(edited by ChillyChinaman.6057)
At lvl 35, actually anything before you get your second set of traits, doesn’t really matter.
The difficulty level of the game doesn’t ramp up until you get to ~70.
For now, play what’s fun.
If you’re set on sword/sb, though, I’d recommend either a berserker/valkyrie armor set with carrion trinkets for endgame gear to work toward.
sorry rangers are NOT to be traps, thats a rouge or thief trait. only in GW2 I have seen this and I have been playin MMO’s for 20 yrs now
Really? I don’t have your prestigious gaming pedigree, but I don’t see anything wrong with either class having access to trap type skills.
Even Necromancer marks are traps in pretty much everything but name.
Get at least 20pts into marksmanship for piercing arrows.
Also, 5pts in BM for the quickness is really helpful for burst/ressing.
What traits are you running so we have an idea of what you can afford to drop.
^no, in comparison to other classes necromancer and ranger have just as many if not more viable builds and although they have bugs just like any other class they are still very much playable.
if you practice your class enough you can be very succesful in any part of this game. Rangers and Necromancers both play pretty similar roles in tournament play at the moment. Basically I’d say the roles in TPvP currently would be Bursty roamer, Support roamer, Bunker, and Side point holder (aka mesmer). Rangers and Necromancers both currently tend to fill the support roamer role with good sustained dps/conditions. Rangers are most often used for the heavy aoe condition damage from their traps, good single target dps with shortbow, strong rezzing power due to their ability to use quickness every 15-20 seconds as well as spirit of nature which gives them more rezzing abilities, and strong stomping power due to their quickness once again and wilderness survival trait line that gives them resistance to ccs. Necromancers see a lot of tournament play for their ability to do a ton of AoE condition damage as well as spread conditions to other players in the fight, they are also expected to be rezzing party members a lot and helping in the group fight in tournaments due to their signet of undeath, which allows them to rez up to 3 downed team members in the area, They are also very commonly used for their boon removal abilities, allowing them to easily debuff the other team, especially the bunker, and for their plague form which grants them a ton of hp and blinds nearby foes. Both can be very strong in 1v1 situations as well as team fights and can be specced to be pretty tanky for holding a node. Necros are dependant on their extra hp bar to stay alive where as Rangers can be extremely evasive.
Necromancers are probably one of the staple members on a tournament team currently along with mesmer and guardian, and probably elementalist.
Rangers just started seeing more tournament play after the recent update but seem to be becoming a very viable option in tpvp
All very valid points that I have either overlooked, or was not aware of having not played the class for any substantial amount of time.
Question to those on the tPvP scene, what weapons/builds do Rangers tend to run with? I’ve been pondering entering tPvP and finding myself a tournament Guild.
I doubt it. The Krait has this Lovecraftian vibe going for them, so it is probably something a bit more… horrible than a dragon.
Unless said dragons turns out to be some cthuhlu-esque monstrosity.
A few things:
Not to be a downer, but you picked two of the community’s lowest rated professions.
They are suffering from numerous bugs, limited build options, and lack of defined role in most forms of the game.
However, I can vouch for Rangers in the following:
-For WvW, we have traps, long bow, and the “Guard” shout to have fun with.
-I’ve heard we make a great pseudo-bunker with surprising burst/damage ability in sPvP
-Rangers apply vulnerability really easily so your whole group can have great uptime for +5-20% damage.
-Once again, traps as well as healing spring are great for the combo-field they produce.
-Rangers have some of the best sustained damage in the game, good for those long boss fights.
(edited by ChillyChinaman.6057)
You seem to be well onto the right track now from these suggestions. As a rule of thumb, I never go into a dungeon with less than 2500 armour without food buffs.
Just curious, why 2500? Are you melee or ranged? I personally tend to get away with 2.2-2.3k armor with liberal use of dodge/evade skills.
I use Melandru’s runeset. I have noticed a slight improvement in my survivability, I only wish the cond/stun duration reduction applied to immobilize too. :P
Wait isn’t immobilized a condition? Why isn’t it affected by the condition duration reduction?
Most drakes have a aoe/cone f2 skill.
If I remember correctly, the explorable path where you fight your way to the front door has you fighting your way up from lower floors, implying that the facility is underneath the reactor.
In my opinion, depending on your crit chance, the high attack speed or AoE weapons are your best bet to trigger crits often.
So:
Shortbow, preferably with piercing arrows, for the attack speed
Greatsword, for the cleaving attacks
Sword, once again for the attack speed and aoe swipe on #3
I’ve been doing dungeons for a bit, mostly AC, and the role I’ve been running is mostly combat medic and field generator.
Pet Swap Quickness is great for ressing, we have the best water field in game, and easy access to Ice, Fire, and Poison fields. Just make sure your teammates have blast/leap finishers to take advantage of them.
Sorry if this has already been posted. I did a little searching and couldn’t finding anything.
But why does everyone hate this match? I did a little PvP on release but not much recently. I personally think the map is half decent, but not something to be reviled.
I actually prefer it this way. I mainly do pvp, and I like to spec my ranger pretty defensively. The way things are now allows me to still inflict decent dmg via the pet. I can prevent pets from dies with pet swapping anyway. I see this as a major advantage as a ranger compared to other profs. I can basically go full bunker and still deal decent damage for example with a jaguar.
Exactly. Looks like most ppl haven’t realized it yet. What the op has suggested imo would not benefit the class at all.
You both make a fair and valid point. I too like to spec defensively and have my canines dish out the pain. A possible compromise is that a pet’s stats are determined by a modifier of its owner. For example, a bear, known for their vigor with over 4k vitality, could have 200% of the Ranger’s vitality. A class cannon Ranger with 15k health would result in a weaker, yet still hearty, 30k bear. If you speced for a tanking with 30k, health, your bear would be running around with 60k health.
Just so you guys know, I always appreciate it when there’s an Engineer dropping supply crates for the turrets and medkits. Thanks to all the Engies I’ve played with.
This is coming from a Ranger, you’re fellow bottom-rung buddy.
Personally I think the best thing they could do for this game is remove the PvP, just shift that whole community off into a seperate game because it is one of the worst I have seen in gaming.
They think their own little world is the most important thing and should dictate how the rest of the game is and start raging every time there is an update for the PvE side they also have no idea how the game works or what dodges are. It is just a constant cry of nerfs for any class that can do a bit of damage. They think Mesmer and Ranger are OP while Warrior needs buffs, tell that to anybody who plays PvE and they would laugh in your face about how out of touch you are. PvE shouldn’t have to suffer because of how bad the PvP players are at the game.
PvE and PvP were eventually split in GW1 because of balancing issues, why didn’t they continue this to save themselves the trouble in the first place?
It’s not really scientific but the comparison is something like this:
a glass cannon build for an Elementalist is doing 1200-1500 normal damage /3100+ critical.
a glass cannon build for an Ranger is doing 1500 normal damage/3000+ critical damage
a glass cannon Grenadier build for an Engineer is doing normal damage of 1000-1300 / critical damage of 1400-2400
I don’t know much about the other classes, but for Rangers, you’re slightly off. I’ve played them since release, almost to the exclusion of everything else.
Yes, Rangers can hit for 1.5k normal, but only with the long bow with its horrendous attack speed. And you can also hit for much higher than 3k with as well. Once again with the long bow. However, that’s with Rapid Fire which in on a 10s cooldown.
More realistic numbers would be:
Shortbow: 500 base 1.5k crit
Longbow: 1k base 2-3k crit
Sword: 600 base 1k crit
The main strength of Ranger dps is that most of it is low damage high attack speed.
2000 total power is the minimum (without buff)
Just wondering, what do you mean by 2000 power without buffs?
I calculated my power from 916 base + 300 marksmanship = 1216 power not from equipment.
Well I just recently started using Power builds so take my advice with a grain of salt. I have 1216 power from stats for a total attack of about 3200.
Back when I ran conditions/traps, I’d never leave LA without at least 1000 condition damage.
Just saying, I’m pretty sure Thief arrows bounce off the environment as well, will do some testing eventually…
@ Sleepy, I also agree that pets are a lot more survivable than people give them credit for, especially with points in beast mastery.
However, this doesn’t apply in dynamic events involving champion+ monsters they are going to be dead, or at least disabled when you pull them back to heal. If there wasn’t such a penalty to being aggressive with one’s pet, I think people would be more friendly towards them.
(edited by ChillyChinaman.6057)
Ranger’s don’t have any inherent boon removal. PvP, at least tPvP, is SUPPOSED to be a team oriented game, so rely on your teammates if they’re giving you a hard time.
It seems like most of the PvP Ranger builds are leaning toward melee, or short-range tanky builds. Try to build toward defensive, survivability, and DoTs.
edit : Added pet’s Resurrection when Ranger uses the heal skill !
Further discussion …
Not intended as self promotion, but it is relevant:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/If-Heals-Rezzed-Defeated-Pets/first#post1024616
I don’t hate flanking per-se, but then again, I do build for.
For example with hunter’s tactics and Superior Runes of the Thief, you get either:
121% damage = 1 * 1.1 * 1.1
or
120% damage – 1 * 1.2
It’s like having almost permanent vulnerability on your foe.
If I’m honest, no, that would be a bad thing. Why? Because between heal cooldown and swap your pet wouldn’t ever be dead in PvE or sPvP. You would never get the pet dead swap cooldown since you can just use the lowest CD heal and keep swaping pets forever.
Isn’t that kind of the point though? No other class, can have, what was it 50%?, of their damage/utility output be so easily neutralized and disabled for as much as 60s at a time.
Also, these are meant to be used in a combat situation. The strongest single heal/revive I proposed is Heal as One getting your pet back to 60%. Unless you’re using a bear, your pet will be down again in no time. You also used your own heal, which you might not have needed at the time, for your pet instead of yourself.
This was mostly an idea to circumvent the long 60s cooldown of a downed pet. In my own perfect world, pet swap would be a constant value, somewhere in the range of 20-30s, no matter if the pet was alive or dead. Combined with the swap trait, this would drop to 15-23s. If the cooldowns were lower, than this healing/reviving wouldn’t be necessary. However, if Anet balances the ranger on basis that their pet is always there, then the pet always has to be there.
To those you that remember from GW1, the pet heal skill also functioned as the pet revive skill.
Does anyone think this would be a good way to help make pets more useful? They’d be dying just as quickly, but if you could get back into the fight faster, than that’s much less wasted time and dps.
As examples:
Heal as One: Revive your pet at 60% health
Healing Spring: Heal your pet at 50% health and apply regernation
Troll Unguent: and 40% and pulse every second for x additional healing
Just wondering where does everyone experience these obstructed hits?
I get them every so often, usually when my grouping is mobbing a single enemy or when I attack inanimate objects. Other than these two cases, I don’t really get this problem.If something is strafing in you can get obstructed on most of your shots.
How many people actually strafe like in a certain video posted here though? I’ve never seen it. Especially in the massive zergfest that is WvW most of the time.
I like your idea for Moment of Clarity, it’s a neat idea and fits in the idea of the trait.
However, instead of a set timer for Remorseless’ refresh, how about a RNG that Anet seems to like so much. It could reset on a percent chance whenever you score a crit. Perhaps a 60% on crit to renew Opening Strike, with a 5-10s ICD to prevent really, really lucky player from stacking max vulnerability in a few hits.
Just wondering where does everyone experience these obstructed hits?
I get them every so often, usually when my grouping is mobbing a single enemy or when I attack inanimate objects. Other than these two cases, I don’t really get this problem.
Don’t even bother. There is nothing you can do in WvW.
1. Your damage is a joke and your shots get evaded 90% of the time by people simply circling you.
2. Your pet is a moron and can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Most classes can outrun the pet or kill it very easy.
3. You are useless while attacking a keep. BECAUSE YOU CANT kittenING SHOOT ARROWS UP. While engineer happily throws grenades up.
4. You are useless in defense because as soon as you stand near the edge some thief pulls you down, standing further back you won’t be able to hit anything because you get Obstructed.
5. Your pet is completely useless in defending keeps. ZERO. NOTHING.
6. You get 2 shot by almost every other class. Sometimes even one shot and that;s wearing full toughness set because medium armour is shiat
I almost forgot.
7. You can’t get away or catch up to any other class, they either have more movement speed, are invisible 90% of the time or teleport with skills that have barely any cooldowns compared to our horn which is our ONLY kittenING movement speed.
8. Not enough stun/lock breakers, we have 1, yeah whooping one. We don’t have any stuns either, just one that lasts for 1sec, hahaha, kitten you anet.
1. Won’t say anything about damage, but the patch did a fair bit to alleviate missing.
2. Pets hitting moving targets, especially combined with the Signet of the Hunt buff helped a bit. I will admit they still die easily though.
3. Too bad grenade damage got nerfed 30%.
4. I’m pretty sure what you’re saying is true for everyone standing on the edge of a keep.
5. You can try using the “Guard” shout to teleport your pet to the ground for some shenanigans every 24-30s. I have no real counter to this one though.
6. From reading you’re complaint, this isn’t even a Ranger specific problem, but an Adventurer class problem that Thieves, when out of stealth, and Engineers would have to deal with as well.
7. Post patch, everyone is pretty much the same speed now w/o using perma swiftness builds.
8. I completely agree on this one though. Besides Signet of Renewal and Lightning reflexes we can’t escape stuns. And then those to breaks don’t remove immobilize like some of the other profession’s skills. I will disagree partially about the stuns though. We have 2 that are on moderately popular weapons at the moment, Greatsword and Shortbow. Combined with the Moment of Clarity buff, we can now have 1.5*2=3s of stun if we needed it.
I like your general idea for the master trait, but instead of on pet swap, how about a percent chance on crit to refresh it? If combined with the grandmaster trait you could get lucky, you could apply 20% vulnerability on a target from you and your pet on your first 2 attacks. However, to offset this, there should be an internal cooldown.
So, is this a bug or intended? In case you didn’t know, if you command your pet to a location it can’t reach, for example, like the ledges of a WvW keep, it will teleport up there.
Beyond whether or not it’s intended, is this practical at all? I mean it gives your pet stealth, protection and apparently 100% crit chance, so it would be nice combined with a canine, feline, or bird to take out someone before calling your pet back. The shout is also on a 30s cooldown, so it’s not that long. Can anyone imaging using this skill if only for a little fun and change of pace?
I really don’t think you can test it. 1200 what? Feet? Inches? Who knows. Only the programmers and it’s in their hands to make it function correctly. You also cannot test it against other weapons/classes range, as who knows if their range is accurate or not.
Apparently each “unit” is equal to an inch.
In which case the range for bows, at least the shortbow seems more believable.
However, it makes the rifles look hilarious. I’m not much of a firearm historian, but is the range really short on them?
Is it practical? Oh yes 33% up time movement speed, amazing. I even know people with perma swiftness sets. Ranger just cannot do anything like this.
Just to clarify, I mean is the method to maintain swiftness all the time practical? If you have to spec and gear for it, IMO it doesn’t seem worth it.
Also, a simple cripple or chill, which rangers have plenty of if nothing else, will completely override their buff as a result of the speed modifiers work in GW2. This should give us enough space to run and get some breathing room.
Do boons and/or conditions affect characters when in the downed state?
Oh really? lol, so this wont be a buff towards rangers, it’s just scaling everything. This is just pure laziness. Again ranger becomes the slowest WvW mobility class in the game, sup.
Not so much slowest, rather as fast as everyone else who has, or will receive the speed buff. So instead of pulling last, we’ll now finishing the same as Thieves, Elementalist, and apparently Necromancers.
You’re forgetting about swiftness, they all benefit from it and can even spec towards keeping it up. We’re defaulted by movement % and they’re all getting that chance. So no, I stand by what I said, the slowest class. And don’t bring in our elite skill, we shouldn’t be forced to have it on 100% of the time for just the swiftness.
I myself would never blow RaO just for the swiftness, I don’t understand why anyone would do this. And I don’t play those classes, so I don’t know, but do they really have 100% uptime on swiftness? If so, how practical is it to keep it up?
Oh really? lol, so this wont be a buff towards rangers, it’s just scaling everything. This is just pure laziness. Again ranger becomes the slowest WvW mobility class in the game, sup.
Not so much slowest, rather as fast as everyone else who has, or will receive the speed buff. So instead of pulling last, we’ll now finishing the same as Thieves, Elementalist, and apparently Necromancers.
And comeon people, would you rather SotH stay at 10%? This is most definitely a buff, at least a shared buff, that puts us on par with our peers. Which is what the game should be working toward, each class being on par with the other classes in one way shape or form.
They’re committed to change…
Change is good! We have some interesting changes coming to FoTM involving the ascended rings we hope will resolve the problem at its core. Expect it soon!
As for my means of playing the game… I actually don’t play with other Anet people. I play with my small casual guild of old friends, but more often than not I am PUGing it since I am a bit more hardcore than my buddies. I don’t typically represent Anet when I do it so I can play the Meta with random people and find out all the neat little tricks that the community comes up with to solve difficult problems.
I experience dungeons and such from the PoV of the average player. As a designer it’s important to experience things like everyone else does, so you can make better informed decisions when moving forward.
There you go. Only thing I could find for 20 pages that hinted at anything changes to Ascended items.
Is Queen Jennah NOT a descendent of King Doric? I thought the kings of Kryta shared Doric’s bloodline.
Sarcasm is weak with this one…
In all seriousness the two heirs to Ascalon are Jennah and Commander Samuelsson.
Sorry for the accusatory tone. I’ll try looking back. Thanks for the, “few weeks,” direction. I can skip the first few pages.
Berseker stats quiver for me, but i’m waiting for the cost reduction that has been said by Anet.
And yes, Anet confirmed the cost for ascended gear was too much and they will change it.
Link or it’s fake please.
I don’t understand how the skill/trait would be overpowered.
As most of us know, or pets can bath barely keep up with crippled foes. Even then, they fall over in a stiff breeze. I may be exaggerating, but the sad truth is not by much especially compared to stronger Mesmer phantasms and invulnerable Guardian spirits.Two wolves chaining fears and knockdowns. Four hyenas chaining knockdowns. Two drakehounds chaining knockdowns and immobilizes.
You could drop almost anyone dead in a couple seconds with a double drake special. “Double Drake Special” sounds like an awesome band name or a gnarly shot.
You can’t take duplicate pets anyway. That alone would solve a chunk of the “OPness” of this trait/Elite. At worst, if someone took Hyenas and another canine, they’d get triple knockdowns.
Back to the Mesmer/Guardian comparison. I will admit that clones and phantasms are much more fragile than our pets. However, they hit for so much more damage and can be traited for all sorts of effects. Not to mention that you can shatter them near death for a hefty amount of damage.
For spirit weapons, in particular the hammer and sword, they’re both invulnerable. You’d think that they’d be less effective than a Ranger’s mandatory pet right? Nope.
Not only does the sword hit for ~700 damage every 2.5s, the hammer has a chain attack that ends with a knock down every 5s.
(edited by ChillyChinaman.6057)
I don’t think you really need to… with xmute kits you simply need to create a lvl 1 toon, grab money from your bank, buy the armor, xmute the skin onto a white item, place item in bank, log onto the character you actually want the skin on, xmute the white item’s skin (which is the cultural skin) onto whatever gear you want.
As soon as I learned about this trick, I was wondering if it could be applied to Racial armors. Have you actually tried doing this to confirm that it’s possible?
I don’t understand how the skill/trait would be overpowered.
As most of us know, or pets can bath barely keep up with crippled foes. Even then, they fall over in a stiff breeze. I may be exaggerating, but the sad truth is not by much especially compared to stronger Mesmer phantasms and invulnerable Guardian spirits.
Not to rain on the party, I’m excited about Jon’s posts as well, but need I remind everyone about 11/15?
I’m still keeping my hopes up though.
I wish this skill made it into the game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Alpha_Strike
It’s basically what you’re calling for, and it fits in line with skills like Thieves Guild.
What Vox Hollow^ said, active defense, especially in the form of dodging is invaluable.
As Rangers we have access to the 5pt trait that gives us +50% endurance regen. Take advantage of the additional dodges and resulting invulnerability it gives. It completely nullifies all damage you’d take. I use it for moving through AoEs and skipping through the wind on the Cliffside Fractal.
Am I missing something? Stone spirit’s Protection only lasts 1s so unless it doesn’t have an ICD I don’t understand how it can be that useful.
Tooltip is wrong, it lasts 3seconds, or 4.5 seconds with 45% boon duration (yes that math is wrong but it still does it, don’t question a good thing lol) which makes it A LOT better then the tooltip says it is.
Swiftness is also 7seconds pre boon duration buff, sun is 3s burning prior to condi damage, and then frost is just always 10% but has no ICD.
While those numbers are certainly better, if the ICD is 10s, that’s only 30% uptime on Protection, completely ignoring the inevitable death of the spirit.
Am I missing something? Stone spirit’s Protection only lasts 1s so unless it doesn’t have an ICD I don’t understand how it can be that useful.