Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

My aim of making this post was just to clarify some of the issues that are plaguing the Ranger as a ranged class at the moment. Mainly two issues.

To start the Longbow.
Previously it did very well in terms of damage and utility. Hitting hard from range, adding positional mechanics to make the game less dull and more dynamic. A signature burst move Rapid fire, A debuff to improve damage to the target, whilst also increasing pet movement speed, a knockback that can do decent damage and support in many different ways. And the Volley, with its recent increased radius and damage.

The number 1 attack does provide decent damage, but many shots fail to land due to “obstructed” when there’s nothing, no terrain, players, pets, dodging, blocking, objects preventing the shot from landing. The speed of the arrow and how buggy the landing is, needs to be addressed. The damage i think is Ok.
Rapid fire needs to be buffed again, this ability was nerfed severely and should be increased with a slightly longer cd?
Hunter’s shot appears to be bugged and not benefit from any power bonus to its base damage.
Point blank and Volley seem fine.

The rest of the weapons are ok, not fantastic but nothing that actually requires bug fixing or improving in a major fasion.

The second main issue is the pets and their cast times. The dogs having a 0.5sec cast time on their base abilities. This is the best we can offer in pvp. Due to the pet AI’s terrible pathing issues, pets are a complete joke against any moving target, let along a target with swiftness. Cats ,birds etc are off the agenda until they all get equal or better pathing/activation times.

If you have any doubt, just try having a cat chaise the moving golum in the mists. This includes having my cat with it’s base 30% speed increase from traits and a swiftness buff from hunters shot ontop.

The pets activation on their abilities needs to be decreased so more pets are available in pvp, adding more utility and damage you can actually rely on.

Any other thoughts?

I agree. Another thing that would be cool to see (specially with PvP) is if our pet can function as a point holder. Being ranged class, you have to be able to put some space between you and your opponent, and rangers are not as playable as they could be because tPvP is all about holding your ground. For Rangers we have to constantly leave the spot making it impossible for us to hold a point for a significant amount of time. Especially with SB skill #3 and Sword Skill #2 make you jump considerable amount of space away from the point sometimes (specially Khylo). Space we need to make up by either sprinting or just end up contesting the point.

You could say that your longbow skill #4 can do the job of taking the point. However my problem with that is there is no damage with it, and for the #4 skill to be effective you have to run towards the enemy giving up your ground you placed in between you and the enemy anyway.

Rangers are playable in PvP, but extremely restrictive for any functionally. Mainly because we aren’t as good as other classes
I personally win my 1v1’s (most of them anyway as a ranger), but I would love to see some changes that would give this class “the edge” we’ve been looking for.

These are just my thoughts, but for exploiting purposes the pet effect should only be viable if the master is close by, like within a certain amount of radius from the pet.

They have openly said that they are aware of the “obstructed” problem in WvW/sPvP and are trying to fix it. This isn’t just with arrows but happens with almost all range attacks from all classes. Warriors guns, Elementalists various attacks and so on.

Irene Jane.9605:

I agree. Another thing that would be cool to see (specially with PvP) is if our pet can function as a point holder. Being ranged class, you have to be able to put some space between you and your opponent, and rangers are not as playable as they could be because tPvP is all about holding your ground. For Rangers we have to constantly leave the spot making it impossible for us to hold a point for a significant amount of time. Especially with SB skill #3 and Sword Skill #2 make you jump considerable amount of space away from the point sometimes (specially Khylo). Space we need to make up by either sprinting or just end up contesting the point.

You could say that your longbow skill #4 can do the job of taking the point. However my problem with that is there is no damage with it, and for the #4 skill to be effective you have to run towards the enemy giving up your ground you placed in between you and the enemy anyway.

Rangers are playable in PvP, but extremely restrictive for any functionally. Mainly because we aren’t as good as other classes
I personally win my 1v1’s (most of them anyway as a ranger), but I would love to see some changes that would give this class “the edge” we’ve been looking for.

These are just my thoughts, but for exploiting purposes the pet effect should only be viable if the master is close by, like within a certain amount of radius from the pet.

Omg… if my pet was a point capper i would cry tears of joy at how amazingly awesome we’d become at tPvP… atm i just use longbow like 85% of the time in tPvP and run around with my trusty fern Mastiff Wilson and Sparky the River Drake, i have lost count of how many times i have stolen a point out from under a point defense because of the whole refusal to leave the point thing they have, i just rain down a barrage ontop of the point, load them up with cripple, and then you knock em off the point, throw a frost/spike trap in their path and smile as they fail to make it to the point in time, you can slo just bring an owl for the chill or an ice drake, or muddy terrain for an immob, in short it’s just hilarious…

PS: Hyenas are also really good against bunkers because of how many knockdowns you end up with, it’s quite hilarious.

I feel like the only one that thinks the LB is a great weapon and doesn’t really need a lot of change. The autoattack is garbage, I’ll agree, that does need changed. The only other change I would make would be to the 3 skill as it just seems so meh, even with 10 stacks of vulnerability. I’d rather the skill just do something else entirely since we really don’t see a benefit to the pet either.

I feel that our biggest flaw right now (aside from utterly useless traits) is our pets. They’re usually perma-dead in WvW and are 98% useless. In sPvP you have to REALLY plan ahead if you want F2’s to land because the animations are so kitten long. In PvE they aren’t that bad, but are actually quite good when they aren’t aggro mobs half way across the map.

LB is the least of my concerns right now and I use it a lot in sPvP. I’ve used SB/LB combo for months now with no issues aside from the Obstructed crap that everyone else is getting.

Petsunder [Guard} on a node should prevent flipping and/or capture the node.

This would enable the ranger to take advantage of the sniper hides around nodes forcing a sole attacker/defender to decide deal with pet while ranger rips me from the flank, or go to the flank to deal with ranger while the pet potentially flips the node…

It would let the ranger use their movement survivability without losing a node guaranteed by sacrificing the pet’s damage and benefits as they did.

Arrys.7145:

Petsunder [Guard} on a node should prevent flipping and/or capture the node.

This would enable the ranger to take advantage of the sniper hides around nodes forcing a sole attacker/defender to decide deal with pet while ranger rips me from the flank, or go to the flank to deal with ranger while the pet potentially flips the node…

It would let the ranger use their movement survivability without losing a node guaranteed by sacrificing the pet’s damage and benefits as they did.

It actually does…. however it’s a bug because it also prevents YOUR TEAM from capping or neutralizing lol

Eww… No to increased cool down times; cool downs in this game can already be ridiculous as it is and just make the combat extremely stale.

If anything should be done with Rapid Fire it would be cutting back on the number of arrows and turning it into a quicker more accurate burst attack (quicker as in the flight time, not the rate of fire).

Pets are the biggest downfall of rangers at the moment though and really should be fixed in some way; everything else homes in like a guided kittening missile, why can’t pet attacks do it as well as every other attack in the game? Fix pets and rangers would be fine…

Before I get into this, I want to make it abundantly clear: I don’t PvE

Everything that follows is from the perspective of a player who loves WvW; some of these remarks will reflect this mindset.

Swifti, you couldn’t be more wrong in saying that the other weapons don’t need bug fixes or major re-hauls.

You touch on the longbow, but that’s just scratching the surface of the Ranger flaws. I think I speak for most rangers when I say that we all know how kitteny the longbow is; it’s actually quite unfortunate because it’s arguably our most dynamic weapon in terms of use.

The fact of the matter is just about every weapon and utility we have needs a fairly extensive rework. Traps, for example, should be a niche utility, but have instead become almost mandatory because everything else we have is just so bad. The same goes for SB + Axe/WH. The combo just outclasses everything for non-condition based builds, and even those just sub the WH out for a torch.

It’s funny really, the SB + Axe/(WH || Torch) combo isn’t that amazing, it’s just astronomically better than any other options. Everything we do can be done better by an other class. No really, go back and re-read that. Everything we do can be done better by an other class. How is that “working as intended?”

I know I’ve left out TONS of issues that plague us, pet pathing being the most obvious one, but I just wanted to point out how poor the state of the profession is now.

TL;DR: It’s absurd to say that nothing but the Longbow needs a rework

JMOR.3708:

Before I get into this, I want to make it abundantly clear: I don’t PvE

Everything that follows is from the perspective of a player who loves WvW; some of these remarks will reflect this mindset.

Swifti, you couldn’t be more wrong in saying that the other weapons don’t need bug fixes or major re-hauls.

You touch on the longbow, but that’s just scratching the surface of the Ranger flaws. I think I speak for most rangers when I say that we all know how kitteny the longbow is; it’s actually quite unfortunate because it’s arguably our most dynamic weapon in terms of use.

The fact of the matter is just about every weapon and utility we have needs a fairly extensive rework. Traps, for example, should be a niche utility, but have instead become almost mandatory because everything else we have is just so bad. The same goes for SB + Axe/WH. The combo just outclasses everything for non-condition based builds, and even those just sub the WH out for a torch.

It’s funny really, the SB + Axe/(WH || Torch) combo isn’t that amazing, it’s just astronomically better than any other options. Everything we do can be done better by an other class. No really, go back and re-read that. Everything we do can be done better by an other class. How is that “working as intended?”

I know I’ve left out TONS of issues that plague us, pet pathing being the most obvious one, but I just wanted to point out how poor the state of the profession is now.

TL;DR: It’s absurd to say that nothing but the Longbow needs a rework

Actually i think Axe/Axe is a really solid weapon set (seeing as how it got buffed up right before launch and as such is now a REALLY strong set which no one seems to use…), that being said… WH is bugged, Sword roots you, SB is actually pretty solid, LB hits like a wet noodle (tons of utility though so it’s still viable if you’re not going for damage which i doubt YOU are), WHs hunters call can be mitigated with blinds and LoS making it not worth the CD against a player that knows how to exploit that stupid mechanic attached to it, and Dagger seems really good too…

I’ve played a good amount of tPvP and PvE and i don’t have these “being stuck in one type of build” nonsense you people have, but then again maybe it’s because i’m not going for LAWLZURHURHUR I HI T TINGZ HARDZ!!! cause seriously, we can do more then that, and it works quite well.

That being said, we still need some fixes, the fact i don’t even want to TOUCH half of our utilities is just kinda sad, and it’s not an “Oh well that’s not a cool concept” sort of thing but an, “Oh…. um, these skills don’t really do anything…” sort of thing.

Axe/axe is strong in power builds situationally. Against a team with GS and axe warriors not so much…. But if you hit B and see a bunch of projectile attackers it’s great.

axe4 – is better than WH4 – multi target good damage not easily avoidable (in a power build.)

WH for me is all about needing the fury to burst damage generate procs. I build power toughness vit in power builds and will have between 4 and 17% base crit. I need that 20% to proc nullification or condition removal every 10 seconds reliably as well as up damage. If the proc’s off crit weren’t so beneficial (Removing a warriors might stack is so sweet) I could forego the horn more.

Just a wild idea. In GW1 you only had pet if you chose to have skill “Charm Animal”. Yes, there was “petless” Rangers in GW1. So maybe we should have that in GW2 also ? If you chose to go without pet you will get raw dmg boost to compensate for that but you would lose some of the pet utility also . I think that could work out just fine ! Atleast until they fix the kitten pet pathing, AI, etc. Any toughts ?

swifti.2590:

Rapid fire needs to be buffed again, this ability was nerfed severely and should be increased with a slightly longer cd?…

Any other thoughts?

Geez, what’s with everyone wanting to “balance” increased damage with longer cooldowns?

Stop with the asking for longer cooldowns on anything! Its not balancing anything, its trading one evil for another. Rangers need improvements, not a reshuffling.

For Longbow 2 specifically: bring the damage up, bring the speed up, bring the cooldown lower or a mix of the three. DON’T, for the love of God, penalize it anymore than it already is!

i just want to see the long bow revised so it does seem like an option to me, ok some people may still consider it usable anyhow but its by far less efective than anything else.