Guild Wars 2

I have always played a full GC longbow ranger in WvW and I had been having a lot of fun from it because I can easily knock down opponents when defending a tower because of the quickening zephyr skill.

With what I have observed about rangers compared to other classes, rangers do not do well in melee and in AoE so I opted to specialize in a flimsy but high dps build. I also think it suits well with the idea that rangers have a consistent dps but should be at the back of the army, they are archers after all.

Rangers don’t have skills that almost one shots an opponent.. So I really relied on the attack speed from the quickening zephyr skill. However, with the recent patch, I really found it hard to knock down an opponent. The enemies can easily run out of my range and away from the flurry of arrows that aren’t as fast as before anymore.

I know this problem may be just because of my build (so do suggest if you have any), but I do think there should be some balance to it other than the increase in the duration of the quickening zephyr.. Rangers specialize in attacking one target at a time, if we do not have a high damage skill and our attack speed is ridiculously slow, how else are we going to down an opponent on our own?

Of course I have been considering other builds but they are just too bugged or too weak as of now. Please look at my perspectives below.

As for the beastmaster build, the pets are basically too poorly designed for pvp. Pets can’t attack the enemies below the tower when a ranger is on top of the wall, So most of the time in WvW, whenever we are defending the towers, we couldn’t do our full potential damage. Isn’t much of our damage on the pets? Because of this problem, a huge part of our damage is gone because the pet can’t get out of the door… I think that is just ridiculous. In addition, they say we specialize in our pets but the pets couldn’t even hit a moving enemy. Skills of pets are too slow to even hit an enemy most of the time, heck sometimes the aura doesn’t even hit me because I had to move and couldn’t wait for the moa to finish its screeching. Anyway, do remember that no good player would stay still while doing pvp. Pets are absolutely great or even OP in PVE, sure. But the endgame of Guild Wars 2 is not on the PVE, it is on the sPVP or WvW so focus on that.

As for the spirit build, putting 30 points in the spirit tree for moving spirits is too much since it weakens the ranger a lot. Moving spirits are a necessity for obvious reasons such as the cd of the spirit skills are too long or the driftwoods have to run because they die too easily from the breeze of the breaths of the enemies. Just think of it like this too, the spirit tree gives vitality right? But the spirits themselves wouldn’t be able to live in a melee situation because of the low health, so the ranger should use a ranged weapon when using spirits. If it were the case that the ranger uses a ranged weapon, the vitality spent on that tree would be put to waste. In addition to that, on both cases, the skills of the spirits cannot be used effectively since the ranger couldn’t get near the enemy because the spirits die too fast or the ranger uses a ranged weapon. I also noticed that the spirit skills cd is too long compared to the average time of clashes during WvW. 1 minute sounds short but in WvW, unless the clash is in a tower or any place that may be captured, 1 minute is ridiculously long. Spirit Build (vit build) implies a melee ranger so make the spirits sturdy enough to survive a melee battle. Also, please do remember that players would specifically target a spirit whenever there is a battle. One, because they are so easy to kill it wouldn’t hurt hitting it once or twice during the battle since that would probably kill it already and, two, they give buffs which no player would want on their enemies.

Anyway, discussing the other builds should actually not be the problem anymore in this thread because remember that, I am a FULL GC RANGER having problems KILLING people because they can RUN too easily. I cannot trap them on their place because there are no skills for that (I am GC thus ranged thus I cannot use entangle nor grasping vines since they are out of range), I cannot hit them with a huge damaging skill (like that of a warrior’s) because we have no skills like that, and I can no longer do a speed burst damage because of the recent nerf they have done to quickness. (to be honest, I only relied on the lag that people experience whenever I do the attack bursts before, any good player watching their screen seeing multiple arrows going to them can easily dodge it out).

For the people who would say that I should change my build or change my weapon — first please do know that the game should be designed in such a way that all weapons are viable to play. Longbow isn’t working anymore because of its low attack speed and no high damaging skill. It relies too much on consistent but average damage that can be easily outran by an opponent. Same thing with the builds that goes in the game, they should all be viable. I am already a full GC and I am having problems with my damage output, that sounds problematic right?

A little suggestion, how about a skill for longbow that charges and gives great damage if charged long enough. It seems fair since the ranger would be very vulnerable during the charging of the skill plus it will fix the problem about GC rangers in WvW. Plus its very cool! Or a skill that poisons our arrows and slows down an opponent or just locks them in position or cripples them (like an “arrow on the knee” skill that will cripple them for a long time or at least enough time so that most if not all of the arrows from the quickening zephyr+rapid fire combo hits)

All in all, I loved the ranger but our relationship is really isn’t going smoothly anymore. I do hope she gets back to herself soon enough because I am really going to miss her…

Nice thread and suggestions.

I’m glad you’re no longer caught in the web of lies, delusions and manipulations.
There is no “Hope” for this class, as the saying goes, “the truth will set you free”.
And that the Truth; leave Dreams and Delusions where they belong and see Reality for what it is.

imo the reduction to quickness attack speed and extended length of QZ does have an up side. Your entire channel no longer gets nullified from just 1 dodge roll.

It may be worse off in trying to do maximum damage in the smallest amount of time but it will guarantee that some of your damage will actually hit even if someone dodges.

The ranger is actually equipped with ridiculously long ranged chill, knock down, cripple to help you to catch up with enemies. However, all of these things are incorporated into your pet system. The problem as you have already highlighted is in WvW where when on walls, you will no longer be able to send out your pets to use their F2. However, when defending in WvW the enemy has to come close. This should not be much of a problem to as for them to run back from 600 to 1500 will take them some time. You can coordinate your damage with say.. another ranger or you can coordinate with another ranged class to burst down the enemy (engineers would be very handy seeing as their grenades can slow the enemy very nicely). Also, barrage is good for slowing down the enemy as it cripples as it hits. The key is to fire barrage behind the enemy and herd them into it with rapid fire of whatever your making them run back with.

My experience with GC Ranger in WvW is that we are really good for keep/fort defence and laying down covering fire at the back of the zerg but absolutely terrible in skirmishes.

on a full 30/30/ build it was possible to do 10k damage to the enemy and I found that it was possible to down people quite often. You have to pick your targets. Go mainly for mediums or lights or those who were already at half health.

You have come up with a very good suggestion. I would love the Longbow to have that charged shot too and it makes perfect sense to have it. LB1 should have the ability to charge the arrow allowing it to do a high dmg shot when charged. I would love to see that implemented into the game and it will give the ranger another interesting twist to the play style. It should fix the damage issue without making the class OP.

Good discussion.

It’s a shame that you proud few know more about Rangers than the devs responsible for them.

Good suggestion.

Personally I used to think that rangers could be balanced with the same pet in both pve and pvp. I no longer think this is a possibility.

I don’t think rangers should be forced to have a pet in pvp with the exact same mechanics (and faults) as the one in pve.

The way I see it there are 2 options: allow the rangers to be without their pets in pvp; then be rebalanced with this in mind, or they completely redesign the pets AI; along with their attacks, attack speeds, run speed, survivability, pathing, etc. This would again just be for pvp.

I can’t see anyway the ranger can still function as is without a redesign in some way.

Full Glass Cannon ? Every Class else but plz no Ranger ^^ i play a Ranger since Beta and everytime on Full GC, but it rly sucks sry… after Quickness Nerf its harder then before to kill people.

For Pve Ranger ist rly! Fine ! but not for WvW or Pvp -.-