First world problems friend..you can only remove 4 conditions every 10 seconds. A true crime if ever there was one. I feel for you that you had to co promise damage in order to have a cleanse. It must be tough being a ranger these days. Rangers got sweet buffs last patch..let’s not be overly greedly and make them the face roll profession that will no doubt go down the same road as mesmer, thief, necro, warrior..all mega buffed, then all reduced to worse than when they were originally buffed.
You know necromancers can hard counter the ranger’s best condition cleanses, right? Particularly this guy, who is running Empathic Bond and Signet of Renewal. Those abilities don’t cleanse, they move the conditions to the pet. Use Epidemic on the pet right after a Signet of Renewal cast and suddenly the ranger blew their only active condition cleanse for no reason, and any conditions that had been passively cleared by Empathic Bond pop back onto the ranger as well.
And while I don’t necessarily think we need more cleanses, I think we could use more accessible trait-based cleanses or an active cleanse that is an actual cleanse and not a “the pet takes the conditions” deal. Of course this is from a beastmaster point of view, and is thus NOT the longbow build you’re complaining about in your post.
So let me get this straight, Skeletor. You feel it’s overpowered for two full zerker rangers to be able to down a single target when they focus fire on said target and coordinate their attacks?
You do realize two thieves can do the exact same thing, right? Two of ANY high burst zerker profession can replicate the same tactic.
I know hotjoin isn’t a representation of high end pvp. My point was more that these players truly believed they were running the high end meta build, rather than realizing it was just a flavor of the month build.
I also checked, and metabattle.com has the Read the Wind Longbow Ranger build listed as the only meta ranger build.
So yah. The problem is people keep treating it like a high end meta build, so people keep rolling new characters to take advantage of it.
I’m just wondering how many of these flavor of the month rangers really think it is over powered. I have run into maybe 1 or 2 that I would even consider a fight, most of them have died laughably fast, and that is across every profession including necro.
I was playing around in hotjoin early this morning. Ended up in the usual 4v5 match with the enemy team having three longbow rangers who just stood around the orb in Spirit Watch sniping anyone who got near it, while the two other members of their team held off anyone from capturing points since it was a 4v5 match. When I called them out on exploiting the game to get an uneven team and all running the same build, they responded with “It’s meta bro.”
So yes, the newbie longbow rangers VERY MUCH believe that the longbow ranger is the new meta for rangers. They even proceeded to call me a scrub for using my usual beastmaster bunker set up and laughed at how easy I was to kill (ignoring the fact every fight was 3v1).
On an even playing field I’ve beaten most longbow rangers I’ve fought, both 1v1 and in team fights. Only a small few have gotten the better of me, and only because I made so many mistakes while fighting them or because I was outnumbered. They really aren’t a huge problem. A threat? Very much so. But I’ve yet to feel like I’ve been completely shut down because of a longbow ranger.
The problem is people BELIEVE longbow is overpowered. They will keep running with the longbow burst build because they so strongly believe it is the be all end all build for rangers. Until people stop complaining about them they won’t go away.
On the plus side, I’ve had a few laughably easy fights because of the existence of longbow rangers. A lot of opponents see a ranger these days and assume they have a longbow. I’ve had MANY thieves try to jump me only to get eaten alive (my build has 3K armor and Sick ’Em). One warrior actually saw me coming and ducked behind cover to try and avoid my arrows, only to get pinned by my pet that was hitting for 2K a hit and ending with a 5K burst. By the time they realized what was happening they were below 30% health, crippled, bleeding, and I was still at full.
I find Signet of Renewal and Healing Spring together is enough condi clears to let me win 1v1 against most condi heavy users. It’s only being focused against two or three that it becomes an issue, but I wasn’t going to win a 1v2 or 1v3 anyway, unless both of my opponents were really, really bad.
Running glass zerker is still considered man mode though LB zerker are not. A skilled zerker ranger used to be respected if played well. Now they are joke’s of gw2.
Um. What forum have you been on all this time? Almost no one gives thieves any real respect for playing a zerker build. In fact, most people call them trolls because of how many escape options they have to do their hit and run style of combat with. Mess up your burst? Disappear and reset the fight, then come back and try again!
The Kill Shot warrior is ONLY used to troll people in WvWvW. One Hundred Blades warriors were wildly hated back in the game’s early history because of how much damage they could do against immobilized opponents. Shatter mesmers were complained about constantly for how hard they hit. When scepter elementalists got Fresh Air there was a huge amount of hate coming at them from the PVP crowd.
Truth is, no one likes zerker builds because no one likes seeing their health drop from 100% to 0 in a matter of seconds. Every time a profession gets a new burst option they get flooded with overwhelming hate for a while before people adapt. Right now, longbow rangers are enduring their “most hated profession” phase, just like everyone else has.
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Your guard is too focused on PVP, search and destroy shouldn’t exist, sic’em is too one sided and protect me should have much lower cooldown.
Shouts should in my opinion be totally reworked into something new. They still have to keep the focus on pets. Basically, a full BM build should want to use a full Shout build.
Shouts are also the only thing that can address AI issues. For example, a low cooldown (10 to 20 seconds) skill that can teleport the pet to the target covers (not fixes) the path-finding problem. A second low cooldown skill can give the pet superspeed and quickness so that it hits reliably. Etc
Your wall of text is not very clear to read. No structure in it and that might be the reason why you don’t get replies!
Guard already has a use for PVE in that it keeps protection on the pet for a good duration. My focus was to give it a new, unique trait that can be effective in PVP.
Search and Rescue I feel could have value. It just need to not be on such an ungodly long cooldown, and if you took Nature’s Voice it’d be a free source of perma swiftness and regen with my fix, similar to Guard.
I do agree with you though. Shouts have the potential to be a good way to alleviate the issues of a poor AI. Personally, the AI is adequate for a build not revolving around the pet, but for a beastmaster ranger especially who relies so much on the pet for damage they just need more control. In particular that’s why I added a teleport for the pet on to Sick ‘Em. I’ve spent too many matches in PVP where my pet didn’t follow me in the clock tower or I was on a perch and my pet would just stand there, unable to find a path.
I did think that I could re-organize this. I admit, I tend to ramble and my posts can get too long. I’ll probably reformat it so it’s more readable.
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Bumping this fore feedback. Added another change to Sick ’Em.
The fern hound feels like a racial pet for sylvari.
Of course, you can have a norn ranger with a pet wolf, bear, raven, and leopard. So those are kinda racial pets too.
Humans have dogs….yea it’s a stretch.
Asura and charr don’t get racial feeling pets. Maybe devourers for charr?
So new pet families to add should have a racial aspect for those races that don’t have any racial pets.
Yah, I’ve always seen the drakehounds as the human racial pet. They are bred specifically by humans and appear mainly in human towns and cities.
Asura don’t really have one because they as a culture don’t exactly appreciate animals.
Charr could go with either devourers or drakes. Keep in mind the charr have a looong history of weaponizing the local wildlife. We already know they breed devourers from questing in charr zones, and one of my favorite things from the first Guild Wars were the pseudo-tanks the charr created by setting up a mini fort/catapult contraption on the backs of giant devourers.
If you were winning because the other team was a man down the whole fight you didn’t really deserve those points anyway.
Get a group of sylvari together at night and watch. The glow pulses together in unison.
The sylvari glow is like the pulse of a giant, shared heart beat. It’s little details like this that I love.
My first ranger was a minimum height mushroom head sylvari.
I also have a charr ranger that I made more recently.
Really, you should just pick the race based on the flavor you want. A norn ranger would be more like one of their shamans with a strong connection to the animal spirits, or a mighty hunter who seeks fame by exploiting the beasts of the wild. A human ranger could be a priest of Melandru or a famous drakehound breeder.
Granted I’m also a roleplayer, so I put more thought into things like this than most.
You need some condition removal. As is the only condition you can remove is poison, so any condition user will basically steamroll you.
Swapping out Signet of the Hunt for Signet of Renewal would help. If you must have the speed boost you can just switch to Hunt whenever you’re out of combat, though then you risk getting ambushed. Signet of Renewal also serves as a stun break if you are in a tight spot against a power build so it’s never not useful.
A golem wouldn’t make sense as a pet. They are robotic constructs powered by magic. Nothing natural about them. They aren’t even organic!
Though more unique pets like the sylvan hound would be nice. Rock dogs as another type of canine would be pretty cool.
I really hope this is working as intended and not a bug.
I played the original Guild Wars and the Prophecies campaign was my favorite. Charr were my favorite enemy. However, I also really enjoyed Eye of the North and the norn. So it was a toss up between the two for me.
The clincher was when I learned norn wouldn’t be able to maintain their transformations longer than 30 seconds. Seriously? That’s PATHETIC. The norn from Guild Wars were able to maintain their transformation permanently, and in fact it was their primary combat form. I was looking forward to being a shapeshifting viking giant, and instead I just got “bigger humans”.
So charr were a natural fit. I love their design and history, and I love their military culture. I especially love the fact they are a heavily industrial world superpower. You don’t see many beast races in fantasy who are ahead of the curve technologically.
It’s a charrberus.
I’d settle for the ability to dye my pet. Or at least having access to green moas.
I want to make a RAINBOW of moas, Anet. You are stopping me from realizing my dream.
Don’t wanna sound rude but most rangers can’t dodge already.
Solori, this game isn’t about off point 1v1. A ranger can melt people at range without fearing retaliation ( not the actual boon, huh). The buff to rf is fine as far as balance goes, but it breaks anet’s rule of melee> ranged and high risk high reward. All ranged weapons should be kiting weapons with moderate damage to apply pressure, not l33t360noscopetoplel machines.
This would be plausible if the ranged weapons actually had the tools to kite effectively, but they don’t. The number of gap closers, condition removal, stun breaks, and swiftness is too high in this game for a pure kiter to be at all viable. In this game the enemy WILL get in close. It’s just a matter if it takes them five seconds or ten.
Not to mention the existence of heal skills making a moderate damage pressure fighting style more or less non-viable unless you jack yourself full of defenses, which the sniper ranger doesn’t run with. Or how terrible a kiting weapon set would be where the only PVP game mode involves standing on a point.
You’re basically suggesting the longbow ranger should have to build full glass to do moderate damage. That wouldn’t be even close to viable.
All of Skeletors posts
No wonder he hates rangers. His arch nemesis He-Man was obviously a greatsword ranger with a special green tiger pet.
I have to agree with Fluffball. I use Intimidation Training in every one of my beastmaster builds. In fact Intimidation Training has gotten me to start investing in the condition duration for pets trait, just to increase the cripple up time from my pets. It helps so much to keep the opponent slow so your pet can hit more frequently, and lets me take other utilities besides Muddy Terrain so I can be more sustainable.
Edit: I’d also argue that the cripple is still great for control pets. A few seconds of immobilize followed by a few more seconds of cripple can be pretty nice. Wolf applies a cripple and a fear so effected enemies can’t run ahead and can be hit my the wolf as they move. Even the sylvan hound applies cripple in AoE, and it’s F2 is a healing ability.
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Perhaps not the MOST comparable. I haven’t a lot of experience with the greatsword to compare. But both the longbow and the rifle are primarily long range, single target damage weapons, and the ranger’s longbow has better damage at it’s maximum range despite us having a “-30% damage penalty” on all our skills.
The longbow has good damage on it’s own, you don’t really NEED the pet to hit reliably. In that build the pet is still extremely important, just not for damage, which was my point.
As much as I defend the longbow, I’m pretty confident in saying it WOULD be overpowered if it got a 30% damage boost. Longbow does good damage and can be built to be solid long ranged burst. It already has higher sustain damage than the most similar weapon, the warrior rifle, and it’s burst hits harder than the rifle’s burst. Damage wise, the longbow is fine without the pet’s damage.
Which is why I feel like Anet might be shifting priorities on rangers. With the longbow the damage is definitely there. The pet hitting is really just more like bonus damage with that set up, and it’s primary role is to add extra control and set the opponent up for the ranger’s own damage.
I’m arguing because now the majority of them are just sitting around doing absolutely nothing but pressing 1, 2 off cd. A buff should not shoehorn rangers into a specific build, much less a specific skill on a weapon of that build.
The majority of them are new rangers who are only playing it because people are making such a big fuss over it. The more people complain about it being overpowered the more people will BELIEVE it is overpowered, and thus the more people will roll it thinking they will now be overpowered.
Ranger build diversity is actually in an amazing place right now. The longbow sniper build did not in any way eclipse existing ranger builds, and just about every ranger build received a significant buff this patch, not just longbow rangers.
The greatsword got a good buff. An evade at the end of Swoop, little more damage on auto attacks. It’s not huge, but it did make the greatsword more smooth and effective, making melee rangers stronger.
The signet buffs were a massive buff that ALL rangers can make heavy use of. Signet of the Wild is devastating on melee rangers just as much as longbow rangers, and is often a cornerstone skill on beastmaster rangers as it buffs you and the pet’s damage by so much.
Signet of the Hunt can be used for passive speed and a one hit amp, which actually makes it amazing for a greatsword ranger who needs to hit harder with their next Maul. Not very good for longbow though since Rapid Fire is many small hits rather than one big hit.
Signet of Stone is a huge buff to every ranger build, but actually favors melee over longbow. It’s handy for longbow rangers to survive if enemies get in close, but since it doesn’t stop control effects and conditions it’s still not quite enough to let the longbow ranger reclaim distance. Melee rangers, however, can now use it on point to punish enemies just like warriors can. It’s perfect for de-capping, which longbow rangers are terrible at because of their super low defensive stats.
Sick ’Em’s six seconds of reveal was a great anti-thief buff for beastmaster rangers who rely on pet damage anyway. Much, much better skill for a pet heavy build than on a longbow build.
The might on Ricochet was phenomenal for beastmaster rangers. Pets can hit like trucks now, and it increases the sustained damage of the axe itself. Beastmaster might actually be viable now just because of this one change. Combine it with Signet of the Wild and Sick ’Em and it can be frighteningly strong.
Finally the Entangle buff is huge for everyone. Longbows love it for keeping the enemy away and setting up Rapid Fire. Beastmasters love it for setting up their pet burst. My trapper ranger has become much more effective now thanks to this change. Runes of the Krait turn it into a killer condi bomb. That plus traps is almost a guaranteed kill.
Speaking of my trapper, those new Runes of the Trapper look pretty attractive. I can’t wait to try them out.
So yes. Rangers are in a good place now. Build diversity has skyrocketed since the last patch, making roles like beastmaster, ranged damage dealer, melee skirmisher, and condition bomber all much stronger than they were before. Is any of that effective at high end play? I don’t know. We have to wait and see. But for now, I am greatly enjoying the number of choices I have.
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The ability to control, at least, 1 more pet skill.
Ex:
Wolf knockdown
Moa heal
Boar charge
Devourer knockback (or evade)
Bear endure pain
Drake tail swipe
Spider immobilize
Cat… whatever
Bird Swiftness
This would be my first choice as a change as well. It’d make using the pet be more about skill and less about luck. Plus certaion skills like the bear’s Endure Pain and the devourer evade are REACTIONARY skills and need to be timed correctly to be at all useful. The AI can’t do that, but the player can.
Teach me how to chill on lb glass please without using sigils. Just use owl or alpine wolf right? Circular reasoning. And in no way is the cripple from barrage reliable or long for that matter. The only other thing you can do is slot frost or spike trap, but is the utility slot really worth that? Oh and ofc the cripple from sword set if you want to stay in melee, but good luck with that.
Not circular reasoning. Some pets are designed to work best filling certain roles. If you need to keep your enemy in place and don’t have the tools with your primary weapon or through traits you take the pets that can cover that gap. Take a drakehound for the ranged immobilize, then let it apply cripple to the stationary target as you drop Barrage to stack more cripple. Spider is useful for the same strategy.
Of course if you’re running a sniper ranger build your damage output is fine. Your pets are more about supporting you than the other way around, so you’ll likely take the wolf. AoE fear can be a life saver, and canines will use their knockdowns as their opening move when you swap them in combat, so if you time it with with Point Blank Shot you can keep the enemy down for a fairly lengthy stretch of time.
Your pet is also your best tool at dealing with stubborn opponents who hide behind cover and try and bait you to come closer. The only times I’ve legitimately lost to a longbow ranger was because they used their pet brilliantly.
I won’t disagree that pets need some more love, but I feel we do have the tools to set them up to hit, which is probably how it should be to be honest. Though I think Anet should stop looking at them as a “part of our DPS” and more as “Extra damage they can get if they can control and predict the enemy’s moves.” Which does seem to be the direction they are going with the recent buffs. I doubt anyone would argue the longbow now does especially low damage for a ranged weapon.
Wouldn’t Intimidation Training be better than Rending Attack if you want to keep the enemy immobilized? The extra bleed damage is pretty low since your pet has no condition damage. That is if you’re using regular birds that is, and not moas.
Also, what do you think of a sylvan hound as a secondary pet? The heal and extra regen would give you more sustain, even if it’s a weaker regen than what you can produce since you don’t have a lot of regen on you anyway. Plus a knock down and more cripple to aid in keeping your attacker down. The sylvan found’s F2 can also apply Intimidation Training’s cripple despite being a heal buff, so you get a big heal with the F2 and Invigorating Bond, extra regen, and cripple enemies.
I might also go with warhorn over dagger for the blast finisher, swiftness, and extra fury for my pet. It basically lets you have a second heal when you have Healing Spring.
If you’re dead set on bird trolling I’d suggest Runes of the Pirate and getting your condition removal elsewhere. Then you produce a parrot pretty reliably that hits for great damage. Combine that with Hunter’s Call and your own bird pecking away and you’ll have a scene that would make Alfred Hitchkitten proud.
I did not know that. Thank you for the new information Solandri!
You only have 7K HP? That’s really surprising. It might be a glitch or something, you should file a bug report.
And I doubt the guy on satellite is dodging anything, unless all he does is stare at Rangers and make avoiding them his sole focus in life. If his ping was 400ms he would cop half of it every time. It is mathematically impossible.
So you’re calling me a liar? Classy.
I can avoid them on my satellite internet connection. Deal with it.
That is total nonsense. Most people can not react before they are copping a good dose of it. And if you have 2 rangers you run out of dodges pretty quick.
I’ve spvp’d on a ranger since launch and the current state of the class is embarassingly OP.
I play with a poor satellite connection that causes an innate latency in the game.
I cannot dodge Kill Shot or Backstab, or any instant burst because I have to time my dodge a fraction of a second ahead of when the attack visually lands.
I can dodge most of Rapid Fire without issue though, because after the first couple arrows I can use a dodge, get hit by maybe one more arrow, and avoid almost all of the damage.
Rapid Fire is incredibly latency friendly because the damage doesn’t happen all at once, it happens over a period of time. So even poor reactions means you’ll only take 2-3K damage before you are made aware of the attack if you’re lagging. Meanwhile if it was a Kill Shot I’d have eaten the full 8-9K damage instantly and probably be down.
Then it’s not a PVP build. You’re running a PVE build in a PVP environment.
You don’t have a single condition clear and low HP.
How do you intend to survive any condition build?
Also, without Read the Wind you won’t be hitting people at 1,500 range. They can literally side step your arrows.
Because some people really like playing archers in games and for two years doing so wasn’t considered viable. Now everyone can finally play the playstyle they wanted from the beginning.
There is also the fact that the more people who complain about the new Rapid Fire the more people are going to roll longbow ranger just to try it out.
Go to the ranger forum. You’ll notice that the new longbow builds are only being talked about by people “just getting into it” because they heard that it became super OP. Meanwhile the veterans who have been playing ranger since before the patch are mostly using the same builds they did before, just more effectively with the new signet buffs and the might on axe auto attack. There’s more build diversity among rangers now than there’s ever been. This single build is NOT eclipsing the existing ranger builds. Quite the contrary, most veteran rangers find it sub-optimal and don’t run it. Even when they do, they play an alternate longbow build with more sustain and less burst.
Almost all the longbow rangers you see are there purely because you’ve told them that longbow ranger is extremely powerful. If you hadn’t complained on the forum the population would’ve died out by now.
I would love to have a raptor or troll pet. Raptors with their interrupting screech and high damage attacks and trolls with some sort of small AoE knockdown. It’d be fantastic.
1. I repeat, have you ever got anyone to communicate and cooperate in soloQ?
2. I’ll just stand there and type while I get myself killed. I am good and fighting, not at typing at the same time. So, no I don’t call for help, I just gtfo and go fight somewhere else.
This isn’t an issue with rangers, then. It’s your teammates being uncooperative and the ranger’s teammates actually helping.
Being the sustained damage class wasn’t really working out. This game has too many self heals for consistent, reliable damage to win out in the end unless you have some kind of spike attached to it.
I wasn’t implying you personally do it, I was just covering all my bases. I know there are builds that double up on melee who’d legitimately have issues if they got attacked by a ranged fighter from a vantage point, for example. That’s just a weakness in the build.
For your other points, the game isn’t balanced around WvWvW, much less zerg vs zerg combat. Additionally, sitting in the back lines and picking off people around the edges of the battle is the entire purpose of ranged support. That’s their role. I also don’t see how it takes more skill to be in the melee train and spam your auto attack and occasionally throw down and blast water fields as the commander requests. You end up getting kills because of the sheer numbers involved and the skill of your commander, not because of your individual abilities.
Skill wise it really depends on what you consider “skill”. Personally, any time you need to make a strategic choice about how to approach an upcoming fight and a tactical choice concerning what skills to use and when to maximize damage dealt and minimize damage taken is skill. It doesn’t matter if you need to hit one key to land your burst or five, so long as you need to think and are constantly reacting to new information as it’s presented. This definitely exists in any confrontation between a ranged fighter and a melee fighter on both sides. A ranged fighter has to manage their control skills more effectively than melee as it’s both their primary source of defense AND is necessary to ensure they can line up their bursts. Do you want to use that immobilize now to land your burst or do you want to save it for when the enemy gets close and you need breathing room? What about your knock down? Better keep applying your slows to compensate for how slowly backpedaling is, but maybe you want to save that chill for when they get close so you can make your escape.
Meanwhile melee use their control skills almost entirely to land their damage and keep the opponent in close range. For the melee fighter this engagement is about managing their defensive tricks and trying to counter every control skill the ranged player dishes out, then unloads the moment they end up in close range.
Both sides require skill to perform well. The number of keys one presses to do damage doesn’t matter, what matters is the number of decisions you need to make per second of each fight and how you handle dire situations that you hadn’t planned on.
@Ehecatl Every one of my PvP build has a longbow. It is a mandatory weapon to be any kind of viable at the moment and I do hide behind pillars and stuff (thats point defense 101) but the thing is I am stuck waiting there until one of his friends shows up and I either run and leave the point to be capture or kill his friend and die in the process leaving the point to be captured. The whole that Ranger has done almost nothing and gets rewarded for it.
Wait, why is one of his friends showing up to make it a 1v2? Why aren’t you calling for assistance?
No skill compared to melee if both deal comparable damage, not no skill at all.
The melee user is under pressure to close the gap – the ranged user has to kite and pew pew reactively to maintain the gap. Personally I think the latter is much easier to do.Anyway as I said, the problem is tab targeting – if this game had a crosshair and proper aiming mechanics for ranged weapons, it would be easier to balance.
But I am very biased against this game’s archaic targeting – maybe because I come from a background of fps/tps and action rpgs, all of which require manual aiming with weapons and skills. Maybe in GW3 they can finally do away with it instead of a half-kittened attempt at making it an “action” game with dodge mechanics and casting while moving.
Damage in itself isn’t the only advantage melee can have in a game. In this one, for example, melee weapons are loaded with much, much more blocks, evades, reflects, control, and/or movement skills than ranged weapons have. For example the ranger longbow has no skills that outright protect it from damage. It’s skills are designed to control and keep enemies at bay. This means that if an enemy gets close they no longer can fight using that longbow and have to switch to a melee weapon. Conversely the melee fighter’s main damage comes from a weapon that already has strong defensive and control skills built into it’s attacks so it can survive the ranged damage long enough to close the distance.
If a melee fighter is ambushed they can use the weapon they currently have equipped to protect themselves. Warrior hammer can knock the enemy back, stun lock the enemy for a while, and control them by applying cripple and weakness. A greatsword can use it’s splendid movement to disengage or it’s burst to get the enemy to back off, and can use a ranged cripple to keep the enemy close. Shields and maces have plenty of defenses baked in. But most important of all, melee attacks CLEAVE. Meaning they can hit multiple enemies around the user, and can actually hit a stealthed opponent.
If a ranged fighter is ambushed their ranged weapon is effectively useless. Ranged attacks don’t cleave and so can’t hit very reliably at that distance, can’t hit stealthed opponents except with channels and AoEs, and if the opponent moves around you your attacks all automatically miss. Ranger longbow is especially vulnerable here because their only two gap making skills need to hit the target to work, and as I just noted it’s pretty difficult to hit reliably when the enemy keeps jousting through you to prevent your targeting to work properly. Thus, the ranged fighter has to pull out a melee weapon to deal with the situation.
As for your assertion that it’s easier to keep someone at range than to close the distance, that isn’t quite true. This game in particular is loaded with gap closers and ways to defend against ranged damage. Combined with the fact that in order to hit you the ranger has to be moving backward, which is much slower than running forward, it means that it’s a very uphill battle to keep someone off you if they are intent on closing the distance and are even slightly good at the game. Melee will absolutely happen, it’s just a matter of how long it takes until the melee fighter gets up close, and hopefully the ranged fighter will have softened the melee up enough that they can take them in the resulting melee, or manage to reclaim some ground again.
It’s also worth noting that in this game everyone can carry a melee and ranged weapon option and use them as the circumstance calls for it. Just as most longbow rangers keep a greatsword handy to defend themselves, there’s no reason melee users can’t carry a ranged weapon so they can apply pressure while closing the gap. If you choose to double up on melee sets then yah, getting peppered from a distance and having to struggle to get close before you can unload your damage was the trade off you made for being so dominating in close range combat.
I’m actually not that bad a JPs but I was over exaggerating a little I’m actually not bad at them if I am not in combat getting crippled or chilled or feared etc.
None of those other class can unleash hell at 1500 range. To force them off their perch as a warrior you need to be at least 600 range you have to get pretty close.
I will grab my ranger and perch myself on some of the places I saw them on and shoot at you while you are trying to climb up and see how well you do. To force them off their perch as a warrior you need to be at least 600 range you have to get pretty close.
My elementalist sure can, actually. If you can still stand on point while sitting in my lava font ticking away as meteors smack you in the face and my fireballs blowing you away then you sir are an immortal. Not to mention that the longer I sit there the more might I’ll be building up from attunement swapping and the harder I’ll be hitting, and as an ele I have much stronger control effects to keep you away than a ranger does. Had to blow more skills and probably took longer, but that’s the price you pay for having all your high damage skills be AoE as opposed to Rapid Fire being single target.
A ranged profession built for damage sitting on a perch can’t be ignored. In fact I’d argue it shouldn’t be possible to ignore them. We’re talking about a build that is completely dedicated to damage that can’t function properly in melee range. If their ranged damage can’t even kill a full melee who can’t get into melee range then the ranged player is woefully underpowered.
Not to mention that if you decided to roll with dual melee weapon sets then this is the massive, gaping hole in your build that you chose to not cover up. You brought no long or mid-range weapons to deal with perched ranged users and honestly should be punished for that.
There’s also a tactic you can use on most points in SPVP. If you’re defending a point against a ranger just leave the point and go behind cover. For example in Temple of the Silent Storm on mid. Ranger is sitting on top of the tunnel entrance and you’re on point. Leave the point and stand behind one of the torches. The ranger suddenly can’t do any damage to you short of the AoE, which you should be able to survive. What is the ranger gonna do? He can’t come down and de-cap the point because you can then easily engage him. If he stands there pew pewing he isn’t contributing to the game and you’re still defending the point from him. You might not get the kill but he’ll have to leave the point uncaptured, thus you have won.
I’d actually like for pets to work more like they did in GW1. Sure, it’s more work, but I enjoyed raising my pets and seeing them grow to become more powerful, and having different roles depending on how I raised them.
My belief is ranged combat is impossible to balance in this game because of one thing – tab targeting => no skill needed to aim ranged attacks.
Yes I know it’s not a shooter but here lies the problem. Then we either have:
- ranged skills too weak as in the past with combat strongly favouring melee
- ranged skills too strong with no skill required compared to melee
Ranged combat DOES require skill. It’s incredibly biased to say otherwise.
A ranged damage dealer has to be capable of keeping away from the enemy, which requires well timed snares, knock downs, immobilizes, etc to limit the enemy’s advance while simultaneously desperately avoiding any of the opponent’s control effects and trying to continuously run away without turning your back on the enemy so you can keep doing damage.
Melee counters this strategy with gap closing skills to get in close and utilize their own slows and control effects trying to keep the ranged fighter in melee range.
It’s called kiting. It’s in just about every RPG ever invented, and it’s the single most important skill a ranged fighter can have.
1. I suck at jps
Not to be mean or anything, but if you’re so bad at using the spacebar that you physically can’t keep up with the ranger and climb to get to him, isn’t that kind of a learn to play issue on your end? You lack a vital skill to pvp effectively.
You’d also be equally dead if it was my staff elementalist up there bombarding the point. Or a staff necro or grenade engineer condi bombing you. Or even a rifle warrior using Volley followed by Kill Shot. There are a lot of professions that can and do exploit terrain and find perches to unleash their damage from. This isn’t even close to ranger specific, and has plenty of counters ranging from climbing up after them and forcing them to leave said perch, or using a pull attack to get them down.
Making the skill require a Kill Shot level cast time before being used at range would make it the worst range burst skill in the game. Kill Shot already suffers so much from it’s telegraph that warriors flat out don’t use the rifle, despite the rifle also having a Rapid Fire-lite on it. Effectively you’re proposing the skill take over a full second to charge up followed by a 2.5 second channel time, taking almost four seconds in total to pull off.
Which, coincidentally, puts the skill back in the situation it was in before the buff. The auto attack would almost do more DPS than Rapid Fire at range.
Using it at close range would also make the longbow play style entirely counter intuitive. It’s a LONGbow. Designed to fight at maximum range. The auto attack does the best damage at maximum range and two of it’s abilities are used to keep the enemy away from the user. If it’s primary burst was a melee skill players would have to run into melee with a ranged weapon to maximize their attack, which no other burst profession has to do. Their melee bursts are all on melee weapons. Warrior rifle, being a ranged weapon, has two ranged bursts on it. That’s what these weapons were designed for and how they should be used.
People like to talk about the longbow like the buff made the weapon a no brainer to use. “Oh, rangers just have to hit 2 and auto attack!” Well consider this. Before the patch the longbow ranger didn’t even press 2! The auto attack was the only damaging skill. You only used Rapid Fire on thieves and the occasional mesmer, and the other skills were only for emergencies. So the longbow ranger basically just… Auto attacked for maximum damage.
I’m sure veteran longbow rangers are having a good time having to hit a second button to maximize DPS, and actually having to think about when to launch their burst and when not to. Please don’t nerf Rapid Fire back into being weaker than just auto attacking.
The people who are playing hotjoin just for the rewards are the same people who are exploiting the games and making it a terrible experience for new players who actually have an interest in PVP. The exploiting reward farmers will never be a healthy part of the PVP community. If removing rewards gets them to leave, then so be it.
There’s no reason we can’t have more than one pet with cleaving attacks. It’s all around agreed on that bear is one of our weakest pet options because it doesn’t do a lot of damage. Adding cleave to it would make it a viable alternative to drakes.
The reason condition cleansing is so harsh for a BM ranger is because two of the three strong condition clearing abilities we have will just transfer the conditions to our pet. As a general rule the entire build revolves around keeping the pet alive, which means we have to invest 6 into Nature Magic for Survival of the Fittest so we don’t immediately fold against conditions. This kind of ties in to the traits problem. A lot of the BEST pet traits aren’t in the pet trait line. Having a few solid choices outside the BM line makes sense and helps with build diversity, but having the most powerful pet buffs outside the BM line doesn’t make sense.
I agree with Kyubi that merging certain traits makes sense. Moving the shared buffs trait from 3 in Nature Magic to 5 in Beastmastery would go a long way too. Not having those 3 points required in another tree would make it easier to get access to different traits. As is there are way too many pet traits for a BM ranger to reasonably take them all, which is fine except you can’t even take all the power ones together or all the condition ones and still have a viable build. I’d love it if the traits were merged and ordered in a way that it’d be easier to build for either power OR condition oriented pets and still have enough points left over to invest in somewhat decent condition cleansing.
To be fair guys, conditions absolutely need a serious rework.
Why Anet would implement them in the way they did knowing they wouldn’t have the computing power to let more than one condition user deal damage on a boss target in PVE I have no idea.
Sad to say Adozu, but the GW2 community has proven they aren’t mature enough to pick their teams. So no, you shouldn’t be able to play with a friend if it means the game remains in it’s easily exploitable state that turns every match into a one sided point farm.
If the community can’t handle the ability to pick your teams without immediately exploiting the system then removing the aspects of the system is the only course of action to take, regardless of if it’d remove an aspect of the game that is actually encouraged.
It’s the case of a few bad kids ruining everyone else’s fun.