Guild Wars 2

I run a full berserker build in WvW and have absolutely no problems. I use sb/lb and rarely die. I found it a lot harder to run a full knight set up… or knight/valk combo.

The way I look at it is, that rangers for the most part are sub par in terms of abilities when paired up against any other class. For this reason use what 1 strength the ranger has.. distance. I kill almost all my targets long before they ever reach me, or before they even know what hit them. I maybe die at most 1 time per hour.

I personally think rangers suck at 1vs1; I also suck at 1vs1, so you’ll never find me engaging in any battle where it could turn 1vs1. If I notice a 1vs1 battle going on, and I can slip in undetected, I’ll get them almost all the time.

I’ve found that dropping the AoE from the LB (which usually causes nearly everyone to expend their endurance), followed by rapid fire, will usually hit somebody (between the 2) 17K-28K + whatever damage the pet can muster.

If I take my warrior or Ele into WvW, I can’t do that sheer amount of damage I can with the ranger. Sure I’m better in 1vs1 battles, but to me those are meaningless. All I care about is sniping, helping wiping out/defending against zergs, and collecting a ton of loot bags. No matter which way I try, I cannot do that on either my warrior or ele effectively.

I know the ranger struggles with sheer dps in comparison to a warrior, but my warrior can’t take out a large amount of targets like my ranger can.

Buffs on pets? Are you kidding? Kiting/runner rangers spamming traps is worst enough.

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

Between the Power and crit of this particular build, Rapid fire is dealing 10k damage over its duration, and it does it at any range. This build does not use quickening zephyr. Please read the related posts before you make a comment. I can understand that much of that math carries over no matter the crit/damage of a build, but that just makes it a matter of starting with Barrage/Huntershot and auto attacks at max range then swapping to Rapid fire as they begin to close, in order to optimize damage.

Oberon Vex.1389:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

Between the Power and crit of this particular build, Rapid fire is dealing 10k damage over its duration, and it does it at any range. This build does not use quickening zephyr. Please read the related posts before you make a comment. I can understand that much of that math carries over no matter the crit/damage of a build, but that just makes it a matter of starting with Barrage/Huntershot and auto attacks at max range then swapping to Rapid fire as they begin to close, in order to optimize damage.

Using Rapid Fire doesn’t optimize damage, period. If something is within the range that your damage with auto attack reaches the point of being lesser than Rapid Fire, you need to change weapons; trying to fight at <500 range with a long bow isn’t a very smart idea.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Oberon Vex.1389:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

Between the Power and crit of this particular build, Rapid fire is dealing 10k damage over its duration, and it does it at any range. This build does not use quickening zephyr. Please read the related posts before you make a comment. I can understand that much of that math carries over no matter the crit/damage of a build, but that just makes it a matter of starting with Barrage/Huntershot and auto attacks at max range then swapping to Rapid fire as they begin to close, in order to optimize damage.

Using Rapid Fire doesn’t optimize damage, period. If something is within the range that your damage with auto attack reaches the point of being lesser than Rapid Fire, you need to change weapons; trying to fight at <500 range with a long bow isn’t a very smart idea.

If using it in-lieu of your auto attack grants more damage, that is optimizing damage. There is no penalty to using Rapidfire in closequarters. And yes you can swap weapons. As I have stated numerous times in this thread, I do not use longbow exclusively.

In all honesty I’m getting tired of defending myself, when I really shouldn’t have to. This is my build, it works for me, and I am happy with it; I will continue to use it. I posted this set-up because I do get decent direct damage and I am sick and tired of people complaining that rangers are underpowered. If you like the sound of the build, give it a try. If you are so strongly opposed to this build, or the Longbow in general, I do not expect you to change your mind just because I say it works.

I really do not think that there is anything left to debate with the longbow or this build. I will not respond to non-constructive criticism any further as I am not interested in hearing your complaints of the weaponset or ranger class in general nor your assertions of “____” class doing X much more damage. From half the comments left on this thread I am lead to believe that a solid portion of you haven’t even read the posts in here. If you have a question or concern about the build that has not been addressed, I will respond. If you want to spew more vitriol, however, you are wasting your time; there are certain of you who are clearly not listening to what I have to say and I see no point in paying any attention to you.

Oberon Vex.1389:

solrik.6028:

If someone has 2000 power, against 2000 armor, with a 50% bonus crit damage and 50% crit chance then the “expected” damage would be 2000*4.8/2 – 0.5 * 2000 * 4.8 / 2 + 2000 * 4.8 / 2. You can not just expect damage because the difference between 2k and 3k armor is a thousand.

To me it just seems you are throwing out numbers that are just “magical” and tell you something.

You are saying it takes crit chance and crit damage, two variables that varies from build to build, to calculate the power. My question was asking for what crit chance and crit damage was used.

Sure we can compare AC and Barrage:
Ac Pros:
-Fire and forget
-100% sustained damage
-Anyone can use it
-Does not need line of sight to be fired
-Longer range
-Constant damage
Ac cons:
-Takes time to set up
-Can not be moved

Barrage pros:
-High damage (thanks to critical)
-Does not need setup
-Mobile
Barrage cons:
-Channeled
-Needs line of sight (Thus endangering the player)
-1/8 of players can use Barrage, granted they all have longbows

I am not saying I dislike Barrage, I always use it when I can, even if I am sitting on arrow cart.

Arrow cart is superior though because anyone can use it while the Barrage can only be used by the rangers every 25 seconds and is most likely to fail dealing full damage because it is easily avoided. The arrow cart can deal the same damage but on different areas. E.g. infront of a retreating enemy group to cripple (the ranger lacks the range for this)

Solrik, I don’t think I can make this any clearer than I have. The crit-chance and crit damage, and the power, used in my calculation are in my build. The effective power I used is in my build. They are not random figures I made up to prove a point. I can expect 69k damage from barrage on average (meaning sometimes it WILL hit lower and sometimes it WILL hit harder). I used the same math that you provided against the same armor target; I really can’t see how you can think I am manipulating the numbers.

Barrage is superior to an Arrow Cart because it deals the same damage over its cooldown, but in the first four seconds. That’s burst vs sustain.

Also, Arrow carts still need line of site to place the target, its just less buggy than the barrage LoS.

Additionally you can hardly call ‘requiring a longbow’ or ‘requires being ranger’ a con for a skill that is on the ranger’s longbow; you cant use Barrage without a longbow. It is a benefit that other classes can use the arrowcart while the Ranger uses barrage, it lets a player not set up to deal decent ranged damage use the arrowcart and still output the damage and be useful in the keep/castle/whatever defense.

Do you even play WvW? An arrow cart is superior to Barrage in pretty much every way possible. You also don’t take reflected retaliate damage from an AC volley either which is pretty kitten nice since a barrage on a teir 1 zerg will take about 9-10k of life on a busy night.

An AC can also hit 50 people per pulse as opposed to barrage’s 5. There is just no way within the confines of game rules that you can deal more damage to more people at greater range than an AC with barrage.

Oh and the next update will bring an AC perk line to WvW so they will get even better.

Oberon – I’ve been playing around with the build and have to say, as longbow builds go, this is the one to use.

63 badges since my last comment on this thread. The only ranger build I’ve played that does comparable damage in a wvwvw setting is the catmaster, and to me, this one feels more fun.

Changes in how I’m rocking it vs what’s posted as the build – PVT armour with runes of the ranger (it’s what I had) ‘zerker weapons and trinkets, and I pulled 5 from marksman for wilderness survival (just didn’t feel right without my endurance regen.)

so, 25/25/5/10/5 instead of the suggested 30/25/5/10/5. Works for me, and I’ll admit to being surprised at how well.

Still not a huge fan of the longbow (anyone really paying attention can avoid being hit) but the build does what it claims to.

Oberon Vex.1389:

@ Bailey:
I uhhh… estimated 40 min in a fractal. They can be done quite quickly depending on scenario and group, but I thought I’d be conservative with my assumption on player skill. In either case that’s still less than one hour a day for fractal running :/

Also: I can’t say I’ve ever really had an issue with the pet. At least not game-breaking difficulties. What I would like to see, is just give the pet an auto attack that it does by itself, make F1 a toggle “attack my target/return” and replace the F3/F4 with the other two attacks the pet has access to (the pet class ones). They could easily just make another hotkey for swapping pet. I would even take just having the control attack the pet has access to (knockdown/cripple/condition removal, most pets have some form of control that they use independantly) being on a hotkey so that its on demand, if not both of them. That and make the active skill F2 actually interupt the other skills the pet does… just to make it more responsive…

@Stale:
This entire thread/build is about how the longbow isn’t as broken as everyone keeps moaning about.

I guess I missed the part where you said 2 months, daily and so forth. When I said an hor was to long thats what I meant, from start to finish. Not an hour per instance or fractal or per day but an hour total. The AI is that bad.

My guardian is similar to this. 4/6 Rubicon armor, crappy Pact greatsword.
Usually hit 700-900 on normals, with a couple stacks of my passive might i get up to 2.5-3k on crits.
Always feels good.

Oberon Vex.1389:

@Yamato:
Theives are NOT that big a problem for a ranger with a longbow. Unless they are opening from cover (aka you have no idea they are coming) you can just pop ‘Protect Me’ and take no damage from their backstab. Once out of stealth just huntershot and rapidfire. Rapidfire tracks targets in stealth, you WILL NOT lost direction and can keep pressure damage on them. Blind only blocks ONE arrow out of rapidfire. They are forced to dodgeroll. Even if all this occurs and they are able to reposition in stealth, just swap to GS and use Counterattack to block the backstab. Its not that big of a problem.

Well, I don’t know what Thieves you’re talking about, but the ones that I play against almost always hit from stealth. LB is only so effective as you lose target when the Thief goes back in stealth, and even if a Thief does SR, there’s no guarantee he’ll still be there if you fire off your Barrage volley. Up close and personal(which a lot of Thieves like it) the LB doesn’t do much. Your best bet is the SS or GS for the mobility. That said, I have a better chance at surviving and driving off a Thief with my GS. No, I can’t drill down a thief with RF and QZ(as the nerfed QZ which was WRONG and it doesn’t help as much unless you’re running high crit chance/damage spec).
Since Rangers are already on the bottom of the health pool for classes, running glass cannon just to try to burn down an enemy(esp. Thieves) takes a lot off the table for SS/GS and forces us to stay SB and LB. Where we’re vulnerable to Thieves.

I don’t know about you, but the enemies I play against have specific squads to take out backline ranged. Those squads usually consist of Thieves. Not only backline ranged, but to find and burn down commanders too. Having a Ranger glass cannon spec is more suicide than other classes by far.

Sry @

U can do 10k dmg? outsch wow :-) with LB and Rapidfire i can reach 18k ( if the opponennt didnt move xD )

But against an warrior with Rifle, our "BURST DMG " ist not rly good, try to dodge Killshot … and then u try easily to dodge Rapidfire

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.5|3.1g.h1h|1.1g.h1h|1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1|1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.1g.61.cg.61|u1ab.p5a.0.a5.5|69.1|4i.4q.4p.4y.55|e

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

It’s been tested and confirmed that longrange shot fires at 1,25 the tooltip is horribly wrong, that said I think it still out damages rapid fire at max distance.

Burnfall.9573:

Daemon,
I’ll take your word for it, however the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-H1zpdg7dU tells a whole different story. That warrior didn’t seem easy to kill, in fact his >33k kill shots were.

I’m sure everyone who were fighting that warrior made it easy for the kill shots.

I encourage you to tell that to any other class other than thief how you " feel that anet did a good job balancing them"; im sure the Engineer class would be Gracious to anet as well.

I guess I should have said they’re the easiest class for me to kill, personally I’d rather go 1v1 with a warrior than any other class but maybe that’s just me.

I wouldn’t go telling warriors in the warrior forum that Anet did a good job balancing them, I’d probably get the same response that people get here when they come in complaining that rangers are doing too much damage with their traps The only reason I made that comment is that rangers frequently compare their damage to warriors’ without considering the steps Anet has taken to balance against that high damage. If rangers could do the same burst as thieves or warriors we’d be grotesquely OP.

Did you know that longbow is also a dream weapon that allows you to do 293k damage in a single shot and out-utility thief shortbow in every way and out-damage everything that warrior does with his rifle and killshot and cannot be dodged and passes through walls!?

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This.

Burnfall.9573:

Daemon,
I’ll take your word for it, however the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-H1zpdg7dU tells a whole different story. That warrior didn’t seem easy to kill, in fact his >33k kill shots were..

Please. Killing a warrior is like beating up a small child. I honestly have to double take when I see one mentioned in a positive light in regards to them killing rangers.

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

Mug is easy to land so no I don’t think I need your “luck” and while kill shot now is a little harder it lands enough with a thief immobilizing the target.

Bailey.6892:

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

Mug is easy to land so no I don’t think I need your “luck” and while kill shot now is a little harder it lands enough with a thief immobilizing the target.

Any skill that requires teamwork with another class has some serious problems, IMO. But you will land killshot a lot just by catching people off guard, in my experience the majority of players is unable to react effectively to more than one opponent simultaneously. And the game is still populated by lots and lots of players that don’t recognize other classes’ skills, thieves waste their initiative on my super obvious greatsword block all the time even now, seven months after launch.

Daemon.4295:

Bailey.6892:

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

Mug is easy to land so no I don’t think I need your “luck” and while kill shot now is a little harder it lands enough with a thief immobilizing the target.

Any skill that requires teamwork with another class has some serious problems, IMO. But you will land killshot a lot just by catching people off guard, in my experience the majority of players is unable to react effectively to more than one opponent simultaneously. And the game is still populated by lots and lots of players that don’t recognize other classes’ skills, thieves waste their initiative on my super obvious greatsword block all the time even now, seven months after launch.

I agree, it is fairly easy to get people who are not paying attention and their are a lot of them who focus on the person in their face and won’t notice you. When I run with the thief I like it, they push one button and it calls their target, applies their poison and mugs them making my life easy, hit T aim fire loot. As for mug I seem to only really miss it on guardians if their agis pops up. Disappointing I wont be able to crit with it now.

Sad part is the ranger is the class I want to play, but it just is not where it should be and with anet I am not sure it will ever be. Maybe EA can take it over, yes I am that desperate.

Bailey.6892:

Daemon.4295:

Bailey.6892:

capuchinseven.8395:

Bailey.6892:

14 to 20k with kill shot
7k with mug
0 relying on shoddy ai

Good luck hitting me with that, ever.

Mug is easy to land so no I don’t think I need your “luck” and while kill shot now is a little harder it lands enough with a thief immobilizing the target.

Any skill that requires teamwork with another class has some serious problems, IMO. But you will land killshot a lot just by catching people off guard, in my experience the majority of players is unable to react effectively to more than one opponent simultaneously. And the game is still populated by lots and lots of players that don’t recognize other classes’ skills, thieves waste their initiative on my super obvious greatsword block all the time even now, seven months after launch.

I agree, it is fairly easy to get people who are not paying attention and their are a lot of them who focus on the person in their face and won’t notice you. When I run with the thief I like it, they push one button and it calls their target, applies their poison and mugs them making my life easy, hit T aim fire loot. As for mug I seem to only really miss it on guardians if their agis pops up. Disappointing I wont be able to crit with it now.

Sad part is the ranger is the class I want to play, but it just is not where it should be and with anet I am not sure it will ever be. Maybe EA can take it over, yes I am that desperate.

Heh, I sure hope they don’t! EA messed up SWTOR and to be honest GW2 is the most fun MMO I’ve ever played, and by far has the best combat mechanics. Ranger issues aside, the game seems to me to get better overall from patch to patch.