closing the gap 1800 range is pretty difficult in most cases.
What build are you running? If it’s anything other than necro you’re totally and horrifically incompetent. Hell thieves can close the gap from like 2500 range. If it’s necro, you’re not playing the fight correctly.
Why would you want to nerf a profession most people don’t feel is as strong as the others? To quiet down a handful of people who have no idea what’s going on? They’ll just complain about something else; you can’t pacify them nor should you try.
1) SoS doesn’t last as long as you stated, and doesn’t protect against CC OR condis, the two biggest weakenesses of zerker rangers. I’m going for champion genius right now and SoS is completely ignorable, laughable even. (This is further compounded by the meta LB build not running any condi removal…..)
2) RF isn’t that great of a skill, isn’t the bulk of the threat of a good ranger, and is complete garbage compared to the damage skills of other professions.
3) Not even about rangers.
This is another L2P thread. Most people on the ranger forum and in the PvP world in general don’t even feel power ranger is in a good enough state to really warrant on a spot on a team over other professions, including the LB ranger that plays on a top tier team.
That said, I usually swap to 1H sword when either:
I need to be on the defensive and get in some extra evades
I’m heavily on the offensive and want to stick to you like white on rice
+1
Sword can either be way more defensive than GS or way more offensive than GS depending on the offhand and intent. GS is happily in the middle.
I always use 1h sword because I only play power ranger in WvW where the mobility is too important to give up. You don’t often get outnumbered in PvP if you’re paying attention. You get outnumbered all the time in WvW.
On top of that, for 1v1 the greater offense of the 1h sword is what I want, especially that I’ve always based my playstyle around CC. I.e. find some noob LB ranger who thinks he’s amazing for running SoS with no condi clears, CC the hell out of him and burn him down with sword auto. That winds up doing more damage than maul and keeps insane pressure on the target.
Anet has done an excellent job making sure all professions are at least happily acceptable at every single type of every single game mode. Unless you’re in a rewarded tournament for one of the game modes, don’t worry at all about your profession.
I’m not talking about viable, whatever that means. I’m talking about burst, of which rangers have none aside from a couple melee skills.
In short, no burst, no instacast, and no teles means not a very good DPS role.
Edit: I’m not necessarily saying we need burst. Ranger is built around sustained damage and our own sustained survival, no matter what possible build you’re running… it’s just what the devs did with the entire profession. That’s why I think power ranger is having trouble being shoved in to the meta, and why condi ranger works so effortlessly.
Melee ranger has more burst than LB? I don’t think so…
The damage modifier on RF is 1320*3.75
The damage modifier on Maul is 434*1.5
Plus maul is a lot harder to land, and you’re getting hit while you do it.
GS is weak. Seriously weak. Especially compared to Guard GS.
I was thinking of path of scars, but anyway, maul hits insanely hard when buffed by moment of clarity and any number of other things like signet of the hunt or whatever. We don’t have a really standard melee build so it’s hard to say what said melee ranger is running. If you want burst you probably at least have s/a and gs with MoC. Counterattack is also worth mentioning.
RF isn’t burst at all when you compare to how other classes can stack their damage so everything lands instantly. Your guardian greatsword example is complete pooh compared to the total of the shield and meditation explosion. Same thing with the mesmer greatsword actually. All the examples I listed are insta-cast or nearly so.
In addition to the lack of teles, rangers also lack burst. Every other berserker class out there has a true burst, unloading lethal amounts of damage instantly or nearly instantly (maybe not necros, I’m not terribly familiar with their “meta” build.) LB rangers do good damage, but it isn’t fast enough. Many of the meta builds can simply outsustain a “burst” by 2 longbow rangers, where basically no one can survive a burst from 2 of any panic strike thief, medi guard, GS mesmer, even a static discharge engi because you don’t have time to react.
Melee rangers pack way more burst than and even more mobility than LB rangers. I’m pretty surprised more people aren’t trying those. They still fall flat from lack of teles, and despite insane 1v1 abilities, don’t have the sustainability of a thief.
What if someone is color blind, they will not be able to tell the difference between the two shades of green.
I’m color blind. Telling shades is actually really easy, it’s telling the actual colors apart that is hard. So I can tell two shades apart probably better than a non-color blind person, but red and green I get confused.
Didn’t he put up a thread on the states of professions in PvP Forum awhile back? In it he stated his view on the professions but when he came to Ranger, he said that he has no idea because he has zero interest in the Ranger.
Or was that someone else? I forget.
Might be him, he clearly doesn’t care about ranger. I don’t blame him for that (I know very little about playing a mesmer properly) but it is certainly a bit of a weakness in his game. He was downright confused at how hard counterattack hit, which needless to say could get you in trouble.
That was really impressive, usually don’t see phanta getting rekt in 1v1s like that ^^
He has NO IDEA what rangers do. There is a thread up on the PvP forum where he teaches some streamer about GW2. When he gets to ranger he can’t even put the right traits on a LB build and he has little idea what the skills do. Pretty amusing.
Also, anyone tried running settler regen bunker? i find it to be almost as good as rabid SB bleed stack.
For a long time when spirits were meta that’s what I ran. SB, stone and sun spirit, guard, settlers amulet. You are almost literally unkillable, bring some pretty decent team support, and do some decent damage. It’s good enough I’d even run it today if I found it fun, which I don’t. The only difference is I would make the spirits non-mobile and place them in positions where a D/D ele or nades wouldn’t kill them.
Looks fine. Krait runes will bump up your entangle condi burst, but you won’t reach 100% bleed duration without trying for it. That may or may not be important to you. I don’t even try anymore because the meta is so condi-cleansy.
The condi runes are mostly crap though, pretty much your only other choice is undead. Undead is actually pretty decent, just a little more on the defensive side.
Ok just played a game with settlers and goes really well. Also helps that there is a high amount of power rangers in ranked right now which kind of makes people jump you.
Even though condi ranger is built for side nodes, going mid at the start is often massively beneficial to your team because people will focus the ever loving kitten out of you. Just stay alive and your team should win the fight. I guess most people aren’t familiar with condi rangers or something, no idea why they’re so slow to realize you aren’t going to die. I was watching Five Gauge 2 v1 a condi ranger the other day and they could not hurt the guy. It was hysterical. (Was that you Shadow Pass? He had shadow in his name.)
Rabid is better than carrion in my opinion. It helps a lot with the berserker meta, and opens up the awesome on-crit sigils. If you go rabid, you’ll almost certainly want to take the trait sharpened edges instead of keen edge, and signet of renewal to help with the condis.
I guess I’m coming from the fact that condi ranger is one of the most survivable builds around, so SoS is a bit overkill. I also would pick rabid or cele over carrion.
At any rate, the OP has seen arguments for both and can consider both.
Frost spirit is the meta. The other spirits are mostly useless in PvE. On very rare occasions you can find a use for them, depending on group comp and dungeon content. For example if you had like 4 thieves with you in CoF path two, you might use stone spirit at the assassins.
If I wanted a team support, I’d run spirit build which involves the signet.
It doesn’t need to be all or nothing. Any opportunity to help your team should be at least considered. There aren’t a ton of 1v1s that are settled as 1v1s, so building entirely selfishly isn’t needed or necessarily helpful.
If a necro condi bombs the first team fight, SoR could be the difference between winning and losing the match.
A bit of testing with trying to hide bleed stacks vs spam reapplying is that I needed to give up krate to make it work, but nightmare is fine IMO, also had to go for 2 into BM instead of the usual marks or skermishing setup because the randomness of those bleeds could mess up the hiding. I also couldn’t put geomancy on the s/t set.
I stopped using krait runes because the meta is so condi-cleanse spammy. That’s also why I focused on the bleed on crit rather than big bleed stacks. It also doesn’t hurt that sword/torch can’t apply bleeds (thus the celestial and berserker stuff mixed in.)
Wow, even though it effectively eliminates our profession for PvP roaming, I will be pretty sad if they require LoS for teles. That’s such an interesting part of the game. Oh well, I guess it will just focus things on fighting more rather than running around.
Phantaram described thief as the only “required” class due to the group stealth burst. Seems a little weird because IIRC they don’t always open in stealth. Maybe I just don’t remember those first few seconds every time though.
On my WvW “condi” build, I’m currently roaming in a mix of rabid, berserker and cele with a sigil of perception for something like 75% crit chance (guessing off the top of my head.) My sword has the sigil that procs bleeding on crits, and I’m using sharpened edges and poison master. The cripple, bleeding, and poison application is non-stop, so a lot of the condi removals don’t do all that much, especially with burning on the bottom. Combined with the additional “condi” of having a moderate amount of power and ferocity, and it consistently brings down experienced D/D eles, albeit after a lengthy fight.
In PvP I use the cele amulet, which isn’t as good obviously, but it still gives you a stalemate or win. Constant poison is very strong against healing classes obviously.
I wholeheartedly agree with you OP, although I don’t know that them playing LB in PvP will change their perception much. If they don’t know how PvP works, they’ll hotjoin, +1 a bunch of fights and get a bunch of "kills"* and think they’re doing anything. On the other hand, no one wants these buffoons in ranked, which would be the best place to show them power LB isn’t OP.
Anywho, on the day the RF buff came out I volunteered to duel anyone who wanted to use a power LB and show them the weakenesses, but no one ever took me up on it. These kinds of people are not interesting in learning. The truly average player just hops on his ranger, sees what all the fuss is about, and doesn’t whine to random strangers. LB complainers are outliers.
*Fun fact: One of my first ever PvP games on a ranger shortly after launch, I took LB/SB and racked up like 28 kills. How many of them did I cause? I dunno, maybe 1?
Once you get in to PvP you’re going to have different ideas about what you want. Everyone comes in to a game they’ve never played and says “I want to do huge damage, it’s ok if I’m squishy.” Then you get the snot kicked out of you for 100 games in a row.
Just play PvP and see what you wind up playing rather than trying to force yourself to play something without understanding the game mode.
I cant wait till we get a new map. Will be refreshing after the same ole borderland we have for ages. Lets just wait and see how it plays out? Cause according to all these threads there is no room for roamers – no room for open field fights or room for zerg vs zerg and you havent set a single foot on it to see how the playerbase will play it? Jeeze i can understand why Anet does not reply that much cause really nothing is ok.
Well Anet is batting 0 for new WvW maps. We have cause to be concerned with what they think we want.
This looks really suspicious considering what an unmitigated disaster EotM is.
The best part about the current WvW maps is how simple they are, so we can concentrate on fighting each other. I get the feeling they’re trying to force us in to a playstyle WvWers have repeatedly said we don’t want.
If I can be a mediocre player and do dungeons with the sword while black-out drunk and not going down, no one has any excuses that “sword is too hard”.
There was a famous study you’ve probably heard of where basketball players were given glasses that turned their vision upside down. After a short while, they were all sinking their shots with just as much consistency as without the glasses. I.e., try a couple dungeon runs (even the same one so you learn patterns) and within a day you’ll be able to use a sword to maximize DPS and not sacrifice fun. AND this translates well to WvW and PvP where sword is one of our most important weapons.
There would be something really weird about having a simian as a pet. I know ravens are supposed to be smarter than chimps, but they don’t look like people.
It probably doesn’t help that there was a race called “simians” in GW1 that seemed to have a primitive culture and used magic. It would be like having a hylek mercenary instead of a pet.
Since it sounds like you’re just getting in to PvP, check out this site to see what other players are running so you know what your up against. You’re going to get absolutely wrecked by everyone if you don’t know what abilities they’re using.
The pet does resume if interrupted, although I’ve only ever had it happen in PvE, since in PvP people just throw on stability and stomp me >_>.
I’ve seen it happen when we down each other. The other player will use their downed state skill to interrupt/pull/fear the pet, but he comes back to me. And that’s pretty much the only time licking wounds is of any use in PvP.
I’m the biggest skeptic of LBs vs the role of a super mobile thief, but even I can see how powerful they are on at least one map. I’d much rather have a good power LB than a good thief on Foefire. That team I mentioned that ran 2 condi rangers last week actually had them both on power for Foefire.
Typical condi spec with cele amulet. It’s what I run actually, only he had a shortbow instead of axe. Gives your autoattacks bit more punch so you aren’t countered by the condi-removal meta, and healing and vit never hurt anyone.
Hello fellow rangers. Thanks for the support. I know that I’m not the first ranger to be on a top team but I believe I am the first that wasn’t a spirit ranger or a beast master ranger which is cool for me (albeit I did have to play those builds to stay competitive at one point).
My comment wasn’t directed at you, just clarifying the situation for those thinking rangers have always been useless in PvP. People forget the past very quickly. One example I love is how utterly unplayed warriors were after the 100-blade fiasco and nerf. NO one played warrior. Every class has had their heyday or nerf.
In addition to spirit rangers, and I don’t know how “top team” we’re talking, but Apex Prime ran a cele ranger Sunday, and the week before that some team I can’t recall ran 2 condi rangers. The profession always makes an appearance.
Don’t be over dramatic, there have been tons of ranger in just about every tournament since game launch, and many on winning teams. I think the very first NA vs EU tourney had 4/10 rangers IIRC.
Every Sunday there are multiple rangers, with some teams even running 2.
Hey guys. I tried to do something that the game didn’t allow and I couldn’t do it. Can we change the game to fit my personal whims? I’m pretty terrible.
I’ve actually been thinking they may make a warrior or thief specialization into the “hunter” or “archer” some people seem to want. Those too classes already are basically petless rangers, but apparently people get hung up on the name when I’ve mentioned that in the past. A norn “hunter” specialized warrior that uses longbow and axe dagger or something would fill the classic D&D hunter role just fine.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Rangers are above average in both group and solo Arah runs, what more could you make fun of? 5 man bearbow parties?
