Guild Wars 2

Hey guys;

What you guys think are the power rangers(LB + GS or Sword/Focus) atm? I mean, after the buff to our LB, do u guys think its viable for SPVP? What are the harder profissions/builds for you guys to kill as a power ranger?

Im play a LB/GS Ranger 6/6/2/0/0 all berserker. Im enjoying it and it fees we have a good damage now. What you guys think?

Thx

Some people run LB+GS zerk ranger in spvp. I personally feel it’s too squishy, doesn’t have enough party support, and overall can’t really do much contribution in an organized match unless rotations are good.

I play a zerker LB+GS ranger in spvp. That’s really awesome to support a good bunker. The problem is that to get the best out of it, you need to be far from the action and support your party at a node. Either you have a good bunker, or a more short range party that can keep node while you pick up target one by one from a distance. Except a bunker, not much profession can take the dmg of a rapid fire with signet of wild + rampage as one. Of course good player can reflect and block at the right time so you need to recognize them and pick your moment to burst them down. This is perfect to support both home and mid with your long range (depend on the map).

It can do great stuff on an open map, especially if there is high ground where you can go (Temple of silent is a great map for a power ranger). You can also survive more than you could think with that. With signet of stone and Counter-attack you can survive a burst, with swoop you have the mobility to escape a lot of difficulty situation.

But against a condition build or if you can’t keep you’re distance, you are just a meat shield. You are also terribly limited at protecting nodes, so if 1 or 2 ranger is ok, more than that will probably make your team lose. You are also weak against burst, you better have signet of stone/counter-attack ready when you see those pink butterflies or a thief stealth.

Power ranger have a really specific support role as a DPS. A bit similar to a Ele staff zerker. The only difference is that the Ele will be better when there is a lot of enemies on the node, while the ranger will be better against single target.

Keep your distance and support a more melee range team and the power ranger will be awesome.

It scales poorly the more organized an opponents team is (aka do they have VOIP and a class that can counter pressure you?).

I find that there are levels of extremes when playing the build, either you get left unchecked for the match and have free reign to make full effect of your build, or you reveal your build in the first matchup, and then get instantly counter pressured by the other team (aka you become thief food unless you disengage) which reduces the overall effect of your build since your goal is like any other zerk roamer, to be where the fight is and pressure weak opponents, which you can’t do if your attention gets averted.

Overall the build isn’t bad, but in PvP specifically you WILL need somebody to peel for you unless the enemy team is unorganized/incompetent. It is very reminiscent of the launch warrior hundred blades build; if you join a fight unexpectedly, you can 1 trick pony wreck a person or two, but outside of that scenario, you can’t contribute much else to your team that another class can’t do better.

6/0/2/6/0 is strong all the way through and generally doesn’t require babysitting unless the thief is extremely good . going full glass is never a good idea against opponents who know how to dodge your spike. 6/6/x/x/x imo never was a good idea, not in the “higher” brackets. the reason RTW rangers can be so strong is that survival utilities give you tons of immob cleanses, while high HP gives you a nice buffer against condis. in fact, I would go as far as to say that you don’t stand a chance as a ranger in general against good opponents without SotF

As mentioned by others, the power longbow ranger is a build that relies more heavily on a propper team than other builds, due to its squishiness. This doesn’t really make it a very good build to soloq with in higher brackets.

Personally, when I roll the build, I prefer to go 6/5/3/0/0 glass, since I’ve played it for a while and can say that I can handle it well with my current level of skill and knowledge of rotations, other classes, and positioning. Note that I only roll it in pre-made these days though.

One thing I’ve found through observation and testing is that, if you’re going full glass, it is better to take Assassin’s amu with ranger runes, instead of Zerker amu. Zerker gives you more power, but I’ve found it crits too few times on average for it to matter. With Assassin’s my crit chance is high enough for roughly 8/10 hits to crit on average and that crits hit for more due to the extra ferocity. The downside is 3k less health, but you’re glass already, so it’s not gonna matter a whole lot when compared to the DPS increase you get in return.

Since I switched to Assassin’s, I’ve found my DPS improved greatly, since nearly every hit is a crit, and crits on squishies are easily 3+k, even with a regular #1 hit, whereas with Zerker it’s closer to 4 or 5 out of 10 hits (depending on the RNG at that time), and non-crits only hit for 800 something damage, which is laughable compared to that of a crit. Swapping amulets has made a huge difference for me.

That being said, I believe the condition survival ranger meta build pretty much hard counters LB ranger completely and generally is the better choice if you want to soloq. It’s the build I struggle the most against when playing power LB, perhaps even more so than s/d thief or a strong shatter mesmer. It’s really consistant with its bleed stacking, so even SotF LB rangers can’t last long against them, since the bleed stacks cleansed are just as easily reapplied. I play the build too and rip every power ranger I come across to pieces or at least send them running for the hills.

WilnerGW.3275:

Hey guys;

What you guys think are the power rangers(LB + GS or Sword/Focus) atm? I mean, after the buff to our LB, do u guys think its viable for SPVP? What are the harder profissions/builds for you guys to kill as a power ranger?

Im play a LB/GS Ranger 6/6/2/0/0 all berserker. Im enjoying it and it fees we have a good damage now. What you guys think?

Thx

Good questions. I think the 6/6/x/x/x style builds have a great spike and enough damage to power down any other build, assuming opposing players are relatively new and don’t know how to counter you. However, as the skill level of your opponents increase, you will find that they know how to mitigate most of your your spike, and will give you a tough fight. On the extreme end your opponents will identify your weakness and completely exploit your build.

The toughest ranger opponents run some form of a condi bunkerish survival build. Rabid, celestial, carrion, Sword, dagger, SB, axes. The toughest LB build is some form of celestial, I think. I’ve seen ItIsFinished use both so you can ask him nicely to share. I run a rabid bleed bomber because it exploits most of the current Meta including spikey LB builds.

High level players will identify and press glassy builds in a hard way and will have amazing dodging, blocking, and healing. You won’t be able to keep them off you long enough to kill. They will have a spike that can drop a zerker in 3 or 4s and much better survival. That being said, there is still a sizable group of ranked pvp players that can’t counter LB zerk at all. You’ll crush them, no problem.

Hey guys;

Thanks all for answers.

Its true its very hard to be competitive with full zerk LB. Anyways, i wanna try another SPVP Ranger build. I would like condition and/or trap. Do you have any strong build to recomend?

Thx all!

My biggest problem with power is that it is good against bad players. You will beat solo queue teams. You can beat bad premades. The moment you hit a team like radioactive you suddenly become useless and do nothing but die all game.

When I see a power ranger he gets called out primary in every fight. Then the difference between the best power ranger and the worst is how much longer it takes to down him. 6-6-x-x-x may take 4s. 6-0-2-6-0 may take 12s. Either way he won’t do anything dodge rolling and sitting in GS4.

As for other builds. You can try:
2-6-6-0-0 for traps
2-0-6-6-0 for spirits
0-2-6-0-6 for BM

Those are just the bases for the three basic condi specs you can play. People will debate endlessly on the specifics so just pick stuff that makes sense.

WilnerGW.3275:

Hey guys;

Thanks all for answers.

Its true its very hard to be competitive with full zerk LB. Anyways, i wanna try another SPVP Ranger build. I would like condition and/or trap. Do you have any strong build to recomend?

Thx all!

Power ranger can work well with some practice unless you want to play in the top 100, don’t give up just yet :P

Trap ranger’s probably the weakest of the working ranger builds I’d say – the damage is awesome but it’s as about as squishy as a power ranger.

If you wanna try all the viable builds use metabattle, should help you out.

If you want to take the condition approach I’d recommend this

I run the same build, except for runes I use rune of the eagle. It does a lot of damage and you can sustain a lot of damage at the same time! But you have to learn how to use the bow strategically, not abruptly, takes a bit of practice to get used to.