Guild Wars 2

Logan Thackery is a reincarnation of King Adelbern’s son, Prince Rurik. I can tell by how useful he is.

the guardian skill “retreat” is inspired by logan thackeray.

“a couple things you wished people told you about the class before you, yourselves, rolled one?”

I wish people had told me how Anet nerfed the absolute living bollocks out of the class when beta ended. It went from pretty strong to pretty weak in one fell swoop.

Still my favorite class, though.

I’m not entirely sure whether the OP is joking around but failing at being funny, or whether he genuinely believes he’s a top level player.

Healing Spring + Greatsword when you already have the evasive weapons of Sword/Dagger? And you think you’re a top level ranger?

I always figured you as a troll

If a pet is downed, your F2 ability is greyed out. That’s your indicator.

Greatsword would be a great main weapon if it weren’t for its extremely low damage. It is however still a viable secondary. Many a times has it helped me keep thieves and warriors at bay until my other cooldowns were back up. A greatsword is good for any build, and will serve a condition build and a power build in about equal measure due to Maul’s nature of doing both direct damage and bleeding damage.

Sword is currently a broken weapon due to the auto-attack disallowing you to dodge. Proper use of this weapon thusly requires careful micromanaging of your auto-attack, in other words, turning it off and manually tapping ‘1’ when required. This off-puts a lot of people, myself included.

However, despite this flaw, the sword allows for two evades, a poison, and a high damage auto-attack which also buffs your pet on every third strike. Carrying a dagger in the off-hand will almost make you thief-like, by adding a third evade as well as a ranged cripple. Off-hand dagger is thus prefferred for condition damage based tank/evade builds, while off-hand warhorn is preferred for power based buff builds and the torch for condition based damage builds.

Off-hand axe does not compliment sword that much in my opinion. All it does is add one ranged attack, and one projectile blocker which roots you in place.

1. Use your roots elite.
2 a). Run away (see shochinhwa’s above post for details) , or
2 b). Attack the one that escapes the roots.

Durzlla.6295:

How i do it?

My Glassless Cannon BM build where i just pop sick’em, QZ and spam warhorn 4 and spam 1 on the sword, kittens go down before they can even heal.

If those 2 skills are on CD? A little harder, but not much, i’ll just evade around the battle field like a rabid monkey and let my pet shred them, if i can get range on them (sword 2 allows that very easily) i’ll often swap to longbow and bend them over from range.

PS: When they go stealth just roll around and make it hard for them to get to where you are, it will make getting a back stab impossible which is how MOST thieves get their damage.

don’t do this unless you want to die to any thief with half a brain. They cloak and all your skills will be burnt and you are going to die from like 5 heartseaker if you are glass cannon afterward.

Sword root bug, if I could pick just one. I’d really love to be able to use this weapon but not to the extent of turning off autoattack and mashing the 1 key to work around the bug. To me this is a must fix.

PS: why is it so hard to give straight answers to such straightforward questions in this forum?

deepwinter.9015:

Zenith.7301:

What do you mean tankiest? mainhand sword is supremely more useful for a bunker/tank build than greatsword will ever be.

Both are good for tank builds. Greatsword has a block, an evade in a chain and a stun. Sword (with Dagger) has an evade, a leap back (not quite an evade) and an offhand evade (Dagger).

In fact, I would say if a Ranger were to go full-blown tank build, they should run both weapon sets.

Regarding the 4th observation: at what point does more crit/crit damage become better to stack than more power?

GS gets a non CD evade it is superior defensively to sword from continuos over time assault and against missile fire burst over a short period.

Sword – is superior in terms of evading burst damage because it gives you 2 on demand evades, 3 with dagger whereas GS gets a single block. Sword can also add in missile deflection instead of the additional evade plus vulnerability stacking. Sword is also superior in being able to double leap inside one healing spring duration. ( the on demand aspect makes it better for pvp IMHO)

Agree with your assessment and also always looked at the traits were they were as tank offensive increases. They make perfect sense from that point of view.

In fact go 5 more into nature and get 5% additional damage for you and your pet with a boon up. And if you actually use spirits you can have 100% boon up uptime 50% for protection and 100% swiftness. And the final traits in nature which we aren’t crazy about let you strip poison – healing debuff on dodge or take your spirits with you.

In some ways it may also be for pve aggro management.

KirinDave.6451:

(the Stallion Who Kites the World builds).

…maybe we should have gotten a sheep priestess to corrupt these builds while they were still in the womb…

that being said, i play on t3. i’m a pretty decent roamer, and i once lead a gorilla campaign with 4 lvl 30’s (me being the only level 80) on TC’s side of EB for a good 1hour before we were caught up by a CD zerg (held off really well as well).

in WvWvW map awareness and knowing all the tricks to turn the balance in your favor is crucial. i could solo cap unupgraded camps starting at level 50 and i got really really efficient at it (i can cap in about 2 minutes solo wise if everything works out perfectly).

i run shortbow/gs, or shortbow/sword-wh, but i also carry every other main hand ranger weapon and a horn. (in my bag is a sb,gs,lb,axe,sword,wh) that way i can alter my skills to help out with the situation.

don’t be ashamed for running away, you’re still contributing if you’re kiting 6 people around a borderlands for 30 minutes because those 6 people aren’t defending, roaming, or sieging.

Depends on the dungeon. Some dungeons places alot of cond dam on you and hard to avoid them so either have a party member that have the ability to remove them for you or use grab some vit. If you’re in a duneon, as long as you’re alive, you are contributing dps, no matter how low so its a better choice to be able to survive than output high damage. Sustained dps > high damage if you get downed frequent and another person has to come pick you up. That’s a lost of 2 dps.

Now IF you are good and many are, where you actually survive longer as a glass than the other party members, then by all means remain glass.

thrice.9184:

UberLander.8326:

Rangers are most ap. I should know here’s a video of a wvw ranger
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1SymCAw2pZI

Those are like all thieves……..

Oh? Gess I messed up. Lol

First of all: The last update finally put the ranger back in the game. I feel I can compete again with all the other professions. A very very big relief. So a thank you to Anet/Jon Peters is in place here.

Really hope they stop buffing the allmighty perma-stealth – and – billion-dps – thieves. Play some hours in WvsW and you know what I mean.
Well-traited they’re untouchable (invisible allt he time), ESPECIALLY by us rangers who have a minimum counters to them. You’re dead before you know it and you didn’t even had a chance to hit them.

Other concern.. They keep buffing everything. Signet of the Hunt now is 25%, then next update they’ll buff another profession to keep up with us rangers. Then another profession to keep up with that one… etc etc etc. Then in a year our signet of the hunt (just an example of a skill) will have 150%… Shouldn’t they tone down some instead of buffing others?

The minor traits in Nature Magic are very good.

The major traits, on the other hand… not so much. About half the major traits in Nature Magic are relatively poor (basically all of them involving spirits because spirits themselves are lackluster, as well as Evasive Purity), and another few are mediocre or situational. Even some of the ones that are good in theory aren’t that great because the bonuses they provide are too small (Two-Handed Training and Strength of Spirit should both be 10%).

Compared to something like Skirmishing where nearly every trait is useful, Nature Magic really falls off.

Even the stat bonuses for Nature Magic aren’t all that great. Boon Duration is OK in general, but Ranger doesn’t really apply that many boons and has a lot of “non-boon” buffs (stuff like Signets which apply damage boosts or other effects to pets, but are seperate effects and not boons, thus not benefiting from duration). Vitatlity is decent enough, but Ranger has good base health, so its less important than say Toughness.

I’m actually using the prot spirit on my ranger in wvw atm- if they got a buff I’d be a much happier bunny but being able to sometimes provide a team or area with damage reduction for a few seconds actually can make a difference.

Proper use of traits and bows will do more damage than waving your GS around and at the same time I’m not being squished by any decent warrior that unloads on u.

Risen are a joke- speed buffed or not they generally don’t reach you if u put a pet in the way and use LB/SB skills – and by the time they reach you they are generally just ready to pop their loot at your feet as they die.

The real nasties are kraken on the new area, which eat pets for breakfast and rangers shortly after- can’t imagine what they must be like to try on a melee ranger.

Personally I’ll stick to around 1600 toughness unbuffed and to keeping out of reach of melee players.

Having said that in pve it can be fun sometimes to swop weapons etc around and smash away on mobs..but then i can do that on my guardian and warrior so don’t feel much need on ranger:-)

Less then 1300 toughness on a melee build in wvw= dead ranger. Health regen basically fails as every hit you take is way over any regen you can muster making it a bit of a waste of space- unless you spend most of the time out of the fight. I’m at 1600 toughness and for me that is just about enough to enable me to not die straightaway when hit in a group fight.

I can’t imagine the build being much use in a group fight- might be ok for capping camps.

I’m just not feeling it- but then i’m a RANGE r, my emphasis in wvw is to keep the enemy away from me and pepper them from a distance with help from my (sometimes alive) pet.

I don’t know enough about spvp to comment on it’s viability there.

Another “Learn to play” thread. Sorry, Ranger is still one of the worse classes in the game, is it good? yeah, It is good. But compared to the other classes? No.

Why? Because Rangers where either nerfed or nothing happened to them.
Other classes got buffs or slight nerfs.

So the gap went larger and larger, now it’s to large to say Ranger is in a good place. I’m sorry, but all this does is prove you’ve not played a ranger, lol@Original Poster.

People should understand, that Shortbow is good at non-condition builds.
I use traits 20/30/5/0/15 and I wear full Berserker’s gear (weapon, armor, jewelery).
I’m highly squishy, but it doesn’t matter, because I have so many evades. 5 in wilderness survival for more dodges, lightning reflexes, shortbow skill 3 (and 4 for easier kite).
I constantly crit for 1,2k with my bow, while my 2 kitties crit for +2k all the time. On top of that, I get the bleeds/poison as an extra dmg.

hharry.1967:

This was at battle of kyhlo and he didnt go below 90% after some heavy burst we ended up running away like a bunch of pussies.

Sounds like he used his protect me ability to go invulnerable for 6 second and you guys blew your wad then freaked out…

hharry.1967:

If you ask me, a little bit OP, any class can go on heal/bunker mode but they do healable damage, but this ranger was doing as much damage as a glass cannon thief.

/eyeroll
Oh the exaggerations and false memories. Gotta love em.

miklo.3610:

“about 2 hours ago”
So where’s the patch?

OP made the mistake of assuming that since all town visits will be at 10PST, that the first update will be at 10PST.

However Anet has specifically said that they gave a big gap for the first initial patch update on purpose to allow for wiggle room.

Wiggle room isn’t a direct quote, I paraphrased.

Durzlla.6295:

a working class

lol he must be joking

Durzlla.6295:

so we wont become OP

bwahahahahaha
Oh goodness.

Maybe in a parallel universe that might ever occur.

You didn’t bust anything, you suggested strategies to sometimes mitigate (but not remove) necessary crippling nonsense rangers have to deal with because they have a pet.

jubskie.3152:

1. Rangers aren’t designed for spike damage, they are constant, steady DPS. Rangers deal the same damage as other high damage classes given a set period of time on a single target. Yes, we wont see 10k crits anytime soon, but we get lots of quick 2k double crits from birds and felines instead.

This doesn’t mitigate the fact that when a pet is dead or ineffective a significant portion of out damage is now gone. What other class has the possibility of a significant component of the their DPS and utility being completely shut down because of bad AI or bad luck with a boss AoE/inability to avoid a zerg? Pets are the first things to die in a zerg in WvW, even the ranged ones. In boss fights you cannot swap them out every single time they are about to die. They do not respond to the recall command fast enough to avoid many AoEs. Pets will be downed often and for a long time. It’s a fact of the ranger and it means rangers, unlike other classes, will spend much of their game time at less than full effectiveness.

jubskie.3152:

2. Pets not hitting fast moving targets is definitely a big issue, but Rangers have a lot of tools to help our pets along. We have access to a LOT of cripples and immobilizes. Think of snaring someone as marking them for your pet, and you should see it hitting more reliably.

You can help your pet hit, for sure, but many classes can easily remove conditions and avoid this quite simply. The reality is, simply running in a circle is all it takes to counter the pet AI (and dodge most arrows as well sadly) and pets unable to attack targets unless they have some CC on them is unacceptable. It needs to be better. Working harder to achieve the same results others can achieve for less work is not good balance.

jubskie.3152:

3. Pet Pathing is more of a PvE issue and it is very annoying when travelling in Orr. As for the pathing, this can be solved easily by swapping pets once you get to the bottom. No more pet running off and aggroing everything! Simple eh?

It’s good advice but it’s still a hassle to have pets pull half the dungeon unless you stow them before jumping (and it means stowing them often or waiting for cooldowns to swap them if you are in combat for making jumps). Rangers become dangerous to their entire group when jumping platforms with the way pets are currently designed. Their pathing, aggro tendencies the inability to stow them permanently without the game bringing them back out as soon as you are in combat are hindrances we shouldn’t have to deal with.

jubskie.3152:

4. As for the Pets dying a lot, this can be somewhat mitigated by putting points in the Beast Mastery Trait line, but it’s really up to ANet to help us here. One other reason pets die a lot is because it’s master neglects it. Even worse, is the master sends it off to fight in melee and expect it to survive when the Ranger itself can’t survive that scenario. If you see that big bad Risen Abomination charging up for its smash attack, call your pet back before the animation finishes. Most people just let the pet take the hit and then complain. Another possible solution is to use ranged pets.

I dealt with this with your first point, but it’s true there are ways to mitigae some unecessary deaths of the ranger pet, but the reality becomes that rangers end up having to do a lot more work (and possibly invest more resources) to keep both themselves and their pet alive. When a boss does an AoE I have to both dodge roll in time AND swap my pet out at the same time (if the cooldown is up) which can be very difficult. That’s if my pet is lucky enough to be alive still. Many bosses which are easily meleeable are still not pet friendly because dodging is involved in almost any boss fight. Pets are going to be absorbing attacks that players don’t. They also don’t have the advantage of being able to be rallied or revived from a downed state like a player does. So fights where melee characters get downed, those are usually fights where a ranger pet is on the 40-60 second cooldown. The longer they go, the less we are able to contribute because of constantly downed pets.

There are ways to reduce the hindrances ranger pet design has forced us to deal with, and some of your suggestions can improve the quality of life of a ranger and his pet, but in no way are you busting a “myth” nor do most of these suggestions alleviate the concern that these issues are real problems that are not skill based but rather design failures.

Honestly, trollhammer sums the issue up quite nicely. People who enjoy the class (like myself) will still play it, and still manage to contribute fine, but we are definitely behind the curve.

jubskie.3152:

1. Rangers aren’t designed for spike damage, they are constant, steady DPS. Rangers deal the same damage as other high damage classes given a set period of time on a single target. Yes, we wont see 10k crits anytime soon, but we get lots of quick 2k double crits from birds and felines instead.

When you add up the numbers, they are still pretty weak. The pet numbers are also completely unreliable, and therefore irrelevant to spike damage.
Steady DPS is good, however… Steady DPS only matters if you can survive long enough to deal it. Guardian can afford to do steady DPS. Ranger not so much.

The rest of your points come down to the same issue. Ranger has to sacrifice all utility and put lots of micro into doing mediocre damage that comes naturally to other classes. Does it make ranger completely useless? No, of course not, but in any competition driven game being significantly behind is the same as being useless.

And for the record: Pets suck. They require too much attention for very marginal return.

(in before the inevitable Durzilla response on spirits, hehe)

The buffs from the spirits are quite good. Sadly, until they get some sort of boost to survival, a support build that uses spirits can quickly be messed up by something like a big boss AoE.

MaRko.3165:

Agadar.4931:

neverborne.4736:

• For PvE leveling rangers complaining that these changes won’t help you, that’s because the ranger is already very balanced for PvE, if not overpowered.

Oh god, my sides! Lord have mercy upon them! I cannot stop laughing!

Yup… there you have it. Us PvE players are ‘overpowered’.

ROTF

I’ll have what he’s having, because to be that out of touch with reality, it has to be something like soy sauce in that one movie John Dies at the End.

It’s funny that he mentions the shortbow, given how long it can take to kill something. I remember the joys of leveling my ranger, watching thieves, warriors, guardians and mesmers completely melt monsters into puddles by the time I had a few shots off. Watching 15 points in beast mastery not amount to anything or watching “Invulnerable” and “obstructed” showing up in red, regardless of where I’m standing.

I can’t believe what I’m reading??
Longbow AND speed buff?? Ooooo I’m hoping some of the pet issues are getting some love too!!
This is soooo exciting…I just got my Ranger in all exotics and whisper skins!
Tried to abandon her and reroll, but I just couldn’t do it!

Durzlla.6295:

Jay.3415:

NaturalPortman.9562:

VeralFixen.3142:

let’s be fair to anet.. some of these are way too OP..
otherwise, who knows they will say the things we’re demanding don’t make sense and make no changes at all..

Like I say, buffing ranger is a very touchy subject as any little change could possibly make them OP. We were once OP and now we are slightly underpowered, and to be honest I’d rather take slightly underpowered.

When were we OP, beta weekend 1? really when no one knew how to build or speck other classes. Thats funny have u played thief they have gotten nerfed every patch since launch and yet i dont tpvp without one……

We were OP BWE1, 2 (our peak), and 3. In BWE2 i was able to go into a 1v8 and kill every last one of them before i even dropped to 50% health while i was in a defensive build, this was because both masters bond, and spirits were broken beyond belief, and the pet was actually responding to my commands 95% of the time unlike in BWE1 where he’d just go “You don’t have enough badges to control me!!” and run off to do something else.

In BWE1 when the ranger had as much weapon damage as a warrior PLUS we had the pet (who as i said above, was unresponsive as hell) we were very OP, you could crush people very easily from the shear power of your weapon shots and then god help them if your pet decided you were worthy of his effort and jumped on you as well, you’d be dead before rapid fire was done casting.

BWE3 we were not as blatantly broken as we were in the previous betas, but our spirits were still really OP which is why they nerfed their health between then and release, and supposedly an ICD was also put on them although i didn’t experience that until the last patch.

I played beta weekend 1, you 1v8 really ? video or it didnt happen….
I 1v8 now on my thief, see i can say the same bs.

Seriously, wrong part of the forum to ask for a nerf o.o
Go for mes/war/thief forum