Something must be done about ranger interrupts

Try taking 3. Composite, Eternal, Ivory & Horn bows also have 0.5 seconds flight times and longer range then a Short Bow.

As far as interrupts go, its most definitely not easy and not fool proof.

Well that is a bow ranger in a nutshell really, the stacking of all buffs to create the omgwtf hit me effect. Warriors can do it too, but really requires another character to augment them to be effective. The argument can even extend into the energy drain realm with debilitating shot as its more of a constant drain with the energy spent in favor of the ranger due to expertise, while dealing reasonable damage every attack. While the mesmer equivilants are not available as often and not all of them deal damage, in addition to the other effects being dependant on the current energy pool effected.

All in all, the direct comparison is dilluted as expertise effects everything and every attack causes damage, while mesmer equivilants can do one of many things if the skill in question is a spell.

Well things revolving around ether renewal need to change as much as elements within it could stand to change as well. Although even some adjustments to it could easily shelve the skill as a copy of a non-eliete skill.

This particular instance with rangers is not really cut and dry either, because several different elements provide tilt towards rangers when comparing to any other interupt method. It might be a less hazy comparison if, for instance, savage shot was long bow only, while distracting shot was short bow only, and so on breaking up the combinations like warriors are forced to. Then again, none of the skills are adrenalin dependant either, so even then the comparison still falls closer to mesmer skills, which are available far less often and not always causing damage.

You also have to note the inherent synergy provided within the class. Fast casting doesnt do much for the mesmer style interupts, while expertise makes the ranger skills easier to sustain over time, making the refresh times a non-issue for reigning in the skills. Then there is also things like oath shot that can recycle them even faster, which can be un-neccacary, but i did happen to run into a r/me that mixed in some inspiriation counters that seemed to work better than if a mesmer were running those skills due to oath shot.

Although i do wonder about the timing of things like energy gain and drain for rangers as well, considering the way expertise cuts down cost for some skills into the 2e range. Say for instance, a zealous string on a bow causes the energy gain before or after the effect spirit shackles might have on the attack. Just in casual observation of using shackles on some rangers, there were quite a few that didnt seem to care and kept on using skills as normal while the hex was up and getting drained in other ways.
It must be my imagination, but it almost seems like rangers are able to interupt their current attack animation sequence with their attacks almost seemingly bpyassing any pause between shots, which almost create instances with multiple arrows in flight to the same target at the same time. I say it must be my imagination, because something else like TF has to be going on in order to allow the bow attack time to refresh fast enough to let that situation persist on every attack. Although, i am not sure, since i havent really played around with every bow combination with the different assiting bow prep skills and spirits.
More like act like a miss, if they were to follow the mesmer pattern.

*Side note
I do wonder why skills and spells are interupted if the skill is not actually being used. For instance, an interupt hits a character intending to use a skill, but is required to move before the action takes place, yet the interupt stops the skill even though it hasnt been activated yet.

While I don't likethe idea of these spells being used for damage output, I don't think its fair that once again people are asking for nerfs of Rangers once again.

Yes NR sprit spam was bad and needed to be balanced, but now this? I mean its next to impossible for Rangers to find paries in the HoH these days.

I been able to join IWAY teams by being a rapid fire Interrupt ranger, and now you want to take this away from me as well... great!



That's my point of view as a full time Ranger, I'm tired of standing about in the HoH and not getting invites to parties.

Leave my ranger alone!

If you think that something is too hard for you to counter, maybe you should improve your own skill as a player instead of complaining when people beat you.

Go to diviners ascent with a caster and go kill a few rockshots. You will know what distracting shot means and you will appreciate that most rangers don't time it so accurately all the time.

but but but... why nerf ranger interupts? isn't that what they are supposed to do? why not nerf the damage that eles can do? or the healing of monks? or the disruption of mesmers?

just because people are finally using rangers as they were intended, why nerf them? and they obviously are intended to be used for interrupting, they have all those interrupt skills.

there are more ways than beetles under the sun of countering interrupts. warriors are supposed to deal with that.
throw dirt you say? warriors cunning say i. pure strike say i. seeking blade say i.
or just disrupt them when they try to do it.
for every skill there is a myriad that counter it.

i have never played a ranger for any great length of time. but from teaming with them i get the impression that they are meant to interupt. if they can't do that then they have no use.

why not nerf all the disrupting skills of warriors? they have loads. i can shut down any caster with Bulls charge, hamstring and oh so many others.

This is the problem interrupt chaining creates. They work like spells, having a cast time (but no associated cooldown), so you can fire them off as fast as you can queue them up. Firing off punishing, savage, distracting in 1.5 seconds (and getting the associated damage buffs with each arrow) puts any other type of bow ranger to shame damage wise, plus you're getting interrupts on each shot.
In the time that you can fire off 3 interrupts, you can fire 1 normal bow attack (if you're using the fastest bow and are using an IAS buff). Add some recharge mods in there, and you can chain certain combos as long as your energy stays up, essentially ignoring the refire rate of your bow. So the question I put to all those people going *omfg don't nerf my rangar plz I <3 him* is why you would take anything but interrupt spam if you want to do damage with a bow ranger? Doesn't there seem to be a major balance problem with the class internally (ie a number of skills that have been made redundant by the new changes).

Now all the damage focussed bow attack skills have been at their current values and been considered close to balanced for a long time now. Recent changes have allowed a combo which produces signifigantly higer damage than the previous benchmark. What can you infer from that?

Are you serious?

Even mesmer interrupts are not even half that good. If you are wanding
someone, for instance, and you click an interrupt -- you finish your wand
attack -- which almost always causes your interrupt to be far from .25s.
So, if you are an interrupt mesmer, you really have to forgo your wand
attack or you undermine your entire build. Are you saying that these
bow attacks don't honor the refire rate of the bow? That's a serious bug;
not a ballance issue or a nerf issue, that's an honest to goodness bug.

When a ranger clicks an interrupt skill, they should finish their current
bow attack; and the next bow attack (with it's normal, modified as it may
be, refire rate) shouldhave that "skill" replace the normal damage that
would be done. If they don't want the "delay", they should stop firing
their bow like a mesmer would stop using their wand. If it works any
other way... it's just ... broken.

How much energy does a ranger have?
Unless you're an E/R you won't have that much.
Fireing Savage, Punishing and Distracting should take 25 energy on my calculator.

So, how many enemies can you take out, before you run out of energy?
What good is a fast recharging spell, if you don't have the energy to fire it as often as required?

And the above example of 3 interrupts on a single target in 1.5 seconds?
Sounds like a waste of resources to me.

That you can counter casters with a ranger...as the game is supposed to be, rangers have the options to go for disruption, damage dealing or beastmasters and btw, the pets also have disruption attacks now.

Elementalists have glyphs and other protection spells against attacks such as these, they would have to sacrifice one or two damage dealing slots to take these along, just as the disrupting ranger is forced to give up skills to be a pure disruptor.

I dont see an issue here, first off all timing bow attacks to disrupt casters is not at all easy, second, disruption attacks are not free, energy of 2? sure, if you dont mind putting 16 pts into expertise, what does that leave you for other attributes?

But hey, go ahead, nerf the disruption rangers so we can fill GW with untouchable casters in future and while you're at it, nerf the mesmers too and take away the disruption attacks from the warriors.

expertise 14... all of them...

on topic... this build works well in random arena... but in tomb they will need a large number to do it (my ranger build still > punishing shot on 1vs1 ).

I have to admit it is far more effective than any other ranger build out there so far... in terms of saying "this build is unbalance" you should say more that "there aren't any reason left to use ranger unless you use punishing build" (although I would like to argue that... there are like 2 more build out there that can do nearly the same thing if not better)

and anyone know about hornbow and not using hornbow with this build is nuts.

Ranger interrupts: 75% intuition, 25% luck.

Now that Aegis no longer affects your Hero, ranger interrupts mean that unless you blind/spirit/price/blurredvision the ranger, or guardian spam, one ranger can basically keep a hero from capping indefinitely.

I think I'd seriously break into tears if the skills got hit big. (a little longer recharge time, preparations not counting.. I could deal with that, but other things, mmm.)

Which affects a tiny part of the game and could much more easily and logically be fixed by adjusting the hero, not the rangers.

You think rangers are only about four interupt skills or they are worthless? Its obvious you don't have a clue about the class. Mis-information like that is killing us rangers.


Why do you people refuse to group with rangers and then spend every amount of your free time trying to bring the class down? Begging for ranger nerfs constantly whats with all the ranger hate in GW? These threads are sickening why dont you eles/warriors/monks get your own game if you hate the existance of rangers so much?

Amazing. Are you people just scanning this thread for the words "ranger" and "nerf" and posting whenever both occur at once? Note: If you're not currently running this build, and a nerf happens to reduce the efficiency of this build, your little pve pet ranger build is not going to be worse. None of you so far have stated exactly why skills based on interruption should do more damage than the ranger skills devoted to damage.

The following arguments are irrelevant in this discussion:

"This and this skill or this build counters these rangers!"
- Great! You found a counter! Does this mean that every single person here calling this build overpowerd are ignorant to the fact that this super counter you found exists? No. Most likely, everyone here trying to prove that something's not balanced, are complaining because your so called "counter" is either not effective enough, too costly or useless in any other situation. So you found out how to put empathy and blind on one or 2 of there rangers. Oh no, what will the 5 ranger 3 monk team do now! Certainly, there's no possibility that the monks are.....good? Or maybe even the slight possibility that these rangers spamming interrupts will control each their target, wear them down then spike together for the win? (thus "accidently" interrupting your crazy counter). The "there's a counter to this" argument carries no weight in any balance discussion, and especially not this one.

"It's hard enough for my ranger to find a group!"
- First of all, if you're talking about PvE, get out of this thread. If you're talking about PvP, rangers are usefull in many builds, and they don't have to be spamming high damage interrupts to fit in either....well, until savage shot became stupid atleast. The fact of the matter is, most pugs picking random people in tombs districts are a waste of your time. Find a group of friends or a guild. Make builds together (include atleast 1 ranger), and wollah. You've got a group with a ranger! Are you happy? If this fails, learn to not be a scrub at GW and be able to play other classes.

"This is just the flavor of the month, just like air spike! You're all just too dumb to fight it."
- It's the flavor of the month for a reason Einstein, and that's because it works. Sure, it can be fought against. You can use the terrain etc., but all that does is makes the ranger who wants you step up to your face. Take a minute to use the thing above your neck for a second and imagine, they have 5 rangers running similiar builds. You have 3-4 monks. If these guys want to make sure that your monks aren't casting many things of much use, they will, and in the mean time, they're dealing as sufficient damage as any "normal" build would, if not more.

"I'm tired of everyone calling NERF! NERF! NERF! whenever something's good."
- Listen, there's a fine line between good and crazy good. Punishing/quickshot - savage - distracting just happens to be crazy good, and unfair at that. Sure, there are many morons out there who post how they feel flare is overpowered because they lost an arena game to it while running their awesome necro/ranger pet guy, but when you see a discussion like this where people who actually know what they're talking about are agreeing that this combination is in fact slightly out of balance, calling it "a typical NERF! NERF! NERF! whine" is just being ignorant. Pay attention. Look at the matter at hand. Things here are not balanced.

I'm reporting anyone who attempts to use any of the above arguments in this thread, for stupidity.

Most of those who do agree that the interrupts are getting out of hand are those who play the game testing these things, and running abusive stuff like this all day long, including myself. We're not "whining" or "complaining" that things are unbalanced because we're losing to it. We're saying it's slightly unbalanced because we want a level battlefield where the fights are actually interesting. Right now, if I'm going to put a ranger into a team build, I see no reason why it should'nt be an interrupt ranger, even if I'm looking for damage. That shouldn't be the case. Penetrating shot etc. should have their uses too.

Edit: "Moron" removed.

Cleaned up sterile rant posts.

I think shinsei gave a blunt but good overview of why they didn't bring anything to the thread. We encourage constructive discussion, so you are much welcome to disagree. Just don't forget to use a *real* argument with solid backup, not the just the same old generic statements we can find in 2344 threads. Thanks.

@Shinsei: you are strongly invited to edit your post and to remove flame baits. Calling someone a moron isn't necessarily the best way of getting your point across.

"SHIELDS UP" For the win, good game rangers...

that's a very good point...the rest of what you said was fluff to fill out a long post.

FrogDevourer: funny how you would have taken the initiative to edit the post of anyone else using flamebait...not saying anything other than it's funny.

I rarely take the time to edit someone else's post. I usuall hit the delete button. This thread can be interesting provided that both sides bring interesting material to the discussion. Shinsei is famous for his aggresive tone, but his last post do contain enough arguments to deserve a second chance. If you have a problem with that, use a PM. Thanks.

edit again - sry, not helpful. Meh.

could've done without the last part. I love playing Ranger in PvP, I don't run this build, was just hoping outloud that interrupts wouldn't be screwed too bad in a change, assuming they were changed.

After looking more at the damage and even using it a few times (in Random Arenas, and then multiplying what I was doing by 5-6), well, that's alot of damage for firing off a few interrupts. ;p in my opinion, I think the biggest change would be damage, and your suggestion about having them ignore the effects of preperations.

the point is that yes its ok to have interupts and yes its ok to have high ranged damage but no its not ok to stack the shit together to the point that a team can be shut down.

people compare it to the mesmers interupt, and i agree its not the same. if mesmers could cast 3 interupts in 1.5 seconds that also did 200+ damage people would be SCREAMING nerf.

also, another part of the problem is ONE ranger isnt imbalanced, 5 is. thats the problem with fotm. you aint beating a good ranger spike team with a balance build. there are builds that counter it quite effectively but then you are defenseless against other builds.

Its not about this perticullar build, you are talking about skills all rangers use so, it afftects all rangers who use the skill for anything and all rangers PvP or PvE have a right to respond. So stop trying to eliminate the voice of all the people whom would be affected by your proposal.

Thats extremely relavent and proves it should not be nerfed just because you find it a pain when others are dealing with it.

Your negative ranger propaganda reinforces this classist behavior making it extremely relevent.

You have called people stupid, ignorant, morons, scrubs and more in your post only because they disagree with you and your weak proposal. Yet, you think you should somehow be taken as an expert and not the immature kid you are coming of as? I dont think so.

But are they overpowering against a mixed party or against a caster party? All that damage to casters doesnt mean much if tried against warriors, so again, this whole argument revolves around the specialized group builds for PvP.

That to me is a very flawed argument to take measures against the entire profession of rangers.

watch everyone start using shield up and shield of deflection soon...

This is what's going to happen if nerfs do happen.

Ranger interrupts no longer do damage.

Ranger interrupts will be far and few between.

The end.

This is because the nerfs so far have come to appease every complaint people have, just look at what happend to spirits. Instead of fixing one aspect of spirits that was causing a number of complaints (mainly the ability to spam them) they "fixed" everything that was a problem.

The stopped the spam but also stopped spirits from affecting each other. They nerfed NR and QZ and Fertile Season.

My point is that any nerfs coming won't just simply "fix" the underlying problem....but rather "fix" all the symptons and basically overnerf.

And yeah there are some really good counters out there, why not use them? And please don't say "Just because there are counters doesnt mean it's not overpowered" because there ARE valid counters.

Bull, any change to skills affects everyone playing a profession, it even affects anyone who plays against a specific profession. If you cannot see beyond your pathetic little PvP world then thats too bad for you. GW is not just about PvP, period.

Oh, thats simple, its a reward for skill as a ranger to watch your target and anticipate his move instead of just firing arrows at anything that moves.

well, if you think they should keep the stacking of damage and interupts for rangers then i think they should do the same for mesmer too since they also have both abilities. that would be funny.

Be a ranger, interrupt back. End of "arguement."

at high expertise and high marksmanship alone, a ranger can almost spam interrupt bow attacks and deal good dmg at the same time.

rangers can interrupt everyone. most of the interrupt bow attacks halt action (melee attack, bow attack, spell/skill casting, running?, eating? etc). cheap to use and fast recharge.

kinda overpowered.

I've been running an interrupt ranger with serpents. I think the problem comes in because of savages recharge being only 5 seconds. It ends up being the link with punishing and distracting so that there's no point where I'm not just going back and forth between those 3 skills except to put serpents back up. So if I'm on a caster, there's practically no chance that they're going to get a spell off because I'm only using interrupts and doing an obscene amount of damage at that.

Punishing is an elite and it's not as good as savage at all. It needs more downtime.

Problem with that is it doesn't take any skill to interrupt with this build because all your attacks are interrupts and you can use them constantly with no downtime.

Great solution. Everyone can be a ranger and its all about who can smash the keyboard faster. That's the way to bring longevity to a game.

Cut the damage on the interrupts that rangers have. (It should be damage or interruption, not both)

Fix the Ghostly Hero AI in HoH.

Or better yet change the style of the HoH match from capture the altar to something else.

Problem solved.

Thats exactly what I was thinking.Either Interuption or Damage, Not both.

Which is the main problem behind this Ranger Build.

Also, the Interupts need longer Recharges.For what they are they should take longer to use again.

in regards to the longer recharges, (yes it can be a strain on energy), but diversion does basically the same thing (aside from interrupting the initial action, and the recharge owns distracting), as distracting shot. I think the initial bow damage and preparations shouldn't count for the skill, and instead it should say, (like distracting shot), this attack only does 'x' amount of damage.

and as said, fix the ghostly AI and buh-bye.

Punishing does damage no matter what and it interrupts. It's also elite. Savage does damage only if it interrupts a spell. Distracting does no damage but interrupts skills and spells and increases downtime. All well and good on their own. Get the three of them together with the ability to machine gun them out and you have a problem.

Distracting (5 energy), Punishing (10 energy), Savage (10 energy) Shots interrupt action.

action = melee attacks, bow attacks, signet casting, skill usage, spell casting, or maybe pet attacks.

concussion shot = only spells @ 25 energy

weird no?

at Maxed expertise and Maxed marksmanship with distracting , punishing, savage and Read the wind with Sundering Bow, your ranger is a winner.

Rangers not running this build, but those who are running a few of the skills from this build are not running those skills with the intention of dishing out a horrible amount of damage quickly. They're running those skills to tactically interrupt certain skills they don't want to see played on the field. That was the innitial intention of interrupts, and that's how they should be in a balanced game. If you had bothered to read my suggestion to fix this, you would have noticed that it does nothing to ruin anyone else's ranger build, and it hardly "ruins" this either. It just reduces the damage of it by a reasonable amount, and that's by having the interrupt skills ignore (not cancel) any preperation bonuses currently on you.

I find it a pain? Kid, I'm running this build. Pay attention.

Negative ranger propoganda? Do you not want ranger builds that utilize skills with normal attack speeds to be good again? Because as of now, they're just subpar compared to the interrupt spike.

Maybe if people came with viable arguments as to why the interrupt spike isn't better damage than skills meant for damage, I might not catagorize them in to a large group of people. But as long as people continue the "Don't nerf my ranger!" replies, they're nothing other than what I had just called them.

While I agree with you that they might have overfixed spirits just a tiny bit, I don't agree with you about fixing this. Sure, they might overfix it, as they have done before, but this discussion is about finding the right fix. So far, I honestly believe that the right fix is ignoring preperations on interrupts. You say the symptoms to that would be that interrupts are useless? I beg to differ, as myself and many others have always ran atleast 1 tactical interrupt on a ranger. When you're a ranger with nothing but interrupts, and using them to trigger damage, you're not using those skills to their intent. Interrupts need to be tactical, yet cheap and easy. The last 2 are there, but currently, the first isn't.

Did I not just explain why the "there's counters!" argument is irrelevant? I would agree, if only these "counters" were something that could be used everywhere. Shields Up is far from that, and for it to be effective you'd want them on your monks or any unit close to them for that matter, and you'd want 2 copies. You're most likely ending up specializing a build just to face this, and ending up with a weak build against anything else.

We on IRC would all like to thank you for the good laugh we had from this comment. We needed the humor . Anyways, if you're looking for a serious answer to your statement, refer to my first paragraph in this post.

That's exactly what you're not doing with this build. You're smashing these 3 skills constantly, interrupting randomly and triggering high damage. Is that really ranger skill?

-Sighs-

And a mesmer completely shutting down opponents differs how? A good ranger is one of a very few counters to mesmers. They screw with rangers then i want across the board nerfs to the ways mesmers shutdown their opponents, especially against melee.

What's sad in fact is how people can't see why there are so many complaints.

Let's see how a ranger can interrupt :

1_Choking gaz + Quick shot
2_Incendiary arrows + Tiger's fury
3_Punishing shot + Savage shot + Distracting shot (+ Serpent quickness)

The first combo is balanced because of the duration and cost of Choking gaz. Moreover, the damage this combo deals isn't that great.

The second combo is balanced because Incendiary arrows has a very short duration (even shorter than Choking gaz) and a fairly long recast time.

The third combo is imbalanced because you can use it with Kindle arrows, and have a better interrupt rate than you would have with Choking gaz or Incendiary arrows, and deal a great amount of damage, almost CONSTANTLY.

/agree with shinzen.

The rangers interrupts don't need to be nerfed, the damage that they do needs to be nerfed (for lack of a better word). The fact that a ranger running interrupts can do more damage than a ranger running quickshot is laughable.

I'm waiting for Echo + Debil to get popular, and see the response that gets.