the poor ranger.

i was looking over the changes made to the ranger... all of the damage when down. and although i dont plan on using beast mastery, lost most of those skills too. whether they were worthy skills or not, i dont know. still looks like bad news for the class though.

i think tigers fury really got it

These changes are made to introduce balance into the game - always that. If some ranger skills got nerfed, it's because they were too powerful, or other changes were made that required they be changed.

With only 8 skill slots I am beginning to wonder if my Ranger/Monk needs to be taking up slots with Charm Animal, Comfort Animal and any animal fighting skills.

Having played a ranger for every beta, I can honestly say that the nerf is nothing extreme. Rangers are very powerful. It does suck that I will be doing less damage now (though who knows if things will stay how they are now for release), but the ranger is still powerful enough to play.

And concerning Beast Mastery, I think it's a really messed up attribute with skills. I personally preferred the calls, but I am still willing to give it a chance during release. Hope for new pets too

Rangers can still nuke the place from a distance, i wouldnt call them weak.

And poision stacks well with other conditions

Rangers didn't get nerfed, they got balanced. I played a Ranger all weekend in PvP and didn't have trouble killing, it just took a bit longer than I was used to.

It was more of a pet nerf than a ranger nerf...

As pet now, are probably less effective than before in terms of damage dealing... before we can put up a few shout and let the pet do everything else with just 10 or less energy for 30-60 sec. Now, we have to actually spend 5-10 energy for 1 hit that do as much as our old pet... =(

Regardlessly... I am still going to get a pet.

I really don't understand why they nerf batted something already sucky (pets).

The pet with buffs actually do quite alot of damages, the only thing that held them back was their IQ (and still is).

Now that they so called "improved IQ" really didn't do much in my opinion... except now they also do less damages with higher cost... I really don't quite get it. Now, I can only think of one way to use pet effectively, and it is being a primary ranger with high expertise... I am assuming thats their goal. Ok... maybe 2-3 ways... E with ether prodigy can do it quite well and mesemer with energy stealing... but then that really cut the the users ability to do something, while forced to use pet as main damage that is not so great.

Oh well... at least I can use these pet attacks while I am still casting something.

if you think pets suck, i think you haven't had a good pet.

I had a cat and it was a good pet. I just called targets and it would attack them.

How do you call targets now? It isn't control-click anymore!

It worked for me last beta, did you double click?

I've been playing a ranger for all the betas, and I think there great. Even with the damage lowered for attacks, if you get a team of rangers together and all of them have trap skills, they can take down a mob easily. Also stacking bleeding and posion togther works well too.

Control + Space (or the action key) calls. Control-click just selects. You can toggle this if you wish.

The change from Calls to pet attacks was a good one, but pets are still a joke in PvP. They take up way too much room on your skill bar for their effectiveness. Now in PvE where they can 'tank' for you, well, that's a different story. There pets are merely bad.

Peace,
-CxE

Yet I still don't get why I see so many pets in PvP!

Don't they get that they're a joke?

I just think that there are a lot more great skills a Ranger could be using instead of wasting a slot with Charm Animal which does nothing but ensure that your pet stays there, and the pet skills are ok, but my Ranger/monk has some good fighting/healing skills that could be used in those slots. I may start a Ranger with a pet and one without and see how they compare.

They changed it to one click to select and double click to call. Took me a while to figure it out.

As for the pets being weaker, they may be, but there were several fights where my level 16 Lynx was the only thing still alive and fighting after a large mob attacked our group. We were all watching it, yelling "Go cat, Go!"