High health is irrelevant when you have enough toughness to outlive any burst and enough regeneration to get back and up dampen conditions. Toughness+Healing Power+Power/Condition damage all the way. A solid trio of stats for the 0/0/30/10/30 build.
Ranger doing more damage than a warrior? Impossible. A zerker warrior will outdamage a zerker ranger any day of the week.
The mere notion that Healing Spring in an open field battle is bad is hilarious.
Nature’s wrath is horrible for a bunker build. There are far better traits out there suitable for a bunker build.
Why would it, it’s an offensive ability, not a defensive one. I don’t see any need to add a stun breaker to it……
Offensive? I’ve used it more for quick-ressing than I have for quick-stomping or putting out damage.
Ranger is an amazing class for leveling and against dumb opponents. What your pet can’t tank, your ranger can kite.
In dungeons or against competent enemies however, it quickly becomes clear why we claim we’re sharing the bottom of the barrel together with engineers.
I agree with Agadar, though the other thing you get from 30 in BM is Natural Healing which doesn’t say it but it also heals you for 133 every 2 seconds (pet is 125 per second).
Personally I run a 0/0/20/20/30 build right now though I’ve also run 30/10/30.
They main goal of a bunker ranger is focus entirely on healing power and toughness (grab either power or condition damage as your 3rd stat) and take all survivability traits. Then let your pet do the heavy lifting while you use your skills to primarily disable targets, buff your pet, and defend yourself.
Aye, I forgot to mention Natural Healing. That, combined with constant regeneration and Signet of the Wild gives you quite an impressive amount of regen.
I also agree on the third stat. Additional vitality will bring little in terms of survivability and nothing in terms of damage, not to mention toughness/vitality/healing power gear doesn’t even exist at level 80.
The generally accepted cookie-cutter bunker build is 0/0/30/10/30, or at least something similar. 30 points in BM provides you with 300 healing and a much stronger pet both survivability-wise and damage-wise. The extra damage your pet will do far outweighs the ‘power through vitality stacking’ and the horrible 5% more damage on the Greatsword.
If you want to go as offensive as you possibly can, you should promise the Ranger community ‘significant changes’ to the class and then proceed to do anything but.
Without any healing power your staying power is going to be severely limited. If it works for you go hard, but there are far sturdier bunker builds available.
If you’re going bunker ignoring your pet is also a pretty big mistake. It’s one advantage rangers have. We can go heavy bunker and not completely sack our dps because pets don’t care about gear.
That, and the mandatory 30 points in BM for the bunker build actually increases your pet’s damage output.
How about pets any specific pets u recommend?
I have great experiences with canines. Good damage, great CC, and most likely to hit moving targets according to personal experiments.
Bears, while strong, do too little damage, though worth contemplating if you desire to use Protect Me.
I don’t play burst anything. If I want to do oneshots I’ll go play a shooter. I play BM bunker build.
I find Sick Em pretty useless. Perhaps of the pet could deal more consistent damage it would be alright, but not in the current state the pets are in. Hell, I’d take Protect Me over Sick Em any day of the week.
0/0/30/10/30 is the build I suggest to anyone desiring a tanky build. Aim for toughness/healing power/power or toughness/healing power/condition depending on your weapons of choice. Virtually any weapon runs well with this build, however personal preferences are sword and greatsword due to their natural defensive capabilities.
Is shortbow speed ever going to get increased again after they did that animation fix a few months ago or is the current speed as intended.
It was a stealth nerf. Don’t fool yourself. If it hadn’t been a stealth nerf, they would have said something about it by now.
Also, I think spirits are included in the five person limit for procs. Meaning that your pet and any spirits up will or could steal the buff from other members of the group.
They changed that, or so they say. Buffs now prioritize players, then pets, then NPC’s. It used to be all equal.
Spirits are incredibly fun.
Until you are faced with the terrible inner 10 second cooldown on their procs, and them dying when being farted upon.
Greatsword does not do ‘good’ damage. It does horrible damage.
It either needs a boost in damage, or Maul needs to become a blast finisher. Either one would see it becoming used more as a main weapon.
Glad to be of service.
Sorry but no its not gamebreaking, underwater combat is never going to be a huge part of this games combat system. Sure my ranger can tank 2 people underwater and kill them, but it doesnt mean Im unkillable, just hard to kill. Pro tip, when fighting a ranger who jumps into the water….run away, why waste time fighting him in perfect territory.
So what you’re saying is to just RUN AWAY when a ranger is underwater because there’s nothing you can do? It’s broken and needs to be fixed.
How is underwater combat not important? Do you even play this game? There are some points in PvP that are underwater. There are underwater objectives in WvW. There are underwater gates in WvW. There are moats you need to cross and fight enemies in while attacking keeps in WvW.
So what you’re saying is to just RUN AWAY when a thief is stealthed because there’s nothing you can do? It’s broken and needs to be fixed.
The popularity of a class is generally a good way of measuring that class’s overall strength. Aesthetics are but a minor influence. Barely anyone would play a class that excells at aesthetics but does poorly in PvP/PvE (engineer), while most people would definately play a class without any aesthetics which excells at PvP/PvE (warrior).
It underperforms in PvP and burst damage.
0/0/30/10/30 cookie cutter bunker build. Dodge around and kite while your pet ravages your enemy.
I do however agree with making foraging similar to the thief’s steal ability. One problem I foresee however is that this would instantly make our bacon friends the best pets we have by far.
I can see that, but I suppose you could scale back the Porcine’s damage a little to compensate for their awesome Foraging abilities. It would make them great support pets rather than straight damage dealers. As it is, everyone uses Ravens & Jaguars cuz they deal the most damage. This would be an alternative to those who run support builds, or help to boost survivability.
I actually use canines in PvP for their CC, and the fern hound in PvE due to his regenerating shout. Tests conducted by me and others also concluded that canines are the best damage dealers against moving targets. But I digress.
Bad? Aye. Boring? No. I’ve tried every single class, and not a single class has given me the joy of the Ranger. There’s just something about pet/kite classes I really enjoy. Hunter was my favorite class in WoW, and I always prefer the archer/beastmaster in any game I play.
Ranger for life. I don’t care that the other classes are better. I’m playing this game hardcore mode.
I second Dante’s argument that no other class has a trait system so incredibly messed up as the ranger’s. We have more useless traits than useful, and the few useful traits we have are in the wrong trees (traps being the prime example. Condition based skills of which the accompanying traits are in the crit tree? What the beef?).
I’d rather it give you a stack of might for 5 seconds for each foe you hit with the attack. This would encourage players to actually pay attention to what they’re hitting and be rewarded for doing so, without letting them stack excessive amounts of might. The bleed could also stand to be improved.
I don’t like this idea nearly as much as it being a blast finisher, as it feels more like a support/utility weapon instead of a DPS weapon. Traits for it are in the support tree. Also, you can use combo fields with a blast finisher to grant aoe might, that’s what combos are all about.
It’s hardly a support weapon in and of itself, unless you count its control aspects to be part of what we call support. All blast finishing will do is make them nerf the recharge and make us spam it on that recharge in any field we find. It makes more sense to me to reward the ranger waiting if feasible to hit as many targets as possible, increasing his benefit from good usage of the attack. And considering the fact that it’s the only reliably source of DPS on the GS aside from auto attack, a blast finish/recharge nerf would not be ideal.
Why would it nerf the recharge? there’s PLENTY of blast finishers with a short recharge, the recharge is based on the SKILL not the finisher.
I’m almost certain the recharge would be increased if they changed nothing else and added a blast finisher.
I agree. Mostly because they don’t like buffing something for no reason without adding some kind of drawback. Also because we already have swoop as a low CD finisher, and maul+swoop spam would be insane.
Guardian’s hammer has a blast finisher on an untraited 5 second cooldown. The hammer has just as much cc and defensive utilities, if not more, than the greatsword, while also doing a lot more damage. So why would Maul need an increased cooldown if it were made a blast finisher?
PS: Use a warthog if you like fields, they can give you access to a poison field that lasts for kittening days and the rangers only etheral field, which if you whirling defense in (no quickness) with a target you’ll be able to apply up to 20 stacks of confusion onto that poor kitten.
I love my porcine pets and the warthog has some amazing items. The only problem is that while they work quite well in melee, at range they’re awkward to utilize. You’re counting on a melee teammate using the foraged item. Most of the time they don’t even know what the items are. I’d love to see a change in the Forage mechanic where, like Thief steal, after foraging our F2 becomes the ‘use item’ button. This would make combo fields from Porcine pets much more useable (and not dangerous in PvP).
I disagree that they work well in melee due to you having to pause everything to pick them up. The very act of picking up items is also pretty buggy at the moment, making things even worse.
I do however agree with making foraging similar to the thief’s steal ability. One problem I foresee however is that this would instantly make our bacon friends the best pets we have by far.
The off-hand axe is only decent for group activities or trap rangers due to the number of combo fields available. The two skills on their own are just not worth it at all, especially in PvP and WvW.
Drakes are currently bugged and can only do their auto-attack and their F2 ability.
Stay clear from them until they’re fixed. If they’re ever fixed, that is.
MooCube, you can PvP and PvE just fine with spirits. But that’s not the point. You can PvP and PvE just fine naked. The spirits are simply way too weak. They’re definately at the very bottom of our already mediocre skill list. That is a great shame, considering they are supposed to be our number one credit-to-team skills.
“Just so much wrong with this class simply reorganizing traits isn’t going to work. Not sure there are enough good ones available to this class to fill 2 trees.”
Hear, hear. Let’s take Beast Mastery as an example. It arguably only has about three or four useful traits. Everything else is utterly useless. Likewise for Nature Magic.
Torch is a very good condition damage off-hand, but that’s all it really is. Condition damage. Pretty bland and boring in my opinion: I much prefer the warhorn and the axe.
All I want for them is to apply a reliable, strong buff as opposed to the unreliable and underpowered jelly we have now, as well as being invulnerable or at the very least resistant to AoE. That’s all I ask. Viable spirits.
The entire ranger trait system is a complete mess?
More news at 11.
The closest thing you can get to a druid-like hunter is, like Jazenn suggested, the Greatsword and the Sword. Especially the Greatsword, as it has two fabulous animal-spirit animations. A Greatsword isn’t exactly the kind of weapon a druid would wield, though.
As for utilities: Healing Spring just screams druid. The elite vines, likewise. Spirits are also very druid-like, but they’re utterly useless with the exception of the elite spirit, who in some occasions can be pretty good in PvE.
EDIT: dagger has no animal animations, Jazenn. It’s completely bland.
I implore the devs to implement this. We have too little ways to get out of snares.
I for one am expecting numerous buffs to our underwater combat capabilities, as clearly underwater is the only place where Rangers thrive and ever will thrive.
Because ever since the Greatsword’s nerf during Beta, I have this nagging feeling that the Anet developers feel like it was a mistake to give the Greatsword to Rangers and as such are actively trying to steer all Rangers away from it by keeping it unviable as a main weapon.
“I.E.: The Thief, with Thieve’s Guild and another summon such as Call Wurm, cannot do, or sustain, the damage output of a Guardian, Ranger, or a Warrior.”
You’re kidding, right? Rangers outdamaging thieves? That is an impossibility.
Try a Ranger with an Arctodus Bear pet wielding a Greatsword. The only profession to out do them in damage, in my experience, are the Guardian and Warrior.
As to the Thief, it’s my favorite profession, I have five of them, one in each race, I love their playstyle, but watching others, or playing other professions, emphasizes the imbalance between the professions.To Goorman / Jonathan Sharp:
I can understand the reasoning, but the disparity is very annoying to endure or see when one exclusively plays PvE on a daily basis.
The Greatsword is the least damaging weapon of all of the Ranger’s weapon, and bears are the least damaging pets out of all of the Ranger’s pets.
In other words, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Oh, my. There’s already another thread suggesting the exact same thing. I even posted in that thread. Remind me to plug the leak in my memory.
“I.E.: The Thief, with Thieve’s Guild and another summon such as Call Wurm, cannot do, or sustain, the damage output of a Guardian, Ranger, or a Warrior.”
You’re kidding, right? Rangers outdamaging thieves? That is an impossibility.
I made a thread advocating making Maul a Blast Finisher. Check it out here if you’re interested.
The Greatsword: a weapon which allowed the Ranger to butcher Warriors, Guardians, and Thieves alike during beta, but which soon after was nerfed straight into the ground, making it utterly useless. Even after the recent minor buffs to Maul and Counterattack, it remains a secondary weapon at most, and is completely unviable as a main weapon. The damage simply is way too low, and the nerf during beta seems to indicate that Anet does not want the Greatsword Ranger to be a source of damage. But then how can we make the Greatsword as great as its name implies?
Exactly: making it a Blast Finisher.
Why is this a good idea? Because first of all, Rangers do not have a single Blast Finisher in their entire arsenal, that is, if you’re counting out the bugged Drakes, which I am. Also, it would turn the Greatsword into a weapon extremely viable for two very distinct builds: the support/tank Ranger, and the trap Ranger. The support/tank Ranger will be able to provide AoE healing by Blasting his own Water Field, while the trap Ranger will be able to provide himself and others with Might and Frost Auras.
And that is only taking the Ranger’s own combo fields in account. In group situations, combo fields are up nearly 24/7. Who cares if the Greatsword has low damage if Maul has a Blast Finisher? The weapon would become like the Guardian’s Hammer, which likewise has a #2 which is an AoE damage blast finisher and also has several defensive/cc tools. The weapon would become extremely viable, and with it, the entire concept of the Melee Ranger would be lifted up into the clouds.
This one change alone would greatly improve the Ranger, or at least in my opinion. What do my fellow Rangers think of this? And if the devs are reading this: what do you think of this?
@OP, a few of those (mostly what the guy I quoted said) are ridiculous, and idk how PBS and CS even -look- like blasts… Now maul…. That’s a different story…
Can’t say I’m seeing how Maul is a blast, but if AN changes it up to look like a ghostbearsplosion I’d be all for it.
Well the bear smashes its paws on the floor, it could totally pull off a blast more than shooting a single arrow that has no indication of a blast at all.
Aye. If any skill is currently candidate for becoming a blast finisher, it is Maul. It would instantly make it a viable main hand. Can you imagine that? It would still have low damage, but with the Ranger’s relative easy access to combo fields, it would have so much interaction…
I wanna know what build you guys are using. I have been playing ranger in sPvP the past few days as a supposed GC spec and I don’t feel glassy and our damage is insane. >.>
If you find rangers to have insane damage, then the other classes must be gods to you.
I’d go for the 0/0/30/10/30 cookie-cutter ‘bunker’ build. It goes well with pretty much every single weapon we’ve got.
It is a shame you find the longbow your favorite weapon. It is by far the worst one we have.
Aye, air and fire combo fields completely throw the pattern of all the other fields out of the window. How utterly strange. In the case of fire I can see how it could possibly be overpowered to have up to five people gain a burning aura, but the air one is just plain weird. Blast gives area swiftness, but leap makes you apply daze? Why not have the leap give you swiftness instead? Why break the pattern?
Just checked it, and you’re right. That’s a peculiar design choice.