Guild Wars 2

Agadar.4931:

Greatsword does not do ‘good’ damage. It does horrible damage.

It either needs a boost in damage, or Maul needs to become a blast finisher. Either one would see it becoming used more as a main weapon.

Well I guess the sword and axe does horrible damage too, because the greatsword does comparable damage. It does slightly more damage on its autoattack chain(the attack speed is nearly identical, 1/4 of a second faster on the sword), more damage on the 2 attack, but less damage on the 3 attack. It also does more single target damage than the axe, though the axe multitarget has more range. The damage isn’t horrible just because you don’t see people use it. Besides, it is already gaining popularity. A guildie told me he managed to crit a 5k with the greatsword (I think it was swoop).

Durzlla.6295:

It wouldn’t be for no reason, it’d make our tanky supporty weapon (i mean seriously, it is tanky, it doesn’t do kitten for damage when compared to any of our other weapons, and it has pretty much only control moves) fill its slot perfectly, as everyone here said, GS is lacking something, whether it’s damage, more control w/e. It’s missing something, and this blast finisher would put it in a place where it’d just be a really solid weapon and it wouldn’t need to be touched for a while, i -doubt- they’d nerf the CD on the sword, if anything they’d increase the time it takes for maul to go off.

I don’t think the greastsword is lacking though. I use it now, and I love it. Good damage with an evade on autoattack. A big hit every few seconds that gives bleed and doesnt interrupt your fighting too much. A HUGE leap(finisher). A 3 second block that turns into a knockdown. A daze/stun that gives your pet a big hit on its next attack. I think it has a lot of utility, and I use mine a lot, often without really having to switch to my second weapon. Also QZ with its autoattack gives you essentially a four second evade, which is a nice bonus. The mobility from leap is very nice as well. It might just be that the weapon is underestimated. None of its skills are bad honestly. Even if it is missing something, its not a finisher, since swoop accomplishes that.

Zenith.7301:

Warriors still do sustained damage. It’s in their absurd autoattack crits. Especially axe/axe warrior sustained damage.

I know you like the class; so do I! I still roam wvw on this class, but I have other classes as well. And it’s obvious the only reason I play on this class is for the flavor and clearly not the strength, because when you see the numbers of your other classes, you realize how low ranger numbers are.

And don’t think me a damage nut. I’d love to be able to run spirit support builds as well, but I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon at the rate of class changes they implement. Prior to game release, they said they would diligently balance classes and would have the tools to quickly implement changes. Post-release, you see tweaks at best every 2-3 months, no better than the other MMO competition.

I agree with you on this. Ranger in its current state is definitely not the top in damage. However this doesn’t mean there are no viable offensive builds. I understand and respect your opinion though.

Dardamaniac.1295:

The skill is called WW defense..defense not offense…its a defensive skill against projectiles.It does some pretty decent dmg but its not easy to make someone stay in meele range while you channel it.i used to use it in some builds and its cool.Whats wrong with you guys?why do you want every skill to do 100000 dmg in the click?
The #4 skill of the Off hand axe is a bit low but this is for another thread

This.

You are effectively not taking damage unless you opponent comes up for melee, and in that event you earn your desired effect of giving our damage as they are now in range of the axes. It is an excellent skill and not really comparable to Dagger Storm if it is apparently an elite.

The 4 skill on offhand axe is lackluster in that it seems to have no utility, just another attack that does damage (not necessarily a bad thing, just lackluster).

Lelouch.8452:

*as blast finishers with maul
torch>maul=might
fire trap>maul=might
but then again, ele fire fields and blast are not op at all xD

I was thinking more water field with healing spring lol. HS, maul, swoop wait a few seconds, reapeat, survive for 15 secs, repeat( throw in the sword leap too on the secondary wep slot). This would make bunkers much more survivable. Lol I would definitely enjoy this change, I just don’t think they will.

Durzlla.6295:

Ursan.7846:

Jazenn.7526:

Leuca.5732:

Durzlla.6295:

Leuca.5732:

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Leuca.5732:

I’d rather it give you a stack of might for 5 seconds for each foe you hit with the attack. This would encourage players to actually pay attention to what they’re hitting and be rewarded for doing so, without letting them stack excessive amounts of might. The bleed could also stand to be improved.

I don’t like this idea nearly as much as it being a blast finisher, as it feels more like a support/utility weapon instead of a DPS weapon. Traits for it are in the support tree. Also, you can use combo fields with a blast finisher to grant aoe might, that’s what combos are all about.

It’s hardly a support weapon in and of itself, unless you count its control aspects to be part of what we call support. All blast finishing will do is make them nerf the recharge and make us spam it on that recharge in any field we find. It makes more sense to me to reward the ranger waiting if feasible to hit as many targets as possible, increasing his benefit from good usage of the attack. And considering the fact that it’s the only reliably source of DPS on the GS aside from auto attack, a blast finish/recharge nerf would not be ideal.

Why would it nerf the recharge? there’s PLENTY of blast finishers with a short recharge, the recharge is based on the SKILL not the finisher.

I’m almost certain the recharge would be increased if they changed nothing else and added a blast finisher.

I agree. Mostly because they don’t like buffing something for no reason without adding some kind of drawback. Also because we already have swoop as a low CD finisher, and maul+swoop spam would be insane.

Where are you getting this “they don’t like buffing something without adding some kind of drawback” idea from?

They’ve unilaterally nerfed/buffed many things since launch. Heck I’m hard-pressed to find an example where they buffed something and nerfed it in other ways.

Splinter Shot, damage and bleeding just buffed, greatsword #4 was just flat out buffed with no debuffs, Mauls damage and bleeding was just flat out buffed with no draw backs, shortbow attack speed nerf with no compensation.

Boom, several examples, proving his argument is BS.

I said “they don’t like buffing something for no reason without adding some kind of drawback”. The things that they buff they feel like there is a reason to doing so, balancing the game. I don’t know the reasons, but I know they wouldn’t buff without one. Maybe the buffed underwater classes for multiple professions because they though it was lackluster. Maybe they buffed maul damage by 150% (i think) because they though it was too weak. Maybe they nerfed shortbow because it was putting out damage faster than they intended it to. My point about this is that buffing it for no reason (at least in my opinion, as this seems more like a suggestion “i wish” request than a legitimate, need for balance problem) would create an imbalance that is unnecessary. When you cite examples of balancing changes, you are still only addressing half my argument. The reason I think that its for no reason because I think it would cause an imbalance. An extra finisher, being a blast on top of that, would give the great sword access to 2 very low CD finishers. I don’t think that is what needs to be done, but it would make sense if they added some kind of drawback, such as a longer cooldown, or something else. BTW, instead of calling my argument BS, maybe just say that you disagree, or even that it is wrong in your opinion.

Congratulations man. I have done some of these things, I didn’t know D meant the pet was dead. But you are a very skilled ranger. Nautika, spirits can move with you with traiting btw. Spirits were hard to work for me though.

Recluse.6740:

Healing spring is a great heal, no doubt. You get the burst heal at the start, and regen after. I have two problems with it. I do not want to be stuck in a small circle to stack the regen, and regen is not strong enough to mitigate burst builds.

With Trolls Ungent and the traits I have, I get about 1500 HP per tick. You add that to having protection boon up almost all the time during a fight, and its pretty darn awesome.

Earlier I ran a Dwayna Rune Build with Healing Spring, and the 33% regen duration trait, and it was great as long as I was not fighting a heavy damage class.

I fought a ranger and it was a long….. long fight, which I finally lost after getting knocked down and bursted with quickness pet swap and canine knockdowns. So many times I would heal just in time to save my butt, but I was always on the edge … never knowing if the next burst was going to be it.

I logged back on to my other build .. joined same server, fought the same ranger 1 v 1, and was never in trouble one time. Got me to about 50% HP one time, but that was more on me, cause my heal was available, I just did not use it, cause the protection was keeping the damage down.

Of course this all could be because I am just used to it, but for some reason .. Trolls and Protection seem almost unfair at times.

1500?? Wow, I didn’t know that was possible, that definitely makes TU more desirable. With shorter cooldown and 10 second duration its the same wait as you experience will the spring, the only difference is that TU heals for a lot more and faster, while HS applies sustaining regen and cond removal. The real decision in this case I would say comes down to weapon choice. With 2 leap finishers on melee, both on low cooldown, I can get some extra healing with the water field. If I was more ranged, however, the TU would definitely seem more attractive, as I don’t want to be confined. Wow thanks for the info, I didn’t know it could tick that high, that’s 15000 total health healed right?

Zenith.7301:

You are seriously listing an elite as your reason to be the best stomper/rezzer? You do realize that necros with signet of undeath exist, right? So, right there, you are not the best rezzer in game. For stomping, sorry, warrior and mesmer both have stability and quickness; the mesmer even has stealth. And if you want to touch on elites, Mesmer Time Warp makes mass stomping and rezzing a breeze.

Neither traps nor muddy terrain nor barrage compare to engineer aoe cc, let alone a hammer warrior. Knockdowns/stuns/knockbacks/daze>>>>>snare.

Burst? What are you smoking, you mean waiting for a raven f2, assuming your pet can stay on a target when you need it to land? I can’t believe you’re comparing ranger burst to thief, mesmer, or warrior burst. Or ranger condition damage to engineer and thief and necro condi damage.

It’s not just fine for the ranger to be OK while other classes are great. Classes don’t operate on a vacuum. Maybe we’re not broken in many aspects engineers are (they’re basically only good for cc bunkering and most of their skills are broken), but to say that we may be a bit better off than at least engineers is not something to boast.

They saddled this class with a pet, and released it knowing very well that it would take them 4-5 months to actually get it working above mediocre. How you can saddle a class with a main mechanic that is a handicap for such periods of time is crazy.

A pet that doesn’t scale at all — no food buff gains, no stat inheritance from your gear. If you want it to be decent, put 30 in BM or the pet is just bad. And the fact remains that regardless of your gear progress or access to boons, a third of your damage (the pet) is not scaling like a class whose entire damage/survival is entirely focused on themselves is scaling.

Scaling is a huge issue that has reared its ugly head in every MMO and needed to be addressed at some point to not disadvantage pet classes.

I can definitely live with not being the best rez/stomper.

I guess you disagree with a majority on the effectiveness of our snares, but we actually do have access to those snare skills you mentioned, as well as a knockdown on greatsword 4, a stun/daze on greatsword and shortbow 5, and a knockback on longbow 4. Thats not including pets, who have access to knockdown,stun,and daze.

We actually do have good burst in QZ and RaO. No, they don’t hit as high as thieves/warriors, but they are nevertheless effective burst because we are hitting faster and harder with more crit. If you don’t think it’s adequate, that’s fine, but it is what it is, ranger burst.

I think every class should be equal, and balance is definitely an issue in my opinion. But for ranger, its not drastic. I can see that there are issues with every class, and it will eventually be considered for change, but at the moment, I am satisfied with the ability of a ranger. We obviously disagree on this though. I think those other classes (thief and mesmer) need a nerf instead of us getting a buff, meaning it’s not that we are a weak class, but that they are at or near OP.

Your pet is all about management, whether you like it or not. It is attached to the ranger class not as a handicap, but as a supplement. If you think of it that way, it becomes useful. A good way to master a class would definitely be to master the mechanic. I disagree with you on pet effectiveness, you don’t need 30 BM, I am currently using 15 and am doing fine. If you want to put 0 into the traitline, the pet stilll can be useful, just not as much as if you were willing to invest in it. By the way, they don’t need to scale, they already hit hard. Say you hit a 1000 on the longbow autoattack, and your pet hits a 1500 on crit (easily possible with 0 BM cats). That makes your dps effectively 2500(assuming that happened in a second). That’s a lot.

EDIT: Maybe we aren’t meant to burst 10k damage in 2 seconds. Its possible our damage is meant to be sustained. If buy offensive builds you mean burst builds, then I could agree with you maybe a little more, but still we have QZ and RaO.

Not much, but one tactic I have found success with:

When they stealth, wait until you see the numbers on you(when they start attacking you), and pop muddy terrain, and burst down as much as you can. This also works with traps, though they can be laid immediately, and after one of those two options, a follow up with Entangle will leave the thief a trapped animal, waiting for the hunter to finish them off.

Leuca.5732:

Durzlla.6295:

Leuca.5732:

Gaiyeerishima Cat.1082:

Leuca.5732:

I’d rather it give you a stack of might for 5 seconds for each foe you hit with the attack. This would encourage players to actually pay attention to what they’re hitting and be rewarded for doing so, without letting them stack excessive amounts of might. The bleed could also stand to be improved.

I don’t like this idea nearly as much as it being a blast finisher, as it feels more like a support/utility weapon instead of a DPS weapon. Traits for it are in the support tree. Also, you can use combo fields with a blast finisher to grant aoe might, that’s what combos are all about.

It’s hardly a support weapon in and of itself, unless you count its control aspects to be part of what we call support. All blast finishing will do is make them nerf the recharge and make us spam it on that recharge in any field we find. It makes more sense to me to reward the ranger waiting if feasible to hit as many targets as possible, increasing his benefit from good usage of the attack. And considering the fact that it’s the only reliably source of DPS on the GS aside from auto attack, a blast finish/recharge nerf would not be ideal.

Why would it nerf the recharge? there’s PLENTY of blast finishers with a short recharge, the recharge is based on the SKILL not the finisher.

I’m almost certain the recharge would be increased if they changed nothing else and added a blast finisher.

I agree. Mostly because they don’t like buffing something for no reason without adding some kind of drawback. Also because we already have swoop as a low CD finisher, and maul+swoop spam would be insane.

Recluse.6740:

I run a 0/0/30/10/30 build. I use Runes of the Grove, and Clerics Amulet in sPvP.
My utilities are Troll Ungent, QZ, SotH, SotW, and Entangle.

Wilderness Survival – Vigorous Renewal, Oakheart Salve, Empathic Bond

Nature’s Magic – Nature’s Protection

Beastmastery – Speed training, Rending Attacks, Natural healing

This build is exceptional at 1 v 1 fights, and does very well in 1 v 2 fights, if you are on your game.

Basically with this build, I am the pet. I am the distraction while my pets do all the damage. I pop TU when I enter a fight which keeps me close to full health with softer hitting classes which demoralizes them, and it keeps me alive if I get hit with burst, and lets me escape to fight on.

Runes of the grove, while not totally reliable do help a ton. If it hits, they get rooted, and my pet does very nice damage while they hit their stun break, or fight their way out, and once they get out, I hit entangle to trap them again, and put Jaguar in stealth, popping QZ and watching their health drop while I stack bleeds, and hit for around 200 -400 damage with my short bow. The best part of these runes are the protection duration increase. The runes give you a chance to get protection on hit, and you have protection on dodge .. so damage mitigation is wonderful.

My other weapon set is Sword/Axe … I know not the most used, but I absolutely love it. Against ranged players, its amazing. I pop Trolls Ungent, go into whirling defense, and heal while they make the decision to attack and hurt themselves, stop attacking and watch as I go to full HP, or come in and attack with melee, which is even nicer because then I am stacking vulnerability while my pet does not have to chase them around, and racks up even more damage. Quick disclaimer: While in Whirling defense if you are not healing, you can die quickly to a hard hitting melee, as you cannot move… so use wisely.

I still get beat by some players, mostly do to their skill being higher than mine, not because of weakness in the build. Im just not that great of a player, but I am decent.

I have run into at least 1 of every class that can beat me, but they are few and far between.

If anyone has any questions you can reach me in game (usually after 9pm central) on either Recluse, or Needle Slinger. Recluse is my sPvP build tester, and PvE main, and Needle Slinger is my main in sPvP.

Take care, and hope I helped some Rangers out.

I agree with you on two points. I can’t say I’ve tried TU much, so I am not a credible judge. Ima let you finish, but Healing Spring is one of the best heals of all time! Lol but yes I agree with your use of QZ in the BM build, it gives you( your pet mostly) the ability to burst down your opponent, despite being a bunker-like build. Immobilizing an opponent, stealthing my jag and popping QZ with me on sword autoattack – its given me many kills. As an alternative I am testing out muddy terrain in order to catch/slow opponents for my melee and pet. I found it also helps in catching thieves, which is a really nice bonus.

I also like your use of Whirling Defense, I’m suprised I don’t see it used more often. I use dagger for it’s cripple but it is a very comparable option, definitely more defensive in this type of build, so if you want more survivability vs ranged along with the big damage it has + vulnerability + REFLECTION of projectiles, use the offhand axe. Its underrated. Watch a rifle warrior pop killshot on that.

For one, the bows have built in skills for that. Longbow has Barrage, which cripples, and the knock back skill on 4. Shortbow has a daze on the 5, a cripple on the 4, and an evade on the 3. Beyond that, you can use your pets to help you. Some pets like porcine and canines have knockdowns. Many pets have CC such as fear, chill, immobilize, and even can cripple when traited (Master trait on the beastmaster line). There are also pets that can grant you swiftness or stealth(birds/porcine) with the right choice.Traits that can help you are found in the Wilderness Survival line, the first minor trait, which gives great endurance regen(Something Engineers have as a Grandmaster Trait), as well as a major trait which gives you vigor when you use a heal skill. There is also a major trait in the Skirmishing line which gives you vigor when you are hit for a critical, as well as a minor trait that grant swiftness on weapon switch. All that vigor helps you get more dodges. Beyond that, there are also utility skills that can help you. For stuns/cripple/chill you have the spike and frost trap, and muddy terrain. You also have lightning reflexes, which is a stunbreak, evade, and gives you a lot of vigor. Some spirits (frost/earth/sun) have active effects that can hinder the enemy with chill, cripple, and blind respectively, if I recall. The elite skill, Entangle, will give you up to 20 second of immobilize, depending on the competence of your opponent. With your gear, you can get runes of Melandru which reduce the duration of conditions afflicted on you, including the cripples and immobilizes people will throw at you. There are also runes that can grant swiftness and increase it’s duration(centaur I think). For sigil, use hyrddromancy for a freeze on switch, or one that can increase your cripple or stun duration(same can apply for runes.

Of course you can also never go wrong with some extra defense, in case your enemy does catch you, with tougness, vitality, or healing power, but all of those are a different story. They can be specced with traits, or beefed up with armor, weapons, trinkets, and runes. Food can also help you in that department, I think there is one that gives endurance regeneration, not sure of the name though.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Ravens have the most burst, Ive gotten 16k crits with my ravens f2 in pvp. Jaguar does less overall numbers and burst but stealths and hits just as hard in its own right. After a ravens f2 its inferior to a jag, atleast during a f2 stealth.

Dang! Someone please tell me how to do this, I cant get my birds to hit even 3k lol. Is this multiple skills buffing the hit or what? Can anyone tell me? In WvW my jungle stalker was able to hit 3.9k but thats the limit I’ve seen. I think I used an enlarged jaguar to hit 5k once but I’m not sure.

Blackjack.5621:

my pets can´t attack enemies when they are moving, i can buff my pet swiftness , sick em! and everything but they don´t hit. Especially when enemy runs in a circle WITHOUT any movementspeed but still the pet will NEVER land a single hit…

downstate nr3: pet stays next to me and does nothing…

Only birds manage to hit people running in circles sometimes.

The downed state ability is definitely bugged, I have the same issues and its frustrating at critical moments. But in regards to people kiting your pet, that seems wierd. I thought pet’s ability to hit on the move was buffed, and with swiftness buff it definitely should be hitting. Regardless, if they are focusing on kiting your pet, then that gives you an opportunity to get hits on your opponent while they are distracted. Also, try to use some conditions like cripple or chill to slow down your opponent so that your pet can hit them more.

Sollith.3502:

Jazenn.7526:

Power builds are also possible with this. When I use this build I am currently running 0/10/30/15/15. With this my pet gets a little extra damage (I use cats/birds for better crit chance). The 15 in NM gives fortifying bond so my pet can still get insane regen. I currenty have Empathetic Bond with Dwayna runes but am considering going Melandru runes with Bark Skin, and using condition duration food. With sharpening stone and my jungle stalker’s buff, I can get near 3000 atk still. I also run melee weps for leap finishers. Sword for more offensive play, GS for roaming/chasing and defense.

Similar to what I use: 0/10/30/15/15, but with zerkers gear to balance (I rely on a bit of crit damage, a small amount of bleed, and a bit of pet damage).

I will regularly change weapons with this build for PvE depending on what I need. I usually use a greatsword though. WvW I use a Greatsword and then a Sword/Dagger combo (and will switch to my longbow for keep defense).

Same weapons and same traits, great minds think alike lol. I run Clerics gear though, sacrificing crit for extra defense, so I regularly depend on buffs or pets to do big damage. Still enough for me though, I’m loving it. Good luck to you sir.

Adaneshade.2409:

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

Adaneshade.2409:

There is nothing wrong with wanting to do ranged, just don’t expect to fight your way out of being ganked while catching up to your zerg without some melee ability. There is not a single class in this game that can go pure ranged and expect to do well if they are alone vs a melee class.

Not true, warrior can do it. I do it with rifle all the time. Its not hard since in WvW kill shot hits soo hard and 1 shots 90% of the players.

90% of the players are terrible >.< your argument holds no weight. I don’t know anyone who regularly solo roams that would ever die to a rifle warrior.

It is actually very easy to kite a melee class, not just for ranger, but with other classes too, like engi. With all the evades, cripples, and cc we have, if you use ranged it is very possible to kill a melee class. Depends on the skills you use and how much evade you can get. I feel like a trap ranger has an advantage on any melee that they meet in battle, regardless of profession.

MooCube.1450:

I’ve decided that I’m going to be a spiritual Ranger anyway. The spirit road may not be the easiest road, but it’s the road I want to walk. Walk with me.

Been there done that. Good luck man! May the spirits be with you (30 NM). Lol

Spirits are viable, some people make them work, they just aren’t as effective as other skills. They have uses, but not many have found a way to make them good enough for their purposes. And dagger does have animal related attacks, according to the name, they just don’t have the animation.

Sword and Greatsword weapons in a melee build help this, as half of the skills give an image of you attacking in the form of a nature spirit animal. Also the spirit utility skills help that, with 4 nature spirits following around (with the right traits in Nature Magic). Any of the elites accomplish what you want too, with entangle growing vines, Nature spirit as a huge monster, and rampage as one with you and your pet attacking together. Try some of those out.

EDIT: also warhorn or dagger as an offhand. Warhorn calls birds to help you attack, while dagger also has animal related skills I think.

I love the ranged aspect of a ranger as much as anyone, I love bows(shortbow more than longbow). I wanted to try something new, however, and melee is pretty freakin awesome. The capabilities are different from a bow. With a sword, you gain access to an offhand, and dagger is an excellent melee weapon you also gain. The poison from this combo is amazing. The sword does give you good condition damage if you use torch too. Besides that, the sword one of the stronger ranger weapons on autoattack in my opinion. Also I am in love with greatsword, so many uses. I was surprised these weapons have comparable survivability and mobility to bows with the evades, dodges, leaps, and block. They are fun, and they look cool with the nature related skills. Reminds me of old kungkittenmovies with serpent style, bear style, eagle style, etc. Thats why I got armor and weps to make me look like a ninja.

Power builds are also possible with this. When I use this build I am currently running 0/10/30/15/15. With this my pet gets a little extra damage (I use cats/birds for better crit chance). The 15 in NM gives fortifying bond so my pet can still get insane regen. I currenty have Empathetic Bond with Dwayna runes but am considering going Melandru runes with Bark Skin, and using condition duration food. With sharpening stone and my jungle stalker’s buff, I can get near 3000 atk still. I also run melee weps for leap finishers. Sword for more offensive play, GS for roaming/chasing and defense.

Zenith.7301:

That was a whole lot of vague rambling posing as wisdom. I love these people who lecture and forget about referring to specifics.

Please address ranger-exclusive utility to a group or a group support area where the ranger excels in a way no other class does. Whate is the ranger’s version of portal, aoe stability, marks/corrupt boon, cc bunker, etc?

If you’ll just keep hiding behind accusations of those who don’t share your viewpoint as “inexperienced”, feel free to leave the thread — you have nothing constructive to offer other than making assumptions about people you’ve never played with. Telling people L2P is not useful in the slightest and it is never appropriate in any thread.

First l want to say that I never was posing my thoughts as wisdom or accused anyone as inexperienced or was hiding behind anything. I actually was constructive, understanding, and put forth suggestions, and named some skills. I assumed that a lot of people search for builds online. I will continue to assume such until I see any evidence to the contrary. I see the forum posts all the time asking about good builds, reffering to them as common knowledge to the point where all it takes is a word to know what it is. There is a lack of build diversity in that, and it can cause problems such as the OP is experiencing.

If you want me to be more specific, as I was in my first post, then just ask. I don’t know how specific you want me to be. I don’t appreciate an attack on my character though, I tried to be polite, sorry if I offended you. I’m glad you love people like me though.

While I don’t want to give a L2P message, I think it is a standard rule to any game, I don’t doubt anyone on the forum doesn’t already know how to play the game though. I just suggested some more exploration. I don’t know everything either, I heard some interesting things about the Guard skill and I’m going to try that out myself later. You could say I’m learning to play.

But to your specific question about ranger-exclusive utlity, I do have an answer. Many elite skills can help a group and I think a ranger has great access in mass CC, in my opinion better than other class’s fear. With Entangle, traps, and muddy terrain, we have a lot of access to this. Some classes, including us, can depend on movement to play well, so these skills can mess up an enemy team, or help set up your team’s burst. Rangers have the best ability to do this as far as I know, better than necro, warrior, or guardian. Maybe comparable to that Tornado elite but I don’t know fully about that. Also, the Nature spirit is an excellent skill that no other class has anything like. AoE healing ticks for big, as well as AoE condition removal, and it’s trump, a possible AoE revive. I have been able to pull off an insta-rez of 3 others once, I’m not sure how many people that it’s possible with. In addition, the ranger has excellent access to combo fields. Fire, Ice, Poison, even smoke underwater, and these are definitely big in team play, I’m sure I don’t need to go into those specifics. The best of these fields is perhaps the water field, with an initial heal, and pulsed regen and condition removal all for 15 seconds with only a 15 second wait in between. To my knowledge its the longest water field in the game, maybe even the longest field period. Not sure about all that though, I just know its good. You could also say pets boons are ranger exclusive advantage, with an easily switchable choice to most boons or conditions, including fear, immobilize, chill, fury, might, protection, regen. These are great because you can easily choose which one you want without retraiting or changing your own build. Lastly, I think utility spirits are supposed to be one of our best group supports, unfortunately many believe they are not up to par, including me having tried them for the better part of about 50 levels. Not to say they aren’t used nonetheless. Some people make it work for them, they are specifically designed for group support giving burn proc, protection, swiftness, and damage. Maybe one day those could be changed so that the majority appreciates them more.

Well there’s my answer. Hope that’s better than my last answer. Just trying to help. Excuse my bad grammar by the way, it’s a long post lol.

Ranger definitely has tools to catch people. Shortbow daze and cripple, axe chill, sword cripple, greatsword leap and daze, entangle, and even some evasion skills can be reversed with some skill. Some classes are better than us at that, some worse. At the same time with traps, muddy terrain, entangle, and greatsword leap, we also have some great ability to run. Its honestly not a bad situation. If you are a quick reactor, you can escape before its too late. If you are experienced enough, you can determine whether to run or fight before the battle happens. Today I caught a running thief and ele on two different occasions. However a ranger was able to escape me. This was with melee weapons too. It may not be the same for everyone, but its still not a huge issue.

Honestly ranger is in a good state right now. There are problems that can be debated/fixed, but we are no longer the laugh at class, we can compete in PvP fine. I can understand the need to rant, I’m just giving suggestions. Might as well work with what we have.

But back to the original point of the thread. I feel like the main issue here is a lack of knowledge about certain aspects to the ranger profession. Like someone said earlier, you can be awesome but with work, practice, and testing. You might be disadvantaged in some ways, but in your build could have the advantage in another. If all builds were equal in everything the game would be boring. Its not easy like a thief (purely an opinion), and I appreciate the complexity of the class because of that. Instead of looking on forums for all your builds and tips, use them as a supplement or critique of your own ideas, even making subtle changes to builds you find posted. I suggest you guys take a shot at creating your own build how you want it. If you want to catch people, spec the swiftness and stuns, we have that. If you want power, spec it. I think a mistake a lot of players make is searching for builds other people make and cause your experience and satisfaction to be dependent on someone else’s playstyle. Either that or just having unrealistic expectations. For a while I was like that and I was dissatisfied with ranger until I explored some on my own. Go to the Heart of the Mists and go crazy, build what you want within the boundaries of realistic play.

If you just can’t seem to find what you want. I guess you are doomed to rant on forums and ragequit/reroll.

I have to disagree with you guys. I have tried a variety of ranger builds and I think the ranger does have the ability to output damage. Condition damage is something many rangers use, traps being the most popular. That build can do plenty of damage. There are plenty glass cannon rangers out there too, according to the forums, many spec power and crit and hit hard enough to make me mash the dodge button. No, we can’t output damage like warriors and thieves do, but I’m thinking we weren’t meant to be a high damage class like that. If by real power you mean 8k+ in one hit, then by all means change profession.

The BM bunker build is popular at the moment, and yes it is a defensive build that relies on pet for damage. Don’t look down on the build for actually utilizing the class mechanic. If you don’t like defensive builds, you aren’t trapped to it. You can spec offensive stats, no one is stopping you, don’t act like its not there. Use pets like they do to supplement damage, they can really pack a wallop. If you have trouble using “crappy AI beefed up BM” pets, try using the f2 and taking a look at the other skills they have. To have them hit more either speed them up or slow your opponent down. Even if a build like that leaves you with low defensive stats, you can combat that with the many dodges and evades+vigor ranger is blessed with. If you still have trouble with low defense, then try a balance. Some BM builds have some power or condition damage specced in too. Having full benefit of both attack and defense is unrealistic.

About AoE, all our auto-attacks can hit multiple targets, including all bow attacks when traited. We have barrage, traps, muddy terrain, whirling defense, bonfire, an elite and thats all I can think of at the moment, not including pets or underwater. That’s a lot. AoE is overrated anyway its the first thing people dodge. There’s more to WvW than wall battles and the bow equips us well for that in the first place. We also have burst in QZ (also quickness from pet swap but less) and RaO. Some also use signets for burst or a fury/might buff. QZ is the best burst for me, its all I need, regardless of my spec, it gets me downs.

If you think ranger is boring, weak, or limited, then sorry boss. All we can do is hope for changes, of which I would gladly welcome for things like spirits.

I would just suggest exploring more. Try everything. We have access to the same stats and equipment as other classes, so no reason you shouldn’t be able to do damage if you want to.

Yes, there is a major trait in the skirmishing line for that.

Wolf.2891:

You’re playing the wrong class if you want to do damage. Just think of your self as a less useful guardian with a little more dps.

Not gonna lie, we don’t have the OP damage that warriors and thieves have, but we are by no means useless or horrible in DPS. A testament to this is any ranger who has ever beaten these OP damage builds, which is pretty much everyone.

Kam.8109:

Ursan.7846:

Doing 20k damage doesn’t equal DPS. It just means Wars have better burst damage.

Oh please. Being able to hit for 90% of most peoples life is amazing. It means the warrior can basically two or three shot someone. The ranger doesn’t have anything close to this. I sincerely hope you’re trolling and aren’t drinking the “warriors aren’t better at ranged” kool aid.

Thats a very easily dodged skill though. Besides, the test was measuring warrior rifle autoattack vs ranger bow autoattack, not killshot vs skills that the ranger has.Warriors have better burst damage. Their ranged dps on autoattack is not greater than ranger, according to the test.

Othayuni.7369:

Specifically asked for comments besides that, urdriel. I want what ranger is, not what it isn’t. But thank you.

So canines are good for damage? That’s good to know, I like them.

Canines have good power and felines have good crit. Felines have been known to hit the highest, especially jaguar with its stealth that gives it buffs, but canines can also reach 2k in one hit with the right build.

Ignore udriel, ranger is not supposed to be a warrior or a thief. Rangers have plenty of dps, try Quickening Zephyr+Rapid Fire on longbow. Hell, even throw in Rampage as One with a pet. If you have the Grandmaster trait for Marksmanship, you get to become a giant along with your pet. You can rack up damage, just in different ways. Warrior burst is dodgeable, Thief burst is dodgeable. Ranger damage is consistent and you cant dodge it all because it persists. Use dodgerolling to its full extent and you can put out more damage and down your opponent. You can kill both warriors and thiefs by avoiding their initial burst, or taking half their health before they even get in striking range. Practice makes perfect in that department.

First, I would like to note that optimization of damage may come with a sacrifice of survivability. Besides that, I think longbow/greatsword is a good dps build, maybe sword/torch as well. With beserkers and power and precision optimized, you can hit a couple thousand on greatsword 2 and 3 and channel over 5k easily on longbow 2, also hitting between 1-2k on longbow and greatsword autoattack when critting(sword could get you 1-1.5k). Also optimize damaging pets, felines and canines I think are best for this. Quickening Zephyr will probably be your most useful utility, others that may be useful are signets, which will give you passive advantages, and, with 30 points in the Marksmanship traitline, nice effects for you and your pet, including invulnerability and enlargement. Elite skill would be Rampage as One. This build could do real damage when mastered, I have tried it, but not extensively.

For going WvW I guess I have a few suggestions. Longbow seems to be a favorite here, for 1500 range and Barrage. Also axe is good for bounce. Pets that give buffs or CC can be useful, but don’t invest too much offensively into them because they are often on the front lines getting zerged on. You have plenty of damage at range, so use that range!

My advice would be to go in with your current build and fix what doesn’t match the playstyle. You can be perfectly useful, despite some opinions.

Adrenaline.2854:

Here’s what I’m suggesting. Instead of a 2 minute CD on Signet of Stone, why not make it a 1 minute CD. Instead of 6 seconds of immunity, make it 5 seconds, or even 4 to counter balance it.

Would that be too overpowered?

I would agree with this. I don’t like that two of our Signets have elite skill cooldowns. Nerf them if you have too, but reduce that cooldown. 4 still sounds good to me, same with signet of the wild.

Braxxus.2904:

OGDeadHead.8326:

awe extender.1908:

And I am not accepting suggestions from players who say that you can call the pet back. This is not a valid fix.

This is the truth. Managing your pet is one thing (which I do just fine thank you), it’s not that hard most of the time. But when we pull our pets out of a fight, we cut our effectiveness in half.

We are supposed to be balanced with an active pet. With a pet on passive, pulled out of a fight, or dead, we are subpar compared to every other class – it really is that simple.

This is actually a very very very valid point. If the ranger class is balanced around the idea of 100% pet up-time so significantly then the ranger class needs pets that are capable of 100% pet up-time. Any time you press f3 or your pet dies to a single aoe (lol @ pets being alive in WvW fights for instance) you’re basically pressing a button that is “Reduce your damage by 50% for an indefinate amount of time”.

50% is a bit of an exxageration, but he does present a valid point. However, what you would gain is buffs and heal, depending on the pet you have active. Not agreeing that equals damage output, but all this is hard to quantify. On the other hand, if you are investing 50% of your damage output into your pet (not even sure this is possible), maybe you should give it some survivability. There are traits where you can give you pet LOTS of regen. For instance I know a build where my pet gets 500 regen every second, making it much harder to kill.

This same argument could go for a mesmer using clones or a necro using minions, which both have less survivability than a pet.

AlexRD.7914:

I think that the way shouts are handled in this game is kind of bad.
Some of the shouts should already be in the pet control interface, not in utility skills. Like guard.

We should have the option to tell our pets to move somewhere and stay there without having to use an utility skill, or making your pet revive people without a utility skill. The pet revive skill is absolutely useless because of its ridiculous long cooldown, so why not make traits that improve these pet skills?

Also, let us manage our pet. I want to be able to choose when my wolf knocks someone down, just like my f2 skill.

Those improvements i listed there, would improve ranger’s usefulness on PvP a lot. Being able to revive fallen comrades with your pet would add a unique feeling to rangers just like mesmers have it with portals.

And being able to control our pet’s abilities will give us chance to say, interrupt enemies healing, or burst someone down while that person is on the ground, that kind of thing.

Oh, and please, improve the range on the wolf’s knockdown, it’s really low and very easy to be avoided.

I agree, shouts are too bad to be utility skills. Maybe a bit more pet control could be a good thing.

The data Ursan linked is interesting, seems we do output more ranged damage than warrior looking at that data. Also the 30 BM points do a lot more than just 30 points in every attribute.

I don’t agree with the Longbow suggestions. Why are you unwilling to trait into longer range and more damage? What justifies giving longbow a free traitsworth of improvement with no investment? The improvement you are asking for is already there, unless you are asking for 1800 range, which is ridiculous. They would dodge everything at that range anyway and then you would ask for arrows that move faster than bullets. Also, bleeding is for shortbow, longbow is not a condition stacking weapon, though there is a trait you can get bleeding on crits as well as sigils if you want this so badly.

As for traps, I can agree with the poison combo, but not 1200 range. Traps make sense to have to be set, getting ground target is already a huge improvement in the first place. Besides, we aren’t necros.

With pets, I can see that ranged pets could use longer range, I think its a possibility. In regards to pet switching and dying, that is a personal control issue, you already have a secondary option. Engineers can’t change their f1-f4 options on a whim either. I think the best needed buff for pets right now is keeping the name on switch lol.

I do believe spirits need a buff. I tried to run a spirit build early on, but it just doesnt work out. They don’t need extra proc chance though. I think the grandmaster trait of mobility can work, if the spirits are worth bringing with you in the first place. The keys are decreasing the cooldown of the effects to honestly no more than 2 seconds and increasing the survivability.

Edit: Also on Spirits, I keep forgetting about their extra skill ability. Even with that, give them the survivability for it to me used.

I would disagree. We as a profession probably got the biggest improvement out of this patch. My pet hits much more often. If your pet can’t catch people, increase its movement speed (easiest way is the major trait in skirmishing). Arrows are faster and we are faster. No complaints here, I think they improved as much as they could for the time being, a major overhaul for any class would unfairly unbalance the game.

There are still some problems, but hey that’s with every class, at least we got the most love this round, and are improving. For instance: Necro staff autoattack is still slow enough to run and dodge at 600 range, not to mention condition damage being lackluster compared to power. Engineer kits can now use sigils, but kits to begin with have all some weak flaw.

With regards to pets, if you dont want them to die, dont send them into a moshpit of damage. In dungeons or zerging, best option may be to keep them by you and use the buffs or heal, or use ranged attacks. Pet control takes time to master, but it isnt too difficult.

All in all, I am becoming better at my ranger, who is my main. The more you master it, the less you feel the class needs a huge improvement. I can 1v1 any class and win. Some matchups are harder and some players skill outmatch mine, but I feel even in my chances. I don’t feel like we need improvement so much as other OP builds in certain professions need nerfs. If ranger continues to disappoint, re-roll or try another class, maybe it doesn’t fit your playstyle.

At the moment Kain is on top, something I like to see. Everyone on Kain is doing their part it seems, we had good coordination in KBL last night between several guilds. Thanks to Chaster and SoS for wrecking EB!

Now that devona is gone the matchup seems better between us and fergs, not sure about ET. Speaking of devonas, they are SMASHING tier 7 right now. They will likely rise until they meet their numbers. What does this say about us and fergs? We got pretty close to beating them at least once. This was last night:

I’m interested to see how this week goes, rooting for my fellow Kain. Kain and Ferg are coming out the gates hard in competition, we will see who is the new top dog. ET, welcome to tier 8! I see green growing in your BL. EB is much too blue right now though. Also a shoutout to a two fergs (not everyone, just the two I saw) using a glitch to remain invulnerable during combat: good fight dudes (not really).

I agree, we are an under powered. But not by so much. The ranger jokes are just there from tradition I expect them to stay for a while unless some op build comes out. I am looking forward to the patch, the pet fix seems most promising, but don’t get your hopes up. I doubt it will be a change-all patch. I enjoy my ranger now I feel like I have gotten better at it and know the class, we aren’t on the level of thieves but we aren’t on the bottom either. Engineer definitely needs some love as well, and Necro too. The mindset has become that we are at the bottom of the ladder, but I think its not terribly bad and we are not alone. Honestly though, I love the jokes lol. If people want to hate, show them your stuff.

I can vouch for the viability of this build. Its amazing! I was becoming bored with ranger but found another interesting build to keep me happy. The regen through various means (I use spring, signet, nature spirit, runes, dodge roll, and fern hound) is nice, but I think the real defense here comes from the evasion skills from sword/dagger, as well as traits and lightning reflexes that give vigor. Traits are 0/0/30/10/30 and I run sword/dagger and axe/axe and optimize defensive stats, so it takes me a while to get a health bar down.

On the plus side, I was able to successfully 2v1 more than once and not die( the longest being at 4-5 minutes!), rarely dying. This is all in one day of sPvP just trying out the build. Shortbow seems an interesting option, but I think my build would lose some power in not being able to attack multiple targets. The offhand axe I dont use too much though, I may switch to torch or warhorn. Mobility out of combat sucks, but its a price to pay. You won’t get obscene amount of kills, but it easy to whittle down someones health. Toughest opponents are heavy CC and condition builds. I am eager to try this in WvW once I get the gold.

Guys lets just forget about last week and move on, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Blame it on me, because I suck. I think some frustrations are just surfacing, people don’t like to always lose. Anyways new week! At the moment KBL is blue! Props to some Fergs from LARP, you guys are pretty kitten good, even without numbers.

Hey all, I’m from KAIN and I really enjoyed last week. I felt like we accomplished a lot and I liked the teamwork guilds put up, we did much better than usual in my opinion. Proud of our ability to hold KBL and snatch some places of other maps at times. Yesterday that 3 way battle in DRBL at our spawnpoint was fun! Also later on the Dev zerg that put up a bunch of siege (arrowcarts, ballistas, even a treb almost built) and fought us at our doorstep, that was fun as well lol. Props Thursday morning to the people (I think is was SoS?) who took all of EB for Kaineng and fought into DRBL. Also credit to Fergs who keep their BL on lockdown on a regular basis. I do notice Kaineng and Devona have a rivalry going on, and I like it, I think its a fun aspect of this game. Yea we will boast when we have victories, don’t be too offended, I’m proud of my guild and what we do, and will enjoy dungeons and fractals as well this week. Don’t take our break as an insult, we are mainly a WvW guild but there are other aspects of the game too. There will still be some of us there anyways, including me. Lets see what happens this week!