Guild Wars 2

You know, no one has even seen the skills for a rifle thief yet.

What if they weren’t able to use their auto attack without standing still? What if their bursts require them to stand still? That makes them immediately countered by any ground-targeted AoE out there; if the thief doesn’t move, they die. If they move, they do no damage.

What people fail to realize is that you do NOT have to kill someone to take them out of the fight; if a thief disengages from you, they’re no longer in the fight and you’ve effectively done the same thing as killing them in regards to team fights and capture points. If you survive a thief’s INI burst they’re going to disengage and trololol around while they wait for it to regen – at that point they are contributing a whopping zero to their team.

It depends. It all depends.
I always roam, and if I see two people fighting it out and the enemy isn’t a PU mesmer I’ll leave the fight alone. If it’s a PU mes or the ally yells for help, you can be kitten ed sure I’m jumping in.

Now, if I’m with someone else roaming all of those restrictions come off unless it’s blatantly obvious that it’s a duel – at that point we’ll probably all stop and watch.

Actually there’s really a fairly simple way to fix it – remove the downed state in WvW.
Think about this for a second (I know this has been discussed before):
Downed state completely removes using the element of surprise as a real advantage for a smaller group to use guerrila tactics on a larger force. If you go into a 1v2 situation with surprise on your side and manage to take down one person before they’re able to respond, their buddy is probably very likely to revive them before you’re able to finish-almost guaranteed to if there are two people nearby to quickly get to reviving.

A stomp takes roughly three seconds to complete, and each class has at least one skill allowing you to interrupt a stomp. If the downed player and/or their friend know what they’re doing they’ll prevent the first stomp from completing, thus allowing an extra three seconds to revive from that downed state. This makes it neigh impossible to actually kill a good, coordinated group unless you have equal numbers.

Now, removing a downed state and sending someone straight into a “hard rez” would completely remove that person from the fight, allowing more involved tactics to have more of a deciding factor in a fight.

Actually, there’s another way manage population imbalances, and that’s by adding more maps and population gating each one differently, while retaining equal point weight on each.
What I mean is this, and this is all purely theoretical amounts to put it into scale:

Let’s assume there’s a total of 5 maps, each map worth 20% overall PPT.
Map 1 has a population cap of 10 per side.
Map 2 has a population cap of 20 per side.
Map 3 has a population cap of 30 per side..
Map 4 has a population cap of 40 per side.
Map 5 has a population cap of 50 per side.

In order to fairly contest 20% of the overall points per tick, you need a total of 10 people on your team. In order to contest 40% of the PPT, you need 30. So on and so forth, needing 60 for 60%, 100 for 80%, and 150 for 100%. This effectively allows a force of 100 people to contest a force of 150 for an overall of 80% of the points.

Contrary to popular belief, if you have two rangers in your zerg that are coordinating their healing springs, you have a 100% uptime water field for condi removal and heal blasting. It’s another class that can be beneficial if played right and there’s not an excess of them.

When mag was camping OS right after reset, I just called in a few buddies and we fought back. Somewhere around 300 kills in a couple of hours, and plenty of laughs from knocking people around or killing the guy that pulled you off of spawn.

As a general rule of thumb in OS – as others have said – expect a fight. That doesn’t mean to go and shiv the first red guy in the back if you’re trying to actively complete the puzzle, since chances are he’ll call in friends to ruin your day; it means that you need to put your big boy pants on and not go crying to mommy because someone decided they’d fear you off of a ledge. If you run into people who are using the PvP JP for its PvP content, then you get to find a way to deal with them – be it killing them, calling in friends to kill them, or sucking it up and leaving until a better time.

There is NOTHING wrong with PvP in a PvP zone.

Just a little bit of advice on the build:
I would change out the Sigils of Battle for Sigils of Force,. The 5% modifier from force comes after all of your might stacks have been added on, and is multiplicative.
What I mean, in math:
Assuming 2000 power, a Sigil of Battle adds 3 stacks of might – bringing the power total up to 2105. If you factor in your Virtue of Justice for another 3 stacks then your power total comes to 2210.
Now with a Sigil of Force, you have a flat multiplier of 1.05 applied to your power rating; be it buffed with however many might stacks you have. Your 2105 power from Virtue of Justice then becomes 2210.25. (The sigils are equal if you have three or less stacks of might, but the minute you get more than that the Sigil of Force becomes obscenely powerful.)
Factoring in Empower and VoJ, you would have 2525 power, then modified by 1.05; bringing the total up to 2651.25.

Also, by not detonating Orb of Light from the staff, you can spam it once every three seconds.

Errr. Try this out sometime:
30/10/0/0/30, running with a GS/SB. Use dual canines.

This requires a good amount of timing to fully pull off, but let that BS thief go ahead and open combat. During his attack chains hit GS #4, and once that lands immediately hit GS 5 to land a stun as you are pet swapping so the dog can pull off a leap for a second knockdown. Once your GS 5 stuns, follow up with a maul (GS 2). By that time most thieves are panicking, so you can pop an F2 hit to either fear or immobilize him as he tries to get away

Played out correctly, this is capable of either dropping the thief if they’re full zerk, or making him think twice about trying for seconds.

Edit: Forgot to add in the bit about popping signet of the hunt as you maul for the 50% increase.

Note: I tend to stick to WvW, so the average quality of players isn’t nearly the same as that of tPvP.

Halo.8976:

Shinobii.4758:

one down many more to go… this guy was pretty good but not good enough!!!

(>O.o)> #teamthief go!!!

Shinobii khai

Sugoi desu! Shinobii to Uchiha wa totemo kakkoii des.

+1 interwebz points to you, good sir.

Thief and Guard works extremely well, especially if the guard is running pure of voice, soldiers runes and triple shouts.

Personally, I’d rather have enemy NPCs lead an assault on towers periodically, much like the dredge and frogs in EB. It would add a bit of diversion if there wasn’t a player there watching said tower.

The problem that exists in the PvP in its current state is due to how emphasized DEFENSIVE builds are, not dps.
Consider this- by switching from full zerker to full knight, you have roughly doubled your damage mitigation while only reducing damage output by around 25%.

For Mr. McSmarts trying to psychoanalyze someone based on a game: you’ve gone full kitten. Try looking at some actual case studies before you start your chest thumping.

Keyce.8137:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

20/20/0/0/30 with a short bow, piercing arrows, full zerker and a cat is your highest dps output as a ranger. Try that out sometime. A full 30 points into BM doubles your cat’s damage output while increasing its survivability drastically. All that you’re essentially losing is 10% crit damage, and 100 power.

And your melee traits add conditions damage and toughness. Although with trait trees, you generally want to ignore the stats you gain from them and instead focus on the traits themselves.

Yeah, I know I should go for traits over stats, but it still bugs me that Wilderness Survival seems to be pointing players into two different directions at once – flat damage through melee weapon traits, or condition damage just with points. But the sword and greatsword are both poor choices for a condition build, I think.

sdlkfdlsgd I just hate that.

Actually, I was just discussing 20 into skirmishing and 30 into BM with a guildie, using the traits offered in both trees to increase the amount of healing on the pet (increased healing, natural regen, heal on crits). Would that be useful in that build, or would it just be better to pick up more damaging majors?

A sword+dagger is your most evasive, tanky, downright annoying weapon set possible. That trait line is actually more defensively focused than it is for conditions (look at your master and grandmaster traits), and that’s one line I don’t run without when I’m running a bunker setup.

But your idea you were talking about? That’s basically what I’ve run as a glass cannon setup for nearly a year now, and a cat will face tank better than 99% of players you’re going to run across like that. Key bind your F3 and F4 skills to something you can hit at a moment’s notice, and figure out which of the boss’ AoE attacks you can simply tell the pet to “come” with F3 to get the thing out of a circle and keep it from dying, without wasting a hot swap cool down. Certain bosses will still eat your pet for breakfast regardless of how well you can micro them though.

Keyce.8137:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

I personally have been running either a pure zerker or Knight’s BM build, one as pure glass cannon with GS/SB and the other as more of a PvP oriented with GS/SB or GS/S+D depending. For PvE all I can tell you is watch your pet’s health like a hawk, and know when you need to call it back or be ready to hot swap. I’ve successfully done fotm 28+ with my BM build and running a jag+stalker, while only having them downed a couple of times. Always due to stray AoE.

Note: I don’t ever sPvP, nor tPvP. I despise it and the clinical feel to the matches; I always duo or solo roam in WvW, picking fights with groups.

Ah. I’m sorry for making that mistake!

I never really thought to use BM as a PvE spec, since I consider the lower damage on the ranger’s side (from traits) to be lower than other ranger specs (not focused on the pet and/or survivability). I still try to put at least 15 into BM for the swap cooldown, but I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that most of the melee weapon damage traits are in the same line as the one that stacks condition damage per trait point spent.

20/20/0/0/30 with a short bow, piercing arrows, full zerker and a cat is your highest dps output as a ranger. Try that out sometime. A full 30 points into BM doubles your cat’s damage output while increasing its survivability drastically. All that you’re essentially losing is 10% crit damage, and 100 power.

And your melee traits add conditions damage and toughness. Although with trait trees, you generally want to ignore the stats you gain from them and instead focus on the traits themselves.

Keyce.8137:

SynfulChaot.3169:

Exactly. Much of this divide comes from the difference of rangers in PvE and in PvP/WvW.

The problem is that this same divide exists for warriors, but in reverse. Warriors are gods in PvE, but are pretty weak in PvP. But despite this, they still band together in the forums and their voice is heard clearly.

We need to do the same. Agree that the class is in need of work and how, and present a unified voice, PvP and PvE alike, so ANet can see the class as all of us see it instead of needing to dig through the back and forth arguments that plague the ranger forums.

Just as a side question, how do you play? I’ve tried a couple builds in sPvP and I keep getting steamrolled by half the enemies in hotjoin.

But more to the point, ranger PvE is just… poor. Our sniping weapon (the longbow) is outdone by the mid-range 2h (shortbow), and pets become super squishy in places like dungeons (and especially boss battle or certain events). Unlike PvP, where your opponent can usually take on either the pet -or- the player, but not both, PvE generally has enough mechanics to attack both at the same time and for painfully large amounts of damage.

In PvP, I have the option to bring a cat or bird with me into the fray, and get away with it. At worst, I may be forced to swap it out on cooldown. But in PvE (dungeons specifically), I have to take a wolf, drake, or bear just to be forced into swapping my pet on CD. And even then? The wolf and drake pets can still die despite my efforts to maintain them.

I personally have been running either a pure zerker or Knight’s BM build, one as pure glass cannon with GS/SB and the other as more of a PvP oriented with GS/SB or GS/S+D depending. For PvE all I can tell you is watch your pet’s health like a hawk, and know when you need to call it back or be ready to hot swap. I’ve successfully done fotm 28+ with my BM build and running a jag+stalker, while only having them downed a couple of times. Always due to stray AoE.

Note: I don’t ever sPvP, nor tPvP. I despise it and the clinical feel to the matches; I always duo or solo roam in WvW, picking fights with groups.

Honestly, go with a trapper build preferably, or a BM bunker build secondary. Being a Ranger and a Commander at the same time, showing people not to be scared to push in through the kill box into inner SM or anything similar gets people to cooperate a lot more than it does to stand back and yell for a push.

If anyone wants to give him specific builds, please do so. I’m on my phone and can’t really give links that efficiently.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Exactly. Much of this divide comes from the difference of rangers in PvE and in PvP/WvW.

The problem is that this same divide exists for warriors, but in reverse. Warriors are gods in PvE, but are pretty weak in PvP. But despite this, they still band together in the forums and their voice is heard clearly.

We need to do the same. Agree that the class is in need of work and how, and present a unified voice, PvP and PvE alike, so ANet can see the class as all of us see it instead of needing to dig through the back and forth arguments that plague the ranger forums.

There’s one EXTREMELY simple thing that ANet can do to “fix” pets in PvE, and that’s to do what Rift did with the Rogue’s pets – hell, it would even fix them in WvW zergs, should they decide to allow the implementation of it in PvP – that’s to give pets an immunity to ground-targeted AoE. Other than the pretty red circles on the ground, a ranger can micromanage a pet in order to make it survive. The limitations of AI just don’t allow for a pet to dodge out of an incoming one shot AoE, so the next best thing was chosen. I’ve been harking this on the forums ever since beta, but no one has decided to help me pitch it; everyone has been instead trying to redesign the class.

23261SynfulChaot.3169:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Anyway. I’m not saying that a ranger is without its faults – far from it. I’m instead trying to help put perspective on why some of us believe that the class isn’t as underpowered as people would portray.

Some portray it as beyond broken. It is not. It is still viable in it’s own way. But with the same effort and gear, I can get far more from most of my alts. That is the issue.

I, myself, prefer to still play my ranger. I will not let class imbalance keep me from my favored class. But I tire of seeing endless defenders against any minor complaint to real class balance issues.

Deep within the bowels of the ranger forum, I have a post outlining everything I’ve found yo be broken with the class. Relatively speaking, it’s not as bad as people would think. Yes, rangers will likely always be kitten upon in PvE situations due to the reliance on an AI, but in a PvP scenario (not including zerg v zerg WvW here) that AI is the very thing that makes the class what it is. You’re always running around with your own force multiplier – always forcing someone to choose between dealing with the player, or the pet; and a good ranger can either overpower, lock the enemy into a stalemate forcing the other player to retreat or allow the ranger to disengage at their own will.

Frankly, there’s no other class that allows me to play like I can my ranger.

Double post instead of an edit, kitten phone.

Anyway. I’m not saying that a ranger is without its faults – far from it. I’m instead trying to help put perspective on why some of us believe that the class isn’t as underpowered as people would portray.

First off in regards to pet damage – some of it was very, very OP. Pre-nerf I had my Jaguar dropping 18k+ maul crits in Arah when stacked with might and vulnerability on a target.

Ranger has an extremely high skill cap, and rewards a certain style of play in which you micro-manage a pet. It’s the only class (that I’m aware of) capable of putting on roughly 3.4k armor, while maintaining an attack rating of around 3k – and let’s not forget your pet, which is contributing another 2.5k attack of its own.

The class – when played to its strengths – can be a wrecking ball. The pet is essentially a force multiplier of nearly 2x, due to the fact that with proper pet management it will nearly never die in anything other than fotm 20+.
Coupled with the ability to drop the best water field in the game, as well as weapon sets that give thief-esque levels of combat disengagement, it is an absolute pain in the kitten to try and kill.

Of course the strength and weakness of the class is in both its skill floor and skill ceiling. Itis an exceptionally hard class to be able to play on a level that makes you as efficient as others, yet even harder still to win against them.
But is that a bad thing, necessarily? Not in my opinion. I’ve played ranger since beta, and will continue to play it purely because of what I can do with it

The reason that cats have a bad TTK on a golem in the mists is due to the fact that they’re using their PvE AI, and attempting to get behind the target as well akittenting something not affected by combat. In a PvP situation, or when the pet gets aggro, it will just go up and maul their face.

WvW jumping puzzles are in a PvP area, in a PvP area you are allowed to kill other players.
Quit kittening and deal with it, for Christ’s sake.

What you’re looking at is indeed a speed hack. Watch his pet, projectile speed, attack speed and various other things that have static timers.

He looks as if he has it set on a low multiplier at first, and then cranks it up in order to run away toward the end.

saiyr.3071:

HighRoller.9508:

Shinobii.4758:

oh and a word to the wise saiyr pvping on a forum isnt the same thing as actual in game pvp… the games called guild wars not forum wars buddy…
- snip -

Is that why you posted like 5 times in an hour boasting about your ‘pro’ thief skills?

I think the irony is lost on him…

Maybe try explaining it in Japanese? Weaboos seem to pretend to understand that better.

I’ve recently been running a two man roamer team with a friend on his guardian, and myself on a bunker BM ranger. Dear god is that funny to watch – we’ve been able to easilyhold our own against forces 3x our size. Granted, no one ever gets any kills on either side simply because they can rez before a stomp drops, but it sure as hell is fun to drag people around for the ride.

Far too many times I’ve lost a kill because a person begins reviving their buddy before I can get a stomp off. I used to love the downed state, but I’ve recently grown to despise it due to preferring to run in 2-3 man roaming squads. Countless times we run into other groups and it becomes a rezzing stalemate, because having 2 people reviving one person gets that person up in roughly 2 seconds.

The very, very best “downed” system I’ve ever played was that of Star Wars Galaxies and its incapacitated state that worked as such:

When your health hit 0, you became incapacitated for 10 seconds. No one would be able to help you during this time, and you were open for an enemy to death blow you by clicking the corpse, which was instantaneous. If the death blow was not delivered, you revived with roughly 10% health and the “Weakened” debuff, which remained for 60 seconds; dying with this debuff would circumvent the incapacitated state and result in an instant death.

Since you seem to not understand the concept behind the laurel system, allow me to try to explain it to you – it is a time sink balanced around the majority of players.

I’m using your numbers here, as well as some of my own that are purely theoretical.
Let’s say that the average player has two level 80s they wish to gear. At 125 laurels each, averaging 40 laurels per month that will take them just a bit longer than 6 months. A fairly average amount of time for any MMO to have best-in-slot gear.
It will take you a bit over 2 years to gear all eight of your characters with Ascended.

Let’s assume that something is done to reduce your gearing time down to half. It now takes the average player 3 months to gear their characters.
Your gearing time goes down to 6 months? Average player gets done in 1.5

The problem is not in the system, it’s in what you’re expecting of it.

As others have stated, WvW and s/tPvP are two completely separate games. The mechanics of one do not translate to another, for the most part.

Just as a tPvP guild/team will know the mechanics of tPvP and use them to their advantage, a WvW guild that knows the mechanics of WvW will use them. A guild of 20 can very well defeat a zerg more than three times their force by correctly utilizing terrain, choke points and sieging up that choke point appropriately.

One is no more skilled than the other, they’re simply skilled at something different.

The “balance” issue isn’t in regards to the skill level of a server, or even the ranking system they had in place – it’s purely based on population size.

Here’s a much more simple way of evening out the player distribution issue.
Varied map sizes.
Let’s say that you have four maps – one allowing 10v10, one for 20v20, another for 30v30, and the final for 40v40.
You would then allocate the same total possible point values to each map.

Out of the maximum player capacities in this situation, it is possible for a server with only 70% of the player base of the larger server to have an even fight at 75% of the points. In this scenario, the winner of the matchup would not be winning by crushing the opponent with a larger force, but by having better control over smaller maps.

How about instead of Retaliation doing a set amount of damage per hit that is then modified by power, have it return a fixed percentage of damage taken, modified by power?

Shiren.9532:

Daecollo.9578:

They need a 1200m leash, they follow targets way too far, its not right.

Once they get far enough they heal like they are out of combat if there master is.

Necromancer Minions leash, Ranger pets should as well. Otherwise out of combat regeneration needs removed.

You want the pet leash to be shorter than the range of their weapon?

A pet fighting a target will be in combat. They don’t get out of combat regen while fighting. What you are seeing is the in combat regen they have from a grand master trait and Signet of the Wild combined with the ranger heal which also heals the pet. Troll Unguent, Natural Healing, Signet of the Wild and Cleric’s armour can give the pet a lot of passive healing that might look like out of combat regen to ignorant people.

Don’t forget Carnivorous Appetite for crit heals. Absolutely nasty on cats.

Daecollo.9578:

@quoted from SPVP Forums

Since rangers can only tell the pet to attack a target within ~1200 range (might be 1500 but still), yet the pet can travel up to I believe ~4000 range (could be less or more, just guess-timating) to the point where the ranger is no longer even considered in combat, it doesn’t seem like an intended function.

1800-2000 should probably be the maximum range (slightly outside of bow range). Current F1 range should be the minimum (about ~1200-1500).

It works exactly like this. Many rangers are exploiting this bug in WvWvW and teams of rangers are running around using this trick to kill roamers.

Okay, the pet will chase that far. The ranger MUST get within range to be able to even tell it to attack in the first place.

I see no problem.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Venereus.9473:

Don’t nerf your server, don’t bring a Ranger to WvW.

You just don’t want to deal with the annoyance of being shot off your Flame Ram by a Point-Blank Shot, and then attempt to run back only to be thrown into down state due to Viper’s Nest, Flame Trap, and Spike Trap hitting you along with a Barrage, huh?

Except, you know, those attacks only hit a maximum of 5 people – and we know there’s never more than 5 people at a door.
Or you could always build an arrow cart, get on that and do more than annoy everyone sitting at the gate.

The viability of classes in WvW starts to matter less as you go higher in the server tiers, and instead the emphasis is on zerg tactics, having commanders that aren’t short a few brain cells, and the use of siege. Assuming you want to WvW for what it is and not run around looking for people to solo gank.
You could be a level 1 with nothing equipped and contribute far more toward your server’s score by simply running supply than the level 80 in full exotics+ascended that’s camping the jumping puzzle for kills.

I actually run a pure glass cannon zerker BM build for WvW due to the fact that I find myself always either leading a group of people, or chasing a guildie that’s leading. In that situation, I want to put as much hurt on someone as quickly as I can – BM zerker does it for me.

Essentially my mindset is that I’m focusing on downsizing the enemy force as quickly as I can, either by killing one or making one pull back out of the fight due to taking too much damage – either of those situations results in one less weapon being used against my side.

Aztex.4895:

Everyone knows WvW is only about zergs. And yes, this is one more thread about how it could be fixed. I didn’t find any post regarding the same suggestion, so here it goes.

Anet can still hide it a bit with some updates (like this last one in Arrow Carts), but servers still zerg and they will continue to do it.

Why do people zerg? Because they get points faster and with no challenge and because they have more supply with them to build any siege weapon.

What if all the points – Keeps, Towers and Camps – would scale in difficulty with the number of attackers, like we see in PVE?
The more people there are attacking a Tower, the harder it gets – NPC’s get stronger with more skills, there are more NPC’s spawning, the Gate and Walls get more Life.
I don’t know if they are already doing this, but I guess they aren’t because it would be the best way to counter zergs with balancing a bit.

I think with this idea well balanced, a Keep or a Tower would be so hard to take down when there’s a zerg of 40+ people in front of it that it wouldn’t be fast enough. Players would think about the time wasted in only one point and would try to separate in teams to take/defend other objectives in the map at the same time.

Just, no. Let me explain why.

If you scale the “difficulty” of the structure, then you’re automatically slanting the balance in favor of defenders. By doing this, you require fewer people to defeat a much larger force. This would promote ninja’ing structures, and far fewer fights over the point.

Zerg tactics work in the mindset of amassing your entire force into one unit; normally this would have the downside of a slower response time due to having all of your units in one place and it requiring more time to move 50 people as one than it does to move 5.

If you wanted to reduce zerging, you need to make it harder to track the enemy. As-is currently, you can have a 5-10 man team trying to take a tower and the enemy zerg can respond within a matter of minutes – far before you have the chance to take it down.

My changes:
Swords only appear on your map within a set radius of your location.
Swords don’t appear when engaging an NPC, they will display when a threat to the location is displayed. (Say, 75% health on the wall or door).
This would REQUIRE the use of scouts at each location to report back when the enemy has started knocking on your door. If a group has gotten your wall to 75% and you haven’t responded, there’s a good chance you’re going to lose it. Furthermore, it encourages the use of smaller raiding parties. If you’re small, you can move around relatively undetected. It would allow for more ‘strategic’ capping of places.

jkctmc.8754:

@ExpiredLifetime

Is that what you wanted to see?

The Ranger does not have Burst really, with any weapon. Only with their pets.

Seeing that you finally decided to read the original post, and respond inline with the thread instead of trying to pick a fight via PMs?
Yes, I am relieved now, and I think I might be able to sleep since the angst has subsided.

Forzani.2584:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Forzani.2584:

Actual testing to support an opinion is highly discouraged here jkctmc. You should know better than that.

Hyperbole and theorycraft >>actual in game experience …obviously.

Since people have yet to seem to understand it, there is a difference in spike (burst) damage, and sustained damage.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, the long bow has the strength in the fact that it delivers more damage in a single shot at range than anything else does; that in and of itself has its uses.

Fighting in a zerg? Find the wounded targets that are preoccupied and have lower health, then pop them with a couple of auto attacks. Chances are high that they’re either going to run away, or they’re going to die.

Either way you’ve removed a body from the fight, further pushing the odds in the favor of your side.

This is likely just a different interpretation of the meaning of “burst”. My first class was a Ranger. After playing other classes I now know exactly what “burst” is. No way does LB + Burst belong in the same sentence. This isn’t just a ranged deal either. Many times I have been burned down by Mesmers…Necros…..Engineers…Warrior and thought what the hell just happened as I scroll back to the combat logs to see what truck hit me. That has honestly never happened when facing a Ranger. I might very well lose to the Ranger…especially when I am on my Warrior (who I am still figuring out to play…plus it is a good matchup for Rangers). The loss to the Ranger is never about burst..ranged or melee.

I say that with a pro Ranger point of view.

OP was in regards to the Ranger class, not every one in general. For a Ranger, about as much weapon burst as we get is QZ+Barrage and endless auto attacking.

BM builds are another story, but until we actually see changes in the pet AI that solves my complaints with them, I won’t use one.

The spirit, Entangle and Rampage as One all have their uses.

I usually run with the spirit if I’m doing dungeons, because it’s a nice way to revive people without having to stop and paint a target on yourself – the heal is decent as well, and in PvE it tends to stay alive.

WvW, I’ll switch between Rampage and Entangle purely depending on the size of the fight I’m in, and how likely it is for my pet to stay alive during it.

jkctmc.8754:

If you’re talking Ranger only weapons, you’d be incorrect in the fact that unless you’re attacking a target standing still, virtually every class has access to 25% runspeed, and CAN EASILY AVOID THE LONGBOW SHOT, without dodging. A Beastmaster spec would do much more damage at more range with a stealthed Panther.

If you’re talking all weapons in the game, the Engineer grenade spec does more damage at 1500 range, and does not suffer the issue of obstruction that the Longbow suffers.

Naro.6327:

I recently (like thursday) bought this game, and i havent decided on the class to play. So far my #1 is ranger, but i want to make sure its the type of ranger i like to play. Is it possible to go bow-crit ranger and be effective in PvP? I want to do tons of damage from a range, (if anyone has played Aion thats exactly what im looking for in a ranger). Also whats the diffrence in shortbows and longbows? Thanks in advance!

Forzani.2584:

Actual testing to support an opinion is highly discouraged here jkctmc. You should know better than that.

Hyperbole and theorycraft >>actual in game experience …obviously.

Since people have yet to seem to understand it, there is a difference in spike (burst) damage, and sustained damage.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, the long bow has the strength in the fact that it delivers more damage in a single shot at range than anything else does; that in and of itself has its uses.

Fighting in a zerg? Find the wounded targets that are preoccupied and have lower health, then pop them with a couple of auto attacks. Chances are high that they’re either going to run away, or they’re going to die.

Either way you’ve removed a body from the fight, further pushing the odds in the favor of your side.

jkctmc.8754:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Kiran.2705:

Bows are bad. Short bow is ok, but just ok. The ranger’s only really good weapons are sword and greatsword. Kiss your dreams of being a longbow marksman goodbye and put them in a tiny vault and throw them into the ocean.

Uh, no. I’m afraid you’re wrong there.

The burst potential of the Long Bow is better than anything else that the ranger has, and its sustained DPS isn’t half bad either. Rangers also have one of – if not the – longest effective ranges in the game when traited for it at 1500 units. By using the terrain to your advantage, you can actually extend the range past that point due to the natural arc of an arrow.
Combine that with piercing shots, along with proper shot placement for maximum effect, and you have the ability to put quite a bit of hurt on people quite a distance away.

Due to the way ranged attacks work in general, you’re never going to win a 1v1 fight with someone at extreme range; however, if you’re dealing with zerg tactics (as most WvW fights go), you can sit back and farm your kills up.

Pick your targets and pick your fights; oh and don’t forget your greatsword/sword, you’re going to need it if someone tries to close in on you.

So much misinformation here. First, and foremost the Engineer’s grenades can reach to 1500 range, if traited as well, and never suffers line of sight issues, like the longbow does. At 1500 range, if I have 25% runspeed, I can dodge, and outrun your arrows 100% of the time, and 60% of the time at 1100 range.

Due to the way ranged attacks work in general, you’re never going to win a 1v1 fight with someone at extreme range; however, if you’re dealing with zerg tactics (as most WvW fights go), you can sit back and farm your kills up.

Thieves, HGH Engineers, Warriors, Shatter Mesmers, and even the Necromancer for 30 seconds in Lich Form has a better burst, than the Ranger, so much so some of them burst three times as much damage.

The burst potential of the Long Bow is better than anything else that the ranger has, and its sustained DPS isn’t half bad either.

I will not even get into the teleports that move you 1200 range, putting you in the Rangers face, where you have plenty of time to kill them before the pet figures out what happens.

By using the terrain to your advantage
if you’re dealing with zerg tactics

Quit spreading false information, and play the other classes.

better than anything else that the ranger has

First off, the fact that you felt the need to PM me this post as well? Rather pathetic.
Secondly, there is no misinformation anywhere in my post. As a matter of fact, I’ll just use my post in response to each of your points.

The OP was questions in regards to the Ranger class.
Again, reading comprehension.

Oberon Vex.1389:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

Between the Power and crit of this particular build, Rapid fire is dealing 10k damage over its duration, and it does it at any range. This build does not use quickening zephyr. Please read the related posts before you make a comment. I can understand that much of that math carries over no matter the crit/damage of a build, but that just makes it a matter of starting with Barrage/Huntershot and auto attacks at max range then swapping to Rapid fire as they begin to close, in order to optimize damage.

Using Rapid Fire doesn’t optimize damage, period. If something is within the range that your damage with auto attack reaches the point of being lesser than Rapid Fire, you need to change weapons; trying to fight at <500 range with a long bow isn’t a very smart idea.

Kiran.2705:

Bows are bad. Short bow is ok, but just ok. The ranger’s only really good weapons are sword and greatsword. Kiss your dreams of being a longbow marksman goodbye and put them in a tiny vault and throw them into the ocean.

Uh, no. I’m afraid you’re wrong there.

The burst potential of the Long Bow is better than anything else that the ranger has, and its sustained DPS isn’t half bad either. Rangers also have one of – if not the – longest effective ranges in the game when traited for it at 1500 units. By using the terrain to your advantage, you can actually extend the range past that point due to the natural arc of an arrow.
Combine that with piercing shots, along with proper shot placement for maximum effect, and you have the ability to put quite a bit of hurt on people quite a distance away.

Due to the way ranged attacks work in general, you’re never going to win a 1v1 fight with someone at extreme range; however, if you’re dealing with zerg tactics (as most WvW fights go), you can sit back and farm your kills up.

Pick your targets and pick your fights; oh and don’t forget your greatsword/sword, you’re going to need it if someone tries to close in on you.

People did these event chains, until they got nerfed.

There’s a difference in a game ‘dying’, and a game reaching its maintenance level of population. Due to the buy-to-play nature of the game, people will leave when they get bored, and they’ll come back when there’s new stuff out. That’s how GW1 worked for the most part, and how ANet is obviously aiming to make this game.

There’s actually something even easier that they could do, that has been done in other games as well.

Make pets immune to ground-targeted AoE.
They’re supposedly going to change the AI to make pets attempt to get behind a target, thus avoiding cleave style attacks.

First off, Rapid Fire is absolutely worthless. Don’t use it – I would even take it off of my tool bar if I could.

Why? Math.
I’m supplying the actual numbers from my ranger in-game as well, I can get screen shots later if need be to prove.

Rapid Fire is a 5 second channel, doing 3,400 damage.
Auto attack has an animation time of 0.75 seconds, and with latency factored in fires once every 0.8 seconds for me and does 817 per shot at 1000+ range, 590 at 500-1000, and 454 at sub 500.
In the amount of time it takes to channel one Rapid Fire for 3,400 damage, you would have fired 6 shots from auto attack. (This is factoring in lag as well)
That equates to a total of 4,902 at 1000+, 3540 at 500-1000, and 2724 at sub 500.
That means auto attack is doing 142.5%, 104% and 80% of the damage of a Rapid Fire at the respective ranges.

The only time you’re going to be doing more damage with Rapid Fire will be in the point that you should have either changed weapons, used your Point Blank Shot for its knockback, or turned and run from your target.

Don’t say that you use Quickening Zephyr to make your Rapid Fire shoot faster than your auto attack, either. The 50% increase affects everything, so your Long Range Shot would be getting the 50% increase as well.

Killsmith.8169:

Sebrent.3625:

Yeah, his math was quite wrong.

Let’s assume you do 100 damage per second.
With +100% attack speed, you’ll do 200 damage per second.
So, for 4 seconds of old_quickness, you’ll do 200 * 4 = 800 damage.
We need a 5th second though, so you’ll do another 100 damage at the 5th second so 800 + 100 = 900 damage.

With +50% attack speed, you’ll do 150 damage per second.
So, for 5 seconds of new_quickness, you’ll do 150 * 5 = 750 damage

(900 – 750) / 900 = 16.6…% So you experience a 16.6…% decrease in dps. This is vastly different than the math given before. This is why some people are complaining like it’s the end of the world for Rangers’ burst and others are looking at them quite quizzically.

“Learn to math” or don’t try to explain things with math, people

I’d just like to point out that this isn’t accurate if you’re looking for the dps increase provided by QZ.

The reason? You’re factoring in damage you would be doing without the quickness. Quickness is only responsible for the additional attacks you make. Before the change, QZ gave you 100% more attacks for 4 seconds. After, QZ gives you 50% more attacks for 5 seconds. Using your 100 dps number, that’s 400 damage vs. 250 damage. That’s a 37.5% reduction.

If you’re doing the math right, it should hold true for all scenarios. Consider a bugged QZ that doesn’t provide any benefit. If you include the base attack speed, you end up with results that say QZ deals more damage after the change to 5 seconds, which clearly wouldn’t be right in this scenario.

You obviously failed math class a few times.
A 100% increase translates to multiplying by 2, a 50% increase translates to multiplying by 1.5.

Pre-nerf: (100*2*4)/(100*4) = 800/400 = 2= 200% aka, 200 damage per second
Post-nerf: (100*1.5*5)/(100*5) = 750/500 = 1.5 = 150% aka, 150 damage per second

Anyway, back on topic.
I still run the same build that I did before the nerf, simply because of how useful QZ still is.
It affects both you and your pet, so I’m given the option of either using it to drop a barrage in WvW during zerg warfare, hit Stalk on my jag>Sick ’Em>then QZ as the cat gets next to the target in a 1v1 situation for a nice little surprise from the cat, use it to rez, or use it to break a stun and then turn around and pummel someone in the face.

I still love my LB/GS combo more than anything due to the fact that while the LB may not be the very best sustained damage weapon, nothing says hello quite like a 2.5-5k auto attack crit delivered from 1500 range.

Oh, and by the way: Auto attack is roughly a 40% more damage over Rapid Fire at 1000+ range if you count purely shots fired, and closer to 50% if you count total time spent firing. They’re near even at 500-1000, and only sub 500 does RFS outdamage your auto. But really – if you’re sub 500 range you should have switched weapons by that point.