Guild Wars 2

Obviously not being 100% serious here, but it comes from a true place.

We all know that 1500 range capped Ranger is a terrible joke considering:

- Elevation of the Ranger does not increase/decrease projectile range and damage (GW1 does, hint hint ANet)
- Thief steal is traited to 1500 range.
- Thief has stealth, shadow steps/teleports, to close the distance within less than a second.
- Warriors can close the distance in 1 second.
- Guardians can close the distance in 1-2 seconds.
- Elementalist can close the distance within 1-2 seconds.
- Engineer can close the distance in 1-2 seconds.
- Even melee Ranger can close the distance on a longbow ranger in 1-2 seconds.
- Most ranged abilities tend to be 1200, 5 steps forward and they’re in range.
- Not even the strongest class with ranged attacks.

Discuss Ranger having 2500 range or more and its implications (good and bad) on each game mode:

PvE
- Wouldn’t do anything here, if a mob can’t reach you or someone else, it goes invulnerable.

PvP
- Would be able to sit up high on a few maps and cover 2 points. (May leave rangers battling for prime position in a map?)

WvW
- Would be a powerhouse when defending Towers, Forts and Keeps.
- Could kill siege in a lot of places no class could reach before.

Anet has said anything over 1500 range will break the mechanics.

I’d rather they fixed the “invulnerable” mobs. If I got line of sight and in range, I should be able to hit it.

@My Sweet Lily IMO they already achieved that in other aspects. Hypothetical discussion, any pros or cons you can think of?

@Seth, yeah that is an annoying aspect of the AI mobs in the game, but invulnerable mobs means they can be lazy with environment design to counter “environment/AI exploiting”

I’m not sure the range of the weapon is the issue. It’s just the weapon lacks the ability to apply pressure to the target. The burst potential is just really low. It has a knockback and stealth to try and help with the kiting issues. You can always swap weapons to help kite as well.

If the range issue is your sole problem with the weapon, perhaps a better issue is simply to give the class a trait that reduces the cooldown on weapon swapping so you can go to the greatsword more freely and not be stuck with a mediocre weapon offensively for so long.

Personally, I find the issue with the longbow primarily related to its lack of a bursting skill and the fact that weapon’s only way to interrupt is also the weapons primary means of defending itself. Shortbow has a snare and a leap to get away. It has a daze to interrupt to help apply pressure to the target. Longbow really only has the knockback.

LB range is 1800, due to a bug/lame mechanic.

If you are foolish enough to think you are unable to be killed at range, think again

If you are unaware enough to let an enemy close that range, you failed

Range is closer to 2k when traited. Yeah I agree with Atherakhia; it’s not the range, but the lack of burst that’s the issue. You can only really nail someone when the stars align: at 1k plus range, with bloodlust, might stack and from the back as a zerker.

The time to kill is far too long for what has to be given up, and that all classes have range weapons and gap closers.

The stealth is nice but it’s still missing something. If they got rid of weapon swap cool down it’ll play much better as the rotation is fairly predictable.

GW1 Ranger was much better, the bows reacted more like real bows, gaining a height advantage gave you more damage (As it should be), I get sick of seeing “invulnerable” whenever a mob feels like it, while he beats me half to death.

GW2 Ranger is very poor in comparison, poor skills and poor weapons.

Loved my ranger in GW1, I find myself playing warrior in GW2 though (have 2 wars as well). Best memory I have of it was on one of the kurzick alliance battles maps, it had a bridge waaaaay above a valley, normally you would miss because the target would move ever so slightly sideways, I ended up one shotting an assassin with keen arrow due to the elevation bonus, was a once off though but the 550 damage was massively hilarious.

Treb’s and catapults get elevation bonus in terms of range due to their projectiles not magically disappearing, surely ranger can be adapted to this?

I like the idea of no weapon swap cool down, it would feel somewhat reminiscent of the ‘expertise’ attribute to some degree in terms of a unique class mechanic.

I agree the burst potential is horrendous. Though extra range would allow them to cover the battlefield or capture points from some decent locations using the environment. Think of a fight at NW borderland camp, with some rangers sitting up top of either ledge raining down arrows (adding elevation bonus for rangers would actually make this possible, without increasing the range of the attack), forcing the enemy to reposition or retreat.

Give LB a set 1500 range, SB to 1200, remove Eagle Eye trait and move the damage effects to other traits. Remove ability for other professions to gain 1500 range on anything, and bam. It doesn’t solve the problems LB has as a DPS weapon, but it’s a start on making the weapon somewhat unique.

That’s basically what I would like. The Eagle Eye trait just being LongBow’s baseline behavior. Do that and bump our SB back up to what it was too.

Why not a bazooka with 3k range and you can put an air strike on No5 ability to call a B52 bomb a place

2500 is a huge lot. It would break sieges soooooooooo much.

Btw: I think it’s not fair bringing the Thief so many times considering the Thief can’t throw a projectile at more than 900 range (previously they had Cluster Bomb that you needed to wait like 4 hours for it to land, and even that one was nerfed to 900 range).

Some professions have better range or more kite ability, others have better gap closers (btw not too many thieves trait for the 1500 range Steal as not too many invest on Trickery and in that tier there are other traits that are more popular). If you start giving professions more range, other professions will start to get ways to close bigger gaps as they balance the game. If that starts scaling too much it might get crazy.

Lokheit.7943:

2500 is a huge lot. It would break sieges soooooooooo much.

Btw: I think it’s not fair bringing the Thief so many times considering the Thief can’t throw a projectile at more than 900 range (previously they had Cluster Bomb that you needed to wait like 4 hours for it to land, and even that one was nerfed to 900 range).

Some professions have better range or more kite ability, others have better gap closers (btw not too many thieves trait for the 1500 range Steal as not too many invest on Trickery and in that tier there are other traits that are more popular). If you start giving professions more range, other professions will start to get ways to close bigger gaps as they balance the game. If that starts scaling too much it might get crazy.

Making one weapon the sole keeper of 1500 range will not create this problem.

leave killshot at 1500.
1500 nades are ridiculous tho.
more like 900 baseline 1200 traited for nades or simply drop the range bonus from gm trait. It’s plenty strong as it is.

WIth a LB you can’t #$ at ~700 range when target is moving and you want 2500 range? lol arrows will miss the target by over 9000%

Wait, what? When I shoot from tower I hit targetets that I couldn’t hit from ground – best place to see it is lake tower during breakout.
Hitting moving targets isn’t that big problem, it can be partially fixed by strafing in right way. The biggest weakness of LB is lack of real burst. I guess it’d be OP to burst like thief, but with 1500 range, but if rapid fire dealt 50% more dmg…

Nuka Cola.8520:

WIth a LB you can’t #$ at ~700 range when target is moving and you want 2500 range? lol arrows will miss the target by over 9000%

This, the only mechanic in the game this would effect would actually be in world pve, where mobs lumber towards you in a straight line and would die before ever landing a blow. Funny would be watching a pet disappear off the screen trying to attack the target, then constantly dog behind stopping, trying its hardest to hit the target over and over and over and over and over again.

Stop suggesting longer range for longbow. Anet will just nerf the shortbow range to 300 so longbow will feel it shoots longer.

The only thing the longbow needs is to have thatkitten dmg to range modifier removed fromourautoattack.

Well, the only thing that could hit at 2500 is barrage. Everything else travels too slowly.

If you’re suggesting that the longbow, in order to be viable for the damage it deals, needs to be 2500 range, then without breaking the game environment, aren’t you really just asking that given the current range, you’d like the weapon to be more effective? I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that most people don’t think the longbow, or the ranger as a whole, has enough burst damage, and that the sustain style is countered so heavily by boons that without any boon removal, the combination of the aforementioned items is what leaves people wanting more from the longbow.

If it’s that, then I can totally get behind that. But not a range increase lol. The system doesn’t even currently handle ranged attacks very well, so let’s not make a farther range for things to break.

This probably has nothing to do with the thread but I played alot of Jade Quarry in Gw1 and I absolutely loved the range on longbow, especially when ranging from a high vantage point with a hornbow, and the arrows arced away into the air and then came down :P

Though, the longbow on Gw2 doesn’t appeal to me at all, just seems to clunky.

I think the OP is onto something here. Why shouldn’t the “Ranger” have the longest range in the game?

I think they got the distance from target relative to damage is backwards. The closer the target, the more damage they should take from the LB. That would give the LB a bit more burst damage when targets flatly stand in front of the Ranger. It also creates a mechanism so that other classes couldn’t not simply switch to a ranged weapon to deal with the Ranger since they couldn’t hit from the same long distance.

The way a Ranger plays right now it does not feel like the “best” ranged class, which it should be.

Current range is acceptable, but would be more enjoyable with a little extension.
I want more damage & faster attacks.

I think the current range is reasonable, but it would be nice to have rapid fire be a little more bursty (it’s kind of a boring skill to use after a while since it has a rather long sequence..) and then maybe have the longbow be able to cripple enemies a little better than just relying on barrage.

I like that we have a stealth ability now, but I think it would have made more sense for hunters to provide a few seconds of cripple rather than stealth. Stealth should be a utility skill or something as camouflage.

The only thing I would like to see implemented in the range department is the capability for arrows to travel farther distances when you are elevated.

I think Anet sees Rangers similar to that Ranger you fight during your storyline, the one that got turned undead. Remember the whole time he was one shotting people and vanishing before you could respond.