Guild Wars 2

Some of the ideas are actually pretty exact.

Some are not.

RtW, Sword Root, 7, and All the Shouts – I agree. Maybe I’d add an AoE aura around the pet for cripple (let’s say 450 range) every time pet attacks while in “Protect” mode. People should be scared of beasts in their territory.

Others I don’t. E.G. Rangers are not supposed to be healers. We provide nice support utility through Spirits – and that’s our support role. We don’t provide enough healing anywayz.

Our Fire traps are supposed to bring damage – offense. Defense is not needed.

ShortBow is not flanking restricted. But could welcome better Power coefficient – that’s for sure. It hits like a Hamburger. Looks tasty but you don’t wanna know what it’s made of.

Holland.9351:

It’s the best trait in the game as far as I’m concerned. Even combined with Eagle Eye my shots never miss. Noone can avoid being hit by mere movement. It was my number 1 annoyance with the longbow and this fixed it.
…

And this is what I’m talking about. It’s not exactly an improving trait. It’s a fixing trait for something that is kinda broken.

More importantly : What is the trait best for? tPvP? PvE environment (dungeons / bosses) ?
WvW ? (solo / group)

As you can see – for Dungeons melee is the answer. If you are using longbow – you are in NO NEED OF RtW because shots cannot be faked by NPC in 95% of cases (mostly stationary ranged targets).
In tPvP you should be focusing on taking the points, not sniping from bushes or walls where you are taking zero objectives.
In group WvW your shots always hit a nice number of targets and you don’t need to hit exactly your primary target – you are trying to hit as much as possible.
In solo WvW – it’s fine. But there are still options that could be better.

~ the summary is that the RtW is not attractive anywhere besides ONE environment – and is not even best at it.

Xenos.1072:

Ive been running it a bit in WvW and i gota say, its beautiful. Giving up the free crit from Remorseless is rough, but when you see your DPS go up because you no longer miss? Mmmm..

But the thing is, that we are the only class using LongBow for DPS, not utility cooldown using.
It’s sad we NEED to use this trait to use LB in a reliable way. No other class has these problems. Not so big as we do.
RtW could even be baseline for us – without even being too powerful. We don’t have burst, not even the best DPS … We could at least welcome a reliable mechanism on our dmg pattern.

One of the best Ranger Feedback I’ve heard.

But what I find not necessary is the weapon like Warhorn Remake. What we need is not more options – but those options we have being reliable.

Many people might think I’ve been thinking about something crazy and unbalanced… But Read the Wind should be made BASELINE. We are RANGERS. We are the only class that use Longbow for steady DPS. We NEED IT TO BE RELIABLE.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Usually when someone claims to be doing DPS “math” but then reveals that he’s using the tooltip’s ACTIVATION time and not the actual attack speed, that’s a good place to stop.

I would like you to get on your guardian (or roll one if you have to) and get on your scepter and tell me if it looks anything like you’re shooting four orbs per second (since the activation time is listed as 1/4th second).

The actual attack speed of a ranger sword chain is about one every 1.85s, while the GS chain is little bit over 3s total. Feel free to go back and revise your math for that and tell me how kitten GS looks after that.

Than it also means you can stop attending Ranger forums… ? I mentioned the animation times – you just ignored it. You wanted Math – which I provided.
The animation cast times are not stated in any database that can be accessed. You simply want me to check the exact animation time for every ability I use experimentally – which is more of a Physics method than Maths – based on measuring the time… Which is even more precise in longer time periods – which (correct me if I’m wrong) I stated.

Maybe this is time for both of us to play what we are better at. 6 years of Math on Hunter class was more than enough for me to apply some of it Ranger scenario (1 year). Let’s say I don’t need to spend my time sharing my effort to players who are clearly better at Maths and Testing than me, shall we.
This is going to be my last reply for this thread. I wish all of you an enjoyable day.

Greetings fellow Ranger.
Your idea is actually pretty in place. There was a debate on RtW actually – and many of us agreed that RtW is currently not attractive enough to be picked.

The problem is that it doesn’t give you anything you might competitively like in any environment besides WvW – and there as you already said – we have more appealing choices (Bonus Range + Piercing Shots).

This trait was made to make Longbow more Reliable against moving targets – while in PvE targets are stationary and in PvP you prioritize bunkering – where Longbow isn’t used for Long Ranged Sniping. Not in competitive scene – that is.

It might be a good trait – but definitely not a choice for the most offensive Trait Tree. It could be nice to swap it with Poison Master in Wilderness Survival. It would even be logical. A Marksman can be poison master (See shortbow) and Read the Wind is a technique used for wilderness survival.

I’d personally say that the RtW as is it now really needs an improvement of a kind. Probably merging piercing shots and RtW into a new trait (better velocity means piercing – logical) and giving the Marksmanship another 2 tier Trait choice (life improvement, not damage increase).

TurtleDragon.3108:

You don’t need to math or spreadsheet that GS is better on 2 or 3 targets, that’s obvious, but in general single target boss dps is the most important thing.

Best part is, you can’t use #3 on some of the fights you need to GS on and using #4 for dps is not a good idea.

Just like you can’t use Sword at some fights either. It has the same mechanic as Sword’s last sequence attack.
Also – for bosses the highest DPS output is still BM version since not only you can deal your stated damage but your pet’s damage is improved significantly too (if your pet dies – you’ll probably die on melee too). For Dungeons – the burst version of BM on Signet of the Hunt build seemed the way.
For personal DPS – that is.

Izaya.2906:

Yes, that maybe true for trash mobs, but the current best DPS rotation is starting off with GS maul & swoop then switching to 1h sword autto-attacks(trash should be killed before the time maul is off CD).

Well, the best DPS is switching between them – to be fair =D. Fire off all the GS’s cooldowns – then swap to Sword+Horn – blow it, wait for like 12 seconds – blow GS’s CDs again – repeat.

Also – to reply to the “previous videos”. There was no using GS’s rotation (only blasting (2) on cooldown) – therefore if I am able to beat the video’s numbers – I don’t have to be tied up by it’s results, either, do I?

Fluffball.8307:

It is pretty widely accepted that 1h sword does more damage than GS. If you have proof otherwise, you need to post the math. The excuse that people don’t want solid proof because we’re closed minded is getting old. Prove your point or stop telling the entire GW2 community only you know the truth. If you can prove it, no one is going to argue with math.

Hint: The highest damage output of Sword is sequence of (1). with a 1.5 sec cast time altogether.
The GS filler (1) is made of 1.75 cast time with approximately 8% lower damage than Sword’s sequence. The filler is then almost 18% off of the Swords Highest output for the higher cast times.

But you can add a rotation of 3/4 cast time Maul with almost as high damage as 75% of rotation of Sword’s (1) – you can check wiki for the damage and coefficients. Sword sequence has 1.9 altogether, maul has 1.5 with less than half cast time (if we take animation delays into account).
If you use Swoop in melee range it’s cast time is very close to being 1/2 with a coefficient 1.
You can also add Throw from (4) with 3/4 cast time and 1.0 coefficient on a 15 sec CD with a Physical projectile finisher.
If you throw these into a rotation – you’ll gain a DPS in comparison to Sword’s in value of almost 90% (took 45/48/43/46/48 seconds with Swords WITH warhorn to kill a certain high HP NPC; 48/51/48/49/52 seconds with GS).
You also gain a Leap Finisher that can add damage in some cases but nothing noticeable.

But what is important that while only a bit more than two thirds of Sword’s damage is AoE – ALL OF GS’S DAMAGE IS AoE. You also provide 7 vulnerability in average if you use GS – so you can add 7% of everyone’s damage to your calculation, or you can take 7% damage from yours if there is 25 vuln on target from other people.

If we come up with a 3K dps number (may be any) … Sword with warhorn will deal around 7100 (3K+ a bit more than 2/3 of that amount) dps, while GS will deal a full amount of 3x 2700 – which is somehow around 8100.
If 2 targets are present – Sword will deal around 5050 damage, while GS will deal 5400.

So the summary is that GS can be on par with Sword (even better on 1 target if vuln. stacks are not capped) and will ALWAYS be better if there are at least 2 targets present.

P.S. I can’t imagine I wasted so much time sharing something that will surely get doubted by whichever reasons. Anyways – I hope someone will have a use of it of any kind.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I personally wouldn’t be against a buff to GS putting it at least on par with 1H sword (a 10% buff to auto-attack damage and a cooldown reduction on Maul to 6s would do it, but it’s probably not going to happen.

Maul is already on 6 sec CD O.o
I’d personally buff some of the Ranger’s Burst damage.
Ranged (Rapid Fire) oriented and warhorn’s 4 buffed (it’s very low dmg for 25sec CD that can be negated even by LoS, evades and many other things).
Rangers are practically made for doing DPS – but we still cannot match any Ele/Warrior/Engineer build in full Zerk. Not even our constant dps can match their burst dps (not dmg – but dps).

Izaya.2906:

You keep on insisting the greatsword does higher dps(read: DAMAGE PER SECOND) but you haven’t even seen or done computations with regards to this.

And this is exactly where you are wrong. It’s kinda sad, but I guess that experience is something that people are too lazy about.

While I have been testing all possible builds on all kinds of situations – I came to some conclusions and results. Since you are not even interested in them – it’s a waste of time to share them.

But it’s interesting to say “maths say” when you didn’t provide any, either. I tested the possibilities myself, hence I’m comfortable by the “best” I tested. If you are not – it’s a personal matter.
I suggest both of us to enjoy the personal “best” for our own. This conversations became pointless a nice time ago, since seemly everyone expects the “meta” to win in every possible scenario.
The difference in straight-minded between us is that I HAVE TESTED your sword versus GS – while you denied it by someone else’s math (who might have wanted GS to be worse). But let me ask you… What has higher probability of truth? A man who says something is impossible, or someone who says he already did the exact same thing… ?
If you didn’t manage to do it – don’t claim it’s impossible.

Izaya.2906:

You can be the president of murica and still be incorrect simply because the math has already been done, 1h Sword offers alot higher dps(damage per second) than GS.

Then feel free sticking to someone else’s math =D
Normally I’d even give you a numerical explanation – but your straight close-minded attitude isn’t worth my effort – since regardless of evidence you’d say someone else’s “Sword=best”.
My golden rule is “Adaptation”. You should try it sometimes – you’ll realize some nice interesting thingies, too.

Ron Cordova.9824:

Every 3 seconds, the spirit pulses a 6 second buff to nearby allies.

While under the effects of the buff, attacks have a 70% chance (traited) to heal the attacker on hit.

After this heal triggers, the buff remains, but cannot be triggered again until 10 seconds have passed.

I don’t know how much HP the spirit has

The water spirit heal is not worth using, it offers the same healing per second as Heal as One, but instead of giving it as a burst, it gives part as a burst on the ranger, part as an aoe burst on the spirit (i.e. the ranger can miss out on a third of the healing from his heal skill), and part as a heal-over-time (procced by attacks every 10 seconds) that can be very easily disrupted by a stray attack from mobs.

But if you are stacking in a dungeon it gives a nice AoE heal. It doesn’t provide Water Field – but sometimes provides even more HP recuperation than Healing Spring. It is in Party scenarios only.

Fluffball.8307:

The OP specifically asked for the maximum damage PvE build, not one that feels the most user friendly. The 1h sword build Turtle posted is the correct answer.

You’d notice he said he is a LongBow user. Also – if he is asking for the best DPS, I’d say he wanted a personal DPS. If I wanted a supportive DPS build – I’d specify my request.

But I guess the OP has more than enough of possibilities here. He has enough of material to choose from.

Sword is single target oriented weapon. It cannot compare to GS’s AoE Maul. Not even once. Also – one of it’s AA sequence is a single target ability too, which gives advantage to GS again.
I am aware of what are you trying to say – but I’ve been a Class Leader of one of the largest guilds in another MMO game. I could say I try to keep my perspective as wide as possible.

But what are you totally right about is that you need to switch traits for every other encounter, which means there is nothing like the “best” DPS build.
But I spent my finest moments giving the highest crits with the BM build I provided
Also… Remorseless + Rapid fire + gives 15 vuln at all times. With Piercing shots this applies to nice amount of targets. If I add OffHand axe – I can bring the number to 25 every 25 seconds(20 if traited for offhand recharge CD).

After you hit lvl 80 – your best friend will be Jungle Stalker (cat), Red Moa
Sword + Warhorn (priority) / Longbow for ranged encounters
And you’d like to run Knight Stats and your build can look something like this. It’s a kind of balanced build. There are some other more damage oriented builds but this one worked just fine for me.

Paladin Jeff.9210:

I’ve seen alot of support for forest spirit and sword as well. For traits what should I go for? Seems melee is the way to go for Ranger.

Yup – melee is the best for damage rush.
I’d suggest you going for GreatSword – it provides you with many things like burst damage, leap and block. It also does AoE damage.
Your second weapon set will be Sword + Axe. This will help you with fast kills and also provide you with Pull which is useful with Melee builds. The 5 on offhand Axe is also cool for larger groups.
The Longbow will be very situational for you. Keep one with you, but don’t prioritize it.

Your traits will be 3 in Marksmanship for opening strikes.
Then the Master’s Bond will be your next goal.
Feel free to take Skirmishing or any other path afterwards. The swapping fury and Speed are very useful but so is decreased time on pet Swap and bleeds from your Cats.

The best things for exping are the Master’s Bond (Beast Mastery) and opening strikes (Marksmanship). They are not “best” but gives you the best feeling of exping making it enjoyable and comfortable.

Your pet will be Lynx (or other cat) for better damage. You’ll keep another pet for hard situations where your Cat is about to die (Murellow, Arctodus, Bear). You swap to your tanky pet until your cat is safe to be swapped again.

Try to get mix of stats of Power, Precision, Vitality and Ferocity(only effective at higher levels). For Sigils try getting On Kill stacking ones.
And that’s pretty much it. I won’t give you exact equip and stats since you’ll be changing them often.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAsXRnEqQrgWyCGsAXLIYPoWGAPAzMYDeutfrrD+kTlqXA-TZAEAAwDAAA

I can throw you a guide later today (1:50 am atm).
The temporary advice is to run a pet either Cat or Bear (whether you prefer more damage at the cost of pet danger or the other way round) and stick to GS. You’ll definitely want to go for Sick’Em and Signet of the Hunt.
These will give you the clear and roam potential you need.
Also keep a Longbow in your pocket for dangerous encounters – you don’t wanna get sexually misused on melee cleaves.

TurtleDragon.3108:

1. The sword does more damage than the GS, this is a fact based on math not opinion.

2. 20-25% vuln uptime is laughable. Rangers can burst a lot of vuln on trash and at the beginning of the fight, but other than that rangers are terrible at providing vuln. After your opening strike wears off, the only vuln you’ll be providing is from your cat and maul/rapid fire. You’re also forgetting about unshakeable, which halves vuln duration on anything noteworthy, so in reality you’ll have only around 6 stacks of vuln uptime and the vuln sources are from subpar and situational weapons.

3. I did answer the OP’s request, he asked for the maximum DPS ranger builds not for builds that contain LB and GS. The builds I mentioned have GS in them, and you can bring a longbow in them for Ranged encounters. You should never aspire to mediocre, pure GS is terrible and prevents you from learning how to play with the sword.

On a training dummy – yes.
In a risky GlassCannon position at bosses that wipes whole parties – hardly.
Sword doesn’t deal more damage. Sword + Warhorn (or probably OH Axe) definitely. Don’t mistake the expressions.

By the way – Ranger IS the class with the best vulnerability applies in the game. You all either say the build doesn’t deal damage or doesn’t apply vulnerability or isn’t supportive enough. Get your ideas together – you can’t have everything.

And I believe it’s not that hard to swap one trait for regaining the opening strike on Hunter’s Shot – but I’m rarely the only one applying vuln. and the raid bosses are flooded with it – so I end up wasting the trait most of the time. By the way – I’m able to keep 15 myself with Rapid Fire and Maul alone.
You all sound like you try to throw the people’s ideas… But if you were smart enough – you’d realize that the OP doesn’t probably want the build for getting world first kill on a raid that aspires to get it and need more damage – but a build that feels responsive and user friendly. That is hardly going to be a Sword build that cost me my life a nice bunch of times and I got sick of switching weapons every other encounter.

Rotted.2843:

I’m actually using signet of the hunt for the 150% damage instead of QZ and axe/warhorn to stack the might(I find the longbow to be too slow). I’m also running 0/4/0/4/6 with zephyr’s speed to cast the skills faster upon initiation. Also you forgot about the 50% damage from the gs 5 :P

Ah… But that build is made for a Single Crit O.o … Well, anyways – that number is nice.

Not only the ranger isn’t the class made for Might Stacking – but he doesn’t have anything special besides Frost Spirit that doesn’t have a cap (and this one wastes you 4 traits into defensive tree).
To sum it up – you all may be right, but you don’t answer the OP’s request.
- I have to admit that the sigils were from a former PvP build and I was lazy to replace them since they weren’t that bad.
But something to add: PvE consists of dungeons and World Bosses. Where Dungeons are BASED ON BURST DAMAGE and world bosses are a suicide for 1h Sword builds. Sword is a suicide in more cases – even dungeons since you are glued to your target and you can’t stop attacking when you need it. In my opinion the Sword is made for PvP.
__________________________________________________
GS is better in terms of reliability. Not only you provide MORE damage than 1h Sword(Maul gives you the advantage/The Warhorn gives you burst which isn’t exactly dps) but you gain evade and Stacks of Vulnerability on target AND you can save your life more frenquently (important for full Zerk Build!).

I’ll give you another build with a pretty safe constant damage that provides the party with 20 vulnerability stacks uptime. That should be more than enough supportive for the PvE party. But you won’t feel the “damage” in other way than statistically unlike the former full burst build I posted (Pet can crit for 17K in the burst phase in addition to your Zerk Stats).

This build provides Party:(5)Might, Fury, 10% damage chance, 20-25 vulnerability stack uptime. Also provides reliable constant damage of high values.
P.S. Switch to Sword + Warhorn if you feel safe in melee range (which you mentioned you don’t like and you prefer Longbow sniping).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnMqQrgWyCuqAXLGYPQWHoRB2Z+My12Lu7EJ-TBCBABVcIAga/BIuAAVq+zZKBxS5HAPAAPOCABAOA43f/93f/tUARMMC-e

Before I can give you the answer you are looking for – I need you to tell me what kind of player are you…
… Active (you like doing stuff and like mashing many buttons)
… Comfortable (doing solid damage without much effort)
… Melee / Ranged Oriented
?
By that time – the most build with highest damage output (AND burst) is definitely this one: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnMqQrgWyCWsAXLGYPoWHANQEwMD6gnb73exUlIB-TBCFABPcEAAa/BkU+hwhAYhHAAAXAgCV/5KlgBAOA43f/93f/tUARMMC-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnMqQrgWyCWsAXLGIQoWfABQBwsBignP70exUlIB-TpBFwAPOCAA3fAxhAYxDAoaZAAXAAA
There would it be.
… As I already said – it’s the most aggressive build that could probably be on Ranger today. But it’s not much reliable and is kinda vulnerable.

You could swap the Master’s Bond into Mighty Swap if you feel like it. You can also swap Quickening Zephyr for Signet of Stone if you are in competitive environment.

The burst comes out of sequence
RaO > Fire off Volley (stack Might on pet) > Activate Signet of the Wild (And Zephyr) > Rapid fire to stack might on pet some more > Swap to GreatSword and blast off Sick’Em + Stalk (Jaguar’s Stealth)
…
Then you have pet with around 22 might already and +40% dmg from Sick’Em and +20% from Signet of the Wild… 30% increased Crit damage from traits and Guaranteed crits from Jaguar’s Stalk for interval of 6 seconds.
If the enemy has any evasive / block / invulnerable cooldown ready – your build just lost all of it’s power.
If they don’t have – A full defensive Guardian is going to die in 5 seconds.

Darth Llama.9217:

Yeah, RtW in PVE is just a wasted trait. I love it in WvW, but the AI doesn’t try to dodge so I’m not really concerned with my projectile speed as it doesn’t actually add any DPS since your attack speed doesn’t increase.

I swap it for something better in PVE, usually I change it to Remorseless.

It is a good thing in WvW, because they rarely run out of Arrow Range mid-flight with this trait. They also are less likely to be “faked” (running the opposite direction after the arrow is fired).
… But that’s pretty much it. It works only on 1200+ Range because situations like that only happen at that range.

I think this Trait is only effective in WvW…
… There’ no way you’ll get a use of it in sPvP where bunkering the points is the goal and you won’t probably win your game by poking from 1200 range.

In PvE it has no effect whatsoever.

I’d definitely like to see an improvement on that trait.

Rangers are actually the most evasive class in the game so far.
The funny thing is that you have to go full melee to achieve that.

But Sw+Dagger / Greatsword is highly “all over the place” combination. We also have nice endurance regeneration possibilities.

But for Ranger builds there SHOULD be something more … Rangery… Both LB and SB are about auto-cast 1. It has nothing for damage increasing purposes and besides SB – there’s no “swift” feeling of it.

Yup, I used to run that build too.
… The problem is that you don’t deal anything if the target is on move and you need 3 cooldowns to fire that number up. One is at 2 minutes CD, the second is at 1 min, the last at 40 seconds.
You also have to fire off Longbow’s Volley to stack pet’s might through traits.

And that all has to occur before pet’s HP reaches Zero, which is around 7 seconds with the Signet that grants dmg mitigation.
Very cool build – but not reliable at all.

Murellow seems even better than bear to me.

Also – Bow will never outDPS a melee build. Ever.
It’s safe for leveling and that’s its only purpose. What does it have in common with Meta?

nagymbear.5280:

I mostly run jungle spider/wolf with zerker gear recently. The ranged attack on the spider hits pretty reliably. It can score 1k normal attacks with 30 in BM.
…

You probably are right… But there’s one condition. Rampage as one is weak as spider (low attack speed). If you want a Ranged pet – I suggest going for Devourers. They even have a knockback and their single attack count as two sources of damage – giving double might in comparison to Spiders.

Plus I found Zerker gear not so efficient with Pet damage. It doesn’t scale at all and it leaves both of you very vulnerable. If you want Zerker Gear – you’d be better off with standard Ranger DMG output build probably with Skirmishing traits for better Pet Crits and pet might on crit. There – you need neither the healing power from Beast Mastery nor you loose might on pet swapping.

Since I have been playing Hunters since year 2006 and I loved going BM
- Of course I tested a bunch of BM builds in GW 2 as Ranger, too.

The 1st thing that people forget is that Agility Training is super important for Beast Master. It not only increases pet’s utility, but it improves its uptime – thus increasing it’s damage AND retreat options.

Since you won’t focus on your but pet’s damage – you’d like to be as evasive as possible – making SB / Sw+Da most effective. These weapons main condi damage – so my stats went for that, combined with healing power to keep both me and my pet alive.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNAsYVnMqQrgWyCusAXLGQaKyELhp4QUk3j0T9ExLWpEJ-TsAg2CuIcS5kzJjTSnsON+YFyMEA

~ DPS pets are in danger with low defenses, but that’s why I always went for a swapping BM build. It not only peaks your burst but you can use it for easier finishers too. You’ll just have to watch your pet’s HP bar.
The Wolf pet is there on purpose. Swapped fear is super fast and reliable, plus Wolf’s leap attack hurts quite a lot.

Amethyst Lure.5624:

Honestly, does every class have a purpose other than being fun to play from a design standpoint, anyway? Is there enough different purposes for 8 classes? :P I think it is the wrong way to look at any class, even the ones with obvious design paths like thieves with stealth; instead you kind of have to look at the details like, rangers having some unique support buffs, for example.

Rangers can be played any role, totally.
And a class that has everything – can’t be best at everything.
We have a GS build for burst spike. We have LB for high constant damage. We have many build for Conditions or Highly Evasive / recuperative builds.
We also have unique SPIRITS that no other class can be proud of.

- You see – you can’t be unique at everything. You just have to be good at what you do.

Dahkeus.8243:

What? It’s actually a pretty solid design. It’s not a brainless spam-this-on-cooldown-for-deeps ability, but it’s also not always a dps loss either. You use it in the right situation to gain DPS or other advantages that autoattack doesn’t provide.

So that means it’s an ability that you use when your baseline DMG ability is not reliable – because this one is slightly more reliable. – Definitely a failed design.
It’s not like a DPS gaining ability – because if you are using it’s advantage of higher melee dmg than LRS – you are an idiot to be trying to melee out a warrior/Thief.

~You don’t use LongBow for melee situations unless you want to use Point-Blank shot or Hunter’s Shot.
~If you use Rapid Fire – you didn’t gain any damage whatsoever, but you restricted yourself to stationary backpedal.
~I somehow get the feeling its only cool purpose is to give Rangers the feeling of love, because high numbers are nice, even though they are Fake – because you didn’t deal that much damage actually – you would deal it with LRS anyways.

Dahkeus.8243:

In a standard, max range DPS situation, yes, it is pretty lackluster. Because of this, you generally want to just stick to autoattack. However, it has 2 main uses:

1) Maintain DPS when a target gets close to you.
2) Set up burst in PvP situations.

An example of number 2 is using Rampage as One, then Rapid Fire to stack might on your pet. After this, you can use a burst pet ability like Blinding Slash.

So that basically means that the ability has failed design, just as I predicted.
Because that ability is not only wasting it’s potential
(if an enemy gets in close range – I’m already switching my weapons. Standing still to maintain Rapid Fire against melee is a suicide)
- but it is just an ability that somehow strengthens other abilities or proc effects (Rampage as One / Sigils) while it was not even it’s purpose (or shouldn’t have been – no abilities should be effective only with a certain weapon/ability).

That being said, the only pro of this ability is that it gets you rid of Blind, or removes Aegis while keeping the main portion of it’s damage… Or keeping an open fire on stealthing Thieves…?
It may be just me, but it definitely feels like a failed ability. There are many class professions that have much higher burst damage that Rangers lack.
I don’t feel like Rangers are the no.1 class for sPvP. Not the LongBow version. Would it be a bad idea to give something more to this ability? Or probably reduce it’s cast time or trade some other part of ranger’s LB damage into Rapid Fire?

Hello everyone.

I’d like to discuss the “Rapid Fire” mechanics in it’s true valuable meaning.
… After various calculations – I found out I’d rather avoid using it at times.

So my question is:
What it’s true purpose is?
~At former patches – it didn’t apply vulnerability and was only for the damage “burst”.
~After the vulnerability was changed from Hunter’s Shot to Rapid Fire – it became the main debuff stacking ability.
~It fires large amount of shots – increasing the chance of proccing Projectile finisher.
~…
But here comes the “but”
It has 4,5 seconds channel time and currently deals roughly 3400 dmg altogether.
My Long-Ranged shot (LRS) deals 820 damage at max range with a cast time 3/4 (1 second including the animation delay).
By my calculations – if I don’t use Rapid fire and let LRS fire for 4,5 seconds – I’ll be able to deal around 820*4 = 3280 with 0,5 seconds still unused.
That means the damage I deal is exactly the same. The only difference is the debuff applied and chance to trigger effects.

People keep telling me, how they manged to get 15K crits with it, but in reality, it’s the same as hitting 4 crits for 3,75K damage with LRS FOR THE EXACT SAME TIME – thus it’s like not using the ability at all.
I’m using it only at times when I’m facing a melee opponent… Is that really it’s purpose?