Guild Wars 2

The basic premise of any of those will work. You accidentally posted the same build twice, but since you mentioned increased velocity I assume one of them went 6 into MM. You’re almost certainly going to want that, or your LB will be pretty much only melee support. (You can use LB as melee support and it’s very cool, but I assume not what you’re looking for.)

If you put anything at all in to skirmishing I would definitely take primal reflexes.

All of them will basically work, but it feels like there might be a slight lack of focus. Like I’d probably either take wilderness survival and entangle (and maybe even go with LR, MT, SotF, etc.), and use MM to purely boost your LB, or RaO and focus on signets. I dunno. It’s just nitpicky from here on out, you’ve got condi removal, CC, stability, invulnerability, etc., so it’s mostly personal preference.

Your toughness and health are lower than most people prefer, but guard buff will help with health, and the rest just depends on your playstyle and ability. Since you already have excellent condi removal you might swap in mango pies.

Edit: Ha, saw your sig and clicked thinking you’d already tried some roaming with ranger.

Misread this as “Frost Spirit twerk” and was pretty disappointed.

Rym.1469:

If anything, I would expect Intimiadation Training to get 10 second ICD or something.

I literally spent couple minutes just running around a warrior today, at max range, dancing when he had 30 second cripple.

Ya, RF won’t and shouldn’t be nerfed. I’m a little worried about the pet buffs getting nerfed.

Chrispy.5641:

I’m starting to lean more towards the idea that its better to get a rune set that has a useful effect than just a straight condition damage increase. Krait runes might be more useful now because of the shortened cool down for Entangle.

Can confirm. Spent a lot of time dueling using entangle and krait runes yesterday.

I was going to make another legendary but I think it’s time to craft a set of ascended celestial. I was using 0/0/6/2/6 with flame trap, entangle, krait runes, and s/d+GS. The burst of entangle/flame trap/maul is pretty nice and on a ridiculously short cool down.

Oh and the new BM buffs are just amazing. Constant cripple and bleeds with birds!

Old build, but I think the point was it now does the 25% damage boost without having to completely kitten yourself like old maul-burst builds.

Old silly build was MoC and SotBM, now it’s actually a viable well rounded build.

I have not been killed by 1 single longbow ranger yet, playing my normal melee ranger. Hopefully I’ll have better luck soon.

And the whole “omg 4 rangers are so strong because they called a target” is just… ridiculous. Are there not 4 people on the other team as well? Anyone want to eat 4 steal/pistol whips??

Renn.8241:

The satisfaction of downing a glass cannon thief in 2 seconds with;
Rapid Fire / Signet of the Hunt / Signet of the Wild / Rampage As One

Oh my kitten
I hope they don’t nerf us

The irony. That thief can do more damage in way less time, while attacking from stealth. I hope he was like afterwards.

Ya we almost do as much damage as other classes with 2 whole skills now. I can’t fathom how these people survived any other profession fights for the past two years.

Your training is complete. Go forth into the world and test.

I’m almost embarrassed by playing ranger right now.

I slaughtered a warrior and he told me “omg rangers now so OP!” I was using sword/dagger…

Azure.8670:

Expiatus.4210:

And I’ll just leave this little tidbit I found on GW2 Reddit …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWfPM8yc2ZA&feature=youtu.be

people have been talking about this for an hour or two now. prepare for some kind of nerf

He blew all his cool downs to kill a normal PvE mob. Most professions can do something like that. Also on reddit recently was a video of bootspurr killing the heavy golem in less than a second on his ele.

Not that exciting.

All this does is make the LB viable. It’s not nearly as OP as I was expecting. I don’t even want to run it because other weapons have so many cool options I’ve gotten used to, and I am a pretty big fan of LB even before the patch.

I did only try it briefly in duels though. I might go roaming with ascended berserker and cons and see if I can make it really full-blown obnoxious.

The last build you posted is basically the meta for longbow. Give it a whirl and see how you like it. If you find you want more damage, you can always add in some dungeon token berserker pieces until you find the right mix for yourself.

The one thing you may want to change is the fern hound, I don’t think it’s that great of a pet, but try it and experiment. It’s not super important. Time to kill some peeps with it and see how you like it.

Reslinal.2359:

Gold league in seasons is mostly just about T1 servers competing with each other though. Whoever ends at 6th probably doesn’t really matter that much because except the first match all t2 servers are going to fight with at least 1 t1 server in their matches. So those matches are going to be lopsided with or without a strong 6th server.

I feel a solid third server in T2 is only really needed during off season times, which hopefully can happen once season 3 is over.

It’s not about SoS or FA winning gold league, it’s that we’re sick of having a 1v1 for months on end, which is exacerbated by the fact that we have opposite peak hours. This is pretty much the reason there are 3 servers per match and not 2. Mag is literally nonexistant and it’s rare to see even a single player, yet they unendingly continue to ‘compete’ at the highest level of gold league.

I like those, bark skin is so ridiculously good, and the “dual” SotW is a cool concept.

I’m really eager to try mainhand axe in a zerg setting after the update. I honestly don’t imagine it being very good, but it will be fun to experiment with. I made an ascended axe I currently only use occasionally offhand.

Kysin.6349:

post

I don’t use the build in godspeeds video, but I think it contributes more to the fight than your build does because the entire purpose of your build is to survive. His build has many skills that break up the tightness of enemy stacks. Entangle will get a lot better at doing that in a few hours, especially if someone is using a SotF build/wilderness training build.

There is a lot to be said for simply surviving as a zerg tactic. But I think it’s a waste of a ranger and (obviously) better done with a guardian who can poop out boons left and right. Even though godspeed ultimately quit using ranger, he was making use of some of the unique abilities rangers bring.

I have no doubt you can stay alive till the bitter end. There was an amusing post on reddit a few weeks ago of a guardian on BG frontlining while completely naked via positioning and skill use. I am mostly a roamer, but I do join up with zergs or my guild zerg and frontline with dual melee in full berserkers, and stay alive through positioning and skill use. Since staying on the commander = you’re not particularly in danger in melee, I feel that definitely opens up the options for contributing more to the group and spending less of the build on simply staying alive.

Zoia.3678:

As for being boring to watch, I personally don’t see how a power ranger vid can be that different. You still press your buttons, jump around and try to kill stuff before they kill you.

Condi is hated because it’s DoT. Apply burning and then run in circles, where as power needs to be actively attacking to succeed. It’s especially bad because of P/D thieves and PU mesmers, which are about as cheesey and skill-less as possible. But, I agree, play whatever the heck you want. It’s in the game, so I have no hatred when facing condi builds.

We’ve sort of fallen out of the meta for every single game mode. I’m not going to stop playing ranger, but anet is sure trying hard to make me want to.

Berserker LB might become something for PvP, but I’m skeptical about that. Spirits haven’t been nerfed, but other classes have been massively buffed which basically makes spirits nerfed.

WvW we’re very good roamers, below average in zergs.

PvE frost spirit got obliterated and ruined our dungeon meta build. Only necros are worse than us.

Has IoJ lost that many people? There were some good FA/SBI/IoJ matches not that long ago.

I usually flop back and forth between the build FrouFrou posted and 4/0/6/4/0, with EB and spotter. Brings just a tad more damage and team support, which I always find lacking with the 2/0/6/6 version, which is significantly tankier thanks to bark skin.

Usually dagger offhand, but man axe is friggen cool.

The 2/0/6/6/0 version is pretty nice for hitting enemy backlines in zerg encounters, especially with an untargeted sword auto. Fling yourself in to the backlines without burning any cool downs at all, then LR, sword 2, GS3 and 4 are still there for when it’s time to leave.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Casino Brawl.1249:

I’m honestly out raged by this.

Time to reroll ele.. oh wait no.

The correct answer to all GW2 questions is “warrior”.

Example:
Player 1: What time does SB spawn?
Player 2: Warrior.

Player 1: What is a good event to farm for silk?
Player 2: Warrior.

Sube Dai.8496:

What exactly? There is quite a lot of it in WvW already, especially as a solo roamer.

And what do you do when you breach a keep/tower? Kill about 5 NPCs.

Yes, we don’t need anymore. It’s a huge complaint about EotM, and if you add a bunch of NPCs to competitive formats it gets sort of… trashy or cheesey for lack of better words. Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood in GW1 were both this sort of thing. They were fun, but it was almost 100% PvE. And watching NPCs try to do anything useful like assualting the fort in Fort Aspenwood was just painful. The warriors would wind up chasing some random troll for the entire mission, while the seige turtles fired at people that couldn’t even be targeted.

Do NOT want this for GW2. I want to fight humans. If WvW ever gets that bad, I’ll play sPvP exclusively.

Hmm, fighting large numbers of AI opponents. Sounds suspiciously familiar.

Anet did a horrible job promoting it. Check out the popular youtuber’s (bog otter, matt visual, blah blah blah) who all have videos out highlighting preview stuff. It looks a lot better than the blogs make it seem.

Avit.3165:

Fluffball.8307:

Straegen.2938:

On the plus side nice editing, solid play and decent music.

I stopped watching after about 5 seconds of that music.

It’s not a music video, its a d/d ele video.
Good fights.

I know, so why make the music so bad it chases people away? I don’t understand the mentality of adding death metal or rave music, etc. to WvW videos. Honestly I’d rather just hear the skill effects for the added combat info.

Underwater weapons are irrelevant unless you have a stacking sigil on a land weapon. You’ll lose bloodlust from your land weapon for example if you enter water, unless you have bloodlust on your underwater weapon.

Your build looks reasonable for following a commander and staying in the backline (stick near the eles), but since you’re not very experienced at WvW or PvP, expect to get your kitten whooped horrifically when someone decides they want you dead until you get the hang of things. If you get too down from that happening, try out some of the more defensive builds posted in this thread.

You don’t really need that power + condi damage food unless it’s really cheap (not sure about a lot of food prices.) You have literally zero condi damage, so you’re boosting nothing. Mango pies are super cheap and will boost your survival a bit.

It doesn’t have to be so black and white. You can use LB from inside the zerg rather than the stereotypical glass cannon ranger hanging out with the eles. Not to beat a dead horse, but… the godspeed video shows what I view as one of the most efficient way to contribute to a zerg fight. Ideally you do something other than just exist and are actively making it harder for the enemies to survive.

Straegen.2938:

On the plus side nice editing, solid play and decent music.

I stopped watching after about 5 seconds of that music.

Ulion.5476:

That is why some t2 server are trying to get into silver league before the next season.

Mag isn’t tanking, they don’t exist anymore. FA and SoS both have zero desire to drop to silver. That would be a terrible result for both those servers as well as the silver league (not that it would be even remotely possible for FA or SoS to drop.)

Dayra.7405:

Vermillion.4061:

SoS is a fairly dead server now.. It’s 4th over-all but the gap between 3 and 4 should be reflected as 400 glicko.. not 60.

Oh oh, rank 4 and dead?
That would mean 21 of 24 servers dead in NA?
Looks like we are very lucky to have language specific server in EU as this seem to hinder concentration a bit.

Probably it would be a good idea to remove the top 3 server such that the people have to redistribute again.

SoS is definitely not dead (they’re currently ticking 445.) The T2 matchup is a mess right now because Mag doesn’t exist at all and SoS and FA have different peak hours. So from what I hear a couple SoS guilds bailed out of boredom. They still have a huge number of players though.

There are some server deaths currently in process — and probably some massive unexpected growths like last tourny — that I think Anet should acknowledge. WvW players are currently aware that some matchups are going to be horrific because the rankings don’t update with the server status in anything less than like half a year.

Can anet respond to that, or will this just effectively ruin the upcoming tourney for many servers?

If anet won’t respond (likely scenario), is there a solution for upcoming tournies to not be ruined?

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Thanks Fluffball, I’ll reread everything here and try out your suggestions!

You can retool with entirely other builds if the ZvZs your going up against aren’t reminiscent of a T1 hammer train. It depends on your timeslot, playstyle, and guild more than anything. Don’t take my suggestions as anything spectacular, it’s just another option. For example I’ve seen spirit rangers hold their own in off-hours.

Oak da Vite.9054:

stuff

We mostly agree on everything. And in reviewing our suggestions we changed things to be more alike than different I think. I have the 2 suggestions that having a useless swap is worse than having a useful swap, and having abilities to break up enemy stacks is a good thing. Take from it what you will!

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Thanks for posting this. I recently leveled my first ranger to 80 and I really, really want her to be useful in WvW, but I’m not a roamer. I’ll be trying out your suggestions here!

Set your expectations fairly low for zerging as a ranger if you’ve done it on the other classes first. It is really not where we shine.

If you are on lower tiers, which my server FA has occasionally dabbled with, rangers are actually really strong in zergs though. The less opponents, the stronger rangers get and the more they help their allies.

And with that in mind, consider that my suggestions are for T2 and Kysin’s suggestions are for T1. There is a huge difference. (Just saw you on are IoJ) You can be way more aggressive with pet choices as well, as they won’t die nearly as much. Take pets for their F2s rather than survivability.

Straegen.2938:

On the plus side SoS and FA are finding parity with some leaving SoS and FA seemingly holding strong. They just need another FA sized server in the mix to make T2 awesome again.

While I don’t disagree that FA will always hold its own no matter what tier because we don’t care if we win or lose, a large part of why we are is because Mag does not exist.

EXAMPLE: I just took the mag keep on EBG with a single other FA player. Yes two of us took the Mag keep with no resistance. FA score goes up to compete with SoS through no effort at all (other than a fairly annoying fight against like 80 guards.)

I’m not really up on EU but as I understand it there isn’t really a population difference between most of the tiers. It looked to me like that was the main enemy militia, don’t think they had enough room left in map cap to have anything other than some guild groups running around.

Anywho, I guess not much more to be said on it. All the suggestions are out there for all 3 of our builds.

Edit: My build suggestion is actually not my build. I do use dual melee, ha. But in a totally different way.

Nope, not my point. Stick with the melee train. But you’re more useful IMO if you put down a barrage beforehand. Seriously, watch the video. It’s literally the origin of your build and the ranger zerg meta. It’s not 100% applicable since he considered the build to be… midline? I guess. But that’s entirely a playstyle thing, you can use the LB however you want. If nothing else, why not take a swap that has a purpose rather than a swap that has no purpose. If you’re holding a gap, LB can put a barrage on it, where as if you’re only using GS you just sit there waiting for the commander to move.

Kysin.6349:

Celerity and Perception are not conflicting, you can charge them both. you just cant stack attribute sigils stacks. Entangle is not good at all in large zerg fights, the roots get insta-destroyed. This is specifically designed for melee train, so if you wanted to use LB to build stacks that is fine, but you should not be using anything but GS while in the melee train.

Ah thanks. I suspected that was the case, but I’ve never even considered wanting to use celerity!

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on entangle. I get kills with it at an extremely high rate*. If it doesn’t work in your timeslot or guild or whatever, it doesn’t work for you. Like I said, I feel RaO is wasted most of the time due to the boon spam meta.

You should watch that video I posted in response to Oak about the longbow. It’s just a plain better option than your self admittedly useless swap. People’s gut reaction is that LB rangers are useless and barrage is useless and LB rangers are bad people. If you are a bit more objective (again, watch the video which at the time was the highest level of WvW) you might convince yourself to compliment your GS with it.

If you really need the WH, I’d take an axe instead. Sword is only good if you’re going to go commando and untargeted leap solo in to the backlines, which your build is just not aimed at.

*Kills = not killing someone directly with the MT or entangle, but rather unstacking them and then they completely asplode when they get hit by an entire zerg. It’s our contribution to the “hammer” in “hammer train”.

I totally disagree with every thing you wrote Oak.

LB isn’t used as the primary weapon. Barrage is DoT, so it compliments the melee encounter perfectly. What advantage does sword have in a zerg? Almost zero, and the WH utility is extremely small compared to having a very long ranged option. I’m sure you’ve already seen this video, but if not check it out. It’s the build the (now sort of outdated) ranger zerg meta build came from.

At the end of the video he shows how LB is used for support in zerg encounters.

RaO vs entangle, like I said it’s situational. RaO doesn’t do you any good if you’re already getting the heavies spamming might, fury, swiftness and stability, which I find to almost always be the case. Snaring people for even a fraction of a second will result in their death most of the time. You won’t kill any warriors with a cripple, but you will kill people by unstacking them. You will also wreck back lines with MT and entangle.

On the other hand, if you’re in a PUG zerg going up against a guild zerg, no way I would not have RaO up at the start of the fight. Get ready for like 400 static fields!

Edit: For clarification, I disagree with your second post. Totally agree with your first post. Your build will definitely work, but mine will too!

This is sort of the text version of the video Flitzie posted. Everything is accurate except for the hopefully up in the air extreme nerf of frost spirit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first

Unfortunately as more people learn about what happened to frost spirit, I suspect rangers will be more and more ostracized from all PUGs. We’ll see.

Conflicting sigils is definitely weird. The celerity I sort of get, but might as well lose perception since you’ll never have a chance to charge it.

I think a LB would be a lot more useful on swap. Barrage does a lot more damage than people are willing to admit, and does a semi decent job of breaking up the tightness of a zerg. RF is going to be a beast after tomorrow. Hunter’s shot is again semi decent at breaking up zergs, although probably less so than even a cripple due to stability spam.

I added entangle, and not muddy terrain, but both are REALLY good at breaking up zergs. The idea is not to lock anyone down permanently, just break up the zerg. I find that using those skills almost always results in at least one kill. This is probably pretty variable for who you’re facing. If you see a bunch of the same guild tags as you approach the enemy zerg, put RaO on. If it’s mostly a PUG zerg, MT and entangle are just absolutely lethal.

With those in mind, I threw this together.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJARTjMq0waFL+rQ1agAha9BUvBAz79Ccuv7QKvKLQtC-TljDwAyPgAyUnonSlXqsM/QAM4ABAUZFgHAQAzfIOCAg0Rc5CAkQJIq9HIDAzEA-w

Edit: I used the original build as a guide, so the underwater weapon makes no sense.

It will work but you need to play really well. I think s/d has a higher skill cap than GS, but whatever.

You have almost no condi removal so I would at least consider 2 things. 1) use SotF or 2) go full glass cannon with berserker.

That’s just me and I know others will disagree. I’d use Muddy Terrain in both of my scenarios and I would get really, really good at using s/d because LB becomes a secondary weapon once you knock off half their health or so and they close the distance. It may help you to think of yourself as a s/d ranger rather than a LB ranger, even if you use both sets equally.

Also consider drakehound. A LB ranger needs to maximize the amount of time before they need to melee.

Edit:

1) S/D is better IMO, GS is WAAAY easier to use.
2) Fire/Lightning/Bloodlust etc. Energy for melee if you feel you need it, which is likely.
3) I’d use variable signet/LR/MT
4) Use variable SotH OOC and learn how to use sword for speed boost.
5) If you decide on HS it needs to be because of leap and blast finishers or you just NEED more condi removal.
6) Drakehound and Wolf or any CC pet and Wolf
7) See above

Just to echo everyone you’re going to want to focus on what is called “berserker’s” gear. It really makes a huge difference in leveling, but don’t go out of your way if you’re missing the ingredients. Other gear will do because you don’t use it very long. Leveling gear is disposable.

Run the 6/5/0/3/0 build with predator’s onslaught and strength of spirit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first

Hopefully they’ll fix it and then you can swap SoS for FS trait again.

Kythan Myr.4719:

Thanks for making things clear.

It was a stealth nerf. Right now we’re not sure if someone at anet screwed up royally by trying to fix a “bug” or if they really intended to remove rangers from dungeon runs.

They fact that anet has not said a word in response about this despite multiple threads on these forums and reddit leads me to believe they just have no idea how their own game is played and completely messed up. A change like this is not made by a single person on off-hours.

Dropping those 2 points only lowers your crit chance from 52% to 47%, and SotF gives fury as does RaO (although you probably want entangle if you take SotF, especially after this tuesday.) You’re extremely tanky with that build and your pet will be a huge source of your damage, so it sort of doesn’t even matter.

If you want to stick with a tanky as hell BM, I’d drop the compassion training. Your pet won’t have any trouble staying alive when roaming, especially with natural healing. I would personally drop nature’s bounty for nature’s protection or 2-handed training as well.

MT and entangle for SotF will help your pets stay on target.

Edit: Ya, Jim’s build will do a lot more damage and still work just fine. I think you’ve gone a bit overboard with the tankiness.

Another thought, just for fun I ran for a while with a combo of your natural healing + SotW and Jim’s nature’s voice for ridiculous regen. I was in full berserker and still basically unkillable. The downside is that condi-overload can’t really be dealt with. The upside is that you have perma-swiftness and high mobility so you can just leave the necros or whatever is condi spamming you. That’s a pretty fringe for-fun build though and not something I normally would use.

You’re hella short on condi removal there. People almost always take either empathic bond or survival of the fittest.

The semi-meta LB/GS build is 6/x/x/6/x for SotF. The other option is to go super high damage LB and s/d and you can get away with just SoR and possibly HS (maaaybe even a bear .) It’s not terribly far off the SotF build because, IMO, SotF sort of sucks. You don’t want to spam condi removal with LR for obvious reasons, so that is a huge percentage decrease in the amount of on demand condi-clear.

The other power builds that may interest you are dual melee. s/a + GS goes really well with moment of clarity. So x/6/6/x/x or so. And the other popular variant is s/d+GS 2/0/6/6/0 for barkskin and SotF. Barkskin is kitten amazing.

One final note, I think not taking a regular wolf is a mistake, but I guess that’s personal preference. IMO wolf blows all other pets completely out of the water for competitive.

Dahkeus.8243:

If your favorite profession in a video game becoming less popular for dungeons is “legit drama” to you, then we lead very different lives…

Um I guess? Obviously a ton of people care a lot about this. I love playing GW2, so nerfing my character into oblivion kind of stings. Not sure how else to explain it to you.

Dahkeus.8243:

Fluffball.8307:

Dahkeus.8243:

If this changes the GS to be the best meta weapon, I’ll be very happy.

The 1h attack is absolute #1 reason I hate playing a ranger in dungeons.

?? It’s a nerf to the class as a whole, nothing to do with GS. The biggest reason we were taken in dungeons is now completely obliterated, so no one will accept you whatever weapon you use.

J Eberle.9312:

Goodbye ranger. Fare thee well.

Oh the drama…lol

P.s. If this is something you honestly care about, open a ticket. The more tickets received, the more likely it is to be fixed.

It’s legit drama. If you don’t care about this nerf, you weren’t running FS and didn’t really care that much about fast dungeon runs, so of course you don’t see the massive nerf to the profession.

Pretty much what we expect anyway. You warriors have any old shoes with holes and mouse poop in them we can have?