its not about the numbers its how you use it, i bet you don’t open with a unload that would be silly but i bet you use it on the second round of stealth after you soften them up and make sure there cooldowns are on.
the longbow auto shouldnt’t be used for damage just a gap fill for 3 and 5 or 4 then weapon swap.
this aa damage is only related to melee classes where the main bulk of damage comes from the autos, and spikes from ether class machanics or aka unload after leaving stealth i see p/p+ P/D unload is that much because you’ve only got limited access to stealth without using cloak and dagger (because thats perfect for unload to get you into a good position before unloading.)
And that’s really, really low relative to other classes.
Hell, even my P/P thief does 11k unloads which can be chained together.
Longbow shouldn’t be used as a main weapon? This is a design flaw. There’s no valid archer in the game, and ANet has explicitly marketed the ranger, even in its class description, as “Unparalleled Archers.”
You’d also just deal more damage autoattacking. RF only proves to be useful for DPS when your target is attempting to enter stealth as it’s stealth-tracking. Otherwise, it deals strictly less damage than AA’ing. Unlike what you just said about AA only applying to melee, the longbow AA does the highest DPS outside of Barrage to a target, and in most cases, it does more, since nothing gets hit by a full barrage.
Everything else was on CD, and yes it’s not an exaggerated amount but it’s not bad either. You can do 11k at 900 range while I do 13k at 1200, I’lll be happy with that. Keeping in mind that was crit though not consistent damage at all. My point is I don’t see why rangers even say LB is kitten but it’s not really the case at least the way I play and from my experiences with it, I guess I can express that easily since ranger was not my original main.
As I’ve also iterated, rangers aren’t inherently bad, but they can simply be out-performed. A rifle warrior can get off almost the same damage with volley, and obviously can be extremely useful in other ways in almost every circumstance.
So what most complaints about consist of issues with the pets causing overall too much of a damage cut. When you engaged with RF, what was your pet doing to augment this damage? Likely either getting ready to engage, or still in it idle animation depending on the pet you used. And damage-wise, if you were to say, get rid of the pet, and allow for a 30% damage modifier or something, putting your numbers up to around 14k, would that make the class overpowered or too strong? A lot of people (including myself) say no, especially since such numbers can be achieved by other classes.
Longbow is restricted highly due to its inherent problems with interacting with the ranger class, and overall its boring play despite stylistically being a demanded one. The autoattack is weak relative to a lot of other ones (mesmer GS is better with lower range penalties and has piercing built-in), yet it’s the best form of DPS for the longbow (it out-DPS’s every other skill except a full barrage, which never happens, and in WvW often kills the ranger via retal or causes a whole zerg to proc Runes of Strength). It’s got awkward/poor synergy with its own traits (need to run 30 marksman and forgo a real GM trait for just letting your arrows hit their targets properly), and by the looks of it, you’re skipping out on some important ones, seeing as you’re at 1200 range, which can easily be closed by most classes in a very short period of time.
The weaponset is riddled with synergy issues with ultimately lead it to be fairly sub-par. Not bad to an unplayable extent, but simply, the ranger, in any build, can be out-performed by another class to fill the same role.
