Guild Wars 2

Shouldn’t heavy classes have less damage than light ones? Just because they do have more defense in general? Gonnae blunt here, mesmers are only really picked in dungeon groups for portal, feedback, and timewarp. Warriors still hit higher than them and take less damage.

Does not make sense to me how Warriors have the highest dps in the game. From melee and range. If you really think about it, thieves should have the highest melee dps because they get blown up if they are even looked at. Rangers should have the highest ranged dps because they’re RANGErs. Warriors should be somewhere in the middle as the jack of all trades master of none considering how many weapons they have available to them.

How does this not make sense?

That you don’t know the actual meaning of Ranger makes this thread invalid.

/thread.

Mesmers are only picked for portals, Feedback, and Time Warp in dungeons? I won’t deny that those skills are extremely helpful but they’re hardly the only reasons why mesmers are good to bring along.

I agree, but unfortunately I don’t think Anet really thought this idea through very much, but just went straight for the “No tank, no healer” type of game, which means that all classes will do roughly the same damage. I really don’t understand Anet’s idea of NOT having a tank/healer/dps type game, because that was a perfect set up for groups in the first place. In WoW, you actually had to look for a tank or a healer and it was actually fun to see how different people performed at those specific roles. In GW2, it’s only DPS, DPS, and more DPS, which really gets boring and repetitive after awhile.

Anyway, it’s been like this since GW1. I created a Ranger and was seriously disappointed with how little damage he did. Rangers were considered the “Jack of all trades” back then, so they were decent at most things, but could never be the best.

Zedd.8239:

Mesmers are only picked for portals, Feedback, and Time Warp in dungeons? I won’t deny that those skills are extremely helpful but they’re hardly the only reasons why mesmers are good to bring along.

Why else would you bring one along? They have utility and decent damage… but if you didn’t want utility and you wanted a mage what would stop you from bringing an elem?

Flissy.4093:

That you don’t know the actual meaning of Ranger makes this thread invalid.

/thread.

The only thing that makes a ranger a ranger is the pet, otherwise they are marksmen.

Let’s be honest here, pets are garbage and giving them more damage would just become useless in dungeons when they die to AOE or can’t hit a moving target.

The point is that a heavy armored faceroll class should not get the best ranged dps.

Khyber.2693:

mesmers are only really picked in dungeon groups for portal, feedback, and timewarp.

Unless you played a mesmer before in GW1 and know that they’re the top of all classes. The classiest class, and the overall best class of every class ever.

Khyber.2693:

Why else would you bring one along? They have utility and decent damage… but if you didn’t want utility and you wanted a mage what would stop you from bringing an elem?

You just gave two perfectly valid reasons to bring a mesmer along. The point I think you’re missing with this game is that all of the classes are viable classes in most areas of the game. It’s a rather limited view to just say that class X is only good for Y.

I’ve done every dungeon in this game numerous times and most of the time I’m not too picky about which classes I bring along. It’s more of a hit or miss situation if you’re PUGing it and I can understand being more careful about who you bring in those situations.

That said, I’ve had groups succeed brilliantly in fractals at level 48 with non-standard group makeups and I’ve succeeded and failed with “perfect” group makeups. A lot of the effectiveness of a class comes down to how well an individual person understands their build, class, and the mechanics of the game. You could have the “perfect” cookie cutter build and still fail horribly if you don’t understand how to play it or specific dungeon mechanics.

I’ve encountered plenty of guardians, for example, that drop faster than most elementalists. The gut reaction from a lot of players in that situation might be “the class is broken/why are we so vulnerable?” And to that I’d say that they need more experience playing the class to know what works well and what doesn’t.

Zedd.8239:

Khyber.2693:

Why else would you bring one along? They have utility and decent damage… but if you didn’t want utility and you wanted a mage what would stop you from bringing an elem?

You just gave two perfectly valid reasons to bring a mesmer along. The point I think you’re missing with this game is that all of the classes are viable classes in most areas of the game. It’s a rather limited view to just say that class X is only good for Y.

I’ve done every dungeon in this game numerous times and most of the time I’m not too picky about which classes I bring along. It’s more of a hit or miss situation if you’re PUGing it and I can understand being more careful about who you bring in those situations.

That said, I’ve had groups succeed brilliantly in fractals at level 48 with non-standard group makeups and I’ve succeeded and failed with “perfect” group makeups. A lot of the effectiveness of a class comes down to how well an individual person understands their build, class, and the mechanics of the game. You could have the “perfect” cookie cutter build and still fail horribly if you don’t understand how to play it or specific dungeon mechanics.

I’ve encountered plenty of guardians, for example, that drop faster than most elementalists. The gut reaction from a lot of players in that situation might be “the class is broken/why are we so vulnerable?” And to that I’d say that they need more experience playing the class to know what works well and what doesn’t.

Ranger is good for nothing. Ranger is only good for PvP. I win.

The amount of stupid in this thread is too kitten high!

Rangers are perfectly fine in PvE. They certainly aren’t without their faults and there are things I’d like to see changed. But they aren’t useless.

I believe here that the OP is referencing the mesmer role in the GW2 dungeon trinity, i.e., that the role is largely utility/support, which it is, and that is why the trinity works. Well, 33% of why it works. You really need to mention the guardian as well, as zerker warriors really don’t work well alone outside of cof1. (It’s actually rather shocking how quickly a glass cannon warrior dies when faced with sustained damage.) You need a quasi-tank. With the guardian, warrior, and mesmer in place you have a trinity that works in GW2.

If there is a problem with this, I don’t believe that reducing the DPS of the warrior profession will in any way fix it. It’s not as simple as light=more DPS, heavy=less DPS. There are a number of trade-offs, mechanics, and implied combat roles in play.

I do believe that there is a problem indicated when three professions rise to fill roles that others can’t fill as well. But, it’s not purely a DPS issue. It’s an issue of how combat and combat roles are conceived in the game and whether they are working or not. But, yeah, there are class balance issues as well. Rangers should do more DPS.

Zedd.8239:

Rangers are perfectly fine in PvE. They certainly aren’t without their faults and there are things I’d like to see changed. But they aren’t useless.

Anet said I could play how I wanted and still be viable. I wanted to play with the longbow. My damage is almost non-existent. Oh, look, I’m no longer viable.

No offense, but people who defend Rangers are the ones that prevent the Ranger from being changed. I’m not trying to bash Rangers, because I really enjoy playing them, but It’s really, really difficult to enjoy the class behind the sound of my arrows striking my enemy for 1 damage each.

When Anet buffed the longbow, that was the happiest day of my life, until I saw that they increased the rate of fire, but lowered the damage. I then realized that Anet had no idea what they were doing. At all. There was no point to that change whatsoever, and I really wanted to smash my face into my keyboard badly.

Raine.1394:

I believe here that the OP is referencing the mesmer role in the GW2 dungeon trinity, i.e., that the role is largely utility/support, which it is, and that is why the trinity works. Well, 33% of why it works. You really need to mention the guardian as well, as zerker warriors really don’t work well alone outside of cof1. (It’s actually rather shocking how quickly a glass cannon warrior dies when faced with sustained damage.) You need a quasi-tank. With the guardian, warrior, and mesmer in place you have a trinity that works in GW2.

If there is a problem with this, I don’t believe that reducing the DPS of the warrior profession will in any way fix it. It’s not as simple as light=more DPS, heavy=less DPS. There are a number of trade-offs, mechanics, and implied combat roles in play.

I do believe that there is a problem indicated when three professions rise to fill roles that others can’t fill as well. But, it’s not purely a DPS issue. It’s an issue of how combat and combat roles are conceived in the game and whether they are working or not. But, yeah, there are class balance issues as well. Rangers should do more DPS.

Now this is a post I can agree with. Or mostly agree with. I don’t know if there’s necessarily a problem with the roles the classes can play. Some more fine tuning is certainly in order, though. But yes I agree that it’s a more complex issue than simply increasing or decreasing damage output. There are far more things to consider than just damage when balancing the classes. Rangers could certainly do with a damage buff. Acting like they’re completely unusable now is a severe exaggeration, however.

And yes, it’s rather alarming how quickly glass cannon warriors drop with sustained damage. Glass cannons can work well for speed clears (especially in CoF1) and if there’s plenty of support in the group, but if a fight requires any sort of sustained survivability, it just isn’t going to work well at all.

Galtrix.7369:

Zedd.8239:

Rangers are perfectly fine in PvE. They certainly aren’t without their faults and there are things I’d like to see changed. But they aren’t useless.

Anet said I could play how I wanted and still be viable. I wanted to play with the longbow. My damage is almost non-existent. Oh, look, I’m no longer viable.

No offense, but people who defend Rangers are the ones that prevent the Ranger from being changed. I’m not trying to bash Rangers, because I really enjoy playing them, but It’s really, really difficult to enjoy the class behind the sound of my arrows striking my enemy for 1 damage each.

When Anet buffed the longbow, that was the happiest day of my life, until I saw that they increased the rate of fire, but lowered the damage. I then realized that Anet had no idea what they were doing. At all. There was no point to that change whatsoever, and I really wanted to smash my face into my keyboard badly.

At least Anet got the weapon right, the LB. And, they were right to think about changing it. This was the perfect opportunity to move the profession forward and it was a big disappointment for me as well. I love everything about the profession, but almost never play my ranger. Hopefully, some day.

Edit: I don’t mean to imply that rangers are not usable or viable and I found that mine is perfectly fine for general running around in PvE. I don’t play my ranger because it feels demonstrably weaker than my other professions without any meaningful offsetting benefits.

Zedd.8239:

but if a fight requires any sort of sustained survivability, it just isn’t going to work well at all.

And there isn’t any. Everything in pve is one shot. You dodge it or you down.

Khyber.2693:

Shouldn’t heavy classes have less damage than light ones? Just because they do have more defense in general? Gonnae blunt here, mesmers are only really picked in dungeon groups for portal, feedback, and timewarp. Warriors still hit higher than them and take less damage.

It was the same thing in the original Guild Wars; I wrote a topic about it, but even in the context of a setup closer to the holy trinity of “tank/DPS/healer” as GW1, warriors still had the highest sustained DPS in the game. In that game, it was because warriors were the profession who took the most skill to play properly.

you know why warrior is bad in pvp and everything else is good? because everything else just have more damage mitigation, maybe you should try it out instead of facerolling dps.

Galtrix.7369:

Zedd.8239:

Rangers are perfectly fine in PvE. They certainly aren’t without their faults and there are things I’d like to see changed. But they aren’t useless.

Anet said I could play how I wanted and still be viable. I wanted to play with the longbow. My damage is almost non-existent. Oh, look, I’m no longer viable.

No offense, but people who defend Rangers are the ones that prevent the Ranger from being changed. I’m not trying to bash Rangers, because I really enjoy playing them, but It’s really, really difficult to enjoy the class behind the sound of my arrows striking my enemy for 1 damage each.

When Anet buffed the longbow, that was the happiest day of my life, until I saw that they increased the rate of fire, but lowered the damage. I then realized that Anet had no idea what they were doing. At all. There was no point to that change whatsoever, and I really wanted to smash my face into my keyboard badly.

You’re reading far too much into my post. I’m not trying to say that rangers are perfect as they currently stand. I agree that they need more work. But the class isn’t useless.

Regarding your first comment about ANet saying we can play as we want, well, yes they said that. But the catch is that you can play as you want using the mechanics established for your chosen class. As a guardian, I’m not incredibly effective at long range. I need to find ways to survive while in melee range or provide utility to those that are moving into melee range/staying at a distance. It isn’t always a completely fair balance since there are situations where melee range isn’t feasible. But I’ve accepted it as one of the weaknesses of the class and I’ve learned to work around it.

The tradeoff to using a longbow with a ranger is reduced damage but more range. Is that a fair tradeoff? I don’t know. At the very least it seems somewhat reasonable. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still require tweaking or that the class doesn’t need certain aspects of it buffed.

Afya.5842:

And there isn’t any. Everything in pve is one shot. You dodge it or you down.

By survivability, I don’t mean being able to face tank a boss indefinitely. Although it is possible to do that in short bursts for many of them if you’re traited and geared properly. I’m talking about balancing damage with health and armor. If you just go all out with damage and don’t take anything else into consideration, your survivability will be significantly lower than someone that focuses heavily on armor, vitality, and traits that give boons/remove conditions. Your damage will be lower but you won’t be downed nearly as often. And as a result, you’ll probably be far more effective overall. Of course, player skill and experience come into it as well. So this is just a general statement.

Zedd.8239:

Galtrix.7369:

Zedd.8239:

Rangers are perfectly fine in PvE. They certainly aren’t without their faults and there are things I’d like to see changed. But they aren’t useless.

Anet said I could play how I wanted and still be viable. I wanted to play with the longbow. My damage is almost non-existent. Oh, look, I’m no longer viable.

No offense, but people who defend Rangers are the ones that prevent the Ranger from being changed. I’m not trying to bash Rangers, because I really enjoy playing them, but It’s really, really difficult to enjoy the class behind the sound of my arrows striking my enemy for 1 damage each.

When Anet buffed the longbow, that was the happiest day of my life, until I saw that they increased the rate of fire, but lowered the damage. I then realized that Anet had no idea what they were doing. At all. There was no point to that change whatsoever, and I really wanted to smash my face into my keyboard badly.

You’re reading far too much into my post. I’m not trying to say that rangers are perfect as they currently stand. I agree that they need more work. But the class isn’t useless.

Regarding your first comment about ANet saying we can play as we want, well, yes they said that. But the catch is that you can play as you want using the mechanics established for your chosen class. As a guardian, I’m not incredibly effective at long range. I need to find ways to survive while in melee range or provide utility to those that are moving into melee range/staying at a distance. It isn’t always a completely fair balance since there are situations where melee range isn’t feasible. But I’ve accepted it as one of the weaknesses of the class and I’ve learned to work around it.

The tradeoff to using a longbow with a ranger is reduced damage but more range. Is that a fair tradeoff? I don’t know. At the very least it seems somewhat reasonable. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still require tweaking or that the class doesn’t need certain aspects of it buffed.

Alright, I agree that there must be somewhat of a tradeoff when it comes to doing more damage or surviving more. And I apologize, I misunderstood you at first. I probably wasn’t paying attention and I thought you said the Ranger class is perfect as is.

On the other hand though, there are very, very few builds that are viable to the Ranger. I think there are about two builds that actually work well. Compare that to any other class, and you’ll see why I think they’re useless. Even the best build on a Ranger is still mediocre compared to crap Guardian builds. If they’re not useless now, they will be soon.

Rammie.2843:

The amount of stupid in this thread is too kitten high!

+1

I’m not even going to bother… When the OP starts with that kind of train wreck and the comments seem to somehow devolve, it’s time to call it quits for the night.

Good fight, goodnight!

Khyber.2693:

Shouldn’t heavy classes have less damage than light ones? Just because they do have more defense in general? Gonnae blunt here, mesmers are only really picked in dungeon groups for portal, feedback, and timewarp. Warriors still hit higher than them and take less damage.

Does not make sense to me how Warriors have the highest dps in the game. From melee and range. If you really think about it, thieves should have the highest melee dps because they get blown up if they are even looked at. Rangers should have the highest ranged dps because they’re RANGErs. Warriors should be somewhere in the middle as the jack of all trades master of none considering how many weapons they have available to them.

How does this not make sense?

warriors have basic attacks while everyone else have something fancier.

it all makes sense.

Rangers have nothing to do with ranged weapons. Rangers have everything to do with ranging the wild. They patrol rangers.

The term comes to MMOs from D&D and it came to D&D from Lord of the Rings. But Aragorn in Lord of the Rings used a sword, not a bow.

And even in Guild Wars 2, rangers are far more effective as melee fighters than with ranged weapons, returning them perhaps to the original and real definition of the word, instead of what the genre painted them as.

Melee does more damage in pretty much every class because it’s a riskier proposition to be there. Exponentially riskier in this game where the majority of ‘boss mechanics’ seem to be pbaoe. When I want to be lazy, I pull out a longbow and sit back and pew pew things, that’s how much safer it is. I don’t have to dodge. I just strafe. If you put more damage on ranged classes, it would be completely out of balance because they’re the easiest classes to stay alive with. Take greater risks, get greater rewards.

I’m 90% sure that the thread has devolved into some random class vs. class thing involving rangers, so I’ll just go off on my own tangent in response to the OP.

Now, the thing with the game is that it is not designed around the philosophy that if you are more durable, you should be doing less damage. That is a rather antiquated design philosophy that doesn’t make sense when compared to a real life situation: If some guy is going to chop my head off with a long-axe, him wearing plate armor or him wearing nothing at all doesn’t change the fact that my head is coming off. From a game design standpoint it is also a bad design choice because it results in the entire game being designed around only those 2 aspects: How much damage you do, and how much damage you can take.

Instead, GW2 has taken the philosophy that classes are balanced around their versatility, preforming different roles and having different abilities that makes each class unique to themselves. The warrior is the “flip out and kill stuff” class. You whip out your greatsword, then you kill stuff with it. Every other class than that is much more complicated, having lower damage and lower durability (arguably) in order to accomplish much different feats.

For example, I’m using a zerker thief in my dungeon runs as of late. With 11K HP 2K armor, and less damage than a warrior, you’d be left wondering why anyone would bring a thief. But then I do some rally cool stuff on my thief:

A)Use Black Powder and Smoke Screen to permanently blind veteran mobs, letting the whole team fight them without fear of taking damage. 5 zerkers for the win.
B)Use scorpion wire to pull one selective enemy out from a dangerous group, and quickly DPS it down so we don’t have to fight the boss with 2 champions next to him.
C)Use Shadow Refuge to stealth a player while they are down and heal them, or stealth the group to escape from an encounter, or heal the group, or use it to leech life for the group, or use it to bypass troublesome areas for the group.
D) Use Dagger Storm to take the initial attack and reflect all projectiles back at the enemy, or use Smoke Screen to block projectiles.
E) Use the shortbow to spam AoE weakness on enemies, or spam blast finishers on any combo fielntlyd quickly and easily.
F)Use shortbow to dodge attacks, letting me permanently tank any high ranged damage with good timing.
G)Use bountiful theft or Lacerwhatever strike to constantly strip away dangerous boons fro my enemy and give t hem to myself.
H)Apply a massive amount of bleeds in an AoE with Caltrops and Death Blossom.
I)Use backstab to do higher single target damage against an enemy than what a warrior can do.

And the list just goes on and on. There are a whole lot of things that a thief can do that a warrior doesn’t do, and these things are why you’d want to bring a thief along. As it happens, this is true with pretty much every class in the game.

The game itself isn’t too hard, so you can use nearly any class composition you want and still make it through, so long as your team is competent. The only place this might not be the case is in high level fractals.

Galtrix.7369:

Alright, I agree that there must be somewhat of a tradeoff when it comes to doing more damage or surviving more. And I apologize, I misunderstood you at first. I probably wasn’t paying attention and I thought you said the Ranger class is perfect as is.

On the other hand though, there are very, very few builds that are viable to the Ranger. I think there are about two builds that actually work well. Compare that to any other class, and you’ll see why I think they’re useless. Even the best build on a Ranger is still mediocre compared to crap Guardian builds. If they’re not useless now, they will be soon.

No need to apologize. I wasn’t offended or angry. I just wanted to make sure you understood that I wasn’t trying to defend rangers as they currently stand. I just think they’re far from useless. They’re also far from perfect. Many of the changes to this class have been rather baffling to me and I can’t figure out exactly what ArenaNet is trying to do with them. The class certainly isn’t in fantastic shape compared to other classes (such as the guardian) that barely get any groundbreaking changes anymore.

Vayne.8563:

Rangers have nothing to do with ranged weapons. Rangers have everything to do with ranging the wild. They patrol rangers.

The term comes to MMOs from D&D and it came to D&D from Lord of the Rings. But Aragorn in Lord of the Rings used a sword, not a bow.

And even in Guild Wars 2, rangers are far more effective as melee fighters than with ranged weapons, returning them perhaps to the original and real definition of the word, instead of what the genre painted them as.

Somehow I missed that part of the OP (no idea how since it’s in bold text…) but yes absolutely. The term ranger doesn’t have anything to do with being a ranged fighter (although they’re often capable of it) and has everything to do with ranging, which is a form of patrolling/scouting over vast distances in the wilderness. Their skills therefore tend to match the skills needed for such a task: ranged weapons for hunting game/taking down enemy targets, traps for hunting/killing, melee weapons for close quarters battles, being able to blend in with their environment to avoid detection, tracking game/enemies, etc. A pet is often brought along to help with tracking and to ensure that larger threats don’t get too close.

Rangers do more damage with greatsword

stop spamming you shortbow, I hate you and you’re a wasted slot in the dungeon.

Charak.9761:

Rangers do more damage with greatsword

stop spamming you shortbow, I hate you and you’re a wasted slot in the dungeon.

I’ll be sure to bring my shortbow ranger into dungeons with you in the future then.

Jackums.3496:

“Perfectly fine” is an extremely inaccurate exaggeration.

And “…but It’s really, really difficult to enjoy the class behind the sound of my arrows striking my enemy for 1 damage each.” is an extremely inaccurate exaggeration but I don’t see you calling that person out.

There’s a lot of inconsistencies, exaggerations and double standards in threads like these but no one ever wants to try pointing them out unless it’s somehow against their argument.

It’d be a waste of my time attempting to point each out so I’ll just save any readers the trouble and say don’t believe anything in this thread.