said by facepalm:Looks like a buff for the greatsword. Yeah... OK. Splinter Shot buff is nice as well as the spirit buffs. Beyond those we get a few combo finishers. Frankly, I was expected a little more. Am I missing something?
Nope, as far as I can tell, you're not missing anything. I stopped playing this game more than a month ago, partially because the class and playstyle I wanted to play (a ranged Ranger) was both underpowered and more importantly, dull. I've been following the updates to see if they were changing anything that would make me want to give it another try, but after this patch, which was supposed to be the fixing/re-balancing patch for Rangers, I'm moving on.
They had stated over the last month and a half that they were looking to do the following in this patch: 1) Buff Spirits and make them more useful, 2) Revise Ranger signets to make them more useful, 3) Change Ranger shouts to make them more useful, 4) Look at the talent/skill spread to make more builds usable, 5) Review shortbow skills because they realized that using primarily auto-attack was boring (this was after what was originally dubbed an animation fix, and later admitted as a nerf, to the shortbow auto-attack rate of fire and in turn, damage/bleed stacks).
Instead, this patch slightly buffs Greatsword and underwater combat, and completely ignores those other issues. The one change to spirits, increasing the proc rate to 35/50%, is pretty much useless, as there's an internal 10 second cooldown on how often spirit abilities can proc.