Guild Wars 2

Hello all. I decided to take a moment and throw together some numbers on the ranger and examine the various weapon choices. I made some general assumptions and ignored certain variables, so these numbers are, of course, not perfect. I would just like to get the community’s thoughts, as I am using these calculations to determine my final gear layout.

I will start off by stating that I examined each weapon’s observed attack speed. I loaded up some videos and counted the precise milliseconds between each of the various auto attack animations. Below are my findings.

Short Bow – Crossfire – 0.52 seconds
Longbow – Long Range Shot – 1.00 second
Sword – Slash (Full Combo) – 1.79 seconds
Axe – Ricochet – 1.07 seconds
Great Sword – Slash (Full Combo) – 2.55 seconds

I used the power coefficients found on the Wiki. Below are the calculations I used for each weapon. I believe it is the same one floating around the forums and various other sites.

Weapon Strength = (Weapon Minimum Damage + Weapon Maximum Damage) / 2
Base Damage = Weapon Strength * Power * Coefficient / Target’s Armor
Critical Damage = Base Damage * (1.5 + Critical Damage Multiplier)
Effective Damage = (Base Damage * (1 – Critical Chance) + (Critical Damage * Critical Chance)
Damage Per Second = Effective Damage / Attack Speed

I selected the following gear layout to simply maximize damage and determine each weapon’s DPS.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJAVVnAVkFchFWVwaZgY9gQBaQNFaq/MFGiRA-jUCBYfBioIQJPMasJSAlhFRjVXDT5iIq2ebIaWepGA-w

I only factored in each weapon’s auto attack damage because most of the ranger’s weapon skills are utility and produce lower damage anyway. For short bow, I ignored the weapon’s bleed damage. For longbow, I used the medium range coefficient (0.65). For each weapon, I assumed only a single target that had 2600 armor. The calculations do not account for any traits that improve damage, as it would simply increase each weapon equally. Below are my findings.

Short Bow – Crossfire – 1,206 DPS
Longbow – Long Range Shot – 1,070 DPS
Sword – Slash (Full Combo) – 1,664 DPS
Axe – Ricochet – 700 DPS
Great Sword – Slash (Full Combo) – 1,183 DPS

Burnfall.9573:

Durzlla.6295:

Just because you suck at playing ranger now that you can’t use the most passive build in existence to carry you to victory doesn’t mean the rest of us became bad.

I’ve been doing just fine. Seeing as how, you know, I haven’t been using a kittening spirit build for god knows how long.

Where in “ranger class is not good anymore” made you label him/her for being a “suck player”?

I don’t see it nor anybody else except you.

Lastly,

Just because you don’t use spirit build doesn’t Justify you to Parade ‘just fine’ player you are as Ranger"

In other word, as long Arena.net nerf builds that aren’t "yours’, is “fine and dandy” for you and make the players who played those builds as “suck” players.

Well,

That’s Unjustified and Bias to the Ranger community as a whole.

Uh well seeing as he’s gotta be a bad player to think rangers are bad, there’s this magical build we’ve had from the beginning known as the Trap Build that is VERY strong in this meta still and hasn’t been touched by buffs or nerfs since the game was launched.

Then there’s the Spirit ranger, who is STILL useful, you can’t just play him how you normally do, gotta be more tactical on when you use your spirits than just going “LOLOLOLO” and rolling your face on the keyboard.

And then you know, there’s still the BM bunker build which is a good BUNKER build, is it going to pump out damage? kitten no, but no bunkers really do, just drop the cats and take moas, bam you have so much survivability on your little point (where you can’t possibly be out of range of your moas heal) and have a nice cone daze (possibly two) or aoe protection, as well as AoE vigor.

Then you can also go with a roaming build (like a survival build), which is always useful because it allows you to backcap, and assist allies.

In other words, you have NO kittening idea what you’re talking about, and the spirit master build NEEDED a nerf it was so stupidly passive that i swear to god my dog would be able to play that build and do well if i turned Auto Attack on for him. The ONLY way spirits were nerfed was that you can’t have 100% uptime, other than that it was a buff.

Learn to play before you go around spouting garbage about how a profession isn’t viable in tournies.

First off, there is already enough crying on the ranger forum, and I hope not to continue that while providing some genuine feedback in a competitive view. Battosai did extremely well considering the major topics that were addressed, but there just isn’t enough time to address everything, which is totally understandable.

My first and I think biggest point, which was addressed at the SoTG (but not mentioned in the regard that I’m going to) is how passive the ranger gameplay is, especially in regards to the pet mechanic. I think it needs to be bluntly stated that the competitive community doesn’t enjoy such a passive mechanic. Yes, this resulted in a nerf, but a nerf didn’t fix any build viability or performance issues for the class.

If anything, the pet mechanic is a much too passive (buggy too) and rewarding system for a game that succeeds on hinging so much of its competition on positioning, burst setup, and reactionary play. Having a pet running around, RNGing skills at people for a large portion of the rangers damage isn’t doing any justice.

Here’s some points:
-The pet holds way too much of the power potential for rangers who want to play a power spec. There really needs to be the option to choose (or it needs to all be forced to this) to use a purely utility pet so that the player can focus on outputting all of the damage themselves, while providing additional support (like boons) for groups through pets that are strong enough to warrant a potential focus from teams so that (theoretically) a pet can’t get off a group wide stability.

-Pets cannot be such a big part of the rangers DPS output. There are times (on ledges, for example) where that pet is useless, and the pet can represent up to 40% of the players damage (which is a problem within itself due to the pets RNG nature). Pets should really be made into almost a more burst like mechanic, where they have virtually zero sustained damage, but can be used to gain DPS in some way (think warrior burst skills or thief steal).

Basically, rangers suffer from both the skill floor being too low, and the ceiling being not much higher. Adjusting the pet to be better only leads to it being a less competitive and more passive alternative. What needs to happen is to have the class adjusted so that rangers can choose to make themselves the damage sources (by increasing damage coefficients and reducing pet damage), while utilizing the pet as additional damage on a cooldown (F2 skills are already in place).

tl;dr: There needs to be more involved play, and the passive attributes need to be adjusted (or removed) to allow for more counterplay.

Best way to resolve the issues with pets…
Allow rangers to put them away and get a damage bonus equal to what the pet is supposed to provide.
Problem solved.

This is neither a solution nor resolution to the problems at hand. All it would serve to do is sweep the issue of pets under the rug without addressing or solving the problems perceived to plague the companion mechanic and instead further supports the idea that a direct damage increase will solve all of our woes.

This proposed direct damage buff will do nothing to increase utility, support, or condition pressure and will further limit the availability of build choices because of the way power and critical damage can be affected by such an unbalanced change of allowing a flat damage bonus because of being able to ignore the pet.

I understand that you feel your pet is dead weight and that this change could greatly improve certain aspects of the classes damage output, it would be a monumental disaster to diversity and capabilities the class currently possesses. In other words, the cure would be worse than the disease.

While it is nice to see people continuing to suggest changes to the class, I wish people would suggest changes to the pet that are for the pet and the Ranger, instead of only the Ranger.

Can we please get a pet status bar above the pet’s command bar?

In battle, you have no information about your pet. If you want to see any kind of info about the pet, you have to find the pet and select it (click on pet). That is impossible in medium / large fights. Sometimes you can’t even find the pet!

If Anet just moves the pet’s status bar to the bottom of the screen, just above the pet’s command bar, you could see all the info all the time. No need to find and click on the pet.

See pics:

1: You have no idea how the pet is doing the fight.
2: After finding the pet, and got lucky to click on it, you get the info in top mid screen. (Clicking on the pet in fights with more foes / allies is impossible).
3: How it should be!

Not so difficult to code, but a tremendous help for us rangers!

Cheers

People are just so angry all the time. It’s okay Puandro, I know you didn’t say it like this so I will;

Half of the ranger community comes off as inept crying babies, and the good players have to feed them with builds to shut them up between patches.

That statement works for every single profession in the game too.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Moving on, completely agreed they gave rangers the elementalist treatment. Personally I would run 0/15/30/10/15 but I also have been running primarily conditions for awhile so I think it would make more sense for me. I wouldn’t know about power builds as much unfortunately.

hyjaxxx.1584:

ok..i know this is going to come across as a trololol…but you folks that were condition using SB…switch to an A/T + S/D build and have some fun.

I love my ranger and will never main another class…and i would say ive yet to be beaten in a heads up 1v1. and always last till the end in 5-10 man skirmishes …so dig your heels in and have some fun!

if your stuck on using a bow…maybe we can add a couple more strings to it and make it a harp..then you can roam the borderlands strummin your sad tune 8(

But, but, but then they’d have to weapon swap or -gasp- use a melee weapon to engage and their shortbow to chase. They might actually have to move!

Come on man. Ranger forum users can’t be bothered to do that.

The better ones are too busy discussing the finer art of using shortbow/longbow on swap and how to rez faster in the middle of combat.

To suggest anything more is to be a pr0 troll, apparently.

/shrug

Oh no? You can’t autoattack with Shortbow anymore, from freaking miles away, while applying 14+ stacks of Bleed? God forbid you actually have to use skills to play.

Ranger Shortbow was by far the most forgiving, braindead, easy-mode way to play in all of GW2. Thank god they changed the range.

Bran.7425:

With the general state of discontent on this sub-forum I doubt we will see a developer here for some time.

Trust me, they are reading this. They won’t comment here though. Its hardly a strange coincidence that the patch notes were leaked so that players can discuss it all during the weekend.

So how about giving some constructive feedbeck on these “leaked” patch notes.
Like how about Natures voice doesn’t give 10 secs of swiftness, but 5 secs of vigor. Or gives 10 sec of vigor, but guard cooldown is raised to 20s. Rangers never had much access to protection/retal in the first place, but vigor fits Rangers well.
Or how about eagle eye raising shortbow range as well.

I would also remind everyone that the devs are listening to us to an extent. Evasive purity was moved 1 tier down, path of scars does pull targets now, spirit traits were merged, they shortened the longbow aftercast, and raised projectile speed as well, they fixed Companion’s might. We were moaning about how pigenholed we are (other classes were as well mind you) into 1-2 viable builds. Of course its not all amazing, but there are changes that were necessary, and that we asked for. Some we didn’t get, like the buff to longbow that everyone wanted, but lets test longbow first. Maybe – and its a massive maybe – this 15% projectile speed increase will solve a lot of out of range/missed problems we were having with it.

Hey, I just wanted to thank Robert for being so active on the Ranger forum.

Don’t be discouraged by the naysayers.

Thank you!

Scootabuser.4915:

This is why people don’t like hunters, they all take kitten shortbow greatsword tank builds and contribute nothing.

Generic statement. Overgeneralization. Negative nancy-ism. Overall, non-helpful and pointless to have even clicked the “reply” button.

The difference between this build and a full berserker is crit chance and crit damage. Instead of those, this becomes quite tanky. When a build is able to cripple, entangle, stun, and bleed you while outputting reliable sustained damage, it is not useless.

Additionally, perhaps you should look at the various other builds running around.

You should also consider reading more than you write. Much more.

Shirou.4862:

He stated some facts, probably expecting the OP to clear them out or explain or even just make him admit that the facts are true. Since the OP clearly stated the he isn’t interested in further argumentation OP either agrees and/or doesn’t want to discuss, disappointing Zenith (and me).

Also, no zergs in the vid => Roamer build mostly. Hardly will work against an experienced player. Killing a guardian that used his heals mostly to kill the dolyak and fighting against a fail-thief were both painful to watch. It’s not the sort of thing you would expect in a serious build demonstration.

Dunno what you were expecting tbh. Its a vid showing burst potential, nothing more. If you expected a burst build that was good for every situation, then your expectations are worrisome.

I find it boggling that people assume that there is a spec for any class to take on a zerg, ridiculous. Against any good player, 1v1 is tops. 2v1 against good players will always mean you will die. So solo play vs zergs is pointless when demonstrating a build… Group synergy is what you need vs zergs, and as such you need teammates.

Any statement regarding the quality of a build vs an experienced player are disappointing. Its the quality of the player that counts, not the build.

Victory.2879:

Good build for ranger: any other class, they all do things better than you can and are more use in wvw. That’s coming from someone who has played them all, and still comes back to ranger (yes, I’m a sick man).

All the posted builds are trying to work around the fact that so many things are broken about the class and ANet have no real ideas on how to go about fixing it without making rangers OP in PVE dungeons.

I don’t get why people don’t focus on the topic being discussed rather than complaining, we all complain and hey even I have plenty of negative things to point out, but that’s not what this thread is about. There are plenty of other people complaining elsewhere so like the dude asked please keep the conversation clean.

What I currently use is a variant of the Phantom Catmaster which focuses on supporting damage for the pet via higher condition damage / better critical chance/ power/ toughness. So I have toughness gear and runes that allow me to spike up condition damage, just in case my pet dies I can fight competitively for as long as possible. I keep a torch on my off hand for constant burning damage. Also note that while cat damage is pretty amazing, you can swap the routine with canines, its especially helpful against enemies who don’t have much protection against stuns.

Kreaven.3172:

Hey man, I think that part of the problem at the moment is that there is a big disconnect between the developers and the community. Many of the players feel Rangers should be heading in “X” Direction, while the developers feel Rangers should be heading in “Y” Direction.

And I am not saying that’s a bad thing. I am not saying Y is any worse than X or Visa Versa. Both could be great in the end. Just feels like we are not on the same page even remotely with the Devs.

That’s because Devs are interested in overall class balance, while Ranger players, as a whole, is interested in improvement of their own class.

In addition to that, Devs have their own vision of the class, while many others have their own vision/expectations (For example, those who view the class as a "range"r. Obviously not what the devs had in mind given our melee options). They don’t necessarily agree.

However, the Devs, both Jon and Robert, acknowledge the problems the problems this class has. That’s good enough for me, really.

TLDR: The Quickness change means a 25% reduction in damage per second during Quickness, but only a 6.25% reduction in damage over the duration, given the increase in duration. No where near the many comments that I’ve seen that state ‘this change cuts my damage/DPS in half’

I’ve seen a lot of comments regarding the impact of the change to Quickness, and how it affects damage output. I’ve seen it said numerous times, roughly paraphrased, that the reduction in speed (from 100% increase to 50% increase) will mean the damage/DPS will be cut in half. I think this is being a bit dramatic, and to that point, let’s do some math to clear the air. I am curious other people’s opinion on this is.

Assume current DPS (and I literally mean damage per second) is P:

• The DPS with the old quickness (double attack speed) is: 2 * P
• The DPS with the new quickness (50% attack speed) is 1.5 * P

So, to determine the DPS nerf, the old quickness must be multiplied by some factor, r:

• 2P * r = 1.5P
• 2 * r = 1.5
• r = 1.5 / 2
• r = .75

So, to determine the reduction in damage, we subtract r (.75) from 1:

• 1 – .75 = .25

Multiple by 100 to get a percentage… 25%. So, algebra just proved that the change to Quickness, at a simplistic math level means, on average, a 25% reduction in your DPS during quickness. I will fully admit that a 25% reduction in DPS is nothing to sneeze at, but saying ‘it cuts damage/DPS in half’ exaggerates the damage impact twice what it actually is.

Next consider that the duration was increased. So, let’s now look at too elements of this, closely related.
1. The amount of skills that can be executed during Quickness
2. The damage (not DPS) done during Quickness

For the first, consider this:

• Duration of Ranger’s old QZ = 4s
• Skill speed was twice as fact, i.e., a factor of 2
• 4s * 2 = 8s
  Ergo, QZ allowed a Ranger to execute 8 seconds worth of skills in 4 seconds.

For the new Quickness:

• Duration of Ranger’s new QZ = 5s
• Skill speed is 50% faster, i.e., a factor of 1.5
• 5s * 1.5 = 7.5s
  Ergo, QZ allows a Ranger to execute 7.5 seconds worth of skills in 5 seconds.

So, using the same approach:

• 8s * r = 7.5s
• 8 * r = 7.5
• r = 7.5 / 8
• r = .9375
• 1 – .9375 = .0625
• .625 * 100 = 6.25%

In essence, the amount of skills that can be executed during the duration of Quickness has been reduced by 6.25%. Do the math related to the damage done during the duration of Quickness, and the same reduction applies; the new Quickness will see a 6.25% reduction in damage dealt over the duration compared to the old Quickness. I will re-acknowledge that the damage per second was reduced by 25% and this is certainly not insignificant, but let’s not blow things out of proportion.

Shikigami.4013:

I posted that in the “Game Bugs” forum a month ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Skill-Call-of-the-wild-makes-pet-attack/first#post1392119

By the way, “turning off auto-attack” is the typical response from people who think like this: “I do not have a problem with it, so there is nothing wrong. My way to play is the only correct one. Noone needs to use options that I do not use”.

I would like to have this fixed. As stated in my linked post, there are other weaponskills that do not require you to have anything targeted, and they do NOT cause your pet to attack. This shows that the desired functionality is already present with other skills, and “Call of the wild” can be fixed. It is an issue with the skill, not with the “auto-attack” option.

I really do wish some of you would try and understand the game you’re playing a little more.

Firstly, auto attack has nothing to do with this issue, auto target does. If you can’t even grasp that then claiming that you “don’t buy it” or that “omg it r need fixing” is kind of silly.

Secondly, these things were added into the game they were not part of the design, turning off your auto target or even your auto attack is perfectly valid for some weapon sets and is how those weapon sets are meant to be played and how they were designed. It’s why you can turn off auto attack on one set and leave it on for another, or even totally move your auto attack to another button, want your auto attack on 2 instead of 1? Go for it, want your auto attack on utility 1 for Sharpening Stone to toggle every time it’s off cooldown for the bleeds instead? Go for it.

You are wrong. Turning these things off or moving them around is how they game is meant to be played.

The issue is with you, not the game.