for personal story and map completion i would sugest using a drake and a cat, use the cat for single targets and the drake for multi targets
Are you talking about roaming or dueling?. From my point of view thay are different things
Dueler
- good at 1v1’s
Roamer
- acceptibal at 1v1’s
- Move form objective to opjective quicky
- can speed buff a yack
- can flip a camp quickly (you don’t want to have white sowords on a camp for to long)
- can walk up to a full upgrade keep and hit the gate with out the guards giving you to much trouble
- can trail and enemy group and get away alive when spotted
but for most classes the best roaming builds are not always the best dueling builds and the best dueling build are not always the best roaming builds
So in answer to you question rangers excel at roaming and are good at 1v1’s
I’ve been having fun in SoloQ with a Celestial 0/2/6/6 SB/GS
Using different pets and trying different traits. I can 1v1 with it fine and hold a point for a little while 2v1.
I play it as 0/0/2/6/6 in tPvP as a home point bunker when running with guild mates
I’ve been having quite a bit of success with this celestial gives you just enough damage to get a kill with good survival. short-bow and cat for offense, a gs and wolf for the defense
it’s pretty good at holding and often winning a 1v1 and can do a 2v1 for a little while, use a cleric amualte to hold 2v1s better,
Sorry, but this build is not great. It doesn’t optimise damage or defence and needs better condi clear. Melandru runes is ok for short conditions, but conditions with a large duration will still do significant damage before they are cleared, even if they do clear faster than usual. Purity only removes 1 condition on a 10 second cooldown opposed to EB clearing 3/10 seconds and/or SoR 1/10 seconds + full condi wipe + stun break on use. You also lack regen.
Damage wise this build doesnt seem to know what its doing. SB is an ok hybrid weapon and can benefit from power/precision/condi and ferocity so I can see why you chose this weapon with celestial, but being celestial, neither power, nor condi damage is optimised. GS is a pure power weapon and doesnt benefit from condi damage, and the reduced stat distribution from celestial makes neither weapon overly effective, all why not optimising your defence either.
The reason settlers/apothecary is so effective for most bunker builds, particularly rangers, is that condition damage scales and can be optimised off only 1 stat, whereas power damage to be optimal reqires 3 and apothecary/settlers optimises condition damage with 2 optimised defensive stats. Ranger is great at condition spam, so this is a great combination.
While Celestial can be a good option for certain classes/certain builds in certain situations, it generally doesnt work for pvp, particularly for rangers, as stat wise it doesnt optimise any stats, so it will never be great at defence/healing, power damage, or condition, only mediocre. And generally in tPvP against good players, there are only 2 main character setups. Burst damage, and bunkers. A burst character will burst you down faster than you can heal since healing/defence isnt optimised, and a bunker will outlast you because your damage isnt optimised.
No need to be sorry mate every one is entitled to there own opinion. But i will take the time to do some rebuttals.
First the point about not optimized, in regards to damage your pet is the damage dealer in this build you job is to soft cc, poison and deal some additional damage hence the short bow. Your cat hits like a truck, especially if you buff it with might form RaO then pop the signet and use F2 while you MT then to immobilize and provide fury. The celestial amulet with this build provides enough sustain that if you cant kill your opposition you can hold your own until help arrives.
For the point about lack of condition removal, you have sigil of purity gong of every 10s to remove incidental condi, remove poison on evade, two active condi clears LR and MT and Melandru’s to shorted short condis such as Fear, Chill, Cripple and imob. also in battling condis you have a lot of vitality form NM trait-line and the amulet plus regen form Signet of the wild and Natural Healing. For handling burst damage that is what Natures Protection is for.
Now for the lost stat when using the GS, i use the great sword for moving between the points quickly, for the evade on auto-attack for the block and for the stun, and mauls still hit pretty hard. saying the GS is a power weapon only, assumes that I’m using it for offense proposes. S/D could be use instead but i like the great sword, but that may just be me.
I think this whole min-max mentally is what make this game sometimes feel like a game of rock/paper/scissors. When you start thinking hybrid you can say to your self. If I’ve got this point capped and a bunker comes at me (you might be sitting on far at this point) than no-problem as they cant kill me, point stays mine. If and assaulter/burst-er comes at me all i have to do i survive there bursts (block, evade interrupt) and then out live them through sustained damage and pet spikes.
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I’ve been having quite a bit of success with this celestial gives you just enough damage to get a kill with good survival. short-bow and cat for offense, a gs and wolf for the defense
it’s pretty good at holding and often winning a 1v1 and can do a 2v1 for a little while, use a cleric amualte to hold 2v1s better,
axe main hand is a tagging machine, you can get almost as many bags as a staff guard
i roll this
So no SB or LB builds? curious as those are the weapons my wife likes the best. trying to find her as good a build as possible,
there is no one build to rule them all (though 4/5/0/5/0 is pretty close) . Different situations often require slightly different setups.
The problem with bows in organized party play (dungeons). is that it puts you at a distance from your team mates so you aren’t sharing buff as well as you could. This is even worse in the case of the longbow as it is at its most effective at 1000 ranger and buff are typically shared at much less range.
For open world content (world events, zerging events, etc) bows are practical using a 6/5/0/3/0 type of set up, as you can afford to be a bit more spread out as the are often random people about.
Just remember you can change your trait anywhere for free now.
i found sigil of ice + sigil of frailty to be very nice in conjunction with a shortbow… especially if running BM bunker as it helps and “increases” pet damage.
in WvW i use to do this as well, also using ghost pepper poppers at night also helps
And yeah, i see people go crazy on might stacking rune sets but I dont know how effective they would be on ranger.
buff stacking runes are great on any class, more so for a ranger if you go at least 3 in nature magic for “fortifying bond” that way both you and your pet get the buff.
I would be Inclined to go Ranger runes over Scholar (in a fight you are rarely at high health) if you want direct damage and if you want to got for a buff stacking set i would go Hoebrok over Strength, condi reduction is great and cheaper. scholar imo is a pve set.
I use Travelers runes because for small scale and solo stuff movement and mobility is king.
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when you say WvW do you mean, zerging, small group or solo/duo to playing (very few build a good in all of these)
for large scale, i don’t like 1h sword it as a tendency to get me killed as it messes with positioning. but i love GS
as for small group and solo you have a few choices.
S/A+GS 0/6/2/6/0 ‘moment of clarity’ and “survival of the fittest” is fun and effective/
S/WH+GS 0/2/0/6/6 power BM bunker is works as well (“survival of the fittest” and “Natural healing”)
S/X+GS 0/4/0/6/4 hybrid BM build, this trait setup works for SB/GS as well
S/X+GS 2/2/0/6/4 hybrid spider build
just experment
I think the trait is perfectly placed, if it where in WS then we will still be stuck in condi builds, because there would be little condi removal out side of of WS.
puting it in a Vit/boon trait line means that we get to use it and then choose weather we go power, condi or beast master. and there are some great traits along the way as well such as:
Nature’s Bounty: handy for regen bunker builds
Strength of Spirit: MOAR power
Nature’s Protection: anti gank trait (i used to go 10 in to NM just for this trait)
Evasive Purity: makes rangers the best class for countering condi Poison rangers
Two-Handed: Training: great sword any one
And the minors are some of our best epically Fortifying Bond (makes your pet hit like a truck)
it has opened up so many build opportunities.
I always go full Pvt melee in zerging as the most impotent thing is to survive the first few hits which is what pvt is for. Axe main hand is a bag farming machine.
I’ve never had a lot of luck with it roaming tried a lot of different builds, i roam with celestial.
This thread needs to be stickyed
i’ve been using 4/4/0/6/0 after patch so you always have fury up with QZ and the condi removal is handy for running through trash
I would also like to point out the taking evasive purity for TA is really handy
I’m hanging out to get home from work
I think I’m going to need more bows.
have anyone tried the ‘survival of the fittest’+QZ on SB or LB combo yet? how long is the fury?
I’ve found mainhand axe the quickest weapon for clearing WvW camps with a power build.
And that is because it doesn’t require line of sight for its AOE (so its better than bows), and the range means you stay away from the guard’s blinds (so its better than swords).
You could arguably call camps a “better designed PvE encounter” though…
i agree. I like axe auto attack, it has its place. great for farming loot, and proc’ing on crit/hit things such as ommnom pies, companions might, fire sigil etc
My fastest camp clears have been A/A – A/WH using drakes and companions might and RoA
it’s the 3 attack i would change and make AoE
if it where me that got that chest, i would get a Cavalier great sword. can’t go wrong
did you notice in the wiki description, the swig and jug do not have amounts in the description like the others do.
kiwituatara, i think the you read mine this is going to be the first type of build that i will test, with full celestial (seeing as it is getting in my view a buff) and maybe the grate sword trait instead of the regen trait.
the other to builds i was going to play with first up is 6/0/1/6/0 (i think this is how the traits will work) longbow great-sword, 0/0/1/6/6 proberly gs/sb and 0/4/0/6/4 gs/sb all with full celestial.
1. Aoes buffs are capped at 5 targets and besides ele/guardians can do it better and without loosing too much attack potential.
2. Pet buffs/conditions are not reliables.Everything we can do it can be done better by someone else, a ranger shines in small group fights (less than 5vs5), with its ability to ress/stomp + group support and single target dps.
1. what are guards/eles doing it better? cripples? fury? vigor? are we just talking about regen they do it differently and are subject to there own difficulty and they are subject to the 5 cap as well.
2. there are currently ways to to make it more reliable (pet swap, hit F3) but fair enough they are also not that flash when they are dead. Well see what the pet enhancement bring
I will conseed that rangers usefulness reduces as party sizes get bigger but in the order of 15v15 and bigger not less then 5v5. This is largely due to pet getting harder to keep alive
(very selfish class, no real group utility due to spirits dying quick and other classes being able to cover perma regen unfortunately, usually don’t take mine out into anything larger than a small roaming group).
I get tired of hearing this comment this is due to a selfish player not a selfish class. Why wound you take another class for perma regen (swiftness as well) when a ranger can do it?
so no group utility, I’m calling bull kitten on that. We can do but are not limited to;
- AoE regen (permanent)
- AoE swiftness (permanent)
- AoE fury (permanent)
- AoE Vigor
- AoE Might (5 stacks permanent)
- AoE Protection
- AoE condi removal
- AoE insta Rez
- Water Field
- Fire Field
- Ice Field
- Poison Field
- quick stacking of 25 stacks of vulnerability on a single target
- AoE immobilize
- AoE Chill
- AoE cripple
- AoE bleed
- AoE cone poison
- AoE confusion
- AoE Fear
- AoE cone knock back
- AoE cone Daze
- we can speed rez/stomp
- and then there is the stuff our spirits do
Obviously we can not do all of this in the one build (but we can do a lot of it) but neither can any other class.
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Except only certain builds are effective in those areas. Different builds and playstyles are vastly differently. If you enjoy open world PvE ranger, you can never take that build to wvw and expect it to perform. If you like open world rangers, it doesn’t mean you would like wvw rangers either. People who like pve doesn’t necessarily enjoy pvp, it is the same concept.
while your comment is very true, this is the same for every class you play.
even to the extent, that
A WvW zerging build is not very good for WvW roaming havoc (vice versa);
A PvE open world build is not the best Dungeon build.
A PvP home Point defense is build is not the best roamer or far point attacker.
I play all content, though primarily WvW and i will re-trait a few times a night. The free on the fly trait reset is going to be great.
All classes suffer form this to some to a lesser extent.
but this is kinda off topic.
Don’t ranger if you want to wvw. It just is inferior in every role to other classes.
What makes you say that?
I found out I have enough glory saved from before I left to get any class instant 80 through tomes, so I might just instant 80 whatever class my friends want and then have fun leveling a ranger ^ ^
This is a good idea, you will enjoy leveling a ranger. make sure you test all the wepones on the way to 80 don’t just use a longbow (but do try it) because it’s easy. For alts i favor both the heavies as there easy to play (epically the warrior) and change between the depending on my mood.
ranger is very fun to play. We cop a lot of hate because perception and bad players. and the hate is contagious
in open world pve and leveling we proberly top of the food chain (hence the large volume of bad player)
In dungeon content, we a quite good but suffer a lot of hate and may get auto kicked (i have never experienced this)
In sPvP we have a couple of very competitive builds.
In WvW we are strong 1v1 and a complement to any team up to about 15v15 and from there we deteriorate as the fights get bigger.
The only place where our worthless label is remotely justified is large scale WvW fights.
I play all classes, but ranger the most because its what i enjoy. if you want to pay the endgame content on easy mode play a heavy else play something more enjoyable.
I think the smartest way to level is to put every point you can in the beast mastery line, the first trait would be either, mighty swap (if you swap you pet a lot) or beast masters bond (if you don’t swap your pet) the next trait, try out different ones, speed training and commanders voice are good choices but try all of them.
for the rest of the points, all the other lines are good choices, you have just got to think about the synergy with the pets or weapons that you choose.
I like running around open world pve with GS/S-WH using a cat and a drake for pets, cat for single target drake for multiple targets, with “sick-em”, quickening zephyr and signet of the hunt for utility’s and Rampages and One for the elite.
I play melee ranger, so pretty much all pets die on inc, so i either use any pet and a wolf so i can swap to the wolf and use f2 straight away some times get a fear off. Or i use duel drakes so I’ve got a potential extra blast finisher on a 60s timer (dead pet recharge) when i drop my water field mid fight.
i think that the best part for this is that you will be able to swap between roaming and zerging builds, also i may change my build between flipping camps quick and roaming builds.
but how does the ranger keeps himself alive? just relying on HoT (troll unguent) and high defense?
these type of builds use regen, from the “signet of the wild” utility and beastmaster XII “natural healing” as well as trolls. wilderness survival XI “Empathic bond” is your condi removal. You can avoid a lot of damage using “lighting reflexes” and sword #2 and #3 and dagger #4
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- but hey, those types are never happy unless they can one-shot someone in WvW from 1500.
Do you me like kill shot?
I think that the information is there, just its going to take alot to decipher it. I agree with you points about pet, I hope that it has been driven home how difficult they are to manage in some instances, and we may already see some improvement in the so call feature patch that we should see in the coming months.
the thing i find more interesting and scary is that; I and I am sure others have come accustom to the shot comings and hidden advantages of the class as it stands now, and some of the more practical purposed suggestions and summary listed in red posts would force my to completely re-think that way the i currently play and i am not sure that is a good or a bad thing.
I find that on crit sigil (i use generosity) healing spring and signet of restoration to be enough, some condi bomb necros give me grief.
sigil of generosity/purity and the passive of signet of restoration seem to be enough to remove “incidental” type condition during a fight (bleeds, poison, Tormanet) and HS and SoR active are handy for getting rid of the on demand type problems immob, chills etc.
i run a few different (hybrid type) builds based around celestial gear and i love the short bow it skills are so useful, i find them far more fun the condi bunkers. i am also a fan of companions might.
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commanders thrive on information.
If you walk past a north tower in an away borderland, click on the walls and gates, if the walls are upgraded and the gate is not, tell the commander on the map, either in voice chat or pm. if they say there going to do something with it proceed to kill all yacks going to that tower to stop it form upgrading.
reporting enemy zerg info is also usefull usually just post this in team chat. try and guess numbers and if there is a dominant guild tag. if you cant guess the numbers try and estimate whether the group is smaller or lager then the group on the commander.
if you want to have little to no trouble finding fight (and still be able to win them) play ranger.
I main ranger, i have no problem finding a fight if i want one, the only people the run away from a ranger are the people that will run from anyone.
things that you will have to get used to
– copping alot of flac for being a ranger
– Raging opponents when you beat them (no one like losing to a ranger)
– being targeted, if you are in a small group fight you will be targeted first
– people will automatically assume that you are bad
You need to be quit close to your pet for it to work. a good trick is to swap you pet before hitting the skill so it right next to you.
i not saying that the skill is in good working order, its a pain
- you have face palmed at lease once per page in the CDI.
- you stick with playing ranger, through thick and thing
- you still say to your self next patch.
- you look at the enlargement trait try to think up a build where you could use it, but give up.
- you see Eotm as an opportunity to use a longbow
- you get sick of visiting the training guy to reset you traits
- you have leveled most other professions to 80 and still find your self loging on to your ranger, and you can’t explain to your guilds mates why.
i told one of my guilds commanders last night that i only have mez and engi to go and he could not under stand why i still bring a ranger to raids.
Also, I don’t want this thread to be entirely about pets. We’ve seen a ton of great feedback about them, and I would like to hear more about utilities that need help (and aren’t viable unless spec’d into) as I haven’t seen as much on that front!
Thanks all
Signets, traps and sprits, and some shouts – all but survival skills (there not bad)
Stone signet is the worst offender, what is the purpose of this skill if you don’t go 30 in to marks?
Signet of the Wild is not bad in bunker builds when not traited. but it active is near useless unless traited.
the Trait Enlargement requires a 50 point investment to get the full value out of it
traps are meh by them self’s but there traits are high up in a line the is of little value to them.
Spirits while the change to spirits unbound was a welcome one, there is little values to equipping a spirit unless you take the Vigorous Spirits trait
Shouts, Guard i have never found a use for this outside of natures voice.
Protect Me its tie to you pet is what makes in not so useful, if you pet is dead it does nothing if you pet is alive it kills your pet its only useful if you have a bear (which is a mostly bad pet)
short bow, sigil of generosity/sigil of purity
long bow fire and lightning
- you have made some ridiculous op suggestion as what balance change the ranger class needs.
- left you pet on passive and wondered why that camp took so long to flip.
- pet rezed under water with 2+ people attacking you.
- died to retaliation from barraging a zerg pvd’ing a gate
– picked up a heap of bags at spawn after doing the above.
- calmed my zerker barebow build works in wvw.
- calmed that the shortbow is a condition only weapon
- suggested the maul should be a blast finisher.
i could do this all day
swap pets, press f3. this will solve you probelm
Another day without responses…. as if the Ranger community didn’t already feel alienated enough.
Lets have a goal tomorrow guys. No more pet posts until ANet comes back asking for more. We’ve gone in circles enough. Lets cover some new ground!
another option would be to continually spam the profession balance sub-forum (possibly the spvp sub-forum) with new titled threads along the lines of “Please don’t ignore the ranger CDI” or “is the ranger CDI suppose to be a discussion amongst our self’s” etc
this is my take on this type of build.
I switch between a/a and gs depending on my mood and depending on the size of the fights i use a mix of celestial and pvt (the bigger the fights the more pvt)
Specific Game Mode
WvW roaming (probably PvP as well)
Proposal Overview
Remove “empathic bond” (or reduce it to 2 or one on a shorter cool down) put strategic condition removes in utility’s.
- Lightning reflexes removes cripple, chill and immobilise
- Heal as One removes 2 conditions,
- Signet of Renewal always removes conditions off you regardless of pet location
- I’m sure there are other good places
Goal of Proposal
Empathic Bond is one of our strongest traits, but it is also our most limiting traits for build diversity in competitive play, it is the reason that rangers are only strong as condition bunker (past and present builds). But the trait is not useful for removing immobilises and chills at crucial moments.
Signet of Renewal Active is not a reliable way of removing immobilises and chills especially when trying to escape form larger numbers, as you pet it often off attacking them when you need to pop it, it not so bad if you can swap you pet first but that is a bit slower and might be on cool down.
Proposal Functionality
Others classes have, reliable ways of removing control conditions they are very strong, I also believe that making a change along the lines of this would enable rangers to have a variety of competitive build other than condition bunker type builds
Associated Risks
Giving us more accessible/reliable active condition cleanse without removing some of our more passive methods may make the class a bit strong against condition builds
2 hours in and we are only on page 3, chop chop guys get to it.
i’ve almost stoped reading them already, poor devs reading through all that.
I must be one of the very few people that like the ranger as it is, though i would love to see lighting reflexes remove immob, cripple, chill
for map completion and personal story, put as many points in to the beast master line as you can and use drakes (try other pets though). For armor grab power based ones, for weapons try them all out but keep the great sword as as you swap weapon, it will help you get around the map quicker. For utility use signet of the hunt and try every thing else out.
For leveling ranger is probably the easiest class to do it with, because of the pet.
- In game name: Eggyokeo The First
- Server: SoR
- Preferred game type: WvW
I’ve been playing ranger from launch
I know how you feel i got to about 70% map completion before wvw took over for me, 9 months later i released that i had most of what i needed to make a legendary.
What i did was do a little pve every time i log on BEFORE pressing B, BEFORE checking your guild/friends list to see which commanders are about. BEFORE logging in to voice chat.
A good way to go about completing a map is to run around getting all the way points first in a single go, then the next day start working on the other stuff, patience is you friend
i don’t think it would be the case that they will talk about one class make the changes talk about another class make changes, etc. that would be kinda silly as classes need to be balanced in relation to each other not on an individual bases.
If i was a betting man (well i am) i would suggest that we will go through each of the classes one at a time before we see a meaning full out come and change, so if we are first i may take 6+ months between the cdi and a major change, minor changes will happen along the way
1. Ranger
2. Thief – to cheesey, not strong enough when not cheesing
3. Warrior – to good at every thing all the time
the thing i find with stealth spamming classed, is that the are alot more fun to play then fight, i get no enjoyment fighting a thief or a mez, aside for the satisfaction of spiking one but i know it from them making a mistake not from something that i did.
the worst thing about a thief is once i realize that we are stalemated (ie they use their stealth to well for me to get any more the 1 or 2 hits off and i can take a few back stabs) , i have to wait for them to give up, as trying to run away from a thief is the easiest way to get killed by one (nikey warriors being the exception). They are completely in control of the fight.
a post got put in this thread for some reason so deleted
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