Guild Wars 2

I main ranger/engi and generally dig the concept of “physical damage” from a distance. Unfortunately, despite my efforts to find a good power build I don’t think power ranger is currently viable. I’ve only played GW2 for about 4 months so I don’t know if it was viable at any point earlier. Here are my suggestions:

To begin with, “ranger/hunter/archer/ad carry/whatever other ranged physical role name”‘s whole point revolves around attacks from a distance and in most cases having a pet. However, with current state of weapons and traits, you end using weapons like axe, sword, dagger, torch. I dig the diversity, but, if not all weapons are to be viable, make it so that at least 1 of the bows are. That’s just from an “roleplay” if I may say perspective.

Below are some of the issues with power ranger:
(I proceed with arguments below under the assumption that your wep sets are shortbow – melee OR longbow-melee. This assumption is made because longbow AND shortbow is just not.. Well, let’s just leave it at that).

Shortbow-melee:

You had “meh” sustain damage with 1 spam but, that’s just it. 1 spam nothing else. It wasn’t ridiculously high, it wasn’t even a big threat for anything other than thief or warrior but I guess it COULD be played. Sadly, such a build would be limited. You would need 20 points in Marksmanship (MM) for Piercing Arrows and aside that, anything between 0 and 25 in Skirmishing (SK). I also ran a variation with 20-0-30-10-10, for the passive condi removal and stealth on cc. However again, with that type of a build (even if its 20-0-30-10-10 or some 20-25-15-0-10 etc), you end up doing less damage than everybody, granted from a distance but there’s no need to bring a ranger with that type of a build. It cannot burst and its sustain damage was low. Lastly, it was super squishy. Whenever a mesmer or thief decided to give you trouble, that was it. So you end up having a glass build without the pressure of a glass cannon, which in essence isn’t viable.

Longbow-melee:

If you manage to find someone who is AFK or coordinate a reasonable amount of immobilise and daze, then yes, you could theoretically dish out a reasonable amount of burst. However, you are even more vulnerable than shortbow. Again, you would need a minimum of 20 points in MM and 25 in SK (arrow pierce and LB skill recharge), which leaves you with 25 points, 15 of which would go in WS (wilderness survival) for Companion’s def (2 sec of protection per dodge for u and pet). Therefore, you once more have no defenses except for that protection. It’s nice but if you try any type of power build, you go down faster than you can say boobs.

The above 2 paragraphs are to briefly identify some of the issues.
Suggestions (these are just suggestions and some are interdependent but most separate from each other):

-Make MM’s VII trait be available with 10 points in MM.

-Better minor traits for mm – or different. 25 points to get 1st attack crit is worthless. An idea could be: MM 5 points: First two attacks crit and apply vulnerability, 10 MM: First 4 attacks of you and pet.. etc etc, 25: 10% more crit if target below X %hp or some other kind of damage increase

-Pet abilities need to be able to be used by the player. There can be a toggle on/off to be used either like now or active and available for the player – this suggestion is further to the today’s SOTG. Give experienced players the ability to micro pets.

-Need more “useful” traits for Spvp;
MM: VI (I don’t know the extent of its usefulness in Spvp, it isn’t as valuable as other traits), IX (Maybe 5 or 7 stacks or so. This way it can actually change your damage output), XII (Get a crit after you kill someone – wow thanks for that 900-1100 (sb) or 1800 (lb)!)

SK: V (maybe more stacks for same duration or same stacks for longer duration – when you play power you’d probably use CC pets not cats and such, thus they do much less damage. If you are gonna waste points on being squishy with these traits might as well get some pressure out of the pet even if it’s only for 2-3 of its hits), IX (needs to be a little more crit dmg, maybe 15% and some crit strike perhaps because atm it’s far from being useful), XII, – (ranger has no “big” attack or ability, thus a mere 150% means nothing. Make it like a 20% dmg increase for 3-5 seconds or something along those lines)

WS: XII (I don’t know to what extent this trait is appealing. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve always found 3 condis every 10 seconds better – just my humble opinion. Perhaps, if ranger actually gets viable power builds, this trait would allow you to score a kill by being harder to get killed towards the ‘end’ – just theorycraft at this point).

[To be continued on comment below yo]

[POST PART TWO]
-Longbow skills: Not enough pressure. Maybe if longbow 1 applied vulnerability (1 stack probably up to a fixed cap) and made 3 some kind of burst skill? Or LB 3 could perhaps be “X next shots do Y more dmg and shizz”.

-Longbow 5: Somewhat acceptable damage, long cooldown. Maybe a few seconds less? I could possibly agree with removing the cripple and giving much shorter cooldown or just less cooldown with cripple still on. Again, just ideas

-Shortbow skills are OK for power. Again, you have 0 burst whatsoever with SB abilities but I suppose if it’s changed so as to reflect a good amount of sustainable damage, it could be enough.

-Another idea could be to make ranger weapon skills interact with each other or with the traits. For instance, if your bonus condition damage is higher than your bonus power, certain skill(s) of SB and/or LB change. [For instance, SB 4 and 5 could apply some conditions if bonus cond>bonus power – I’m out of ideas as to the specifics, but I like the concept] {my favorite one so far}

-The above suggestion itches for this one: “What if you build for almost same bonus power and condi? should there be a third category of different skills for that?” Why not

-When LB is equipped and you channel either 2 or 5, have X % less damage taken. Since you are stuck in the target’s line of sight for that duration, might as well mitigate the penalty of no-kiting.

-A new trait that gives you stability everytime you start channel for 2-4 seconds (just to finish LB 2 or 5) with a 10-15 sec recharge. It might sound OP but it would basically make a glass cannon stand still and take your damage. It’d enable the ranger to choose between downing someone but risk going down himself. And since you would be a glass cannon power ranger to hurt somebody, despite that 10-20 or whatever less % damage, two people will hurt your feelings in a nasty way if they focus you.

-Another idea is, if you trait 20/30 in MM, you get 1500 range on LB which is pretty sweet but there are plenty of downsides to it. A lot of times people spot you and try to get away from that and by the time the arrow arrives they’re gone. Maybe, it could make arrows that travel further than 800 or 1000 range to do extra damage to targets they pierce. This way even if your primary target escapes or outranges you, you have put SOME pressure in the process to unwanted targets.

-Also, if targeting someone at further than 800 or so range, you get a stacking buff that increases your arrows’ damage or make them apply certain effects. This effect can either stack in intesity – as in more % dmg or effects dealt or in amount of attacks.

-LB 2 can be changed to 2-4 rapid shots after a short channel (0.5-1sec?) or a big charged shot that’d deal a lot of damage. Either way, it cannot stay the way it is – too easy to be dodged / LoSed.

-LB 1 besides applying vulnerability up to a certain cap (as mentioned above already), can also grant allies near the target a might stack (again, to a certain cap) – provided that the target is further than 800-1000 range.

-Some type of passive for all LB attacks where, the more targets arrows pierce the different or more effects they have. So that if you pay attention and practice your positioning you can be rewarded for it.

-One idea could be to implement some kind of “spike” ability, that would make power-ranger desired for setups with high burst. For instance, make LB 3 apply a “mark” on somebody (similar to the concept of ’Hunter’s Mark’ from WoW) and that person would be unable to block/ take increased % damage/ lose his endurance (any combination of these). This way it would make it a similar in concept but different kind of mesmer’s Moa. [Could be "target loses half his endurance and takes 10% increased damage for 5-7 seconds, 20 sec cooldown – this combined with some careful practice, u can watch for weapon swap, burn his endurance and spike dat]

I apologize in advance for the lack of TL;DR but I spent far too much time writing this to give out a short summary. I do not in any way imply that all of the above suggestions are to be seen or implemented together, they are just several ideas and/or possible solutions. I posted this here as well as Spvp forums. Unfortunately I didn’t think of this forum when I initially wrote it.
This is it, just my humble opinion. Constructive criticism and comments more than welcum!

Bows should given the most attention of all ranger’s weapons imo. +1

now that sb is nerfed better expect some nerfs to sword and axe.
how else can u get ppl to use longbow.
not trolling
just following arenanet logic

Both sword and axe are viable. Testing has also shown that barrage can put the Lb ahead of SB at any range.

The issue is that the SB has always been easy street. The sword has always dished out more damage but there is a learning curve. Before the buffs axes were not viable.

The recent changes puts each weapon in a more ridget role. While before you could get by justing using the sb. It wasnt optimal but it was adequet. Now if you dont use them in their strongest roles your performance suffers.

Some rangers use to say that if they saw a ranger using a long bow and a bear they automatically new they were a bad ranger. The sad fact is these rangers don’t know that the long bow can alwys out perform the sb in a skilled rangers hand. The long bow also provides vulneriblity to benifit the whole team.

The sb changes are forcing rangers to be better rangers. To consider there weapon and pet choices. Not to auto attack to win with the short bow.

Anet is not your daddy they should not have to push you in a direction so you can better yourself. When don’t need Anet to tell us our roles. We should be show Anet how we want to play and they will help us by bringing in the tools we need. As long as our vision for the class doesnt contradict what they invision.

Settler gear helped the ranger I’m not to sure about the celestial gear but I wouldnt be surprised.

How can we get people to use the long bow. We can’t. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t force him to drink.

You have been lead yet alot of you refuse to drink. Rangers adapt. If you can not adapt you will be lost. Fear not, for if you fall to the wayside take comfort in the fact that you will serve as a milestone on the path of the Rangers evolution.

A cautionary tale to urge your brother and sisters forward and a deterant to those who are not worthy of joining our ranks. Ranger is not an easy class to play.

If easy and OP is what you were looking for when you made a ranger then you picked the wrong class.

To begin with, sorry I am responding so late, I literally lost track of this post. Secondly, I am a little bad with the forum tools, so I’m afraid I won’t be using the quote tool but I’ll do it manually instead.

@Serraphin Storm.2369
“The sad fact is these rangers don’t know that the long bow can alwys out perform the sb in a skilled rangers hand. The long bow also provides vulneriblity to benifit the whole team.”

If you believe that statement mate, then I’m afraid you have not seen a skilled ranger’s hand. The current longbow, in a TPVP context, is a terrible weapon that cannot perform any role even on a mediocre level. It can’t duel, it’s not a long range nuke, it’s not a sustain damage weapon, it can’t spike/burst. I suppose if you are a hotjoin player, I can see why you would think that. But, in tournaments, on a level where people know all classes even a little bit and teams are organised, you cannot play LB with a straight face, I am sorry but that statement is very wrong.

“The sb changes are forcing rangers to be better rangers. To consider there weapon and pet choices. Not to auto attack to win with the short bow.”

If you played power ranger and you won anything at all, let alone by simple auto attacks, I am forced to think that you played in hotjoins solely and that you have never set a foot in solo tournaments, much less premade teams. Again, so far your statements have come from vastly misinformed perceptions. This is like a billionaire claiming there’s nothing wrong with this world because everybody in his neighborhood is doing OK. Yeah, of course everybody is doing OK there, but that’s far from the truth.

“Rangers adapt. If you can not adapt you will be lost. Fear not, for if you fall to the wayside take comfort in the fact that you will serve as a milestone on the path of the Rangers evolution.”

That is a well written point, but once again, comes from a vastly misinformed individual/context. Ranger players, in the same context that I have been writing this post from the start, have been doing nothing But adapting. I repeat, nothing but adapting. Trapper, to BM, to spirit. Everything and anything that might work, we tried. Well it doesn’t anymore. The nerfs didn’t stop (some of them were necessary I admit – aka pet damage) but it has to stop somewhere.

I am sorry but I cannot even begin to describe how much far from reality your answers are. It is not about opinion; some of the things you wrote are just simply wrong. There’s a fine line in any argument between facts and opinion but the majority of what you have written is in clash with facts at which point I will stop quoting and trying to answer to everything. However, and I do say this without prejudice or irony, if you wish to understand the ranger class better, feel free to add me and we’ll have a chat. I am far from a master on the topic, but I am definitely closer to understanding some part of it.

Trollmacht.4105:

now that sb is nerfed better expect some nerfs to sword and axe.
how else can u get ppl to use longbow.
not trolling
just following arenanet logic

Your post is short so i can successfully use the quote tool now!

And yes, you are right my friend. This is their logic so far. I don’t know if you watched the previous SOTG but they actually spoke that logic out loud (along the lines of “we felt LB was underutilized/UP so we nerfed shortbow to make LB more appealing”). I don’t know where to begin with that logic, I am just sad that I cannot play the class that I like in competitive tpvp, let alone the builds I love.

PS: apologies to you too, but as I wrote above, I literally lost track of the post. Sorry for the late response