Guild Wars 2

Axe/axe is just all-round better than shortbow. Cant see why anyone uses it. I keep considering it but then look at abilities, and arrive back at the same conclusion.

1. MH Axe has better dps, assuming 1+ targets which is where the problems are anyway. It now might stacks which can add 6 stacks easy. SB bleeds are the main feature here but really if they are not facing you then youve pretty much won anyway.
2. The #2 bleed is better than the bows #2 poison, poison is easy to apply from ranger and the axe #2 pierces by default handing out up to 25 stacks in one toss.
3. Chill can be very clinch and the weakness is cake in a 1-1 where the axe would otherwise be a bit shy (except vs mesmers and other rangers who provide pet bounces). The bow evasion is meh to me, if I need to evade I’ll switch weapons or dodge or lightning reflex out of there.
4. Path of scars vs some weak cripple. Need say more?
5. short bow concussion, scuse me but #4 axe still has you beat. And whirling defense is just great if you are drawing a lot of heat up close or afar. Not only is the damage very good, but retaliation adds up very fast and rangers you all know what reflect does.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Get rid of retaliation, add stability. Being able to move would also be nice.

I’d go for that but I do so much retaliation damage with whirling defense it would be a tough trade. Not only is the damage decent but using it in a zerg with signet of stone active is just comical amounts of carnage.

No need to play ranger if you are just after ranged dps. Warrior is a good option too if you want the long bow. Thief has a great short bow.

I dont use long bow, do I get a cookie?

I’d rather see them go the route of buffing other weapon choices rather than nerf.

No they will never be nerfed… Next question?

Let’s play a game, who can fill in the missing letters?

F _ E _ B A C _

Gold star to first correct answer!

I keep coming back to great sword, its ability to function well in any circumstance is hard to match. It is a power weapon, so spec according to that, otherwise its wide open to many options.

I have both an human and norn 80 rangers, and the norn is definately the stand out. Humans are just so.. mundane.

But I agree you need to always have some kind of run speed buff with Norn or they look like they are runnnig in slow motion which can be aggravatingly to watch.

Norn was much better before they nerfed leopard speed but its still a useful elite if you want to look at that angle.

But Norn is just straight up cooler looking too. And thats a fact!

Cool, Ive been considering something close but I need a lot more condi removal, empathic bond at least. No stun removals or stability is pretty brutal too if you get jumped.

Don’t forget signet of the hunt… Since I’ve been running with it after trading out Travellers runes for trappers, it has actually been quite useful. It’s instant so when you see a nice maul coming down you can hit it for +50%!

That’s actually my pet peeve with sotw, cast time means you start out in the hole dps wise…

Artaz.3819:

You’re wrong. Rangers are not squishy with traiting and have the DPS at range.

It’s not 6s (double that). And it’s not even invuln so…

And it’s also not Rapid Fire alone.

It’s Rapid Fire’s damage/range with excessive no damage utilities and since the update, Rangers have better defenses than a Warrior (for slightly less trait point investment) … yep, I said it. It’s even amplified further if you forget Longbow and just use Evade weapons (more defense) … or use GS (more Evade) and burst with Maul or use Axe offhand range instead cuz it is just as bursty, pierces and has short cooldown control And in a pet knockdown and fear/immobilize and you win or you kite/win.

That’s what annoys me. It’s not that Rangers were ignored before the update and people are screaming now. It’s that no consideration was given to the balance of one major change at a time. It’s ‘lets buff majorly 5 different things with Rangers’ when it should have been 2.

By the way, do you honestly think prepatch Warrior was balanced? ANet sure didn’t think so.

It seems to me mostly qq about rapid fire, the rest was there before the patch, in some cases moderately buffed. “Protect me” isnt a great invul so not many take it since pet dies too fast under any kind of pressure.

I dont know much about the warrior but they still dominate the wvw so they are probably still fine.

Its very powerful already, I cant see them buffing TU. The cooldown starts as soon as used, so by the time its stopped ticking you are only 15 secs away from using it again. Our other heals need buffs more IMO.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

If the perch is within range of a key objective (say, a PVP point) then you cannot ignore said ranger.

Ive never had a problem closing at spvp ranges, then laying the smackdown. Some will give a good fight but thats with a lot of skill and not simple zerk rf spamming.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

So “don’t engage him” is the winning strategy of the day?
I havent watched that movie though, I’m glad to see it’s relevant to my interests.

If you’re talking about the video I posted, I was mainly referring to the fact that a fullzerk ranger is cleaning warrior house with a greatsword. which means they have notable close range combat capability.

Yep close range combat is much better imo which is where I like to play. Zerk RF is a gimmick that produces big qq due to very circumstantial situations. If you dont engage him, it makes him a null factor …If someone wants to waste their time sitting up on a perch somewhere whats that to me?

Glad to see a GS ranger beating a warrior, though if you can get past the stuns its never been the hardest fight for a ranger.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Meanwhile the ranger has not moved from his perch~

The funny thing is, in that video, people that run towards him (cliff face anyway), or back up into his kill zone. He is shooting at max range and cannot pursue. All that needs to be done is move away. Now hes useless and can do nothing. Literally nothing.

I think the problem is rooted in this: People “want” to neglect rangers, as they always have in the past. Now they cant, and they are mad at the discomfort. Its really simple to dodge rf, then squish the squishy ranger (if hes full zerk). You might have to deal with invul for 6 secs, but then hes squishier than ever.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Kilger.5490:

Kill shot comes in one big spike, rapid fire is a slow spike that warns you and only punishes you if you neglect it completely… Like people in that video. i play ranger but don’t use longbow, but have in the past. Nothing there that couldn’t have been done before patch against people in glass armour that don’t react at all…

Counter scenario. You are 25% on endurance. Less than one RF’s worth of HP. Old RF: you’d be able to dodge part of it. New RF: you eat all of it before you can dodge again (and down).

I have no problem with this as a mechanic alone. for the purpose of a greater argument though, I have taken issue with it when used in tandem with camping by rangers.

lol thats a very very specific scenario… I guess you use block, evade, reflect, stun, cc or any other myriad of abilities.

But really the scenario is more typically… start being hit by rf… before patch…. “dodge and miss 50% damage”, where post patch its “dodge and miss 90% of damage”.

Kill shot comes in one big spike, rapid fire is a slow spike that warns you and only punishes you if you neglect it completely… Like people in that video. i play ranger but don’t use longbow, but have in the past. Nothing there that couldn’t have been done before patch against people in glass armour that don’t react at all… (Provided you are prepared to die in a stiff breeze so you can post the odd video with some big numbers)

I use them on a somewhat hybrid zerk build (its geared to zerk traits anyway), and just use the fire trap with its short cd. Firstly, if you don’t want to be revealed, you may have to use frost trap since it does no damage there is no reveal.

But really traps are very powerful and should be used. If I go back and look at my combat logs the random flame trap damage just from constant dropping them rivals just about every thing else! Problem is the damage is very diffuse and unfocused but you have to think it’s helping your side ..

Pack is nice if you are dependant on horn swiftness when not in zerg. They are both good.

Its good in the marksmanship line imo, its nice to offset a lack of precision. But you are right you probably wont take it with longbow, its more for other specs. Long bow has lots of choices already.

Condition specs are always powerful small scale but this might be over the top Nice build, I’ll bet it will create lots of qq! They will never hit you with evade and stealth, and you keep pounding them with conditions. Might even get thief level qq.

I do enjoy the trapper runes too, but more for use in breaking target in zerg situations. Just need flame trap for that.

Troll post…

sounds like you killed someone blowing all your cool downs, that did nothing (literally nothing) to resist and now you’re going to say this is how it always is.

When I take out a bow I prefer sword axe… Mainly because pos is so f-ing brutal but whirling axe is a lot of fun catching stray projectiles and sending them back, or sitting in the middle of enemy Zerg with signet of stone and stability and rack up some major retaliation damage. Sword2 is great for an immediate backup.

Great sword is great too. It comes down to play style and the nature of the Zerg fighting, why limit yourself to one? I carry all weapons and change up to suit the situation but longbow isn’t even a preference for me (prefer gs and dual axe).

I don’t duel, I’d rather sit back and tell you what you’re doing wrong.

That must be it, but I don’t like how i often don’t get any message when it’s a very large number, the maul just doesn’t land.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Fluffball.8307:

Edit: Just to tag on to this, my personal ‘most requested’ feature would be a drop target hot key other than escape.

It’s already in the game, and has been so since release. Just bind whatever key you like to “Lock Autotarget” (control options).

Works awesome too, muscle memory now

Rym.1469:

75% crit chance ?

By the way, Remorseless is often very underesitmated. That vun increasing your damage output lasts for 14 seconds, allowing you to cap the foe.

I’ve been also considering going for more Ferocity over Precision but I think that Sharpened Edges is really worth it. If you catch someone in Barrage, he often leaves it with 6-10 stacks of bleeding, similar to RF.

I was thinking about going for more condition removal at first, but suprisingly this build deals with them pretty brutally, even P/D Thieves and condi mesmer trolls.

55+ fury which has high uptime. And rangers have tons of vulnerability already. Can’t help thinking predator onslaught or read the wind would be a better choice, unless you have a very low crit chance where all the auto crits would really pay off.

Wouldnt flame trap ensure the burning better?

I usually trait martial mastery, maybe that’s the culprit. In the patch notes they mentioned a range increase. Like you say they’ll often change an ability but bugger up the trained version or vice versatile.

Lovin it too, but with a crit rate of 75% already e.b. does a lot more for me than remorseless.

Substance, is that in pve, pvp or wvw? Pve seems ok to me but hitting a cluster of enemies in wvw has just been a dud for me whenever I check logs. Possibly it aegis being shared but it’s very consistent.

Being norn may be throwing me off a bit since the graphic may reach a lot farther than the effect.

I’ve also been dual axe a while… Prefer it for wvw since it gets lots of bounces which makes it highest damage (not sure if that’s still true with rf buff) Also doesn’t draw aggro like a bow does.

Tested it some more last night, still not working. Only gets maybe 1 hit on a stacked group of enemies.

Swap a trap out for Signet of the hunt when out of combat. If youre with the zerg should be lots of other swiftness around, actually just need one more ranger with warhorn. Keeping RAO in elite slot is good for emergencys (unless youre norn and can get the leopard form for true super speed! )

I was fighting a thief with perplexity in wvw. Somehow got big stacks of confusion on me, and didnt realise it until too late, downed myself pretty quickly Was wondering if maybe they were a mesmer until I met them again, build seemed a kitteneesey with no survibility if they got hit.

Given that my gs maul does not seem to be working on more than a couple targets when it doesn’t fail completely I’m definately on the sword/horn bandwagon. Id like to see the using #1 for jumping untargetted crowds of enemies I can see how that would work pretty cool. I guess you leave target off and just spam #1?

I did that run speed testing, it was without martial mastery. The sword wasn’t as good as greatsword but it was closer to greatsword than it was to just swiftness if that makes sense.

Thanks for all those definitions, the young uns that think the word was invented for mmos make my head want to implode..! On the other hand I think the “range” part of the word is to imply someone who personally ranges far (not shoots long range) but that is speculation…

Pets arent useless, they absorb my conditions like champs! And yea Sparky the river drake does have some mean cleaves!

The problem i see with it is that for it to be useful you have to be severely wounded, and in wvw that brings much more aggro so that if you don’t have a more complete escape plan 50% damage isn’t going to matter much. I’d rather rely on evade/dodge/block/stealth/ immunity. Spvp is a bit more forgiving I suppose but ymmv.

Oh and yea the assumption is it is multiplicative so it would be a 66.5% reduction with protection which is still very good.

Like the title, I’ve tried it over and over, when hitting a large group of enemies, like when they are clustered at pin, never get more than the odd bit landing, sometime no hit at all!

Thought it was bad luck at first but now I notice it’s consistent. I’ve stealthed up and tried too so no blocks no evade, just doesn’t register any hits. Combat logs confirmed.

Note there is no problem in small encounters, just when there are a lot of enemy players.

Ive been noticing something since the update and switching back to great sword… Against mobs no problem maul seems to work fine generally, in small encounters in pvp and wvw its ok too.

But in wvw whenever I have tried to land a big hit on a group of enemies, and I look for an explosion of numbers, I rarely see more than a few hits, often none. I check the combat logs, nothing. Its like if there are too many people it overloads and I am just doing a scarey bear graphic and thats it.

This is over several days now. I wrote if off at first as bad luck or lag or maybe a blind I didnt notice was on. But after stealthing up to an enemy zerg, swooping in and mauling the lot… nothing… got me very suspicious and have since found over and over again only scant hits with maul when hitting a large group.

So before I post this in the bugs forum has anyone else observed this issue? I remember seeing a post from someone that said their swoop wasnt working. Could this be aegis or something I am not thinking of maybe? I am not seeing “blocked” or any kind of graphic. Really makes maul a bit of a fail for me.

Dont worry, you’ll have the last laugh when all the engineer players have carpal tunnel syndrome.

Azaruil.3406:

Let us compare it to eviscerate which was already considered somewhat overpowered.

You don’t need to build adrenaline.
You can hit from 1500 range.
You can pierce targets to hit more than 1 person.
It stacks vulnerability.

The biggest issue I would say is the 1500 range. There should be a trade-off from being able to attack from that far. Either lowered damage, slower attacks, higher cooldowns etc.

Theres a big tradeoff. Reflection totally turns back attacks of everything longbow except barrage. There is no equivalent in melee. Learn to use reflection or find a friend that does and watch rangers kill themselves.

People never really cared about reflection before, but now they do, thats a good thing.

I’d say its even more than with necros.

-Nerfs that went on at the same time, creating a lot of bitter players.
-People still want to ridicule rangers and when they get killed by one, they complain loudly.

I actually quit playing a necro since it felt over buffed. I dont feel that way with ranger. DPS (mostly single target) is our only real niche, its something we should do best.

adozu.6398:

i played ranger for like 3 or 4 hours yesterday full glass spec in tpvp and didn’t feel glass at all honestly. i could just stay on a ledge and rain death from further than anyone could reach. (i maybe played ranger 2 hours total before that months ago)

if pressured melee i had: (as LB/GS)

- stealth (LB 3)
- awesome pushback (LB 4)
- 1100 range dash (GS 3)
- block (GS 4)
- stun/daze (GS 5)
- stunbreaker that also removes immob and evades (lightining reflexes)
- 6 second damage immunity (64 recharge with mastery, better than endure pain)
- AOE immobilize (elite)
- 2 immob from pet (black widow)
- knockdown and fear from other pet (wolf)

Great to hear! But you know ranger had all that 2 months ago too right? Interesting fact… no one said we were we OP then. Thanks for playing ranger!

Chrispy.5641:

Kilger.5490:

hmmm got them, the speed isnt 100% (in spite of the tool tip), its exactly the same as swiftness

Bugged I hope.

The effect is a shortened version of the effect you get from the Engineer skill, which has the same limitation :::
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Super_Speed

And even in combat, your speed is set to out of combat run speed with swiftness applied, even if you have crippled and chill on you.

Looking at the wiki link you provided it even states it’s bugged for engineer version too. I tested it out with chill, rune super speed is affected, so it’s not identical. It’s basically a broken version of a bugged ability. :p

Tested it out, it doesn’t help against chilled…

Swiftness speed is not 100% speed, it’s 133% speed.

Ok to be more clear the icon is +100% speed, big emphasis on the “plus”. Where swiftness says +33% this says +100%. This sounds to me more like super speed.

Hence I still think there’s a bug, maybe just the icon description is inaccurate, but I’ve posted it in the bug forum.