Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I have a lvl 65 ranger and play a lot of PvP. I use longbow/shortbow and I focus on Power/Toughness/Vitality in that order.

I have no issues surviving or escaping from people most of the time. I also have no issues taking down people (especially glass cannon builds).

What exactly is the issue everyone is having with ranger? What kinds of builds are you using that is causing all the complaining? I honestly would like to know as I really don’t have issues playing my ranger.

I love the skills on both bows. I couldn’t decide which to use so I am using both and it works out great for me.

I think people are not necessarily using the best weapon sets for the type of build they are using. Shortbow has a ton of utility. Longbow packs a decent damage punch for me and has a few good utility skills as well.

Shortbow:

1. Bleeding damage. (I usually use this skill when I pop quickness)
2. Poison to decrease healing on foe.
3. An evade + swiftness boon for mobility.
4. Cripple for control and some extra bleeding.
5. Daze/stun for more control. (awesome to use right before an enemy is about to heal)

Longbow:

1. Nothing too useful here. Just a standard attack.
2. Decent attack skill here. Especially with quickness.
3. Great skill. Makes your pet move faster and debuff for more damage. Short cooldown.
4. AWESOME skill. Great for offensive and defensive control.
5. AWESOME skill. Use quickness with it and force an enemy to either join you in the barrage of arrows or keep them at a distance.

So seriously. Let’s have a constructive talk guys. What’s up? Maybe there is a better build/weapon set you can be using instead of spamming #1 on shortbow with focus on condition damage. That was never the intended design of the weapon as it is not interactive play.

I logged back in to give you a +1. Great class, not with out its faults or things that I think could be tweaked/adjusted, but certainly not worthy of all the negative threads I see here or threats of leaving the class for another.

Not sure what you mean about condition damage. Seems to me the ranger is great for condition builds. My 2c.

I think the Ranger is a fine class too Joey, certainly not the strongest class in pvp, but still capable and fun to play. What the majority of the angst is about at the moment is that the devs nerfed SB damage and the xfire/quickness synergy also appears to have been nerfed. But even more than the nerf itself people are upset about the way the nerf was handled-ie, it appears for some mysterious reason to have been an attempted stealth nerf and the follow up from the dev was doubly insulting because not only did it confirm a stealth nerf it suggested that lowering the damage on xfire somehow magically encourages more interesting gameplay.

Now i agree with most of your run down on the skill sets, but there is one thing I disagree with in your post. You say spamming #1 on SB focusing on condition damage was never the intended design of the weapon. I think this is a pretty silly thing for you to say (unless you are being sarcastic?) since the #1 is the main damage dealing skill on the SB and it applies a condition. Cutting its damage by 7% and by perhaps up to 20% during quickness will not make me use the bow any differently. I’ll still be using all those great cc, condition, and utility skills off cd when appropriate. The only difference will be that my main damage ability and only burst potential from the weapon will be lessened from 7-20%.

So now I ask you, what is so hard to understand about people being cheesed off about this?

i love the ranger, out of all the classes i played, ranger is the most fun and versatile. adaptable in so many situations and you have skills and traits that are quite strategic and useful when you think about what you’re doing. ironically, why i think people complain about the class is because IT IS NOT A SIMPLE AND EASY class to play.

No you don’t just spam autoattack like most rangers around town do. Nor do you just spam skills. Nor do you just go burst dps. There are so many things u can use and become extremely effective. You need to use all of it together. People who don’t understand the concept of the ranger class and it’s skills complain that it’s not like a thief or a warrior, or its not fun all you do is spam autoattack.

Totally not what I do. I am the longest standing in any encounter because I use everything in my arsenal. I love ranger melee as well, its so practical and so smart. Ranger is a SMART class. It takes thinking and cleverness to use effectively. It isn’t a class about all action.

I don’t think Ranger’s are a bad profession either. I have had rather good luck with them in PvP. I run Shortbow/Greatsword a lot and tried Shortbow/Sword-Dagger with some fairly good success.

I think the main reason people are complaining is that, for one, as the previous poster stated, the devs seemed to have nerfed the short-bow in an underhanded fashion. In addition, this nerf is done without any compensation to the weapon. Furthermore, there are many issues with the weapons and mechanics rangers currently have which should be addressed before “animation fixes” aka nerfs.

For example, when using the sword today, I did have fun, but the rooting problem was ridiculously annoying. It became especially apparent if I tried to down an opponent and instead just kept attacking. Beyond that, sometimes with the sword I would jump away from targets while trying to use my auto-attack. An issue almost opposite to the rooting one.

Other things people have raised concerns about are pet responsiveness and spirits.

Yasha.5963:

I think the Ranger is a fine class too Joey, certainly not the strongest class in pvp, but still capable and fun to play. What the majority of the angst is about at the moment is that the devs nerfed SB damage and the xfire/quickness synergy also appears to have been nerfed. But even more than the nerf itself people are upset about the way the nerf was handled-ie, it appears for some mysterious reason to have been an attempted stealth nerf and the follow up from the dev was doubly insulting because not only did it confirm a stealth nerf it suggested that lowering the damage on xfire somehow magically encourages more interesting gameplay.

Now i agree with most of your run down on the skill sets, but there is one thing I disagree with in your post. You say spamming #1 on SB focusing on condition damage was never the intended design of the weapon. I think this is a pretty silly thing for you to say (unless you are being sarcastic?) since the #1 is the main damage dealing skill on the SB and it applies a condition. Cutting its damage by 7% and by perhaps up to 20% during quickness will not make me use the bow any differently. I’ll still be using all those great cc, condition, and utility skills off cd when appropriate. The only difference will be that my main damage ability and only burst potential from the weapon will be lessened from 7-20%.

So now I ask you, what is so hard to understand about people being cheesed off about this?

Their change might have then been more influenced by trying to get people to be more active in their play by encouraging the swapping of weapons. If shortbow auto attack was the main damage skill of your build, I think that is not a good design choice and they realized that. I don’t think ArenaNet wants people forced into using a single profession/weapon/build in order to be effective.

Now that the skill does less damage, it will get people to have a secondary weapon that will compliment their playstyle. Instead of most people probably sticking with using shortbow all the time. And feeling like they HAVE to use shortbow in order to be competitive in damage.

Maybe there are other weapons people aren’t really taking advantage of to fill that gap of what the shortbow used to be. Or maybe there are more changes coming to ranger that will increase the effectiveness of the other weapons.

That may be the case, Joey but alot of the other weapons aren’t viable enough to combat alot of other classes. I can hold my own with a SB and since I play a power/precision/toughness build Im not too much of a glass cannon but Anet nerfed GS right out of Beta which was sensible but made it nearly completely unusable for PvP and the sword rooting problem makes it barely viable in PvP. That’s both of the melee weapons gone.

The Axe is barely used enough but I love the Ricochet skill on it. The Longbow is good for defenses but I /facepalm whenever I come across a Ranger soloing with it since it’s incredibly slow. The Shortbow ‘1’ skill is the main damage dealing, even with the nerf, people are still going to use it as it’s the weapon they use for their build. Personally, I love my Ranger and will definitely see it through but I’ve suddenly lost alot of my effectiveness in WvW.

Joey.3928:

Their change might have then been more influenced by trying to get people to be more active in their play by encouraging the swapping of weapons. If shortbow auto attack was the main damage skill of your build, I think that is not a good design choice and they realized that. I don’t think ArenaNet wants people forced into using a single profession/weapon/build in order to be effective.

Now that the skill does less damage, it will get people to have a secondary weapon that will compliment their playstyle. Instead of most people probably sticking with using shortbow all the time. And feeling like they HAVE to use shortbow in order to be competitive in damage.

Maybe there are other weapons people aren’t really taking advantage of to fill that gap of what the shortbow used to be. Or maybe there are more changes coming to ranger that will increase the effectiveness of the other weapons.

Putting aside how they handled the nerf (animation glitch fix only, then coming out and admitting to a 7% dmg reduction (not including stacked effect dmg) and saying using the autoattack was spamming), doesn’t it occur to you and them that perhaps some people liked that playstyle?

Anyone can create any other class and play them with their various pros and cons and many different skills and playstyles. Ranger for me was a relaxing PvE class using the SB. I tried the other weapons and didn’t particularly like the playstyle with them.

Why do we HAVE to change the way we play the Ranger because the animation team took the easy way to fix a glitch and JonPeters, who obviously isn’t very familiar with the Ranger from his comments, decided he wasn’t going to make the animation team rollback their fix and so he decided we must be forced into changing how we play?

yeah we are irked about how there are other issues (more important we’d think) to deal with before a random SB nerf.

However, even without the SB there are ways to be effective even in PvP. And i never thought SB was such a great weapon, there’s other things. It’s nice but not THAT great and imo it’s like the sidearm of my ranger… i’d open and use all my longbow skills + other slot skills any day and use SB as a back up for extra damage when im done with everything i needed to put down.

Ranger is definitely a good profession with only a couple fixes that need to be made. Nonetheless still absolutely viable in all aspects of the game.

I also agree with the OP, I’m using GS and Axe/Axe same stat focus, I’m having little to no issues surviving and taking people down myself. I think the issue was SB condition build was so effective and easy, people focused on it. I tried SB builds out, I thought they were neat but not the playstyle I personally wanted. Dunno, I don’t think I’m an awesome player, just average at best but; I don’t have half the issues the supposed pro players are having. shrug

I’ve been playing ranger for over 500 hours of gameplay.

I still love it and mainly use SB/LB regardless of nerfs.

I still have no problem solo’ing people. The recent nerf did force me to make a different build, but stacking quicknesses (very easy to do) have really made up for that stupid tiny unimportant little 40ms SB nerf that people are making such a massive deal about.

i dont care about the 40ms either, i just care the Quickness has been nerfed