Guild Wars 2

Pet Hit reliability: I still think the easiest and fastest way to make pets more reliable is to increase AA range to 300 all around. birds hit extremely reliably on AA, they just die to everything. 300 or more range on AA would fix this with little effort on the part of the devs.

Grizzly Bear.9085:

Not anything specific beyond roll back the ranger to the Beta release form. The class was a useful spiker and crowd control class that was still squishy when forced to melee (though the sword dagger builds would disagree with me on this).

Beta Ranger was sooooo good they completely nerfed it from Beta and then Druid…. I think beta ranger would compete for top dps in the current environment with some tweaks and SB+A/T.

all this math and time dedicated to answering a question that could be answered extremely easily.

In a SOLO situation your DPS DOES NOT MATTER.

if you’re truly solo and getting no buffs from allies, i.e. soloing dungeons or personal story, then druid can excel due to it’s high survivability. you have to be able to remain alive in order to solo dungeons. the ele and thief builds that max out dps do so at the cost of survivability.

On the other hand if you’re really asking about a max dps build that can be used in almost all the other content then the condi druid is decent but not the best when compared to other classes. ele’s and thieves are the kings of power damage and necro is the king of condi. all other classes fall off from those three. when it comes to GROUP dps druid is the lowest but is brought for the buffs only they bring, Not DPS.

sorry my proposed changes are a bit broader and less on specific skills or traits:

rather than +150 to pet stats when taking BM it should be +300 in PvE. This needs to be split between PvE and PvP as to not completely unbalance the ranger in PvP. PvP stat bonus can be reduced to +200 or remain at +150.

The pet’s bonus stats, +150 for non BM, +300 for BM, should be divided based on gear type. You should be able to choose Assassins stats for your Bear if you want to. This would eliminate the fact that pets are only brought for their stats and not their skills. By being able to choose you’re pets bonus stats you could focus it’s traits for PvP, Raids or Fractals etc.

more dmg buffs need to be added to MM that affect the ranger and pet only. to bring the ranger in-line with other DPS classes they need at least an overall 20 increase to dps. This would increase overall damage without changing the overall burst ability of the class so that in PvP damage could still be dodged or blocked.

WS and SK trait lines need optimization as condition trait lines. At the moment the rangers traits offer very little when building a condition class. The boost to poison damage can be brought back to what it initially was when poison master was first discussed(50%). Rangers should have more access to torment either through traits or weapon skills. Traps need an overhaul in the number of conditions they provide and their other effects. Direct damage can be removed in place of more stacks of a condition or additional cover conditions.

Trap ranger should be a strong point defender.

power Lb ranger needs to be a stronger dps capable of maintaining offensive pressure even when rapid fire is on cooldown.

healing to others should be increased in CAF but reduced on the ranger to prevent further bunker abuse. GoL should be baseline at 1% per stack, increased to 2% and reducing the CD of CAF abilities by taking the GM trait. Druid, specced for healing, should be able to truly support allies who are being focused. At the same time allies must down enemies quickly to prevent their druid support from being nuked.

the AA of birds range at 300, this allows birds to hit more than almost any other pet. This change could be made to ALL pets AA to allow them to hit more regularly.

really bad pet skills, like Quickening Strike, should just go away and be replaced with almost anything else. swiftness is combat is totally useless.

the pounce attacks of the cat family should be coded similar to guardians LB2 that can track an enemy as they move instead of it missing completely anytime someone moves an inch.

F2’s overall need quicker response times, many more pets would be useful in both PvE and PvP if you could get there F2’s to work.

Pigs F2 should go straight into the rangers hand, similar to Steal. In Combat this skill is currently useless.

why a/wh and not GS? you’d get more defensive utility out of GS on swap with the built in evades on AA, evade on swoop, a block and 2 CC’s.

also seeds used to clear 2 condi’s, they got nerfed to one in the last patch that may have been why you thought that.

I’m going to have to try something similar this evening, i run cleric shoutstaff when i need to bunk or support at mid. I like glyphs but they always feel lacking to me when compared to the other ranger utilities.

Tragic Positive.9356:

A golden advice :
The longer your target lives – the more damage you take. And that graph is steeper than damage negated by stats.

Tank stats without damage will actually only make your days more difficult. If you don’t intend to make people kill stuff for you while you comfortably run around tagging loot, that is.

If you don’t intend to support people with heals and buffs – you should definitely go for at least condition damage stat. Like apothecary (Healing, Toughness, Condi) or something of that matter. If you die in 3 hits instead of 1 and your damage is so low that you take 25 hits instead of 5 in berserker mode – your experience as a solo roamer will only become a nightmare.

That should be the GW2 Golden Rule: the longer stuff lives the more it can hurt you.

if zerk feels too squishy you could mix in marauder gear or magi trinkets for more vitality. I find vitality more important on the HoT maps than toughness by far.

if you’re going to play ranger in PvP after this patch then prepare to be a bunker. I ran a WS/NM/Dr and BM/NM/Dr Clerics shout build and the shout build can out heal the incoming damage from most classes easily. As a matter of fact, I ran this and was able to hold point 2v1 and 3v1 for quite some time. The problem is I did 0 damage. It’s going to take some time to figure out a build that gives you all the condi cleanse we need + dmg + sustain.

Honestly, this is the main reason i’ve been playing less and less on my ranger and more on my ele. Ranger doesn’t just get nerfs to OP skills they get smashed in one fell swoop. Takedown nerf i can understand, damage nerf is nonsense. Bristleback might as well not even be used anymore, what’s the point really. maybe go back to slotting a bird or canine instead. Lunar Impact nerf is BAD, Seed of Life nerf is REALLY BAD. WS or soldier runes are going to be mandatory now to keep up with the condi cleans. smdh…..

almost the same stats as the build posted above with slightly less crit chance and damage but far less expensive to craft and much more versatile since you can easily swap trinkets to change your role. I didn’t change the build at all, just the gear, i think it also loses a bit in power but you can change the amulet to zerk and make up the difference and still have as much healing power as the other build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA1CiFsCWsCctgl/A7JN8DGeLvuMQAA+s+WnrlMtwA-TlCEAB5sBQb6CY4IAEz6DJq+DAXAACOEAG8AAsS53gKBDAgAczbmNvZghO0hO0hO0u5Nv5Nv5NLFgZatA-w

I would craft zerk gear as its the most useful in the most situations, as you said stats can be adjusted with trinkets.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Shout_Trooper_Roamer

swap in marauder pieces if you feel like you’re low on HP

condi builds with a tanky pet

i’ve been using WS with Survival utilities for cleanses and TU for a heal, it works OK but i get much better results running shouts.

I carry ascended Celestial and Soldiers with me in WvW, soldiers for zerg-surfing and i roam in cele.

they’re ok as is for raids, dungeons and fractals other than their actives. all the spirit actives are useless other than Nature and that the CD of that is so long I rarely even use it. Besides killing off the spirit for a weak active sucks.

bringing back mobile spirits would turn us into revs and i doubt anet would want/allow that. Besides with the amount of boon corrupt around it would actually be better if there functions where changed to be more like the frost passive where they can apply an un-corruptible boost to damage/healing/damage reduction or something.

Natures Vengeance is bad.

Have you played other classes before?

Unlike some classes ranger utilities can be very situational and you’ll have to learn when to use what, the same goes for the pets. BearBow gets a bad rap, there are times when having a bear can be useful as well as times it is detrimental to the group. Learn what the utilities/pets are for and how they are best used and you’ll feel a lot more productive and useful in groups.

edit: to clarify, I mentioned other classes because Ele can be like that where as a specific warrior build may never change anything on the bar other than swap a banner.

level all crafting skills on 1 toon, i wish i had, it’s super cheap to swap between them.

axe with force sigil. most condi builds are built around viper gear now anyway so a 5 power damage buff doesn’t hurt.

I would also look at making sword, Greatsword and Dagger, almost every profession uses them.

Euthymias.7984:

Pretty sure we lose out to Condition Engineer and Necro. Possibly Condi Warrior too. We’re still wanted for buffs, but to say we’re “very strong” is a bit of a stretch.
It is usable, though, and its still possible to play conditions while being the supporter many wants us to be, too.

actually in PvE all three are pretty close. Engi is over 25k dps, possibly more with the buffs to pistol skills, and both condi ranger and burnzerker sit at around 22-25k. most of this will depend on the boss your fighting and how much they move. zerker has huge fire fields they can make use of so a boss that moves around doesn’t affect their dps as much as one that can step out of our bonfire.

also you have to really pay attention to your quickdraw procs for max dps with this build, engi needs an optimal rotation to max it’s dps as well. Burnzerker is just faceroll easy in comparison, but numbers are competitive.

edit: forgot necro, necro is at the bottom on single targets with the chill nerf but with more targets and another condi class they’re dps gets really high.

agreed. the bond should also flow both ways, if the pet gets a buff it should be able to share it to the ranger as well. pets also need a flat increase to stats.

looking at that chart I would say that core ranger needs a dps boost but not a huge one. by slotting druid, which the tester did, you lose dps traits so it’s going to put up lower numbers than a pure dps class. We should be hitting numbers like warrior, 18-20k unbuffed and 20-25k fully buffed. that would keep us competitive with other classes.

Expect dps to be reduced by at least 5-10k when taking druid because your dropping dps traits and adding on support.

happy with the changes so far. kinda sad we lost some dps on sword, axe/axe + sw/a may become the new power ranger setup with the changes to axe skills and aftercasts. also the trait changes weren’t as heavy handed as i’m used to seeing and i’m very happy about that. very few “buffs” but really only 1 painful nerf (SnR) that I can live with.

A slower approach to changes is what has been needed for all classes for some time now. make a small change, see how it affects all aspects of the game, then adjust.

if your testing raid dps then you should be testing with full buffs on all classes or flat damage with no buffs on any class including rev. testing one with buffs and the other without would skew the results.

Dahkeus.8243:

Ok…but there were changes to skills too. Are you sure the builds you tested are still the max dps builds? You sure that the buffs to short bow/axe don’t change these results?

also don’t compare another classes burst to our dps, rangers built for sustained damage not burst numbers. compare damage over a significant period of time like boss fight length.

huge QoL improvement for PvE

kinda sucks for PvP i liked sticking to my target…..

best thing about it is i’ll probably use sword a lot more now!

that one unfortunately isn’t a bug but it is working as intended. they mentioned something about needing a way to store the names locally and they didn’t have that set up. There is, however, an extra long list of bugs that still need to be fixed lol.

I thought it was pretty good myself.

Wingchun.8703:

Hi. can someone give me a rundown on the pros and cons for each?

Does shortbow win out if i continuously land crossfires on the side and back?

for rangers the question isn’t about raw dps most of the time but about how and where you’ll be using it. as has been said shortbow is a midrange hybrid weapon, it works well with high crit chance and condition damage.

I havent done the math but without building around a bleed build you wouldn’t be able to maintain enough bleeding stacks to completely out dps the lb.

In a situation like WvW it will depend on your playstyle, LB is for sniping and shortbow is for skirmishing and condi pressure. the same goes for PvP. in PvE neither weapon is optimal, sword would be #1 in dps, #2 would be LB and 3 would most likely be either main hand axe or shortbow. i think axe may edge out shortbow depending on the build.

LB has a low cooldown stealth and knockback, SB has a daze and evade.

choose a weapon based on the utility you want and then build for it.

this was the best part LOL

Fractals

• In order to streamline the experience of Fractals of the Mists, every fractal has been replaced with Swampland.

• Removed all terrain and environment assets from the Mossman encounter. Players will now engage the Mossman in a featureless, gray, circular room, and this is why we can’t have nice things.

• Fixed a bug that allowed ascended boxes to drop from fractal daily chests.

Fluffball.8307:

Durzlla.6295:

I assumed it was a necro too, but i couldn’t think of a way they would apply it other than deathshroud, but they’re all reapers so they don’t have the same skill…

Ya scepter is what almost all of them are running now, it was probably that. I am pretty sure there is a way for them to get crit chance without investing in precision as well for agony sigil, but I don’t really play necro.

there’s actually 2 traits that can provide precision that can get necros to 100% crit chance with 0 investment. between the sigil and scepter AA there’s a lot of torment floating about.

sure, core ranger could use a few tweaks and a lot of bugfixes but it is in no way, shape or form dead.

the same way we couldn’t force players to believe that core ranger was worth taking pre-HoT you’re going to have just as hard of a time making ppl believe that ranger is worth anything without Druid.

what’s dead is my patience with people on forums that don’t understand their class.

agree with everything said prior. I run zealots gear with zerker trinkets, I tried the condihealer route and it is really not pug friendly at all. For max healing slot in as much magi as you can. I would stay away from clerics as much as possible so that you’re not pulling aggro from the tank.

Tank healing in full clerics or cleric/magi mix is also very viable and it allows for one more dps role but don’t try this until you know the fights well.

edit: Just to clarify. I chose zealots gear despite the price so that i could use it in other content. to me crafting a full ascended set of magi just to raid in occasionally wasn’t worth it and stat switching daily isn’t worth it either.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Well, naturally, there’s way too many things to account for.
But I think mentioning every factor is only a plus. People searching for advice might get a grasp of pros and cons and then decide for themselves.

After all, I’ve been playing a stealth Zerk build for a nice time just because I really felt like playing one – which became my play-style. And anyone could prove me otherwise, I had better results with it than meta builds because I was so bored with them that I literally couldn’t force myself to care.

This game is to be enjoyed, after all. If people can bring results with what they play – anything is fine. It’s just that Paladin’s Amulet does a completely different job and has a different role than Mender’s so it’s hard to evaluate.

I was just playing around on a build site and saw that you might be able to stack around 20s of stealth using trapper runes and Celestial Shadow, have you tried something like that??

with Menders on I can (running my own variation of shoutranger) run into mid and support the team while dealing decent damage with my pet and staff. If i notice us being overwhelmed or that ppl are starting to die I will switch into CAF and attempt to burst heal as much of the team as possible.

There are times when this turns the tide at mid and we control the rest of the game. I’ve tried to do the same using Paladins and Marauders for a more offensive build but I didn’t feel like I was getting the same results on my heals. Plus, the healing from regen using the shoutbuild is so much better with HP.

GussJr.1643:

If your looking at pure healing power and survivability (self and ally) this druid build provides far more healing power than any tempest or druid build I’ve seen to date…

(although some would consider the high toughness a draw back, as well as the small amount of damage – However, it works wonders for keeping large groups alive while being able to mitigate large incoming damage)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fgw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FvNAQNBmOD7keVomVskVwgVgoVsgJYw30e6Q1Jx14qZNLrBQAoi3eA-TBSDABOcRAMUJYWK%2F0T3wlq%2FgxRAAgHAgK7PEAABYjbMNWjBjckjckjckNyROyROyRWKgv1bB-e

while something like that could work well in WvW you couldn’t run that in raids without taking on dual roles of healer and tank. there’s far too much toughness, thats’ why zealot/zerker or magi is recommended.

bearshaman.3421:

~snip~

I have a full set of ascended light, medium and heavy armor from some time ago and now with stat swapping you can really move it to any character and with any build type. The gold cost in swapping around can be high but it’s way cheaper than crafting a new, full set of ascended now lol.

Shirk.6421:

Prophet.1584:

if it works for him then the build works, that’s why i rarely post my builds.

I mainly solo q ranger and the toughest to play against is 1v2 against two condi classes. even with all the cleanses we have right now it’s still pretty tough.

That’s the thing, It works very well for me, I just have to play smart with my avatar. What I see from most druids is that they make no use of CAF 2, which can deny so much condition pressure. My dueling setup is slightly different and A/D + LB.
I get the generosity every ~10 seconds, with fury I actualy crit a lot more often than people think. Most of the people want to copy my build and fail hard, because the playstyle is pretty weird, but I’m used to it and I love it. Beaten a lot of famous “dueling gods” with it. And I make my guild flame me 24/7 :^).

Yup i’ve played some weird builds and done really well with them. One that I had a ton of fun with was full signet power ranger and I won a lot of duels.

passive spirit range is pretty huge, it may not suffer as much as you think. I would not recommend investing too heavily in celestial ascended gear as you go up in fractals.

Druid provides unique buffs as well as healing. Healing output is also higher on druid than it is on elementalist since the aura changes. Ele’s provide more team buffs than druid but those are mainly covered by the team rev or warrior anyway. druid can also provide some boons thats just not its primary focus.

if it works for him then the build works, that’s why i rarely post my builds.

I mainly solo q ranger and the toughest to play against is 1v2 against two condi classes. even with all the cleanses we have right now it’s still pretty tough.

in open world PvE the only rule is bring what you like.

StickerHappy.8052:

Okay, give me guys an good original build then, I just despise metabattle a lot

your build edited. take GotT on VG for orb control instead of sun spirit, not sure if this is on metabattle or not, it’s basically how i have my ranger built atm.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAnfn0rC1sitqAOrAEtgFDBzZ1F76BMBg1VDAerGWLrZo8ZTkA-TxxXABAsPQOKB1TpXjLMMsygR1DMr6PBAOAM+4jP+4j3u7u7u7ubpAubZF-e

edit: there’s only 1 weapon set shown because you split the torch and axe for quickdraw procs. you could use SB on swap as well, the daze could be useful for breakbars on VG an fast atk speed with sigil or water and food will fill up CAF well.

wish i could find something for asura, nothing nature themed really fits them well. I went with the standard trench coated look on my asura.

this traits fine as is. if it ain’t broke, don’t ask anet to fix it or it will be broke.

Blue Hare.8612:

But druid, to my experience, is not always best for PvE content, it feels like a waste of spec slot. Druid offers sustain and group support, so in harder content and group situations it is better than other specs by design. I don’t think druid can be nerfed enough or core ranger buffed that druid wouldn’t be the best for group play. Well of course it “can” be nerfed to the ground but lets not go there.

Druid is usually taken in place of beast mastery (PvE), the main reason I use beast mastery is Loud Whistle and Zephyr’s Speed for quickness. In a group this is not needed since you should have a mesmer to provide quickness. Overall in a group, druid offers much more than beast mastery, the little personal damage gain you get from beast mastery is far less than the group wide boost that druid provides.

So my bottom line is that for solo play I prefer core ranger.

Totally agree with this. It was found some time ago that the highest dps build for ranger was the condi build. it outshines our power build on all but the most mobile bosses. for this you don’t need druid at all. druid is great as a support line and can add dps in the form of GoL buffs but those really aren’t necessary outside of raid content.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I personally think the most important issue with the highest reach is the pet.
It doesn’t scale and doesn’t track targets – which makes it naturally unreliable.

I think that we are in a nice spot with a lot of options. Actually the class with the most options while each offers a certain advantage over the other with a different role and game-play.

1) I don’t think there’s anything too strong we have atm. Everything we are good at has a really obvious and easy counter. But Druid is a must-have for everything we stand for. Core Ranger lacked a lot of things and Druid offers everything we lacked
2) Traits (Predator’s Instinct, MDG, LoYF, definitely Refined Toxins, Invigorating Bond). These are the ones that no one will ever really use at all if he wants results. I sometimes see people use them for fun but extremely rarely.
3) My experience is quite satisfying. We became wanted in PvE (yup, LFG is finally searching for druids) and I currently have like 7-1 win-lose ratio in PvP (I’m still in Saph, I slack a lot and usually go for dailies only)

However, I can tell this is going to drop at competitive PvP environment like tournaments or anything of that matter. Our counters are way too obvious. But technically speaking we are “fine”. If QoL issues get addressed and some classes in particular get nerfed – we’d be in a perfect spot.

agree with this as well although i think more emphasis should be made on improving the pet. Improving the AI could be considered a big project, increasing the range of most pet melee attacks or making more of them cleaves would solve a lot of the targetting problems of pets. they really need to scale better with higher teir content, the added damage with or without BM just isn’t enough. we have a lot of pet traits scattered throughout the lines that just don’t add much and rarely see play. those should be improved or eliminated to make room for things that matter.

ranger/druid really needs a dps increase, a portion of that going to the pet and an increase to some of the weapons.

in pvp most condi mesmers are squishy, i think a lot of them are running viper amulets, so if you’re running BM keep your pet on them at all times. i.e put pet on passive and set attack on the mesmer, it won’t stop attacking and will re-target after stealth.

like others said the two main condi’s from mesmers are torment and confusion. don’t run yourself to death or spam skills and use CAF to clear yourself as needed.
With alacrity their cooldowns become pretty short, punish them as much as you can with your attacks between shatters while the pet keeps the constant pressure on.

I don’t roam WvW much anymore but I would assume most of this would hold true there as well.

why do some ranger players always compare our dps to other classes?

we do damage differently, we’re one of the few sustained dps classes, we’re not bursty at all. you’ll never see the numbers on a ranger that you would see on a thief in a short engagement but over time we can match most classes in dps.

why do we compare what we bring with what anyone else brings?
ranger/druid has always been about the unique buffs it brings not zerg blocking or anything else like that. The healing from multiple staff skills plus CAF heals can keep a team fight going, the GoL+frost+spotter+GoE buffs can increase group dps a great deal.

we have meta (!META!) builds right now for every game mode, those types of gameplay may not fit your style but they are there. we are meta(!META!) for raids, pvp, pve, etc. Sure there are things that could be changed, I still think staff needs to be a hybrid weapon, but as it stands we’re in a better place than we have ever been.

pulling some damage off bristle didn’t destroy the pet, it still bursts pretty high. cats and birds still hit really hard and can be more effective when paired with a druid over the old base ranger.

I think we’ve all had our fair share of complaints about druid but if you really stop and look at it this is the best we’ve been. now if you don’t like the druid gameplay style then you obviously will still have complaints but that wont change until the next elite spec or you reroll.

Hammerguard.9834:

3) Though I hate to see another Druid nerf considering so many other disgustingly broken things on other classes currently in the game, Signet of Stone should prevent point capture.

all invulns prevent point capture, they do need to revert that change on “protect me” however since it no longer makes the ranger invuln.

http://en.gw2skills.net/ this is a good build site, they keep it very up to date. you can’t create an account but you can generate the build link and then bookmark it for later.

nice videos, you should link these in the pvp forums too