Touch Ranger Nerf Idea

Vile Touch, Vampiric Touch, and Touch of Agony make them "Attack Skills"

"Touch rangers are mildly overpowered, they were not a problem before Factions, but with dulpicated skills they've become more then a simple nuisance." Quote from -Ken Dei

if a touch ranger is next to you using these "skills" there is nothing you can do but run away. there is no skill to lower the damage: ward, stance or mantra. there is no way to limit the amount of life gained by the ranger.

things that stop attacks would now have an impact -- like empathy, ineptitude, or sig of midnight...

Yall should chill about the word nerf (perhaps i should have called this a ele/mesmer buff)... I am not suggesting to nerf the build by lowering DPS or by changing any energy managment(Expertise still works with attack skills)... i think its a good build. i am only suggesting to make them attack skills... think about it -- if a blind warrior cant hit you with a hammer why should a necro be able to touch you with less range?

e-denial + snare and degen will stop ANY build. We are being forced to use a cookie cutter build to balance a creative build.

what i am suggesting is not a HUGE nerf... to say that blind would stop you from touching someone is not huge, rangers(with weapons) warriors and assassins must deal with blind why should touch rangers be any diffrent?

Please include any reasons WHY you think there should or shouldn't be a nerf.

Edit: I moved up some information as this thread got merged with another...

Except then they can spam the skills with half the cost.
Was there ever a problem with rangers using those skills being overpowered?

If running up and biting someone's neck is a normal form of attack, then I have been fighting wrong all these years.

They are fine the way they are.

I am not suggesting that they are "normal attacks" -- I suggest that they are attacks. Skills that directly do damage should be considered attack skills (Vile Touch, Vampiric Touch, Touch of Agony).

Plague Touch is a skill (it does not do direct damage). this is what a "skill" should be.

What difference would this change make? Attack skills are lowered by Expertise too.

The difference is that conditions like blind would stop them.

Change them to a spell, that way expertise won't have any effect on energy cost.

I used to touch ranger in RA for kicks. It's a fun build that works suprisingly well against melee chars (warriors,assassin,rangers). However, it's completely worthless anywhere other than RA. Even in RA it's less than stellar because if you get snared/slowed or kited by your target then you're unable to do any real damage at all. Any mesmer, water ele or necro worth their salt can simply degen you to death.

/not signed

changing them to spells seems a bit extreme of a nerf to me.. but i would support it.

any mesmer ele or necro worth their salt could degen anyone... the problem with the touch ranger is their ability to do alot of damage and heal at the same time with almost 0 skills to stop them. Saying the only way to stop a ranger is to slow them down seems silly to me.

They're not over powered though... Cripple + Degen and they're dead before they know it.

We met touch rangers in GvG last night. We were playing a massive degen hex build. About 20 minutes in, they started /resign'ing. It was interesting to see touch rangers in GvG.

Gargle Blaster's point is being evaded. Nobody said touch rangers were overpowered but the language is wrong in the Expertise or there was an oversight with these touch skills. Expertise says: "Attack skills" and not "skills" so it is definitely some sort of error.

Touch Rangers are very vulnerable to energy denial, because the only way for them to regain energy is from OoB, and they need to sac 20% for it. Very often for inexperienced players, that will kill them.

the idea is though you use it, and very quickly touch your health back up again.

Me and my guild were playing some kind of touch ranger spike (think its called Forest or summin) in HA recently, works well but you can run low on energy easily, and with Awaken OoB hurts.

I don't think the skills need to be changed at all, theirs nothing wrong with them.

Well since ANet added Vampiric Bite. they can now spam Vampiric Touch/Bite to keep their HP up. I can't believe ANet couldn't see this coming when they decided to add this duplicate skill. Touch Rangers seem to be extremely popular in Alliance Battles now since they have such high damage output and high survivability. I remember I encountered very few Touch Rangers back in FPE weekend.

Expertise is supposed to cover all skills. its not a bug, and you would be essentially nerfing rangers as a whole if you were to change it.

Touch rangers are not overpowered and deserving of the nerfbat IMHO. They are easily countered and are limited in what they can do. Granted, when first going against one they may seem "pwnage" but they are fragile. A couple of counters are as follows:

energy deny
diversion
interrupt
cripple/ward against foes/slow hexes
degen
or my favorite....kiting

Basically anything that is going to effect casters is going to effect a Touch ranger. I for one am happy to see new builds using some of the double skills, makes it worth having them and opening up options.

Bring wild blow and be like STFU STFU STFU STFU USE YOUR STANCE WHAT WHAT WHAT OWNED.

Anyway... I've never seen them in gvg in random arenas and team arenas they're just funny as you save them for last and then take like 3 mins to kill them.

Why is it that any time anything new that doesn't completely suck comes out, there are mass cries for it to be nerfed.

Anet already way over-nerfed way too many things. Let's stop the nerfing.

Touch rangers are fine as is. Touching someone is hard, unless they are going to stand still and let you in which case they deserve to die.

Don't nerf Touch rangers.