Guild Wars 2

It’s sort of the way it is, but thats a good thing, since your pet is dying and not you.

Next and mainly, keep your pet alive via pet swapping.

Finally, keep both pets alive via recalling them if there is no other choice and moving forward yourself. Taking aggro to save your pet will pay off when someone jumps you and you have a living pet.

Ambush.3251:

Nice gameplay, but I don’t understand the choice of the axe. The 4 isn’t really useful and he barely use the 5.

Dagger 4 and 5 will win you the fight through attrition. Axe 4 and 5 can be much more decisive. Neither is necessarily better, just different.

You guys are acting as though entangle is the old 20 second lockdown. It lasts 5 seconds tops, so it doesn’t matter how quickly someone’s sword tele comes off recharge if you use it at the right time. All you want to do is immobilize the thief for even a couple seconds, and an immobilized thief is in a very bad spot. He can eat a maul, full RF, sit in a bonfire, etc.

You want to have the target unable to immediately get out, and ideally at like half health so you can end it right there. Entangle is for late in the fight to push you over the edge when things are all tied up.

And then there are multi target scenarios where you can really get creative with it. Preventing rezzes and peels and things like that.

It looks like that build editor is slightly out of date? This is the one most people seem to like: http://en.gw2skills.net/

Zenith.7301:

Why are people taking Entangle over RAO? Thieves are immune to entangle due to ports as well as eles, mesmers have staff to port out of it too on a low cd.

They are most definitely not immune, they have to use skills to get out. Either they use the teles to get out and can’t use them in another emergency, or you’ve already forced another emergency and now they can’t get out of entangle. That’s one of the main reasons I almost always use MT, drakehound and wolf, regardless of what build I’m running.

You can’t just spam entangle and expect it to land on anyone. They’ll just dodge it if nothing else.

Harnel.6810:

It can be in three circumstances. The first is that if you’re invisible, it’s much easier to stomp people. The second is for the Remorsless Marksmanship Grandmaster Trait, which makes it so that every time you get a kill or go into stealth you get Opening Strike back. Third, if you’ve over-aggroed in pve it’s a good way to get them off you.

It’s useful for a whole lot more than those 3. But ya, sounds like you had barrage going. Skill works fine for me.

Remember that if you’re facing the wrong direction of your opponent and holding down the mouse to look another direction, your character won’t auto-rotate to use the skill, it will just go on a short recharge.

I know most people will look down on it, but I use a rabid reve and round out my power through fast spirit swapping + sigil of battle.

Soilder.3607:

Honestly though, thieves never seem to stay in the entangled vines as they always have something to get them out, like stealth or teleports. With RaO you run the risk of having them take you 20s of stability. I’d personally use RaO and wait till they pop their steal until using it.

They do have a lot of ways to get out, but you have a pretty good idea what teles they’ll be running. You have to have restraint using entangle on thieves and mesmers, but when you wait them out, the effect can be devastating since they’re so fragile.

And speaking of counting teles, remember when fighting thieves to move the fight to the point of their initial sword tele to cut off their escape.

For roaming, entangle helps you land your melee bursts better. Some opponents will get completely shut down by it if you use it at the right time, usually LB rangers, engies and necros. RaO is just a really good do-everything kind of skill, but you already have plenty of fury and increased movement speed. The stability helps against engies and terrormancers and what not, but that’s more of a PvP thing IMO.

Builds looks solid. I’d personally take entangle, but either is really good.

Wolves can’t proc MoC.

anduriell.6280:

Also trying to make the ranger pure melee is like trying to make the guardian pure ranged. It will not work

That’s shocking news to the many of us on this forum who have logged hundreds or thousands of hours playing melee ranger.

It scales with your healing power. I haven’t used it enough to remember what the heal is, but it’s definitely higher than 1k. It’s a very reasonable skill, it’s just the line isn’t used much in PvP.

Tarkan.5609:

so far i heard spider, wolves, dogs, birds and bears for WvW, so i guess thats about that?

Wolf > drakehound/jungle spider > river drake/birds > cats, are all good WvW pets.

Moas are unfavorable, and pigs and bears are so terrible they usually aren’t worth considering. There is the rare player who takes a moa, bear, or pig for some legit reason that they’ve made work for themselves, but don’t even think about taking those pets until you understand all the pets extremely thoroughly and can come up with a good reason to take them.

Edit: Oh ya, devourers exist as well. They are beyond useless. Never, ever use them.

Ambush.3251:

Birds are slow to react and rarely reach the target.

You got that backwards. Birds give AoE swiftness, which makes them a decent option for a roaming melee ranger. It helps both the ranger and the pet reach their moving target. They also do the 2nd most damage of the pet families, and their F2s are solid.

100b never needed to be nerfed. That started a looong period of warriors being nearly unusable in PvP. Back in the day I think it was only the guy ‘cigarettes and coffee’ or whatever his name was that even dared play a warrior in tournies, and even he thought it wasn’t viable.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/index.php?title=MetaBattle_Build_Wiki

Lettuce.2945:

Players that aren’t willing to try things out will never improve. So his loss. I did say it first here. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a meta shift to that soon.

The old LB meta was 60260, which is the same concept of what you’re running (sturdier LB.) It went away because full glass became so viable, and people got better at playing it. I’ve been roaming with the LB in WvW since the beginning, so I have a pretty good idea of how to survive while playing glassy builds.

I’ve run berserker XX66X for hundreds of hours roaming in WvW, so I know exactly the capability of your build. I’m not missing out on not using this in PvP because I know what it does and don’t feel it fits in to a team comp. I could alter it in any of half a dozen ways to make it fit my criteria and preserve what you’re trying to accomplish with making a sturdier build.

It just doesn’t make sense to me to get 100% of your damage from an amulet rather than percentage damage boosts, shorter skill recharges, instant-hit arrows, things like that. Even your melee swap is being neglected trait-wise.

I agree with sminkiottone, that’s a very rough matchup for spirits.

Engis are super weak against CC and not amazing against your own conditions, so that’s how you must win, especially if he’s rabid and not celestial. I run MT, entangle, drakehound and wolf and that helps a lot. If you can chain CC him and get behind him, he can’t attack you and your SB will hit the bleed damage.

Also make sure you know what the bombs do so you can dodge them. Take your engi out in to PvE and just throw bombs for a couple minutes until you get the timing of the explosions down.

silvermember.8941:

class specific daily seems like the type of thing a PvE designer thought it would be a great idea.

They actually worked on me. I now have 4 professions I enjoy playing regularly in PvP instead of 1 or 2. It’s people’s ridiculous ideas about rewards (like skyhammer farming, seriously how lame do you have to be to farm pvp rank??) that mess up the system. Can’t fix stupid. You can’t even see AP in PvP matches!

I don’t actually run LB at all in PvP, nor was I trying to bash lettuce (despite what he seems to think!) I just think it’s really important to look at a build honestly enough to judge whether your spot is better filled by someone running a more conventional build or even a different profession. Usually the meta builds are the meta for a very good reason.

I have no doubt I could 1v1 someone while running lettuce’s build, but I still wouldn’t run it on a team slot.

Warhorn is too weak for 1v1s, I’d recommend swapping sharpening stone for signet of the hunt and using s/t. Your damage will improve despite “losing” a utility, and it will buff your pet damage. Also you can always swap the signet out if you see the enemy coming.

You could also consider a bird for a swiftness, but that’s only for in-combat.

Lettuce.2945:

Like I said, I’m more than glad to demonstrate how good the build is. You can use your glass ranger or condi ranger against it. The spike is nearly the same as a glass ranger. I don’t know why you are too stubborn to even try it out in real pvp. Everyone’s said the same thing to me, then tried it and ends up using it themselves for tpvp.

I’m not talking about dueling, I’m talking about PvP. I guess to simplify this question, what are you bringing that an ele doesn’t do significantly better?

Someone was killed by a LB ranger recently…

Benjamin.8237:

Koroshi is a good WvW player and you’ll find him on his engie and occasionally ranger quite a bit there. I wouldn’t go as far to say he’s a good PvPer though.

I would. You could argue about his rotations and I would buy that, but he has an uncanny ability to win 1v2s, or at least tie down a 1v4 at far or something else ridiculous. He’s a very, very solid player. Perhaps his roaming mentality of me vs the world gets in the way of his PvP, but it’s still a joy to watch.

Lettuce.2945:

It’s about clears and such. The build was made in the sense of being in an outnumbered fight. You could be super DPS but if you don’t trait for clears and such…It’s hard to stay alive when you are focused. We both know how much people hate rangers. Amirite?

Sure I get what you’re doing. You have to ask yourself if a half bunker ranger with low spike potential and no AoE is a better slot than a celestial ele or something though, which has both more damage and more sustain.

Glass LBs are popular because they out spike most other builds currently being run, and condi rangers are significantly tankier than your build.

I think you’d be better off taking a celestial amulet and using axe/dagger on swap or something like that, using the LB just for opportunity support like if you were holding home on foefire and moved to support mid from the cliff. Although the arrows wouldn’t land consistently from that distance without RtW.

I’m not referring to WvW stuff? Where did you get that?

Anywho, I have lots of experience using XX66X with berserker, but I use the traits to augment my weapons. You’d be just a durable using a valks amulet using 60260 or some other mix of offense and defense, and do a lot more damage. Clearly you aren’t interested in that type of gameplay and that’s fine. Whatever works for you.

Brazil is a surprisingly bad ranger player, he’s just really really good at PvE and it covers up all his profession-specific mistakes. :P His videos are good stuff.

SirKoroshi and Flopy the Rabbit on youtube are both worth watching if you like competitive rangers, although I think Koroshi more uses his rangers on twitch streams. He’s also not a ranger main, just a really good PvPer.

You’re awfully defensive lettuce…

I’d still like to know why none of your traits benefit your weapon. Your arrows are strafable, your skills recharge longer, you have no bonus damage, etc. I wonder if you’d be better off going damage with your traits and taking something like valks, cavs, soldiers etc.

LB rangers when well played are already extremely durable assuming they aren’t meant to stand on point. I’m not really seeing what you’re gaining here?

It looks like a dueling build where you outlast the other guy, not so much a PvP build.

eldenbri.1059:

If the pet is out of range for a ranged attack, and I haven’t given it any other instructions, is there any reason that it wouldn’t be closing on the target that I’m attacking?

Yup, usually a terrain difference, and/or you switching targets. You see this all the time in the PvP maps. An example would be you fight off enemy A at clocktower who bails, you don’t call back your pet, it chases enemy A and is not in range to help you fight enemy B who just showed up. Eventually it will move back to you, but your special ability will say “out of range”.

It’s often better to swap pets even if you’re in combat rather than wait for the pet to navigate stairs or other level changes.

Press F2 and nothing seems to happen. I sometimes see “pet is out of range” in the combat log, but what should the pet do in this case?
This means the pet has a targeted ability and it’s way too far away to even consider using it. Nothing happens in that case.

- Press F2 and the button “pulses”
The ability is in the works, like if your pet just got knocked down it will try to stand and up reuse it, or if it’s repositioning because a target is close enough but still out of range. Also lag will do this.

- Press F2 and the pet starts attack, but stops before using all five
If you issue another command to your pet you can interrupt the special attack. Also any number of regular combat things can stop it, like the target dying, moving behind the drake (I think that applies to river drake, not 100% on that), drake getting CCd, etc.

- Press F3 and the pet appears to stay engaged for a few more seconds
You may need to recall it more than once. If you recall it and then attack, it will reengage. Anytime you start attacking something new or re-hit the autoattack you’ll need to recall it. Also if the pet is mid action there will be a slight delay.

Dismissing rangers is usually a solid sign the player has not even the slightest idea what they’re talking about. A lot of people do it because they hear others doing it, and don’t actually have any real knowledge or experience to back it up.

And SoR! One of the best skills in the game.

Many of the individual pieces of your build are incredibly useful in PvP. Adjust and give it a whirl, you might like it. Or if you’re not dead set on ranger, maybe try a shout-heal warrior or any of the other popular “healing” builds in PvP. I also enjoy playing an altruistic healing guardian in the WvW zerg sometimes (usually when I’m drunk.)

I had a ton of fun playing these types of builds in GW1, but they really just don’t work in GW2. Here is a video where a GW2 player Wooden Potatoes makes one of, or the highest possible healing builds in the game, way out-healing yours, and still thinks it sucks:

If you want to do team support, try to modify your build to work in PvP. There are several different professions that focus on healing/condi removal in the meta at the moment. See if you can come up with a self-reliant build that does some damage and can also keep teammates up.

scerevisiae.1972:

Just use GS.

Maximum Potato.5923:

This is a huge issue for me, since I’m a perfectionist and I don’t feel I’m contributing to dungeon runs unless I’m doing optimal damage.

Also the obligatory 17% is not a trivial DPS increase.

Have you tried using a dagger offhand? The PvE meta is offhand is axe, but a dagger will get you an extra evade that breaks the autoattack chain. Also don’t spam the 1 button, but take it slower at first so that if the boss uses a big tell, you aren’t mid-chain.

I always suggest running around the open world to learn sword. Try using it on easy enemies with big tells like ettin.

Re: bouncing around the room, even if you have a target, if you swing with the auotattack and hit something else while not hitting your target, you’ll go flying. It can help to continually hit “target closest enemy” when you’re in a trash fight. (Note, you can use this to get closer to your actual target faster by bouncing off other enemies once you get used to it.)

The last thing, do you know the dungeon encounters well? If you’re sure of when you need to dodge you have a lot more time than if you’re trying to dodge right as the attack is happening.

Lettuce.2945:

This build hits almost just as hard as full zerkbow but has way better survivability. Why do people think it’s a condi spec? It’s not always one. I use it as a zerk set up.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjUq0yaDLesQ1aABhaVA0+FChl1dTcDfNA-TpBFwACuAAIOCA12fYxhAoaZAAPAAA

Can easily swap out signet of stone with renewal and emp bond with bark skin depending on the situation.

Why not take tankier gear and traits that benefit your LB?

It sounds like it’s a personal playstyle thing. My perspective is coming form a WvW roaming berserker LB ranger and a condi PvP ranger against glass LBs. On both of them I use entangle, wolf, drakehound, and usually muddy terrain.

The LB ranger, I just CC people until the die. I ran that back even before the RF or RtW buffs. If someone (usually war) gets past the CC, I swap to s/d and outdamage them while evading. But if something like a condi necro or engi gets past, I asplode in seconds, my only shot is SoR.

In PvP, I play against LB rangers. I have way more CC options than any LB ranger has escapes, and sooner or later I’m going to unload a geo sigil, bonfire, spliteblade, etc. burst on them and they’re toast.

That’s my perspective on why I’d never run SoS on LB. Well I shouldn’t say never, it is a good skill, it just doesn’t fit my playstyle at all.

If they’re using a LB and removing condis with LR, then it’s 6XX6X. It’s not focused at all on condi damage though, and if their dagger is causing moderate condi they’re probably mixing in some celestial gear to round their stats out.

Anything else is a custom build that multiple rangers won’t all be running.

XX66X is pretty rarely a LB build. It might be someone’s custom dueling build.

Typical WvW LB builds that aren’t pure glass and aren’t dueling builds would be 6X6XX for empathic bond and toughness or 6XX6X for survival of the fittest and vitality. The 6 in marksmanship is taken almost 100% of the time because you need read the wind for arrows to hit consistently.

XX66X is usually a condi build, and you might be mistaking a shortbow for a longbow.

The thing is if they had unique character glows for all the different types of immunities, the fight would be more confusing than it is now, where you just have to pay attention.

For example you’d need an effect for true invulnerability, you’d need one for signet of stone that doesn’t prevent CC or condis, you’d need one for defiant stance that doesn’t prevent anything but instead absorbs damage, you’d need one for berserker stance that doesn’t prevent CC or direct damage but does prevent condis, you’d need one for protect me that doesn’t prevent anything but instead transfers damage to the pet, etc etc. etc.

The way it is works without making things overly complicated. The designers have talked about how they’re constantly trying to simplify the huge graphical mess they’ve made. There may indeed be a better way to indicate various effects, but we don’t want them to go backwards with it. Right now it at least works, so I’d be pretty hesitant to start adding random graphical effects.

At the very least, if you hit a ranger and do zero damage, you know what’s going on.

It’s worth bringing up that glass LB’s 2 greatest weakeness are condi and CC, neither of which SoS protects against. I know I’m in the extreme minority, but I would never take SoS on a glass LB. Sort of off topic but anyway.

No, I don’t have any issues other than correcting this statement, which is inaccurate when you consider RtW, which as I said almost all LB rangers take.

Killyox.3950:

If you bring pvp into matter I can make your ranger miss most of his attacks at 1500 range as well Hectic strafing is known to screw with aiming since beta.

The arrows cannot be dodged other than to push the dodge button. If you consider that instant or not is semantics; they hit 100% of the time.

Yes the affect is only outdone by perhaps that gigantic guardian bubble. It’s very noticeable.

The signet active effects are really quite massive, and are doubled up on the pet. There is no way you’re going to miss it or guess the wrong signet if you’re paying attention to the ranger. The skill affects of just about every other skill on every other profession are far more subtle.

On top of all that, the use of signets is very predictable. First of all notice which signets a ranger is running before he uses them because you need to plan what you’re doing and are not just spamming. If you condi bomb a ranger or his allies, he’ll use SoR 95% of the time. If you put direct pressure on a ranger he’ll use SoS 90% of the time.

Also SoR is pretty uncommon among people who don’t main ranger, so signet active = he’s immune to direct damage, use CC and condi instead.

The signet active effects are really quite massive, and are doubled up on the pet. There is no way you’re going to miss it or guess the wrong signet if you’re paying attention to the ranger. The skill affects of just about every other skill on every other profession are far more subtle.

On top of all that, the use of signets is very predictable. First of all notice which signets a ranger is running before he uses them because you need to plan what you’re doing and are not just spamming. If you condi bomb a ranger or his allies, he’ll use SoR 95% of the time. If you put direct pressure on a ranger he’ll use SoS 90% of the time.

Bran.7425:

Not at all that is just perception fooling you there, that and how stupid slow the projectiles were in the beginning. Read the Wind would have been deleted if it had launched in the beginning of the game.

It hits quick enough so that it’s not possible to avoid the projectiles in any way. Jcbroe even did tests where he used movement skills like savage leap at max range to try make the arrows miss and they still hit. I’ve never had an arrow miss while using RtW, and I’ve played a reasonably large amount of time with LB in WvW.

Edit:
Here is jcbroe’s test paraphrased.

jcbroe.4329:

As far as I can guesstimate, out to the realm of about 1800 range (manually pressing the auto and using skills of course), not a single attack was missed from strafing.

Even tried it with leaps as movement modifiers, every attack was still successful.

The testing conditions were with Eagle Eye and Read the Wind being used at maximum effective range in a PvP server with both no speed boosts, speed boosts, and movement skills being used.

The more I play the more I think the whole differences in profession skill is stupid. People always claim ele and engi require the most skill, but really is pressing 2 buttons instead of 1 for a healing effect (e.g. regenerating mist and big ol’ bomb together) "skillful’? Is it more skillful to proc yourself a second heal with swoop and healing spring than it is for a warrior to knock you down and then hundred blades on you?

There are most certainly good and bad players, but all the professions have their own combos that are confused with skill. You may not know the combos, but once you know they exist, executing them isn’t hard. Engis have more combos than other professions, so you have to remember more. I don’t think that’s skill.

And for all classes, condi is easier than power because condi doesn’t need much of an investment to reach max possible damage, so you can stick it in defense. Not only that, the defensive traitlines often give access to condi damage so you have no choice but to be tankier/easier.

/esoteric rambling

I’m not a fan of poison trap because posion is so easily come by, especially as a ranger. I don’t agree with not taking spike, as you can never have too many bleeds.

Another solid option would be something like flame, spike and lightning reflexes or any of the signets (expect probably SotW, the other 3 would help you though.)