Guild Wars 2

I’m playing a Warrior and I’m looking for a change of gameplay. I mainly enjoy high damage output burst or otherwise. Does Ranger fit this description?

hunter’s shot (vulnerability) + zephyr (quickness) + rapid fire + barrage – burst dps, as an example… there’s some high damage output that you can do. But in general, from what I experience, normally, the ranger deals sustained damage over time in most situations while maintaining survivability and positioning. But I’m sure you can work it to have quite decent damage output. I don’t think it’s as much as you would do with a warrior though…. the class in general is kind of toned down I believe, a more steady kind of damage. Hmmm… not sure, others may have different ways of playing that will fit your style. Just that it’s not that completely natural to the ranger class. Let’s see what others have to say!

If you are looking for burst damage only, the Ranger is not you best bet. The Rangers damage is balanced around the pets damage, so your maximum damage potential will always be split in two. That’s not to say the Ranger isn’t capable of burst damage, but a Thief or Elementalist can do it a lot easier.

Kasama.8941

That’s not to say the Ranger isn’t capable of burst damage, but a Thief or Elementalist can do it a lot easier.

With regards to Elementalist, it can definitely do more burst damage than Ranger, but easier? Definitely not. Elementalist has to work ten times harder to to put out similar damage, not just because of attunement swapping, but also because most of their big hitting abilities (e.g. Dragon’s Tooth) require setup or luck (or both) to actually land.

Ranger is not really a burst damage class, and it relies on the pet a lot so when your pet dies or cannot reach your target you loose a lot of dps on the way.

The way i see it…there is not a build that doesn’t use the pets like in GW1, so it’s quite an issue in terms of dps because pets hit quite hard. I’d stay with warrior/thief if you want burst damage.

In short? Yes.

Let me explain that its not a huge difference, and its subtle, but there is one, and its generally due to how we operate vs other classes at ranged.

This is due to traits, pets and attack speed.

Our longbow seems to fire a bit faster than other classes longbow (i.e warrior). Our shortbow by comparison is a machine gun (and balanced as such).

For long range power, a ranger can get his longbow to 1500 range, his 1 hits like a ton of bricks. In general the suite (compared to warrior who I feel is the closest competitor for non raw AOE damage like the Elementalist). Warriors can get extra range but our talent also ups longbow damage by 5% at the same time (theres does not). Its not a significant difference before you examine it as a total kit. Rangers have more access to many different conditions, they are on shorter cooldowns and can stack them better to.

Ontop of that, you have your pet. In PvE, these are beats. Mine regularly will tank champions while I solo kill them. In PvP, a pet is an extra damage source with an active ability that can be clutch. My Lynx for instance on my condition builds can stack tons of bleeds on its own, while things like Wolf can AOE immobilize my foes (awesome sauce!).

The best things about a ranger though are the traits.

10% bonus damage when endurance is full is an easy to fufill condition. Your arrows penetrate targets is great in WvW and sPvP, letting you rack up easy extra damage. Warrior ranged extra damage is based off a burning foe which can be cleansed away.

Sleepy.2647:

Ranger is not really a burst damage class, and it relies on the pet a lot so when your pet dies or cannot reach your target you loose a lot of dps on the way.

The way i see it…there is not a build that doesn’t use the pets like in GW1, so it’s quite an issue in terms of dps because pets hit quite hard. I’d stay with warrior/thief if you want burst damage.

Here is the thing though, compare our abilities to a warriors or a thief, and the abilities on their OWN stack up. The pet is gravy. In general our ranged kit (as a whole) seems better than either of the before mentioned classes (much more so than thieves whom are stuck at 900 range). At melee range though its reverse. So I guess it depends on what type of ranger you are playing…?

A warrior with a rifle will do a lot more damage; sustained and burst, than a ranger can do. The longbow is not a viable weapon right now, the shortbow will do more damage for example with its auto attack than the longbow does with its “burst” ability rapid fire.

The only burst we have consists of quickening plus shortbow auto attack. It’s not so bad, it’s not that powerful but if you are a skilled player and use your utilities right, you will be able to beat other professions, as long as they’re not mesmers and rifle warriors ofcourse, you have no tools to beat those if they are somewhat skilled.

With some minor changes we can have a lot more viable builds than just this one, but that’ll be up to Anet, right now only the shortbow build is viable, few serious rangers will use the sword or greatsword or longbow, as it means weakening yourself greatly.

I find Ranger to be great at sustained damage, with occasional bursts by popping CDs. Bows keep us at range which keeps us constantly piling on the conditions and shots without being blinded or interupted as much as melee. Pop some CDs like CotW, QZ, and some pet shouts/signets and we can pile on some serious damage bursts for 4-6 seconds.

I agree.

The longbow does feel like it is missing something. The auto attack feels too slow. I does not have to be anywhere as quick as the shortbow, but not near as long of a time between attacks on auto attack.

The 2 skill (rapid fire) hits well, but is very easy to dodge out of the last half of attacks on it (I only find this useful in sPvP/WvW when the other player is already weakened and is trying to run away.

The 3 skill is ok (venerability).

The 4 skill is ok (knock back).

The 5 skill isn’t too bad (the AOE). I can’t put my finger on it, but it does seem to be missing something.

All in all, the longbow is the least used weapon of my arsenal.

Rifle Warrior > Ranger.

1500 range is pointless when people can negate that with one gap close.

There’s nothing on the ranger that’s even close to the burst lvl of killshot.

Aridia.3042:

Rifle Warrior > Ranger.

1500 range is pointless when people can negate that with one gap close.

There’s nothing on the ranger that’s even close to the burst lvl of killshot.

Plus the damage reduction to your output from the longbow doesn’t help when that is all another player has to do.

I think it depends on your skill level and build. If you have both shortbow and longbow equipped a high damage pet and skills, traits designed for high crit and dmg, the dmg output can be quite high but you have to be switching between shortbow and longbow durng battle.

Open with longbow rapid fire, switch to shortbow and flank to get bleed and poison during the longbow rapidfire cooldown. Then switchback to long bow for the rapidfire. You can also throw in a weaken, knockback or AOE barrage if the situation applies. Then switch back to shortbow. Also, don’t forget the combo effect, if your fire through an Eles flame for example you are getting the extra burn effect and because your firing rate is much higher than most other classes, that adds up.

I’m pretty sure that I’m putting out the most sustained damage in most random small groups because the boss almost always goes after me no matter what I do to try and move away.

Talking about pve or pvp?

Because Rifle warrior is a joke in dungeons whereas shortbow is actually legitimate dps.

Um ok a few things

1500 range matters because in WvW, dash closers arnt going to matter in most situations. A ranger will have his team around to support him, dashing in on them gets you killed, while they have 300 more range (quite a bit) to snipe, kite and kill. In general their longbow > fighter longbow at this range for a variety of reasons (non reliance on target being ignited, on average can sustain 15% bonus damage from traits).

Within 1200 range, the debate is Rifle vs SB (sPvP)
SB auto fires twice as fast (do a side by side test). It has a positional requirement for its bleed, but applies straight dps much MUCH better than rifle.

For 2-5 Warriors have
a 5 sec cripple every 10 seconds
a barrage that lets them do about the damage shortbow does with their auto attack
vulnerability (rangers apply this from LB before switching to SB)
a knock back that requires melee range

For 2-5 Rangers have
a aoe poison that works like a shot gun;multiple arrows can hit the same target and stack duration (-33% healing is no joke)
a very short cooldown (9 without traits) evasive shot that also grants swiftness (prefer this to melee range knock back, since it can bounce you back into your friends)
a 3 sec cripple that also applies 3 stacks of bleeds on the target (so not as long of a chill vs a warrior, but more total damage)
a daze or stun (warrior has no counter part)

As a SET of weapons, Ranger LB/SB also compliment eachother more than Warrior LB/SB. Ranger LB becomes a source of knock backs (better than warrior) and vulnerabilities (shorter cooldown than warrior counter part).

So the differentiation is head shot.

Is it good? Hell yes. Does it in my opinion compensate. No, in general people dont understand pets and how freaking awesome they are. In an sPvP fight if my pets been on you a few seconds, even moving around and with their crappy auto/move issues, a lynx on its own is going to apply a number of stacks of vulnerabilities, plenty of bleeds (especially with its active, which can be done every 30 seconds. Since you can swap pets between that, you can realistically use a special about 20 seconds form your pets).

Head Shot is great, but Ranger just feels better at ranged than Warriors. They can laugh all around the amazing damage they sometimes get off a head shot, but I feel thats more or less the extent of their ranged. Their LB is so so, i find the auto attack speed is worse than that of a rangers (which is already kind of slow).