34 replies to this topic

[FITE]

Greatsword damage has been reduced by 40% - 50% even in a glass cannon 18k hp build my GS will crit between 1400 - 1900 depending on the boons at the time. Even with rampage up ive not seen anything above 2.5k.

A condition / dot build seems much more viable, yet the ranger isnt inherently strong as a condition stacking class.

Thoughts?

Edited by FITE, 21 July 2012 - 05:27 PM.

[Stormsoul]

I feel like GS ranger is pretty solid actually, i've been playing it extensively in pvp since beta opened and i really like where it's at now. It's definitely not supposed to be a glass cannon weapon -- it has too much built-in control and defense for that. i've been rolling with 30 in beastmastery, 20 in wilderness and 10 in both skirmishing and nature magic swapping between a Wolf/Eagle pet and i've been wrecking with the GS. it's more of a defensive melee option, I've been focusing more on disrupting heals and keeping myself alive while dishing out damage to support my pet, the real DPS powerhouse of the combo.

Very satisified with both the performance and the feel of it, i've been able to stand toe to toe with pretty much anybody, though heavy condition builds tear me a new one since i can't fit a whole lot of condition removal in the build (i have the signet already, i could grab a bear pet but i'd rather keep two high DPS pets). but then again, everything needs a weakness, right?

[Nyth]

FITE, on 21 July 2012 - 05:27 PM, said:

Greatsword damage has been reduced by 40% - 50% even in a glass cannon 18k hp build my GS will crit between 1400 - 1900 depending on the boons at the time. Even with rampage up ive not seen anything above 2.5k.

A condition / dot build seems much more viable, yet the ranger isnt inherently strong as a condition stacking class.

Thoughts?

Well if you realize how far ahead the GS used to be before BWE3 than a nerf was more than in order.
This might be too severe a nerf, or maybe they're just trying to find a good spot for the GS; it cleaves which is a huge plus in group fights. Before in a fights where you could hit 2+ opponents the GS would leave the 1H sword so far behind it it wasn't funny.

I'm not quite sure yet whether I think they overnerfed it. My first reaction is to say that it's slightly overnerfed; but it was quite on the strong side before.

[sogeou]

FITE, on 21 July 2012 - 05:27 PM, said:

Greatsword damage has been reduced by 40% - 50% even in a glass cannon 18k hp build my GS will crit between 1400 - 1900 depending on the boons at the time. Even with rampage up ive not seen anything above 2.5k. A condition / dot build seems much more viable, yet the ranger isnt inherently strong as a condition stacking class. Thoughts?

Yes, they over nerfed it. It was almost perfect with the damage it did. They should up the damage up about half of the nerf. So just nerf it by .25 instead of 1/2 they did. The pet fixes are still not good and without the damage of GS it is very hard to kill targets before they start jumping and running around.

[UssjTrunks]

The biggest hit I managed to land with my glass cannon ranger was 1.8k. That's a huge drop from before (I was routinely hitting 2-3.5k on the dummies before). The new GS 1-skill on a glass cannon ranger does about the same damage as the warrior GS 1-skill on a balanced warrior build. That shouldn't be the case because the warrior has a 10k burst on his GS, while the ranger does not.

sogeou, on 22 July 2012 - 03:14 AM, said:

Yes, they over nerfed it. It was almost perfect with the damage it did. They should up the damage up about half of the nerf. So just nerf it by .25 instead of 1/2 they did. The pet fixes are still not good and without the damage of GS it is very hard to kill targets before they start jumping and running around.

It was a bit too strong before, but they should have only nerfed it by 10-15%. 3.5-4k hits on a 1-skill is too much. However, reducing it to a max of 2.5-3k would have been fine. The weapon doesn't have any other distinguishing abilities that make it valuable to carry around at this point. That 1-skill damage was the only thing it had going for it.

If they're going to keep the damage this low, they'll need to improve the other abilities on the weapon.

Edited by UssjTrunks, 22 July 2012 - 05:25 AM.

[xardas22]

they nerfed longbow as well, i think that reduced dmg overall on ranger

[UssjTrunks]

xardas22, on 22 July 2012 - 01:32 PM, said:

they nerfed longbow as well

I don't think so.

I was still hitting 1-1.5k with the auto-attack and 8-9k with rapid fire.

Edited by UssjTrunks, 22 July 2012 - 02:59 PM.

[Velron]

The 1hand sword feels stronger now, hits just as hard but attacks crazy fast and sticks you on your target.

Rangers ARE good at condition builds, my favorite build BWE has been a axe+horn and shortbow condition build. I regularly stack 20+ bleeds on someone in a few seconds.

Granted a sword bleed warrior can burst with it better, but they gotta get in melee range and don't have as much utility going along with it IME. (I have been running a warrior sword bleed build also, both work great)

[FITE]

Velron, on 22 July 2012 - 04:26 PM, said:

Rangers ARE good at condition builds, my favorite build BWE has been a axe+horn and shortbow condition build. I regularly stack 20+ bleeds on someone in a few seconds.

Yep i completely take back my original comment, I used this build for the weekend and it is EXTREMELY strong. So much fun, will be adding videos soon.

[LIVESTRONGG]

I do think they nerfed it a bit much. Glass cannon build doesn't do alot of damage, like it should, not like previous betas, obviously, but it should do a fair amount. Only doing 2k crits at most is kinda depressing imo, and with 18k HP you don't have much time before you're dead.

[Kolapz]

Title should be "overnerf on greatsword ranger" since the one-handed sword damage was buffed quite a bit.

[Haku]

I use greatsword. It performs excellently for what I need it for. 3 stacks of bleed, and several extremely useful abilities. Perhaps there was a nerf... but overnerf? No...

16 wins 1 loss in Tourney as ranger. Not like I'm carrying the team but I think I can be confident when I say that greatsword can perform well as a utility weapon.

Edited by Haku, 23 July 2012 - 02:07 AM.

[Adrian_R]

I didn't notice the 40-50% reduction the OP mentioned, maybe it's just a nerf to glass-cannon builds.
I sure performed better with a greatsword ranger than I did with my guardian in sPvP.

[Norseman]

UssjTrunks, on 22 July 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

I don't think so.

I was still hitting 1-1.5k with the auto-attack and 8-9k with rapid fire.

Uhh where you hitting that hard with a longbow? sPvP? WvW? PvE? Baby rabbits?


ETA: I do think longbow was toned down a bit. Along with that, pet damage and sword damage was boosted some.

Edited by Norseman, 23 July 2012 - 07:45 AM.

[Teagen_Presley]

I had a 9K rapid fire in WvW, but I believe the person was missing real armor.  More typical was 6K for crits, but that was with the windswept bow that put my crit dmg at 150+ (when mousing over).

Greatsword when I tested it (very limited), was doing less damage than 1H sword.  I don't understand this, at all.  The 1H sword has a leap function on its #1 attack which is superior  to the GS mechanic of an evade on the last in chain.  The 1H sword also allows pairing with the warhorn which means you can stack buffs/birds onto the damage.

I really don't understand this decision from a balance perspective.  And if they nerf 1H sword at all, what exactly is the point of ranger melee over the warrior?

[Haku]

Teagen_Presley, on 23 July 2012 - 07:49 AM, said:

I had a 9K rapid fire in WvW, but I believe the person was missing real armor.  More typical was 6K for crits, but that was with the windswept bow that put my crit dmg at 150+ (when mousing over).

Greatsword when I tested it (very limited), was doing less damage than 1H sword.  I don't understand this, at all.  The 1H sword has a leap function on its #1 attack which is superior  to the GS mechanic of an evade on the last in chain.  The 1H sword also allows pairing with the warhorn which means you can stack buffs/birds onto the damage.

I really don't understand this decision from a balance perspective.  And if they nerf 1H sword at all, what exactly is the point of ranger melee over the warrior?

You're right on the point that it does less raw damage. But if you want raw damage with 2 hands you could just run a bow. Also there aren't really traits focusing on the melee aspect. This puts greatsword as a utility weapon. It's outperformed only by the warhorn in that sense. For survival specs it can be an extremely useful weapon. It can put up 3 bleeds on low cooldown with (2), huge leap that can cover ground with great recovery on (3), a block move so good I can't believe they gave it to rangers on (4), and a skill that could use an increase on leap on (5)

Honestly I love the greatsword. Good overall utility weapon. No, it should not be doing massive damage... You're a ranger, not a warrior. It makes me faster, compliments my bleed build, can be used to knock someone off the point, and some of it's skins look super sexy.

Edited by Haku, 23 July 2012 - 07:59 AM.

[Red J]

I think it was good idea to nerf Greatsword. It was too powerful, overshadowing other ranger weapons.

However, Sword seemed to have been buffed a bit. I tried Sword and Dagger this BWE, and I can't even describe the sheer awesomness of that combination.

[UssjTrunks]

Norseman, on 23 July 2012 - 07:35 AM, said:

Uhh where you hitting that hard with a longbow? sPvP? WvW? PvE? Baby rabbits?


ETA: I do think longbow was toned down a bit. Along with that, pet damage and sword damage was boosted some.

Glass cannon build on target golems. It's the same damage I was getting last BWE.

Edited by UssjTrunks, 23 July 2012 - 04:25 PM.

[Lawn Pirate]

all power builds seemed worse than they were due to the high prevalence of toughness/condi builds

[Irons]

I was running GS and Axe/Warhorn and both did the same damage on crit.

[AndrewSX]

GS dmg has been slightly overnerfed imo.

Also, i still see Sword MH autoattack rooting you.

Now, 2 options:

-they still haven't fixed it
-it's intended to stay that way.

If it's the 2nd, it's idiotic, for the GW2 kind of combat, and for the ranger class.

[Haku]

AndrewSX, on 23 July 2012 - 05:25 PM, said:

GS dmg has been slightly overnerfed imo.

Also, i still see Sword MH autoattack rooting you.

Now, 2 options:

-they still haven't fixed it
-it's intended to stay that way.

If it's the 2nd, it's idiotic, for the GW2 kind of combat, and for the ranger class.

Do you expect to do warrior damage? Again, Greatsword is fine as it is now. It was actually my favorite weapon this bwe.

[AndrewSX]

Haku, on 23 July 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

Do you expect to do warrior damage? Again, Greatsword is fine as it is now. It was actually my favorite weapon this bwe.

No, but now it's simply laughable. I'm not saying to revert: it WAS OP.

But now it's too low.

[Runkleford]

I don't understand the complaints about "overnerf" because in sPVP, ANET buffed the pet damage to be on par with the Ranger itself and a lot of times even better. That's the reason the weapons were nerfed. Rangers were still kicking ass in sPVP. I can't speak for PVE, there may be an issue there with Rangers but the nerf makes sense in PVP.

Edited by Runkleford, 23 July 2012 - 05:57 PM.

[Haku]

AndrewSX, on 23 July 2012 - 05:49 PM, said:

No, but now it's simply laughable. I'm not saying to revert: it WAS OP.

But now it's too low.

I think there would be a huge problem if I was running a condition/power build and put up bleeds with axe, swapped to greatsword, more bleeds, and then proceeded to maul someone's face with the greatsword for massive melee dmg because the weapon itself did massive damage. I think only warriors are allowed to be carried by the greatness of their weapon like that.

[Yumx]

Greatsword dmg is fine, just tune your builds right.

[Spatzimaus]

I honestly didn't notice the decrease.  Level 38 in the last BWE, level 31 in this one, and I was still killing things just fine.  Okay, the pets might have been doing better than before to make up for a drop in weapon damage, but I tried swapping to other melee weapons and it still seemed like a decrease relative to the GS.  The greatsword was still just a really good damage source for melee combat, especially with its built-in AoE.

[velimirius]

Slight overnerf is the case...

[Teagen_Presley]

Haku, on 23 July 2012 - 07:59 AM, said:

You're right on the point that it does less raw damage. But if you want raw damage with 2 hands you could just run a bow. Also there aren't really traits focusing on the melee aspect. This puts greatsword as a utility weapon. It's outperformed only by the warhorn in that sense. For survival specs it can be an extremely useful weapon. It can put up 3 bleeds on low cooldown with (2), huge leap that can cover ground with great recovery on (3), a block move so good I can't believe they gave it to rangers on (4), and a skill that could use an increase on leap on (5)

Honestly I love the greatsword. Good overall utility weapon. No, it should not be doing massive damage... You're a ranger, not a warrior. It makes me faster, compliments my bleed build, can be used to knock someone off the point, and some of it's skins look super sexy.

Except by running a SW/Warhorn you've got more overall mobility than the GS.  The speed buff + multiple leaps that sword brings to the table lets you move around a fight, more often and faster than the GS.  The only advantage the GS has is the daze (sword/warhorn lacks an interrupt tool), and the longer range on its leap.  And the evades on the sword beat the GS too.  It also just seems strange to do more damage with a 1Hander than with a 2Hander.

[Erro]

FITE, on 22 July 2012 - 06:06 PM, said:

Yep i completely take back my original comment, I used this build for the weekend and it is EXTREMELY strong. So much fun, will be adding videos soon.

Lol, I tried that as well and had great fun .

OT, greatsword really sucked this time around. Damage decrease really was 50%, no doubt in my mind. On the plus side, my pets were scoring 3k crits... juicy to say the least.