Something must be done about ranger interrupts

If you are relying on blinding flash to disable one or more rangers, you are fighting a losing energy war. Ineptitude has a chance to get off fast enough to avoid the possible interupt via ranger and land the blindness on one ranger as can signet of midnight if you manage to survive being nose to nose with said ranger continually.

However, to futher indulge in your line of thinking, snap casting condition removal doesnt exist in GW either. The other hexes to "stop" or slow down a ranger are much fewer than you think as the skills in question are not linked to the bow refire rates and are prone to being interupted themselves if the ranger has them as the target for disruption due to their cast times. If the worst hex they are looking at facing is blurred vision, then that is not much to be concerned about in general as things like inspired hex also exist.

Glockjs, you are not spamming, but you're unwilling to try and understand why your arguments are accurate but irrelevant in this discussion.

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 an interrupt ranger. We understand your point. We really do.

That doesn't make 'interrupt ranger skills' balanced or unbalanced. Period.

That's why using the "can be countered" rethoric is considered irrelevant here. Because it is a Non sequitur. Even if your premises (facts) and conclusion (balanced/unbalanced) can be accurate, the conclusion is not a consequence of the premises.

NB:Their success rate is not relevant either: even if they were obscure skills ignored by 90% of GW players, they would still be unbalanced.

Hahaha I love it,nothing is more satisfying to me than interupting a caster over and over and over,especially necros and monks,I just love to see your little heads flap

Possibly, its about all we have been playing in TA for the past two weeks.

Honestly, concerning the Ranger Interrupt build, I'm not certain if it's bugged or broken - if it needs fixing or nerfing. I do know this: 90% of the Rangers I encounter in Random PvP are using this build and more often than not their teams are winning.

In most cases they are totally able to shutdown the opposing team's Monk. More often than not that's me, Hi.

If "this" Ranger build is not to be touched with then my suggestion is to give some kind of boost to Casters in general.

If things do not change (or you do not take out the Ranger first) then as your team's Monk/Healer this is my pre-emptive apology for our being defeated by their team's Interrupt Ranger.

The Ranger Interrupt build needs to be brought more in line with the other classes.

Balance.

/me trots off with an aching, wobbly neck.

A ranger interrupt build is easily avoided, and is subject to ten thousand different ways to shut it down. If ANET nerfs anything with melee or rangers they would be fools. There is blind, necro hexes, stances, monk spells (guardian, aegis), using terrain to avoid arrows.

Lets compare this to a mesmer who is a anti-caster built. How many ways can you defend yourself against one of these? YOU CANT. You have to kill the mesmer fast, or go offensive with another mesmer perhaps. Yet somehow this is acceptable, and yet a ranger who is able to shut down a caster is not acceptable, even when the counters against that build are easily accessible.

One of the very few counters to cheesy mesmers is a interrupt ranger. They've already stripped NR, so encahntments are ridiculous. Like illusionary weapon, ether renewal and the tons of monk enchantments. This was a tombs fix that has made it virtually impossible to counter overpowered enchants in the random arenas.

Casters have it too good in this game. Especially mesmers who arent even subject to line of sight restrictions. Im sure the OP thinks that a frag mesmer is perfectly fine. They want to play an overpowered class with no effective counters against it.

glockjs, I don't think you understand the difference between "overpowered" and "counterable".
If rangers were not counterable, every single person in GW (or just about) would be playing them right now. This is an extreme case that you never want to get to. Overpowered is something like ether renewal, that completely blows all other options (in this case, energy management in particular builds) out of the water.

I'm assuming you're arguing that there's nothing overpowered about interrupt rangers (I tried looking at your past few posts but saw nothing other than philosophical rants on what opinion is). Now, opinion is all fair and good, but when it's going up against cold hard facts, you lose out.

That interrupt ranger that was posted (if you want a clearer example, look at this thread and read my post on the changes I would make) outclasses pretty much any other ranger build interms of damage AND interrupts. Some might argue that a choking gas/practiced stance/TF ranger might edge out this guy in terms of interrupts, but the performance is very slightly better and the damage is not nearly as good.

Now rangers in general are good for 3 things: damage, interrupts, and spirits. For the most part, spirit rangers have gone kaput after the update to spirits, so it's down to option #1 and option #2.

If you could have the best of option #1 AND the best of option #2 in one ranger build, would you choose anything else?

omg people, leave froggy alone...

For ALL the good things he had done, he got no credit/praise for it... for ONE that is probably not EVEN a bad thing he done, he get people attacking him... and you people are SERIOUSLY stealing this thread.

If you people hate frog so much, make a new thread about it and pm all the people who is screaming and crying to go to that topic.

If I was a moderator, I would have remove all these debate about froggy and the others by now. Froggy can't since he is under attack.

Don't take good doing for granted.

------
Back to topic... wow 52 straight? was that team arena pure or random? if it was random... NERF j/k... honestly I wonder how are like going to nerf it for it to be balance in arena... even without preperation this thing can kill... people would just focus on 16 marks and 14 expertise and viola, your butt in the ashes. Techincally they already nerf the quickshot quite a bit for forcing it to be 1 sec minimum recharge.

It was team arena, notice we were all in the same guild, heh.

In those 52 matches we faced a "mirror match" about 5 times and none of them came close to beating us. While I feel the build is powerful, it defintely takes skill. So many times I cast Shielding Hands on myself and THEN got hit by the barrage of interrupting arrows, which did little or nothing to me. People have to learn when and how to time their attacks.

Umm... stop basing your arguments off of random arenas please. Ten thousand ways eh? Love your ability to over exaggerate. There is infact very little you can do about this build in particular, especially if the ranger is attacking you.

And a mesmer who is a "anti-caster built" has little in offensive capability while this ranger build has both high damage and interrupt capability. In fact the damage on this build is actually higher than supposed dps builds that you can make with rangers, which is one of the reasons why its deemed ridiculous.

Mesmers are a pure support class with very little options of standing alone, which is why its abilities are potent. Rangers on the hand, have the ability to remain a potent attack class while having other secondary abilities at hand, how effective this is, really varies from build to build. That is the strength of ranger verstility. To put it simply a mesmer must devote themselves to a specific purpose, while having all of the caster maluses and being a priority target to boot, rangers don't have this problem.

Enchantments are hardly overpowered its just that enchantment removal is underpowered, the concept of "strategic removal" is a complete and utter joke. But thats an argument for another topic altogether.

There are plenty of anti-caster skills in this game, use them.

Btw Fragility mesmers are fine, if your team can't deal with them, tough, get better. If you can't see the reason why Fragility Mesmers are ok and why this particular ranger build/set of ability isn't , I suggest you play around with the build and try a team build based on it in tombs before you say anything.

Little offensive capability? A mesmer can totally shut down a caster and kill him if he knows what hes doing. You dont have to go 16 in attribute points to make effective builds.

Mesmers are the MOST dangerous class in the game. They get taken out before monks alot of the time. And yet on top of the HUGE offensive potential of a mesmer, it needs to survive against a spefic class designed to counter casters using a specific build desinged to counter casters?

Welcome to balance, or some vague semblance thereof.

I am personally SO sick of the nerfing. Nerf Spirit spam while overnerfing the spirits as well. Personally as a ranger distracting is what rangers do best. Their dmg cannot compete with an axe war with eviscerate/executioners. Their interupts aren't as good overall as the mesmers. Their arrows do have a chance to miss. Most of the anti-warrior skills work against them. Personally you should just take out the whole ranger class. A-Net should work on it till the expansion and then put them back in. So many things about it are broken in a sense. I love my ranger to death and I have been running the build. Punishing is not worth the elite. Escape? even in PvE I would never touch it. If you nerf distractions at least boost something else. . In my opinion its kind of like a water ele compared to an earth ele. Earth being the other classes just does it in general better than water. I think this goes back to the ranger being the jack of all trades. Being decent at everything and good at nothing so when a build comes out and is actually good everyone and their mother wants a nerf.

I have no qualms about rangers being able to interrupt well, its just that with Punishing shot + distracting + savage shot + kindle/conjure, you have 3 interrupts that deal alot of damage as well. Interrupts or damage not both with the same skills, that would be the best way to rebalance.

Nothing in game can compare to the spiking ability of the eviserate/executioners combo, so your point is semi-moot. Take heart in the fact that with certain builds you deal high sustained, ranged damage, with the ability to spike that is second to only that of the eviserate/executioners combo. Not only is your armor better than elementalists, you outdamage them by far as well, while still having enough room in your skill bar to bring 3 or 4 skills devoted to complementing/supplementing your role.

Punishing is definatly worth being an elite. Escape on the other hand, is more of a pve skill.

Ranger interrupts are better than mesmers interrupts since they are 1.Cheaper 2. Recharge A LOT faster 3. Generally Interrupt SKILLS and not just spells like mesmer interrupts are typically limited to.

Arrows can be dodged, but the ironic thing is, while the character is strafing and dodging your arrows, he is dead weight, he can't do anything , not casting, attacking, healing, whatever, just strafing.

Kill him with what? Wastrel's Worry ? Mind Wrack ? Give me a bloody break. And if you are talking about fragility combos, a mesmer can be a fragility mesmer or a shutdown/other mesmer, not both at the same time. By the way rangers are great at killing mesmers, since they are one of the hardest classes to shutdown in game. You heard me right, rangers. Rangers are not effected by anti-melee spells and shrug off anti-caster spells, the spells that target rangers are quite narrow.

And yes mesmers are meant to be dangerous, because nearly all of their abilities are indirect. They don't heal, buff [typically] or kill [typically]. Sure you can make a buff mesmer, but necros will out do you, and you can make that cute fragility mesmer, but don't expect to get far in tombs.

The fact is though that rangers interupt. You can basically just cast the skill again. The only one that disabels is distracting shot. Other than that the caster can just cast again. You are right about strafing and not doing anything but an aeigs would work if it were not for the fact that kindle always hits. Personally i think that if the arrow misses the prep should miss as well. This ranger build is basically like a frag mesmer. spirit shackles is the only counter i think as of having any great effect. Making the prep not hit if the arrow misses would and could solve many problems. Therefor a monk could use the time to cast guardian or another monk cast guardian on him and have a chance of healing him/herself. Anti-MELEE spells do not work on rangers but what about as mentioned above spirit shackles, faintheartedness or spiteful spirit. They work but only to a degree but they will have some effect. Nerf the distractions if u must but cmon boost something else.

I can agree with making some preps not happen if the arrow misses, kindle and poison for example, and I believe poison doesn't go off if the arrow misses. Ignite on the otherhand has an explosive component and should hit, it also does less dmg than kindle because of this. I have an interrupt build that I use in both pve and pvp to great effect, whether or not I'm alone or with other rangers, and I believe the kindle going off hit or miss is a bug since a miss with melandrus or poison does not still cause the preperation effect. I don't think the interrupts should be messed with, just fix how the prep is working.

After the regular recharge of the skill completes. Oh, the recharge is 60 seconds? Well, you're screwed! Ofcourse you also lose the energy investment as well, and still suffer from any exhaustion the spell caused you. Your 'fact' only holds for Signets with an instant recharge (such as Resurrection Signet), and for nothing else. And at the same time you took away what the target was hoping to launch into the fray. Their monk won't cast his heal. Their elementalist won't put up his ward. Their mesmer can't cast his backfire. Even if interrupts did 0 damage, you're offering a significant contribution to your party.
No, it's not. A frag mesmer uses his chain hoping that the opponent either doesn't expect it or isn't prepared to deal with it, if they are, he's pretty much screwed because short of cheap killing power he doesn't have much more to offer a team. An interrupt ranger has tools to stop counters used against him, and he uses them accidentally most of the time while tearing a target up. Oops, was that your Guardian? Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt Spirit Shackles. It's offense and defense in one, and for a defensive/control build it's actually better at offense than standard offense builds due to the interrupts carrying preparations.

And exactly how many mesmer interrupts do damage? Oh that's right, ONE. That's a whopping 107 damage for all the mesmer interrupts COMBINED. Either you didn't bother reading the whole thread or you're incredibly dense. In case you haven't noticed it's not the interrupts people are saying are imballenced, it's the damage that goes with them. And any idiot should be able to see that interrupt skills should not do more damage over any amount of time than pure damage skills. So if you want to keep the ranger skills the way they are, then why don't we add 100+ damage to all the mesmer interrupts on top of what they already do? And then we'll make three of the best spammable damage skills for all the other classes do interrupts too. Then maybe you can consider the current ranger setup ballanced.

I have both a Ranger and a Mesmer and I love them both, but this nonsense clearly has to be changed.

This isn't about not being able to defeat rangers, a point you missed back in the NR days as well. It's about those people running these rangers who instead of keeping the big winning secret to themselves and lashing out at anyone who tries to touch their precious build, bring it out in the open to say "hey, this doesn't seem right, this is disproportionally effective compared to other options". It's the old beta mentality of trying to make this a fun game instead of just being concerned with winning.

EVERYONE STOP FOR A MOMENT!!!!

we are way off topic. if you got something to say about ranger nerfing take it some where else. this is nothing about nerfing rangers. this was made as a warning of what i see as the next FLAVOR OF THE MONTH. with good reason.

all the people that are yelling that QZ and serpent's attribute points spread is too much (saw it earlier) is crazy. kindle, QZ, and serpent's are all wilderness survival so i don't know what you where talking about eariler.

complaints about spirit spam being nerfed, again take it somewhere else.

this is not a debate on: DAMAGE, ENERGY COST, IGNORING REFIREING RATE OF BOW, or PREPERATIONS.

this is a debate on the effectiveness of ranger interrupts and their RECHARGE RATES.

with QZ in play and serpents concussion shot and distracting becomes 4 sec recharge, savage becomes 2 sec recharge, and punishing becomes 3 sec recharge (btw punishing is an avg 100+ dmg a hit w/kindle so its well worth it). i could spam these one after another for the entire battle which will be about 1 minute max anyways.

the recharge is what makes them so deadly in the first place. the dmg and refire rate is fine considering you do have to hit with the arrow and it does have a slight delay on interrupt due to flight time. refire couldn't be abused with recharge a little higher keeping them from being spammed. dmg would be lowered b/c less attacks in xx seconds. not like this has to be changed much. even a 13-15 sec recharge would put it into balance.

not going list an entire team build b/c i'm trying to prevent the abuse from happening.

You should list it just so it will be abused.
Cause more grief, create more demand for action and more pressure for a quick respones.

good point but don't see many counters to it and i hated what spirit spam did to the game. people shunned pvp at that time b/c there was nothing else. don't want to see that again.

I never said that they did not lose their energy or anything of that sort but I've used this in CA and for the most part monks continue to cast. I can usually outspike them if given a little bit of time but it is not like they are completely defenseless. Whenever a new fotm or fad arises or an overpowered build for that matter such as smiting was more people start bringing counters and then that build slowly falls out of fashion. Its the same with all these trick builds such as was the frag mesmer and the whole IWAY team. And I do consider this a trick build for the most part cause it is using the skills in an "unintended" fashion.
Right now I'm mainly talking about CA or 4 man teams. I don't believe even these high powered rangers could take down a well organized balanced tombs team. When I say spirit shackles yes a mesmer could screw him over. So now the ranger will target the mesmer first instead of the monk? And what happens if there are two mesmers or mesmer secondaries. Yes there is a counter to it and there are counters to counters so its moot. I do believe though that you are right on the fact that interuption is mainly defensive but mixed with preps it becomes something it was not meant to be.

Yet I'm seeing people calling nerfs for all of those things in this thread. Hence that's why people are bringing up the spirit spam nerfs because people were bringing up all sorts of "problems" with spirits and in the end all these "problems" got "fixed" and that's how we got overnerfed spirits.

If you're all going to call for nerfs...at least know what the root of the problem is instead of calling for nerfs on EVERY singing freaking aspect.

the recharge is the root of the evil. just fix it and don't touch anything else. it would be fine.

I think it is a debate about all of the above items; the combination which makes for an over-powered set of skills. Having interrupts ignore the refire rate of the bow is also a big factor -- why is Quick Shot an elite when these interrupts are just as quick?

good point - QS just shoots faster. punishing shot is the same but it has + damage and it interupts. crappy recharge tho.... hmm...

read above^^^

you can get it down to 3 sec recharge (possibly 4 if its rounded up)

I think that the issuses about this build have the brought to light, have the Devs acknowledge any of this, how much longer will we have to wait for a fix?

until its abused like crazy in gvg and hoh

Imo, Ranger's damage attacks need a slight buff in dmg (or have 1 or 2 instants cast) and Punishing/savage need a nerf in dmg.

That way, it would still be possible to make efficient ranger spiking if well coordinated without the devastating aspect of having it interupt at the same time.Interupt, dmg and hybrid builds could all be efficient but there wouldnt be "a one and only ranger build" like it pretty much is atm.

Also, I know its been mentioned plenty of times alrdy, but one of the main reason rangers are overpowered at the moment is the current hoh's mechanic.
Imo, Ghostly heros should cap instantly (or very quickly to make interupting it pretty hard) or even better, the HoH should have a totaly diferent mechanic than KotH. As it is, its just ridiculous...

Counters to Hero interupting arent effective enough wich lead to a "who can interupt heros the longest" contest instead of a "who can kick everyone else's ass" contest like it should be.

Bias or ignorance, im not sure which this falls under exactly. First off, there are 2 ways to completely neuter any spell based skill, not just interupts. Taking a mesmer secondary completely neuters their ability to use interupts and gain no side effects from their use, due to the unsucessful interupt. Mesmer skills, with one exception and on a 45s timer, only affect spell type skills. Rangers affect every skill. Ranger counters are fewer than warrior counters and only a fraction of those actually hinder the rate at which the arrows sucessfully land in the same time frame. Condition style counters are quick, cheap, and easy to remove and come from the very sources that you would be targeting to interupt. The other style of coutnters in the form of hexes are not that easily piled up, especially on ranged attackers who do not bunch up on a target like warriors are forced to do so in melee. Then there is the issue of the acutal energy cost. Using the right bow ends most of the discussion of arrow that stray from the target as well. If the target is fleeing away from you, they arent casting anyway and in giving persiut a mesmer wouldnt be having the projectile arrow in flight that may or may not stop the next skill use due to the change in actions. The whole hide behind cover can work, but then the ranger is not a soft target like a mesmer and can just simply move into a better position while the target is moving.

I mean seriously, do you even look at the mesmer skills before talking about how the work? It sounds more like you want to have everything at the same time. Judging from the ranger skill lines that is not too far from the truth.
You would have to slow them down into the leech signet range in order to have any real impact. Small end changes with that kind of effect stacking would have virtually no effect on the application of the skills considering the recharge times of the skills they are used to counter.

If you were to remove the effect stacking entirely from the game and only allow for the highest to take precidence, it would be a step in the right direction and would flatten out a few other "peaks" present within the game now. That is not just a ranger issue, its an issue somewhat common within the game. If the effect stacking was removed then the skills were looked at for more "reasonable" effect timers, then a change like that could have a decent effect without over nerfing the skills individually.

Already use them.
You don't use high marks in a ranger spike.

It's not just defeating noobs. It's defeating good teams that actually are being original.

Well its seems that we are reaching that point or at least I have, the Arenas are full with this type of Ranger. I just popped over to Tombs for a looksee and guess what ..

Need 2 Qs Rangers
3 QS Rangers to complete group
Rank 3 - QS Ranger Lfg

I can understand that they can not anticipate all possible inbalences. A-Net needs to nip this in the butt NOW not weeks down the road as they did for the Spirit Spamming. Oh well, I was expecting a much faster response to these type of issues, the longer this drags on, greater the negetive impact this will have on the game. What's up Devs?

Are you in American districts?

i experimented with "Read the Wind"

:P

Ranger damage is already potentially the second highest in game (right under warrior dps), why make it any higher?

But yeah HoH should be more than just "well let see if we can keep the enemy ghosts interrupted for the last 2 minutes".

Favorable>Read

You should be using a 20 damage kindle instead.


Yum...Shield of deflection and Guardian!!

Yay for well of profane!

Hurray for rend and rigor mortis!

Of the suggestions made to nerf the interrpting chain, long recharges on the skills seem like the lest favorable, imo.

I do think savage shot could use some recharge adding. But thats it.
The suggestion for a cooldown period doesnt seem all to bad. That stops the chain interrupting.
The removal of preps from skills that shot with a cast time of 3/4 would stop the spike damage.
That would be it. We are back to normal.
I personally count on the timed interrupting effect of ranger interrupts, not all this new stuff.
An lenghty recast on these skills would make them bonus quick damage skills with the bonus of interupting in longer intervals of attack. Or at least, thats how I would play them.

The only class I can see thats screwed from rangers intrupting are necros.
Monks and mesmers are hard to interrupt. (fastcasting, shuck-and-jive mesmers that is)
Elementist have glyph of concentration which is a very good skill.
Warriors generally dont suffer from ranger interupts and even still, they have stances.
That leaves necros, and for some reason, they go unnoticed, so...good for them.

wrong my friend.

hammer warriors will get 1 attack vs 4 from the ranger. swords and axe doesn't get much better.

ele are just about completely screwed even the ele/mo. glyph is not the answer. you add 5 energy and 1 sec casting to the next spell you need to cast + .75 after cast for using glyph.

necros fall in the same boat. they are just SoL.

monks are so predictable its not funny. breeze at 1/4 life, healing touch at <50% hp. only protection skills are the exception with 1/2 or 1/4 casting times. still haven't been able to interrupt reversal with distracting yet.

mes are probly the least affecting with shackles and fast cast but even they can be interrupted.

rangers just interrupt each other. will come down to who ever interrupts the kindle or troll.

no matter what you face it doesn't lose any affectiveness.