Guild Wars 2

Been gone @ a year and I see that Spirit Rangers have been recognized and several other things have been changed.

Added.
Blast finisher on warhorn 5 – Wait I can have a controlled blast finisher in all the fields available to me….. Interesting.

Stealth on Longbow 3 – Assuming this may help generate more opening strike opportunities.

Offhand Axe 5 – switched from reflection to retaliation?

Offhand axe 4 – Was a pull added? calculator shows a pull distance now.

Other weapon changes I’m missing?

Spirits
Water Spirit added to heals.

Did Spirit health get a second bump? Find it hard to believe spirits is a spvp build without a bit more HP, so easy to aoe drop.

Utility Skills

Guard improved – stealth and protection (Does the stealth on a pet enhance damage? Thinking Lynx with benefits of jaguar but also it’s own f2.)

Traits -
Spotter – benefit increased(doubled?)
MoC – Don’t remember the stun daze duration increase.
Barkskin – protection increased
Off Hand training – (Range increase new?)
Natural Vigor – Endurance regen reduced (Disliked dodge monkey?)
Nature’s Voice – (Ok don’t remember this one is the 15 second CD on guard just making me notice it now?)

Enlargement – Was stability always a benefit?

Two handed Training – Fury stacking on greatsword – interesting
Made spirits mobile for 20 not 30 points.
Sure I’m missing more.

Spvp -
Settler’s Amulet – (I got all excited for a second – then saw it was simply a renamed Shamans).

So anything else I should know other than obviously pet hit chance remains borked and tied to PvE easymode mob mechanics?

Yes all of those things are new. However the state of the ranger is relatively unchanged. We have a few viable condition builds (trap, spirit, regen), but no power builds. Same problem as always. We can’t take the damage traits and have survivability.

I’d be interested in your comments on why my power ranger (posted in the build thread) won’t work. You might save me a lot of time and effort.

Go go power rangers?

I particularly enjoyed hitting with maul last night for 4500 and seeing the little asura turn tail and run.

Sube Dai.8496:

Yes all of those things are new. However the state of the ranger is relatively unchanged. We have a few viable condition builds (trap, spirit, regen), but no power builds. Same problem as always. We can’t take the damage traits and have survivability.

That’s what burnt me out on the game. trying to find a survivable burst power build that didn’t involve pet bursting for me….. I simply can’t resist putting square pegs in round holes. Even back then a few power builds showed some promise but not enough….

Anthony.7219:

I’d be interested in your comments on why my power ranger (posted in the build thread) won’t work. You might save me a lot of time and effort.

Go go power rangers?

I particularly enjoyed hitting with maul last night for 4500 and seeing the little asura turn tail and run.

Checked out your build. Power Shout I guess I’ll call it. Shouts weren’t too viable/used alot when I played previously. AKA other than protect me(defense) and sick em for pet burst builds.

Does “guard” stealth You and your pet or just the pet? Just adding up the opening strike auto crit resets in the build.

Arrys.7145:

Anthony.7219:

I’d be interested in your comments on why my power ranger (posted in the build thread) won’t work. You might save me a lot of time and effort.

Go go power rangers?

I particularly enjoyed hitting with maul last night for 4500 and seeing the little asura turn tail and run.

Checked out your build. Power Shout I guess I’ll call it. Shouts weren’t too viable/used alot when I played previously. AKA other than protect me(defense) and sick em for pet burst builds.

Does “guard” stealth You and your pet or just the pet? Just adding up the opening strike auto crit resets in the build.

Guard doesn’t stealth you, just the pet, so you only have one opening strike reset every 12 seconds. Weapon swap time is 10s so that works out okay…

Guard does give your pet 10 seconds of stealth, 13 seconds of protect, 16 seconds of swiftness, and 18 seconds of regeneration on a 15 second cooldown (+ 1 second cast) ^this is only the case if the pet is in range of the shout, otherwise he gets 10 seconds of stealth, 13 seconds of protect, 3 seconds of swiftness, and 5 seconds of regeneration.

Kind of removes the need to take skirmishing VI to allow your pet to stay with players and actually hit them, considering the amount of cripple/etc you have access too.

Arrys.7145:

Sube Dai.8496:

Yes all of those things are new. However the state of the ranger is relatively unchanged. We have a few viable condition builds (trap, spirit, regen), but no power builds. Same problem as always. We can’t take the damage traits and have survivability.

That’s what burnt me out on the game. trying to find a survivable burst power build that didn’t involve pet bursting for me….. I simply can’t resist putting square pegs in round holes. Even back then a few power builds showed some promise but not enough….

You and I sound a lot alike. Fit darn peg, FIT.

Arrys they didn’t change Whirling Defense they just added retaliation. The skill still reflects projectiles.

Made a big complicated post, but what it comes down too.. power ranger is just weaker than condi ranger because it’s an ACTIVE play build in a meta that supports PASSIVE play builds. On condi ranger, you can launch 3-4 fire and forget attacks stacking 2000-3000/second ticks on your enemies and then focus entirely on evading and kiting while that just keeps ticking away hurting your enemies even though you’re running around with swoop and leaps. On power builds, you can either hurt your enemies or avoid attacks and kite… you cannot do both simultaneously like condition builds. Every time you attack you are exposed to danger, and because you must attack more than a condi build to pressure your foes, you are also exposed to more enemy attack and burst sequences for longer periods. When a consequential period where you are heavily damaged and most start kiting away happens, you are not pressuring your enemies simultaneously like condi.. which means your enemies if they get the better of you can pressure you a lot more while not worrying about their health bar when you are on the defensive. They have less need to watch their health bar when you are fleeing from them, whereas with a condi build they still have to worry about healing themselves and curing their conditions, and trying to time their heal to go off when they are not poisoned which they frequently are.

That coupled with the fact that condi just seems to scale better and that it ignores toughness means that even condition removal rich builds get hurt more by condition damage than physical damage reduction builds (via evade/invuln/protection/whatever) get hurt by physical damage.

In the end you get this stupid situation where many power rangers get screwed over because our pet doesn’t work, but because condition rangers are built so that the pet is not as much a key issue to them, they get in arguments with us that buffs and fixes to the pet will make them (And I say only them) OP and is consequently not fair for the class. Which is total bullkitten, pets could be fixed and then the condition output on the popular condition weapons could be reduced to accommodate for higher pet hit ratios. It’d be as simply as giving all melee pets an auto-casting distance closer skill like swoop and an attack combo on their auto attack that pounces like sword one while simultaneously reducing the numbers on the condition staples. Condi builds would still have the same damage, just delivered differently with the pet contributing more than before. Power builds would become more viable as the pet would be holding us back less with less grotesque miss ratios.

To bad there are as many brainless condi rangers as incompetent balance team members who don’t get that and have the same objections, so this class never gets anywhere on the forums.

The blast finisher on horn is brilliant and it makes HS even better. The stealth on longbow is also very useful, i often enjoy stealthing, switching and then opening with a hilt bash into maul (/w all the vuln stacks).

Detharos.3157:

Made a big complicated post, but what it comes down too.. power ranger is just weaker than condi ranger because it’s an ACTIVE play build in a meta that supports PASSIVE play builds. On condi ranger, you can launch 3-4 fire and forget attacks stacking 2000-3000/second ticks on your enemies and then focus entirely on evading and kiting while that just keeps ticking away hurting your enemies even though you’re running around with swoop and leaps. On power builds, you can either hurt your enemies or avoid attacks and kite… you cannot do both simultaneously like condition builds. Every time you attack you are exposed to danger, and because you must attack more than a condi build to pressure your foes, you are also exposed to more enemy attack and burst sequences for longer periods. When a consequential period where you are heavily damaged and most start kiting away happens, you are not pressuring your enemies simultaneously like condi.. which means your enemies if they get the better of you can pressure you a lot more while not worrying about their health bar when you are on the defensive. They have less need to watch their health bar when you are fleeing from them, whereas with a condi build they still have to worry about healing themselves and curing their conditions, and trying to time their heal to go off when they are not poisoned which they frequently are.

That coupled with the fact that condi just seems to scale better and that it ignores toughness means that even condition removal rich builds get hurt more by condition damage than physical damage reduction builds (via evade/invuln/protection/whatever) get hurt by physical damage.

In the end you get this stupid situation where many power rangers get screwed over because our pet doesn’t work, but because condition rangers are built so that the pet is not as much a key issue to them, they get in arguments with us that buffs and fixes to the pet will make them (And I say only them) OP and is consequently not fair for the class. Which is total bullkitten, pets could be fixed and then the condition output on the popular condition weapons could be reduced to accommodate for higher pet hit ratios. It’d be as simply as giving all melee pets an auto-casting distance closer skill like swoop and an attack combo on their auto attack that pounces like sword one while simultaneously reducing the numbers on the condition staples. Condi builds would still have the same damage, just delivered differently with the pet contributing more than before. Power builds would become more viable as the pet would be holding us back less with less grotesque miss ratios.

To bad there are as many brainless condi rangers as incompetent balance team members who don’t get that and have the same objections, so this class never gets anywhere on the forums.

Great post. I definitely find my power ranger clunky and awkward. I just can’t stand condition heavy builds though. Just isn’t as much fun for me.

Kind of sad really, I built a guardian (my only level 80) around passive healing ticks for the group and being able to take away everyone’s conditions and convert them to buffs, and I never seem to be able to catch anyone who even HAS conditions on them. I think if anyone gets stacked with conditions they either have a way to remove it themselves or they’re dead.

I think I just need to find a way to motivate myself to like conditions then I’ll be able to enjoy some of the classes more.

Detharos.3157:

Made a big complicated post, but what it comes down too.. power ranger is just weaker than condi ranger because it’s an ACTIVE play build in a meta that supports PASSIVE play builds. On condi ranger, you can launch 3-4 fire and forget attacks stacking 2000-3000/second ticks on your enemies and then focus entirely on evading and kiting while that just keeps ticking away hurting your enemies even though you’re running around with swoop and leaps. On power builds, you can either hurt your enemies or avoid attacks and kite… you cannot do both simultaneously like condition builds. Every time you attack you are exposed to danger, and because you must attack more than a condi build to pressure your foes, you are also exposed to more enemy attack and burst sequences for longer periods. When a consequential period where you are heavily damaged and most start kiting away happens, you are not pressuring your enemies simultaneously like condi.. which means your enemies if they get the better of you can pressure you a lot more while not worrying about their health bar when you are on the defensive. They have less need to watch their health bar when you are fleeing from them, whereas with a condi build they still have to worry about healing themselves and curing their conditions, and trying to time their heal to go off when they are not poisoned which they frequently are.

That coupled with the fact that condi just seems to scale better and that it ignores toughness means that even condition removal rich builds get hurt more by condition damage than physical damage reduction builds (via evade/invuln/protection/whatever) get hurt by physical damage.

In the end you get this stupid situation where many power rangers get screwed over because our pet doesn’t work, but because condition rangers are built so that the pet is not as much a key issue to them, they get in arguments with us that buffs and fixes to the pet will make them (And I say only them) OP and is consequently not fair for the class. Which is total bullkitten, pets could be fixed and then the condition output on the popular condition weapons could be reduced to accommodate for higher pet hit ratios. It’d be as simply as giving all melee pets an auto-casting distance closer skill like swoop and an attack combo on their auto attack that pounces like sword one while simultaneously reducing the numbers on the condition staples. Condi builds would still have the same damage, just delivered differently with the pet contributing more than before. Power builds would become more viable as the pet would be holding us back less with less grotesque miss ratios.

To bad there are as many brainless condi rangers as incompetent balance team members who don’t get that and have the same objections, so this class never gets anywhere on the forums.

I agree with what you’ve said, but I’d argue that the non-working pet and the high toughness/protection of enemies simply means that our power builds don’t do enough damage.

I mean even full glass rangers don’t hit that hard IMO, but maybe that’s because they can’t live long enough to get off their burst.

You only mentioned the stuff that was added. How about mentioning all of the nerf’s we got, like Pet damage being nerfed, short bow damage being nerfed (and calling it an animation fix), Short bow being nerfed a second time for range. Endurance regen nerf, barrage damage nerf, and the list goes on. Nerf’s that the class does not need because we need help! Just the nerf’s I mentioned here already outweigh all the small decent stuff they did for the class. The acknowledgement that pets are broken and not working as intended but they refuse to fix it out of fear of breaking something else. Name me one other class who’s class mechanic is broken and ANet refuses to fix? And that the class mechanic is ‘suppose’ to be responsible for 30% of their damage which they are not receiving because of the broken class mechanic! Don’t take this as a personal attack, and if you did then I apologize as of now. I just get frustrated when I see people posting stuff on the ranger forum as making it seem that we’re doing good when in reality we are sub par compared to other classes, and yes, I know about other classes, I also have an 80 thief, 80 warrior, and 80 mesmer. I can kill more and die less with those three classes then I can with the ranger, and I play the ranger more then them.

Akisame.9508:

You only mentioned the stuff that was added. How about mentioning all of the nerf’s we got, like Pet damage being nerfed, short bow damage being nerfed (and calling it an animation fix), Short bow being nerfed a second time for range. Endurance regen nerf, barrage damage nerf, and the list goes on. Nerf’s that the class does not need because we need help! Just the nerf’s I mentioned here already outweigh all the small decent stuff they did for the class. The acknowledgement that pets are broken and not working as intended but they refuse to fix it out of fear of breaking something else. Name me one other class who’s class mechanic is broken and ANet refuses to fix? And that the class mechanic is ‘suppose’ to be responsible for 30% of their damage which they are not receiving because of the broken class mechanic! Don’t take this as a personal attack, and if you did then I apologize as of now. I just get frustrated when I see people posting stuff on the ranger forum as making it seem that we’re doing good when in reality we are sub par compared to other classes, and yes, I know about other classes, I also have an 80 thief, 80 warrior, and 80 mesmer. I can kill more and die less with those three classes then I can with the ranger, and I play the ranger more then them.

I have a Guardian and a Thief, and I only started playing Ranger recently (tried it at launch and hated it) because I enjoy the changes to the class. I know they’re small, and on the whole Rangers have been nerfed, but the class is very strong in areas that other classes are very weak in. Balanced? Perhaps not, but with the way I like to play, this seems like my best class at the moment.

Pets definitely need to be fixed. They need to do a bunch of programming to make them an exception in the server side code so that they think/respond faster. This will make them stop stuttering whenever something changes (incoming command, person runs away, etc.) and will allow them to add other fixes like making pets dodge when you dodge, or something similar to fix the dungeon problem.

Anthony.7219:

Akisame.9508:

You only mentioned the stuff that was added. How about mentioning all of the nerf’s we got, like Pet damage being nerfed, short bow damage being nerfed (and calling it an animation fix), Short bow being nerfed a second time for range. Endurance regen nerf, barrage damage nerf, and the list goes on. Nerf’s that the class does not need because we need help! Just the nerf’s I mentioned here already outweigh all the small decent stuff they did for the class. The acknowledgement that pets are broken and not working as intended but they refuse to fix it out of fear of breaking something else. Name me one other class who’s class mechanic is broken and ANet refuses to fix? And that the class mechanic is ‘suppose’ to be responsible for 30% of their damage which they are not receiving because of the broken class mechanic! Don’t take this as a personal attack, and if you did then I apologize as of now. I just get frustrated when I see people posting stuff on the ranger forum as making it seem that we’re doing good when in reality we are sub par compared to other classes, and yes, I know about other classes, I also have an 80 thief, 80 warrior, and 80 mesmer. I can kill more and die less with those three classes then I can with the ranger, and I play the ranger more then them.

I have a Guardian and a Thief, and I only started playing Ranger recently (tried it at launch and hated it) because I enjoy the changes to the class. I know they’re small, and on the whole Rangers have been nerfed, but the class is very strong in areas that other classes are very weak in. Balanced? Perhaps not, but with the way I like to play, this seems like my best class at the moment.

Pets definitely need to be fixed. They need to do a bunch of programming to make them an exception in the server side code so that they think/respond faster. This will make them stop stuttering whenever something changes (incoming command, person runs away, etc.) and will allow them to add other fixes like making pets dodge when you dodge, or something similar to fix the dungeon problem.

The suggestions you’re making were made a year ago. Devs responded saying that the changes would be gamebreaking lol. Rangers are incredibly fun, but equally frustrating.

Heres some tips:
-Pet running off and randomly attacking neighbors? Put it on passive and F1 only when you want it to attack. You also benefit from being able to attack 2 targets at once and your pet will stop coming back and attack whatever target you’re hitting.
-F2 skill responding too slow? Not responding at all? F3 quickly before F2 to interrupt whatever the AI was about to do.
-Sword autoattack roots you? Turn of autoattack. Or switch weapons/use other weapon skills to interrupt your autoattack.

It takes a while to learn the workarounds for rangers. Even though I main a ranger, I still forget to do these things sometimes Have fun!

Akisame.9508:

You only mentioned the stuff that was added. How about mentioning all of the nerf’s we got, like Pet damage being nerfed, short bow damage being nerfed (and calling it an animation fix), Short bow being nerfed a second time for range. Endurance regen nerf, barrage damage nerf, and the list goes on. Nerf’s that the class does not need because we need help! Just the nerf’s I mentioned here already outweigh all the small decent stuff they did for the class. The acknowledgement that pets are broken and not working as intended but they refuse to fix it out of fear of breaking something else. Name me one other class who’s class mechanic is broken and ANet refuses to fix? And that the class mechanic is ‘suppose’ to be responsible for 30% of their damage which they are not receiving because of the broken class mechanic! Don’t take this as a personal attack, and if you did then I apologize as of now. I just get frustrated when I see people posting stuff on the ranger forum as making it seem that we’re doing good when in reality we are sub par compared to other classes, and yes, I know about other classes, I also have an 80 thief, 80 warrior, and 80 mesmer. I can kill more and die less with those three classes then I can with the ranger, and I play the ranger more then them.

Thanks for covering the negative adjustments. Don’t exactly recall weapon damage numbers off the top of my head so those changes aren’t obvious looking at a skill calculator, where oddly I have a very good memory for traits. Was hoping someone would chime in with what they were.

Some of them had also occurred before I left such as the ahem “animation fix” for SB. I do believe I mentioned the endurance regen change but wasn’t aware barrage had been adjusted. SB range also didn’t catch my attention and pet damage – like that’s ever been predictable. Guess they didn’t like 25 stack MB/sick em bombs?

Just trying to get a baseline for changes so my test specs don’t cover useless already covered territory. Honestly alot doesn’t seem to have changed. Spirit bunkers weren’t meta but they already worked. Have yet to determine if they are working any better.

Shouts finally got some reason to be listed as utilities you might even use more than 1 of and some of the power changes may be interesting.

They did get some of my wishlist. Controllable blast finisher, offhand axe getting a retaliation the pull an extra bonus. LB is better. MoC makes me want to break some piggies out and recycle some older power builds.

Sube Dai.8496:

Detharos.3157:

Made a big complicated post, but what it comes down too.. power ranger is just weaker than condi ranger because it’s an ACTIVE play build in a meta that supports PASSIVE play builds. On condi ranger, you can launch 3-4 fire and forget attacks stacking 2000-3000/second ticks on your enemies and then focus entirely on evading and kiting while that just keeps ticking away hurting your enemies even though you’re running around with swoop and leaps. On power builds, you can either hurt your enemies or avoid attacks and kite… you cannot do both simultaneously like condition builds. Every time you attack you are exposed to danger, and because you must attack more than a condi build to pressure your foes, you are also exposed to more enemy attack and burst sequences for longer periods. When a consequential period where you are heavily damaged and most start kiting away happens, you are not pressuring your enemies simultaneously like condi.. which means your enemies if they get the better of you can pressure you a lot more while not worrying about their health bar when you are on the defensive. They have less need to watch their health bar when you are fleeing from them, whereas with a condi build they still have to worry about healing themselves and curing their conditions, and trying to time their heal to go off when they are not poisoned which they frequently are.

That coupled with the fact that condi just seems to scale better and that it ignores toughness means that even condition removal rich builds get hurt more by condition damage than physical damage reduction builds (via evade/invuln/protection/whatever) get hurt by physical damage.

In the end you get this stupid situation where many power rangers get screwed over because our pet doesn’t work, but because condition rangers are built so that the pet is not as much a key issue to them, they get in arguments with us that buffs and fixes to the pet will make them (And I say only them) OP and is consequently not fair for the class. Which is total bullkitten, pets could be fixed and then the condition output on the popular condition weapons could be reduced to accommodate for higher pet hit ratios. It’d be as simply as giving all melee pets an auto-casting distance closer skill like swoop and an attack combo on their auto attack that pounces like sword one while simultaneously reducing the numbers on the condition staples. Condi builds would still have the same damage, just delivered differently with the pet contributing more than before. Power builds would become more viable as the pet would be holding us back less with less grotesque miss ratios.

To bad there are as many brainless condi rangers as incompetent balance team members who don’t get that and have the same objections, so this class never gets anywhere on the forums.

I agree with what you’ve said, but I’d argue that the non-working pet and the high toughness/protection of enemies simply means that our power builds don’t do enough damage.

I mean even full glass rangers don’t hit that hard IMO, but maybe that’s because they can’t live long enough to get off their burst.

The problem is we really only have burst with Maul and that’s it. LB lacks the utility to make it good for anything other than sniping at max range where it does decent presure but only because you are far enough away to not lower dps by trying to kite or dodge. Pretty much everything else we have is either a condition attack or a dodge skill that means they all do terrible damage. We don’t even have decent power build utilities that don’t require 30 marks to use.

The other major problem with the build is we have very little in the way of sustain that doesn’t need an entire build. Regen tank is very solid but requires 30 into natures, 2 utilites and 10 into beast to make it work. It also needs a hefty amount of healing power so you are also limited in what you can use for equipment. It’s just silly that I can make a regen/condi build with 50/50 dire/apoth and have much more health, armor, sustain, mobility, and dps than any power build I could make ever would. Honestly, the only downsides of the build is that it lacks real aoe and degen sucks in pve right now.

Substance E.4852:

The problem is we really only have burst with Maul and that’s it. LB lacks the utility to make it good for anything other than sniping at max range where it does decent presure but only because you are far enough away to not lower dps by trying to kite or dodge. Pretty much everything else we have is either a condition attack or a dodge skill that means they all do terrible damage. We don’t even have decent power build utilities that don’t require 30 marks to use.

Rapid Fire does not calculate Range as damage. It is only for Long Range shot. Which means you can be in any range you want to make full use of Rapid fire.

Rapid Fire does good damage, Maul does good damage. Combine them both, and you get great damage.

I find that Rapid Fire’s long channeled time is actually very useful. Whenever I use rapid fire, the enemy tends to use dodge twice to dodge almost all of my arrows.This depletes their endurance for the GS. If they dodge once, they will take most of the hits. If they don’t dodge at all, 7k of their hp will disappear. Follow it up with Maul and the enemy will have to fight with very little hp left.

It sounds like that you want to play with one weapon only. Rangers are meant to be a weapon switching class. Look at Tail wind and furious grip, they grant boons when you switch weapons.

runeblade.7514:

Rapid Fire does good damage, Maul does good damage.

I have not tested it personally, but a lot of people here keep on mentioning that the regular #1 attack does better damage then rapid fire. So if this is the case, then Rapid Fire does not do good damage. However, I agree that Maul does good damage, however, it’s the only skill we have that does good damage and it’s easily avoided because it has a huge and long ‘tell’ that lets your opponent know what’s coming.

Akisame.9508:

runeblade.7514:

Rapid Fire does good damage, Maul does good damage.

I have not tested it personally, but a lot of people here keep on mentioning that the regular #1 attack does better damage then rapid fire. So if this is the case, then Rapid Fire does not do good damage. However, I agree that Maul does good damage, however, it’s the only skill we have that does good damage and it’s easily avoided because it has a huge and long ‘tell’ that lets your opponent know what’s coming.

Rapid fire does good damage, long range shot does good damage at a range of > 1000. Rapid fire also applies 10 stacks of vulnerability, and it makes the two very close to the same damage (auto attack and rapid fire). The difference being that Rapid Fire works at less than 1000 range and long range shot doesn’t.

Ex: The coef on long range shot > 1000 is 0.9 with an attack speed of 1, the coef on rapid fire is 3.75 but with the vuln stacks (only considering the rapid fire attack itself) that boots itself up to 3.92 with an attack speed of 4.5 seconds. 3.92/4.5 = 0.871, so a tiny bit less damage, but everything you do for the next 5.5 seconds is doing 10% more damage, so id hardly consider the skill useless.

FYI, its not the only skill in the game that is technically less damaging than an auto attack. I’ve found others with minimal searching.

Rapid fire, due to the lack of range restriction, is also a much ‘easier’ skill to use properly than long range shot.

runeblade.7514:

Substance E.4852:

The problem is we really only have burst with Maul and that’s it. LB lacks the utility to make it good for anything other than sniping at max range where it does decent presure but only because you are far enough away to not lower dps by trying to kite or dodge. Pretty much everything else we have is either a condition attack or a dodge skill that means they all do terrible damage. We don’t even have decent power build utilities that don’t require 30 marks to use.

Rapid Fire does not calculate Range as damage. It is only for Long Range shot. Which means you can be in any range you want to make full use of Rapid fire.

Rapid Fire does good damage, Maul does good damage. Combine them both, and you get great damage.

I find that Rapid Fire’s long channeled time is actually very useful. Whenever I use rapid fire, the enemy tends to use dodge twice to dodge almost all of my arrows.This depletes their endurance for the GS. If they dodge once, they will take most of the hits. If they don’t dodge at all, 7k of their hp will disappear. Follow it up with Maul and the enemy will have to fight with very little hp left.

It sounds like that you want to play with one weapon only. Rangers are meant to be a weapon switching class. Look at Tail wind and furious grip, they grant boons when you switch weapons.

Finally, someone who sounds like they’re not insane

Anthony.7219:

so id hardly consider the skill useless.

Well, I didn’t call it useless. I was just trying to state that it wasn’t that big of a DPS skill when your comparing it to Maul. I agree that Rapid shot has it’s uses, and it’s not useless, but I wouldn’t call it a high dps skill like Maul. That’s all I meant by comparing it to our #1 skill.

Substance E.4852:

Sube Dai.8496:

Detharos.3157:

Made a big complicated post, but what it comes down too.. power ranger is just weaker than condi ranger because it’s an ACTIVE play build in a meta that supports PASSIVE play builds. On condi ranger, you can launch 3-4 fire and forget attacks stacking 2000-3000/second ticks on your enemies and then focus entirely on evading and kiting while that just keeps ticking away hurting your enemies even though you’re running around with swoop and leaps. On power builds, you can either hurt your enemies or avoid attacks and kite… you cannot do both simultaneously like condition builds. Every time you attack you are exposed to danger, and because you must attack more than a condi build to pressure your foes, you are also exposed to more enemy attack and burst sequences for longer periods. When a consequential period where you are heavily damaged and most start kiting away happens, you are not pressuring your enemies simultaneously like condi.. which means your enemies if they get the better of you can pressure you a lot more while not worrying about their health bar when you are on the defensive. They have less need to watch their health bar when you are fleeing from them, whereas with a condi build they still have to worry about healing themselves and curing their conditions, and trying to time their heal to go off when they are not poisoned which they frequently are.

That coupled with the fact that condi just seems to scale better and that it ignores toughness means that even condition removal rich builds get hurt more by condition damage than physical damage reduction builds (via evade/invuln/protection/whatever) get hurt by physical damage.

In the end you get this stupid situation where many power rangers get screwed over because our pet doesn’t work, but because condition rangers are built so that the pet is not as much a key issue to them, they get in arguments with us that buffs and fixes to the pet will make them (And I say only them) OP and is consequently not fair for the class. Which is total bullkitten, pets could be fixed and then the condition output on the popular condition weapons could be reduced to accommodate for higher pet hit ratios. It’d be as simply as giving all melee pets an auto-casting distance closer skill like swoop and an attack combo on their auto attack that pounces like sword one while simultaneously reducing the numbers on the condition staples. Condi builds would still have the same damage, just delivered differently with the pet contributing more than before. Power builds would become more viable as the pet would be holding us back less with less grotesque miss ratios.

To bad there are as many brainless condi rangers as incompetent balance team members who don’t get that and have the same objections, so this class never gets anywhere on the forums.

I agree with what you’ve said, but I’d argue that the non-working pet and the high toughness/protection of enemies simply means that our power builds don’t do enough damage.

I mean even full glass rangers don’t hit that hard IMO, but maybe that’s because they can’t live long enough to get off their burst.

We don’t even have decent power build utilities that don’t require 30 marks to use.

Not true – survival has some nice utilities. However since every class can get high toughness through gear and that has a huge impact on how hard you hit them….. Being a kiting predator preying on squishies isn’t what it is in other games.

So the utilities marksmanship opens up are nice.

in spvp where your only job is to hold or capture a tiny point and you or your pet dont need to move the pet is not bad. but a newbie with half brain learn after the first encounter and just move around you and you will lose half of your dmg. maul and rapid fire are slow and very spotable. utilitys need 30 points, no aoe or decent cc. roots die from 1-2 hits if not miss what happens every time… i think they want this class to be bad. if u meet a ranger, u know u will win and if u reroll you will feel the power!

Akisame.9508:

Anthony.7219:

so id hardly consider the skill useless.

Well, I didn’t call it useless. I was just trying to state that it wasn’t that big of a DPS skill when your comparing it to Maul. I agree that Rapid shot has it’s uses, and it’s not useless, but I wouldn’t call it a high dps skill like Maul. That’s all I meant by comparing it to our #1 skill.

Was comparing it to #1 longbow attack. Maul is on a melee weapon, pretty standard to run with 1 melee and 1 ranged so you can adapt to the current situation unless you’re trying to be really niche.

McWolfy.5924:

in spvp where your only job is to hold or capture a tiny point and you or your pet dont need to move the pet is not bad. but a newbie with half brain learn after the first encounter and just move around you and you will lose half of your dmg. maul and rapid fire are slow and very spotable. utilitys need 30 points, no aoe or decent cc. roots die from 1-2 hits if not miss what happens every time… i think they want this class to be bad. if u meet a ranger, u know u will win and if u reroll you will feel the power!

Only a couple of classes are obviously/significantly better, most are just different.

but that diference make them better

McWolfy.5924:

but that diference make them better

No…

Arrys.7145:

Substance E.4852:

Sube Dai.8496:

Detharos.3157:

Made a big complicated post, but what it comes down too.. power ranger is just weaker than condi ranger because it’s an ACTIVE play build in a meta that supports PASSIVE play builds. On condi ranger, you can launch 3-4 fire and forget attacks stacking 2000-3000/second ticks on your enemies and then focus entirely on evading and kiting while that just keeps ticking away hurting your enemies even though you’re running around with swoop and leaps. On power builds, you can either hurt your enemies or avoid attacks and kite… you cannot do both simultaneously like condition builds. Every time you attack you are exposed to danger, and because you must attack more than a condi build to pressure your foes, you are also exposed to more enemy attack and burst sequences for longer periods. When a consequential period where you are heavily damaged and most start kiting away happens, you are not pressuring your enemies simultaneously like condi.. which means your enemies if they get the better of you can pressure you a lot more while not worrying about their health bar when you are on the defensive. They have less need to watch their health bar when you are fleeing from them, whereas with a condi build they still have to worry about healing themselves and curing their conditions, and trying to time their heal to go off when they are not poisoned which they frequently are.

That coupled with the fact that condi just seems to scale better and that it ignores toughness means that even condition removal rich builds get hurt more by condition damage than physical damage reduction builds (via evade/invuln/protection/whatever) get hurt by physical damage.

In the end you get this stupid situation where many power rangers get screwed over because our pet doesn’t work, but because condition rangers are built so that the pet is not as much a key issue to them, they get in arguments with us that buffs and fixes to the pet will make them (And I say only them) OP and is consequently not fair for the class. Which is total bullkitten, pets could be fixed and then the condition output on the popular condition weapons could be reduced to accommodate for higher pet hit ratios. It’d be as simply as giving all melee pets an auto-casting distance closer skill like swoop and an attack combo on their auto attack that pounces like sword one while simultaneously reducing the numbers on the condition staples. Condi builds would still have the same damage, just delivered differently with the pet contributing more than before. Power builds would become more viable as the pet would be holding us back less with less grotesque miss ratios.

To bad there are as many brainless condi rangers as incompetent balance team members who don’t get that and have the same objections, so this class never gets anywhere on the forums.

I agree with what you’ve said, but I’d argue that the non-working pet and the high toughness/protection of enemies simply means that our power builds don’t do enough damage.

I mean even full glass rangers don’t hit that hard IMO, but maybe that’s because they can’t live long enough to get off their burst.

We don’t even have decent power build utilities that don’t require 30 marks to use.

Not true – survival has some nice utilities. However since every class can get high toughness through gear and that has a huge impact on how hard you hit them….. Being a kiting predator preying on squishies isn’t what it is in other games.

So the utilities marksmanship opens up are nice.

Zephyer and Reflexes are obviously good and only get better with the cd reduction trait, but the only ones we have specifically made to increase attack damage (hunt and wild signet) need 30 into marks to use.

Everything else we have is very niche and designed to fit a specific build (trapper, spirit, natures voice spam). You can use them to fill your bar in a power build but most if not all of them are designed to be optimal with the appropriate traits.

I can’t really comment too much on muddy terrain as I’ve had, at best, mixed success with it. I find it would be much better if we could have a version that insta casts at your feet like an untraited trap.

The dev team should just tell the interface team to add an interface option cast aoe at my feet. Don’t waste class balance resources.

So, after a year I consider coming back and the ranger has changed… not at all. What an utter disappointment. Does it really take more than a year for a developer to fix a class that they murdered at launch? Guess I won’t be returning after all. Be back in another year(surely that’s enough tie to fix the ranger, right?) Anyone have any suggestions on good MMOs to play in the meantime?