Guild Wars 2

Also posted in the Ranger forum…

So I’ve been doing a lot of fractals with PuGs recently and I’m running the standard meta PvE ranger build for S/A + Longbow and I’m noticing that I’m usually the only person meleeing or, at the very least, I always have aggro. This makes me get downed A LOT, even with the two dodges built into S mainhand.
Is there any way to play as melee Ranger with PuGs or should I just bite the bullet and make some sort of Longbow focused build? What is the DPS loss of using Longbow only (with Longbow focused traits, not just using Longbow with the standard S/A build)?

To be honest you should just bite the bullet and play another class.

But if you insist on ranger replace the longbow with an offhand dagger for an extra evade.
Longbow is nice single target burst to open up or to finish a fight. It’s not that nice when the fight is dragged out by your party’s super low dps.

Also you can use greatsword if the sword root becomes a problem but at this point you are compromising so much already.

Just reroll if you plan to pug fractals.

Goood, this again? I feel like I’m back to 2013. Shrugging off the “rangers make your party automatically fail and the instance collapse on itself”…. don’t camp longbow. Just don’t. Seriously. It’s lame.
The thing is… pugs are so bad and unorganised already, you either compromise or step up your game, because you’ll recieve no support from your party. My favourite compromises would be to slot lightning reflexes, disable aa, equip dagger, equip greatsword, in this order. Keep in mind that giving up on warhorn (in a party with no fury) is a blow to overall damage, unless a random shoutheal warrior has fgj slotted. You could slap a moa in there, I guess.
Oh, you can interrupt sword aa with horn 4 and 5, by the way. Just get the timing down.
I see lb in pugs being useful only against bosses that you find really hard to melee. If I were you, I’d try to keep practicing melee, but I understand that for us not-uber-pro it can be a long and/or annoying process.
P.S. Don’t you dare camp longbow at shaman… they’re gonna need your axe.

Don’t camp longbow! It’s too kitten ed boring, and it entices you to stay too far away from your party to reliable keep them spotted and frosted.

As one pug said to me as I lay defeated on the ground with a sword and horn in my hands “it isn’t that big a difference in damage between GS and Sword” So I run GS now and melee is much nicer, have even started tanking mai trin in fractals a bit to keep her in the static with reasonable success. I also run signet of stone instead of QZ for the toughness/invuln, and a Spirit of Nature and a Fern Hound for the extra healing/revives. I suppose i am doing less than optimal damage, but we aren’t talking a huge difference in time to kill here, and most pugs could use the extra support anyway. If you really need the reflect or blast finisher for an encounter, then swap to sword and turn the AA off.

All that said, just ran my engineer through a CoF path and was blown away by how much easier it was…..perhaps the better option is to roll another class. :-/ Lets hope druid is awesome.

If you’re out of dodges/heals, it’s time to swap to longbow and range for a bit. Once you recover, it’s time to go back and continue to melee.

You’re not in a speed run group where bosses die fast or you can spread out your cooldowns because you have lots of support (Ice Bow 5, Aegis, hits being spread around the group) across the entire fight duration.

If you’re the only one meleeing in the first place, getting downed with 2 melee weapons won’t impress anyone. But by carrying a range on swap, at least you have the option to burst in with melee, survive for a bit with your cooldowns, train yourself with melee combat, and still have something to fallback on in case of trouble.

I’m not sure what level fractal you are doing. But at high level fractal, everyone is meleeing trash mobs.

And for boss fight, it’s all skills, since there is long cool down in between boss attack, so you should have time to evade. If you have problem surviving range it, else melee it. No one can answer that question but yourself.

I don’t find min/maxing to be particular important in pug. Because out of all my fractal, I have never seen any pug finish fractal 50 faster than 40 minutes. Usually it takes 50-60. And most of the time, they waste more time because they took too much risk.

laokoko.7403:

I’m not sure what level fractal you are doing. But at high level fractal, everyone is meleeing trash mobs.

And for boss fight, it’s all skills, since there is long cool down in between boss attack, so you should have time to evade. If you have problem surviving range it, else melee it. No one can answer that question but yourself.

I don’t find min/maxing to be particular important in pug. Because out of all my fractal, I have never seen any pug finish fractal 50 faster than 40 minutes. Usually it takes 50-60. And most of the time, they waste more time because they took too much risk.

I have seen a pug l50 take under 40 mins and it was epic. Added every one of them to my friends list for future runs. That night, everyone was on point, extremely flawless run that was…

Oh, and I run the 6/5/1/2/0 build.. Spotter and all the traits that improve damage output. Usually run sword+axe/LB or GS/LB depending on fractal or how much wild turkey 101 I’ve had… Of course I open with LB2 then hit LB5 then melee the rest of the time. QZ, SotW, FS, and RaO are usually on my bar… Unless we’re in grawl, then I use the condi clear signet, SOTW, QZ, and entangle to stop dat shaman in phase.

thefantasticg.3984:

I open with LB2 then hit LB5 then melee the rest of the time.

I guess you meant LB5 and then LB2?

Yeah, gotta get the predator’s onslaught on your enemies, p@l.

wauwi.9162:

thefantasticg.3984:

I open with LB2 then hit LB5 then melee the rest of the time.

I guess you meant LB5 and then LB2?

lol, depends on how much whiskey I’ve had which order they end up in.

deSade.9437:

The thing is… pugs are so bad and unorganised already, you either compromise or step up your game, because you’ll recieve no support from your party. My favourite compromises would be to slot lightning reflexes, disable aa, equip dagger, equip greatsword, in this order. Keep in mind that giving up on warhorn (in a party with no fury) is a blow to overall damage, unless a random shoutheal warrior has fgj slotted. You could slap a moa in there, I guess.
Oh, you can interrupt sword aa with horn 4 and 5, by the way. Just get the timing down.
I see lb in pugs being useful only against bosses that you find really hard to melee. If I were you, I’d try to keep practicing melee, but I understand that for us not-uber-pro it can be a long and/or annoying process.
P.S. Don’t you dare camp longbow at shaman… they’re gonna need your axe.

Good advice, in my opinion keep the meta build. Change your weapons when you think it’s needed.

Meleeing mossman on a pug is a very bad idea as is meleeing archdiviner p2/3 at fractal 50 also in a pug. Everything else you can melee.

Longbow use is perfectly fine for single target bosses like archdiviner and mossman. For archdiviner you can melee while he’s casting the circles and then switch to longbow when he’s active.

PuG’s don’t generally make good use of aegis or protection or reflects so telling people to melee all the time is really bad advice as melee stacking works so long as people know what they are doing (which most pugs don’t).

Also the mainhand axe is terrible for fire shaman. It has completely kitten single target damage. Use greatsword longbow. Basically, barrage as soon as reflects go up then switch to greatsword and maul/cleave all the things and use your jungle drake’s lightning breath.

Offhand axe for fire shaman is kinda alright. The reflection radius is pitifully small so you’re not going to be reliably protecting your group, and its duration relative to cooldown means you’ll need more deflection than that. Moreover, you are reflecting but in the meantime you;re not doing much damage yourself as you are stationary and channeling a wimpy skill.

Leave the projectiles to your d/f ele or guardian or mesmer. Your job is to burst down and snare/control the adds.

And just keep in mind ranger is not a great class to do fractals with. The name of this game is burst, aoe, and boons. Ranger has neither of those outside a rapid fire.

Zenith.7301:

Meleeing mossman on a pug is a very bad idea as is meleeing archdiviner p2/3 at fractal 50 also in a pug. Everything else you can melee.

Because PUGs who apparently cannot melee mossmann or archdiviner are totally capable of meleeing the rampaging ice elemental or dredge powersuit. Makes sense.

Zui.9245:

Zenith.7301:

Meleeing mossman on a pug is a very bad idea as is meleeing archdiviner p2/3 at fractal 50 also in a pug. Everything else you can melee.

Because PUGs who apparently cannot melee mossmann or archdiviner are totally capable of meleeing the rampaging ice elemental or dredge powersuit. Makes sense.

Yeah? The difference is in the speed of the autoattacks. Both the ice elemental and dredge suit have a huge wind up to their melee attack.

Archdiviner and mossman autoattacks are much faster, and archdiviner will plain one shot anything that isn’t heavy armor. I’m not talking the archdiviner’s jump, which is more telegraphed. I’m talking his normal melee swings, which you want aegis or protection for since you’ll likely won’t dodge all of them consistently.

And pugs don’t rotate aegis or keep up protection well much less use their guardian group heals or blast water fields when needed.

Both the ice elemental and the dredge warsuit also have massive models so their attacks are easy to see throughout the spell effect clutter that elementalists and guardians create on human-sized mobs.