Guild Wars 2

The christmas content lasts a whole month, and you are free to do other things in between. Or you could simply just chose not to do it at all..

This is dynamic game, so obviously you can’t just compare damage, and say one is better then the other based only on that. The greatsword is a great burst weapon with some really good escape abilities, and sword is a great snare weapon with some good evasive abilities. Both have their different uses, and are only good or bad depending on the build you play.

I think you’re confusing choice with “how I want to play”. The way the weapons are laid out now, does leave room for either power or condition damage builds. Greatsword and longbow just leans more towards power builds, and the sword and shortbow leans more towards condition builds. But you have plenty of access to conditions through utility skills, traits, pets, and sigils, to make the greatsword and longbow viable condition damage weapons.

The staff damage being crap is a bit of a bad rumour. Between the auto-attack and Orb of Light, the staff deals great AoE damage. Overall, the staff is great as a switched in weapon, that offers both offensive and defensive options from each skill. Even ‘Line of Warding’ can be used offensively, by preventing foes from running away.

Chopps.5047:

Kasama, do you think stability training should apply to all pets and just be 5 in beastmastery?

Sounds good to me.

Those Warriors weren’t by any chance trying to stun lock you?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAW7flYg672GSOEf4Ei1DCCh8nqHxj+4hXFSIA-jUyAIMBZaCAdBmIAl9KiGbxrIas6FMdJRUt7oIa1CBobMA-w

Enjoy =)

Your toughness should be 1500+, your health should be 18.000+, your power should be 2200+, and it’s not worth having condition damage with either the longbow or greatsword, as both weapons doesn’t have any condition damage skills.

Stow triggers Mighty Swap and Vigorous Training, if you get into combat while the pet is stowed. It can put your pets health back to 100%, when you come out of combat. If you’re doing a jumping puzzle, it gets rid of the pet so it doesn’t block your visibility. And when you go past a ledge, it makes sure your pet isn’t left behind.

Use the Flamethrower for offensive support, and then change to Elixir Gun when you need defensive support.

The pet is out unique mechanic. ButI’m sure you already knew that, and were just waiting for someone to post this, so you can make a condescending reply, and turn this into yet another useless Ranger complain topic.

I find it astounding, that even over a year after the game is released, people are still complaining that the Ranger doesn’t play like in Guild Wars 1. Maybe if you’d actually try to accept the Ranger for what it is, you might come to like it, instead of hoping that ArenaNet eventually turns the GW2 Ranger into a GW1 Ranger clone.

Chopps.5047:

Atherakhia.4086:

Chopps.5047:

I haven’t ran the numbers but 40% of damage seems awfully high. Maybe in a regen bunker condi build. But rabid or berserker there’s just no way it’s 40%. Probably more like 10% or 15% tops.

Pets scaling with gear becomes a problem with ascended in wvw though, depending on your build.

I ran simple DPS numbers from a Thief’s dagger (their highest DPS weapon) and the Ranger’s sword (our highest DPS weapon) and found the Dagger at 2469 and the Ranger at 1663. So that would be about 33%. I haven’t timed the pet attacks yet as I got lazy so can’t do a DPS comparison as the wiki doesn’t have any values and I didn’t find them yet.

This is before traits and food and such. It’s also just auto attack. Rangers don’t seem to really benefit that much from using their abilities. Especially with the bows (which are the only weapons I really care about) so I haven’t done anything else to see if maybe the horn #4 is worth using etc.

Simple test? Explain. There is no such thing. The result depends on the assumptions. You didn’t take any traits did you?

It is around 30% Chopps. Simply comparing the weapons base damage on wiki, will give you the same rough estimate. However, the pet doesn’t only deal around 30% of the damage the Ranger deals, but actually deals +50% of the damage the Ranger deals. So as long as both the Ranger and the pet is hitting a target, the damage can actually be +10% higher then other professions. And that’s not even counting pet skills like Lightning Breath..

And that leads me to answer the OP question; the biggest issue with the pet is path finding. If the pet could hit a target more often, the Ranger would feel a lot more powerful, and the fact that the pet dies easily would be more justified.

idevourwater.3149:

Kasama.8941:

Entangle is working as intended. The immobilize will trigger on any foe who gets trapped in the vines, even if they teleport out. If a player stays in the vines, the immobilize will keep stacking. If a player teleports out of the vines, or destroys the vines, the immobilize will still stay on that player. If a player uses condition removal, the immobilize will be removed, but if that player stays on the vines, a new stack of immobilize will trigger on that player.

Entangle stacks 1.5 seconds of immobilize on a player, every 1.5 second. So if a player gets vines on him, and then immediately teleports out, he will still have 1,5 immobilize on him. If you increase your condition duration, this will of curse be higher.

I know entangle is working as intended, but what im trying to suggest is that the intended effect is a little underwhelming…
the entire mechanic of the root applying immobilization in a periodic interval has many loopholes… since the game treats the root as an npc unit, you could easy bypass effect either through stealth, teleport, blind, regular condi removal or even reduced condition duration effects from runes.

Consider the following: if you happen to cast grasping roots or entangle on someone who have lemon grass nourishment plus melandru runes or rune of sunless… your supposingly 8 sec immob suddenly turns to a 1 second one because the immob pulses every 1.5 seconds to apply a 1.5 second immob.
since the target enemy has condi reduction, they have to only stand still for 1 second, and then simply walk out of it before the root pulses again… I think this is complete bullkitten for a 150 sec ult.

So what i was hoping for is a more reliable skill that would actually cause the person under the effect to need to destroy the root to get out, or simply make that skill a 4 second immobolize without a buggy mechanic

I agree that the overuse of negative condition duration, and the low “health” of the vines, makes Entangle feel weak on paper. However, when actually playing the game, I still find that Entangle hits, more often then it misses. But it is a hard skill to balance, as the majority of players in WvW aren’t running with -65% condition duration, and players in sPvP can’t have more then -20% condition duration. So if you improve the immobilize of Entangle too much, it might become too powerful against players who doesn’t run with negative condition duration. And in the same respect, if you improve the “health” of the vines to balance Entangle against AoE damage, it might become too strong against single targets.

A solution could be to simply reduce the recharge time of Entangle, all the way down to 90 seconds. So if you miss the vines, it won’t feel as too much of a lose. This would also help make the “trap Ranger” more viable in WvW.

Entangle is working as intended. The immobilize will trigger on any foe who gets trapped in the vines, even if they teleport out. If a player stays in the vines, the immobilize will keep stacking. If a player teleports out of the vines, or destroys the vines, the immobilize will still stay on that player. If a player uses condition removal, the immobilize will be removed, but if that player stays on the vines, a new stack of immobilize will trigger on that player.

Entangle stacks 1.5 seconds of immobilize on a player, every 1.5 second. So if a player gets vines on him, and then immediately teleports out, he will still have 1,5 immobilize on him. If you increase your condition duration, this will of curse be higher.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Great Ill look into that Kasama, I definitely missed that.

The Speedy kits trait has a 5 sec CD so Im assuming you are
using ways to buff the 5 sec of swiftness? Either way seems kind
of laborious spamming the key every 5 seconds to keep buff up.

Allow me to quote myself:

You can have permanent and increasing swiftness, by using Med Kit together with the trait Speedy Kits.

Med Kit gives you 11 seconds of swiftness every 20 seconds. So when you use Speedy Kits together with the Med Kit, the swiftness you get from the Med Kit is never used. Meaning every 60 second, you’ll have 33 seconds of swiftness saved up.

Rocket Boots together with Acid Bomb gives you a 1000 range leap. You can have permanent and increasing swiftness, by using Med Kit together with the trait Speedy Kits. Using all of these skills makes the Engineer one of the best mobility professions in the game.

Obscure One.4357:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Obscure One.4357:

Why is this an OR question? I use both.

Pro Tip: Weapon swap as you use Acid Bomb if you want to cancel the leap. Allows for a triple leap finish with Jump Shot then Rocket Boots. Great for Healing Turret water fields and stacking Retaliation off of Super Elixir.

the main thing i dont like about Acid Bomb is the fact it sends you BACKWARDS – send me forwards, great i will use it. Send me backwards? No thanks.

Step One: hot key “About Face”
Step Two: release mouse “Camera Look” (normally right click)
Step Three: press “About Face”, press #4, then press “About Face” again.

See how you now just leapt FORWARDS?

It takes a bit of practice but you’ll get it. It ain’t easy being greasy bro.

It’s much more effective to manually turn 180, instead of using “about face” a second time. This is because you can only use “about face” either before or after a skill animation, but you can still use your camera look in the middle of an animation.

This is how to do it:
1) Have “auto run” on
2) Press “about face”
3) Then very quickly follow up with Acid Bomb (you have to do this fast, so you don’t run backwards)
4) As the animation of Acid Bomb is happening, use your mouse to turn your view back 180, so you are faced forward when the animation of Acid Bomb is complete
5) Imagining 2, 3, 4 as being one move, and not three different moves, makes it easier to do

It doesn’t take a lot of practice to learn. And when you combo it with Rocket Boots, you are able to do a 1000 range escape.

The Guardian will be able to have 3000 power with stacks as well, but while still having more then 600 condition damage, 1400 toughness, and 16000 health. Plus virtues..

jcbroe.4329:

@Everybody;

Here is another way of looking at it:

These are the damage stats we can invest into;

Power
Precision
Critical Damage
Condition Damage
Condition Duration

When it comes to maximizing DPS, direct damage needs Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. For Damage Over Time, no additional stat investment is required.

For maximizing the DPS of condition damage, you need; Condition Damage. For Damage Over Time, you need an additional investment of Condition Duration.

Based on investment values alone, condition damage is the better investment because it requires less stat investment to be effective.

However, as previously pointed out, this doesn’t take into consideration the requirements and hard counters to either of the types of damage.

Also, I forget the users name, but from the spvp forums, there was an argument of why shorter condition were better than long lasting conditions. Basically, the point was made that being able to reapply 2 second bleeds over and over is better than being about to apply them on a long duration due to the nature of condition removal in this game.

Because condition removal in the game is very tied to cooldowns, whether it be passive or active, the chances of having your damage removed is actually lower for low duration conditions than high ones. Take for example, ranger Torch. Torch 4 can apply a long duration burn, which, for most players, will be cleansed almost immediately if they get hit by it, making the skill do almost no damage unless the person lacks the removal to get rid of it.

However, skills like Bonfire and Flame Trap reapply 1s/2s burns over and over, and even though overall the damage over time is lower, the DPS is safer because the chance that a 1s or 2s long condition is going to be removed is much lower than a 10 second long condition.

That’s just an interesting perspective I found on the actual benefits of condition duration.

Direct damage does not need critical damage, and critical chance is less important then condition duration is. Even if you only have 2200 power, 20% critical chance, and 15% critical damage, you still have a viable direct damage build. Condition damage requires more attention to build choices. Because of the hard counters to condition duration (Lemongrass Poultry Soup, Rune of Melandru, Rune of Hoelbrak, and Rune of the Sunless), you need more then +40% condition duration in a condition damage build, in the current meta. Next to this, you also need to be aware of all the condition damage types, as the more you have, the more damage you will deal. Burn, poison, and 10 stacks of bleed, deals a lot more damage then just 10 stacks of bleed alone. And because of this, you also rely more on multiple skills, meaning you’ll want some form of skill recharge reduction, so you can stack your conditions faster. Or in other words; auto-attacking with a direct damage build, is more powerful then auto-attacking with a condition damage build. Condition damage only becomes more powerful, when you can continuously keep conditions on a target.

jcbroe.4329:

Kasama.8941:

I disagree with you. The weakness of condition damage comes from the fact, that it deals with more random elements, then direct damage does. Like condition removal, opponents negative condition duration, damage over time, and the attention to various condition types. These are variables that direct damage doesn’t have to deal with. Direct damage can’t be removed, there is no permanent damage reduction against direct damage, you can deal a lot of damage over a shorter period of time, and it simply just requires you to hit your target. Condition damage should really be called “complicated damage”.

Those are all very good points. I am in no way trying to devalue them with this next statement, when I say that I was only evaluating the differences of the two damage types on a stat allocation basis.

The only point I’m going to nitpick with is when you say there is no permanent damage reduction against direct damage, just because toughness is that permanent damage reduction, unless I’ve misunderstood what you meant.

Other than that, I’d have to say that it’s a very good evaluation of the pros of direct damage that condition damage has trouble with.

I was referring to the comparison with negative condition duration. Having -60% condition duration is a permanent counter to condition damage. There is no permanent counter that gives you damage reduction against critical chance or critical damage. You could say that toughness is a permanent counter to direct damage, but toughness is also bad for condition damage, because almost all condition damage skills deals some form of direct damage as well. The Rangers shortbow auto-attack is a good example of this. Protection, weakness, and retaliation are really the only true counters to direct damage. However, it should be mentioned that condition damage continues to deal damage to a player, even when that player is dodging, or is out of hit range. While direct damage requires you to constantly hit a target, and is therefor more susceptible to damage denial like dodging, aegis, blind, and so on.

Here’s a burst build for ya:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAW7flYg672GSOEf4Ei1DCCh8nqHxj+4hXFSIA-jUyAIMBZaCAdBmIAl9KiGbxrIas6FMdJRUt7oIa1CBobMA-w

Here’s a build that I just made real quick. It should have the things you’re looking for:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqqb3yShF1bJx4DdOUhEDShe5r4DV+TB2C-jECBINBkoGkIAIHqIas1PFRjVzATliIq2jrIa1CBsYNA-w

Healing Turret and Elixir Gun for healing your allies, Shield and Throw Mine for control and blast finishers, and Toss Elixir R for reviving allies. Rune of Grenth I choose because it combos very nicely with Healing Turret.

I disagree with you. The weakness of condition damage comes from the fact, that it deals with more random elements, then direct damage does. Like condition removal, opponents negative condition duration, damage over time, and the attention to various condition types. These are variables that direct damage doesn’t have to deal with. Direct damage can’t be removed, there is no permanent damage reduction against direct damage, you can deal a lot of damage over a shorter period of time, and it simply just requires you to hit your target. Condition damage should really be called “complicated damage”.

I like the pet. I just think it needs to be more valuable, for both the Ranger and allies. Either by improving the pet skills, or adding new skills to the pets, similar to the shouts.

Use the Black Bear instead of the Brown Bear, for the AoE weakness. Take Malicious Training to increase pet condition durations, and Shared Anguish for an extra stun breaker. Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup will make your condition removal even better, and Master Maintenance Oil will give you some much needed critical chance. Finally, Sigil of Hydromancy should make it harder for melee opponents to reach you.

By the way, you can’t use two defensive rings of the same type.

Actually, the Elixir Gun can do everything Rocket Boots does. Super Elixir removes conditions, and Acid Bomb gives you a leap, plus a blast finisher. The only thing that makes Rocket Boots better, is the 500 longer leap distance. Personally, I use both, just because I love the movement.

If Med Kit is your only source of condition removal (it really shouldn’t be though), the immobilize problem can be solved by using Packaged Stimulants, which allows you to throw Drop Antidote on yourself. It also improves the bandages healing, and swiftness duration, by 25%.

Ralkuth.1456:

I’d assume Speedy Kits is in every build, but I guess it isn’t. Thank you for the heads up. On the same note, Healing Turret gives AoE regen, which Medkit doesn’t.
You can also split up Healing Turret healing by using the toolbelt skill Healing Mist to blast finish off of, for 1320 AoE healing each. I think that was the amount Medkit skills 1-3 healed for before the reduction.

Speedy Kits plus Drop Stimulant means you can increase your swiftness. So even before you get into combat, you can easily have 30+ seconds of swiftness. This also potentially allows you to share your swiftness with another player.

Yeah, you can gain 780 healing from Regeneration Mist, or 2100 healing with a blast finisher. But then you will have used an extra skill, to do the same thing that Med Kit can do on its own. Regenerating Mist, and blast finishers, also have long recharge times.

It’s also worth mentioning that sigils can be used to provide even more healing when using the Med Kit.

This will make no difference. People blob up because it makes gameplay easier, and rewards higher, while giving more WXP. The only thing that could stop blobbing at this point, is some form of damage penalty debuff. But blobbing is not going to stop, simply because ArenaNet actually want blobbing in the game. They seem to be stuck in this fantasy of “large scale combat”. Regardless of the fact that it creates a ton of lag, or that the combat system isn’t build for it.

This is what happens when you add a level system to a MMO game mode. People will only care about leveling up, even if the benefits of this makes no real difference. Everyone simply does it because the higher number you have, the more awesome you obviously are. Meanwhile, the actual gameplay is hurting because of this. But ArenaNet won’t really care about this either, because they are just excited about the fact that more players are playing WvW. Never mind the reason why…

Leagues are simply just another system that’s meant to keep players invested in WvW, over a longer timespan. It will do nothing for the actual gameplay.

It could be fun if it was a lightning field. It doesn’t even have to make sense, because it’s the Engineer :P

Ralkuth.1456:

Healing Turret gives 2 condition removal instead of 1 from Medkit.
Healing Turret has 0.5 second cast time making it very hard to interrupt even with anticipation. Medkit Bandage Self is the standard 1s cast heal. Good players can interrupt very easily. Counter with LoS or blind.
Healing Turret can be combo’d with various abilities to Area Heal with Combo Blast Finisher. In an emergency Healing Turret + Detonate (water field stays) + Shield 4 Detonate + Rocket Boots should give you a high healing spike with CC and movement.
Medkit Healing on paper is higher with the 1-3 skills, however you cannot utilise them when immobilised and each bandage has a 0.5 second cast time, and although you can use them to the fullest out of LoS, that’s 1.5 seconds you are not outputting CC or damage.
Healing Turret gives regen that can stack with Backpack Regenerator that will sometimes save you from clutch situations, but I’m sure some will argue Medkit gives more healing.
Healing Turret has a 15 second CD if stowed and you can stow it even when you are kiting forward, you just have to be quick with Overcharge -> Stow turret. Harder with Super Speed on, but that’s a rare exception.

Healing Turret is 5040 heal + 8 second 130 regen = 6080 heal
on 0.5 second cast-time,
15 second CD OR

Healing Turret is 5040 heal + 8 second 130 regen + 1320 x max 4 times Blast finish = max 11360 heal
on 3-0.5 second cast-time,
20 second CD
(Combo: Big Ol’ Bomb -> Healing Turret -> Overcharge -> Detonate + Shield 4 + Big Ol’ Bomb Detonation + Rocket Boots)

Medkit is 4920 + 1000 × 3 = 7920 heal
on 1+1.5 = max 2.5 second cast-time,
20-15.5 second CD.

Medkit is better for Power burst as it can have minimum 10 seconds of fury for the Rifle-Grenade-Toolkit-Slickshoes CC spike combo to crit more.
Healing Turret is better for Condi removal, safer healing (harder to interrupt), and quick spike healing via usage of water + blast finish. Also more self-combos with Fire Bomb and Smoke Bomb for Might and Stealth, respectively.

You can’t say Med Kit, without mentioning swiftness. This is one of the biggest strength of the Med Kit, especially in WvW. You also didn’t mention that Med Kit allows you to split up your healing better, which is very useful when you have other healing sources, like the Elixir Gun.

Shemsu.8721:

Kasama.8941:

ArenaNet will not reduce the current amount of stealth options the Thief has, simply because they are afraid that the Thief will become the most underplayed professions, again. Most players who plays the Thief, plays it because of the way stealth and backstab currently works, as this playstyle resembles how an Assassin plays. If you where to remove that “feeling”, by reducing the amount of stealth options, you would lose a lot of Thief players. But I still think it needs to be done. The Thief should play like a Thief, not like an Assassin.

Again with the name nit picking? So I suppose they should remove sword from the class, since its called thief and not swashbuckler or duelist? And they shouldnt have a shortbow since the class isnt called archer right? Its not called marksman or pistoleer so i guess no pistols either. And you already pointed out its not called assassin, so no daggers either………

It’s not just about the name. It’s about what ArenaNet told us the profession was going to play like, even before the game was released. Stating that: “Unlike other games, stealth is not unlimited in Guild Wars 2. Stealth is a very powerful ability, and so we want it to be something that players use strategically, as opposed to something that’s a safety-net, that they have on all the time”.

When I say the Thief shouldn’t play like an Assassin, I’m referring to the classic Assassin move of dealing high damage when coming out of stealth, and being in stealth for the majority of time. The Thief is suppose the be the master of movement first, and a master of stealth second. Why go through a lot of effort to make a Thief profession, if it just ends up playing like an Assassin anyway? ArenaNet needs to stop pleasing the Assassin crowd, and tone down the stealth options, to force players into using movement more. Then give the Thief some boons in return, like aegis and protection, to improve survivability a bit.

Leuca.5732:

And the ranger gives up attack speed to justify the evade, making GS even worse of a dps source. This has nothing to do with your pet’s dps %.

Warriors, engineers, necros, and guardians have superior cc. Even elementalists have cc that’s close to on-par with rangers. I’m not even sure why this is being mentioned though; the pet’s inability to hit a slowly moving target that doesn’t have swiftness is not the fault of the ranger. Also, you shouldn’t mention drake f2 as an example of efficient damage, because the windup combined with the fact that they cannot follow a target that goes to the side/behind them with the skill makes them awful.

What does the ranger’s evade on auto have to do with pet’s % of damage output anyway? The fact is that pets have awful pathing which makes them terrible balance references when calculating raw numbers, which Anet did when balancing the ranger’s base damage and coefficients.

If your opponent misses an attack, he deals less damage then you. It has to do with the total damage you deal, compared to other professions, which is what we were talking about. I don’t know why you think we were talking about the pets damage percentage?

Warriors, Engineers, Necromancers, and Guardians do not have superior crowd control to the Ranger. The Ranger can have up to 7 sources of crowd control, when you include pets. No other professions has that.

If your pet doesn’t hit, then how is it not your fault as a player, when you have solutions available to you? The pet AI is never going to completely take over, you will always have control of what your pet does. If your River Drakes F2 skill misses, because your opponent is running freely all over the place, it is your fault for activation the F2 skill at the wrong time. You have to make the most of what you got.

Sollith.3502:

Burnfall.9573:

OP

No need to mock the thieves in their forums.

For they didn’t do it to us.

As the saying goes, “treat other as if you would want to be treated in return”

While they may not mock us in our actual forum; I hear other classes mocking rangers all too often while in game… I mean in wvw today I even saw in the team chat a player stating rangers are like thin wet paper and I see players tell each other to target the rangers first for an easy kill all the time too.

While I find myself doing rather decently in WvW (I don’t play sPvP for many reasons), I still find these statements rather unsettling at times.

Everyone loves to hate the Ranger, even Ranger players themselves. There always has to be a scapegoat class in an MMO. Even when it’s not justified, players will just make up something. It’s like I’ve said before; no matter what ArenaNet does to the Ranger at this point, people will continue to think that it’s a bad profession.

Atherakhia.4086:

Kasama.8941:

It’s not 40%. Just look at the Rangers base weapon damage, and compare it to the weapon base damage of other professions, and you can see that it’s not 40%. Take greatsword damage for instance; the Ranger deals 203-203-240 with auto-attack, while the Warrior deals 259-259-333 damage on auto-attack (plus 2% vulnerability). Clearly, that’s not 40%.

However it’s important to remember that combat in Guild Wars 2 is not static, but constantly moving. If you don’t hit, you don’t deal damage. You also have to consider that the pet doesn’t deal 30% of the damage you deal, but that it has its own damage output, and is capable of dealing some good burst damage as well. And that, when the pet is hitting your target, while you are out of your targets damage range, you have an advantage.

It’s not just the raw damage, but the coefficients as well. So while the raw damage may only be 27.5% different on the first 2 swings, there’s also a 27% difference in their coefficients. The third attack is 38% higher in raw damage and the coefficient.

Now as for quantifying the pet, you must also find some way to account for the pets downtime for being dead. the downtime for running to a target. The fact that the pet can’t hit a moving target but maybe 1 in 3 shots. The fact that F2 abilities have a near 50% failure rate because they either miss outright or misfire.

But then you also have to consider that the Rangers third attack has an evade, meaning the Warrior could end up only dealing 259-259 damage.

Yes, but the pet isn’t dead 100% of the time, and the Ranger has more crowd control then any other profession for a reason. Even if the pet only hits 3 out of 8 attacks, it is also possible to make up for that lose of damage, if you use the River Drake’s F2 skill on your opponent. Or you simply chain crowd control your opponent, to allow your pet to hit more often.

Solandri.9640:

Kasama.8941:

It’s not 40%. Just look at the Rangers base weapon damage, and compare it to the weapon base damage of other professions, and you can see that it’s not 40%. Take greatsword damage for instance; the Ranger deals 203-203-240 with auto-attack, while the Warrior deals 259-259-333 damage on auto-attack (plus 2% vulnerability). Clearly, that’s not 40%.

For DPS purposes, the damage and damage coefficients are useless if you don’t know the weapon’s attack speed. e.g. Shortbow’s coefficients are about half of longbow’s, but they do about the same DPS because shortbow fires twice as quickly.

I was simply pointing out that it’s not 40%, or 50% as many players likes to claim as well. To get a real estimate, you’d have to take in to account too many variables. Like the fact that the Ranger has an evade on auto-attack, that makes the opponent miss an attack. Or control skills, like a canine that knocks down an opponent, that prevents a that opponent from dealing any damage at all, and allows the pet to get more hits in.

Siren’s Call is purple, and Song of the Temptress is blue.

DevonCarver.5370:

Dese.1382:

MiLkZz.4789:

Imagine you taking down 1 gate/wall of a a keep/tower. Imagine 50 people inside which ain’t that abnormal. Imagine they all chaining their aoe into the gap. Good luck walking through and surviving.

Aoe cap is there not only for the servers, but also because some things will be just impossible to cap and some classes will be rediculously OP. Like Ele and ranger, no. If aoe is unlimited, make healing unlimited aswel and all the other spells. But OOPS, we are back to 0 than…

So yea aoe cap is there for a really really good reason.

There is a dev post flat out saying, in plain english, its there for the simple reason of server performance.

I will say it again. If the cap were raised performance would suffer greatly. That is why it hasn’t been changed.

So your a hurting gameplay even more, because your system can’t handle the information? Shouldn’t the solution be to try and reduce the zergs, by making a small penalty for running with 25+ players? I really don’t understand your standpoint when it comes to WvW. You want 50v50 fights in WvW, but your servers can’t handle it, and your combat system isn’t build for it. It seems like you are shooting yourself in the foot..

ArenaNet will not reduce the current amount of stealth options the Thief has, simply because they are afraid that the Thief will become the most underplayed professions, again. Most players who plays the Thief, plays it because of the way stealth and backstab currently works, as this playstyle resembles how an Assassin plays. If you where to remove that “feeling”, by reducing the amount of stealth options, you would lose a lot of Thief players. But I still think it needs to be done. The Thief should play like a Thief, not like an Assassin.

I’m not sure I understand this topic. Making a level 80 build for levelling up seems contradicting. You should just make the build you want to use, when you are level 80, and then work towards that while you level up. Just chose the traits you feel you need, as you level. It’s easy and cheap to change your traits.

digiowl.9620:

Kasama.8941:

Healing Turret is good because of its two water fields, which pairs really well with all the Engineer’s blast finishers. But I like Med Kit more as well, simply because of its ability to apply endless swiftness with Speedy Kits, and because you can split up your healing, instead of using it all at once.

Just wish the drop was instant on the kits, so if you rushed across the 123 you didn’t find 1 or 2 interrupted because you hit the next one before they were done with windup.

Yes, that is really annoying! And even more so when you add lag on top..

It’s not 40%. Just look at the Rangers base weapon damage, and compare it to the weapon base damage of other professions, and you can see that it’s not 40%. Take greatsword damage for instance; the Ranger deals 203-203-240 with auto-attack, while the Warrior deals 259-259-333 damage on auto-attack (plus 2% vulnerability). Clearly, that’s not 40%.

However it’s important to remember that combat in Guild Wars 2 is not static, but constantly moving. If you don’t hit, you don’t deal damage. You also have to consider that the pet doesn’t deal 30% of the damage you deal, but that it has its own damage output, and is capable of dealing some good burst damage as well. And that, when the pet is hitting your target, while you are out of your targets damage range, you have an advantage.

Dirame.8521:

The med kit is good. It definitely has it’s merits and you mentioned pretty much all of them. The Healing turret just allows you to cleanse condis a lot better and AoE heal on the overcharge skill.

HT has better group utility and better heals over time but MK is great for setting up on a point and getting ready for that moment when things hit the fan.

I disagree that Healing Turret has better condition removal and better healing over time. Condition removal is the same on both healing skills, and the Med Kit has better healing over time, thanks to bandages and a shorter tool belt recharge time. But Healing Turret definitely is better in group play.

Healing Turret is good because of its two water fields, which pairs really well with all the Engineer’s blast finishers. But I like Med Kit more as well, simply because of its ability to apply endless swiftness with Speedy Kits, and because you can split up your healing, instead of using it all at once.

At 4 seconds, it’s going to be a precision job, trying to get reveal on the Thief at the right time. Use “Sic ’Em” to early, and the reveal will run out before the Thief can be downed. Use “Sic ’Em” too late, and the Thief has already ran away to reset.

mistsim.2748:

Kasama.8941

you can run as many players as you want in WvW. The only point should be whether or not a build makes a difference, not how it compares to other builds.

even though it does AoE crowd control even better then the Necromancer? I don’t understand that..

I don’t see how anyone can categorise that as being “soft”. Especially considering that this is just caused by one Ranger, imagine three Rangers doing this..

Necros are more reliable sources of chill and cripple because they can spam scepter 2 and staff 3. Necros also have an aoe fear and immobilize on 30s cds. Unlike rangers, necros bring huge aoe dps. So in wvw, nobody will ask for a pack of rangers instead.

Soft cc is not a subjective thing. It means the affected player only loses control of character partially, as opposed to totally like with, fear kb or stun. The only soft cc that reliably secures kills is immobilize because it disables dodge rolling. This is why it’s important to use point blank shot and axe 4 when running a support/utility ranger. In addition to entangle and mt of course.

My issues with the build:
- no survivability
- no hard cc
- insignificant damage

If someone gets annoyed enough by the traps they’ll swat u like a fly. No invuln, no stability, no stun breaker. And you’re doing all your work from 600 range! Do I really have to keep arguing why this build only works in your head? This kind of build is what we call a free rally as it actually helps the enemy.

zerg busting works by:
- hard cc
- high sustain
- high aoe damage

Trap bombing has been around since beta really so this build isnt something that was missed by thousands of players. Zergs have also been around since release so there’s a reason this kind of build isnt part of any meta new or old. You’re gonna have to put up a vid demonstrating the build’s efficacy against a solid group of wvwers who know what theyre doing, and then we can discuss new meta.

The Ranger can bring seven sources of AoE crowd control, so why would you want a Necromancer instead? Fear doesn’t work against stability either.

No it’s not a subject thing, it’s just completely underrated. You seriously think that 3 seconds of stun or fear is more valuable then 6 seconds of immobilize, chill, and cripple? Stun and fear doesn’t work against stability, and recharge times on these skills are longer, meaning they are only useful once or twice doing a fight. Immobilize, chill, and cripple ignores stability, force foes to use their condition removal, and it can be cast more then four times during a fight, meaning you can exhaust your opponent a lot more.

Your issues are easily countable:

• Once you snare the frontline, you have plenty of time to get away. There’s a reason why the build has plenty of dodge options, and +25% movement speed. How much toughness and health you have depends on your stats.
• The so called “soft” crowd control ignores stability, have longer duration then “hard” crowd control, and has shorter recharge times.
• This is just a template to put over your own build. As with toughness and health, damage totally depends on your own stats. The build I play (link a few posts above) still has 2162 power, 50% critical chance, and 69% critical damage.

Why do you assume that anyone could down the Ranger easily? Invulnerability is a bonus for a build, not a requirement. Stability can be gain from other players, but you honestly don’t really need it, unless you are slow to react. And the build already has a stun breaker trait. I know the build works in practice, because I’ve actually played it. Do I really need to keep arguing with you, when you don’t have any experience with this build?

I know how zerg bursting works, which is why I also know that the Ranger can fill a niche, that no other profession can do as well. You’re talking like a zerg loses something by having more crowd control.

Trap bombing is a completely different build from this. The point of this topic is making sure everyone takes part in demonstrating the build. I can’t change the meta on my own.

Gotejjeken.1267:

If I slot Muddy Terrain, I lose my stun-breaker. If I put the pet on passive all the time it becomes nothing more than a utility on my skill bar, and takes half my damage away. Also if I keep the pet by my side so I can use the F2, that means the enemy has to be close enough to me for it to work…as a Ranger I really do not want people in melee range.

You’re being a bit pessimistic here. You can gain a stun breaker from traits. The pet isn’t responsible for half of your damage, it’s really not that big a deal. I down players all the time while my pet is mostly on passive. The Ranger works great in melee range, thanks to a ton of dodging.

Chopps.5047:

I’ve been saying it for months: guardian is OP. No one believes me. “but chopps we have a low health pool”. I don’t care about that, ya know? The fact is, it’s harder to get results with ranger in every game mode, especially pvp. “But chopps ranger spirit build is just cast spirits and spam crossbow”. Lol and wellomancer is just DROP WELLS LOL GG and warrior is just spam knockback and guardian gets every tool for everything, basically. Ok I’m exaggerating a little but the next question is 100% serious:

When will people realize stability is OP? When will people admit guardian is OP in pve and warrior is OP in both pve and pvp?

I agree that the Guardian needs to be looked at. I play a burst build on my Guardian, and I have almost 2500 power (without Empower buff), 50% critical chance, and still almost 1600 toughness and 16500 health. On top of the heavy armor, virtues, and tons of boons..

I find my kill rate is pretty even across all my professions. It’s important to keep in mind that how you play, has as much value as which profession and build you play. Which is also evident when you say you don’t have any problem taking camps solo, but you do when fighting other players. This leads me to believe that, while you have enough damage and durability, your gameplay might not be that strong with the Ranger.

I don’t know that your changes would matter that much, at least to me. I feel that my Ranger has an easy chance surviving encounters, mostly thanks to a lot of dodging and control.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Being a trap ranger is…a lot harder than it should be. I am running a build heavy on beastmaster with the other half being traps and honestly, I cannot kill jack.

The pet does not track nearly well enough to be helpful, that is, the only use I found with a pet is running dual canine and getting the knockdown on swap. After that initial knockdown they really do not do anything of use. Especially the F2, no matter what you do, that channel is way, way, way too slow. By time the wolf starts the howl, the enemy is out of range.

Really though, I see your passion about it, because on paper it seems awesome. With the build I run I have access to burn, bleed, cripple, immobilize, stun, fear, chill, poison, and blind (when running a raven). Problem is, you either do not get the chance to use half of those, and when you do, the enemy has a way to either clear it or absorb it.

That’s why I agree with the ‘soft condition’ people. Sure, you have access to something like poison, but it is on a fan skill (fan is utterly pointless), and is so short no one bothers to care. The attack itself also does pitiful damage, so you cannot hope to get someone’s HP down enough.

It is honestly super frustrating playing WvW. You see people able to spam skills that outright block attacks, grant stability, invuln (mist form), mass stealth on demand, or illusions. What does the ranger really get? A half baked stealth mechanic and an ‘OP’ underwater rez skill. Seriously?

I want my traps to be able to be thrown farther. I want my shortbow range to be reinstated to what it formerly was. I want my pet to HIT SOMETHING.

I’m not sure why you can’t down foes, but yes, playing a Ranger in WvW is difficult.

You have to chain your attacks, and think one step ahead, to use the F2 abilities. You see a foe who has low health, you know that he will probably try to run away to reset, so you have to act on this before it happens; cast Muddy Terrain on him, or cripple him with a weapon skill, and then immediately press F2. Keep your canine on passive at all times, to make sure it stays near you, and just use F1 to attack foes that tries to take you down.

You do get to use the abilities, it’s simply just about prioritising your abilities. For example, Muddy Terrain has a range of 900, where a trap will only get a cast range of 600. This means Muddy Terrain is best to use first, as it gets you closer to your foe, where you’ll have a better chance of following up with the trap. Next you know that the trap will have a range of 600, but the canines only have a range of 500, plus they have a long activation time. So this means you should cast the trap before using the canine, to give yourself a better chance of hitting. And then you also have to factor in your weapons cripple, how long duration each skills has, and so forth. Doing this makes all the difference.

Again, the point here is not to deal damage. And building around the snare skills, is what makes all the difference. Dealing 2.5 second if chill every tick, is not soft. Neither is using Muddy Terrain and the F2 skill from Krytan Drakehound, to stack 6 seconds of immobilize.

The first step to making a difference, is taking a step forward. If you believe the Ranger has nothing to offer, then that’s how you’ll play it.

Gotejjeken.1267:

So you basically have a build that lets you support while 20+ other people actually do something? Ask yourself, if you remove the Ranger in that situation would those people be worse off? I think that answer is ‘no’.

If you want to play support in WvW just grab an arrow cart. With the poison / reveal on the leveled ones, you pretty much support your zerg the same. Upside is you don’t even need to care about your build at that point.

But alas, would you happen to have any videos of this working?

Your thinking in terms of the glass as being half empty. The question you should be asking is; if you add this build to a group, will it make a difference?

I think I have to start making videos at this point, because even though I’ve made a template build, that only costs a few silver to change to, people still don’t want to try it first, before they start accuse it of ‘not working’. But it seems whenever someone sees a gameplay video on this forum, they want to know the build immediately.