Guild Wars 2

I like how you came into the ranger forum and accused all rangers of being deceitful and hiding the truth from the masses. Real classy.

Especially since there’s quite a lot of misinformation coming from non-rangers to try and paint Rapid Fire as more dangerous than it is. My favorite was the guy who claimed he could hit 12K on the heavy golem in the Mists without blowing any cooldowns.

I can’t wait until people realize how hard our pets can hit now. The longbow changes seem trivial in comparison.

The other day I was fighting a guardian in the clocktower. She eventually had to pull a retreat because my pet’s damage was too much combined with my sustain. So she ran off. I let her go and stayed to cap the point, but my pet pursued. The pet ended up downing her on her way to home point because I used F2 to cripple her and my pet got in a few extra 3K auto attacks.

I was able to chase her and get her down while capturing the point simultaneously.

That’s not even mentioning all the off-point skirmishes I’ve been able to fight in while capturing the point at my leisure. Longbow’s range is nothing compared to the range your pet can travel without you.

evilapprentice.6379:

600 unit extra range is a 40% range increase, not roughly 30% (10% of 1500 is 150, * 4 gives us 600)

Again, assuming your testing was accurate and you aren’t BSing (Which, why would you?), 40% past max range on flat terrain is very good – it clearly counters the idea that you can retreat out of the abilities range easily.

I mean, anyone can log in and replicate my tests to see for themselves. I can’t make a video, but the whole process took maybe five minutes tops.

Bare in mind that after 1,500 range you have to manually spam the auto attack to launch hits. The weapon also wasn’t designed to function at that range. I don’t have Read the Wind unlocked because I don’t use longbow often so I couldn’t test it’s accuracy at that range against a moving target, but that is also something to take under consideration. Without that grandmaster trait the longbow is barely accurate at 1,000 range, much less 2,000. More tests will be needed to determine how accurate it is with the grandmaster trait.

Of course, if you need a grandmaster trait just to make a weapon effective at what it’s suppose to do that’s a bit of a design flaw in my opinion.

There’s also the fact that the longer the range the attack is coming from the more likely there will be something to break line of sight with. I don’t have a problem fighting most longbow rangers in SPVP because the maps tend to be littered with ways to break line of sight.

There are so many gap closers in the game that there really isn’t an excuse for range to be the sole reason you lost a battle, aside from the ranger sniping you from a vantage point.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

You’d be surprised, the duels I had between them were amazingly interesting

Shush! You’ll give away the secret!

As long as they are distracted with the longbow rangers they won’t be paying attention to my raven that can now maintain perma 25 might stacks and hit for a 6-9K burst followed by 3-4K auto attacks!

evilapprentice.6379:

Yes, let’s pretend that denying anything within 1500 range and LOS of a particular position is a completely worthless ability to have in this game based on capturing points.

Honestly, I know you’re probably having fun with your new Ranger, but don’t just spout whatever you think will keep it the way it is to stifle the conversation.

Longbow ranger is terrible at capturing points. They pretty much have to give up the point to get the kill, and if they try to stop you from capping it they will almost definitely get torn a part as the weapon they invested 7 trait points into can’t function effectively in melee.

Longbow ranger is more useful as a plus one in small skirmishes and picking off people in team fights. They don’t hold up well on their own.

It’s a lot like thief honestly. High burst if your enemy is surprised but less effective if the person sees you coming and can react. The ranger just uses it’s incredible range as it’s primary defense rather than the thief’s much, much better access to stealth/blinds/evades, depending on the flavor of thief.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

I would be more worried about the Celestial Axe Rangers that will rise at some point…

Muahahahaha…

I mean… Yah. No. That’s crazy talk, Brandon. The axe is an awful weapon and no one would ever use it ever!

I beat a longbow ranger as a rifle warrior early today. A zerker rifle/hammer warrior. Bare in mind I am a really bad warrior, so it’s not even a matter of significant skill advantage.

I was capturing the mid point on Spirit Watch. He runs up the stairs and opens with Rapid Fire, which I dodge. I try to return fire but get hit with Point Blank Shot. I recover and unload a Volley which he dodges. He uses Hunter’s Shot to relocate with some distance and unloads another Rapid Fire which I again dodge. I hit him with Crippling Shot and pursue him to keep him in range. His wolf fears me and he turns around and hits me with a Rapid Fire only for my Endure Pain to eat it. Then I switch to hammer, use the F1 to leap at him, which connects. Then I knock him down to set up for a hammer 5. He eats it, switches to greatsword to block my next attack and knock me down and leads into a Maul, then Swoops away. I switch back to rifle and unload another Volley that he dodges. He puts down a Healing Spring to recover.

Then I get down on one knee for a Kill Shot. He switches back to longbow and starts shooting, and tries to dodge, but I cancelled the Kill Shot at the last moment causing him to waste it. I set up Kill Shot again and get him while he’s out of endurance, but his Rapid Fire gets me down as well.

We throw stuff at each other for a little bit before he gets his pet to start healing him. I get back up with Vengeance, walk over, and get the stomp. Then I died on top of him.

It was a pretty epic fight.

I suppose the moral of that story is rangers using a zerker build are pretty squishy. With a similar ranged weapon and a zerker build of your own you are on pretty even footing, all in all. It all comes down to who gets in the first hits and who makes better use of their burst and dodges.

Tower defense is hazardous enough with all the pulls available. It’s more dangerous to defend a tower than to attack it, and less forgiving if you do die as you’ll likely not get back in.

I say let elementalists keep this little trick. They run with the lowest health and armor in the game and are suppose to be compensated with a lot of defensive tricks and good ranged spells. Seems tower defense is where an elementalist should really shine.

Arthur, staff elementalists also have the advantage of AoE damage that vastly eclipses the ranger’s AoE damage. I’ve downed 3-4 people at once with meteor shower->Lava font -> Fireball spam before because they all crowded around a downed ally. A longbow ranger cannot recreate that even under ideal circumstances.

Elementalists also bring a lot more AoE control and can make standing on a point a punishment for the entire enemy team, while providing buffs for allies on point.

The longbow ranger only has single target damage and a fairly weak AoE that provides cripple.

The two are long range fighters who can take advantage of range and thus be called “Low risk” despite being built as glass cannons, though I’d argue the staff ele has more tricks to keep enemies off him. They just provide different roles from range. Honestly, a staff elementalist unattended is more dangerous than a longbow ranger in the same situation.

evilapprentice.6379:

33-40% past max range seems a bit much. Is there any other weapon that goes this far past max range? (I’m assuming the person who tested the 2k range is legit, I haven’t verified his findings)

Sure, I was aware my thief’s Shbow went slightly past the max range due to the arc, but it doesn’t go out to 1200 no matter where I shoot it from.

If you’re talking about the same person I think you’re talking about I wouldn’t put too much stalk in his claims. He was using Sick ‘Em to measure 2,000 range and assuming it ALSO had an extended range, even though it’s not a projectile and thus wouldn’t have an extended range at all. So he came to the conclusion that Sick ’Em’s range was 2,200 while also using it as a measuring stick for other skills without first testing Sick ’Em’s range.

I’ll do some testing later tonight if I really have to. Every time someone posts about the longbow’s range they seem to make it even longer than the last. At first people were claiming 1,800, which is about reasonable, but now people are claiming 2,400? I dunno. It feels like an exaggeration being passed off as fact, like the people claiming you can hit 15K damage with Rapid Fire without blowing cooldowns on the Heavy Golem in Heart of the Mists. It’s not possible, but people state it as if it’s a proven fact.

Edit:

I did some testing. The longbow’s max range when traited on flat terrain is only a few steps back from 2,000 range, likely 2,100 or so. So roughly a 30% distance increase, but not the 2,400 that people are projecting.

I tested the throwing axe using Guard as a distance measurement and found that the 900 range axe will travel 1,100-1,200 range just about, which is 20% more than it’s max. I got the same result with the shortbow. However this was assuming the AoE’s center is the point of range, which when tested with Swoop proved not the case.

Using the center of the AoE as the point of max range on Guard showed Swoop only traveled about half the distance of it’s stated 1,100 range. However using the AoE circle’s nearest point to me as a measurement showed Swoop did in fact close the full 1,100 range. If this is true then the shortbow actually has a max projectile range of about 1,300, which would be a 40% range increase.

At any rate, it’s really hard to measure range effectively because we have no clear units to measure with in the game.

Edit 2:

Tested warrior longbow. Bullets don’t keep traveling past their maximum range. Rifle’s range is 1,200. I fired it until I hit it’s maximum range, then switched to longbow. The longbow, untraited, was able to hit the target 1,200 yards away despite having a tooltip range of 1,000. That’s a 20% increase in projectile travel distance.

stof.9341:

A warrior has 1000 range on the longbow naturally and needs a trait to get 1200 : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stronger_Bowstrings

Trait that only increases the range and nothing else (except the weird bug making one skill a projectile finisher)

Ah, alright. My mistake. I guess the difference between 1,000 and 1,200 is too small for me to really notice.

loseridoit.2756:

and you still get hit….

There is a bug/exploit that allow ranger to exceed the 1500 range limit.

i heard the max is actually past 2000 because the way the channel works.

Not a bug. Working as intended. All bow weapons and most other projectiles will keep traveling beyond their maximum range and can travel further on elevated terrain. It’s this way on every profession with bows and it works that way with my elementalist’s staff and scepter projectile auto attacks as well.

It’s been this way since release. I’m honestly baffled at how no one noticed it until the most recent patch.

Kind of goes to show how little attention anyone paid to any ranged weapon in the melee-centric meta, I guess.

I’m fine with an in combat stow option for the sake of escaping combat or jumping puzzles, or just exploring. However I do not think fighting without a pet should be optimal. In other words you shouldn’t get a buff to compensate you for not using the class mechanic to it’s full potential.

You did have a choice in whether or not to have a pet. That choice came when you were choosing your profession and picked the only one that has a permanent pet as a core mechanic.

Sandrox.9524:

Dont insult other ppl while you dont even know what are you talking about.I may have “lousy situational awareness” but you sir no better,cause no one is perfect,and because of that,you will always get spiked by a ranger,no matter how much situational awareness you have.You cant predict a ranger or much to react to a ranger who sit on high places and pick you out,you cant predict a ranger who shoots from stealth,and you defiantly cant predict a ranger sometimes,when you in middle of a fight.So please before insulting ppl on no ground,try keep it civil cause we are adults?(I hope you are).

And fyi,I did changed my builds 3 times to same end.Today I went full yolo with all the reflects memser have,and still got bursted from tiem to time.You can blame my “lousy situational awareness” but you can also blame the fact that RF is way too strong for a 6s cd attack.

You should be able to initiate a dodge after the first two or three arrows connect and negate the rest of the Rapid Fire. I do it all the time. Since they are projectiles it isn’t hard to then see where they are coming from and respond accordingly. I can also predict rangers from stealth pretty easily, given that again you will take a small amount of damage in the first .5 seconds and be able to dodge the rest. The stealth is also only three seconds long, so…

I’ve beaten longbow rangers with my trapper ranger. My trapper ranger has no blocks, no reflects, no projectile destruction, and a max of 900 range. He gets by entirely with dodges, good armor, and an evade on Sword 3.

I get bursted on occasion, but only when I’m already in a tough spot fighting someone else when a sniper ranger arrives, which is fine, because that is the role a sniper ranger fulfills. They are suppose to be good at being the +1 in a duel or small scale fight. You’d be equally screwed if it was a thief landing a backstab when you were already at 50% health.

I kind of like the way revealed works now. There’s a level of skill needed on part of the user to time it right. If you use it too soon then you’re not getting your money’s worth, and if you use it too late it just won’t go off as the enemy is already hiding.

You need to watch the thief and wait for the moment when the thief’s initiative is low and they are on the defensive, then hit revealed and unload while they are prone.

vincecontix.1264:

Rangers can keep the damage but then how about reduce there range to 1200.

So… You want the ranger to have to trait into their longbow to get the same range a warrior has on his longbow naturally?

Rozbuska.5263:

Yea your explanation is amazing.. If I dont run close thru your amazing invisible traps you pew pew me with autoattack to death.

So… You didn’t bring ANY non-melee weapon? Your only options are to run into where you SHOULD know the traps are by the second engagement or die?

I’m not buying it.

However, going by your complaint about counterplay stealth should be outright removed from the game as well. So lets just remove thieves entirely. There’s no counterplay to an instant gap closer from stealth! Right? It’s not like you can anticipate the incoming attack and plan accordingly or anything. Or how about mesmer clones? Sure, you can find the original one if you’re paying close attention, but add in invisibility and teleports and it can get super confusing. Lets remove those too.

Deception is an ingrained aspect of the game. Anet clearly wants us to be able to do things to catch enemies off guard and throw off their rhythm. Traps serve such a roll. A surprise that the enemy will suffer for if they failed to anticipate where the traps were waiting. Unless you’re running full zerker with zero condition removal running into the traps once isn’t game changing either. You’d have to hit five or six traps for it to give a solid edge to the ranger who has sacrificed all defensive utilities for surprise damage.

I agree with everything you’ve said.

Personally, I’ve always enjoyed ranged combat. I enjoy fighting at range via my staff elementalist and I like fighting ranged opponents as a mid-range/melee ranger. It adds a whole new dimension to combat that was otherwise sorely missing from this game. I’ve never had to think tactically and my environment as much as I have since the patch launched and rangers got their buff.

I’d go as far to say that it’s the first time I’ve felt like a RANGER in a very long time. No, I don’t mean finally being able to use a longbow effectively. I mean being on the ground dodging arrows and ducking behind trees and large rocks, and baiting my opponent away from their defensive position before launching an ambush. Sending out my animal companion to distract the ranger with control and damage long enough for me to close the distance. If there is one thing a ranger should excel at, it’s manipulating the environment to their advantage in a skirmish, and there’s finally a build that can emphasize that aspect of the game. The fact it’s another ranger is just a cherry on top.

Another thing I really love is that suddenly people are complaining about the crowd control provided by pets. The class mechanic that was laughed at for two years is now something to fear because the person in command if that beast can actually hurt. Rangers were interrupt focused in Guild Wars. The fact they have a focus on control in GW2 is something I greatly enjoy. I’m glad we have a build that can really capitalize on it.

It does seem contradictory that they want us to watch character models for tells and react to the combat but then make combat extremely focused on cooldowns that force us to watch our skill bar as we wait for an important skill to become available.

This alone is pretty manageable though, it just becomes more difficult when you add in condition damage. I think a big reason condition damage gets complained about so much is because when you start taking on a lot of conditions your eyes will be drawn to the toolbar, which means you’ll be missing any tells from the condition user as they use their own vital skills. It’s a lot easier to dodge a power build’s burst because your eyes are naturally on your opponent, but conditions force you to divide your attention between your opponent and your conditions/boons bar.

Acrisor.8097:

+1. This is the truth. Balance of game dps should not be done based on dodge/reflect/evade/block. Power ranger is now an overpowered machine-gun ranger.

So it shouldn’t be balanced around the relationship between offense and defense?

Also, toughness still mitigates the burst guys. Same as it mitigates every other burst in the game. You aren’t going to get one shot by a ranger if you have decent toughness/health.

So you think forcing them to jump right into ranked matches is less terrible?

Have you met online gamers?

I run a very similar BM build, though I use celestial stats and runes of the ranger for higher crit and ferocity, and don’t go for Nature’s Voice since I’m only running with a single shout. Instead I go 3 into Skirmishing so I get fury on weapon swap, which then is given to my pet in a slightly shorter duration.

I was using clerics for a while before the patch though. Might go back to that but keep the ranger’s runes to see how I fair with more baseline power. Maybe go back to Nature’s Voice just to ensure I have potentially permanent regen when combined with Healing Spring, which works oh so well with Call of the Wild.

Chainspell.5697:

So I decided to play S/D + SB trapper today to see if I should invest money into this build. I managed to win a few battles and lose some, with the wins I got 1 party join then whisper complaining about LB when I was using a SB.

I’ve gotten this complaint too, actually.

“Lol GG OP Longbow scrub.”

“I’m… Using a shortbow.”

It’s like they don’t even notice I’m stacking bleeds and THAT is what is killing them.

I love running trapper. I’ve been trying to get my hands on the runes but they’re never on the trading post.

It’d make sense if your pet scaled in quality based on the quality of your equipped weapon. So people with an ascended weapon would get ascended pet stats.

Pet food to buff the pet’s stats would also be nice. Or even foods that improve the pet in specific situations, like a food to make it more resistant to AoE damage or food to increase it’s movement speed and damage. Roamers would likely go with the damage increase food while zergers would go for the damage reduction food.

tanztante.6532:

even worse: hotjoin didn’t disappear. the cancer of pvp

I feel the word cancer is being severely overused lately. What makes hotjoin cancer, exactly? Why is a place for people to test builds and get experience with the game before jumping right into ranked play a BAD thing? Why is a place where you can literally jump in, have some fun, and then leave as you see fit a negative experience that is hurting pvp?

Yes. Lets fix it and THEN remove it.

First they should actually fix hotjoin so it’s playable.

T raw.4658:

Even though people have already tested it and stated 2.4k…..we’ll still say 1.8k-2.1k is still broken since its well over the supposed 1.5k range ^^

Once again, it is not broken. Plenty of other projectiles continue to exist and deal damage past their maximum stated range based on elevation. Both the ranger longbow and shortbow do it. Warrior longbow does it. Elementalist staff and scepter both do it on certain auto attacks. Etc.

The skill isn’t bugged or broken in range. People have just been oblivious to the range of projectile skills in this game for two years apparently.

Why did you make another thread to discuss the same thing being discussed in a dozen other threads?

I don’t see why it hasn’t been fixed yet, honestly. Just making the leap interrupted by dodging or activating another skill would go a long way to making it less unwieldy.

Also making Pounce linger a few more seconds after casting Hornet Sting would be a big benefit. Long enough to activate it, run in, and pull a leap on someone.

It’s all just quality of life changes really.

The entire point of a trap build is to surprise someone who thinks they can just run up and gank the ranger. The element of surprise is the only thing that makes them relevant to a fight.

It dramatically loses it’s potential after the first person runs into a trap and proceeds to warn their team about the trap ranger. After that it’s pretty easy to just NOT walk where the ranger is obviously trying to lead you. If the traps are being laid in combat you can see them being placed.

Frankly I am astonished that people will keep running into my traps in an attempt to get me when they see me standing perfectly still on point and not even trying to get away from them. It means that I have laid my traps. You literally JUST got destroyed by my traps last time we fought. Why the Hell would you think there wouldn’t be traps this time?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I would like rifle to be a more effective killing tool. The one thing I could think that’d make Kill Shot much better is if it always critically hit. I was playing with a rifle/greatsword burst set up the other day and couldn’t help but get frustrated every time I managed to land a Kill Shot only for it to NOT crit and leave me with some pitiful amount of damage for my trouble. The pay off needs to be better, especially not that the risk of missing is much higher.

Volley is fine as is I feel. It does only 1,000 or so less damage than the already infamous Rapid Fire in total and at a comparable range of 1,200 to Rapid Fire’s 1,500. The rifle also has the advantage in having two ranged bursts on it to the ranger longbow’s one, Volley AND Kill Shot, and can stack it’s vulnerability prior to firing one of it’s bursts where as Rapid Fire is both the burst and the vulnerability applier, so you won’t get maximum damage unless you land a second Rapid Fire.

So basically, at least in my opinion, the main thing stopping the rifle from being an effective ranged, single target damage weapon is Kill Shot. Without the ability to carry adrenaline over between fights it can’t really catch anyone by surprise anymore, so it has to more reliably do the high damage it’s suppose to do to compensate. Really make it a KILL shot. A finishing blow to end a ranged engagement.

Acrisor.8097:

You probably do not get it. Power ranger is no longer power ranger, it is machine-gun ranger. He kills a player extremely fast, from range (aka distance), so fast the target can not reach him. That is why so many people (aka customers) complain and consider it overpowered (or unbalanced).

On my beastmaster and trapper rangers I can close the distance and pull a win without too much struggle. Both of which have a maximum range of 900. I’ve not had to duel a sniper ranger on my staff elementalist yet, mostly because they usually get melted from my AoE whenever I notice them in team fights. That or they try to snipe me and Magnetic Aura feeds them their own arrows.

Shoot, my trapper ranger can take the entire Rapid Fire and still be in pretty good condition since he has such a high armor rating. The usual 6/6/0/0/2 sniper build can’t survive any level of condition pressure for long so they will die way quicker than my trapper.

The only way you’re getting melted before you can close the distance is if you’re also running berserker or have absolutely no gap closers or ways to mitigate the Rapid Fire. Even then the other most prominent zerker profession is thief, and they have all the tools they need to get close to the ranger before the ranger can target them and unleash stabby/shooty death.

loseridoit.2756:

Jagstang.6912:

then you just might need to learn to evade/reflect/run up to him and just hit him.

I am just trying to understand this statement. Are you implying that all ranger just die in 1 hit in melee ranger with any build what so ever?

That include tank builds?

If a ranger is built tanky they aren’t the ranger build that everyone is complaining about. Totally different animal.

Found another interesting way to deal with sniper rangers.

I was on my trapper today and there was a sniper sniping at me in a team fight from on the bridge beside the point nearest to Svanir. It was a 3v3 with myself, a guardian, and a warrior vs the ranger, a thief, and a warrior. The thief and the ranger were both focusing me, but with 2.9K armor my ranger is pretty resilient.

Eventually the thief went down and as my two partners fought the warrior and the oncoming elementalist who just spawned I ducked down under the bridge the ranger was sniping from and he switched targets. I then threw my traps on the bottom of the bridge beneath where he was standing, causing him to get condition bombed and go down hard.

In another match it was Skyhammer and a sniper ranger was perched on the column path above mid. I dodged his Rapid Fire and hugged the front left column and kept darting out to take bleeding pot shots at him with my shortbow. My little sylvari was MUCH better geared for handling physical damage than his opponent was at conditions. When the sniper got below half health I ran out, dodged through his Rapid Fire again to get under him, and once more unloaded my traps beneath his feet for a finishing condition bomb.

It’s a pretty fun and unexpected tactic.

So far the only time I’ve legitimately lost to a sniper ranger was on Foefire in mid. She was clear across the point on a ledge and opened with Rampage as One → Point Blank Shot → Rapid Fire. I hadn’t seen her perched in the distance because I was looking at my minimap to see where my teammates were running, so that was my bad. Even so I still managed to survive and find cover. Unfortunately at that range with a shortbow and low on health there wasn’t much I could do, so I healed as much as I could, dropped my traps, and waited for her to have to run around, since she couldn’t get me from there. Sadly her pet ate my traps and she was free to close the distance and hit me with another Rapid Fire which I dodged, followed by Swoop→Maul which ended it.

She got crushed by my team when they finally made it to mid though, since she had to give up her positioning to get me. So moral victory for me!

All in all, I’d say sniper has a clear advantage over traps because of the limited range a trapper build tends to have and the fact a sniper ranger won’t have to come close to you and risk setting off your traps, but you can still pull a solid win if you can catch them off guard.

I don’t play my warrior very often so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I wouldn’t be opposed to Hundred Blades getting a buff in it’s radius or damage. Of all the burst skills it’s probably the hardest to land as it doesn’t have Rapid Fire’s range or Backstab’s ability to be delivered from stealth. The warrior pretty much has to blow a utility simply to connect. It should be more rewarding than it is now.

That isn’t to say that the ranger longbow is a better weapon than warrior greatsword as you still have to factor in the full professions and other skills. But right now warriors are only using the greatsword to escape combat, which I find to be a travesty.

musu.9205:

I used RF in heat of the mist on heavy golem and i could do like 10-12k damage with 3-5 stacks of might and ranger rune.
Yeah It’s too hard to learn counterplay just like it’s to hard to roll a ranger and do some test in hotm before claiming something.

That seems highly improbable.

Just coming out of the Mists with a berserker amulet, runes of the ranger, and fifteen stacks of might and fury I built up with the axe mainhand , warhorn 5, and might on pet swap I only hit for 6.7K from the Rapid Fire alone. Add on another 1-2K from the Air and Fire sigils proccing. This all being on the Heavy Golem as you claim to have performed it on.

Bare in mind it takes a fair while to build up that might by bouncing the axe between three targets, and it fades in a matter of seconds so you have to be VERY fast in the weapon swap and Rapid Fire click.

I was able to repeat the same process and get up to 8.5K with Rampage as One. I only broke 9K by blowing Rampage as One and Signet of the Wild together, but by the time I swapped my pet, popped both, switched weapons, and turned to hit the Heavy Golem my might stacks had already dropped from 18 to 7. That should give you a reference for how hard it is to get a good 10K plus burst out of Rapid Fire.

Even accounting for other factors and differences between our builds you’re getting 3,000 more damage than I am, and your post implies you weren’t blowing an elite and a utility skill to optimize your burst. So what are you doing to get these numbers, exactly?

My build was 6/6/0/0/2.

vincecontix.1264:

Edit also apparently there is a bug when traited lb can reach 2000 range can anyone else confirm this?

Not a bug. Certain projectiles will keep traveling past the maximum range depending on the arc of the shot and the player’s elevation. Apparently no one ever noticed this until just now.

It works the same for warrior longbow or my staff elementalist’s fireballs, as well as the elementalist’s scepter water and earth auto attacks last I was testing it.

Xillllix.3485:

It’s OP. Sure by itself it can be evaded partially, but have a few rangers working together and that skill is so powerful it makes no sense.

Three or more of any profession is going to steamroll you.

It’s also worth mentioning, again, that there has never been a long ranged damage dealer in this game before. Not since beta, anyway. No one has developed the skills needed to compete with it yet because they’ve never had to.

Wait a few weeks. It won’t take long for people to start getting comfortable with dealing with this new threat.

runeblade.7514:

I see plenty of PBS + Rapid fire.

Hunter shot is also something to worry about if you want the ranger to die. Otherwise, he’ll disappear and then reappear to use rapid fire from the otherside of the room at 1500 range.

Hunter’s Shot is only three seconds of stealth. If the ranger can clear 1,500 range in three seconds they either switched to greatsword for Swoop or have super speed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Soo, what you’re both saying is that Power necros are hopeless against longbow rangers? Or that Rangers try to fight at sub-1200 range?

Yes, if a necro can close the gap, a Longbow ranger will have some difficulty. Then again, what profession is this not true for?

Again, I’m happy for a Ranger’s current power level. The only thing I am saying is that reflects cannot become as important to bring as condition removal and the game be balanced. While everyone has dodges, self-healing ability, stunbreakers, and condition removal available to them, not everyone has reflects, or even projectile blocks.

No, what we’re saying is that it can go either way depending on how the fight is initiated.

Contrary to popular belief not every fight is engaged in a friendly duel where both parties agree on a set distance and say when to start. In fact most fights in the game, both in WvWvW and SPVP, will involve one player getting the drop on the other.

If the ranger initiates from a comfortable maximum range it will be a very uphill battle for the necromancer. However, if the necromancer is the one who initiates combat because the ranger didn’t see them coming or was busy with someone else the necromancer has every tool it needs to quickly burn the ranger down and keep them close with slowing conditions that counter Swoop and a utility skill that hard counters the ranger’s best condition cleansing abilities.

Also, reflect isn’t exactly like a condition cleanse. The longbow can be countered by any form of power damage reduction such as blocking, dodging, evades, and toughness. Reflect is closer to the necromancer skill that takes all the conditions on you and turns them into boons. It’s a HARD counter to ranged damage that turns their own weapon against them rather than just negating the damage the way a cleanse does.

So really, you will bring reflects if you anticipate dealing with a lot of projectile damage, just like you might bring a reveal skill if you’re anticipating a lot of thieves. Both are hard counters to a certain profession and have to be considered. Though reflect is a lot more common than revealed is.

Fluffball.8307:

Exactly that. SotF is the best LB build, or one of the best. I don’t think LB is good for conquest.

I wouldn’t say that. A viable long ranged burst does open new doors in terms of tactics a team could use, like sniping at a bunker to force it to either leave point to engage or die, then have a teammate slip in behind the bunker to de-cap it.

It’d be a good counter against turret engineers I feel. Mainly because a turret engineer is the only bunker that has to leave 90% of their build behind if they want to leave the point.

Only time will tell, but there’s at least a chance the new longbow could make it into the meta.

I think they should make your video’s audio the actual audio for the skill. BAM! Issue with needing a tell solved and we get to giggle every time we press 2!

Interestingly, I’d say sniper rangers ARE the hard counter against turret engineers. I’ve not tried it myself, but looking at it on paper it seems to make sense.

Turret engineer places his turrets down and readies for an attack.

Ranger comes up and starts sniping the engineer from 1,500 range.

The engineer can reflect it, but unless the ranger is really bad the single reflect won’t down the ranger. The engineer needs to engage the ranger somehow or the ranger’s high sustained damage and burst will eventually win out over the engineer’s healing and blocks.

So the engineer either has to charge the sniper ranger, thus leaving the protection of his turrets which will get him killed, or he can stand there trying desperately to dodge, block, reflect, and heal through the endless barrage of arrows until help arrives. Given the ranger’s damage I don’t see the engineer surviving for very long without being able to apply pressure to the ranger in return.

Just some theorycrafting on my part, but I could see it as being a viable hard counter to everyone’s least favorite engineer build.

Admittedly having a jump animation on an auto attack looks awesome, but it’s also kind of impractical for what an auto attack is suppose to do, which is well.. Attack automatically. Gap closers should be something you trigger manually rather than something that gets fired off without permission.

Taku, ALL projectiles function that way. Every single one. They all keep going past their maximum range, the auto attack just won’t fire at that range anymore.

I do it with my staff elementalist all the time to fireball enemies that are sitting just outside the range my Lava Font can reach.

SerratedOcean.7398:

Rank = experience, experience = more creditability, akin to a resume, thus you’re likely to know what you are talking about. Low rank lacks experience, higher ranks comments does not invalidate other low ranks comments, I think it filters out baseless comments and trolls that this forum has, if any comes up with a logical sound argument I don’t think it would invalidate it at all…over all rank shows experience.

That all sounds good on paper, but you know as well as I do that it isn’t how such a tool would be used.

The ignorant players who happen to have a high rank will simply tell anyone with a lower rank to shove off with their thoughts. People will use it as a weapon to invalidate other commenters regardless of the quality of their proposition or advice simply to feel superior and “win” the argument at hand. It’s human nature, sadly. People on the internet especially argue mostly to win the argument, and will use anything they can to discredit the other participants in the discussion who disagree with them.

Effectively it would downgrade all discussion of game balance to:

“GTFO YOU LOW RANK PIECE OF NOOB TITS!!!!! U DON’T KNOW YOUR KITTEN”

Which is ironic given thieves are the best equipped to take out a sniper ranger. A single backstab should cripple a glass cannon like a longbow user.