Guild Wars 2

Hey guys. I wanted for us to talk about and brainstorm about the good things the Ranger can do. Personally a feel as if, even though there is a bit of a gap between us and the top professions, that there are things we can do now that we simply could not before the patch. Furthermore, I hope our bugs will get fixed soon but even without that I think that there are some positives to take out of the changes that have happened.

By the end of this wall of text I will hope to have touched on some questions about specialization lines, traits, skills and general flow.

So i would like to start off with the things we can do now that we could not before!!

We can survive a 1v1 spike and a coordinated spike now. This was the number 1 issue with the previous glass ranger before. Someone sneezed in your general direction and you would die. With the change to the Nature Magic line primarily and the addition of protective ward the ranger has become far better at taking the initial hit. Even the Wilderness line alone is better at taking the initial hit but this is only true for things like backstab but not as much for Mesmer shatters because those are many smaller spikes at once.
As far as coordinated bursts go, the WS and NM lines work so well together now. How you would ask? The initial spike is reduced by 33% and right after the first hit you gain protection and apply weakness and when it gets brutal you activate Signet of Stone- SOS haha. Evasive purity works well with WS mastery and we have access to two actually useful stunbreakers. QZ is one of the top utilities across all classes now IMHO and TU is the best heal in the game, 425 Hp/sec and it clears conditions when traited.

So, passive reduction, 2 stun breakers, 6s invulnerability, on demand condition clear within those stun breakers and a good heal.

Marksmanship is no longer a must for LB builds. This one is huge. I mean really huge. People go into MM by force of habit but this, my friends, is an utterly crap PvP line. It offers nothing. Opening strike is a bad mechanic. Remorseless makes it passable. The only heavyweight trait here is Moment of Clarity if you are a GS user. But it works with a very unreliable GS5. It allows a conditional semi spike. For PvE purposes it is still mandatory due to the 20% dps increase but I am talking about PvP here so i will ignore it.
This is an important thing to consider, previously we were forced into it to make LB playable, but now all the boosts are by default. We are free to go into a line that actually increases the DPS and utility of our skills like the Skirmishing line. Quick draw, spotter and hunter tactics are actually a much bigger boost to the LB then MM could ever be. Higher KD possibilities, or higher stealth uptime.. Consecutive RFs and a 17% increased critical chance when flanking.
Furthermore if HS gets debugged we will have a possibility to not take WS for a more offensive oriented build.
Please understand this message you do not have to take MM anymore for LB, AND PLEASE DO NOT!!!

A rather big power up to utility pets. Why am i talking about utility pets here? Well, DPS pets were always bad in PvP by virtue of not hitting moving targets. Utility pets like dogs or spiders have gotten a massive boost to both sustanability and utility. The CD reductions are huge now!! Every swap you have a guaranteed KB for dog or an immobilize for the spider. Actually with this and a solid timing of Rangers own immobilizes and stuns we can be very good in chaining someone for a long time.

So while pets are bad, utility pets are much much better now!!

High quickness up time. People have been captivated with Beastly Warden and have overlooked a simple trait that was there for 3 years, albeit in a different incarnation. Quickness is something that has innate utility value for us. We sacrifice nothing to get it. When playing dual dogs or dog/spider 1 more 2s control ability can be good but I feel as if it is not a be all end all. Quickness on the other hand can help us do things like quick stomps, swap 100% fear resurrections , swap entangle dog GS5 or axe4 spikes with a high success probabilities, fast heals, etc. Its good and we got 3 sources of it. 2 of them are on demand and a third is rather clunky but extremely useful.

Conclusion:
-Yes we have bugs and that sucks
-Yes mesmers and elementalists are extremely good now, OP is to weak a word to describe this
-Yes some things that should have happened, like OH training being baseline, did not happen and our condition builds are worse off for it
-Yes we are very playable in PvP now!!!

Gl hf out there guys!!

Tbh, if you play power lb, you go MM or go home. Other options is for hybird or condi build.
After patch, both condi and raw dam are stronger but our pets are not. That means they will die faster than before. Ofc pets have some new good utilities but that dont make them live any longer. When you swap pet, all the boon from previous pet gone.
Compare to the old ranger, new ranger is better i admit. But compare to other classes, the new ranger fall behind much more than the old one. That is the reason ranger suck now.

I don’t think there is an argument that can be made that shows MM is > than other options out there.

In fact, I think the only argument that can be made for it is actually for condi builds…

for the current iteration of the game anyway.

MadCat.9172:

Tbh, if you play power lb, you go MM or go home. Other options is for hybird or condi build.
After patch, both condi and raw dam are stronger but our pets are not. That means they will die faster than before. Ofc pets have some new good utilities but that dont make them live any longer. When you swap pet, all the boon from previous pet gone.
Compare to the old ranger, new ranger is better i admit. But compare to other classes, the new ranger fall behind much more than the old one. That is the reason ranger suck now.

speak the truth

MM is still better in most lb build

Natural magic and beastmastery need more improvement but compare to the old build they are better now but still lacking comparing to other classes

too many trait need to be 90% hp above this is some kind of silly joke noone will be 90% hp in WvW, maybe at the start of the fight but during the fight most people will be at least 60 -70% hp and whats the point of having those 90% hp trait ?

they should balance the classes based on WvW not spvp look more people is playing WvW then spvp

anyway dont tell me about zerg stuff everything die in zerg run

What is ANet’s obsession with Ranger 90/50% health threshold traits anyway? It is such a rubbish way to design traits, unless they are about survival and only then a trigger, not an extended time period like the utterly useless MDG.

I would like to see a re-evaluation of the point of those traits and make them trigger off something else, make them meaningful. Like Instinctive Reaction, are they serious? There is perhaps 1 build that can use that trait effectively, and even then, its not the best choice in the tier.

If they are about damage, they should be triggering off the targets health, if they are about survival, they can trigger off the Rangers health. But even then, I would rarely take traits that do nothing while I’m at 51-100% health, better options to play around.