Core ranger is broken

Poledra Val.1490 · April 7, 2020

@Eurantien.4632 said:Im sure this will just fall on def ears but the real problem with Core Ranger is Wilderness Survival being busted. Not the pets.

I agree that Wilderness Survival needs to be looked at and a few people are overlooking the fact that rangers sustain and disengage is absolutely amazing at the moment. I am not overtly concerned about the pets damage because im sure Anet will nerf these numbers in some manner soon enough, as annoying as it is at the moment.

Math.5123 · April 7, 2020

@shadowpass.4236 said:
@"Poledra Val.1490" said:Im not even sure why this is even a debate to be frank, we all know what the problems are with Ranger and just as importantly the very top elite pvp players and the majority of top rangers are all in agreement that it is broken at the moment and overperforming for several reasons stated in this thread.

Both Kiri, Eura, and I (the highest rated rangers on NA atm) are all in agreement and understand how important killing the pet is.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1208972#Comment_1208972

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1209013#Comment_1209013

I hear thieves going, "Omg why did the pet hit me so hard?" Meanwhile they're on berserker amulet with 13-15k health and no toughness.Or necros echoing the same statement on sage/carrion amulet with no toughness in their build either.Or mesmers...Or anyone else that doesn't have

any

physical damage mitigation in their build.

Yet I don't see many prot holos complaining about ranger damage when I moment of clarity fully buffed maul him for 3.4k damage.

Because unlike ranger. Thief Ele and Guardian can't afford to run a toughness amulet.You can't play the game with 11k health and you barely tickle with paladin. We were through this on discord literally like three days ago.

Trust me, no one would be happier than me if I could land 10k hits on Knight or paladin, but it's just not a reality.

shadowpass.4236 · April 7, 2020

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@"Poledra Val.1490" said:Im not even sure why this is even a debate to be frank, we all know what the problems are with Ranger and just as importantly the very top elite pvp players and the majority of top rangers are all in agreement that it is broken at the moment and overperforming for several reasons stated in this thread.

Both Kiri, Eura, and I (the highest rated rangers on NA atm) are all in agreement and understand how important killing the pet is.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1208972#Comment_1208972

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1209013#Comment_1209013

I hear thieves going, "Omg why did the pet hit me so hard?" Meanwhile they're on berserker amulet with 13-15k health and no toughness.Or necros echoing the same statement on sage/carrion amulet with no toughness in their build either.Or mesmers...Or anyone else that doesn't have

any

physical damage mitigation in their build.

Yet I don't see many prot holos complaining about ranger damage when I moment of clarity fully buffed maul him for 3.4k damage.

Because unlike ranger. Thief Ele and Guardian can't afford to run a toughness amulet.You can't play the game with 11k health and you barely tickle with paladin. We were through this on discord literally like three days ago.

Trust me, no one would be happier than me if I could land 10k hits on Knight or paladin, but it's just not a reality.

And yet all 3 of those classes can deal with core ranger pretty easily.

D/P Daredevil hard counters it. It also has blinds to deal with the ranger and his pet's single hits.
D/F Weaver is also a hard counter with all of the projectile denial for our longbow, high blind and weakness uptime on both the ranger and his pet, and constant CCs against a build that only has 6 seconds of stab and stunbreaks. Not to mention Shocking Aura shuts down our Lightning Reflexes.
Symbolbrand should not lose to a core ranger. Sagebrand is a hard counter to core ranger because the burns delete our pets.

If you're playing berserker amulet on core guardian, you shouldn't complain about bad matchups or getting hit hard when you literally choose not to run toughness in your build. As I suggested on discord, you can run honor for symbols with marauders amulet and take the shield trait + shield and you can get 2500 armor even without toughness on your amulet. Then I linked you

of me 1v1ing Tryfox a whole bunch of times on my core guard on point (even though I only have 5% of my games played on it) and you made a bunch of other excuses as to why you insist on sticking with radiance and an amulet that has no survivability stats.

Oh and...

I can also hit 9k+ whirling wraths on valor virtues dragonhunter with paladin amulet + dolyak runes so don't say guardian can't hit hard on tank amulets.

Brujeria.7536 · April 7, 2020

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:@Brujeria.7536
There's a risk/reward associated in killing the pet. However, particularly for you, because you seem to be playing condition necro, your weakness uptime from Weakening Shroud should render the pets' damage very low. Your movement impairing conditions should make it much easier to kite the pet as well. You also have the option to take CPC if you want to hard counter the longbow and greatsword (projectile denial, weakness + poison in melee range).
But yeah, regarding risk reward. You have to weigh your cooldowns and consider what the situation is before deciding whether or not to kill the pet. The payoff for killing it means that you lock the ranger out of a significant portion of his boons, offense, utility, cc, and condi clear for a full 48 seconds on the meta core ranger build with beastmastery. Killing the first pet also makes killing every subsequent pet, much easier. By doing so, you force the ranger (which already doesn't have very strong node presence) to play defensively, avoid as much damage as possible off-node, and kite in an attempt to break combat.
If you think this reward is worth spending some cooldowns for, you might risk taking more damage or losing the trades in the moment. However, it will pay off heavily in the long run if you execute this strategy correctly.
And, as a class that has historically not performed well in larger fights due to the nature of our pet class mechanic, is it really that unfair that we gain some 1v1 potential and single target burst in exchange?

No, not really. There is exactly 0 reward for killing the pet, as the ranger can just swap and it goes again.

This is exactly what I'm talking about ^

Blind argument with the complete absence of recognition towards defeated pet cool downs.

Well it is true. You cant kill the first pet because the swap is not on cooldown. You could kill the second one, after pet swap, but thats a very resource heavy try that will cost you time. cooldowns and the ranger is having fun with you, only to take high risks to shut down a part of its damage.

Bro, with no insult intended, I don't know where you're coming from here as a player with a Necromancer avatar sign.

When I'm on Core Necromancer or any Necromancer spec for that matter, I absolutely destroy Core Ranger Pets without even needing to focus them. The enormous amount of CCs prevents the pet from taking the majority of their actions, and then the heavy amount of mostly AoE damage both power and condi, absolutely melts pets as a convenient byproduct of focusing the Ranger.

I mean if you invest your cc as necromancer, which is like your most reliable defense beside shroud, to cc the pet you are fodder for any decent ranger. You wont kill the pet as a side effect from focusing the ranger, either as the good rangers know that you cant pressure both if they pester you from afar or a safer position, Of course if the ranger blindly rushes on point with GS every time your chances increase heavily, but we are not talking about these kind of rangers, we are talking about the good ones.

Crozame.4098 · April 7, 2020

@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@Avatar.3568 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
\o/

So broken in ranked means not broken at all. OK, I see your logic....He also mentioned that pet dmg is broken....

Hey says, if you want that pets are alive you need deer or smokescale and dmg is gone, so yes

Pet dmg broken, for the pets that do not live more than 5 sec

If you run a test, and the null hypothesis is the average seconds of pets that can survive in 1v1s is less than 5, I think that's clearly not true.Maybe true for 5v5s, but not sure. However, for a core ranger, if you don't know when to let your pet to follow you back or swap pet. Then I think its also the l2p issue.

If you can't cripple/chill/immobilize/cc an AI running away from you, it's more of a L2P issue on your part than anything else.

I hard countered Helio's core ranger on stream and he was using the meta knights raven + tiger build. Once I killed both pets (and kept doing so), he was completely useless as long as I kept him in combat.

If you can't cripple/chill/immobilize/cc an AI running away from you, it's more of a L2P issue on your part than anything else.In most cases, one can run away or use movements. But not always. rangers and pets also have stuns. Also, this is not a pure 1v1 scenario.

I hard countered Helio's core ranger on stream and he was using the meta knights raven + tiger build. Once I killed both pets (and kept doing so), he was completely useless as long as I kept him in combat.Using Slb right? Slb is also very strong. and Slb has 1-2 more stuns on the merge pet skills right? And again, it would be much more convincing if you use some other classes do completely counters Helio.

If you're not talking about a pure 1v1 scenario, two or more players should have an exceptionally easy time focusing the pet down. As Helio said above, the reason why core ranger is hot garbage in higher tiers is because any player(s) that understands how to counter this build will just nuke the pets every time the ranger pet swaps.

Honestly, this idea that "killing the pet doesn't work" or is "too hard" is just silly. The belief that all of these ranger mains and other top players are trying to deceive everyone is on the level of being a conspiracy theory.

And no, I kept killing his bird and tiger on my core ranger and Helio just ran around being unable to kill anyone all match.

I really dont understand, I tried ranger and Slb after reading this thread from yesterday. After 1-2 games, I dont find it hard to play and keep the pet alive. I control the pet to follow me if it is focused, and I swap pet when its low. And you also have the command heal that also heals up the pet right?

So you used core ranger. And Helio was not able to kill your pet. Then maybe he misplayed?. And again, I think your evidence does not support your claim. But hey, I would try out the strategy anyways. But again, I dont think it is that simply when the ranger control the pet better.

If you're on NA I can duel you on multiple classes on point and you can see if you can keep the pet alive against me. If you call the pet back and are forced to kite away, you lose the node. If I chase after you, you're forced to continue kiting away until your pet swap is back off cooldown. If you don't, the pet is dead and you're forced to leave the fight or fight at a severe disadvantage.

Helio was not able to kill my pets because he was using Knights amulet. The damage from his bird and tiger aren't enough to down my smokescale and gazelle. Like Helio said earlier, ranger does pretty trash damage without buffing our glass cannon pets. He said himself in

this post

, "If you want your pets to live on core you have to run Smokescale and Deer but then your damage is garbage." He also said that the only value ranger brings in ATs is decapping side nodes (because ranger is trash in larger fights) and even then, a good player will avoid your Point Blank Shot consistently and bait out the GS4 block and stow (like they would for a Spellbreaker's Full Counter which has less than half the cooldown) so you don't gain access to the knockback kick.

Also, if the enemy player is smart, they will kill the pet right after you pet swap. So, you would have to blow your heal to keep your pet alive or F3, run away, and hope I don't lock the pet down because your pet swap won't be up in time to save it.

I am not on NA unfortunately, but even if I was I would not be able to win because I just have like 30-40 mins on ranger and ranger is not as stupid as the Mesmer about 2-3 balance patch ago. Tbh, I agree that without the pet, core rangers loose significant dmg, especially in range. However, I prefer they balance in the way that buff core range's dmg a bit and only give pets some utility roles.

bait out the GS4 block and stow (like they would for a Spellbreaker's Full Counter which has less than half the cooldown.Despite the fact that baiting FC is a learn to play issue, ANET still nerfed it heavily. Longer CD, much lower DMG. So why it must be different when it comes to ranger or any other classes? And please, can you please compare the GS4 to the Shield instead of the FC... Shield stance has longer CD than GS4. And it can only block and has no counter attack procs. Also, rev shield has heal but, during that time revs cannot move. So I would say Anet should nerf the GS4 further.

shadowpass.4236 · April 7, 2020

@Crozame.4098 said:Despite the fact that baiting FC is a learn to play issue, ANET still nerfed it heavily. Longer CD, much lower DMG. So why it must be different when it comes to ranger or any other classes? And please, can you please compare the GS4 to the Shield instead of the FC... Shield stance has longer CD than GS4. And it can only block and has no counter attack procs. Also, rev shield has heal but, during that time revs cannot move. So I would say Anet should nerf the GS4 further.

Full Counter has an 8.75s traited cooldown compared to Ranger GS4's 20s traited cooldown which is the same as a traited SH5 on warrior.

Ranger GS4 has been nerfed repeatedly, especially in the past few balance patches. It most recently received a massive 10 second cooldown increase which nearly doubled its cooldown.

Dantheman.3589 · April 7, 2020

@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@Avatar.3568 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
\o/