Guild Wars 2

Alright, well I went ahead and formed Favorable Winds [Wind] so that I can get started on some of the guild upgrades.

I’ll put up a larger post (like the Mesmer guild post) later today, maybe early tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want in just send me a PM here and I’ll send invites when I get home from work.

I’m on Maguuma, but I want this to be available to any Ranger on any server. Don’t currently have a TS server, as I’ve always just used Skype (can’t argue with free,) but if there are enough people and they really want it, I’ll consider it. I’ll also set up a spvp arena in the following weeks, depending on how well received this is.

Guard and Sic’em would be entirely too powerful.

I’d prefer to see shouts reworked to already include the Ranger, even if it means ‘nerfing’ the effect to the pet. Sic’em could be a huge duration swiftness and fury, as well as vulnerability and reveal on the enemy or something. Guard could offer the ranger a portion of the protection.

To be fair, the heal on Troll Unguent is extremely high with 0 healing power. Considering its cooldown and duration, it feels like you only have to wait 15 seconds between activation time. It’s pretty great.

As far as healing skills are concerned, I think I’d like to see the Oakheart Salve trait reworked into something that removes bleed, poison, and burn when you use any heal skill.

Skcamow, I really appreciate your input. Thank you.

Still want ideas for a name! Preferably something serious, I don’t really care for goofball names; should also relate to Rangers in some way.

Favorable Winds [Wind]
Rampage as One [RaO]
Hunters Covenant [Hunt]
Arrowhead [Arro]
Bestial Fury [Fury]

Anything? I really like Favorable Winds. Nice reference to GW1 and already pretty nature-y.

My goal would primarily be to provide an in-game forum and testing area for us to chat and have a bit of fun. I don’t really care if it’s got 5 people I know really well or 100. I’m not a big fan of mandatory repping, so I’d only encourage repping on Rangers or just when you want to chat; I think it detracts from the fun of the game when it starts to feel like job or something.

And being cross server only means we can’t WvW together (but it means we could duel each other!) We can all still do dungeons or world content together, and even though I mostly WvW, I’m usually willing to help guildmates do PvE content as well.

Will respond to some of these thoughts in the morning.

But in the meantime, what how does guild name Favorable Winds [Wind] sound?

Glad to see some interest. I’ll brainstorm some names and get back to you guys.

Also, I’ll be willing to buy a Ranger-folk arena.

I appreciated that; it’s nice seeing roaming Ranger videos that aren’t condi bunker.

Makes me wish I had the tools and know how to edit cool videos. (I know these weren’t edited, just saying.)

Sneakier.9460:

I do it all the time, unless they have a stun breaker, it hits

Signet of the Wild> Hilt Bash (Moment of Clarity for 2s daze/Stun)>Maul

Anyone that knows Ranger GS knows exactly what Ranger GS players fish for; It doesn’t tend to work on experienced players.

I can vouch for Bredin’s build being incredibly good for roaming; I used it for a while before switching to my own build. This was after getting my kitten handed to me by him several months ago.

Do yourself a favor and give it a shot.

I don’t use offhand axe, but I agree with what you’re saying here. The idea of Longbow being terrible in 1v1 situations is insane to me, as it usually does so well there.

I’ve said it before, but Malicious Training with Jungle Spider/Wolf or Jungle Spider/Other Spider makes the longbow so much more deadly.

Is there an in-game guild for Rangers? A place where many of the best and brightest Ranger minds can go to talk about builds and maybe set up duels between each other to test things out?

If not, would there be any interest in this?

I don’t mind mandatory pets, I enjoy pet classes. I get a furry little companion to run around with me. I do mind losing a lot of damage because I have a pet. I don’t think that’s fair. All other class mechanics are a bonus to their class, ours is the only one that has a constant drawback.

I know that AI won’t be fixed. So I’d like to see damage given back to the ranger, have the pet damage taken down a bit, but have it scale better with Beastmastery, then give the pets more of a utility role. More boons, more soft and hard CC, etc.

I run Sigil of Battle on both of my weapon sets. Every time I swap weapons I get swiftness, fury, and three stacks of might; The might tends to last long enough to sit at 6 stacks through an entire fight, but I think you’re right in keeping Sigil of Earth on Shortbow, so maybe give it a try on your Sword/Torch set. Combined with Mighty Swap, you’ll still be hitting 6 stacks for the whole fight.

Soilder.3607:

Sevans.4619:

It looks pretty solid. I don’t like a few things (Greatsword, No stunbreakers, crit chance, or crit damage,) but I imagine it does well despite that.

The thing is, for a ranger power build to have sustain, you need to go soldier’s. You could go cleric’s and pick up some nice regen, but you’d lose out in a lot of damage. If you were to head knight’s, then, frankly, I wouldn’t find there to be suitable dps with the loss of survivability you’d face. And everyone knows a full zerk ranger can’t take much of a hit.

The reason I take greatsword is for it’s tremendous survivability value in addition to the fact that I can trait for it (can’t trait for bows without losing either signets or EB) and because maul sync’s well with SoH and SoW.

I dunno, man. Ranger can sustain pretty well from smart use of their built-in dodges, vigor uptime, and things like GS#4 or LB#3/4. And because of how strong Troll Unguent is, you also don’t need stacked healing power like many people run, it’s just padding.

I do think that, if Greatsword shines, it shines in a signet build. Maul is really the only skill we have that’s going to take full advantage of SotH active. Problem is getting Maul to hit consistently.

Also, I do feel like people are being a bit too negative in here. Don’t let them get you down.

It looks pretty solid. I don’t like a few things (Greatsword, No stunbreakers, crit chance, or crit damage,) but I imagine it does well despite that.

Traits

As everyone knows, Ranger traits are a mess and along with our poor active condition removal, I think this is what plagues the class more than anything.

There are too many important traits in Marksmanship for power and bow Rangers. Piercing Arrows, Spotter, Eagle Eye, and Signet of the Beastmaster. One or more of these needs to be combined with other traits to free up some space here. Since we’re unparalleled archers (according to the class description,) I’d like to see the range boost from Eagle Eye baked directly into the class with no option to increase range further and the damage boost from it combined with Skirmishing trait Quick Draw, since most other professions have an auxiliary effect on their cooldown reducing traits.

Empathic Bond is not only necessary, but it is also a grandmaster trait. I’d like to see this trait dropped down to Wilderness Survival master tier and I’d like to see another trait improved and moved to grandmaster tier. Maybe add a neat effect to Martial Mastery and make it a WS grandmaster trait. Having easier access Empathic Bond would really help open build diversity.

Many Beastmastery traits need to either be entirely reworked or combined, they’re a mess.

Pet AI

ANet has stated that fixing pet AI is opening a can of worms that they aren’t really willing to do yet. I do not expect pet AI improvement and because of that, I think they can placate much of the Ranger playerbase by slightly increasing the damage coefficient of all Ranger weapon skills to make up for the poor AI. This will do a lot to help power builds, which is where the class really needs a helping hand.

Weapons

Aside from having a slight coefficient damage increase, there are a few skills that need improving. Rangers could use a little (read: a lot of) party support and this is a good opportunity to do that. We all have a ton of ideas for this, so I’m not gonna type a gigantic list, all that needs to be said is that we have to be better at support. (Also, replace Cripple with Weakness on Monarch’s Leap for me ANet, pretty please.)

Utilities

- Sharpening Stone needs a serious buff. Maybe make it every attack for X duration causes a stack of bleeding, increase CD if need be.
- Lightning Reflexes NEEDS to remove all movement impairing conditions.
- Make Viper’s Nest and Frost Trap scale well with power so we can have nifty power trapper builds that make sense.
- Put a blast finisher on an activated Spike Trap.
- Move the damage bonus from Frost Spirit to Storm Spirit, give Frost Spirit a chance to Chill on hit; Change the active to freeze (like Ice Bow 5) enemies in the area for 1 second.
- Signet of the Hunt active grants your pet 3s of stealth. (Got this from another thread.)

The other classes just aren’t fun to me.

Spiders. They have immobilize. Makes LB that much better.

Spiders, I say. The auto hits very hard, they have a poison field and Cave Spider F2 is Vulnerability + Weakness. Can’t really beat that.

They also don’t waste time burrowing.

Manekk.6981:

The first fight with the thief you should have died more than a dozen of times not sure what he was doing to be honest, my favourite part though was when you disengaged with sword2 managed to heal and then make sword 2 leap in time. nice video.

That’s one of my favorite things to do with Sword2 and this post reminded of how much I love the length of time I have to utilize between the initial skill and the chain skill.

It’s on too short of a cooldown to apply a 3s reveal. And it’s not really that easily avoidable.

I’m so conflicted about this that I can’t formulate a well thought out response without deleting it all and starting over.

I don’t think that I like it, unless it means we’re seeing a change to the grandmaster trait of the same name.

Aegael.6938:

Anyway, I’d like some kind of parallel between LB/x and SB/traps. Shortbow performs a similar function with condition damage, but has the advantage where, if a melee tries to close the gap on you, you’re standing on a bunch of traps. I’ve tried LB/traps in order to mitigate the close-range weakness of the set, but mixed damage leaves both traps and LB doing subpar damage, to the point where you might as well be playing the traditional shortbow/trap set.

A little off topic here, but I would kill for a power longbow trapper to be viable. I’ve been saying Viper’s Nest and Frost Trap should pulse considerable direct damage for a while now.

Part of me would love this, because I feel it really suits Rangers aesthetically, plus it’s a huge combat advantage. However, it’d probably get us nerfed even harder.

That said, I love the idea of putting a short stealth on Signet of the Hunt. I would also appreciate a smoke field either via traps or pets so we can leap through for stealth.

I run a Knights/Berserker/Valkyrie/Cavalier mix. It’s pretty nuts, only two Cavalier pieces, though. My amulet and my quiver.

It works very well for me. I maintain 40% crit chance without fury, over 1800 toughness, 2100 power, and something like 75% crit damage.

I’ve also only got 30 Healing Power, but I guess because of how I play (I use Troll Unguent as well as Mango Pie and Signet of the Wild,) I am often asked how high I have my healing power stacked.

I’ve pulled off a lot of silly 2v4 or 2v5 situations because people would rather target a Ranger with a million evades, stealth, and crazy health regen instead of a glass cannon elementalist who just bursts everyone down.

Yeah, and I also have over one thousand hours of focusing on it and see great results with it. People just want to slap on zerker gear and see big numbers at 1500 range and, while the weapon can do that, it’s not really what it’s great at and it leads to people getting thrashed.

Nobody’s crying about crying, there are just people advocating furthering yourself as a player, which this community seems to have a problem with.

Barrage should be 10% chance for blast finisher per wave.

That’d be fun.

It increases pet healing power by 350 which does the following practically:

- Increases health gain of Beastmaster grand trait Natural Healing. (About 45 more points, I think?)
- Strengthens Fern Hound F2.
- Strengthens Moa skill Harmonic Cry.

I think that’s about it. It’s pretty much outshined by Mighty Swap in every possible scenario, with the exception of full regen bunker. Maybe.

Fluffball.8307:

Huh. I hunt warriors with a longbow. They’re difficult prey to catch because they run so fast.

This.

All of the longbows in Tyria were thrown into the Mystic Forge. All that’s left are swords, daggers, axes, and torches.

And bears. Lots of bears.

I get a lot of private messages about this kind of thing, so I’m gonna copy and paste a few of the tips of shared with others. Please excuse my laziness here, some of these tips refer to my build specifically, but they still apply to most rangers. If you want more specific tips for your build or against certain classes just feel free to PM me or whisper me in game. Love helping fellow rangers.

- When using spiders against ranged enemies, stand directly behind your spider so that your enemies projectiles hit the spider and not you. This really screws most players over because they are too dumb to notice. Exception against shortbow Thieves, because they get the bounce on their stuff and that can actually create more damage for them.

- Use Hunter’s Shot stealth to activate your heal and your elite. This essentially turns your heal and elite into something that can’t be interrupted without insane luck.

- Confirm that your Point Blank Shot hit, then immediately fire off your Hunter’s Shot for a guaranteed stealth/target drop. This is akin to a ‘hit confirm’ in the fighting game community. Don’t just mash 4 then 3, but make sure your PBS hits first. You actually have enough time to squeeze off an auto attack in between for that extra bit of damage.

- Speaking of stealth, using stealth to activate heal, then using Protect Me after stealth runs out is a great way to make sure that you’re getting at least 8 full seconds of your TU heal. I’ve had people comment on how pesky my build is because I can “heal up like a Thief.”

- Wolf Fear = Guaranteed Point Blank Shot. Use PBS at the end of your Wolf fear. You’ll learn the timing. This combo is annoying (so I’ve been told) and creates a ton of space.

- Malicious Training trait makes your pets a nightmare. This trait single-handedly makes Jungle Spider and Wolf the two most dangerous pets in the game. The spider gets almost 10 seconds of immobilize and you’d be shocked at just how many people aren’t prepared to clear that. The wolf fear is just all around fantastic.

- Quick Draw is probably the most important trait for longbow users. It’s not Eagle Eye, it’s not Piercing Arrows. It’s Quick Draw. Reduced cooldown on Rapid Fire, Hunter’s Shot, and Point Blank Shot? Can’t pass it up. Also, twenty points in Skirmishing means that you get swiftness and fury on weapon swap, which helps your damage and spacing a ton.

Vs Thieves

- Ranger pets are Cloak and Dagger bait and it is our biggest hurdle when fighting this class to keep our pet on a leash and try to not allow that Thief to constantly stealth on our pet. A few times is okay, because hey, our pet is taking the damage instead of us, but it can end up being a real pain. Use your F3 and F4 buttons liberally to keep your pet away from the Thief.

- Longbow skill Rapid Fire should be used a lot. It tracks Thieves in stealth, so not only do you continue to do damage while they are hiding, but you can even follow where your arrows are shooting to know how close the Thief is getting. If your Rapid Fire channel ends, that means the Thief stepped too far to your side or just performed a Shadowstep behind you. Prepare for a Backstab.

- Sword/Dagger is amazing for mitigating Thief damage due to all of your built in evades. Hornet Sting/Monarch Leap in some random direction about 1 – 2 seconds after a Thief stealths, this should put you out of range of a Backstab.

- Traits like Primal Reflexes and especially Nature’s Protection are great against Thieves. You gain two very valuable buffs when you do get hit by a Backstab. These will help you recover from that.

- Lightning Reflexes is a straight counter to Basilisk Venom elite. It’s a stun break on a shorter cooldown than their elite and it comes with an Evade and vigor. Save this for when you get turned to stone. Always.

- I love, love, love using ‘Protect Me’ when a Thief stealths and just give them my back. They backstab, my pet takes the damage, I proceed with whacking away with Sword auto-attack for a few seconds while they are revealed.

- If a Thief has a Sword/Dagger set-up DO NOT USE Rampage as One elite. They’ll steal your long Stability/Fury and that’s pretty much a death sentence.

- Long and frequent roots like Spider Immobilize, Wolf fear and Longbow’s Point Blank Shot make it very hard for Thieves to be Thieves.

reikken.4961:

obviously the point is to tank. you don’t need to do tons of damage to be useful
nor to have fun, which is the real point.

I want to run around in WvW and see how many people I can have on me without dying.
if you don’t see the possibility for fun in that, I pity you

The point is that you’re still going to die. A single fully offensive character is going to kill you. You will not outdamage his heal and his offense will punch a hole in your defense, even if it takes a few extra seconds.

It’s pointless and ANet likely isn’t going to waste their time.

Manekk.6981:

dylan.5409:

Muddy terrain maybe could also add a traited spike trap (not sure if it would be worth it though), unfortunately pet cc is not reliable

Spiders are pretty reliable to hit, the imob will work every single time since it’s a venombuff applied on the spider itself that makes the next attack that hits imob, so it always works albeit perhaps not instantly, I’d say it’s more reliable than muddy terrain actually.

This. This a million times. Both my Jungle Spider’s web ball and his F2 skill are fairly reliable. It’s up to the kitten player to have to react to these skills hitting and making use of them.

There’s a strength to have players not dodge a spider web because it’s coming from behind them when they’re focused on us. We have to make up for that with being solid players with a lot of awareness, since we may not know exactly when it happens either.

Judging by general players reaction when I stealth, I’m going to go ahead and guess that they can’t see a floating quiver.

I’m sure it works well. This is a pretty safe and easy formula to follow.

I feel like some Dire gear mixed in would do you well. You lose a little healing power but gain a lot in your life pool; You don’t really need that much healing power to be a regen monster.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that my quiver (crafted — Sights Be True) doesn’t stealth when I do.

What would be the point? You would be useless in PvE and you wouldn’t be able to kill anybody in PvP or WvW.

I get this issue. I even made a thread about Monarch’s Leap saying I wish that it were changed to give more of a reward for hitting with it as opposed to just running away, but taking the latter option out of the game completely limits playstyle options, and when you limit playstyle options, you end up killing the fun of the game for a lot of people.

I don’t think disengaging is that big of a deal because the issue only occurs in WvW and it can be part of a greater strategy there; Like baiting or just regrouping for a stronger push.

Are you using Boar? Skulls and Bones are exclusive to Boar.

Fun watch. I had a laugh when I saw your message about that Ranger and immediately realized it was Bredin! That guy’s kitten good.

Footage of SBI vs Mag with no footage of poor ol’ Ranger Saethe? You make me sad.

I got excited thinking this was going to be a match-up style thread. Now I am sad.

If you care what people think about you, play warrior. If you want a class mechanic that requires more than hitting ‘F1’ every 10 seconds, play ranger.

:3

Thedenofsin.7340:

Maybe she wants to corner Tyria’s Spice market.

Ah, yes. Dune.

It’s completely possible without being Norn, you just don’t get access to gimmicky one-shot builds.

Ranger elites are better than any racial elite.

Norns get to do that silly signet ranger one shotting people for 20,000 damage with a dash that travels across the map.

I use a Sylvari ranger. I actually use Druid Spirit sometimes in duels because it draws conditions from you and immobs the enemy. Occasionally I’ll use Jungle Spider, Drakehound, Grasping Vines, Muddy Terrain, and Entangle for the ultimate immobilize fest. It really, really trivializes some open world champions, it’s kind of silly.

EDIT: Thematically I would say both races are great choices.

Man, I was checking the game release section on my phone at work all morning to see the patch notes and see what awesome balance changes were in store for the game.

Nothing. Nadda. Not even Ranger bug fixes. I want to cry. Somebody hold me.

Guess it’s a good thing you guys planned on a plan B! It’ll be interesting to hear what topic you choose.

Sounds perfect.

Oh! One of my favorite things to discuss when I was playing fighting games competitively were character match-ups. It’d be GREAT to talk about Ranger versus ??? class match-ups.

Tips versus each class, our weaknesses, strengths, etc.

As a very, very dedicated longbow Ranger, I stick by my idea that Quick Draw and Malicious Training with Jungle Spider Wolf are the two most important things you can do for a longbow build.

I actually would love if they removed the damage and gave it the immob, chill, cripple break. On more than one occasion, I’ve broken my longbow stealth prematurely by hitting lightning reflexes to get out of a random CC or something.