Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if I’d go down the road of longbow for mass wvw. For small scale skirmishes and solo play in wvw it’s definitely a winner but for mass fights there’s too much retaliation for a longbow to be effective without killing yourself quickly.

For the larger scale fights, I would drop the longbow and invest in a GS or S/WH combination to provide some escapes if you get caught and need to make it back to the main group.

I run something along these lines for the larger scale fights: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNUQJAWRnUqA1siVsAOsActgFPB7ZFEASYwp0XaN1pv1pGcnMtzsA-TlyDQBA4IAgOdBAU9HsZ6BhK9g3FA4KKDK2jAIe7P0FlgkCwvlRA-w. The healing is quite insane both for staff and avatar.

When in avatar, you can pop the glyph, swap pets and then use lunar impact and rejuvenating tides very quickly for some serious burst healing. By doing so you’ve also provided your party with grace of the land for some additional damage. If you hit heal as one thereafter you can extend the quickness with another 3 to allow for casting of convergence.

I like the tankiness of the build and the insane healing that comes with it. It allows me to run in the front line due the the relatively short down time of avatar and the escapes for getting out of sticky situations.

Agree with quite a lot of what Sorenstam says. I would add however to tinker a bit with your specialisations, pets just die in most large and/or organised wvw encounters.

The following http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARWnEqA1sitsAmsActgl/AD+sGXnrLFhMQAopfVD2Bp8qCM1K-TlCBAB5o+Tf6C8S5HAPAAKUCy/+DMcEASwE0GHCgAuAABAQAu5Nzm3Mgbe0be0bmUABuMC-w sets you up with remorseless which when grouped with a Herald will give you a very nice damage boost. It also provides signet of the wild if you get caught and double daze durations.

I would suggest to look at other druid traits. Druid clarity is a very nice stun breaker and clears just about all conditions and grace of the land gives your party an additional 15% buff to damage after you heal them back up again.

Runes of durability are a good investment and don’t cost any gold, just some pve time. Bloodlust sigil on staff will give you the additional +250 strength and stuff like Golden Dumplings provide some good boon duration and might generation.

Hello

I’m setting up my Druid at the moment and have a couple of questions regarding healing, but cannot seem to find a definitive answer on the forums or google. To break it down into some examples, what I’m curious about is:

• does my healing power effect the heals that allies receive from me? E.g. If my ancestral grace would base heal for 1000, but due to healing power stacking heals me for 2000, does a full zerker party member benefit from a 1000 or 2000 heal?
• does outgoing healing buff apply to the base heal or stack on the modified heal (due to healing power)? I.e. In the above example but now with 50% outgoing healing does my AG heal allies for (1000*150%=1500), (1000*150%+1000=2500) or (2000*150%=3000)?

I’ve had it a number of times now, where I’m in wvw fighting an enemy. I swap from one pet (which is on 50% health for example) to the next and the second pets has no health and is dead already.

This has happened when fighting both players and npcs.

Otherwise, try MSI afterburner. Its free and you can tweak the quality of the record etc.

Norn is the only way to go. Bear charge in zerker is just too much fun.

Why, if I already submitted this bug in that forum the day after the patch…

Its a bug. The skill doesn’t remove conditions, nor does it provide fury. In addition the tooltip is bugged…

As the title states, Survival of the Fittest does not trigger with Entangle. Neither the fury buff, nor the condition removal works on activation of Entangle.

Additionally, the toolbox provides an incorrect listing of the Fury duration (~5s instead of 8s) and the amount of conditions that are removed (1 instead of 2).

Poison gm might have been worth speccing for, if it had been -66% healing…

I use dual spiders, muddy terrain and longbow. Just keep them at range and it’s very easy to win.

What frustrates me most of all, is that Ranger’s still have no place in a group. Its ridiculous for a game that is supposedly designed around playing as a team. That long CDI was a waste of everyone’s time…

The ranger already has 1v1 specs that are viable, why focus on that more?

Hate is sometimes too weak a word…

:)

Specific Game Mode – WvW

Goal of Proposal
A good game should cater for rewarding synchronised team play. At the end of the day nothing is more rewarding to me in game then heading out from warcamp with a group of approximately 20 and taking on enemy groups of double or size or more; and coming out on top. In fact it gets really fun when facing an equally skilled and synchronised opponent with even numbers and duking it out. Its really about being a team player and providing support to others, which is what makes a game a good game.

There are a few classes which excel in this synchronised play, yet most of the medium armor classes do not fall into this category and there is good reason for this: they have no clear defined role which they can fulfill.

When I look at the ranger, there are hints of a role that is was meant to fulfill, but thats all. To me, it seems that the ranger was supposed to be in charge of crowd control by providing snares, freezes and immobs with areas of effect. Now this is a good idea, because its a role which has not yet been fully developed in wvw. However, the skills that provide these area of effects, either pigeon hole the ranger into having no escape skills (trapper) or provide escape skills with only a single aoe immobilise (survival/signet).

What I would like to see happen to the ranger is that it is given a proper toolkit to provide crowd control, in support of the team such that they can either evade an oncoming push or they can keep a number of enemy in a kill zone. Basically, its providing them with a rewarding supporting role, with only minor tweaks involved.

Proposal Overview
In order to enable the above, these are some of my own suggestions. But really, its the goal I described above that needs to be addressed rather than the proposal listed below.

• Make muddy terrain a trap and remove the ground targeting.
• Predator’s instinct has its cooldown removed. The cripple it provides is now 5s.
• Change whirling defense such that it pulls an enemy once a pulse, increase the aoe range to 300, eliminate damage component and block projectiles.
• Might buff on call of the wild is now 3 stacks instead of 1.
• Make rampage as one, a shout.
• Channeled abilities can now be cast on the run and are no longer interrupted when casting (this includes: barrage, horn skills, traps, whirling defense etc).

Proposal Functionality
The functionality is creating a viable role for the ranger in wvw, one which isn’t already being taken up by another class: by being delegated to crowd control. A lot of the ground work is already done for the class, and by adding nuances it can gain a good footing in this department. By buffing these aspects of the class, provisions are made for a rewarding role in team play, since ranger will have to choose between doing damage or providing crowd control. Additionally, it can do so by staying out of the melee ball or moving within.

By embracing a role of crowd support, you are enabling smaller organised groups to more effectively take on larger numbers, thus also somewhat tackling the issue of the trump card of bringing more numbers to a fight in order to win.

Associated Risks
There are a lot of counters to the above crowd control, most of which involve team play. So I do not see many risks associated with the proposed changes. Skirmishing shouldn’t be affected too much due to the fact that ranger already has excellent single target immobilise abilities through spiders.

ilr.9675:

It’s just another hard control that takes “skill” out of the equation, often in a setting that was already purely participation/population based. And that’s the OPPOSITE of what we want as players who enjoy the ability survive and even win when fairly outnumbered.

Hard control with no dps, does not take skill out of the equation. Setting up the ranger to compliment other classes is exactly what this game is about: team play. Its about creating proper synergy between classes and rewarding working as a team, rather than bringing more numbers to a fight.

Sarision.6347:

How is it a buff? Muddy Terrain is basically a trap with built-in Trapper’s Expertise PLUS 50% longer range.

By making it a trap, muddy terrain will be unblockable and it will open the ability up to the effect of trap potency. In combination, it will greatly aid in locking in players in a kill zone. Additionally, by making it a trap, it will allow for flexibility of play when you want to run with melee ball or stay on perimeter.

Adding in to the discussion on pets, my opinion is that they are in a good place at the moment for solo play, not for wvw. That being said, I would rather have focus placed on improving the ranger itself rather than the pets. Creating a role for it in wvw (whether its the one I outlined above, or something else) is the most important topic the devs need to address.

Vid quality was poor indeed, but I liked the game play. Nice demonstration of perpetuating n3 chain of GS!

I like the build that you have posted, but must admit its really a roamers build.

Prevvy, you noob… you got downed by a maul? This shall not go unnoticed!

Fenrir.6183:

This is a terrible idea ! Muddy Terrain is one of the only things that actually can redeem the ranger currently (in wvw).
Please Anet, don’t listen to this guy.

Thanks for the feedback. Its actually more of buff than you realise, think it over some more.

ilr.9675:

Nice attempt in theory, but in addition to doing absolutely nothing for End-game PvE, it also fails to live up to your opening point about WvW as well where those of us who DID beat to 2-1 odds and route some Zergs, did so through stacking Stability and Condition shedding pretty much exactly like GvG. In GvG, you never had multiple Condition spammers either (hex spammers were kitten-way…. we don’t talk about that). It was very rare to ever see more a few spots going to Rangers / Dervishes / Necros / Sins once all the Badtouch/en-gen/S-way garbage was nerfed out of the lower rank matchups too.

Granted, these boons can be stripped by a well still but that further cements the point that Ranger itself has nothing to offer here even IF your view of things was carried its natural conclusion. None of the formats leave room for a ranger to be part of them. And it’s not the ranger that was designed wrong from the ground up. It was the formats.

Its funny that you discuss how to beat zergs, in fact its very recognisable. I run with a guild that prides itself on taking on number far greater than our own, in open wvw and field an excellent GvG setup. Its actually from these fights that I have made the observation, that there is a lack for a class that can effectively and efficiently lock a group in a kill zone. Ranger has some abilities that resemble this: muddy terrain, spike trap, entangle, frozen trap, krytan drakehound f2, but none of them are near as effective as they should be. By making them more effective you are providing a crucial role for rangers in wvw without making a complete overhaul of the class.

I don’t play high end pve too often, but the occasions that I did I never felt the ranger was underpowered. Having said that, since I do not plat it often, I undoubtedly miss some of the nuances that others will pick up on. I leave that feedback up to them.

When in game, I hardly ever play dungeons, or pvp, so most of my feedback is centered around playing wvw by roaming and in guild raids. I only take my ranger out for roaming and never for guild raids and this is due to the lack of a role for the ranger in a team based wvw environment.

A good game should cater for rewarding synchronised group play. At the end of the day nothing is more rewarding to me in game then heading out from warcamp with a group of approximately 20 and taking on enemy groups of double or size or more; and coming out on top. In fact it gets really fun when facing an equally skilled and synchronised opponent with even numbers and duking it out. Its really about being a team player and providing support to others, which is what makes a game a good game.

There are a few classes which excel in this synchronised play, however most of the medium armor classes do not fall into this category and there is good reason for this. They have no clear defined role which they can fulfill.

When I look at the ranger, there are hints of a role that is was meant to fulfill, but thats all. To me, it seems that the ranger was supposed to be in charge of crowd control by providing snares, freezes and immobs with areas of effect. Now this is a good idea, because its a role which has not yet been fully developed in wvw. However, the skills that provide these area of effects, either pigeon hole the ranger into having no escape skills (trapper) or provide escape skills with only a single aoe immobilise (survival/signet).

What I would like to see happen to the ranger is that it is given a proper toolkit to provide crowd control, in support of the team such that they can either evade an oncoming push or they can keep a number of enemy in a kill zone.

While I’m sure there are ifs and buts to the following, I would suggest this for getting better crowd control:

• Make muddy terrain a trap and remove the ground targeting.
• Predator’s instinct has its cooldown removed. The cripple it provides is now 5s.
• Change whirling defense such that it pulls an enemy once a pulse, increase the aoe range to 300.

Additionally, here are some small fixes on my personal wishlist:

• Might buff on call of the wild is now 3 stacks instead of 1.
• Make rampage as one a shout.
• Complete overhaul of search and rescue, which is a terrible skill.
• Channeled abilities can now be cast on the run and are no longer interrupted when casting (this includes: barrage, horn skills, traps, whirling defense etc).

When in game, I hardly ever play dungeons, or pvp, so most of my feedback is centered around playing wvw by roaming and in guild raids. I only take my ranger out for roaming and never for guild raids and this is due to the lack of a role for the ranger in a team based wvw environment.

A good game should cater for rewarding synchronised group play. At the end of the day nothing is more rewarding to me in game then heading out from warcamp with a group of approximately 20 and taking on enemy groups of double or size or more; and coming out on top. In fact it gets really fun when facing an equally skilled and synchronised opponent with even numbers and duking it out. Its really about being a team player and providing support to others, which is what makes a game a good game.

There are a few classes which excel in this synchronised play, however most of the medium armor classes do not fall into this category and there is good reason for this. They have no clear defined role which they can fulfill.

When I look at the ranger, there are hints of a role that is was meant to fulfill, but thats all. To me, it seems that the ranger was supposed to be in charge of crowd control by providing snares, freezes and immobs with areas of effect. Now this is a good idea, because its a role which has not yet been fully developed in wvw. However, the skills that provide these area of effects, either pigeon hole the ranger into having no escape skills (trapper) or provide escape skills with only a single aoe immobilise (survival/signet).

What I would like to see happen to the ranger is that it is given a proper toolkit to provide crowd control, in support of the team such that they can either evade an oncoming push or they can keep a number of enemy in a kill zone.

While I’m sure there are ifs and buts to the following, I would suggest:

• Make muddy terrain a trap and remove the ground targetting.
• Predator’s instinct has its cooldown removed. The cripple it provides is now 5s.
• Change whirling defense such that it pulls an enemy once a pulse, and allow the player to move while channeling.

Small fixes on my personal wishlist:

• Might buff on call of the wild is now 3 stacks instead of 1.
• Make rampage as one a shout.
• Complete overhaul of search and rescue, which is a terrible skill. Personally I would like to see it become an instant cast aoe immobilise for 1s with a 30 s cooldown.

Interesting idea, I’ll have to try this one out!

Ranger has a lot of static damage buff modifiers. For example with the following build, you would attain: +5% from sigil, +20% traits, +10% runes, +10% spirit, +75% signets, +109% crit for a total of +229% damage on the opening strike. Combine that with LB autoattack at range and the damage is pretty intense.

I have to teach myself to open up with regular shot first, then #4 followed with spider root, #2, #3 and then subsequently #5. People without teleport skills go down very quickly like this if you catch them unawares.

CRrabbit.1284:

it’s not %, power wise, it’s +916 power to your status at lv80. (see wiki description)
Bear hit hardest coz the bear #5 skill base damage is the highest among all norn elite skills.

Yeah, I know CRrabbit. Stat scaling and skill base damage are independent. The point was to demonstrate the difference in racial skills…

Precise strike and Signet of the hunt will only apply on a single attack, second hit will not do as much damage. It still hits hard though…

You forgot that steady focus, hunter’s tactics, rune of the scholar and a sigil of force would add an additional 35% damage buff.

Thanks for the replies. Sincerely wish I could post some vids of the ranger in my guild’s evening raids, but that would require the ranger to be useful for such events… so I’m always on my guardian.

@Prysin
From what I can gather, bear hits the hardest. Stat scaling is as follows (100% is index):
Bear: 140% power, 100% precision, 150% toughness, 340% vitality;
Leopard: 140% power, 250% precision, 90% toughness, 180% vitality;
Wolf: 160% power, 150% precision, 150% toughness, 180% vitality;
Raven: 140% power, 150% precision, 150% toughness, 260% vitality.

Ridiculous build for wvw. Aim was to get largest crits possible. Expect to top 20k even vs rank 80 players. Very much a glass cannon spec, but hideously good fun to play.

Try it and enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TaWQrRPEPo

Think ANet should make active signets apply to player and pet by default. Signet of beastmaster should apply passive effects to nearyby allies.

Edit: recipes with crystals work, others not.

Rym.1469:

I don’t rage often, but things like “hey,let’s perma-stow the pet” et me sad. Pets are class mechanic. We have many traits, utilities (how would you make SoR active or Emphatic Bond work, huh?)

It wouldn’t since you don’t have a pet. By stowing it, you lose the ability to use the pet. So its a conscience choice whether you run one, or not. Can’t have everything…

Rym.1469:

and skills (Winter’s Bite. You literally get rid of that weakness by stowing pet. Sword AA third attack giving might to…nobody?)

Same as before, no pet to give buffs to. Not that it matters, in wvw the pet is pretty much instagibbed anyways.

Rym.1469:

to get rid of our pet. Perma-stowing pet isn’t the way at all and we all know it, yet people want to roll a Warrior named differently.

Judging by the number of people that would like a stow ability, it seems that most people want to play the ranger, without the pet, but with a little buff in return. In WAR there was a flat damage buff to compensate for stowing pet. Warrior is an entirely different type of class, and in no way similar to a ranger without a pet.

Rym.1469:

I do agree pets are somewhat useless sometimes, but use your brain. Even in zerg, using Dog’s AoE immobilize on short cooldown will help everyone landing their AoEs, including your Barrage or traps. Porcines can knockback multiple people in line with their racial 3 sec knockdown. Spiders can be very useful when trying to focus fire certain targets, rooting then for a long time. Bears can use condition remival/AoE weakness and save your kitten in zerg with Protect Me!. Wolf can AoE fear/ single knockdown.

The examples you post here demonstrate why the ranger has limited use for a pet in wvw.

Rym.1469:

While I agree these mentioned above still lack very much, we have many unsolved problems with themand they need changes, I can’t see why you should ignore all ranger mechanics, weapons and traits to get your beloved vision. Most people are just too lazy and want to switch pet on attack, push them into fight and forget. e do have less damage because our pets can’t stand in zerg frontline, but that’s only one aspect of the game, which I believe will get fix sooner or later.

Ranger is pretty balanced as it is at the moment. It is a wonderful roaming class and is decent in pve. Yet in wvw it is definitely lacking. Providing the class with a grandmaster trait is a far cry from what you call ignoring all ranger mechanics, weapons and traits. Its not even remotely the same… Out of interest, why would you want a pet to stand in the middle of a zerg frontline? Heavy kitted warriors and guardians cannot even do that, so creating a pet which has that kind of survivability sounds ridiculous. Not in a million years should something like that be implemented.

Rym.1469:

You may say “hey, but but that’s optional!” – you really do think that ArenaNet would make another balance around Ranger for one trait when they haven’t fixed obvious things like naming the pet for over a year period?
On a side note : Okay, so you place the traps as class mechanic. What with missing utilities then ?

Who says that naming a pet is broken? Sounds pretty logical to me that if you choose a new pet, you give it a new name.

By stowing pet with trait, I would say that you forfeit taking traps as utilities but have to choose out of the others.

Same here, also on AG

Rym.1469:

“pet is stowed and replaced by traps”
Really, people, you don’t stop to impress me how ignorant you are. You want to destroy class mechanic, all related traits and get another mechanic via one trait…
Get use to your pet for kitten sake, or roll another class

Rym, please rage less, a grand master trait to stow pet is hardly going to destroy a class mechanic. Providing a means to stow the pet in wvw is about tailoring it to fit the various game modes.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Jacks.5367:

I don’t have the gold to do the whole test so I am just gonna used build editor to test it (since it’s pretty accurate).
Full ascended berserker GS:
Ranger: 1473 dmg over 2.56s
Warrior: 1938 dmg over 2.4s
Guardian: 2359 dmg over 2.5s

Full exo berserker GS:
Ranger: 1352 dmg over 2.56s
Warrior: 1780 dmg over 2.4s
Guardian: 2166 dmg over 2.5s

The percentage of increased in damage from exo to ascended:
Ranger: 8.949%
Warrior: 8.876%
Guardian: 8.9104%

Your statistics support what I originally said and (ironically) actually give the opposite conclusion than the one you came to. The ranger will not gain the most going to ascended.

Take the ascended damage of each example you just gave and subtract the exotic damage…

Ranger: 1473 – 1352 = 121 more damage
Warrior: 1938 – 1780 = 158 more damage
Guardian: 2359 – 2166 = 193 more damage

The percentage increase in damage from exotic to ascended is about the same for each class (which is what I said in OP). What isn’t the same is how each increase affects the damage the classes do. Since the other classes already do more damage, they gain more from it. This puts rangers even further behind in dps ability than they were before.

Jacks.5367:

Clearly that Ranger gain the most benefit from going ascended.

Clearly not ;(

Gotta love the distinction between relative and absolute

Orodret.8230:

I like suggestions, especialy traps replaceing pet skills. After WAR and white lion, and now GW2 with even worse pet mechanic in large scale pvp, i started to belive that pet classes cant be made properly in games. Just too much problems to handle, its much easier to give viable option like suggesion you made. Also i realy like how they sorted mesmer mechanic with phantasms (they are there but doesnt metter if they die and proffesion is not entirely relaying on them).
Sorry for bad English.

A fellow WL player! What server did you play on?

After WAR I was determined not to play a pet class as my main and had opted for thief. However upon launch of GW2 the guild was lacking in ranger players and I decided to play ranger just for class balance. For solo play its a great class, but for guild raiding its painfully lacking. My guardian and ele get a lot more miles than my ranger in wvw.

Doubt they will ever really make this class viable for wvw, for reasons unknown. The role is there, they just need to dot the i’s to make it so…

Adding to the countless wish threads for the rangers, here are a couple of modifications that I would like to see (mostly from a wvw perspective).

• Predator’s instinct: remove the cooldown.
• Signet of the beastmaster: change to “passive effects of signets are applied to nearby allies”.
• Moment of clarity: add “attack of opportunity has 100% crit chance”.
• Trap potency: pet is stowed and replaced by traps.
• Whirling defense: can be cast on the move.
• Call of the wild: will now give 3x might stacks instead of 1.
• Guard: is now insta cast.
• Search and rescue: Renamed to Tormenting strike. Pets next attack applies torment. Anything besides this absolutely useless shout.

The above will allow for a nice role as a ranger for crowd control, which will greatly help vs blobs and reward coordination with other professions. Whirling axe and the change to signets give the ranger a very nice manner in which to assist the melee groups. Predator instinct will give the ranged ranger some nice crowd control in larger fights, without it being OP in small scale.

The strength of the ranger should lie in its ability to manage crowds and keep them contained within a certain perimeter. No other class really has this role. Though the current ranger does hint at being so, it lacks the toolset to really perform this task effectively. The change to predator’s instinct will provide a nice buff to keep enemy players within a kill zone, along side the ability to throw down traps by stowing pet. The nice tradeoff here is that the pet stow requires speccing into a damage tree, rather than survivability and thus will offset the marginal buffs since these rangers will effectively miss out on +300 toughness or vitality. Similarly, it also applies if you spec for the Signet of Beastmaster.

Call of the wild buff is minor but provides the skill with a little more umph. Search and rescue is just a plain terrible skill, any improvement to it would be welcome.

I try and save people whenever I can with LB4, but I do consider myself a diplomat on the battlefield.

I think I’ll add on to this thread: a build that I play with my guild [VII], when I’m not on my guardian. Since we typically field around 20 man raids aimed at zerg busting, this build is geared towards that. Its all about periphery and damage dealing while being tough to take down if caught in a tight spot. Even against such top guilds as GD it was surprisingly effective.

The build is as follows.

Gear
Armour consists of knight’s embedded with scholar runes for 10% damage increase. For trinkets, I like to take 2 berserker and 4 sentinel. This provides a very nice mix of stats which complement the build and bring the vitality more towards the 19k-20k depending on realm buffs. Longbow and sword are knight’s and have the sigil of force for both swaps. Axe: I like to give sigil of battle for an additional power boost. Its good to have built up bloodlust stacks prior to battle to get an additional boost, so having a separate set for them is nice. Remember that wielding dual stack weapons gives you 2 stacks per kill.

Healing
Healing skill I like to take troll unguent, which I typically activate at start of battle to ensure I keep my health high. The more health and endurance I have, the more damage I’m dealing.

Utilities and Elite
For utilities, I’m looking towards stun breakers. There’s nothing more annoying imo than getting caught by zerg ball with roots and stuns and not being able to do anything. This is where signet of renewal followed by lightning reflexes is a life saver = cleanse roots and get the hell out of Dodge. The final utility is a bit of a toss up between frost spirit for 10% damage (see a theme going on here?) and quickening zephyr. Either one will do, though QZ offers the additional stun break and the ability to get barrage and rapid fire off for nice spike damage. Elites you should always go for rampage as one. Large scale wvw will render entangle useless, similar to the spirit. The best way to contribute is to stay alive and not become an enemy res. 20 s stability does wonders here…

Pets
Pets don’t really matter in large scale wvw (sigh) so I usually keep them on passive and use an occasional f2.

Traits
For traits, its 20 markmanship (I, VIII), 25 skirmishing (IV, X) and 25 wilderness survival (III, VI). This provides +30% damage when flanking, full health and endurance (which suits the periphery style of place nicely) as well as the usual dodge roll buffs and weapons swap buffs. Barrage and rapid fire are on shorter cooldown as well as your survival skills.

Playstyle
So what does this all add up to? ~2500 power before kill and might stacks (you will easily see 2800-3000 here with buffs), ~1900 toughness, 19k health, +45% flat damage, +57% crit damage coupled with good escape skills.

Longbow is the main damage dealer, but your weapon swap will give you access to path of scars for burst and some nice evades. Burst damage on a specific spot can be frightening when barrage and rapid fire and used in conjunction with quickening zephyr and a well placed path of scars.

I say the above with a word of warning: retaliation is your main enemy. If you try and burst down an enemy thats fully buffed with retaliation you will go down like a cheap date. This is where patience comes into play, you will have to wait for the necro wells to go up to strip the boons.
What works nicely is to target the enemy raid leader, and just start autoattacking him at max range. The damage you take should be minimal from the periphery and you’re basically waiting for the necro spike. As soon as you see the wells go down, its time to pop QZ, barrage and rapid fire on the leader. Alertness, timing and movement is key here, since you want to avoid being a target and really want to move around the enemy on the outside. A nice added touch is to pull people back into the wells with path of scars… always gets me smiling.

Conclusion
A bit of a different take on the OPs wvw roaming build, but thought I’d provide my 2 cents for options in zerg busting. The build he provides is very nice, I can say first hand.

LR will not cleanse immobolise, sadly. If you really want to get the hell out of dodge, you will need to pop signet of renewal and then lightning reflexes. Only reliable way to get out of a zerg train’s way…

kiwituatara.6053:

On a happier note. I’ll have 4 seconds of protection after I dodge now~ Just hope they didn’t nerf vigorous renewal+healing spring combo.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Awesome-build-with-90-boon-duration/first#post2980133

Shhh… don’t give them any ideas!

Spirit buff is interesting, will have to try it out for wvw soon.

Godspeed did a very decent vid on a good wvw build recently.

Fordel.3208:

I think you could make a build that would survive fine in the ball, it just wouldn’t bring anything TO the ball outside of our 6 button.

Splitting hairs I know. /shrug

Nah man, our condi removal is just too weak for this. I know what you are trying to say, but best we can get is 2x passives, 1 signet with long cd, melandru runes and lemongrass soup. Passives are a joke in gvg, signet is good but only once, after which you’re screwed.

Ofcourse, the above is true if you go up against a Second, GD, TUP etc. Vs beginners in GvG you will survive a bit longer.

Power builds work well, except in 1v1s where condition damage and survivability is king. For power builds I tend to use something along these lines:
WvW
GvG
For fun, the chill build, which can be used for 1v1s to decent effect also.

mistsim.2748:

true about the pet, but HP is getting massively buffed next patch.

um id recommend running backline pressure. you wouldnt be with the melee train. your purpose would be aoe immobilize spam via MT and entangle, and aggressive HS placement. focus squishies with LB.

This is exactly the only point to a ranger in gvg: taking down periphery support like they’re cheap dates. Anyone that thinks they can run with the Ball is kidding themselves.

Voicing the opinions of others, I would like to add to the fact that Rangers have really limited use in GvG.

In the unlikely event that you use one for a match, I would go about the following setup which utilises the strength of the ranger: ST DPS. You are a periphery fighter and need to take out the enemy support classes: staff eles, necro’s and thieves. This build hits incredibly hard and has a number of roots to keep the enemy in place while you pummel him to bits. Flat damage buff at full health is +45%, and crit damage buff is 114%. And since you are on the periphery you should be on full health constantly.

When kitten hits the fan and people target you, you have two stun breakers to get out of Dodge, as well as the evades and leaps etc. So you should be able to make it to safety.

Btw, path of scars works so nice with GS stun and maul combo…

10/10, cause I <3 anyone with dreamer! Skill nr2 must look epic

Did a similar build, but one which relied on a frozen trap a bit more. You can easily get 25s of freeze on someone this way…

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-H;5FVy-p2ZDV-0;9F5D;1JTJ;006-35A39;5W-F75;1BmNX8DtZ20Fa1-g290;0Vq5rar5sas5t5230C-2i;9;9;9;9;9;9;1A-6s

It was actually very effective tbh.

Saturday starts well with my morning GvG showdown fix.

To be honest there’s not a lot that a ranger provides in these large scale fights. I play on a high ranked server in a competitive guild and for large scale wvw, I always play my guardian or ele, they’re simply so much better for the group.

I’ve resigned to say that ranger is a ST class. Its strength lies in being able to lock down and take out single targets with relative ease. Yet this is useless in large scale fights, where its about group buffing and aoe damage and cc. The mechanic of the ranger doesn’t lend well to these types of fights, with the decent pets dying very quickly. Spirits have limited use due to their health pool and long cd. This leaves us with trapper, signet or survival build.

Trapper provides nice fields (eles are much more effective in this department), yet by taking traps you lose a lot of survivability utilities. Just about the best trap to take is frost, but that’s on a relatively long cooldown.

Survival build has some nice break stuns and roots, yet entangle gets destroyed in large fights, and muddy terrain recently got hit by nerf bat.

That leaves us with signet build, which is probably the most effective, in combination with LB/GS. You do similar damage to warriors, but lack most of the utility.

What rangers really need is something that lets them spec outside of their current mechanic for large scale wvw, by stowing the pet and getting something in return. My preference would be to give rangers a grandmaster trait that provides traps on mechanic skill bar when stowing pets. Hello usefulness in wvw…

Think I’ve seen you around Coarr. I recall facing a Buka ranger that had insane regen… Why don’t you run renewal though, seems it would supplement the build you have a little better?

Hey guys, some footage from the last couple of days after finally trying a BM build.

Having a blast vs my Desolation opponents, quality of solo play on that server is very high!

Ins.7139:

Hehe thanks for all the solo fights in Deso BL Pikens, VII Ranger, INC Necro gave best fights, rest died pretty easy hehe. Warrior buffs are <3

Ugh man that was so embarassing, I forgot I was no longer in my signet build and only realised when I popped signet of stone wondering why the hell I was taking so much damage. Just stood there and took it…

Was good fight though Insane regen warrior.