Guild Wars 2

Xirin you nailed it right on the head: most use dual bows for ease of use. That combined with the seemingly lack of general knowledge about their own class makes for a stigma on the rest of us.

How many times have you gotten face to face with a ranger and he just sat there and did his LB AOE? I don’t even bother to dodge out of it, just quick combo him down.

Trib,
To each their own on builds, but personally I never use LB outside of zerg. #5 is worthless to me because anyone decent will dodge out(and its not a lot of dmg to begin with" and its a channel skill. This means you cannot move during the animation, which opens you up to easy back stabs. I prefer the torchs campfire skill. Put down the fire field and get an easy burn on, or if they avoid it you can just leap through for fire aura so its not wasted.

The amount of evades, escapes, passive health regen and cond wipes make us a scary opponent when played right.

I’ll just throw this out there: Nine times out of ten I don’t even need to pop my heal vs LB/SB power build rangers.

Linkisdead.9647:

1. is worthless to me because anyone decent will dodge out(and its not a lot of dmg to begin with" and its a channel skill. This means you cannot move during the animation, which opens you up to easy back stabs.

Is also the reason why I’d do that one only when the thief (in this case) goes into stealth. If he stealths by heal, I’ll pop the barrage on my own head. Should he try to come backstab me, he’ll be crippled and have taken some dmg. More importantly, the LB#4 will push him once again to some distance..
If he stealths by Shadow Refuge, I’ll pop the barrage over there.. If he dodges out, his stealth breaks.. And then of course I’ll break off the barrage..

The amount of evades, escapes, passive health regen and cond wipes make us a scary opponent when played right.

Couldn’t agree more there..

I’ll just throw this out there: Nine times out of ten I don’t even need to pop my heal vs LB/SB power build rangers.

Oh, I do.. I never want to see my doggy pet die.. And have to admit: I haven’t encountered that many LB/SB rangers while roaming.. Maybe the WvW rank has something to do with it..

Linkisdead.9647:

How many times have you gotten face to face with a ranger and he just sat there and did his LB AOE? I don’t even bother to dodge out of it, just quick combo him down.

You got a legitimate laugh-out-loud from me with that because we have all been there dozens of times. LB AOEing while being melee’d is always funny.

Haha, yes we all have. I honestly wish enemies could see what we type in /say because I just want to scream at them to stop doing that.

Trib that’s certainly one way to do it regarding thieves, I just hate giving them even a chance at a free shot on me. Cripple usually gets wiped the second they go into stealth anyway.

Then again our playstyles are very different. While you are pushing them away with LB, I am usually trying to close with the GS and stay right in their face.

Honestly though my absolute favorite thing in this game is when a thief goes into stealth and you pop wolfs fear just at the right time and the thief reappears doing the funny walk in the opposite direction. Then its just GS 3, 5, 2 switch pet/weapons and its good night.

Linkisdead.9647:

Honestly though my absolute favorite thing in this game is when a thief goes into stealth and you pop wolfs fear just at the right time and the thief reappears doing the funny walk in the opposite direction.

Haha, awesome..
This made me laugh out loud, and since I’m at work, my colleagues didn’t get it..

Atherakhia.4086:

The problem with ranger is how boring they are. While I’m overstating it a little, they really don’t do much but run around in circles auto attacking. They do have very strong escapes though so I don’t know what others are complaining about. Swoop alone is amazing, but ranged snares, traps, and knockback/evade are all great. Only class able to escape better than a ranger would be an ele or thief.

Rangers I just feel are too dependent on condition damage and bunker builds. Even if you went all glass and acknowledged you’d be 2 shot by everyone, they still don’t gain any real damage for doing it. Only option is like full apothecary regen bunker builds while running around auto-attacking.

If you are running around just auto attacking, you’re doing it wrong.

There is a whole lot of layers to the Ranger, on the outside you probably don’t see a lot of it. For instance certain weapon skills give our pets buffs on the next attack, combined with well timed slot skills your pets can hit for substantial numbers.

Then you have the pet which is a layer in itself. Timing your pet switches for quickness and timing your pets skills is not easy mid combat.
Then you can get a lot more advanced with them such as chaining canine knock downs.

SB uses a lot of auto attacking, but melee is nothing but fun.

I see lots of replies talking about classes that can 1v1 or potentially 1vX but that’s not what you need in a roamer, unless maybe you’re in T8 or something.

Roamers need to be able to walk around a corner, see 50 rednames coming and be able to get away. Thieves are #1 at this by a long shot. A ranger can chase a ranger but even a thief can’t catch a thief.

Slamz.5376:

Roamers need to be able to walk around a corner, see 50 rednames coming and be able to get away. Thieves are #1 at this by a long shot. A ranger can chase a ranger but even a thief can’t catch a thief.

As a ranger, get your GS out, hit #3 and fly away.. And should you notice they do are catching up on you: WP
But agree: to tackle this specific issue (when encountering a zerg heading your way), stealth is the “tactic” to use..
But roaming is more than just wandering around in WvW awaiting to encounter a zerg, no? Flip some camps and sentries, for starters.. Or doesn’t that happen above T8? :o

Slamz.5376:

I see lots of replies talking about classes that can 1v1 or potentially 1vX but that’s not what you need in a roamer, unless maybe you’re in T8 or something.

Roamers need to be able to walk around a corner, see 50 rednames coming and be able to get away. Thieves are #1 at this by a long shot. A ranger can chase a ranger but even a thief can’t catch a thief.

Well this is why you don’t roam alone and do it with 2 – 5 other people. A ranger and a thief for example is an insanely powerful combo. If for no other reason than blast finisher spam and healing well. But both have similar amounts of speed, buth can attack from range, and the ranger’s ranged abilities help compensate the thief for a relatively few number of snares and such. I’d probably put more money on a thief+ranger pair than a thief+thief pair.

Real players roam as a Guardian.

Amins.3710:

Real players roam as an Engineer.

Fixed that for you.

I used to roam a lot with my shatter mesmer even though I don’t use swiftness runes so I suffer a lot of the lack of speed buffs. I can use my focus when I know my destination, but if i’m just wandering around I prefer to keep my usual sword/pistol combo since if u’re in combat u can’t switch weapon anymore, so it’s always better be prepared and geared to fight…
Imo best roaming class is thief no doubt on it.
About rangers….maybe 95% of the rangers are lazy but I almost never found good challanges against rangers. I’ve met rarely some good traps/condition build rangers, the rest of them just use a bow-autoattack-ranger-build that works it this way:
1- shoots arrows
2- shoots more arrows
3- sends the annoying pet that can follows u miles away from its owner
I actually find rangers a good way to test ur build, if u have trouble soloing a ranger then ur build is not good.
Don’t get me wrong, i’ve nothing against rangers. They’re good in pve but in wvw if u’re not shooting from a safe tower it’s better working on a different build than the usual bow-build

Aten.8046:

About rangers….maybe 95% of the rangers are lazy but I almost never found good challanges against rangers. I’ve met rarely some good traps/condition build rangers, the rest of them just use a bow-autoattack-ranger-build that works it this way:
1- shoots arrows
2- shoots more arrows
3- sends the annoying pet that can follows u miles away from its owner
I actually find rangers a good way to test ur build, if u have trouble soloing a ranger then ur build is not good.

Don’t judge all rangers because of the noobie ones you encounter please.. I could say the same from every other class in the game: Thieves go down so easily, and all they can do is cloak and dagger, blablablablabla..

I would be glad to show you some tactics involving more than just hitting 1.. And yeah, I’m LB/SB, so I will be shooting arrows.. Point is, some will poison, others will cripple, others knockback, …
And my pet? I don’t want it to follow you for miles.. So when you decide to run away from me, you’ll be safe, no worries..

Don’t get me wrong, i’ve nothing against rangers. They’re good in pve but in wvw if u’re not shooting from a safe tower it’s better working on a different build than the usual bow-build

Hmmz, you have nothing against rangers but just decide to turn down the entire class, looking at it as though they all are unskilled zombies hitting 1?

Aten my first thought was to get angry and challenge you to a duel…but you’re sadly right. Most Rangers want to pew pew from range all day, and I’ve only met one or two who gave me trouble one on one.

A well played ranger can be down right nasty 1v1, but most of us tend to not understand the class and complain on the forums about bows rather than try something different.

I think of the Ranger as a slippery close to medium ranged skirmisher, where most seem to think of a traditional archer class.

Indoles.1467:

Ele, Thief, or Ranger. Ranger is very potent in 1v1 if built correctly with a skilled player behind it, just know that you NEED a sword or greatsword to roam with it. Ele would be the strongest imo.

Edit: You are upscaled, probably not the best idea to roam then as any nonupscale with half of a brain will defeat you while kitten.

In other words: Any class with a movement speed +25% signet.

Amins.3710:

Real players roam as a Guardian.

Guardian is really fun for roaming because you can use crowd control to keep other roamers from escaping (binding blade, line of warding, zealot’s embrace, ring of warding, chains of light, wrathful grasp, or weight of justice).

Tribio.8531:

Aten.8046:

Don’t get me wrong, i’ve nothing against rangers. They’re good in pve but in wvw if u’re not shooting from a safe tower it’s better working on a different build than the usual bow-build

Hmmz, you have nothing against rangers but just decide to turn down the entire class, looking at it as though they all are unskilled zombies hitting 1?

I repeat, I really don’t look down on the ranger class. I’m talking about my personal experience in wvw. It’s not a matter of class actually, it’s a matter of how do u play the class. It’s like thieves that rely on basilisk-quickness backstab or warriors than rely on frenzy-hundred blades; if they fail that they’re scr**ed. If u play cheap u’re not going anywhere.

A lot of the above posts are moot. The OP was looking to solo-level in WvW against caravans and camps. Giving builds and playstyles doesn’t help because many builds won’t work at all until level 30, and will work rather poorly until level 60 when GM traits are reachable. So for most of the leveling process you have to build and gear rather hybrid-like, which means you’re going to have a tough time against those veterans, and in fact even normal mobs. I had an epic 5 minute fight with a dolyak with my vastly underleveled engineer a while back. I wouldn’t even think about approaching a camp…

I also found that even if you are somehow able to constantly circle the map PvE’ing without running into invaders, with the XP you get from these events you level an estimated 5 times slower. The big XP comes from towers and keeps, but that necessitates a group and some time. So if you are in WvW to PvE, you’re actually much better off actually PvEing in PvE world by a large margin. I know the idea of helping your server seems appealing, but the extremely slow XP rate is going to start to get on your nerves.

I roam all the time on my 0*0*30*10*30 Ranger…LB/SB kitten spec to boot and enjoy a ton of success. Find an angle that works for you and your preferred play style, refine it and have fun.

Some classes definitely have a bit more to work with but if you have a clue you can make and find an angle for about any class out there.

I chose to continue to play on my Ranger because it was a challenge

Tyaen.5148:

Amins.3710:

Real players roam as a Warrior.

Fixed that for you.

FTFY

Amins.3710:

Real players roam as a Guardian.

Only thing is, I love my AH. Plus it gets kind of slow when Staff3/Retreat/SY wear off.

When I was doing World Completion solo it felt like I was driving a bus around the zone. Sure, enemy players bounce off, but you’re not exactly a speed demon.

Uh i run necro and it isn’t the best roaming class probably solo, but it sure doesn’t falter. I run a support tanky condition well build, and my wells, numerous aoes, chill on blind, plague, and dark shroud, and sheer tankiness already dissuade many people from challenging me (i’m not worht the time) and even when i get in a 1v2 situation i can usually last quite a while until I get to a zerg, where i can truly shine!