Guild Wars 2

butch.8136:

They’re reworking every single skill for this problem. I’d say they’re working on it and give them some slack.

I wonder if this was part of the reasoning behind healing spring field length reduction. Are there any other long duration fields that have had duration reduced? Anyways, you are right, they’re optimizing the system and apparently rebuilding it in many ways (evidence: condition damage floaters, blue skill recharge when chilled, ect). I bet they do a lot under the hood no one ever sees so it looks like they’re doing less than they are.

nagymbear.5280:

Next time you run into a s/t s/d regen ranger, try this. Stand in black powder, dodge axe #4, dagger #5, entangle, which should be easy. If you would run d/p you would have poison on autoattack as well. If you are a condi build and didn’t scratch his HP, stack more conditions. Only attack him and his pet next time when his troll unguent wears off, everything else is a waste of your initiative/cooldown. If you guys were 4 against one, and noone had poison/stun on them maybe change setup. This just shows that it doesn’t matter what guild you are in.

You could alternately make a ranger level it to 80 gear it up, play it for 3 months like all thieves have suggested to others.

Great advice. Best advice

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

~hidden message~ we must be “Bloody Mad” to still be using a ranger in GW nowdays hehe!

Lol I dunno, I personally want to see more transparency in how gw2 via tooltips as well as bug fixes at a faster rate. I think ranger has a few really strong builds in each game mode. That’s pretty good. And dat vigorous training. You love it. You do.

Without writing too much, ranger is really good. And so is that pumpkin.

I believe he was using it as a synonym for cowardice. An ill advised analogy to make though, particularly in written form, as many will find it insulting (like professional woman boxers who could literally kill you with a single punch).

champ.7021:

Sandpit.3467:

Ranger: remove it from the game and put us all out of our misery.

Ha lol

or just force all rangers to use sword in pve

Just to add to the wisdom of champ’s message, I use sword in pve, soloq, and wvw. Why? First of all because the animations are tight, clean, and fun to watch. Oh, and because I turned off autoattack and autotarget. And then I practiced. I avoid spamming the auto when it can get me into trouble. Easy.

Atherakhia.4086:

Indoles.1467:

Chopps.5047:

Indoles.1467:

I get the feeling Anet wants lb and gs to be power weapons, they just have no idea how to make them viable. They thinking nerfing our other weapons will make them stronger, hilarious.

Dat shortbow though. It’s so good.

I disagree, we just think it is good because it is our only weapon with the entire package (hard cc, soft cc, evade, condition application) and because it is mindbogglingly easy to use. If we had some weapons that were actually worth using other than in niche builds, I think we would all see how bland and normal the shortbow really is. As it stands now, it is our most basic option that works, so it appears strong.

What’s depressing is if LB was given an aimed shot skill it would probably be a complete and viable weapon.

What makes longbow not viable? I mean, on the forums today I am reading that rangers want A) aoe like necro B) kill shot C) stability from a shout (lol that was my idea) D) increased range on both bows…

So when these features are implemented, I wager ANET changes the profession name to “Godmode”.

ilr.9675:

Fordel.3208:

The answer is probably never, it’s a limitation of how ANET implemented the pet database.

No it’s not. My Reef Drake always retains the original name I gave it.
I’ve never had to rename it once, not even after major patches.

That’s because you also have reef drake equipped underwater.

Ya, taym is right. You have to think more critically about what you’re saying. Game design is not simple. There’s a reason the devs are developing and we’re playing.

That is really cool, great work. We carved last weekend and I could barely make two triangles and a snaggletooth! You must be good at arts and crafts.

This is almost as good for popcorn as the matchup thread. I think they need a merge, mods.

“Imagine spike and frost trap at 900 range”

Which is why we’ll never get it lol! Seriously, 900 range traps would be insane! Total insanity imho.

hooma.9642:

Chopps.5047:

Is it better RNG though? Dyes you get from soloq do not stack with normal dyes. Are they better? Surely someone has measure this. Or maybe I’m just too optimistically hopeful that this is the case.

they stack. they are both unidentified accountbound dyes

Have you tested? I recall them not stacking despite them lookong identical. Ofc I could be wrong. I just reply because I didn’t see positive confirmation that it was tested in your comment. Just circumstantial evidence so far

I have a “flame and frost” themed rampager dungeon build on jubskies sticky. I lile rampager gear. For ranger, I was using it to solo arah back when I was beating my head against lupicus solo. Someday I’ll beat that ridiculous looking monster solo. Someday! Maybe! Lol

Haralin.1473:

T1 never get it cause of queues of 3 hours :/

Anet is great in not see the consequenses.

And no i do not want transfer to another server cause i am on SFR since 1 year and wont give up all friend or miss some player.

Lol! Dude! The lead dev, Devon, warned everybody that stacking in T1 will create queues and issues. This post made it onto reddit even. I would link to it but I’m on cell and that’s way too much work.

But on the forums you see “no queues in T1 on every map bla blah blah”. Were the people saying that trolling or just foolish???

When I was on JQ (prior to the frontrunning onto T1 servers), it was basically just a handful of mainstay guilds (a few guilds had just left for SoR even) and there were at least 15 minute queues almost every night. 15 min doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize this is JQ when it’s dead. Now JQ (and other T1) are alive.

You sleep in the bed you make, young hero.

Is it better RNG though? Dyes you get from soloq do not stack with normal dyes. Are they better? Surely someone has measure this. Or maybe I’m just too optimistically hopeful that this is the case.

Ranger: Hammer, staff (nature weapons and magic as opposed to loud, destructive guns).

Trueshot, have you ever got 600 to 1500 bleed damage per second on a target? The way ranger can stack bleeds really is kind of insane, especially since they buffed keen edge and sharpened edges. There’s nothing wrong with bleed sigils. Sigil of earth is great if you can crit consistently too. With bleed duration in wvw, a single ranger has the potential to stack 25 bleeds.

Beastcannon is a build on jubskies sticky

You do know that there’s a 300 range detection feature that precludes anet from correcting attack range? In other words, it you have 900 range shortbow, you should be able to land at 1200 still. This means warrior longbow is only 1300 compared to a 1200 range shortbow. Honestly these range discussions are unwarranted. I’m waiting for you all to slap me when I say that there is an argument to be made that shortbow range should be even shorter. So, honestly, you have it really good already.

You can’t debate that DR negates MF because DR likely works like exponential decay, right? It’s a factor in the magic find formula that simply decays over time, I would imagine. And we’re not even sure if the decay rate resets on map change or whatnot. In this case, which, I mean, this is almost certainly how they do it, right? So in this case, 300% magic find is always better than 100%. Whether it’s cost effective to go all the way to 300% is another question entirely though.

Looks solid to me. Quick question: why stone spirit over muddy terrain and why not traited signet of stone? Just the additional toughness?

Be able to stomp while transformed with signet of the wild. (Ranger)

Fix sic em such that it does not get overridden by pet f2 ability.

Yes, I use different pets in zerg and roam, and I use many pets in dungeons depending on if i need ranged pets or specific buffs. A ranger who doesn’t hot swap pets is underperforming.

Go rabid with 2 rune of afflicted and 4 rune of krait (I think, we’re going bleeds here…these runes should be affordable). Or was it 4 afflicted and 2 krait? Ah you’ll figure it out.

Run yourself a power/condition duration build with signet of beastmaster and signet of stone. Crank up wilderness survival to 30 grab bark skin. Grab yourself muddy terrain. Put 10 in skirm and take sharpened edges. Take the run signet for your last utility and the troll for heal. Use the brown bear for condition removal.

GLHF

Oh, and go off hand training with a torch, you won’t regret it

Well, I don’t know about pet death being too much of an issue. Remember at least for dungeons the pets got a 71% health buff. I was running stalker the other day in HOTW with zero beastmastery points and it seemed to live for a good time without recall from boss attacks. I think I just swap and avoided most pet death. Pet will still die sometimes though but not as much as before.

Lol totally joking ab the gloves thought you were 10% sarcastic and like 90% trolling

Indoles.1467:

I get the feeling Anet wants lb and gs to be power weapons, they just have no idea how to make them viable. They thinking nerfing our other weapons will make them stronger, hilarious.

Dat shortbow though. It’s so good.

We’ve…come too far…

Edit: srsly grats thats rediculous kaboom

This is an odd question to me. If you are playing regen ranger, regen should basically always be up while in combat, right? Isn’t the more relevant question:how much healing power do you need? Should the ranger play the signet of the wild or fortifying bond for the pet heals? Should the ranger go magi for crits that activate companion’s might? Should the ranger use troll and rely on bear for condition removal?

Anyone have any ideas about that stuff? Just a few of things I have wondered.

Ol pistol peetee has a point

+1

Dat vigorous training, you guys are letting this dude go beastcannon mode on you I bet. Ask prysin and choko about this. They know.

Imagi.4561:

Just name all of your pets something like “Sparky,” and it’s a non-issue.

You mean just paste the same name in and keep it on the clipboard? That’s an incredibly awkward workaround.

Edit: Reinterpretting your question, if you mean “sparky” because it’s easy to remember I will reach through the screen and slap your face with molten guantlets. We know our pets names because we made them up. That’s not the issue.

The annoyance—yes, the bug—is making us type it in every time we switch pets. Oh I need a new pet in between dungeon phases, well, good luck typing that in without falling behind. Lol good grief

Amicable is dub’s stooge, he made the 100g gambit himself to make the 40g “lesson” look cheaper. :p

I doubt it’s technical limit or something they can’t do. Let’s think about this. If you were in charge, with all the tasks on their master schedule, is there any reason to fix the pet name database? Maybe it would get priority during a QoL patch but they clearly have bigger priorities somewhere else.

My guess would be to expect it when they decide to overhaul the pet GUI. I’m sure that will happen in later versions because, let’s face it, it’s underwhelming they way pets are organized. Overall, the current GUI is functional for an advanced player or dev however, it is not user friendly or functional for the wider gameplay audience.

When? Haha, don’t even ask them, right? It will be a while. I bet it’s only barely on their radar.

Maybe they fought 50 rangers? Haha

Ya muddy terrain has helped me win battles ranging from fractals to gauntlet to wvw. It’s relative weak against people with condition duration reduction or lots of condi clears. But it really is great.

I like to use soft landing on tower defense: jump down, muddy terrain activates, drop bonfire or a trap, roll back into door and repeat. You can really snare and kill this way.

This is an interesting post in that it helps me understand the drawbacks each profession has (working on developing ranger/thief/ele right now). My advice is to team with a player with access to immobilize or crowd control.

Trueshots.9456:

Chopps.5047:

What gives me trouble? A good p/d thief will make me struggle.

Im sorry Its Anets fault, but lets be honest p/d is almost obsolete at this point, everyone and their brother is easymoding d/p and plex runes. I refuse to change to that crap!

Sorry ya I got it backwards

Loses to ranger one time: 100% convinced it’s the build of all builds? Seems like it counters your build but doesn’t mean “it’s the only viable build for ranger in wvw”.

It’s looking pretty good to me. Do you recommend food for endurance regen?

Sword is for poison / damage / evasion

Greatsword is for burst / mobility / blocks / control

Which do you need for your build? Ask yourself that because that is where you will find your answer.

Signet is not designed to let you catch people

I use muddy terrain whenever I want the function of a traited spike trap without the investment in skirmishing for the grandmaster. It’s the poor man’s potent spike trap. Like Lukyromero said, it is indeed a survival skill. For just 10 in wilderness survival you can get wilderness knowledge, which should reduce the recharge time by 5 seconds.

I understand the analogy. There’s nothing wrong with using it for a comparison instead of power in an informal conversation.

Well, lukromero has a point about skill being able to account for a lot of production. Let’s take it in a different direction. What tools does ranger have to help the the zerg?

Hmm… A pet will have to be put on passive and stay close, that’s just a result of so many enemies running around it will chase (you will be tagging a lot too). This suggests pets like brown bear or moa or dog, something that does an aoe the group could use.

The tools I see are…

1) condition removal and resurrection (healing spring, brown bear, signet of renewal, spirit elite, healer’s celerity, trapper’s defense, search and rescue, fernhound heals, plenty of sources of quickness). In theory, a ranger spirit elite could resurrect up to what? 3 or 5 allies? Whatever that is plus in theory two (ranger and search and rescue) means that ranger can resurrect A LOT of downies.

2) Slow downs: ranger has many sources of slow downs (some of which are unblockable), not much need to elaborate on the usefulness of “slows” here but they include chill, cripple, immobilze, and crowd control. This pushes a trap/condition/offhand torch type approach

3) group buffs (spotter, traited spirits are awesome)

4) ranged power similar to luky describes but it’s conditional

Ranged power works best when you can keep gaps. It’s awesome in tpvp to pressure from a distance. But there’s problems with it. For example, yesterday, I tested berserker ranger with knights teinkets against knight warrior. I could not put a dent in his armor. Literally did nothing. Then I switched to my condition/immobilize trap build. Destroyed him handily.

Ranger power is best combined with a pet in action. In tpvp, this works great because the ranger pressures a point and the pet harasses the point. Enemy does not want to leave point and just getting him off point is a victory in a way. So it’s tough to kite the pet in a tight circle. But in wvw, this tends to be limiting. The pet is typically passive at the side and the ranger is in fact underperforming in my view.

Let me know what you think about that analysis, lukyromero.

DeWolfe.2174:

A Ranger can do many things, we are versatile. You can Zerg with a Ranger too! The question becomes how effective or optimal are you? The problem, is not the Ranger, it’s our pet’s.

Pet’s simply aren’t very effective in a zerg. No matter how much you try to back line the fighting, they will not be very effective. In large scale combat, where our targets are rapidly changing, our pets end up endlessly chasing. On those with attacks that require root, they become even less effective.

Of course, then there’s retaliation. Going zerker and pulling out Long Bow seems to be a great idea for Ranger. Until you end up downing yourself all night long due to retal

Though don’t be discouraged. I’ve run my Ranger all summer long for reset in WvW. If I could make a Jed safe Ranger for WvW, anyone can. Chose your role wisely and pick the correct WvW traits appropriately. For example, don’t go for ram mastery as that’s not a Ranger’s place

Lol @ “Jed safe ranger”. Good luck in wvw seasons btw, dunno if you knew but I transferred off JQ.

Anyways, I came here to raise a slight debate. While I wish ranger could offer more group support through pets/shouts (heals or stability), you can backline, in theory a rabid ranger could, for example either flank the enemy’s backline and close off their escape with frost trap and muddy terrain. Or you could use those use those abilities to prevent the enemy from flanking you and targeting your elementalists or necros.

Also, with as little as 8 coordinated rangers, you could have all 4 spirits out in both traited and untraited forms giving 10% chance to burn, 10% bonus damage, 10% chance for swiftness, 10% chance for protection, in addition to all the aoe abilities spirits bring and soaking up damage (natures vengenace to active on death too).

I have seen drawn out battles in T1, I know what you mean when you say they’re limited though.

Good rangers are scary to fight, aren’t they? One of my favorite things is defeating overconfident players on other professions. It’s basically saying “we’re still here” via actions.

Most ranger play is poor because they focus on passive, archer play and signets. As any experienced ranger here will tell you, that’s a recipe for death. Little mobility, little control, little sustain (usually zerkers do this). Basically, easy bags if yourself know your profession just a tiny bit better than the ranger knows his. Also, these rangers tend to neglect their pets.

Now, you might assume it was regen and it may have been. Did you really land any hits though? I’ve defeated warriors recently without them really touching me through clever usage of invulnerability, evasion, endurance, and immobilize. A regen ranger will kill you with his pet primarily and conditions secondarily. Is that what happened?

Personally, I do not run regen/beastmaster/apothecary since the pet damage was nerfed and I would advise fellow players to do the same. Condi/crit/trap or regen/spirits or carrion/spirits but I don’t know how I feel about beastmaster/regen/apothecary anymore. It feels weak to me.

What gives me trouble? Well, some warriors do. Usually, these difficult warriors have longbow and mobile strikes, two things that help negate my ability to kite. Some mesmers give me trouble (these mesmers usually do condition damage and are awesome at convincingly blinking, using decoy, or swaping positions with a clone). A good p/d thief will make me struggle. A perplexity engineer is a difficult matchup for me as well.

I find that ranger is a lot like mesmer in that it’s hard enough to figure out and play successfully—and also they’re usually people’s alts— which results in most mesmers and rangers (duelist professions) actually performing like garbage in a duel.

In theory, ranger is simple and straightforward. In practice you find that “oh, I get 1 shotted if I’m not mobile in melee range” or “oh, bird can’t hit a moving target so I should have been playing dog the whole time?? Or should I cripple enemy for the pet?” or “wow, the damage is so low, how do I kill anything?”. There’s dozens of more little quirks that go along with the profession. The skills and tooltips are simple but the gameplay is not.

I hope that helps.

Flopjack.5314:

What do you call it when every player gets on top of one another against the early spider area in the Catacombs? I’ve heard that to be called stacking, in which case, it is definitely an exploit.

ANET designed the game with clipping character models and limited range 5 person limit aoe boons. GW2 is not a static stats game. It’s an active boons game. You might still have to dodge or reflect even if you stack. Some bosses (mossman, captain, diviner) have mechanics that strongly negate crude melee stacking. So it’s really not like “you stack you win bro”.

If someone goes down, they’re right there to resurrect. The fact that stacking is efficient is a function of game design. For stacking to be eliminated, anet would have to change the game design (not gonna happen). Therefore, stacking is not an exploit. It’s simply leveraging game design.

Jumping an invisible wall so you can jump down with descent of madness and kill lupi in 4s without a single attack? That sounds exploity but watching it happen WAS AWESOME.

So really there’s a fine line. Anet will only ban people for duping / counterfeiting goods so I think you’re ok as far as bans go.

It is if you fight people that crit you. Lighting reflexes gives some decent vigor too but you might want an aoe ability in a zerg instead.

cafard.8953:

Forget the shortbow, i want my pet leash range back.

Me too. They seriously need to reconsider wvw leash range imho.