Guild Wars 2

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Prysin.8542:

The meta is not an answer, it is what the masses claim to be the truth regardless of the facts at hand.

Do we live in a dictatorship? Last time i checked, we had a democracy. Democracy means, simply put, power to the masses. So if the masses decide that the ranger is too weak, they may be not that far off track as you may think.

The masses meaning who exactly? Tons of rangers complain that they are struggling with the profession, granted because it’s freaking hard to climb the ranger ladder. I can see why a lot of other professions see that as a weakness in general, when classifying professions. But is this weakness directly related to the ranger as a profession, or more so due to the inability of players behind the ranger to play the profession correctly? Could it be that, due to the inherent mechanics in other professions, players behind those professions have it even slightly easier in reaching the standard of success in their gameplay? I like to believe that this is true, not by a large margin, but by a margin that stands out enough specifically for people who can’t deal with the mechanics of the ranger and maintain that ‘standard’ everyone is looking for.

Let’s also forget that historically, we’ve been on the lower end of ‘developer love’.

To follow up on the above, I think each and every one of us rangers want to be pew pew from max range, it’s just ideal and it feels right. But in a dungeon, or in pvp or in wvw you can’t just depend on that strategy. Want an example? Given that this is a game based on fantasy, all you bear bow rangers go watch any Lord of the Rings movies and check out what happens to the archers who like to pew pew and don’t know how to jump into the fray like a ninja, giving their allies excellent backup in hand to hand combat + ranged support.

Fluffball.8307:

Ragnar.3916:

snip

Well there’s your problem. Pure spirits were obsolete long before the latest patch. I run a regen spirit build which has permanent AoE swiftness and permanent AoE regen. As a pure spirit ranger, ya you die to pretty much everything 1v1. As a regen spirit ranger, you don’t to anything ever. Very solid team support or home defender.

Like I said, whatever the meta changes to, a regen spirit ranger is a very solid build.

Not sure where you got low mobility on rangers either, swords + AoE swiftness are very good for the minimal distances you travel.

You mean as long as you’re not soloing as you defend right? Because I have fully downed many – a – regen spirit ranger on 1 vs 1, not an easy feat but from a ranger’s perspective things are more manageable I suppose.

Prysin.8542:

Just goes to show how even the top players does not bother to explore the class

It looks to me like the build choices were things that they agreed upon as a team, then again the player skill comes into account. The thieves were far too free to roam between points without having someone being able to stop them by themselves, something a duel built ranger could have accomplished. Also most of the action that occurred in the matches never found the ranger as a spot light, so it’s hard to judge their skill.

There are rangers who center their yolo burst burst or their about to die here we go tactics around canines. That’s for sure a (maybe more) over 3/4 times successful strategy. But there are players out there who understand ranger rotations quite well, especially when they push you into a corner or when you give signs of doing a burst attack; they will pay more attention to the canine who just got spawned to save your butt than your pew pew action, so they will avoid whatever they and you attempt to do to drag them into a corner. I tend to switch the pace off their strategy by playing the ‘oh no, I made a mistake come at me and waste your burst’ strategy (mainly dodges and a nice crimson red bonfire on their feet) before turning a switch back into the canine pounce of death that we all know about and know how to exploit.

I personally cannot judge these teams based on their ranger alone, it seems like their own decision making was not on par and that’s why they lost. Looking at each of the builds all I see are skilled rangers doing what they can to properly synergize with the rest of the team’s teamwork. I personally see a ranger’s role quite defined: team up with 1 other friendly, coordinate your strategies using a duelist build for the ranger, and bring down opponents while your teammates focus on the holding points aspect of the match. I often switch to a heavy condi-damage bunker build and go on 2 or 3 vs 1 in front of the enemy spawn just to hold them off for a good 30 seconds (minimum) so that my team gets a quick upper hand on the rest of the map.

Granted, these are the top teams out there so they have clear and defined strategies, but it’s the trump card, the ‘we predict they will do this so we will counter with that and gain the upper hand’ kind of strategies that win matches. For example in the final match between TDI and 55HP, TDI kept on sending friendlies to a pointless capture the middle match with their mesmer, while they could have morphed that function into ‘while my portal is down, me and x dude will cap their mansion’. Strategy wins matches, even with the kittentiest rangers you could find on your team.

This build is flawed, if you are really #1 as you say you are, it must be on cheerleading alone

@OP: granted that this is more ranger oriented than your warrior setup, it is definitely a more stable build than the one you currently are proposing:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAsfVnMqQvgWLIWsAVLGAToaPAdaA86GcfBLwEfyieQL-TViAABdq+jHPAAAOBANqE8Q9Nlp8bp9H64QAsxRAIAACwMLzycmBG6QH6QH6QboDdoDdoDtMAMrB-w
I would modify based on the above, since it is more optimal in terms of what your build should center itself upon: survival with active regeneration and strong condition damage output. Take it to PvP and give it a go before you go make all the expensive ascended stuff and not end up liking it.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

awge.3852:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

MuchWaffle.2579:

Probably meta-trash anyway, as such they’re as only good as whatever flavor-of-the-month builds they’re running. In short don’t expect much from them should those exploits ever get patched.

^ You can’t be serious.

To OP – Range in dungeons is bad, most rangers use bows, thus they are bad and get kicked. If most of these people playing ranger and responding in your thread weren’t pure trash, there wouldn’t be any hate towards the whole class.

Ok you can’t be serious here, how does using a bow make you a bad ranger exactly, go ahead and explain. Let me make it simple for you, if a ranger sucks its because the player behind the ranger sucks. The class as it stands is as good as any in GW2, each one providing different strengths to group play. It’s as simple as asking your buddy to play ranger for the first time while asking a veteran ranger to join your group… watch the difference.

I never said ranger is a bad pick for dungeons, it’s actually a nice addition, if it runs one special build. Which is not bow.
I’ll ask a buddy to run ranger even if it’s his 1st time because he at least won’t use a bow or some bad build (bad = not suited for dungeons).

You can’t hide behind ‘player skills’ when it comes to meta. Either you run Sword/WH + GS with Frost Spirit and Spotter or you do not run dungeons (you get kicked). The segregation we witness is due to people playing garbage builds. The same way as Engineers and Necros. There is no trust when you see a ranger, most of the time he’ll use a garbage build in dungeons because he is entitled to play how he wants, too bad it’s a team content, he can’t play how he wants.

To above : Rangers are kicked because they run terrible builds. The class has one viable build for dungeons, it’s the least ran one.

Given the fact that ranger is the hardest profession to play correctly, I can see your point. However why do you dismiss other builds that are successful in dungeon runs, even when using longbow or shortbow? Most dungeon runners will agree with the fact that not every dungeon instance can be melee’d or can be ranged and vice versa, in other words, you can’t just stack kill everything in every dungeon. The fact is that a good player will be prepared for the dungeon that they will go to, they will swap their gear and build to best suit the situation. So yes I have never run Sword/WH + GS with Frost Spirit and Spotter in any dungeon run… ever and still the dungeon is ran quickly and smoothly every time I go, unless an issue arises with other players. See the problem happens when you pug a dungeon.

Expecting people to be condescending during pugs is highly unlikely. If it’s a new player then sure they will screw up, or a player with some kind of condition that they can’t think on their feet. Otherwise, I expect players to gear up and trait properly for the task at hand and that goes for any profession. I don’t go asking… hey dude, put on this hat and good luck! I don’t know you but you best hope you know how to deal with it or I’m gonna cut you into pieces with the magic of ‘kick from party’ because I have no patience unless you do it right the first time! and let’s make a forum post about it because your profession sucks, not you who is sitting behind the other monitor making mistakes.

If everyone who did a dungeon run took the time to teach the player how to do the dungeon right ONCE we would have less and less people complaining. Forget rangers, this goes for all people who can’t do a dungeon run properly, kick them from the party and continue to do nothing to improve the problem. In the meantime I will do what I can to teach other rangers how to do it right.

So to the tldr people? Yes, expect to be kicked if you don’t know what you are doing. Being kicked for being a ranger and not running a specific build is downright ignorant. If you get nicely asked to run a certain build, ask for the details, leave the party and come back to the dungeon run when you understand why that build is good and why people are asking for it, can’t hurt to try new things.

Hello there mate, one thing you need to be aware is that both the builds that you describe have a high skill cap, so practice will make master. PvP will be your friend in this aspect, it surely will be something you can translate into WvW.

PvP build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjEq0xaLLmsQ1aABhaVA0uGS2u2d+eDfdBbqA-TphAwAeOCAL3fgcZAAHEgOXAgNPAAA

In PvP, a bunker condition ranger has many different applications. I personally run this build, but feel free to listen to other comments and modify it as you like. So far its quite successful for me, but don’t forget about that high skill cap. For this build, consider your Wilderness Survival grand master trait to be a personal choice between Poison Master and Bark Skin. I like Bark Skin more, however it doesn’t hurt to try Poison Master. I am sure you can see the benefit of surviving longer vs dealing more damage, they are quite interchangeable and you can play around with either depending on your enemies.

In WvW it’s just as you said, Power damage will conquer in large zerg play. However the only thing is that wielding longbow does make you quite vulnerable in certain situations, especially the melee combat kind. Be aware that the following build, while quite efficient, is certainly not optimal as a pure and optimal build for rangers in WvW does not exist. You will have to be the judge of what works best for you and how to apply yourself. The positive? It’s strong and it serves a purpose. Also you can take the above pvp build into WvW with the right gear, trinkets and food:

WvW ultimate skirmisher (roaming version):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAT8YnEqQLLWLIWsAXLIAQoWFAtrh9NGYmvZgrookPVB-T1DFABFcEAY4ACcoaHI8AEWSZmSKNaT3wkqgAwFAoQVB2Z/hEOABLcwAUTDjgKBJDg5EA-w

WvW ultimate skirmisher (long range version): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRnEqQLLWLIWsAXLGoPoWfAJQA0eHC4bg1/exTVNB-T1DEABJcIAg4ACsoaHM8EEeSJWc6CuUFkEVF4n9HkS5BAXAgGOABPcgAcTDjhKBJDg5EA-w

WvW bunker sniper: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjEq0xaLLmsw1agAha9AEAbdrbw9TsvhdJfqC-TFDEABaq+DEHQAGOCCPp8bp9HWRXgEXAAAeAAPcoAa4AEYoSQ30wQIAWLAA-w

WvW power signet bunker: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjEq0ya/KOsw1aA/AZdjALa3LWNXVL4TF-TlCHwAEOgAAOACy1BMU53v9HEp+zgDEQgDQgelgi1wQIAWLAA-w

WvW roaming shouts: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fnEqQvgWLIWsAVLGAToanAdaA86Gc3sLwEXynqA-T1hLwAb1IkT53n9HUoLAgGmMq/EWJIhAQuGA-w

WvW roaming signet conditions: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjEq0ya/KOsQ1aABhadAUADQ7aIZbhXfRJfqC-T1iAABecEASUHAAHEAc0Ms0+Dsoh5I1fkUJoYK/24BA0xFAgMAMjB-w

There are plenty more builds to come up with, but the ones above should provide a decent starting point on ‘what I think I like’. Remember that ranger is the hardest profession to master, so be open minded, have fun and keep your skills sharp by going to PvP.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

MuchWaffle.2579:

Probably meta-trash anyway, as such they’re as only good as whatever flavor-of-the-month builds they’re running. In short don’t expect much from them should those exploits ever get patched.

^ You can’t be serious.

To OP – Range in dungeons is bad, most rangers use bows, thus they are bad and get kicked. If most of these people playing ranger and responding in your thread weren’t pure trash, there wouldn’t be any hate towards the whole class.

Ok you can’t be serious here, how does using a bow make you a bad ranger exactly, go ahead and explain. Let me make it simple for you, if a ranger sucks its because the player behind the ranger sucks. The class as it stands is as good as any in GW2, each one providing different strengths to group play. It’s as simple as asking your buddy to play ranger for the first time while asking a veteran ranger to join your group… watch the difference.

This would have been fun before they fixed the bug that pets could run up walls in wvw. I remember running a build just for my pet, send it up the wall and kill people there who were unaware of what was happening.

Belzebu.3912:

Now lets see how many of them will keep playing rangers after level 80.

That bell curve effect…

In terms of WvW, I believe that as long as you play your ranger well and manage to show that yes you are contributing to your guild/party/commander then you won’t have to wish you could wield a hammer or that boons and heals poured out from your sweat.

In my experience rangers are very well suited for roaming in the open field ahead of the commander zerg. Nothing attracts more attention than a lone ranger, you can lure a pack of enemies to you and make sure you tag them (longbow 5) so that they cannot port, have your zerg (10 or so seconds behind you) come in for the kill. You can spot enemy zergs and break their flow of combat (and their aegis!) by a simple muddy terrain, wolf fear, entangle, spot the commander and use longbow 4 on their face, preferably in the direction that your thief friendlies daggers are pointed to.

That’s just scratching the surface, however if you focus on not providing things a guardian or a warrior or a thief or a mesmer or an engineer or a necromancer already does… then you are definitely not thinking outside the box here. Let the players who enjoy those professions be the ones who have to mindlessly follow a commander and do their every whim. As a ranger feel happy that you’re free of the burden of being ordered around and do something outside the box if you want to contribute.

Can you feel it?

Brush that experience off your shoulders like it never happened mate. If you think about it you have every reason to kick whoever you want. I personally dislike warriors in dungeon runs because a good number of them like to yolo 100 blades and die in 5 seconds.

kiwituatara.6053:

Prysin.8542:

the truth isn’t necessarily sugar coated and nice. It is what it is.

If you suck at something, and blatantly fail to admit so. I will tell you to L2P. Because you need to L2P. I will not pat you on the back and wish you good luck the next time you get into the same situation.
Being spoiled and told not to worry but reroll warrior is also not helping.
Saying anything rangers can do, others do better is equally moronic, and ignorant. The trolls who do so, have limited knowledge of rangers in the first place.

I don’t think anyones said to “reroll warrior” ever since the April patch, nor anything along those lines.

You can explain your reasonings without slapping on the labels. Calling others “trolls” because they have a different point of view is distasteful and condescending.

Not to mention that rolling warrior solves nothing, in fact playing as a warrior is very different than playing ranger and there are many people who do it wrong as well. Besides defeating a warrior as a ranger requires no small miracle, just practice. In the end its up to you to like a profession or to dislike it, but that is wrong is pushing the point of argument. Why not focus on the OP instead of pushing an argument that takes away from the main point?

Prysin.8542:

awge.3852:

ranger has thankfully improved largely due to the community better understanding the profession;

Since when?
There is 6-7 of us trying to better the profession and make people see the good points, then there is a few hundred trying to undermine what we try to build by being trolls, kneejerks, kittens and other forms of kittens.

Then there is the warrior fanboys that think unless its name starts with warrior and ends with warrior, then it sux from the get go and will never be good.

Then there is a huge pile of “dreamers” that have no intention in playing the class properly, but instead just whines about ONE TINY ASPECT of a description made probably a year prior to launch not being correct 2-3 years later.

There is no community. It is just a collective soup of negativity and trolls.

I agree that there is still a large amount of people who just love to go out thee and troll, however you can’t just point out negativity and say that people don’t make a valid point. Especially if you’re struggling with an aspect of the ranger, negativity can be constructive but only when people criticize in a constructive manner, which is what I try to do when I find posts like this one. Despite all that negative influence and warrior trolls and ‘dreamers’, you can definitely find constructive feedback on many aspects of ranger play and that’s no hypothesis. The only way I was able to improve my ranger play was through reading both negative and positive posts, kicking trolls out of my eye sight and honing onto what I could. Reading new builds, trying them out, etc. Besides you cannot deny that the ranger community itself has improved from what it was 6 months after launch, where all you found was ranger hate, lack of understanding, even the so called pros where dumbfounded by the profession going downhill in so many ways. Time has passed and yes you can ask in the ranger forums for help and people will help… now expect trolls and dreamers and warrior lovers to come along and trash on the OP, heck yes.

So to you who likes the tldr: Avoid trolls, avoid negative feedback, avoid things that take away from the OP and are not constructive, focus on what helps you. There is a lot of ranger community support but it’s not always received in every post and its certainly not consistent at all.

@OP: the thing about rangers shooting enemies from far away and killing them before they reach you is that, despite what it looks like, you’re dealing with people who are quite likely to be skill enough not to be killed from a distance. Indeed you should be able to land quite a lot of pain from a distance before they make it to you, but the fact is that you wont have a choice but to deal with them once they reach you, and they will.

Now back to topic, ranger has thankfully improved largely due to the community better understanding the profession; it has always been the most difficult one to master. You can easily grab a build that will serve as a ‘solid ranged approach’ build, but do keep in mind that this ranged approach can only do so much, once melee combat initiates you need to use ranger’s evade-and-destroy mechanic in order to rotate back into melee damage.

If you really want to know how to use your ranger in a ranged way, it takes a lot of skill but it’s doable. I can definitely show you my techniques but it’s all up to you and your skill to do what you can to come on top of every situation. There is quite a lot of risk involved in playing a ranger, but the reward of doing it right make the game and game play quite enjoyable for me.

What I’ve also seen that’s an interesting build (used by other rangers, haven’t had time to test it myself) is the 0/6/2/6/0, with axe/torch, sword/dagger, using SoTF and the rest in Nature magic toward spirits unbound; as well as a trapper build on skirmishing. As far as I could tell it works quite well for hard point control as long as you’re skilled.

The truth is that in many PvP maps RtW does help due to a few factors:
1. You are aware that you need ally support to properly engage with longbow.
2. In many PvP maps you can definitely find spots to snipe from that can take advantage of the terrain, meaning you are covering close to or around 180 degrees with your range of view. From this vantage point you are vulnerable to a melee class who wants to hone in on you, however if you position yourself outside the capture point, more likely than not the enemy will fight your ally who is at the capture point.
3. RtW is useful because of the motion that occurs while you try to snipe, in which you can not say that all 100% of your shots will hit, especially if you use long range to maintain a viable vantage point and your enemies are moving all over the place (retreating or engaging).

Knowing that I can reliably hit enemies from long range truly made a difference in my book. Otherwise you have to rely on real life experience, where you know your shots can miss, therefore the best time to engage an enemy who keeps on moving is only when they are the ones engaging into combat; during the retreat phases you will likely lose DPS due to their movement.

Not to mention this build does well against all the condition damage you get, the only drawback is in healing power… you have to watch your lifeline carefully despite having near 3k armor and near 20k health.

I’ve been trying it like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNBjYDbkQlOWbZxkFqWDArH71HAtCc6eganAcxKnMB-TkAigUB5CyEkMIbQjOWfsBB

Marksmanship grand master: Read the Wind
Nature magic grand master: Survival of the fittest
Second sigil on longbow: superior sigil of intelligence
Trinket: Cavalier’s, but if you can’t afford that then go with Valkyrie.
I am not sure if they care what gear you use in PvP nowadays, but I am using Knight’s (Toughness Power Precision ).

Naturally the above posted link doesn’t do justice to the actual numbers (attack is at least 3K and crit chance is 38%), perhaps once they update the website it will make more sense, moving on….

I am quite surprised how much support you can provide to the group, granted that you think as a ‘sniper’ when you have the longbow at hand, and properly place yourself in a location to provide those big numbers, stomp + heal + skill interrupt. Not to mention that you can beat the life our of someone on melee (unless you don’t kill them then run for your life, muddy terrain, entangle and lightning reflexes for the win!).

So why the extra range? positioning, positioning, positioning. I was able to provide support against further range and I could tell it made a difference, especially when enemies were on the run, I can’t tell you how many times I brought down an enemy thanks to the extra range and forward thinking positioning.

The only problem I have is that positioning is not always optimal, especially if you are stuck with the longbow on weapon-swap cooldown, and all the enemies want to kill you and you alone. Tips? If you get good positioning, use Call of the Wild, jungle stalker F2 ability and begin by choosing the enemy who is most likely to get plumetted by you and target them. If the enemy you chose is a necromancer, unless they are solo, do not target them, with that double health pool they have you will likely have to deal a lot of damage to bring them down, save your burst for someone who deserves it. Also, why entangle? Why not, its a very decent crowd control option when you’re pugging it and not dealing with ‘been there done that’ pros.

Is your goal more oriented towards killing enemies as a one man army, or towards killing enemies in a more team-oriented way? The question is in regards to your elite skill choice. I am fond of entangle and rampage as one, but I find that entangle is useful when your allies know you’re going to pop it, its a great way to open up on a group of enemies and hone down on at least 2 of them very quickly. Rampage as one I like to use when I am defending a point, that stability helps.

Not sure if trolling or not, submit your pictures of utter defeat to the bear bows please.

I think this trait can be used the right way when you’re in a group that understands you’re the spotter, basically the enemy you’re onto is the enemy they need to kill. For example you keep a thief or two in your party, then a warrior and guardian for melee enemies. Using a high DPS + crit damage build you can bring down most foe’s health down to 50% from a good enough distance. Using predator’s instinct you can force cripple on them, adding superior sigil of hobbling for added cripple duration, as well as superior sigil of doom to hinder their health regen (using Poison Master trait), you could easily become the ‘this guy is going down put an end to him’ spotter for your team. Plus with constant crippling going the enemy’s way you help to pin them down for your team by accurately hitting them with Read the Wind.

Just an idea, would like to read some thoughts.

I just wished that we had more options to hone into what the GM trait is all about,. In WvW, when you realize that yes I am hitting that guy from this far away and it’s accurate and wow I am not missing at all, you just want to do all you can to maximize your DPS. That’s the problem because ranger zerker is too big of a drop in survival for me. I want to be able to hit hard without being overtly squishy and this trait only adds to the zerker factor without contributing to the survival factor. I however wished that the poison master trait would give my first hit (like opening strike) a poison damage. I get that it is useful when your pet is onto your enemy, but the fact is that in large scale WvW that’s entirely up to the pet surviving the zerg’s damage or not, it can be quite a waste under non-roaming terms. Other than that, poison master is a great thing to try to do before you think an enemy will try to heal, that reduced healing factor effectiveness is pretty strong.

I get it MuchWaffle, but the bias is something that will take longer to dissapear. I think that, for now the best thing that can be done, is to grow the community itself in a positive and constructive manner. Find rangers who have free time to play within different time zones (I think there are 3 in general), who are experienced and want to run events in the guild. 24 hours / 3 = 8 hours a piece, you can make it so that every 8 hours events regarding PvP, WvW, PvE are done by people who are consistently active during those times. With such a big ranger community, in the long run it shouldn’t be too difficult to find volunteers for this purpose. The events should be scheduled daily even if people won’t do them, but they will begin to slowly but surely until it becomes a near daily basis thing.

I like Winds and I am a member there, but the main problem I find is that nothing happens when I am online and no one is repping. The guild has been running for some time now so I’d expect a little more from it. When I log in and I don’t want to roam with the people I know in game in other guilds, I want to play with rangers. Be it in WvW or in PvE or in PvP, but it’s hard to do that with how things are now. So I think a structure should be set, so that goals can be accomplished by the ranger community. If you really are interested (as you say above) in the future of rangers as a profession, a well structured guild should be your first step; think of how the [TTS] guild organized so well server wide when the Tequatl event came out, you could almost always log in at a specific push time and the guild would be running acccross in multiple servers, across the 10+ expansions of the guild, across most overflows.

Pyriall.1683:

Add to the suggestion, signet of the beastmaster needs to be made baseline. It’s poor design that the ranger is the only profession who has to invest 30 points into a tree in order to be given the “choice” of active/passive signet use that other professions get baseline. Make SotB enhance signets like Written in Stone for elementalists.

One of the biggest things hindering rangers, not only are our pets a pain to deal with (yes it takes a painful amount of time to master using your pet) but when you do use them right, a lot of the things you can do with it are in the name of killing the pet. We could have a good modification of trait and skills where the pet contributes without having to be sacrificed in the process.

Spectrals.4682:

I have a regen ranger to solo bosses and such:
ok so im rolling
0
0
10
30
30

my healing power is 550 and my armor is PPC. I want my ranger to do damage over time with conditons and such but be able to solo PVE type enemies like in fractals or dungeons.

What sort of trinkets should i go for? Vitality for extra health? More Healing power? More power for more damage?

and should I not being running precision at all?

For dungeons a Regen build will not benefit you as a ranger, it may be fun but you’re doing it wrong. First let me suggest that you go with your favourite power-toughness build in dungeons as your contribution will be higher. Cavalier focusing on power damage is pretty neat and beefy enough that you won’t die easily.

Now going back to the regen build, generally speaking the trait distribution goes like this:
0/0/30/30/10 with full apothecary gear, for maximum condition damage, healing power and toughness. The build’s efficiency is maximized in WvW roaming play, but whatever you can go anywhere with it, its pretty solid.

What you’re doing wrong is mixing the regen build with beast master build, which is interesting but it won’t do you good in dungeon runs as much as a power build would.

I personally run conditions in dungeons, but I have also noticed that it’s more necessary to do power based damage since it’s the #1 deciding factor for a quicker victory in dungeon runs. There will be boss fights where having condition damage will give you the edge over power damage (and save your life too), but that is still not the majority of the cases, so you will eventually want to invest time in preparing a power based build that suits you (anyone cheering for today’s new build YES life just got easier).

If you still like condition damage you might want to go for trapper, its very useful in dungeon runs and it gives the most all rounded performance, but beware of condition damage!

I think we should have traps that allow us to use more varied effects. You could have blast traps that would do things like apply confusion damage and daze 5 enemies in a 350 radius of it. Or a putrid trap that would create blindness and poison enemies at the same time OR cause vulnerability and weakness at the same time? (did we not learn anything from Orr). If you want to go more ‘nature’ oriented, then how about a spider web trap that would fear enemies and remove an boons on them?

You already have to sacrifice a lot to be a trapper (especially condition removal) so why not give people more options?

MercilessLemurs.7459:

I think I five man squad of any sort (of only rangers) can’t work. You have no AoE hard cc and your damage bombs on an enemy group would be pitiful.

I wonder how the enemy would deal with 5 rangers who continue to rotate between muddy terrain (traited) and continued to roll regen, hard condition damage, melee evasiveness, pet fear rolling and croud control skills. While a 5 man warrior – guardian – mesmer – thief – engineer is a strong setup, each will sacrifice something in their build in order to contribute to group play. Rangers on the other hand can draw strength from different builds while maximizing their total contribution. Now I am not saying that this is a deciding winning factor, my point is that it would be a little difficult to predict because you’d be dealing with a lot of variables which depend entirely on how well the team can play.

The problem is getting rangers that are skilled to roam with, I am not saying that you’d need to seek out the 0.1% of the best rangers out there, but there are a lot of rangers who are just not skilled in the art of ‘not getting face planted by thieves everywhere they go’. Also I know that the best setup of rangers will come from a balanced mix of various ranger strengths, which is great because not all rangers can play the variations flawlessly. I would gladly join a 5 man ranger team so send me a message in game.

Ranger:
PvP: Spirit bunker, boon bunker, high dps melee bunker, condition beastmaster, condition signet bunker, trapper condition bunker
WvW: all of the above plus full zerk, celestial, and about 20+ condition bunker variations.
PvE: Cavalier DPS and all of the above

Which ones are truly viable? (highly debatable but here we go)
PvE: no problems with most builds except maybe spirits.
PvP: spirits, high dps melee bunker, trapper condition bunker
WvW: condition bunker, regen bunker, high dps signet bunker and condition signet bunker.

Fluffball.8307:

Your trapper ranger isn’t using a single trap.

I forgot to update the trapper with the new link, thanks for pointing it out, it’s now updated.

Well this is fun, I would love to try it out if I can get 4 other people in SoS to join me. We should also do this via a rangers-only guild, that way we are truly representing rangers.

Feel free to comment the below setup, I could use opinions on all:

1 and 2. Signet survivalist – high dps ranged
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNBjYDbkQlOW7XxhFuWDArHEG4gtHayJmuCoexKnMB-zkCBofJDzBA3JyEEAUGQkIwpPFRjtAvIas6aYKXER1ECg1CA-w

3. Melee survivalist – high dps melee
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMUQNAsXRnEqQtg2vCOsAXLGIaPyk5PP7B/V0icFQ1FfcyE-zkCBofJDzRQkgAkWGiEBI3sIasFXFRjVXDT5KoqYKyECo8CA-w

4. Trapper Boon ranger – hybrid
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQRAsf3YnMqQvg2uCmrAVLGQaF4E2DFxReE3jRpTCxS+0DA-zECBofJDTMyIOBk8AIPqIasVTFRjVPjIqWfEjQATWDA-w

5. Boon ranger – condition bunker
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQRAsf3YnMqQvg2vCWsAVLGQaP0EzDTeFmF3jRpTCxC+UB-z0CBofJDTMyIOBk8Ag+AkABiCBOPqIasVTFRjVPjIqWfEjQASXDA-w

Shoot me an invite mate, I’m quite experienced in all areas of the game. Depending on the week I focus on PvP, WvW 5 man roaming, to PvE activities (this is all during my leisure time). Currently trying to make a 5 man wvw team of rangers only so I hope the guild helps.

I can and I intentionally go solo in WvW just to lure them out. With the benefits a conditions-signet ranger gets, it’s a fair fight no matter what type of thief you find, with the skill I’ve obtained I can almost always beat the ones I find. The only problem I have (and I am sure I am not alone here) is when the thief comes into the fight with 25 stacks of bloodlust, full guard stacks on them, food and oils… and good little me jumping into the fight not having any of that… that’s damage that is hard to mitigate by all means, especially if you’re getting critted+critical damage by the enemy. So while they will have an easier time trying to get me down and staying alive, I just have to work harder for it.

shadowpass.4236:

yeah, what psizone said, burning doesn’t stack haha, it won’t do 12k damage in 2 seconds, more like 1-2k every second. It would do 12k if someone stayed in the field for the entire duration, got the full burning duration, and let the entire thing tick away on them

There are ways to maximize the time someone stays in the bonfire, and if you can produce such situations more and more steadily then sure why not, ~12k damage of a fire field is pretty strong. Just to clarify, means of keeping someone in the fire field? entangle coupled by concussion shot, hilt bash, canine #1 stomp, canine #2 stomp, canine fear while rooted, muddy terrain and add to that any friendly stuns that may come by. This can happen granted that you can pull it off, I find myself making it happen… 2/3 times at best and 1/4 times on my worst days but only against single targets, if multiple targets then they themselves must be struggling against entangle (novices?).

Tricare.2946:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y03hudKTyFI

If you’re condition, you will have to just wear them down and try to land all of your conditions when they are weak.

If I may… that was a good example on how to fight using a condition build (and boars for the regen/stuns), yet this goes for all rangers experienced and unexperienced: if you are running torch use bonfire wisely. That is one big bonus we rangers can use against thieves who depend on stealing for heals in order to survive a fight. Wait for them to approach (you can see that he always approached after using stealth), set a bonfire on the floor the moment he pops out of stealth. For better results make sure that you use a slow/cripple/stun/immobilize skill as well, this is to ensure they take as much fire damage as possible. Also in terms of bonfire use, it’s best to exploit it when you know the thief will do all they can to stay on top of you. Perhaps your health is starting to run pretty low, but you know you can avoid death, yet the thief may not expect you to come back from it, this is a perfect time to use bonfire since they will most likely risk it to get the kill.

Fluffball.8307:

I said “someone who doesn’t want you behind them.” Standing in place or running away if just giving the thief your back.

I played my thief in PvP a lot more than WvW though, I could definitely see some lost guardian just standing there wondering why the thief disappeared.

….with a staff on their hand

Prysin.8542:

guys, you don’t understand, it’s CHUCK NORRIS, asking. Chuck Norris needs no build. He’d just roundhouse kick any enemy. He has over 9000 power, toughness, vitality, condition damage, critical damage, precision, condition duration, boon duration and healing power without gear on.

That aside… there are a lot of choices for you to pick. Dungeons you should have two gears choices with the same trait build. One for those ‘I am going to rain hell on them’ and one for ‘this boss will while the floor if we are not careful’. I suggest 30/0/30/10/0, with cavalier gear all around, you may combine the trinkets with berserker…. but as a ranger you will need a little extra health (18K+ in my experience is safe) so valkyrie in my opinion should be good to mix with.

WvW…. power or conditions, your choice. Make sure your health is no less than 18K and keep your armor as close to 2500+ or you are easy pickings. They key here is critical damage boost, you can get a lot of fury and precision boosts by running in groups (did I mention you can just throw on Spotter on your trait line? yeah). Condition build is best suited for roaming, but you can modify it for regen/condition bunker to provide you allies with some shout boons.

PvP? That’s where you litteraly experiment with the above, so based on that fact, don’t go buying gear or making it without first making a solid PvP build that you know will work outside PvP. It will work because without the total benefits of outside PvP play, the build preforms positively.

That’s the short version for you, ask for specifics below…

Fluffball.8307:

RoyalPredator.9163:

Please Fluffy, stop trolling with DMG boosted screenshots…
You know what? 36k on 1 skill is what my TANK WARRIOR is capeable to do.
Not to mention how easy can it outrun any other class, mostly the rangers with that single “Swoop”.

It’s not worth to compare a twin-turbo Audi R8 engined WV Beetle to a Lamborghini, even if it seems to be competitive in the start of drag race…

How am I trolling? For starters it was funny, someone posted that a thief being able to kill him with 3 attacks needed to be nerfed, so I showed him a ranger killing someone in a single attack. Sure, we need to be nerfed. Thieves achieve that damage by going glass cannon.

So many people are whining that a character with 900 toughness and 10k health can’t be killed. It takes three autoattacks landing to kill a thief. THREE. AUTO. ATTACKS.

This really is a learn to play scenario.

It’s not rocket science, how does anyone expect to defend themselves against the potential for very high damage by wearing kitten see through panties for armor? It goes both ways.

JaNordy.6149:

Condi trap bunker owns thieves, well it owns pretty much everything due to how condi stats work right now. One of my favorites is full glass cannon LB, let thief get you to less than 5k health, pop signet of stone, unload on him as he spams HS, if he is about to stealth barrage. It produces much rage from thieves cause they think they had a sure win, often times you will get party invites after that.

I like to run ahead of a large group of allies or a zerg (ahead enough that the enemy doesn’t see them coming right away) straight into a bunch of thieves, the minute they see the solo ranger they all run like wild animals after me, using their utilities to close the gap and initiative. Pop that signet of stone, force them to start ganging up on me as they chase me around the corner of that wall over there….. and BAM 40+ allies pop out of nowhere… dead thieves everywhere. Party invite achievement unlocked.

Unlike critical damage, in which all you need to do is close your eyes and swing your weapon away, condition damage requires more dedication in combat. Moreover, there are multiple ways of negating condition damage, that is why in combat condition builds can be ‘worked around’. You can see it in zerg fights, a lot of the condition damage that occurs does not compare with critical damage. In fact, I have only seen conditions being done right when one too many are being applied non stop on top of critical damage. So nerfing condition damage? I don’t see why.

If you want to talk about things that make conditions OP then sure, but the same goes for everything else, so nerfing condition damage will only bring out issues with damage elsewhere.

Chrispy.5641:

The first thing you should never do is run away from a thief. The first thing you should always do is have your character facing the thief head on.

This right here, even if you know will die then what you will not do is die like a coward. How else are you going to learn to kill them?

One other note I will make regarding fighting a thief in WvW, have high armor, anywhere near 3000 will be a life saver. Also, let them steal the water field from you because it’s honestly pretty hard to counter the moment that they will decide to steal you (not impossible just hard). Save your block/evades for their burst. The second that they use the water field, walk away from the spot immediately while maintaining damage on the thief. Most thieves will drag you to fight them within the water field, so they will leap into the water field and heal/cure conditions mitigating all your effort. If you can keep a thief chasing after you as you fight, even if they reset the fight a million times, they will fall into your pace and this is key to beating them… as long as you don’t screw up.

urdriel.8496:

awge.3852:

3. Learn to use your pet…. period.

yeah,yeah,yeah, the old L2P issue…………………. it is epic when your pet stop each time the thief stealth.

how do you use your pet when the thief is in stealth???Because the f2 skill have a long cooldwon( if you are using CC pets)

It depends on the pet, if it’s not a canine you can just F3 the pet back to you while the thief is in stealth, but if your stowed pet is a canine, swap to it so you get the pet’s stomp, which will mitigate the thief’s burst.

In general you need to use your pet to your advantage, if the pet gives you a boon then use it while the thief is in stealth. If swapping pets gives you boons then do it while they are in stealth or as they come out of stealth.

Also while the thief is in stealth keep the pet by your side and make sure the thief doesn’t lure your pet far away from you only to shadow step by your side and kill you because you’re a bit overwhelmed with the situation or can’t swap pets.

One thing you should do is invest at least 10 in beast mastery for faster F2 usage (commanding voice I think it’s the name of the trait).

What to do against thieves overall? Do what I did:

Go into PvP 1 vs 1 arena with a thief friend, regardless of their skill level. Work your way to killing them, modify your build and gear as you deem it necessary. Use websites to build your character outside the game, so you don’t spend anytime in game looking for gear when you don’t know better. Put your ‘i think this works’ build in these forums so we can comment on your ideas. As you get better, challenge other thieves in the 1 vs 1 arena, until you feel strong enough, but do come back periodically to retest your skills and builds.

In my experience, I find that condition/toughness centered builds work best. There are certainly many variations in approach and I can share mine if you want, but it all will depend on your skill, your build can only take you so far as there are really skilled/experienced thief players out there.

Pro tip:
1. It’s essential for you to learn a thief’s approach, make a thief and practice with them in PvP, learn the flow of battle, or level them to 80 just for the single purpose of having fun.
2. Learn your ranger, we have a lot of (quite spreaded) survival options and damage options. When you have mastered your ranger, your weapon, utility and pet skills should flow as smoothly as an elementalist’s going through their elemental atonement rotation. The difference is that we can be more versatile since we have plenty of options, it’s just a matter of using them best the way that suits the situation AKA trashing the floor with that —- thief.
3. Learn to use your pet…. period.
4. Be open to losing, getting killed over and over by a thief until there is a permanent hole on your ranger’s back from all those backstabs, that’s how you will learn from your mistakes.

Race doesn’t really do anything to you other than offering different PvE story content, it directly affect the looks for your character and your racial skills, which in my opinion you will focus more on using your profession skills more than anything. The actual use of racial skills over profession skills is something that you end deciding over after you reach max level.

For example Asura players will tell you that having technowabble is a plus, Human players will praise the prayer skills they get, Charr’s batle roar is another consideration, sylvari’s grasping vines work really well in certain areas of the game, norn’s elite skills can be fun to use.

I suggest that for ranger that you go with your preferred looks, the racial skills won’t really make a difference in the end.

They would easily rethink ranger to have a more substantial role in WvW. When I think of ranger in WvW I think of thief and how thief can be used in group play. They have that venom share build which is quite awesome for group play, but when they’re not doing that they can feel free to do their thief job and target enemies on the outskirts of battle, without running a huge risk due to their stealth mechanics.

Now rangers should be able to cope in a similar way. In group play they could be provided with builds that both allow them to excel in group play while providing ranged support; while at the same time allowing them to jump into the current and strong roaming builds we already possess. So why do we need to get shafted? It seriously can’t be that hard for the devs to take a look at the rangers and say DEAL and come out with a more efficient way to be a ranger.

I can imagine being a very DPS~spirit ranger, using a skill or trait like ‘nature manipulation’ that granted me and 5 allies boons based on the spirit that I decided to absorb into myself, something related to burning damage or shocking damage etc… or perhaps a ranger who focused on defense via wilderness survival and granted allies certain defensive abilities or boosts when signets were used. Anything is possible, traps + the above spirit skill = enhanced trapping skills. Beast mastery specialization in which your pet can contribute to you in different ways if passive and active respectively, and that synergizes well with at least one major aspect of ranger play (signets already do, how about CC via skirmishing?)

Why can’t we get stuff like that, which is purposeful and not counter intuitive? I have no freaking clue.