Q:
WvW LB + S/WH Sniper?
You are pretty much full glass. Should deliver great damage with your LB…..but a strong breeze will kill you.
I know the Skirmishing line is helping your crit chance/crit damage but man there sure isn’t many, if any, good choices. If you are sniping a zerg from far away your pet won’t really be involved….so those traits don’t help much. Although there really isn’t any other decent choices.
I would probably think hard about removing 10 points from Skirmishing and grabbing another more useful trait from another line.
Dueling? Maybe if you are a really excellent player you would have some success. I sure couldn’t pull it off with no toughness/HPs or healing.
When someone uses the word ‘Meta’, a kitten dies. Don’t do it.
I have to agree with last post….your are pretty much glass cannon. If you really want to run a sniper build try to use pets that will provide you with a buff like jungle stalker or red moa. That is pretty much all they can do in WvW before dying- so don’t waste any traits on improving their dps.
As for duelling….you may want to add a little more into toughness, healing power and vitality. Trying to run a LB sniper and great 1v1 build is a really tall order. You simply don’t have enough points to spread around to make it work well.
Try mixing up your armor for more toughness and vitality. I run a hybrid build which gives me decent dps and some survivability when dealing with a 1v1.
Freyja Ernouf
lvl 80 Ranger
JQ
lvl 80 Ranger
JQ
Hmm… then another thought would be to use a SB and have the LB in the bag when doing zergs? I have seen several Rangers do some impressive damage against 1vX when using the SB.
The thing is, I LOVE my hybrid warrior but as much fun as she is in dueling and small groups, she’s not much of a threat when it comes to zerg Vs zerg. The ability of a Ranger to just eat someone alive from great distances just sounds like a ton of fun. I tried build a sniper with my warrior using the rifle and the LB and neither of them really had the effect I was hoping for.
I do like that comment about getting killed to a strong wind! lol, that’s great.
You kind of can’t really get that effect in this game at all, sadly.
With some modifications(remove the traits that buff pet) you can make it work, but should you step out of a garrison your butt is toast. I find glass lb ranger works extremely well in garrison due to the high number of choke and vantage points. Less effective in keeps and towers due to the fact people can shoot back or just pull you off the wall. Practically worthless in 1v1 or small scale fights.
With extreme tactical micromanaging you can use it in a zerg and can actually be quite useful in downing wall defenders before they pop back into safety. However there are better options for zerg fights and glass cannon lbs is not one of those options.
Ideally you should keep a zerk set in your inventory as a 2ND SET and re-trait when you find yourself in a garrison. You’ll have waay more than the 30 seconds required to swap sets and re-trait as garrison battles tend to get drawn out(at least in the upper tier servers) for long periods of time.
Guild: Winds Of Change[Wind]
Server: BlackGate
Lvl 80 Classes: Ranger, Warrior, Guardian, Engineer, Thief
Server: BlackGate
Lvl 80 Classes: Ranger, Warrior, Guardian, Engineer, Thief
I’ve been WvWing with a longbow berserker sniper build a lot lately. Playing all 8 classes, I think it’s one of the more effective setups for relatively disorganized zergs since so much of that is just two sides taking potshots at eachother, which longbow rangers are quite good at. It’s not especially great or anything, but in my experience I feel pretty impotent on almost all characters in these situations, with the LB ranger feeling very slightly less so. You can also do some pretty good damage to fleeing stragglers as long as someone else can slow them down.
In anything even remotely organized though (I’m not even talking tight knit guilds or anything – just a pubbie zerg on a server VOIP with an okay commander), it’s fairly terrible. You can use barrage to cripple/damage clusters of enemies that your group is pushing to AoE, and can pick off downed people that survived the push, but I think I bring a whole lot more to the table as most (all?) other professions.
I’d also just like to say that you don’t really eat people alive with this kinda setup unless they are also squishy classes wearing berserker gear. It still takes a pretty good amount of time to down anyone with average survivability, which gives them plenty of chance to back off without you being able to pursue without overextending yourself. Even using quickening zephyr and the river drake f2 (haha, good luck getting him in there to pull that off reliably), it’s not gonna down any but the most inattentive folks before they get away, and even if they do hit the floor they’re typically gonna be surrounded by ressers. Certainly isn’t some vanilla WoW aimed shot + multishot instakill out of nowhere or whatever.
I’ve had pretty poor luck in 1v1 scenarios using it as well, but I’m also fully willing to admit that I’m just not exceptionally good at 1v1ing with a glassy longbow ranger. Haven’t had any trouble surviving in a zerg with the increased range trait, though. That + lightning reflexes keep you quite safe, though you obviously need to give up piercing arrows to get it.
I’ve made subtle changes
The idea is situational bursts mostly on LB-2 with fury/quickness from pets. I’ve taken some condi damage negation out because you pretty much need to LReflex or Sword Leap out of there if anyone’s paying you enough attention to apply conditions.
From there you can either continue to kite them with muddy terrain and entangle and DPS or you can reposition and continue situational bursts.
There’s also a tiny bit more general survivability with the trait changes to improve toughness and get protection on rolls.
Other posters already stated pretty much what I thought, but I’d just chime in to say the precision sigil is rarely better that the raw power one.
Some calculations with Sword AA1 given the first build, not taking in consideration any other modifiers.
With Perception, base AA is 533, with 227 crit damage, it crits for 1210.
With Bloodlust, base AA is 588, with 227 crit damage, it crits for 1335.
Perception is 71% crit chance (so 29 non crit)
Blood lust is 59% crit chance (so 41 non crit)
Perception :
71 * 1210 = 85910
29 * 0533 = 15457
Total = 101367
(divided by 100 = 1014 per hit)
Bloodlust
59 * 1335 = 78765
41 * 0588 = 24108
Total = 102873
(divided by 100 = 1029 per hit)
So overall bloodlust gives (in your build) slighlty more damage output than perception.
- Remove 30 from Skirmishing and put it in Nature magic. This way, you can gain the benefits of fury from Survival of the fittest for big bow dps increase. Plus, you get some good survivability skills. You’re a sniper, not a beastmaster.
- Owl isn’t really good for wvw, your owl will blow up. Use Krytan Hound/Wolf combo for AoE immobilize/fear. Otherwise, use some other utility pets.
- Put sigil of fire instead of accuracy. It will bring a consistent small burst/huge sustain dps increase.
5x Warrior, 5x Ranger, 4x Elementalist, 4x Engineer,
4x Necromancer, 3x Mesmer, 4x Guardian, 4x Thief, 4 Revenant
4x Necromancer, 3x Mesmer, 4x Guardian, 4x Thief, 4 Revenant
I’ve made subtle changes
The idea is situational bursts mostly on LB-2 with fury/quickness from pets. I’ve taken some condi damage negation out because you pretty much need to LReflex or Sword Leap out of there if anyone’s paying you enough attention to apply conditions.
From there you can either continue to kite them with muddy terrain and entangle and DPS or you can reposition and continue situational bursts.
There’s also a tiny bit more general survivability with the trait changes to improve toughness and get protection on rolls.
Pretty much the same deal as the original poster. You have traited 2 skills from Skirmishing that are completely not useful …( Yes, the line sucks so you don’t have much choice).
Rather than pigeon hole yourself into that line just because of the crit chance/crit damage Just put enough points to get Quick Draw if you really want it. I could argue that even Quick Draw isn’t really needed for a sniper.
..and I guess it comes down to peoples definition of what a sniper is.
When someone uses the word ‘Meta’, a kitten dies. Don’t do it.
- Remove 30 from Skirmishing and put it in Nature magic. This way, you can gain the benefits of fury from Survival of the fittest for big bow dps increase. Plus, you get some good survivability skills. You’re a sniper, not a beastmaster.
- Owl isn’t really good for wvw, your owl will blow up. Use Krytan Hound/Wolf combo for AoE immobilize/fear. Otherwise, use some other utility pets.
- Put sigil of fire instead of accuracy. It will bring a consistent small burst/huge sustain dps increase.
I think we are on the same page.
When someone uses the word ‘Meta’, a kitten dies. Don’t do it.
@OP: I worked based on what you’re looking for, this setup will provide you with the survival you will need as a WvW sniper, while not lacking in the big DPS part. Try to see why Survival of the Fittest was my choice. First your health pool, 15K health is far too low for any sniper, ever felt thieves breathing down your neck? Next, fury + condition removal on command, muddy terrain and lightning reflexes are excellent tools to get out of sticky situations, on top of that they cleanse you and grant you fury. I’d say pay around with your elite and pet choice as well as signet of the hunt, change them to whatever you like; but do keep that Jungle Stalker with you at all times. I threw greatsword there deliberately, just to show you a different option, sword/horn is a good choice too but not the only one. Enjoy!
Mon Fils — Favorable Winds [Wind] — Blackgate
Ranger’s guide to PvP/WvW: http://tinyurl.com/oht3e9z
Ranger’s guide to PvP/WvW: http://tinyurl.com/oht3e9z