Guild Wars 2

I’m so raging sick of using every tool at my disposal to get killed by some lamer who did nothing but auto-shot crossfire attack me the whole fight.

A list of annoying things that go can wrong.

1. Ranger kites in circle dodging phoenix and dragons tooth.
2. Fire grab always fricken missses.
3. Arcane wave hard as heck to land on kiter.
4. Earth knockdown requires you to stand still, they just kite away.
5. Zephyrs quickness – boy i wish I could pop quickness and melt someone with lightning auto-attack.
6. After they’re downed some pets can cause you a crap load of trouble.

The only build I’ve found that can handle rangers is scepter/focus signet-aura condition build. Basically you create an aura-build that uses fire signet as an extra dot. Open with gale switch to earth spam auto-attack pop magnetic aura and watch him kill himself, funniest darn thing in the world when they pop quickness into your magnetic aura + fire aura. I guess you counter auto-attack spam with auto-attack spam.

The question is, has anyone found an effective strat against rangers with the standard arcane sceptre/dagger build?

1. Throw Phoenix ahead of him. Do not bother with Tooth. I usually swap to air, unload first 3, hop into earth, stack up some bleeds, blind, water -> aoe ahead, heal up. Signet of Earth helps as well.
2. Fire grab is pretty kitteny atm. The cone could be wider.
3. Arcane wave is not the only option for utility. Look into some signets/cantrips. They are great tools.
4. Agree completely. Earth knockdown could use some help in either longer knockdown or ability to be cast on the move.
5. =)
6. Well they are a pet class after all.

Overall I agree, Rangers are a kitten to deal with. Especially when you are specced pretty soft. I think if you go Toughness primarily you should be able to last VS rangers. Swap Arcane utility for Signet of Earth and either Lightning Flash or Cleansing Fire.

XodoK.8734:

Overall I agree, Rangers are a kitten to deal with. Especially when you are specced pretty soft. I think if you go Toughness primarily you should be able to last VS rangers. Swap Arcane utility for Signet of Earth and either Lightning Flash or Cleansing Fire.

Haven’t thought of using lightning flash as a positional aid, worth some experimentation. I have the arcane trait in my build that causes arcane spells to do something special based on your attunement. For example, in air arcane blast blinds, in fire it causes burning. This is very helpful for getting burning up on someone quick so fire grab does extra damage, among other things. So, I’m not sure about dropping arcane blast.

Played some more games and I gota say I’m disgusted. It would take the designers of this game 5 minutes to see that ranger can literally auto-shot an elementalist to death. Yes, you can right kitten click an elementalist as a ranger and kill them, maybe throw some dodge rolls in for fun. GG Anet you guys are real masters of balance.

Rangers dont really have a choice Auto attack is the only thing on the shortbow that does damage and the other weapons are a bit UP in my opinion.
skill 2 poisons short duration to reduce healing.
skill 3 is a small leap back , very small compared to gap closers
skill 4 a 3 seconds cripple on 12 second cd so again not amazing
5 is a daze/stun from behind

try scepter dagger i have no problem with rangers. start casting skill 5 of earth and use lightning flash to get in range, i have lots of points in water so i cleanse the bleed dot every so often when switching attune.

also instead of arcane wave try arcane blast

Ride the lightning is a good gap closer if it doesn’t bug out on a bit of terrain.

Rangers have pretty rubbish condition removal so you could try maybe take signet of earth to root him for a good fire burst.