Guild Wars 2

I have been playing Ranger in sPvP since release. I feel there are quite a few things that don’t feel right about the Ranger. I’ll try to be as constructive as possible for the Devs.

The first major issue I believe is our weapon sets just aren’t very good. I have tried many different builds and they all always have 1 thing in common. They always have short bow as a weapon set.

I feel short bow is the only weapon I look at and say…hey that seems pretty good. With a power/crit build it can crit for 1100 on medium armor from behind, adds a nice bleed and gives good utility. It attacks fast too. Sometimes I feel like the short bow is strong, other times it feels weak. Without a doubt it is easily the most easily countered weapon in the game (even if I felt the weapon was GREAT which I don’t).

It seems like this is where being able to swap skills during a match really hurts us. Mesmers and Engineers have really mean projectile reflection…which is just a really mean counter. I feel like we aren’t good enough to have such strong counters to us. Even if you buffed rangers a lot, they can still never achieve any level of success, simply because such hard counters exist and are easily swapped to.

Shortbow also gets eaten alive by permanent damage reflect. It shoots fast for low damage, which is just terrible against passive retaliation which isn’t uncommon to do 10k to me before I am dead.

Swords damage is…OK but it doesn’t warrant the risk of being in melee and the animation licks you in place.

Horn is very useful and Torch seems ok in heavy condition builds.

Everything else is just either way too low on damage and/or attacks just too slow and/or easily misses (axe, longbow).

I just feel we have no real viable weapons if we want to stack power.

Support Skills
Spirits aren’t very good, even fully traiting them. Traps are only good while traiting them. This kind of leaves us with very few generic skills we can just use. Shouts also seem subpar, I don’t even notice a difference when I use Sick Em’

Skill Traits:
Our tree seems completely whacky. Our traits seem really weak on almost every level. There are very few that are just any good really. It would take too long to go through them all but other people have posted about it. Also our trap traits being in skirmish really makes no sense. The entire marksmanship subtraits are really terrible as well.

Immobilize I’m Dead
Why doesn’t lightning reflexes break immobilize?

I’m not sure what the answer is. I do OK in tournaments, I notice when I am able to beat a mesmer or engineer 1v1 at a point they come back with a projectile reflect ability. Even when I notice it fast it swings the fight so consistently.

The only non-high-recharge skills are our traps, so I feel, for the most part, that rangers are one-trick-ponies.

Some may argue that we’re made to harass, and not kill. But harassing doesn’t give you glory, now does it?

I’m not sure if its all that bad, but LR breaking immobilize and on a 30sec CD would be nice.

I also notice that there are a few builds that seem impossible to counter as a ranger, they just kill you: its frustrating that there seems nothing you can do, no build you can make to counter these builds.

Another thing is I nearly always target ranger first because they are the easiest thing to bring down and is usually easy to finish them in downstate.

I love the longbow, but you almost have to have horn or GS for mobility, and shortbow just seems more reliable in pvp so I can only take longbow for the fun of it while kittening myself (usually coupled with shortbow-which then leaves you exposed to thief ultimate and other projectile reflect skills) .

Spirits? I run spirits a lot in spvp with a heavy toughness and healing build, but again its just for fun-I like running around with those three glowing pets and my normal pet. I’m pretty sure taking nearly any other skill is more powerful.

I completely agree with the OP. I play all the classes and I’ve noticed that rangers are by far the most easily countered. Once they’re rooted, they’re dead even while equipped with Prayer to Kormir, which has an extremely slow cast time and is easily predictable and interrupted. Another weakness of Rangers is that they lack the mobility to escape Gap Closer skills that almost every class has while in combat. Against an evenly skilled opponent of any class, the ranger will end up fighting in melee range.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fMUQNAnXVnAVUFciF+VAaZAgz4QF/MaNWniRR9irSrC;TgAA1Ctoey8k4J7TunkPB
test this.my friend had a guardian and i let him play with my ranger a while.he totally dominate the Map

I have tried a Build very similar to that. Axe offhand is really underrated, if Axe or Sword main hand was any good it would complement it. The problem with investing so many points in the pet is the huge pathing issues, and the animation issues where the pet has to stop. Really I found this spec doesn’t touch any kind of bunker guardians. You also still get eaten alive by the usual projectile reflect some mesmers have as passives or support skills and engineers.

My friend Terroshard.First of all i cant tell much about builds similar to mine.But for my build i can tell you much.Investing so many in pet is paying you back.Ok i know that theres some pathing issues and some animation but there are not as much as you may think.If you spent some time to work your ability to predict the movement of the animation and your foe position you will notice that the pets do around 4k-6k dmg with some skills..also you dont investing only in pet atrit. but also in healing.Why you get eaten alive by projectile reflect since your pet does so many dmg?You know that pet also got his own bleed dmg…i mean skill 4 in shortbow with the bleed that kittens got from their skills its not something to ignored by any prof.the bunker guardian will die (slowly but he will be dead) from your pet all alone.he cant do any dmg that you cant heal.the kittens got like 2300 precision..try to estimate the crit chance and the crit dmg they got…and the good part is that they cant target em cause are tough and you can swapp em fast enough,while YOU will make em tone of dmg.eehh you noticed that you got 1960 power and 31% crit dmg and 16% crit chance?….wait,count the fury from the weapon swapping and u got some numbers.Ok i dont wont to be sound like a idiot that overestimate his build,but it works fine to me

I have actually played it a lot. I would go almost as far to say it was my…second most successful build. Problem is, it just isn’t very good. The pet hits for 3-4k crits sometimes on its long 45 second cool down attack. It crits a lot for 1800-2200ish actually. The problem is the healing, and pretty much any defense I care to bring doesn’t seem to make much difference against the burst classes. Tie in with we don’t do much damage to begin with…honestly in a vacuum it is an ok build. We have a few builds that if you didn’t know anything about the game and made them on the calculator you’d think they were pretty good and would do well.

The problem is what mesmers, guardians, warriors, and thieves can do. They are light years ahead and trying to compete is a bit futile. Tack on the hard counters they have (easy gap closers, awesome utility skills, passive damage reflect and projectile reflect).

TL;dr It isn;t really a ton of damage and doesn’t really outshine the power/crit build with shortbow. It also has a much greater frustration level.

you dont need crit. just go straight power, pet and survivability. sb/sword/dagger. u cant die, and u do above average dps.

Just take Axe/Warhorn combo and Shortbow and you can kite to kingdom come.

sure, but if you get immobilized, and you will, youre dead. sword/dagger gives you 3 dodges. dagger #4 is one of the best defensive abilities in the game imo…you evade everything in melee range for the entire duration of the animation. 100b and thief initiative dump included.

Some people dont wanna be pigeon holed into playing shortbow or melee evasion tank, some of us wanna play GS or longbow rangers. Ever played a longbow ranger against good players? Its sad, longbow is in poor state atm, what rangers need is for signets to effect both master and pet without being traited, and stone to be put on a 90 sec cd so it is like every other class in the game. I wanna pew pew and snipe with a longbow but it seems that Im forced to take signet of the beastmaster just to remain competetive, and thats only for about 20 secs every 2 minutes, and therefor miss out on piercing arrows which is a need for pvp since projectiles get eaten by clones/pets/minions/other players. All I care about atm is them doing something about longbow, then Ill be content. Protect me is terrible too, they need to make it so pet takes 90% less damage during it, and make it so pet isnt forced to stand by ur side, considering our damage is heavily based around pet.

i dont think LB and GS is a viable combination. however, LB with a melee evasion tank (sword/dagger) is. piercing arrows and signet of the beastmaster are essential, but you need Marksmanship maxed anyway, as LB builds are all power/crit based.

oh and Protect Me is great, at least for my SB build. i have 15 in BM, so i can swap pets faster and the shout is on a shorter CD. i would actually recommending something like 30/20/5/0/15 if you wanna play LB. swap pets for more quickness.

I play SB / Axe / Horn in pvp. I have no problems with guardians and reflection, I just stop attacking them with my bow and drop more traps on them (playing with 3 traps, ~1500 cond dmg), if they stay there reflecting, they die from traps dmg, if they move, they die all the same.

While I do agree that Rangers have some…niche places in sPvP, please don’t discount them as being ‘limited’. I had a glass cannon quickening Zephyr build (before it became popular) with short bow and longsword/warhorn. Honestly, when at ranged, shortbow is deceptively devious at the burst it has, but honestly, the best burst is from ranger longsword and quickening zephyr. It is right there with thief PW spam, only problem is, we don’t get the evasion the thieves do during HS spam, but we are not rooted in place like PW spam or 100 blades.

However, there are many types of builds you can do out there that are effective, and easily can do 1v1 situations.

I run a trap build, and you ‘must’ ‘must’ combine it with combo fields to get teh full potential from the weapon set. That is the thing I don’t think many rangers really figure out, is to standin your traps and light them on fire, or chill them. Kite them all you want, but if you don’t stand in your traps until they end, you lose out on I would say, a good 20% dps. I could be wrong, but there is a lot of damage in a simple combo field.

As for longbows, aside from WvW, they do serve their purpose. As a point defender, and as a long ranger sniper, as well as crippling foes in a treb spam location ^_^. Yes, rangers fill the role of support more so than I feel mesmers do, and we do it well, however, rangers can 1v1 it up. I beat almost all of my 1v1 against thieves, can do so/so against mesmers…conditionmancers…just forget it, as well as condition engi’s…but I pretty much 1v1 anything unless they are macro spamming DPS machines. Then, well, respawn and avoid them if you can.

Everyone compares the damage our weapons do vs other classes, without ever mentioning or acknowledging that our pets are doing damage too.

Skolvikings.5132:

Everyone compares the damage our weapons do vs other classes, without ever mentioning or acknowledging that our pets are doing damage too.

because pets (mainly in PvP) cannot attack AND move at the same time. thus rendering them….well, kinda useless in PvP. In PvE, they’re fine.

honestly i feel rangers are allright. I play sb condi with axe/warhorn with the traits 5/30/30/0/5 with if you trait correctly rangers can escape fairly well and maintain distance with sb cripple/stun. You just need to learn to confuse the other player with erratic movements and get behind them. If youre just playing in lobby games most of those player keyboard turn or dont play with high sensitivity mouses so you can essentially run circles around them. Dont forget basically all the sb skills help you break away from other players even the evade shot. Dont blow all your cds when you first see a player i see so many rangers pop zephyr while the other player usually just pops his defensive cds.
-I usually crossfire/poison then use the bleed signet/skill w/e its called to throw on stacks.
-At this point they usually blow cds or heals. Alot of times when you stun them or even cripple an amateur player they pop their cds.
-After the cds are done thats when you pop Zephyr
-also i usually start off with axe/warhorn first give myself the buff then horn the birds then slow followed with the close range split axe throw with bleed signet before switching to sb. By this time they most likely wasted cds and thats when you just faceroll them with the sb

Mesmers are annoying just because my build doesnt let me have piercing arrows and the clones get in the way often
same with guardians but guardians cant kill you unless you dont know how to kite of know when to run
warriors are easy to kite
thieves unless they are good play extremely stupidly and are easy to kite and predict. (esp heartseeker spam just lol @ that build seriously)
Ele are a joke they die in 1/2 a second
engineers are pretty annoying no lie

Derek.9254:

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I play a trap ranger, and you can pretty much 1v1 anyone by coaxing them into your traps by backing up. You’ll be surprised how much someone just wants to be that near you when you go down, that they’ll blindly follow you into an ambush. Even good players fall for this.

Warrios….what a joke

Guardians….what a bigger joke (the defensive ones fall easy prey to your traps.)

Engi’s…annoying, but fairly squishy. Just stay at ranged from their turrets and you have a fairly easy kill

CC/DPS burst elementalist….if they do their little lightning ball trick and start flopping you all over the map, root you and dragon tooth you, just pick up your shattered ego and move on. Otherwise, Ele’s are cake. Only the ‘prestige’ ele’s dominate maps. Anything else is a free kill

thieves….by themselves, easy pickings. Just plop down a healing spring when you see them, lay down your traps and let them blow their CDs before you kill them. If they bring their guild or if they come with a friend, either take them out or eat a death. 1v1 they are not very strong. 2v1, they let you deal with their partner and take you by surprise.

Mesmers….I only lose when they moa me. >.< And yeah, its my fault when I get moa’d. Otherwise, I have piercing arrows traited and with traps, their illusions don’t last very long, making dealing with mesmers 1v1 easy.

other rangers….snorts I swear, I must get the really n00b ones, because I am not even challenged by them 1v1.

Necromancers….conditionmancers totally destroy me. Minion masters make me laugh and call out lunch. Those who play conditionmancers, however, are like DPS burst/CC ele’s. they are top tier elite players.

The downfall of the trap build is that, while you have utility and survivability, you trade it for raw burst DPS. You can swap out a trap for quickening Zephyr (like I do for hot join) but in tPvP, I use nothing but traps. They are a great way to control the flow of battle for your team (aside form top tier elite players that do a nothing but burst rawr dps). But again, you can take people on 1v1, but you have to be more confident in your skills to do so.

I didn’t read the thread, but I play a ranger in SPvP all the time and am almost always at the top of the team in points with 10+ kills. I roll with a shortbow and a sword/axe combo, a wolf and bear pet, and a build focusing on power and armor.

Rangers are some of the most solid PvP classes as far as I can see, the only class that gives me serious trouble are mesmers and 100 blades warriors if I get stunned/immobilized by them.