Guild Wars 2

‘Deserving straight answers’… this looks like nothing but some kitteny excuse to feel like your entitled to something. Anet made a change in the game, it didn’t break the class, it didn’t tear our world apart. I’m sorry about your woes as a ranger who feels a lil butt hurt over having one weapon minorly hit, but it isn’t all that important.
Losing a dozen percent of dmg on one spammable won’t impact you terribly unless you plan on playing some top tier PvP.
I can next to guarantee no one here is doing that.
Until then you can make up the lost dps a few times over by playing better.

Yes they said they had patches for rangers, no they didn’t actually impliment them.
That is far from the worst thing I’ve seen a dev team do, FAR from…
warhammer online had a class that could aoe stun an entire enemy team for 7 seconds and then burst them all down in that time… yeah… losing a dozen percent from a strong weapon, or forgoing a change making a few allright weapons strong isn’t even comparable.
Even with blatantly annoying kitten devs, warhammer online was probably one of the best PvP game ever.

These guys are doing fine, give them time to get their kitten together as they get ‘a game released months before it should’ have all cleaned up… then they will get their fingers more wet in dabbling in small numeric tweaks and underbalancing issues.

And you wonder why devs are hesitant to speak on forums, half you guys are outright crazed over minor kitten. Its a game without a sub fee, sit back, relax and enjoy the show…

Jay.3284:

Rangers are pretty lackluster overall. So yes I think they need some lovin’

2-3 solid specs
Very solid short of aiming to play in a top tier PvP team.

Panther Chameleon.8465:

I’m not sure what you mean by luck since the hyena lands knockdowns like nobody’s business and they automatically use knockdown when you swap in combat. How was he terrible w/bow? He landed shadowstep, and clusterbomb, but missed crippling shot. That’s not terrible. And when he thought about kiting me I knocked him down right quick. If anything I would of just waltzed right back into base and fixed my utilities instead of chasing him with sword like a kittening idiot.

They don’t knockdown right after being swapped out, it’s a chance at it, at least from what I’ve noticed.
Especially when you swap with an enemy right next to you.

He never bothered to kite with shortbow, he used it for a few spammables (and basilisk venom!!!) when he couldn’t catch you, keeping a close distance instead of kiting, then swapped back as soon as the weapon swap CD was up. Good thieves use shortbow then spike when they can finish you with the backstab combo. That or if they just go balls to the wall and spike off the bat, they immediately kite out of it with shortbow and pew away instead of chasing a sword ranger with d/d out and blowing shadowstep for nothing but a spammable attack or 2….

Shortbow can evade like its nobodies business, that with a little sidestepping would mean you would never land a hit on him with your bow and he would be doing 750-2k to you a hit (depending if your pet is next to you).
Its a MEAN weapon in the right hands, one rangers have little answer for besides a lucky pet CC/imob/chill/cripple or using sword’s hornets sting and Lightning reflexes with your back to them to roll towards him.

Rangers don’t WvW well.
They are good at small skirmishes, but bad as fights get larger.

krojack.4920:

I support this thread.

Also in before it gets closed or more like deleted. Can’t have any evidence left behind.

Edit: ArenaNet should take a lesson from John Smedley over at Sony. https://twitter.com/j_smedley It’s awesome how he gets involved with the community.

Games hate admitting that they completely kittened up.
Anet completely kittened up on their release schedule, and now they either have to comment on 90% of the “DO THIS NOW” threads saying “sorry we are working on something that should have been in at launch and don’t want to do any major changes in that area of the game since the game is playable in those regards and we don’t want the chance of any more major issues with regards to that until we have more manpower to ensure that the patch is well tested and entirely progressive” that or just be quite.
Neither are good options, both are going to piss people off, being quiet stops the chance at posts being brutalized by the forums as they rave about how they are doing things wrong, even from implications (intended or not)….
Its a more conservative approach but you can’t expect tooo much more from a company.

TO?
And how?
How is the fact that they fixed phantasms not working, a bug that made phantasms randomly miss attacks that clearly should have hit… showing favoritism…
That’s comparable to the trap bug that came in after a few patches ago… within a few hours it was reverted and devs commented saying it was all allright…

Shortbow was a dmg nerf, the weapon got hit from being something you could run around spamming at anyone and win most fights to a more condition weapon. The ranger class is such a mess with power based weapons since there are good specs floating around… if you spec into pet dmg and run 2 birds you can pull off 10-15k spikes in a few seconds, spikes near undodgeable because of the bird’s quarky animations… its brutal.
Fixing the class isn’t as simple as bumping up a few dmg numbers. It will take allot of changes and testing (since that’s the type of dev team Anet has shown themselves to be, slow but progressive) and with everything else that needs doing and the holiday season coming up that probably isn’t going to happen too soon.
As they said.

There are more important things than making rangers top tier viable, they have to actually pull a game out of the gutter after it was launched with hundreds of bugs and no competitive PvP.

Azrhyel.3942:

A brilliant game to begin with – ruined and destroyed further day by day by the most disgraceful developer service team I ever experienced.

The devs aren’t bad, they are a bit annoying with how quite they can be (why makes sense though), but they aren’t bad.
GW2 was released half finished so they are kittening overloaded with things to do atm making little, working, things not the biggest priority.

I’ve seen far worse dev teams in every way.
If anything the random push for outing the game on august 28th was the worst thing to happen to GW2, it stopped PvP from evolving into a better setup and meta… it stopped PvP from being released, for the most part, bug free and with the required tools, it stopped the developers from being able to focus on the after release balancing/perfecting since they have to catch up on a few dozen things they were supposed to do half a year ago.

Panther Chameleon.8465:

Akisame.9508:

There are several things thieves can do, but from what I saw, that thief was ‘clean’.

Like what? It’s not like he was packing Thieves Guild or anything. He used Basilisks on me…twice!

He wasted the 2nd one by using it with shortbow… and to boot he didn’t even try to salvage any use out of it by throwing in a free cluster bomb after…

It was an entertaining deul, the thief had the advantage by leaps and bounds, just couldn’t play it out.
:)

Dardamaniac.1295:

this prove that dueling is more exiting than this bad conquest-bunker-roamer thing that we are playing for 3 months now..

It can be.
But bad conquest can be more exciting than deuling.

If the ranger didn’t get a lucky pet knockdown during the end of the theif’s spike he would have been dead within the first 5s of the fight.
Melee thieves are typically easy 1v1s though, at least if you make it threw their spike, the ones you really have to worry about are thieves that are good with shortbow and shadowstep… the guy in the vid was terrible with them. He could have easily out ranged dmg’d the ranger and forced the ranger to use sword to kite into melee, which is when the thief pops back into d/d and eats his face off.

xbutcherx.3861:

Lol QQ goodbye thread? Another guy that doesn’t know how to play and the best way to learn is quitting and flaming mesmer and thieves. Well goodbye.

You mean another casual that doesn’t find the game entertaining?
As much as you’d like to forget… completely competant players don’t tend to be the majority of a playerbase…
At least for a game that is going to live a good lifespan…

Dahkeus.8243:

You said speccing for a pet was silly. I replied in dispute of this statement by pointing out the value of pet burst (which is benefitted from speccing in BM).

Speccing for it does tend to be silly…
But playing your pet well isn’t…
Just to reiterate my quote.

Pets are useful, but that doesn’t make the traitlines or utilities that help them are even remotely worthwhile… of course short of running birds and the 30% bonus crit dmg for pets and some fury engine.

Dahkeus.8243:

Pets are one of our biggest sources of burst and pet damage synergizes very well with a 1h sword since the 1 attack grants might to pet. RaO -> 1 spam -> F2 on raven -> swap pet -> F2 on other bird for example will give bigger burst than what you can do with a weapon alone.

and?
I’m honestly not sure what your point is in relation to my post…

Raine Akrune.8416:

Here is where ANet actually screwed up…

…They released the game before it was finished…

We have one type of sPvP currently when we should have several.
Free for All Deathmatch
Team Deathmatch
Conquest (the only one we do have)
Capture the Flag
Attack/Defend

Those are a few that come to mind in under 15 seconds. They should have spent their time implementing new game modes and maps rather than think they could toss in paid sPvP tournies and expect those to last.

What we also need is team sPvP to counter the current “pick a server and play” setup from the PvP browser. Add an NPC that queues a party, even if their going to end up in the same servers from current browser, and drop them together in the same server on the same team.

If ANet wants sPvP to work they need to buckle down, as I’m sure their doing to some extent, and get some content released for it.

Well made PvP is a billion times better than many styles of PvP.

Improve and perfect what they’ve got, then see what needs doing from there…
Making capture points into nothing but something you cap every 1-2~ minute and then own for those 1-2~ mins, besides possibly the middle point, would do WONDERS. It’d make fights more mobile and pushing/holding much more strategic since it doesn’t involve just leaving someone on a BO… the bunker roamer meta (no offense to people that like it) is completely silly, no one wants to sit on a point for half a match with little to do, no one likes fighting nigh unkillable stalling specs… a push away from that will only do good for this game.

For Faux Sake.8457:

even if you aren’t pet specced.

Speccing for pet is silly in near every situation.
Playing your pet well is far from it…

He really shouldn’t be running felines if he is just going to leave them sitting on whatever target they feel like… he’s going to be blowing swaps left and right which could have been better used for the 2s of Quickening Zephyr…

nldixon.8514:

Esrever.8613:

if you miss with the muddy terrain you are screwed is what I saw.

He missed a couple times with Muddy Terrain and still won the fights. Not sure what video you were watching.

Against a warrior who near literally only used auto attack…
And almost died to boot, correction, would have died if the warrior timed his downed state knockdown better…

Seriously though, use quickening zephyr on pet swap, birds and/or canines, empathetic bond and troll ungent…. so much more potential… its actually a solid spec then.

As long as you’re not running longbow… the projectile speed is enough that you can make due with it.
As long as you don’t just let your pet fallow random unsnared people that only run in circles, their fine and you can make due with it.
If you seriously have an issue with pets, get a bird, they can hit moving targets and deal good dmg to boot,but they miss out on things like the amazing canine CC. I’ve managed with a canine for the vast majority of my time as a ranger, but the spec also has a half dozen snares so getting him in range isn’t toooo hard.

AlexRD.7914:

When fighting any class that kites, your pet will be useless and will serve as a Cloak and Dagger target for the thief.

Your running a wolf for christs sakes… it has a kittening leap that knocks people down… a leap you yourself can interupt right before it launches if you see the enemy has kited out of range (if you are silly and didn’t cripple the enemy right as you see the wolf’s animation start) or has stability up or is dodge rolling exc… wolves can aoe fear… I’ve screwed up soooo many kiters just because of a well played wolf…
You can even fear theives out of their shadow refuge…

Firstly in SPvP you pretty much need 30 points in wilderness survival for empathetic bond (full cleanse every 10s, easily best cleanse in game) and 5 points in beastmastery for 2s of QZ on pet swap.

3 good things to focus on as a ranger…
Self healing… roughly: troll ungent, Signet of the Wild, lightning reflexes and on weapon evades; it typically leads to a power based spec as you have to take sword mainhand and are using up a number of utility slots that a condi spec needs. Overall though this gives you as a ranger a very solid base for survivability.

Condition dmg… roughly:shortbow axe/dagger or sword/dagger or torch with typically carrion or if you have allot of self healing/survivability rabid works well too, 2 traps and some defensive CD. Running a wolf is pretty advised.

Pet… roughly: 2 birds and rampage as one. Any pet buffs (greatsword #5, over 5p in beastmastery, signet of the hunt, Quickening Zephyr) are nifty but not really all that great, QZ is probably the best of them since it effects you too. You can go offensive or defensive, offensive tends to be the most common since it stops your pet from being all your dmg (meaning you would flounder if it dies).

There is overlap between them, I was working on getting a bird spike into my condition spec before I got bored of the game and decided to play LoL instead.

Pride N Greed.8106:

this game has been in development since 2007 and had plenty of time to lay a more solid foundation is what bothers me.

Then you titled your thread terribly.

BroScientist.9875:

Concentrated on moving? How much focus does it take to hold down a button? Everyone moves in WvW. How often do you see someone standing still? Only when they’re afk.

Its not just concentrating… I can stare at my movement keys as much as I want but they won’t dodge arrows…
Seriously though you have to be moving nearly left to right in correlation to the ranger to dodge arrows or be at the complete extent of their range… it isn’t simply “oh I can dodge arrows without dodging so never get hit by arrows” its far more situational that…. you can completely sacrifice movement while unsnared to pretty much only go back and forth, left to right just to avoid a mediocre spammable…. but that typically is far from the best course of action….

That… issues…. makes longbow useless.
It makes shortbow average, it is fine in the majority of S/TPvP just terrible at keeping a 900~ range and pewing away at people fighting over a BO or whatnot.

For SPvP…

Wolf.
If you are planning on being a ranger you either have to run a wolf or bird.
It’s pretty much the only way to go (if you are just looking for what is effective).
The wolf’s aoe fear is just brutal for stopping stomps, landing stomps, helping an ally spike, stopping an enemy spike, getting that extra second to neutralize a BO…
It is BEAUTIFUL.
Oh, and it does good dmg and has good survivability and has a 2s knockdown…
Just rediculous pet…

Birds do really, really good consistent dmg. So if you plan on ever killing anything and don’t want a wolf, get a bird.

The best way to hunker down and take a hit as a ranger is to go with heal power and signet of the wild, troll ungent, empathetic bond and some vigor (for the protection on dodge roll procs). You can usually ditch the heal power for offense and be a decently survivable dps if you can play well enough. Oh and Greatsword is pretty mediocre for surviving, sword tends to work a dozen times better, it can kite more easily, get in melee more easily, has an on weapon evade and a poison… then you can grab dagger for another evade and long duration cripple, it is fantastic for stalling or staying in melee range.

Rampage as One or Spirit of Nature are much better support/survivability elites than entangle.

Daemon.4295:

Easy…

1. Fix pets so they can hit moving targets
2. Fix sword root bug
3. Increase projectile speed so we can hit moving targets

And because it’s the holiday season….

4. Increase pet survivability so they last longer in dungeons and WvW

Anything else is just candycanes, with those fixes rangers would be competitive.

Yeup…
That and making beastmastery a legitimate tree past 5 points… it should have traits to buff pet dmg and reduce dmg taken from aoes.

Better responsiveness on pet F2s.
Oh and pets would either need to move slower or deal less dmg to compensate for being able to hit what they get in range of.
(I’d prefer the slower movement speed since then they would still involve skill to use well, timing cripples/chills or really speccing into them for the bonus movement speed and dmg traits.)

Spirits need to be good.
Signets need to be reworked to have worthwhile passives (short of SoTW) and then activations worthy of a tier 3 trait and 30-120s CDs.

Greatsword could still use some love, with ranger weapon swap CDs being 10s, having a weapon that is only for a few nifty skills just isn’t good…
It should either be offensive or defensive… either hilt bash leaps and maul imobs for a lil bit and does notably more dmg that and the spammable just needs to be better making it a mobile offensive weapon. Or they turn maul into a chill/cripple + weakness and make the spammable give protection (so its more defensive control). Either or would be great, having it be a hogpag of random nifty abilities with no real cohesion is just bad…

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

so yes i am a mesmer and i will tell you the truth. i am unbeatable 1v1

That’s not what I remember…

Axe/dagger is decent.
Axe offhand is just terrible.

Noctred.6732:

These two things go hand in hand though.

They are related, but not the same.
There is a distinction between the two and that was my point.

Companies have screwed up MMOs.
Yes people complain when companies screw up MMOs.
No that doesn’t mean their solutions to the problem are good.

Noctred.6732:

garethh.3518:

You’re implying random forum go’ers have all the idea needed to save PvP…

hahhahahahahahahah

Man you’re a kick in the pants.
The people at Anet understand what is going on just as well as you do, no wait, far better than you do.

NGE-era Star Wars: Galaxies wants a word with you.

In particular, the ever famous quote from SOE CEO John Smedley -

---

“With the NGE, I’m sorry about the mistake we made,” he told us. "We screwed up and didn’t listen to the fans when we should have, and it’s not a mistake we’re going to make again.

…

[The mistake was] to not just think we know the right direction without bringing the fans into the mix," he explained. “We made the cardinal sin of not listening, but assuming and we were wrong.”

---

Unfortunately, developers do not always know best and SWG isn’t the only example of it – it’s just the most popular one. Post-Trammel UO is another great precedent.

Using the fan population for their opinions on content, what they like or what they don’t is as important as kitten.
I even tagged in a few lines about it so it wouldn’t be misunderstood.

Using the fans as a base for ideas on how to make the game better… now that is bad territory to sail…
There are good ideas occasionally floating around in the mix, like I said, but short of a few pro or extremely intelligent players congregating over a major issue… using forum ideas just really doesn’t happen often… and I wouldn’t expect it to.

Pride N Greed.8106:

Not implying that forum "go’ers have all the ideas. There are some people who put out some great ideas on many different posts i read with devs on here agreeing to them. But, what you fail to realize is that the community is what drives the game any game for that matter. Jonathan even stated that they read the forums. They hear us on what we have to say. According to him, they are tailoring pvp on what we like.One way to communicate with them is on the forums.

Saying the one dev who commonly is known, and just said to be the ‘forum perusing guy’ is the only one who can save a game, is a pretty blatant implication to that idea…

Anyways…
Yes some people wandering threw forums have good ideas, but it is a rare rare day that they are something the devs have not thought of and beats out their ideas.
Let me repeat… extremely rare day.

And good luck with that dream… the day that devs tailor a game based on what people on the forums say they want is the day an MMO becomes a nightmare…

First off..
We all know little enough about their reasonings for releasing when they did that we can’t really say anything short of blind assumptions…
Not everything in ArenaNet is run and decided by Jonathan Sharp and the PvP balance devs…
It’s their philosophy about progress, not that of the entire company.

Pride N Greed.8106:

…I think he is the only who can save pvp. He is our link to anet on what needs to get done on the pvp end….

hahahahahahahhahah…

Wouf, let get my breath for a second…
You’re implying random forum go’ers have all the idea needed to save PvP?!?

hahhahahahahahahah

Man that’s a kick in the pants.
The people at Anet understand the workings of the game just as well as anyone here does, no wait, far better than anyone here does. What they can and end up doing is the product of the methods a of a business, (timelines, funds, profits, manpower, exc.) and they have dozens of people who do little else but work on ways to improve the game….

Any idea expressed here, odds say, has been thought of there.. the constraints are just man power, methodology and opinions of effectiveness…
The only thing that will come out of public forums are general opinions on already implemented or soon to be implemented content and I would rarely if ever want it to be any more than that…

BAMBOO.9430:

Rangers could have been the same if they received bunched of big changes/buffs. Then, all we would have to look forward to is minor nerf after nerf.

Who said people only wanted big changes???
Just because he says the devs are not going to fix the ranger all at once, doesn’t mean he can write off the devs utter lack of addressing the class at all…
Sharpe said they work in numerous small tweaks, and I’m cool with that, I actually prefer it…

The problem is that they kind of dropped the numerous and just left the ranger be with A SMALL TWEAK OR TWO SINCE LAUNCH.
That’s the annoying part, if they were actively tweaking the class I would be ecstatic, but they haven’t, pretty much at all…. oh and have said that we shouldn’t expect large patches till 2 or more months after next year because of the holidays…

Telegraph.7509:

Maybe we should turn this thread in a more productive direction by talking about possible fixes for the patch in 2 weeks?

There have been a million of those and no dev has ever commented on or acted on any of them…

2 bird , possibly berserker 1-handed sword; longbow and shortbow both work, shortbow is more defensive, but longbow is bad at allot of things.
You probably got hit by a Quickening Zephyr, bird spike. Usually about 10k in 2~ seconds.
If you dodge the pet’s F2 and stay out of range, block or CC during the 2s the quickness is up, he is in allot of trouble.

Agadar.4931:

I second this. If you’re lucky enough to keep the bugger alive, he can be quite helpful exclusively in PvE. In PvP it’s pretty garbage.

As for the other spirits, well, they suck at both.

I run it in PvP, aoe rezzing, even yourself is extremely powerful.
Short of enemies interupting the spirit’s rez action…it rarely ever can be spiked down in the 2s it takes to rez).

I play a condition ranger and rarely see thieves I can’t beat.
At best they kite with shortbow for ages and just pew away since they ironically do a lil better ranged dmg than me.

Yeup…
With the loads of gear you would think there would be diversity or even appealing stuff…
The vast majority of the gear just looks bad, unfinished and/or thrown together in a few minutes by someone on project runway…
(yes I am ashamed of that reference, but more so that the situation called for it)

FuVirus.6398:

Thank you, i do hope people make their questions count because i feel this may be one of the last chances.

Unless they seriously get their kitten together and just aim for a game worth playing in time, then draw people back since so few good PvP games are out… its going to be tough for this PvP to go places.

But anyways, at this point though I’d really like to see them fulfilling what they have already talked about doing more than talking more about what they want to do even more… the devs have already said they are planning on working in next to everything, but at this point, with the best of take on the situation, we can only say that their pacing is god awefully slow and tacit when it comes to actually doing it…

A rough rough timeline of what they plan and where they are at with updates would be a billion times better than all the vague promises about perfection I enjoy hearing…

Gintoki.6405:

my condition thief has a massive advantage

You shouldn’t.
If your running pistol/dagger… rangers can evade C&D all day every day, even while immobilized. If you land a C&D, the ranger you are fighting is screwing up.
If you mean d/d… empathetic bond and not being a kittening idiot and standing in caltrops, possibly a well played canine on the side, will make the fight a long and strenuous one in the best of times.

It is a 1v1 sort of setup.
The bunker ranger gets progressively worse the larger the fight is.

He also has little to no synergy with anyone.

It makes tournying with one, at least very competitively, a bit of a pain.

Yeup, Id give it a few months at least before deciding.
The interest in tournies and whatnot seems pretty small atm, but that’s just because the game is terribly setup for them atm.
After they fix that… more people will have a better formed opinion about it whether the PvP itself is worthy.

To give you the raw un-opinionated rundown.

3/10.
Major issues-
Signet of stone and no ability to activate it.
Greatsword.
Heal as One instead of troll ungent.
No empathetic bond.
Pet speed trait.
No vigor (yet a focus on protection from dodge roll).
Over 15 points in skirmishing but not focused on traps.

Gandhi.3410:

Thank you, garethh for the information.
Just by posting, you made other written posts, that you have written earlier, easily attainable.
And this really helped a lot! So after doing some reading,my main conclusion is: you do prefer shortbow
over longbow… why exactly?
And you do probably prefer axe and whatever to whatever… for exactly which reasons?

And last but not least…:

obviously when doing random spvp, a whole lot of my enemies tend to be rogues.
Which build would you run to counter exactly this one class?
(Necros are a major problem for me also…^^)

I know that I am pretty new, I know that my questions probably have been answered somewhere else already…
but I am having a really hard time trying to search for decent information in these forums.

So to spare your time…. even posting a link would help.

Thank you for reading!

Cheers!

:)
Longbow just isn’t a good PvP weapon atm.
The projectile speed is too slow to be able to sit back, use that long range and pew away into combat… you won’t hit with near enough reliability to actually have worthwhile dps while doing it.
With that being the main setup of the weapon… it just isn’t worthwhile, pretty much ever, tragically ><

Shortbow has condition dmg on the spammable (flanking is a joke), which fits a condition setup, especially since I run carrion amulet and +bleed duration runes (4s bleed on spammable instead of 3).
Running axemainhand , though, on a condition spec is just a preference, it’s a weapon where you either get good so reliably land close range splitblade’s… or don’t use it at all. Allot of people like one handed sword on a trap setup since it gives ridiculous mobility so you can stall while your trap conditions tick out and pet beats on the guy.

Against thieves… condition dmg and well played canines/traps kitten them over.
Odds say, if the thief is worth anything you will eat a basilisk venom->mug spike the vast majority of the time, which means you either have to have protect me off CD or lightning reflexes or Signet of Renewal up or die (the tragedy) but short of that… they really aren’t a good class 1v1 atm.

Even before the dancing dagger nerf I tended to beat theives 1v1 (it was a lil close) but yeah, after…. they are oh so terribly kiteable. If you can get and keep distance and throw traps down while they are in stealth (to see when they get close to you) its a pretty easy win 1v1. Ironically the worst thing they can do to my condition spec is just sit in shortbow and kite as much as possible… they actually tend to pull more dmg like that than I can do to them…
If you’re curious, this is the spec:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV3YnEVUXZcFaBBaZgo9ITSCTsH83RP6VYWFspC;TsAgyCuo8xAjAGbROfkFtWYAy2DA

Oh that and if you really get good at coordinating your pets you can use the wolf’s fear to get them out of the shadow refuge pretty reliably… its good stuff.

You are talking about deuling…
Rangers are fantastic at that.
With my trap condi dmg spec (I’m rank 39 btw) I won next to every deul I played….
Ele’s where annoying for sure and so were mesmers, but still pretty beatable.

You just sick your pet on the mesmer phantasms or catch them in a fire trap or geomancy sigil so they can’t do much, then evade the shatters (on weapon evades mean you can evade even while immobilized). Bam. You just crippled their dmg and with conditions are easily beating them in life. A few heavy cleansing specs can be an utter utter pain and the fight lasts a good minute or more every time.. but that’ about the worst of it.

Elementalists… I’ve won more than I’ve lost simply by playing my pet well. The 2s knockdown and swapping->aoe fear have kittened up more eles than I can count, you can interupt either with ‘come to me’ so they should rarely ever miss. I do lose a number of fights though if I give them a chance to stall the fight out, they have far better self healing than my spec does so the longer the fight goes on the better off they are.

I’ve had tough matchups from every class so far, so can’t really throw out a decidedly usefull list. Honestly other rangers are a bad matchup for me, the solid dodging and empathetic bond beat on my dmg output like no other can.

Odds say they read both roughly the same much.
The devs just don’t care to respond to anything that could give an idea of what they are up to short of ‘making everything B-E-A-Utiful’.
Or overly long threads full of QQ, which tends to be allot of threads…

Anyways, if you want something done your best bet is to strap a bomb to your chest and walk in to one of their offices with a ransom note of demands, (I’m joking obviously, don’t throw me on some terror watch list) short of that nothing you say here is anything short of venting.
:)

For instanced PvP…
Yes if you had the mentality I did when starting the game.
No if you throw that away for a spec that kicks kitten

In a few more words, I tend to enjoy playing things I think function pretty cool’ly. That doesn’t work well with ranger unless you are one of those one in a million that just loves the idea of traps or harrying people but all the while avoiding larger fights (which just isn’t SPvP). It’s really a kind of niche thing if you want to play a spec that works just as well as any other classes can.

If you run sword- something and a pretty offensive amulet, troll ungent, SotW, LR and empathetic bond… you can stall in small fights for days and still have a pretty solid burst (pet swap QZ).
That or traps, its more offensive and you have to know about enemy cleansing a bit more but it hits like a truck and doesn’t let up if you play it well.
But yeah, that’s pretty much it, there are a few other decent specs that work decently but you have to kind of carry them with better playing/luck than your opponent (or hope they have an even worse spec)…

It’s not an impossible place to be in PvP, but not quite rainbows and sunshine either.

Syko.3726:

What do you mean ? This is a condition damage build, obviously I will use 1 mostly, lmao

Sure but that doesn’t mean its the most effective.
(that’s where the lil bit malicious part came in, what you just said is roughly the best way to play out the spec, but that doesn’t mean the spec itself is one of the better made)

Anyways, I’m not trying to sink your boat or sidetrack all this praise for ya, I mean whatever works for you more power to you I’m wonderfully glad you are enjoying the class its really a nice change of pace :’)

but that aside, from a strictly competitive standpoint…
Meh.

I’m feelin a bit mean so…
;)

I dunno, spamming 1 then swapping and using every condition ability on CD is a really mediocre spec in vast the majority of cases. The guys you were fighting were SPvP grade so can’t really say that I would call that a show of your spec being worthy of use in tournies… it really just looks to be a worse version of the trap setup.
That and you are running the rabid amulet yet didn’t take troll ungent… it heals for 30-50% more so with lower vitality and higher toughness its beautiful. Every ranger in a tourny takes 30 in wilderness survival for empathetic bond so that and SoR easily make good cleansing.

HAhahahaha.
A warrior saying someone’s else spike, even when the spec he ran is literally only that spike, is comparable to a dps warrior’s…
What a silly man.

For PvP.
Carrion or rabid.
Rampager is pretty mediocre since rangers are a lil bad at getting bonuses to critting (fury and the likes) and have bad bonuses for critting (that one tier one major trait for a 1s bleed on 2/3 of your crits other classes have as good if not better minor trait versions of this, its roughly a 5% dmg buff on condi heavy, crit heavy builds. Not enough to cover what you lost for going crit instead of power.)

Carrion if you aren’t running troll ungent and something like signet of the wild or allot of regen/evading/stalling.
Rabid if you are.

YumCHA.8706:

Great Idea. Already been mentioned.

every idea pretty much has been mentioned at least a dozen times here…
I don’t know whats more sad, swarms of unanswered complaints about a class or the quite that will come when people finally stop caring…

I’ve killed theives while entirely in the downed state, they were bad but the thunder clap -> pet swap-> wolf knockdown -> wolf aoe fear -> thunder clap is usually enough stall time to do 12+k dmg, if you time the stomp interupts well.