Guild Wars 2

He was indeed.

Sarision.6347:

^If I recall, he’s also one of, if not the first, to come up with Frost Spirit + Spotter.

You don’t have to be smart to see that a skills and traits that buff a party work together. Many people, including myself saw the skills and planned to use them together, before launch.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Sarision.6347:

^If I recall, he’s also one of, if not the first, to come up with Frost Spirit + Spotter.

You don’t have to be smart to see that a skills and traits that buff a party work together. Many people, including myself saw the skills and planned to use them together, before launch.

So why aren’t people running the build back then instead of complaining that the class has no place in dungeons?

Sarision.6347:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Sarision.6347:

^If I recall, he’s also one of, if not the first, to come up with Frost Spirit + Spotter.

You don’t have to be smart to see that a skills and traits that buff a party work together. Many people, including myself saw the skills and planned to use them together, before launch.

So why aren’t people running the build back then instead of complaining that the class has no place in dungeons?

Back then? Before launch?

I’m sure every Ranger who played Ranger in GW1 saw the possibility of Frost spirit. And people still complain that the class has no place in dungeons, which it doesn’t really even if using FrostSpotter. Meta classes are far stronger.

The issue is that he’s comparing an optimal situation for Condition Ranger and saying “look at all the things that zerker Ranger could possibly lose”, and taking the worst case zerker Ranger and saying “look how much better condi is!”

Things like Scholar Runes, Night Sigils, Spotter (???), and Frosty.

In my parties, Scholar is usually up. Either I’m running with my friends who know where and how to blind, or I’m not getting hit. If you’re not running with Spotter or Frost Spirit, you’re not running the right build. And Frost Spirit only has about a 10-15 second downtime on average. You can have it up for every fight if you time destroying it well.

Why on earth would Rangers be running Strentgh runes? Rune of the Ranger is a fantastic sub for Scholar, if not better.

And then he just ignores the burst damage of ranger in his calculations as well “to keep it simple”. Well, simply, burst damage is still damage.

He compares a single weapon’s autoattack to a whole set of skills.

I won’t deny that Ranger condi is good damage- it is. But it’s not better than berserker yet. also, axe mainhand is almost as boring as shortbow.

Been trying a variant of Guanglai’s build on my 2nd Ranger, opting for sword + torch / torch instead. Testing is still going on but I’m digging it so far. It’s definitely different from the usual Zerker Ranger. I’ll keep playing it and see how it pans out. Cheers, Guang.

Ltomato.8649:

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

The ranger completes 3 sword auto’s every 1.5sec, as is your cat pet (lets assume this is a single target dps fight and cat is fine with it). The ranger would get 6.5 full rotations (~20 attacks) off in 10 seconds plus 20 cat autos (sure, cat will get a bite and maul in there instead of a few auto’s, but those are worth more).

In those same 10 seconds, the ele is going to get off 8-9 fireballs with 3 casts of lava font to keep it ticcing nearly every second.

Damage multipliers, cooldowns and might stacks aside, 9 FB and 10 tics of lava font do not outpace 20 sword + 20 cat autos. The individually bigger numbers of the ele tics do not equal higher dps.

Cool. I did the math on my own too, and it looks like you’re right. There are definitely other external factors and things (such as fireball/lavafont being AoE, while pet attacks are single target, sword chain 2 single target), though.

I don’t know. I’m just frustrated, I guess.

Sarision.6347:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Sarision.6347:

^If I recall, he’s also one of, if not the first, to come up with Frost Spirit + Spotter.

You don’t have to be smart to see that a skills and traits that buff a party work together. Many people, including myself saw the skills and planned to use them together, before launch.

So why aren’t people running the build back then instead of complaining that the class has no place in dungeons?

Probably because the majority of Rangers are lazy players who don’t use it even now.

Substance E.4852:

Sarision.6347:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Sarision.6347:

^If I recall, he’s also one of, if not the first, to come up with Frost Spirit + Spotter.

You don’t have to be smart to see that a skills and traits that buff a party work together. Many people, including myself saw the skills and planned to use them together, before launch.

So why aren’t people running the build back then instead of complaining that the class has no place in dungeons?

Probably because the majority of Rangers are lazy players who don’t use it even now.

I always see Rangers with Spotter. I see them with Frost Spirit less frequently, probably because odds are good it will be dead seconds into the fight from some random BS so they took something else instead (signets or shouts). I hear a lot of “Sic ’em” recently but I’m under the impression its damage component is bugged / not working.

Raven.9603:

Substance E.4852:

Sarision.6347:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Sarision.6347:

^If I recall, he’s also one of, if not the first, to come up with Frost Spirit + Spotter.

You don’t have to be smart to see that a skills and traits that buff a party work together. Many people, including myself saw the skills and planned to use them together, before launch.

So why aren’t people running the build back then instead of complaining that the class has no place in dungeons?

Probably because the majority of Rangers are lazy players who don’t use it even now.

I always see Rangers with Spotter. I see them with Frost Spirit less frequently, probably because odds are good it will be dead seconds into the fight from some random BS so they took something else instead (signets or shouts). I hear a lot of “Sic ’em” recently but I’m under the impression its damage component is bugged / not working.

The last couple I paired up with didn’t bring either. One was running some kind of build with no Marksmanship at all because he never had Opening Strike up and another actually brought an Arctodus which is probably the worst pet in the game.

Sic em still works to my knowledge, it’s just that the pet will lose the buff the instant you give it any other commands including using it’s F2 or even telling it to switch targets/return.

Substance E.4852:

Sic em still works to my knowledge, it’s just that the pet will lose the buff the instant you give it any other commands including using it’s F2 or even telling it to switch targets/return.

This is pretty much why I never run “Sick Em.” I prefer utilities that aren’t so finicky.

Raven.9603:

Ltomato.8649:

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

The ranger completes 3 sword auto’s every 1.5sec, as is your cat pet (lets assume this is a single target dps fight and cat is fine with it). The ranger would get 6.5 full rotations (~20 attacks) off in 10 seconds plus 20 cat autos (sure, cat will get a bite and maul in there instead of a few auto’s, but those are worth more).

In those same 10 seconds, the ele is going to get off 8-9 fireballs with 3 casts of lava font to keep it ticcing nearly every second.

Damage multipliers, cooldowns and might stacks aside, 9 FB and 10 tics of lava font do not outpace 20 sword + 20 cat autos. The individually bigger numbers of the ele tics do not equal higher dps.

That’s just super off everywhere.

Sword chain is about 1.85 seconds per.
Cat attacks about once every 1.2 seconds on average.

Fireball is once per 1.4 seconds, Lava Font with cooldown trait is 4s CD with .25s cast, so you get one every 4.45 seconds (3 Fireballs, 1 Font). In 10 seconds you will get about 6 Fireballs and 2 Fonts.

No wonder people think condis don’t tick for enough, they’re apparently in super Time Warp mode all the time.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Raven.9603:

Ltomato.8649:

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

The ranger completes 3 sword auto’s every 1.5sec, as is your cat pet (lets assume this is a single target dps fight and cat is fine with it). The ranger would get 6.5 full rotations (~20 attacks) off in 10 seconds plus 20 cat autos (sure, cat will get a bite and maul in there instead of a few auto’s, but those are worth more).

In those same 10 seconds, the ele is going to get off 8-9 fireballs with 3 casts of lava font to keep it ticcing nearly every second.

Damage multipliers, cooldowns and might stacks aside, 9 FB and 10 tics of lava font do not outpace 20 sword + 20 cat autos. The individually bigger numbers of the ele tics do not equal higher dps.

That’s just super off everywhere.

Sword chain is about 1.85 seconds per.
Cat attacks about once every 1.2 seconds on average.

Fireball is once per 1.4 seconds, Lava Font with cooldown trait is 4s CD with .25s cast, so you get one every 4.45 seconds (3 Fireballs, 1 Font). In 10 seconds you will get about 6 Fireballs and 2 Fonts.

No wonder people think condis don’t tick for enough, they’re apparently in super Time Warp mode all the time.

I’m using the cast times listed on the tool tips of the skills. For example, sword 1 is : .5, .25, .75 = 1.5. FB is listed as 1sec cast. Lava font is instant. Is there a better source than the wiki or the skill tooltips for the attack times?

Raven.9603:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Raven.9603:

Ltomato.8649:

OP makes a good post, but his claim that a staff ele auto attack / lava font rotation outperforms ranger sword single target dps is bogus given an equal min/max scenario.

This is false. Lava font + fireball can very simply reach 8k ticks and autoattacks. Ranger sword reaches at most 6.5kish with occasional bursts of 20-22k. And that’s with Signet of the Wild on. Once that falls, the damage drops too.

The ranger completes 3 sword auto’s every 1.5sec, as is your cat pet (lets assume this is a single target dps fight and cat is fine with it). The ranger would get 6.5 full rotations (~20 attacks) off in 10 seconds plus 20 cat autos (sure, cat will get a bite and maul in there instead of a few auto’s, but those are worth more).

In those same 10 seconds, the ele is going to get off 8-9 fireballs with 3 casts of lava font to keep it ticcing nearly every second.

Damage multipliers, cooldowns and might stacks aside, 9 FB and 10 tics of lava font do not outpace 20 sword + 20 cat autos. The individually bigger numbers of the ele tics do not equal higher dps.

That’s just super off everywhere.

Sword chain is about 1.85 seconds per.
Cat attacks about once every 1.2 seconds on average.

Fireball is once per 1.4 seconds, Lava Font with cooldown trait is 4s CD with .25s cast, so you get one every 4.45 seconds (3 Fireballs, 1 Font). In 10 seconds you will get about 6 Fireballs and 2 Fonts.

No wonder people think condis don’t tick for enough, they’re apparently in super Time Warp mode all the time.

I’m using the cast times listed on the tool tips of the skills. For example, sword 1 is : .5, .25, .75 = 1.5. FB is listed as 1sec cast. Lava font is instant. Is there a better source than the wiki or the skill tooltips for the attack times?

The wiki has the actual attack speeds for most auto-attacks and/or long channels, down in the notes. If you don’t trust the numbers on the wiki for any reason, go test it yourself in Mists.

The cast times in the tool tips are off. Simple experience will show that they’re often wrong. You generally need to find the cast times of skills, as Guang said, by either testing and recording it yourself, or by getting it from some other reliable source (like the Wiki notes).

The cast times are only for the initial activation and animation. They don’t include the after-cast animation or server tick lag.

This makes DPS checking and balancing hard, since the listed cast times are lies meant to deceive the player.

Guang also erred with his phantasm mesmer calculations, which DnT promptly corrected.

Sometimes people get things right, and other times they’re wrong.

Let’s just say there’s good reason why the current top tier speed clear and fractal competitive PvE guilds don’t use rangers.

Actual tl;dr: I played ranger exclusively for a long time. Then I made a different class and discovered that in the specific content I want to do it’s better/easier. Plsbuffranger QQ.

Ranger has always suffered in dungeons/fractals compared to warriors/eles especially, this is nothing new. The ranger is still arguably one of the best (if not the best) class for most open world content. Ranger is also incredibly strong in WvW and PvP if played well. You played ranger pretty exclusively, it seems like, and then the one time you tried something new immediately decided that because it was better in that content there was a massive problem.

Turkadactyl.5308:

Actual tl;dr: I played ranger exclusively for a long time. Then I made a different class and discovered that in the specific content I want to do it’s better/easier. Plsbuffranger QQ.

Ranger has always suffered in dungeons/fractals compared to warriors/eles especially, this is nothing new. The ranger is still arguably one of the best (if not the best) class for most open world content. Ranger is also incredibly strong in WvW and PvP if played well. You played ranger pretty exclusively, it seems like, and then the one time you tried something new immediately decided that because it was better in that content there was a massive problem.

Open World PvE lolololololololol

Staff ele says hi, it’s a better longbow ranger with fields, far better damage and aoe, and group support.

My guild tried out the Condi Ranger in our FOTM Marathon last night (50-40-30-20) and things went pretty fast! My friends and I really like the build. You should post it to the Ranger subforums here yourself Guang, I think it’s a pretty fun build.

Zenith.7301:

Turkadactyl.5308:

Actual tl;dr: I played ranger exclusively for a long time. Then I made a different class and discovered that in the specific content I want to do it’s better/easier. Plsbuffranger QQ.

Ranger has always suffered in dungeons/fractals compared to warriors/eles especially, this is nothing new. The ranger is still arguably one of the best (if not the best) class for most open world content. Ranger is also incredibly strong in WvW and PvP if played well. You played ranger pretty exclusively, it seems like, and then the one time you tried something new immediately decided that because it was better in that content there was a massive problem.

Open World PvE lolololololololol

Staff ele says hi, it’s a better longbow ranger with fields, far better damage and aoe, and group support.

Loot stick guard pwns open world pve.

Guess I’m one of the rarer ones. Instead of starting out on a ranger then making another toon, I started out on other toons and made a ranger to see how bad it actually is. So far I’ve found rangers to be alright, but I can see where many of the complaints come from.

The Good:

#1: I’m surprisingly tanky with Greatsword. The evade on auto is enough to face tank many boss autos with little concern. For a longer fight I like to open with Signet of the Wild + Quickening Zephyr, which gives me a lot of evade time, then I follow up with Signet of Stone.
#2: The vulnerability stacking is unreal. The build I run has both remorseless and quickdraw, and this lets me get a ton of vulnerability very quickly.
#3: The amount of self quickness I apply is quite staggering. It is on part with my interrupt mesmer at times.
#4: I do have spots of group support that help out. I give AoE fury regularly, I use spotter, and in safer environments I even have frost spirit out.
#5: I’ve never played a class that had this much reliable stability before.

The Bad:

#1: The Sword. This is a weapon so cumbersome that I cannot fathom how it made it past the alpha stages of design. It is filled with a bunch of animation locking leaps that can only be triggered after you’ve landed the first non-leap attack, making the all of the leaps and the animation locking pointless. This is the only weapon I know of that actively gets players killed for the sin of being within melee range and not having unbound the auto attack function of the weapon. So, instead of letting my hands rest while I wait for cooldowns to end, I have to mash the keyboard like an excited baby just to do the bare minimum of damage.

To top it off, the middle kick doesn’t even cleave. Meaning that it is the top DPS weapon, but only against single targets. Even if the greatsword does less damage, I can’t bring myself to use such an annoying weapon.

#2: A surprisingly large portion of damage is done by our pet. This is a problem in two ways. First is that we don’t really have the means to protect our pets or keep them alive, so in areas with a lot of cleave we can kiss our DPS goodbye. Second is that the vast majority of pet attacks and skills are single target, meaning that against multiple enemies we can kiss our DPS goodbye again.

#3: Micromanaging is hell, second only to the engineer. A ranger constantly has to make sure their pets are attacking the right targets at the right time, and as we all know pets will just randomly run off to attack something that isn’t even on your screen. This is especially bad on the condi build, which requires much more skill spam than the others.

#4: Lack of a unique meaningful mechanic. This is an observation that can be made by other players: There’s not much difference between having a ranger around than there is not having a ranger around. They are like Necros in the sense that they are there, and you assume they are contributing, but were the ranger to suddenly vanish you probably wouldn’t notice. We have vulnerability, but every class already stacks a lot of that. The pet isn’t an aid, as much as it is just a tumor that sucks away all the potency the ranger might have had.

Take a look at all of the ranger weapon skills and traits, and ask yourself if any stand out as memorable. Pick out one skill that says “This skill is the reason why I should choose ranger over another class”. If you’re like me, there isn’t one. Everything is so unremarkable.

Shouts: just command your pet to do basic stuff, most of which isn’t particularly useful. Only good one is Search and Rescue.

Spirits: Give out spotty and unreliable effects that can be killed prematurely.

Traps: Apply condis after a delay. Whoop de doo.

Survival: A grab bag of miscellaneous tricks. Spots of utility, but the only useful one is Quickening Zephyr.

Signet: This is one part where the ranger actually has decent utilities. Invulnerability, stability and increased damage, AoE condi cleanse (at the cost of 40% of your damage), and the generic but ever so useful movement signet.

Ranger: We have good signets.

There is no point complaining about how poor the ranger is in here. Nobody at ANet who is capable of making a change plays ranger and nobody at ANet who is capable of making a change reads this forum. It is because of this that ranger is in a such poor place and I am willing to bet it will get even poorer in the future. Ranger bugs will not get fixed, pets will not get fixed (they think they already did that) Just look at what happened to ranger in GW1.

ANet hates ranger, they like warrior, always did, always will. If you want to play ranger then find another game, Guild Wars is not for you.

If you want to complain, do it in general. Forum staff will move it but at least someone at ANet might read it before it’s moved.

Zenith.7301:

Turkadactyl.5308:

Actual tl;dr: I played ranger exclusively for a long time. Then I made a different class and discovered that in the specific content I want to do it’s better/easier. Plsbuffranger QQ.

Ranger has always suffered in dungeons/fractals compared to warriors/eles especially, this is nothing new. The ranger is still arguably one of the best (if not the best) class for most open world content. Ranger is also incredibly strong in WvW and PvP if played well. You played ranger pretty exclusively, it seems like, and then the one time you tried something new immediately decided that because it was better in that content there was a massive problem.

Open World PvE lolololololololol

Staff ele says hi, it’s a better longbow ranger with fields, far better damage and aoe, and group support.

And yet ranger is still an easier bet for map completion and leveling than ele. World bosses or event farming? Yes, ele is hands down better every time. That being said, if you’re latching onto open world PvE in that post, you’re missing the point. Ranger is very strong in WvW (roaming/small group fights especially) and PvP if played well. Ele still has a role there, but even d/d or Fresh Air ele can be pretty easily burned down by pewpew ranger or condi bunker (and it’s a pretty poorly played ranger who loses to a staff ele 1v1).

Clearly a bad class.

Well, I’ve just been convinced to make a second sinister torch.

Does food even work in the pvp lobby?

Gonna give Axe a second try again. Guess I’ll get used to it like how I got used to Sword lol

Rag.3258:

Does food even work in the pvp lobby?

It does if you apply it before you enter the lobby.

Sandpit.3467:

Just look at what happened to ranger in GW1

Holy hell, I wish we were as good here as we were in GW1!

We were okay in PvE but never terrible like the assassin. We never really became obsolete until DoA became the meta and Anet stopped giving a kitten about horrendously OP stuff like cryway ruining the game because they had shifted focus to GW2.

As far as pvp goes, we went from a solid CC pick to rare stints as the melee role (praise be to the thumper).

Let’s put it this way, I never felt inefficient as a GW1 ranger and I never got community vitriol for playing one either.

All of the nay sayers here need to try the condi build that Guang posted before disagreeing. I tried it last night with rabid and it’s crazy powerful, plus very very fun compared to the boring sword AA zerker meta.

Speaking of GW1, this was QZ in GW1 http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Quickening_Zephyr

Why can’t the GW2 version give party quickness? It irritates me that the class is in desperate need of some group utility and they give Guardians a group quickness on a 30(!!!!)second cooldown, beacuse they were obviously lacking in groupsupport…

Seriously, Rangers and Necros were at the kitten end of the stick when i stopped playing alittle more than a year ago and it’s just sad that hasn’t improved much.
Yeah, improvements have been made but same goes for the classes that have been the golden boys for almost 3years now getting us nowhere.
As far as PvE is concerned anyway.

I hate to bring this back but i said this was going to happen. They new traits were another nerf and other classes were getting really buffed up.

PvE if you play glasscannon with LB seems easy because you pewpew dumb mobs from 1500. Same as you can do with ele but slower and worst.
Any other mode that is actually competitive simply is not for the ranger, Anet has passively stated that you have to reroll any other class (preferably warrior or ele) to be able to enjoy those modes. That’s a problem when the equipment is soulbound or the weapons/armour pieces aren’t usable by the new profession.
You have no choice if you want to play all game modes and play just with the 3 favourite classes.

Sword is bad. Unfortunately we don’t have any other weapon if you go condi.
After the new traits power ranger is not viable, we lost too much damage modifiers when we lost the traits.
Condi ranger still do weak damage compared to other classes. The weapons that are actually useful have other drawbacks that render them useless.

Sword is useless although is our best dps weapon. Sword#3 still misses too much, Sword#1 still effectively immobilize you.
Axe is a very bad weapon of choice. Axe MH is just too slow, Axe#2 has like a delay when cast that i can’t understand why it is there… Axe#5 root you in place.
We lost the extended range in our OH weapons. The bonfire is useless again, i though they said they saw we needed more room with those skills. Dagger without the extended range is just useless.

Spirits became useless when they got nerfed same as traps.

One good thing came out of this mess: i discover the shout ranger that actually can provide some support with runes of the tropper. That’s all.
I said before and i say it again: Anet just think the ranger as a PvE class for bots. We are the pariah of this game followed really close by the necro.
As i said before. There is none in actually charge of fixing/improving the experiencie with this class . They guy that did engie can not be in charge of another class like ranger, for what i saw he seems simply incapable of handling this two classes.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Rag.3258:

Does food even work in the pvp lobby?

It does if you apply it before you enter the lobby.

TIL