Guild Wars 2

This thread serves no special purpose, I just want to demonstrate how odd the most weapons of the ranger are.

So, let’s begin:

• Greatsword 1: The dodge on the third AA. The devs said they’re looking into this, we’ve seen no changes.
• Greatsword 4: Roots when triggered. This got mentioned dozen times now, we even got a response from the devs that they want to work on this, still no change.
• Longbow 1: The range penalty is a solid idea to compliment the ranged combat, yet it’s just hindering the weapon. Combined with the huge trait-requirement, this weapons is useless under competitive aspects.
• Longbow 2: Harldy serves any purpose. Got mentioned dozen times also.
• Longbow 3: Too unreliable. I liked the old one better despite the fact that we now have atleast some sort of defense.
• Longbow 4: Not directly a problem with the skill but the knock back gets bugged at uneven terrain almost every time.
• Longbow 5: Roots.
• Axe 4: Unreliable if the enemy moves just one bit.
• Axe 5: Roots.
• Sword: Just a mess. They overloaded this weapon with movement skills. The sword has 6 skills and 5 are moving the character. Not to mention the trouble the AA is creating.
• The general lack of distinct weapondesign. Half the weapons are hybrid weapons, which can be nice in PvP but is useless for PvE.

Unrelated to Weapons:

• The pet. Is just the pet. Unresponsive and stupid as ever.

Fully agree with every point except longbow 4 which I find very reliable as long as I watch my elevation angles carefully. Poor pet AI could be greatly made up for with extra pet movespeed, damage or summon cooldown reduction (cough cough mesmer).

I’d add GS 1 lack of damage also. For a medium armor wielding a heavy weapon GS1 should hit harder than most 2h’er as the tradeoff for the ranger is generally in the other class’s favor with everything else being equal. It’s a glass power weapon and Maul is nice but easy to evade without a ton of setup work.

Gs1 = needs a silly amount of power to match its underwater copy , currently im sat on 1.98k with my hybrid and the gs1 auto only does 540ish compaired to the under water spear that does 710ish on the last strike. though underwater weapons have been pretty much untouched.
it shows the difference in a rangers weapons countless changes, to match the masses of different combat styles a ranger can do.
In the end it’s slowly unbalanced its weapons because of these vaired combat styles to balance those combat styles.
i remember in previous patches gs1 got nurfed a little in damage, then it go buffed by that new redifind two-handed mastery, although we now get fury from it , the previous nurf outweights the trait buff still, and saying that its a trait, not in a power line and needs 4 points.

i stopped using gs1 because of that.
i found more evasive defence+damage from two one handed weapons.
the gs1 needs a buff again no more than 5% that should let it scale well again, with flanking , steady and FS.

i realy hope anet can make power builds work more effictively with the traits, since other classes can build for power without investing everything in there power/crit lines, they can still make a power build without sacrificing too many traits.

gs power nature ranger. built with PPT stats + zerker/cav/val trinkets.
2,4,0,6,0 2 spare its sad currently even with near all power gear, its no good untill you put 4or 6 into Marksman and a bit in skirmishing , then miss out on two-handed training without a major Trait sacrifice in other lines.

And one of the biggest gripes I have with the sword AA is that I’m “pushing” the enemy around. The essential key for a succesfull and fast dungeon run is stacking. The sword AA is counterproductive for that tactic because one will more than often push the enemy out of the corner, ruining the speed clear.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And one of the biggest gripes I have with the sword AA is that I’m “pushing” the enemy around. The essential key for a succesfull and fast dungeon run is stacking. The sword AA is counterproductive for that tactic because one will more than often push the enemy out of the corner, ruining the speed clear.

didnt know you have knockbacks on sword AA. Must be a new ninja feature.

You’ve never noticed? Go out in to a random map and autoattack a champ (so it doesn’t die too quickly) with the sword. You’ll slowly, slowly push the thing across the map.

It’s actually really handy in some cases to shove bosses in to walls for the eles to go all FGS on them.

Fluffball.8307:

You’ve never noticed? Go out in to a random map and autoattack a champ (so it doesn’t die too quickly) with the sword. You’ll slowly, slowly push the thing across the map.

It’s actually really handy in some cases to shove bosses in to walls for the eles to go all FGS on them.

Never really paid it attention. But if that is the case, just push the darn mob INTO the corner or god forbid, use CC, immob works on most things even if cripple and chilled doesn’t .

Fluffball.8307:

You’ve never noticed? Go out in to a random map and autoattack a champ (so it doesn’t die too quickly) with the sword. You’ll slowly, slowly push the thing across the map.

It’s actually really handy in some cases to shove bosses in to walls for the eles to go all FGS on them.

Yeh, and once you hit the wall you start pushing them in weird directions, especially if the corner is just one wall.

The sword autoattack I do find annoying but that could just use minor tweaks, the other 2 skills are nice. I’ve had minimal issues with the pet as of late but it could be better.

I do find all the rooting to be needlessly frustrating though. LB2 and 5 could use some real help since often you’re better off just autoattacking. Right now I mostly use 2 if they get up close but then channeling when they’re close to you might not be a good idea.

I want to add a couple of points to this.

As per OP’s comments:

The weapon skills I, for the most part, firmly agree with. This does not however limit to rangers. I feel a big issue in this game is the question of consistency across classes. A quick example thats already been mentioned a few times:
the whirlwind skills (lets ignore the mesmer phantasm)

1. Thief: High Damage, Reflect Projectiles, no root, limited availability (steal)
2. Warrior: No reflect Projectiles, No root, 20 sec cd, Decent damage
3. Ranger: Reflect Projectiles, Rooted, 25 sec cd, Low damage (offset at least a little by vulnerability and retaliation?)

• Not being rooted also means being able to dodge during,
• I’m also not sure on this one, but I think Warrior and Thief can hit 5 targets with their skill, rangers cannot.
• There is also the case of how many hits it registers, how retaliation resistent they are but I don’t want to bust out all them numbers here at the moment. Even without this taken into consideration:
  HOW are these skills consistent in any way? Anet puts in some effort to equalize out certain skills and aspects (25% movespeed access for example) but then just does not continue far enough. I’m a little disappointed to be honest.

Anyway, things I would like to add on:
Pets: I feel there is alot of misspecification with what pets are supposed to be for. I like what they did in the feature patch, though I did expect a little more tbh.
In this thread I would like to focus on AOE, Group Fights and the like. It seems like the Pet class for AoE is the Drake, the only class with an autoattack that hits more than 1 enemy and an AoE F2.

• Drakes: Their Problem with F2 is being rooted, and unlike any other charged skill IN THE GAME, NOT turning to follow the target should the target sidestep or get behind the pet. Again, consistency, I don’t see it! Secondly, their Blast finisher is nice, but a little unreliable.
• Bears: They (along with moas and the fern hound I thought dogs were supposed to be cc support?!) seem to be AoE support based, However, that is right about where they stop being useful in a group setting. No AoE, no CC, nothing. SERIOUSLY?! Has anyone seen or read The Golden Compass?? Bears are king of being in the middle of the fight. They rampage around and are just generally scary once they get going. I always thought this was why we were given the trait Stability Training. I’ve always hated how it a) is just the pet that gets stability (maybe thats fair, just a personal grudge) and b) does not affect the Drakes when they are clearly our best option for AoE. Bears should be given some more group influence other than their F2. It would at least in part be a step towards solving the problems Rangers face in WvW Raids.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Gs1 = needs a silly amount of power to match its underwater copy , currently im sat on 1.98k with my hybrid and the gs1 auto only does 540ish compaired to the under water spear that does 710ish on the last strike. though underwater weapons have been pretty much untouched.
it shows the difference in a rangers weapons countless changes, to match the masses of different combat styles a ranger can do.
In the end it’s slowly unbalanced its weapons because of these vaired combat styles to balance those combat styles.
i remember in previous patches gs1 got nurfed a little in damage, then it go buffed by that new redifind two-handed mastery, although we now get fury from it , the previous nurf outweights the trait buff still, and saying that its a trait, not in a power line and needs 4 points.

i stopped using gs1 because of that.
i found more evasive defence+damage from two one handed weapons.
the gs1 needs a buff again no more than 5% that should let it scale well again, with flanking , steady and FS.

i realy hope anet can make power builds work more effictively with the traits, since other classes can build for power without investing everything in there power/crit lines, they can still make a power build without sacrificing too many traits.

gs power nature ranger. built with PPT stats + zerker/cav/val trinkets.
2,4,0,6,0 2 spare its sad currently even with near all power gear, its no good untill you put 4or 6 into Marksman and a bit in skirmishing , then miss out on two-handed training without a major Trait sacrifice in other lines.

I’ve been saying that GS is too weak for ages, even for a “defensive” weapon. I think it needs more than 5% though. Its auto attack coefficients are .55, .55, and .65. It should be .8, .9, and 1.0. That would make it match our spear and the guardian’s hammer.

The third skill on the guardian’s hammer has an additional AoE that only does its full damage if the enemy doesn’t move much, not unlike our pet when you think about it.