Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing spvp hotjoin to level my newish ranger that I plan to mostly use in dungeons later on, but I’m getting wrecked in every fight. I’ve been running every celestial amulet build (and some settler’s) under the sun, and I’m equally bad at all of them. I can’t control the sword leaps and autos, and I feel like the evades do little to prolong my inevitable death. I will end up 1v1ing a meditation guard only to do no damage to him while he kills me in 10 seconds. Thieves pick me off, hambows/engis CC me, mesmers troll me to death, and its simply frustrating.

I don’t know what weapons are supposed to be good and I don’t know how to use them, mostly because I’m out of my element playing ranger instead of necro or ele. Someone told me that sword auto was basically all of your burst rotation, but it doens’t seem to do enough dps with celestial to do anything. I honestly don’t know whether longbow or shortbow is better. I feel like MH axe makes me do almost nothing. The offhands are all great though..

I tried running a celestial beastmastery build but Im too clueless with pets to make it work. How does one become good at ranger and fighting these meta classes without running a cheesy antique spirit build?

1. You did turn autoattack off on your sword, right?

1. Spirits is not antique, and I would argue still one of the best PvP builds available, though it has gone through several iterations.

There are variations of spirits that you can see here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Let-s-Talk-PvP-Meta.

Edit: I have my #s numbered properly, no idea why this site turned them both in to 1s.

Fluffball.8307:

1. You did turn autoattack off on your sword, right?

1. Spirits is not antique, and I would argue still one of the best PvP builds available, though it has gone through several iterations.

There are variations of spirits that you can see here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Let-s-Talk-PvP-Meta.

Edit: I have my #s numbered properly, no idea why this site turned them both in to 1s.

Wait do you mean autotargetting, like turning autotargetting off to use fgs 4 without a target on a boss, or do you mean stopping the sword auto attack chain? (Since I don’t know how to turn that off).

Okay, I heard that the spirit build was nerfed considerably. Although I don’t think using Sic Em on cooldown or primal relfexes is really helping me out by much.

Control-click your sword autoattack, you should see the autoattack arrows that usually circle it disappear. That’s crucial to using a sword. If you’re on exactly right now I can show you the sword quickly.

Spirits haven’t been nerfed at all, other builds have been buffed. But spirits are still really strong, people are just over dramatic about new things. Much the way people said traps were obsolete, and yet they’ve been around since game release or so.

The main things I would say is if you are going to fight in melee range then you need to make use of your evades, rangers have tonnes of them. Wait for the telegraphed moves and don’t waste them. It took me a while to get out of the habit of just spamming my skills (I still do it sometimes).

If you are using longbow then stay at range and make use of your stealth and knockback. Don’t feel like you have to fight on point if there is an engi and a bunch of turrets on there either. No point just jumping on and dying straight away. Clear it first.

So I’m the one who right the guide that he linked, but I read through your post and I think that before that, there is going to be a learning phase to go through.

Ranger is very different from the classes that you mentioned. The weaponsets outside of greatsword don’t offer much burst. The damage is centric around a consistent output, so the first idea you want to go for is getting a feel for which weapons do what.

I can help you there:
Longbow: Ranged Direct Damage
Shortbow: Ranged Condition Damage and utility
Mainhand Axe: Hybrid Weapon, lots of damage from bleed stacks on Axe 2 though
Sword: Direct Damage, also used as a defensive, utility, and mobility set. Can work on any stat setup, just not necessarily as a damage tool
Greatsword: Direct Damage, only weapon with a true direct damage burst skill
Offhand Dagger: Condition and Utility. Best evade skill rangers have access too, commonly paired with mainhand sword or axe.
Offhand Axe: Direct Damage, hard to hit burst skill that’s unreliable but strong if successful
Torch: Condition damage
Warhorn: Utility

Play around with the weapons in game first, get a sense of how they work and what they do. I can give advice, but ultimately it only reflects my playstyle. Mainhand Axe, for instance, while it suggests is a 900 range weapon, as actually more effective as a “footsie” weapon, dancing in and out of melee range to make the most out of Axe 2, and is commonly paired with Dagger to have an evade on the weapon set and give the set a little more soft CC control.

Sword is a learning curve weapon. Turn of the autoattack (hold shift and right click), and then manually tap for execution. Each tap adds an attack to the attack que, and you cannot interrupt the animation for the 2nd and 3rd chain in the autoattack chain, BUT, using it at the appropriate time will “stick” you to a target and cripple them. So try to only queue up as many attacks as you can get in, even if you are only manually queuing one at a time, so that you will be able to dodge after the animation and not get locked into the 2→3 animation.

It’s something you don’t just pick up, you definitely need to work with it until you get comfortable with it.

Celestial Builds in PvP are also for people who are comfortable with their own ability to survive to the degree that they can run with an arguably lower toughness level than every single ranger meta build has ever used. Settler’s on Condition builds is the better starting option, but you will suffer a little against condition builds without the vitality buffer provided by a spirit build.

Spirits might seem a kitteneesy, but no more cheesy than half of the other things in the game right now (they are literally just traits that other classes get, like engineers), but they are good team support and your team will notice the support they get in some way.

BM builds though, you need to know your pets, understand the AI attack priorities and pathing, the pets that work well together and do damage, and the function of F2 skills, among other more subtle things that have an even higher learning curve. Birds are one of your best bets for a burst damage pet, and cats do consistent decent to high damage, but if you don’t operate your pet correctly, they will be dead often, so fair warning.

There are a lot of helpful people on the ranger forums though, so you came to the right place

hears quick description of commonly use pets for pvp

dogs: in general are our cc pet is it has a cripple and a knock down on 40s timer. one thing to note is the dog will use the knock down when available so you can get an intentional knock down when you pet swap.

Wolf: this is proberly the most used pet for pvp it has fear as its f2 ability which you can find many uses for.

Drakehound: this is hand like all dogs and has an AOE immobilization

Birds: are dps pet that have a burst, they inflict vulnerability and have a skill the grants swiftness in combat (i think it get use on recharge) but does not damage so they may look like there lagging.

Raven/White Raven: single target spike pet its f2 ability is a hard hitting blind

eagle/hawk: have a condi damage f2 skill on a short cool-down

owl: (my favorite pet) has a hard hitting f2 skill the causes chill

Cats: a consistent damage dps pet that inflicted vulnerability and bleeding. has a slow animation the may miss if you opponent is moving freely

Jaguar: this pet has a stealth as it f2 ability which increases its crit chance and make it harder to kite. this pet was a staple in beast master builds abit over a year ago.

Drakes: this is our AOE pet the has a blast finisher that can be use in a way similar to the dogs KD.

River Drake: has a hard hitting AOE f2 that is handy in a team fight in the center point.

some other pets are use for niche reasons/builds.

Common pet choices for non beast master builds are Wolf/Drakhound or Wolf/River Drake.
Common pet choices for beast master build are Wolf/Bird, Wolf/Jaguar or Duel birds

If you are playing a beast master build (particularly if using a cat) you need to have some cc (soft or hard) in you build so Main had Axe, sword, Dagger, short bow, traps and muddy terrain.

The reason you are dying is because of how reliant rangers are at reacting to other players. Accept that you cannot control the flow of the fight and that you have to play like nostradamus.

Approach the warrior with your ranged set vs his longbow, the instant he swaps to his hammer/axe match the swap and evade his incoming f1 with a skill. Then burst him while using endurance to evade the next couple hits. Eventually with practice and experience you can become untouchable. You will run circles around him as none of his important hits land. It takes time though. Just yesterday I made my teamate duel me with axe/sword longbow warrior for over an hour to practice evading the eviscerate.

Take the same mentality against other classes and you will get there.

Tldr: Find what killed you. Dodge it.

Thanks for all of these helpful and informative answers guys. I’ll be sure to take in everything and try again. The beastmastery builds are a little too tough for me right now, so I guess going back to spirits makes more sense. I also feel like I just need to be smarter about engaging, and I should avoid going crazy with a sword on heavy classes that shrug it off and can dispatch me easily, but maybe with the auto turned off it’ll work better.