Guild Wars 2

Smelly Bookah.6957:

Hello there old vets!

I have a little question for you: how do you like your new game? Do you think it’s better or worse than it’s predecessor?

Personally I had high hopes for GW2 but now I feel quite disappointed. I don;t say the game is bad, but the thing is it’s Guild Wars (which was one of the big advertising points of the game) yet core mechanics (variety of skills) from GW1 are pretty much gone, and most of the decisions A-Net make seem to take this game even further away (ascended stuff).

What are your opinions? Please share them below (I can offer cookies).

Well, I played GW1 for a long time and overall, I do think that GW2 is better (I mean, hell, if nothing else, my character can jump now). Combat is a lot more diverse and the world feels a LOT more alive.

However, there have been some steps backwards. I am disappointed to see how much grind is required for gear and to see the reappearance of the gear treadmill, even if it is better than a lot of other games.

Also, I miss guilds. I mean, sure, this game has guilds, but they don’t really matter. There’s no feeling of guild allegiance or guild pride since you can join as many guilds as you like and there’s no competition between them. I really hope that this changes because the spirit of competition really feels dead for this game right now.

Saulius.8430:

if you are looking at overcrafted food like omnomberry bars, then you are doing it wrong

The profit margin with food is small, so to be able to make any decent profit to offset the time/effort cost, you need to sell a sizeable quantity. High demand food like Omnomberry bars aren’t the only thing I’ve looked at, but low demand foods, even when profitable don’t look like they are worth the time I spent leveling 400 cooking.

The opportunity cost for this profession really looks to be too high in this current market to justify it.

Yea, as much as I enjoyed the discovery system, I just hit 400 cooking earlier today and immediately regretted it because:

- I don’t have any bag/bank space unless I just straight up delete stuff.

and

- There’s really nothing profitable. Almost everything I saw, including the famous Omnomberry bar sells for less than the price of the raw materials.

Bleh…I should have known better.

ItIsFinished.9462:

I have been kind of reluctant to post this as I believe it will become a flavor of the month kind of build. I say this because I have had nothing but success with this build.

You must be new to ranger forums. Variations of this build have been around for a long, long time. However, something like this is more common in PvE since it’s very glass cannon for PvP.

Here’s the skeleton of what you should go for:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATVCRWCgli9CsVgTmCAY8LA
(copy and paste for link to work)

There are 15 points left that you can move around as you prefer.

- If you want more pet survivability, put 10 more (15 total) in BM for the extra pet stats and faster pet swap.
– For more personal and pet survival, put 5 more (15 total) in WS for the protection boon on dodge for you and pet. Just remember to dodge to boon your pet if they’re about to take a big hit
– For more of a glass cannon build, invest more in Skirmishing or Marks.

For slot skills, you have a lot of flexibility. Quickening Zephyr is pretty huge, not only for dps, but also for getting a quick rez on an ally, which is why Wilderness Knowledge is chosen in this build. Outside of that, however, you have a lot of flexibility.

Atherakhia.4086:

KirinDave.6451:

Code.1327:

The OP and most players forget one very important point.

PETS DONT SCALE WITH GEAR.

This might seem minor right now, but as gear creep continues, pets will continue to slide backwards as a class mechanic. It needs to be addressed at some point for the long term viability of the class, either by compleatly halting gear creep that started with ascended gear, or making pets scale with player gear.

So, I’m peeking in on this forum as I goof around looking for something to replace my Engineer (I’ve realized ANet has no idea what they’re doing with that class, and it’s just a hand’s breadth from utterly broken and useless right now). And I wanted to comment on this.

This is actually a good thing. Let me say it again; pets not scaling with gear can be a good thing. What this means is that your pets do not scale with your gear choices, which means you and one of your pets can be wildly different in spec. ANet has promised, unfortunately, to change Engineer kits so that they do have gear dependence. Try not to let them do this for you; instead have them make pets keep up with gear creep.

The reason it’s good is that right now, you could go full bunker spec and still whip out a cat and have cat-level DPS added to your own (which may be low with a bunker spec, but presumably you have control effects to help your pet). You have mid-fight role variability. It’s the holy hybrid grail, and right now the only class where it’s even remotely feasible is Ranger.

I do not have a high level ranger, but I’ve done dungeon and WvW runs with them. I’ve always been impressed by the class. I’ve watched people switch pets to dodge (exploiting the fact that pets do not instantly phase in, and as such a pet swap is actually a dodge if you time it right; even in melee). I’ve always been impressed by how much DPS Rangers can sustain while also being very good with helping the party. And in sPvP I dread stomping good rangers nearly as much as I dread stomping mesmers (“Oh kitten now I am dazed… Oh kitten now I am knocked down… Oh kitten you just got a rally… and you were contesting the point the whole time.”)

I also want to note that the people here talking about the absurd difficulty of managing a pet and themselves should probably try giving Elementalist, Thief, or (if you hate the idea of being effective) Engineer a try. All three of those classes require a lot of situational awareness, very quick decisions, and close-to-flawless technical execution. Which is not to say that Rangers are not in need of bugfixes; I think most classes are. But I do think it’s easy to forget how hard other players are actually working with their classes.

Pets not scaling with gear is a horrible thing. The class is designed so the pet accounts for 50% of its damage. So right off the bat, this class is working with a 50% handicap because the rest of the stats are being flushed down the toilet.

I don’t think you really understand this concept. If this was WoW or some other gear arms race, then it would be a problem, but in GW2, it allows defensive builds to still bring significant dps and only really works against people that can’t manage their pets effectively.

Code.1327:

The OP and most players forget one very important point.

PETS DONT SCALE WITH GEAR.

This might seem minor right now, but as gear creep continues, pets will continue to slide backwards as a class mechanic. It needs to be addressed at some point for the long term viability of the class, either by compleatly halting gear creep that started with ascended gear, or making pets scale with player gear.

This could be an issue when more ascended gear is released, but hopefully there is some change to pets to offset this.

For now, it’s actually a good thing that pets don’t scale with stats. This lets us keep strong damage even when we go with defensive stats and/or gear. Your raven can still do 10k crits on F2 when might stacked even if you’re wearing white gear with nothing in marks or skirmishing traits.

Yea, I really want to like the longbow, but there are only two situations where I use it:

1) WvW

2) Sometimes I use it as a secondary weapon in dungeons when I run a shortbow build since the knockback and AoE come in handy.

With conditions, length vs damage will vary depending on which condition you’re talking about.

Bleeds are almost always better off with condition duration instead of condition damage bonuses. Poison on the other hand is better with condition damage since it often comes with a long duration and does low damage.

For some conditions it depends on your circumstance. For example, condition duration for burning is usually great since burning tends to have a short duration with high damage per tick, but if you’re running a dungeon, it’s pretty common to have fights where burning is constantly up on your target since burning from allies stacks the duration. In these situations, condition damage will edge ahead, but this is also why I try to avoid condition builds in PvE.

If I had it my way, I would make the following changes to the longbow:

- Increase rate of fire slightly and reduce damage per hit to keep dps the same.

One of the big reasons the short bow is so much better than the longbow is because “on crit” traits/sigils/etc. all benefit more from a fast rate of fire, even if overall dps is the same.

- Increase the damage of close ranged hits with the number 1 skill so that dps isn’t penalized as much from not being at max range

It’s much harder to maintain the max range needed to make longbow damage competitive than it is to meet the flank requirement of the short bow. As much as I like mechanics that force players to think about their position, it’s just not realistic to be able to maintain max distance often enough to keep the longbow dps competitive.

- Decrease the channel time of rapid fire and keep the number of arrows shot the same for a slight dps increase on this skill.

The reason behind this is that currently, to maximize dps with the longbow, you simply stand at max range and autoattack with the number 1 ability. Increasing rapid fire dps this way would mean that dpsing with the longbow is more active for the player.

In addition to this, the longbow would give some decent burst to make the weapon more PvP viable since the max range requirement is rarely met in sPvP.

Tl:dr The longbow needs a small dps buff, but even if they kept dps the same, the weapon would be greatly improved with a few small tweaks to the way that it deals dps (higher rate of fire, make rapid fire part of dpsing normally, and give rapid fire decent burst).

Yea, I love wolves for PvE. They have good dps since they attack quickly and they miss very few attacks as a result of their short attack animation. They also are very well rounded since they have high toughness (better than high vitality for PvE since condition damage isn’t as deadly imo) and also bring great CC.

If I was running a different build, I would definitely switch back to using wolves.

Agadar.4931:

My wolf’s AoE’s never saved me in the situations which really mattered because it always takes him more than 2 seconds to cast it, assuming he doesn’t interrupt himself or otherwise cancels his own cast.

The 2 second cast shouldn’t get in the way of it’s usefulness.

Personally, I’ve been able to extend my downed state very frequently in PvP by swapping to a wolf when I go down and casting Howl after Thunder Clap. If you hold back your wolf from attacking when you do this, you can send them after your enemy when the fear starts to wear off and you’ll usually get a knockdown on your target as well. In a 1v1 scenario, this can often give me enough time for a second Thunder Clap.

As for the beastmaster thing, yea, I gotta admit that BM is very underestimated. It wasn’t until I discovered the power of might stacking on a pet with Fortifying Bond and Sigil of Strength/Sigil of Battle. Hitting for 10k with a 25 might stacked raven is very fulfilling.

Yea, as others have said, drakes are really the go-to pets for AoE damage, but if you’re doing something like WvW, there are some situations where it may be better to have a ranged pet since sending a pet into a big zerg is often like dropping a toad into a blender.

If you do take a ranged pet, any spider will periodically drop an AoE poison, but you can also bring a Carrion Devourer to get an AoE poison as your F2 ability so that you can have a bit more control over it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBMPxG2JRFVWGZhVQsWII6H4ErwhePiV6bv/woS4RiNG;TwAg0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFtyYkxWkpIA
(copy and paste link for it to work)

Why?
I’m taking a break from bow builds and this does some great damage while being strong enough to survive PvE melee fights. The burst is fun too.

Oh, it would be awesome if we could stealth and charge up a huge shot like skills 5 and 4 when playing as a scout in the snowball fight.

Criminal.5627:

this was with the lynx, and now it was not crippled, chilled or affected by quickness, it was at the start of engagments that the lunge failed to travel at full distance, in a comparison of distance the lynx went it is hilt bash on the greatsword compared to swoop

Sorry, meant Jungle Stalker. Edited post.

No, I’ve never noticed this because I’ve never been able to justify bringing a cat with a lunge ability since jaguar/Jungle Stalker are so much better. =(

mjhungness.8059:

I don’t have anything constructive to add, just wanted to say grats on getting married and may many great times come to you two!

loneknight.8425:

Congrats to your marriage Dahkeus

Thanks!

Well, switching teams can help in sPvP where we can get in the same group, but sadly this doesn’t work for stuff like Snowball fights, kick the keg, and just about any other non-party based instance stuff.

And I agree that joining non-grouped people against grouped people (premades) in PvP isn’t balanced, but this is easily fixed by pairing premade groups against other premade groups when they queue, just like WoW and other games do. There would have to be some degree of a queue time with a system like this, but this would be worthwhile because the lack of a queue already means that many games are started and play all the way through without teams ever being filled, while many other unfilled games go on at the same time.

Even if they did decide that they don’t want to change the sPvP mechanics, at least change them for things like Kick the Keg, Snowball Fights, etc.

Catraine.6245:

You won’t be able to play together for the snowball game, but if you want to play sPvP together, do “tournaments” instead of the random games. also, once you’re in the random games you can switch sides.

PM me if you need help.

We’ve tried tournaments, but they’re even worse than regular sPvP games for a number of reasons:
– It takes longer to get in a game
– Since it’s just the two of us, we have to wait to get paired with 3 random people that often drop before the game starts
– We often get matched against a full group of 5 people that do tournaments regularly and are more prepared.

However, I didn’t know about the switch team feature, so I’ll try that in the future.

I know people don’t want to get matched up against premades in regular sPvP, but I see no reason as to why ANet can’t do what other games such as Blizzard has done, which is to pair grouped players together against other grouped players when they queue.

MethodicMockingbird.6520:

Dahkeus.8243:

So, I just got married yesterday, but my wife and I have been playing Guild Wars together since launch.

We love PvP. Sadly, we’ve been sticking primarily to PvE because we’re casual players and unless we were to get into serious tournament groups, doing any sort of sPvP is a frustrating mess since the game constantly either puts us in different games or pits us against each other when we join in together.

The really sad part is that with Wintersday, we can’t play the Snowball game together. There is no “Join in” feature and there is no “join as a group” feature either. There are so many games going at once that it’s practically impossible to end up together when we queue and even if we did, we’d likely end up on opposite teams.

So please, please…please, please, please, let us play together. We both love this game, but it’s sad and frustrating to no end that this social game puts so many barriers to letting us play together.

Not to go off-topic, or anything, but, if you got married yesterday shouldn’t you be on your honeymoon doing other things with your wife?

I’m not trying to tell you what to do, don’t take it the wrong way. Maybe try clicking join at the same time like the other poster suggested?

We had a mini honeymoon last night, but we’re waiting until Jan 6th to go on the full honeymoon since the holidays are in the way. We have a week in Ireland planned. =D

Also, we’ve tried hitting join at the same time quite a bit (we sit next to each other, so this is easy), but we haven’t been joined together once yet. It worked for the jumping puzzle though, so go figure, lol!

So, I just got married yesterday, but my wife and I have been playing Guild Wars together since launch.

We love PvP. Sadly, we’ve been sticking primarily to PvE because we’re casual players and unless we were to get into serious tournament groups, doing any sort of sPvP is a frustrating mess since the game constantly either puts us in different games or pits us against each other when we join in together.

The really sad part is that with Wintersday, we can’t play the Snowball game together. There is no “Join in” feature and there is no “join as a group” feature either. There are so many games going at once that it’s practically impossible to end up together when we queue and even if we did, we’d likely end up on opposite teams.

So please, please…please, please, please, let us play together. We both love this game, but it’s sad and frustrating to no end that this social game puts so many barriers to letting us play together.

So, I just got married yesterday, but my wife and I have been playing Guild Wars together since launch.

We love PvP. Sadly, we’ve been sticking primarily to PvE because we’re casual players and unless we were to get into serious tournament groups, doing any sort of sPvP is a frustrating mess since the game constantly either puts us in different games or pits us against each other when we join in together.

The really sad part is that with Wintersday, we can’t play the Snowball game together. There is no “Join in” feature and there is no “join as a group” feature either. There are so many games going at once that it’s practically impossible to end up together when we queue and even if we did, we’d likely end up on opposite teams.

So please, please…please, please, please, let us play together. We both love this game, but it’s sad and frustrating to no end that this social game puts so many barriers to letting us play together.

A popular spot for people farming Orr events is to go to either the Shelter or Penitent waypoint on Cursed Shores. There’s a bit event at both places and you can bounce back and forth between towns through the tunnel that connects them. There are also a lot of other events in the area to keep you occupied if you experience a delay between these events starting.

Also, the grenth temple event chain is popular for people farming events.

Either way, make sure to join with people in a group if possible since this will increase the number of drops you get.

Finally, if you’re trying to accumulate karma, do your daily and monthly achievements and save the karma jugs. Once you have a ton of them accumulated, pop karma increase buffs (the booster, buff from a guild banner, guild research, and I think food buffs too) before you start drinking the jugs since this will increase the amount of karma that you get from them.

Wow, blast from the past. I remember seeing iQ a lot back in GW1. I wonder if “Your Math Teacher” is still around…

For me to really get more than 15 points into the NM tree there would have to be either a fix to spirits so that they actually survive long enough to be viable or there would need to be some traits that could support a boon stacking build of some sort.

As it stands, I love the 15 point talent for BM builds, but the rest of the tree is pretty mediocre and if I want to invest points to be able to survive better, I’m more likely to go into Wilderness Survival since it’s just hands down better in this regard.

Yea, I really underestimated swords as well as the BM tree when I first started my ranger. I still wish they would fix the root issues with the sword so that it didn’t keep us from being able to dodge, but overall, it’s a great weapon.

If you’re looking to go deeper with the sword and want a good build that focuses on the synergy between the 1h sword and pet stacking, try this out:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBMPxG2JRFVWGZhVQsWII6H4ErwhePS/sav/woy4pEWxA;ToAqiMFJKyWkrIZRrMGZsFZKC
(copy and paste link into browser for it to work)

DaisyRogers.6837:

I was having a blast with ranger prior to update. Now I am plain out pleased.

Yes there is still some work to be done tweaking things. But both of our latest patches have been huge boons to Ranger.

I am Beast Master Build FYI, so pet survivability has never really been an issue for me. And I melee, so if my pet is getting smashed so am I typically. I press return whenever I need to escape, works like a charm most instances and gives me the few secs I need to swap. Short pet cooldowns on swap are also a huge plus for pet survivability.

Within wilderness survival at 15pts you get 2s protection on dodge roll. This is meant more for your pet then for the ranger. (already have increased endurance regen at this point). Pop off a dodge roll whenever your pet is about to eat AoE (since I melee, its when I am about to get eaten by AoE anyways so it is quite nice).

Ranger was dangerous before, now we are awesome. Looking forward to them working out some of the other builds to bring more to the table, looking at you spirits.

Agreed with this 100%. BM is easily one of the most underestimated trees that I think a lot of people dismiss since so many people have problems with handling pets. However, it has a lot of damage potential and is probably the best source of burst damage taht we have.

I’m really happy that Rangers are viable as both a ranged and melee dps class. I think the current meta of sPvP needs to change before we really shine there (having only capture objective maps really stagnates things with only bunker/roamer builds prevailing), but outside of this, we’re doing pretty well.

And yes, I can’t wait for spirits to be adjusted so that they can survive long enough to be viable.

Anthrage.2519:

Dahkeus.8243:

Do you have any idea what it takes to create AND maintain a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game?
I mean, by all means, feel free to tell me all about how you’ve been a developer in a game large enough, detailed, and successful enough to win big awards in its genre.

Yes, actually I do.

I could tell you all about it, but that would only serve to help you further cloud the issue. Yes, GW2 is a quality game, very enjoyable and the product of a lot of hard work. None of that changes the facts as they are…and there are things which we have done, which game devs do, which ANet has not and is not doing. A test server is one such thing. I suspect there are others.

I assure you, neither myself nor others who are unhappy with the various issues are ignorant of what has gone into, and continues to go into, Guild Wars 2…but we also are not ignorant of the issues. I can also assure you that ANet is not happy with these issues either…I am absolutely sure they want a quality product and happy, satisfied customers. This is not a case of only 1 thing being true.

Oh come on, don’t give me that. After a patch that brings almost nothing but buffs and fixes, you came here to post that it’s a “fail”, citing a missed tooltip. If you’ve ever played any MMO ever, you should know that no class is ever truly fixed. Hell, it was about 5 years before WoW ever fixed the glitch with the mage skill blink that often made them teleport in place or even behind where they were when they cast it instead of teleporting 20 feet ahead like it was supposed to and this was one of the core, most important mage spells in PvP. This also happened in the most highly funded MMO in history, so don’t get all uppity just because we have bugs in a game that doesn’t charge you a sub fee.

Sorry, but just because you didn’t get everything you wanted for Christmas doesn’t mean that it was a “fail”.

Eh, you don’t need all that glass cannon gear for good burst. Put 30 points in BM, 10 in skirmishing for the 30% crit damage. Get 25 stacks of might on a raven and cast “Sick ’Em” before hitting F2. You can easily get about a 10k crit in one attack and can probably get higher if you time this with the 5 ability on a greatsword and Sig of the Hunt. And that’s before you consider the damage your character can do.

Welcome to GW!

The biggest tip I can give to anyone leveling is to experiment with different weapons and builds. It’s cheap to change your build, so don’t afraid to try anything that looks interesting.

However, if you’re looking for something that’s more efficient, then short bow, longbow or 1h sword+torch are good main weapon sets. If you do use the 1h sword, turn off auto-attack to prevent getting stuck in the animation (it’s pretty annoying at first, but gets better as you get used to it).

For talents, you can’t go wrong with a good investment in Marks and Skirmishing since they will give you power and precision. However, I would also recommend grabbing 10 points in Wilderness Knowledge for the reduced cooldown on Quickening Zephyr (awesome ability for any build). Also 5 points in BM is useful for the quickness on pet swap.

BM DPS is frequently overlooked, but absolutely awesome. Here’s a build that’s very high dps and tough enough to survive in melee in dungeons:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBMPxG2JRFVWGZhVQsWII6H4ErwhePiV6bv/woS4RiNG;TwAg0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFtyYkxWkpIA

(copy and paste the link)

Depends how you wanna play. Unless you’re pushing the top of the top FotM, then you have a lot of flexibility in what build you want to use.

Do you want something with ranged or melee dps?

In general, for ranged, you’ll want a short bow with at least 20 in marks for Piercing Arrows, 10 in WS for Wilderness Knowledge (to go with Quickening Zephyr), and at least 5 BM for the quickness on pet swap. Outside of this, you have a lot of flexibility, although you’ll want a good bit of investment into skirmishing for your crit (good dps talents in this tree too).

For Melee, go with 1h sword for your primary weapon. You can get by with a greatsword too, but that tends to work better for tankier builds rather than more dps heavy builds. With this, you’ll want more of an investment into Wilderness Survival and Nature Magic so that you can survive being melee, but BM is something to consider with a build like this too since you can increase your dps through your pet while increasing your defense through better healing. The 1h sword also puts might on your pet with the 1 attack, so it synergizes well with it as well.

Runes/Sigils depend on your build.

For dungeons, I would suggest aiming for more direct damage builds rather than condition builds. This is because your group can lose dps on targets if you have too many people applying the same condition. For example, if you put burning on your target, but an ele in your group is also throwing out the condition, your target will likely have a duration of burning that is far longer than you need for the kill. Also, because of the way that condition damage is calculated, the person with less condition damage may not be applying much if any damage at all through some conditions.

In an ideal setting, a condition damage build may be able to eek out a bit more dps, but you’ll seldom being in that situation in dungeons, so I would highly recommend going for direct damage.

Hope that helps.

Anthrage.2519:

Buttercup.5871:

Does our class still need a lot of bug fixes? Yes. Many.

But the two things you call “fails” made me very happy. They are giant leaps forward in the right direction.

The signet’s speed buff is fantastic, but the fail is in that they could not even get something a simple as the tooltip right. How closely do you believe things are being surveyed at when something so basic is overlooked? I consider this a fail.

Do you have any idea what it takes to create AND maintain a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game?
I mean, by all means, feel free to tell me all about how you’ve been a developer in a game large enough, detailed, and successful enough to win big awards in its genre.

You probably spent about $60 on this game (maybe more, if you really get your jollies from gem store stuff), but you don’t need to spend another cent to get the continued content that these developers are still creating for you. You don’t need to pay a subscription to log in game and you don’t need to throw money at a cash shop to stay competitive in game either.

There is no other game on the market near the success of GW2 that requires only the purchase cost of the game while producing the same massive PvE and PvP content regularly.

So, please, take a reality check before you start peeing in the face of the people giving you more quality game for your buck than anyone else on the market.

And if you don’t think that’s the case? Feel free to stop logging into the game that is now continuing to grant you continued FREE content and spend your time elsewhere.

Atherakhia.4086:

ShinraGuardian.8053:

Hey guys! Ofcourse we are doing better! This patch was a buff what do you think happens when something gets buffed? That it does worse?

When your buffs were largely quality of life changes it doesn’t mean things got better either.

I don’t think you know what you’re saying, lol. Quality of life is something like not having to click twice or not having to spend gold on something or something that gives a convenience rather than an increase on output.

The changes in the Dec 14th patch made a very real and direct change to the output potential from the Ranger class.

- Increasing arrow velocity increases hits, i.e. dps.
– Addressing attack animations of melee pets means more attacks land which increase dps.
– Buffing “Sick ’Em” to do more dps increases dps.
– Buffing Lick Wounds to increase revive rate increases survivability.
– Increasing speed of Signet of the Hunt increases speed to reach or escape targets, i.e. dps and/or survivability.
– etc., etc.

Eh, not all traits can be good. I run a build focused on stacking might on my pet and I still pass on this talent.

Atherakhia.4086:

Dahkeus.8243:

Atherakhia.4086:

Dahkeus.8243:

Atherakhia.4086:

It does seem silly to design a bow and class around DOTs and then restrict the way you apply those DOTS where the only other class that has these kinds of limitations are thieves really, and they gain insanely more DPS and burst on top of it.

While I don’t mind the mechanic because in PvE it’s easy enough to handle, I’m not sure I understand why the mechanic is there either.

I think a lot of people overlook the fact that the short bow has such a rate of fire, so a bleed on autoattack of a bow is much stronger than a bleed on autoattack of something like a pistol.

It also changes things up and keeps the ranger from just standing in one place spamming auto attack.

While valid points, the Ranger’s damage with those auto-attacks is also much lower than the damage from Warriors and Rogues who still get the bleeds and such without directional limitations.

Comparing bow damage? Not when you take into account pets.

Even with pet damage, it’s still below that of the other classes. I really wish real DPS meters were available as unlike the Ranger class, the Warrior and Thief, when using their abilities, isn’t a DPS loss unlike the Ranger who’s only option is auto attack at the moment.

But yes, even with the pet factored in the damage isn’t close enough. Even if you presume 100% uptime which is impossible.

Comparing ranged dps from a Ranger to melee dps of a thief/war? Yea, thief/war will do more damage, but if you’re comparing to them at range, then we deal equal or better.

If you’re having trouble with this though, feel free to ask for advice.

Malzeth.2168:

Dahkeus.8243:

Comparing bow damage? Not when you take into account pets.

You mean those useless things that we tow around with us that get 1 shot by every single boss and player in the game? Those things?

So, in other words, you’re not arguing about bows, you’re QQing about pets and hiding it as a critique on flanking.

AlexRD.7914:

While i understand that with healing spring you can apply vigor 6 times over 15 seconds, that does not explain how heal as one or troll unguent gets 5 seconds given you can only pick one healing skill. (keep in mind to get 15 seconds of vigor with healing spring you have to stay in the circle, which is most of the times, not viable)

Also, both thieves and rangers depend on evades for their survival. Thieves get invisibility to improve their survivability even further, so why do we have less vigor?

It’s less vigor on 2 of 3 heals. I mean, sure they could have made complicated mechanics and made a big long tooltip to explain this, but really it’s not worth it.

And as Abaregi said, there’s a lot more to take into account when you compare two classes. This isn’t apples to apples.

Besides, ANet has been pretty clear that they want Thiefs to be more mobile than Rangers, although they want Rangers to be a pretty close second.

Atherakhia.4086:

Dahkeus.8243:

Atherakhia.4086:

It does seem silly to design a bow and class around DOTs and then restrict the way you apply those DOTS where the only other class that has these kinds of limitations are thieves really, and they gain insanely more DPS and burst on top of it.

While I don’t mind the mechanic because in PvE it’s easy enough to handle, I’m not sure I understand why the mechanic is there either.

I think a lot of people overlook the fact that the short bow has such a rate of fire, so a bleed on autoattack of a bow is much stronger than a bleed on autoattack of something like a pistol.

It also changes things up and keeps the ranger from just standing in one place spamming auto attack.

While valid points, the Ranger’s damage with those auto-attacks is also much lower than the damage from Warriors and Rogues who still get the bleeds and such without directional limitations.

Comparing bow damage? Not when you take into account pets.

Atherakhia.4086:

It does seem silly to design a bow and class around DOTs and then restrict the way you apply those DOTS where the only other class that has these kinds of limitations are thieves really, and they gain insanely more DPS and burst on top of it.

While I don’t mind the mechanic because in PvE it’s easy enough to handle, I’m not sure I understand why the mechanic is there either.

I think a lot of people overlook the fact that the short bow has such a rate of fire, so a bleed on autoattack of a bow is much stronger than a bleed on autoattack of something like a pistol.

It also changes things up and keeps the ranger from just standing in one place spamming auto attack.

Tracking andn Alpha Strike probably weren’t implemented since they involve unique mechanics that may have been too time consuming/complex to implement at release.

Dust trap was probably just left out since we had enough traps and slot skills already, although I would have loved to have this instead of Frost Trap.

I actually love that you have to think about positioning with ranged weapons. If not for this, it would be incredibly boring to dps with bows (and at times can still be boring) since the highest dps comes from just letting the autoattack roll.

But if you hate flanking, grab a different weapon or try a different class. There’s lots of choices to try.

Probably because we can grant our vigor to allies with Healing Spring I guess.

Himei.5379:

Nah, they only use Bite. Most of the drakes are useless anyways since its hard to aim their F2 and seems to die quickly when it shouldnt.

Many pets work unlogically if you look at them. Why do jellyfish have more hp/toughness than a armored fish or shark? Birds hit harder than a bear?

Gameplay balance. Irl, a bear will hit harder AND take more hits than a bird, so if they balanced things this way, there wouldn’t really be any reason to take a bird.

Pets become a lot more reliable when you know how to use them effectively. There are times when you will be hindered by your pet regardless of what you do, but I’ve found that to be pretty few and far between.

Rocklin.4106:

Raven F2 Attack, none of the Ranger Attacks himself deal high numbers.

Yea, pet burst easily blows anything our weapons can do out of the water.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Dahkeus.8243:

Important Talents:
- Wilderness Knowledge: Lightning Reflexes is particularly important since it allows higher might stacking on pets (from pounce on the sword), so talents that reduce the cooldown are important.

Hm, what do you mean with this? How does LR impact might stacking on your pet from pounce? Do you mean you use LR to jump back, then leap back into melee range with sword 1 for one extra might? Sword 1 stacks might anyway since pounce is part of the chain, so if this what you mean, I think it’s a waste of use on LR.

Please elaborate!

Doh! Sorry, that was a typo. I meant to say Quickening Zephyr since the quickness allows for faster stacking with the sigil of strength.

@Wayfinder: Runes of Lyssa do sound like they would synergize well with the build. I guess I dismissed when I saw the condition damage, but it does look to have some potential. I’ll also consider an axe mainhand, but I’m really liking using a sword for both since I’m swapping weapon on cooldown for the might buffs from Sigil of Battle. Also with the 10 in Skirmishing, I get the swiftness on weapon swap without a sigil.

Take a breath, stop being a jerk, and submit a bug report. In the mean time, I’m sure you’ll survive.

Thanks for the feedback!

I just made an update where I dropped the 20 point talent in WS, but I think you’re right about HIPS being better than offhand training, so if I do go back to using this talent, I’ll go with HIPS.

As for tanking, I haven’t designed this build to primarily be the tank, although it should be able to survive being focused for a while. However, if I take too much damage, I pop out and use the ranged offhand abilities for a bit.

Since there’s no real reliable way to control who an enemy focuses, I find that it bounces between my pet and me quite a bit. Neither pet I chose are really designed for tanking, but with the BM investment and the frequent swapping, they tend to do fine.

My goal for this build was to be a solid dungeon dps build that functions for general PvE as well.

I’ve also considered “Protect Me”, but it would probably require a tankier pet. However, I probably could change a few things around to make a tankier variant where “Protect Me” is a good fit.