Guild Wars 2

Warhorn may not be so great in WvWvW/PvP, but it is by far the best offhand in PvE.

slamb.4781:

This is the build i use for Fractals.
It’s a might share DPS build i also change out the weapons, Skills and traits as needed depending on the situation.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJIQNAR3Zj8cU7Z3HeewJaAggy4BEAKbjuI9SkEZPA-ThCEwAJOCAp2fIqSstKBZq8wwDAgl6Pt1NA4CA84gAQKgyVGB-e

I think you forgot Forceful Greatsword

DaliIndica.9041:

The longbow hits pretty hard, I have no idea why anyone woulc complain about it. Has some nice tools on it as well to help out with a situation..

The positioning required for it to hit hard isn’t helpful to anyone in your party. You’re also picking a lower damage weapon on a class that does low DPS already.

Teknogeddon.4523:

Try this out sometime, it’s actually a lot of fun.
Put your skills on Quickening Zephyr and Sharpening Stone.
Tap Quickening, drop barrage and then tap sharpening stone and toss out rapid fire. You have to do this in a small window, but I’ve always had wonderful results with it. This is what I do when I know I need to damage something hard and fast. Toss out the jungle stalker’s might buff and you’re a force to be reckoned with.
Granted, what works for me may not work for everyone, but at least give it a try.

I don’t see what’s so good about 5 stacks of bleed on 45 second cd on a weapon that is primarily power. Sic-em and Signet of the Wild are much better cooldowns for DPS.

Laziest solution would be a overall damage buff for the class and/or sword. It’d still be high risk and high skill cap, but it would atleast have the high reward associated with it.

Fluffball.8307:

What I view as the best solution, which I would LOVE, is to add a third mainhand melee weapon.

I agree with this. Mainhand Dagger pls.

Archon.6480:

TurtleDragon.3108:

The main problem with this idea is that it’s a band-aid fix that doesn’t address the actual “issue”. Why not address the reasons why people stack, los/wall and FGS in the first place and formulate a solution based on that.

Ah yes, well this is not meant to fix stacking/FGS so to speak, as I don’t think it is broken. Please don’t let us get off topic, as this is not the intent of the kind of changes I am thinking (though I understand why it might seem that way). Think of it as ways to make stacking (or whatever) more Interesting.

Wouldn’t it be nice to hard cc some of the perma-defiant baddies once in a while. Or to have to run from that foe you just burned down to 30% health when he gets angry (cornered, so to speak)

Ah, I just assumed this was another anti stacking topic.

I suppose giving bosses more than 3 attacks and 1 phase could be a place to start.

Some of those ideas might be alright I guess if it was for a select few bosses. Having every boss enrage at 30% or get a corner buff would get old and/or frustrating fast. A lot of people in this game don’t like excessively long time gates (cough Mai Trin, AC p3, TA unskippable cutscenes)

The main problem with this idea is that it’s a band-aid fix that doesn’t address the actual “issue”. Why not address the reasons why people stack, los/wall and FGS in the first place and formulate a solution based on that.

Archon.6480:

How many people go into dungeons for a challenge? It’s more of a somewhat glorified Ori-farm.

It’s really hard to find excitement or desire for challenging content in dungeons that are almost 2 years old at this point. Even if say, all the bosses got reworked in AC I wouldn’t care because I’ve ran AC 100s of times already and only sometimes do it for the gold.

Also, I especially don’t care about challenge if the rewards aren’t there.

I do find regular dungeons boring and don’t do them because I don’t need the gold, but I always suggest new dungeons/paths as the solution. Main content I liked doing in this game is Fractals because the encounters are more interesting and FGS is not as dominant (or atleast is harder to do) there as it is in regular dungeons.

draconx.3102:

Wethospu.6437:

Yes I agree. They need to compensate people and reset everyone to 20.

Don’t forget to also remove fractal levels 41 and up from the game.

And decrease the drop rate of fractal skins.

Speed clears for individual common paths without warriors, thieves and eles. Restricted ruleset. Dungeon tour would take too long imo.

jcbroe.4329:

As far as I know, the PvE min/max optimal Trait setup is still 4/5/0/5/0 for damage and group support. I’d have to double check to see if Brazil would agree or not on his youtube.

4/5/0/5/0 and 6/5/0/3/0 are the go-to builds for PvE. Both are viable and are basically the same build.

Lace.9472:

Firstly In meta-groups the survivability I am supposedly gaining for being ranged is not something I can harness in the meta . Therefore the dps trade-off I am subject to for the privileged of being ranged is hurting my relationship with other classes in groups.

You won’t notice it in regular dungeons, but you will definitely notice it in higher level fractals. Fights like Mossman, Archdiviner, Grawl Shaman and the dredge fractal end bosses are not simple stack, los and FGS fights and are quite punishing to inexperienced melee DPS. Ranging those specific bosses is much easier and safer. There may be a few more examples in there as well, but I’m quite unfamiliar with PUG strategies in fotm (if they’ve changed recently)

Aegis.9724:

Did someone make the math on comparing procs to the flat damage/crit chance increase?

IIRC, air/fire get outscaled by % modifiers once you start to get lots of buffs from your party.

Is bloodlust still viable after the nerf, or even worth it while pugging dungeons?

The short answer is no, they’ve received too many nerfs to be worth the effort or be worth limiting your your potential weapon skill set. They do have a pretty high “break even” stack number that you sometimes won’t reach until you’re done most of the dungeon. It’s not too bad if you play a class that only has to camp 1 weapon set.

I feel the only dungeons where stacking sigils are great are

1. AC all paths
2. CoE All Paths
3. Arah All paths

Maybe TA forward and HotW 1 as well.

arkealia.2713:

Longbow has pretty high DPS actually, it’s just that since you’re at high range you can’t give and get buffs from those in melee.

This is actually true surprisingly. Though, it is still not higher DPS than sword for single target or multi target. “High” is also relative to the ranger class’s weapons, so anyone reading this shouldn’t compare it to other classes lol.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Okay, so you can’t get maximum damage out of Long Range Shot.

The bigger problem is that the longbow ranger with a bear contributes very little to a group environment. Contrary to popular belief damage is not the only thing that matters. Support (defensive/offensive/utilty) and control are important as well. Classes need more than just damage to be useful, and your typical longbow ranger with 3 signets and a bear does not contribute anything other than kittenty damage and crappy condition removal. A longbow ranger playing within 600 range with a jungle stalker, frost spirit and spotter is a significant improvement and not that bad, but the damage will still be terrible. The point is, you need to contribute more than just damage. Everyone does damage, but you still have roles to fill in organized groups.

Should you? It’s only LB1 that is affected by distance — why should anyone expect to get crazy DPS by standing there auto-attacking?

There are a few classes where most of the damage comes from the AA chain and you spend 95% of the fight auto attacking. Ranger sword is one of them, the only skill that that’s a DPS increase over Sword#1 is Path of Scars. Dagger necro gets most of it’s damage from auto attacking as well, but you ocassionally press WH#5/Focus#4 but they have long cds so it’s an extra button press every 30s or whatever and then you go back to auto attacking.

Finally just for reference, I took a look at the longbow and tried to come up with some coefficients. Assuming a 3>5>2>1 rotation with Quick Draw and 30s fight I came up with ~0.68 for melee range longbow, and ~0.853 at max range (ignoring projectile travel time). Sword is ~1.053 with a slightly lower weapon damage. Longbow’s problem is positioning and sustained damage (for both single target and AoE), it has decent burst for the first 8-10s of a fight. After that, your DPS drops off a lot.

Archon.6480:

no, he omitted them as (they will magically be there)

Since the classes scale differently with different buffs, the relative “base” DPS might look different than the actual DPS at any given level of buffs. It’s too much trouble to run them all again but here’s a sampling of how different elements scale with every possible buff active (all boons, banners, spirits, EA, Spotter, full Bloodlust stacks, Force+Night, +10% dungeon potion.)

6/6/0/2/0 walled GS warrior: 13330 direct, 164 bleed, 13494 total
4/5/0/5/0 ranger: 8064 self, 1364 pet = 9428

where certain kinds of damage are irrelevant because something else will be doing it?

It’s irrelevant because it does not exist in the rotation. Sword doesn’t do any conditions by itself except poison which you’re not supposed to use the #3 unless you have to dodge b/c it’s a DPS loss. Conditions also do negligible damage in berserker gear except for the cases where some classes have an abundance of them like engi.

As for the last paragraph, you’re just running into bad players. I have no problems playing the meta builds on the classes I’m comfortable on in PUGs. Not everyone plays this game exclusively with bad PUGs. Since you do not seem to like Guang’s math for some reason, here’s a link to some math i’ve done. It does use a slightly different set of assumptions like no blood lust, Ranger Runes and 100prec/70 ferocity food.

Also, “viable, but not optimal” does not mean rangers are bad.

Archon.6480:

snip

I’ll let Guang defend his own work if he wants, but i’ll point out a few things.

He didn’t factor Might, fury, vulnerability, burning, bleeding, poison, confusion, retaliation, evasion, aura’s, combo fields, combo finishers, cc ability, blocking ability, reflect, multi-target hit scenarios, etc. His disclaimer for his omissions is a cop-out.

He did factor might, fury, vuln which are the main things that matter in addition to EA, spotter, bloodlust stacks. For the ranger, things like burning, bleeding, poison and confusion are not included because the optimal rotations do not include those conditions and any combination of weapons/traits/gear/skills will result in lower numbers. (eg. Engineer includes bleed damage)

Longbow = Useless. Or rangers suck in dungeons.

Longbow = useless is an exaggeration ,but longbow isn’t very useful in high end PvE.. In a speed run scenario, longbow is not viable as a main weapon because the damage is not up to par. It still has utility that make it worth bringing in a few scenarios. It has a purpose, which is to be to be a safe ranged power weapon for rangers. It trades away damage for survivability. Whether or not that you need that is up to the player.

I’ve said this a few times in the past, rangers are viable but not optimal in dungeons/fractals.

Any weapon set or party composition can work. Figuring out how to use the weapons and your team is what matters.

This is true, but not every combo is efficient which is what some people are concerned about. Others aren’t. These two playstyles conflict with eachother and each party will have a happier time avoiding eachother.

Another problem is that the optimal player in a PHIW group does not interefere with their goals. He may die or rage alot but that is his fault. The opposite is not true as a PHIW player’s playstyle will conflict with the goals of a optimal group. They will contribute less buffs, less damage, not know strats etc and the other 4 ppl may not be in the mood to carry them.

Archon.6480:

I’ve been reading the forums since launch and watch people go back and forth jib jabbering about DPS but have never seen anyone post an actual number. Is good DPS 3000? Maybe 4000? Think about why no one posts these numbers, then you might get some insight into how to build your ranger.

DPS is a bit hard to visualize in this game because of the lack of in game tools for it, and the dungeons being scattered across various level ranges.

“Good DPS” is also going to be very subjective and opinion based, but if I were to pick some arbitrary number in the high end range it’d be 12k since Ele and Thief can hit numbers in that range or even higher.

Check out DnT’s public theorycrafting forum for more info or to ask them questions if you want.

Example DPS numbers: Elementalist, Guardian

Ranger sword by itself without the pet is pretty low, it’s within the range of 7-8k
For all intents and purposes, reaching numbers are like this all the time are impractical and not realistic since it depends on having a good party composition and good buff uptime. 25 might, 2 banners and permafury are relatively easy, but getting that and 25 vuln (25 vuln is easy to burst, but hard to sustain. For the purposes of speed running the short duration of 25 vuln is long enough to blow up bosses) at the same time + spotter/Frost Spirit are hard.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

While it is true that melee damage is superior to range that doesn’t make range damage useless. There are many situation that melee isn’t possible or practical.

I can’t really think of any dungeon/fractal bosses that are impossible to melee, but I will agree with you that some are difficult or not practical to melee for most people.

Edit: Ranger DPS courtesy of Gaung If we define good as 80% of the the class’s expected DPS, then good DPS for rangers would be around 7.5k (including the pet). Basically, good DPS is too vague to give a universal and consistent answer.

If it was up to HHR LostProphet, we wouldn’t be allowed to melee bosses at all.

Everyone grab your longbows and rifles.

Berserker gear on ranger is quite forgiving (unless you’re just yolo camping sword). If you’re ranging with a longbow, there is no reason to use anything other than berserker gear since you’re at a safe distance from most enemies. For beginners, GS AA evades and blocks make it fairly easy to melee most enemies in the game. You also get 2500 health from traits putting you at around a manageable 17.5k health, which is enough to not get 1 shotted by most mobs in the game.

Can you (static burst) Hello? The signal (static burst) interference (static burst) higher ground. But (static burst) are everywhere (static burst) hear me? Higher. Ground.

Lace.9472:

trunks.5249:

i was tired of seeing all these negative posts about rangers being bad.so i decided to posts some videos of some really good rangers in pvp ,WvW,Pve and let them know i had the same build has one of the guys in the videos. ….

Hello, I am someone who’s disappointed at the balance of the ranger compared to other classes. I am specifically annoyed that we don’t have that many viable ranged builds with bows.

I noticed that the last few videos/builds you’ve shared are sword and axe.

Do you have any viable ranged builds to share with me? I am particularly interested in dungeons/WvW.

I think the bow ranger right now is bad.

Ranging isn’t very viable in dungeons/fractals right now and is only done when you/your party are unable to melee encounters. Having even 1 party member at range will cause bosses to use extra attacks. You will also receive less boons/buffs from their party on top of ranged weapons generally being less DPS than melee weapons.

At the absolute minimum, you need to be within 600 range of your entire party to help support them. For other classes, ele and engineer have viable build(s) that involve ranged weapons.

Staff ele is high dps and is good if you are the 2nd ele in the party. Elementalists have traits that make them do more damage within 600 range so max ranging with staff is discouraged, as well as attunement swapping. Grenade engineer is also viable, but you want to be within 600 range again to blast might for your allies and receive boons.

Furious Demise effects allies.

Barbs, Mark of Pain, Order of Pain/Vampire type skills.

Unique damage buff/debuff. idk EA/Spotter version of ferocity (or condi lol)

ItIsFinished.9462:

Coordinated or not, you want to remove all 40 stacks as soon as possible.

It depends on your strategy, but it’s far easier to kill the elementals without the shaman shooting arrows and placing fire storms on your party.

maha.7902:

TurtleDragon.3108:

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Every decent speedclear group uses at least one Ranger.

False. (I wish it were true though)

world records, no.

but for daily dungeon tours, we have no problemo taking a ranger, people just normally don’t like running theirs in our guild unless they’re in the mood for it.

Oh absolutely. I just thought the post implied that rangers were something you’d want to prioritize for daily dungeon tours. ie. you don’t actively seek out a ranger for your comp, but you want to prioritize including atleast 1 warrior, 1 ele, etc.

DiamondMeteor.8345:

Every decent speedclear group uses at least one Ranger.

False. (I wish it were true though)

Fluffball.8307:

TurtleDragon.3108:

The only fight I use axe MH on is grawl shaman and I still haven’t figured out the ideal build for that fight yet.

That’s one of the very few places in PvE a longbow shines, IMO. I liked barrage and entangle on the lava eles, and the longer range and harder hitting of the LB is good for when the boss is up. Longer range means whatever random position you find yourself in (i.e. getting away from someone with the AoE blasting on them) you can still hit. I did often have axe/WH on swap for that one though. The eles are very fragile so barrage does a number on them, but axe is not bad for finishing off stragglers.

The highest fractal I’d done back in the day was like 78 or something though, but that was obviously a very long time ago and I don’t know what tactics people use anymore, and I’m not sure how the fractal update changed anything. So…

Yep, Longbows are quite decent on this fight. I don’t bring it anymore because I try to melee the fight. GS + Axe/Axe 4/5/5/0/0 Honxed Axes + offhand training (aka the Lupi solo build) is what i’ve been running lately. Strat for the fight is pretty much the same as before. In uncoordinated groups and PUGs, you just blindly zerg the boss’s 40 stacks down. In coordinated groups, you CC the boss for as long as possible and kill as many elementals as you can before removing the 40th stack. Traited whirling defense is nice (although, you’ll stack a ton of burning on yourself and will probably get targetted by a fire storm), Path of scars does high damage and does a crappy job of grouping up elementals and Winter’s bite helps stack chill.

(Trap potency is a waste of a trait slot and 3s untraited isn’t long enough for your party to get much use of it from LH or other blasts. Flame trap doesn’t work outside of combat either which is the where the torch sees the most use because it’s easily made obsolete by other members of your party)

DaveGan.8065:

What does the sword bring to the table that the greatsword doesn’t? (honestly curious)

Sword has more damage than greatsword. There are two evades to the greatsword’s one. As a 1h weapon you can bring warhorn for party fury/swiftness, dagger for another (easier to use) evade, or axe for anti-projectile (very rare).

Greatsword is an option in areas where sword is less viable (some fractals)

Everyone forgets torch

Jebster.2539:

Would you ever use it in a situation that called for ranged damage? Perhaps if there were 3 targets? Or is shortbow/longbow just better?

There aren’t really any fights that favor long range sustained AoE from the Axe bounces. Closest thing would be the first boss in Harpy Fractal, but in that fight single target burst is better and if the shaman and ettin are close enough for axes to bounce, you’re doing it wrong.

Hypothetically, if there was a 2-3 target fight where you must range and the targets are far away enough from each other that you can’t cleave or hit with piercing proejctiles, then axe would be the weapon to go.

The only fight I use axe MH on is grawl shaman and I still haven’t figured out the ideal build for that fight yet.

Alora.6841:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Alora.6841:

This is the Dungeon Subforum. Which means there is exactly one way to play your class. If you do something else you are a noob.

False.

So why all the “Play Zerker or you are stupid” “Play Sword/Horn or you are stupid” etc? I dont mind though. I really find these discussions entertaining and I am very successful with my Longbowranger ( she killed every gauntlet boss including Liadri btw. I heard this was impossible, but…oh well^^).

Well first of all, you are mixing up group content with solo and open world content. The key difference is that your playstyle isn’t effecting 4 other people when you are doing things such as gauntlet and living story, no one really cares what build you run there. It’s a bigger issue in dungeons/fractals where your playstyle directly influences other peoples and effects how long it will take.

“Successful” is a pretty general term, it doesn’t take much effort to just complete content in this game if that’s all you care about. However, efficiency is completely different and where most of the arguments come from. Longbow/Shortbow rangers are not efficient or successful when it comes to pulling their own weight in a party who’s goal is to farm content quickly. There’s a pretty distinct difference between doing all your dungeons in 4-5 hours and doing the same dungeons in 8 hours.

atheria.2837:

We have never sucked in PvE…

This isn’t really true, rangers were pretty much useless to groups before they buffed our some of our traits (which might have been the same patch pets were nerfed). Spotter used to be 70 precision and Vigorous Spirits used to be a master level trait that did not include the 100% health increase.

I remember the “meta” PvE spec used to be some BM spec, i think it was 30/25/0/0/15?

Jebster.2539:

Not had any experience of axes in terms of damage though, how do they compare?

Worst Single Target DPS for rangers by far. It’ll do about half the damage of the ranger sword. It is also infferrior to sword and GS in cleave situations, better for AoE than SB/LB w/o piercing arrows or enemies lined up perfectly.

For PvE, you want 2 %dmg sigils on your weapons. Force and Night are very potent for half the dungeons in this game. Runes for PvE should be Ranger or Scholar.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Shortbow was a bit more DPS at close range or on average, but I feel Longbow has better #2-5 skills and burst.

LB#2 Helps party DPS slightly with vulnerability.

LB#3 is a good disengage and aggro drop

LB#4 when used intelligently will help strip defiant or knock back bosses when you are trying to rez allies.

LB#5 is useful for some of the fights you want a ranged on like Grawl Shaman and Archdiviner.

Ranger Lupicus solos are fairly rare, but the most common set up used (or atleast recorded) is 4/5/5/0/0 GS + Axe/Axe. (excluding the joke bearbow solos by Obal and others that took like 20+ minutes). You’ll want to to avoid the pet traits in Skirmishing, Sharpened Edges and Honed Axes are good choices.

Esplen.3940:

You can put a bloodlust sigil onto your underwater weapon and then swap your land weapon after getting 25 stacks.

That was fixed in the may 20th patch

Anierna.6918:

Everyone’s said “guard or war,” but nobody else has said ele, and i dont understand why. Maybe we have different ideas of the sort of pug group the OP is referring to. I was thinking of “p123, zerk only, ping or kick – no necro/engi” groups, where the pugs know how to might-stack, use FGS, and coordinate banners.

It’s probably this tbh, and the OP didn’t specify either.

I was thinking more along the lines of “P1 80s only”, “P1 experienced only”, “P1” and “P1 3k + AP!”. In bearbow and cleric staff guardian land.

Probably going to get flak for this but…. here goes:

I think Hammer guardian is fine for PUG-ing dungeons (including the ones that aren’t fractals). Perma prot is a great DPS trade off and hammer still offers competitive DPS. PUGs don’t blast fire fields anyways, you will not always have an elementalist in your party composition and protection will help the random players of varying skill levels survive. Worst case scenario, you can bring your own fire field and place it before the symbol.

For organized groups in dungeons (not fractals), hammer is not needed and generally should not be ran, but the OP specifically asked for PUGs.

To answer the OP’s originally question, i’m going to recommend warrior. High survivability, high utility and self reliant. You can single handedly ensure that your party will have 2-3 of the unique warrior buffs (EA, 2 banner) and provide enough might for yourself with strength runes. You can also opt for Battle Standard instead of SoR which is an amazing wipe recovery tool if you feel it is necessary outside of Fractals.

RoyalPredator.9163:

snip

Yes because 100% more damage is a very big exaggeration. Also, environment =/= conditions. For clarity, let’s just say refer to condition as the amount of boons and buffs. If the ranger and warrior had the same buffs, the warrior would not do twice the damage of the ranger.

If you place both the ranger and warrior in solo environment, then the warrior is a much stronger self buffer and will outperform a ranger who can not buff himself as much as a warrior can. A warrior with only his own buffs > a ranger with his own buffs

Keep in mind, i’m just talking about theoretical damage. Ignoring utility,survivability, and what not.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Fluffball.8307:

So your tank warrior does 100% more damage than a berserker ranger when a berserker warrior does 5 or 8% more damage than a berserker ranger. That makes perfect sense.

To say more clearly, my ranger shoots 2500-3200 if it crits.
My warrior chops ~3000 crits with axe ~twice faster.

You’re comparing a ranged weapon to a melee weapon and not testing them under the same conditions.

Warriors are exceptional self buffers while rangers are more reliant on their party to reach their maximum damage output.

Not really a fair comparison unless it’s for PvP which usually doesn’t play with every possible damage buff.

On the gw2 subreddit, /u/SnickyMcNibits made a spreadsheet comparing every armor set in the game, including Carrion and Berserker.

Check it out.

Link to Reddit Thread

If you’re on a budget, Minotaur steaks, candied dragon rolls and Steak and Asparagus are all great options. Choose according to the situation and dungeon, and then pair it with the appropriate slaying potion. I recommend Skale Venom for fractals and sharpening stones for AC.

If you can afford it, Curry Butternut Squash Soup is the best option.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Any decent dungeon runner and the more/most advanced speed clear groups run a spotter/frost spirit ranger in their comp. It’s almost essential for any high-level PvE. It’s bad groups and self-proclaimed elitists that will refuse you a spot in party, and chances are their run won’t go smoothly anyway, even without you there. If said bad group were to take you, they’d just end up blaming the ranger anyway. Build some credentials as a player and use them.

Let’s not exaggerate the usefulness of a ranger. The highest possible damage comp is neither the fastest nor the most effecient for speed clearing dungeons. Once you have 25 might/vuln, perma fury and two banners, the remaining damage optimization (Ranger) is trivial. Your strategies and what you do inbetween bosses make a bigger difference than having all the possible buffs you can. Rangers also do have a few mechanical issues that prevent them from being used.

Speed clear/run are a bit of a general term where the definition is going to vary depending on the context and person using it. I just like to think of it as a mindset and playstyle or sometimes use the term “record run” to distinguish between the “types” (PUG "speed runs < Dungeon Guild “normal” (casual run) < Record run) of speed runs (There are people who think that if it’s not a record run, then it’s not a speed run and is a casual run). As of right now, rangers are not viable in record runs where the meta is basically to just stack as many elementalists as you can. I have not checked gwscr that often, but none of the compositions have a ranger in it.

Your basic cookie cuttie cutter speed clear comp is 1 warrior, 2 eles, + 2 utility classes ( thief for stealth, mesmer for portal/reflects, guardian for reflects/stab/aegis, ranger for more buffs, engi…. if you have someone that wants to play it). It does depend a lot on the dungeon you are doing. Personally, I find double ele very overrated for FotM for example. You can make a ranger work in these comps, but I feel it doesn’t benefit the composition that much. Ie. the fractal comp I run most of the time is warrior, guardian, thief, ele, mesmer.

Having said that, you can do a PUG quality speed run with any class as long as you guys are using consumables and maintaining buffs.

I think the 5% less is a bit of a misleading number, I’m pretty sure that number is relative to the warrior’s lowest DPS build, the “Banner kitten” (EA + double banner). Once you compare it to the other warrior builds, the DPS difference is a lot greater. They also came up with that number before they realized pure GS was viable, and is 3.8% more dps (EA versions)

That and Ranger theoretical DPS is significantly harder to translate into the game. If you’re doing anything other than straight up AA-ing, you’re increasing the gap.

From a speed run PoV, rangers are pretty subpar and their buffs fall into the “Nice to have” category rather than mandatory for most runs.

Archon.6480:

The META for zerker fractals rangers is horrible! But most people on this forum disagree with me, so be prepared…

What I do not understand is why you hate the meta so much and say it’s horrible when you’re running half the things that make a ranger a decent addition to the party and are included in the meta builds. The only thing you’re missing (or just did not explicitly say) is traited Frost Spirit and at that point you’re bringing all the best utility a ranger can provide at the cost of one off hand weapon slot, 2 trait slots and 1 utility slot. Once you have that, the rest of your build just determines your damage, survivability and playstyle.

Archon.6480:

What is the DPS (Damage Per Second) of a ranged weapon that does zero damage but applies 10 stacks of vulnerability to a boss for for 10 seconds, in a 5 man team with each other team member dealing 5000 damage a second? Let’s assume the ranged weapon does zero damage per second while applying the vulnerability to make the math easy.

The ranged weapon does 0 DPS because anything * 0 = 0

Yep, the whole point now is to not unequip the bloodlust weapon. The stacks appear to be bound to the weapon and not the slot. eg. if you swap a bloodlust warhorn with an offhand Axe with bloodlust, you lose the stacks.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

snip

Giving might to your allies is support, and strength runes make you better at doing that. They’re really strong on Phalanx warriors and Elementalists, but they are obviously not the maximum DPS option, it’s still scholar. Depending on the build/class, strength runes are also good for soloing and PUGs.

I was referring to things like condition DPS and ranged DPS, I did not mean to include melee in there. The only advantage ranged has right now is safety, if Ranged DPS was as good as melee dps then there’d be no reason to melee fights like Mossman or Archdiviner. I don’t want go into more details on the gap between melee and ranged because we’ve discussed it a lot already in this thread.

I’m also not a balance expert or game designer lol, I was just trying to suggest things that would make things other than zerker viable. I think the things that would make the biggest difference while keeping the theme of the game intact is to increase all buff/boon range to 1200, and to somehow make Condition/Hybrid DPS competitive (by changing mechanics and/or theoretical damage) with berserker builds without breaking it in PvP.

Updated the guide for the May 20th patch. There is only one significant change and it does not affect this build that much. You can no longer unequip stacking weapons with a sigil on your underwater weapon anymore. If you want to keep your bloodlust stacks, you need to keep the weapon on one of your 2 weapon sets.

Since Rangers do not typically use a weapon swap in their DPS rotations, you can devote 1 weapon set for trash and bloodlust stacking, and 1 for single target boss DPS. I recommended putting Bloodlust on your GS earlier out of laziness, and because the tactic will work even when they nerf Underwater weapons. If you are trying to get stacks off a single target, auto with the sword then swap to GS before killing a mob, though you do not fight single trash mobs often. Alternatively, you can go Sword/Warhorn + /Warhorn (Bloodlust) if you prefer that set up.

Everything else appears to be the same as from what I tested today and yesterday. I am also considering changing the title of this guide to more accurately represent the fact that this is a dungeon and fractal guide. This would likely break any previous links to this thread. I just thought the word "meta’ would attract attention lol.

I’ll try to say this as nice as possible: I would not recommend your guide to anyone because it is full of inaccuracies, needless fluff and bad advice. Your build does not offer any advantages to the current Spotter/Frost Spirit meta build for PvE and you appear to have little to no speed running experience based on your build and trait choice. I also feel the guide is a bit too vague.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

we’re getting totally off track here, but still, i like the discussion and feel like we should keep it up, regardless of the location

TurtleDragon.3108:

<1> Phalanx strength is the most recent example of this, you do garbage DPS but you buff your party by a gigantic amount.
<2> Strength runes are not max dps,but people run them anyways for support, etc.
<3> I also feel that melee DPS needs to be far more rewarding than ranged DPS

1: garbage compared to who?
2: support, in a phalanx build, or?
3: how do you figure? i mean, this whole thread has majorly been about ranged being behind melee. you want to increase that distance? why?

Fluffball.8307:

One simple change to start increasing viable builds would be making the person with the highest condi damage actually get to do the damage. Doesn’t matter how boss your condi damage is, you aren’t the one doing it, it’s the berserker guardian.

are you referring to burn stacks only?
i totally agree that condition stacking should be different. actually, stacking in general – like, i stopped running might-on-crit on my guardian because i realized i was potentially removing long-duration stacks and replacing them with low-duration ones. silly…

1. Compared to other warrior builds
http://i.imgur.com/hHz4ukG.jpg
Phalanx is the first one. You sacrifice a lot of personal DPS when you run this build.

2. Not sure what you’re asking here. But the other reason to run strength runes is because the modifier is easier to maintain.

3. Out of context, it would appear this way, but I was saying to decrease the gap while making melee still better

Your build is fine.

I feel meleeing fractal fights are about knowing when to disengage. If you watch some high level melee videos of bosses like mossman and archdiviner, you’ll notice that it involves a lot of max melee ranging, backwards kiting and running out of melee range. As a ranger, this does imply you’ll need to camp GS more often. And obviously, meleeing a boss does not mean you have to stay in the boss’s face the entire time and probably should not if it means you’re going to die.

Some of the bosses have large cleave ranges, like Archdiviner and dredge mining suit.

You also want most of your group to be meleeing as well. If your other 4 party members are ranging, then meleeing is pretty much suicide. It’s a team effort, and spamming project defenses, cripples and chills help.

Fractal fights are generally not stack and burn, ranged weapons are more appropriate here than in any other dungeon content in the game.

I don’t have much advice for pets though, they will die to things like the molten berserker’s shockwaves and Mai Trin’s cannon phase.

I’m far from an expert at meleeing fractal bosses, but these are my observations. Hope this helps.