Guild Wars 2

Man there’s a ranger on maguuma named tanbin who is kittening amazing at roaming and duels dunno what people are talking about. id like a good ranger in a wvw roaming group, but yea in a gvg i can see them not being really useful at all compared to warrior/guardian/ele

will be full of d/p thieves and pu mesmers

theCOREYCOLAK.5698:

eldenbri.1059:

Fairly often, I see a post that says phantasm builds are “no skill” builds. It doesn’t feel that way to me when I play.

Here’s how I see it. If you’re losing a 1v1 as a phantasm mesmer, or find it a difficult spec, then you’re not an amazing player. Phantasm play can be skillfull to an extent, but offers very little return if you do have “uberl33tskillz”. Personally, I find shatter more OP then phantasm, if you know how to use it properly, the rewards are substantially higher then if you can use a phantasm build.

Phantasm is pretty bad in group play, that’s why you’ll only see it being used exclusively for 1v1’s, basically, and you have to be honest with yourself here. Yes you are moving, but you’re not being active, yes you’re dodging and moving, but your damage is coming from clones you press one button to summon as you kite. To me, that’s the definition of an autopilot build. Similar OP builds include thief p/d and s/d, warrior h/m/m, and the the zoo builds(necro and ranger).

Then take a look at what other builds require you to do, d/d ele, s/d ele, shatter mesmer, burst thieves, burst warriors, power rangers. The level of reaction required to not only successfully pull these off, but reactively adapt to certain situations and do so well, does requires you to be engage more. Higher risk, higher reward.

Pretty much this

Steal is actually a pretty good mechanic, especially against rangers/mesmers/necros/thieves.

Void.4239:

Bios.1398:

After playing 20/20/30 PU Condi Mesmer with sword/pistol and scepter/torch I can safely say generally the reward given for such minimal skill put into it is astounding. I have never played such an easy, yet INSANELY overpowered and effective setup among all the classes I’ve played and I sPvP regularly with all of them. This is purely from a duel perspective though involving 1on1 situations. Second on that list would be 10/030/0/30 p/d d/p condi thief and then maybe spirit ranger after that, but the gap between those 2 and PU mesmer builds whether condi OR direct dmg is astounding in terms of risk/reward.

10$ for , you are a warrior .

Seeing warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
Warrior is nowhere to be seen in your post about risk / reward.
And
WARRIOR is nowhere to be seen in your post about RISK / REWARD

Nope, doesn’t get less funny the more you say it

I’m not a warrior although I do play warrior to learn some of their common builds in sPvP, I play all of the classes and don’t have a ‘specific’ one but I started as a ranger and then played thief then moved on from there.

I mainly duel in spvp with all of them as I like them all in their own ways. Warriors are kind of funny really. They’re easily taken down by poison and picking and prodding, something that I do quite easily with the mesmer (sigil of doom) and since the warrior needs to pressure you to attack you, keeping confusion on them (scepter / torch) consistently along with using torment block at the right times you can usually widdle down any warrior quite easily especially with bleeds which all of combined make a godo enough condi spread for even a shout-based cleansing ire warrior to handle. Stun breaks for hammer/bow warriors (hardest build of a warrior to fight against as a mesmer whether conditions or burst imo) when necessary and making them play your game and you can usually take down just about any warrior in a given situation with pu condi mesmer. Warriors aren’t really that hard actually , you just need to learn how they need to set things up and evade those methods of lockdown/setup.

If it worked free form like thief sword it would be so much better but yes, this is the way they have intended it for ranger’s version of the sword auto attack.

After playing 20/20/30 PU Condi Mesmer with sword/pistol and scepter/torch I can safely say generally the reward given for such minimal skill put into it is astounding. I have never played such an easy, yet INSANELY overpowered and effective setup among all the classes I’ve played and I sPvP regularly with all of them. This is purely from a duel perspective though involving 1on1 situations. Second on that list would be 10/030/0/30 p/d d/p condi thief and then maybe spirit ranger after that, but the gap between those 2 and PU mesmer builds whether condi OR direct dmg is astounding in terms of risk/reward.

I realize the skills being controlled by ranger has been said before, but it needs to be said again. Putting us in control of those skills albeit them being unresponsive or not adds depth to the class as a whole. That is what the ranger needs, depth and uniqueness. There’s too much automation in this class and anybody with a brain who knows that and knows the ranger class itself can destroy you because they have, for the most part, more active utilities. Look at thief for example, I think almost everything you do is active on that class for the most part. YOU have to do everything , YOU are in control of everything. I think that is one of the major weaknesses of the ranger class in general. You’re simply not in control of everything. Due to this, you rely on a majority of automation which hinders the class.

Making us in control of those pet skills adds combo options, makes more pets viable , more active utility instead of waiting for a canine knockdown then setting up a combo, etc etc.

As for the comment about buffing empathic bond. It’s not buffing it it’s simply adding uniqueness to it, it’s making it more useful and viable instead of automated and adding skill depth to it instead of just automatically happening every 10 seconds. You’re already pidgeonholed, why be pidgeonholed with automation when you can have active removal and raise that skill ceiling even higher? I’m talking purely for skill ceiling, empathic bond triggers if you have or don’t have conditions, that is useless if you’re able to dodge important things that apply those said conditions. Say empathic bond triggers while you don’t have conditions, then you miss a dodge and get chill or 5 stacks of bleeds – you have to sit there with that until it triggers again, when if it were active you could trigger it and get a 10second cooldown. I won’t disagree with you that we need active removal elsewhere but active condition removal is and always will be a unique defining attribute. Automation isn’t always good , spirits are good automation, but not condition removal. That should never be automatic. It just is so counter-intuitive to skill based play.

Automation is the bane of this class, it needs to stop.

ClaraFee.2579:

Paz Shadow.9715:

This is my armor, full ascended beserker everything…

I’m not trying to one-up you or be too critical, but if you are having trouble killing with 3700 damage and 54% crit before foods and Rampage As One, then I think you are doing something wrong.

I don’t have ascended everything so my stats are closely behind yours, but I decimate the average WvW player that isn’t ready, isn’t paying attention, or is retreating / straggling behind. I think that’s a great strength of powerful Rangers – the ability to mop up multiple enemies without breaking stride.

Clearly somebody who has not faced somebody who actually knows how to play the game and also their own class.

Point 1 is so you have complete control over your pet, and not to depend on that stuff happening automatically so instead of skills occurring randomly while you’re fighting, you can control every aspect of your pet. The reason why ranger isn’t as good as say a thief is because thief is hugely interactive which gives it a much higher skill ceiling , almost everything is active even down to stealthing for condition removal.

I meant to also add, no thanks on going 10 into BM / 6 runes and using up a utility just to have 1 condition removed actively every 12 seconds. This is the kind of sacrifices rangers shouldn’t have to make to be interactive with their class, I appreciate the suggestion though.

d/d for the most part is fine

condition spam by other classes like mesmer/necros is insane though , torment and confusion have to be 2 of the dumbest condition additions to the game. stun spam by warriors is another issue. i would add thieves and rangers but for the most part the d/d playstyle counters both of those classes pretty hard and any good d/d ele will wreck both (traps are a bit of a pain but thats a ranger style that actually requires a brain on the ranger’s part) and even thieves running p/d perplexity

toning down conditions will ultimately fix alot of the issues the ele currently faces, you don’t even really need to do much to the class itself

of course, this is purely from a 1on1 scenario

Here’s 2 things I think would help the ranger class:

1. All pet attacks are bound to f keys (or bind your own option so if you had a naga could bind em to a button on the side or another key on the keyboard, etc) instead of automatically occurring. I think this has been brought up before but I think it will open up usefulness to pets that do have other good attacks but can’t be relied on automatically , this will put more options into the ranger’s hands and raise the skill ceiling up as well.

2. Empathic Bond as an active removal instead of passively doing it every 10 seconds. Make it to where it’s bound to a key that you have the option to activate and then it goes on a 10second cooldown instead of automatically doing it every 10 seconds. This provides more uniqueness but also raises the skill ceiling of the ranger class.

May help , may not , not sure, let me knwo what you think

Atherakhia.4086:

Bios.1398:

Nope

You want zerker damage from ranged, make a thief with shortbow

As long as ranger has a pet, you will never see a true ‘zerker ranger’

It’s not just raw damage either. Without burst the class will never function as a true power class either.

Good point, and I agree

Nope

You want zerker damage from ranged, make a thief with shortbow

As long as ranger has a pet, you will never see a true ‘zerker ranger’

Excalibur.9748:

We can decide this with a 1v1 tournament of some kind.

Join the next thief tourney, triggerless is hosting one right now. Next one will be on January 3rd

No shadow rejuvenation trait or Thieves guild is allowed in the tourney.

1. Fights against people were harder , theyre extremely easy right now with my condition pu build
2. Prismatic understanding should give vigor/might as well

Teehee

Azreell.1568:

Just to clarify – This build is basically a solo join 1v1 build.

It is absolute trash in Tpvp or any organized setting.

So why are people complaining about it? Is it that upsetting to loose to it while dueling? The game has been nor will be every balanced for 1v1 play.

Every game from the beginning of mmorpgs to current day have particular classes that are good at 1v1 and some are far better at group or large zerg play.

If the spec was amazing 1v1, in group play and in zerg play then I could understand people wanting it nerfed.

The problem is it is basically a duel spec and nothing more or less.

The spec also has some pretty easy hard counters to it.

My suggestion for those complaining – don’t go to duel servers if you can’t handle loosing to classes/specs built solely for dueling.

It’s not that they’re built specifically or solely for dueling. The issue is the passive AI component in it and that it takes very little effort to play for the reward given – and it is very good in groups as well as roaming in world vs world (probably better actually) the only area it lacks is tPvP and that’s because necros can dish out conditions better and at a faster rate than a condi mesmer.

The same is said for the spirit build of the ranger or the minion master of the necro. The difference between those very 3 builds is that the pu condi mesmer 20/20/30 build easily takes the least effort to play and can dominate both of those same AI dominant classes due to invis and protection/aegis (and vigor now moreso than any other class besides guardian maybe) uptime. AI passive play is becoming more rewarding than active gameplay and phantasm pu mesmer is the prime example of it. The only reason spirit ranger is regarded as better is because it can perform in tPvP, unlike this condi mesmer build and that’s sitting on a point better.

Let’s not kid ourselves, mesmer has always been overpowered in every area except tPvP (even though back in the day before conditions became a prevalant part of tPvP burst mesmer was used quite frequently and was pretty kitten solid in tPvP which was also why condition counter specs were introduced in the first place, they hard counter bunker guardians and burst mesmers).

Again, the issue isn’t that it’s ‘a duel spec’ , because it’s not just a duel spec but it’s the effort/reward ratio of the build itself. It’s so easy anybody can play and dominate with it. I played it for only a few days and dominated vets of their classes with it.

Triggerless is probably the best thief in the game

You will still die to a 10/0/30/0/30 condi thief or a 20/20/30 pu condi mesmer. Speaking from a 1on1 perspective.

Rangers lack interactive gameplay, almost if not all the attacks a ranger has are very telegraphed and for the most part rely on automatic AI. Anybody knows how a ranger works knows exactly what the ranger needs to do whether it’s conditions or burst spec and when you can run an overpowered class like thief/mesmer you can simply counter that very play very easily.

Dungeon content is mindless, you can take any class into a dungeon and get the dungeon completed, whether it’s fractals 30 or cof path 1. Dungeon mobs don’t discriminate against the very telegraphed pvp gameplay the ranger brings to the table.

It is the way it is, until we get more interactivity to our class like being able to control ALL of our pet’s skills on f keys or other bindable key setup , more active condi removal and more ways to control our opponent that isn’t automated and actual burst that isn’t telegraphed and can be quicker/more readily available, ranger will always then fall into a bunker condition category where you’re playing the game of ‘keep getting fire and poison on them while pet does dmg automatically’ style which is easily countered nowadays since necros/condi mesmers have made people fearful and also more knowledgeable on condition handling.

I’ll also add torment and confusion are 2 of the single most kittened condition additions to this game but that’s a rant that can be saved for another discussion.

MakeitNeil.4561:

Just saying… a good condition thief can beat any mesmer… any day. Fight Very Sad Panda. Then you will understand.

He’s also Triggerless and is probably the best thief in the game, and he even dies to some really good condition mesmers , if that’s what you’re saying it takes to kill a random pu condition mesmer in a pvp duel arena then I think that alone speaks volumes for it in itself. I played with the common pu condi mesmer build (20/20/30 scepter torch / sword pistol with rabid or carrion) and it’s just too easy to play. The amount of effort that you have to put into a fight is ridiculously low compared to the effectiveness that is put out. It’s really stupid and very over powered and it’s based around pure AI while you invis around and do burst setups and apply confusion on them while they try to kill your burst phantasms.

I will also add that this same build wouldn’t do ANYTHING in a tpvp match but as I’m beginning to see it mesmers simply run these pu builds to troll people because they know how overpowered it is in 1on1s anyway so I don’t think most really even care about it’s ineffectiveness in tpvp, it’s perhaps one of the strongest and becoming one of the most common 1on1 builds out there at wvw duel clubs and pvp duel arenas. It really is a matter of time before it’s nerfed, like some have said before, how it’s nerfed is the question.

Mesmers need tpvp builds. The buffs mesmers have received as of late do nothing but glorify phantasm pu passive builds and do nothing for tpvp/team variety.