Guild Wars 2

It is roughly the same attack speed as the Elementalist scepter which has less damage but allows double the bleed duration.

It is faster attack speed and hits harder than the Necromancer scepter but the Necromancer scepter applies almost twice the duration and poison on top of its bleeds (can’t underestimate poison).

It is a little faster and hits harder than Elixir Gun, but Elixir gun applies almost double the duration in bleeding and can keep up perma-weakness on its target.

It is already balanced with these others in other ways. I don’t see why it needs to flanking restriction as well. Back when shortbow attacked even faster … sure. Now? No. It doesn’t appear to still be warranted.

Run into a Volley Thief that is taking as many traits as they can to gain extra Initiative. It gets stupid real quick. If you think Rapid Fire traited to have an 8s cooldown is a pain in your butt … oh man.

Amusingly, if you don’t run into PvP with the mentality of “More DPS solves everything”, even the Unload isn’t insurmountable. It’s just a heck of a lot more coming at you than a Ranger can do with Rapid Fire.

Oh, I think you misinterpreted what I said; likely my fault.

I was pointing out that the Shortbow bleed is already half the duration … so, given that already significant disadvantage, why must it also have the disadvantage of requiring you to flank your target in order to bleed them.

Heck, it enables an enemy to mitigate a significant amount of damage by looking at you. If we were warriors with Fast Hands, I wouldn’t care as much, but I’m locked in my shortbow for 10s. I’m quite aggravated that the skill floor for mitigating my damage is “face him”.

Durz could probably have fought naked and made it efficient … let’s be honest :-p

I’d love for there to be more boon-stripping across the board in GW2. I’m sick and tired of how effective boon-stacking is in PvP.

Boon-stacking is essentially stacking stats. In a game that is supposed to have action-based combat, stacking stats isn’t supposed to be as powerful as it currently is. It is supposed to be much less about stats and much more about skill.

As such, anything that diminishes the power of boon-stacking in GW2 gets a “heck yes, please” in my book.

If that means classes currently “dependent” on boon-stacking need to be buffed elsewhere… fine. Just kill the boon-stacking garbage.

I somewhat disagree with you jcbroe.

I think the weapons that do their damage from AAs are designed to slowly wear a player down while using the rest of their skills to (1) Stick to their target and/or (2) Avoid their target’s burst.

I think the weapons that don’t just do their damage from AAs are designed to win through landing their burst. It’s two different playstyles.

• Burst vs Burst … need to land my burst and avoid yours.
• Burst vs Sustain … need to keep my sustain up while avoiding your bursts … will likely have to avoid more of your bursts than if I was a burst build.
• Sustain vs Burst … need to land my bursts before you wear me down with your sustain.
• Sustain vs Sustain … need to keep my sustain up on you … disrupting each other’s sustain and/or throwing in little “mini-bursts” will help decide … example: Shortbow vs Shortbow I’ll beat you if I do a better job with my Poison Volley than you do with yours as the Poison will give me the edge.

This is also reflected quite well in the differences between my Power Shatter Mesmer and my On-clone-death Condition Mesmer. With my Power Shatter Mesmer, I can jump in, burst, and jump out and the player feels the pressure because I just tore a chunk out of them. With my On-clone-death Condition Mesmer, I have to stay “stuck in” to keep the pressure on them.

We don’t care if Rapid Fire does more damage if at the same time, players are going to be mitigating more of Rapid Fire’s damage … yay, 15% dmg increase … but people are dodging 25% of the damage now by simply moving out of the AOE … that is a loss.

You did say there are builds that don’t have defenses.

The comment about people not being able to avoid all damage isn’t about your suggestion. It is about your complaints about how dodging and other mitigations don’t mitigate all of the rapid fire damage in some situations or how rapid fire’s cooldown means you then need something else to mitigate it again for subsequent casts of rapid fire.

If there isn’t a viable build that doesn’t have counters to rapid fire … why in the world do we have this large thread you created to continuously harp on the idea that you think Rapid Fire needs to be changed despite not having any solid point presented as to “why”.

I didn’t suggest anything about the Shortbow having a 6s bleed nor double bleeds.

I simply don’t think its bleed on Crossfire should require flanking.

Maybe it is a hybrid, but that would only explain why the bleed from it is half the duration of those applied by the full condition weapons. Why must it be both half and require flanking? That doesn’t make sense. It’s already penalized with the half duration.

And those channeled high damage abilities do more damage as a tradeoff. That is not irrelevant information.

I’m still waiting to see what viable build you come up with that has no defense against Rapid Fire.

Manekk.6981 also made a good point … you aren’t supposed to be able to avoid all damage someone throws at you.

I don’t care if you buff Rapid Fire’s damage if that now means a person can simply side-step to avoid the damage. Then we are left with another Greatsword Maul … does great damage, but it is stupid easy for people to avoid it.

As shown several times now … there is already an extensive list of ways/abilities to avoid Rapid Fire damage. You haven’t addressed those other than saying that not all builds have all of them. I asked you, “okay, give us a build”. You have still failed to do that.

I don’t see how the damage of hundred blades is irrelevant when you keep citing hundred blades as a similar skill and why rapid fire should be changed due to how it is different from hundred blades.

You can’t just simply say “this thing I’ve brought up several times … your data on it is irrelevant” … please, explain why it is irrelevant.

How about we not hyper-focus on something that isn’t even a viable solution (might stacking) ?

The issue is that shatters remove our illusions, including phantasms. If you are able to just have 3 phantasms stay alive and attack, your DPS will be drastically higher than if you are constantly churning out illusions to shatter … ignoring that shatters also have a cooldown.

So you need to be compensated for those illusions being lost (primarily any phantasms) or not lose them.

The actives on the spirits are not good because of their horrible range that and the fact that they have to survive while something is in their bad range is a big issue.

Not to mention that we have to use one major trait to get their proc rate out of “complete suck” range and another trait to get them to follow us. That is, we have to use at least one trait for them to be partially useable (mainly taken only for Frost) and another trait if we want it to actually follow us … though that can often result in it dying since it can eat direct and condition damage as well as be crit … not to mention doesn’t dodge and we can’t control its movement to not stand in the AOE next to us that we aren’t in.

I’d argue that those are balanced by Hundred Blades being melee :-p

But, yes, they are quite different and Hundred Blades can be used more often and hits harder. Could argue it has more synergy with its class as well.

Aye, I dislike the +%damage when flanking Ranger trait as much as I dislike the Mesmer +%damage when target isn’t using an ability.

I think both traits are garbage.

Let’s compare hundred blades to Rapid Fire a bit more indepth than your simple “they are both channeled damage dealing abilities”.

Hundred Blades (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hundred_Blades)

• 1,571 + (4.21 * Pow)
• Final hit for 410 + (1.10 * Pow)
• Channel over 3.5s

DPS = { (1571 + 410) + ([4.21 + 1.10] * Pow) } / 3.5
= {1981 + (5.31 * Pow)} / 3.5
= 566 + (1.52 * Pow)

Rapid Fire (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rapid_Fire)

• 1,320 + (3.75 * Pow)
• Channel over 2.5s

DPS = { 1320 + (3.75 * Pow) } / 2.5
= 528 + (1.5 * Pow)

So:

• Similar DPS, though Hundred Blades is a decent bit more.
• Hundred Blades does more damage overall.
• Hundred Blades has a base cooldown that is 2 seconds less
• Hundred Blades can crit several times, stacking with its trait to gain Might
• Hundred Blades can cleave up to 3 targets.

@skcamow.3527
@Advent.6193
Thanks for the logic and the laughs :-)

If you take the advice to just kill the clones … my on-clone-death build will tear you apart. You need to quickly realize whether or not killing clones applies conditions to you. If it does, that advice he gave you will get you killed.

I’d be fine with buffing the non-AAs of the shortbow, or simply buffing the AA of shortbow.

I think it would be easier and less error-prone for ANet to simply buff Crossfire. I think it would also give us something that we are lacking … a weapon that applies conditions via its auto-attack (without flanking).

I have always found it frustrating when I’m running a full condition build that all of my auto-attacks are just doing horrible direct damage unless my opponent is for whatever reason not even looking at me … in which case I could be horribly UP and kill that player … because they’re likely afk.

@Zenith:
I’m not a fan of that 1.5s bleed. I again direct you guys to look at the math for the other classes. Their auto-attacks allow them to do far more than that. They are already getting twice the bleed per auto-attack as Ranger shortbow but without requiring flanking. I don’t see why we couldn’t have our bleed, which is half the duration of theirs, without the flanking requirement … then work from there buffing Crossfire and/or the other Shortbow skills.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Sebrent.3625:

I imagine being able to hit multiple targets (cleave) will be beneficial in clearing opposing NPCs. This could create an Axe + Drake + 3 NM that works well.

I’m concerned though that Elementalist will still retain their “Best in Slot everywhere” status in the new format given that they can probably extend their boons to their NPCs, heal their NPCs, and have great AOE/cleave damage.

Rangers can do that as well.

Not to the same degree and without having to make tradeoffs.

All you’ve given me is:

• My opinion is in berzerker without their classic meta build that is stacked in tournaments, they are worse than mesmers
• Trust me

As someone who plays their mesmer far more than their elementalist, I too do better on my mesmer, go figure :-p

It still doesn’t give any concrete reasons why Mesmer warrants double the ICD for the same trait.

If your argument is skills, traits, sigils, etc. … there is nothing preventing the elementalist from doing the same and proccing more bleeds on their hits.

Krait runes, etc. fall exactly into what I already showed the math for … +% duration.

You actually do see some Condi-Eles running around. They love berserker builds because they can camp in Earth and be immune to critical hits (goodbye 2/3 of zerk stats) via their Grandmaster trait as long as they sit in Earth which they want to camp in anyways to bleed to death with autos.

You also see less of it because metabattle shows people that Dagger/Dagger Celestial is king … as do tournaments and many of the top dueling elementalists.

Back to the main point … people are only saying we should continue to require flanking because otherwise we’d stack too many bleeds from autos … I call bull on this (and show the math to prove it) as others are already capable of stacking far more with autos.

I can’t believe you’re ignoring the fact that an Elementalist with +0% duration is only stacking 2 less bleeds from autos than a Shortbow Ranger with +100% duration.

@TheFantasticGman:
Aye, that is pretty accurate … which is one reason I strongly dislike that we have to use Major Trait to get Agility Training to have our pets move 30% faster so they can do the same as the rest of the bots in-game that simply innately have that to make up for their bad AI.

It’s a good example as well as to part of why the bird pets are better at landing hits on targets since they provide their own swiftness.

Despite the various things that have been done to Mesmer that I disagree with … I still enjoy my Mesmer, and that is what really matters.

Play what you are going to enjoy. It won’t matter if you’re the most OP/UP class in the game, the easiest/hardest class in the game, etc. if you don’t simply enjoy the class you are playing at its core.

Elementalist Staff

• Burning Retreat: mobility and 1s evade … 20s cd
• Geyser: healing … 20s cd
• Healing Raid: healing + cleanse … 40s cd
• Lightning Surge: blind … 10s cd
• Gust: knockback … 30s cd
• Magnetic Aura: reflection … 30s cd
• Unsteady Ground: unpassable ground … 30s cd

MH Dagger

• Burning Speed: mobility and 0.75s evade … 15s cd
• Cone of Cold: healing
• Shocking Aura: stun when hit (at most once every 2s) … 25s cd

Scepter

• Pheonix: cleanse and vigor … 20s cd
• Water Trident: healing … 20s cd
• Blinding Flash: blind … 10s cd
• Rock Barrier: significant amount of toughness … 15s cd
• Dust Devil: blind … 15s cd

OH Dagger

• Frost Aura: Damage reduction and chill attackers … 40s cd
• Cleansing Wave: healing and clease … 40s cd
• Ride the Lightning: mobility … 40s cd
• Updraft: launch and 1s evade … 40s cd
• Earthquake: knockdown … 40s cd

Focus

• Comet: daze … 25s cd
• Swirling Winds: projectile block … 30s cd
• Gale: knockdown … 50s cd
• Magnetic Wave: reflection and cleanse … 25s cd
• Obsidian Flesh: invulnerability … 50s cd

They have plenty of defenses just from their weapons. They have longer cooldowns but that is to offset having double the number of weapon sets (e.g. 4 attunements to our 2 equipped weapon sets).

I also ignored their capability for spamming Weakness … and that they can be traited to be immune to crits (hello berserker builds … 2/3 of your stats mean nothing to me).

This is not an “Elementalists are OP!” thread …

I simply do not see what warrants an elementalist getting a 5 second ICD on the exact same trait that mesmers have a 10 second ICD on.

If our pets could simply move and attack at the same time, they’d be leagues ahead of where they are.

If you want to test this:
(1) Send you pet a test golem in the mists that is standing still … watch it melt it.
(2) Send your pet at the test golem that is running around in the mists … be saddened.

I think Carighan.6758 is on a good line of thinking.

When I think about it, I don’t say “I’m not going to use my class mechanic because of my build” on any class except maybe Warrior in open world because +15% damage is awesome.

I say that all the time on my Mesmer. I’m going to shatter rarely, if ever, because I’m a phantasm build or a clone-on-death build at the time. I think there may be a real issue with that.

It’s made worse by the fact that if I decide I want to truly leverage our class mechanic (shatters) that I often feel the need to trait for it to make it worth using most of the time.

@Zenith:
I agree that an Acrobatics Thief (current Sword+Dagger meta is 2/0/0/6/6) is ridiculous (though I love it when I’m on mine). I ran around in mine to test one day and am pretty sure I was either dodge rolling or evading with weapon/heal skills for at least a solid minute as I rotated using Endurance, Initiative, and my 15s cooldown … and that was without having the extra Vigor from traited Steal (or stealing from a Mesmer for all boons <_<). I just didn’t bring it up as that is not a straight comparison of on-crit Vigor traits.

I think comparing Elementalist defensive abilities is a slightly different topic. Sure, we have Blurred Frenzy on a nice cooldown and several blocks, but if and only if we are using those weapon sets. Elementalist is similar. They also have a far superior up-time on Protection for that additional 33% damage mitigation and more access to heals. Some of their builds also have far superior mobility and healing as well.

I just don’t see why their ICD should be 5s and ours 10s. If you look at their weapon skills and other traits, they have plenty of other sources of Vigor as well as sources of passive increased Endurance regeneration … not to mention the ability to be immune to critial hits :-/

A good elementalist is going to make sure he can either go into water to cleanse conditions or use utilities to cleanse. He won’t leave himself without some way to mitigate conditions unless he has completely “screwed the pooch” and been continuously loaded up … which would suggest bad play which would also suggest a not-so-great elementalist.

@Soilder:
Thanks. My memory of GW1 is obviously more hazy than yours.

So they brought over:

• Can’t move (bigger issue given the drastically smaller range of spirits in GW2)
• Can move with some investment (GW1 Alt Profession vs GW2 4 trait points)
• Spirit can be killed (could have done without this … especially when compared to other classes’ similar utilities … also a bigger issue due to the drastically smaller range of Spirits in GW2.)

They did not bring over

• Huge range (this would be nice to have)
• Affects enemies (glad this didn’t get brought over)
• Spirit effect is a constant, not a proc (debateable … but our current procs are lacking compared to other classes’ constants from their similar utilities).

@robertul:
Please scroll up and look at my post with the math on how many bleeds you can stack with shortbow. You can’t stack over 10 bleeds by just autoattacking with shortbow unless you have roughly +100% duration on those base 3s bleeds. Please also see where I compared that to Elementalist who can stack 9 to 19 bleeds given +0% to +100% duration.

Then please tell me why Elementalist Scepter doesn’t require flanking but Shortbow does.

Given that the Elementalist already starts at 6s bleeds (equivalent to Ranger shortbow capped at +100% duration), why is it that we aren’t seeing people “just crumble to auto spam” from Elementalists?

@Cufufalating:
You got me wanting to crunch the numbers on the direct damage of Shortbow’s AA versus our other weapons:

See spoilers below for full breakdown of the math for each weapon.

• Shortbow—Crossfire DPS (without Flanking) = 248.15 + (0.74 * Pow)
• Longbow—Long Range Shot (1000+) DPS = 317 + (0.9 * Pow)
• Longbow—Long Range Shot (500-1000) DPS = 263 + (0.8 * Pow)
• Longbow—Long Range Shot (0-500) DPS = 211 + (0.7 * Pow)
• Greatsword—full AA chain DPS = 252.34 + (0.68 * Pow)
• Sword—full AA chain DPS = 355 + (1.06 * Pow)

Please note that is an untraited Longbow’s numbers. The longbow specific traits would increase both the base damage and the coefficient by 5% to 15% depending on which trait(s) you took.

It is interesting to note that Shortbow isn’t far behind our other weapons except Sword which we all know is our best DPS weapon. So, when compared to other Ranger power weapons, shortbow isn’t doing too badly.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing though as it could just be that most of our weapon’s power coefficients are lackluster. I’ll have to dig into that sometime I guess.

I find it interesting / odd that Shortbow auto-attacks scale better with Attack Power than Greatsword auto-attacks. This may lend some more credit towards all our claims that Greatsword auto-attacks don’t hit hard enough since it has been made a 100% power weapon ever since Maul was changed to apply Vuln instead of Bleeding. My only possible thought on how this is “okay” is that Greatsword does have some nice direct damage from Maul and Swoop … but I’m not sure that is sufficient without crunching more numbers.

Currently, once you have 70 or more Power, those Shortbow auto-attacks have a higher DPS than Greatsword’s auto-attack chain. I’m fairly confident that I’ve had more than 70 Attack Power on my Ranger for quite some time … even when running gear without Power on it :P

@UmbraNoctis:
Your argument is “it would be way to easy to maintain high bleed stacks just through autoattacks” …

… but the math I just showed you shows that we’re getting shortbow attacks every 0.54s that each apply a 3s bleed. So you’re going to stack 5 bleeds from that and the 6th bleed will fall off before you get that 6th attack because:

• 0.54 * 5 = 2.7 … less than 3s bleed duration.
• 0.54 * 6 = 3.24 … more than 3s bleed duration. so the 6th falls off and you still have 5.

If you doubled that with a heavy investment in traits, sigils, runes, etc. then you could get up to 11 stacks of bleed.

• 0.54 * 11 = 5.94 … less than 6s bleed duration
• 0.54 * 12 = 6.48 … more than 6s bleed duration so the 12th falls off and you still have 11

Elementalist is already doing this without flanking.
Warrior is already doing this without flanking (though at melee).
Necromancer is already doing this.
Engineer is already doing this and weaving in all sorts of other conditions as well.

So why exactly do we still need flanking in order to apply our bleed that is half the base duration of others bleeds that don’t require that flanking?

Compare it to the Elementalist I already showed the math for. Since they are applying 1 6s bleed every 0.63s, they can stack 9 bleeds without any additional condition duration.

• 0.63 * 9 = 5.67 … less than the 6s bleed duration
• 0.63 * 10 = 6.3 … more than the 6s bleed duration so the 10th falls off and you still have 9

Now, if that very same Elementalist stacks up to double bleed duration, they have 12s bleeds now so they can then stack up to 19 stacks of bleeding

• 0.63 * 19 = 11.97 … less than the 12s bleed duration
• 0.63 * 20 = 12.6 … more than the 12s bleed duration so the 20th falls off and you still have 19 stacks

So, again, I ask you why the Ranger needs to be flanking someone in order to stack 5 to 9 bleeding from their auto-attack when an Elementalist doesn’t require flanking and they can stack 9 to 19 stacks of bleeding from their auto-attack ?

I fail to see the logic here.

Are you really complaining that someone’s critique of someone else being rude was also rude?

So,
Step (1) be rude to developers without knowing all the information.
Step (2) someone tells you you’re being rude.
Step (3) complain about how rude it was that someone told you you were being rude?

Lol.

Feel free to PM me about what you thought was:
“over the top”
“holier than thou”

Also … last I checked, a “White Knight” was a good thing.
When did it become a bad thing? Is a “Black Knight” the new “hotness” ?
I’m also curious what constitutes someone being a “White Knight” … other than “not agreeing with people that are griping/complaining”.

I feel like I’ve stepped into some bizzarro universe whenever I see that used in a derogatory manner.

+1 UmbraNoctis.

Otherwise … give me Warrior’s ability to regenerate health with their Signet and class mechanic … I’d love that on my Ranger :-)

To get close to that I have to invest 6 points in Beastmastery for Natural Healing, wear Cleric’s/Apothecary’s, slot Signet of the Wild in a utility, and find some way to get Regeneration (Dwayna Runes work).

Options —> Keybinds.
Look near the bottom.

We had a discussion about this in another thread in these very forums as, when I came back, I didn’t know it’d been added either.

… but I wasn’t complaining about it :-p

Learn to be part of a joke sometimes … it will happen to you throughout life as you will make mistakes.

Sorry … almost 30 and 3 kids is sucking my braincells :-p

• It used Celestial
• It used Longbow + Shortbow
• I think the traits were similar to the build used in that video you linked as it had at least 4 in Skirmishing for 20% bow cooldown reduction and at least 4 in Marksman for Piercing Arrows so that players couldn’t hide from your shots behind minions/others.
• Quite positive about it having those points in Skirmishing due to good uptime on Fury+Swiftness from weapon swapping.

I want to say that it was perhaps a 4/4/0/6/0 … but I thought I also remembered it having 3 in WS for Protection on-dodge … obviously can’t have both.

If you think there is a shortage of ranger running anything other than Longbow, then I don’t think your eyes are open a good bit of the time :-p

There are several of us running around with some combination of Axe/Sword/Shortbow/Dagger/Torch. In fact, we’ve been successfully running condition specs with those since well before (see: “years”) the buff to Longbow.

The discussion isn’t so much a “vehement defense” against the idea of changing Rapid Fire much as taking issue with the complete lack of facts used to support:
(1) Why the change is warranted.
(2) How the suggested change is an actual improvement.

You say that classes don’t have defenses … we list a large number of counters.
You say that there are builds with none of those defenses … we ask for such a build.

Do you see the issue?

Also, do you know what a Longbow Ranger often hates to see in-game? A condition spec’d Ranger coming at them.

Elementalist — Renewing Stamina: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Renewing_Stamina

• 5s Vigor on-crit (really 5.5 since it requires 2 traits points that gives +10% boon duration)
• 5s ICD

Mesmer — Critical Infusion: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_Infusion

• 5s Vigor on-crit
• 10s ICD

This was one of the nerfs that never sat well with me on my Mesmer given how critical Deceptive Evasion is to several different types of Mesmer builds (not just shatter).

Now when I’m just looking at stuff I noticed this and can’t help but wonder “what the heck”. Why would they nerf Critical Infusion to have a 10s ICD but leave Renewing Stamina alone with an ICD shorter that is always at least 0.5s shorter than the duration of the Vigor is provides?

It’s not as if Mesmers have more sources of Vigor than Elementalists. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

It’s not as if the Mesmer is stacking more of other boons than the Elementalist either. Again, in fact, it’s quite the opposite :-/

It’s not as if the Mesmer doesn’t need to dodge as much due to being able to stack protection and regeneration more than the Elementalist. Again, in fact, quite the opposite.

It’s not as if the Mesmer has more access to heals than the Elementalist :-/ Again, in fact, quite the opposite.

It’s not as if the Mesmer is one of the best-in-slot classes that is stacked (2+ taken) in

• (1) sPvP teams
• (2) Record-breaking dungeons runs
• (3) WvW GWEN

… that would be Elementalist again …

Bah :-/

I don’t think the flanking argument for Shortbow has any weight ever since its attack speed was nerfed to be 0.54s.

• Crossfire applies a 3s bleed only if you’re flanking.
• Crossfire attacks once every 0.54s

Compare this to Elementalist Stone Shards from their Scepter.

• Stone Shards applies 3x bleeds that each last 6s … no flanking required.
• Stone Shards is a 1.9s channel that applies 3 bleeds (0.63s per bleed applied)

Both of these attacks have 900 range.

We’ll ignore that the Elementalist has a trait that increases bleed duration by 20% AND increases damage to bleeding targets by 5% (yep … a single trait that does both of these).

I currently see no reason why the Shortbow still requires flanking to apply a bleed with half the base duration available to Elementalist with a very similar attack.

@Lyger:
Because that wouldn’t look as much like the spirits from GW1 who had an enormous range to their effects unlike our 1,000 range spirits.

For some reason, it appears that there is a desire to adhere to some of the look and feel of the spirits from GW1 … despite the facts that those had far superior range … and I believe you couldn’t stack them … and they were constant effects as opposed to chances to proc …

Not really sure why the only aspects ported over were the ones that people don’t like :-(

Not going to touch on the math countering your earlier point about channeled abilities and rapid fire?

I disagree that “nearly every ability a ranger has needs a buff”.

Do some? Definitely.
Do “nearly all”? I think that’s a gross exaggeration.

Someday there will be gamers that check their facts before complaining … someday

Please see my previous post.

Actually, when someone is close to you is still a fine time to use Rapid Fire if you don’t think you’ll be dodging soon. Rapid Fire’s damage is not affected by the distance from your target.

Magnet is 1.25s. Rapid Fire is 2.5. That is not the same cast time.

Please give us an actual competitive build that doesn’t have defenses against Rapid Fire.

@Gern:
They don’t need access to all of those at all times. They only need access to 2 that they can rotate. They have more than that unless they chose one of the few builds with completely no defenses AND no mobility … also known as a bad build.

<edit>
Compare to other channeled abilities?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Channeled_skill

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unload
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rapid_Fire

Unload regenerates its 5 initiative in less than or equal to time than the 8s a traited Rapid Fire is off cooldown.

Unload does ((101 + (0.3 * AtkPow)) * 8 ) = 808 + (2.4 * AtkPow) … in only 1.5s as well …

• so 808 / 1.5 = 538.67
• 2.4 / 1.5 = 1.6
• So you get 538.67 + (1.6 * AtkPow) DPS

Rapid Fire does 1320 + (3.75 * AtkPow) from a 2.5s channel

• so 1320 / 2.5 = 528
• 3.75 / 2.5 = 1.5
• so you get 528 + (1.5 * AtkPow) DPS

Unload can be used more often and it has higher DPS. This leaves only one advantage to Rapid Fire and that is Range.

Are you going to now tell us that this change is warranted for Dual Pistol Thieves as well?

<edit 2>
Follow-up questions:

If it is so powerful, why do we not see more Dual Pistol thieves given how strong it supposedly is?

If it is so powerful, why do we not see it in the tournaments? When there is money on the line, teams will take any advantage they can find (outside cheating).

Taking donations for buying another character slot so I can make a character named “Math Hammer” :-p

Actually, a Pistol+Shield with Toolkit (taken in most builds these days) can laugh their head off at a Longbow Ranger’s Rapid Fires:

• Toolkit—Gear Shield: 3s block, 20s cooldown
• Toolkit—Magnet: pull (interrupt), 25s cooldown
• Shield—Magnetic Shield: 3s rect, 30s cooldown
• Shield—Static Shield: Block + Stun

Special Mention to Elixir Gun auto-attacks applying Bleeding and Weakness with their auto-attacks … making longbow even less effective.

Replace that shield with a Rifle and you lose those last two, but you gain a single ability with half the cooldown:

• Overcharged Shot: Knockback (interrupt), 15s cooldown.

Yep, Dodge rolls and LOS can be done by all classes. Proper positioning is one of those things that separate players of varying skill levels.

There’s quite a large amount of access to interrupts: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Interrupt

• Daze: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daze
• Fear: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fear
• Knockdown: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knockdown
• Launch: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Launch
• Pull: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pull
• Knockback: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knockback
• Stun: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun

Same with block: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block

Same with Reflect: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reflect

and so on.

Please take a look at the plethora of abilities in game across all the various classes that enable you to counter rapid fire.

Also please note that a Ranger can interrupt their own Rapid Fire. For example, if you come at me with a Warrior Eviscerate, I’m going to dodge that. I don’t want that damage to land in my face.

Thanks. Since it’s using berzerker, I have to say no, but I’m wanting to try that build out now :-p

It does feel like it’s close to what I recall Durzlla using back then.

I’m not familiar with Aussie. If you can direct me to them, I’ll take a look and see if it matches with my memories from playing with Durzlla.

@StickerHappy: Yes, but not double-bow trapper. If Durzlla comes back, I’m sure he can describe it. I’m trying to remember the exact build, but he was quite effective with it.

@Shortbow Bleed
I don’t see why it would need to become a 1s bleed if they removed the flanking. They already nerfed the attack speed of the shortbow auto a while back … why can’t it have a nice bleed like other weapons’ auto-attacks …

• it’s not like we’re asking for a Bleed + Weakness like Engineer Elixir Gun gets
• … or Bleeds and Poison like Necromancer Scepter AA-chain
• … or Elementalist Scepter in Earth which applies 1 bleed every 0.5s (same as a flanking shortbow) with a base duration of 6s (compared to Shortbow’s 3s bleeds) duration) … without the Elementalist scepter requiring flanking :-/

Arc Lightning. It is a constant … as opposed to a 2.5s channel that can be cast every 8 to 10s at most … so 10.5 to 12.5s. It’s not interrupted by their other damage which has no telegraph and simply smacks you in the face.

It also stacks with their abundance of ways to proc on-crit.

Let’s look back at counters to Rapid Fire:

• Daze
• Stun
• LOS
• Block
• Reflect
• Dodge
• Invuln

Plenty of ways to mitigate Rapid Fire. We don’t need to add “move slightly to the side” to this list.

A buddy of mine was trying Dagger+Pistol Thief. He didn’t know what to do about Rapid Fire at first and died to it quite a bit. Then I pointed out to him that his #4 is an interrupt and it was never an issue again. Add to that that his Steal dazes and it’s even less of a problem.

Later he was trying Sword+Dagger Thief. He can still daze with steal every ~21s so roughly every other Rapid Fire and can easily LOS with intelligent use of Infiltrator’s Strike/Return.

Mesmer has daze via shatters and plenty of weapons also interrupt in one way or another.

Warrior has plenty of blocks as well as interrupts depending on their weapon sets.

… and the list goes on and on.

Complaining about Rapid Fire is like complaining about conditions when you don’t bring any condition removal.

At least it does its damage with a telegraph and over 2.5s from an interruptible channel. There are other abilities with no telegraph that do the damage instantly and from range.