Guild Wars 2

It’s confirmed by the devs to be a bug and is getting fixed.

There is a ranger in the finals. All of us who were playing ranger before the patch know exactly how the LB works post patch, which is why you don’t see any skilled LB rangers in the tourney.

A single LB user could have a place in a tourney, just as one group used a berserker killshot warrior last tourney and did reasonably well. LB rangers are not, as you say, unbeatable though, and unless something changes you’re not going to see them succeeding in large numbers in ToLs.

Stick with your cats in PvE. Some people use drakes since they have a small amount of AoE. Sometimes your party needs a particular buff due to a bad random grouping so on extremely rare occasions you might break out a pet for that utility (red moa for fury if no one in your group can provide it for example.)

For PvP/WvW, people have all sorts of personal preferences to compliment their builds. There are barely any wrong choices here, just think about the pet’s ability and ask if it compliments what your goal is.

Poor bear is the one pet that has almost no role in any format, just a few niches.

Sandrox.9524:

those skilled lb rangers before patch are now unbeatable.

I look forward to seeing all the LB rangers in the tournament of glory finals then… oops there aren’t any. Guess no one knows what they’re doing!

TurtleDragon.3108:

Fluffball.8307:

Sort of. GS is still the best weapon for multiple targets. And obviously movement, but you don’t need a Twilight just to run skips.

This actually isn’t true anymore unless your sword’s OH is not axe. Towelcat did the math recently for various ranger set ups http://puu.sh/b6f2s/2cc82028fb.txt

S/A > GS for 3 target scenarios by a significant margin, S/A > GS for 5 target scenarios by a very small amount.

GS still has it’s uses outside of trash skips. It’s still useful for max melee range fights and scenarios where you don’t want to accidently leap out of a stack spot. It’s also our next best option on fights where using the sword is difficult.

Good info, thanks. There aren’t a ton of 3 enemy situations. The trash killing situations that always come to mind for me are gravelings and the assassins in CoF2, both where you almost definitely want GS (and are probably hitting 5 targets anyway.) There isn’t much trash in many of the other dungeons, or at least not that you wouldn’t fight 1 at time like golems in CoE or nightmare court vets in TA. Arah is mostly bosses. Edit: Spiders in TA as well, although TA is 99% skipping so might as well have a GS up.

If some of you aren’t familiar with floppy I highly recommend watching his other videos. He has a few guides and commentaries on duels or 1vXs. All before the LB buff as well, so you get good ol’ fashion effort.

I’ve always felt the most important thing about a longbow is having a couple backup plans, something almost everyone ignores when they first take one!

Sort of. GS is still the best weapon for multiple targets. And obviously movement, but you don’t need a Twilight just to run skips.

The mesmer fights exhausted me just watching them, kudos for sticking it out and finishing the guy off.

Do you take frost just you so won’t unstealth? Or defense? I would think you’d want spike trap instead, but then I don’t use traps a ton.

Anymras.5729:

Hm. Thought Celestial gear soulbound when you equipped it.

Anyway, as a Celestial-using Engineer: I found Traveler Runes pretty useful, and they’d probably be handy on a Ranger, too. Most of the time, I just go straight Divinity, because I change builds often and don’t want to have to build around certain effects – this is pretty much the same reason I used Traveler, besides the speed.

Sorry, meant ascended armor, which is now account bound.

I like those two suggestions, seems like good choices for sharing between professions as well as playing with a bunch of builds like celestial would allow. Thanks.

Wolfey.3407:

Ranger:
-Signet of Stone
-Point Blank Shot
-Hilt Bash
-Protect me
-Wolf Fear
-Hope your pet does a knock down at the right time if able

Just for completeness:

Wolf fear isn’t really practical for interrupting RF. In an emergency I guess it’s ok.

Better would be axe5 or GS4 which will prevent 100% of the damage. Then a bunch of other skills to stop most of the damage, or all of it when chained.

Let me worry about the ranger part of it.

In WvW roaming groups shouldn’t be able to completely take a capture if they can’t kill a single person. It’s very uncommon someone jump around in a circle and not die before a zerg come across map.

Just saw on reddit* a dev responded about this.

Chris Whiteside: Hi Blude, We are not ignoring it all. We are aware and will update Monday. Thanks for raising it to my attention. Chris

*The conversation took place on these forums, was posted about on reddit, and now I’m learning about it through reddit and posting on these forums.

I’m starting to make a second set of armor for my ranger, who I play basically 100% of the time. I do like watching good engies play, so when it’s all made, it may see some use on my neglected engy. However after looking over the runes, nothing is really standing out as being good for both classes. For ranger I was thinking krait runes, since entangle is on a 48 second CD now, but that doesn’t seem like it would be useful on an engy.

So, not knowing almost anything about engies, what are some popular celestial runes you think would also work on a ranger? Or do engies even use celestial?

I guess ogre is always an option, it just seems so generic…

As background, I usually play using s/d or s/a and gs on my ranger. And obviously this is for WvW.

I’ve seen him use brown bear for the condi removal as well. Interesting that he went with the spider for a duel against a condi engy! He can get away with a ton thanks to the high evasion and 3 sources of stealth though.

I really need to finish crafting my ascended dagger so I can get a sigil of energy on it. Only have an exotic right now with a crappy sigil.

I found this fun and figured some others might like it. I always enjoy their youtube videos, so it was neat to see them fight. This was before the September 9th LB buffs.

Koroshi is a well known engy roamer and Floppy the Rabbit is a LB ranger, both are extremely good.

Work on whatever one you like best. Sword is the highest DPS of all the weapons if that matters to you.

DeWolfe.2174:

Josh Davis.6015:

I’ll be joining Strike Force [SF] on JQ and Driven by Fury [dF] on FSP!

LET’S DO THIS!

I’d like to say this was a great idea Dev’s. And, to express my excitement and extend my thanks to Josh for coming over to JQ. It was a rough start being stuck on a home BL but, that’s as bad as it get’s. Tomorrow on an offensive map will be a lot more fun!

Did he suck and what class was he playing?

No Walking.6349:

Fluffball.8307:

I think the SotF build is way more useful for conquest, and I think the SotF build is not very useful for conquest.

Huh?

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

Talk to Eurantien.4632 who I believe ran a LB in the last ToL.

I think the SotF build is way more useful for conquest, and I think the SotF build is not very useful for conquest.

Team arena regulars tend to be pretty decent, and they will just annihilate a build like that which has basically no strengths other than an initial damage burst.

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

NO MATCH UP THREADS ALLOWED!!!!

The mods almost always let banter go until it gets hostile. Take notes.

Tman.6349:

“I don’t always run condi, but, when I do, I run it with power weapons.”
-The Most Interesting Ranger in the World

*least interesting

Jeknar.6184:

I wonder how many devs there are actually…

360ish I think.

Did any devs wind up on FA? I think we’re in a rather unique position with the whole T2 thing. Half way between glory and complete misery.

Ehecatl.9172:

I also feel no one should be able to outright ignore a full berserker geared burst profession while fighting someone on point. Ever. The fact you could before the patch is a testament to how much the longbow needed a buff.

Samesies.

Also I doubt you’ll kill anyone but another berserker with a single RF. But whatever.

This is inspired mostly by Pat Cavit on a hopelessly outmatched server, but I hope some or a lot of these devs will write a post or two about their experiences.

There isn’t one answer to that, ranger has literally scores of builds that work. For condi, a lot of people run this:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Shout_Heal

For power, LB is all the rage at the moment. I don’t have the energy to post a build for it because it’s in a weird flavor of the day phase. You’ll want condi removal though, so empathic bond or survival of the fittest.

Pat Cavit.9234:

I signed up with Starfleet Dental [SFD] on Maguuma, I hear they’re very professional.

I admire your bravery for joining Mag! Honestly didn’t expect to see you guys even ticking 185 on reset. Hope it keeps up.

Fistarius.2496:

Is there literally no power in the current universe that can get the duration from the vastness of 45 seconds, to the much more reasonable 44 seconds?

http://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound-clip.php?id=3904

That first ranger you slaughter really slams home how ridiculous all of this is. Did he even press a movement button? Before attempting to barrage you from point blank range? Shocker that he died!

Mag is indeed placed in gold. Whether they’re “playing” in gold is up for debate.

Ya confusion is extremely strong, but a power spec using two 100% power weapons that have no source of condi damage is not the place to be using it!

It’s not a new combo though. The downsides of this build are… basically everything that isn’t quickness.

You could make it work with other builds, but then people have been doing that for a very long time.

That definitely doesn’t need a nerf. View the build as a whole and not just the high amount of quickness.

It’s not like parties would be better off running 5 rangers with the LB changes and a working FS, you’d still be best off with a single ranger! There is just no excuse for the overall nerf to rangers in PvE, makes no sense.

I think the main difference is that the WvW forum and the PvP forum are largely ignoring the ranger buffs. The people that play competitively a lot are like “whatever, I can deal with these changes.” All the complaining is coming from people who don’t play ranger but are posting on the ranger forums.

When necro got a ton of buffs, the PvP forums were upset.

Kovu.7560:

I played a ranger before it was cool. =)

~ Kovu

So.. you played a ranger before Tuesday?

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Fun fact: If you reflect the shot that was about to stealth the ranger, you get the stealth instead.

“Oh my god LB hits so hard he disintegrated!”

Solandri.9640:

Anyone know if the hyena’s summoned duplicate is buffless or copies the hyena’s buffs?

It doesn’t get any buffs from anything; not from copying on spawn, not from axe, not from fortifying bond, etc. It also doesn’t follow pet commands for whatever that’s worth.

Dorkie.7159:

WvW titles are a joke. GW3 will be out before we slap all them yaks.

No it definitely won’t. We’ll all be long dead in the time it would take for the first person to reach most WvW titles.

I’m getting extremely sick of getting completely worthless leather armor.

Start working on your Bolt. Just got a really nice damage boost through the new grandmaster trait, too.

Looks pretty solid.

Haha! No I meant the pet dies since you can’t swap it and HS is the most involved way of the 3 heals to heal your pet. Doesn’t the pet lose master’s bond on death? I’ve only ever used it PvE so I don’t know much about it.

It seems like commanding voice would be the ‘easier on your life’ option if players don’t count for 5 MB stacks. With a sort of weak pet heal and no ability to swap pets, I don’t know if MB would get much use. Killing 25 drake hatchlings after every encounter sounds draining!

Do you get stacks of master’s bond faster by killing players like you would with bloodlust?

That power roamer won’t work because it doesn’t have even a single condi removal.

Hahaha! It’s actually not as bad as it sounds, it’s just opening with barrage and RF then switching to sword, which I suppose most of us have used at some point even before the update.

Kirby.9138:

I’m a complete noob ranger but what exactly is the 0/0/6/2/6 here? settlers amulet with some type of healing rune? I’m a big fan of tanky rangers I personally really dislike the longbow because I feel exposed.

I’ve been using it with celestial lately. You can do about anything with it really, the new pet traits are insanely strong for example an eagle can put out 1500 or 2000 bleed (can’t remember number) plus 6.5 seconds of cripple every 6 seconds. Sword/dagger is a nice hybrid of condi and power, and GS provides a lot of utility and some burst. For runes you can either augment with more condi damage (krait runes and entangle for example), more power (and probably take RaO, nice against engies), or survivability like natural healing and dolyak runes — I dueled a thief the other day who couldn’t outdamage the regen of that.

You don’t even need to run melee with it. All of the ranger weapons are basically hybrid weapons except GS and LB, so celestial can work with anything.

Ok I’ve been tossing this challenge around for like 12 hours straight and not a single taker. I’m going to bed, but this thread will continue to exist. Great critiques Zefrost, you really proved you have any idea what’s going on.