Guild Wars 2

Hi,
Ranger is my main profession, I’ve played over 400 games as one and I did notice one thing that is very problematic as a ranger: extreme vulnerability to conditions, more specifically – bleed stacking, confusion and immobilize.
There are few traits and abilities to deal vs conditions, but they are very indirect, unreliable and ineffective in everyday dynamic PvP fights.

Versus necros for example (bleed stacking), rangers have absolutely no chance. I figured a way to deal with every prof except necros and mesmers. Mesmers are currently OP, so I just accepted the fact that I am unable to do much vs them. Necros however are either a bit underpowered or mostly balanced atm (think it’s the former), but they still destroy rangers so hard because rangers don’t have an effective way to deal with their main source of dmg – bleed stacking.

Confusion is absolutely broken vs shortbow ranger, it totally destroys us. If we attack with the confusion on us, we will actually do more dmg to ourselves than to light armored target. So u can basically win vs shortbow ranger by just keeping confusion on him and not doing anything else. I’m pretty sure confusion wasn’t designed to be this strong.

And finally – immobilize. As a ranger, getting immobilized is a “oh snap, I need to get out of this immediately or I’m done” moment, but you can’t really get out of it as often as you should.

Now you will say "but you got loads of condition removing spells: signet, healing spring, spirit of nature, bear ability “shake it off”. The thing is that you need to sacrifice way too much to get somewhat decent condition removal spells.
You have to to drastically change your build and playstyle just to be able to decently deal with conditions. There is so much more things in the game that u need to deal with along with conditions, you can’t neglect most of those things just to fix this one thing.
And in the end: Signet of renewal passive, healing spring, bear ability and empathic bond are all VERY unreliable/slow-responsive/too-situational for dynamic PvP combat.

Only reliable condition removal ability that fits in common ranger pvp builds is signet of removal active. This is not the solution.

Out of the many sPvP games I’ve played, the two classes you have problems with are by far the two I find easiest. Necro especially. They just die.

For sPvP I am primarily SB/LB or SB/MH-S-OH-H

I’ll admit though, imbo’s suck a lot.

Here is how you beat everyone in PvP: Quickening Zephyr → Auto attack. If that doesn’t kill them, they sure as hell shouldn’t be able to take you from full to dead before you can take them from half (or even 25%) to dead. Don’t have Quickening Zephyr active? Don’t fight. Also, the signets passive you mention removes a single condition every ten seconds. When it removes a condition, it removes the ENTIRE condition, not just a stack. If all they are slapping on you is bleeding, this should not be a problem at all, especially because of the Brown Bear F2 skill which also removes a condition, as you should always be using Brown Bear against enemies who will throw conditions on you.

Confusion destroys shortbow rangers you say? I’m pretty sure it destroys warriors, thieves, Engineers, Elementalists, etc., just as much. It triggers on ability use, the only way to counter it is man up and pay the hell attention so you don’t hit QZ the second they put it on you killing yourself. Most Confusion conditions only deal about 100-200 damage per attack, and I am pretty sure that Heal As One heals for almost 6-7k, I think you can afford a couple of auto attacks with it on you.

I, too, find Necros to be ridiculously easy to kill. I don’t have too much trouble with Mesmers, but then again I did sacrifice a lot to get as much condition removal as I have. Took the pet removes conditions periodically trait, Signet of Renewal, Healing Spring (though it’s a given) just to deal with them because, like you, I found them to be ridiculously powerful against me. I like the change it brought about, but I do feel I have to invest far too much for unreliable removal.

Signet of Renewal is OK, except that if your pet happens to be out of range, or dead when you activate it, it doesn’t work. Pretty kitten stupid, IMO. Healing Spring suffers from the fact that you have to stand in the circle, or shoot through it (I think this removes conditions correct me if I’m wrong) which isn’t exactly feasible with a Warrior or a Thief sitting on your face. The trait one is stupid, too, given its cooldown, and the fact that it’s only one condition removed for a -major trait- slot. I’ve only been running it for a day or two, and will likely swap it out for something more useful.

Just making the signet work like every other class’ condition removal would go extremely far in helping us.

Signet of Renewal is your friend and I find it to be more than adequate.

Also spec deep into Wilderness Survival. As you said the brown bear can remove a condition on you and all conditions on nearby allies. I think it could be an awesome ability with a slightly lower CD.

• Empathic Bond should be moved to tier 1 Wilderness Survival. Guardians have a tier 1 trait that does the exact same thing, and it doesn’t require a pet. Empathic Bond is not even remotely tier 3 quality.

• Signet of Renewal should not require a range. As long as you have an active pet, it should work every time.

Those two changes would improve Rangers’ condition removal significantly.

Agree with the condition removal problem, and I agree with mouse. I find that Rangers, even if they try, can’t get the same kind of condition removal as other professions.

I find the utilities for condition removal on the ranger very lacking. The traits get the job done though.

To the guys who said that they find mesmers and necros the easiest 1v1 opponents – you have never met a good one, trust me.
Good necro will just eat u with bleeding, you won’t be able do do absolutely anything, he will just outdps you.
Good mesmer will put a confusion on u and summon a phantasm – that’s enough to kill u. If you auto attack, you will kill yourself. You can wait out confusion, but the fight is already over, like 50% of your hp is already gone and he’s hiding behind some pillar nearby to reopen on u.

River Drake’s lightning breath then Quickening Zephyr just as he’s about to fire and then longbow 2 and prey your River Drake isn’t on his silly streak. Got confusion, use the above without longbow 2, switch to Brown Bear and remove condition. Against Mesmers the River Drake should half hp them or more and remove there clones from the field.

For spvp if you want dmg and condition remove you should get 40%+ crit rate and equip 60% chance on crit to remove condition on weapons. This works very very well with shortbow.
Confusion is stil a problem just not as big.

For secondary weapon i take condition removal and boon removal on crit for annoying guards and mesmer

Edit : You should stil bring one condition removal either from pet or utility for when your not fighting.

Condition necros are easy to solo as a ranger. They can’t put bleeds on you if you have half a mind to spam dodges the moment they are up. In between quick shot, dodge rolls and Vigorous Renewal, you would be hard-pressed to have more than 5 stacks of bleeding from a necro at any time.

I mostly agree with the OP and with mouse.

Those of you saying that necros are easy 1on1…well, you guys obviously have never fought a necro that knows what he’s doing. They have a kittenload of hp, they have 2 fears and they can condition you to death before you can kill them, if they play their cards right. Best chance you got is to go for pure power damage and not give him the chance to swap your own bleeds to you as well as his own, but even then, it’s hard.