cleric/magi if your pugging raids or your team is inexperienced and required carrying a bit. That gear is more for a max healing setup. zealots or zerker if your team is more experienced and you can just pop into CAF, throw some heals out and go back to dps. Gear choice will also depend on your tank as chronotanks have very low toughness but others may run with more.
SK/NM/DR is probably the best setup to run, if you have a second ranger or don’t need spotter you could drop SK for BM i guess.
while multiple classes can fill the same roles no one would want them to do it in exactly the same way, the game would be far more boring and stale if all you did was change the title of your profession but they all played the same way. Druid is in an excellent place in pvp atm, in pve-raids they are in a good place, in general pve the new QoL changes stated will increase the druids rewards by a ton, the only place they might be lacking is WvW and this is based on zerg mechanics.
anet didn’t create zerging the players did.
CA1 and 2 shouldn’t have as long a delay between cast and effect times. Staff needs either a 25%+ increase in base damage or the addition of conditions to make it into a hybrid weapon. pets need a real damage increase and a better method of reducing all the aoe damage they take.
pets need a damage buff, staff needs conditions added to every skill it should be similar to ranger SB except good (lol).
rangers need better ways to generate AF without staff or an increase to the percentage of damage that becomes AF so that druids aren’t locked into a single weapon(staff) or burning a heal just to generate AF.
a way to make attacks unblockable for a period of time would be nice
all utilities except survival need to be looked at, shouts have limited uses, traps need more condi stacks to keep up with things like mallyx revs, SotW and SoS are the two best signets we have, the rest just duplicate what our traits already do.
Spirits are still garbage, none of the actives are worth using at the sacrifice of losing the passive spirit buff. only 2 of the passives are even useful and sun spirit could use at least 1 more burn stack.
there is a 99.999% chance that none of this will be done and instead they’ll nerf bunker druid.
This changes everything. My last big hope is that with the new fractal levels they make bringing a druid or some other healing type helpful, not mandatory but a bit less of the max dps mentality in fractals would be nice.
Sounds reasonable, no nerfs mentioned (for a change!!). And the broken PvP builds from other professions have nerfs mentioned. They made the thief buff sound scary.
it’s going to be scary, really scary. I would expect thieves to get a huge dps boost to bring them inline with the current amount of burst around. what will be crazy is if they boost the base thief traits/skills/etc and then add DD on top, what will they come out with lol.
buffs to fresh air tempest are going to hurt a bit though unless they reduce their survivability some.
it looks promising from the text plus the article highlights changes to other classes that will help rangers out a bit. it all depends on how it’s implemented tbh, i try not to get my hopes up about ranger anymore
Hey guys, I was thinking of reinstalling GW2 and potentially buying HoT if the ranger situation has improved any. I’ve noticed on metabattle that rangers are not in the Raid meta, and our only meta build is still the LB spotter, even with the introduction of Druids. I’m guessing druids have been a complete bust for us in terms of competitive gameplay. Is it worth it to come back if I main ranger?
rangers basically in the same positions it’s always been in. We have 1 build that is meta or almost meta for raids but a lot of people who don’t know better think rangers are useless. The raid build is a healing build so decide yourself if that’s how you want to play.
we also basically have 1 really strong build in pvp, decide for yourself if you want to play celestial bunker.
metabattle lists both of these builds, there’s a lot of alternatives to these and you can always make trait changes based on your playstyle.
nope, Druid turned ranger into bunker ele 2.0 in PvP. it’s in too strong a place right now to expect buffs.
Druid may not be required anymore to get through the current wing of the raid but I expect their popularity to shoot up again once the next wing is released.
What could be used is some real work on core ranger traits to make them better able to stand on their own in the current meta as well as more synergy between the ranger traitlines and druid line but I don’t see that ever happening tbh.
I play revenant or engi far more often than ranger now, the healer role holds no appeal for me.
the bonfire condi build suffers from something that the engi condi build also suffers from, complexity/timing. if you miss time your weapon swap and don’t proc quickdraw your dps fall off rapidly. A real condi build for rangers shouldn’t rely so hard on that one trait proc. if flame trap did more burn stacks or sun spirit procs applied more stacks maybe we wouldn’t be so dependent on quickdraw.
or, god forbid, burning gets nerfed. then most of these condi builds go back in the box.
Seeing how there is some wiggle room in terms of differentiating team compositions, this could work. It’s really up to you and other people. Most people just play it safe, so you’ll see people wanting Zealot or just max healing power Druids. I personally wouldn’t touch either now. Just go Zerk with Monk runes, Delicious Rice Balls, a Sigil of Transference on each set, and call it a day.
agreed. now that the mechanics are so well known running max healing power isn’t as necessary as it was in the beginning. It might be nice to have a max healing ascended set for when the next wing is released as well as a zerk set for max dps.
fractals are probably the most worthwhile and profitable thing at the moment outside of raiding and even that’s debatable since gearing up for raiding and food costs get expensive. If you can find groups run CoF as much as you possibly can to build up tokens. Dungeons or WvW tokens are still the cheapest and easiest way to get armor if you’re relatively new to the game and don’t have 2-300k karma saved up. while the rewards from dungeons aren’t the greatest their are advantages to doing them, the dungeon reward collection rewards an ascended trinket and you can get exotic gear of different stats without spending any gold.
does it matter that much anymore? 3 years in to this game and people are still talking about how ranger (or insert profession here) sucks so hard and can’t do x content. what most people have found is that All the professions are viable in all game modes and the only thing you really need to look for are filling specific roles to improve play. You need buff bots, for raids you need a support person and a tank, you also need to fill dps roles with either power or condi dps. sure some classes do better than others but if you’re playing with friends it shouldn’t matter what you bring. If your playing with pugs bring what they need.
you shouldn’t try to compute dps in a bubble, if you’re going to assume buffs for a revenant then you should do the same for the ranger whether or not they can generate them themselves. assuming buffs means that you’re assuming group dps increases.
ele and berserker warrior most likely outdps ranger lb by a great deal. Being able to combine a strong condition plus strong direct damage makes them great at range. They also have the added bonus of doing a lot of their damage AoE.
ranger LB most likely outdamages revenant LB even with 2-3 targets because rangers do more direct damage at range. viper/sinister has increased the gap between condi and pure direct damage classes because it buffs all their dps not just part of it. Ranger and Revenant hammers suffer from not doing hybrid damage.
DH likely falls just behind these four as they can apply quite a bit of burning through traits and also do a good amount of direct damage. DH is probably the slowest attacker of the group using a ranged weapon though.
warrior noob with a question: since anet balances across the board instead of splitting game modes do you expect warriors to get a pretty big buff to bring them back into the pvp meta? I have one of each class but have been floating between mains for a while so i’m curious.
yea i’ll be watching the gameplay for both those games when they come out to see if I want to make a move. For all it’s problems gw2 is still one of the best out there if you’re not into WoW.
Cleric’s cripples the tank too so you’re better off with magis or even shamans
i’d have to agree with this, magi or shamans > clerics for babysitting baddies. You still get max healing power but you have no idea what random gear the tank is wearing and clerics can really throw off the aggro.
Apothecary or Cleric if you want to dual role as tank/healer
I like the build although in the current meta I find it hard not to take WS, there’s so much condi spam from so many sources -.-
also while I like the ice trap cc it just doesn’t do enough of anything to really justify bringing it. Why not spike trap for the CC+dmg+a few bleeds or poison trap to hurt healing.
I tried it and it is working very well. But now i dont know what to do with my Ascended Berserker Armor. Should i change it to Viper or to something else. And can i change it anyway as described in the wiki. Because its not listed on this page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gossamer_Insignia
Viper’s would be the best choice and sinister for trinkets. sinister trinkets can only be acquired through LS2 achievements so far. For vipers insignia you need to purchase the recipe from a HoT vendor. Sinister can still work for gear it’s just not the “best” choice although it’s a kitteneaper to craft. the only thing you must have ascended for is fractals since you must have agony resist and I would recommend switching to vipers for high level fractals as mobs have a lot of toughness the higher you go.
Tons of condition clearing skills and effects, i’ve had no problem with the condi spam unless its 2 or 3v1 and i get overloaded with conditions. 1v1 and 2v1 it can hold it’s own. I’ll swap runes for Wurm runes for more dps if i’m not up against a condi heavy team. The high health pool helps a lot if you get caught by the dh traps or vs reapers and chronos.
From my perspective, this thread was given birth because people believe Ranger is inferior to other classes. When it comes to raids – it’s exactly as you say.
Unlike former Dungeon Farming meta where nothing but time consumed mattered (that’s why everybody went for DPS) – raids are once per week. Which in comparison is not about DPS at all, if you manage the boss within his enrage timer.
My point is that Ranger in reality is much more important than OP tries to make him sound. It’s true that we are not top tier DPS – but that’s because we are compensated with the highest DPS support across the board.
If rangers complain about bad DPS – and are probably playing the ranger the same way as the guy in the Video – They are sincerely playing wrong and have no right to claim anything about Ranger DPS.
I have been playing a raid as a Cleric tank and healer in one, as a berserker healer, as a zealot healer, and I personally found full healing spring berserker (without staff) the most efficient way to play (we had that tempest guy helping out with heals).
But at the end of the day – everything works as long as the squad organizes around it. In raids there’s no meta or what not. In Raids it’s all about what the 10 people make work, and there’s currently more than 15 ways to build around.
With ranger present in most of them.
This right here. My 10 people may not be your 10 people but my 10 people can make it work. If yours can’t bring something else.
Yeah, dreamer was great but then ANet destroyed it as part of their ranger hate campain. And just to get the people who still didn’t care that the bow was useless they decided to make the sound effect ear-splittingly painful so that everyone else in the game can hate you too.
Ignorance on my part but your last sentence made me giggle a bit.
What was the nerf? Effect/sound related?
anet nerfed SB into the ground a while back, thats why you rarely see a ranger running it anymore. it used to be far more popular than the LB. they reduced the range, damage and auto attack speed i think.
It’s 10% each for five players. It works out to about 2-3% when you consider the internal cool down and up time on frost spirit plus the fact that it is a stationary buff giver with a range of a 1000.
uptime on the spirits buff is far higher than that and given that most raid teams should be capable of stacking 25 might and have permanent fury this buff as well as GoL and GoE sit on top of those buffs as does things like alacrity. these unique buffs are extremely important to raids.
just a note: I wonder how many people commenting on how dead ranger is have actually beaten Sabetha or even Gorseval? I know I have.
quick question, does this complaint about ranger’s dps includes the pet’s own damage and their abilities and taking into account ranged weapon vs.melee weapons and their associated side functionality? Catch my drift?
only if pet dps shows up in the chat window, which i haven’t tested, but i highly doubt. anet isn’t usually that efficient.
Core ranger does better than 5k dps, it always has and only 6k is required per participant to beat the bosses on average. unless that screen scraper is also taking into account the team dps with and without the ranger you’re not seeing what the ranger brings in addition to personal dps. Druid is a (edit: personal )DPS loss in anyway that you spin it so if you’re going to take druid you might as well be the team healer, if you want to play as dps stick with ranger or move to something else.
The thing that has moved me away from ranger for the time being is the fact that I don’t like the mechanics of druid, if its an issue of not wanting to heal then don’t and switch professions like I did.
Only 20% to bleeds and chills, really. The scepter one is added to BASE duration, not towards the standard 100% cap (which is actually crazy good).
To get 80% more is a little more difficult. 30% via consumables, and 50% via gear/runes/sigils.
It should be worth noting that duration isn’t necessarily better if the mobs die quickly. It may well be possible that sinisters can still trump vipers in something like fractals trash. But yes, for most PvE calculations you can treat a 10% increase to duration as a 10% increase to condition DPS, since it will almost certainly tick its full duration over an 8 minute fight. :P
It also is worth noting that condi duration improves non-damaging condis, and to remember in PvP that duration may not be helpful if it gets cleansed before it comes into play. Just some considerations when gearing.
Thanks, I appreciate all the information you put into that response. answered all my questions!
Why has carrion fallen out of favor with these hybrid builds? is it just that viper is the new FOTM? with Viper you’re getting more power damage than condi, with how low the coefficients are for power damage why not emphasize condi. this would include sinister>viper as well since it also emphasizes condition damage.
Duration is the strongest stat a condition build can get until you hit 100%.
doesn’t necro have several traits that increase duration? until HoT i mainly played my necro in pvp only so there are certainly things i don’t know. Reaper so far is just pure fun for me.
Then he will get kick…please know your role. You guys are healer only now. Besides from that, expect to get kicked.
this 100000 times
um..no..condi druid probably has better condi dps than anything other than a necro on moving targets. condi engi and warrior are better on moving targets. core ranger can still take frost spirit for a dps boost and if you really want to you can slot druid and use the glyph without ever healing or going into CAF. sure it would be a dps loss for yourself but you can still buff the team.
stop acting like you MUST take druid, no one said you have to. Ever. if you get kicked for playing ranger find new friends.
Why has carrion fallen out of favor with these hybrid builds? is it just that viper is the new FOTM? with Viper you’re getting more power damage than condi, with how low the coefficients are for power damage why not emphasize condi. this would include sinister>viper as well since it also emphasizes condition damage.
Three years building a character with fully ascended gear. All the Real money spent on gems because I loved the Ranger so much.Three years trying and experimenting with a vast quantity of builds for maximum damage and survival.Three years putting up with the constant ranger hate from guilds and parties.
Three years only to have my main character neutered , Railroading it into a full support druid. Handed builds by guilds where the only thing I can do is wipe other peoples back sides healing ,buffing,and clearing conditions. OH-BOY!!
No benefits in running a full support druid because drops are based on the kills of opponents.Normally with my ranger I would have to empty inventory of 100 slots 2,3 even 4 times a night during WvW raids.Not anymore!! WvW experience drops off to just the captures.
Apparently I’m supposed to have fun with that?
Such a waste of a class.
The first set is obviously useless outside of raids and I don’t use it there. The 2nd set is fine for open world but I can’t use it in high level fractals
That’s the issue i’m having. I moved my ascended set to my engi because i could use 1 set for fractals and raids. I can’t seem to find the same balance with druid, I was hoping someone had.
So far this is my current build. Eagerly waiting to see those healer rings drop for me on a kill so I can slot in the exotic for their ascended counterpart.
what kind of tank do you run with in your group? I pugged with a mesmer tank using cleric trinkets and I kept pulling aggro because he only had 1400 or so toughness.
So far this is my current build. Eagerly waiting to see those healer rings drop for me on a kill so I can slot in the exotic for their ascended counterpart.
thanks! that looks pretty interesting, you have a decent amount of power, healing and crit chance.
most of the builds i’ve looked over either sacrifice everything for healing which is ok but useless outside of raids or sacrifice healing for dps which seems like a mistake to me.
what gear combinations are you running? did you break the bank and go for zealots or a magi/cleric mix? what foods and oils are you using? monk runes for the 10% or something else?
biggest question, are you using exotic gear or ascended and how useful does it feel outside of raids?
New here, but can someone tell me why rangers suck or why they feel weak?
core ranger isn’t weak at all in truth but their are some things that need to be changed in core ranger. sword aa is just bad, pets are buggy, traits are buggy etc etc.
druid seems like it was designed with raids in mind and not any other aspect of the game, none of the traits synergize with core ranger traits very well. in pvp, because of the amount of healing it can do, the devs keep nerfing our dps or healing in the name of balance but that’s a bad idea because it breaks core ranger.
all in all anet needs to get their stuff together and figure out what they want to do on this class and how it should be played in pve, pvp and wvw.
maybe i’m wrong but i’ve been having a lot of fun on my engi lately and i have 3 years and 2.5k hours on ranger. i’m also looking at ele, necro and chrono so that might be a lot of fun.
druid shouldn’t have damage at all but staff needs a dps increase, better healing on the auto attack and it needs to apply conditions as well. the entire purpose of druid isn’t dps, it’s healing, they should probably move the base healing back to what it was before the scaling changes because now without a heavy investment in healing gear you don’t get much from it. Those are the things that would solve the problem with druid.
putting dps on a healer makes it too strong, especially with some of the bunker sets in pvp, you have to understand that this game revolves a lot around pvp for better or worse.
edit: fixing spirits would be a big help as well….3 years later but who’s counting….
Honestly? None. Crafting is a huge time and gold-sink. I say save your money. Most gear you can find, earn, or buy cheaper and it’s just as good. Ascended and legendaries only offer a slight increase in benefits, but it does add up.
That said, I’ve found or earned all my ascended gear via PvE.
My wife is a hardcore crafter and is trying for Nevermore now. And never have I heard more kittening. Sadly, it’s become a drain on me too because I’m sending almost all my tier four and five materials to her. That’s a lot of gold I’ve lost over the last month or so. Easily 200-500 gold lost in materials sold for that stupid staff.
But it’s cheaper than a divorce, let me tell you.
not for things like nevermore but it’s actually cheaper to buy stuff off the TP than craft it yourself. The exception, of course, is ascended gear since you can’t buy it but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on ascended drops anymore in pve.
to the op, i would however suggest selling mats and purchasing the parts/pieces of ascended gear and just assemble them once you’ready. the selling price of x# damask/deldrimor/spiritwood is always higher than the cost of the piece you would make.
nerf spirits NEOW!!! I was pvping and saw that ranger spirit buffs are all over the mesmer clones making them hit harder AND apply burning blah blah blah
what I should have done when I started the game is to level all the crafting on just one toon. almost anything you craft can be moved to another toon through your bank.
How long does it take to obtain the sinister trinkets doing the living story part2?
some of the achieves are soloable but for others you need to bring a group, the amount of time just comes down to how fast you can get through the content. maybe an hour or three.
So much for the play how you want notion. Why does every design aspect of this game have to hate rangers?
Doesn’t hate rangers anymore than anyone else. It’s designed to be a challenge. Just don’t be stupid reckless.
It’s a mechanic that pretty specifically targets rangers. Sure, take other skill/weapon choices, but it kind of makes you wonder what the ranger profession is doing in a game that goes out of it’s way to kill the things that make the profession.
every single profession in this game has a ranged option, how does this target rangers??
condi ranger is probably still the second strongest condition damage profession, no one can touch engi right now.
DnT said condi ranger was so close to perfect engi rotation it’s effectively the same due to it being so much easier to use.
And then there is the berserker. I put some crappy dungeon armor on my warrior to fool around with burns and I was like ‘whhaaaaaaaat just happened?’ The damage is ludicrous for doing effectively nothing. Nike put out a video where he hit 34k burn ticks on one of the raid bosses (bigger hitbox so it’s situational.) But I was in rampagers initially and hit ~10k burns and 10k bleeds on the zerg hero challenge under Tarir.
34K burn ticks….just…wow….let’s have some more power creep shall we?
GW2 is basically made for alts, try one out and if you like it then find a build/playstyle that works for you.
to your question specifically, shortbow is bad since anet nerfed it a while back, if they ever get around to bringing it back it may be good again. as mentioned a/t condi is the way to go using quickdraw to get double bonfires going. you can also stack burning with flame trap and sun spirit.
condi ranger is probably still the second strongest condition damage profession, no one can touch engi right now.
