Guild Wars 2

As usual nothing to cheer about in the patch. Seriously I’m just gonna drop here “Lone Wolf”. If WoW devs finally realized it, maybe Anet will follow. Until then, most of the time spent in WvW will be playing the ginger step-child class that is the ranger.

This is the build I am using in WvWvW.

When I’m with the zerg I swap Signet of the Beastmaster for Piercing Arrows and Signet of Stone for Quickening Zephyr.

If you know what you are doing you are surprisingly durable and can 1v1 pretty much anyone (hardest being a good thief) and you can easily escape when needed or when a gank squad comes to say hello.

Sometimes I also swap Rampage As One for Become the Snow Leopard, but with the amount of GS – Mace/Shield or Hammer warriors around these days not having stability is asking for trouble.

I would make a video to show what a power ranger can do but I don’t have enough time to do it right now. Maybe next month I will try to do it if all the videos about rangers in WvW are still BM-Condi ones.

Seriously Jon. With all changes that you could make and you want to butcher the GS chain, which is the sole reason that a ranger can run around in a zerg in WvW (with his pet dead, obviously).

If you want to focus your attention on GS, you can either add some range to Hilt Bash, because it’s impossible to hit a moving target with it or you could buff the #1 chain damage a little bit, or simply give the Two-handed Training trait 10% damage instead of 5 because rangers are in dire need a melee option to do decent damage outside of the clunky sword (even if it’s working as intended and some people like it, it does not change the fact that is not easy to use).

And as many people have already said in this post, the main problem with power rangers is being pigeon holed into using lackluster traits in Skirmishing while Marksmanship is bloated with useful traits for an archer/power build.

It still boggles my mind that a ranger is still handicapped in WvW because we can’t use our pets effectively. In a keep siege/defense you can’t hit enemies with it so it’s a mere condition removal tool (because we are kind of forced into Empathic Bond) and in a large scale battle it dies instantly, so you don’t even have your condition removal available.

I really hope that you get someone with some insight of the core problems of the class and try to address them instead of tweaking numbers like health of spirits or pets like the last couple of patches.

I’m sorry if the post came as rude, but I’m kind of tired of waiting for a decent patch for power rangers.

1. Balance and build diversity
2. Motivation to play (that includes rewards and proper leaderboards)
3. Faster updates (we can’t have a “balance” every 4 months because “the meta has to settle”)

I have been playing ranger for a long time now and I am really sad to see that patch after patch the same issues go unattended by the ArenaNet balance team.

How is it possible that power rangers are still by far the worst direct damage profession? I’ll try to make a clear list of the current issues a ranger has to deal with every day while playing PvP.

1. DPS reliant on our pets
In any kind of PvP situation your pet damage is negligible because unlike NPCs, players move around while fighting.
We can’t have a major portion of our damage tied to an AI that simply does not cut it. Using pets for utility would be a way better choice, like today’s patch improving their ability to buff the party with vigor, fury or cleansing conditions.

2. Condition removal
Rangers desperately need some kind of active condition removal. It has been brought up by the community a thousand times yet we still have to fully spec into Wilderness Survival to get Empathic Bond and/or use Signet of Renewal, which is all passive. The active on Signet of Renewal cannot be taken into consideration because your pet has to be close to you and alive, which is not that common when you are being focused due to all the AoE damage and conditions going on.
A single immobilize and the ranger is dead. We have been asking for lighting reflexes to cleanse movement impairing conditions like the thief’s Withdraw/Roll for Initiative and remove the damage it does, but nothing has changed in over a year.

3. Weapons
Personally I have been playing a double bow ranger in soloQ (185 EU) because there is just no reason to use a melee weapon for a higher damage output.
- Greatsword, being a good weapon, is not cut for DPS because all of its damage is tied to Maul and no decent PvPer will ever be hit with a Signet of the Hunt+Maul combo.
- Sword, our highest DPS weapon with its #1 chain can force you to take a deadly CC or attack making it usually a bad choice.

4. Traits
Like I said in point 2, having only 40 points left (30 WS for Empathic Bond) leaves us with few choices.
As a direct damage dealer in PvP you need to invest in either your precision or critical damage trait line. Luckily for us, our Skirmishing has both of these desirable stats. Sadly most of the traits are lackluster.

In conclusion, give us some condition removal outside of EB so we can have the build diversity that we all want. Because I have never nor I will ever want to play the current spirit ranger that everyone seems to love these days.

It still amazes me how you gave warriors Cleansing Ire (+Dogged March) when they had signet of stamina (full condition cleanse) on a 36 seg traited and Mending (removes 3 conditions) on a 20 seg cooldown arguing that they lacked condition removal yet rangers have not seen an improvement on the matter.

Maybe you could pay attention to Heal as One, that currently is useless and make it remove 3 conditions. That way it could see some use, because right now pretty much every ranger is running Healing Spring for support or Troll Unguent as a survival tool.