Guild Wars 2

I main ranger/engi and generally dig the concept of “physical damage” from a distance. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to find a good power build I don’t think power ranger is currently viable. I’ve only played GW2 for about 4 months so I don’t know if it was viable at any point earlier. Here are my suggestions:

To begin with, “ranger/hunter/archer/ad carry/whatever other ranged physical role name”‘s whole point revolves around attacks from a distance and in most cases having a pet. However, with current state of weapons and traits, you end using weapons like axe, sword, dagger, torch. I dig the diversity, but, if not all weapons are to be viable, make it so that at least 1 of the bows are. That’s just from an “roleplay” if I may say perspective.

Below are some of the issues with power ranger:
(I proceed with arguments below under the assumption that your wep sets are shortbow – melee OR longbow-melee. This assumption is made because longbow AND shortbow is just not.. Well, let’s just leave it at that).

Shortbow-melee:

You had nice sustain damage with 1 spam but, that’s just it. 1 spam nothing else. It wasn’t ridiculously high, it wasn’t even a big threat for anything other than thief or warrior but I guess it COULD be played. Sadly, such a build would be limited. You would need 20 points in Marksmanship (MM) for Piercing Arrows and aside that, anything between 0 and 25 in Skirmishing (SK). I also ran a variation with 20-0-30-10-10, for the passive condi removal and stealth on cc. However again, with that type of a build (even if its 20-0-30-10-10 or some 20-25-15-0-10 etc), you end up doing less damage than everybody, granted from a distance but there’s no need to bring a ranger with that type of a build. It cannot burst and its sustain damage was low. Lastly, it was super squishy. Whenever a mesmer or thief decided to give you trouble, that was it. So you end up having a glass build without the pressure of a glass cannon, which in essence isn’t viable.

Longbow-melee:

If you manage to find someone who is AFK or coordinate a reasonable amount of immobilise and daze, then yes, you could theoretically dish out a reasonable amount of burst. However, you are even more vulnerable than shortbow. Again, you would need a minimum of 20 points in MM and 25 in SK (arrow pierce and LB skill recharge), which leaves you with 25 points, 15 of which would go in WS (wilderness survival) for Companion’s def (2 sec of protection per dodge for u and pet). Therefore, you once more have no defenses except for that protection. It’s nice but if you try any type of power build, you go down faster than you can say boobs.

The above 2 paragraphs are to briefly identify some of the issues.
Suggestions (these are just suggestions and some are interdependent but most separate from each other):

-Make MM’s VII trait be available with 10 points in MM.

-Better minor traits for mm – or different. 25 points to get 1st attack crit is worthless. An idea could be: MM 5 points: First two attacks crit and apply vulnerability, 10 MM: First 4 attacks of you and pet.. etc etc, 25: 10% more crit if target below X %hp or some other kind of damage increase

-Pet abilities need to be able to be used by the player. There can be a toggle on/off to be used either like now or active and available for the player – this suggestion is further to the today’s SOTG. Give experienced players the ability to micro pets.

-Need more “useful” traits for Spvp;
MM: VI (I don’t know the extent of its usefulness in Spvp, it isn’t as valuable as other traits), IX (Maybe 5 or 7 stacks or so. This way it can actually change your damage output), XII (Get a crit after you kill someone – wow thanks for that 900-1100 (sb) or 1800 (lb)!)

SK: V (maybe more stacks for same duration or same stacks for longer duration – when you play power you’d probably use CC pets not cats and such, thus they do much less damage. If you are gonna waste points on being squishy with these traits might as well get some pressure out of the pet even if it’s only for 2-3 of its hits), IX (needs to be a little more crit dmg, maybe 15% and some crit strike perhaps because atm it’s far from being useful), XII, – (ranger has no “big” attack or ability, thus a mere 150% means nothing. Make it like a 20% dmg increase for 3-5 seconds or something along those lines)

WS: XII (I don’t know to what extent this trait is appealing. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve always found 3 condis every 10 seconds better – just my humble opinion. Perhaps, if ranger actually gets viable power builds, this trait would allow you to score a kill by being harder to get killed towards the ‘end’ – just theorycraft at this point).

[To be continued on comment below yo]

[POST PART TWO]
-Longbow skills: Not enough pressure. Maybe if longbow 1 applied vulnerability (1 stack probably up to a fixed cap) and made 3 some kind of burst skill? Or LB 3 could perhaps be “X next shots do Y more dmg and shizz”.

-Longbow 5: Somewhat acceptable damage, long cooldown. Maybe a few seconds less? I could possibly agree with removing the cripple and giving much shorter cooldown or just less cooldown with cripple still on. Again, just ideas

-Shortbow skills are OK for power. Again, you have 0 burst whatsoever with SB abilities but I suppose if it’s changed so as to reflect a good amount of sustainable damage, it could be enough.

-Another idea could be to make ranger weapon skills interact with each other or with the traits. For instance, if your bonus condition damage is higher than your bonus power, certain skill(s) of SB and/or LB change. [For instance, SB 4 and 5 could apply some conditions if bonus cond>bonus power – I’m out of ideas as to the specifics, but I like the concept]

-The above suggestion itches for this one: “What if you build for almost same bonus power and condi? should there be a third category of different skills for that?” Why not

-When LB is equipped and you channel either 2 or 5, have X % less damage taken. Since you are stuck in the target’s line of sight for that duration, might as well mitigate the penalty of no-kiting.

-A new trait that gives you stability everytime you start channel for 2-4 seconds (just to finish LB 2 or 5) with a 10-15 sec recharge. It might sound OP but it would basically make a glass cannon stand still and take your damage. It’d enable the ranger to choose between downing someone but risk going down himself. And since you would be a glass cannon power ranger to hurt somebody, despite that 10-20 or whatever less % damage, two people will hurt your feelings in a nasty way if they focus you.

-Another idea is, if you trait 20/30 in MM, you get 1500 range on LB which is pretty sweet but there are plenty of downsides to it. A lot of times people spot you and try to get away from that and by the time the arrow arrives they’re gone. Maybe, it could make arrows that travel further than 800 or 1000 range to do extra damage to targets they pierce. This way even if your primary target escapes or outranges you, you have put SOME pressure in the process to unwanted targets.

-Also, if targeting someone at further than 800 or so range, you get a stacking buff that increases your arrows’ damage or make them apply certain effects. This effect can either stack in intesity – as in more % dmg or effects dealt or in amount of attacks.

I apologize in advance for the lack of TL;DR but I spent far too much time writing this to give out a short summary
This is it, just my humble opinion. Constructive criticism and comments more than welcum!

Power based ranger won’t work so long as ranger has no ways to deal with boons.

Warriors do ridiculous damage so they can hit through boons, but power weapons from ranger don’t do close to the damage of a thief or warrior to cope with boons.

So long as power spec rangers can’t deal with boons and continue to boast such low damage, they won’t be used over condition builds.

Power abilities on ranger have their coefficients reduced by a lot due to the garbage pet. Condition damage from ranger attacks don’t take that 40-50% penalty.

@Zenith, Indeed. I understand why it now isn’t viable, I just thought of posting some ideas other than same old scaling/lack of damage due to pet and whatnot.

I would gladly sacrifice a huge % of pet’s damage to be able to play power and just keep pet for CC if it was incorporated in a trait or something.

agree the only way that ranger has to deal vs boons is to rely on teammates like thieves and necros he can’t handle them by himself

Change longbow 3 to daze and it’ll flow better with shortbow real talks.
Longbow is slow as hell and so a power build flops when it takes you a half hour for a skill to go off.

@Ensoriki, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe something like LB 1 applying vulnerability defacto and if target’s at 900 range or more, giving might to allies near him could also work

Change long bow to do more damage at close range? Because shotting arrows further totally makes them do more damage /sarcasm (<- owns a bow, does the shooting thing).

the 3 needs to be another damage ability, or something that will assist with damage, because a newly merged current 2 and 3 is still not enough damage to be considered a lot of burst, I’d say something like an explosive shot with like a bomb on the arrow. 1 extra strong shot with an explosion on impact.

The longbow needs defense more than damage, but it needs an increase in both.

Longbow and greatsword in general need some help, as does the offhand axe.

@zenith I don’t fully agree with the concept of defensive skills on longbow. If they keep 4 as a cone/aoe knockback, it’s good enough. The other skills in my opinion need to put more pressure for it to be viable.
@DevO, yes. Explosive or not though, it needs to be a damage skill

I agree that longbow needs to be changed. Currently it doesn’t work :/

Yeah, LB is probably the most characteristic weapon of a RANGER since it favors RANGE, yet it is the least efficient one. Also it is my favorite and I refuse to play my ranger without a longbow. Definitely needs change.