Showing Posts For kasimmorathi.4963:
Incredibly awesome, can completely regear my ranger now to attempt out a condition build relatively cheap now.
Consolidate some bow-centric traits first:
Increased Range/Piercing/Reduced CD should be on a single trait, like the Warrior rifle. As it stands, to get the most out of the bow I have to follow multiple traits to the 20 point mark, it feels a little disorienting. I wouldn’t even mind it being a 30 point trait since most of our other 30 point traits in the Marksman/Skirmish line are a little underwhelming.
Melee is more attractive because it also offers a more dynamic and interesting combat, especially when you pair it with the dagger. The greatsword is just genuinely fun to swoop around the battlefield. Simply put, melee is just more entertaining and I wish the abilities of the bows were equally as dynamic or interesting to play with. I also wouldn’t mind seeing the Rifle added as part of the arsenal for us to play with.
@JustCurious – How do you enjoy it? I was thinking of going toward a defensive based build myself. What does your Virtue of Resolve tick for?
If you’re having trouble sticking, may I recommend trying out a one handed sword and meditation build? The teleport weapon abilities and skills may help you functionally have a gap closer. Additionally, you could use the hammer to temporarily immobilize and then establish a ring of warding to keep them trapped in close for you to press the finish.
Here is a minor variation based upon the above for more ‘rounded’ stats and perhaps a bit more survivability:
You end up losing about 200 power, but you gain 2000 health, 200 healing, 200 condition damage and 10% crit damage. There is no other major variation in the stats except you are just two points shy of the 3000 armor goal.
The extra health and healing is the primary focused gain of this build variant.
Edit: You do also lose the 6 piece Soldier bonus of the ‘Shout’, however with Pure Voice already traited this shouldn’t be too significant of an impact. Then again, I could be wrong.
(edited by kasimmorathi.4963)
This is the build I have been considering using. Please note I have not added any Ascended equipment into this and the stats are based only off of exotic gear and oil/food.
It is emphasizing might generation with a ranged alternate for the encounters that can make melee iffy. If you’re concerned about mob tagging I would use staff instead of scepter, but you lose out on the RHS benefits. I haven’t yet had a chance to really experiment with this build, so criticism is welcome.
Just putting this out there, for the purposes of leveling – since that seems to be what the OP is doing, I find the Greatsword far easier to grind out with. The One Handed Sword is quite possibly superior to the Greatsword in terms of DPS, but as others have mentioned the auto-attack chain can really screw you when you want to time a proper retreat. It is easily disabled, however that means you will also be sitting around crushing your ‘1’ key over and over again.
It is useful to get the practice in, but while leveling and learning the class / pet control, it is probably more useful to stick with Greatsword. My favorite tactic right now is to run around with the Longbow/Greatsword, with Lynx/Jaguar as pet.
1. Swift Arrow
2. Rapid Fire
3. Weapon Swap
4. Swoop
5. Hilt Strike
6. Maul
This is usually more than enough to either wipe out a mob entirely, or shear them down enough that your pet will finish it up. Also, the use of Swoop lets you move around the field quickly and catch up to your pet to get into the melee fray. Keep in mind, no one knows what this next patch will do yet or what they are intending for the Rangers beyond some pet improvements. So this all could change in two days.
My thoughts on the weapons for the ranger is:
Long Bow for Ranged AOE – add more options for AOE damage
Rifle for Ranged Single Target
Short Bow for Ranged Condition – leave as is for now.
Conceptually interesting, however, I see a hunter putting on a sigil of the hunt to run about and keep their distance up while the pet just gnaws away on an opponent in PVP. The exploit potential for a pet receiving absolutely no damage is too big.
My biggest recommendations for pet usefulness?
Cleave: Melee cleave for pets to match the melee being used by a player and provide us additional AoE options where we otherwise lack it for most of our ranged choices.
Pet Scaling: Permit the pet to scale along with the ranger armor and weapons with the Beastmastery trait line. This way the pet remains just as competitive as the ranger.
AoE Avoidance: Add a static AoE avoidance/mitigation for the pet so that, while they can’t double tap evade, they can survive a little longer in situations where melee is going to sap the pet far too fast.
And this is simply to make the pet more useful. To add some boons and benefits to a party, Anet would need to make a determination; is the ranger the giver or the pet? Personally I would like to see the concept of the ‘spirits’ reworked to instead offer a trait line that emphasizes a pet to offer buffs and boons.
I.E. Nature Magic imbues your pet with the ability to provide additional boons to your party and the ability to remove conditions depending on scaling. Instead of a ‘spirit’ mechanic, it would help, again, focus the ranger on their pet without sacrificing our ability to provide support to our allies.
(edited by kasimmorathi.4963)
Really looking forward to giving this a shot; I just finished getting my Death Blossom thief up to 80 and I need a change of pace.. Thanks for the tips! I am especially interested in that lifesteal variant that seems to be starting up, it sounds really entertaining. Looking forward to seeing how it pans out!
Among the patch notes with each release comes a note indicating the need to ‘repair’ a broken event. As a possibility and a means to possibly correct some of these issues I suggest the following:
If an event has not been successful or ‘triggered’ within two hours, reset the flag of the event back to stage one. On my particular server there are quite a few events that have been ‘hanging’ in a single stage for over two days, in one case blocking access to an entire area per mechanics (Skrittsburg). By having events reset after a certain prolonged period of time, it may help correct these bugs en masse rather than selectively approaching them one at a time.