Touch Ranger Nerf Idea

I bet half of all the people here supporting touch rangers are touch rangers themselves.

But I call for a nerf for warriors and assassins. I mean, who needs warriors and assassins when you have touch rangers right?

I bet half (or more) of all people here supporting a nerf are the W/Mos who got beaten 1v1, because they don't realize they can't solo everything, and Guild Wars is a TEAM game.

I call for a nerf to intelligence. Who needs it when you can join the moronic majority who're too lazy to use the counters available, right?

LOL Seriously though, if touch rangers were actually making certain classes useless by doing everything that that class could do only better, then nerf it. But thats soooooooooooo far from being true.

I don't touch...

If you're just looking to slow down the damage, a simple tweek to the recycle, say to 3 seconds from its current 2, would be a fair and balanced nerf allowing the build to survive. It could be retweeked back up to its current speed with Serphent's Quickness, but at the cost of losing their run buff while they attack, and their evasion.

Or it would force touchers to stack a 3rd damage skill onto their bar to go full spam, reducing the extra slots for evasion mellee/arrow counters. It would basically reduce the R/N back to pre-Factions, back when it was an unheard of build...but still quite effective against the unprepared (and the idiots) out there in PvP.

Nature's Renewal does what you suggest and its pwn sauce to a touch atm. A Ranger/Rt with Spirit killing skills can drop it when needed, and kill it when they're done to save their monks mana(I think; haven't tested in game yet, will tonight).

I still don't think R/Ns or their skills need a nerf. They're going to get one though, and right soon. Not because you people have complained but because Anet can view the server logs. They know that a build is being overused--why shouldn't it be if you Whammos won't bring counters or kite?--so something will have to be done to rebalance the game. I hope Touchers survive, even thrive through your idiocy, so that the metagame can evolve.

I hate the touch ranger build. I just dont want expertise or the other touch skills to get nefed because theres something that takes out W/mo's, and I think making Boon-prot have a few more disadvantages is a good thing.

Well I find it overall powerful because there's little to stop these skills other then running away from them. Due to the fact they 'steal' life even Aura of Lich, Reversal of Fortune, skills that protect versus damage like Protective Spirit, etc have little to no effect. You can't Backfire them either. In fact theres almost nothing you can do to stop them other then kill them as quickly as possible or Spiteful them. Any ideas? Maybe lower 'steal' damage since its a type of 'damage' that has nothing to really stop it.

I'm a ranger and I use pin down. Then the touch ranger uses plague touch on some unfortunate fool that runs by and BAM! He's still running and touching me.

Kiting from touch rangers or 3 warriors on 1 touch ranger = loss of time for capping, which leaves the enemy team free to cap.

Well, where to go with this one...

I refuse to play a Touch Ranger. It's effective, but quite annoying really, and I only see them (as others have stated) in Random Arenas and the Alliance Battles.

If played right, a good interrupt / degen will take them out. You can't complain a whole lot abot the cast time either, because you notice the same skills popping up in repetition, so any Chimp can learn to anticipate when to slap a Distracting Shot.

I play a R/W, Two weapon sets, at least one melee weapon. It's funny to see the little toucher squirm when I pull out an axe just to knock him out of his precious stance and then start Distracting him to death

Take that Michael Jackson!!

So basically, your argument that they're overpowered is that your allies are too dumb to kite. Warriors must be overpowered too then, those same morons won't kite them either. That's the problem with RA/AB, people are extremely dumb with shitty builds, and any build that works can roll over them. That'll never change. Try playing somewhere where you can choose your entire team, and you'll never have trouble with touchers again. You might even fight against a build that's actually dangerous. Wow!

To everyone wanting to weaken or change touch rangers, yes they are annoying and it is another gimmic build that requires little or no skill. I have to agree with Chicken Ftw on countering builds though. For the warriors that can't beat a touch ranger in AB, get creative I just slap bleeding, poison, and cripple on them and bam dead touch ranger. Touch rangers aren't overpowered they are just lame and annoying, every build has a counter, you just need to be smart enough to find it

2 things i'm wondering about.

1. Have you ever heard of Seeking Arrows, Rigor Mortis or Way of the Fox?

2. Has there actually been a single mention in this thread involving increasing the recharge of the Touch skills? Even if its only to 5 seconds. Does make em less predictable to interrupt though

i dont like the idea of increasing the recharge because these are necro skills.

its detrimental to the necromancer class if a skill being used by another class gets nerfed.

Thats why my suggestion is to tweak expertise a little bit without affecting other skills.

I want to nerf it, because it's stupid and lame.

It's also skillless and this game is suposed to be centered around skill, lets keep it that way.

Not because it's good, it's very easy to counter also, distract shot, diversion, cripple, degen....


IMO, there is no reason to keep popular builds that don't require a brain, it will kill the community slowly if not dealt with.
Because if we don't deal with it, new people to the game will think
"Hey, nice build, i'll play that and never gain any skill, because they didn't know about regular builds"

That's the same reason, that i think IWAY should die.
Don't know how to kill iway though, this isn't the place to talk about it either.

Nerfing touch = 6-7 recharge on touch skills. There is no reason to keep them at so low a recharge anyway, nobody uses them.
To compensate for this, maybe the damage could be increased to like 11..109.

Thats why i only said 2 seconds increase. If your necro is getting close enough to need to cast Vamp Touch or Bite twice in 3 seconds, he's probably leeching your monks energy anyway. Its small enough to not affect a necro, but big enough to stop them been so insanely spammable, plus it doesnt mean nerfing future builds by pissing around with Expertise.

Congrats, i stopped caring about your post after that... If this game is centred around skill, then be skillfull enough to continue to counter it whenever you face it, we can't ask for much more.

Yeah because Touch Rangers totally bring imbalance to high-end PvP. It's not like 10 out of the 16 teams in the GW:FC Season 3 Play-offs will be Touch Ranger teams. They get used in RA/TA/AB only, who cares?..

I don't think they should nerf Touch Rangers. Today I beaten quite a few just by simply making them Poisoned/Bleeding/Degen and cripple. They suck at that point. Drain their health or shoot at them with the bow and just keep your distance from them because they need to touch you to live, alot like Vampires. That's what I think of them anyways, kooler don't you think?

This has been stated a number of times by many people, but what the heck, once more with feeling!

Touching isn't a problem in GvG, its a non-factor. Its a non factor in TA. In RA it can cause trouble for certain people, but I'd rather have a toucher chasing me anyday of the week than a compotent axe or hammer wielding warrior. Quite frankly, they aren't even in the same league. The main source of trouble seems to be for people in AB. But AB, to echo myself earlier and many others, is _NOT_ an adequate testing field for when something is broken or overpowered. This reminds of the my magic playing days...bear with me,

Imagine a certain certain deck that is powerful, easy to assemble and play..lets call it 'Sligh'. Now this deck was played by Joe at the local store tournament every weekend. Now, Joe beat a lot of people sensless with sligh. In fact, they never had a chance given the cards they had assembled. Now Joe didn't beat everyone, and didn't win every Sunday although sometimes he won since sligh was a decent deck and would have good mathcups against certain other decks in the metagame. Now imagine Joe takes his deck to a pro tour qualifier. Suddenly Joe gets his butt kicked. People are prepared for his little deck. They know how to play against it, have made decks with his deck in mind since its so common. The quality of players here is also generally better.

Local weekend magic is like alliance battles. GvG and such are something like pro tour qualifiers. And its in later circumstances that the power level of a build should be judged. If Sligh were constantly winning against the top competetition so that it had virtually no weakness, then it should have been nerfed, but it wasn't. If Touchers were constantly winning against the top competition so that it had virtually no weakness, then it should be nerfed, but it isn't. Bottom line _its apparant effectiveness in AB is not an accurate reflection of its power level_.

I totally hate touchies but leave everything as it is. Someone will crack them someday and I'm trying to be that someone .

Yes Touch Rangers are annoying, But I like the skills when I use my necro so nerfing them to me is like cutting off your nose to spite your face to me. when use like that they're unbalanced but with normal cost use they're perfectly balanced and a way to get around prot enchants that are overused for everything at this point.

Why stop at one, I know several. Here's the 3 best I've found that eat them alive.

We'll start by fighting fire with fire, another build that focuses on using a primary professions attribute to boost skills it was not intended to.

Me/E

Earthquake
Glyph of Energy/Churning Earth/Water Trident/Echo
Aftershock
Crystal Wave(clusters)/Obsidian Flame(soloers)
Earth Attunement/Channeling (a must have, your primary energy managers even with Glyph)
Ward Against Foes/Grasping Earth
Stoning/Stone Daggers
Ether Feast

12 in Earth
16 in FC for full benifit
rest in Inspiration if you bring self heals (you should)

Glyph is the best Elite of the choices given, synergizing well with your primary weapon: Earthquake. This requires a healer for backup and is extremely good at 2-man control capping in AB. Against a four man touch group you can drop 300 dmg AoE on their heads in 3 seconds. After dropping Ward Foes or (my preference) Grasping Earth as they get up finish with Stoning or Stone daggers. Trust me, you won’t be kiting FROM them for very long.

And Oh yes! It's all back up and ready to go in 15 seconds...including most of your mana.

Honest Dom Me/* This old chestnut can shutdown anything for a good long while. Energy is an issue for young mesmers.

Minimum 12 Dom
10 FC Minimum
rest in heal attribute or Inspiration

Diversion
Arcane Echo/Echo
Cry of Frustration
Complicate
Energy Drain/Panic/Wastrol's Worry if using Echo/Mantra of Recovery
Blackout
Self heal

Better for 1v1ing a touch or skill spammer, this build relies on Diversion for primary shut down. E Drain gives your spams longevity, Panic gives a second R/N something to think about while he tries to spam you to save your primary target. Echo/Arcane Echo gives full shutdown for 12 seconds with 2 diversions, but most R/Ns spam through if you hit them while they are attacking something else (like your warrior or monk). Again, a healer is preferred for backup as you should not be running around all over the place by yourself.

A note: Diversion’s recycle addition continues after target death and rez.


Many of you should have seen this critter running round AB. I know I have.

Me/N illusionist

Imagined Burden/Ethereal Burden
Shared Burden/Fevered Dreams/Energy Drain
Conjure Nightmare
Images of Remorse
Conjure Phantasm
Energy tap
Accumulated Pain/Illusion of haste (with Plague touch)
Epidemic/Ether Feast/Plague touch

Shared Burden is your best bet for an Elite as touch rangers tend to bunch up in clusters or solo. Slow them as they cluster, kite and degen, then drop Accumulated Pain on your primary target followed up with Epidemic to give them a really bad (and short!) day. This is a kite heavy build, and an old hat. Many of you should have seen this pwning them in AB by now.

Once more, you should have a healer on your team and remain with them (are we starting to get the picture?) if you want to survive long. Otherwise, people will see you running around all by your lonesome and stomp you.

And there you have it folks. 3 seperate recipies for pwn sauce. Just add chicken and stir.

Anyone spot the holes in that argument.

Run away from them, and let your team mates kill him, stop tying to tank it.


Seriosly my healing monk cant kill a warrior attacking me, does that mean all warriors need nerfing because all i can do is kite?

Good point. ;-)

I find it so funny when people start getting owned by some build and don't want to switch theirs to counter it.

I've been playing a touch ranger since yesterday - I wanted to see what everybody is moaning about. And you know what? I found out that there's not much to moan about.

Touch Rangers COMPLETELY lack the ability to snare their enemies - and every attempt to change that would result in this build sucking. ;-) A Monk can run circles around a touch ranger - wow - they hit him for 65 (sometimes for 68 with BM 13) every now and then - one healing spell and you're fit again. Dodge and Zojun's Hate don't help much - the touches have an aftercast which makes you stop running after each use - even with a 33% speed bonus you will catch your enemy 1-2 times at most. And then you have to use OoB from time to time... And then you have to heal yourself with the touches again... But then you can't cause you can't catch anybody etc. etc.

Note that I'm describing a situation where you don't have any counters against them. If you do, then they're SO fried, you wouldn't believe it.

Even a good shock warrior can own a touch ranger.

There are so many overused builds - many are better and many are worse than touch rangers.

I really, really hate the nerf-spiral that appears after a while in every game. Instead of making some spells/skills/professions stronger and better suited to fight popular builds, the community and game designers start nerfing everything so that after a while we have a bunch of useless skills and professions that are totally no fun to play.

Another thing is: everybody claims that touch rangers are so easy to play. How many of these people have actually played a touch ranger? How is playing a touch ranger easier than playing e.g. an Ele, or a W for that matter? That your two attack skills recharge faster? Yet you still have to use OoB wisely, choose your targets carefully, switch them often and use your defensive skills as well. I've been playing every single profession both in PvE and PvP and I know what I'm talking about. There are only a few builds that are hard to play and hence nobody (read: no skill-less newbie - experienced players do use them =) uses them.

If you want to nerf touch rangers, then nerf all the W/Mos with Mending/Healing Hands/Healing Breeze etc. first - I mean - is there a build that is more overused than this one? Yet nobody complains cause everybody knows meanwhile how to deal with them.

P.S. Of course I KNOW that the touch rangers will be nerfed no matter what, so writing about them is kind of a waste of time. I just had to speak my mind on that matter though. =)

touch rangers are osem dont power down the ranger make other classes more powerfull

Just give the touch skills a longer recharge, not absurdley (my apologies for spelling errors :/)long, just something like 5 or 6 seconds. So they aren't spammable.

Fire nuker can kill a toucher, so does poison arrow ranger, mesmer. why nerf it, think of a build to kill them. and if u ask if I ever kill a toucher with those three profession before , yes many times in Alliance Battle. but its not 100% time you win. so goes for every other build.