Guild Wars 2

mistsim.2748:

i don’t see how crap like spotter and frost spirit matters when our bleeds will be doing +33% damage and there wont be a condi stack cap. we should be able to maintain a ton of bleeds, poison and burns permanently, in addition to our pets hitting much harder. 0/6/0/6/6 with Quickdraw, 3 traps, and full rabid or something. that’s what i’ll be running anyways.

Spotter and Frost Spirit boost the party’s power dps and are pretty much the only reason at the moment a ranger has at least a bit of a place in PvE groups.

Also Spotter is in the same trait slot as Hidden Barbs, so if you want Spotter you lose out on the +33% bleed damage.

Strategist.6132:

Okay let’s take a look at the facts:

About the dodge:
Rapid Fire lasts 2,5 seconds, while a dodge only takes 0.75 seconds, so even if you would use both dodges you would still not be able to fully come out undamaged.

Rapid Fire vs Kill Shot
- Rapid Fire and Kill Shot both have a cooldown of 8 when traited.

- Rapid Fire has a Skill Coefficient of 3.75
Kill Shot has a Skill Coefficient of 2.25/2.5/3.25 for each adrenaline level on Warrior. I never played Warrior, but I can imagine the adrenaline takes a little while to build up. (Shouldn’t be too long though)

- Movement Interrupts the Kill Shot, while Rapid Fire can be used while moving.

- Kill Shot has a 1.25 cast time, and only does one hit, Rapid Fire hits 10 times with a 2.5 channeled cast. Concluding from this:
-> Rapid Fire can hit faster since it doesn’t have a 1.25 cast time
-> Kill Shot is likely to deal more damage when traited with the 100% crit trait at full adrenaline.
-> Kill Shot is blindable, dodgeable, blockable, reflectable,
-> Rapid Fire is blockable and reflectable

I think Kill Shot is very strong too if I look at it on paper, but still I never see warriors running with a rifle. (Anyone knows why?) But builds without blocks or reflects are really screwed with Rapid Fire, while Kill Shot can be dodged or blinded and depends on Adrenaline.

If I miss some points please add them below, then I’ll add them to the post.

Sources:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dodge
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rapid_Fire
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kill_Shot

Warriors often don’t run Rifle in the current meta since LB is one of the best utility weapons out there and important for soft cc/condi cleanse/aoe pressure.

In real pvp matches longbow rangers aren’t much of an asset at the moment, because if your opponent knows what they’re doing that ranger is gonna get focused as soon as he tries to join the teamfight.
True, longbow rangers are pretty great when they can just sit back on, say, the ledge on Foefire, but in real matches you’ll have someone on you asap trying to force you into melee or retreat. And in real matches there are PLENTY of spots you can use line of sight.

RF & Longbow in general are overpowered against subpar or unaware players. The second you start fighting people who know what they’re doing a longbow ranger is more of a hinderance than an asset compared to other classes. That’s why you never see them in tournaments (it also lacks offensive utility like boonstrips, but that’s another story).

Puck.9612:

coax.2951:

Warrior Killshot also does around the same damage (even in one huge chunk, giving you an advantage over unaware enemies) on an 8 second cooldown and 1200 range, yet nobody is complaining about that one.

kitten my slow typing, you beat me by 2 min lol. But killshot is 1500 range, volley is 1200. Their ranged weapon gets 2 burst skills.

Ah right forgot killshot had longer range. Welp, an even better comparison then.

Vendetta.1958:

The fact that there is a skill that can be cast from 1500+ range away and fairly reliably deal 6-10k damage depending on your target IS NOT balance.

The fact that longbow can deal more upfront damage at 1500+ range than any of the ranger’s melee weaponsets can at 10 range IS NOT balance.

If you want to tell me I’m wrong, queue for PvP before you do, and replace your LB with either a GS or S/D, change your traits to suit, and tell me how your match went.

I feel disgusting just looking at the longbow in my inventory. How you guys can use it in PvP and think that it is ‘fine’ or takes skill to play is beyond me.

Warrior Killshot also does around the same damage (even in one huge chunk, giving you an advantage over unaware enemies) on an 8 second cooldown and 1200 range, yet nobody is complaining about that one.

If you can fairly reliable deal 6-10k damage to some dude, that guy is too lazy to dodge/evade/reflect/LOS/etc. Rapidfire has such an obvious animation and if you eat 1 or 2 arrows before dodging it really isn’t a problem since the arrows individually don’t deal that much damage.
If you fail against rapidfire, that’s an issue with you, not with rapidfire.

Also Longbow dealing more damage than a ranger’s melee sets is to be expected, since GS is a utility weapon with a burst skill, that’s about it. Not meant to be a dps weapon.
Sword autoattack actually does more dps in melee than longbow at max range, but is not usable in pvp since the animation locks keep you from dodging in time very often.

That is why full melee ranger currently isn’t really viable, not because longbow OP huehuehue.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

temporal curtain reflect

Mesmer.

Which is very hard to fight as a Power LB Ranger if they know what they are doing. If you are having trouble with Rangers, you need to use more reflect.

Luckily, Mesmers get a nice trait called Evasive Mirror which gives projectile reflect on dodge. Should level the field a bit more.

Elorna.5329:

Quarktastic.1027:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

2 x Ele
1 x PS
1 x SA Thief
1 x Frost Spotter with Axe OH

Meta.

Needs more guardian. New elite shout too OP.

Ye this is what has me worried, plus after chronomancer goes out with the f5 timewarp recharges, I seriously doubt ranger will see any play in the meta.

Nerf icebow, bring ele staff dps down to levels where it’s more beneficial for overall party dps to run a frost spotter instead of a second ele.

That’s the only scenario I can see for rangers in speedrun groups.
For your ordinary dungeon tour ranger will work just fine and you won’t face problems with pugs I guess.

You’ve been spamming the forums with your complaints all day long so far, in pretty much every thread. You’ve been given lots of advice and opinions so far, but you seem to ignore all of it.
Can’t you just stop already?

Bear with me, incoming theorycrafting. Since you asked for “pure condi builds” I went ahead and crunched numbers for a build using Rabid equipment with nightmare runes, since that is an easy set to calculate for. Sinister will do more damage, but I’ll leave that number crunching to someone else.

ASSUMPTIONS:
25 might
25 vuln
Warrior Strength Banner
Sigils: Malice (10% condi duration) & Bursting (6% condi damage)
Food: Pizza (70 Condi Dmg, 40% duration)
Utility: Toxic Sharpening Stones (100 Condi Damage, 10% Duration)

This gives us the following personal stats:
2463 Condition Damage
+75% Condition Duration

We are missing 30% condi duration from traits after the patch, so it’s worth speccing into that.

I tried starting with some kind of shortbow trapper, like Nike used for some of his sinister ranger solos, but found the following to be quite nice:

The Build

A/T x2
Yes, that’s right, we’re actually using the same weapons for both sets. This is to take advantage of the new Quickdraw trait. A/T produced bigger numbers for a pure condi build compared to Shortbow, if using sinister it’s probably the other way around.
Usage is simple, spam splitblade off cooldown, same for Throw Torch, use Bonfire every 10 seconds after weaponswap.

Important trait choices:
Ambidexterity (over Refined Toxins) seems to net larger numbers
Poison Master (Wohoo we found a use for it!)
Trapper’s Expertise (over Sharpened Edges, maybe sharpened edges procs often enough to warrant taking it over this, but I’m not going to use it for these simple calculations).
Quickdraw
Hidden Barbs over Spotter. But since this is supposed to be a group build, I’ll include the numbers with Spotter intead at the end.
For the last trait line you can basically take whatever you like, probably something that beefs up your pet or marksmanship with remorseless for vuln stacking.

I’m not gonna calculate rotations at the moment, just pure Stacks * Duration / Cooldown for an average number of stacks.

Bleeding

Splitblade: 5 Stacks of Bleeding for 10.5s → 8.75 Stacks
Spike Trap: 6 Stacks for 12.5s → 3.75 Stacks
Entangle: 5 Stacks for 14s → 1.167 Stacks

Total: 13.667
Total DPS at 297/Tick: 4059
Total DPS with Warrior Banner at 315/Tick: 4305

Poison

Viper’s Nest: 3 Stacks for 10s every pulse, 3 pulses → 5.625 Stacks

Total DPS at 240/Tick: 1350
Total DPS with Warrior Banner at 254/Tick: 1429

Burning

Flame Trap: 1 Stack for 5s per pulse, 3 pulses → 1.25 Stacks
Throw Torch: 2 Stacks for 10.5s → 1.75 Stacks
Bonfire (with Quickdraw, to maximise Damage, effective cooldown 10s): 1 Stack for 5.25s per pulse, 9 pulses → 4.725 Stacks

Total: 7.725
Total DPS at 544/Tick: 4202
Total DPS with Warrior Banner at 572/Tick: 4419

TOTAL
Overall Condition DPS: 9611
Overall DPS with Strength Banner: 10153
With 25 Vuln and Banner: 12692
With 25 Vuln, Banner, but Spotter instead of Hidden Barbs: 11346

NOTE: This number does NOT include pet damage or any kind of power based damage. A cat adds at least 1.5k dps to this, putting it at over 14k dps without and just under 13k with spotter. If you want to use Frost spirit, use it instead of Flame Trap, resulting dps is 10.5k alone and around 12k with the pet, ignoring power damage.

I do not have the exact numbers for a power build, but an S/F+LH ele pumps out around 14k dps fully buffed, just for comparison.

So yeah, there it is, have fun. This build is really far from optimal and sinister probably gives better numbers, but I’ll try to do that another day.

jcbroe.4329:

I’d say that at this point, since groups will still want Frost Spirit, the only way NM even has a shot is if Nature’s Vengeance is somehow amazing.

Other than that, BM has the more efficient opportunity cost (it honestly still will even if Vengeance is amazing from an individual standpoint).

Nature’s Vengeance could potentially be good if one of the spirits pulsed Fury every 3 seconds, combined with Remorseless we might get some decent vuln stacking going.

Thz.7569:

coax.2951:

The new Bark Skin should help a lot with those backstabs out of nowhere.
I feel like Wilderness Survival (for condi remove & general survivability) and Beastmastery (for the sheer amount of utility it offers) will be very popular in pvp, probably Skirmishing too. Nature Magic seems to be the odd one out, the only reason I see to take it is Protective Ward :/

Protective Ward is the only reason, so you aren’t wrong. As the game is now, even with the added 300 tough from going 6 wilderness (which I do for EB), I still melt against good thieves without much of a fighting chance. Thieves are getting even better with the next update and you can bet your kitten they’ll be rolling over zerk builds even more than they do already. My going NM route is seeing if it gives me the valuable time I need to recover and survive their barrage of engage and disengage. If I’m still around 40% when they’ve used up most of their CDs, I should be able to win. That’s my initial thinking anyway. It could end up being unnecessary and I’ll be able to toy around with BM or Quick Draw, but I doubt it.

True, good thieves ruin a power rangers day in a heartbeat and Protective Ward should help a lot with that. I’ll toy around with different builds once the patch hits, pretty much have to wait until we can test it in a real match to see what works and what doesn’t.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

You know, I see good things ahead for us. We were already good before, no matter what people thought or how they underestimated, but now, many more options and more utility. More burst damage and more support. More condition damage and more pet damage. More pet utility and sustain. All good things.

Same thoughts here, think ranger will just get more fun to play after the trait update.

The new Bark Skin should help a lot with those backstabs out of nowhere.
I feel like Wilderness Survival (for condi remove & general survivability) and Beastmastery (for the sheer amount of utility it offers) will be very popular in pvp, probably Skirmishing too. Nature Magic seems to be the odd one out, the only reason I see to take it is Protective Ward :/

So why don’t we brainstorm a little build database for everyone to try once the patch hits?

To start off, why not have a look at the currently popular builds and how they can be reimagined with the next patch (I’ll just go over the Traits and leave out equipment choices for now, most skill choices should be obvious, e.g. Lightning reflexes, Entangle, Troll Unguent):

Condi Survival~
S/T + A/D
Beastmastery is far superior to Nature Magic in my opinion. Beastly Warden is amazing. Blind and weakness on F2 combined with bird pets should be awesome as well.
Can’t quite decide wether to use Ambidextery or Refined Toxins, both sound like great traits, although high poison uptime should help against many classes.

Quick Draw will probably end up being my new favorite trait, it just gives you more of what you actually need. Quickdraw Bonfires for point defense should work out great.

EDIT:
Some quick napkin math concerning condition damage:
Assuming a pretty ordinary setup many people run, lets just take Rabid amulet with Krait runes for a quick calculation.
Bleeding Damage now: 113/tick
Bleeding Damage after patch: 173/tick
That’s roughly a 50% boost in bleeding damage, a simple Geomancy proc -> Splitblade combo should net 9 to 10 bleeds (depending on how often the bleed on crit trait procs) which works out to 1560-1730 damage per second. Pretty decent if you ask me.

Lets take a look at bonfire: Burning duration got increased from 1s to 3s, so you should be able to get at least 3 stacks of burning up. In addition to that, Throw Torch now inflicts 2 stacks of burning for 6 seconds
Burning Damage now: 680/tick
Burning Damage after patch: 350/stack
So, at 2 stacks, you will get a slight boost (700 compared to 680) per tick, at 3 or more stacks burning gets a massive dps boost. Neat.

Power Ranger, Offensive~
LB + GS
Primal Reflexes got a slight nerf, but it’s still worth running in my opinion. Might as well grab spotter since the other two traits are lackluster for power builds.
Easy access to fury thanks to Clarion Bond, pick whatever master trait you want in Marksmanship, they all have their uses.
Wilderness Survival is a must for condi remove, combined with Troll Unguent being a survival skill now, this should give you decent survivability on top of great damage.
Quick Draw is a must for power rangers in my opinion since it lets you adapt to different situations easily. Got caught off guard and need to get away quickly? Swap to GS, Swoop, Dodge, Swoop again. More knockbacks, 10s CD barrage, more blocks on GS, double Maul or double RF if you need to finish someone off, basically a huge bonus all around.

Power Ranger, Defensive~
LB + GS
Since stats are now seperate from trait lines, and longbow gets 1.5k range and velocity increase baseline, you can play power ranger and not spec into marksmanship at all. Why should you do this?
Superior control options with Beastly Warden. Blind and weakness on pet F2 are flat out amazing, especially if they don’t have an ICD.
You do lose fury (not an issue because the survival skills give 6s fury each) & swiftness on pet swap, piercing arrows and moment of clarity though.

Concerns:
I would like to see some builds utilizing shouts, including the new “We Heal As One”, but Troll Unguent combined with the new Wilderness Knowledge is crazy strong and should be tough to beat.

Also every build out there will have to use Wilderness Survival, since it’s the only source of condi removal traits, Wilderness Knowledge being the strongest one in my opinion.

Nature Magic will probably only get picked by bunkery builds, although I really like Protective Ward. Running Nature Magic, Wilderness Survival and Beastmastery should work for more defensive condi builds though.

On topic (sorry for derailing/troll feeding….):

PvE ranger should be about the same, although the increased cooldown on spirits hurts.
One thing I would be interested in is that new spirit grandmaster trait. As others have already said, if it would pulse fury every 3 seconds, you could rack up a lot of vulnerability with remorseless, a role that’s currently occupied by engis. If rangers were to combine superior vuln stacking with party buffs from spotter/frost spirit, they could be in a better spot for pve.

PvP gets a lot of buffs, really exciting stuff.
Good buffs to survivability and utility. I assume lots of builds will run quick draw, simply because it offers so many situational combos. One of the best trait ideas they had in a while in my opinion.
Beastly Warden is soooo good and actually allows you to run something else than wolf for a change.

The “Traits with wrong idea/value” section is spot on.

Poison Master will never get picked at the moment. Just an idea though, why not make it increase the healing penalty from poison instead (maybe 33% -> 50%). That would make it a really strong trait with a defined niche, but you would lose out on your only condi remove traits. Either that or it needs to be moved, no sane person would pick the current poison master over wilderness knowledge.

Honed Axes proposed change is spot on, the ferocity just feels way misplaced and precision would be way more useful.

For MDG, either ramp up the might gain to be quicker or maybe give us a toughness boost depending on health% ? If they want us to stay under 50% for longer amounts of time we should get something that helps us survive at low health.

Light on your feet. I really want this trait to work since I like the idea, but as you said, the numbers are lackluster for a grandmaster trait. 5% and 4 seconds are way too low, longer duration and a stacking buff sounds like a reasonable idea to make it better.

I’ve always found invigorating bond to be a lackluster trait and to be honest, I don’t think it ever will be good if they keep the concept of it.

Warrior is just as good if not better with a bow.

I don’t even. Warrior bow certainly is a good weapon, but it serves entirely different purposes compared to ranger’s longbow.

Period why can you not understand what the rangers community wants is what should be natural to the class that has NOTHING?

Ranger has plenty of things going for it, yet you choose to ignore most of them and then complain about it.
You should go ahead and complain in the warrior forums that you demand mainhand mace to now be as much of a dps weapon than greatsword or axe since you feel warrior should be the class that wields maces and every other weapon feels wrong when you play warrior.

I am, unlike you, a dire hard ranger fan of the Guild Wars universe and I’m ashamed of where the ranger is in this game.

My ranger is still my main character in this game and I’ve spent countless hours on it. With the upcoming trait rework we should be in a great spot for PvP. For PvE ranger works just fine, just because you don’t see rangers in record runs very often doesn’t mean the class is completely useless for PvE. They don’t have a set spot in groups like thiefs, eles or warriors do, but they sure as hell aren’t useless. Compare to necro, that class is even worse off for PvE. In WvW zerging ranger will still be lackluster, true. Decent for roaming though.

Traps that hit only 3 targets.

Traps are lackluster, I give you that.

Bows that do minimal damage at closer ranges.

Maybe because it’s a ranged weapon. Ranged. Melee weapons are a thing.

AoE skills that lack punch.

Ranger = single target ranged damage, Ele = AoE
That’s the way it is and it won’t change.

Seems to me the only people argueing are the people that do not want ranger in the top tier period.

So what you are asking is to make longbow the best dps weapon in the game, from what you’ve posted so far. That’s not going to ever happen. Ever. Get over it.

For PvP you should wait for the upcoming trait changes. They are buffing ranger a lot for PvP, will see if it’s enough to push them into the meta. Time will tell.
PvE ranger, well, won’t be part of record runs anytime soon, but S/A + LB frost spotter can easily be a good addition to most dungeon groups, and lots of people know this.

Here’s a goodie for you: the new pve build after the patch will probably include longbow as a set part of the rotation, so you will actually use it for more than the inital opening burst.

If the only thing you want (and it sure looks like it from what you’ve posted here) is rangers purely running longbow for every gamemode and situation ever, while still having the best dps in the game, you will be disappointed. Take the time to actually give the other ranger weapons and playstyles a try.

And if you absolutely refuse to do that, just open your own groups and voila, you can now enjoy pew pewing stuff with your longbow from range all day long and nobody will disturb you.

Natfrog.4310:

coax.2951:

Natfrog.4310:

Why would I go MELE on a RANGER? Haveing access to that is one thing but frocing me to use it is another. I play a ranger because it is “supposed” to be the best at ranged combat. If I was going to use a GS I would just go Warrior. Why bother with a sub class for GS like ranger?

Because maybe a longbow isn’t the best choice of weapon once your opponent is standing literally in front of you.

Weapon swaps are a thing, you know? A thing that lets you adapt to different situations, you know? So why not, you know, start with longbow and swap to GS when he gets close? Or maybe if you really like your longbow, try and immobilize or knockback every once in a while?

But that is exactly the point. I had ZERO issues using a bow in GW1 at ANY range but yet in GW2 the programming for up close combat is just bad. It needs to be fixed.

Back to GW1 with you then.

Natfrog.4310:

Why would I go MELE on a RANGER? Haveing access to that is one thing but frocing me to use it is another. I play a ranger because it is “supposed” to be the best at ranged combat. If I was going to use a GS I would just go Warrior. Why bother with a sub class for GS like ranger?

Because maybe a longbow isn’t the best choice of weapon once your opponent is standing literally in front of you.

Weapon swaps are a thing, you know? A thing that lets you adapt to different situations, you know? So why not, you know, start with longbow and swap to GS when he gets close? Or maybe if you really like your longbow, try and immobilize or knockback every once in a while?

Natfrog.4310:

Bring better evidence or GTFO. Obvious troll is obvious… Brushes off mic hands it back

You are the troll my friend. If you want to be ignorant about everything this class is exept for the longbow, go and vent your incompetence somewhere else.

Natfrog.4310:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

You know nothing, Natfrog.

This is how you come back? I could care less what you sit at your desk and type I have done the physical effort to compare these things. You only claim you have which is how I know you are wrong. I want a ranged class on my ranged class. I’ve never said get rid of swords. If you like that then by all means but we both know there is no REAL great bow class in this game. It’s completely ok that an ele can blast you for 4k per hit with meteor shower but as soon as a ranger hits 1.5k per hit with Barrage it’s OP right? It’s ok in ~5 seconds a warrior can thousand blades you for 2.5k per hit but as soon as a ranger hits you for 1.5k per rapid fire it’s OP right? Never mind a single dodge will evade 4-5 of those shots or that the projectiles can be reflected or destroyed or the entire rapid fire can be blocked with a shield right? Warriors defenately do not have a mechanic to use adrenaline for a single 5-8k hit right? They cannot close the gap with a sword rush and smack me in the face for another 4k right? Lets not even talk about eviscerate.

At this point you should probably just stop.
1.5k rapidfire? What kind of stats are you using? Settlers?
If you have problems with warriors hundred blading you, the problem isn’t Hundred Blades, it’s you. That skill should never be a problem in pvp since you can just walk away/dodge/knockback/block it.
Also, who would’ve guessed, Eviscerate has a pretty obvious animation that is entirely dodgeable. Did I mention ranger has plenty of evades/dodges?

You totally can’t knock back that gap closing warrior, right? you totally can’t stealth and reposition yourself, right? you can’t use GS4 to block and knockback them, right? you can’t immobilize them, especially not with entangle thorugh their shield block, right? You can’t fear them away with a wolf, right?

It’s a l2p issue. Not a balance issue. Get over it.

Natfrog.4310:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

@ Natfrog
Fact: Ranger out DPSs warrior, especially a PS warrior (for personal DPS)
Fact: Melee is more risk, therefore more reward.
Fact: Ranger LB is the highest ranged damage weapon with the longest range.
Fact: Melee Rangers in GW1 were immensely popular, most HA builds that ran them were considered ‘cheese’ because they were so effective. Ever play R/A or R/D?

You have displayed your ignorance of Ranger, move along.

FACT: Ranger out DPS warrior is just a flat out lie and you know it.
FACT: Mele is not more risk when gap closers are REAL. Mele usually has more access to survivability in the form of invulns and blocks AND as much endurance as the ranged class
FACT: Ranger LB is the highest damage ranged weapon until said weapon is forced into close combat and is then almost ineffective
FACT: There was no mele ranger in GW1… That said there were cross professions that utilized ranger as main for the better energy management.

Actually, the only reason warriors are taken in every pve party isn’t their dps but their party buffs in the form of banners. Yes, ranger produces smaller numbers and you won’t see as many BIG NUMBERS, yet damage per second is definitely up there with warrior if you would actually take the time to learn how to use Sword/Axe.

A longbow not being a good close quarters weapon? Oh really? Who would’ve guessed?

Melee ranger not being a thing in GW1 isn’t a reason at all why it shouldn’t exist in GW2.

Natfrog.4310:

Tragic Positive.9356:

ATTENTION
Everyone who keeps talking about the “loose” of damage modifiers…
… We didn’t loose a single one. We got one for PvE in return.

Before the changes you couldn’t afford to take all the steroids and boosts. Yes, you had a choice to take them – but by doing so you lost the access to the rest.

Currently you have better access to steroids than before. This is a fact.

Master Trait X.png Eagle Eye Increases longbow and harpoon gun range. Longbow and harpoon gun damage is increased.

Grandmaster Trait ranger.png Hunter’s Tactics Deal more damage while flanking.
You were saying?

We get quick draw instead, and being able to use Path of Scars and Rapifire twice every rotation makes up for the lost damage modifiers. Also Hunter’s tactics now increases crit chance, so it’s still a slight dps boost for pve.

Natfrog.4310:

There is no instance in this game where I would ever CHOOSE to take my ranger over my warrior…. I main Ranger… Ranger was my first… But let’s be honest here… Phalanx strength + full zerk is just broken. When I can pull off higher numbers in exotic gear/trinkets on my warrior than my full out ascended gear/trinkets with Kudzu something is SERIOUSLY wrong!

Difference of full exotic compared to full ascended is a little more than 10% dps, a tiny difference compared to other factors. Also higher numbers =/= higher dps. Just because you can push out 50k hundred blades doesnt mean your dps is the best.

I’m just going to throw this out there btw…. Whenever a rangers sword damage is HIGHER than his BOW damage the class is effectively broken. This is the Guild Wars world we are speaking of and a ranger is very well defined in Guild Wars 1. This is not a subject of divesity or of theory that is just FACT. Ranger was the bow wielding profession and a specialist of said weapon. Why has this been lost in the 200+ years? Now they are going even farther away from it making GS a more viable weapon in almost EVERY top teir build? This needs to change… Rangers need to be feared and all I see is them being the laughing stock of the game.

You seem to have no idea about how this game is balanced. Ranged weapons generally do less damage compared to melee, to balance risk/reward. Bows are already a strong single target ranged option.

Also you might not have noticed, but ranger gets significant buffs for PvP (in the form of more utility/survivability) as well as PvE. Yes, you lose out on a couple of damage modifiers, but make up for it with better rotations thanks to Quick Draw.

I’m getting tired of these “hurr durr ranger = ranged just remove sword/greatsword buff bows” posts. Also this game is not Guild Wars 1. If you want Guild Wars 1, go play that instead.

sevenDEADLY.5281:

coax.2951:

Another thing to consider: If you open the fight with longbow, you will not get the -66% recharge on RF, since the trait only works in combat. So if you’re just sitting away from the fight pew pewing people, you will not get to use that “OP RF, anet fix pls” combo anyway, unless you go full kitten and run double longbows.

Double longbow rangers. New Meta.

Ranger specialization has been leaked: Superior Arrow Cart

Substance E.4852:

Quick draw is going to get nerfed to hell and back once the update hits. The amount of people complaining about double mauls and “omg the 998933938 damage from double RF is 2 gud!” will not go unnoticed by anet.

No doubt the new quickdraw is a really really good trait, but it’s exactly what the new grandmaster traits should be: They change the way you play, and that’s what Anet wants.
Being able to quickly adapt to different situations is a real gamechanger. Yes, double Rapidfire sounds cool and will probably make the same kind of people cry, but lets be honest here, there are way more and better uses for -66% recharge.

Get caught out of position? Switch to greatsword, Swoop away, 4 seconds later you get another Swoop. Will also make for a super easy and effective repostition/retreat combo with GS3->4->3. Really need a block right now? Use GS4, 5 seconds later it’s off cooldown again. What about Point Blank Shot with a 5 second cooldown? Neat. 10 second cooldown barrage. Also great.

If people complain about double Mauls, that’s really a l2p issue. Maul has a super obvious tell and is so easy to dodge, if you get hit by it, that’s your problem.

Another thing to consider: If you open the fight with longbow, you will not get the -66% recharge on RF, since the trait only works in combat. So if you’re just sitting away from the fight pew pewing people, you will not get to use that “OP RF, anet fix pls” combo anyway, unless you go full kitten and run double longbows.

While I don’t have anything against the pet as a class mechanic, it just feels lackluster at the moment.
My main problems with pets at the moment are:

- They can’t hit moving targets properly (Which could be fixed easily! Ever had a mesmer moa your pet? Suddenly it can hit moving targets without problems, since the Moa Morph autoattack has a small “leap” built into it. Don’t believe me? Just check out this neat video posted over 1.5 years ago)
- The lack of control over the pets other family specific skill, like the knockdown of the wolf pet. Having to recall your pet every time it starts the knockdown animation and then hoping it will execute it at the time you want it to just feels wrong.
- Pet stats are horrible. Just straight up horrible. What’s the point of having a few bleeds on the pet’s F2 skill, if they have no condition damage at all (or 350 at most)?

For the new class mechanic change of the druid, my money is on some kind of passive bonus you or your allies get depending on the pet family.

Completely removing the pet will definitely not happen, even if some of you guys would ditch them in a heartbeat. I’d rather see them improving pets.

The quickswapping only works with traited grenade kit, not the other kits, maybe you swapped out the grenadier trait?

The one thing nobody likes in this game are AI dependend builds like minions, turrets and pets. They all have glaring flaws and aren’t useful in most situations at all, and if they are, they will get nerfed to the ground, just like turrets did, since they promote passive play. No specialization will get minions or anything close to that.

My guess would be that they keep the theme of engi being “unique” and the specialization gets a new skill type no other class has at the moment.

They should’ve just sent out emails again.
If you don’t get one, no biggie, you might get in on the next one.

With the portals, it just feels like a slap in the face to try and grind it for the better part of the week and don’t get one, only to see tons of people getting them in the first 5 minutes from a random mob.

You don’t put in effort to sign up for a newsletter. If you farm for that thing for over 50 hours, like many of us did, and don’t get one, you put in a lot of effort with absolutely no return.

I bet druid will utilise that new resistance boon a lot.
Other than that, immobilizes most certainly (since that’s what vines to in this game apparently).

In PvE the sword auto isn’t much of a problem, it’s pretty easy to evade all the big hits in time, especially if you disable autoattack, but like another guy said, that’s just a bandaid. It becomes a problem when you need to dodge fast though, I’d argue dodging while you’re doing the sword AA is always a little slower compared to attacking with every other weapon there is.
Sword has its moments in pvp, since you can easily stick to a moving target, but I’d argue the overall experience would be improved a LOT if that leap got removed.
I don’t want to be in their face all the time. I want a little more control over my postion.

Just got one too, dunno why, but thank you very much for it^^

“We’ll be expanding the size of the pool of beta testers for future tests. We selected a small number of testers for the first round from our newsletter subscribers. Our next test will use this method as well as the “Portal to the Heart of Maguuma,” an in-game item which has a chance to drop from enemies in Dry Top and the Silverwastes.”

So, this means that, even if I give up on grinding Silverwastes like a madman, I can still get in through the newsletter mailinglist like the last beta, right?

Just in case: Yes, I know that being in the first beta doesn’t guarantee a spot in future beta events.

Having 2 traits that are focused on ressing people is completely unnesessary. Either merge it with the Healer’s Celerity one or get rid of it entirely, it’s a horrible trait to begin with since it does absolutely nothing helpful.

Trapper runes for WvW, you can also try Krait Runes (beefs up Entangle a lot and gives you +45% bleed duration).

Well this morning I played against Xerrex premade 5 times in a row, each time we all were randoms and got utterly destroyed. Matches like that are neither fun nor fair.

Try running the GW2 Diagnose tool to confirm it’s really Anet’s servers and not a routing issue by your ISP.

To do so, simply right click your gw2 shortcut, select Properties and add “-diag” behind the path to your gw2.exe

This will give you a detailed report of where your connection gets a high ping or packet loss. I had exactly the same issues (even the time you stated is right on), but in my case it’s an ISP issue. Seems like they route my traffic through several toasters before it arrives at Anet’s servers.
Using a free VPN, which you can find all over the internet, fixed the issue for me.

Harvest.2506:

Booms.3952:

in all his time boasting about being #1 surely he couldve read one of the blog posts about the season dates and rewards

But to your original point, yeah I read ends Jan 13 which is fine the Leaderboard keep going so that means we’re in a new season. then load and behold today we have new or another test season with no announcement on my rewards with everything I did the past 3 months.

You just assumed things, turns out you were wrong. That you have invested that much time without the desired reward is unfortunate, but you already got a clear response from Grouch.

I can understand your frustration, but you are clearly wrong here.
You choose to ignore all the news/blog entries/ingame notifications about the start & end of the first test season. They even made a blog post announcing the winners on Jan. 20:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-winter-pvp-ladder-test-season-has-ended-and-the-winners-have-been-chosen/

There have never been ongoing rewards for the leaderboards. If you can earn something, they’ll announce it.

Consider that the material your armor uses has an influence on the color of every dye.
I use leather armor.

-The orange piece of cloth on your backpack matches “Bold” Dye. It’s really cheap so just buy one off the TP and test it.
-For the brown parts I usually use colors like “Mushroom”. Matches pretty well
-There are little yellow pieces on many backpacks/kits. I use “Squash” or “Antique Gold”