Something must be done about ranger interrupts

name any spell or skill on this game and i can make a huge list of what will screw it. does that mean it will be used in hoh or gvg? no it doesn't. tired of hearing that arguement.

btw my 120 dmg isn't counting any dmg from savage shot. you left out winnowing and favorable winds being multiplied by your marksmanship. your calculations are off by the 100s of dmg.

Kindle arrows + conjure flame = over 20 damage.

Faced an interrupt ranger who thinks he can deal more damage then me in a duel today. He lost because I slapped in lightning reflexes in my build. While I admit that they get the first few seconds of dealing more damage, they need to wait for their skills to recharge, while I can spam quick shot WITH tiger's fury or lightning reflexes no problem.

Just for the hell of it, I used zealous bow string to test out if conjure flame works with kindle arrows. Apparently it does so I don't even have to worry a bit about energy.

You'd pretty much have to be prescient to avoid an arrow shot from a short bow with favourable winds down.

Recharge isn't a problem if you run it with serpents quickness. You can literally spam them all then. It sounds like the person you came across wasn't using it if there was downtime for him.

Also, over 20 damage? Why are you even running conjure when you can get "over 20 damage" with kindle alone easy. Seriously, what is your attribute spread? With a 14 or 15 in expertise, 12 in marks, 4 in beast (at least), doesn't exactly give you much wiggle room with conjure to make any appreciable differance.

Or around the corner, or in a stance, ...

Here's the schtick, mmkay...

If you decide to make a build with little to no defences, you make yourself open to attacks that would otherwise suprise you.

There is a pretty damn good reason why stances exist, and a damn good reason why "empathy", "Price of Failure", "Spirit of Failure", and so forth. You put spirit shackles on an interrupt ranger, he is GONE.

The problem is ...most people just go out all offensive. The W/R builds? Yes, they deal a buttload of damage, but they are very often screwed by a single hex like shadow of fear and. I know some shutdown mesmers that don't use defenses, and you know what happens to them? They die.

Lately I've been using my own little ranger build that uses Melandru's Resilience (yes, the elite) and Lightning reflexes...

You know what happens when I get fragged in 1 on 1? I thank the mesmer in public chat for giving me free health as if I got a healing breeze (for 30 seconds) and the 6 eng regen rate.

It's called defences. Interrupt rangers are like warriors; they both use physical attacks to hurt you. If you don't bring your own defensive abilites or at least some counters, expect to die from us. Especially if you honestly believe that third-rate mesmer is going to be a threat.

Stop pinning the blame on interrupt rangers being 'overpowered' and start thinking on how to exploit their bold-headed behavior. Start thinking on how to protect yourself instead of relying on the monk all the damn time.

Fire magic 9
Beast Master 8 (9, minor)
Expertise 8 (12, superior + mask)
Wilderness Survival 7, (9 major)
Marksmenship 9 (10, minor)

My health is around 405, so I can't take a beating. Only thing I can do is bring lightning reflexes. If I want to be a total bitch, I can bring dryder's defence instead of favorable winds.

I would deal less damage of course, but I would live just a tad longer so the monk can say "shit, the ranger is dying"

Which is what defence is all about...delaying the death.,

Using sarcasm because you run out of arguments? PvP players are looking for balance because any random build can get you through PvE with henchmen. You don't need balance for PvE. Period. That's why PvE players are not concerned about the current 'abuse potential' of a few ranger skills. However, I bet if a few packs of 5/6 'interrupt spammers' Jade Bows were added to TK, many PvE players would be screaming. For the records, PvE players didn't even know these interrupts had been changed by the secret buff of doom.

And since you seem to have missed half the thread, yes you can have the audacity to disagree. Just don't forget to use valid arguments. We're not sharing opinions, we're having a discussion based on facts, and on numbers.

Sorry but I don't understand. Please reread the original posts including User_Name's reply and explain what you mean. If you think Leech Signet is weak due to its recharge time, then I think you missed the point.

You're welcome. Now if you take the time to read my previous posts (or even better the whole thread) and double-check the forum rules, you might be able to get an explanation. And for the records, I didn't remove any picture.

No offense intended, but did you post this in a random thread or do you actually think this paragraph brings anything valuable to the thread? Is that some sort of variant of the "can be countered" rhetoric?

my point exactly if you prepared yourself defensively against anything that comes your way in the hoh you wouldn't have anything else.

the ranger only needs 4 offensive skills, res sig, and 3 open slots for wards, spirits and healing.

all comes down the team in the end but i think that team built right with ranger interrupts will be more consistant than any other team.

best stategy on this game is to interrupt you opponents stategy. the rangers acomplish this while they kill you in seconds.

I invite you to reread the thread carefully. The topic of this thread is: "ranger interrupt skills: are they more powerful than they should be? and if so, what is the best way to put them in line with other interrupts and other ranger skills?".

Yes you can counter such an interrupt ranger. That doesn't make it balanced. Period. That's why using the prehistoric "can be countered" argument is considered irrelevant here.

Just for fun lets add in Winnowing, Favorable Winds and even Conjure Flame ( although they'll have to have Fiery Bow Strings now since Kindle doesn't work )


Again, 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, adding in Winnowing, Favorable Winds and Conjure Flame:

The most a Punishing shot will now hit for is: 28 + 18 + 10 + 10 == 66 dmg
The most a Distracting Shot will hit for is: 15 + 10 + 10 == 35 dmg
The most a Savage Shot will hit for is: 45 dmg on a spell or 20

Now, even with 8 Rangers hitting Punishing Shot and landing a max hit -- the damage will only amount to: 66 x 8 == 528

Now with 8 Rangers hitting Distracting Shot -- the damage will only amount to: 35 x 8 == 280

Now with 8 Rangers hitting Savage Shot -- which only deals damage on a spell == 45 x 8 == 360

So that's 528 + 280 + 360 == 1168 dmg for a whole team of 8 in 1.5 seconds with the next full run taking 10 seconds to be ready

Again we assume that:
- Each arrow hits for the max on the damage range of a Bow -- 28 dmg
- They have Conjure giving out 10 dmg
- They have Winnowing for 4 per arrow
- They have Fav Winds for 6 per arrow

And we assume that every single arrow doesn't miss, get evaded or blocked

We also assume that each Savage Shot interupts a spell -- which it won't -- at most 1 or two might hit for 45 dmg with the rest hitting for 20

A more realistic number then is:

528 + 280 + (45x2) + (6x20) == 1018

That's for a full party of 8 Rangers in 1.5 seconds with the next full run being availible in 10 seconds time and I've been generous with my numbers...

Thoughts..??

what page is it on? this thread has gotton huge since i checked it 2 days ago.

ok now dmg right but still missing the recharge affect of serpents and QZ stacked.

it doesn't take 10 sec it really takes 4 sec for the maximum. 1 sec for savage shot which is even better than quick shot ever hoped to be.

Look, I've read the thread already. What I'm reading? Whining and nerfing.

The reason why spirit spamming needed to be nerf because there was little counters. Same with putrid.

Interrupt rangers, on the other hand, have loads of counters. It isn't just one or two, but almost every class has something for a ranger (or warrior) that likes to spam attack skills.

If you are not using them, guess what? You will lose.

We have a winner. You do know ANet also changed 50 other skills from all professions in the same update, right? Guess why. B.A.L.A.N.C.E. And try to follow the discussion, we're not whining, we are USING these interrupts.

and thus is why the nerf of spirit spamming happened. it wasn't b/c it was good or b/c they affected each other. it was b/c you either used it or you lost. that's a warp of the metagame that dulls the game and makes people leave.

i use an interrupt ranger and i made this thread way before anyone else has even made an open discussion about (besides the occasional whining).

just want the game to stay with in balance. since the nerf of spirits more players have come back to pvp and more have converted from pve to pvp.

Yeah but here's what you're missing. You're thinking in terms of taking out one interrupt ranger, and even the proponents of nerfing the interrupts agree that's no problem. I myself can think of a dozen ways to shut down one of these rangers with my mesmer. The problem is when you have 3+ interrupt rangers. Now you're going to have to have 3+ sets of counter skills, just to counter this one build. (And god forbid you only have 4 effective counters while they have 5 rangers.) Some skills like blinding flash, aegis, or shields up might work vs the whole group of rangers if they're newbs, but not normally, especially if the rangers are smart. And none of these group counters stops the damage from the preps so you're STILL getting hit for massive damage even if you're not being interrupted.

In the mean time while you're wasting skill slots to counter the interrupts, their builds are good basically vs anything. Most decent builds include 50% casters or more and even the popular iway build falls soon if iway gets interrupted or a necro dies. And as has been stated umpteen times the reason this build is overpowered is basically because of the damage dealt along with the interrupts which makes it good even vs warriors that don't cast a single spell. When I first started reading this thread I was inclined to think they were just whiners about wanting to nerf something that's fine as is (the way it was with protective bond..) but after reading the whole thread I see that's not the case. There really is an imballance here and it really does need to be addressed. Hopefully when they do address it they're careful enough not to overcorrect.

Oooh quoting myself oO

1018 dmg ( without preparations + spirits + conjure + base damage of 28 ) every 4 seconds then

Dare I ask for thoughts..?? oO



EDIT:

And Shinsei or the other IQ members will likely shoot me for spreading false propaganda -- if my numbers are wrong

EDIT 2:

Just as I've done max damage hits (28) I thought I'd better do min damage hits (15) -- so for Punishing Shot that's: 15 + 20 x 8 == 280 --> 1018 - 280 == 738 every 4 seconds

hope that clears up the dmg output of this build. cool thing is that's just minimum dmg.

oh btw kindle does still work with conjure. you don't need a firey bow string i take a sundering, but then again i don't use conjure.

armor of earth, ward vs melee or elementals, and heal party are better used than conjure. that's for another discussion

Kindle wouldn't work in my examples ( since I've made preparations not work, as suggested earlier... ) otherwise you'd have to add another +16~ damage per arrow

And since Kindle doesn't work -- Conjure shouldn't work without a Fiery String


As it is now with preparations stacking with the arrows -- we can use Kindle +16~ per arrow and a Vampiric String for +5 dmg per hit


Assuming all my numbers are right -- this is making my Axe Warrior look like a little girl

LOL

forgot you where doing that calculation with suggested changes to not count preperations.

but still impressive with the changes which begs the question: not counting preperations for interrupts really make that much of a difference?

i think the fact that you interrupt is enough to justify it to have a slower recharge.

at least most spike builds out there take 15-20 sec to fire off the spike where the ranger can do it in 4 sec while interrupting.

btw if you really wanted to abuse the interrupts just take flourish to recharge your skills only 10 sec recharge.

I completely agree with you.

yes yes. because what i said there had nothing to do with this thread at all....you are 100% right. infact my whole post did not bring anything valuable to this thread. i agree with what you say(what i should have been doing in the first place, what was i thinking) go ahead and delete that post and maybe this one as well...or wait this one can stay because it says i agree with you. you know what...im gonna stop typing now so you dont have to read anymore of my crap OPINIONS. i'll let you go back to your unbiased mediation. thanks

No, but there are two forms of 100 percent spell avoidance and one that turns the mesmer interupts into crap via a stance since none of the additional effects occur unlike ranger versions.

First off, I have to say that I now support a slight adjustment to the way Ranger interrupts are now. In order words, I'm on your side...as long as the nerfs don't go overboard the way that they did with spirits.

Now addressing your quote there... How the heck did you come to that conclusion and how can you present it as fact? Do you have hard numbers from a magical source that more players have come back to PvP as a direct result of the spirit nerf? Don't post nonsense like that again.

And sorry to say...the moderation in this thread is really really biased. It's obvious.

Well I know I've been playing an interrupt ranger for the past few weeks. Not only is this type of ranger the best damage dealing and interrupting ranger (and right up there in terms of damage compared to other classes), but the counters themselves have a high chance of being flat-out overpowered by the constant interrupts. Especially in arenas.

There is little reason to play any other ranger, to be honest.

OK, maybe Rangers are too good...



...or maybe it's us. Anyone play us tonight?

My team did. We were the ones with 3 Monks.

I have been playing an interrupt ranger for a while now, did so before savage shot and punishing shot were changed, I expect I will continue to unless they hit interrupts VERY hard with a nerf. Either way, here are my thoughts...

As has been mentioned, not adding preps to interrupts seems like a good idea at first, cosmeticly it would work (you can't light that arrow on fire and shoot it that fast, now can you?) but then, going purly cosmeticly here, read the wind, while not used a lot, is kind of a stance thing, not, say, lighting up your arrows before shooting. Would this fix the problem? Perhaps not, as interrupts still deal decent damage. Perhaps it would, as losing 20+ damage per shot is a big hit.

The incredibly good recharge on savage shot is a bit unbalanced, perhaps it should be moved up to 10-15 seconds. The others? I do not think so. Mesmer interrupts recharge slower because there are fewer ways around them, not because all interrupts should have a 20+ second recharge.

0 damage from interrupts is foolish, just as I think 0 damage from distracting blow is foolish, though this is, again, a cosmetic thing really.

The 'nerfing' of skills is called balance, as many of you have said. If Anet thinks they need balance, well, I am more than willing to let them do there thing. So far I have not seen a SINGLE change that was not for the better.

even at 10 sec recharge serpents quickness and QZ will make it a 4 sec recharge for the maximum recharge of ranger interrupts. you said yourself the recharge on savage needs to be changed then what makes the others the exception when you can make them recharge even faster than savage's base recharge.

Somewhere halfway in this tread I conceded that a slight adjustment to the possible abuse of interrupt skills might be in order. But I repeat once again, this has to be done WITHOUT nerfing the interrupt skills themselves. If you mess around with the recharge times, you will weaken the interrupt capabilites themselves in addition to nerf to damage. This is completely over the top. The idea to ignore preperation is way better because it won't keep my ranger from interrupting but will make the damage abuse less powerful. Which is what you wanted, isn't it? Nerf the abuse and not my interrupt ranger, please!

Take a good look at QZ, it only has, even at 10 wilderness survival, a 35 second duration, 60 second recharge. So, you can keep it up indefinatly, if you can always spare the 13-14 energy it will take. I know this was said during the NR spam days, "just kill the spirit". I am afraid that I think that actualy applies here, believe it or not. Also, even with 16 expertise, I can not see a ranger maintaining his or her energy for long, I do believe that QZ costs are added after expertise reduction (correct me if I am wrong)

I will say it straight out: There is no easy way to stop serpent's quickness. If you can get the ranger below 50% health it is shut down, but that can be hard if you are running casters as your damage (and don't say wild blow. yes it works, no, it is not something every build will carry a large number off, nor is it something with a general usefulness)

Again however, we come back to just how effective these are, and the number of counters to them. Mesmers can get interrupts down to...what? a 5 second recharge? with QZ and serpents, or mantra of recovery, and there are only 1-2 ways of stopping them, yet no one complains about them. The reason, of course, is because they can not deal damage with them whether you are using a skill or not, they have a condition.

So we come to the center of the problem: These interrupts are dealing to much damage and are to unconditional for their costs. If all they did was interrupt, tell me how many people would be using them?

People who mention counters seem to get flamed on these boards, but the counters here work against ANY ranger or warrior, unlike, say, Ignorance, which counters specific skills and is ment only to prevent signet use from getting out of hand. Look through the skills and you will find more examples of skills like this.

If your build does not have a way to survive warriors, you will die in the current metagame. Many skills usefull against warriors double as good against rangers. Skills which will be usefull 30%(assuming even distribution of all classes) of the time tend not to be taken, but then again, you can not really construct a build without at least some way to handle warriors, why not rangers?

There is but one interrupt for rangers that ignores all dodging, blocking and blinding, and that is choking gas. Not viable in the interrupt builds you have stated, this leaves interrupts that must hit to work. Just as you can avoid warriors to negate them, the same applies here. (yes, kindle still hits. If kindle alone is strong enough to kill you, I suggest you work up a new build)

In the interist of stating one more counter, the single most effective skill in the game against spamming is Diversion. 100% guarnteed to be usefull, it is the shutdown skill I expect to see on the bar of any good mesmer running domination, it casts fast, and it does a number on any skill spammer in the game. Yes, you have 4 skills to spam here. How much effectivness do you lose when, say, punishing shot is suddenly unable to be used. What about when you lose two?

Conclusions: Plenty of ways to stop builds centered around interrupt spam, perhaps add, as I said, a slight increase to savage shot's recharge time, maybe lower its damage bonus, but any drastic changes you propose do nothing but reduce the skill line to redundant, and that is no option at all, just as you can not remove serpent's quickness or QZ without causing imbalance.

-Banebow

P.S. I apologize for any spelling mistakes in the above post, I lack a spell-checking program on my computer, and that is a lot of text to go through manualy.

Can you show me a build that is as uber as you claim it to be? Because I detect a problem here with the claims that are made and the attribute points spread you'd need.
Or are you talk about a variation of the 55 monk in ranger guise with 3 superior runes?

Using arrogance because you run out of actual arguments except to shout "nerf the interrupts"? You and Shinsei related perhaps?

What numbers? On page 9 of this thread someone posts an actual build for the first time, why dont you do the same for a change instead of sniping at others?

So please, produce some facts because up until now you've mainly produced opinions

Yes it is. I've removed the most sterile rants and the worst "can be countered/don't touch rangers/I play PvE" posts. On the contrary, I didn't remove posts when they provided arguments and facts, be that in favour of the balance/unbalance of these skills. Simply put, I don't care if these skills are balanced or not, and if ANet will fix them or not. As long as they are so powerful I'll keep using them and I'll be prepared to deal with them. I just want this thread to be a place where the topic is discussed on facts, not a place where you can spam opinions with no backup.
Doh! Have you actually read the thread? Spammability (dmg spike, abuse of zealous, need only 3 interrupts to shut down somone), comparison with mesmer interrupts (both in terms of cost and recharge, and numer of skill slots required), ability to spam interrupts against non-spell skills, permanent shut down of a target with a few rangers, damage output higher than most damage-oriented rangers. Did you really miss all this?

Were you running that a couple days ago? Looks awfully familiar to a team that halted a 21 win streak we were working on. (btw, we got destoyed )

so who draws the line between fact and opinion??? you?.....and what is an opinion for if you can't state it if somebody just squashes because they have power....i can name 50 skills off the top of my head that are anti "attack". but you might dub that un factual as well. why? because you can right............

At 14 expertise the 25e skill will be reduced to 11e according to the chart. 3 pips of energy regen working for 5s is 5 energy regained durring the casting/skill use. 6e every ~35s is a laughable loss. This is especially true when looking at other professions such as mesmers, who are spending nearly triple that on every interupt excluding the inspiration counters in addition to using an eliete stance in order to try and bring down their counter refresh times to a comparable level to the base ranger counter skills refresh times. Even still, the mesmer is still dependant on a QZ environment if the mantra is to be kept up consistantly, thus causing a cross class synergy need or 4 skill line attribute split while incorporating a ranger secondary. Considering the effect fast casting has on interupts, dropping it entirely and merely trying to imitate a ranger seems like a better option, but costs far more energy and is more vunlerable to basic attacks.

Cost is also a major factor if the inspiration interupts are not sucessful, unlike the ranger equivilants. Then there is the issue of the interupts being spell like skills in use ignoring the bow refire rates apperantly.


Are you trying to suggest to counter an interupt with a skill with a casting time of 1s or more against something that is designed to prevent such things from occuring? There is less ranger specific hate and is more difficult to apply in the same fashion due to the abscence of need for rangers to be close to each other when applying their skills or close to the target in question.

Rangers can always opt to use oath shot to basically negate that style of attack against them. R/me with inspired hex seems to be popular as well. This is of course assuming that the ranger is not focusing on the mesmer initally, largely shutting him down anyway. A skill that begins as a 2s cast time is not what i would define as quick, but its not overly painful with decent fast casting levels.

Dictionary definition:
FACT: A concept whose truth is proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts"
OPINION: A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof

Say 'it can be countered' and it's an opinion.
Give the skills/builds you can use to counter interrupt skills and you get a fact.

Now if you want to understand why the 'can be countered' argument is irrelevant, reread previous posts.

again. you are 100% right. i digress. there is no such thing as a condition or hex in GW. sorry for my useless spam again