Guild Wars 2

Over the past week I’ve run into a few Rangers that have taken me to school.

My Build and Gear
I play a shatter Mesmer with a traited Focus. My typical burst is Curtain -> Warden -> Into the Void -> Cry of Frustration (3 clones) -> Mind Wrack (3 clones). Between the burst damage and the follow up confusion most players are hurting.

Most of the time I’m able to get in close and engage the enemy for a burst. Either they come to me or I can Focus pull or Illusionary Leap to them. Once in range I can burst with Blurred Frenzy and Shatters.

Not with these Rangers. They were slippery, could stay ranged, and their pet was surprisingly painful. These were my main problems:

1. It’s hard to get close to them. Lightning Reflexes, Quick Short, and Rampage as One allow them to keep range and RaO prevents pulls.
2. Obviously their ranged damage is superior to my staff.
3. Reflects did surprisingly little damage. I laid down a few Wardens, used Curtain for reflect, and Mirror heals but they didn’t do too much damage to themselves.
4. Pet burst damage was surprising. I typically ignore pets and just burst down the player but that wasn’t working. I think the player kept swapping pets making it difficult to kill them.

What are your tactics against Rangers?

• Are Phantasm builds stronger than Shatter builds against them? I’d like to find a good strategy as a Shatter Mesmer.
• Kill the pets first? Their bird and cat pets were doing some good burst damage.

if you are using the traited focus hold off on into the void until the last possible second… Proceed with your COF shatter then use decoy and cast iWarden stand near the iWarden for its entire duration (if the ranger is a SB spammer) and he will either kill himself because of reflection or he has had to swap to an alternate weapon… Once Iwarden has finished pop another ill and shatter then see what happens after… A traited focus is very good against a ranger.

I use Staff + s/s and run a shatter build with blink, decoy and arcane thievery. If the pet was doing a lot of damage, its possible they are running a Beastmaster build and are going to take time to kill as they will be tanky, so you want to pace yourself and dodge the pets moves.

If they pop rampage as one use arcane thievery, use blink as a gap closer or to get ahead then use staff to stay ahead. Decoy can also be used as a gap closer. Phantasm build will always be the stronger 1v1 build.

Traited blink is your friend, if you can trait it. Stealth is a great way to outmanuver the enemy as you can approach without their knowledge. If you run away from them before you hit your stealth button, they’re likely to run toward you while you turn around and run at them.

Draw the ranger to fight near obstacles. Always try to remember to that YOU’RE choosing the battle ground. Rocks and cliffs can deny LoS, forcing the ranger to move into close range. I like trees. Even the skinniest tree can deny LoS if you’re good at positioning it between you and it. Hell, try putting up staff clones then just hiding behind a tree. Let them do the work.

Possibly try changing the pace of your fight. Rangers can build very tough. So instead of shattering, put up and keep up clones and phantasms. Whittle him down before bursting. Also try to deal with the pet first before taking to the ranger, though I don’t blame you for not doing this.

There’s also the option to build differently, or swap out your utilities if you know you’re going to be fighting a ranged ranger. Mostly though, know that rangers are a skirmisher class. They’re designed with maneuverability in mind. With a greatsword they can flee from any battle and there’s nothing you can do about it. So, one option, turn around and run the other way. Find a fight you can win. Deny the enemy what he’s looking for.

Oh, and in a recent spvp pole, 49% of people said ranger was the “strongest profession after the last patch”. Not thief, not mesmer. Ranger.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1r_e0iZGa5z6y4qujWZ6xJQ0O9OSt8u_MGtay2nRmgYg/viewanalytics?pli=1

Just flip them off and go your own way.

Thanks for the responses. I’ll try to control the fight more with line-of-sight and pet pathing. Earlier I was treating it as a typical encounter where I could burst the enemy down before they killed me.

Hopefully I can find one of these Rangers out there and duel them for a bit.

When I fight roaming rangers, I try to stay right on top of them as much as I can. They’ll move to try to get away and get some breathing room, and while I chase i also try to kite the pet to make sure it doesn’t hit me while I’m dancing around the ranger. They usually try to make enough distance between me and them so they can heal out of combat, but there isn’t anything anyone can do about that. It’s impossible to catch them. If they run I consider it a victory. Also, I find rangers attacks to be slow and obvious and very easy to predict and evade. LOS isn’t always an option when you’re in the stuck in the field, but it shouldn’t be a problem if you can keep dancing around them, they’ll have to keep turning around to to face you to attack.

I’ve never really had any problems with the ranger. Cant even remember when I lost to one as I rarely see solo rangers, they are all blobbers. I dont know, maybe I’ve just meet some really, really poor rangers.

All you have to keep in mind is one important thing – you got evasion, but they are more mobile than you are. If they run, dont bother chasing them. You have to fight on your own terms, not on the run. Try to keep the pressure up initially while avoiding the pet, time your reflects for their bursts (if they got a longbow you KNOW that the burst will come). Deciding to kill the pet first is a matter of opportunity, few has the survivability and damage to kill two pets while the ranger pounds him (unless of course, the ranger is an idiot).

Just a quick tip as there are already a bunch of good ones, remember that your TC is more than just a reflect, if your having trouble with distance use the speed boost on it, or force a pull on the ranger/pet to better dictate the fight, TC allows you to really control the positioning of the battlefieldsoso remember that even traited its sometimes more use full as a speed or pull.

All it takes is running into a Bunker build ranger to realize that Glass Cannon Rangers aren’t the scary thing you should worry about

Staff counters rangers pretty dang hard.

Personally I find rangers to be one of the easiest classes in WvW solo roaming because chaos armor counters ranged users so hard.

Just add some toughness and rangers are the easiest class to kill.

If you think you have difficulties to close the gap, then don’t play into their hands. 20 pts domination + greatsword will teach those rangers not to kite.

OK, I’m a ranger and I only have a level 3 mesmer, but I’ll give you my perspective on this as someone who has gotten the hang of killing mesmers while roaming as ranger.

I run an evasion tank build (SB + S/D), high toughness (2034), high power (2004), and good crit/crit damage (50%/51%) and decent health (18k+). I run with 4 evades, and some passive healing (~150hp/sec + 130 when regen procs). You will have a hard time bursting me down.

I haven’t lost to a memser 1v1 since I can remember. I’ve even recently beaten two mesmers at once, though one was upleveled. I’m in T2, if that means anything. There have been some really good mesmers that I couldn’t kill and had to disengage, but mostly I can pretty easily wear them down.

Here is my recommendation of what I would hate to have done to me.

A good SB ranger will be DD and try to wear you down with high sustained damage. If the ranger is running SB as their main damage weapon then do :

1) If they have a DPS pet like bird or cat and you have a tough time hitting the ranger (due to evasion/dodge), take out their pet. We rely on our pet for 3 things: 1) DPS; 2) CC (knockdown/fear); and 3) Targeting (the pet is what keeps us on you. While you go to stealth and pop your clones, our pet stays stuck to you like glue and tells us which one to target.) Even a non-BM ranger without a pet is crippled. Also, You down our pet and then we lose big advantage.

2) watch their weapon swaps. If they move to sword and dagger, then go on the defense and target their pet. STAY AWAY from a ranger with S/D. They will do a surprising amount of damage with that sword and throw on bleeds, poisons and cripples. You will NOT be able to hurt a good ranger while they are holding S/D. Do not bother stacking confusion, etc at this time. Wait until they switch to SB then go on the offense—that is when we are most vulnerable.

I feel I’ve learned so much about how to beat mesmers by reading the excellent posts and guides on this sub-forum that I would try to return the favor.

Hope this helps…but not too much!

Take maneuver skills (be it stealth, blink, etc) and use phantasms. If they don’t target the phantasms and keep on you just use your defensive abilities and continue. Use shatter at key times. Even phantasm builds can still get large shatters. I like to keep a few stealths available for repositioning during the fight.

If you use warden, lock them down first. Make sure they’re not moving, melee them in it. Or drop the warden the switch to GS for some ranged defense.

Reflect + phantasm = win. I’ve noticed the fotm for rangers is tank builds. They can be more difficult to burst down, but they do so much less damage it’s a non-starter. Make sure that you use all of your defensive abilities and avoid the pet or even better take it out.

Honestly, I’m not sure why Rangers don’t take a bigger penalty from losing their pet. I know if I lost my pet I’d be dazed for at least a good 30 minutes or so :P

Thanks for the advice Bredin! What about the easy pet heals…dont know much, but doesnt that make killing pets somewhat tough?

also, my impression of rangers was that pet builds could be very strong 1v1, but very quickly lose value in larger fights, so a wvw ranger speccd for his pet is probably going to feel pretty useless at other times…when not in duels. Am I right?

It’s the hearp dearp no skill 1v1 spec with good mobility.

Our bet counter is our own hearp dearp easy mode 1v1 spec, phant.

They out heal and pew pew. If your glassy shatter, unless they are totally inept odds are you won’t win. Though you can hold out against them till help arrives if it was sPvP.

They trade off 1v1 roaming power for being useless in team fights. Although in a Zerg it won’t matter much.

There are a few strategies you can use to outplay them but any decently skilled one doesn’t need to do much to kill a player of a higher skill level. (Again like running phant lol)

bobross.5034:

Thanks for the advice Bredin! What about the easy pet heals…dont know much, but doesnt that make killing pets somewhat tough?

also, my impression of rangers was that pet builds could be very strong 1v1, but very quickly lose value in larger fights, so a wvw ranger speccd for his pet is probably going to feel pretty useless at other times…when not in duels. Am I right?

If they are running full BM (beastmaster) their pets can be hard to kill. If the build is one of the popular high condition/healing/toughness + beastmaster, then you will have a hard time. That is a really tough build to beat one on one. It may be the equivalent of a fighting a good thief—the most you can do is hope for a draw.

The fact is that there are several excellent ranger builds for one on one’s. Some of those work well for small skirmishes/group fights, as well. But you are also correct that the heavy beastmaster/healing/condition builds do not contribute much to large zergs etc. That is why I run a high power/prec/tough build which allows me to be zerg-friendly with just swapping a few major traits.