Something must be done about ranger interrupts

Lordy. I never said the game is or should be like life. I don't think that. I just think that that particular characteristc a of ranger is important and used an example. This is why I hardly ever post on boards, people get really edgy and defensive x10000.

I think the basis of his post was that while you are saying that getting hit by an arrow would be distracting, how much more distracting would getting hit by a fireball be? I do agree that there needs to be some underlying realism in a game but it has to be relative realism.

I favor nerfs and buffs alike for certain skills.
Frailty and Ether Renewal needs to tone down.
I stated earlier that Savage Shot needs it too.
Mind Freeze and Holy Veil could use some sort of buff.
Im glad the Savage Shot & Punishing Shot got the buffs they did in casting time.

I dont think a balanced skill is a counterable skill.
Or therefore, all skills are balanced and will forever be because diversion counters every skill.

It was stated that interrupts should be arrows indepented of thier prep.
And, Id still apply a 8 sec recharge to Savage Shot.
This doesnt take away the value of a good interrupting ranger on a team.
Or a good damage dealing ranger.
One or the other, or a little of both seems fair enough.
Its how it used to be, and no one had problems with it until just recently.\

Ummm. I dont know.
I think if you removed prep effects from interpting skills youd still get the desired effect.
Kindle, Choking, Ingnite are the only preps that hit if the arrow doesnt.
I dont think conjures should hit. But these preps are AOE, so it just seems right that they do hit.

Ok. So, to recap there are four factors which give rise to this abuse:

1. These 3 "interrupt" spells can be chain-casted right after each other
to deliver 3-4 attacks in a 2s period (each attack is .5s and there is
no after-cast or waiting for the bow attack to recharge).

2. The recharge on these skills (esp Savage Shot, a non-elite) is 5s,
which makes the entire interrupt sequence spammable every 5s.

3. These interrupts allow both a conjure enchantment and a preparation
stance to pile on extra damage.

4. Modifiers like the Zealous bow string assume a break-even if you're
attacking at the bow refire rate (1.5 to 2s); here, the refire rate is .5s

So. What we have is the classic symptom of something "broken", that is,
a skill is used when it's clear that the skill description is not what is
important -- but rather the side effect. In this case, it's the rapid-fire
nature of the interrupts. You chain 3 interrupts in a row (all within 2s),
you're doing serious overkill on the interrupt -- your target has already
been interrupted once; and the other two interrupts are clearly wasted.
What these interrupts become is a broken "delivery" mechanism for a
zealous bow string energy, and 3x conjure+preparation damage.

The obvious "fix" to me, is to make these interrupts _fire_ very quickly,
.5s or so; but have an "after-cast" equivalent to the bow refire-rate
less .5s. The goal of the .5s is to make the interrupt go fast enough to
get a 2s spell -- not to have it chainable. Once this fix is in-place,
the actual recharge can be examined -- it might not be a real problem
if the "after-attack" is put back in.

Basically, an interrupt mesmer will put about 4 interrupt skills on their
bar: Power Leak (-22en), Power Spike (86) dmg, Cry of Fustration (AOE,
37 dmg), Power Drain (interrupt only, costs 5n). During that time period,
the best you can "chain" is 1s per skill (.25 plus after cast) -- however:

1. you can only interrupt spells; if you click an interrupt w/o knowing
which are skills and which are spells you will waste alot of interrupts;
so, that .25s is really .75s since you've got to to be smart

2. the recharge on these skillsa re 25s, so even if you could cycle
through all 4 skills in 2s, you'd be on the shelf for 23 more.

3. during your interrupting you can't attack, or you won't be
able to use your wand attack or any other spells since those would
prevent you from using the interrupt when needed

4. none of these skills is "enchancable" /w conjures + preparations

I could go on, but the difference is substantial. Compared to this ranger
build (I played it today), my standard "interrupt mesmer"... sucks. I'm
totally shelving those skills and playing a Ranger till this is fixed.

The problem is not with the skills themselves it is with the lack of any
sort of "coodown". The best Frenzy can do is a 33% bonus, making a
1.5s attack down to 1s or so; and then you have a serious side effect --
your warrior is 2x as vulnerable. This rapid-fire mechanism has no
side effects and breaks most of the assumptions that are made when
balancing preparations, conjures, and bow modifiers.


You missed something. The problem isn't so much with the raw damage
that the skill itself gives -- this is probably fine. The problem is that the
skill is used not for the primary purpose (to interrupt and deal damage),
but more that it's a better quick-shot than quick-shot.

It's broken, plain and simple.

....

Another possible fix for this issue is to add an "penalty" recharge if the
interrupt does not in-fact interrupt. So, language like the following at
the end of these 3-4 skils:

"If this bow attack misses or does not interrupt a skill, then it takes
an additional 20s to recharge".

This will have the effect of making the ranger use the skill with its
primary intent -- to interrupt and not for spamming it to get the
side effect. An interrupt ranger (who is watching his opponents
skill bar and anticipating), can then still shut-down an opponent;
however, they no longer can "mash" their keyboard and get a
sustained spike engine going.

the recharge on distracting shot is 10 seconds. So it's likely the first skill used to allow it to benefit from recharging while you're firing off the other two skills. With Serpents enabled you are recharging that skill in 6.7 seconds, Punishing in 4.02 seconds and Savage in 3.35 seconds. With the right timing one could theoretically(granted slightly slower) string this combination together twice without allowing the caster to do anything but fall down and get up in between shots(without having a cool down period in between skills). Regardless at most you're waiting 6.7 seconds before you can re-spam....


that's the point I believe everyone is missing.

I think Shinsei's suggestion of the interrupts not carrying the preparations (and possibly conjure) addresses the 'abuse' of the side effect better than adding penalties for not interrupting. Latency (or poor reaction time, or bad luck, or fast casting, you name it) can cause an interrupt to miss a spell, and there's plenty of ways to make a ranger miss the shot, so adding penalty recharge would be way too invasive in the regular use of the skill.

With Shinsei's suggestion, people could still mash their keyboard, but it would have the effect of pelting the opponent with interrupts in a short window, not killing the opponent but rather disabling anything he might try. If the goal was to bring the opponent down, the ranger would instead use attack skills like dual shot, penetrating attack etc. Both roles remain valid, but at least one role is not trumping what the other role can offer on top of its original purpose.

I am not going to begin flaming you. The fact that you accuse me of jumping to conclusions and then assume I do not know how to play any other build is immature. I had read the first page of this when it was first posted, then to come on to the third page and still see it going on really gets me fed up. I have mastered every class, have pvped and pved the hell out of this game. I don't think I need someone to hop on and insult my intelligence merely for the sake of what they consider balanced.

The reason A-net does not cave into every last one of you is because balancing in this game is like stairs, get past one and then theres another. Balance one skill and then another seems over powered. Thus would lead to making all skills worthless and it come down to the primary weapon. Ranger interupts can be nerfed and given penalty, but then we can complain about smiters, thus Balthazars aura can have a penalty, then moving on to spikers, hence we can put a damper on ele skills, now healing is to dominant, thus lets weaken theirs, etc.

First character I started playing was a ranger. I never liked using the interupts no the spirits. But some things are out of the question in terms of nerfing. QZ 25 cost, weak health, and sort lived. It is now a worthless skill. Especially in PvE.

Balancing needs to be Balanced not in fairness but what will work in both fields. pve and pvp. So before you go and turn this into a flame debate because you don't like my feelings on this game turned into a joke, then you should not insult others rather then point out the flaws in thier opinions. Discussion>arguements.

What bothers me about this thread isnt that nerfs are being called in general... but that they're about several different factors. Not everyone is doing this...but several different people are complaining about several different things.

Some are complaining that interrupts are coming too often too easily. Some are complaining that they do tons of damage. And then some are complaining that preparations are doing damage even when missing.

Like I said earlier, all this will lead to nerfs that won't just deal with the source of the problem but will nerf every symptom stemming from it which will lead to overnerfs.

I can easily see interrupts getting nerfed so that they're far and few between, I can see them getting nerfed so that they do no damage and preparations won't affect them at all and wont do damage when missing.

I have to give credit to Shinsei (and a few others) that did point out the source of the problem and proposed an easy fix that won't break everything. But there's just too many others that are just complaining about everything stemming from these ranger interrupts. If this continues it's going to be like the overnerfed spirits all over again.

There is also the question of cost and time you are able to perform such actions continually. Before you begin to think the current situation is fine, observe other methods that try to achieve the same effect like dwarven battle stance, shiverspine, and thunder clap. All of them are far more conditional than the ranger spam interupt method and do less damage or are less sustainable.

Sanity check here. Ask yourself why damaging spells don't interupt "easily interupted" skills. By that logic every attack should interupt everything else.

I'm not sure exactly what your trying to say... ( but that's what happens when you quote a single sentence )


Do you mistakenly believe that I think the Punishing Shot, Savage, Distracting, Kindle + Conjure combination is balanced..??

Or do you not believe that a Ranger should be able to interupt almost continually..?? ( albeit without the damage boosts )


Either way I was simply stating that taking the damage away would still allow a ranger to interupt every five seconds -- with Sensei's proposed changes the interupts would ignore preparations thus making them fairly weak hitting arrows -- that in my mind is balanced ( or at least heading in the right direction ) You've traded off damage for interuption.

What it will do is make the interupts be actually used for interupting rather than just hitting them like a madman when they charge, turning them into a warped substitute for proper +damage skills.

Having this strong interuption and damage means there really is no other build a ranger should run atm -- even though it is blantently broken


As for the other options Dwarfen Battle Stance is a poor choice -- Devastating Hammer + Other Knockdown skills makes a better combo.

Not only that but we'd be comparing one skill ( a Warrior Stance ) to multiple Ranger skills ( Bow Attacks ) that are required for this to work...

1. Perhaps damaging spells should interrupt easily interruptible spells.

2. Your leap of logic makes no sense in line with the arguments presented. Read the posts. Every attack should definitely not interrupt everything else.

there was a screenshot of smgzor mainting 24 enchantments with ether renewal ;( I fail to see how ranger spike is "overpowered". It can be healed through prot spirit sure it interupts to shit.

There is no difference between any attack that disrupts as a byproduct of damage. If you want to argue placement, then there would be a random chance for any projectile to interupt due to the placement of the hit. AOE spells would by default always interupt if that were the case. The only reason why the interupts in the form of attack exist, is a byproduct of a introduced game mechanic to create some sembelance of variety within the game. It is not a leap of logic if you actually think about the path that you are trying to argue and come to its logical conclusion.

The reason why the spell dont interupt them, is because they always happen unless shielded from a spellbreaker effect or interupted durring casting. Other forms of attack, regardless of damage type, can fail due to the large variety of conditions in the game or defensive measures which are passive.

I didn't assume that you were giving the false impression of a balanced situation, but the ability to chain the effects is just as imortant. I brought up those other examples as very conditional methods that attempt to do the same thing, but are less effective and are designed to do exactly that and nothing else. Rangers on the other hand do all of the above almost endlessly. Even if the other damage options were toned back, the ranger would still chain them in a more effective manner than those other methods due to duration, cost, and not being dependant on a hex.


I believe that is one of the fundamental game design faux pas allowing few jobs and skill to stack abilities to create a greater effect, while others are limited to very conditional use. All of them were poor choices considering other options within the game, regardless of what the current ranger can or cant do.

Someone should try a build with 8 interupting rangers, everyone picks his own target (number 1 picks number 1 of the enemy team etc). If everyone's good enough, it should work

What?

Oh... that.

Yeah... rangers hate me.

No.. you can't nerf my mesmer/necro build and their fast interrupt skills

I think that this totally undermines the idea of a conjure (it's ok, I guess for it to ignore preparations). So, I don't like Shinsei's fix. The issue is chaining 2-3 interrupts in a row -- not the conjures or preparations, IMHO.

Let's compare these interrupts to their closest cousins -- Mesmer interrupts. The average mesmer interrupts are 10en and recharges in 20s for "spells" and 45s for "skills". Further, mesmer interrupts have a .75 after-cast, making them 1s total casting from start to finish and get effectively no bonus from fast-casting. First, a bow will naturally be slower than an interrupt spell, so a .5s plus arrow flight-time (.5s?) gives you about 1s (instead of .25s). The question is, how can you balance the ranger skill to make up for this inherent latency?

If Rangers had the same break between spells and all-other-skills; I'd expect 20s for "any skill" and 10s for "spells" -- perhaps 15s and 7s for an Elite, respectively. That said, this "interrupt" should not be a "quick-shot", thus, after the interrupt is fired, the regular 1 to 1.5s bow refire delay should apply.

So, to summarize my suggestion:

1. Reduce the "time-to-fire" to .25s to be equivalent to the mesmer; of course, there is still the arrow flight time that will bring this up to .75s
to 1s from the time the ranger sees a skill to when he can interrupt it.

2. There should be the regular "refire delay" depending on the type of bow, just like any other non-quick-shot bow attack. This will prevent chaining.

3. Some of the skills should be "spell only" and can have a lower 7-10s recharge, and the "any skill" recharge should be 15-20s. This will compensate for the added arrow flight time; ie, they are slower than a mesmer, but can interrupt much more.

Of course, if the ranger touches an interrupt, the current bow attack (if any) should finish /w its refire delay -- just like a mesmer using a wand or other spell attack. Mesmer interrupts don't skip the previous spell's after cast, and thus, neither should a Ranger's interrupt skills.

Pfft, interrupt rangers are no big deal. The ONLY reason they're so annoying is because people RARELY attack rangers first, or second, or even third. See how well a ranger does if you're actually trying to kick his ass. A ranger with that interrupt setup can't exactly play tank, sure they could bring along whirling defense but that's really about it. :P Rangers aren't ever really the targets, they just sit back and relax and annoy the hell out of you while you ignore them. And unlike all the other builds that've been nerfed so far, it takes some timing and practice to get it down right.

A bunch of interrupt rangers aren't going to be dominating the HoH or anything.

that's just my point it isn't popular "yet."

the reason i made this thread in the first place is b/c of the obvious imbalance in relation to the cost, affect, and recharge of the interrupt skills.

affect: being able to interrupt any action. being spells, skills, sigs, and attacks (stances can't be countered of course unless you use wild blow)

cost: most rangers have 13+ expertise (i carry 15) that's a 52% reduction in energy cost for rangers. punishing and savage are 10 with experise becomes 5. distractin is 5 which i believe is rounded up would be 3 cost.

recharge: the maximum recharge on any ranger interrupt is 10 sec. that can be boosted by synergic skills like serpents quickness and QZ.

btw spirit spam isn't dead. you just need to use different spirits. with 8 rangers on the group they can bring predatory season (reducing healing and healing yourself), frozen soil (body and res denial), QZ (instant recharge of spamming interrupts, too bad it only last about 30 sec now), favorable winds (you'll never miss a shot unless they are hiding behind something while adding 6 dmg after being multiplied by marksmanship is much more than 6 dmg), EoE (massive dmg to the entire feild).

you have 120+ dmg in 2 sec with each ranger. 8 rangers can drop 2 targets before you even get to them. triggering EoE dealing about 60 dmg to the rest of the party and denying them the chance to res them.

dmg is fine. interrupts are fine. cost are fine. recharge is NOT!!

This doesn't make sense. The arrow is armed (the word representing a rooster was sensored...), the string pulled.

Yea, interrupt mesmers suck even more. You need 1/2 your skill bar to be interrupts (/w 20s recharge) for you to even begin to interrupting; and then you still miss often unless you've got like every skill's cast times memorized and have very quick reflexes. Even then, you have to forgo your wand attack so that you even have a chance of interrupting a 2s spell.

I look at it this way, either these interrupts are over-powered; or the mesmer interrupts are vastly underpowered.

now that is a valid point. if the ranger interrupts are not so unbalanced as everyone thinks (still say wait a week or 2) then the mes interrupts need to fixed.

i used to play with an interrupt mes and i always thought that it wasn't that great b/c i was only affective against casters, but 1/4 of a team is accually casters. so what do i do about the other 3/4 of the team.

no i don't need anyone to list the number of necro, mes, and ele teams there are.

I think what I was suggesting is already how it works; if you've got an attack "in-progress", it finishes before the skill goes off. I think of these interrupt bow attacks as a "rushed thing", in which case, you need to "clean-up" a bit afterwards. So, a simple fix is to add a "after-interrupt" delay of equal time as the bow's refire rate. So, you can get in 2 arrows quickly (the previous attack, and the interrupt) but that's it -- you should not be able to spam 4 of them in a 2s window.

How do these skill discriptions sound to you?

Distracting Shot
If Distracting Shot hits, it interrupts target foes action but deals only 1-16 damage. If the interrrpted action was a skill, that skill is disabled for an additional 20 seconds. Preparations do not apply with this skill.
Cost 5 | Cast 1/4 | Recast 10

Concussion Shot
If Concussion Shot hits while target foe is casting a spell, the spell is interrupted and your target is Dazed for 5-10 seconds. This attack deals only 1-16 damage. Preparations do not apply with this skill.
Cost 25 | Cast 1/4 | Recast 10

Savage Shot
If Savage Shot hits, your targets action is interrupted. If that action was a spell, you strike for 13-28 damage. Preparations do not apply with this skill.
Cost 5 | Cast 1/4 | Recast 10

Conjures shouldnt hit at all if the arrows miss, but they are still applied to these skills.
Punishing Shot is untouched to keep its name sake.
Im not to sure what a "refire delay" would mean and how it would introduced.
But a slight pause inbetween any bow attack that isnt quickshot seems proper.

just to let people understand...

lv12 OoV OoP
lv10 curse weaken armor + barb 6 + horn bow vs 60 armor
punishing 84.58 dmg + 13 OoP + 13 OoV + 10 igniting + 6 barb + 4 winnowing + 6 favorable = 136.58 dmg
savage 57.29 dmg (w/ spell 96.7) +13 OoP + 13 OoV + 10 igniting + 6 barb + 4 winnowing + 6 favorable = 109.29 dmg (148.7)
distracting 15 dmg + 13 OoP + 13 OoV + 10 ignitng + 6 barb + 4 winnowing + 6 favorable = 67 dmg
All 3 = 290.87 (351.65)

that is 1.5 sec
with 2 rangers, they can successfully kill a caster without any armor mod within 1.5 sec
Of course, this is the extreme way... lets put weaken armor and OoV OoP cast time in...

mes/nec fast cast 12 curse 10 = 1.19sec barb + 1.78 weaken + 2(.75) delay sec = 4.47 sec
+
mes/nec fast cast 12 blood 12 = 1.19 OoV + 1.19 OoP + 2(.75) delay = 3.88

so basically means u need 5 sec of preparing before that 1.5 sec kill your caster then another 1.5 sec within the duration can kill another of your caster... while at it, these ranger naturally got more armor than ele...

2 ranger + 2 me/n... for ele to do the same...

16 air lightning orb =137.45 dmg on 60 armor
137.45 x 4 = 549.8
137.45 x 3 = 412.35
so you need 4 air ele to cast for 2 sec to kill someone

Now personally i think the ranger build sux... to be more effective you probably just have your ranger carry barb and weaken armor themselves... then you can shovel more ranger into a team, with each of them making thier own target... then 4 or 5 opponent would just die right off.

Its already been clearly stated that only PvP players have any say here and specifically casters who are the ones being hit by interrupt rangers, after all, it doesnt help their case with Anet if ppl have the audacity to disagree with the proposed nerf.

45 sec recharge

enough said

you forgot predatory season. also there are 4 shots in the sequence. it goes kindle, dual/punishing/savage/distract. dont forget to add all the bonuses to the dual shot. you see what im getting at, it creates a huge anount of damage.

They don't deal more damage.

If I wanted to make a damage ranger build, I can do it MUCH better then that interrupt crap.

its time vs dmg

can you do more than 120 dmg in less than 2 sec for the entire match w/o any slow down or cool down time

i don't think so

I would like to thank the mod for deleting my post without any reasonable explaination.

EDIT: I noticed he got rid of my pic. Good job.

Kindle Arrows, Conjure Flame, Favorable Winds, Tiger's Fury, Quick Shot, Dual shot.

the only thing on the skill that needs to be changed is the recharge. either make the recharge comparable with mesmers (maybe a little less seeing as the flight time for arrows). add some type of "after cast" affect or disable other interrupts for 1/2 sec on each one.

its the recharge that is the killer. i understood why the 1/2 cast was added to compete with mes interrupts and interrupting with a bows normal attack speed is usless.

What's your attribute spread?

If you truly want "balance", make spells dodgeable or deflectible with whirling defense.

All this talk about damage with interrupts fails to address the reality that arrows can be avoided, and unlike spellcasters, rangers can't shoot around corners.

I really do think making the interupts ignore preparations is enough -- I've done the numbers to prove it =)

It'll mean no more Punishing Shots for 60+ dmg etc...


If we assume a Ranger with:

12 Marksmanship
14 Expertise

With the 3 main skills:

Punishing Shot -- 10e -- 1/2 sec -- 8 seconds -- Interupts and does +18 dmg
Distracting Shot -- 10e -- 1/2 sec -- 10 seconds -- Interupts and hits for 15 dmg
Savage Shot -- 10e -- 1/2 sec -- 5 seconds -- Interupts and hits for 25 dmg if that action was a spell

Now ignoring preparations and critical hits:

The most a Punishing shot will now hit for is 28 + 18 == 46 dmg
The most a Distracting Shot will hit for is 15 dmg
The most a Savage Shot will hit for is 25 dmg on a spell or nothing

Now, even with 8 Rangers hitting Punishing Shot and landing a max hit -- the damage will only amount to: 46 x 8 == 368

Now with 8 Rangers hitting Distracting Shot -- the damage will only amount to: 15 x 8 == 120

Now with 8 Rangers hitting Savage Shot -- which only deals damage on a spell == 25 x 8 == 200

So that's 368 + 120 + 200 == 688 dmg for a whole team of 8 in 1.5 seconds with the next full run taking 10 seconds to be ready


That's not even counting arrows that miss, get evaded, blocked and that's also assuming that each Savage Shot interupts a spell -- which it won't -- at most 1 or two might hit so we can assume the whole damage is now in the region of 500~ for a FULL PARTY OF EIGHT !!!

Now that IMHO is nothing amazing, whilst the interuption is still strong


Now, you want:

Damage --> Duel Shot + QS + Tiger's
Interuption --> Punishing + Savage + Distracting


We can't compare Ranger interupts to Mesmer's -- since ( bar human error ) Mesmer interupts don't miss. Ranger interupts are hard interupts -- Blind screws it, Enchantments screw it, Stances screw it, Spirit Shackles screws it killing Favourable Winds screws it ( since most good rangers bring Flatbow ( high arc ) and Shortbow )

Most of the Mesmer interupts even have a nastier kick -- like lost energy on top of the lost energy from the spell, damage or energy gain for the Mesmer

used to use that exact same build. found the points in flame are wasted for conjure for at lvl 9 for only 10 dmg.

you can't spam quick shot. there is a split sec that you are already 3/4 of the way on your next attack. interrupts you can spam all day long.

that build will only do dmg. i'll take you on 1vs1 with my interrupt and i bet you anything i will win. can't do anything when your attacks are interrupted constatly.

i've tested them 1vs1 many many times so trust me.

i used that build until i ran into a ranger using interrupts and i got owned while his life was still more than half.

you do more dmg but you give up the utility of the interrupt which is priceless. i laugh every time i nail some one with distacting shot while they use res sig. laugh even more when i hit with punishing, sig again, savage, sig again, distracting run!!!!

obviously you don't know what favorable winds is. you won't be dodging anything unless its via spells or stances.

i guess people dont understand that rangers have as many weaknesses as warriors....except the fact that i have never been able to step to the left or right and totally avoid a melee attack :shrug:

yes some of the skills need balancing here and there...but it's not as huge as people make it out to be.....

and im sorry if your team cant go in and roll over the other team to do what they want to do to the other team...there's 8 skills you can fill in your bar...before you put that last uber last of the 8 uber skill you need for your elite combo you might want to think about some sort of counter instead.....


/end

But arrows can be avoided, yes? Spells can't. There's no 75% chance to avoid a mesmer spell being hurled at you, for example. There's balance.