Guild Wars 2

Hey guys…

Quick question about Rangers in PvP. I’d rather play a direct damage class as I’m pretty burned out on DoTs (conditions?) from playing a warlock so long in WoW. Is it possible to be effective as a ranger while stacking power and crit?

Thanks!

Short answer, no.

Effective? Kinda. Dominant? No.

Any decently skilled person playing a good build can kill you, no matter how skilled you are. This build is best played with a group of people and not trying to solo much. Not saying you can’t solo things, but it’s fairly difficult.

Personally I prefer a 30/25/15/0/0 build with spotter and signets traited.

Long answer, no. The reason is because the skills on ranger scale differently than they do for other classes. Say if I increased my power by 1000 on a warrior, the auto attack damage may increase by 200%. On a ranger though, that damage will only increase by 100%. The scaling is a result of your pet and an attempt to balance your damage output. Condition damage doesn’t scale like that and is the main reason the good pvp builds for rangers are condition builds.

It is possible, but the skill floor is high and it is not the reward:effort ratio is abysmal.

Eurantien.4632:

It is possible, but the skill floor is high and it is not the reward:effort ratio is abysmal.

This is exactly correct. The reason, as stated above, is that rangers benefit MUCH less for a given increase in power than do other classes (because of the pet mechanic).

Also, solid health regen as well as high toughness are important for making a ranger viable in small scale PvP. This requires investing in two defensive stats (toughness and healing). To boost direct damage you need to invest in THREE offensive stats: POWER, CRIT % and CRIT DAM.

To get good condition damage you need invest in only ONE state (COND DAM) and this scales just the same for rangers as for other classes. You can get all the +COND DUR from food.

So, it is MUCH easier to spec for conditions/healing/toughness as a ranger than for DD/healing/toughness. If you look at Puandro’s videos you will see what a high level of skill you need to make a direct damage build even serviceable. In contrast, if you make a condition/regen build you will enjoy success even if you just spam your condition attacks and jump around randomly.

P.S. this isn’t meant to imply that condition/bunker builds are cheap or that their advocates on the forum aren’t highly skilled players.

P.P.S the solution to the DD vs. condition discrepancy for rangers does NOT involve a nerf to condition to make DD more desirable…

My ranger is direct dmg too. i’m not gonna play condi on it though because i have other classes to do that and do better job.

u kinda need to know how other classes work as well to play at high lv range.

condi/ bunker is the famous way, ppl go to every class because it’s easy to play.

Xhosa.9642:

Hey guys…

Quick question about Rangers in PvP. I’d rather play a direct damage class as I’m pretty burned out on DoTs (conditions?) from playing a warlock so long in WoW. Is it possible to be effective as a ranger while stacking power and crit?

Thanks!

Knights Gear(in PvP), watch out though, A LOT of condi builds are good VS direct damage builds so you’re going to need to try to counter them a bit, so take sig of renewal (make sure to actually activate the kitten thing) and sig mastery, it’ll save you a lot of the time, and I’d use a pet like Marsh Drake or better yet spiders to butcher most of the sustain the condi builds rely so heavily on because poison will kill passive regen, not so much burst healing, but passive regen.

You also may want to look into evasive purity, the less poison and blind on you the better!! It’ll help you just stay up that much longer since most condi builds rely on outlasting their enemy!!

Good luck fellow Direct Damage ranger!! May the RNG forever be in your favor!

PS: crit damage is NOT needed (contrary to popular belief) does it help for the damage aspect? Sure, but it’s hardly needed, PvP is a game of attrition, and I don’t care how much crit damage you have, chances are that condi build is going to slaughter you in attrition due to what you give up for that crit damage…

Absolutely, and definently No

It’s Fun and you can really wreck some classes, but as soon as you enemies get a little more tanky/evasive you are screwed.

nahh u can run a power/crit build for spvp and tpvp im actually doing it right now i would post my build but the skillbuilder website i use is currently.. down for some odd reason.. but anyway.

I run a LongBow/GS power/crit build zerker ammy full scholar runes. take zephyr signet of the hunt and any other utility u would like.. ur choice on the last one. on sigils just use bloodlust on longbow and air sigil on GS

Ima have to get back to you on the build traits and stuff when Into the Mists website is back up. ill post it a bit later as im on my mesmer atm easier for you guys to click the build itself.

People say you cant use it without success thats kinda B.S imo.. ur a sniper. act like one.. go ontop of kitten and just rapid fire and auto away.. u see a team tryna cap a point just use ur aoe Longbow 5 and they auto run off of it.. and u can knock them back aswell. tbh you just have to play smart. and know when to run away.. when its like 3v1.. thats where GS comes in where u can swoop away and no one will even try to follow you aswell as u can block all attacks with GS 4 skill. its a good build and you do have to get used to it but its by no means a BAD build to go in for pvp. its fun and i can pretty much wreck people with it without issues.. even non squishies i hit for about 10k rapid fire shots.

but anyway ill post it up when my build website is back up.

Cmon guys! what are you doing! Ranger is really strong with a power/crit build! of course i’m not talking about a full zerker build but a balanced one like:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRjIVF2JWCWs2Bg1j96bwWhMZPOkxFB-j0yAYrARigICAZPiM2EIUFsIasqFMVZQVmI6zI7NKiWtMAMLA-w
(don’t look at gear… that can be optimized but i did that build in 10 sec)

With these traits, weapons and utilities there is nothing you can’t do! I really enjoy to play as a power build ranger and i always get an high score in HotM but here, as everyone know, condition builds are the best… anyway i’m still able to kill condition builds a lot of times.
Also if you talk about WvW a power build is really better due to the massive aoe damage (barrage) and the great support (fury with pet and reviving with spirit and healing with healing spring)…

really guys, no need to be so oppose to power builds… ranger can be really strong! and skill is the key… learn how to wipe your foe, how to evade best enemy attacks and how to use the environment as an andvantage… then you can kill everyone.

As someone said spirit build is stronger… but only in hearth of the mists and only against a non-condition build and/or noob player because every time i had a 1vs1 against a condition ranger/necro/engineer and i lost… then you can be sure that was an epic fight (always more than 5 mins of fight) and the enemy has only a bit of hp remaining…

my advice is to play ranger as you want! It’s viable as power/crit build and as condition build just get skill (unlike warriors or guardians) and you can kill everyone =)

The main problem with pure power/critical in pvp is that you lack in all forms of toughness/vitality, which makes you easy pickings, even if you can hit really hard that will only take you so far. After all, most enemies like to chew on rangers just to find out if they are easy pickings or not (thieves anyone?)

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAnXRjAV91FWKWs2Bg1DC9bwWhMZPMsQFLYSF-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINsY9xECA

With this build i made you can make a thief or any melee class who tries to get trigger happy on you regret that decision i literally murdered a guardian on skyhammer with this build because he thought he could tank my damage and retaliation. verry not smart move on his part he went down in about 5 seconds. it was funny.

Just pop signet of the wild and do whirling defense. on squishy targets it hits a little over 9k damage and on bunkers ive hit about a 6k crit before with retaliation so its fairly effective. mostly a Signet Axe build greatsword is for ur getaway and long block duration aswell.

OH P.S i forgot to add. while doing the whirling defense skill you can use signet of the stone because it has no cast time aswell during whirling defense cast so ur basically immune to physical damage for 6s great great signet use. You can also switch out bleeding on crits for pets prowess for ur raven and wolf everytime they crit 30% more damage thats one hell of a damage boost for them and makes raven pretty OP on squishies