Guild Wars 2

Trying to think of a nice way to say this…. Please don’t take that build into anything but open world PvE, and even then…

law.9410:

Jim cats do more damage than birds

Not really sure what that has to do with this conversation but since you brought it up what are you basing this on? Is it tests against golems or against moving people?

That’s why we are saying just let the other pets climb the walls. Even if they don’t want to do it for towers they should at least do it for regular terrain. It’s ridiculous that all someone has to do to escape our pet is to go up or down a slight incline.

Tuomir.1830:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Tuomir.1830:

Let’s use the numbers Jim Hunter suggested earlier for simplicity’s sake. If a ranger with a bow is assaulting a tower in WvW, and is shooting, he deals 70% of his potential damage if the pet doesn’t reach. If the ranger would use a bird, he’d do 100% of his potential damage. A warrior with a hammer would do 0% of his potential damage, for comparison’s sake. I find those to be pretty major differences. So, what would justify the bird to have such an improvement over the cats?

Warriors have access to bows and rifles. if they don’t want to use their range attacks that is their decision. However if they are using a ranged weapon they are dealing 100% of their damage.

So, you seriously claim that a warrior can deliver 100% of his potential damage when using a bow or a rifle? You’re a funny guy.

I don’t understand what you are asking. If you are trying to say a warrior can do more damage through melee than ranged, well yeah, of course. That goes for any class, but have you ever tried running a crit rifle build? You easily do more damage than a ranger longbow.

Tuomir.1830:

Let’s use the numbers Jim Hunter suggested earlier for simplicity’s sake. If a ranger with a bow is assaulting a tower in WvW, and is shooting, he deals 70% of his potential damage if the pet doesn’t reach. If the ranger would use a bird, he’d do 100% of his potential damage. A warrior with a hammer would do 0% of his potential damage, for comparison’s sake. I find those to be pretty major differences. So, what would justify the bird to have such an improvement over the cats?

Warriors have access to bows and rifles. if they don’t want to use their range attacks that is their decision. However if they are using a ranged weapon they are dealing 100% of their damage.

This looks fine for running at the back of a group and taking pot shots at people but you are going to be wrecked by conditions or just having someone focus you. I can’t imagine this works well for 1v1 or even just roaming with a smaller group.

I’m sure some people will complain it doesn’t make sense, but in a world full of giant cat people calling down meteor storms I am willing to accept animals can scale walls.

Tuomir.1830:

Birds have the same stats as cats do. Cats don’t fly. Do you really want to continue?

Let some of the other pets climb the walls. Spiders, lizards, even cats would make sense.

Tuomir.1830:

Yeah, it might be cool… but a hell to balance.

Why? Ele’s can do aoe damage to people and siege on walls that are out of sight, our pets would be doing single target damage. Pets are also supposed to make up something like 30% of our damage, I’d argue that it would make up for the damage handicap of having a pet.

I play as an Asura, my kitten bird should be able to carry me, or at least slow my decent when I jump off a cliff.

You mean so they don’t have to make a 2 mile detour because you went over a 2ft ledge, or so they can attack people on top of tower walls?

Either way this idea gets my vote.

Rym.1469:

Pet F2s are now working more than 50% of the time

Lol I love that this is seen as a fix. Maybe one day I will be able to use my pets interrupts to actually interrupt people, or have a pet that doesn’t randomly forget we are in the middle of a fight and stop attacking… I’ll just keep dreaming

I want to capture some of the giant insects I always see flying around. Let me get a firefly that inflicts burning damage, or a wasp that calls in a swarm!

What’s this build going to be for?

No I liked your ideas, I meant my idea would never happen in a thousand years. like having companion’s might give us might on crits, agility training making us move 30% faster, natural healing giving us regen, etc.

Of course warriors have a bunch of similar traits but rangers can’t have nice things.

If you’re using great sword then go with long bow and trait for power/precision damage. Short bow works better work a condition build.

you might want to consider something like companions might over sharpened edges since you have 0 condition damage.

All shouts are instant cast.

It’s a shout, not a kitten hymn.

K U T M.4539:

#rocketbootsstunbreak

+1000

Abrilete.1439:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Abrilete.1439:

Omnitek.3876:

Only thing I can say is the drakehound immobilize > any bird by far for roaming.

THIS.

As an average/bad player that roams a lot, I can tell you all that I NEED dual dogs to survive (dog and wolf): 2x cripple, 2x knockdown, fear and inmobilize. Priceless.

Sadly, I need to spend two traits to make all that CC really usefull (faster movement and longer condition duration).

I ran the drakehound in place of the wolf for a couple days, I prefer the wolf’s fear. When encountering other roamers I like having 1 pet for control and 1 for damage, so far the bird seems to do the best damage on a moving target. I know cats are supposed to be better but they seem to hit less often. Has anyone done the math on that vs. a player? I don’t care what the golems show, golems don’t move.

I remember that someone made the tests with both static and moving golems and, thanks to the cripple and short attack animation, the canines had the best DPS against moving targets.

That’s really surprising. I wonder if the speed buff is making up the difference because my bird does way more damage than the wolf.

would never happen in a thousand years but I would love a trait that made all the pet traits apply to the ranger as well

RoyalPredator.9163:

These scenarios are the reason why we need real Hunter skills, where we can lock down and interrupt our foes, mostly these stealth user covards.

Or give us a third bow (hornbow?) that does a ton of aoe damage.

Bring back GW1 splinter barrage!!

Abrilete.1439:

Omnitek.3876:

Only thing I can say is the drakehound immobilize > any bird by far for roaming.

THIS.

As an average/bad player that roams a lot, I can tell you all that I NEED dual dogs to survive (dog and wolf): 2x cripple, 2x knockdown, fear and inmobilize. Priceless.

Sadly, I need to spend two traits to make all that CC really usefull (faster movement and longer condition duration).

I ran the drakehound in place of the wolf for a couple days, I prefer the wolf’s fear. When encountering other roamers I like having 1 pet for control and 1 for damage, so far the bird seems to do the best damage on a moving target. I know cats are supposed to be better but they seem to hit less often. Has anyone done the math on that vs. a player? I don’t care what the golems show, golems don’t move.

@Awge The trouble I have had so far is against a good PU mesmer or thief. Rangers lack of aoe can make those fights a nightmare. I’ve also run into a couple bunker guardians that I just couldn’t finish off because I don’t have enough burst.

Usually in those situations I switch over to my condi necro or engie and harass them until they leave the bl lol

CRrabbit.1284:

It’s not bad for a 1v1 situation. However, roaming is not only 1v1, actually in most of time roaming means 1vx and you need to either win 1vx or successfully escape the 1vx. I can’t see a big chance you can handle either of these cases

That wasn’t really constructive criticism, do you care to elaborate why you think that?

I feel with 2 stun breaks, the stealth from long bow, the perma swiftness, the swoop from great sword and then blocking projectiles with sword 4 while running, I haven’t had to much trouble escaping when I need to.

Forgot to mention entangle does a darn good job of distracting people if I need to run. Seems to work even better against condition players, I’m guessing the roots are only affected by direct damage?

condition builds are for roaming, conditions are terrible for blobbing, but then again so is bearbow.

I’m surprised you all think this is that weak against condition damage, maybe it’s just because I’ve spent so much time playing as a condition engie and necro but I’ve had no problem dealing with them. Both of those classes really need to be in close range to be effective, I know engies can have 1500 range on their grenades but those things are slow as hell. The perma swiftness allows me to kite them around while annoying them with the longbow until I get an opening like my wolf knocking them down or fearing them, then it’s swoop in with the long sword, daze, maul, if their not close to done I entangle and back off to finish them with the bow. 2 condition cleanses has been more than enough so far.

I just can’t see myself taking survival of the fittest over nature’s voice. Not only would I be sacrificing speed which is essential for roaming, I’d also be losing the perma +5 damage from bountiful hunter for me and my pet. Really it ends up replacing several traits that are needed to make the pet useful like natural healing, agility training (which lets them actually hit people), and it makes them invisible so players are suddenly being hit out of nowhere.

I do like the stats you are getting with that mixed set of cavalier, zerk, and knight armor though. Really wish you could just adjust the stats instead of having to haul around ten different sets of armor.

I’ve been roaming WvW on my engie for quite awhile now and needed a change. A couple weeks ago I dusted off the ranger I made at launch and have been having a lot of fun with him. I have no problem flipping camps fairly quickly and I win most of the fights I come across but I’m sure there are more tweaks to be made that would improve my build. I’d love to hear suggestions.
The 2 builds I’ve been using are
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnMqQvg2vCusAVLGYPoWHAFwZ/KOcvFHRTnyKSwaqA-TlSBwA7U/xsSwrK/i8AA6cEAIu/AedAo0Es4QAA4CAQKA9EGB-w and

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnMqQvg2vCusAVLGYPoWGAFAzOYEcvFHRTnyKSwaqA-TlSBwA7U/xsSwrK/i8AA6cEAIu/AedAo0Es4QAA4CAQKA9EGB-w

If I’m running into someone like a stealth spamming thief or a bunker guardian I will usually switch signet of renewal for quickening zephyr to help burst them down, and I usually swap the raven for a black moa when flipping camps because the moa is ridiculously tanky right now and has that nice daze. /let me know what you all think.

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Still no place in WvW, that’s for sure. Only 1 competitive build for sPvP (4/0/6/4/0 or 2/0/6/6/0 Spirits), and SSS zerker (4/x/x/2/x) for PvE. Being a Ranger, while we have the capabilities of running different builds through versatility, we really only have one defined build in every gamemode. There’s a reason we’re the first to be considered for the CDI.

I just started really playing my ranger a couple weeks ago and found him to be excellent for roaming and flipping camps. One thing that is especially handy is in a 1v2 I can set my pet to attack the first player I down while I focus on the other player.

I’ve been outplayed a few times but I haven’t run into anyone that is a hard counter to a ranger. Plus almost no one runs from rangers because they think we’re easy kills.

Oak da Vite.9054:

Cats, birds, moas and spiders are definitely too squshy for bigger fights when they are not traited in beastmastery.

That’s usually true but I think something buggy is happening with pets right now. My wolf/hound will go down in 2 hits but my moa is soaking up damage like a boss.

RoyalPredator.9163:

No, it was one, solo capper. Believe me, I’ve saw strange things. But we’re not supposed to talk about those -.-’

This one was the same asura.

dkspins.4670:

There are certain dungeons, TA, HotW, AC, even Arah , where I’d rather play as a ranger, and have not had any problems succeeding. However, COE is much easier as a Warrior. Fractals are easy enough as a ranger. 5k hours playtime, 2k hrs on ranger, but I don’t do pug groups, since I’d much rather play with guildies or friends.

It’s not a question of succeeding, it’s just other professions can do it faster and bring more utility to the group. The big problem is rangers pets are supposed to make up a large part of their damage but thanks to the crappy mechanics of the dungeons and pets (no dodge) rangers end up playing handicapped.

They need to improve the dungeons so that the mobs aren’t just big blobs of hp that have telegraphed attacks that do massive damage. Instead they should improve the ai and lower the health and damage the mobs deal in a dungeon, or like I said above just give the pets an evade while we dodge. (Or better yet, do both)

shadowpass.4236:

A shark with real lasers would be kinda neat as well

at the very least some ill tempered, mutated sea bass

Just want to add, before people say we’re in a good place for dungeons because of spotter and frost spirit, until pets start to evade when we dodge rangers will always be a bad choice for dungeons. Yes, rangers aren’t as worthless as they one were but there are a bunch of professions that would do a better job filing that spot.

Rangers are great in open world pve, of, possibly the worst class for dungeons, mediocre in a WvW zerg, incredibly fun for WvW roaming.

Pets are still wonky but at least their f2 skills activate a little more often now.

Hambow making fun of bearbows….

I would have a lot less of a problem with thieves if they would remove the downstate from WvW or give every profession an aoe reveal skill. I was fighting two thieves and after downing them several times they finally killed me because I couldn’t stomp them.

I’m sure it’s coming ”soon”, so probably about another 2 years.

They could easily fix a lot of these complaints by taking the old living story missions and instancing them. It would give meaningful raid like content for guilds to do together. They could even offer a hard mode that gives tokens for an ascended reward at the end for people that can’t stomach crafting.

By all means keep the current living story the open world zergfest it is for people that don’t like organized play, but give the rest of us something to do with our guild, and give the people that missed sections of the LS a chance to play them.

My biggest problem with food buffs is that they are just 1 more massive gold sink in a game mode that is already full of gold sinks.

I spend 99% of my game time in WvW because it is the only thing in GW2 that I enjoy, but in order to fund all the siege, upgrades to camps and towers, and buffs for multiple characters, I have to occasionally run dungeons just so I can afford it.

You’re absolutely correct but unless they downscale ascended armor and items to exotic stats in WvW there is no reason to remove the boons that can only be achieved in WvW.

Sanguinem.3452:

I was really not expecting to see so many replies to my thread today O.o wow. I know how alot of you feel. I’ve tried bearbow zerker and I honestly hate the berserker armor because a small breeze is enough to drop me. what gear besides zerker would be better for more survivability?

Since I receive vitality and perma regen from the traits in Nature Magic I use knights for the added toughness. This build offers immobilizes, stealth, block, stun breaks, knock backs, daze, and a darn good leap. Having perma swiftness on top of all that makes me pretty hard to hit. But unless you are fighting against someone really terrible you will eventually get hit, it’s nice not falling over after being hit twice.

I felt the little extra toughness from my armor was enough to get me by and it’s been working for me, but you could always switch out one of the trinkets for something with toughness and/or vitality.

This should not have been introduced without including the district option from GW1 or at the very least the addition of Guild Halls so that everyone could have a good place to meet up before heading out on missions.

Agreed. Bare minimum make throw junk piercing so that I can hit the target with 2% health and not the random mob standing in front of him.

Drop elixer gun for nades and trait for grenadier. Most of their bleeds are going to come from the scepter which is 900 range. Just keep your distance and load them up with conditions.

You could make a thief to unlock the hood, not sure about the rest

Holland.9351:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Fokyr.4012:

I, for one can’t stand a zerker build, ANY zerker build. In a med to large group they’re the ones that are focused and die first.

This. If you expect that people are going to let you sit at 1500 range and pew pew away you are wrong. When I see a bearbow zerker I immediately target them because they are almost always an easy kill.

Not in my experience. I survive more encounters than most. That’s the thing though, if you need more survivability, please go and get it. If you feel you could do with less survivability and more damage, then go for it too.

Yeah but just surviving most situations isn’t the same as pulling your own weight.
By being so fragile you are actually harming the group more than you are helping, you are bringing sub par dps and acting as a rally bot.

Does anyone know what the loss in damage is by not using a pet for anything other than a spare life pool? I’m betting you can do just as much damage without going zerk by using a bird or cat, and you would be a lot more useful to the group.

Fokyr.4012:

I, for one can’t stand a zerker build, ANY zerker build. In a med to large group they’re the ones that are focused and die first.

This. If you expect that people are going to let you sit at 1500 range and pew pew away you are wrong. When I see a bearbow zerker I immediately target them because they are almost always an easy kill.

solrik.6028:

They do stack. Seems like you missed the last big update!

My mistake, thanks for correcting that. I still stand by everything else I said though.

Holland.9351:

Jim Hunter.6821:

solrik.6028:

Sanguinem.3452:

Thank you! I’ll give it a shot and see how it works out.

Please don’t, he is trying to trick you into using the worst and most hated build ever.

I was really hoping that was a troll and not the typical advice seen on the ranger forums

Don’t listen to these folks. He wants a small-group roaming build, so I assumed WvW.

My bearbow build is excellent for that since Read the Wind. These guys are either uninitiated or thinking about PvE / sPvP meta. It’s not a build for sPvP nor PvE. It’s a WvW build which works best in group combat. I wouldn’t advise 1v1 with it, but it’s not impossible and it has excellent escape options.

Also, you could go 6/0/2/6/0 with Survival of the Fittest, but I really don’t see the point in doing so when you’re playing WvW in a group. You’ll have less damage, less stealth, less barrage, less knockback and less rapid fire.

Sorry if I’m not initiated into the generic bearbow club but your build is just bad. Like I said before, this kind of terrible zerk ranger build is why rangers are laughed at and targeted

You are also using 2 on crit sigils on the same weapon, and 2 on swap sigils on the same weapon. These will not stack, you can only get the benefit of 1 of them.

On top of that, suggesting he leaves his pet on passive is seriously crippling his damage output. A good chunk of a rangers damage comes from the pet, if you want to run around as a zerk without a pet then reroll as a war or thief, you’ll do a lot more damage.

solrik.6028:

Sanguinem.3452:

Thank you! I’ll give it a shot and see how it works out.

Please don’t, he is trying to trick you into using the worst and most hated build ever.

I was really hoping that was a troll and not the typical advice seen on the ranger forums