Guild Wars 2

Ranger is a very strong class, it’s just a matter of finding someone to play it in a way that will actually benefit your party. There are only 5 good Rangers in all of Guild Wars 2 as far as I know, and 4 of them are me.

Then the last one must be me most likely

Six then.

Count me in!

Crigger is the 5th.

Chopps is the king ranger

Rangers have great dps if you are full zerk with 1H sword plus-horn or plus-axe. It can easily have 100% crit chance with 110%+ crit damage.

It just makes you wonder why the hell did you roll a ranger and not a thief to play like that.

Every class in Guild Wars 2 plays like a Warrior when it is played optimally. You attack with a melee weapon. That is how you do the most damage.

I like rangers, the problem normally is the player, like " i’m don’t want to stack and i’ll stay back here with my tank bear rolf "

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Every class in Guild Wars 2 plays like a Warrior when it is played optimally. You attack with a melee weapon. That is how you do the most damage.

You understand this is not an universal truth and it is because someone didn’t do their homework properly at ANet, right?

I mean,.. when we post here we are not taking current variables as dogmas… like a ranger should be good enough with a bow and shouldn’t be forced to be a thief instead.

Just hope you understand ANet is no god and everything in the game is subject to change if they see the reasons clearly.

Playing all classes exactly the same isn’t really the definition of a game well designed and IMO shouldn’t be praised or spread as total truth among other players, instead; we should ask Anet to balance according to common sense and enforcing class variety. That would only make the game richer.

Mesket.5728:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Every class in Guild Wars 2 plays like a Warrior when it is played optimally. You attack with a melee weapon. That is how you do the most damage.

You understand this is not an universal truth and it is because someone didn’t do their homework properly at ANet, right?

I mean,.. when we post here we are not taking current variables as dogmas… like a ranger should be good enough with a bow and shouldn’t be forced to be a thief instead.

Just hope you understand ANet is no god and everything in the game is subject to change if they see the reasons clearly.

Playing all classes exactly the same isn’t really the definition of a game well designed and IMO shouldn’t be praised or spread as total truth among other players, instead; we should ask Anet to balance according to common sense and enforcing class variety. That would only make the game richer.

Playing all classes with DPS traits, Berserker’s stats, and specific melee weapons with specific skill rotations is how you achieve the highest damage barring things like abusing Reflection. It is a mathematical truth and it is demonstrable. This is Anet’s doing.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Mesket.5728:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Every class in Guild Wars 2 plays like a Warrior when it is played optimally. You attack with a melee weapon. That is how you do the most damage.

You understand this is not an universal truth and it is because someone didn’t do their homework properly at ANet, right?

I mean,.. when we post here we are not taking current variables as dogmas… like a ranger should be good enough with a bow and shouldn’t be forced to be a thief instead.

Just hope you understand ANet is no god and everything in the game is subject to change if they see the reasons clearly.

Playing all classes exactly the same isn’t really the definition of a game well designed and IMO shouldn’t be praised or spread as total truth among other players, instead; we should ask Anet to balance according to common sense and enforcing class variety. That would only make the game richer.

Playing all classes with DPS traits, Berserker’s stats, and specific melee weapons with specific skill rotations is how you achieve the highest damage barring things like abusing Reflection. It is a mathematical truth and it is demonstrable. This is Anet’s doing.

I think you completely missed my point… it could be due to my poor grammar… English is my second if not my third language.

Let me rephrase….

Tomorrow a patch makes ranged weapons the ultimate dps weapon… Will bow/riffle warriors or scepter guardians be THE definition of warriors and guardians? Will that be the new truth?

Of course not… at least not in my (and I know in many others) book. A warrior will be mainly a melee class and a ranger will be mainly a ranged class no matter what ANet believes. Melee Rangers and Range Warriors are great decitions by ANet by they made it wrong at some point. Some of us (vet enough in the game) do play how ANet defines the world but they are not strong enough to force that into every roleplayer mindset that joins the game. So no matter how elitist hate it, Rangers will continue to use bows because that is the “natural way” of Rangers.

A whole year into the game kinda shows that players won’t adapt to ANet rules where melee is king so its probably about time for ANet to start rethinking their balance and maybe increase the damage of some range classes (while adding some new challenges at range distance to increase the risk accordingly).

Mesket.5728:

A whole year into the game kinda shows that players won’t adapt to ANet rules where melee is king so its probably about time for ANet to start rethinking their balance and maybe increase the damage of some range classes (while adding some new challenges at range distance to increase the risk accordingly).

Who says? Every good ranger I am aware of has “adapted to Anet rules” and uses a Sword/X weaponset. The only people who still insist on using bows are bads who wouldn’t change what they do to save their own lives.

I understood your point, I don’t think you understood mine. Anet is responsible for breaking and continuing to break their own game.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mesket.5728:

A whole year into the game kinda shows that players won’t adapt to ANet rules where melee is king so its probably about time for ANet to start rethinking their balance and maybe increase the damage of some range classes (while adding some new challenges at range distance to increase the risk accordingly).

Who says? Every good ranger I am aware of has “adapted to Anet rules” and uses a Sword/X weaponset. The only people who still insist on using bows are bads who wouldn’t change what they do to save their own lives.

ok lets drop some stadistics…

lets ask anet to place x/y where x is adapted rangers and y is the total amount of rangers… lets see that %. I don’t think that resutl will back up your statement.

I don’t think it is to save their life… I have a zerk dagger necro, a zerk axe warrior, a zerk bomb engie, a zerk sword ranger… so what the hell, im sick of playing all the same with different clothes on… I rebuilt my warrior to WvW set up and use for open world bosses and stuff like that, and I use the bow on my ranger when im outside dungeos because that’s what i made a ranger for… Class variety is good for games like this.

Instead of separating this community and forcing rangers to use swords (as an example) why not “force” Anet to make this game better by doing some proper balance using common sense as criteria and not only plain math.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I understood your point, I don’t think you understood mine. Anet is responsible for breaking and continuing to break their own game.

Oh, ok.. then my English back stabbed me; I didn’t understand you. I apologize and I believe we agree on that.

Mesket.5728:

ok lets drop some stadistics…

lets ask anet to place x/y where x is adapted rangers and y is the total amount of rangers… lets see that %. I don’t think that resutl will back up your statement.

How about when x = good rangers and y = total amount of rangers. I would bet I am right that the number of good players who play ranger is very close to the number who use Sword.

ranger =/= ranged. Ranger means mobility, specifically a type of troop that patrols an area. They aren’t married to bows by any means, heck the archetype for a ranger in LotR used a sword primarily (and when he got his legendary weapon used it exclusively iirc), and Drizzt from the Forgotten Realms books used TWO swords for most of his career, and only later on switched to a bow as a weapon swap.

The mechanics of the game favor melee, wanting to make a decent class bad by playing it in a way that flies in the face of the mechanics is foolish, especially since the entire argument is based on bad semantics.

Edit: not only is Drizzt a sword ranger, he also uses a dps cat.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mesket.5728:

ok lets drop some stadistics…

lets ask anet to place x/y where x is adapted rangers and y is the total amount of rangers… lets see that %. I don’t think that resutl will back up your statement.

How about when x = good rangers and y = total amount of rangers. I would bet I am right that the number of good players who play ranger is very close to the number who use Sword.

good = melee is something inked in your brain by ANet…

notabot.3497:

ranger =/= ranged. Ranger means mobility, specifically a type of troop that patrols an area. They aren’t married to bows by any means, heck the archetype for a ranger in LotR used a sword primarily (and when he got his legendary weapon used it exclusively iirc), and Drizzt from the Forgotten Realms books used TWO swords for most of his career, and only later on switched to a bow as a weapon swap.

The mechanics of the game favor melee, wanting to make a decent class bad by playing it in a way that flies in the face of the mechanics is foolish, especially since the entire argument is based on bad semantics.

Edit: not only is Drizzt a sword ranger, he also uses a dps cat.

Aha… this is so right as warriors are not married with heavy armor and melee weapons… its just a general view of the genre. There are plenty of bow warriors, cross bow warriors, naked barbarians with javelins and a lot more… but it doesn’t mean what it is expected by convention when rolling a class.

The balance patches revolve around pvp, there is no input from pve players, hence, there is no real pve endgame.

Mesket.5728:

Aha… this is so right as warriors are not married with heavy armor and melee weapons… its just a general view of the genre. There are plenty of bow warriors, cross bow warriors, naked barbarians with javelins and a lot more… but it doesn’t mean what it is expected by convention when rolling a class.

Many of the heavy skins actually look barbaric, or gladiator style. And the LB is sort of viable on warrior in specific areas. No javelins in game, and if we did get them maybe we could get them on guards since they are evolution of paragons. I still don’t know how ranger got equated to bows though. D&D 3.0? I don’t remember it before then at least. WoW hunters are probably what people are drawing off of, even in gw1 you didn’t have to use bow on ranger.

Mesket.5728:

good = melee is something inked in your brain by ANet…

I play and interpret the game as it is. The way the game is designed melee = good. It doesn’t bother me at all that it is the truth. I have no idea why it bothers you so much.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Mesket.5728:

good = melee is something inked in your brain by ANet…

I play and interpret the game as it is. The way the game is designed melee = good. It doesn’t bother me at all that it is the truth. I have no idea why it bothers you so much.

I already told you why:
“…I have a zerk dagger necro, a zerk axe warrior, a zerk bomb engie, a zerk sword ranger… so what the hell, im sick of playing all the same with different clothes on…”

If you think this is a good game design, and agree with it… good for you. It doesn’t work for me… and I’m sure it is not a good symptom for any game of this genre; but since I know that balance come and go and this is just for the meta… I prefer to cast out my opinion on the mater whenever I can in a naive attempt to make this what I think it will be a better game.

Anet gave Nike a lemon and he made lemonade out of that, while others are still trying to get Anet to give them orange so they can make orange juice. And arguing orange juice is the way to go.
For the fun of thought, they did the same thing in fractal to Nike but later they confiscated Nike’s lemonade then give Nike lime this time. Last I’ve heard that he’s till trying to make a limenade.

SkyChef.5432:

Anet gave Nike a lemon and he made lemonade out of that, while others are still trying to get Anet to give them orange so they can make orange juice. And arguing orange juice is the way to go.
For the fun of thought, they did the same thing in fractal to Nike but later they confisticate Nike’s lemonade then give Nike lime this time. Last I’ve heard that he’s till trying to make a limenade.

con·form·ist (kn-fôrmst)
n.
A person who uncritically or habitually conforms to the customs, rules, or styles of a group.
adj.
Marked by conformity or convention: “Underneath the image, teenagers today are surprisingly conformist” (Selina S. Guber).

You know… its not always a good thing.

A little lime juice is very good in a cranberry vodka.

Mesket.5728:

SkyChef.5432:

Anet gave Nike a lemon and he made lemonade out of that, while others are still trying to get Anet to give them orange so they can make orange juice. And arguing orange juice is the way to go.
For the fun of thought, they did the same thing in fractal to Nike but later they confisticate Nike’s lemonade then give Nike lime this time. Last I’ve heard that he’s till trying to make a limenade.

con·form·ist (kn-fôrmst)
n.
A person who uncritically or habitually conforms to the customs, rules, or styles of a group.
adj.
Marked by conformity or convention: “Underneath the image, teenagers today are surprisingly conformist” (Selina S. Guber).

---

You know… its not always a good thing.

I won’t bother dealing w/ you. Please ignore me.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

A little lime juice is very good in a cranberry vodka.

That I can agree.

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

Mesket.5728:

Rangers have great dps if you are full zerk with 1H sword plus-horn or plus-axe. It can easily have 100% crit chance with 110%+ crit damage.

It just makes you wonder why the hell did you roll a ranger and not a thief to play like that.

That’s exactly why I rerolled a thief after leveling a ranger. Now with recent patches making pets worthwhile in PvE I’ve gone back to playing my ranger, which deals less damage but offers greater team support than my thief. They’re both very fun to play though.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Because it causes people to play badly and hinders improvement.

Most annoying thing about playing ranger to me is how they give you a million dodges and then make sure you’ll always miss some. Come on! :-/

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Because it causes people to play badly and hinders improvement.

Except there’s nothing ‘improper’ about it, especially when considering the fact that many PVT builds are very effective in PvP scenarios and also that soldier’s gear is the optimal setup for objects and world bosses that do not take crit damage.

How you word your sentences can make a very big impact on how people perceive the message you are trying to convey.

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Because it causes people to play badly and hinders improvement.

Except there’s nothing ‘improper’ about it, especially when considering the fact that many PVT builds are very effective in PvP scenarios and also that soldier’s gear is the optimal setup for objects and world bosses that do not take crit damage.

How you word your sentences can make a very big impact on how people perceive the message you are trying to convey.

Well, this is the dungeon forum, so people here usually talk about effectiveness in dungeons, not in pvp or in Tequalt fight and so on.

Casmurro.9046:

Well, this is the dungeon forum, so people here usually talk about effectiveness in dungeons, not in pvp or in Tequalt fight and so on.

AC is a dungeon that features plenty of structures.

That aside though, the greater point still remains.

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Because it causes people to play badly and hinders improvement.

Except there’s nothing ‘improper’ about it, especially when considering the fact that many PVT builds are very effective in PvP scenarios and also that soldier’s gear is the optimal setup for objects and world bosses that do not take crit damage.

How you word your sentences can make a very big impact on how people perceive the message you are trying to convey.

Then I’ll make it more clear. PVT is improper, bad, and causes people to play badly.

Black Box.9312:

Casmurro.9046:

Well, this is the dungeon forum, so people here usually talk about effectiveness in dungeons, not in pvp or in Tequalt fight and so on.

AC is a dungeon that features plenty of structures.

That aside though, the greater point still remains.

PVT teaches people its ok to eat attacks and never bother having to learn the boss tells. Something that encourages bad play isn’t something that the community should support.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Because it causes people to play badly and hinders improvement.

Except there’s nothing ‘improper’ about it, especially when considering the fact that many PVT builds are very effective in PvP scenarios and also that soldier’s gear is the optimal setup for objects and world bosses that do not take crit damage.

How you word your sentences can make a very big impact on how people perceive the message you are trying to convey.

Then I’ll make it more clear. PVT is improper, bad, and causes people to play badly.

It seems to have flown right over your head. Oh well, I tried.

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Black Box.9312:

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I don’t really have a problem for there being a supreme end-all of how to do the best damage in the for of Berserker’s gear and melee weapons. You can still play how you want and go along and do whatever. I wouldn’t really mind if there were condition builds that could replace Berserker’s builds and do the same damage, etc, but I am not okay with PVT “tanks” rolling around on the floor doing the same damage as a proper build.

How exactly is PVT not ‘proper’? The word ‘proper’ and the word ‘optimal’ have two entirely different meanings.

Because it causes people to play badly and hinders improvement.

Except there’s nothing ‘improper’ about it, especially when considering the fact that many PVT builds are very effective in PvP scenarios and also that soldier’s gear is the optimal setup for objects and world bosses that do not take crit damage.

How you word your sentences can make a very big impact on how people perceive the message you are trying to convey.

Then I’ll make it more clear. PVT is improper, bad, and causes people to play badly.

It seems to have flown right over your head. Oh well, I tried.

No, nothing flew over my head.

Rangers have spotter and frost spirit. Both great utilities especially for buffing the damage of pugs. But the main problem is most rangers just run easy(bad) mode with a bow

pvt gear should only be used for teq or world bosses, for dungeons it is disgustingly bad and anyone using it should learn to play better

Mesket.5728:

good = melee is something inked in your brain by ANet…

They are still using pistol thieves in demonstration videos…

However, maybe it’s all just a ploy and they are subliminally infecting us with ‘melee is good’ messages flashing in the twitch stream at really quick intervals.

The problem is that pretty much the only good utility and support in this game is the one that can be turned into an offensive boost.

If there were encounter mechanics where you needed to have someone in healing power gear with some support traits to get through, encounters would encourage a lot more gearing and build variety.

There’s just no point on introducing so many stat combinations when only one will blow all the others out of the water.

The real problem is the sheer self-sufficiency of berserker builds. This game’s PvE needs more dependence on other builds/setups that are not guardian aegis/reflect/mesmer feedback.

The reason this game can’t stand up to the PvE standard that is WoW is because in trying to abolish roles they just watered it all down and only made the damaging role stand out. Healing and tank roles are obsolete.

And mind, the point of a tank and healer role isn’t just to remove responsibility from the DPS, it’s there to allow more types of interactions with an encounter.

Nerf reflects, and give more use to group condi removals and application of conditions like chill/poison/weakness.

Right now most encounters are ball up on the boss, beat him and dodge his crap. You don’t have waves of different types of mobs that need to be dealt with differently while fighting the boss and his own mechanics. Most encounters are just flat.

Tone down defiant on all bosses to 2-3 stacks but make missing CC on an ability something that can cause a wipe.

Zenith.7301:

The reason this game can’t stand up to the PvE standard that is WoW is because in trying to abolish roles they just watered it all down and only made the damaging role stand out. Healing and tank roles are obsolete.

Personally I think it’s because they left the dungeons to rot and persist only in adding watered down / poor quality open world content every couple weeks. Oh, that and then going back over places like TA F/U and making them worse than before by adding in ‘living world’ content.

Geez, we do dungeons to get away from that kitten, thanks Arena Net -_-

Oh and while I’m at it- Dearest Arena net… Stop with NPC reliance, forced agony, forced cutscenes, time gating and kittening puzzles.

Zenith.7301:

The problem is that pretty much the only good utility and support in this game is the one that can be turned into an offensive boost.

…

The reason this game can’t stand up to the PvE standard that is WoW is because in trying to abolish roles they just watered it all down and only made the damaging role stand out. Healing and tank roles are obsolete.

This is somewhat true, though I can’t say I agree with your supposed fixed. But I do believe the root problem of the system is the lack of the trinity. This isn’t saying that I advocate to bring it back, but this new system isn’t quite ready to replace it yet.

From the very beginning, the core design of GW2’s combat is around the ‘dodge or die’ model instead of the attrition model. In a trinity system, it’s about the tank has enough armor to take the hit, the healer has enough heal to keep up, and the DPS has enough output to kill before tank and healer are overwhelmed. While there certainly a ‘minor’ decree of skill to migrate damage, it stills pretty much come down to attrition: you can’t avoid getting hit, and you can’t survive without heal.

The GW2’s model though, due to the lack tank/heal, 90% of the fight come down to the ability to avoid damage. A heal is not a must, but rather an insurance in case you screw up, the armor/HP is not meant to keep you up, but rather to give you a more forgivable margin of error. This is why if a player has a certain level of skill to avoid damage, they can forgo defense in favor of more offense. Hate on it all you want, but this is why full DPS will always be the ‘optimal’ setup assuming the player has the skill to avoid damage. This is why on the odd occasions that the game tries to impose an artifical un-avoidable damage, it sticks out like a sore thump.

The Heal Support/Tanking build will always be sub-optimum for the same reason, they work against the principal of the system, and that is ‘avoid the damage, not to soak it up’. While it still works, it can never be argue better than DPS build. I have heard so many time people so proud of their HP pool or toughness, or their ability to take multiple hit, or they have madzheal. What they don’t realize though, is that those are not ‘needed’ in most scenarios:

- The difference between being able to take 3 or more hits is meaningless if you don’t get hit to begin with. Bragging about being to take a lot of hits IMO is the same as admitting you can’t avoid them yourself.
- You need heal because you get hit, don’t get hit and you don’t need heal.

So all the investment putting in “being able to take kitten or having madheal” can in turn be putted in DPS for a faster kill. Do you know what is the main reason why pug tend to have terrible time in high level fractal? It’s because support/tank build give abysmal return rate. A zerker might go down in 1 hit, but a full tank won’t last more than 2 which hardly a big difference. A full DPS group however, can finish a fight 4-5 times faster than a support group . Also a zerker will most likely have a ‘avoid damage’ playstyle as oppose to ‘take it in the face’ style like a supporter tend to do.

That is correct, and that’s why they need to restructure stat builds so that building for a tanky support has necessary uses for a group setup.

I believe I mentioned this by saying zerker self sufficiency is too high. Basically, zerkers exist because of the broken crap that are guardian reflects (and feedback should not reflect massive damage either), and the damage dealt by them in the time period they can evade all damage is so high that the fight becomes much cleaner if you just burn things down.

And as you said, a mechanic where damage is unavoidable sticks out, but it’s exactly what’s needed. This game needs more mobs with pulsing damage auras and unavoidable downing skills so that classes with rez traits or healing are restructured to come in and counter these mechanics.

This game’s completely shallow PvE is due to the total independence of the DPS archetype.

And that would be fine if the only gear that existed was berserker, but you have to ask yourself why you would waste so many assets introducing traits, weapons, and gear stats that are deemed obsolete in huge parts of the game.

I mean, outside the BM ranger, no other class really uses shaman stats. Maybe a condi warrior. It’s even worse for some stats like giver’s or rampager’s or PVT.

I hate design where you put in stuff that won’t realistically have use. If something can’t be made to be useful and competitively desirable, then it should not be introduced at all.

Developer’s can’t design based on liking a gimmick. They must commit to successful implementation or cut it out of the game until it can successfully be supported.

I say this specifically with pets and their AI system, where they were vehement about saddling the ranger class with a AI as its central mechanic, and then a year later you get a post from Peters saying they just don’t want to “open a can of worms with ai”.

I mean, what the hell? You opened that can of worms to begin with by forcing a mechanic on a class you knew would be deeply flawed. A year later, pets still can’t hit moving targets, their useful abilities like knockdowns are on automatic queue to be wasted, pets can’t function properly in WvW or PvE because they’re aoe fodder and don’t cleave (with the exception of drakes at a lower 3 person cleave cap).

And then they go and introduce ascended gear but forget to scale pet stats to the new ascended gear scaling classes have access to now.

Personally, if they made ranger pets have higher potential DPS on single targets I could probably forgive them. Most likely, though, they never thought of higher-level options for rangers, opting for much more mediocre solutions.

swiftpaw.6397:

I’m the last one alive in my full pvt spec guardian with 10% damage reduction signet of judgement. No idea why everyone is always dieing but I’m always standing, that’s how I know I carry my team really well. I provide extremely high dps with my sceptre dps spec and I wait till the party is about to wipe to use my virtues. I never waste my renewed focus, I always save it for when I need the 2 seconds invulnerability.

I see what you did there…

/wink

Also, could someone link the optimum Fractal build for a Ranger?

And here is why I disagree with just about every of your proposed fixed.

Zenith.7301:

I believe I mentioned this by saying zerker self sufficiency is too high. Basically, zerkers exist because of the broken crap that are guardian reflects (and feedback should not reflect massive damage either), and the damage dealt by them in the time period they can evade all damage is so high that the fight becomes much cleaner if you just burn things down.

Reflect already got nefted one, and the result of that is now we have about a dozen situation where an attack clearly presented as a projectile but somehow magically go through reflect. It’s not a fix, it’s a hack. Plus what you say is overstate, aside from a few extreme situation (like Lupis), reflect is a bonus, it’s not the ‘main’ reason zerkers can play like they do.

And as you said, a mechanic where damage is unavoidable sticks out, but it’s exactly what’s needed. This game needs more mobs with pulsing damage auras and unavoidable downing skills so that classes with rez traits or healing are restructured to come in and counter these mechanics.

No, no, no, no, NO! This is, again, a hack to force an out of place mechanic into an existing concept. There is a reason why the majority of community frown on map-wise agony hit, and the nightmare debuff wasn’t exactly better. You can’t be serious about seeing more of them, if that the direction the game will go to then eventually it will just become a quasi-trinity system, there should never be an attack that can not be avoided.

If you want an example on how things should be done, take a look at the duo bosses at the end of Molten Facility, assuming the fractal level is high enough that even a full DPS group can not burst the boss down before they can do anything. Technically, there is no attack from this fight that can not be avoided, but the intensity of the fight make it very difficult to dodge all attack. You can bring reflect, and they help without cheapening the fight. It’s a good fight that can put pressure on a full zerk group without the need of cheap hacks.

Oh btw, I don’t know why you keep insisting on bringing up ranger in PvP, wasn’t the last series of post got removed. This is a dungeon forum and chance is most people don’t care about it, so bringing it up hardly will help your cause. PvE Ranger is pretty powerful as noted, and most of the time the pet can be managed to be beneficial. :P

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that reflection is unbalanced in PvE. It’s not the reflect itself, it’s the amount of damage that the enemy ends up dealing to itself because of how it scales with the player’s damage multipliers.

Black Box.9312:

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that reflection is unbalanced in PvE. It’s not the reflect itself, it’s the amount of damage that the enemy ends up dealing to itself because of how it scales with the player’s damage multipliers.

N

Reflection damage is just the icing on the cake, projectile protection as it is is completely broken. It only needs two people to bring 100% projectile protection uptime barely dropping any other support or damage for it. If anet ever wanted to use projectile attacks as a serious measure again they had to go down the “unblockable” road. Anyone could have seen that, it is the old dragonball scheme (new stronger enemy arrives, he is seemingly immune to all of the heroes attacks, hero learns a new attack to counter him, next enemy has to be even stronger to make any sense…)