky like 100blades level clunky where it's difficult to hit with a small hitbox for an elongated channel, and the larger problem with 5 is that now with Smokescale having lost its CC which was a nice 2s knockdown, the Ranger now no longer has a practical heavy CC to hit with in timing with the mace 5 to actually land the full animation. Remember, we have to bring Smokescale for several reasons. Whereas a Warrior can hit with Bull's Charge to make time for 100blades, the Ranger has no practical way with any build setup for viability to actually land the whole mace 5 in a competitive setting. People just move out of it. You'd need to bring some heavy CC option to attempt to land that mace 5, that would actually make your build worse overall. 1s CCs aren't long enough, and other pet CCs don't land reliably enough. Also, the stun on that mace has too long of a delay. By the time someone sees that animation, they move out of the way, and that stun never hits. The damage on mace 5 is also too low for how considerably difficult it is to land the full animation. Like an axe offhand 5 is nearly double the damage for the same cast time, it's in a huge AoE that covers an entire side node that at least makes people bail off the node for some decap time, and it is a projectile reflect with resolution attached and a whirl finisher. The mace 5 needs work. It isn't good enough to replace axe offhand on any setup for any reason. All of this can be said about the mace's general utility, however the new mechanic "Nature's Strength" attached to the maces is completely and entirely dysfunctional for competitive modes. I'm sure feedback from pve will say this mechanic is WORKING OUT GREAT! but this is NOT working out great in pvp. The 1st problem we have here in pvp is that people "dodge" "block" "invuln" "CC you" "stealth away" ect ect all forms of defensive play. In other words, you can't so easily & reliably hit people with such slow melee attacks to maintain enough output of the NS stacks to actually hit 6 and turn big. Like it's actually overly difficult to do and virtually impossible vs. good players and very defensive builds. The only times I've seen it work is when you have a pet or clones to beat on or someone who's in downstate that can't move. Otherwise, people counterplay and the 15s duration on those stacks somehow just isn't long enough to provide enough time to land enough stacks to turn big. The 2nd problem here that exasperates the 1st problem, is that with competitive modes, we have to prioritize weapon swapping to maintain an optimized cycle of CDs. So first I was trying dual maces. And I quickly realized how difficult it is to land 6 stacks when you blow your CDs and can't exactly hit with autos so easily when guys are counterplaying vs. your slow melee swings. You end up with all mace skills on CD and you WANT to camp mace side to try and hit that last stack or two, but then you're sitting on a weapon side that is all on CD and you're swinging autos that are missing and nothing is getting done. Of course you realize maintaining the weapon swapping is more important. What happens when you swap to the other weapon side? Well you start losing all your NS stacks, the duration runs out. Then you swap back to mace side and have to start it over again. Needless to say, it just doesn't work out. It's very rare to ever hit the 6 stacks and when you do the 5s isn't nearly long enough to get anything done with a weapon set that isn't even designed for big damage that has no substantially large heals either. A buff to mace 5 may solve this problem, but it is far far more important to tend to the accessibility of NS stacks to begin with. I'm not exaggerating this, it's way way too difficult to build that to 6 stacks and the 5s BIG duration is too short. What I ended up doing to try and avoid the downfall of the weapon swap burning the NS stack duration, was I tried builds that did like sword/mace and mace/axe on swap, stuff like that. This way I had mace on each side to land NS stacks and if and when I was able to hit 6, then I had some kind of relevant high damage skill to actually use that 5s 25% on, like sword 3/2 and axe 5. This exposes the problems I was mentioning earlier. These are not ideal weapon sets for either roamer or side node. These setups lack the mobility & precision to be a good roamer, and they ultimately lack the defensive stature to be on a side noder. Again, when you try to bruise/team fight like this, there just isn't a cherry spot to set a build up for it. You end up with impractical damage output that isn't reliable to hit with, and less sustain that the typical Reaper or Bladesworn or w/e super bruiser is coming at you at the time. The thing I found truly functional/good about mace was using just the main-hand mace on side node bunker builds. In this case the mace is strong, but it has nothing to do with the Nature's Strength mechanic, but rather the extra protection, small heal, stun, and additional blast finisher it provides. That blast finisher in conjunction with say staff 3 blast, druid ca kit 3 blast, unleashed blast, this is all good for party stealth prebuffs or blasting on water fields. I'll say again though, mace off-hand needs work and Nature's Strength needs a rework to be functional at all in competitive.

To sum up what I've said here TLDR style:

1. You guys went way way too hard on Ranger nerfs in the past half a year or so.
2. Ranger is currently being pigeonholed into the role of side node bunker. Mace main-hand specifically will seal its fate here.
3. You need to add damage back to Ranger if you want to see anything in play that isn't an Untamed or Druid side node low damage hard bunker.
4. The pet patch was a low blow guys. Smokescale needs its CC back.
5. Nature's Strength mechanic is completely & entirely dysfunctional for competitive no matter how you try to work it. It needs a rework for competitive. Mace main-hand is great, but mace-offhand needs some work to be useful in competitive. ~~~ Careful with buffing that NS too much though. When the 25% kicks on, the damage can be very high with certain setups. I would suggest for competitive that the 25% is lowered to maybe 15% and that the NS 6 stacks becomes more accessible in general, whether the skills grant more stacks or the stack limit is lowered or maybe the duration is brought from 15s to 20s. Something like that.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Deadmoose.6594]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

• You need to add damage back to Ranger if you want to see anything in play that isn't an Untamed or Druid side node low damage hard bunker.
• The pet patch was a low blow guys. Smokescale needs its CC back.

lol dmg is fine, give it a rest. The reason why ranger keeps getting nerfed is because it was super op and low skill. The nerfs they did put it in line with where it should be, finally. Multiple nerfs just means it wasn't nerfed hard enough the first time.

Smokescale needs its cc back? You joking? You might as well ask for free wins in arena. How can you possibly think that the ability to stunlock with a pet and then f'ing smash the kitten out of the opponent with a greatsword is fair play. Unless you do know its not fair and you're just vying for your spec so that you can be more powerful, that's more likely the case here.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I know you guys love to meme me, but logging into every alt you have to downvote every single thing I say while upvoting your own comments gets silly.

It's obvious what you're doing when my alerts show all the confused emojis hitting the board at the same time within a timeframe of only 60 seconds ^^

The reverse psychological projection behind this and the fact that I am the only person you take the time to do this to, presents the question as to if those confused emojis are really confused emojis, or emojis that show how sincerely worried you are about the effectiveness of my posts. Think about it for a minute.

Anyways, regardless of the emoji spam, let's have a discussion here boys.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, Deadmoose.6594 said:

Smokescale needs its cc back? You joking? You might as well ask for free wins in arena. How can you possibly think that the ability to stunlock with a pet and then f'ing smash the kitten out of the opponent with a greatsword is fair play. 

Replace GS with Hammer and Ranger with Spellbreaker, and you tell me what's harder to kill.  

Anyway, smokescale CC removal is fine with me if it got applied somewhere else--but it didn't. 

Ranger meta is changing towards stability and less so stealth, so we should concentrate on how offhand mace is going to work going forward, as it's clear they aren't going back on any of this.  If you think I'm wrong, go back and watch / listen to how many times 'bruiser' has been mentioned since EoD; they've been slowly killing off LB/GS for nearly two years now.    

Like, Hammer has stab, but lacks the mobility or defense to actually be useful in any scenario. 

OH Mace now has the stab, but the mace mechanic itself is going to hold that one back, and stab is the only defense you get on an entirely melee set lol.  Sure, there is also barrier on 4, but it's overloaded compared to rest of mace kit and isn't a block/invuln/aegis/reflect/etc. etc. They need to rework it, or it won't hit meta just like hammer didn't.  

At the core, the problem is they aren't replacing our limited stealth options with anything meaningful.  

I would love know actual dev thoughts on this if every stream they had wasn't just three dudes laughing about how unprepared they are.  Every stream CMC sits there ambivalent, Roy runs around chaotically either showing skills at random or not showing them at all until chat asks, and the other guy kinda looks super lost.  The problem with looking super lost is he is the one that is supposedly in charge of ranger now--from the 5 minutes they spent on maces, it looked like PvE was the only place he'd seen ranger in action.  

That's the problem.  Until that changes, topics like this unfortunately are empty air.  

[CETheLucid.3964]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

but the off-hand 5 is clunky like 100blades level clunky where it roots you in place with a small hitbox to make it work

I'm writing up a review on maces but I can tell you after just playing this isn't true. It is a channel but you can move around with it.

[lotus.5672]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I know you guys love to meme me, but logging into every alt you have to downvote every single thing I say while upvoting your own comments gets old after awhile.

Sometimes you've got to just let good feedback be good feedback.

trevor vs revslane schizo showmatch when?

[Sahne.6950]

Ranger is fine.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Myror.7521]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 excuse me ..... did you said ranger got LOWER dmg than cata and Condi zerker? We might Play different games then lol. For real the only thing that actually do good dmg on condi zerker is just its Mace burst skill ..... and that is only cause of the akeem relic. Alsooo a actually good ranger would win against condi zerker in the long run on Open field. (Maybe not in conquest since its capture the Point Style of a Game Mode besides this ranger still got insane amount of dmg compared to for example Power warr. (pets doing actually good dmg so does gs and other Ranger weapon skills) the only thing where it is slightly worse is melee comebad but even there you are able to kill peops per GS Maul 7k Hits. (Especialy with its amount of stabi dodges and also stealth plus superspeed) Ranger is allready good enough and does not even close need buffs. The only things that need to be done is nerfs to overperforming things just as akeem with mace burst by Berserker ^^

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

The smokescale 'nerf' was a straight buff for sic em SLB. Knockdown merged now crits for 5k and is easy to land. Before knockdown was only enough CC to land worldly impact, but now you hit them twice for over 10k, assuming you still land WI. 

[aymnad.9023]

3 hours ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 excuse me ..... did you said ranger got LOWER dmg than cata and Condi zerker? We might Play different games then lol. For real the only thing that actually do good dmg on condi zerker is just its Mace burst skill ..... and that is only cause of the akeem relic. Alsooo a actually good ranger would win against condi zerker in the long run on Open field. (Maybe not in conquest since its capture the Point Style of a Game Mode besides this ranger still got insane amount of dmg compared to for example Power warr. (pets doing actually good dmg so does gs and other Ranger weapon skills) the only thing where it is slightly worse is melee comebad but even there you are able to kill peops per GS Maul 7k Hits. (Especialy with its amount of stabi dodges and also stealth plus superspeed) Ranger is allready good enough and does not even close need buffs. The only things that need to be done is nerfs to overperforming things just as akeem with mace burst by Berserker ^^

You probably do not realize it because you focus on the burst but reliability and sustain are also important to have more opportunities. When do you deal damage if you get countered and cannot stay in fight?

Edit : I feel like this is especially noticeable outside of lb / gs untamed which is the only build that has ways to be reliable. Most power builds will get the standard counter with projectile and will lack condi clear thus have less opportunity for damage or will be too slow on condi. The soulbeast I see are just on / off,  after the burst (which is predictable) they do not accomplish much and I rarely see / feel the impact of druids or core. I am sure other people felt it and I doubt there were that many rangers last mat or that they had an impact.

Edited November 29, 2023 by aymnad.9023

[Vasdamas Anklast.1607]

13 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I know you guys love to meme me, but logging into every alt you have to downvote every single thing I say while upvoting your own comments gets old after awhile.

Sometimes you've got to just let good feedback be good feedback.

I wish I had a bunch of alts to downvote you, because I definitely would do that now.

SPvP had all shades of ranger this year: roamer, node holder. Power, condi or both. I am so happy it's getting kitten on by both balance and players these days, it is not respectable clicker tier class.
 

Edited November 29, 2023 by Vasdamas Anklast.1607

[Irrational.2871]

ranger mains trolling entire world just by their existense

[Eddbopkins.2630]

Imagine if you put that much effort into doing something productive in you're life, you be successful at what ever it is. But instead you wrote at least a 1000 word essay on why ranger bad.

[Deadmoose.6594]

1 hour ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

Imagine if you put that much effort into doing something productive in you're life, you be successful at what ever it is. But instead you wrote at least a 1000 word essay on why ranger bad.

and won't be buffed because anet has spoken

As of 11/29/23 at 8:45 est, OP has 11 confused, 1 thank, 1 like, 1 sad that's all you need to know

Edited November 29, 2023 by Deadmoose.6594
OP emoji count

[Downstate.4697]

Buff ele

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

8 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Ranger meta is changing towards stability and less so stealth, so we should concentrate on how offhand mace is going to work going forward, as it's clear they aren't going back on any of this.  If you think I'm wrong, go back and watch / listen to how many times 'bruiser' has been mentioned since EoD; they've been slowly killing off LB/GS for nearly two years now.

Yeah the problem though is that it functionally doesn't work. Ranger as a class doesn't have stuff baked into it like Full Counter, a 2nd health bar, or blocks/invulns that allow you to attack while blocking, like Distortions or DH F3 or Photon Wall, ect ect.

If they seriously want to convert it into a functional bruiser that can actually brawl with things like modern Reaper or Hammer Cata or Bladesworn/Condiserk, they are going to need to give it a lot more than a couple stab procs on a weapon.

8 hours ago, CETheLucid.3964 said:

I'm writing up a review on maces but I can tell you after just playing this isn't true. It is a channel but you can move around with it.

You're right. You can move with it, but it's still clunky as hell for several reasons.

7 hours ago, lotus.5672 said:

trevor vs revslane schizo showmatch when?

Unfortunately, myself and the Revslane seem to agree on everything. Also, the Revslane is currently on a mission traveling the multiverse to fight other Revslanes to see who is the strongest Revslane. So this is probably not going to happen any time soon.

6 hours ago, Myror.7521 said:

excuse me ..... did you said ranger got LOWER dmg than cata and Condi zerker?

Yup, but did you read the full post? I was referencing that in the event of side node build vs. side node build. Of course a full DPS Soulbeast has higher damage, but what is being discussed is the ratio of attack vs defense power that these different build actually have:

1. DPS Soulbeast - Attack Power 6 - Defense Power 1
2. Cata/Condiserks - Attack Power 4 - Defense Power 6
3. And then Bunker Rangers - Attack Power 2 to 3 at best - Defense Power 6

A very true estimate of what's going on lately.

6 hours ago, Myror.7521 said:

Alsooo a actually good ranger would win against condi zerker in the long run on Open field.

We're talking about conquest, taking & defending side nodes, not open field kiting.

5 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

The smokescale 'nerf' was a straight buff for sic em SLB. Knockdown merged now crits for 5k and is easy to land. Before knockdown was only enough CC to land worldly impact, but now you hit them twice for over 10k, assuming you still land WI. 

The numbers you're giving are considering that a Soulbeast is stat for complete DPS. This means that trying to go toe to toe with something like the modern Reaper, you're defense is so low that it will out DPS you and it will out sustain you. Damage counts for nothing when you can't avoid higher damage that is rolling of an opponent. The extra 2x CCs from Smokescale were necessary for counterplay.

If they hadn't nerfed all the damage on Soulbeast so hard, it losing those 2x CCs wouldn't be as big of a deal, but they massively nerfed the damage output on Soulbeast. After that massive damage nerf, the Soulbeast absolutely needs CCs to be able to secure kills & survive at all.

The removal of CCs off Smokescale was just flat out a bad balance move that greatly harmed Ranger in competitive.

4 hours ago, Vasdamas Anklast.1607 said:

I wish I had a bunch of alts do downvote you, because I definitely would do that now.

Don't worry about it. This Deadmoose guy and his friends have got it covered.

4 hours ago, Irrational.2871 said:

ranger mains trolling entire world just by their existense

Nah, it's just me. They treat me like forum Godzilla. I'm the only person that when I make a serious post they freak out and mobilize an actual force of alt accounts to launch coordinated propaganda attacks on my threads.

I'll take it as a compliment.

3 hours ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

Imagine if you put that much effort into doing something productive in you're life, you be successful at what ever it is. But instead you wrote at least a 1000 word essay on why ranger bad.

Imagine using a forum for what it was designed for instead of just tossing insults at people all day.

[Myror.7521]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 what you said is right .... Well at least for the Meta builds. Warrior imo got realy and i mean realy Bad dmging skills. Yes condi Warrior is something around:

Attack Power 4 while Defence Power 6

(This is mostly thanks to akeem relic tho). But Power Warrior Overall is just more like this:

Attack Power 2 while Defence Power 6

Or

Attack Power 6 while Defence Power 2

Nothing on it is actually realy good specialy when you think about it been a full melee class so it can not compensate its Defence loss by kiting or at least not as good as for example Ranger or deadeye could.

[Deadmoose.6594]

30 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Nah, it's just me. They treat me like forum Godzilla. I'm the only person that when I make a serious post they freak out and mobilize an actual force of alt accounts to launch coordinated propaganda attacks on my threads.

You bring up conspiracy theories a lot. You already posted about your bot conspiracies, quick revive conspiracy, and now your forum cabal theory. That's a lot of conspiracies to believe in over a game.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

.

Imagine using a forum for what it was designed for instead of just tossing insults at people all day.

You right.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

59 minutes ago, Deadmoose.6594 said:

You bring up conspiracy theories a lot. You already posted about your bot conspiracies, quick revive conspiracy, and now your forum cabal theory. That's a lot of conspiracies to believe in over a game.

I think you have a misunderstanding of what a conspiracy is. A conspiracy is when something has not yet been proven true or can't be proven true.

When something has already been proven true several times over or is just so plainly obvious that it doesn't need investigation for validity, the person who points at that and calls it a conspiracy is just a fool trying to create a blanket of disinformation.

But to each his own. Keep spamming the responses & confused emojis. By all means, demonstrate for me just how much force you feel is required to deal with one person.

[Frequency.6407]

Dear Anet,

Please buff my class.

ty

[Eddbopkins.2630]

Have 1200 range attacks is op. Id like 900 range max. Ranger op for that alone.

[Flowki.7194]

22 minutes ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

Have 1200 range attacks is op. Id like 900 range max. Ranger op for that alone.

You know LB has around 1700 force fire range right? Its hillarious that is possible, regardless of overall ranger effectiveness. I do agree with OP, too many horrible low effort bunker ranger builds, and SB is still stupid easy for what it achieves.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Yeah no. Ranger is by far the strongest beta class atm. Also guess what, smokescale is still meta because smoke field is op.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Paradoxoglanis.1904

[Rap Tiger.1257]

22 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Some of us do still care about the state of balance and how the game feels. Here we go:

1. Ranger has received too many nerfs over the course of recent patching. Not only has it received much direct nerfing, but also indirect nerfs due to how other classes have received some significant buffing. And I'm not even going into new beta weapons yet, but rather the actual effects of the 11/28 patch in conjunction with what the new rune/relic system has done to enhance certain other classes/build structures. Lately, the role of Ranger in any semi-competitive meta-viable environment has been reduced to the role of a side node bunker. Untamed & Druid can hold sides, but they lack the damage to win sides or even decap sides, unless they are against some build that shouldn't be siding against them to begin with, like say a DP Daredevil. In the case of "meta-viable semi-competitive scenarios", Ranger builds will lose in time to other side noders such as a Hammer Catalyst or a good Condiserk, ect ect. This is because the Ranger has no damage compared to these other side noders. Hammer Catalyst or a Condiserk has an equal amount of staying presence on a node as the Ranger but these other side noders have quite seriously triple the damage output or more. That damage output also holds value in team fighting, whereas the Ranger has no valuable damage for team fights if stat as a bunker, which it has to do because it has no choice in this recent patching.
2. Why does Ranger have to stat as a bunker? Because too much damage has been removed from Ranger for it to be viable as a DPS roamer. The DPS that Soulbeast/Untamed once had was important because they relied on the mechanic of "Our offense is our defense". But once that DPS was so graciously mega nerfed, Soulbeast & Untamed are too squishy without that bully damage and have become a liability to run in the face of a super bruiser team fight meta. They simply get the short end of the stick in nearly every engagement unless the Ranger player is capable of significantly outplaying the opponent. You probably wonder: "Why doesn't the Ranger just also stat as a super bruiser?" Well, that's because it can't. The way Ranger as a whole is setup, it either has to go full DPS to have any value as a roamer, or full bunker to have any value as a side node. There actually isn't a sweet spot in between to stat as bruiser/team fighter for a plethora of reasons of how traits & utilities are designed around each other, which I won't go all into here. The point being is that no matter what you do with Ranger right now, you're either playing an underpowered roamer or a side noder that entirely lacks damage. When you try to stat for a more bruiser/team fighter, it only results in builds that are far less valuable than things we have going on like current Reaper, Scourge, or anything else for that matter that is a proper bruiser/team fighter. And so we have to choose between underpowered roamer or a side noder that can at least hold, which again, means you have to take every defensive option possible and then you have no damage to realistically deal with those other meta side noders. You can only hope to hold against those other meta side noders when it is your color, but you will not have the CC or damage to actually push them off or kill them for a decap. Keep in mind I am referencing plat+ play environments like in ATs where you can really see the strengths & weaknesses & limitations of classes/builds. Of course a veteran player could go into an unranked game, run something dumb like a mace/mace hammer Warrior, outplay a bunch of new guys and make that build look disgustingly effective. But in a sweaty final round of an AT, a mace mace hammer Warrior would hold 0 value to the point that his team may as well be considered 4v5. So let's INB4 discussion on "the casuals and their experiences" because that's not what I'm talking about here.
3. The removal of Smokescale's CC in-merge and out of merge was a detrimental nerf. First of all, Smokescale has been the primary pet to use for so long that Ranger as a class has widely been being balanced around the defensive values & utility that Smokescale provides. All Ranger specs need the smoke field. Without it, there isn't enough disengage to survive certain encounters or ability to spam blind for defense. Soulbeasts need the smoke assault evade frames for counter-offensive/defensive reasons. Without it, they die like a Thief who didn't bring shadow step. The Smokescale's natural CC was very important for chasing & securing kills as well as for a Ranger's ability to disengage when needing to retreat. This is because the CC reliably landed directly after the Smokescale would use smoke assault. Other pet CCs do not land reliably at all. The Smokescale's CC could be timed for landing a burst, or when someone is trying to retreat and the Smokescale chases & CCs, or when the Ranger is retreating and the Smokescale lands that CC so the Ranger can actually get a jolt ahead. Without this one CC, it is harder to land bursts, it is harder to chase kills, and it is harder to retreat. Keep in mind that Ranger NEEDS the Smokescale for the reasons I've already explained. There is no other pet to use, even after the 11/28 patch, that replaces the sheer value that the Smokescale brings. So in other words, Ranger is still pigeonholed into needing to use Smokescale. When you start ripping off important aspects of this pet without compensating the Ranger directly in its trait lines or utilities, you're just nerfing the class because it can't replace Smokescale. In the case of Soulbeast merge, I found this to be extra debilitating. This is because the Soulbeast isn't just losing the CC off the Smokescale itself, but also the CC from its in-merge skills. In the case of Soulbeast, it is losing 2x CCs from this patch. Remember, there is no way to replace Smokescale. We HAVE to use it due to the smoke field and the evade frames. Nothing else even begins to be nearly as important as these two things. An example statement of how detrimental the removal of Smokescale CC is: While playing ATs today, the removal of those 2x CCs was allowing Necromancers to very forwardly & aggressively chase me, putting me into a forever ranged kiting type situation where there is no interval of time to actually secure a kill on the Necro "unless I'm greatly outplaying it" because there no longer is enough CC in the Soulbeast's kit to deal with a Necro when it gets close range, so you just have to run and stay ranged, and in this case you can't finish up a melee side burst to secure a kill because if it gets close you die, because you don't have enough CC. This same thing was happening vs. good players on any class really. The loss of the Smokescale CC was a bad move guys. This was not a tiny nerf or alteration. No, this is a big glaring nerf that really hurt Ranger competitively. Before someone brings it up, I'll state now that I don't care what metabattle.com says. The site is no longer an accurate gauge on the actual performance value of classes/builds for several reasons that I'm not going to get into here in this thread. What I'm telling you about the performance of Ranger here in this thread is true.
4. Changes to the other pets on 11/28 patch. There were so many non-ranger mains who were like: "Look at these big buffs to the pets! Imagine all the new builds that will appear!" which couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is that very very few of any of those changes/alterations could even be seen as buffs at all, whether pvp or pve. Where they went wrong is that they strangely altered a bunch of the actual useful pets like Smokescale, to where the alteration is definitely a nerf competitively, not a buff. And then they tried to slightly alternatively buff unused pets in very strange places, which changes nothing because the buffs were incredibly insignificant and they still won't be used. Again, we HAVE to use Smokescale on any viable build, if you don't want to be a trashcan. Outside of Smokescale which is mandatory, we have the only other good pets as: Gazelle, sometimes Pig, Ibolga, Jacaranda, Turtle. Gazelle & Pig get paired with Smoke for power DPS. Ibolga or sometimes alternatively Jacaranda gets paired with Smoke for condi DPS. Turtle gets paired with Smoke for side noders. Any other combination of pets is suboptimal & hopeful at best even after the 11/28 changes. This is what REALLY happened to Ranger with this patch: 1) Nerfed Smokescale. 2) Pig was already nerfed. 3) Ibolga gets nerfed again. 4) Jacaranda, nerfed its health. 5) Turtle, threw some insignificant alterations at it that changes nothing. These are still the only pets that will be used as they are the only good ones even after the patch, and they were nerfed with this patch, and Ranger received NO compensation anywhere for these nerfs. This patch was a big fat nerf for Ranger, again. People were excited for the changes to say Bird swoops. But this is a great example of an empty buff because it won't be used. The swoop has a longer CD still than a Gazelle charge, same range, and no CC. The Bird itself also had its F2 put from 6s CD to a 20s CD. People will use the Gazelle over a Bird every time. And the one thing they could have done to make some of these pets actually viable, was the one thing they didn't do at all, and that would be to increase the freakin health pool of some of these pets that explode immediately when summoned, like Birds. This was aaaaall just a big fat nerf to Ranger.
5. NOW WE DISCUSS NEW RANGER MACES. Boy oh boy, ok, where to start. I don't think the mace skills themselves are bad. In fact, the main-hand mace is actually good for Ranger sustain play. The off-hand mace 4 is nice but the off-hand 5 is clunky like 100blades level clunky where it's difficult to hit with a small hitbox for an elongated channel, and the larger problem with 5 is that now with Smokescale having lost its CC which was a nice 2s knockdown, the Ranger now no longer has a practical heavy CC to hit with in timing with the mace 5 to actually land the full animation. Remember, we have to bring Smokescale for several reasons. Whereas a Warrior can hit with Bull's Charge to make time for 100blades, the Ranger has no practical way with any build setup for viability to actually land the whole mace 5 in a competitive setting. People just move out of it. You'd need to bring some heavy CC option to attempt to land that mace 5, that would actually make your build worse overall. 1s CCs aren't long enough, and other pet CCs don't land reliably enough. Also, the stun on that mace has too long of a delay. By the time someone sees that animation, they move out of the way, and that stun never hits. The damage on mace 5 is also too low for how considerably difficult it is to land the full animation. Like an axe offhand 5 is nearly double the damage for the same cast time, it's in a huge AoE that covers an entire side node that at least makes people bail off the node for some decap time, and it is a projectile reflect with resolution attached and a whirl finisher. The mace 5 needs work. It isn't good enough to replace axe offhand on any setup for any reason. All of this can be said about the mace's general utility, however the new mechanic "Nature's Strength" attached to the maces is completely and entirely dysfunctional for competitive modes. I'm sure feedback from pve will say this mechanic is WORKING OUT GREAT! but this is NOT working out great in pvp. The 1st problem we have here in pvp is that people "dodge" "block" "invuln" "CC you" "stealth away" ect ect all forms of defensive play. In other words, you can't so easily & reliably hit people with such slow melee attacks to maintain enough output of the NS stacks to actually hit 6 and turn big. Like it's actually overly difficult to do and virtually impossible vs. good players and very defensive builds. The only times I've seen it work is when you have a pet or clones to beat on or someone who's in downstate that can't move. Otherwise, people counterplay and the 15s duration on those stacks somehow just isn't long enough to provide enough time to land enough stacks to turn big. The 2nd problem here that exasperates the 1st problem, is that with competitive modes, we have to prioritize weapon swapping to maintain an optimized cycle of CDs. So first I was trying dual maces. And I quickly realized how difficult it is to land 6 stacks when you blow your CDs and can't exactly hit with autos so easily when guys are counterplaying vs. your slow melee swings. You end up with all mace skills on CD and you WANT to camp mace side to try and hit that last stack or two, but then you're sitting on a weapon side that is all on CD and you're swinging autos that are missing and nothing is getting done. Of course you realize maintaining the weapon swapping is more important. What happens when you swap to the other weapon side? Well you start losing all your NS stacks, the duration runs out. Then you swap back to mace side and have to start it over again. Needless to say, it just doesn't work out. It's very rare to ever hit the 6 stacks and when you do the 5s isn't nearly long enough to get anything done with a weapon set that isn't even designed for big damage that has no substantially large heals either. A buff to mace 5 may solve this problem, but it is far far more important to tend to the accessibility of NS stacks to begin with. I'm not exaggerating this, it's way way too difficult to build that to 6 stacks and the 5s BIG duration is too short. What I ended up doing to try and avoid the downfall of the weapon swap burning the NS stack duration, was I tried builds that did like sword/mace and mace/axe on swap, stuff like that. This way I had mace on each side to land NS stacks and if and when I was able to hit 6, then I had some kind of relevant high damage skill to actually use that 5s 25% on, like sword 3/2 and axe 5. This exposes the problems I was mentioning earlier. These are not ideal weapon sets for either roamer or side node. These setups lack the mobility & precision to be a good roamer, and they ultimately lack the defensive stature to be on a side noder. Again, when you try to bruise/team fight like this, there just isn't a cherry spot to set a build up for it. You end up with impractical damage output that isn't reliable to hit with, and less sustain that the typical Reaper or Bladesworn or w/e super bruiser is coming at you at the time. The thing I found truly functional/good about mace was using just the main-hand mace on side node bunker builds. In this case the mace is strong, but it has nothing to do with the Nature's Strength mechanic, but rather the extra protection, small heal, stun, and additional blast finisher it provides. That blast finisher in conjunction with say staff 3 blast, druid ca kit 3 blast, unleashed blast, this is all good for party stealth prebuffs or blasting on water fields. I'll say again though, mace off-hand needs work and Nature's Strength needs a rework to be functional at all in competitive.

To sum up what I've said here TLDR style:

1. You guys went way way too hard on Ranger nerfs in the past half a year or so.
2. Ranger is currently being pigeonholed into the role of side node bunker. Mace main-hand specifically will seal its fate here.
3. You need to add damage back to Ranger if you want to see anything in play that isn't an Untamed or Druid side node low damage hard bunker.
4. The pet patch was a low blow guys. Smokescale needs its CC back.
5. Nature's Strength mechanic is completely & entirely dysfunctional for competitive no matter how you try to work it. It needs a rework for competitive. Mace main-hand is great, but mace-offhand needs some work to be useful in competitive. ~~~ Careful with buffing that NS too much though. When the 25% kicks on, the damage can be very high with certain setups. I would suggest for competitive that the 25% is lowered to maybe 15% and that the NS 6 stacks becomes more accessible in general, whether the skills grant more stacks or the stack limit is lowered or maybe the duration is brought from 15s to 20s. Something like that.

I disagree about the pets, I play phoenix and wyvern fire, and I have to admit that they are much better and even attacking normally is more efficient, I tested with smokescale and sand shark, Smokescale was more complicated with the takedown without knockdown, but it works to play yet and the area shark has a bug that when he uses his f2 after leaving the merge, he stays still and does nothing......I'm not going to test mace because I don't like the style, I wanted off hand sword.