Guild Wars 2

Warriors are only worse because of the condi metagame and crappy recovery. Once warriors are allowed to hit someone they are pretty much kings of damage. It’s not even 100b. They don’t have a single skill that doesn’t hit hard. Have him go happy mode with mainhand axe on someone and see how much damage they sustain.

Warrior just happens to require far more support to get their damage in than a mesmer/thief, so those are taken instead — and each of those brings something more.

To say thief is worse off than necro is just laughable. Nobody outclasses the thief on single target gibs or mobility for roaming. Nobody.

kitten engineers. They are a scourge.

The more time I spend with it the cooler I think the new model looks. Perhaps the whole rainbow name is a misnomer, but they could rename it a Green Jellyfish and it’s such a nice change.

These balance patches may not have been all that satisfying (RIP Search and Rescue, nobody will use you anymore), but rangers got 2 great things:

-Rainbow Jellyfish new skin

-Fervid Censer

At the very least the class will not be lacking in style. Now please let me tame the green moas in the sylvari starting area plz.

Why are you using staff ele as a comparison? Nobody uses staff ele for tpvp.

You’ve got cleansing wave, evasive arcana cleansing wave (both direct heals and condition removal, not a regen application tied to a spot). You’ve got cone of cold. The ele too can apply regen to allies at will, so your healing spring isn’t special, and if you’re going to bring a 240 cd spirit they can bring their water elemental elite which also heals.

You only bring regen. They bring high protection, fury uptime without needing a weapon (it’s a trait), the auras gives allies stun when hit which stops someone from getting trained by melee, and frost aura reduces their damage taken by 10% plus chills opponents.

They bring 2 aoe knockdowns to prevent damage on their team, an immobilize, aoe chill and cripple all in one weaponset without needing to use utilities. They bring aoe weakness.

And quite frankly what the hell are you thinking bringing a bear to pvp? They do less damage than an engineer’s burning ticks. Bears are pretty terrible.

Guardian has aoe group stability, prot, regen, condition clear, sanctuary, aegis, an instant chunk of group heal with virtue, symbols granting the group fields for retaliation. Empower gives the group healing and easy stacks of might on top of healing and ground control, without needing to occupy a utility slot. They also do deceptive damage because when specced their burning and retal will eat you up pretty quickly. They have group blinds.

They are bar none the best team fight class in game due to having an abundance of boon provision for their team, and a bunch of boons to top it off.

Hell, their stun breaker is that same skill that gives THEM and the entire group stability and retaliation at the same time. Stability is a stupidly OP boon and because there are only 2 classes with the ability to strip boons (and only the mesmer can strip them consistently on a group while necro is on a 45 sec cd or a single target strip from Corrupt Boon) a guardian is fairly able to give his group all kinds of boosts and ground control. Moreover, necro is a weak tourney class in the meta as it’s too fragile and has crap mobility, so the only class you actually see often that can strip boons is the mesmer.

Eles on the other hand may not provide as much defensive boons to a group as a guardian, but they do better healing for a group, provide fire fields and auras to boost the team with fury and swiftness, offer more condition clears; they also do considerably more damage than guardians do and a lot of it is cleave, pbaoe damage with a host of CC and mobility that the guardian doesn’t have.

Both classes are extremely more useful in a team fight than the BM bunker will ever be. The BM bunker is strictly a roamer class specced for 1v1 and stalling. Its spike ability outside raven f2 is horrible, and even with the raven you’re stuck by an ability delayed by bad UI over player delivered immediate burst. After raven burst you offer your team no meaningful pressure damage compared to a condi character like the engineer, don’t have the spike pressure of glass cannon specs, and most importantly the entirety of your damage is mostly single target versus cleaving by mesmers/engineers/eles.

If BM bunker ranger and rangers in general have little utility, they SHOULD be the best at what little they have, which may be roaming. Trapper rangers are the only thing close to a team fight spec, and it’s only for tpvp because people need to stand over a point unlike in wvw where groups are larger, mobile, and make good advantage of aoe condition clears and fields.

Thorson.9218:

Zenith.7301:

At the cost of karma and supply, and it’s 1200 range so all the thief needs to do is shadowstep away out of that 1200 range and wait till you disengage from that trap spot.

When triggered, the thief gets the Revealed condition for 30 secs. There’s no range involved, i.e. he can’t run away from the Condition that’s applied….it’s like a bad smell, LOL. So, he can’t stealth for 30 seconds. A gc thief (which most are) spec’d for stealth will die long before Revealed wears off. Also, the karma, supply, and badges are relatively cheap. The QQ’ing on the Thief forum pretty much shows how impactful this is in WvW.

Shadow Step and Infiltrator Arrow do not require stealth to get away.

I feel bad for people who dare feed others the lie that anything is better than berserker. Obviously they don’t understand the scaling of power/prec/crit per stat point investment.

If conditions were as strong as some suggest in PvE, you’d see more groups asking for necromancers or engineers. As it stands, both of those are the least desired in groups.

Dark Saviour.9410:

Scott McGough.6897:

(or, I should say, we’ll spend more time with her but see less of her, as she won’t always be wearing her beach gear).

No. She should continue to wear the bikini regardless of the situation or locale, and none of the NPCs should even make any mention of it, treating it as perfectly normal.

Don’t worry, at least you got Faren in his tight swimsuit

At the cost of karma and supply, and it’s 1200 range so all the thief needs to do is shadowstep away out of that 1200 range and wait till you disengage from that trap spot.

Scryar.2954:

Zenith.7301:

Blackhat.4016:

Look at their base HP and you will understand why they got such a good condition removal…

Standard bunker build is 16 to 17k hp…..same as bunker ranger or engineer.

you wrote about the ele. and the standard bunker ele is far from 16k or 17k hp. its more about 13,8k-14k.

You’ve got 30 in water, and you can use either cleric or pvt amulets.

shimmerless.4560:

My feeling when people say condis aren’t sticky is usually that they either a) don’t melee or b) they’ve never fought an Engie who knows what he’s doing. Condi bombs from well-played Necros can be scary as well.

Show me a single video of a necro even scratching a competent bunker ele. You will never build up more than 4 stacks at a time on an ele that knows to manage his cleanses well and dodge the REALLY slow scepter #2 and dagger #5 skills.

Blackhat.4016:

Look at their base HP and you will understand why they got such a good condition removal…

Standard bunker build is 16 to 17k hp…..same as bunker ranger or engineer.

Furajir.3815:

Sounds like you should roll an Ele.

However, I do agree that agility training is utter garbage and the pets should just move 30% faster as part of their mechanic.

Already have one, got bored of that OP spec. Next row of assumptions?

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

Puandro.3245:

Maybe i should go QQ that i cant kill BM Regen rangers when i play Bunker ele on the Ele forum? Nah i think ill just change my build and my tactics if i want to kill a class instead of going to go QQ on the forums.

Do what you will, tough guy. I can’t be bothered with e-thugs.

Bunch of people have suggested things to change and/or try and you keep saying that it doesnt work. Apperently your way is the best way but it doesnt cut it so i dont know why you keep discussing it with us. Do you want us to agree with the problems you are having when have found ways to work around them?

I don’t keep saying it doesn’t work. I am not alone in voicing concerns about pet ai and excessive cleansing in game, but you keep trying to push it as if I do.

My build works. I pressure the ele as best as I can, but what will get the kill on any bunker as a ranger build is ultimately the pet, and when the pet is not functioning properly because it autoroots while attacking changing from a condi to power spec won’t change anything.

I’ve had little problems discussing with other people besides you and Fura, who both talk to people in forums like you wouldn’t in real life because such behavior would be despicable in a public setting.

My shortbow pressures conditions just fine. I don’t need the axe and I don’t need its offhand. It works for me and other rangers in spvp. What I need is for my pet to hit a moving target.

It’s not important for you, but it is important to me that they split part of my damage into an npc where if that damage were given to me and the pet did not exist I’d have little issues. But they’ve decided the pet will be our main mechanic, and at the very least on a basic level — not susceptibility to aoe, not random usage of abilities like knockdowns/roots, even more minor stuff — I expect them to at least keep up with opponents instead of watching it stare as it chases someone but very rarely catches up with them.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

tPvP is different because of the food factor. In tPvP, you should be stalemating d/d eles. They are a broken build.

This thread is about apothecary gear and how it affects our gameplay though. One build from one class that it has issues with shouldn’t be cause to derail the thread into yet another “to kill a d/d ele” discussion :/

Where you guys were going was good before this escalated into argument for whatever reason it did. Swiftness is a huge deal in condition builds since enemies that can kite you are the ones who are most dangerous.

The maddening thing isn’t that you stalemate. It’s that a dd ele in tpvp can stalemate a BM bunker, yet at the same time do great in group fights with tons of team utility, still posses good player controlled burst, and keep the title of the best bunker after the guardian for point holding.

As a BM bunker ranger, you are really only good at one thing, and that is 1v1 and maybe holding 2 people on a point for a bit until a CC heavy class comes along and kicks you off point.

We are a very specialized spec, yet even at the best thing we do we can’t kill some specs that are great at what we do and then even more things BECAUSE the pet ai is deficient. If they improved pet rooting and uptime on moving people, my complaints in a pvp setting would vanish.

Puandro.3245:

Maybe i should go QQ that i cant kill BM Regen rangers when i play Bunker ele on the Ele forum? Nah i think ill just change my build and my tactics if i want to kill a class instead of going to go QQ on the forums.

Do what you will, tough guy. I can’t be bothered with e-thugs.

With the amount of aoe cleave in tpvp your spirit won’t stay up for long.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

I’m going to go on a limb and guess you’re pwning random elementalists in WvW. I love when people like you pretend like it means anything.

@Faux

You can have uptime, but bleeds need to be of enough intensity throughout the fight to be outhealing an ele’s regeneration.

I’m still waiting for people here contesting the idea that our pets aren’t the majority of our damage. Or that they can’t be easily kited by someone with swiftness.

Most people are bad at video games due to not really caring or not be able to improve. Few % of the people are average. Then on few rare cases people are really good at video due to playing games with goal to be better than anyone else or are just naturally good.

I cant count the number of people ive fought at random in WvW that i thought wete really good since release on 1 hand. I usually have to set up “duels” to fight good people. You act like everyone knows how to play perfectly when in reallity if you are actually any good you will faceroll anyone 1v1 with little or no effort in WvW.

Booohooo you couldnt kill a bunker ele. If you are any good then neither will he kill you so its a stalemate. If you are dying then you need to take a look at your tactics.

Yes pet have issues hitting targets but you shouldnt have issues keeping targets perma crippled for your pet with your sword auto attack.

Maybe you’re fine with stalemates, but I’m not.

I don’t accept a stalemate where I know that if my pet could actually stop being terrible AI and didn’t selfroot while attacking and was able to hit a target, I’d win.

Because I win when the ele is bad and doesn’t move and the pet can hit him.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Zenith.7301:

I’m going to go on a limb and guess you’re pwning random elementalists in WvW. I love when people like you pretend like it means anything.

@Faux

You can have uptime, but bleeds need to be of enough intensity throughout the fight to be outhealing an ele’s regeneration.

I’m still waiting for people here contesting the idea that our pets aren’t the majority of our damage. Or that they can’t be easily kited by someone with swiftness.

No, I play against elementalists in WvW who know what they are doing plenty as well. Just because conditions can kill them doesn’t mean they suck. You need to give the player a bit of credit there.

Regarding bleeds, that’s why I mentioned specifically sigils of geomancy. It’s 3k DoT on my build every time you swap weapons near them. Since I swap weapons as often as possible and apply bleeds, poison (just about constantly even with boon removal), and slightly less frequent burnings through well-timed skill spam, they still die most of the time*. If they were running lemongrass food, then it’d be a different story and we’ll very likely stalemate… but how many d/d eles do you see using that?

When it comes down to it, you need two things more than anything to kill a d/d ele: frequent chills/cripples and constant poison. The poison is pretty easy to do, and that 33% reduction in healing ability kills them quicker than any quickly cleansed bleed will. Eles don’t remove chills and cripples frequently.

*when it all comes down to it, it really depends on the ele… but even the best will die, and that goes for anyone running any build in any class.

Lucky you because the eles I come across in tpvp cleanse my chills and cripples, since that’s what will do them in. The majority of a bunker ranger damage is the pet, and if they don’t cleanse cripple/chill, my pet will be able to hit them and they WILL die.

CJay.4067:

and where’s the problem?

its the same as if you would complain about thougness or healing skills when running a burst build…

its just rudicilous if you try to take down a water ele with conditions, way easier to counter them with burst damage.

The problem is classes that are not engineers and can’t trivially reapply a host of conditions are completely shut down in pressure, and both eles and guardians do it aoe for the team whereas toughness stacking users do not extend that anti-power build benefit to their entire team, just themselves.

Poplolita.2638:

Zenith.7301:

Tgames like WoW where the warlock class suffers pretty highly from being trained and their damage over time pressure is outperformed by the efficacy of mage/rogue archetype burst/cc/control benefits.
.

Not sure how warlock performance in wow pvp can be compared to necromancer pvp in gw2. Affliction warlock damage over time pressure was always the best since season 1. In fact, any competitive teams pretty much required an affliction lock, its dot pressure simply was amazing. On top of that, they had a dispel protection in the form of unstable affliction, which, not only protected their own dots, but also, it was a requirements for classes like frost mage and balance druid so they could burst without getting spam dispel. It was only in mist of pandaria where blizzard finally aknowledged affliction warlock dominance season 1 to season 11 that they finally nerfed them to the ground by changing dispel mechanic and dot damage. Which is the exact opposite for necromancer where we are all pretty much crying out loud for a buff.
sry for my english, it’s my second language

I don’t know what season you played but past season 8 healers could dispel at will despite UA because the silence and damage was negligible relative to their ability to burst heal after the silence. Taking the UA damage on a single person was always preferable to just letting the dots tick on the entire team.

Most importantly, good luck getting UA’s off when that warlock was getting trained by warriors and DK’s and rogues 24/7. Toward the end of Cataclysm warlocks became mediocre, and by MoP they became garbage compared to mages who have always fared well in any season. There’s not a single season where frost mages have been weak.

I’m going to go on a limb and guess you’re pwning random elementalists in WvW. I love when people like you pretend like it means anything.

@Faux

You can have uptime, but bleeds need to be of enough intensity throughout the fight to be outhealing an ele’s regeneration.

I’m still waiting for people here contesting the idea that our pets aren’t the majority of our damage. Or that they can’t be easily kited by someone with swiftness.

Chopps.5047:

That’s true Zenith but the axe just got 34% faster projectiles. I’ve heard some say that it’s still too slow. Is that the case? I’m landing more with it, that’s for sure. You could always trait the range on it too. Or you already did and that won’t cut it?

It’s the projectile property. It’s very bad at hitting people from range, because it still has a projectile speed similar to the newly nerfed thief shortbow, and you can see all the crying thieves are doing at the moment.

The weapon itself has a horrible autoattack, so you’re relying on a 6 sec cd close range ability to do any damage for the axe mainhand. Your other bleed on that axe/dagger is a 12 sec cd. Your throw torch is a 12 sec cd.

I don’t think people understand how well a good ele can cleanse conditions. He’s got a condition clear from skill 5 offhand water dagger, another from evasive arcana on a 10 sec icd mirroring the skill 5 water dagger, a clear on attunement swap to water (10 sec cd), 3 from Cleansing Fire, another on top of that cleansing fire for cantrip regen application (5 sec icd, the nerf barely changed anything they just need to stagger can trips in between 5 seconds).

In order to cope with this your pet needs to hit, but your pet won’t hit any ele running frost aura/aoe chill while he’s got swiftness on himself. All he needs to do is keep moving instead of standing still or walking backwards like the random noobs did In Fura’s video.

Sadistis.4257:

For sake of argument my guild ran a tPvP group last night of 5 necros with all separate builds and facerolled. The problem really resides in people not understanding how to play necro or trait it well… I tPvP on a necro and I assure you it’s not as underpowered as everyone thinks. The thing is most people who try to play necro need to stick with it it’s a high learning curve

I love when people like you go implying that people with issues concerning the class such as Symbolic need to L2P.

It really never changes when people love to lecture those they don’t even know.

The biggest offender is the ele, with1 cleanse from wave, 1 cleanse from evasive arcana, 1 cleanse from water attunement switch, and one cleanse from applying regen. The ICD on cleansing with regen application should be increased to 10 seconds as eles can still spam cantrips to stay condition free in between water attunement swaps. And if he really wanted to be overkill, he could still bring Ether Renewal.

The guardians is also capable of cleansing too often, and to a lesser extent a ranger if he brings healing spring (which at least is stationary and on a 30 sec cd).

Unless you’re an engineer with so many condition types to apply on low cd’s, no other condi specs can really keep up with the condi removal of these classes.

Mean comments from pompous morons don’t hurt me much, Chopps.

Winter’s Bite is stupidly easy to dodge, and it’s your only source of weakness so to have that -50% endurance regen debuff you need to land it on the first place.

And quite frankly these professors strike me as people who haven’t fought anyone worth their salt with condition clear. You will not keep conditions up on an ele or guardian or D/P thief unless you are an engineer. Their condition cleanses are pretty low cd and can be chained.

To some people looks are more important than stat differences. You don’t get to say what is optional for people. Playing the game and going beyond lv10 is also optional — you don’t need to be lv80 as you can still play without issue pre-10.

I love how some morons seem to despise consumers for voicing their opinions aboout consumption.

And what are we good at besides stripping boons and rez signet? Everything else other classes can fill while bringing things of their own, and even boon stripping a mesmer can fulfill pretty closely while getting to keep his own class strengths.

I just think they made a serious miscalculation with high hp = high survival. Avoidance has always been superior to facetanking, especially on classes without good recovery.

There’s quite a history, most recently in games like WoW where the warlock class suffers pretty highly from being trained and their damage over time pressure is outperformed by the efficacy of mage/rogue archetype burst/cc/control benefits.

High hp and high ramp up condition damage is just very one dimensional in application while mobility, cc, and burst can be used defensively and offensively. They’re just much more versatile tools than being a damage sponge with big ramp up that is also highly susceptible to rampant condition clears.

Whenever someone sees you running axe they know they can stay at 600+ ranger and crap on your damage since you need splitblade at enough a close range to get stacks, and the pet is easily kited with swiftness.

The ele I was dueling just simply walked out of the wolf’s knockdown because the wolf’s leap, like any leap, is reduced in travel distance depending on cripples/chill fields.

Axe requires too many things to go well to pay off. It’s good as a weapon to punish melee getting in your face, but that’s about it.

It’s as if your opponents were too stupid to press dodge when they saw you closing in for a splitblade or saw a slow frosty projectile lobbed at them.

Axe is a one trick pony. If you don’t land either of those skills, its damage is nonexistent.

You can nerf shatter when the mesmer’s other skills actually hit for something and he gets actual aoe.

Don’t talk to me about phantasms they die the moment they are summoned in a team fight — a frostgorge alpine wolf can 2 shot a phantom with hp signet and extra phantasm hp trait; that’s how bad phantasm hp is, same for clones.

Things I want on necro:

Better stunbreakers – Our stun breakers are on 90 and 60 sec cd’s respectively. The 90 sec cd one gives a measly 6 secs protection while ele’s armor of earth gives them protection AND stability, all while they have better access to boons.

Make Spectral Walk a teleport like blink as an additional effect on activation — it’s still double the cooldown of blink and 15 secs cd longer than Lightning Flash.

Make Spectral Armor give longer prot and stability. We NEED stability — the class feels like a pinball if you don’t have 30 points in Soul Reaping. If you don’t want to give necro boons, at the very least give spectral armor a mobile black powder effect so it keeps with the necro’s condition theme as a defensive skill.

Gives us access to vigor or better endurance regen — the lack of vigor hurts this class greatly in all game formats because DS is nowhere near adequate for tanking burst trains as effectively as dodging a CC>burst attempt.

—

Fix our heals. They are REALLY bad. The necro will never be a bunker despite being promoted at the beginning of the game by devs as the hard caster to take down.

Necros have horrible recovery options. They can absorb initial damage, but that means little if you can’t recover like actual guardians and engineers and eles and rangers do. Necro healing needs to be improved. Our heals heal for too little and we have so little healing unless we trait into Blood Magic — whose heals are crap anyways.

Master of conditions? Don’t think so. With the abundance of condition clear in this game, the necromancer is spanked by the engineer BECAUSE he can only apply one damaging condition, while the engineer has 2 damaging conditions, including the strongest (burning) that the necro doesn’t have, and he can layer those two conditions very easily and in aoe sustained fashion (necro only gets aoe through epidemic).

You try burning a bunker ele. Still post nerf with cantrips that ele is going to be clearing bleed stacks 24/7 and the necro won’t have any options.

—

Power setups are deficient — the axe is a mere 600 range, with a horrible auto, and the only aoe/control weapon we have is the staff, which is a condition weapon with one of the worst autoattacks in the game.

Dagger has only one gap closer built into the weapon with a 1 sec cast time that is easy to dodge. Power necros have very poor staying power because they do high single target sustain but little of it is burst so burst classes like thief and mesmer can counterburst you much more quickly and effectively.

Axe should be increased to 900 range, the autoattack needs a substantial buff, and it’s #3 skill should do more aoe damage considering it’s the only aoe damage a power necro has access to besides life transfer.

Life Force generation: It’s abysmal outside dagger autoattack and staff with soul marks trait. Both scepter and axe have horrendous life force generation.

It also seems like the necromancer is balanced in his survival around a full LF bar, but more often than not he has to engage encounters against someone with less than a full life bar, and death shroud doesn’t offer enough offense to compensate for the lack of mobility and eating burst.

Life Blast should do the same damage regardless of life force levels — in a situation where you are getting trained you will rarely get to use life blast to counterpressure because the damage below 50% is terrible.

These are my main complaints. The necro is just really easy to shut down with pressure since you can train him to the ground and he doesn’t have the tools like guardian or bunker ele to facetank damage.

He mentioned signet of the hunt not only for mobility, but for his burst, and he said it was optional.

I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, but shortbow flanking is ridiculously easy to pull off. The arc is actually pretty kitten generous and you don’t need to hit from the side so much as at a bit of an angle on the opponent, which you can do by strafing. It’s sort of how backstab makes it seem like you need to land it on the back but actually you can land it on the sides since the positional requirement in truth is very lenient.

He doesn’t need offhand training because the torch isn’t only used to pressure someone off a node. You use monarch’s leap to combo into a fire aura, which forces them to stop attacking or stack burning on themselves or give you might.

Shortbow on any build outdamages the axe in sustained condition and power damage, and has no range limitations in effectiveness to boot.

There is nothing wrong with his build. Some people run BM to 30 for natural regen and use signet of the hunt. He instead went for agility training, so his pet is moving 5% faster than with signet of the hunt, and he gains swiftness whenever he switches weapons, which on a BM bunker is pretty often.

That gives him room to take signet of the wild, which is KEY against classes like engineers because empathic bond won’t come close to coping with engineer condi application.

Either way, in your build you MUST have either signet of the hunt or agility training. Even with those two competent people outside necros and warriors will kite your pet most of the time, and if you don’t have either of those you might as well stow your pet because it will never hit a good opponent that knows how to move.

I mean, what other ranger build can you run traitwise besides trapper? All those traits are standard. You have some variation in either offhand training and shared anguish, or 33% extra regen duration or 5 sec prot upon taking damage greater than 10% of your HP, or between vigor from raven or bleed trait for jaguar.

But the trait allocation is pretty much standard as far as it goes for a BM bunker build.

Serpent Strike’s damage is low regardless of build….analogies are not your strong suit.

Your autoattack with mainhand sword is stupidly easy to kite, and if you’re talking shortbow please get off the pot, I’ve ran even a knight’s version of the ranger with spikier damage and a power shortbow won’t get close to scratching the classes that roam with the exception of thief.

Good for you that you come across idiots that let you spam your sword auto on them. My main damage is from my shortbow bleeds and with offhand training on a pet people don’t run out soon enough to get a tick.

You also don’t seem to know much apothecary builds if you’re burning your throw torch so early in the fight where opponents have dodges up, let alone from range. It’s on your sword set for a reason.

And TBH I’m kinda tired of taking your claims one by one as this comes from the same guy that says berserker is not good for ranger and just gave bad information on new gear just because you heard about it. If you don’t like what is said on this thread you are free to leave it.

jcbroe.4329:

Zenith.7301:

Puandro.3245:

Xsorus.2507:

Zenith.7301:

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Glad you said something, i would of never bothered with the Southsun thing, guess i know what i’ll be doing now.

I did it for the flower backpiece. Looks awesome on my ranger. Ascended backpiece doesnt have an infussion slot ive read. Cant confirm atm.

It has an infusion slot, as does the Fervid Censer (flower backpack).

BTW to those asking for weapon choices for apothecary, I much prefer shortbow over axe/offhand.

Axe has very poor sustained, while shortbow does much better sustain even without power, it hits more reliably, and it applies bleeds on its auto instead of relying to be point blank on someone;s face to land a splitblade. Shortbow also has extra bleeding from the crippling shot, then you still get poison if well timed, and the daze/stun is really great for denying heals.

In general most rangers in tpvp run shortbow due to the greater sustained damage of it and with good flanking you can keep 4-6 bleeding stacks up most of the time and occassionally burst for 9 bleeding stacks or 10.

Who are “most rangers?”

I’m just curious, I have only watched Battosai and Symbolic, and they’re both from the EU meta I believe. I haven’t watched Gasmask in awhile but I doubt he switched away from traps.
But most of the BM rangers I’ve come in contact with are running axe/torch and sword/dagger with offhand training, so I’m really curious if there is somebody I could observe (can’t really observe myself unless I record, and would want to watch higher tier footage than myself) running the shortbow.

Maybe Blu caught it on one of his streams, I’ll have to check since I’m behind.

Another guy you can follow.

Puandro.3245:

Xsorus.2507:

Zenith.7301:

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Glad you said something, i would of never bothered with the Southsun thing, guess i know what i’ll be doing now.

I did it for the flower backpiece. Looks awesome on my ranger. Ascended backpiece doesnt have an infussion slot ive read. Cant confirm atm.

It has an infusion slot, as does the Fervid Censer (flower backpack).

BTW to those asking for weapon choices for apothecary, I much prefer shortbow over axe/offhand.

Axe has very poor sustained, while shortbow does much better sustain even without power, it hits more reliably, and it applies bleeds on its auto instead of relying to be point blank on someone;s face to land a splitblade. Shortbow also has extra bleeding from the crippling shot, then you still get poison if well timed, and the daze/stun is really great for denying heals.

In general most rangers in tpvp run shortbow due to the greater sustained damage of it and with good flanking you can keep 4-6 bleeding stacks up most of the time and occassionally burst for 9 bleeding stacks or 10.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

Against heavy condition cleanse you will.

Not that your cleric is making you hit much harder. I don’t see your ricochets in cleric hitting for more than 300-400 on a bunker ele.

Good luck killing a guardian on a power build.

Power build does 120% more damage then Apothecary. Your 500 damage hits become 1,100 + im giving my pet might and crippling for it.

Bunker guard or Ele wont die to either ranger specs if they are good and if they are bad they will so i see no issue here.

Condi ranger easily debunkers any guardian, I don’t know what you’re talking about. A guardian has limited removal relative to the ele. And I would have killed the ele fine if my pet actually hit. When the ele tried to melee me and I stood still, his hp started dropping fairly fast.

Your power build is susceptible to dodges and classes that use vigor more than mine — dodging doesn’t negate condition damage already applied. Condition builds continue to damage when you’re being kited. Condition builds ignore the effect of toughness stacking, and many bunkers stack toughness at the expense of vitality. My damage can be spread across targets and my pressure doesn’t vanish the moment I switch targets. My build affords me a greater variety of offhand choices, whereas yours is stuck with warhorn as the only useful power based offhand with lengthy cd’s on both abilities and aoe on neither.

I can switch to shortbow/sword+torch and be as effective as I am with axe+dagger/sword+torch, whereas the same transition cannot be said of your build. Your axe would be even worse than it is on a condition build in sustained damage, and you can try greatsword if you want for what little good it will do you against any opponent that can kite/dodge maul (which is the majority of greatsword damage, since its auto is really bad even on berserker gear).

Aeri.5738:

So why exactly did you open this thread?
to complain or to get a solution?
you didn’t try anything and yet you still say we are wrong.

To point out pet uptime, troll. I’m not going to continue down this path with you so go bore someone else with the strawmans and see if they bite.

Against heavy condition cleanse you will.

Not that your cleric is making you hit much harder. I don’t see your ricochets in cleric hitting for more than 300-400 on a bunker ele.

Good luck killing a guardian on a power build.

solrik.6028:

Zenith.7301:

The first thing a designer will tell you is to give them your opinion, not play armchair designer and come up with “fixes” for them. Often what players suggest is what designers will dismiss and fix it their own way. So I don’t bother, and leave the fix up to them.

“Many ranger weapons also have horrendous sustained damage due to crappy autoattacks like ricochet or greatsword or longbow. A ricochet hitting for 197 damage when the opposing bunker ele is hitting for 700 lightning lashes two times for 1400 damage is just dumb. We don’t have the group utility of an ele or engineer or the burst both can have while even bunker so at the very least the sustained damage of our pet should have uptime on a target if our personal damage is to remain so miserable.”

Where are the numbers coming from? Where are the calculations that actually show this? Why are you dismissing the fact that richochet bounces and that Richochet has 900 range while the other only has 200 range?

Combat log, spvp. Bunker ele duels.

Without traps you ain’t kiting any ele worth his salt and he can pretty much cleanse cripples/chills/roots off him multiple times. So raising that range issue is moot. If you can easily have uptime on someone as a d/d ele the difference in range is pointless, because you can apply that attack under most circumstances (and especially as a bunker ele).

Lightning whip is 300 range btw. I’ll trade 197 ricochets on one bunker to 400 lightning whipsx2 (the auto hits twice) on another bunker.

The ele bunker works because he has various sources of damage, so even on a cleric or celestial amulet he’s got burning application and bleeds to pressure boon spammers.

The bunker ranger’s damage, whether condition or power, is centered on the pet, and when the pet can’t hit that moving ele with swiftness and his chill fields and auras and stun auras it’s a kitten problem.

Because your little cleric ranger sure as hell isn’t going to outdamage his self healing and pass through his protection and stability boons by itself. You need the pet’s damage.

Manekk.6981:

Pets should certainly be better at hitting moving targets no doubt about that but if your axe hits for 197 damage I assume you must run apothecary and should expect poor physical damage, if you find cleansing to be too much problem try a power spec instead I’ve been running a BM powerspec for a while now it works really well, this is for wvw but you can do the same thing with soldiers in spvp also although it’s not nearly as good there due to the lack of crit.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.3|5.1n.h19|c.1n.h19.8.1n.h4|1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7.1n.a7|211.d14.211.d1a.311.d1a.211.d1a.311.d1a.2s.d1a|0.a1.u34b.0.u57c|56.7|4j.4q.4o.4r.55|e

This can easily be modified for a regen build too if you like, it won’t have the strong regens of apothecary of course but you’ll do more damage I’m pretty sure, personally I like the extra boost on petcrits and higher critchance to be preferable, atleast in most cases.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.3|5.1n.h19|c.1n.h19.8.1n.h4|1n.71d.1n.71d.1n.71d.1n.71d.1n.71d.1n.71d|211.d14.211.d1a.311.d1a.211.d1a.311.d1a.2s.d1a|0.0.u48b.a3.u57c|56.7|4j.4q.4o.4r.55|e

You could also use greatsword if you prefer that I just like the extra evades and ability to apply poison with all weapons cause I find it helps alot against strong healers so I use shortbow and sword+dagger.

Power spec ranger is worthless. You don’t have the damage to cope against anyone who uses boons like guardians because you neither steal, rip, or get increased damage against boons like other classes.

solrik.6028:

The problem is that you complain, but do not suggest how it could be improved.

Imagine if you built a car for me and all I said about it was “It sucks” but you don’t know what should be improved……

The first thing a designer will tell you is to give them your opinion, not play armchair designer and come up with “fixes” for them. Often what players suggest is what designers will dismiss and fix it their own way. So I don’t bother, and leave the fix up to them.

With condi cleansing any class with swiftness can pretty much negate most of my damage as a ranger. I’ve had encounters with elementalists and engineers and mesmers and thieves, and at best the ranger has 3 snares, which many classes except for necro or warrior can routinely cleanse.

All they need is to move, and particularly elementalists will see whatever pet — wolf, jaguar, raven, completely unable to land attacks. They’ll constantly root themselves to attack and the target is long gone.

F2 skills should be cast on the move, and many animations like the raven casting group swiftness should not stop it from tracking its targets. Pets are substantial if not the greatest percentage amount of damage for rangers in many cases, so it’s maddening when they can’t have uptime on a target that is moving.

Many ranger weapons also have horrendous sustained damage due to crappy autoattacks like ricochet or greatsword or longbow. A ricochet hitting for 197 damage when the opposing bunker ele is hitting for 700 lightning lashes two times for 1400 damage is just dumb. We don’t have the group utility of an ele or engineer or the burst both can have while even bunker so at the very least the sustained damage of our pet should have uptime on a target if our personal damage is to remain so miserable.

I recently upgraded it to ascended since it’s the only existing apothecary stat ascended backpiece in the game.

Problem is that the Fervid Censer is much more attractive to me as a sylvari — but it’s a rare. And because the Sclerite Karka Shell is a once per account acquisition, it’s a unique skin I’d be destroying without way of acquiring it again.

Have you considered fractal capacitors with ascended apothecary stats? Those doing daily lv48 fractals would have more to spend fractal relics on.

I also wonder if it has been considered to look at WoW’s transmogrification model as an example. You would copy the skin with the stone, but no items would be destroyed, and the transmutation process could be reversed. It would not harm transmutation stone sales since you still need them for the process of changing skins, and since most unique skins are soulbund or consumables you couldn’t transmute and sell at TP.

I’d just love it if I could use my Fervid Censer with ascended apothecary stats…

Phantasm mesmer should be able to kill BM ranger.

Xsorus.2507:

Well played Trap Rangers absolutely kitten me now after the nerf to PI, I use to be able to basically kill them with that.. but I don’t have that anymore to burst… so a Trap Ranger will just gut me.

I just dueled an ele friend on d/d bunker.

Ran 30% speed bonus trait for pet (better than signet of the hunt’s 25%).

I used raven. I used dog. I used cat. Result was the same.

He moved, used auras, and my pet’s uptime on him was pretty much below 40%. It was so aggravating to know I was stuck in a stalemate because my garbage AI mechanic couldn’t properly attack while moving instead of rooting itself to attack.

The raven in particular was maddening because it will autocasts its group speed and that means it stops for a second doing the swooping animation where it’s casting and the ele is long gone.

And chill/cripples did absolutely nothing since he was running cantrips and condi removal (dueled him earlier on conditionmancer, it’s absolutely hopeless to keep conditions on that ele spec unless you’re an engineer with multiple condition types on low cd’s).

BTW Ricochet did 194 damage a pop to him. His regen boon outhealed ricochet’s damage.

The only time my pet hit him was when he came for me in fire/air attunement and I sat there in place and let him melee me while my pet hit him as he was standing still. Any other time and my pet was trailing behind like a mongoloid.

People complain about BM bunker ranger but without condi uptime (so classes like ele and cleanse thief and guardian) ALL your damage is the pet. So when the pet can be trivialized by just moving you’re left with the ranger’s horrid autoattack.

In a practical sense, the warrior will always outperform the thief and thor ele in any dungeon where adds are factored in, and where there is substantial AoE fields or dangerous anti melee mechanics that force repositioning.

The warrior’s design is self sustaining, whereas other classes need ideal circumstances to start competing with the warrior.

Warrior in pve is just absurd. Even if their damage is slightly lower than a thief, you have shout heals and condition clears, group fury, group might, vulnerability for a group, and group rez. You can throw in one banner that gives an absurd amount of stat bonus.

That amount bonus of two stats groupwide is just dumb utility to give a warrior. Especially the precision and critdmg banner, critdmg is among the most powerful stats in the game.

You can dodge through the spike trap so you don’t get rooted, and then you get out of fire and stealth reset, set up a backstab.

Trap rangers are VERY strong against bunkers, but they are rather weak against proper mesmer/thief burst.

You can get an apothecary ascended backpiece now. Do the 25 Southsun achievs and get the exotic version, and then in the mystic forge you use it+250 karka shells, 100 passion flowers, and 50 ectos.

Besides that, use laurels and guild commendations for ascended apothecary gear. There’s no point in getting ascended stat combos that you can get with exotics since the stat difference is not that big.

I just need 1 more week to have full ascended Apothecary.

Ricochet still does miserable damage. Garbage auto.

Both are crap in PvE dungeons and decent in pvp. Ranger’s better in pvp though than necro.

The necro is probably the worst off class in game in general, but ranger is worse in dungeons while necro is worse in pvp.

solrik.6028:

Would a triat “Becomes invisible after standing still for a short time. Any action breaks stealth” be too overpowered?

Yeah, because stealth itself is pretty OP.

For dungeons never take anything that’s not Berserker Power/Prec/Critdmg. You’re just hurting your team if you do. Condition builds are garbage in PvE.

For pvp it’s the opposite. Get rabid gear for trap ranger or apothecary gear for BM bunker. Power builds on ranger for pvp are garbage unless you’re running in a wvw zerg and are protected.

Puandro.3245:

Zenith.7301:

I love it in tpvp. It reduces the value of zerging someone down with spike when a sustained damage team can bring you down after and be better at getting the stomp that the other team.

In WvW it’s kinda even necessary in zerg fights, and for PvE several of the encounters are designed with the boss having the capacity to reliably down people (like Mossman at fractal 48).

Down state is fine in TPvP because its fought on points to take. Down state balance between classes is really bad. Glass cannons dealing too much damage while downed is also unbalanced. The rally system is also pure BS. For example you down their mesmer and ele, then your bunker guardian goes down trying to stomp. Mesmer #2 and Ele #2 will be avoided with a stomp while your guardian will get stomped with stability and now their 2 downed persons rally. Not only does this happens due to unbalanced down states between classes but the fact that they rally is dumb. Really downstate should only exist in TPvP and you should only be allowed to use #4 or suicide.

PvE downstate also is bad design. It makes berserker stats even more wanted because if someone goes down no need to use utilities to rez when you can just kill stuff and rally (unless its a boss). My toons wear full berserker for PvE its silly how good it is as long as you don’t suck which isnt hard to do. You should just straight up die and make people decide to bring rez utilities or play tankier.

WvW Downstate is the biggest culprit here. It makes bigger numbers have a bigger advantage than they already have. You down 4-5 of their guys but they get 1 of your guys and dps their body so fast due to greater numbers so you cant rez and their 4-5 people rally its so frustrating. The AoE limit on 5 enemies also doesn’t really help smaller numbers. Lastly nothing like doing a 1vX and somehow a mob adds, you down an enemy and go for an invul/stability stomp and the mob dies while they are trying to kill you with AoE and the guy rallies….. so frustrating.

Yeah, downed state skills have pretty shoddy balance. The necro one is the worst of them all, not only having bugged HP but it’s a single target fear with a long activation time.

As for stability stomp, I think that’s more an issue with stability being too good in its current state. Stability should work more like defiance where say it blocks 2 CC’s and then wears off. At the moment Stand Your Ground is one of the most absurd skills ingame.

I also think mesmer/ele/thief downed states are too good, or the other ones are too bad. Thief in particular just forces you to DPS his body because you won’t be stomping him for long.

As far as pve, just no. Rallying is a necessary feature like in fractal 48 grawl shaman or the mossman. Otherwise agony straight up kills you if it hits you in downed state because you can’t dodge it.

WvW zerging rewards is really messed up. At the current state it’s the most profitable thing to do in wvw. It yields the most bags and the most results. They should seriously implement more features like Siegerazer all across the map when people are getting outmanned by zergs.

Imagine like those bounty hunt champs that completely annihilate zergs (they become much harder the more upscaled they are) being put into WvW to dissuade zerging. Whenever a group greater than 20-25 people is around, the champs start to activate around the map or people get the option of summoning one to the area.

Xsorus.2507:

Zenith.7301:

I love it in tpvp. It reduces the value of zerging someone down with spike when a sustained damage team can bring you down after and be better at getting the stomp that the other team.

In WvW it’s kinda even necessary in zerg fights, and for PvE several of the encounters are designed with the boss having the capacity to reliably down people (like Mossman at fractal 48).

I’m sure its fine for TPvP

I just don’t believe its fine for WVW, where you can fight while outnumbered and have some kitten get ressed cause some Rabbit died next to him.

Yeah I completely agree in wvw killing critters should not rez you, and you should not be able to cnd off them or gain any benefit from mobs around.

I love it in tpvp. It reduces the value of zerging someone down with spike when a sustained damage team can bring you down after and be better at getting the stomp that the other team.

In WvW it’s kinda even necessary in zerg fights, and for PvE several of the encounters are designed with the boss having the capacity to reliably down people (like Mossman at fractal 48).