Flatterer. <3
I’m definitely enjoying the praise about my ranger play. I think Chronix also deserves props for being top dog right now. He actually beat me -more- soundly in the subsequent duels after this, but that’s exciting for me, because someone who beats me in duels is an opportunity to refine my playstyle and learn as a ranger. When we first met, we were about even, and then -he- was the one who inspired me to flirt with carrion amulet and ultimately come up with that traps build I’m still using; posted in full detail, including gear etc, here:
…And then I soundly beat him for a bit, and then he came back with the power and signets build he’s using in that video and soundly beat me and that’s where we’re at. I’m heavily dodge-oriented, and one of the big things I’m working on is making each of my dodges count rather than just flinging dodges out randomly, which is a tricky habit to break but I’m doing well.
Oh, wait, I beat him once with his current build once I knew he was 30 BM and had to pay close attention to his pet. But he might’ve been lagging. We’ll see! All in all, I’m honored to know Chronix, because he’s a skilled ranger with a good heart and has really inspired a lot of development for my play as a ranger.
Here’s to wolf and snow leopard; they make the rockin’ world go ’round.
Well, it’s not about raw damage for us. It’s about flexibility and adaptability. Our damage isn’t the highest on any front, but our evasiveness and control options might be, especially when you take that all as a package deal with I think pretty respectable damage. (I’ve been happy with it lately). “Best” doesn’t just mean “highest DPS”.
Not that I’d complain about even better control options and such! But I’m very happy with the shortbow 2-5 along with the base damaging 1, aside from the broken crossfire quickness, right now.
This thread is 250 replies long, so I don’t know if either of these have been done already, buuuut
I felt proud of naming my snow leopard “Juvenile Court”.
And a lovely friend of mine has a pink moa named “Lon Moa”.
I love that the censor made it look like you said “jag kitten”.
I’ve seen enough posts being like, “We’re rangers! Why isn’t our range the best (see: hardest hitting) in the game and why isn’t it much better than our melee?”
I think it’s worth noting that “ranger” actually has nothing to do with range. Ranger was a real occupation, often related to the military, that involved scouting and wilderness. To pick a few definitions from the dictionary:
-one of a body of armed guards who patrol a region.
-a soldier specially trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare, especially in jungle terrain.
Related; forest ranger:
-any of the officers employed by the government to supervise the care and preservation of forests, especially public forests.
And “to range” is to “rove, roam, or wander”.
Remember that Aragorn in LotR was also a ranger—or the scouts in Game of Thrones.
So it’s less about ranged combat and more about the archetype of scouting, exploration, wilderness attunement/survival, so on and so forth, all of which I believe the class captures very well in how it does what it does. I realize the bow is iconic to us, but remember our symbol is a pawprint. And, yes, the bow is a ranger’s tool, but because of wilderness survival or warfare, not because of an implication of fighting at range.
I’d like to clear up a misconception about the name of the class.
I’m going to post a topic on this entirely, but the jist of it is “ranger” doesn’t refer to ranged combat. It refers to a scouting-and-wilderness role that’s appeared for military or for service throughout the ages.
I’d been running a 0/25/30/0/15 build for a while with berserker gear and survival utilities. Today, I swapped to 0/30/30/0/10 with carrion gear and traps.
For the most part, I adore the build. But god, what I wouldn’t give for that last number to be a 15. I really miss loud whistle. I -really- miss it. Being able to refresh pets and have a little quickness burst every 16 seconds instead of 20 was amazing. It hurts my heart to give it up.
I tried some different things. I tried taking points out of survival to put in to BM. But this meant giving up empathic bond, my big condition removal. I considered trying to swap from troll unguent to healing spring, but the amount of derailing in to healing power and regen duration it takes to make healing spring actually keep my health up seems ridiculous, and it’s frustratingly immobile condition removal—6 conditions over 15 seconds over 30 seconds would be great if I was ever actually able to stay in the field without putting myself in much more danger than it’s worth. It’s such a clunky spell.
I tried biting my lip and sticking out the 20 second pet swap time. But it hurts. Especially with them soaking up conditions from empathic bond.
I’ve been considering swapping to signet of purity, but then my pet would be slow or else I’d have to take +30% speed on them over +30% damage, and -I’d- be slow, and feel much worse off for it.
And if I just had one trap I wouldn’t be much of a trapper.
I tried mentally wishing arenanet would somehow let me turn the 25 point surv trait in to the 15 point BM trait but that didn’t seem to work. Apparently my latent psychic abilities are still very latent.
And I sure as hell don’t want to give up trap potency.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t think of any way to have traps, loud whistle, speed, a properly flexible heal and a properly flexible condition removal all in one.
Is there some way I could make healing spring work better? Use the combo field somehow to its use? I know about the sword leap finisher. I wish I had some way to make the regen last longer without traiting and gearing like everything for it.
Halp.
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If you have both shared anguish and HIPS, and a stun or such hits you but transfers to your pet, will moving cause you to lose your cloak?
If you have SA with HIPS, can you move and attack without HIPS decloaking you?
Is there benefit to traiting both of these, or will getting hit with a disable instantly trigger both of them at once? It would be pretty cool if they had alternating effects, like the first disable triggered HIPS (dem hips) and the second triggered SA or vice versa, but it’d be pretty lame if getting hit with one triggered the cooldown on both. Can these talents work together?
Thank you! This gives me what I need.
Where within the wiki? What article?
I want some quantitative analysis on how much toughness/armor results in physical damage reduction. Anyone have any useful charts, formulas, or data?
I hope that facilitates discussion!
What are you running off hand with sword?
Torch or dagger?
Dagger! I stack evasion as hard as I can. Someone earlier said they don’t like serpent’s strike. I’m like whaaat that’s my favorite non-auto.
What trait builds & skills do you use with Sword? I’ve been mixing up all my weapons while levelling my new ranger (level 46 now) and trying various combinations to get a good “pure” melee build. I’ve been enjoying Sword & Warhorn the most lately for the birds and fury.
0/25/30/10/5 with full berserker gear. I use quickening zephyr, a wolf, and a snow leopard. Those’re the main staples of my aggressive behavior. Lemme know if there are more specifics you want to know. I’m not a pure melee build; my build is made to work in conjunction with a bow of some kind (usually short) in my other hand.
Actually, it’s my primary killer. It’s extremely precious having a high-DPS move that keeps you on your target with all the crippling and lunging when it’s time to go for it. My typical kill strategy when I’m ready to try and gun someone down is to have my snow leopard pounce them for the chill so they’re less likely to get away, and then pop quickness and start swordhumping them as hard as possible. It’s been an extremely potent kill tactic for me when well-timed. I run berserker, of course.
The biggest tip I could offer to anyone is -do not have it on auto-. Because then, yeah, I agree, it sucks, it locks you down, but if you’re comfortable mashing 1—which I am, in fact I prefer it because it’s more precise—I have 0 problem with it affecting my movement in unwanted ways.
I really like the number 1. It’s nice to have something that lets me hold on to a target I’m trying to take down. Mostly you just need to keep it on manual.
It’s been giving +50% action speed instead of +100% ever since the, sigh, ‘animation fix’.
Shouldn’t this qualify as a bug?
I miss old crossfire.
Wow, I never realized how good lightning reflexes was. I didn’t realize it also broke fear, knockdown, etc.!
I suppose I could consider empathic bond—currently I’m using the 20% offhand cooldown reduction so I have CD redux on both my sword and dagger. I’m doing this to maximize flexibility and evasiveness and stuff.
Sure thing—what trait gives that?
Such a specific question, but my build’s pretty nailed down otherwise.
Lightning reflexes would be with the 20% off, so @ 36 sec CD. Signet would be with no discount, so 60 second cooldown. I’m wondering if people have general opinions on which of these makes a better tool.
Feel free to just comment on that, but here’s some extra details:
Pow/pre/crit ranger
0/25/30/10/5
Sword/dagger/shortbow, 20% cooldown on all weapon abilities
Wolf and jaguar pets
Quickening zephyr
Also open to suggestions for other utilities entirely.
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I’m having a serious rough time with this question. It’s going to be paired with sword/dagger, and QZ/Signet of the wild/Signet of the hunt.
The mobility and flexibility of the shortbow is awesome.
The kittenty +50% instead of +100% quickness on crossfire is not awesome.
Barrage and point blank shot are awesome.
The inability to respond if someone jumps me while I can’t weapon swap is not awesome.
The damage on both seems good, and my priority is efficient takedown of individual targets. I also like being rewarded for being sneaky, and I like adaptability.
I can’t tell which is better for me. Input?
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That explains it!
I’ve heard some tittering about jaguars being awesome pets because of stealth. Since them turning invisible itself seems to have limited application I was wondering if they got some kind of buff when stealthed. Any comments?
Well, that went well. I cranked some signet and QZ and longbow and berserker stuff and…Thanks, guys. It’s been a fun night in hot join.
General word of thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this thread! I have some ideas to try.
For those interested, I’m building with sPvP in mind.
So as far as I can tell, there’s no way to stop someone from stalking your characters. Blocking them doesn’t prevent them from seeing what character you’re on at all times and where you are, and it’s so easy to add someone’s account. I’ve had some very bad experiences with people stalking someone, invading their privacy, and making their life hell.
Any suggestions?
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.
See that? That is one helpful kitten comment.
I’d like to be quite efficient and reliable at taking individuals down, especially 1 on 1. Does anyone have suggestions for high ranger damage builds/tactics?
Edit: Trust me, I’ve been on the forums a while, I too am upset about crossfire and overall damage potential etc etc etc, I know the weaknesses of the class, I’m looking for optimization suggestions. This is my class and I love him.
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I would love dueling. I’ve been wanting this since beta.
As an RPer on tarnished coast, I’m having a great time, but I notice that the range on /say and /e is so large that it’s extremely difficult to achieve a realistic range at which others can’t hear you and noise from people much too far away is pervasive, as well as privacy difficult to balance.
Sorry to bring up WoW, but they’re a good role model for what makes an effective /say and /e range. It’s a good deal shorter while long enough to work and makes character proximity interactions feel a bit more natural in how they split up.
They still never undid the damage they did to shortbow crossfire, but lots of stuff in here is actually quite nice and favorable. A little blessing here and a little blessing there—it’s comforting to see things going in a good direction.
Probably a couple weeks. I’m not exactly sure. I was one of the people voicing my discontent about arenanet’s design decisions and attention to consumer needs around halloween.
Back from my forum suspension. Anything new with rangers? Words from the devs about anything? Crossfire?
I’m not sure if this is a tech support issue or what, please redirect me if so.
She wants to join tarnished coast with me since it’s the RP server, but she says the game says that server is full. I didn’t realize the servers would fill up. Does anyone have any advice for her or insight on when it will be open, and ideas on what to do in the mean time?
Topic pretty much says it all. I’m trying to pick an elite skill between entangle with the -20% cooldown or spirit of nature renewal with 2x health but no movement. Go!
The only thing I’d still like to see is a comment on crossfire and crossfire quickness. But maybe that’s what he means by weapon pacing!
This is exactly what we were waiting to hear! This just made my day. Thanks, Jon <3 This post did a lot to restore my faith.
This is a wonderful thread that needs to be recognized.
Well, that’s nice. I was noticing that bug. So I appreciate them fixing that.
Crossfire and crossfire quickness hasn’t been addressed, though.
Can we please get a red response re: the direction of the ranger?
in Ranger
Posted by: Othayuni.7369
We’ve been trying very hard to keep the faith over here in ranger land. Some of us harder than others. And I understand that development cycles for MMOs are slower than we eager gamers would like it to be.
But one of the most agonizing things is that we haven’t even received word. We haven’t had a developer or anyone come in and say that this is a legitimate issue—that ranger’s going to get some TLC or at least that -some- kind of plan to shape the class up is being worked on.
I was once infracted for “calling out” developers by asking for their attention by name, so I feel self-conscious of doing so again. But I feel that I must.
Could an arenanet developer please comment on the state of the ranger, any plans to tend to the class, and perhaps your intentions about the disproportionately nerfed crossfire?
I think I speak for most of us.
Please,
Othayuni
Fate, you are a very sane person who knows your class extremely well.
You have a very good message about that class, too.
I hope the forums do not swallow your spirit.
@Ravendous
I was pretty pleased to find your posts are actually fairly respectfully reasoned. I think there’s some food stuff in there.
I disagree on a couple things enough that I want to bring it up; the bulk of it I didn’t have a problem with, but—
1. I’ve played both, and rangers feel a ton more flexible and diverse and responsive in their mobility. No one cranks out evasion states like a ranger. Thieves have stealth and swiftness and shadowstep, yes, but in a way that’s a very linear mobility. Using sword/dagger/shortbow my capacity for weaving feels tremendous. I can stay safe forever while still doing damage with cleverly woven together dodge strings.
2. You caught that OP agrees with you/us about the shortbow nerf being, in his words, unacceptable, right? He’s with us in that fight, he’s just talking about what we do have.
3. I think OP put his views forth very well (same as you did) and appreciated his attitude of not being all doom and gloom about rangers. Remember he agreed they still need work but him speaking up about them having tremendous value is a good thing. I’m concerned you felt like he was trying to shut complainers up. He wasn’t. He specifically alluded that stuff needs to change; he was mostly taking the time to celebrate what we do have because he felt it was fair and I agree with him. (And I also agree with both of you we need our bow back.)
4. Please never pull the “DEVS DISLIKE THIS CLASS” card. It is never true. It’s their game and their life’s work at the moment. They have no reason to pick a punching bagclass. They made a -mistake-.
Otherwise good posts!
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Oh my god, Fate, I love you. So much. Please have my babies. I am male; if you are too we will work something out.
I’m really happy to see this topic made because it’s beautifully written and exactly how I’ve been feeling. I do amazing work with ranger. Is my damage spectacular? No, but good lord, why are we using that as our only meter stick? We’re -fantastic- at evasion and control and adaptability and stuff.
(I use this build. http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mVoVMm0zMomxMommxMo0xGfVoRqosm )
Yeah, the shortbow’s nerf isn’t okay, but rangers are awesome, kitten I for one on my ranger am a downright wonderful duelist.
Hey, you guys got that I’m saying -keep- complaining, just do it responsibly, right? I’m hearing some confusion about that.
TL;DR for those who don’t want to read the whole ramble: Really glad we’re speaking up about this, frustrated with how immaturely/unfairly some people are going about this, want to call for people to stay reasonable, stay rational, and stay strong.
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Furthermore since ANet’s tactics so far have been to ignore the ranger forum and hope we all stop complaining, I think not stopping our complaining is exactly what we need to do to make sure ranger gets changes.
I said that a bunch of times throughout my post. We do need to keep talking about this.
We should not quiet down until we’re satisfied. But we should also be handling that responsibly. Some of us have been. Many of us haven’t.
I agree with this. We want some communication and dialogue. And honestly I think that’s the bulk of what we need right now. People have been getting more and more upset not from lack of changes (since god knows patches take time) but from lack of acknowledgment and communication.