Guild Wars 2

Hello,
Im quite a new player even though i have been playing for a year now. After a 6 month break i decided to lvl my ranger and recently i finally capped at 80 ^^
The problem is, like i already read in this forum, that most people dont know how to play a ranger properly, which gives an even worsr impression to others who want to start this class…and im afraid im one of them.e.e
Currently im running a zerk build with full zerker gear/runes/trinkets etc. And with my 1.3 toughness im squishy as hell so i do my best to use my pets to catch up as much damage as possible and read attacks so i can avoid them better. Im using a longbow and axe/warhorn. When in wvw i try to switch my accesories to apothecary stuff to make up for the loss of toughness but it still looks like other classes dont even have to put a lot of effort to kill me. Also, the highest power i can reach is about 3k
So i was wondering if you guys maybe had tips/tricks so i can improve my playstyle and become a better ranger. Everything is appreciated, thanks in advance ^^

I get a lot of private messages about this kind of thing, so I’m gonna copy and paste a few of the tips of shared with others. Please excuse my laziness here, some of these tips refer to my build specifically, but they still apply to most rangers. If you want more specific tips for your build or against certain classes just feel free to PM me or whisper me in game. Love helping fellow rangers.

- When using spiders against ranged enemies, stand directly behind your spider so that your enemies projectiles hit the spider and not you. This really screws most players over because they are too dumb to notice. Exception against shortbow Thieves, because they get the bounce on their stuff and that can actually create more damage for them.

- Use Hunter’s Shot stealth to activate your heal and your elite. This essentially turns your heal and elite into something that can’t be interrupted without insane luck.

- Confirm that your Point Blank Shot hit, then immediately fire off your Hunter’s Shot for a guaranteed stealth/target drop. This is akin to a ‘hit confirm’ in the fighting game community. Don’t just mash 4 then 3, but make sure your PBS hits first. You actually have enough time to squeeze off an auto attack in between for that extra bit of damage.

- Speaking of stealth, using stealth to activate heal, then using Protect Me after stealth runs out is a great way to make sure that you’re getting at least 8 full seconds of your TU heal. I’ve had people comment on how pesky my build is because I can “heal up like a Thief.”

- Wolf Fear = Guaranteed Point Blank Shot. Use PBS at the end of your Wolf fear. You’ll learn the timing. This combo is annoying (so I’ve been told) and creates a ton of space.

- Malicious Training trait makes your pets a nightmare. This trait single-handedly makes Jungle Spider and Wolf the two most dangerous pets in the game. The spider gets almost 10 seconds of immobilize and you’d be shocked at just how many people aren’t prepared to clear that. The wolf fear is just all around fantastic.

- Quick Draw is probably the most important trait for longbow users. It’s not Eagle Eye, it’s not Piercing Arrows. It’s Quick Draw. Reduced cooldown on Rapid Fire, Hunter’s Shot, and Point Blank Shot? Can’t pass it up. Also, twenty points in Skirmishing means that you get swiftness and fury on weapon swap, which helps your damage and spacing a ton.

Vs Thieves

- Ranger pets are Cloak and Dagger bait and it is our biggest hurdle when fighting this class to keep our pet on a leash and try to not allow that Thief to constantly stealth on our pet. A few times is okay, because hey, our pet is taking the damage instead of us, but it can end up being a real pain. Use your F3 and F4 buttons liberally to keep your pet away from the Thief.

- Longbow skill Rapid Fire should be used a lot. It tracks Thieves in stealth, so not only do you continue to do damage while they are hiding, but you can even follow where your arrows are shooting to know how close the Thief is getting. If your Rapid Fire channel ends, that means the Thief stepped too far to your side or just performed a Shadowstep behind you. Prepare for a Backstab.

- Sword/Dagger is amazing for mitigating Thief damage due to all of your built in evades. Hornet Sting/Monarch Leap in some random direction about 1 – 2 seconds after a Thief stealths, this should put you out of range of a Backstab.

- Traits like Primal Reflexes and especially Nature’s Protection are great against Thieves. You gain two very valuable buffs when you do get hit by a Backstab. These will help you recover from that.

- Lightning Reflexes is a straight counter to Basilisk Venom elite. It’s a stun break on a shorter cooldown than their elite and it comes with an Evade and vigor. Save this for when you get turned to stone. Always.

- I love, love, love using ‘Protect Me’ when a Thief stealths and just give them my back. They backstab, my pet takes the damage, I proceed with whacking away with Sword auto-attack for a few seconds while they are revealed.

- If a Thief has a Sword/Dagger set-up DO NOT USE Rampage as One elite. They’ll steal your long Stability/Fury and that’s pretty much a death sentence.

- Long and frequent roots like Spider Immobilize, Wolf fear and Longbow’s Point Blank Shot make it very hard for Thieves to be Thieves.

Even in a power build with no focus on pet damage, sick em works amazingly well against thieves. Because it is so underused thieves are always used to their standard cool downs on revealed

Pvt Frosty.6973:

Even in a power build with no focus on pet damage, sick em works amazingly well against thieves. Because it is so underused thieves are always used to their standard cool downs on revealed

As someone who has played a great deal of Thief, I would supplement this by saying pay attention to the weaponset the Thief is running. “Sic ’Em” is often a waste against sword builds, because they do not need to use stealth as the prerequisite for their main source of damage.

Edit: A typo was driving me crazy, so I fixed it.

Sevans.4619:

snip

Sounds like you play a lot the same as I do. My favorite pets are wolf and spider also, but I find them not durable enough for large scale wvw soaking up aoe and conditions via EB, so I have to trade out one of them for a higher vitality pet. Also being power build I have a hard time giving up a slot for malicious training but sounds like it would be great in smaller scale.

Against thieves, GS#4 is also a great counter to backstab. You knock them down and can follow up with maul and have them half dead in seconds. Usually they bug out after that, but if not rapid fire and all the other stuff mentioned will finish them.

If you want more than 3k of power, use a sigil of bloodlust on one weapon. Also, even if you dont use a horn normally, you can do this: out of combat I will hot swap a torch#5 and horn#5 to get 4 stacks of might, fury and swiftness for ~20 secs.

When using a power build, such as zerker.
Sword + Axe and Longbow is a devastating combination against thieves and kitteny idiots.
When thief are about to stealth, fire off Rapid Fire. This will quickly stack 8x Vulnerability on your target, then use Axe 4 quickly followed entangle and Axe 5. By now you got about 15-18 stacks of vulnerability on the thief. Activate Quickening Zephyr and just let the sword auto attack rip through them. OR change back to longbow and fire off another rapid fire volley.

The only thing keeping a berserker roaming ranger alive is being a tricksy hobbitses. “Most people don’t play ranger right” comes from people trying to brute force their way through a warrior, rather than using the evades, stealths and CC appropriately.

There are some great tips here, but it really comes down to experience using those skills. At first, use them as ~ much as possible, and then through that experimentation you’ll get the hang of when using those skills causes the most annoyance to the opponent.

For example, any time you stealth with the longbow it makes your opponent lose his target, which is already annoying. Then as was mentioned, you can use that stealth to cover up another action like moving behind the opponent and putting down an entangle. Now they’re facing the wrong direction, can’t see where you unstealthed and you’re ready to do the next annoying trick.

Try to chain together these sorts of annoyances. If your wolf knocks someone down, follow that up with a fear and then a knockback on the longbow. No one action is going to kill the opponent, but rangers win through being annoying and whittling people down.

Alright thanks a lot for the replies! Will do my best ^^

whats wrong with brute forcing down a warrior? it works wonders, because they never expect you to be able to do it.