Guild Wars 2

My main issue with thieves is their ability to disengage. I can beat most theives that come at me, but invariably as soon as they start to lose they disappear off. I know they will be back and we go through it all again usually with the same outcome. Eventually, inevitably they will win an engagement and it suddenly doesnt mattr if I beat them 3-4 in a row because they always escape and ultimately did catch me out.

Makes it not even worth my bother fighting them.. usually I avoid thieves not because I am scared but just because its pointless – they will disappear the second it hasnt gone as they planned.

Keep going till you no longer enjoy it is my theory. I’ve tried all the classes and the only 2 I actually enjoyed playing were Ele and Ranger. They just work with how I want to / am good at playing. I play ranger over ele only really because I play the ranger class if almost every game so it fitted. We arent the strongest class and have some issues, but we arent unplayable as many make out and if you enjoy it then keep at it

The whole openning strike thingy I find useless really.. especially since half the time people seem to block your openning attack making all your traiting 100% useless. The only reason I take Marksmenship so high for is piercing arrows which frankly should just happen without traits.

You cant totally ignore your pet (well you could but I wouldnt advise it). I dont really like having pets either so I tend to keep my wolves on passive, but I do send them in when I need them. Also even if you really do never want to use them, you can at least pick a pet with a good F2, such as the AoE buffs or heals or CC, or something.

Writetyper.1985:

Jabronee.9465:

Due to the word —--> Ranger?
Masters of Long Range Combat?

Its a typo dude. It should be called Beastmaster!

Except that’s not what it means in the slighest. Common misconception.

Ranger=/= ranged combat, even though it shares the letters. Ranger means ranging the land, etc.

Example: Aragorn is a ranger of numenor. He does not specialize in ranged combat because he is a ranger, he is a ranger because he ranges.

Legolas on the other hand, may or may not be a ranger, but it is not because he specializes in ranged combat.

That might be true if Anet didnt describe the ranger class as “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.”

I use knights armour and berserker trinkets. Lets you hit mostly like a GC but with more toughness than people expect from you, and as long as you have enough condition removal and use evades well you’ll have no trouble surviving and dealing a ton of damage. Can either go with defensive or offensive runes depending on your preference.

This is for WvW SB/GS.

Because in their very nature warriors deal high damage but in return are slow and melee based, whereas rangers are an evasive mobility class built to attack at range or with traps and pets.

You cant expect every class to hit the same when the whole point of a class system is for certain classes to do certain things better.

Nice video, some awesome kills. I share some of Zeniths misgivings though.. I dont think a single person in that video even attempted to dodge / block swoop. If they did so I think you’d find yourself out of options very quickly. Still.. when it works it seems to work well :P

Interesting thread but I cant help but laugh that you’re trying to give new people some info and you continually refer to the Borderland maps as the Battleland.

I admit its very annoying when you know you’ve outplayed a thief just to have them stealth at the last second and disappear off, never to be seen again. Its not really unique to them though.. d/d Eles are more or less impossible to catch and its also frustrating to see your hard earned kill disappear off. That doesnt make them OP though.

I loved the LB in WvW as well, I am unsure why it gets as much hate as it does. Its great in many situations, and despite is decreasing damage and apparent poor use at short range, its fantastic and killing thieves.

What I disliked about it and made me favour SB in the end (after having use both together for months) is that its hard to actually kill people who run away, in my experience. Point blank shot shoots people away from you, which is unhelpful often when you are chasing them, and its auto attack can be simply side stepped. You dont even need to dodge roll to avoid it… just change direction as the arrow leaves the bow and you’ll dodge it. The same can be done against rapid fire, although you’ll likely still get hit a little. I just found it too frustrating watching half my arrows missing even when the person didnt know how they were avoiding them.. just my moving in a randomish way they dodge your shots.

I still miss point blank shot and of cause barrage, but just for those it wasnt worth keeping for me.

Would be awesome. I really love the idea of pets leveling up as you use them more not only to make them stronger and more useful, but also it adds a little more uniqueness to each ranger because you’d be more likely to stick to your chosen pet, rather than being able to change on a whim.

Veyr nicely done. I have to say I love entangle. I know in theory its easy to get out from, and usually people do escape in around 2-4 seconds, but it still throws people off long enough to get the upper hand and as you demonstrated in small battles it can easily throw off their entire team. Even if its just a few seconds of them being destracted and unable to move its enough for you to win the battle.

^ Good question. I’ve tried all the professioned but by level 10 I just get so horribly bored of running around doing hearts and events I’ve done a dozen times before I just ragequit and go back to my lovely 80 ranger where all the grinding is done.

Never thought of crafting….

Would be a great help

Like others have said I think the GS for rangers is meant to be more of a defensive weapon, although that said withthe recent changes to Maul it has the biggest burst for rangers. Can easily clear 8-9k damage with just swoop+maul, whereas the SB really is purely for doing consistant high damage. None of its abilities will spike your damage at all (obvious except quickness, but that can be applied to any weapon so you can ignore that for comparisons).

I’d have to disagree with the 2 people above. I spend al lmy time in WvW, and even in zerg battles you can easily have 1v1 style battles. Just stop spamming AoE randomly at the enermy and think you’re helping and pick one target whose close to you and you think you can take down quickly and then do it. Thats what berserker rangers are for, fast kills at distance. Its very easy if you do it right because they usually have no clue whos hitting them or that they are even being targetted until its too late.

Been using 20/30/20 – SB + GS. Works really well for me against any target. As ever mesmers are the biggest pest but GS is amazingly powerful now. Even with a GC build its great if/when people manage to get up close to you. Warriors and even thiefs or guardians who try to get close get cut to pieces.. just evade backwards, stun, cripple, lightning relexes, grasping vines (sylvari racial skill) as long as you can and if they do manage to get up close switch to GS and use counter attack. You’ll block whatever they do and knock them down.. follow that with hilt bash and maul (which should be hitting 5k+ with a GC build). They really should be easy to finish at this point, but if not you can always use swoop to distance yourself again, switch back to SB and continue evading.

Enjoying it more than any ranger setup I have tried actually, including using QZ pre-nerf. Its a lot of fun and so very effective.

I tried continuing with my SB berserker build and it didnt work as well, so I just swapped QZ for the single target vine bind (the name of which I forget), and moved the 5 BM traiting to Skirmishing for MoC.

It works surpringly well.. was a small adjustment but the vines are better than I previously thought. I know a lot of people will come here and tell me how easy they are to escape from, but I find that between vines, SB#4 (+MoC) and 2 spider pets, people have a very hard time escaping or even moving when I fight them. It might be easy to avoid to work round one of these effects, but if you time them well 95% of people will be immobilized so often that they have no hope of beating me.

So yeah.. Thats working well for me. I’d say just as well as the same build was using QZ before the nerf. The loss of quickness for stomping and other stuff is still saddening but what can ya do.

Nice thread. And also to add to the point about it now being a stun breaker.. honestly I would almost never use it for that. If you’re stunned you’re probably in danger and taking damage, and the very last thing you need then is to be blocked from healing for 5 seconds. I’d rather wait out the stun for 2 seconds then heal than screw myself over by being without a heal.

It certainly does seem to him very high (for a ranger).

The lack of stealth or camoflage for rangers always seemed odd to me too… It seems such a natural thing for us to have, more so than for a mesmer. I like a lot of the suggestions made here. Honetly even just a passive trait effect which removed your name tag would be huge in WvW. Would actually be quite fun to “manually” hide behind trees or round corners without your name giving you away.

There was a build / video of a trapper ranger using Sword+torch / SB here the other week.. worked really well from what I could see. Maybe give that a go.

A Catmaster vs Catmaster battle would be legendary.
__________

This is starting to sound like a pokemon dual now

Actually not dissimular at all to what I use. At the moment prefer using a SB + GS though, but historically I have used LB + SB more. If I am using LB I usually dont get signet of stone and rather use my traits to incrase LB range to 1500. Doing that works much much better in zerg fights but less well in 1v1 or 2v2 scenarios because you are so much more vulnerable.

I also cant live without Signet of the Hunt, so I have either signet of stone or lightning reflexes, but never both.

But in general.. I can confirm this work very well with some practice

It is very frustrating. Its a great ability but it just never works.

I wouldnt pay perminantly.. probably just like 1 month every 3 or something.

Not really my style but I admitt, very creative and I am sure effective :P Not least because, as someone above mentioned, I doubt anyone would really be expecting it.

I can also imagine it being hugely useful for attacking enermy seige in WvW. I often use my wolf to suicide at enermy seige, and can pretty effectively get them down overtime, but thats with only 5 BM. With a truely powerful pet you can easily take out seige from a great distance with no risk to yourself.

I’ve always prefered berserker with LB and/or SB mainly because with some practice you can use it anywhere in WvW (which is all I really do). You can fight 1v1s, even against close combat fighers if you know what you’re doing, and in large battles you can easily pick off targets one at a time. You are correct in saying range doesnt have a huge burst like some other classes, but you will hit constant high damage and use your range and pets to not let them escape.

I found bunkering very limiting because it depends on your enermy bringing the fight to you. If they decide to just walk off your dont have the dps to actually hunt them down, and in large battles I could never kill anyone because it took too long and they just retreated back into their zerg to heal.

So for me, from a purely WvW perspective, berserker is the way to play a ranger. You of course have weaknesses, primarily I find skilled theives or mesmers a challenge, but with practice you can usually overcome them, and no build is perfect against everyone.

And there is personal preference as well :P

In WvW I have I have in the past always run with both wolves for the knock down and cripple, and with the non-alpine wolf its howl is unbelievably useful if you use it well.

Recently though I have come to love the spiders. Their webbing is really great and has won me many kills. Its a little unpredictable because it often misses, but when it works it really works.

I dont trait up BM so I use pets more for their utilities rather than damage. The damge they do is a nice help but I dont depend on it.

LB is amazing in WvW, and all its attacks have their uses. LB4 I used, obvious, keeping distance from the enermy, but more often its useful as a way on stopping your enermy using an ability. Often in battles I save it when when they heal, and then interupt them.

Also as an aside, in 1v1 situations dont use barrage at range as an openning attack, they will easily dodge roll our of it. Use it defensively by casting it on yourself or on your healing spring (preferably with quickening zephr). It usually keeps close combat fighters away from you and if they do appraoch they will be hit hard and crippled, allowing you to move away.