Guild Wars 2

You can try to keep the pets alive via swapping, which works until it magically explodes at some random point. The other option is to keep one in reserve, probably a wolf, and swap to it and use the F2 at an important moment. If you’re not in the very thick of an AoE it should go off.

Or if you meant big fight in PvP, you have to keep the pets alive.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

swap your zerk boots/shoulders and gloves for Valk for a power boost you’ll loose like 4% crit hit for a extra 80power thanks to the vit, it balances to higher crit damage total.

You not taking vigorous spirits? :O

Eurantien.4632:

- Pet AI does not use F2 skills at their current position but run to the target (absolutely brutal in sPvP when I NEEEEEED that fear RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE not over there in a couple seconds. Doing the finger dance to get my pet to fear right here right now (especially when I lost my target to stealth) is a huge nuisance and makes playing a ranger at top tier incredibly difficult given the fast pace of the game.
- we cannot entirely choose when the other pet active skills are used.

Yup. These and the autoattack failure are my issues.

To be fair, these don’t come up that much against most players, but when you’re trying to squeeze that extra bit out against a good player, it hurts. I could make a Benny Hill video of me paralyzing engineers at max range with a drakehound, but I could also make a video of me getting stomped while being rezzed by 3 players because the wolf fear didn’t go off in the right place.

Edit: I just noticed there is in fact a Benny Hill video post near this one.

solrik.6028:

Sword:
- While it roots you in place, you can easily fly through an enemy zerg, to the backlines, by using the basic attacks.

I do this, works really well with double melee. You get to the backlines without using any of your cooldowns other than RaO, so you are basically guaranteed to get out.

solrik.6028:

- Requires skill, but the basic attack’s third attack can be used for escaping if timing it right… very difficult to do and I haven’t seen anyone do it.

I do this! It’s habit more than skill. One of the single greatest things a ranger can learn how to do is drop a target, we have so many abilities that depend on it. Also the poster FrauFrau (don’t think she plays or at least posts anymore) has a lot of YT videos of her using this in action.

solrik.6028:

Side note:
It is wrong to even consider sword’s basic attack damage because it’s very unlikely that you’re going to or will be able to just root yourself on the enemy with it, rather than to use the evade skills.

On paper this is true, but in reality I find it isn’t. This is the single biggest reason I run a celestial amulet in PvP over rabid. A few scenarios:

• I run double canines with drakehound, entangle, and lately muddy terrain, so it’s not uncommon for me to be attacking the back of an enemy. Bonfire + sword autoattack really hurts there.

• Panicking enemies often try to kite you if near death, and sword autoattack not only stops the kiting but also does the most damage.

• Once the enemy PvP team realizes you’re a tanky condi ranger and not an easy kill, they’ll often go after softer targets, which can again open up your autoattack.

• One final note, not related to autoattack, but to celestial power damage, is that all the sword attacks as well as the dagger attacks hit quite hard, relatively speaking. It starts to add up, and I view them as an additional “condition”.

S/A and keep a GS in your inventory for the occasional fight (too hard with sword, need longer range, etc.) or skip.

xGraver.4918:

You ppl make me laugh.

Where the hell do you ppl get such dreams and hopes for wvw??
There isn’t even 1 WvW dev in Anet last 2 were but to LS.

They’re obviously doing something with WvW or we wouldn’t have had sneak attack. Adding a new wvw exp line wouldn’t require a full dev team working 24/7.

If any WvW content is added I think it would be a small number of (hopefully simple) maps and some more stuff to spend points on. Everything else I’d want would be minor changes best handled through things like Sneak Attack trials. I wouldn’t want a massive overhaul of WvW that ruins everything.

That was my point. This is only good for new players that don’t know the basics, however it leaves out one of the biggest basics of all: what a ranger is. I’m not trying to disrespect the guide via that sarcasm but rather call attention to the fact it is in fact a terrible guide for that reason.

LB is best used at extreme range, and if that goes wrong people switch to melee for defense and movement. Mainhand axe has no movement and minimal defense. However:

If you really want to use that setup, I’d concentrate on using the axes in very close range and just carry the LB for when opportunity presents itself and/or closing distance. For WvW you’d probably be looking at something celestial-eque, perhaps slanting slightly towards soldiers gear. Another option would be a beastmaster build and stacking a constant 25 stacks of might on your pet via fortifying bond.

For competitive, sword… the movement is just sooo much ridiculously higher than GS.

There are a ton of other small reasons I always have one equipped, like the built in poison, evades, and 3 cripples, but 6 out of 8 of the skills on a s/d are movement skills. That’s crazy!

benjenx.6427:

This guide is not a roaming guide, this guide is not a GvG guide. This talks about WvW as a whole gametype, of which roamers and GvGers are but parts of the whole.

So one of, if not the best, roaming profession should not be mentioned at all? In a “guide”? Makes sense.

benjenx.6427:

And in terms of PPT, raiding guilds who GvG impact PPT FAR more than any roamers capping camps, unless the roamers are organized.

So why can’t the roamers be organized and why can’t roaming groups — even PUGs — take objectives?

You’re making a LOT of excuses as to why you personally feel rangers should not be acknowledged to exist, and none of them are any good.

Also this guide is just pointless. Who exactly is gaining anything from it and why would anyone bookmark it? In case you forget what supply is?

Banzie.5248:

You guys are getting personally upset over things that Arenanet and the Community have chosen to do for the class. He is not saying you cant play ranger, but he is correct in saying there is minimal to no use for ranger in organized zerg busting (Facing 1.5-2+ times your numbers) and GvGs.

He explains what supply is and what towers are. It’s the most basic intro to WvW, not an elite GvG guide. The whole GvG thing is being used as an excuse to cover the horrible bias/personal opinion of the ‘guide’.

I’m not sure how pretending rangers don’t exist is much more helpful to newbies than flat out insulting rangers, but ok.

In addition to coglins great points, this is a great way to get newbies slaughtered wholesale by rangers. Nothing in the guide is of particular use to WvW vets, so you’d think a warning for newbies about the effectiveness of rangers in small scale fights would be warranted.

Condi rangers are great at 1vX, but everyone playing WvW needs to know that you can’t ignore a berserker LB ranger in a small scale fight or you’re dead in seconds. That’s critical information for playing WvW at all.

Was going to say the same thing. It looses a lot of credibility to not even acknowledge the existence of a profession, especially one that is arguably the best roaming profession.

DaShi.1368:

I agree. The longbow is a huge offender with a short cooldown long range knockback. No class has such on demand knockback with so little cost. Then it has a stealth, burst, and large AoE. Why would rangers use anything else?

LB users run into a bit of a wall against condi rangers. I wouldn’t call them a hard counter, like necros should lose 100% of fights against LB rangers, but condi rangers are a horrible matchup for LB rangers.

I guess that doesn’t answer your question about not using a LB, but there are always downsides.

You also don’t have to go pure glass with LB, but then the LB starts to lose a bit of the appeal. It doesn’t hit all that hard and has a slow attack speed. If you’re going to go tanky power, I’d rather go full melee. Pure glass LB is a mess in close quarters. I won’t engage warrior roamers unless I have enough line of sight to level the playing field by the time we get in to melee range.

/ramble

eldenbri.1059:

Anyone ever try to play in WvW with this kind of approach?

Check out Flopy The Rabbit on youtube. He has tons of videos of him roaming with a pig.

ArchonWing.9480:

Oh, so you can actually get your pet to body block that too?

That’s gonna take some work for me.

You can block engis as well. It’s not as hard as it sounds, you can just move to whatever side your pet is on. If you take too long doing that on a warrior, he’ll usually vengeance himself which is almost as good as a stomp if the other players aren’t threatening you to the brink of death.

ArchonWing.9480:

Guardians, warriors, rangers can cc you once.

If you’re going to try stomping a warrior in the middle of a fight with no stealth, blind or stability, you need to put your pet on him to block the hammer.

I don’t usually use the raven, but it’s extremely handy for 1vX stomping.

Your lengthy post is for naught. It has nothing to do with PvE, it — and several other changes — is about celestial and strength-runed professions in PvP.

Not only the picking-up-the-item sucks, but their charge is just ridiculous. They have a roughly 0% chance of landing it, and they fling themselves completely out of the fight after they miss. It’s so bad it even misses in PvE.

If you can’t stealth or wolf stomp, I use entangle a lot of times in that situation. Or stay out of range of their downed skills and just tap them with the LB from time to time.

As mentioned, if anyone is foolish enough to try to rez them against a berserker ranger, that’s about the best possible scenario for you.

Gotejjeken.1267:

I guess possibly if you are in the middle of it and are not paying attention then you could face a little trouble. If are paying any bit of attention it isn’t all that hard to avoid IMO.

You can’t dodge so, the enemy can reapply CC at will.

It’s not a “little trouble”, you either avoid the immobilize after cleanses are burned or you flat out die. You’re NOT going to survive an attack when you can’t move or dodge.

In the long run, to get the most out of a ranger, you need to learn how to use a 1h sword. So consider starting with it, perhaps in some PvE. It’s useful/used in a huge number of builds. Actually the only common build that doesn’t use it is the LB/GS, and even in that one I prefer LB/S+D.

As was mentioned, turn autoattack off. But also make sure you have auto target turned off and experiment how all of the skills behave differently when no target is selected. The autoattack in particular has a massive escape leap built in to it when the target is dropped. You know you’re a bad kitten ranger when you escape a series of hammer stuns from a handful of lost zerg-heavies using nothing but an autoattack.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Anyway, Entangle is horrible IMO. I do love when other Rangers carry it though…one quick LR and they just wasted an elite.

Or you just wasted LR. They’re on similar cooldowns, but many rangers only carry a single stun breaker or immob cleanser. Every now and then I’ll kill some noob with no cleanse at all using entangle, but for the most part I chain it together with a half dozen CCs to secure the kill.

Drakehound + MT is like the noob test for people that want to fight you 1v1. If they can’t get past 900 range without getting aced, well…

I love all those things about ranger, yes, but. All professions have “no drawbacks”, but none of them can have everything at once. Pick any random ranger build rather than ranger as a profession and I’m sure you can see immediate drawbacks.

Go even further and look at armor/amulet types regardless of profession, and you can see immediate drawbacks. The obvious one is berserker.

I think all pets use their heal skill in that range (65% ish). That can be handy for knowing when moas are going to AoE heal. A looong time ago I used moas and knew the pattern, I think it was when any ally or the moa itself was under about 65, 70% health and in range.

My god, I don’t know how that guardian lost to you. You did literally everything possible wrong and still managed to win. I think you knocked yourself down SIX times if I counted right, you blew a PBS on aegis, you missed almost every important dodge, you wasted dodges to run sideways faster…

SilverWF.4789:

At the 99% of roaming vids (for every class) we can find only “Me the Great against bads” and nothing else.
Who is better in beating kids? This is the same question.

While I agree with you, I’m not entirely sure what else you’d put in a video. A montage of getting the kitten kicked out of yourself?

I’ve thought about making a video with in-depth breakdowns of difficult fights, but I suck at getting video recording to work, I have no experience with video editing, and I doubt anyone would learn much at this stage of the game. And I’m lazy.

That idea mostly came from back in the day before LBs were “viable” and everyone claimed you couldn’t roam on a power ranger. Now any idiot can beat a thief 1v1.

Paffus Piffus.9430:

Thanks for tips guys. I basically screwed myself. I built this around wvw/pve and all my ascended gear has soldiers stats and I can’t face making all that again. I kinda wish they had a bit more flexibility with the gear and changing stats. Oh well, I’ll have to deal with a crap build or make a new class I guess. Thanks for help guys!

In low level dungeons the difference between exotic and ascended is completely non-existant.

Jewelry is pretty easy to get without crafting. What I’d do in your shoes is use exotic (dungeon token even) berserker gear and ascended berserker trinkets for PvE, and use your fancy ascended mix-n-match gear for WvW.

Character saved!

I’ve always felt the condi survival build does way too much physical damage to be using a rabid amulet over celestial, especially when a cleanse wipes out most of your offense. And you can never forget the added survivability of cele.

It’s a pathing thing, if you can manually walk to a location without going too far out of the way, you can blink there. You can’t for example blink up in to a keep in WvW because you can’t walk there, but you can blink up to the clocktower because it’s a pretty short walk.

To be fair, thieves are the new bearbows because the professions has always attracted some of the least skilled players, and now the LB buff seems to have driven skilled thieves to extinction (in WvW).

The rangers I’m running in to these days are surprisingly decent players. I’d probably target a thief over a ranger now if I’m looking for an easy first kill in a small group skirmish.

Your character is crazy looking!!

I always find it weird when people keep the sword autoattack on in competitive play. I see lots of people do it though.

Justine.6351:

Makes me wanna go S/x instead of gs ;-)

I know I say this all the time, but at least for WvW, S/D is drastically better than GS in my opinion. I’m not sure how GS got to be the sort of default swap for longbows. The movement is ridiculous, and poison is very strong. The high cripple uptime is pretty fatal as well.

What ever happened to the 5 man ranger team from this forum that entered one of the official tournaments? I think it was that Swedish guy and jcbroe and a few others.

Just to add on this, you can actually stealth out of entangle (or at least you could in the past, haven’t tested it lately.) Good or bad game design, that’s something every glass LB ranger needs to know when fighting a thief.

Tribio.8531:

However, I would like to counter by pointing out the synergy of Piercing Arrows with a dual bow build.. I roam on my ranger, so when the LB-burst is put down, I can switch to my shortbow (fires very quickly) and still do tons of AoE dmg (mostly talking from the perspective of taking camps/towers/keeps).

For PvE (camp/tower NPCs), we’re talking PvE stats, so a sword autoattack is going to do the most damage, followed by the greatsword autoattack/maul. The defining characteristic of a SB is the fast autoattack, which is surpassed by a sword autoattack even without being traited (PA). What SB offers over melee is range, but that’s not useful when you already have a LB.

For competitive play you have to ignore safety of range against camp NPCs which you don’t need in favor of at least being able to win a 1v1. So while you’re correct it’s mostly about the person behind the keyboard, I don’t see a reason to intentionally cripple yourself with a weapon set that isn’t going to win many encounters versus a single human opponent.

So out of curiosity of what you’re getting at, excluding NPCs, what are you getting out of running a SB swap? Maybe as an example describe how you use the SB swap against a thief that just stealed to you.

That’s not how it works, Tribio. I could kill lots of people using only an axe with no offhand at all, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good option. SB doesn’t have enough utility to be paired with the LB. All 5 skills are useful GS or S/D, where most skills on the SB don’t do anything in terms of keeping you alive.

I’m not trying to be like “argh I hate you”, just pointing out you’re needlessly handicapping yourself. You’d probably have more fun and win more 1v1s or 1v2/3s if you learned how to use ranger melee, which is very strong. You’ll find plenty of roaming videos on this forum of people roaming with dual glass melee, even or usually against multiple opponents. If you want, I’ll duel you in HotM with us both using berserker amulets, me using dual melee and you using dual bows just as a proof of concept.

Tribio.8531:

Jim Hunter.6821:

That’s because you are running with a shortbow for your second set…

And how would a GS in that case be any better? Remember: glass!
Or you just wanna use the GS to swoop away from 1vX?

I kill people every day with my glass sword ranger. You’re not rangering right.

Fester.9328:

I like this post, people do the opposite of what you asked them not to do…such is the way of forums eh?

It’s like asking for advice on the best way to steal credit card numbers from people who took out payday loans, then getting angry when people suggest you don’t do it at all.

A SB condi ranger in a dungeon group would be low enough on damage that even people who don’t care at all about speed might be annoyed with him, and that would be compounded by those types of groups not skipping enemies. I think you’d be stuck with complete noobs and uplevels, and you’re more likely to have your condis overridden by people in masterwork gear with little condi damage.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Aww man Ranger/Rit… I miss splinter barrage

I created a 7 hero team with I think it was 5 ranger mains, 2 rits for SW, and 1 signet bonding monk to keep up strength of honor on 6 or 7 pets. My ranger had max points into curses for mark of pain, and the other ranger heroes had various other buffing secondaries like paragon. Basically, it took forever to set up, but it exploded just about any mob in the game in a couple hits, to the point you’ll notice I didn’t mention taking any healers (one of the rits had a few restoration skills and I think the other had a second copy of MoP.) T’was hysterical.

Sube Dai.8496:

I don’t want a new trap added (unless it is part of a bundle), as I feel trappers need to take spike, flame and poison in order to be remotely viable.

I always felt poison trap was sort of garbage. Trappers are almost certainly using SB, sword, dagger, spiders, or all 4 at the same time.

Dungeon ranger mostly uses 1 handed sword, so your ranged weapon isn’t that big of a deal. LB obviously does a lot more damage as you close the distance, but as you said if you’re playing in groups that don’t care about efficiency, it doesn’t matter if you’re using the SB as you close the distance.

That seems like a silly excuse to use it though, you’d be better off using it for an efficient condi build in PvP or WvW. Solo with a SB is a bit weird because you can mostly only trigger the bleeding from behind by using CC.

Xaylin.1860:

I could also see a trait which grants -x% CC duration per equipped trap utility. A stunbreak feels way too convenient, though.

Something along those lines gets around the fact that traits don’t have visual clues to their timers. When I made the suggestion of a cooldown on stunbreak, I was thinking in the back of my head of a suggestion that weirdo veewee made about making traits more visual; you’d probably need some sort of icon in the buff/condi bar when the trait was ready. And that in turn leads to the problem of too many things in random locations you and your opponents need to read, and not making it intuitive. And the counterargument to that is that people who care about the CD of traits are probably playing competitively at a high level. Meh.

A trait that breaks stun would get around the problem of having a stun breaker available every couple seconds from it triggering on trap use. “Trapper’s Focus: Stun break on trap deployment, CD 25 seconds.” It prevents a non-trappers from taking traps purely for fast-acting stun breaks, and makes sense from a GW1 perspective as well, where trapper’s focus prevented you from being “stunned” (interrupted) when deploying traps.

As long as the must-have traits for trappers are condensed a bit, I don’t think it’s a problem.

A big weakness of traps is that they hog all your utility. I wouldn’t mind a trait that was perhaps along the lines of SotF, where using a trap also breaks stun or cures cripple, etc.

A necro screwing around alone out in the openfield is going to get whooped by any number of professions and builds.

I disagree with all of your points.

1.) Different terrain is fine, but adding fake bonuses just makes 3 out of 4 of the maps unplayable for people looking for fights and not EotM style gameplay.

2.) The have plenty of defenses built in to the terrain already. We don’t need places to completely shut down the map with seige.

3.) Huh?

4.) NPCs should not be a factor in competitive play.

5.) Garrisons are nearly impossible to take if they’re defended, and NPCs don’t belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

6.) Upgrades mean a lot, which is why flipping a T3 keep is a massive effort that takes a lot of planning from guilds. Are you in TS? You may not realize the effort that goes in to taking them and just see a commander tag go in and take it, not realizing he’s been working on the keep for hours.

7.) NPCs don’t belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

8.) Ok. Try to deal with it.

9.) You can make customized GW2 playlists in-game. Play whatever you like when battle starts.

10.) We don’t need fake bonuses, just play intelligently.

11.) SMC is very unique. If you control it, you control the map, and the fights for it are unlike any other location.

12.) Don’t care about this other than to to reiterate NPCs dont belong as a serious factor in competitive play.

Overall, it sounds like you want to turn WvW into a PvE karma train, aka EotM, a la your quote. “I’d also like to add, given the increased difficult this would obviously have on attackers, to increase rewards for taking something over.”

Yes, the spider causes the immobilize not you. Seth answered question 2. Your pet choices are pretty solid. Wolf is always an option for WvW/PvP, but your pet choices are top notch.