Guild Wars 2

I take it as a challenge, everyone seems to think that ranger is the worst class for PVP and PVE. I’m going to try to prove those wrong ! There’s a lot of good build out there, and we can also try to think by ourselves and try something else than what is given to us.
If a build doesn’t suits you, why not trying another one ?
As I read on the forum, people tries to run a zerk build, or the same build on EVERY class they play, and complains it doesn’t work… A necro can DPS, it’ll not DPS the same way an ele do. Same for a Ranger.
It will take time, as I have to go all over the basics of the class, but I’ll get there eventually.
If any other people wants to do the same and help me, just tell me IG

You are probably thinking just in PvE, there all classes need to run power/DPS build.
In PvP people try a lot of builds, but ranger can only get so good, when you reach high level competitive PvP you’ll see that at any possible role in a PvP team there is a better class than a ranger, that is why in the last couple tournaments you could see every class at least once in a team except ranger.

In PvE, we have a quite nice DPS and frost spirit/spotter to offer to the party, we are not part of the meta but at least we are in a better position than necro.

Heh. I appreciate your optimism, but you’re coming into a forum with people who have been playing ranger for over 3 years, have literally tried every combination of traits possible, every armor combo, people who have truly mastered every nuance of ranger… tiny things that you don’t even know are possible. And telling us we need to experiment more and you’re going to find the way to play ranger everyone is missing.

We’ve done it, bruh. And not just one of us, hundreds of us. If you come up with a new build you think is the answer, I can probably find a thread from 2 years ago with a dozen or more responses discussing the concept. And for dungeons, if it’s not the meta build, chances are extremely good it’s just plain incorrect, because of math.

Don’t feel too dejected when you discover you cannot prove the consensus wrong.

There is a link in my sig for a bunch of PvP builds, maybe a nice place to start looking for something, but in reality, Ranger just does not have the mechanics it needs to be competitive. At least not in team competition.

its his Experience guys , if he doesn’t do it he won’t get to our field of critical thinking.

its his choice, dont Belittle him, its a great choice to improve his knowledge about classes first hand through his own eyes.

No one is belittling him.

Fluffball.8307:

No one is belittling him.

yes you are , you noted your Experiences and Explained why he shouldnt do it because you’ve already done it , that is Belittlement you should be Encouraging him and giving him ideas rather than those previous comments, it’ll be good for his experience of multipul classes and trying to put him off playing a ranger just because of your opinon of “hehe i admire your enthusiasm” then procced to demote him to " why bother I’ve already done it".

Although I understand your lack of optimism, the traits and stats system changed less than a month ago, so I don’t think every combinaison has been tried since then. Plus, you have the “disadvantage” (note the quote marks) of having trying for years, maybe you’re too attached to some of the old stuff that used to work, but changed, and maybe I’ll find those out, maybe you’ll find those out before me.
That actually doesn’t matter who finds it out, I just want the best we can get out of this class in every situation to be found and handed to this forum.
And I’m asking for help, because I know I can’t do it alone without taking a hugekitten amount of time.

The build I’m running atm is decent for sPVP, and can take people down. But I know it can be improved. For instance, I don’t see the rune of rage beeing used that much, but it increases the DPS of the ranger impressively, and allow for a 100% fury uptime, the pet can hit up to 4~5k with his auto-attack, which is part of the ranger’s DPS, and the ranger up to ~1.8k with the auto attack, sigils of force and intelligence. It still has 17k hp and a decent armor to survive, plus the mobility it gets from the sword and GS (even shortbow can get you out of some spiky situations). Don’t forget about the survival backrush, that clears also conditions and breaks stun.
And that is for PVP. I haven’t even tried PVE yet.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Fluffball.8307:

No one is belittling him.

yes you are , you noted your Experiences and Explained why he shouldnt do it because you’ve already done it , that is Belittlement you should be Encouraging him and giving him ideas rather than those previous comments, it’ll be good for his experience of multipul classes and trying to put him off playing a ranger just because of your opinon of “hehe i admire your enthusiasm” then procced to demote him to " why bother I’ve already done it".

Thanks for the support, but this kind of comments actually gives me more will to do it

You’re misinterpreting the responses Zenos. I didn’t tell him not to experiment, I objected to him telling us we’re doing it wrong and he’s going to fix it for us. That isn’t going to happen. The other’s that responded basically said the same thing.

The internet really will argue about anything.

I for one praise the effort, but also hope he/she does experiment a lot with Ranger and then let us know the honest opinion.

You have to really use a set of criteria for something like this and I have done similar to reach my thoughts on the matter. All these need to be compared to other classes.

What I personally think are the 5 points that make a good PvP build;

1. Mobility, how fast can you move around the map.
2. Damage, how much, how often and types.
3. Team and group support.
4. Unique mechanics that assist with objectives.
5. Survivability.

Innovation is key, fresh perspective is often what we need. OP might not make a new meta, but he might do something that gives one of us the spark for an idea. In our age and cynicism we often overlook things that someone else might see. I wouldn’t have made it to where I did in the PvP scene without a little help from an old thief friend. He knew nothing about ranger but he had some insights I had to consider which ultimately effected some tweaks to my build. The same can be said for some of the forum posters I was dead set on RaO, being stubborn, it took me some convincing to take entangle but that was the clear choice in the last meta. Point is, let him do what he will. Something interesting might come out of it.

Kehlian.4380:

Plus, you have the “disadvantage” (note the quote marks) of having trying for years, maybe you’re too attached to some of the old stuff that used to work, but changed, and maybe I’ll find those out, maybe you’ll find those out before me.

I’m not referring to me personally. I’m saying the tens of thousands of ranger players have tried everything. As for me personally, I play… ‘different’ builds shall we say.

Kehlian.4380:

Although I understand your lack of optimism, the traits and stats system changed less than a month ago, so I don’t think every combinaison has been tried since then. Plus, you have the “disadvantage” (note the quote marks) of having trying for years, maybe you’re too attached to some of the old stuff that used to work, but changed, and maybe I’ll find those out, maybe you’ll find those out before me.
That actually doesn’t matter who finds it out, I just want the best we can get out of this class in every situation to be found and handed to this forum.
And I’m asking for help, because I know I can’t do it alone without taking a hugekitten amount of time.

The build I’m running atm is decent for sPVP, and can take people down. But I know it can be improved. For instance, I don’t see the rune of rage beeing used that much, but it increases the DPS of the ranger impressively, and allow for a 100% fury uptime, the pet can hit up to 4~5k with his auto-attack, which is part of the ranger’s DPS, and the ranger up to ~1.8k with the auto attack, sigils of force and intelligence. It still has 17k hp and a decent armor to survive, plus the mobility it gets from the sword and GS (even shortbow can get you out of some spiky situations). Don’t forget about the survival backrush, that clears also conditions and breaks stun.
And that is for PVP. I haven’t even tried PVE yet.

i’ve actually tried runes of rage a few times in my builds what’s really nice about them isn’t the fury uptime but the re-application of fury if your running remorseless. the build i’ve been running lately uses no precision, rage rune, gs and still crits pretty often. I thought of using intelligence sigils too but i’ll stick with battle instead of possibly wasting an opening strike on the sigils crit.

with might and bloodlust you can hit pretty hard with this

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-Jg-o;1sEFu-r2JEV-0;9V8R;1Yb_;0257246147;4SRF66;1m7YBm7YBT0d

the hard part is surviving long enough to hit that hard lol

Fluffball.8307:

Kehlian.4380:

Plus, you have the “disadvantage” (note the quote marks) of having trying for years, maybe you’re too attached to some of the old stuff that used to work, but changed, and maybe I’ll find those out, maybe you’ll find those out before me.

I’m not referring to me personally. I’m saying the tens of thousands of ranger players have tried everything. As for me personally, I play… ‘different’ builds shall we say.

please do share lol different can be good!

Prophet.1584:

Fluffball.8307:

Kehlian.4380:

Plus, you have the “disadvantage” (note the quote marks) of having trying for years, maybe you’re too attached to some of the old stuff that used to work, but changed, and maybe I’ll find those out, maybe you’ll find those out before me.

I’m not referring to me personally. I’m saying the tens of thousands of ranger players have tried everything. As for me personally, I play… ‘different’ builds shall we say.

please do share lol different can be good!

One of my WvW builds is in Heimskarl’s link. But really I just swap things around on a ~ weekly basis. Especially in open world if I’m doing dailies or something I try to use all the pets and traits just to get a feel for them.

I mostly base builds around where I’m getting condi removal from. After that, you can do anything.

I did pretend to manage where you guys fail, and to be honnest it was a bit audacious, but as someone said, maybe that will give you the insight you needed to form a good build and share it to the others.

Anyway, I’m still experiencing, WvW, sPVP and PVE

I’m not going to say not to do anything or even that you shouldn’t or that it’s pointless.

What I will say is that the current state of the game is going to be comparatively short lived, so that while it is a fun way to spend your time theorycrafting and optimizing and perfecting; don’t get too set on making any sort of definitive ideas/conclusions just yet unless you don’t mind the potential uprooting of everything (or just some of the things) you come up with.

That’s honestly why I’ve been staying away from doing so myself. The expansion is becoming more and more tangible, and the reality is that the biggest changes are going to happen either at launch, or about as close as imaginable approaching launch, aka the next “feature patch” which has been mentioned in passing a few times on red posts.

So my advice is to just get into the game, get comfortable with the class and your class knowledge, and get your head into the theorycrafting process, but be extremely open-minded about how the game is in flux and preparing for another batch of massive changes.

The way I like to think about it right now is that the existing classes are all playing a little less than 5/6ths of their class (missing a whole trait line plus a new weapon), and we don’t even know what sort of other things will get changed beyond that (but you can bet on changes).

I just found out that resounding timbre is bugged, it doesn’t affect “We heal as One!” nor “Strength of the pack!”

Does not work in what sense?
Till a couple days ago I’m sure that the CD reduction worked on “Strength of the pack!” and the regen and swiftness didn’t appear in the tooltip of the skill but proced when used.

nvm it works, it’s just not displayed in the skill stats

Well that makes a shouting build a bit useful for the team, that’s that

So far I tried this for 5-6 sPVP matches, and it seems to work.

knight version: hold your points
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBMhV6kSFolFsVQwhFgrFM8HU7rnBBAvvh9G8pRxP8ncrK1C-TJRGABA8EAG4UAA0+DMXGAA

zerk version: take their points !
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBMhV6kSFolFsVQwhFgrFM8HU7rnBBAvvh9G8pRxP8ncrK1C-TJRGwAAeCADOFAA3fAaZAA
Explications:

sword for mobility, and DPS, obviously, and the poison, which even tho is short, if timed correctly can turn the tides of the battle by decreasing healing effectiveness.
The warhorn for group support, but the 4 deals a good amount of damage too.

I hesitated between shortbow, longbow, and GS. I decided to go shortbow, because it has some life saver 3, with quick shot, alongside with controls. Vulnerability applied by both 2 of GS and LB will be compensated with the amount of opening strikes we got with “strength of the pack!”.

I choosed sigil of force and inteligence to gain some might. I know in PVP it’s not much, but with the 100% fury uptime, we got around 66% crit rate, which isn’t negligable. I crited fairly often in those battle, managing to stack might up to 12 by myself in most combats. And you’ll have to swap weapons often too, you don’t want to stay in melee when ennemy reinforcements arrives, it’s too dangerous.

I chose rune of the soldier for the additionnal toughness and vitality, that will increase survavibility, and effectiveness at defending a point. Also, this build beeing shout based, the condi cleansing is awesome for you, and your friends.
So we got shouts that heal allies, cleanse their condition, while still having some sweet effects. "Sic’em! " is one of my favorite against mesmers and thiefs, those kitteners tend to go camo too much, and that prevents it. It also increases by 40% the damages of your pet, allowing it to crit up to 5k, which is pretty nice, and increases its speed for him to reach the target.

Speaking of pets, the wolf is a life saver, when you go down, his fear can give your allies enough time to res you, or even give you time to charge your lick wound, without using the Thunderclap CD, which you can use as a second life saver while your pet licks your wounds
The bear is pretty tanky, but most of all, he can chill ennemies, allowing you to reach them more easily, and preventing them to flee. (the shortbow is good at it too, even tho we don’t have condi damages, when you hit from behind, you make him bleed). I often saw the brown bear as a pet, but I think we have enough condi cleansing with all those shouts.

With Furious grip, you gain fury everytime you swap weapon, with means another opening strike.

You get additional vigor when evading an attack, which means more mobility.

I still hesitate between Beastly Warden, and Zephyr’s Speed, both look good, I chosed the taunt, because it’s more helpful to the whole team than Zephyr’s.

2 panic buttons:
- Lightning reflexes: breaks stuns, get you out of hairy situations.
- Signet of Stone: while giving you a good passive 180 toughness, it can negate all direct damages. Important to use while in melee.
3 shouts:
- “We heal as one!”: I hesitated with the awesome troll onguent, but I based the traits around shout, and not survival, so I think it’s better, it gives you around the same amount of HP but in a shorter time laps: 7800 instead of 8500, but still, in a shorter time, with a faster CD. It also heals your allies and gives them swiftness, plus cleanse condi. What more could you ask ?
- "Sic’ em!‘: My favorite: see above, this one transform your cute pet in a bloodthirsty beast
- “Strength of the pack!”: Same, I hesitated with Entangle, but Entangle is survival, while strength of the pack will give your pet an incredible amount of might, increasing further more its DPS, also, cleanse condi, heal allies, and gives you fury every 3s for 4s, which means a lot of opening strikes, and then a lot of vulnerability for your ennemies.
As Amulet, I think both knight and berserk can be swaped, depending on the role you want:
- Knight to hold points for your team, you won’t be killed ever, but you won’t do much damages.
- Zerk to actively take points from the other team. Crit damage is awesome with that, but you lose around 1200 toughness.

What do you guys think about this one ? I’m working on some others right now.
Sorry if the english isn’t good, I’m not a native english dude, do not hesitate to ask if something isn’t well formulated or unclear

Lose the polar bear for sure.

Why not the polar bear ? Have you some more interesting choices ?
Chill and weakness is a pretty good DPS dumber for the foes
Alpine wolf, maybe ? it increases the DPS, but you’ll have a harder time keeping it alive in combat

Kehlian.4380:

Why not the polar bear ? Have you some more interesting choices ?
Chill and weakness is a pretty good DPS dumber for the foes

Several. I would like you to go through the pets and figure out what each of them offers. If you are saying you want chill and weakness, well there are already better options for that (for PvP) besides the bear.

Haha, Eura assigning homework. It’s a good assignment though, you can’t play ranger if you don’t know the pets. After that, enjoy figuring out how to control all their weird quirks.

Well the healing from the fern hound seems nice, but useless in that build. Canines seem to have a higher power, which is good.

Maybe the white raven’s blind, but it only affects one target. Birds have a higher precision, which means more crit for them, but with Fury and stuff, maybe not that useful.

Finaly, jungle spider can immobilize, THAT would be useful, but if you are in melee range, it doesn’t change much, unless you switch back to shortbow, but you’ll lose time on that sweet imobilisation, and it lasts only 3s.

The hyena can summon another hyena, but its low power is a turn-off, I guess. The lynx’s bleeding is too long, it will be cleansed and rendered useless.

The salamander drake could be good, with its burning, but has no condition damage, and therefor isn’t really better than dumbing the ennemy DPS.

Maybe the ice drake, it looks good, the stats are good, but the chill is a channeling skill, which means the ennemy just has to evade it and suffer 1s instead of 3.

I’d go alpine wolf, but as I said, it’s a bit squishyer than the bear.
Or Carrion Devourer, the poison area isn’t that bad either

Well, sooner or later he will come to the inevitable conclusion that all of us came to and that is that the Ranger is pretty OK in the lower to middle brackets of any game mode, but at soon as you start making considerations into optimizing your team, in any game mode, you will realize that there are far better and more reliable classes out there.

Bunker – Guardian
Bruiser – Rampage Warrior and Cele DD
Ranged/Spike/Control – Mesmer.
+1 Spike/Map control – Thief

Fun part is, you can probably make a team with a Hail Mary composition of builds and classes for a specific map but getting it to work on a large scale, game after game, like these meta builds do probably will not happen. Please do try though!!!

Some of the pets are good for their F2s, some are good for their other abilities. Drakes are often used for the blast finisher in healing spring, for example.

Fluffball, true Drakes are good in a HS, if the HS was not worthless now hahhahaa.

well that’s actually a good idea, the healing spring may be better than the traited “we heal as one!” in this case :o Haven’t thought about that. But it’d easier in PVE than in PVP, smart people will avoid staying in the healing spring to not let the ranger heal. meaning the blast finisher will be launched outside of the area.

It’s just one example, there are TONS of ways to use your pet in non-obvious synergistic ways (woo, got to use that word outside the office!)

Edit: It’s up to you to make sure you’re not wasting the blast finisher. Pet control separates the good rangers from the hobby rangers.

Alright I’ll delve into it, what about the rest of the build ?

Fluffball.8307:

Some of the pets are good for their F2s, some are good for their other abilities. Drakes are often used for the blast finisher in healing spring, for example.

A marsh drake F2 against 5 targets will stack 25 might on the ranger when used with “Strength of the Pack”. Unfortunately, the might duration seems to have been reduced along with every other facet of the skill.

That’s a cool application of it. I used to use AoE pet attacks to do that in the early days of PvE before a meta had been established. I clearly remember typing “lol 25 stacks of might!” in a dungeon. First time I’d ever seen it.

Not sure how useful that is anymore, now that everyone stacks might for WvW and PvE, and even PvP to an extent.

Fluffball.8307:

That’s a cool application of it. I used to use AoE pet attacks to do that in the early days of PvE before a meta had been established. I clearly remember typing “lol 25 stacks of might!” in a dungeon. First time I’d ever seen it.

Not sure how useful that is anymore, now that everyone stacks might for WvW and PvE, and even PvP to an extent.

I still use it, because some pugs are bad at stacking might. And it’s good for solo play.

All in all, the marsh drake is the best drake to use in PvE in my opinion.

Ok Kehlian, as others have mentioned, sometimes the secondary effects are worth more than the F2. For PvP if your pet is low
You could heal it, swap it, or just pull it out with F3. Bears don’t offer much for PvP since players aren’t actively targeting your pet.

Because of this bears and decourers (the tankiest and least useful of the pets in terms of damage and abilities) makes them frowned upon for PvP.

Next question, are some pets in a species more beneficial than another?
For example, what does the river drake due that the ice or fire drake does not?

Have a look into my Forums posts you may find quite a bit of good information and some snippets of information (i tend to think out of the box first because thinking in the box is all too common and easy to create simple builds)

well the F2 skill is different for each, obviously. The river drake’s attack bounces, stacking 25 might on its own, while the other’s stack less.
But the might stacking isn’t applyable this way in PVP, since people will just dodge attacks.

For PVE, though, it’s awesome

Sure, but what it especially does is track your target. The other drakes (except marsh) don’t track your target, this makes them less useful in PvP. What you could do with the river drake is cast the F2, maybe on one side of the node and then you stand on the other side of your target so they are imbetween you and the drake. This will force them to look at you, they will be in front of the drake and with their back to it. This makes it much easier to land the damage.

Kehlian.4380:

The river drake’s attack bounces, stacking 25 might on its own, while the other’s stack less.
But the might stacking isn’t applyable this way in PVP, since people will just dodge attacks.

These statements are inaccurate. Go play with the pets and learn their mechanics.

Eurantien.4632:

Sure, but what it especially does is track your target. The other drakes (except marsh) don’t track your target, this makes them less useful in PvP. What you could do with the river drake is cast the F2, maybe on one side of the node and then you stand on the other side of your target so they are imbetween you and the drake. This will force them to look at you, they will be in front of the drake and with their back to it. This makes it much easier to land the damage.

The marsh drake’s F2 has much better tracking than the river drake. It also travels farther and bounces farther (900 range). The caveat is: it trades some of its raw damage for poison.

Alright I should test them in real battle, I tested them on golems til now.

People dodge the super critical pets skills like the canine knockdowns. Otherwise they tend to ignore your pets. You can’t be dodging eagle swoops when the ranger has a maul ready. (Which might be a mistake, since the eagle could end up doing more damage than the maul!)

Well all in all, the only part that lacks in this build SEEMS to be the pet, and the synergies with it. I don’t know them much yet. But then, with a proper pet synergy, it would makes a really good and useful ranger for sPVP. Maybe not the DPS you wanted, but considering the support it provides, it’s a real asset in the team.

It’s definitely a decent build. Out of curiosity, why do you want the SB with a power amulet over LB? LB’s utility is underrated by new rangers IMO.

As I said, longbow provides only one control, and one camo of 3s. The SB, even tho is less powerful, shoots faster, apply bleed from behind and the sides, and provides one panic button, 2 controls, alongside with some sweet poison to dumb down the ennemies’ healing.

It isn’t used as a range damage weapon, even tho 900 range is far enough in a sPVP situation, it’s more like another set of utility when needed, this build is mostly played with the sword/warhorn as damage dealers and burst, and the SB as a side weapon when things get hairy in melee, or ennemies are too many.

I love LB, I just felt it’s not suited for a sPVP situation with that kind of build, but more for WvW and PVE

I may try swaping the warhorn for the axe, for more defensive abilities, and an additionnal control, since the call of the wild is used each time we switch pets. But the additionnal fury boon means another opening strike for the ranger and the pet.

Kehlian.4380:

I take it as a challenge, everyone seems to think that ranger is the worst class for PVP and PVE. I’m going to try to prove those wrong ! There’s a lot of good build out there, and we can also try to think by ourselves and try something else than what is given to us.
If a build doesn’t suits you, why not trying another one ?
As I read on the forum, people tries to run a zerk build, or the same build on EVERY class they play, and complains it doesn’t work… A necro can DPS, it’ll not DPS the same way an ele do. Same for a Ranger.
It will take time, as I have to go all over the basics of the class, but I’ll get there eventually.
If any other people wants to do the same and help me, just tell me IG

Been playing ranger since day 1.
3 years of playing non stop ranger here.
And I can tell you…and thurst me that it is totally broken and unbalanced ( in the negative way). A decent engi or thief or whoever you want will kill the ranger Always. No matter his skills. Simply becouse we have no decent F skills. Simply becouse we have no decent survival skills.
Change profession you are still in time…. Don’ t make my mistake

Darkness.9732:

How have you not been banned yet?

Darkness.9732:

Kehlian.4380:

I take it as a challenge, everyone seems to think that ranger is the worst class for PVP and PVE. I’m going to try to prove those wrong ! There’s a lot of good build out there, and we can also try to think by ourselves and try something else than what is given to us.
If a build doesn’t suits you, why not trying another one ?
As I read on the forum, people tries to run a zerk build, or the same build on EVERY class they play, and complains it doesn’t work… A necro can DPS, it’ll not DPS the same way an ele do. Same for a Ranger.
It will take time, as I have to go all over the basics of the class, but I’ll get there eventually.
If any other people wants to do the same and help me, just tell me IG

Been playing ranger since day 1.
3 years of playing non stop ranger here.
And I can tell you…and thurst me that it is totally broken and unbalanced ( in the negative way). A decent engi or thief or whoever you want will kill the ranger Always. No matter his skills. Simply becouse we have no decent F skills. Simply becouse we have no decent survival skills.
Change profession you are still in time…. Don’ t make my mistake

That is simply a blunt lie, after patch thieves keep telling me how broken OP rangers are. Never had an issue with an engi, if they win is due to a serious misplay by me and that is the way it should be . I play spvp arena, I roam solo and I OS alot, where are all thouse “decent engis and thieves”?