Guild Wars 2

There’s one principle i learned while playing card games that i’ve held close and made my experience in videogames (especially MMORPG with all the balancing swings) less frustrating – play with the cards you have been dealt! You can complain on how you have few trump cards or how most of them are from the same color or you can adapt, make the best of your current hand and master the intricacies of how well you can play those.
Enough with the cheap pseudo-philosophy on with the purpose of of this thread:

-> To compensate some shortage on the shortbow, pun very intended, i make it almost mandatory to: – go 30 skirmish, – grab 20% reduction on shortbow, – take traps ground targeted and shorter cooldown, – go with sword/torch and shortbow;
- flame trap goes up,
- enemy ignites it, i get burning and poison up;
- flame wears off; switch to sword torch, keep burning up with 4th on torch, sting with 3 on sword;
- time the cooldown on weapons to lay down the bonfire to combo it with the shortbow;
- then flame trap is up again, rinse and repeat.

Now with the proper timing, yes it takes practice, yes it takes time to get use to it, it takes effort to perfect it and some gear to back it up; you can have a very frequent uptime of burning and poison up (bleeding on the sides), while still scraping some direct hits on 1 abilities from both weapons;
NOTE: Add things like Fire Spirit, Sharpening Stone, Viper’s nest for extra awsomeness.

Now gather around fellow rangers, tell us how you made it to OVERCOME the adversities and challenges of our class!

Ive been playing that way alot . Add in a forest spider and you get 3 more poison shoots add to short bow.

In order to effectively use spirits, i only need 10 points in nature magic and maybe some more to increase the proc chance.
As a Ranger you really have to make it count the place where the spirits are summoned, the double health from the trait helps yet doesn’t solves it.
Instead of summoning in the heat of the freight we really have to look for safe places to guard our spirits, getting out of harms way and only when it’s relatively safe, cast it.

→ I hope this catches on! I have a few more that address common complaints from the ranger community let this thread be the safe haven of those who wish to overcome instead of wanting it to be catered to their specific “wants to”.

Looking forward for some ideas!

PS: Yes the word shortbow on the title’s thread is a shameless buzz word maneuver for more visibility.

In pve I play full trap AoE – Healing Spring, Flame Trap, Frost Trap, Muddy Terrain, Entangle. Traits are 10/30/30/0/0 ground targeted traps/+50% size, Spike Trap on revive, survival/main hand/off hand/bows 20% faster cooldowns. My weapons are Shortbow/Sword + Axe. Gear is specced mostly for power/condition dmg/vitality.

As you might imagine I rely a lot on combo fields for dps due to a near complete lack of self buffs, but I never realised how dependant I was on the SB fire rate until the “animation fix.” The SB, which used to be my mainstay weapon and best source of damage, barely sees action now, as the sword/axe combo easily out performs it.

Whereas my tactics used to involve a lot of kiting and pet tanking, they now consist of standing in place, drawing enemies in with the pet, and hammering them with my melee skills. I usually plant a fire trap behind myself and use hornet sting to draw the mob onto it, then leap in for fire shield, serpent’s strike, then generally finish with path of scars. It’s very repetitive and combat is nowhere near as much fun as it was before 7 Oct. I’m going to stick it out, and hopefully get rewarded for my faith with a shiny, new profession that can call itself the king when it comes to ranged combat.

Link to build?

I have been doing something similar. While QZ/Shortbow took the nerfbat to the face, Traps dodged it unscathed. With the low CDs on Flame Trap/Viper’s Nest, it’s very easy to run a condition trap build.

Spirit Builds I haven’t tampered with. While I’ve never had an issue with Spirits dying, even untraited, the procs just seemed unnoticeable, and when they did activate, they felt highly underwhelming.

Redrumickey.9672:

Ive been playing that way alot . Add in a forest spider and you get 3 more poison shoots add to short bow.

When I use a lot of combo fields, I’m more of a fan of devourers, personally. They shoot 2x which adds a lot of extra projectile finishers in there. (Almost as many as we just lost from the nerf… almost)

I love the condition build and the strategies you described I use to run similarly. But my build is a power precision dps full berserker build with enough vit and toughness to keep me quite long lasting

I used to open with long range similar to what you do and dodge in for sword torch fun. I love sword torch it’s just brilliant. So much damage so fast. Sb never was that prominent in my combat

I was running with longbow for a while lay down traps, vulnerability, qz barrage or rapid fire, throw torch, in for some serpent strike and bonfire, dodge out with Hornet sting, stay long range or back in for fire combo some more melee and if im in danger time to repeat, lay down trap, dodge back out for long range etc

But now I’m just going pure melee bc after getting full berserker gear I have way too much dps lmao enough that qz greatsword auto attack is basically same as warrior hundred blades 14k crit. So most of the time with normal things I just swoop and hack and slash. But if its anything more interesting…

Id swoop to gap close, daze with hilt bash (if its a smart foe like wvw), entangle so they dont move around >< and maul for bleed, qz greatsword autoattack which has great aoe in itself and by then most mobs should be down to little life. If not, Maybe use the block if necessary before dropping trap for extra aoe and switch to sword torch, and use bonfire and roll around dodging most of everything xD insane aoe and damage. If im in trouble usually duck out for a breather with hornets sting, dodge roll back and heal, throw torch switch back to greatsword and long range throw sword and by then my hp should be ok and then back in again with swoop.

I usually have at least signet of renewal to keep me alive in PvE but might switch to protect me and stone signet in place of a trap if I’m in tight situations

Going pure melee actually helped me survive even better bc of all the evasions and block and great dps. Its even better than dps I do with sb. I find while ur long range first of all ur targets mostly have long range as well and can hit u from the distance u are hitting them. As well u and ur pet have a greater area covered hence u attract more aggro from behind if u move around kiting. When I stick close with my pet in melee I find it helps more. And with bows you have limited aoe so if you are dealing with swarms which for the most part u are or vets and champs else u can really do nothing and a single target will just die. So I find that most attacks on sword sets being aoe helps clear dangerous situations easiest

I run with wolves mostly in PvE, they root the targets so well with knock downs and cripple and does a lot of damage so most things are down before we’re in trouble. The fear and chill helps as well

Ppl think ranger melee doesn’t work or it’s unconventional and ineffective but it’s really really good. I prefer ranger melee over warrior or guardian any day. Our skills are in fact very practical and useful.

Sb hasn affected me much as u can see. I only rly use sb for like dragon events or champs or dungeons if I need to stay back. Sort of like that side arm

“-> To compensate some shortage on the shortbow, pun very intended, i make it almost mandatory to: – go 30 skirmish, – grab 20% reduction on shortbow, – take traps ground targeted and shorter cooldown, – go with sword/torch and shortbow;”

First of all well done, and thank you for your onwards-and-upwards attitude which I certainly seek to adopt xP

Just one minor issue, I don’t know which talents you mean, “Trapper’s expertise” (radius + targeted) and “Trap Potency” (double DoT duration + -20% cooldown time) seems to be a mandatory requirement for any trap spec, with how much they add to the abilities. If taking both of these, removes the option of also having “Quick Draw” (-20% S-bow cooldown time)

Please correct me if I am wrong, otherwise looks really fun and can’t wait to try it ^^

@WhiteDevil (quote button broke)

I personally dropped Quick Draw in favor of Trap Potency because, IMHO, Quick Draw is overrated on the shortbow. The only skills with CDs are skills 2-4, all of which are situational. I have never run into a situation where I thought, “ kitten if only I could cast Quick Shot 2 seconds sooner after I just cast it.” AFAIK, it does not affect Crossfire in any way, and considering that’s the only attack we have on the SB, I don’t see a reason to take Quick Draw.

I’d much rather have the reduced CD for Flame Trap and Viper’s Nest, both of which are great DoTs.

To make it short:
Sacrifice your utility in order to still deal less damage than any other class with utility spells.

Glass half full? Like at least our short bow doesn’t suck as much as our longbow?

@ White Devil.3176 i agree with DoomBunny.2903, but there’s room to personalization.

To keep this on-topic:

Another opportunity to adapt and overcome an adversity lies on the sword:
Yes your movement gets limited, but so does the enemy’s. It’s the glass half full all over
again, your small leap and cripple ables you to stick to a target.

To overcome, one has to time the animation with your reaction, there’s a window of opportunity where you can move your character, what i find usefull to “unstick” is to !!!-strafe away from the target and as one single process, to turn the camera into the direction of the strafe-!!!! and there you go: no stickiness. So instead of bashing dodge, just time the animation, pretty soon your reaction will be n’sync with the auto-attack.

On the other hand i think it goes without saying that abilities 2 and 3 have a flipside of the coin: not only they provide a finisher, some added damage and condition but they are actually defensive maneuvers. The golden rule though, get your lightning reflexes walk hand in hand with the sword, for that extra “unstick” machanism.

There are enough threads about “oh how ANET has it in for ranger, and how it’s all a conspiracy against rangers” so if you have no intent of providing with ideas to cope with the ranger as it is, the complaint threads are that way. Thank you for reading though. For those who thrive on adversity and find rewarding to overcome shortcomings and even flaws, keep them coming, i’m eager to read them.

Level 80 (not rushed.. so many many pve hours). I’ve been a lazy long range shooter the whole time.. until the sb patch. Never did well 1vs1 even pre patch. I decided to try lb with axe/horn and focused on chill slow downs (sigil that procs 3sec aoe on weap swap). In about 6 hours or so I went from getting steam rolled repeatedly to bag collecting frequently .. ppl don’t expect it.. took me a while to get used to timing things and it’s challenging but man it feels good to win when I do. Heck Im still shy my top tier armor and things still need tweaking.. looking forward to tomorrow.

I am feeling that with sb nerf we can rly see our melee and close range combat shine. Like it forces us to use diff stuff yes but it’s not necessarily that bad. Like condition rangers and so forth can use close range weapons as well and may be very effective. Melee has some defensive tricks and stuff to go with it that might make us effective. I think as more of us explores this we will discover some great powerful things despite our game physical / actual stat shortcomings

I’m a Wilderness Survival/Beastmaster build. Traits are 0/0/30/10/30. I almost exclusively run with Hawk & Eagle as pets. I’m focused on getting loot, so all my gear is MF and luck based. I mostly run with axe/horn and shortbow.

In PvE, forget it. Playing in PvE is like slicing warm butter. I have to get ganked by a lot of mobs with immobilize to get killed. Even in Cursed Shore, it takes a lot of Risen to take me down. Against practice dummies where the condition damage isn’t applied, my birds hit for 1500-2800 damage per attack. Against real targets, they include stacks of bleeds. It’s a sweet PvE build. Once another ranger and I just happened to meet up in a cave where there was a Champion cave troll. We didn’t know each other, but started attacking. It was more of a challenge than the normal champion because of the tight quarters. Very little room to kite or maneuver and the minion trolls kept respawning. The other ranger was a glass canon. She died three times. Meanwhile I never went down once. I kept up the attacks and even rezzed the other ranger or popped a healing spring on her so she could self heal.

In WvWvW, I hold my own. Usually the only reason I ever die is because I did something stupid. Like not watching my health bar. Or not realizing the zerg isn’t around me anymore. Because my birds can’t kill moving targets, I don’t rack up tons of kills. But I hold my own on 1×1 encounters despite the loss of 60% of my DPS from my pet. What I do really well is waste the enemies time because I’m traited with 300% exta toughness and 100% extra vitality. I’m no meele tank, but so many Rangers are glass canons that people see my pet and like to attack me. They’re probably thinking easy kill. What they don’t know is I’m a waste of their time. Even if they do kill me, I guarantee they blew all their initiative or cooldowns to do it. It’s funny really and frees up some DPS from hitting others from my world, and leaves the enemy vulnerable.

In dungeons, I usually survive all the boss fights. Or I hold out long enough for others to run back before I go down, which prevents a wipe and reset. My pets die easy enough in dungeons, but sometimes I don’t have to be the highest DPS in the group. Sometimes it’s more important to stay alive and prevent a wipe.

In farming Orr DEs, I run with the axe/horn. I put a spike trap on the spawn point, use my #5 and #0 skills whenever they’re off cd, and spam my axe #1 as soon as the trap goes off. It works and I usually get a decent share of the loot. The spike trap especially helps tag the mobs. While waiting for the DE to come up, I can stand around and sic my hawk on single Risen without even paying attention. The hawk will kill its prey guaranteed. I just look after the kill to see if the body can be looted.

I do not play sPvP, so I have no idea how well this build does there, nor do I care. It’s great for the parts of GW2 that I enjoy, so it works for me.

With the recent nerf I was afraid the Ranger forum would devolve into nothing but whiners and complainers, glad to see a post that is useful for a change. I prefer insightful tips/builds over complaints anyday.

As for myself I run Short/Long bows with the 20% cooldown reduction on Bows and Survival Skills, then slot Sharpening Stone and Quickening Zephyr as utility for some amazing burst, which also helps when I dip into WvW on occassion.