Guild Wars 2

Ranger “endure pain” has longer CD, like 20 seconds longer, the “other” endure pain moreor less instantly sacrifices your profession mechanic. It would be comparable to warriors getting 4-6 seconds of invuln at the cost of not being able to get adrenaline for 20-60 seconds (good skill that one, right?)

Rangers are more duelist focused, warriors are more all round. i will not deny that warrior sustain is flawed, it is well, outright bad. You float on stances and CC alone. once stances are gone and you fail to CC/target has stability, you lost your only chance to manipulate your sustain short of running away. atleast thats how i feel its like when i play my warrior in PvP.
Rangers are great 1v1, and they should be, because it`s technically 2v1 (pet + ranger) so while the warrior is a brilliant all rounder with great utility and self sustain in most content, it cannot – easily – beat a ranger of equal skill because the ranger has three tools to completely shut the warrior down. Those would be the pet, evades and poison (shutting down heal sig almost from the get go).

I will not argue that warrior is in dire need of having its core sustain looked over. They are becoming a sort of “sink or float” profession, more so when might gets nerfed and thus their pressure is slightly reduced.

Now for the defensive skills on zerk ranger and meta. If ranger is running conditions, IT IS NOT RUNNING LONGBOW, AND IF IT IS, THE RANGER PLAYER IS AN IDIOT. This whole argument was primarily about LONGBOW range being greater then any warrior weapon. Which has NOTHING to do with conditions, at which the longbow is a POWER weapon.

Now that iv`e underlined the basics, lets get back to the topic at hand.
Ranger skill coefficients, with the exception of longbow AA, Maul and Path of Scars, is terrible. Outright terrible. That is because pet`s account for 25-30% of our base damage. Pets also account for a portion of our sustain and utility, although not that much.
Ranger defenses, in zerk (which is the single most efficient setup for longbow. Yes you can do 4-5k damage with rapid fire in full ascended cleric, that still does not make it a good setup for longbow), is bad. A glass ranger wants to be at range, because it has merely FOUR tools to sustain itself.
1 – Hunters Shot (stealth). Hard to land cuz even with Read the Wind, the projectile is slow and telegraphed
2 – Point Blank Shot. Everyone knows its coming, so most functional players put up stability when charging at a ranger
3 – Signet of Stone. A signet granting 6 seconds of DIRECT DAMAGE IMMUNITY, conditions and CC does still work
4 – Greatsword Block/Sword+Dagger Evades. Great, but at this point your main source of DPS, the bow, which you probably have 6-10 trait points invested into using effectively, is now on cooldown. Unlike warrior, Ranger has flat 9 second swap cooldown. Once i swap, i become a very very easy target unless you are very low on health, because most GS skills are slow and exceptionally well telegraphed to the point that most of them can be avoided by just walking away, you do not need to dodge them even. Sword DPS is mainly from auto, which glues me to whoever i am attacking, thus im just begging to get smacked in the face because i cannot stop that rotation once it is going.

So yes, 4 tools is what you got. They are not great, they have drawbacks that is obvious to anyone with experience with ranger, and last but not least, ranger healing skills are only strong if you can actually drag things out. Zerker cannot drag things out that much so healing spring and troll unguent becomes obsolete and that leaves you with Heal as One, which has a mightly long cast time that is just begging to be interrupted all the time. not to mention, NOT ONE healing skill on ranger can have its cooldown reduced in ANY way. Not even the spirit one. We are stuck with cooldowns that are far from good compared to the healing output and how these skills scale with healing power.
Ranger also suck against stuns and other forms of hard CC, most builds are lucky if they can fit in two stunbreakers, at best even one stunbreaker isn`t always easy to justify.

Engineers can throw nades as far, maybe even hit a tad further due to explosive radius.

However i find it funny that the argument has now reverted to “ranger shouldn’t be able to be better at ranged then others”.

That sir is missing the point; now ranger has nothing to do with RANGEr, that is a fact. Infact, Ranger is simply a term used for people “ranging the land”.
Now, to thematics that makes more sense.
Ranger is first and foremost a Survivalist class, secondary anet claims its the official pet class. Now, to the basics of survival. If i cannot wield a shield (i cannot on a ranger), and i cannot wear metal armor (heavy armor is not possible on a ranger) then i will not survive if someone can blow my head off from outside my attack range. I would not be a survivor, i`d be a lootbag (again).

Warriors got SHIELDS, and a neat little trait that reflects arrows. Infact right after rapid fire was buffed i started toying around with Mace Shield, hammer warrior. simply because when traited the mace would reflect rather then counterattack. So i would get 2x reflects, more then enough to make the ranger think “hah, no more reflect, next one gonna hit”. But no, he ate his own rapid fire, again.

Warriors have the tools to approach, it does not require advantageous terrain (line of sieght obstruction), teleports or stealth. It can simply use a weapon skill and walk over to the ranger.

The only profession, if any, that deserve a increased ranged teleport/leap is necromancer. Simply because the necromancer has almost NO chance of ever approaching a ranger fast enough to not be feared away/knocked back/ bursted down.

The ranger itself has poor tools to deal with incoming damage while wielding any of its ranged weapons.
Shortbow being the most defensive one with a evade and an interrupt is still too short ranged these days to actually fight other ranged units. The longbow has a clunky stealth skill that is slow and requires you to land the arrow, the knockback is predictable, not so much in terms of animation, but by intuition (its kinda like learning how DD thieves works).

PVT warrior will do enough damage with killshot to almost 3 shot a zerk ranger, however a zerk ranger needs to be zerker to be devastating, this is because unlike other professions, rangers does not have good or even decent skill coefficients. At any time, a ranger shares 25-30% of its total outgoing damage with a dysfunctional furball. If you want to complain about rangers damage vs range or range vs others, then you better prepare yourself. For if the ranger is to see others match its range, pet leash range, pet damage and skill coefficients must go up in order to balance out the loss of a critical advantage.

I am sure some of you remember when pets could still chase you from one end of a BL to the other. Good times right? when you were kept in combat and constantly got hit for 1-2k HP while the ranger was camping in its spawn.
Yeah, lets not repeat that, shall we?

Warlord.9074:

At no point did did Prysin prove our respond to my argument that the range is too long. I never mentioned anything about rangers damage. That was an invention of his own. Look if you guys want to go against me your going to lose because I am being intentionally vauge for a reason.

If the range was too long, arenanet would have reduced max “base” range for longbow. However most builds, short of necromancer builds, can close the extra range gap and counter attack in less then 2 seconds. Granted rapidfire can be unloaded in 1, 5 seconds however at 1950 range (furthest i got in pvp lobby testing) the rapidfire animation (long white line of arrows) is not only very obvious, but also easy to counter due to a minimumof 1, 1second projectile travel time.

Ranger longbow is fairly balanced due to the numbers of easy to use counters.

Now drawing lines to reality. If you have a sniper trying to kill you, and you run out into an open field without s pebble to hide behind, and you get killed by that sniper. Then you gave that sniper the kill, because yoj did nothing to try preventing it.

Open fields are ranger territory, just like close confined places are warriors (meaning you gunna struggle not being CCd an bursted)

Warlord.9074:

Rifle wasn’t a bad weapon before rangers were overly buffed. Riffle warrior was almost better than ranger then.

I welcome the changes anet is proposing to rifle so far. I am not sure warriors should have comparable range as rangers.

I do think rangers should have the range toned down a bit though. I have been hit from as far as 2000 range from a ranger because the arching arrow mechanics. This to me a very broken and needs fixed.

rangers were far from overly buffed. They were given a burst skill and over time, has had their AA brought up to a level where it actually hurts when you spec into zerker, like it does with AA from all other classes when they go zerker.

Prior to buffing Rapid Fire, rangers had, amazingly, 2 burst skills. Maul (Greatsword 2) and Path of Scars (Axe offhand 4). Neither of which is by any means easy to land against players due to being properly telegraphed (even more so then warrior bursts).

So ya, rangers now have THREE burst skills, all of which can be countered and or evaded.

So for once, your warrior cannot do what a ranger does better then the ranger, Get over it and move on.

William C.6195:

Since the I bought the game I’ve been playing on an NA server, even though I live in the UK. I’ve had no lag, no horrible ping issues, nothing to complain about.

I recently bought an EU account so that I could pvp at more reasonable times. When I playing on an EU server I get so much lag and high ping.

Why?

there is two possible reasons:
Your UK ISP has a bad deal with the german ISP that provides internet for the EU servers, which is in germany. This thing has happened to me in other games. My ISP didnt like the other ISP (cuz their competing in the same market in the other country). End result, my data traffic was down-prioritized because of this. This happens more often then you’d think.
ISP’s sometimes queue their own members data ahead of yours, this will result in small amounts of latency.

BUT, in the whole of the US, there isn’t that many ISP’s (contrary to EU), so most EU ISP’s got good deals with the US ones also because they do not compete in the same market so they got little reason to impose “corporate kittentery”

There is also this FACT.
All players in NA and EU are, at all times, connected to the same login-server in Austin Texas, USA. It does not matter if you are in EU or in NA, you use the same login verification servers. And those servers “ping” you every now and then to make sure you are still there and that you are still “who you said you were”…. This could also slow things down when/if the pings are late.

actually. it may “do” 600 pr shot, but the tooltip is calculated using this formulae

weapon strength x power x skill coefficient / 2600 (heavy golem armor)

while ingame damage is done like this:

weapon strength x power x skill coefficient / targets armor

if targets armor is lower then 2600, then you will hit higher.

Weapon strength is the average of the minimum and maximum damage listed on the weapon. So for a warrior longbow the formula would look like this:

Exotic LB damage= 920 to 1080
The median damage is 1000
we will say our warrior got the power listed in your build, 2766
the coefficient for warrior longbow auto is: 0.66

1000 × 2766 × 0.66 / 2600 = 702 damage

however if we assume min and max values, the skill damage would fluctuate between this (every skill use, the game randomly decides the “power” of the weapon within the set limits. for the longbow that means you can get weapon power between 920 and 1080)

920 × 2766 × 0.66/2600 = 645,96
1080 × 2766 × 0-66/2600= 758.30

meaning your actual damage fluctuation PR shot is between 645 amd 758 damage

HOWEVER, i think there is a oversight in how the wiki displays the coefficient. If we go by how normal multi hit attacks works, the actual coefficient would be 0.33

taking that into consideration:
920 × 2766 × 0.33/2600 = 322
1080 × 2766 × 0.33/2600 = 379

which seems more realistic.

however, we shall assume that you do not do critical damage, but however that the target has lower armor, say 1800 (light golem i think)

920 × 2766 × 0.33 / 1800 = 466
1080 × 2766 × 0.33 / 1800 = 547

so there you go. It may be a oversight from anets side that warrior LB have better coefficients then it probably should ( per shot that is), however i think its the wiki that is wrong (if not you get damage that somehow does not rhyme with my experience with LB)

Did you know that the early rifles was outranged by a standard longbow?
Lead ball rifles (or rather muskets, as they didnt have rifling back then) was only leathal at 75-100 yards, while longbows have been documented to reach 220 yards or longer and due to the arrows wheight and speed, it would be lethal to non armored units. Furthermore, the crossbow could match the range of the first rifles/muskets and also do lethal damage with high accuracy.

However what sets the primitive guns apart is that you do not need to be outragously burly and have over a decade of specialist training to weild a rifle successfully. you only need a pair of good eyes, a steady hand and functional extremities so you can hold the weapon and pull the trigger.
In the end, simplicity won through.

From what i can see, this build would lose out in terms of sheer DPS to LB rangers, staff eles and GS mesmers.

The reason it loses out is that warrior LB only has one good burst, the #3, all other skills are bad. you may also mis-interpret the auto, it is not 2x 738 it is 2x 369 = 738. Meaning in reality, even melee range damage on ranger LB (ranger LB auto does less damage the closer you get, and at close range it is really weak) will be higher.

The axe is your bread and butter in terms of burst, but the axe itself is not a ranged weapon, therefore this is not a ranged nuker. It is a burst build, but it does not have the sheer range, the sustained nor burst damage to be classified as a ranged nuker.

The only ranged nuke you can do as a warrior is rifle setups, as it has long range, and multiple strong bursts (volley + killshot).

Warrior is the most versatile in terms of ease of use, now if you up the skillbar a little you can roll a ranger. A ranger can do most of what a warrior can do, isnt great for zerging though, but it can pull through quite OK.

Mesmers are a peculiar one though, their neat and can be strong, but only really sought after in WvW as portl/veilbot.

Both warrior and mesmer is strong roamers, but in terms of flexibility the ranger does better. Rangers currently match PU mesmers in dueling capabilities (assuming equal skill). They lose out to warriors in mobility but absolutely wreck warriors in duels (anyone claiming otherwise has not played/played against anyone with a remote idea of how to play ranger). While not as fast was some warrior builds at clearing camps, they are much quicker then mesmer (like A LOT), so in terms of balance between mobility, dueling prowess and camp clearing they are the better choice.
If however you opt for group roaming, the mesmer or warrior will have more useful options for a group in most scenarios, granted, you can run beastmaster or spirit ranger and have some really neat functionality at the cost of solo performance.

Warrior IS however the best option if all you want is to grab any run of the mill build and jump into action straight away without any second thoughts as to how the build even works.

Edit: Rangers currently beat out warriors in terms of DPS for PvE (DnT calcuations if i remember correctly), it is not a huge difference though, but if opting for solo PvE or open world stuff then rangers beat out both mesmer and warrior by ease (AFK bearbow farming)

HtFde.3856:

Prysin.8542:

@HtFde
Most obstrcuted issues was resolved some time ago. I also noticed that reinstalling the game removed some of them. Perhaps some old code is stuck somewhere and just didnt get patched properly. Maybe my case was just a coincidence, but it is worth trying.
Also, notice that this game is 3D, if you got a solid ledge ahead, dun think you can shoot through it

I play every class and I also play power ranger. Just yesterday I was in AXE range, switched to longbow and fired … 3/4 of the shots were obstructed (empty terrain but the dude was a bit uphill) and 1/4 went “out of range” …

Had the same “out of range” problem a bit later with my mesmer’s sceptre … clear view, almost nose to nose …

Calculation of ballistics has been pretty borked in this game – it’s become better, yes, but ever so often #2 on longbow just doesn’t hit ONCE because of obstructed, obstructed, obstructed and the faulty “out of range” thing.

Edit: The out of range is something I often get when fighting in Eternal on the “hills” north of SM to where the entrance to the red keep is … seems that height difference makes for faulty calculations there.

The game calculates range by following the ground/walls, it does not calculate diagonally. This hurts ONLY projectiles using straight paths (scepter, necro staff, rifles, pistols). Projectiles using a arced path will hit and more othen then not hit further then their listed range. Auto attack will not work ontop of walls because the height of the wall is added into the range calculation but the arrow flight time (or rather decay time) allow the arrow to travel the distance anyway.

There is a few buggy locations still in terms of “obstructed” problems. Yes that hill near red keep (not the hill with a vista but the other one) does have some, there is a few obstruction bugs between the river/bridge and south east spawn and briar tower in borderlands, a bunch of them in EOTM, a couple more issues near skritts, inside the blue keep`s “maze” in EB. The obstructed bug CAN (meaning, this doesnt always work) be avoided by altering the angle relative to the target. you need to alter the angle quite a bit, so you have to move in a wide arc. This should let you find that spot where the obstruction bug is no longer affecting your projectiles (found that this works well in the borderlands, havent had many obstruction bugs in EB, then again, reinstall the game, you may just have some old broken code somewhere causing issues, i know some struggle more then others with obstruction errors).

Also, you say you play LB power ranger. Which is a one trick pony troll build. All it will ever do is destroy unsuspecting targets and baddies. It has no relation to the state of the ranger and should at no point be used as a benchmark to judge it due to that.
If you are one of those who struggle with obstruction issues (i did too for a long while, but for me they are mostly gone now for some reason unknown to me), you should seriously run some other build and hope they fix whatever is causing your issues with ranged weaponry.

@HtFde
Most obstrcuted issues was resolved some time ago. I also noticed that reinstalling the game removed some of them. Perhaps some old code is stuck somewhere and just didnt get patched properly. Maybe my case was just a coincidence, but it is worth trying.
Also, notice that this game is 3D, if you got a solid ledge ahead, dun think you can shoot through it

Gs for cleave and spike melee. Sword for everything else

My personal fav when playing condi is just approaching with Serpent strike (poison) then drop a bonfire on them (torch 5) before swapping to AD for the geomancy proc and axe 2 for a total of 8 bleeds (in addition to on crit bleeds from traits and pulsing firefield)…. usually that keeps anyone from trying to res. warriors always get up using their vengance downed skill, which just gives me another chance to destroy their pride.

As for power – LB3 > swap to GS and if being attacked or suspecting incoming downed interrupt (guardian KB, engi blowout, necro fear, ranger F2) – immideately use the block to avoid being interrupted.

because i bet that if we could, we could abuse teleports to such an degree that it would be horrible to fight against eles, thieves, guards and mesmers as they would port all over the place unhindered

the best build is the one you can play.

thefantasticg.3984:

Windsagio.1340:

There are pve related issues to might, namely might stacking is very powerful and in some cases greatly effects the intended difficulty of encounters.

“intended difficulty” is the key phrase here. Not being bad can effect the “intended difficulty” so how are they going to nerf good players? Well, they tried by the universal vigor nerf and whatnot. It’s changes like this that just widen the gap between the goods and the bads.

initially, but in the long run it is good as the learning curve changes.

Without these global changes, the mediocre and bads would never know or never realize what set them apart from the better players, thus they would, for the most part, not strive to get more skilled. In turns a system that too heavily favors the average and bads will punish the “core” players, who usually are the ones who end up being “good players” in the first place due to their competitive attitude and time invested.

Still, if they want things to get harder, might should be reduced to 25 power/stack at least…. 5 power less is not a massive change and will only really affect PvP and dungeon speedruns so at this point, they are doing it wrong, sort of. Harder nerfs are in order to make the DPS pan out more evenly.

meh im in T1 EU and solo roaming is quite OK. It is by far not great.

best thing is to hook up with a friend, or two. If you are 2-3 then you’re not going to have such a hard time

Actually, this is what makes EU more interesting then NA. While you think that rank 5 wont be a match for rank 1, it is far from as simple as that.

Rank 5 will lose due to lack of coverage, but at the same time, they are good fighters and often fight harder, thus prove to be more of a challenge (battle wise) then higher ranked servers which just “float” on their coverage.

SilverWF.4789:

Also as range skills for RANGErs.
And blaming rangers for using their range skills… I dunno, maybe someone need to choose another game – without range classes.

I like range classes, will always use it, also as jumping on enemy’s bodies

here we go.

Ranger does NOT derive from RANGEr. It derives from “a person that ranges the landscape”.

And now for the world famous comparison:

Guild Wars, and pretty much any MMO in modern time, is heavily influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, which again is influenced by the original Lord of the Rings books by JRR Tolkien.

I presume you have read the books or seen the movies, so ill just carry on.

Contrary to what YOU think is a ranger (Eg: runs around with a bow and pewpews) Legolas was NOT a ranger, he was a archer. Aragorn was a ranger, he wielded a bow from time to time, but primarily relied on his sword.

A Ranger is NOT an archer, marksman (ironically so since we got a trait line named Marskmanship), sniper or sharpshooter.

The ranger class is first, and foremost, a survivalist class, secondary it is “the official Pet class” (Arenanets words).
Why are we good with bows? because it fits the survivalist theme.
How are you most likely to survive? In a place that is out of harms way. Thus a bow with long range fits this theme. That and for the sake of traditions, people like “bow-wielding classes with or without pets”, it just feels thematically right in an MMO

STILL, THE WORD “RANGER” HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING A RANGED CLASS. THE BOW IS JUST AN OPTION, NOT THE “ONLY RIGHT WEAPON CHOICE”.

Might changes is fine i guess, my own build uses 2x battle + mighty swap. Currently that gives me 12 stacks at max, it’ll be down to 8-9 stacks now for sure.

Oh well, it is a small price to pay in order to bring eles and engies down a bit.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAS8ejMdUFaZIGgQHagqgC5iHAK7hGPdG8BtAA-TpBHwAMLDU4CAY4gAA4BAIc/hAHBAA

have been toying around with this build for a while. It aint perfect though.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8fjEqUzaLLWsQ1aALhqdDEA18rT1dJEt3cBbSA-TFCHABA8AAsTJIjq/YwFBwJlfts/Qc6GE4IAEAAB4m3Mb2mBH9oH9oH9odf7bf7bf7TKAmUGB-w

Your warrior build would lose to a similarily specced ranger.
If you gonna go celestial, use valkyrie or cavaliers for armor, cleric backpiece, zerk or zealot for weapons. It balances your build out, enabling you to do more damage and thus be useful.

PS: that ranger build works and is nothing to scoff at. GS is all you need for zergs anyway, sword + torch makes it a formidable roaming setup.

Natural selection working as intended

Eurantien.4632:

The ranger is the worst class at top tier PvP. So that means it is a learn to play issue.

Well eura, to be frank, top tier PvP accounts of the icing of the cake, all the rest of the cake is far below top tier.
If you gonna compete at top tier, eles, engies, warriors, guardians and thief makes for much better icing, but if you just gonna play with “the average peasant” then ranger will be totally fine.

At this point though, ranger is depending on one thing to happen to become top tier.
Either the multiple heals of engi and ele must be reduced by making them unable to blast as many fields as fast as they currently can, OR ranger must be given access to a direct heal of medium power (2.5-3k) that is not tied to its healing skill or any unreliable pet function. If this happens, atleast ST AD ranger will be able to hold their ground in PvP. But if either of these does not happen, then ranger sustain will be far too low compared to ele and engi, and subsequently it is far from good enough.

TL;DR – Currently the ranger is not good enough of a survivor to actually survive.

@waterbear
A good analysis, however there is some faults in your assumption.

Your analysis only works if the ranger is specifically running 66xxx.
Power rangers running 6xx6x will have decent enough condi cleanse, and enough damage, to wreck those who rely solely on CC condies.
Power LB can also run 44600 and have an ungodly amount of defense for their offensive capabilities, many rangers are moving away from the 66xxx zerker spec, because they know it is a one trick DPS Pony. Swap a few trinkets or armor pieces for Knights or PvT and you suddenly have incredibly high sustain relative to DPS.

That being said, a straight up condi build will wreck havoc with anyone trying to fight it. Sword Torch, Axe Dagger 02660 apothecary/dire/rabid will destroy almost all hostile classes granted how much offensive power you get, coupled with the evades, uptime of stacks and enough condi removal to keep a condi necro in check.

you cannot be “best” at roaming.
Some people excel at 1v1, some excel at 1vX, some are incredibly fast at flipping camps/towers, some have amazing map awareness, and some, some just get stomped by random zergs and havoc parties.

And just to make things more clear, ive yet to see any single player being actually good at all these at once. Ive seen good duelers, but their map awareness/knowledge of how to ninja stuff has been lacking….

So good luck searching for the best roamer, you need it.

SilverWF.4789:

5 Zerk thieves!
:D

Perfect party, until you meet a party with a trap ranger or staff ele. Then not so effective anymore.

Mesmer + thief caused the bunker meta, which was slow and boring, so to find a way to kill bunkers, the might stacking meta began, incidentally, there was a way to build tanky with DPS when using might stacking, so the end result was a bunch of builds with the DPS to wreck a glass thief, but the armor to just bunker down when need be

Healers are not bad for a 5 man team, but you cannot spec for ONLY healing, that wont work. A warrior can easily be effective with healshout by just bringing 500 healing power, which is something that isn`t that hard to achieve (200 from traits, clerics amulet + monk runes and you are pretty much set).
Previously, many would use HPOT healers such as guardians, which heals little by little with either symbols, weapon skills or utility skills. Unfortunately, against spike damage, your best bet is burst healing, at which warrior, engineer and DD ele is very adept at. The ability to within an instant just outright deny a spike by supplementing 4-9k healing, without using a healing skill, is more often then not more efficient then trying to maintain someones HP high.
Best example of of spike heal vs HPOT heal can be seen in rangers. Most of their healing is HPOT, subsequently, they have few or no methods to effectively heal other then sitting things out, this is why rangers struggle against thief and shatter mesmer if they cannot prepare for the incoming attack. On the contrary, engineer and elementalist have very bad HPOT heal (yes they can heal pretty good with HPOT but nowhere near that of ranger or warrior, so lets not get carried away with semantics). Instead ele and engi relies on multiple sources of direct healing. such as blasting waterfields, heal on attunement/toolbelt skills, heal on dodge/elixirs. These sources of healing allows them to constantly mitigate bursts, and while the heals are not strong, they are usually strong enough to heal for more HP then the attacker does to you. Coupled with protection, and you got a very efficient way to regain your HP.
HOWEVER, these types of heal, is again weak to sustained damage, simply due to sustained damage being a constant source, thus you must use your heals wisely or else you will not be able to outheal the incoming damage. .

Been known for a while, tbh though, there will probably never be an proper fix to pet pathing. Even if they had the code already, they wouldn’t bother, it is most likely a very low priority thing.

1x bleedstack condi ranger
1x condimancer with epidemic
1x DPS mediguard
1x healshout warrior (hammer + axe/sword and warhorn)
1x perplexity condi mesmer (with portal)

Reasoning behind this setup:
The ranger is there primarily as the “focus” player alongside the guardian. Ranger can apply more damaging conditions faster then ANY other class (takes mere 7 seconds to reach 22 stacks of bleeds if you do it right), however the ranger cannot apply this amound indefinetively, as enemies will hopefully know by now that allowing any ranger to pewpew is bad. So here comes necromancer with epidemic, and BANG, all enemies get 22 stacks of bleeds, some poison, and whatever else you stacked onto the first target. Granted how a ranger can quickly stack up lots of bleed, we can safely assume that the stack then epidemic combo will work aslong as there is a driver calling targets or the ranger + necro is able to cooperate between themselves.
Ive found that with the amount of boon ripping going on in small scale fights ( necros, mesmers, thieves seems to be plentiful), trying to maintain stability is futile, so instead of maintaining our footing, we opt to maintain our HP, this is where the healshout warrior comes in, by using monk runes the warrior can easily heal its allies for 2.2-3k depending on build. Couple that with AOE CC and the ability to remove conditions through warhorn, we got ourselves a solid support unit.
The mesmer should preferably run conditions to further boost the effect of epidemic, but mantras could be useful, especially the AOE stunbreak one. Ive found that while underrated, mantra mesmer with healing enabled is actually very handy, perhaps not the most threatening thing on the planet, but a force to be reconed with behind the scenes.

If you swear towards a more power based setup then this is probably the better choice:
2x Longbow Glass Rangers (for ranged spike)
2x DD or SD thieves (for melee range and stealthing the rangers when they get in trouble)
1x minionmancer (wait wut? minions? why? – because when you are all glass, you cannot eat AOE – solution, minions eat AOE instead and you can keep fighting against pug groups of 10 with staff eles and wellomancers trying to kill you)

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

xDudisx.5914:

Prysin.8542:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8fjEq0xaLLWsQ1aABhaVA0uGShu2d+mDf9FXdUF-TVCHABFcEAA4BAYnSQGV/xgLAgTK/E4gA0y+DxpbgUAMJMC-w

Hybrid melee ranger. Its built to endure and burst. And if that fails, condies will wear your enemy out fast enough.

I was thinking in make a celestial ranger for wvw. The utilities and traits are similar my main problem is get a good weapon set. GS has the best mobility but it is pure direct dmg, Sword also has great mobility but the autoatck chain is annoying.

Has anyone tried to might stack with sword+warhorn/axe+torch or something similar?

It’s a bit difficult to stack might with axe since the duration is so short, unless you’re fighting multiple targets. WH will only grant you one might stack. If I’m running my ranger for might stacks, I’ll use a Jungle Stalker (5 stacks for a base 15 seconds without additional boon duration), sw+wh for fury + 1 might stack, and strength/battle runes on my weapon sets. It’s fairly easy to maintain a constant 15 stacks of might or more this way, and if I was running axe I could probably pull off maybe an extra 5 stacks if I’m just autoattacking like crazy.

if you wanna might stack on ranger, best way to do it is put 2 points into Beastmastery and take “Mighty Swap”, in addition to a Sigil of Battle on each of your weaponsets. You can easily maintain 9-12 stacks like that.

Condiremoval with my celestial build is good enough to offset most condi spammers. If more condi removal is needed, swap poison master for empathic bond and use River Drake instead of Snow Leopard.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8fjEq0xaLLWsQ1aABhaVA0uGShu2d+mDf9FXdUF-TVCHABFcEAA4BAYnSQGV/xgLAgTK/E4gA0y+DxpbgUAMJMC-w

Hybrid melee ranger. Its built to endure and burst. And if that fails, condies will wear your enemy out fast enough.

Sokia.3710:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

A good melee Ranger is scary. IMO, a good Ranger, Ele and Engi are the scariest things you can come across

Yes. Melee rangers and mid-range condi/hybrid rangers can be very dangerous. It is very much a mind game. They can be tricky like thieves, but they can use hybrid builds more effectively. Like thieves, they can also get more evasion than most other professions, so a battle of attrition will often favor the ranger.

I would say they aren’t nearly as scary as a good Engi, and they probably aren’t as scary as a good Ele. But, a really good ranger will give you a run for your money if they are using the right build.

Just gonna note that the only thing that holds rangers back in terms of “monster performance” is the lack of a small-medium sized direct heal (1, 5-3k) that is not tied to their healing skill, incidentally, that is what engi and ele have. Even thief has it (mug). So if these types of heals are nerfed or ranger gets one, then beating a ranger will be hardmode any day.
Ps fern hound is too unreliable to fill said function.

Shanks.2907:

Eggyokeo.9705:

i think that the only way to extend the pet condition duration is with Malicious Training in the marks line.

Malicious Training is bugged (no effect), it’s been reported and ignored.

same with the +50% boon duration one…. and apparently the +30% crit damage doesnt apply on F2 skills, according to battosai

Baldrick.8967:

Put me up against a ranger any day rather than a disappearing, teleporting around the map, venom using thief (or usually two or three of them at the same time these days). Unless you are completely asleep you can dodge at least half the damage from RF, but when a thief pops up on top of you insta- immob, 5 skills in a fraction of a second (no cooldowns on skills), 6-7k damage from one skill insta hit despite 1800 toughness along with a pile of conditions and 4 other hits then poof they disappear again, tell me again what’s OP about RF? Meantime you might just about be able to cast half a fireball doing 600 damage….

Maybe if RF made you invuln or teleported you 10 yards left whilst stealthing you it might be considered OP, but as it is it’s just fine. There are so many ways to counter it on so many classes.

As for other classes having to do multiple things to get their burst, I guess having to press ‘steal’ to teleport then mashing 4 buttons (or the one keybind for the macro) to output 2-3 times the total damage from the 2.5 second RF….

I love facing RF rangers, especially on my own ranger, as has been said- close the gap and most will panic (and be made of glass). Thief on the other hand, if they can’t insta-down you will disappear and come back with at least another thief and maybe two.

Porting 2100 or 2400 range on a thief is instant- thief uses IA, steal and you’re immob while the thief dumps on you- good luck firing off RF while you can’t even move.

a year ago, i’d totally agree with you, but now not so. Iv’e learned that the majority of thief attacks, ill go out on a limb and say close to 80%, can be negated by just looking around you while moving. You do not need to stop or do a 360 turn, you can just use the “look behind” key and scan for red names.
That or simply stay away/be extra aware in places that is good for ambushing.

Same with rapidfire. MOST RANGERS CAN BE SEEN PRIOR TO ATTACK. Only a tiny tiny tiny amount uses stealth from LB 3 or from siamoth pet to initiate their attacks. Those rangers are already so good at what they do, that seeing them would most likely not change anything.
However there is so many counters, and the only places where you are at a disadvantage against rangers is in places with open spaces. In which case – you are fighting a marksman, a sniper, a hunter, a ranged assassin, a archer – whatever you think of the ranger, this is “his/her” battleground. Open spaces is where they rule. If you fight a ranger there, you are fighting in a disadvantageous location. It can be compared to fighting a thief in places with lots of buildings. The thief will stealth and hide behind things so you cannot hit it. It will keep doing so until you either die, or the thief has to give up.
Or like fighting a warrior in narrow spaces, where you cannot just move outside its reach to avoid the CC and bursts.
Or like fighting a ele/necromancer in a dead end, a place where you cannot avoid the AOE damage and subsequently you will succumb to it.
Or like fighting a mesmer or engi in a tiny area, not trying to kite them will make you lose.

Rangers are only efficient when they can engage you in a area that forces you to “be visible”. A thief can stealth in an open area, but they cannot reappear without being vulnerable. This means they must be careful as to how to approach the ranger.

Good positioning is key, to all classes, some more then others. It is just another form of timing/skill. It is the skill of choosing when and where to attack, a principle of war that has been the basis for battles for over a millennium by now.
If you think that a person using the combined experience of thousands of years of humans fighting eachother, then you as a person, and a player, should log off Guild Wars 2 and go read some books before logging back on again.

shadowpass.4236:

Jana.6831:

To be honest: I do have troubles to understand you.
My point is that it does take little skill to do a lot of damage with a ranger’s longbow. *However, it does take a lot of skill to get to you as a thief from a range of 900+ and nearly “one shot you”. *

Thieves can port 4200 range instantly.

with aftercasts and initiative cooldown, porting 4200 range will take 3-5 seconds.

Knighthonor.4061:

in your opinion if Land Spears were ever added, would you want it to be a 1hander like GW1 (but for different uses based on class)

or would you want it to remain a 2hander weapon like the sea spear?

ive been advocating Spears as two handed land weapon for Rangers for a long time. It is a “survivalists” weapon, i also see it fit well with Guardians as it is also very good at defensive type of actions.

I hope they give it to rangers (with the same coefficients we got on underwater spear, ya hear that anet? good, do eet)

For those who dunno why i want my ranger have same coeffs on land as underwater – Go watch the damage rangers do underwater, then compare it to warrior GS on land…. with the exception of 100b you will see something that is out of this world in terms of sheer DPS comparison.

Jim Hunter.6821:

SilverWF.4789:

2. Rly? Did you counted Minis or not? Never seen Rangers with THREE pets at once, but seen Necros with 6 pets

You can actually get at least 6. Hyena and summon, hounds of balthazar, ogre or pirate runes, and sigil of demon summoning. Throw on spirits and you will be a walking zoo.

Now is this effective? Absolutely not, but it gives the ranger haters something else to kitten about.

you can get 11 in total….

1 – hyena
2 – hyena ally
3 – water spirit
4 – sun spirit
5 – stone spirit
6 – frost spirit
7 – hounds of balthazar
8 – hounds of balthazar
9 – Rock Dog/Pirate Parrot
10 – Ogre Pet Whistle
11 – Sigil of Demon Summoning

DeadlySynz.3471:

The problem with some people’s views on pets is stemming from a biased standpoint in a particular game mode. Shouldn’t the class at least have semi-effective builds in all game modes (if designed correctly)?

The “I’ll show you how to play a ranger” or “your not using the pet” aren’t valid arguments by any stretch.

sPvP – Nobody should be arguing that pets are under-powered here. Many of them shine with a variety of builds. It may take practice, but it’s doable.

PvE (No world bosses) – The jury is out on this one. Seeing as some enemies ignore the pet’s presence, it really negates having the pet, given pathing issues and slow F2 response.

PvE (Dungeons & World Bosses) – Pets are supposed to account for 40% of your dps. You can’t sustain 40% of your dps if they are:
- sitting by your side
- continually being called back or swapped out
- dead because of unavoidable 1 hit ko’s

WvW (General Play) – By general I mean what people usually do there and that’s zerg. Maybe some small or medium group play; either way the pet is useless in all these scenarios due to pathing issues, lagging F2, and AoE.

WvW (Roaming) – If your somehow able to avoid the zerg and stay in 1v1 or maybe 1v2 scenarios, the pet is fine in skilled hands. Most people don’t go to WvW to roam, they go to zerg, and given the amount of complaints of roamers and smaller groups being run over by the zerg, it pretty much negates the pet.

So we have 5 scenarios; 1 of them, the pets are fairly advantageous, 1 is a toss up, 1 is semi-useless and based on luck, while 2 of them are completely useless.

To me it sounds like we should have the option to play with the pet because it really limits the effectiveness of the class as a whole.

pet barely accounts for 25-30% granted the recent buffs to weapon DPS.

Also, pets and their survivability is VERY reliant on one thing; correct pet choice. Most players fail to use the right one, or even the right type of pet (IE: tanky/bursty/control)

Justin ODell.9517:

Zenith.6403:

- I would really like to see this kind of information available on a website. Would it be possible to add it to API for third party developers?

While the official policy is still to not show MMR, we do have on our backlog providing a public API for PvP data.

how about just a simple colored meter…

Green at bottom, yellow for average, red for high… then use the possible color shades inbetween these three to “fill out” the rest of the meter.

This way players cannot pinpoint with any good accuracy, but you get a rough idea who is “good” and who ain’t…

If you fear that “displaying skill level publically” will lead to further elitist recruitment and segregation then lets be honest, if you’re good, people know. If you ain’t, you get the boot.

it also happens with some reverse leap skills, such as Ranger SB 3 and Lightning Reflexes….

I also noticed that from time to time, portal is bugged, mostly in WvW. You enter, then you cannot go back through it (the “use” option does not appear)….

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

Better yet, trait that gives rangers protection on dodge should at the same time give aegis to pet

There’s no reason to tie it to a trait.

As has been said in the past… either give the pet aegis or dodge frames when the Ranger dodges or evades.

we aint getting shiny toys “read: stuff that does no require investment”. So rather then doom ourselves by praying for free stuffs, we should just argue for it at a cost.
Then once we get it, we can start arguing the cost is too high….

First we need this function…. one way or another, we are NOT getting it free, that is 100% sure…..

Kilger.5490:

Prysin.8542:

just wanna note that trapper, using generosity sigils or purity sigils will draw against condi necro. However the strongest condi build for ranger is 02660 condition survival using SB or ST/AD, and a condimancer cannot apply conditions as fast, or as many stacks as fast, as the ranger can. In addition to this, said condi build is focused on surviving, so it is evasion heavy with 3-4 sources of active cleansing and often (not always) – empathic bond ontop of the active cleanses…. There is not many builds that can actually kill a survival ranger with conditions.

Thats what I run in spvp except hybrid with SotF and LR/Muddy Terrain/Entang for even more condition removal and still have had scarey moments where a necro reverse dumped everything in the book on me lol. Dont think they’ve won that way strictly 1-1 since also generally pressured by adds but I wouldnt be surprised.

necros can be nasty that way, however they got long cooldowns on most of their stuff, its just a matter of not nuking with all you got right off cooldown.

this class will get buffed 2 days after OP “quits”.

this way, OP can make the infamous “been gone for a while, anything changed?” post.

cillard.3986:

Jim Hunter.6821:

You are kidding right? A regen condi ranger is pretty much unlikable in a 1v1.

Not really, in my solo build I have lost exactly 0 times to a ranger 1v1.

and what kinda rangers did you fight? bearbows? BM using moa’s?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I main both professions and have 2k+ hours on each.

LB Ranger wins versus a Necro (regardless of power/condition build) assuming the Necro has no way to LOS the Ranger and assuming both are of equal skill. Necro wins only if they are substantially more skilled – this is assuming the Ranger isn’t a pew pew idiot.

Power Necro wins versus condition regen Ranger. Too much damage for the regen to out heal and too much life force generation to gain the upper hand. If the Ranger times their evades right (sword x2 and dagger x1) they can evade some of the major bursts but even so, dagger AA and Life Blast are devastating on their own and still enough to maintain the upper hand. Again assuming both are of even skill; if the Ranger is however more skilled they should likely win. A good condition regen Ranger is one of the hardest builds to fight because it’s well equipped to deal with just about anything.

Condition Necro wins versus trapper Ranger. Trapper only has passive condition cleanse. Assuming best case scenario (brown bear and Antitoxin runes) the Necro still has enough sustained condition damage to take the lead and enough condition management to defend themselves. Assuming the Ranger is more skilled, the Necromancer still wins unless the Necro is a total idiot and the Ranger is highly skilled.

Beastmaster versus minionmaster is a draw. Necromancer can likely deal more damage in this scenario but his minions are more difficult to control and less durable. The Ranger will also have higher healing power and likely more sustainability making the fight tip back in favor of the Ranger. I’d say it’s whoever runs out of pets first.

Spirit Ranger wins versus wellmancer. Unless the Necromancer wants to burn all their wells with longer cooldowns than spirits just to kill the spirits, the Ranger should win rather quickly. More sustained damage and more durability. Assuming the wellmancer is more skilled, they have a chance at winning but the odds are still against them.

LB Ranger still has the upper hand versus any Necromancer build due to greater range, better mobility, invulnerability and better kiting potential via cripple, Point Blank Shot and assuming they are using wolf, pet knockdowns. This is not to say it’s impossible for a Necromancer to win versus a longbow Ranger, just that unless the Necromancer is highly skilled or unless the Necromancer has some way to line of sight the Ranger, the Ranger can just disengage and continue to kite if they’re in danger of losing.

just wanna note that trapper, using generosity sigils or purity sigils will draw against condi necro. However the strongest condi build for ranger is 02660 condition survival using SB or ST/AD, and a condimancer cannot apply conditions as fast, or as many stacks as fast, as the ranger can. In addition to this, said condi build is focused on surviving, so it is evasion heavy with 3-4 sources of active cleansing and often (not always) – empathic bond ontop of the active cleanses…. There is not many builds that can actually kill a survival ranger with conditions.

Gw2skills was updated in november, but no blog post was made. The update mostly brought with it new runes, sigils and foods.

I mostly piece together stuff in a build editor, I know by default what will work and what won’t, but fine tuning stats is always nice.

Better yet, trait that gives rangers protection on dodge should at the same time give aegis to pet

Shadelang.3012:

First In response to it being focused specifically on the condi regen build. On that I apologize I misread the post in reference to a previous post I was considering. That is my fault.

On natural healing. I have never seen a single ranger use compassion training in a build outside of a very specific build.

It is true that rangers have many ways to regen. but its also true that necros are the best in the game at nuking healing.

Its true that bird f2 burst is quite nice. But its also true that you can two shot that bird in most power builds. Put both there birds on cooldown and your fairly set.

As far as the condi build itself goes. Ill be the first to say thats one of the cheesiest builds in the game as far as WvW roaming is concerned. Ill be the first to admit Ive died to that. Mostly because that build has literraly EVERYTHING. Honestly thats the ONE build a ranger has that I wouldnt be upset seeing a nerf directed at. And I play my ranger just as much as I do my necro.

Again I apologize for misunderstanding your previous post. What I said what largely in the context of fighting a power based ranger build. However like I said above that condi build is a whole nother level of easy mode gamestyle I never want anything to do with. The one week I played it I couldn’t stop feeling disgusted at myself.

Actually, rangers have higher poison uptime with dagger 4 then most necro builds. So in terms of “nuking healing” rangers “win”

Most who trait for regen also take evasive purity, which removes poison and blind on dodge. Couple this with protection on dodge and most power necro builds are severely reduced in efficiency.
Ranger can also do damage effectively with pet if the enemy is prioritizing the ranger. By no means is the necromancer profession weak, but it has an unfortunate matchup in the ranger. Unfortunately this discussion has so far, mostly been conducted with the premises that the necro is good/average and the ranger is average/trash. Meaning you assume that the necro must be better because necro player is better. This type of discussion has no root in facts and as seen, mostly evolve into a kitten contest.

If you want to shut down LB ranger as a necro you must understand that LB does not rely on zero cleansing, or even the marksman line. You can easily do 11-14k damage even if you have zero points In marksmanship.
Rangers favor critical hits and chance more then sheer damage mostly due to how their damage is split with the pet and subsequently how that affects skill coefficients.

You can, as a LB ranger run x464x or xx662 and still have terrifyingly high damage purely from utilities and might stacking, and yes, a ranger can easily maintain 12-15 stacks of might, which equals roughly around 420-570 power, more then the whole marksmanship line offers….

The 66×2x or 6×26x build that most rangers run is the most damaging but least efficient build you can run but fear not, they will not realize this before LB has been nerfed so hard that it is no longer “viable”

six.6304:

I don’t think it would ever happen but if it did, it would be awesome. If a pet is stowed, I think the abilities should be transferred to the ranger to some degree.

we had a discussion about that in the ranger CDI. the idea (aspects) was raised by an former Anet employee, and subsequently shot down by the devs themselves.