Guild Wars 2

I usually name them “juvenile (insert random animal)”. For example my eagle right now is named juvenile whale and my wolf is juvenile giraffe.

You don’t use it randomly, use it when a you’ve hurt a thief or mesmer and they’re about to stealth. It usually scores you the kill. I almost never roam in WvW without it.

It does need the F2 bug fixed, but it’s a good skill.

Puck.9612:

Fluffball.8307:

What the heck? It’s literally one of the starting options, you can’t make a ranger without getting asked if you want one.

Unless you pick a norn.

Whoa, didn’t know that. What pets do norn start with?

Helly.2597:

Fluffball.8307:

Says it’s processing? Can’t watch it.

Indeed, like I mentioned in the first post it was just uploaded. It should be completed in a bit. Sorry for the inconvenience.

You hadn’t mentioned that when I posted it. #pedantic

Says it’s processing? Can’t watch it.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

If they add tagging and participation algorithms for purely healing people, sure, that would be fine.

I actually can’t remember. Was it just first come first server for GW1 loot? That seems so barbaric. Also why is my memory so bad? I played that game for like 6000 hours and I can’t remember how the loot worked.

What the heck? It’s literally one of the starting options, you can’t make a ranger without getting asked if you want one.

At the top of your keyboard above your arrow keys you should see a button labeled “Print Scrn”.

I wouldn’t take predator’s instinct even the way you have it. Ranger already has cripple for days. Only thing more cripple is good for is a cover condition. It would need like a 4 second ICD with a 1 second cripple or something.

Edit: And that note I seriously miss the old trait that gave birds (pets) cripple on F2.

No one plays charr because of clipping problems and terrible lack of armor options.

CandyHearts.6025:

If you’re finding that there’s absolutely NOTHING you like; ignore the names of classes and just test every weapon kit until you find something that you enjoy. That’s really the only advice that can be given.

The weapon skills are 98% of a profession, so ya, that’s some pretty good advice. If you hate all the ranger weapons you probably don’t want to play ranger.

I maxed both kuzick and luxon by vanquishing with heroes. Do the same map over and over and you’ll get a perfect route down after a few times. You can speed vanquish in like 10 minutes.

Also for whatever reason they delete GW1 topics here, so… bye.

vespers.1759:

but surely the element of flair and confidence you project by running one makes up for it?

I’m not a mesmer!

The craziest thing is, the F2 isn’t even my biggest complaint with the pigs. F2 can be worked around to some degree (it’s still ridiculous). My problem is their stupid charge that is so bad it misses in open world PvE. Now your pig is not only not knocking down the target, it’s no where near your fight, it’s charged off in another zone.

It’s definitely not a bug. Nothing says it should go the old distance.

It’s an oversight. It looks inconsequential on paper where the devs live in don’t-play-ranger-land. It’s actually a kind of big deal.

mistsim.2748:

I can assure you that whoever was using the SB was experimenting. and I certainly didn’t see any of the “best rangers” in NA using the SB, at least not in soloq. unless theyre below my mmr. and good players can make anything “sorta work”. further, if there was a viable SB build, it would have been made obvious probably back in july/august.

Well not soloq. Obviously SB is garbage for soloq (again something debatable you and I agree on, but whatever, I still don’t like SB.) I meant the trend a few months ago of every ranger running cele survival SB with muddy terrain in the weekly tourneys against Abjured and what not. Cele survival with SB was a thing for a few months, and I don’t know if it still is because I stopped watching the tourneys. Also Abjured winning every single week kind of kills the excitement.

Also quit subtly bragging about your mmr, anyone posting on the forums that plays pvp has a high mmr because we all play too much GW.

Paprikaspice.8462:

How is the ranger in pvp meta these days? been gone for 2-3 months. Looks like bw took a hit, but WHaO and pets got some nice buffs.

Ask again after the 23rd. Honestly not trying to be rude, but everything is going to complete hell on the 23rd when HoT releases. There will be no balance for like a month at least.

Your problem is with our condi builds and the amulets, not the weapons. Before mesmers got buffed to kitten, you wouldn’t have had a problem with most of our weapons.

Also some weapons on every profession are viable in different game modes. Would I use offhand axe in “high mmr pvp”? Obviously not. I do occasionally roam with it in WvW and before the WH buff I usually took it in PvE. It’s not a disaster. It’s actually considered by many people to be OP in PvE.

And SB, while I technically agree with you, I can’t ignore that some of the very best rangers I’ve ever seen use it in tourneys. I think you’re the one that has always hated cele amulet on ranger (which slightly off topic, I have always loved) so I can understand that. SB is not great, but it IS used at a higher level than you play at, unless you’re a tourney player I don’t recognize.

Fluffball.8307:

Even recently it was listed on metabattle.com and made plenty of appearances on sundays in tourneys as the cele survival ranger.

lol metabattle. listen man, you can put a ranger on a team right now. but that team wont go very far. druids may give us some offensive hybrid options, but until most of our weps and GM’s are reworked, there’s not much to look forward to.

Ya this was a couple months ago that the SB cele build was popular. TBH I’m pretty much done with PvP at the moment because it’s gotten so stale, so I haven’t been watching the weekly tournaments. Not sure if anyone is using SB at the moment but I’ve heard rangers are showing up more frequently now.

The reason SB showed up on metabattle was because one of the best rangers ever used it in a tourney. It showed up there like half an hour later.

One of the very first videos (THE first video I think?) we ever saw of ranger gameplay, before beta weekends, was of a ranger dev PvPing and using his pet in downstate. Thread over.

mistsim.2748:

the core weapons are terrible and badly need reworks. only lb/gs power rangers are viable. dagger is a decent weapon, and warhorn is almost there. but the rest are a disaster.

on the bright side, staff feels pretty slick.

In addition to completely disagreeing with you, how can you not even acknowledge torch? I’m not a math guy at all, but as far as I know that’s our highest DPS option at the moment, for both PvE and PvP. Sword obviously being a PvE staple.

Once we list Gs, LB, Sword, Torch, Dagger and WH, you’re only complaining about the widely taken MH and OH axe? Bah.

Shortbow I don’t acknowledge as existing, however it has been taken by the best PvPers for the better part of 3 years. Even recently it was listed on metabattle.com and made plenty of appearances on sundays in tourneys as the cele survival ranger.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Matt Stacey.7415:

As someone who interested in playing around on their ranger again, can you point me in the direction of said videos? The ones I’m finding are highlighting the issue with sword #1, not really a guide how to control it

there is no issue it is all player controlled , its up to you to time and press it correctly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4J3O1dqkrQ&list=PL0YdygHp1vKfJ6iu9ZIIeWOQYNVexSeJW

Those are great clips. There are plenty of other neat little things you can do with sword, but a couple of those are some of the lesser known and used. These are also the things people don’t get when they cry for sword “fixes”; we’d be losing a LOT.

Anything that has such interesting movement that other professions don’t have is an advantage. In PvE it’s a disadvantage, but as of yet, there is zero amount of PvE content that can’t be done with sword autoattack turned on.

People always cry “you think you’re better than us because you pretend sword is an advantage” and YES, us folks that like sword ARE better than you. We can do things you can’t.

I think we’re talking about PvE here. In PvE there is no reason to turn autoattack off.

In PvP, you generally don’t just go ham on the sword autoattack, regardless of how good you are with it, so “spamming 1” shouldn’t be a problem. Unless you’re playing a power dual melee build you’re barely ever going to sword autoattack at all. Why would you even touch it in a settlers condi build? You won’t use it on a power LB build unless you’re behind the guy in an entangle where dodges don’t matter. You’re certainly not going to go toe to toe with someone as a LB ranger.

I bet that was like a 5 year old version of barrage; it looks a lot like GW1 barrage.

Well ranger has it’s problems, but I don’t think you got it quite right.

First of all, make sure your heal skill is traited. It reduces the CD and gives you additional effects, i.e. the perma swiftness and regen on WHaO and condi removal on TU. Our heal skills are some of my favorite across all the professions, all 3 are really good in the right situation and that’s awesome. Most professions have 1 viable heal skill.

Condi cleanse, you’re going to want to use wilderness knowledge, and I also use signet of renewal. That’s a good bit of on-demand condi removal.

Pet dying is both the sign of an inexperienced ranger, as well as just something that happens from time to time. Pet management is very important to playing a ranger, so you need to be able to swap it or reposition it to keep it from dying. Sometimes it just gets obliterated, but that shouldn’t happen that much if you’re paying attention to it.

What is your problem, OP? Like what is your hidden agenda to posting completely and totally random “nerf this skill that isn’t that good and has been around for years” threads?

This is the most ridiculous, nonsensical ranger hate that I’ve ever seen on these forums, and that says quite a bit.

Another melee choice fo’ sho’.

People aren’t learning from history. I don’t know why people think he’s going to single handedly save the profession. The past week or two this forum has been completely swamped in dozens of threads with that assumption. He’s the public face of druid is pretty much all we know, he’s not the founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Arena Net®.

Many of us have learned to not wait around for a ranger fix. We’ve been here for several years. It sometimes gets better, it sometimes get worse, but we’re literally never, ever, ever going to be a top profession.

If you can’t play ranger as it is, and aren’t a masochist like the rest of us, definitely make a new main.

The pets we have right now are like 6 years old. Knowing what they know now, there is no way they’d make many of these pets with all their ridiculous flaws. I wonder if changing the pet skillbars is just not feasible, which is why they gave us a bunch of new pets that all work pretty well?

Many of the old pets are still pretty solid. Canines are pretty widely used, felines are ubiquitous in PvE and sometimes beast master builds, birds for the F2s and good damage, spiders for the heavy immob, drakes for tankiness aoe and blast finisher.

I’m willing to overlook the pooh-ness of bears, pigs and devourers if they keep adding pets as useful as the new ones. There is really no downside to adding and keeping lots of pets even if half of them are bad, it just gives us more options when we try a new build.

In addition to all the other methods mentioned, you can get exotic gear for karma at each temple in Orr. Karma is otherwise useless, so I definitely recommend that method if you can find the gear you want.

Kodama.6453:

The smoke scale is evading for the attack for 2 seconds. How do you cc something that evades?

You really can’t think of a single way to not die to a pet? The reason he downed those people was they didn’t know what the pet (or rangers skills) did. They just ignored the several seconds of ranger buffing his pet and keyboard mashed into the fight.

Those same ranger skills on birds or dogs will down people too, but people know the brutal charge and lacerating slash animations, especially when it’s enlarged.

Edit: Let’s also point out jaguars can do this while invisible. The whole “oh god rangers are now able to attack us, let’s make a bunch of threads on the ranger forums whining so hard” shtick is getting really, really old. Every single profession in the game has the ability to make a similar video.

Someone dedicated their entire build to a pet that is able to kill someone. Same old song and dance for rangers. If this gets nerfed…. kitten .

AgitatedFox.5287:

You can argue it’s good for PvP too, but it’s really not in my eyes. the meta is so filled with sustain and boons that it’s simply not needed.

This doesn’t make sense to me. The reason there is a bunch of sustain in the meta is because people are bringing it. Now we can bring it too. Complete selfishness has always been the community’s gripe with how ranger plays in PvP. We get some group support and you say we don’t want it now?

I think a druid cele LB and/or torch build will probably be the new ranger meta. Do damage, bring some CC, and then pop the avatar for support. Should be solid in team fights.

AoE stealth is the single worst thing that can ever happen to any game. Buff thieves, completely obliterate their stealth.

Ya i bought the expansion on a whim and I really can’t see myself using druid over regular ranger, which is pretty bad.

If you go underwater it fixes it. Edit, and click the pet controls.

Hopefully, if I ever see a ranger succeeding at anything I will kill my entire family!

This is pretty minor, but it would be amazeballs to have a place to practice all these transforms like celestial avatar. Druid is a relatively short CD, but some of them are pretty long, so it can be tough to get the muscle memory down. Usually when I use a transform I just smash all the buttons because I don’t have time to read the descriptions before it runs out, and then you sit there waiting 2 minutes to try things out again.

I never did learn what those guardian books did.

Bill Freist is now 100 times larger than he was. Deal with it Anet.

Bill?

I need to read up on the new e-spec skills, I’m fighting a lot of people that are landing unexpected results. Like Reaper has a stun I can’t stun break out of?? I still killed him but he locked me up for like 10 seconds, I clearly need to learn that tell.

Am I missing something? That looks totally normal even for the old pets.

Edit: Oh nm, the problem is that the pet actually landed its attacks?

The kitten -kitten eyes seal the deal for me.

Edit: Well that’s an interesting word filter result.

Will anyone be doing that this weekend (in PvP, WvW or raids)?

I’m still really hesitant to buy HoT myself when I don’t know if either ranger or druid will be in a good place.

jcbroe.4329:

What does ranger lack in comparison to other specs, power or otherwise?

• ways to deal with boon stacking enemies
• AoE
• Skill/Utility bar compression
• competitive team support

Basically, almost all ranger specs are damage specs that are very linear in what they can accomplish, and all other classes specs can do a lot more with a single build than ranger can.

Druid sort of addresses some of those, but only by BEING a Druid.

So really, we amplify the scope of “what needs improvements” out to where we start with the question: Are other classes performing too many functions and roles with a single build, or are ranger builds not capable of doing enough?

+1. We’ve all been over these points (and I’d add teleport to the mix of possible combos that could make us shine at something.) I wanted the PvP forum to think about what they expect from a ranger, which I don’t think any non-rangers have ever thought about at all. See the totally not-going-to-put-us-on-a-team WHaO fiasco as evidence of that. I once asked Chaithe (who is just hilariously vitriolic in his disdain of any kind of ranger) what he thought would make rangers good and he said spirits.

It unbalanced the TU/WHaO competition. HS is its own thing. WS is stupid.

Obviously rangers need a boost, and I guess WHaO was a thematically appropriate skill to try this effect on. I guess it could have just as easily gone on Sic’ Em (and with its longer CD, maybe the eles and warriors wouldn’t have thrown such a temper tantrum over it.)

Actually, hey devs, as you look at changing WHaO, why not stick it on something like PM or Sic Em?

Shadelang.3012:

that logic as flawed because signet of stone is superior in every single way except for the stun break.

“SoS is superior in a 2 ways (1 only relevant in PvP and not WvW) while PM is superior in 2 ways” is a better way to put it (and oddly enough, you even listed the 2 ways PM is superior to SoS )

I’ve always maintained PM is a better skill than SoS for a glassy LB. SoS doesn’t get you of of that bonfire or dragon’s breath or nade spam or whatever else is condi-killing you in mere seconds. The stun break on PM can’t be so easily dismissed.

S&R is probably beyond repair as a utility, and I think that’s why it’s now basically a trait.

PM is completely fine, excellent even. SE is good enough that I use it most of the time when I’m roaming in WvW. Needs touched up, especially the bug.

Guard is nonsensical.

The 4 rune bonus no longer applies aegis on a heal skill. I tried logging off, un/re-equiping the armor, and using various different heal skills. Nothing go the aegis to appear. Oddly enough, the 6 rune bonus of gaining regen while blocking still works.

TheGuy.3568:

You have a point. However, whenever I see a question like this I wonder how many players are top tier pvpers and how many are “PUG stomping”. What should you really balance around the minority who can adapt easily or the majority who can not?

The balance is off no matter what level. If you’re mediocre at ranger, you aren’t as good a use of a party slot as a mediocre ele or even a slightly subpar warrior.

Also the point was not to whine that ranger is awful, I really want to know what people and the devs want from ranger.

EDIT: This was originally in the PvP forums, where it made a lot more sense. Rangers already have been through this. The post was aimed at PvP team comps as a whole 5 man team, not rangers. This really shouldn’t have been moved.

First: I can’t immediately find team comps, but we all know the drill. Out of the past 2 years worth of WTS, we’re looking at an average of 0% of the players running ranger, and, let’s guess 20% each running warrior, guard, engi, thief or ele. That’s quite clearly off a bit, but it is close enough.

Next: Let’s assume you’re now a professional PvPer putting together a team to take down the Abjured or any other very high level team. Don’t focus on a specific profession counter, this is a general team. This is not about PUG stomping, because “my team uses a ranger and we do just fine.”

Finally: Let’s ignore the WHaO change. Not only is it getting nerfed, it also would not have put a ranger in any of the next WTS teams. (“Rangers now have access to self buffs, let’s get one on our team.”) The LB and signet buffs did not accomplish the goal. One ranger tried back in march, but the team declared the ranger experiment a failure and disbanded.

What is your personal fix? Does the community throw a temper tantrum if your plans succeeds in getting a ranger on to a top team?