Well, you seem to know what your’e doing. Just playstyle differences between us, and even then it’s not a big difference.
My bad for not paying more attention and assuming things.
You may want to believe it or not but im rather experienced, running melee ranger including spotter and frost spirit in highlevel speedruns for a very long time, since back when there where no brazil tutorials, the ranger stigma being a lot worse than it is now and everyone and their mothers thought warriors had the greatest dps ever. I also play very much and almost exclusively ranger and i tested and tried almost everything there is. And that is the basic version of my very own build, nothing in there is random.
So you may want to point me out these questionable build choices and i try to explain to you exactly why its there.
Maybe i should also note that this is a allround version, catered to no specific dungeon path, encounter or team comp. The weapon, pet and sigil choices reflect that.
It will do good in every situation but if you truly want to minmax of course you are going to adjust it according to the situation.
I for one am almost exclusively running hounds of balthazaar for the elite as an example but that is only possible if you are human and only a good choice if your group is almost perfect
I won’t deny/question your experience, but I do feel some (but not all) of these choices are mathematically inferior in most situations. I won’t talk about all of them but the only things truly bothering me are
The Crit chance is over the soft cap of 65%. You’ll end up with ~103% crit chance fully buffed, even more if you use some of the good precision food like candied dragon rolls
kitten , i didn’t realize that website now includes the precision from Spotter. Ignore this- Why Air/Night for all around sigil choices? Wouldn’t force be better than night since that works everywhere. Fraility is a decent alternative and it buffs your entire party’s damage as well. Accuracy can work in some builds depending on how you manage your crit chance
- Why no warhorn? I do criticize other rangers for not bringing it in PvE, so it’s only fair if I do it to you as well. The blast finisher is something I highly value.
Everything else you could easily adjust based on the needs of your party. I mean, i find RaO pretty useless in organized fractal partys as well, so I run Spirit of Nature for heals/rez.
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Rangers are fine in casual runs since you’re not trying to min/max anyways otherwise you’d just run 1 war 2 ele 1 thief for everything. Teamwork, playstyle and maintaining buffs are more important than having a perfect team composition in PUGs.
They have little to no representation in speed runs (Record runs to clear) and I don’t see them being used any time soon for anything serious.
That one is almost good, but it has a few questionable build choices (Sigils, crit chance over soft cap, and lack of warhorn)
@OP:
Check out the link in my sig or look up Brazil’s ranger guides.
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You can use your pets to provide the same swiftness and fury as the Warhorn (the 1 whole might isn’t that important), and do it better. Go on and complain that pets die too often and easy. It just means that you aren’t as good as you might think you are when it comes to pet management.
Sword/Axe + Longbow + proper pets and pet management = better damage/support and cc than sword/warhorn + whatever.
Actually, proper pets for the right situation and good pet management in general trumps just about everything in the Ranger class, except for damage.
Jeez, you sure do like to assume many things and are overly defensive. There is no need to assert whatever superriority you feel you have in every response. I’m not out to prove I’m better than you or that you suck cause I don’t care about that. You challenged us to come up with a way to be more useful to the group and I responded.
There are better pets to use than Red Moa if you don’t have to. Red moa does around half as much DPS as a cat and can actually cancel out the DPS you gain from path of scars. Pets also have long cast times on their skills, so no they do not do it better than a warhorn. My pets rarely die, except for the very few cases where it’s near impossible to keep it alive.
Pets also can’t replace a reliable blast finisher (which can also be used ooc unlike drakes). Blast finishers are extremely valuable in any sort of organized play and are frequently used in Fire, Smoke and Water fields. If you don’t see the value in a warhorn, then you are not as good as a ranger as you think you are.
Warhorn is a much better general use weapon, /axe is more situational than warhorn is. They obviously have different purposes but the warhorn is more likely to be useful (utility/support wise) in a situation than it is for the /axe. It’s not a ranger’s job to reflect and Path of Scars is a very small dps increase.
But hey, go ahead spec your Ranger for max DPS. I’m sure maximizing your DPS at the cost of utility on one of the lowest DPS classes in the game is worth it. You won’t out DPS an equally skilled warrior, ele, thief, guardian, or engi. Ranger is one of the classes where it’s especially important to optimize your utility, otherwise there’s no point bringing a ranger and you’re better off running a different class. Most classes have to choose between utility and DPS at some point, and the utility is almost always the better choice (Unless it’s not needed).
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Oh you’re right. I just read the first two sentences and skimmed the rest lol.
Wow I can’t believe you guys forgot about Guang.
GuanglaiKangyi <———-This guy 100%
This is the guy who 2 years ago taught us about frost spirit spotter and inspired Brazilhue to create his legendary PvE build that has been the meta for +2 years. He kept telling us the truth but didn’t have video to back it up. Finally Brazil took a video with his build and BAM instant meta. Everyone thought he was on crack but he sure showed us.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84456-ranger-vs-the-cof-world-record/
Read this thread.
Oh wow, gw2guru, haven’t been there in ages. Totally forgot it was GK that made that build originally, except it didn’t get much attention until Brazil used it. Props to him and his guides that helped explain how to use the sword with auto attack on.
You guys should find a guild that matches your interests and playstyle, or build up a friends list of decent people you PUG with. I used to grab 1-4 people from my friends list to avoid using LFG solo.
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At this point… i think the encounter would be fine if the projectile was dodge-able and the AoE twirl thing was blockable. Cannon phase could use an adjustment as well since it’s just very long and a pointless time gate.
The end fractal bosses are still horribly unbalanced and it’s not worth the effort to get fragments or an uninfused rings.
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This is what happens when we ask for more challenging content.
At least they were nice enough to mention this one in the patch notes.
It’s too difficult for non-organized groups too handle
Too early to tell. Though, if it’s as bad as everyone say it is I won’t be PUG-ing fractals anytime soon.
I’m sure they’ll find a way to safespot AFK range it.
It’s really not too early to tell, this will make pugging fractals impossible. We found Mai Trin difficult and failed a couple of times in KING (a fractal guild) with the composition 1 guard 2 ele 1 war 1 mes
kitten , that sounds rough. I had enough reasons to hate that fractal before this patch :/
This is what happens when we ask for more challenging content.
At least they were nice enough to mention this one in the patch notes.
It’s too difficult for non-organized groups too handle
Too early to tell. Though, if it’s as bad as everyone say it is I won’t be PUG-ing fractals anytime soon.
I’m sure they’ll find a way to safespot AFK range it.
This is what happens when we ask for more challenging content.
At least they were nice enough to mention this one in the patch notes.
Period, end of story, I dare you to come up with a way to deal more dps and be more useful to the group.
Bringing a warhorn and using an rotation that doesn’t artificially inflate your DPS for the first 8 seconds of a fight.
You didn’t answer my question. Instead you whine and moan that I am artificially inflating my dps, and give me a link to a thread with a grand total of four replies from a bunch of nobodies on a self described hardcore website, who I honestly don’t give two kittens about. Must mean I am obviously a far better player than you are if you can’t even grasp the simple concept of dealing as much damage as possible, nor do you understand how to create the conditions necessary to deal as much dps as possible, which the Warhorn does not allow in any situation. Also, dealing sustained dps over 30 seconds to a nonmoving immortal golem doesn’t prove anything since there aren’t that any situations in the game where that happens. Try again.
I am answering the 2nd half of your question which you obviously didn’t catch. I’ll give you a hint, DPS isn’t all that matters in this game. Support and CC are just as important.
Also, a longbow swap rotation doesn’t increase your DPS in the middle of a fight which is why I called it an artificial DPS inflation. Axe offhand will actually increase your DPS in swap rotation so there is no issue with that offhand other than the possibility of wasting an interrupt.
Edit: To be clear, I was mainly criticizing your lack of warhorn since you can clearly still be more useful to your group than running Longbow + Sword/Axe. Being useful to the group takes priority in this game and running /axe instead of /WH has a high opportunity cost in terms of utility and interupt/CC if you’re ignoring defiant. Path of Scar’s main weakness is that it’s also a CC, which is negligible in uncoordinated groups and bad in coordinated groups. Randomly CC-ing a boss when he has 0 stacks is a bad habit that everyone should avoid. This is why I’m not a fan of OH axe. See this for more detail
Just fyi, the meta builds for some classes are NOT the max personal dps set up.
Tl;dr: S/WH + LB good, S/Wh + S/Axe good, S/Axe + LB Bad.
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Period, end of story, I dare you to come up with a way to deal more dps and be more useful to the group.
Bringing a warhorn and using an rotation that doesn’t artificially inflate your DPS for the first 8 seconds of a fight.
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PUGs actually see a more rounded view of the game as they see all the problems that dungeons can pose, not perfect runs with best builds and well tried tactics.
I take it you didn’t watch the tourney on Saturday? There are just as many mistakes and runs are far from perfect even amongst top guilds and “elite” dungeon players.
The perfect runs you see on youtube are far from the norm, and take many hours of attempts/practice and sometimes a bit of good RNG to achieve record level clear times. It’s not something people do on a daily basis.
On topic:
The balance is mostly fine, I can take any class other than a necro and have some meaningful contribution to a group. I don’t think PvE balance should be based on gwscr.com, or terrible PUG groups.
Here’s my feedback:
Like others have said, the matches should end as soon as there is a clear winner for the entire series (ie. the CoF story and Arah p3 early wipe). Under the current rules, I believe the two main scenarios in which this happens are in round 2 (0-1 score) when the losing team (0 win team) wipes, and round 3 when the winning team has a reached a point that is “further” than where the other team wiped.
I’d like to see a 2nd stream so that way we can choose which match we want to see. My guild got knocked out in the qualifiers off of the main stream :/. Spreading the tournament out over mulitple days may/may not help too.
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It would seem to me, that as popular as the “bearbow” seems to be, that there is much hate toward it. Why all the hate?
Low damage and low utility/support are the main reasons. Sometimes lack of pet control as well.
Please do not spread misinformation like that.
Rangers has better single target DPS then warriors (if pet is attacking)… DPS wise we are only beaten by elementalist and thief.We have few support functions that cannot be done by other classes, but the frost-spotter build is unique to rangers.
Our utilities depends a lot on the pet we use. If you use the wrong one, you will have poor utilities, if you use the right pet for the right occasion you will have good utilities. Other classes has better utilities on their own, some being really strong, but most utility skills in this game, as a whole, is rather situational and or lackluster (guard spirit weapons, warrior banners, thief traps, mesmer mantras etc. )
Edit: You’re taking this way out of context, I was responding to a question about the bearbow ranger build, which does none of the things you mentioned in your response. For clarity, let’s just define it as a random trait distribution including 2 of Piercing Arrows/Eagle Eye/Read the wind (ie. 6/6//2) , a pet bear and signet utilities (No Frost Spirit/Spotter).
I’m not spreading misinformation, a bearbow ranger is not better single target DPS than a warrior, and neither is a sword/WH ranger. The meta ranger builds are about dead even with the warrior slightly ahead.
Spotter/Frost Spirit are good, but they are lower priority support then anything a Warrior, Ele, Thief and guardian can provide.
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Really entertaining event so far. The wipes were funny.
Which is why I want them to simply boost the power scaling for Greatsword or Longbow so that it can out perform sword for a pure DPS build against a single target while in party range. Then the PvPers can have their non-broken sword and PvEers can have their non-broken GS/LB.
Well… the other problem with sword is that the offhands they allow us to use are very good. Warhorn is mandatory for every good dungeon/fractal build. Axe is situationally great too, I’m not a huge fan of it but there are people who think it’s great too. Even if GS was buffed, you’d need to fit WH into your build and swap to it before/in combat for water/fire blasts and fury.
Longbow doesn’t have any sustained AoE (Can’t “cleave”) which is also a problem.
They wanted to replace Logan with Zojja, but they couldn’t because he was the instance owner.
Signet of the Wild, Axe#4, swap, GS#3, GS#2 + QZ + Jaguar F2, swap, Sword#1
I think that’s the highest burst for PvE. I don’t recommend it in general and only use it for CoF gate controller and Brie.
For all intents and purposes, the more practical rotation will look like this in no particular order
1. Place Frost Spirit in a location where it will be active for the entire duration
2. If there’s a fire field, WH5
3. Use gap closer (GS#3 or Sword#2) if you need to
4. QZ and Sic’em
5. Maul if you have GS.
6. Swap.
7. Camp sword 1 until boss dies.
So if it’s low damage, and low utility/support, why is run run so often?
The players usually don’t know any better or are lazy/bad.
It would seem to me, that as popular as the “bearbow” seems to be, that there is much hate toward it. Why all the hate?
Low damage and low utility/support are the main reasons. Sometimes lack of pet control as well.
WoW still had patrols that you could skip by avoiding aggro. You also had the option of using potions of invisibility for challenge modes (Dungeon speed runs)
Wildstar also has you skipping patrols and avoiding unnecessary trash pulls for dungeons/adventures as well.
It’s part of MMOs, you didn’t clear the entire instance in GW1 too unless you were vanquishing.
It’s really hard to satisfy both the PvPers and PvE-ers. :/ Your idea prolly wouldn’t work because of “lore” or some other reason.
I like Fluffballs suggestion the most which was to add another MH weapon.
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You still have the GS option, it’s viable and probably even the preferred weapon for some fractal encounters where you need to max melee range and kite.
He’s not saying it’s advantageous but easy to work around.
Just use your #3 (or #2 ) skill, you should be doing minimal dodging anyways in order to maintain your steady focus modifier.
Alright thanks for the comments. What would you say are the biggest strengths and weaknesses for the ranger?
From a PvE POV:
Strengths: Unique damage buffs that no other classes can provide. Decent provider of group fury.
Weakness: Struggles on Max melee range fights. Some fights render pets useless and pets suffer from scaling problems.
So my question is…why? What is the benefit of ‘sticking’ to a target while being rooted unable to dodge/evade attacks during the chain?
PvP for mobility and chasing potential. Typically not advantage in PvE which is the whole point of this thread.
And if to strategically use the sword’s main form of DPS (auto-attack) lowers that DPS by 20%-50% due to less attacks per second, then why take the sword at all?…
If you’re losing that much dps, it means you’re attacking too slow with the sword. Other classes lose DPS too when they dodge, but no other class loses DPS when they need to move. You also have other options for controlling the sword other than turning off the auto attack (use #3, cast-cancel, swap-cancel) that would result in less attack speed loss. For most bosses in this game you can leave the AA on and AFK until it dies since fights last less than 30 seconds outside of fractals and maybe Lupicus.
it makes me wonder what Anet are doing since core aspects of their game are being diligently ignored.
Living story.
Imagine trying to use Guardian hammer with that system lol.
Yeah, you might need to use #3 #5 more than once a day.
#$ has a 40s cd. #3 won’t hit every target unless they’re in a line.
The point is, it would be incredibly annoying to have to constantly chase enemies just because the AA has a light field on it. You’ll also lose a ton of symbol ticks from not being stationary. Like someone else said above, you shouldn’t need to bring extra utility skills just to make your weapon set work for 5-10 seconds.
Check out the guide in my sig for PvE meta. Alternatively, you can also look at Brazil’s ranger guide.
Rangers are viable in PvE, but I would consider them a low priority pick. Main issue with rangers is that it’s relatively hard to find players that run the right build and have sufficient skill/experience to play it without dying or being a hindrance to the team.
You also shouldn’t be labelling classes as “ranged” or “melee”, every class has the ability to melee and range.
“The problem is the enemies that willfully stay in black powder or that willfully keep using projectiles on WoR.”
Thieves have only two off hand weapons and they can throw one of them away if AI mobs don’t stand in black powder, really! Combo finishers might as well not be there once enemies are not in the fields. There are also going to be other problems with players using aoe fields just to make enemies run around until they die. It isn’t a simple fix to mend the AI.
Immobilize, cripple, knockdown. You should need to make enemies stay in fields, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Heck, it’d actually make cripple and immob more useful in PvE, which is brilliant.
If enemies get trolled like that, then you could make the AI better. Add in conditions in the code like only moving from certain AoEs.
You’ve clearly never played a thief since the offhand pistol field is so small it’s there’s no point spending 0.5 seconds on a utility skill to cripple an enemy just to give extra 0.5 seconds moving away (even if we forget that weapon sets should be functionally complete without utilities). Thieves are also clearly not going to use tripwire traps to knockdown enemies just so they are blinded while knocked down!
This is just one example that the PVE game doesn’t just change slightly when mobs run out of fields, it completely unbalances the design of many skills.
Imagine trying to use Guardian hammer with that system lol.
Aren’t some of those single player games though? (I’ve never played them) It’s a bit different when it comes to MMOs since the other people in your party may not wish to play the same way you do.
I kinda like Wildstar’s system, it’s a slightly better version of defiant. Each boss will have 2 stacks of interrupt armor, and they regenerate pretty quickly (maybe after like 5 seconds, don’t know the exact time). You can’t interrupt or CC the boss while it has stacks of interrupt armor, so it means you just need to synchronize your CC’s within a small window of time.
It’s basically the same thing as defiant, but less stacks and the boss wont’ remain at 0 stacks for more than a few seconds. It doesn’t have the problem of a random player using a CC just cause he felt like it and ruining your interrupt attempt.
The necromancers are hiding in the alternate’s spot.
Several teams have already included a ranger and/or an engineer in their comp already.
No one runs comps like that on a daily basis and is a pointless artificial limitation that makes compositions even more static than your previous ideas.
I think the most common comp so far is 1 war, 2 eles, thief and guardian. I was kinda expecting EVERY comp to be that but there has been some variations from it.
You want to stack and sustain might.
So, first look at your weapons. If you are using sigils of strength and/or battle and can afford runes of strength, go for those. The cheaper alternative are runes of Hoelbrak. These are what I use…
If your only source of might is from your pet, then forget runes of strength. If you don’t like runes of the scholar, try ruby orbs. They are surprisingly good for what they cost, particularly if you cannot keep your health above 90% for scholar bonus.
Ruby orbs aren’t good anymore and should not be recommended post ferocity patch.
You should be relying on your team to provide you might, since you won’t get 25 might stacks by yourself as a ranger. Sigil of strength and battle have high opportunity costs, as they replace a 5% or 10% damage modifier in order to maintain a bonus from a runeset that was already inferrior to both scholar and ranger.
Yeah, I agree the ruby orbs are not that great anymore, but still a cheap option until one cam afford something better..
However, you are wrong about sigils of strength. I mainly solo open-world PvE,
running sword/xxx and axe/axe with MH sigils of strength and OH sigils of force.I can easily, and very quickly, generate 25 stacks of might by myself, and sustain a good portion of this through fights of any length on both myself and my pet.
Regarding relying on teams for might ..
How many pugs do you know that understand what might is, let alone able to stack it?
Unless you constantly play with the exact same 5 players for all the game content, then forget about relying on a team for might.If you want might, then you need a build that can generate and sustain enough of it yourself. I have no need of a team to stack might …
Yeah, how silly of me for relying on my team in a group environment.
Your builds fine for solo/open world, but the runes/sigils are weaker in any decent team. Might stacking isn’t hard, and it only takes one competent ele or a warrior running phalanx strength. Losing 17.7% in modifiers is a big deal in dungeons/fractals.
You want to stack and sustain might.
So, first look at your weapons. If you are using sigils of strength and/or battle and can afford runes of strength, go for those. The cheaper alternative are runes of Hoelbrak. These are what I use…
If your only source of might is from your pet, then forget runes of strength. If you don’t like runes of the scholar, try ruby orbs. They are surprisingly good for what they cost, particularly if you cannot keep your health above 90% for scholar bonus.
Ruby orbs aren’t good anymore and should not be recommended post ferocity patch.
You should be relying on your team to provide you might, since you won’t get 25 might stacks by yourself as a ranger. Sigil of strength and battle have high opportunity costs, as they replace a 5% or 10% damage modifier in order to maintain a bonus from a runeset that was already inferrior to both scholar and ranger.
Regardless, two warriors do NOT provide this same benefit, so if NormalPerson was running meta he would indeed be contributing quite a lot to the team.
Yeah, I don’t mind having rangers as long as I know they are decent and can run meta. Otherwise, I’d rather have the 2nd warrior since their DPS is pretty decent when they don’t have to run EA and they’re also less likely to die.
This is getting super off track but where is that number coming from?
I see fairly similar buffs of might and fury (with average builds, obviously warriors can provide massive might and ranger perma fury). Both of these are likely null from the two eles.
Both have irreplaceable damage buffs in FS/Spotter and the 2 banners. Not seeing a huge discrepancy so far. Or are the banners just THAT much better than FS/Spotter?
Finally a slightly intangible bonus from HS and the elite banner.
I had to search a lot for this lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jme_2kUY3eM outdated, but Nike mentions banners around 6:06 and EA 5-10% according to his guide
Edit: Turtle, I think ranger/ele/ele/guard/thief would be effectively equal. No point at all that I’m making, other than one could bring something the other couldn’t and vice versa. Warriors will be favored due to the “no deaths allowed” rule though.
IIRC, I think a single warrior buffs his party by like 35% or some ridiculously high number, while a ranger buffs his party by 15%. Don’t remember where I saw that warrior number though.
Warrior also has stronger CC.
I suppose Rangers may get their time to shine when (if) FGS gets nerfed and you actually have to fight things without pressing 4 on a wall.
Well, all the weapons the warrior has have great use in PvE (exept mace).
I would label rifle, longbow, hammer, sword, and shield as basically PvP only. All of those except possibly rifle are very meta in PvP.
Axe, mace and greatsword have always been the only acceptable PvE weapons and now it’s down to only greatsword.
It’s the variety of weapons warriors have that give them these choices.
Eh… you can always find some really obscure uses for warrior weapons if you try hard enough, even mace. Wouldn’t label some of them as general-use though.
Axe is close enough to GS that’s it’s still viable. And sword has uses for both MH and OH.
Here’s another example: I bet atleast 6 of the teams are going to run warrior/ele/ele/guardian/thief for the DnT Tourney.
When everyone else is going meta…. you kinda have to as well to remain competitive.
Also, there’s a pretty distinct difference between bad and non-meta (It’s just that most people who hate the meta don’t understand why it’s good and make bad builds). ie. a bearbow ranger is bad and doesn’t contribute to the group, while a condi ranger with spotter/frost spirit can atleast buff his party, but won’t be as efficient as the meta build. And like Fluffball said, you’re pretty much better off using a different class if you’re not going to use the Ranger’s best build. As far as PvE goes anyways.
Arah story is banned for sanity purposes.
:D, glad to see that one on the ban list.
Those birds… I have unpleasant memories of them.
I know you guys are talking about long range and/or PvP, but some of the longbow skills do more damage than the auto attack.
Longbow have one big problem: there’s not a skill that deal more damage than the auto attack. .
Rapid Fire does more damage than the auto attack at less than 1000 range. Barrage is also DPS increase at all ranges (if you actually land every hit)
Difference between scholar and ranger with 100% uptime is around ~3.56%. Main advantage that Ranger Runes have is that they can be maintained indefinitely.
You end up with too much precision if your unbuffed crit chance is over 65%, since spotter, fury and banner give you ~35% crit chance. This means you should not use more than 1 of the following with ranger runes: precision food, maintenance oil, Sigil of Accuracy. My full ascended zerker with Curry Butternut Squash Soup, Spotter, Fury and Banner of Discipline puts me right at 100% crit chance.
I’ve been told that increase is constant even if your pet is “dead.” I can’t confirm that though as I haven’t tested it personally.
It does not, but it will work with mini pets out.
strength runes seem to be all the rage these days.
Only for certain classes. The reasons to use strength runes are
- Your build provides a substantial amount of might to you or your allies
- You want an easier modifier to maintain
Rangers (or any other class) has a convenient alternative to #2 with Ranger Runes. Rangers also do not get much use out of Strength Runes because they do not effect might given to other people from their pets. The only real use for it is if you want to give a lot of might to your pet for some reason, but builds like phalanx strength make it obsolete (along with the might to pet trait). Strength runes are quite decent on Eles, Warriors and Engineers, everything else is meh imo.
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