Guild Wars 2

For the past days I have been spending karma on zerk gear(1 set of ascended trinks) for my characters and testing them in dungeons, events and HOTM – the invincible golem.
I narrowed my choices down to two classes that I enjoy playing.

Ranger (LB spec and melee alternative for ‘stacking’)
Plus:
good dps from Huge range, good healing & pet
good HP
decent condi cleanse
decent mobility
Spotter
Frost Spirit

Minus:
so many rangers…
feels… strange a bit, not sure… too simple?

Thief (my variation of a P/P D/P build)
Plus:
decent dps (20% less than ranger) from 1k range…
great mobility…
feels a bit more dynamic because I cannot face-tank stuff so I have to be more careful where I stand / etc…

Minus:
bad for events because of the 900 range and Low HP
bad condi clean (I use a sigil of purity… but I will change it…)
no Spotter / Frost spirit / banners so what do I compensate with?
loooow hp!

I’m at the point of creating my first ascended wep (pistol or bow) and I am reading / testing as much as I can before I commit.
Oh, and I am what you would call an ‘old’ / casual player with 2-3 hours / day for this.

So.. what are your thoughts?

Thief can be traited for condi clears on stealth. Lots of On Stealth traits available.

If this is just a pve choice, Ranger. If it is for WvW as well, either. Their strengths lie in what your playstyle choice will be.

For PvP, it doesn’t matter. Can create disposable alts to PvP with, the only exception is if you want those XIII traits. That would be pricey to dispose of 3g + skill points at a whim.

Why not both classes?
If you are making an asc weapon for a thief I would make a dagger or sword, not only both are used in great thief builds but also can be used on ranger, specially the sword.
But if you really want to make the pistol or the longbow, go for the longbow, the reason is that the pistol isn’t actually a good power weapon for thief, while the longbow is a great power weapon for ranger, I assume a power weapon because condition damage doesn’t get much advantage with ascended gear.

BTW, I wouldn’t call someone with 23 hours/day available a casual player

@Gosu: PvE wise as the title says

@Bel: 2-3, not 23

Ranged dps sucks kitten . If you want to compare both classes use the right builds.
Speaking of which, Thief has more utility than ranger. Both have insane burst abilities but ranger brings Frost spirit and Spotter.

But you should tell us what kind of PvE do you play. In open world anything does ok, even terrible builds.

The best advice I can give is that you shouldn’t be using Pistol/Pistol as a thief, especially not with Berserker stats. The damage on the weapon set is poor and there’s no synergy between the different abilities. Using a Shortbow as your ranged option instead will give you much more utility and survivability, while still being able to deal decent DPS with close range Cluster Bombs.

Try your thief out with a Shortbow for a while instead, and see if that helps sway your decision.

P/P is my choice against world bosses and sometimes in dungeons (against single bosses) when I’m in a pug of non zerkers who don’t use their skills. Shortbow is nice against groups of enemies.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Ranged dps sucks kitten . If you want to compare both classes use the right builds.

1. I find ranger dps pretty good, lower than grenade engi, but still good.
2. since it will be me playing I will use the build I feel most comfortable with (dps / surv / support balance)

Seems to me you put more thought into your ranger list. Your thief list is all over the place, with cons listed as pros etc. Here are my thoughts:

@bad condi clean:
Try Signet of Agility, and since you like the mobility, having Shadowstep on your bar can get you an additional cleanse (3 conditions). As stated above, you can also go for condition removal on stealth, but that’s up to you. To be honest, I feel more at a loss trying to cleanse conditions off my ranger without resorting to passive effects.

@bad for events because of the 900 range and Low HP
Shortbow’s bouncing auto-attack, Clusterbomb and Choking Gas will allow you to easily tag way more mobs than your ranger can, in my opinion. Also, spamming Disabling Shot allows you to survive through mostly anything. As someone already mentioned, shortbow is where it’s at.

@no Spotter / Frost spirit / banners so what do I compensate with?
Blast finishers. Again, that’s on your shortbow. Blast them fire fields and make your team proud! And if you’re just roaming around, you don’t need any of those since mobs will be dead within seconds.

@loooow hp! // cannot facetank
Thieves have access to ludicrous amounts of blind and AoE blind. This renders pretty much any non champion/legendary grade enemy powerless. You can just sit there and keep them blinded, taking next to no damage.

I hope this helps you in figuring out thief a little better.

rogerwilko.6895:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Ranged dps sucks kitten . If you want to compare both classes use the right builds.

1. I find ranger dps pretty good, lower than grenade engi, but still good.
2. since it will be me playing I will use the build I feel most comfortable with (dps / surv / support balance)

I find it funny that you ask for advice on your characters and yet you don’t even treat all input as equal. Should have just titled this thread “Agree with my build choice so I feel validated.”

rogerwilko.6895:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Ranged dps sucks kitten . If you want to compare both classes use the right builds.

1. I find ranger dps pretty good, lower than grenade engi, but still good.
2. since it will be me playing I will use the build I feel most comfortable with (dps / surv / support balance)

The problem is not ranger dps. The problem is ranged dps sucks.

And your post just explained why many people hate ranger(in this game) for easy dungeons. Because a bunch of ranger thought they are doing uber dps with bow, when they are actually doing similar dps as a rifle warrior. But you never saw people complaining about rifle warrior, because most warrior don’t use rifle(in easy dungeons).

@theguildless: thx, solid advice
@tree: thx for your input.

rogerwilko.6895:

@Bel: 2-3, not 23

Yeah I know, I just forgot to type the “-”, my statement keeps the same. ;D

But yeah, in GW2 ranged DPS will never be better than melee, the game was designed that way.

rogerwilko.6895:

@Gosu: PvE wise as the title says

Yeah, I made a brain error. I meant to say:

“If this is just a pve choice, Ranger.”

Dunno why I typed pvp in that sentence.

Oh, those PvE thief p/p unload meta builds.

In dungeons, thieves are a million miles ahead of rangers, whether team or solo play. Rangers are situationally good depending on the dungeon and party composition where as a thief will excel in every and any dungeon, they are also the most important class next to a guardian as they provide easy trash skip, perma blind and projectile block for trash mobs and the highest dps in the game. Their survivability may look low due to low hp and armor but is actually one of the most survivable class due to lifesteal signet and trait on top of lots of blind and easily traited felines grace for perma dodges.

laokoko.7403:

your post just explained why many people hate ranger(in this game) for easy dungeons. Because a bunch of ranger thought they are doing uber dps with bow, when they are actually doing similar dps as a rifle warrior.

Do you have some numbers to back this up?
I have tested the LB ranger / Bow and Rifle warr and I have a clear picture of what each can do.

LB 2 and 5 are powerful burst ability, but the auto attack in melee sucks, and playing at 2K range will lower your dps because you can’t self stack might to 25 and steal the banners from the stacks and keep them for you. Sword aa hits for less, but it’s faster, and you don’t have to trait for it. It’s one of the most powerful ranged weapons in all situations ( not including the unreliable guardian scepter, staff ele wich is melee, and nade engi because the rotation includes close range abilities), but it’s still inferior to melee dps.

Bow and rifle war simply doesn’t exist in the dps realm.

rogerwilko.6895:

laokoko.7403:

your post just explained why many people hate ranger(in this game) for easy dungeons. Because a bunch of ranger thought they are doing uber dps with bow, when they are actually doing similar dps as a rifle warrior.

Do you have some numbers to back this up?
I have tested the LB ranger / Bow and Rifle warr and I have a clear picture of what each can do.

edit: I’m actually pretty wrong on this. Anet seemed to do some change after the sep 9th patch. So they boost ranger rapid fire dps by a bunch.

That being said I have no idea how pure longbow dps rotation compare to pure melee.
http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewforum/4280897

DnT seemed to be the authority in this type of discussion. I’ll try the dungeon forum and ask.

rogerwilko.6895:

laokoko.7403:

your post just explained why many people hate ranger(in this game) for easy dungeons. Because a bunch of ranger thought they are doing uber dps with bow, when they are actually doing similar dps as a rifle warrior.

Do you have some numbers to back this up?
I have tested the LB ranger / Bow and Rifle warr and I have a clear picture of what each can do.

Check ranger forums.. havent been any good DPS calculations post LB buff, but the bow has almost always been 20-25% lower then sword AA.
Given that sword AA has cripple, it will permanently keep Predators Onslaught active, meaning you will get +10% damage for ranger and +5% damage for pet permanently. This means the sword will pull further ahead even when LB got a substantial buff.

Ranger DPS is ranked like this:
Sword + Warhorn
Greatsword
Longbow

While the longbow can churn out massive damage at around 1000 range, it cannot churn out massive damage at 130-300 range (melee). Therefore your maximal LB damage, due to the range restriction on the AA drops by 2/3rds due to this massive difference in potential “filler in” damage.
You have good uptime on rapid fire, but 15-20k damage every 8 seconds compared to the sword maxing out at 3700 damage per 0.5 seconds clearly show who is the winner in terms of sheer damage.
In comparison, Longbow does one attack every 1.10 seconds when counting in arrow flight time, animation, aftercast and cast time. The swords attack chain is 0.5, 0.25, 0.75. Meaning the sword does (in best case, all stars align) 3x 3700 damage in 1.5 seconds, while longbow will deal 3900 in 1.1 second (if at 1000+ range, meaning you wont have 25 might stacks).

Just add the coefficients together and divide by the time. That’ll tell you which is higher damage.

Sword and GS (NOTE: I don’t think Wiki has been updated with corrected coefficient for 3rd attack) are close. Longbow is still distant 3rd.

Atherakhia.4086:

Just add the coefficients together and divide by the time. That’ll tell you which is higher damage.

Sword and GS (NOTE: I don’t think Wiki has been updated with corrected coefficient for 3rd attack) are close. Longbow is still distant 3rd.

crude way of doing things, but yes, at the basic level this works. Things are slightly different when adding in traits, buffs and debuffs.

Also please note that in PvE the majority of damage is produced by using 5 then 2 to get a brief moment of Predators Onslaught boost to the initial RF. However due to barrage cooldown, you can only maintain this boost at 33% uptime.

well we know rapid fire is really good. Problem is you have 2.5 second of uber dps, and for 10 second your dps will be quite poorly. Barrage also have 30 second cooldown.

If you are just exploring open world, rapid fire is really fast in killing trash mobs since they die really fast. But if you increase the duration of the fight, a pure longbow build is quite low in dps due to long bow autoattack dps isn’t very good.

Yes, I did test the melee options for ranger / thief and warr and indeed melee is ahead in terms of damage.

Since for me the melee options are more or less clear (I know where when and how to use them) I wanted to focus more on the range dps area.
Here, the ranger has a huge (1500) range.
The thief 900. But it has AoE. And it provides healing, if I so chose (SoM).

So far, the best result for me, in terms of ease of use and dps output was using the thief P/P for aoe Trash & easy events, switching to D/P when the single target boss was at 20%, or using the Sword/x Ranger.

I still think a Ranger would be better for the party in terms of buffs because of frost spirit and spotter. I am more or less sure that in a 5 man or more group I won’t be the best DPS player, and nor do I want to.

As long as I carry my weight and I bring some useful buffs/dps/cc/res/cloak to the other when they need it, I’m happy.

This thread was not created to “help me pick between thief and ranger”. I made it because I am curios about what others think / how stuff works / etc.
Thank you for all who contributed, and should you want to add more, feel free to do it!

You should make choices by looking ahead to where you’ll be in a few months with practice when you’re good at the game rather than where you are now.

Plus the most optimal / viable pve builds are a known quantity and you can check out metabattle to see what you should be doing.

Prysin.8542:

rogerwilko.6895:

laokoko.7403:

your post just explained why many people hate ranger(in this game) for easy dungeons. Because a bunch of ranger thought they are doing uber dps with bow, when they are actually doing similar dps as a rifle warrior.

Do you have some numbers to back this up?
I have tested the LB ranger / Bow and Rifle warr and I have a clear picture of what each can do.

Check ranger forums.. havent been any good DPS calculations post LB buff, but the bow has almost always been 20-25% lower then sword AA.
Given that sword AA has cripple, it will permanently keep Predators Onslaught active, meaning you will get +10% damage for ranger and +5% damage for pet permanently. This means the sword will pull further ahead even when LB got a substantial buff.

Ranger DPS is ranked like this:
Sword + Warhorn
Greatsword
Longbow
.

Sword/axe *

True, sword + axe is what I would use, for melee dps + reflects.
for now I do not have the resources(time + gold) to gear the ranger and test it in more detail.

But I will say this: it is Very pleasant to play thief and use SB to blast stuff. Sadly this only happens about 1/10 of the time, when I actually find a decent pug

rogerwilko.6895:

For the past days I have been spending karma on zerk gear(1 set of ascended trinks) for my characters and testing them in dungeons, events and HOTM – the invincible golem.
I narrowed my choices down to two classes that I enjoy playing.

Ranger (LB spec and melee alternative for ‘stacking’)
Plus:
good dps from Huge range, good healing & pet
good HP
decent condi cleanse
decent mobility
Spotter
Frost Spirit

Minus:
so many rangers…
feels… strange a bit, not sure… too simple?

---

Thief (my variation of a P/P D/P build)
Plus:
decent dps (20-30% less than ranger) from 900 range…
great mobility…
feels a bit more dynamic because I cannot face-tank stuff so I have to be more careful where I stand / etc…

Minus:
bad for events because of the 900 range and Low HP
bad condi clean (I use a sigil of purity… but I will change it…)
no Spotter / Frost spirit / banners so what do I compensate with?
loooow hp!

wish ranger had 6/6/6/6/6 in traits and 10 utility skills to match what you described at once

Thief is better generally. With your bad builds probably ranger comes out ahead though.

@robertul

:)
oh, how exactly did you find out what builds I used for the tests?
did you test them yourself?
what did you compare them to?
what are the results?

P/P has been tried and tested before, the dps is not worth it usually. The only time p/p is viable is for certain encounter where you only range it like if you are glitching cm p2 final boss but even then you can melee that too if you use the rock. D/D and S/P will always offer highest dps out of all the other weapon sets, while S/P also has some of the best survivability due to pistol whip evade and blind spam.

This all assuming dungeon ofc, in open world anything can work. By all means though test out all the weapon sets yourself and draw your own conclusion.

True, p/p has it’s uses and it’s FUN. The new Ricochet is very nice. The numbers are decent. Range is 1050. etc.

D/D and S/P will always output bigger numbers, that’s true, but that’s a different play style. And it’s zero range.

I use S/P, D/P, SB, P/P, depending on the dungeon / event party setup / mood, etc.

rogerwilko.6895:

True, p/p has it’s uses and it’s FUN. The new Ricochet is very nice. The numbers are decent. Range is 1050. etc.

D/D and S/P will always output bigger numbers, that’s true, but that’s a different play style. And it’s zero range.

I use S/P, D/P, SB, P/P, depending on the dungeon / event party setup / mood, etc.

Range isnt an issue in most of the dungeon encounter as they are mostly fought in melee. obviously there are encounters where p/p can work, thats why its always handy to carry a set in your inventory, but its too situational and i doubt it can be a “main” build in a dungeon assuming you want to run it effeciently, if you are doing it just for fun then anything works if you have the skill, only difference is time it takes to kill stuff.

As for which class you should play for dungeons, thieves is always a good choice no matter the content while ranger is situational, there are dungeons where you will feel like a kitten as a ranger, such as arah.

Thief>ranger
Dodge the rf and win

rogerwilko.6895:

True, p/p has it’s uses and it’s FUN. The new Ricochet is very nice. The numbers are decent. Range is 1050. etc.

D/D and S/P will always output bigger numbers, that’s true, but that’s a different play style. And it’s zero range.

I use S/P, D/P, SB, P/P, depending on the dungeon / event party setup / mood, etc.

Max range longbow ranger is more dps than pistol thief. So that covers dps.
Thief has stealth and blind. Both very in demand things. Ranger offers a marginal dps boost. That sums up the utility part.

robertul.3679:

Ranger offers a marginal dps boost. That sums up the utility part.

Not really. There are lots of niche things a ranger can bring depending on the party comp. And FrostSpotter is hardly just a “marginal” dps boost.