Showing Posts For psy.1249:
Actually, the 5 minute buff helps small squads, and works against zergs.
Here’s the thing… imagine a zone completely controlled by a large zerg.
All supply camps are unbuffed, as the zerg has been in control for a while.
A small 3 man team joins. They hit a supply camp, and take it down.
Now the supply camp is buffed. The zerg arrives.
The small group has 5 minutes + zerg travel time to take another camp. By the time the zerg captures the camp.. the small team has taken another camp.
That’s the point of the buff… its to keep a zerg busy while you hit unbuffed camps. It keeps the zerg always behind you in the chase.
Only thing the zerg can do, is guard camps… By definition.. a zerg with co-ordinated guard posts is no longer a zerg.
Great thread,
I’ve looked at all the clases, and played Ranger, Mesmer, Guardian and Ele to 80. Played a lot of PvP (my preferred style) and some instances.
I can say the main reason I play a ranger is not because of stat-min-maxing… it’s because it’s the most fun! The formula for ranger…
Speed + Range damage = Fun
The key to this class is not in the stats, its in the flow of the play…
Managing the pet while maintaining range to reduce your incoming damage. Monitoring your buddies to predict when to take a few hits to place HS, or sweep in for a revive. Kiting off groups of mobs or enemy players as a method of permanent CC. Selecting the right weapons/pet/utilities/elite for the job at hand.
The class is easy and fun for a new player to play; its point and shoot! But… hard to master.
This is why Ranger has always been a "classic’ mmo class. That’s why ranger is always a challenging selection for a pick up team. Good ranger = good pick, probability of good ranger….
Mastery relies on manual pet control, full understanding of every weapon, pet and utility skill, and ability not just to manage the ranger, but to provide the right thing to your team at the right time.
To me, GW2 ranger is a highly survivable support class, that creates time and space for more fragile builds/classes to take bigger risks. A class that can pop reliable, steady focus damage on a target while adding to, rather than subtracting from the teams precious healing budget.
It’s the effect on the teams healing budget that is often overlooked.
It’s a the eternal curse of the healing class.. everyone remembers how they awesomely downed that boss.. and handily forget the 5 or 6 times healing spring magically popped on them when they were about to hit 0 health. Or the amount of times the ranger reached out when they were throwing rocks while lying on their back! For every heal the ranger recieves, he/she will return 3-10.
Here are a few other reasons I’d rather be a ranger than any of the others…
No other class has so many evade options. 6 back to back evades is not tough for a ranger to pull off. On top of this, ranger can spec for 33% reduction while evading, and gain regen for free. Very useful in both PvP and PvE situations.
Ranger is 1 of 4 classes with 25% speed boost, and warhorn provides swiftness, you will always be at the front of the pack in WvW. The first to arrive, the first to damage, the first to leave if it all goes south.
Any melee mob that can be crippled is fodder for this class, despite the rangers so called “lowered” damage. This is why the damage is lower IMHO, delivering the damage of a warrior at long range? How is that going to be balanced?
In instances, SS provides your entire team with 33% damage reduction, and healing spring is the best group heal in the game. Pets should be on passive and controlled manually via F1, F2, F3., and you can change your pet, providing at least 30 options for situational buffs/skills. You are the first to put damage into the target, and often the last to go down.
By switching in traps/LR + speed you become the best kiting class, due to good survivablity/evades, and AoE cripples. Axe also gives you a short cooldown, 66% cripple on 3 targets. Any boss where kiting is useful or required.. what class are you going to bring along?
In PvP, I find no other class can really compete in 1v1 ranged situations, the end result of any fight is either, ranger retreats using speed and evade, or ranger gets the jump and kills target. Only thief has a chance to kill the ranger due to stealth, but this is true of most classes (and can be countered with survivable builds). Other melee based classes usually cannot stay in close long enough to kill the ranger, forcing them to fight at range, where ranger is strong. Nearly always it takes a 2v1 to actually bring down a ranger.
Ranger is the best companion class for PvP 2v2 situations, SB/Sword ranger can bring poison, cripple + QZ damage burst to bear instantly on the focus target , while lots of evades make the ranger a poor choice of focus target. Pet still serves damage while the ranger evades, and 30 % of your damage is being served from pet.
After plenty of hours of playtime, i’m still learning about how to play this class well, which I think is what the OP is trying to drive at here in this thread. Hopefully I can provide some inspiration/ideas to those still learning to play this class.
After leveling many characters in many games, usually because I thought “the grass was greener”, my learning has been… Play the class you enjoy playing, and forget about the numbers. In big title MMO’s like GW2, the designers did their homework.. every class is viable when played with skill. If you enjoy the class, you can climb the curve and get to the skill level required.
(edited by psy.1249)
Yep, same thing happened to me.. my story has the following listing
Test Subject (OK)
A Meeting of the Minds (OK)
On Red Alert (NOK)
This got triggered after I was secondary character in the same questline as my gf.
After triggering the first waypoint in Loins arch my questline jumped to “On Red Alert”. My gf’s questline was OK.