Guild Wars 2

If they nerfed channeled skills ability to track through stealth what chance would a longbow ranger have against a thief? You can’t properly aim projectiles where you think a stealthed thief might be. A rangers melee weapons on their own don’t have the damage to take out a decent player running full SA or condi. Rangers would be forced into playing condi which is a much stronger spec against a thief.

Every profession has either channeled projectiles or a ton of aoe to keep stealth from becoming brokenly OP. You keep saying we should have to explain to you why rapid fire should track through stealth. Well the reason is because the game was designed that way so that stealth has counters. If they removed that counter they would have to introduce different limitations on stealth like you’ve seen in other games such as you can’t stealth in combat, 50% speed reduction while stealthed, any damage taken breaks stealth, etc.

And going off your argument of what “makes sense” to you, and how you “feel” things should work, it would make much more sense if they did implement these limitations because it is stealth, not invisibility. Do you really think thieves would be in a better place at that point?

Arkitech.9158:

problems tend to happen when programming. you have NO IDEA how many issues we would face without EXTENSIVE QA testing they do internally. Trust me you don’t know the half of it.

Yes but in other games when they release a patch that is this broken they do a rollback until they can fix it.

MOUED.6491:

Jim Hunter.6821:

MOUED.6491:

Jim Hunter.6821:

MOUED.6491:

Dal.5872:

This was not meant as any sort of “I’m better than you comment”, fact is I claim nothing of the sort. The real point is people who use keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys have much reduced skill activation time. They can also spend more time looking at the enemies around and not their skills. This is a massive advantage and all I did was suggest you try it.

Now climb down off your clicky high horse.

No actually u claimed that i look on the mouse and skills when i do them which actually wrong coz ive been playing this way since more than 2 years i have almost 4000 hours so i dont look at the mouse or skills and trust me i activate them fast enufff

But you still activate them slower than if they were hot keyed or you used a gaming mouse. It’s not an insult to you, it’s just the way the world works.

How the world works? U sound like those brainwashed people just believe in everythin anyone say and just accept whatever is served at thier dining table nothing is called how the world works u do what u want to be done in this world man do it with ur own way with ur own style dont let anyone tell u how u should do this or that forget the game consider it a friendly advice from me to u in everythin in life braaah and goodluck

Wow okay ”braaah”, do you also consider keyboard turning to be more effective because that’s just how you play? This isn’t a subjective opinion, it is faster to click a button with your thumb then it is to position your character, drag your mouse across the screen, find and click a skill.

Play however you want but don’t get all bent out of shape when someone points out a way your game play could be improved.

The point of this forum and video just to show how solo roaming in t1 could always turn into that and well yeh ive been told that the way i play is slow and boring plus the zoom in of the camera is painful to watch thats true but still the results i make when roaming dualing or anything in terms of personal skill is good so i dont think really i need improvement not that am saying am too good or anythin just an average player having fun doesnt matter how u do it just the fun braaah some people use right hand while faping others use the left still same results i guess

Like I said, play however you want. You just need to learn the difference between constructive criticism and an insult. It reflects very poorly on you when someone tries to offer you some useful advice and you immediately get defensive.

I don’t care who you are, there is always room for improvement. You are absolutely free to disregard any advice people send your way but try to do so graciously, and remember when you post something on the forums any advice offered is for everyone’s benefit. Just because you choose to ignore the advice doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful to another player.

MOUED.6491:

Jim Hunter.6821:

MOUED.6491:

Dal.5872:

This was not meant as any sort of “I’m better than you comment”, fact is I claim nothing of the sort. The real point is people who use keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys have much reduced skill activation time. They can also spend more time looking at the enemies around and not their skills. This is a massive advantage and all I did was suggest you try it.

Now climb down off your clicky high horse.

No actually u claimed that i look on the mouse and skills when i do them which actually wrong coz ive been playing this way since more than 2 years i have almost 4000 hours so i dont look at the mouse or skills and trust me i activate them fast enufff

But you still activate them slower than if they were hot keyed or you used a gaming mouse. It’s not an insult to you, it’s just the way the world works.

How the world works? U sound like those brainwashed people just believe in everythin anyone say and just accept whatever is served at thier dining table nothing is called how the world works u do what u want to be done in this world man do it with ur own way with ur own style dont let anyone tell u how u should do this or that forget the game consider it a friendly advice from me to u in everythin in life braaah and goodluck

Wow okay ”braaah”, do you also consider keyboard turning to be more effective because that’s just how you play? This isn’t a subjective opinion, it is faster to click a button with your thumb then it is to position your character, drag your mouse across the screen, find and click a skill.

Play however you want but don’t get all bent out of shape when someone points out a way your game play could be improved.

MOUED.6491:

Dal.5872:

This was not meant as any sort of “I’m better than you comment”, fact is I claim nothing of the sort. The real point is people who use keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys have much reduced skill activation time. They can also spend more time looking at the enemies around and not their skills. This is a massive advantage and all I did was suggest you try it.

Now climb down off your clicky high horse.

No actually u claimed that i look on the mouse and skills when i do them which actually wrong coz ive been playing this way since more than 2 years i have almost 4000 hours so i dont look at the mouse or skills and trust me i activate them fast enufff

But you still activate them slower than if they were hot keyed or you used a gaming mouse. It’s not an insult to you, it’s just the way the world works.

Why the hell can’t they just roll back the patch until they sort out some of the problems it caused? I mean do we really need scaffolding in LA? That stupid worker has been hammering away at the bridge for a year now and it’s still broken as kitten, I don’t think anyone will care if the city just pops up fully repaired one day.

I have a copy of each of the stacking sigils I use on my land weapons because anet is greedy and underwater combat is broken.

Dawdler.8521:

I just realized something…

Did Arenanet just accidentally show us how they plan on solving borderland coverage issues?

Think about it. Borders being “at peace”. Oh so its 12:00 in the middle of the day and only EB has players on it? Well then 3 borders are at “peace” and doesnt provide any score income. In the afternoon, 1 border goes to “war” again as the population increases and in the evening all borders are at war.

.
.
.

Hahaha nah they cant be that clever can they?

Can they?!

That would be fine if they reworked the bl’s so there were no home bl’s. If they implemented that in the current bl’s whoevers bl opened up first would be screwed.

Adean.3702:

I play Ranger myself the only ranger i have and i never had as much fun as i have atm in WvW i do 18-21k dmg on ppl with light armor 14-17k dmg on ppl with medium armor and 11-14k dmg on ppl with heavy armor even some berserker warriors i attack i can get my dmg up on 18k and simply just use my skill 3 for stealth dodge in and finish him in my opinion ranger is the most usefull class for killing back tail in a blob and i love to do it i die sometimes too yeah i have trouble against eles but sometimes i can even outplay them cause alot of WvW players have no idea how to play 1v1 i see alot of thieves even jumping me and using everything they have when i have signet of stone on xD its funny as i turn around with my greatsword and do 9k crit with skill 2 its funny as hell

What are you doing 18-21k damage with? Rapid fire? If that’s the case then you are fighting uplevels or people that forgot to wear their armor.

Archon.6481:

Jim Hunter.6821:

When you are stealthed they have nothing to target, you are virtually immune to projectiles at that point.

Ironic because my argument is that you’re not immune to projectiles in stealth because rapid fire follows.

No you are complaining about being hit by a channeled skill that was activated before you were in stealth. Learn the difference.

Archon.6481:

Jim Hunter.6821:

And how is dagger storm worthless? Seems to me a skill that removes a weakness from your build is worth having

You mean that I should be required to run an certain elite in order to properly counter a single ability of a single weaponset of a single class? It’s not even a good counter: its a 90s CD elite protecting against a skill with a 10/8s CD. And it’s pretty bad against most other builds. It’s basically a “Kill me! I can’t protect myself!” kind of thing against most other builds that don’t have projectiles as a main source of damage. When I see an enemy thief do this I immediately open on them because they can’t defend themselves unless they cancel dagger storm.

It’s a whirl finisher that grants stability and reflects projectiles from all professions. You are by no means required to run it but if you keep complaining about dying to ranged attacks when you have a skill that’s main purpose is defense against ranged attacks….

To avoid the burst I’d still recommend changing your build. The best defense is a good offense. The minimum you could do is throw on some trapper runes so you aren’t a sitting duck.

An added benefit of trapper runes is most condi rangers are terrible players and still use auto targeting, half of them will end up firing at an eagle griffin or something.

If you are in 1 of the 2 places in WvW where there aren’t a dozen ambients or npc’s running around you should put your pet on passive and kite around so the thief has nothing to c&d off of.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Try Survival Ranger or using Sword/Dagger instead of Greatsword.

Personally I roll a full Rabid Sword/Torch Axe/Dagger trapper build and most condi builds have a hard time with me, including P/D Thieves. I simply have too many evades and kiting potential with sword and dagger is just too high for them to land a good burst on me. And that’s without having active condition removals as my only source of condition management is Empathetic Bond.

For power builds GS is a much better weapon against thieves, You see them enter stealth for a backstab you use counter attack, swoop, hilt bash, maul. That combo will take out most thieves, if they are still up you can swap to longbow and PBS, rapid fire them the rest of the way down.

1 hand sword ends up leaping you in random directions when they go into stealth. It works great in a condi build because you can condi bomb them and then just kite them around but a power build against a thief needs the CC and burst.

First, a big issue is your build. Your traps were doing terrible damage and wasting valuable utility slots. You could be slotting Signets, or traited survival skills for more condi removal and more useful skills.

Second, if you are fighting a pure condi anything and you pop healing spring, make sure you stay in it. It removes a condition with every pulse as long as you are in it.

Lastly, try to rotate your skills so you have at least 1 big hitter off cooldown when you know a thief is about to drop refuge. Point blank shot is my favorite to knock him out of the refuge and reveal him but barrage, rapid fire, wolf fear, or maul are also good choices. If you can’t get any of those off then run and get out of combat so you can slot sic ’em, or if you really want to kitten them off just drop a stealth trap and then laugh and laugh.

Rambitshouse.8712:

I have two accounts, one on FA and I moved my other to Anvil Rock about a month ago. T2 is just a blob fest to me I guess and ques ques ques….What I like about AR is that I can sign in, enter any map I please, and just roam. You will get ganked from time to time by a wild group of blood thirsty thiefs, every server has them regardless of what tier you’re on, but it is rare from what I’ve seen down in T6 so far. AR is fully capable of taking 15 players, no tag and wiping a group twice their size easily. The players awareness is pretty impressive. They don’t use teamspeak much and don’t rag on you if you are not using it. What I like is that you can come across a small crew of 3-5 and just hang out with them without even saying a word to each other and take camps and towers.

I’m sure I’ll get hate from T2, but the fights down here are more fun and epic. I haven’t seen much blobbing tbh from the T6 crews. It feels like launch honestly, where fights were somewhat even and small guilds could pull off some awesome tactics. Battles at towers and keeps are amazing, I’m loving it so far.

And for my final insult, the roamers are better down here in my experience. I’m not sure if they are so use to fighting outnumbered or been roaming so long they just know how to handle their class, but then again my main is on FA and hands down they have some awesome fighters on that server so hanging around some of those guys you have a comfort zone that they’ll carry the fight against the other T2 groups.

Hope that helps…sorry T2

RambitsHouse summed up AR pretty well. Outside of reset you’ll normally see a queue on 1 map during primetime, but even then a lot of the time there isn’t a tag up, just a bunch of small groups and solo roamers.

During NA prime you will see a lot more guild groups and havock squads but outside of NA prime is a roamers paradise. You will find plenty of 1v1-3 fights.

I do want to warn you, a lot of people come down from tier 1-2 thinking they are going to be hot kitten and end up getting their kitten handed to them. I’ve played on every tier and bronze just has a lot more action for solo roamers so the people you run into are going to be a little more experienced at it.

Archon.6481:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Archon.6481:

Jim Hunter.6821:

What you are complaining about is that even though you know that channeled skills track stealth targets if they are activated before you stealth (since they have worked that way for the entire history of this game) you still don’t have the common sense to dodge, interrupt, reflect, etc.

How, pray tell, do you think I should handle rapid fire once the ranger starts shooting then as a thief?

I literally gave you 3 options right there….
Every time you post it becomes that much clearer why you are having problems with rapid fire.

Dodge? Dodge is .75s long and if I double dodge that’s 1.5s. Rapid fire lasts 2.5 seconds. That 1 second will still take a respectable chunk of my health and they are still at 1500 range free to auto attack me.

Reflect with what? You mean that elite that’s worthless for any real group fight? Or should I pray I find a warrior to steal from?

Interrupt them at 1500 range? Even if I’m closer or use shadowstep they often times have rampage as one active.

The options you gave me are not realistic. Dodge leaves you incredibly vulnerable because, well, now you’re out of dodges and still at a distance. Reflect requires you to equip a worthless elite and its on a 90s CD (and you think that’s a viable counter lol), and interrupt relies entirely on being within range to begin with. And even then, it’s probably a waste of ini to interrupt unless it’s at the very start of the cast.

And I’m not having problems with rapid fire. Following through stealth is just a dumb and broken mechanic.

How many rapid fires do you think you should be able to counter? You act like double dodging is a death sentence, if they are at 1500 range and you use your endurance to dodge rapid fire you are now free to hop into stealth and close the distance. When you are stealthed they have nothing to target, you are virtually immune to projectiles at that point.

And how is dagger storm worthless? Seems to me a skill that removes a weakness from your build is worth having, but that’s just because I prefer to adapt to the game and improve my own fighting ability rather than cry for a nerf on the forums.

Archon.6481:

Jim Hunter.6821:

What you are complaining about is that even though you know that channeled skills track stealth targets if they are activated before you stealth (since they have worked that way for the entire history of this game) you still don’t have the common sense to dodge, interrupt, reflect, etc.

How, pray tell, do you think I should handle rapid fire once the ranger starts shooting then as a thief?

I literally gave you 3 options right there….
Every time you post it becomes that much clearer why you are having problems with rapid fire.

Archon.6481:

Rapid fire was meant to have a target in order for it to properly work. When a thief stealths, rapid fire still continues to fire. This creates a paradox where the action contradicts the intent.

Rapid fire does need a target in order to track you. If the ranger used rapid fire after you went into stealth he would be wasting the skill.

What you are complaining about is that even though you know that channeled skills track stealth targets if they are activated before you stealth (since they have worked that way for the entire history of this game) you still don’t have the common sense to dodge, interrupt, reflect, etc.

I understand how that can be frustrating for you. It’s like John Wayne said, “Life’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.”

I was playing cele and had people crying when I killed them. Of course if I play power they cry about that too.

Wow that looks boring. Plenty of good solo roaming in bronze league. I’m in T6 atm and have no problem finding good 1v 1-3 fights

aspirine.6852:

I’ts the easiest job in the world, and very effective.

I’m pretty sure full shadow arts thieves still get to claim the title of easiest job in the world. I hopped on mine last night after not playing a shadow arts build for a few months and wrecked face. 1v1 you are unkillable unless you do something stupid. I trolled about 30 people on inner bay for at least 5 min, the only reason I died was they set a stealth trap for me. Come to think of it, the only time I died all night was when I’d go to port out of an aoe bomb and get the “no valid path” message.

I had no problem dodging rapid fire because I could camp stealth afterwards to regain my endurance or simply port to a safe distance. Even when I had a ranger use sic ’em on me I just used dagger storm to reflect his shots.

Rapid fire isn’t a 1 shot skill. It is a 10 shot channel that takes 2.5 seconds. If you eat that entire channel you have no one to blame but yourself.

It’s even worse when you down a player on top of a wall or cliff and the level up knocks you off so you die from fall damage.

I’m not seeing any inappropriate language. Oh and grown ups just use the ignore function in game instead of tattle tailing.

I literally just said the same thing this morning lol

Am I the only one that thinks the rng of EB doesn’t qualify it to be a GM trait?

Clearly I agree. Hopefully this will get changed while they are still messing around with traits. Maybe they can take a look at combining healer’s clarity with trapper’s defense while they are at it (hint hint), or better yet give us a useful revive trait like reviving allies activates “search and rescue”.

With all the high sustain builds floating around lately I have recently gone back to a build I played awhile ago http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnf8YnEqQvgWxCusAVLGQQoWFAtrhktFcPE3wPfyKyCL-TZRHwAIOIABeCAAOBAh2f4YZAA
There aren’t as many pure condi players so I’ve been able to get by just fine without SotF. The regen + empathic bond is more than enough to deal with the condi’s you get from most players.

The swiftness+regen+evades make you tanky as hell.

I know murrelow might seem like an odd pet choice but the poison field on point comes in really handy and since EB relies on the pet being alive it is nice having a pet with high vitality (plus the high protection and perma regen uptime) to help keep it alive.

Fire field and wolf CC make it pretty easy to force someone off a point to catch them in entangle so you can decap.

SotW is handy against high CC classes or for stomps.

The perma swiftness means you can rotate a lot faster.

The build is great for outlasting someone on point, keeping a point contested against several players long enough for teammates to rotate, or jumping into a group fight and condi bombing. The best thing is I’ve had shoutbows, cele ele’s and cele engi’s calling me cheesy…. I guess it’s only okay for them to play cele…

Am I the only one that thinks the rng of EB doesn’t qualify it to be a GM trait?

I think they should swap wilderness knowledge with protective ward in the nature line and move EB to a master trait.

Unless jamming them all into one line was a complete oversight, the only reason I can think of that they would do this is that we are finally getting our antidote signet back http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Antidote_Signet

So I’ve recently made ranger number four and after insta leveling him to 80 I realized most of the medium armor skins look like butt on a charr. What are you other charr rangers wearing? Any good looking skins you can point me to?

What a bunch of bull kitten. I’ve fought on every tier, the higher tiers have more organized zergs, basically more people running the right builds and gear. But the average skill level of their roamers is pathetic. Solo roamers are almost non existent.

The roam game is much stronger in bronze because there is a lot more roaming action. When I was in the upper tiers people would WP or put on their nike’s as soon as they saw me and call in a ten man group before engaging a solo roamer. When I’d call them out on it they would say crap like roaming isn’t about fighting and that I was ”scouted”.

That’s pretty good but I also run a hyena pet so I can summon the extra hyena the same time I call my warband. So I can do 5 times the damage. I’m pretty much a zerg at that point.

^ salty about dying to rangers

Kasteros.9847:

coglin.1867:

Kasteros.9847:

So Ranger at WvW:
+ Long range so u are safe
+ Op 1 target burst
+ A lot of tagging and poking during new PS meta
+ Pretty fine survi
Now let’s say about minuses:
- No support for group
- After u use RF nothing to do much dmg
- Low number of AoEs( only 5. from lb tho)
- Almost 0 ccs
- Nothing to harass and split enemy group( except roots, but 200s CD…)
Basically Ranger can’t do as much as GWEN classes and this class isn’t suited for playing in group( no boons, almost 0 hard condis like immo and AoEs, low amount of ccs). Still Rangers are nice for FP to take papers out but tbh nothing more. except some pointless bang bang bang from self range and holding spot from some GWEN player…blob player…:D

The problem here, is that your discussing this in the very narrow view of Longbow only.

I do not even use longbow on my ranger.

Entangle is good for CC and quit helpful. Flame trap is a nice 12s cooldown fire field. Frost trap offers an ice field. Healing spring is a large, water field with a 33% uptime, that cleanses conditions. Call of the wild offers 3 useful boons in an AoE.

Some of you need to learn, think, and play out side the box of the concept of blindly following the so called mate. I have no idea why so many blindly identify “meta” with “good” but they are not the same thing in my opinion.

Not to mention, If three or more rangers use the skill at the same time, a Lunar Wolf is summoned. This is a reference to the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt and meme. Which is not particularly group supportive, but its kind of cool

Ye I wrote about meta ranger and build that OP run. I know ranger have some usefull stuff but u need to admit that if we compare him with Ele, his skills means nothing. Entangle have too long CD to be considered as usefull. Healing spring yes is large etc. but Ele gives u same but it is x2 Ice field isn’t really needed, unless u know how to utilize frost armor / chill. Call offers buffs but same goes for much better Ele. If Ele is wrong example then let’s compare him with Warrior:

• Warrior – a lot of ccs, Ranger – almost 0
• Warrior have 2 short cd blasts, Ranger 1 long cd
• Wariror have flurry with low cd immo, Ranger have immo with 60 sec cd that happen randomly
• Warrior can rally with banner, Ranger…what is teamplay?
• Warrior can heal with shouts, Ranger have water field
• Warrior have low cd buffs, Again Ranger long cd buffs
• Warrior have a lot fo cleansing, Ranger not so much

I compared typical Worker Warrior with LB and most usefull group skills Ranger when it is about zergling / blobing. As u see Warrior won here(at last for me). The point of Ranger is that he have everything what other proffesions have, but it is much weaker.

Your comparing a build built for the front line with a build built for small skirmishes. Rangers can build to be just as tanky as a war, have group condi cleanse, group precision buff, group vigor, group fury, group swiftness, group regen, interupts, CC, low cooldown immobilizes, the best water field in game, aoe poison, etc.

Once the trait change goes through they are going to be in an even better place with better access to multiple blast finishers.

Of course none of this has anything to do with the OP being in a pug zerg that apparently vastly outnumbered the group they were fighting. In that situation you could be running anything and feel powerful.

Pets are double damage…. I don’t think you understand how math works.

Rangers are fun, they are definitely my favorite profession. But before you come in here claiming they are too strong you need to go get in some 1v1/1vX fights and see how long you last.

The game isn’t balanced around people standing in the pug zerg auto attacking, and since that seems to be the sum of your experience you should give back line ele and necro a try and see if you still think the ranger does too much damage.

Yeah that pet and barrage combo are brutal against afk players and npc’s. Their only real weakness are players that don’t stand still….

I found a picture that does a good job of summarizing the OP’s complaints for anyone that came in late and doesn’t feel like reading the entire thread.

The tournaments are pointless and are terrible for server balance. Every tournament we have had has led to bandwagoning on a select few servers and completely lopsided match-ups.

Darksteel.8412:

making fun of, just shows you have no valid counter arguments and knows the one pointing it out is absolutely right and 100% spot on but just don’t want it to happen.

You’ve heard the arguments before in all of the other threads where you cried about dying to longbow rangers, what’s the use in repeating them?

Good players try to improve themselves and look for advice on how to do so, bad players cry that something needs to be nerfed because it’s unfair that they should have to change their build or play style to adapt. The good players will receive helpful responses from the ranger community, the bad players will be mocked.

Here, I found a pretty good instructional video on how to deal with a longbow ranger.

https://youtu.be/kvS6zMThiZU

Using super speed and rocket boots to jump into keeps isn’t hacking either but it’s still a pretty kittenty thing to do

Cufufalating.8479:

Dude you can’t change weapons or armour while in combat.

I think he just means swapping to your second longbow to get the sigil of battle to proc

In PvP the wolf is good for control and the birds are good for dps. Drakes come in handy for their cleave and tankiness. Marsh drake f2 + rampage as one = 25 stacks of might.

Loosmaster.8263:

There was a sticky about Necroposting. Apparently it was removed on the last forum update.

For a minute there I thought you meant a dev posted something relevant to the discussion….

Johje Holan.4607:

I think the OP’s suggestion got off track with everyone talking about alliances vs. servers. And EotM. It has nothing to do with EotM. Or WvW really.

The OP is talking about a completely different game mode. Much smaller maps with a lot less people on them. Matches are very short.

I would love the game mode that is described. And yes it is much like AB in GW1. I’ve often said Anet should just copy/paste AB and Ft. Aspenwood into GW2. It would be awesome.

It’ll never happen though. It would require Anet to make numerous maps which is not happening.

I would love for FA to be copied over. Stronghold feels similar but it is too closed in and small scale. But like I said before, there is no need to remove WvW to implement a new PvP mode. The more options the better.

Dawdler.8521:

Does EoTM have a better community than WvW? Does EoTM even have a community?

Sure, it has that EoTM guild that taxi’s it’s members in to one instance where they are tagged up for all 3 sides. This way they can coordinate a rotation where they don’t run into each other and they can K-train to their hearts content.

That’s kind of a community right?

I’m sure GW1 vets remember what a tight nit community the alliances were. You practically knew everyone by name. It’s not like every time you queued up you were tossed in with a bunch of random strangers, half of which just afk’ed in spawn. I have fond memories of people always playing for the fights, I remember how they would shout their battle cry of ,“Red resign!” before tactically sitting in spawn.

@OP: In all seriousness, if you want more PvP modes to be added to the game I will 100% support you. I don’t however, support the idea of replacing WvW, especially with what sounds like EotM 2.0

Tragic Positive.9356:

Leuca.5732:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Holland.9351:

They should switch it with Rendering Attacks. Then all the Minor traits are direct pet buffs and you make Instinctual Bond an Adept choice.

Might as well delete it if they do that.

I kind of disagree. If they switch it, it allows it to be merged with another trait, or buffed so that it can actually be relevant.

This is what exactly my way of thinking.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Tragic Positive.9356:

and there’s no discussion that Rangers are currently the strongest downed skirmishers.

I guess you haven’t run power necro with traited downed state yet.

I have. Just as I was able to beat them anytime when we both got downed. Plenty of times where I got downed while he still had 25% of his death shroud.

I didn’t say anything about the damage. I was talking about fighting possibilities. Ranger’s interrupt is AoE, can have 2 interrupts thanks to the pet (even 3 if you can manage), the highest sustain in downed state, and the damage is not that bad.

Now the Necro is not even close to being a threat to this arzenal.

With deaths embrace and chill of death traited I have taken players from 100% health to the downed state.
I once wiped several players by dropping my wells on point right before going down.

In a downed state fight vs. a ranger all a necro has to do is use the fear to interrupt the pet and drop the poison field on the ranger, the life steal with the traited extra damage will do the rest.

I’m not saying ranger’s downed state isn’t strong, it’s great in certain situations. It’s down right OP underwater. But in different situations other downed states are better. An easy example is ele’s fighting in front of a tower door in WvW.

Tragic Positive.9356:

and there’s no discussion that Rangers are currently the strongest downed skirmishers.

I guess you haven’t run power necro with traited downed state yet.

Holland.9351:

They should switch it with Rendering Attacks. Then all the Minor traits are direct pet buffs and you make Instinctual Bond an Adept choice.

Might as well delete it if they do that.

The pet taunt isn’t something I’ll be spamming when it comes off cooldown. I’ll be using it when it’s needed. The biggest concern will be keeping track of the internal cooldown so I don’t swap pets and use it too soon.

Sebrent.3625:

Sounds solid enough to me … though your power-based damage will suffer with Axe … till those Might Stacks kick in … which will make swapping back 10+s to the Greatsword and double-Mauling pretty nice.

Good pet choices there. You don’t often see the Murrelow, but that’s one of the most solid reasons I’ve seen for taking it. I’m a big fan of the drakes, but usually end up running dogs as I prefer to roam/havoc instead of zerg and all that CC is just so good :-)

That’s why I’m having such a hard time deciding between beastly warden and protective ward without being able to test them. That taunt trait is going to open up a lot of pet choices.

Sebrent.3625:

Aye, that is nice on weapon swap and pet swap … but:

• Front-line is currently often a bad place for pets (could change in HoT) … you’ll likely be eating a 60s pet swap cooldown in the large fights.
• As a front-line Ranger, what are you going to weapon swap to from Greatsword? You mention Rapid Fire and Stealth … so Longbow on the frontline?
• Yes, you can get all those blast finishers, but that requires staying in the field. Melee frontline trains don’t sit still that long … unless there is some new meta I’m unaware of.

Quick Draw is undoubtedly nice as are Quick Hands and Furious Grip … I just don’t personally feel like constantly swapping weapons in order to keep benefiting from them. I prefer to park in a weapon and swap as needed. Maybe I’m more reactionary than you guys.

When I was talking about rapid fire and stealth I was referring to how I plan to use quick draw in multiple builds. When I go front line I run axe/warhorn, GS and I run murrelow/marshdrake because they are tanky enough to survive and I can use them to spam poison on downed players. Only time I really had a problem keeping them alive was when they broke the pet passive mode so they aggroed anything I attacked.

Xaylin.1860:

When it comes to fighting in the front line I’d rather take the new Striders Defense (which apperently is a Sword trait but the projectile destruction should work with all melee attacks) with GS plus Primal Reflexes.

GS AA means evading quite a huge amount of melee and area effects. Striders Defense will take care of 50% of all projectiles. And the evade on the AA will ensure at least 50% Vigor. There is no point of more frequent blast finishers if you die because you can’t keep up with the survivability of the rest of the melee train.

Part of running in the front line is building for group synergy. Warriors will be providing plenty of vigor with their warhorn, it doesn’t make sense to drop one of our unique party buffs for a selfish buff.

Sebrent.3625:

Why not drop skirmishing and take up a different Specialization in its place?

Furious grip synergy with remorseless, spotter for a unique party buff, damage buffs from most dangerous game and hunter’s tactics, and quick draw for the double maul/war horn blast.
If quick draw ends up being as good as I expect it to be I’ll likely end up using it in multiple builds. Think about the burst heal you will be able to get off with HS. If you use swoop when you swap to GS you will be able to proc 4 leap finishers and then you can pet swap for a blast finisher. If you swap to a drake that will be another blast finisher.
If you need to run you can have much higher mobility with sword or GS. More burst you have lower cooldowns on maul, rapid fire. Double stuns, stealth, etc.