Guild Wars 2

Do you guys think that ranger longbow will be viable in raids? Is my favorite weapon to use right now but im afraid I might be turned away from raids just for using it.

I suspect over the course of several bosses there will be a time when ranged damage is very desirable. But there’s no reason to expect that to be true on every fight. It falls to you to have the range of experience and the tools in your inventory to roll with the needs of the encounter.

Expand your comfort zone. It’ll make you a better raider even when you are using your favorite weapon.

Not sure if this is the answer you want, but with barrage/rapid fire, i can see it being a valuable second weapon for generating astral force (assuming that they buff gain by damage, which I hope they do)

Depending on how you want to handle it, longbow can be very useful for the first raid boss since he is always running after someone it can be hard to melee. It will probably be just as useful in other instances as well.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Not sure if this is the answer you want, but with barrage/rapid fire, i can see it being a valuable second weapon for generating astral force (assuming that they buff gain by damage, which I hope they do)

For a non-dedicated healer I can see lb being of great benefit. As a Dedicated healer Druid not so much as you are needed to heal and anytime not using staff means you are not doing that (for the most part).

If you don’t have to camp staff then it would help but then druid as a whole would be a fail.

Some of these responses are deliriously optimistic. Longbow rangers are already heavily stigmatized in PvE, and so is being a ranger. Aside from druids who are dedicated to healing (especially with the proposed healing power changes), I sincerely doubt you’ll have pug groups looking for rangers to fill a DPS spot, with or without longbows. Once a few solid builds and strategies are developed for each boss we’ll probably see LFGs/LFMs for specific classes and builds, e.g. LF sinister engi and magi NM druid, etc. Unless there’s some mechanic that somehow requires a 1500 range power build, I suspect no one will be on the lookout for a longbow ranger.

xev.9476:

Some of these responses are deliriously optimistic. Longbow rangers are already heavily stigmatized in PvE, and so is being a ranger. Aside from druids who are dedicated to healing (especially with the proposed healing power changes), I sincerely doubt you’ll have pug groups looking for rangers to fill a DPS spot, with or without longbows. Once a few solid builds and strategies are developed for each boss we’ll probably see LFGs/LFMs for specific classes and builds, e.g. LF sinister engi and magi NM druid, etc. Unless there’s some mechanic that somehow requires a 1500 range power build, I suspect no one will be on the lookout for a longbow ranger.

well then thats for us to prove to them once again and Destroy that stigmatized view because dps LB PvE frost spotter ranger and Druid are two totaly diffrent playstyles , should not be a Lable for a entire class, but ether way Pugs will be pugs , and ill knowledged players won’t know the real reason Beyond numbers on the screen.

did you know spirits count as one body for the Lighting attack for the first raid boss? and can survive if a guardian uses protect on it , with perma regen from the ranger , it survives the lighting strike quite funny this lack of knowledge for the player base is because of what you say Rangers are not welcome which Causes this lack of knowledge in the first place.

so to you OP , do what you like be a druid or a PVE LB frost spotter you do your thing as a ranger and provide what you can as a player , its up to the team to trust in your skills as it is RAIDS after all (which i won’t be Pugging) , it very well need more than just a " wing it Attitude " with more structure than taking optimal damage which includes Ranged attacks and a point role of standing in the lighting attack (first boss) to make him vulnerable while giving the team the convenience of not having to run back and forth all the time.

Simply find or form a raid group that isn’t comprised of elitist kittenheads, and you’ve got your viability.

Honestly? Probably not, maybe as a secondary weapon when you need the range. Longbows dps is just really really bad compared to almost any other option.

I can see it being used. But it heavily depends on the design of the encounter and the build you choose to bring.

Im a firm believe that one of the rangers highest strengths is our dps uptime. I.E. the amount of time we can always be doing x amount of damage to the boss despite whatever mechanics the boss is producing.

Even if its too lethal for us to be in melee. Typically we can have our pet in melee dpsing. Or similarly with ranged pets and us in melee. Or we can swap to a ranged weapon (say the longbow) and still deal decent dps from a distance.

The vale guardian has several situations where having a ranged weapon can be beneficial.

If you get teleported away you can keep dpsing with longbow. If you need to stack into a lighting surge you can do that while still doing high ranged dps and still having the pet in melee benefiting from boons that you can copy onto yourself with heal as one. If the boss spawns a seaker near the raid you can swap to longbow knock it pack but down barrage between it and you and keep doing damage to the boss through the pet.

The longbow is a very good tool for maintaining dps uptime or controlling mobs. And it does hit hard enough that you probably won’t fail the raid for swapping when its necessary. Between that and our pets. Rangers should have 100% damage uptime on the boss regardless of what happens during the fight. And frankly that should be the case for nearly every boss in the raid because of how our class is designed (pets not so bad when you think in these terms).

Compare that to say a full melee build. If that melee build gets hit by a teleport. Or has to move to a certain location outside of melee range. The only dps he generates will be through conditions or his pet. He himself will have less dps uptime.

Whether that balances out in the longbows favor is entirely up to the way the fight is designed. I feel a full melee setup will deal more POTENTIAL dps. But whether it deals more actual dps is up to how the fight is designed.

Note: Im not saying a longbow is better. From a purely dps standpoint a sword/axe combo is going to out dps it end of story. But from a control and dps uptime standpoint. The longbow has its place. Its just up to the ranger to use it properly and not 1 spam the entire kittening fight.

Toolbox.9375:

Simply find or form a raid group that isn’t comprised of elitist kittenheads, and you’ve got your viability.

Pretty much this. I would have said it is already viable for boss encounters like VGuard, though and would have exchanged the word ‘viability’ for ‘acceptance.’ It is already perfectly viable.

Thank you for the responses. This was alot more then I thought I was going to get.

I have a feeling that condie might be the way to go for ranger in raids if you want to be a dps.

It is really hard to dish out optimal damage in a team environment with longbow. But we don’t know about other raid encounters yet. So there could definitely be places where longbow is good. But I won’t put too much hope on it.

Exciton.8942:

I have a feeling that condie might be the way to go for ranger in raids if you want to be a dps.

It is really hard to dish out optimal damage in a team environment with longbow. But we don’t know about other raid encounters yet. So there could definitely be places where longbow is good. But I won’t put too much hope on it.

Max Range longbow actually has the potential to be a really solid DPS weapon. The problem is … You can’t expect people to stack for you on 1500 range.

So by being that far you basically lose 50% of damage via Might, Banners or what not. If you had an organized SafeZerk stack where Longbow Rangers would profit from the buffs – the LongBow DPS is actually quite close to Sword DPS.

If raids are taken into account – LongBow seemed wrong for me because you are too away from your party. The same problem as PvP. You can’t buff, revive or help anyone with anything, you don’t inherit the party boons and if you screw up they have no way of helping you back up unless they spend 7 days running towards you across the 1500 range you stayed away.

I personally felt that GS+S/A remorseless is the way to go for straight DPS.
If you intend to play the druid, there are lots of ways to play it. Hybrid Celestial with A/W + Staff; Condi Settler (healer) with A/T + Staff; Burster Zealot (healer) with GS + Staff …
With raids coming in, there’s nothing like “meta”. You just need the roles to be filled. Whoever fills whichever role – doesn’t matter at all.

If you can get the “safe-fire” role of LB Ranger – there’s no problem in using one in raids. But it’s your duty not to be a burden. Longbow is not a bad weapon. But people tend to use it wrong.

I honestly want to see 10 LB Rangers run a raid, I think it would be pretty awesome to see

Fighting from range often allows you to dps more or less non stop, compared to melee where you’ll have move around more, dodge more and so on. Fighting from range will make you loose out on buffs though, something they could have solved with WHaO or making Fortifying Bond work both ways. Unfortunately, Anet seems to like melee stacking.

If banners and Spirits had a large Radius that would solve many Ranged issues in the sense of buffs , and if Heal as one had its Might boon copy upped to 5 stacks that would make LB even more Accepted for Raids .

also a lot of people forget that frost spirit can now stack 3 might so , i’d suggest for Raids to use Natures Vengence trait also so you’d maintain might between Locations of movement.

^-^ Heimskarl that would be a awesome sight to see 5 frost power rangers(primairy LB) , 3 Condi dps Sun spirit rangers(primairy Sword+torch) , and 2 Druid Condi/heal spec rangers (primairy Staff) on the condi builds the LB is used to Burst and Stack Vun through remorsless and WK+clarions bond.

which all 10 LB rangers could take and use Heal as one to maintain boons and might from frost+FB to the pet.

its the circle of life :p chessy pun.

Longbow is a viable weapon for PvE content as long as: you use the trait Quick Draw and you constantly swap weapons to make use of it…but lets be honest…right now sword/axe is the strongest power damage option. So using longbow + sword/axe would be optimal.

LB doesn’t neccessarily mean long range. Rapid Fire works just fine at melee.