The mechanics of PVP are pretty solid. Class balance is off, but it’s still fun. I’m a ranger that uses a sword and i can succeed decently.
The lack of variety really kills it though. I’m hoping this game will pull a team fortress 2 and add a lot more maps and types.
It couldn’t hurt to add more interesting things to PVE from PVP too. Give us rewards for being awesome at PVP rather than just skins that only apply in PVP. Maybe an afterglow or a mini.
Traited for 20% reduction on skills LB is more to my liking, the amount of time you’ll spend auto attacking is minimal.
If the enemy closes range you just send them flying as it is.It’s just a preference thing honestly.
Not really. There have been DPS test done. Longbow slightly outdamages shortbow at 1000+ range only if you don’t calculate bleed. It’s the same with rapid fire.
I did a bit of a trial run. It’s best when used sparingly, but it does a lot of damage. I got a lot of people with it. I use a sword (which pretty much perma cripples characters), so if i catch them without defenses or by surprise they usually don’t see it coming.
Jaguar still dies pretty quickly though, which is annoying.
this was always the case. unfortunately, the gimmicky burst build you speak of is way outclassed by something like 100b, d/d ele, or BS thief. why? because rangers dont have any stealth or gap closers. people see you coming from a mile away and no one in their right mind would allow you to burst on them for 3 seconds.
I think it’s not about stealth or gap closers. This build requires very little investment into burst damage as the jaguar does 75% of the damage, so you don’t have to focus on it specifically.
If the ranger had a decent stun or knockdown i could really make this work.
As good as a thief?
don’t think so
Well not as good as a pure glass cannon backstab thief, but it is a nice quick burst that you can pull off with almost no risk to yourself and no real investment. If it fails you just go on fighting like you normally would.
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That’s if you don’t count the shortbows bleed damage though.
Basically longbow > shortbow when you’re above 1000 range and the enemy is facing you. If the enemy is facing you though, it probably means they’re going to close that distance.
It is slow. It’s dps is way subpar compared to the shortbow.
I’ve been playing around with my ranger in the testing area and i just noticed how insanely hard the jaguar can burst.
Apparently the stealth skill jaguars have is not just normal stealth. They can still attack without breaking stealth and in stealth they get guaranteed critical hits. If you can catch an enemy without dodges or escapes, activating quickness and jaguar stealth will do massive damage.
With a sword, a 0/20/30/0/20 build, knights amulet, and ranger runes i can burst down a heavy training golem in the span of 3 quickness autoattack cycles.
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No it wasn’t. it still locks you from dodging.
On the bright side though, apparently the final attack has a massive AOE now. I don’t think that was intentional.
As for everyone else, it is still possible to dodge quickly from it. You just have to manually interrupt the skill with esc. It’s annoying, but if you really want to use a sword there you go.
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It’s like wanting a cake but being given a cupcake. Not as much as you really wanted but it’s still pretty good.
Thief stealth speed got increased to 50% lol. throws up
What a undeserving buff
Considering they were just about to lose their name as the fastest class, I can say the buff wasn’t entirely undeserving. But 50%? I’d have thought 45% would be good enough…
People shouldn’t be fast when they are invisible and trying to stay hidden it doesn’t even make sense.
People who take that trait (if you didn’t know, it’s a 20 point trait in a defensive tree) are probably more about defense then offence. It does make sense for them to have a speed boost because it encourages thieves to not be glass cannons.
Nothing major but still pretty good. Maybe if the pet attack thing is reliable enough i can actually take advantage of the new shouts a bit.
Or make it so that when pets run back to you with f3, they auto evade.
Someone needs to let the Army Rangers know they’re doing it all wrong. Those guys are always running around with guns.
Seriously though, one of the most famous “rangers” in history is Daniel Boone and that dude was killer with a Kentucky long rifle. Literally!
I’m sure in real life if a bow could surpass the range of a sniper rifle with just as much accuracy and fire speed, and rain down arrows over an encampment like a handheld personnel mortar, more people in real life would use longbows.
Ranger has a lot of meanings and i don’t think Anet had any in mind when making the class. They look like they’re going for a legolas with pets and nature magic, and i love that theme.
OT: Now i know where boone’s name comes from in fallout NV.
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Warrior has condi removal with Signet of Stamina and Shrug it Off.
Ranger is a pretty solid professions, the problem I see with a lot of Rangers in SPvP is that they try to make a balanced build and forget to pick a role. Some that will have some burst or some condition or some survivability, instead of Being full burst, condition or survivability.
Another thing is that this is a team sport, so you don’t always have to rely on yourself for condition removal. I run with a friend that is a guardian and he is always cleansing and healing me.
The ranger thing is because it’s pretty much impossible to make a specialized ranger.
We have two burst combos. One relies on the enemy standing still for 5 seconds doing nothing, and the other relies on the pet actually working properly (which it almost never does). We don’t have any straight up high damage weapons either. The shortbow outdoes every single other weapon in pure damage with just its autoattack.
We are decent at condition damage though, which is kinda nice.
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I agree, like the warrior is master of all melee, the ranger should be master of all ranged.
Except the warrior is master of weapons in general, including ranged ones.
Also ranger doesn’t mean ranged weapons. It means someone who ranges (explores large areas), or a soldier trained in guerrilla warfare. If ranger was master of ranged we wouldn’t have the awesome looking greatsword.
What purpose would a rifle serve? Weapons in this game are only aesthetic. The only real difference between a rifle and a bow is appearence (and projectile speed, but that’s being fixed). The devs could reskin the shortbow to be a rifle with no difference. Adding another ranged weapon means it needs to fill a role, but there really isn’t a ranged role to fill for the ranger.
Also the ranger is not the hunter from WoW. The ranger in GW lore is more of a druid. Adding a manufactured mechanical weapon like a rifle goes against the theme.
And you could use the sylvari rifles, they are made from plants and fire seeds, like plants can fire seeds. so that makes sense for a bio rifle, when doing the kodan heart quest in frost gorge one of the polar bears says sylvari grow weapons from seeds.
But that would mean making a brand new type of weapon that only one class would use. Think about what a nightmare that would be for the trading post and for PVE.
you’re not getting the point of bringing a burning spirit, YOU DO NOT NEED CONDITION DAMAGE if you have a ally in your group who has condi damage, as i said, if i have 0 condi damage and i give a necro with 1700 the ability to apply burning the damage for all the burning that target takes (so long as it doesn’t drop off) will be over doubled, where as if i were to apply it with a torch it’d still be piss poor damage.
And for the knockback on 8s the hammer has to hit you with the 3rd chain in a combo, and when he does the combo he is 100% stationary, in otherwords if you’re brain dead and just stand still yes, you’ll get hit with an 8s knockback otherwise there’s no way that thing will hit you, you have a better chance of your pet hitting a target with 100% of their attacks then that hammer does of hitting you with the 3 chain combo if you’re moving.
And you do realize as a bunker you can hid your spirits yes? there are plenty of pillars, and walls and other such things you can hide your spirits behind at each capture point (minus the middle one, that things always a death trap) where it doesn’t matter if they know you have the spirit or not because they’ll either have to outwait the buff (in some cases this can mean their undoing IE if you get significant chill amounts on them with frost trap + combo finishers) or play hide and seek with your spirits as you and your pet pew pew at them while standing on the point, making them doing a whole lot of nothing for their team.
I think you missed my point too. I said bonfire, not throw torch. Bonfire is a massive fire field that lets any of your allies do burning damage. Your necromancer only needs to do a necrotic grasp for the first tick and then you can keep a constant stack of the high burning damage as long as bonfire lasts and you have a shortbow (or a few friends with ranged weapons).
The hammer does follow them around for a bit, which makes it great at capturing points. It attacks like a pet, except that it’s immortal and its attacks have a wider range. It hit the running golem with decent success because it can move in between each attack and its range is very large.
And there are a lot of problems with playing hide and seek spirits. First of all fights are usually in groups, so someone will find them, and when someone does find them you lose the ability to use spirits in that battle. Your main weapon is gone because you can’t hide them anymore. Spirits take all of 2 seconds to kill, and as a bunker i assume you won’t have enough damage to take them out while they finish off your spirits.
It’s not like spirits are hard to find anyway. There aren’t that many hiding places and once people start thinking that spirits are an actual threat (they aren’t much of a threat really), they will find them easy.
So here’s just a sampling of the data.
Rabid, Pet, Back: 20.4, 20.8, 20.1
Standard Deviation of 0.35 (about…..1.75%)
Rabid, No Pet, Front: 42.4, 39.0, 40.7
Standard Devation of 2.4 (about 6%)Warrior, Zerkers, no adren: 27.1, 27.4, 27.0
Standard Deviation of 0.208 (about 0.2%)The crits have a certain degree of randomness, yes, but after many tests I noticed it actually doesn’t affect the results very much. What I mean is, the results are very very consistent.
Also in a pure dps test like yours, it’s hard to take into account bleed, which is important both for rifle and shortbow. Unless you have a good idea how you can incorporate bleed damage into your calculations?
Each bleed stack does individual damage. If one stack of bleed does 83 damage per second, adding a second stack of bleed would just do 83 damage twice per second, so you can calculate it as an extra attack that runs parallel to each autoattack.
I think i’ll try to calculate the DPS. See how my results match up with yours.
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Your ideas are very neat and good ones. One of the things I’ll be particularly interested in is measuring the full time for a “skill rotation” and measuring just how much each skill contributes to it. For a Ranger, this is easy (Crossfire Crossfire Crossfire Crossfire). For a Warrior, just based on pure observation I believe Killshot + Volley does about maybe 40-50% of the damage in these tests.
But then that goes back to the beginning. What is your motivation behind doing these tests? Why remove crit (Fear of randomness? That’s why I ran 3 tests each)? Your method will result in a more “accurate” measure of dps, sure, because you calculate all the values instead of actually testing them out. But why is this important? What is your motivation?
My motivation is spurred on mainly by many posts I see in this subforums, of users claiming that “Warriors have better ranged DPS why bother with Ranger…” To me, the purpose of these tests were to provide some rough numbers for perspective when people make these statements. The tests are to compare a realistically-traited Ranger vs a realistically-traited Warrior, and to observe the amount of damage they are able to deal out.
But after all this rambling, your method does perk up my interest. Do you mind going over in more detail why you think your method is a more accurate test? Because I remain unconvinced, but I remain curious nonetheless.
About the crit. The reason i don’t like crit is that it adds unneccesary randomness. Even with your 3 tests your margin of error is still very large. Crit can be added into the calculations afterwards ( DPS increase from crit = crit chance( in decimals) * bonus crit damage) . This makes adding crit into the test pretty unnecessary and gives the test an unreliable random factor.
There’s also the fact that your pet crits too, adding in a lot more unreliable numbers.
That’s my primary reason why i think my method is better. With inaccuracy it means that some of these numbers could give the wrong perspective. For example, your numbers for front with pet and adrenaline full at start are pretty close. If the error margin is 10% (it’s probably more though), it could turn out that adrenaline full kill time is actually shorter than front with pet.
Also with DPS you can calculate a lot more things, for example, you can take a rough guess of how often you think your pet will miss their attacks and calculate that in, or a guess of how often your crossfire will hit from the sides or behind.
/snip for length
I don’t know about that. The burn isn’t a 100% chance proc and it does have an internal CD . It also only lasts for two seconds meaning that extra damage isn’t that much.
Bonfire does the job much better with its massive fire field and 100% proc. Fire trap does a good job at it too.
And as for HB and backstab, it’s still 5%. This is on average though. When the thief gets that backstab in, he may get 10% damage, or no bonus damage at all.
Survivability is 100% accurate making your spirits mobile is a penalty. Hiding them in a stationary manner at say nodes, currenlty viable. For now they are viable partly because everyone seems to ignore them. If more started running at 50% protection uptime choosing their DPS spirit whether they were with condition or power crit monkeys people might stop ignoring them.
I had always used stone unspecced occasionaly. Based on Durzlla’s posts I did a 20 point spirit condition bunker build. It was a freaking rock and a half properly armored(Using 20 points let me armor for better set consistency). I frustrated a thief so much he started attacking my pet which had 70% protection uptime his 3.5 seconds plus 3 transfered from me perpetually and couldn’t dent piggie either.
Until people start targetting well placed spirits, it is viable to use spirits in sPvP, TPvP. They could be improved. Making them mobile is an effective penalty. It should be spirit stealth….. So only random luck aoe gets them;).
That’s my problem though. It seems like the only reason spirits are doing anything right now is because no one knows how to fight them. Once people figure it out (not that hard), spirits will go back to being useless. This is especially if you’re a bunker. When battles take long and people know you’re a spirit bunker (they can see your buffs), they’ll easily find your spirits and kill them.
I would like to bring up as an aside. I did a bit of testing with the guardian’s avenger shield skill. It keeps a shield of absorption up near constantly, making you pretty much immune to ranged attacks during its duration. The hammer also knocks back every 8 seconds and has a 20 second CD knockback. I’m still not impressed with spirits.
Look, i’ve explained this like 5 freaking times, i grow tired of explaining how spirits work to ignorant clauds such as yourself, and if you read more then 2 posts in this thread you’d know that spirit of protection gives 3 seconds of prot before boon duration (and is bugged so it gives 5 seconds at 45%, so don’t rely on that it’ll be fixed eventually) and that frost spirit, you know the “pitiful damage” one has no ICD
Oh hey, you’re right. It is 3 seconds. Looks like the GW2 wiki is wrong. Still doesn’t change much though. While the protection does make it slightly more useful, the other spirits still aren’t worth it, and it can still die easily.
Also i didn’t say “pitiful damage” i said slight damage increase, which it is. Even if you spec for it, you get a 5% damage increase which is futher diminished by the fact that, again, spirits can die very easily.
I don’t know if i like your test OP. This isn’t a DPS test and it includes critical chance so it isn’t all that accurate.
I don’t feel like doing the tests myself but the proper way to do this would be to
1) find out the damage of each attack without crits.
2) find out how long each skill takes to complete
3) use this to calculate the DPS of each skill
3) do a few skill rotations and time how long it takes you to complete them.
4) count the total seconds each skill takes up in a rotation
5) multiply each skills DPS by the time it takes in a rotation
6) add up all the damage numbers
7) divide by the time it takes for a rotation
That’s your DPS. Including critical hits and buffs in there makes it much more complicated to get accurate results.
No valid argument saying that 600 range + 600 range from traps = 1.200?
What a coincidence that shortbow autoattack or torch “4” has the same autocast range (1.200) when traited. Or that barrage center of the skill it’s at the same exact point…again 1.200 range.Anet must really have a good laugh at looking at these videos because people makes “tests” without any accurate data. “If it doesn’t work like i say then it must be a bug!” mentality.
I just checked a few things.
Using the two traps method you described i figured out that the shortbow does in fact have a longer range than 1200, autoattack just stops. Throw torch works at that range. Crippling talon, however, does not. It’s bugged so it stays at 900 range max.
It looks like shortbow is more bugged than previously thought.
Way to put together a video showing the bug’s involved with a few of the key components of this class. Pet AI and Arrow bug’s. The thread shouldn’t have been closed, no one was taking personal shots at a Dev, so I’m glad they re opened it.
The real trick… CAN the Dev’s fix the problems? I think the answer is no. These problems will saddle this class for a long time. Other MMO’s have tried and failed at pet AI, never have gotten it right. The obvious fix is give us an option to run without pets boosting arrow/sword/axe damage through a trait line.
The Arrow bug, sadly, the option is make the arrow hit what is shot at when it is aimed and this goes contrary to the game and its dodge abilities, etc… Speed up the arrow flight? or, remove the bug and make it hit the spot it is aimed at 100% of the time with no rock or or partial wall obstructions, which again messes with the game and its high walls in keeps or trees or old ruins or insects and little rocks for that matter.
I don’t see either being fixable. Would love for a Dev to come to this thread and tell us that either could be fixed or that they have a handle on the issue and see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not holding my breath.
Actually the arrow thing is fixeable. Thief bow doesn’t have this problem because their arrows autocorrect their paths in flight. If an enemy makes a sudden turn when the arrow is flying towards them, the arrow changes directions.
Or you could speed up ranger arrows to gun bullet speeds. Bullets don’t have this problem.
and notice how Guardians have untargetable invulnerable spirit weapons..
Which are garbage compared to spirits? they last 20s and have varrying CDs, rarely attack, and their active destroys them.
Spirits last for 60s with a 60s CD, have actives that DONT destroy them, and can buff an infinite amount of people once per 10 seconds per spirit (5 rangers with the same spirit will cause the spirits to STACK meaning if me and 5 rangers bring stone spirit we’d have 100% prot uptime assuming my fellow rangers weren’t dumb with spirit placement), another thing that spirit weapons CANT do is take shots for you, ever lose a fight because you got hit just once to many times? yeah, see those spirits you’re bagging on? i’ve saved my own leafy butt so many times by dodging behind one of those things so it’d eat a finishing blow for me and leave me to win the fight or escape (have also dove INFRONT of them before to ensure they had time to heal back up to full before dying so they’d live long enough to let me proc them again, but this doesn’t happen nearly as often).
But nope, just because they’re unkillable -that- means they must be good right? right?
First of all guardian spirit weapons can be specced so that the actives don’t destroy them. They can be given 50% more duration and 20% lower cooldown.
So lets see.
I can have a invincible seperate sword that does nice damage and has a good AOE attack. (lasts for 45 seconds with a 24 sec CD specced)
I can have a invincible magic bow that has a good AOE heal and cures conditions.
(lasts for 30 seconds, 48 CD specced)
I can have a invincible hammer that has an auto knockdown chain attack and an activated knockdown making it amazing for CC ( lasts for 30 seconds, 36s CD specced)
and i can have a shield that generates a 4s AOE knockback and projectile deflector with the same duration and CD as the bow.
Or i can have
An easily killable spirit that gives me 1 second of protection every 10 seconds(that’s the internal CD isn’t it?) and a small immobilize.
An easily killable spirit that gives me a chance to do a bit of extra burning and an AOE blind (woo… blind. )
An easily killable spirit that gives me swiftness every once in a while and a ok damage AOE.
And a spirit that slightly increases damage for a bit and has an AOE chill that’s not really that impressive.
They’re not good because they’re unkillable. They’re good because they are useful. The hammer and the shield especially. They outdo every single spirit so massively that it’s laughable.
Also about cooldowns
Because ranger spirits can die, they don’t have a guaranteed 50% uptime. The spirit sword has a 65% uptime, the hammer has a 45% uptime, and the bow + shield have a 38% uptime. All the guardian spirits have the portential to have higher uptime than ranger spirits, depending on how much AOE is thrown around.
It’s not that rangers are bad, it’s that we’re outdone in pretty much every role. There’s not much reason to take a ranger when another class can do the job better.
This is because of a few things
1) the current meta doesn’t really support a jack of all trades character. It’s either burst, bunker, condition, or support. No hybrids.
We can be decent in any one of these roles, but other classes can do them better.
2) a lot of our traits are pretty useless. Most shouts and signets and every spirit except spirit of nature.
3) pets are unreliable and can miss attacks. They also account for way too much of our DPS.
4) our arrows have this weird thing where they can miss. No other ranged class gets this (except maybe warrior bow. never tried that).
Not really. On my warrior every time i jump down a small ledge i think “oh my god. Now i have to wait for my pet to run all the way around and take the stairs down” and then i think “oh wait. I’m not a ranger” and then happily charge into combat and hit things with a sword.
Horribad at PvP? My pvp build IS spirits, and I run around WvW with them. They are terrible for dungeons not PvP. 2nd the extra health trait and follow trait can be taken together.
I am a sword, warhorn ranger, my spirits have 2x hp, follow me around, and activate their abilities on death. The sword’s dancing all over the place, combined with the spirits following me around, keeps the spirits moving and harder to focus down. The spirit’s abilities on death punish anybody that does manage it assuming they are in melee range, and since I’m a melee ranger they should be whether they want to be or not.
For a support build, I feel it does a great job in solo 1v1 and even the occasional 2v1. I was downright amazed how I was winning duels left and right on a build I thought would be worthless for it. You should see how pissed off folks get when they fight a vit-toughness ranger with decent healing and a nature spirit that rezzes them every time they get downed.
If a clicker like me can win pvp fights with a build, theres gotta be something to it.
I tried spirits once. They did nothing noticible. They survived for a bit, gave me a buff once in a while and died.
I don’t like spirits because they have nothing to offer me that can’t be beaten by every other skill in my arsenal (with the exception of shouts. I think they’re worse). I found them very hard to use in large groups because there was way too much AOE for them to survive, and none of their active skills are very impressive.
Except spirit of nature. spirit of nature is awesome.
Maybe if they were retooled to be more suicide bombers (low HP, high movement speed, charges enemies, lower CD) i would use them. Right now though i can get far better results from just getting traps and survival skills.
I’ll say one thing… I wish a warrior bleed condition could stay that high for a while instead of rapidly depleting after flurry is done or trying to get high stacks.
Warriors are far better at single target bleeding. On my sword my autoattacks bleed for 15 seconds. With a bit of crit and an earth rune i can keep a very high bleed stack just with autoattack.
I call this the elder scrolls NPC archer psychosis, or esnap for short.
It’s a serious mental problem that appears in games like the elder scrolls where the enemy is sometimes equipped with a slow moving projectile. In what the developers thought was clever programming, the NPC will use a mathmatical formula to aim where you will be by the time the arrow travels the right distance.
So basically we’re that bandit archer in skyrim that spawns next to a random animal but they don’t attack eachother.
Also to everyone saying that no one will actually dance around like this, this is just an exaggeration of a major problem rangers have. Even if the obstructed bug only decreases DPS by 5%, it’s still way too much. We shouldn’t have this problem at all.
I don’t understand why people purposefully want to nerf themselves by not using a pet.
Second, pets are the Ranger class mechanic. It’s not like the game or any of the written material at any point leads you astray or suggests otherwise, so if you willfully chose the Ranger class knowing that you don’t like playing a pet class… I’m not really sure what say.
It’s like ordering a cheeseburger then complaining that you like everything except the cheese, but you definitely don’t want a hamburger. You want a cheeseburger.
THIS! Lol perfect analogy.
No horrible analogy. Here’s a better one.
It’s like ordering a bacon and jalapeno burger and then complaining about the jalapeno’s because there isn’t just a plain bacon burger on the menu. The worst part is the jalapeno’s are cooked into the patty so you can’t remove them.
Not all people play ranger because they want to be a beastmaster. Some people play it to be able to use nature magic (no druids in this game, so no other alternative). Some people play it to be great snipers and archers (warrior longbow is about AOE support and thief shortbow is about short range AOE and escaping). I personally play it because i like the idea of a speedy skillful swordsman. The warrior feels like a berserker and the guardian feels like a paladin. The ranger feels like a blademaster.
Your analogy caters to what you want the Ranger to be. The official description of a Ranger describes an archer with a pet.
I’m aware of the official description. My analogy was about how rangers have things you can’t find in other classes, but we’re stuck with the most intrusive class mechanic in the game. If rangers had absolutely nothing setting them apart from say a thief other than pets, i would understand your argument, but the ranger is a very unique class. Simply look at all the 100% unique animations made purely for the ranger.
My argument is that we shouldn’t be about pets. The GW1 ranger had the option to drop pets and still be good, so we should too.
EDIT:
Something caught my eye from that wiki post.
“At one point in development, the ranger was split into two different professions, the warden and the marksman. Eventually these two were merged into the ranger again”
Too bad they were merged into ranger. I’m guessing warden was the sword/greatsword ranger and the marksman was the bow/axe ranger with pets.
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I don’t understand why people purposefully want to nerf themselves by not using a pet.
Second, pets are the Ranger class mechanic. It’s not like the game or any of the written material at any point leads you astray or suggests otherwise, so if you willfully chose the Ranger class knowing that you don’t like playing a pet class… I’m not really sure what say.
It’s like ordering a cheeseburger then complaining that you like everything except the cheese, but you definitely don’t want a hamburger. You want a cheeseburger.
THIS! Lol perfect analogy.
No horrible analogy. Here’s a better one.
It’s like ordering a bacon and jalapeno burger and then complaining about the jalapeno’s because there isn’t just a plain bacon burger on the menu. The worst part is the jalapeno’s are cooked into the patty so you can’t remove them.
Not all people play ranger because they want to be a beastmaster. Some people play it to be able to use nature magic (no druids in this game, so no other alternative). Some people play it to be great snipers and archers (warrior longbow is about AOE support and thief shortbow is about short range AOE and escaping). I personally play it because i like the idea of a speedy skillful swordsman. The warrior feels like a berserker and the guardian feels like a paladin. The ranger feels like a blademaster.
1v1, the ranger should lose. Thing is, with your animal companion it’s 2v1. The ranger should win with it’s animal companion if they’re skilled, but expecting to beat the warrior on your own is stupid. It’s akin to complaining the guardian is better at buffing teammates, and the ranger should match/be better.
Which is why the pets need improving, bugfixes need to be done, and things like spirits and utility skills need to be more viable. Currently everyone whining seems to be trying to play the ranger as a warrior; big surprise, the warrior is better at being a warrior. If utility skills are improved/changed and different playstyles are made viable for the ranger, suddenly you don’t have to waste time trying for that. It’s like the Necromancer isn’t really designed for raw damage (Warrior again), but a war of attrition. The ranger is not designed to beat the warrior in a headbutting contest, so it needs to win some other way. The only way it can do that is if it has better/alternate options than headbutting.
Necromancer isn’t designed for a war of attrition, that’s just it’s most viable build. There are plenty of necros out there who want to be power builds using the dagger/axe and vampire abilities, or minion masters who use their minions for high damage.
The warrior isn’t designed for raw damage either. If they were the sword and the bow wouldn’t exist. Neither would banner/shouts, maces, shields, or hammers.
Also, the ranger should be as good at buffing teammates as guardians. That’s why we have spirits.
The thing everyone is whining about is that we don’t have different playstyles. We have one. The beastmaster. No matter what we do, no matter how we spec, we will know that our character will always be weaker than other characters in exchange for an easily killable bad AI with tons of issues. I highly doubt any of these issues can actually be fixes because they’re core problems with the AI of this game. The engineer turrets are not viable and neither are the necromancer minions. The only reason mesmers are good is because their AI is really simple and is made to die quickly.
In fact i have never seen any action game do friendly AI in a good way. At best i’ve seen it done in a way that doesn’t annoy, but it’s never helpful. I have seen it done in a good way in pure RPG’s, but this isn’t a pure RPG. We can’t be the WoW hunter.
The ranger should be about speed , damage, and nature magic. Sort of like if the Thief, Guardian, Warrior, and every druid from every game ever came together and somehow had 1 baby.
If you trait the off-hand training trait, path of scars gets about a 75% boost in damage. I can hit the heavy golem in the mists for about 1.8k without crits if it hits both ways.
the stupid thing about that trait is that axe main hand is ALL condition, it makes no sense to pair axe with axe.
It’s not really all condition. It’s stuck in the same undecided hole as the greatsword. It has one attack that relies heavily on bleed, but that’s the only condition damage it has, so you never really know how you’re supposed to spec with it.
OT: Personally i love how whirling defense looks. It’s probably the coolest looking skill in the game. My suggestion would be to give it a chance to block. Give us our own more defensive 100b.
And you are basing this on what? If it is experience, then clearly you were doing something wrong, as I have no issues whatsoever to stick to most targets. Of course there will be some people that get away, but that’s to be expected. All you need in order to pull this off is be willing to learn. But I suppose you like having things handed to you on a silver platter. That’s fine, just don’t expect the ranger class to be your kind of thing.
Just because something is needlessly complicated doesn’t mean its good. Sword is not fine, in fact it’s pretty bad. I have used it, and i still keep it as a backup from time to time, but i would never use it as a main weapon again. Yeah sure turning off auto attack fixes the rooting (sort of. not really.) but it also drastically cuts into your DPS and makes your attacks needlessly hard to control. The sword is just an easy target for people that can kite. Hornets sting sometimes just doesn’t work and even when it does is still affected by cripple and immobilize. Serpent strike is good for dodging, but it doesn’t do good damage and certainly doesn’t help close the gap. There are no offhand skills that can close the gap. Against any decent long ranged class you would be slowly crawling around out of attack range.
The greatsword is better than the sword. At least all of its skills work. The 1200 range dash is not only much better for keeping close to an enemy, it’s also much better for running away. The block is much better for defense, lasting longer, giving a good knockback, and providing a long ranged cripple that can hit multiple enemies. It even provides more synergy with your pet because i can pull off some nice mini-bursts with hilt bash + blinding slash on my raven.
Even then i only use the greatsword because it’s fun. If i wanted to win i would switch to shortbow/traps because they’re far more effective than both melee weapons.
As much as i like warriors, yeah. this needs to happen.
The problem is the amount of damage that hundred blades does. I understand that rooting is bad, but there are other skills that do the same thing and do not offer the same damage. Mesmer sword #2 I believe roots them and doesn’t do near the same damage. There are many skills in the game that put the user at a disadvantage for using them and don’t do the damage of 100b.
As for giving up a utility slot, every class does this for certain builds. The thief backstab build you want the % damage signet. 100b want’s bolas or bullscharge(preferably with frenzy). Play some other classes and you’ll quickly learn that the damage on 100b is insane compared to other skills that risk just as much for no where near the reward.
I’m all for making 100b not root the player because it is bad for melee, but the damage needs to come down to reasonable levels. All of the big burst skills need to come down in damage so skillful play wins fights and not sure fire combos.
Also, if I see one more person say “dodge it” I might blow a gasket. Following that logic we just need to give every player 1 hit abilities, but hey it’s balanced because you can dodge it. Every ability can be dodged and that should have no basis on the balance of the ability. Don’t get me wrong, there should be hard hitting attacks that you want to avoid but shouldn’t be dodge or die.
Mesmer sword #2 also makes you invincible while using it and doesn’t keep you rooted as long. So does pistol whip with an added stun and spammability. The only other melee move that keeps you rooted while using it is the warrior sword burst, and that roots the enemy. No other class skill gives up as much as 100b does.
I play a lot of classes. Thief, ranger, warrior mostly. 100b is powerful but it’s also very annoying to pull off. First of all bolas are very easy to dodge because of their slow movement, and you have to bola them at close range because the root time is just enough for a 100b. At this point they’re still allowed to use attacks, so not only can they break the immobilize, they can just CC you out of your ridiculously long channel time. Even if they don’t have any CC you’re still vulnerable to attacks from other people, so in a group setting you’re going to take a lot of damage and probably die.
Without bulls charge + frenzy you have no guarantee of safely pulling off 100b, and if you do use them then you only have 1 utility slot left over. Then there’s the problem of bulls charge being slow and easy to dodge, and the fact that you can use a stun breaker to escape and destroy the warriors 60 second CD burst. Unlike thieves warriors can’t run away easily.
There’s a difference between telling someone to dodge a thief backstab combo and telling someone to dodge a warrior. Dodge is in the game for a reason, and devs expect you to be able to dodge things which are easy to see coming, like bulls charge.
B. Shortbow is awful..and i’m not saying Longbow is the greatest weapon either, I’m saying Shortbow is awful and longbow is better then it. Shortbow’s Auto Attack can hit like rapid fire all it wants, It’s still an awful weapon (By the way, Rapid Fire at least still gets the benefit of QZ unlike Shortbow) The Knockback alone is better then most of the Abilities in Shortbow, Auto-attack is superior to Shortbow as well when dealing with World vs World…. I mean if you really want to use bow.. and i mean if you really really want to..You’re pretty much like I said going to be humping zergs with a PowerCrit Build and using Longbow….If i was going to do any sort of SPvP, I wouldn’t touch either bow with a 10 foot poll because they’re both crap compared to our other weapons. Shortbow simply isn’t anywhere near our best weapon…It’s our worst. The only time it was ever remotely useful was when QZ made it fire a billion times a second.
Shortbow still gets the benefits of rapid fire. It just gets about 14% less benefit than it did before the 40 ms nerf.
Longbow autoattack only does better damage than shortbow autoattack at max range when the target is looking right at you. Once you get close it becomes pathetically bad. Even at long range it isn’t good because long ranged attacks in general can miss if the enemy isn’t standing still.
Shortbow is probably the best weapon to use in sPVP, and you saying it’s horrible compared to our weapons is so wrong i wonder if you even set foot in the sPVP mists before. Compared to our sword that constantly roots us in place, the axe that does meh damage in general and is really bad for 1v1, and the greatsword that does horrible damage and only works as a sub-par tanking weapon and for running away, the shortbow is downright amazing.
Not only does its basic attack outdamage the longbow 9/10 times, it also gives far better mobility, a quick snare, a evasive attack for kiting, quick access to poison to reduce healing, and an interrupt that comes out quickly and can actually interrupt things unlike the longbow knockback.
The only advantage longbow has is range.
(edited by Division.9618)
Nah not really.
They have a higher chance to proc but the cooldown they have for each proc makes the extra 15% pretty much useless. They also die if an enemy looks at them funny.
Maybe next patch.
As a response to the OP i can only say….
Laughing stock dps wise? I think you should learn to know the class a bit better, know how to equip it and play a bit more often.
Yes there are some things worth changing but in general it’s a solid class.
People complain even before they know what they are talking about.It’s all about choice
I made the decision to go glass cannon (yes, hit them before they hit you), sure ye take a lot of damage quickly.
But it was my decision to do so for group play.
Result: in pvp i dps down every class very quickly with at times the cloth ones in 3 auto shots. Sometimes the crits even scare people and keep them from attacking.
For pve i do noticeably more dps than most other people.
So lack in dps, i think not.And as for any class, if you stack up on defense you will lose dps but have more suvivability.
And about the ranger defensive side, i agree that it lacks at least 1 or 2 good skills that actually work but other than that i think most people get it all wrong.
Bull. I can spec in full glass cannon damage build but i can’t get anywhere near the damage you say.
I’m going to have to call you a complete liar unless you show me proof.
Probably the biggest flaw with rangers right now are pets. They’re supposed to deal 45% of our damage but they die really quickly and have trouble hitting moving targets. Their skills usually don’t activate reliably and some of them don’t even work half the time.
If you really want to play ranger, pick your pets carefully. Get at least 1 pet that has good defense of CC. Something that doesn’t need as much management.
I keep a wolf with me as a secondary pet so that when my raven dies my wolf can fear or knock down the enemy, and if i get downed i can use my wolf to delay stomps.
Actually sword stacks very high bleed. With the proper traits it isn’t hard to get 25 stacks.
About axes, dual axes are a bad idea for PVP. Get a shield or a mace in your offhand. The offhand axe skills are pretty sub-par when compared to mace (which has a long range knockdown) and shield (block and a stun).
Nope, that’s supposed to happen. People have been complaining about it for a while. Hopefully the devs will fix it, but right now that’s how it is.
regardless of tech/ magic a rifle should still be a viable option for a ranger besides that It makes sense to not limit themselves to having only 2 ranged weapons. Lore wise I don’t think a greatsword would suit a ranger at all. Having 2 kinds of bows is also redundant, if we have 2 kind of bows then we should have rifles, smg, rockets, snipers, shotguns….. But relieving this suggestion of exaggerations a simple rifle would suffice and I think would help greatly in terms of versatility and “build” of the ranger.
What role would a gun give? We have a ranged weapon that’s made for fast firing condition damage and kiting, and a ranged weapon that’s made for long ranged sniping with high damage (well it’s supposed to be high damage) and AOE. There’s also the throwing axe which pretty much covers everything else you could want with ranged attacks (bouncing attacks, shotgun attacks, etc).
Despite what people say, warriors aren’t that op. They’re balanced, so if you like balanced go play one of those.
How heavy are these swords really? Some of the plainer 2h swords look like actual historical 2h swords (which weighed about 7 pounds), while some of them would make clouds buster sword kill itself.
We swing them all the same speed, with no lower back problems. Could it be that the guild wars world is just the matrix, and everyone in it is just being controlled by some outer power they can’t comprehend? Are all of these swords just graphical representations of the idea of doing damage, with different magical appearances endowed on them by said outer power for visual purposes only?
Nah, magic.
I like the female GS stance aswell. The stance makes it look like the Pixel has some weight to it. The Male stance is just no accurate. Maybe that stance could work for a one handed sword, but not a heavy Greatsword. Have you ever felt the weight of a real Greatsword? It is not light, like it seems on the way the males hold it.
Actually a lot of what we might consider to be great swords were relatively light. about 7 lbs for big 2-handed swords.
Of course it doesn’t change the fact that the male greatsword stance isn’t a real stance, but still.
19k-25k hundred blades is okay… yet they nerfed pistol whip… I’m genuinely confused. Both root the character, both are channelled attacks, yet the guy with the heavy armour and high health gets to keep that ridiculous damage.
Confused.
lets forget that a glass cannon warrior has far less ways to avoid attacks and run away than a glass cannon thief.
Let’s forget how a thiefs quickness skill doesn’t increase damage taken by 50%.
let’s forget how S/P thief’s opening moves, either mug or the sword #2, are both instant and impossible to dodge unless you predict it. Compared to bull rush which is incredibly easy to dodge.
Let’s forget how a S/P thief can do his stun quickness combo without needing 2 utility slots.
HB
Roots the player
does high damage
pistol whip
provides an interrupt
roots the player
does medium damage
the player auto-evades while attacking.
If you’re a so called skilled player but now you’re having troubles, consider the possibility that you were crap and just rode on the thiefs OPness.
Thieves are still strong. They still do high damage on backstab combos, and they still have the best way to escape enemies. Dancing dagger was rightfully nerfed. I disagree with the C&D nerf (i think they should have nerfed mug instead), but other than that it’s fine.