Guild Wars 2

As someone who recently picked up ranger Id love your input on this. When doing dungeon pugs, is it that bad to be pure zerk (+traits) and just sit in longbow with a dd orientated pet on boss? I have a zerk thief where my dagger does more damage, but as im not an expert in dungeons, and once again in pugs, i can find myself backing off due to taking dmg, which is a dps loss. I guess what im wondering about in general, are longbow rangers less useful in this bursty zerk meta where bosses are expected to die fast? (Though being able to stay alive must count for something right + spotter)

Edit double post

As a general rule melee > ranged for dungeons. Sword Ranger ranger is not terribly fun to play due to the horrible jumping around, but it’s superior to the longbow due to boon sharing, dps etc.

Longbow Rangers are kind of a running joke around here, as a stereotype of the typical bad player. However, for most pugs it’s easy enough to play what you’re comfortable with, and doesn’t matter terribly unless you’re drawing enemies out of a stack or letting your pet run wild.

A-a-at least it’s better than greatsword…

If you are in bad pugs then it probably doesn’t matter, but you are better off sticking with the thief if you are looking long term.

The biggest problems, you have to deal with when playing the LB, is;

1. that your DPS is “meh” and even worse, when fighting more than 1 enemy.
2. that some enemy-A.I.‘s behave differently, depending wether one or more players are at a certain range or not, possible causing a wipe all by yourself, because you’ve triggered a powerful attack or messed up the bosses behavior, by fighting ranged.
3. that you can’t get boons from your group/pet, if too far away from them and they can’t get any support from you either. (If you’re using HS)

The whole group decides to go either all ranged or all melee.
Melee is preferred, because most classes have the best DPS on their melee weapons.

Ranged doesn’t really give you much of an advantage, except in very specific scenarios.

But now the core question here: Is it bad to use LB mostly/only in PUGS?
Depends on the PUG, that you’re in. I can’t say, if the randoms, that you’re playing with find that bad.
Some will flame you for that, some won’t even notice, some will just call you a “bearbow” and not bother further.

I personally use LB only for Barrage+RF+PBS, to burn defiance and then i’ll camp S&A for the rest of the fight.
3k+ Autoattacks are a good reason for me not to bother much with everything else.
Rolling a thief would probably have been the better choice, but whatever.

And that’s why i took a break until HoT and see how things play out.
I still hope, that A-Net mixed something up and ranger —→ dragonhunter and guardian --→ druid.

One of the reason is longbow is really bad dps before. And many people still think longbow ranger is terrible.

Longbow have since get a huge boost a while ago. That being said, I have no idea how long bow ranger dps perform. All I know is it’s not as terrible as before.

longbow 2 and 5 are pretty much the only skills you’ll use and then back to your other weapon set.

ranger meta weapon sets are sword+axe/longbow now.

LB is part of your starting rotation in the meta, so, no it’s not bad. And it’ll be there if you do need to back off or range something.

Camping it alone will certainly be sub par and as others have pointed out ranging can be detrimental to your group. As well LB doesn’t have the cleave power of other weapons. Just keep these things in mind.

Personally I suck at sword and hate it ohh so much. THis is why I’ve never really been able to enjoy my ranger the way I do other professions. But GS is pretty sweet, just a pretty hefty DPS loss compared to sword, but it’ll still be a nice weapon over LB at least for multi enemy fights (haven’t really looked too in depth on ranger because I suck at it ) It even has evades in the auto rotation, on the leap and a block. I actually really like GS on ranger, it’s just that damage loss… I hate myself that I can’t handle the sword.

The problem with ranger in dungeons is that the meta weapon has a built in “Don’t kill yourself” mini game. It can become second nature to you, but the sword 1 chain is still a handicap.

Longer has its uses, but camping in it will just net you less dps and if you hate the sword too much just slap on a GS for cleave and easy evades.

You won’t be doing as much damage as Sword/Axe, but you won’t be eating the ground as much either. Dead men do 0 dps :/

Personally I’d just stick with thief for dungeons, I view my ranger as a “luxury” toon that is just there for roaming in WvW. Everything else is done on my Ele as you’ll almost never hear crying about them joining a dungeon.

If everyone else is using melee weapons, use a melee weapon.