Guild Wars 2

My 2cents on Longbow:

Swap Precise Strike and Steady Focus

Move either Piercing Arrows or Eagle Eye to Adept to allow us to take PA/EE/Read the Wind

Shorten Rapid Fire to 3.5 seconds to get full damage

Make the next attack after self given stealth to do double damage (with longbow only)…only works on the next shot while in stealth, not full length of Rapid Fire/Barrage

Sasajoe.1509:

runeblade.7514:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

runeblade.7514:

If Longbow is so bad, then I must be a pro esport player.

I sniped and killed so many players using the 6/0/2/6/0 build.

Pewpewing noobs or newbs from afar proves nothing. A thief, mesmer, warrior, guardian, engineer or elementalist should be able to close the gap in no time. Anyone who lets the ranger utilizing his range does something wrong.
Against a LB ranger, you have to play aggressive. If you do so, the ranger is forced to switch the weapon or die painfully.

If any of those classes can close the gap and gank the ranger before he could see it coming, then that ranger is terrible. That ranger isn’t abusing the 1500 range and the terrain; he deserves to die.

You are so wrong on so many levels, in other mmos (more successful ones) the ranger/hunter/archer profession has many reliable kiting mechanisms unlike here in gw2. rangers have huge cooldowns & unreliable spells that very often even go on cd without doing anything.

If you play the build correctly. You should be finding terrain advantages. If there is no enemies around. Your terrain advantages is your fortress, your 20-40 second damage immunity. Other classes and ranger’s weapon set can’t abuse the terrain advantage as much because their range is much much less. With this advantage, I felt that my emergency escape skills are always there when I needed it most.

Also if u r with a ranged – longbow build & some one like warrior or thief gets to you (which is very very very easy especially for thieves) you cannot escape they have superior mobility .

If you have a good terrain advantage, you can just knock them back or waste their time by escaping.

if you switch weapons .. well good luck with your ranged build holding a gs or sw/smth against a thief / warrior in close combat

Those weapon sets are for escaping. Longbow Rangers should always position themselves for escaping.

its a loss-loss situation

If you escape successfully, you can get back to your terrain advantage with relatively no loss at all.

Oh and almost forgot, even with the range you have you still dont have a huge burst like thives or warriors do (no matter even if you are “THE SNIPER CLASS”)

On the other hand, Longbow has a decent pressure: sustain damage. If the enemy tries to escape, they still have to suffer arrows on their backside. Think of it like trying to escape huge amount of bleed stacks without any cleansing available.

so as a conclusion – no burst, no kiting ability,no escapeability*, no good melee option if you have a ranged build – if you are the poor kitten to try play a bow ranger basically you a the free loot bad end of story & if you wanna tell me that this is a balanced game well i don’t think so a balance —->

In conclusion, you are free kill because you don’t know how to play the build. I was definitely not a free kill when I sniped hundreds of players in sPvP.

Oidmetala.8426:

ok now seriously…

you have exatly 2 options as a longbow ranger in tpvp.
and trust me i play it long enough now.

• option 1: you have more survive, but no damage (also not aoe)
  so you can jump around like a clown and be completely useless

• option 2: you have more damage (not much), but no survive.
  and every other player will love to put a target on you.
  if you go high ground like this, nobody in your team will rez you after thief, ele or even condi professions killed you in 10 seconds.
  if a s/p thief decide to troll you, he can even farm you on spawn with a build like this.

at least you will never come to try this two options, because every serious tpvp team dont take you into a team with a build like this.

so please just stop complaining longbow ranger is viable.
i have no idea how you can think that…

everything can do much better
high range is worth nothing in gw2
there is enough mobility, ports, jumps to get fast into a close combat

Option 2: You increase your survivability by using the terrain. No player can target you unless they want to waste 20 seconds trying to reach your location only to be knockback onto the ground and then another 20 seconds to find out that you repositioned yourself in another place. If two or more players tries to reach you, then that is the equilivent of 2 players leaving the objective while your team kills the rest.

Not sure about Team tournament, but it is viable in soloqueue.

there is enough mobility, ports, jumps to get fast into a close combat

This is the problem with your argument. You think that longbow is a close combat weapon.

i know really well how to use the terrain in tpvp.
its the only thing i do in this game since release,
playint tpvp as ranger and bunker guardian.

so i have really much experience in tpvp and positioning as ranger,
thats exactly what i have to do as spirit ranger

if you think i’m a random bad ranger,
no i’m not, you can find me in the eu ladder top 25 and also in the legends tourny where we got the 3. place at least.
normaly i dont backup my messages like this, but i get totaly mad to explain with guys think they found out how to play a longbow power ranger…
i think i have enough experience to say it dont works.
at least it dont even need much experience to see it fast, that power ranger is bad atm.

anet devs should never read in this forum things like “longbow ranger is not bad in tpvp” because its the most bad thing you can do in tpvp atm…

at least with “there is enough mobility, ports, jumps”
i mean your enemys have enough mobility to get close range to your longbow ranger and so you are instantly close combat.

enemy players are not stupid and also know all/most jumps on the tpvp maps and get fast to your super well good positions you use.

Atherakhia.4086:

Khenzy.9348:

I don’t think the longbow is a bad weapon, it’s decent, the only change I’d do is removing the need to be static while channeling Barrage, and vastly reducing said channel.
Rangers need so many traits to make a single weapon viable is not even fair if you compare them to other professions. That, and poor condition removal, unreliable damage and dead pets on team fights make this particular build underperform.

Again, it’s not the weapon, but mostly the builds associated with it.

Its not the weapon, but the weapon needs 5 traits (with room for 2) before it’s good?

You provide alternate ways to apply lonbow’s damage through other traits (more Ranger survivability for example) and you have a viable weapon. Ask hammer warriors when they were considered free kills before, their hammer wasn’t even touched when they started to be considered a serious threat. It was healing signet’s buff, Cleansing Ire, Burst mastery, etc… all of them affected hammer indirectly.
Maybe I should have worded that diferently as I contradicted myself when I said “taking so many traits to make longbow viable” when I wanted to say is to make a competent viable power ranger longbow build, you have to overload that weapon with traits as there are no other more optimal or desirable choises.

The LB is good for WvW (covering fire, killing/slowing strugglers etc)
No need to change it

Just merge the 1500 range trait with piercing arrows then we are sweet

While I agree that Longbow could see some changes, I find arguments such as “But I got no personal defence” to be a bit weird. In most MMOs, this would be seen as a benefit. The more damage focus the merrier, you’re not running around alone and it’s the melee group’s job to box in and contain the enemy attackers, after all.

In a way, I see Longbow as a support-centric weapon. It excels at clearing structures, it’s amazing attack range especially when manually aimed, can knock back and can frequently break target lock against enemy ranged attackers.

So yeah, in 1v1, sure it has tons of issues. 1v1 isn’t a PvP format, so it hardly matters.
In group situations it can be pretty kitten good. It’s either a bit too generic or actually too specialized though, so yeah, some small changes would be required.

Well, giving the longbow and GS some active defence would be great (smoke fields, dodges etc Oid’s suggestions), not only would they solve a lot of ranger survival issues, but would make them fun to play again.
At the moment its pewpew from range and hope to not get noticed, which is not only completely lame but also unrealistic, especially in a any organized play.

dylan.5409:

Well, giving the longbow and GS some active defence would be great (smoke fields, dodges etc Oid’s suggestions), not only would they solve a lot of ranger survival issues, but would make them fun to play again.

Hunter’s Shot
Fire an arrow that grants you stealth when it hits an enemy. Your pet gains swiftness.

Point-Blank Shot
Push back your foe with a point-blank shot. The closer they are, the farther it pushes them back.

That’s two defensive abilities already. Really, I don’t think this specific part is where Longbow is hurting. When they changed Hunter’s Shot, I was more thinking that it’s losing its specialized role too much, adding more defences to it.

Carighan.6758:

dylan.5409:

Well, giving the longbow and GS some active defence would be great (smoke fields, dodges etc Oid’s suggestions), not only would they solve a lot of ranger survival issues, but would make them fun to play again.

Hunter’s Shot
Fire an arrow that grants you stealth when it hits an enemy. Your pet gains swiftness.

Point-Blank Shot
Push back your foe with a point-blank shot. The closer they are, the farther it pushes them back.

That’s two defensive abilities already. Really, I don’t think this specific part is where Longbow is hurting. When they changed Hunter’s Shot, I was more thinking that it’s losing its specialized role too much, adding more defences to it.

That’s the worst argument ever. Really. Mesmers or thieves can use stealth. If you don’t hit them, you can’t stop them. Guards, warriors, engineers and eles can use some sort of stability or invulnerability. You can stealth yourself for 3 seconds but you’re not able to reposition yourself properly during that timeframe. You’re forced to swap weapons or lose damage. Beside, even if you’re able to knock someone back, they have probably a second or third gapcloser.

I do not main a ranger, but I leveled one to 80 and I do like it in concept. I have always loved pet professions since EQ. The recent responsiveness changes to the pet did help. That said, I can agree that the long bow needs some help. As I see it, an auto attack should not have such inconsistency, nor should it be so easily avoided.

As I see it, most of the skills out side of the scope of of the AA are not in bad shape. Yet, to play at the range benefit of the long bow, you need the AA for sustained damage. As well, I think the fact that you have to put 4 points into two separate lines for the traits to benefit long bow where other professions get them at 2 and 4 points in one line, or generally all in one trait together, should define the problem in itself. Not to mention the fact that they felt read the wind would be a trait to add, shows that it is clear the speed of the projectiles are a problem.

@Carighan
Fair enough
Unfortunately as HHR pointed out, its not enough. Atm its extremely difficult to reposition, sometimes impossible (los ignoring abilities aka thief teleports). Basically all you can do is stealth (hope it hits) swap and swoop away while other proffs have several gap closing abilities.
I dont want the power ranger to be op, but i would like to have options other than run

my offer for improving longbow #2:

problem 1: 4.5 second channel to obtain less damage than letting off 4 auto attacks.
problem 2: can’t reduce the channel time to 2.25 seconds without making the skill OP when quickness is applied

solution: apply 2.25 seconds of quickness to the ranger at the beginning of the channel, thereby increasing DPS without being OP. default. (or at worst, added to eagle eye trait)

Is Rifle #3 overpowered when the Warrior applies quickness to it?

Til that apparently I play ranger completely wrong and I like boring things.

warrior is considered a “burst” class… and (to my disagreement) no other class is, except maybe thief. i was basing my “problem 2” from Anet’s perspective, not mine. i would personally love a default 2.25 second channel, and a 1.125 second channel under quickness. but of course… warriors will probably complain about how unfair it is that another class is as powerful as them…

disclaimer: the warrior comment is intended for entertainment purposes only. no actual harm to warriors of any race was inflicted.

I forgot about this post and I come back to find its taken on a life of its own. Good! We need to seriously discuss the issues with the Longbow Ranger; the most laughed at build of the most laughed at class.

So you know what…

Here’s a simple fix you could make.

First, make the longbow only have two stages of damage. 0-600 and 600-1500+

Second, Make the longbow auto attack the inverse of the Necromancer’s Lifeblast. So at close range, the Longbow would have the power coefficient of a 600+ range lifeblast. At long range the Longbow autoattack would have the power coefficient of a close range lifeblast. Adjust Rapid Fire damage accordingly.

There ya go. Of course once the Longbow actually becomes a threat, you are going to have to deal with people actually focusing you and going out of there way to kill you.

“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

Sadly the best situation my ranger adapts to is my death when a heavy or a Mesmer or a thief decides to target me.

Going with the master of nature and sniper thought…I have said this before….Camouflage should not be a trait…it should be an active skill that the Ranger can use to disappear (blend into Nature).