Guild Wars 2

Archon.6480:

Nice post. You might want to add the forge rune build. When running xx6xx, you will have a very powerful trait called Companion’s Defense which pairs nicely with forge runes and energy sigils.

I would, BUT, again, addressing this at the highest tier of competition where a S/D thief is standard right now, the moment that thief becomes aware of the runeset you are running and the effect you are going for, they are going to take your protection every opportunity they gets, especially the long duration protection you get from the 6 bonus.

However, I’m glad you bring it up though, because this is one of those options that actually translates down “tiers” extremely well. The less organized teams get, and the less competent players are (Solo Q says hi), the better this option gets. You’ll have protection for days, and eventually a thief might notice and rip it once or twice, but overall, you’re going to have the benefits from it more often than not.

I personally would not suggest running it with Celestial though, but that’s without testing it myself so it isn’t giving a fair chance. It would just leave your condition damage at 734, so I want to test how much that affects damage output.

Really though, this is a good contribution, and it does put things into perspective that even if I discuss things at the highest tier of competition, that isn’t where all players play at (most don’t), so even though the thread is basically discussing what people should aspire to play to be as competitive as possible, it doesn’t mean that where most people currently sit, their aren’t other options.

Prysin.8542:

dunno about necro builds, i do not play necro. GW2 necromancer simply does not have the slightest hint of the type of gameplay i expect in a “necromancer” class. IE; re-animation, corpse manipulation and so on.

If chill is what you are looking for, why not try sigil of Ice? It is not in any way “replacing” the chill + weakness on axe 3, but it will grant you chill with almost the same duration and cooldown. Or my personal favorite combo; Sigil of Frailty (50% chance pr hit to add 10 sec vuln, 2sec ICD) and Sigil of Water (AOE heal to allies around the target for around 350-600 HP depending on amulet. 5 sec ICD).

Sigil of water allows for even non BM builds to have their pet soak a LOT more damage. In some fights, i have found that it was the difference between a dead pet or not.

They’re all good suggestions! I’ve actually been playing around with a shortbow chill build, but I dunno if it’s where I want it to be (unless I already posted it on this thread somewhere lol).

I was actually playing around with sigil of frailty on a longbow Remorseless build the other day, and it was pretty amazing for vulnerability stacking. Without zerker though, I think the longbow is horrendous damage, and with zerker, you’re pretty much fodder for any roaming class and person who is decent at roaming (thieves will eat you alive).

Frailty on the Shortbow (and sword) are very interesting alternatives though, because their attack speed better takes advantage of the 2 sec icd to get as many procs as possible.

Water too, and it’s a very good note that Water and Renewal sigils are extremely usable for us since quite a few of our builds promote weapon swapping often and have good attack speeds to take advantage of low ICD procs.

My next round of build testing from the thread starts today, so I’m definitely going to “combat test” all of these ideas (dunno if I can say this on the forums, so I’ll say; this thread is a theorycrafter’s “happy” dream hahaha).

Prysin.8542:

Necro has chill spam deluxe

Isn’t this the typical necro build though? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW7Yjc0UebfNG3wfbighSyW4Di+ACgzlykIKA-TpwXAAw+DWZAA

That might just be the NA build. Not sure if Carrion is the standard or the exception (I copied and pasted one of the only NA necro builds I know, too lazy to go look at the ESL VoD, bout to head to bed).

But in a build like that, I wouldn’t consider the amount of chill anywhere near spammable, especially since Dark Path with Path of Corruption should be used strategically to rip boons more than to just get the chill and bleeds.

Dunno, there aren’t as many teams running necros as there are engis, as far as I can tell from observational data from the livestreams. Could just be a poor perception of it. I mean, I didn’t want to bias the thread, but I personally prefer the shortbow sets to the Axe sets, even though the chill build is my “baby” lol. The Axe sets are strong duelist sets, but lose lots of value for team fights. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have uses though, you would just need to be on a team that incorporates them into their strategy.

Prysin.8542:

i think i would swap Axe Dagger for shortbow. You will have the same number of evades, better bleed and poison coverage, and also a on-demand interrupt which will help stop enemies trying to stomp.

While its true that the shortbow is better pressure weapon in teamfights, I think it’s a 50/50 thing between what your team needs or would want more of, because if you swap to shortbow you may as well just drop the chill utility entirely. I would think that this would rely heavily on team composition.

Assuming the common core for a team of Warrior/Guardian/Thief/Elementalist/Necro or Engi, we would basically be looking to replace the Elementalist, and entirely from a team fight perspective, I would theorize that Shortbow pairs better if the team has an engi, because engis have a pretty decent condi coverage but lack an “easy” way to stack bleeds and maintain poison, where as necro has arguably less radius to their AoE but can stack bleeds and poison for days, and would probably appreciate the chill lockdown you can offer so that they can continuously stack bleeds on easy targets (and also a team with lesser mobility will definitely appreciate your ability to peel people off of them with Chill, which is something the shortbow can only do with crippling shot, and an interrupt to some extent if you aren’t saving it for something else).

There’s a strong argument for both though, and they both have strengths and weaknesses. At the top level though, I think it would be up to the team to figure out which they need more.

Cont.d:

The classes I didn’t mention are very affected by Chill. Guardians can cleanse it, for instance, but their cooldowns are their lifeline, both bunker and damage variants, and slowing them so they take damage and are more able to be focused on top of increasing the time it takes to get their survival options back hurts their survival about as hard as it can possibly hurt a class in GW2, except:

Mesmers. Mesmers will hate you. Typical mesmer builds lack a way of cleansing at all, and rely on mobility and cooldowns for defense, meaning you are hitting them about as hard as a class can be hit by these builds. Poor mesmers, the meta hates right now lol.

Thieves are a mixed bag. Chill doesn’t affect initiative, but a thief that is hit by chill is such an easy target, and they don’t typically have cleanses either, that it does hurt thieves overall ability to survive and stay in a fight, and it definitely makes it so that there are less situations where they can safely jump into a fight, burst, and get out without taking massive damage, or just outright dying.

Overall, even though there are a few classes that deal with it better than others, the fact is that chill right now is something we are the BEST at, and rangers don’t get to be the best at things that often. A lot of it does come from gear options that are available to other classes, but it is the unique playstyle of Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch that essentially has us weapon swapping on cooldown and puts us in range of Hydromancy always being able to be landed that makes it so powerful, and Axe 3 is easily the best single target chill in the game (utility too, as it is also a perma weakness skill).

To follow up, for Fluffball’s suggestion, I think it is just about the best team support option we can possibly run right now as far as my testing goes. However, there is a learning curve to it.

So that everybody knows what I’m talking about, this is the variant I ended up liking the most: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fnMqQvg2sC+qARLGAToaPAdaAwKZdvBfwEXwqD-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Now, there is a learning curve, as I mentioned. It’s a very cast time heavy build, and you don’t have any stunbreaks. This pushed me to decide to take Primal Reflexes, especially since I went with a chill option for the build. This chill option for me ended up being a no brainer, because if people started focusing me down, sword alone wasn’t always getting the job done, so by going for a chill option, it allowed me to control my opponents and the flow of the fight better, not to mention giving me a potentially perma weakness option for direct damage heavy opponents. I dropped a spider due to this, and picked up the wolf. Even though I prefer Guard with spiders, the wolf’s utility is too invaluable, especially since you have no interrupts otherwise.

Overall, I think you would be hard pressed to find a better support build to run right now, and the dueling ability the build has coupled with the team utility makes it the top contender for team compositions right now imo, as long as you can manage the learning curve.

As far as the damage goes, you absolutely most run, at least in PvP, Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch with and be fairly comfortable at dueling with that playstyle.

The builds I run for chill builds are:

BM: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0vaBLWsQ0agDhqdJ8rjArA4dxusXdBPqA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Traps: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0ua3K+rQ0aABhaVA0+FS2Wgd9mBbQBPqA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Spirits: This: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0savK+rQ0iABhaVA0+FS2WgV968IWiCeUB-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA or http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0savKeqQ0aABhaVA0+FS2Ww9RsEFRBPqA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Compared to a typical build from any of the previous PvP metas, these builds are by far higher damage (except for before the pet nerf where we could do some crazy things with pet damage, but the pets did have worse AI then too).

These builds are played mostly within 600 range, mind you. You have power/precision/ferocity and conditions all backing your offensive power, and the loss from a typical condition build in about 300 condition damage is more than made up for in the direct damage stats gained, not to mention that it makes your damage output far less linear, especially in a metagame where condition cleanses are so prevalent on half the popular classes to play in PvP right now.

Another option, for 10% more chill duration, is one that I run with spirits as well, which is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0savKeqQ0aAAhaZBEAtnhmNGcuEPRBPqA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Now, the thing to note is that none of these builds are truly perma-chill, BUT, you do have enough sources, reapplication, and up-time, along with cripple sources as far as additional soft CC goes, to hurt opponent cooldowns and in general, be the best “chill trainer” in the current PvP metagame (chill-trainer: you train them down with chill and other conditions, essentially removing them from a fight).

Also, I have been playing around with my chill builds versus other classes, and they are no as effective on some classes as others. Engineers can manage to remove chill quite frequently for instance, with their healing turret, and it is on a low enough cooldown that without the proper amount of pressure on the engi, if the are lucky enough to keep getting the chill cleansed, than they don’t feel as pressured as some other classes.

Necros will cleanse you once with their healing, and their other two typical cleanses should be dodged (staff 4, dagger 4), and other than that, they eat chill full force. With warriors, it’s all about not wasting chill while they have zerker stance active, and not standing in their LB F1 fire field to provide them cleansing for it (even if you know when to dodge, your pet still gets hit by the F1 and gives them cleansing, and against warriors, you want to chill as a defensive option to kite, but make sure to keep the condi pressure going, especially poison to counter heal sig).

Elementalists will cleanse it if and not be affected too much by chill if they are running Ether Renewal, but that is a long channel, so be sure to interrupt it with your wolfs fear, because most eles that get their heal interrupted melt soon afterwards, especially if they are using it after being out of all of their other healing sources as they cooldown.

Lastly, and the hardest counter to our chill build, is other rangers with Empathic Bond. Ranger chill duels last forever, because EB just keeps cleansing the chill off, and a lot of the time, the chill doesn’t stick long enough to even affect cooldowns.

Simply put, rangers are able to choose bears at launch, and the first thing 99.9% of rangers do is buy a longbow. It’s an immediate sign of a new player, and regardless of what level a person makes it to in the game, if they are still running that bearbow, then they look like an inexperienced player that lacks game knowledge on how to play “efficiently” (I quote this because efficiency is usually a narrow field of vision that only measures how close a persons build is to a meta build, and meta builds aren’t always the full extent of efficient builds, just the most popular efficient build(s)).

So some additional information and things to clarify:

• On the shortbow builds, dropping Hydromancy for Energy Sigils seems to be the more versatile option and will probably make your average survival a bit better, versus the stronger but more situation kiting Hydromancy creates.

• Survival of the Fittest is not a top tier option due to the limitations it creates on builds. By no means does this mean builds using it are bad, but as far as the coordination and team comps you see in top tier goes, it limits the “role” you play for a team to some sort of roamer, with hardly any team support to offer. The fact is that at this point, thieves, eles, and engis completely and totally replace you while bringing better team support, and overall, although the builds using the trait definitely make for strong builds, they wouldn’t be competitive in the current metagame for a team slot.

• Our top team composition competition class wise is elementalists. With the buffs to celestial and strength runes, elementalists have recaptured the powerful position they used to be in when the game launched, meaning that they have high mobility, high damage output through direct damage and semi through condis, and they have high team support options through the amount of boons and heals and cleanses they can provide. That means that the criteria we are aiming for is to try to provide a similar amount of options for our team with a similar amount of survival ability. That way, at the end of the day, the only thing eles have over us is AoE, where we can offer superior condi support and decent rez utility.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YnMqQvKWxC+CCXLGAToaPAdaA86GcvBXwEnxRf8KC-TJxGABA8EAkqMQuXEAf2fAA

This is my tpvp point-holder build. So far it has been the only ranger build that I’ve been able to work with. Win 90% of all 1v1’s but lose in mere seconds when it turns into a 1vX.

I really enjoy playing my ranger. Just want to know if there are any good 1vX ranger builds out there.

Any build that can sustain in a 1vX isn’t necessarily going to win the fight. Most classes that can sustain under that type of pressure don’t win the fight in the end though, they just stalemate until their team arrives to create a teamfight. Any class capable of winning 1vXs is doing so through the ability to repeatedly reset the fight and avoid damage (P/D condi thieves are a tad notorious for their capability in doing this, and engis can too if they manage their cooldowns well).

Not to say we don’t have any options, but your best bet is to run something more out of the ordinary than a typical setup, like: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8YnMqQvg2vCWsAXLGAToaPAdaAwKZdfBLwEXwmK-TJxHAB1+EAQqMgO7PAwFBAA

That’s going to be your typical evasion tank setup, which should be able to outlast almost everything you come across if you manage your cooldowns and leaps correctly. This ever so slightly alteration is the more offensive oriented version: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8YjMq0ya/KWsw1aAMhq9A0pBAvk17FsAFspC-T5wHABJVGo2nAAAXEAA Rune choice for that is really up in the air, though I would probably go for more healing power personally. Flock Runes are a very lolzy choice, but offer up a decent amount of utility on top of the healing power (bonus healing, a blind and extra attack on people hitting you).

StickerHappy.8052:

I think sources are a priority foremost because even you have a high duration but with only limited sources for it, it will get cleansed leaving you with limited options to re apply it

The best chill output I’ve found per duration is just going all in on chill. Axe/Dagger and Sword Torch, Sigils of Ice and Hydromancy, with Grenth Runes and 4 in Marksmanship (also, Malicious Training and an Owl).

That hits 50% duration (no, I didn’t calculate for food, somebody else that WvWs more can do that) which turns all of the 2s chills to 3s, meaning than on any given weapon swap, with sigils alone, you have 6/9 (2/3) chill uptime.

Axe now has kitten of chill, healing skills also do and AoE kitten chill, and an unlucky person is going to hit you and get kitten of chill. Oh, and the double hit of the owls F2 with Malicious Training should be 9 seconds of chill.

So, lots of chill lol.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Thanks for taking the time out to write this, was a great read and totally inspired me to give Ranger another shot, thanks! (Also we need something like this in the Mesmer forums)

No problem! I’m glad it inspired you!

Yeah, it’s a real shame that GW2 doesn’t have a PvXwiki that assesses and evaluates the meta and individual builds. Hopefully, more people can step up within the profession specific communities and have these discussions, so that the communities can collaborate and kitten where the metagame is and how they fill into it. Supcutie, for the amazing PDF he provided, doesn’t really help when it’s all information pertaining to a different meta, so hopefully, we can continue to have discussions and information at these/those levels.

That, and as much as I love shatter on my mesmer, I can see where its weaknesses are against the current metagame, and would love to see a build that can compete better against where the game currently is (that isn’t a clone death build, I must shatter my clones) lol.

Otaking.4675:

I tried the sb/trapper variants with a couple tweak for yoloq (namely drop spirit for entangle) and the trickle down effect doesn’t work that well since the team is largely uncoordinated more full of roamers and will separate instead of stack leaving this build hanging without enough personal defense. Things did melt very well with a ton of effective aoe conditions so I can see the effectiveness in TPVP comp but I was left high and dry too much. I went back to my regular power roaming in yoloq with better success.

Thanks for making this thread though I didn’t have a good reference point for what people think of as condi meta ranger and now I do.

In what situations where you struggling with defensive options? I ask because incidentally (and anecdotally), the weaponsets, runes, and sigils were specifically chosen to be able to function independently from the utility bar, meaning that in 1v1 scenarios, there are only a few options the builds even match up poorly against.

Granted, the match up argument is a hard thing to give insight on with the amount that individual skill is a deciding factor, but I do know of certain builds that the builds I mentioned are directly weak against, so that could be a factor (Pistol Whip thieves and Terror fear necros mainly).

However, 90% of the time, there shouldn’t be any lack of defense in these builds unless you are outnumbers and being pressured by more than one opponent, in which case disengage, reset, and reposition.

Key factors for the trapper build to improve survival:

• Turn off the sword autoattack. I cannot stress this enough, the autoattack is amazing for control and DPS, but the only way to control it is turning the auto off. Manual input lets you control the leaps and ultimately, control the opponent and the fight.

• Viper’s Nest is a Combo Field. This means that combined with the 4 total 100% combo projectiles, the percentage based projectiles, and 2 leaps (one of them being the wolf), you will apply weakness. This is imperative to do against any sort of power DPS class, as well as bunker, so that they do less damage to you and they will dodge less.

• Use your Heal wisely. Healing Spring has a notoriously long cooldown for the actual amount it heals. The 1:1 ratio with healing power scaling helps it a little bit, but overall, you do not want to be punished with this heal skill, which means if you can afford to, save your heal for when you aren’t poisoned or chilled. If you can hold off to a point where you can heal without either of those conditions on you, you can improve your survival by leaps and bounds.

• Know when to fight off point. Holding the point isn’t everything. Stick on the point for as long as you can afford to, but if a warrior is just spamming all of his AoE on to the point, don’t sit on top of it. You’re providing him cleansing for your damage is it’s the LB F1 skill, and you’re giving him free damage on you, and an easier target. Not just warriors though, but any class. It’s better to win the fight (if it can be won in a fair time frame) and retake the point while taking the opponent out of the game while they respawn and run back than to give them a stomp and a cap and let them take you out of the game. If the fight is going to take too long, or if you are going to lose, disengage and reset, or go somewhere else. All of our survival is evade and mobility based, don’t facetank anything by choice, that’s a Warrior/Guardians/Eles job.

Now, I realize these are all situations where you are acting against an individual versus another individual, and that is because in teamfights, your only real job is to pressure a target(s) and stay alive. You can’t make your team win teamfights, and if your team is ultimately lousy, then no matter how good you are individually at any of the things I mentioned, you will eventually be overrun by the enemy team, and there isn’t a single thing you can do to survive that situation other than knowing when to disengage. So, just play your part, pick your targets correctly (never, ever choose the bunker as the first target if there is somebody squishier), and in solo Q, hope that your team can carry their weight.

But yeah, other than these general tips, let me know where any particular problems were and I will gladly talk them out, since these builds, when using evasion appropriately, are some of the best survival builds we have against the current metagame (literally, the only way to run a more defensive build is to go with a settlers amulet and/or forge runes).

StickerHappy.8052:

@jc

The chill bm build you mentioned, is it the same one you posted on the chill ranger thread?

I’ll do you one better and just give you a link for it here, but it should be! I don’t know if I changed anything though, so I’ll just give it to you again here: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0vaBLWsQ0agDhqdJ8rjArA4dxusXdBTOA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Prysin.8542:

no i meant the 02660 one with Earth Runes. Condi power hybrid.

I messaged you on Skype, but yeah, I don’t really have any sort of idea when we had this discussion, and I feel pretty kittenty about it :/ would love to be refreshed and see the build now. The trait spread, without knowing any traits, is obviously solid. Celestial is solid. I wanna know though, I really want to see this build.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

I have no arguments against that setup at all, except that for a lot of people, Natures Voice is harder to pick up and use than other options.

I moved the “Guard!” hotkey to my middle mouse button, so I just double click that every 10 seconds (and then immediately recall the pet on ‘R’ for my left hand, in case I put him on top of a cliff or somewhere ridiculous.) That combo takes my fingers like 1/4 of a second, and things like that make all the difference.

I think you may have the better idea with the malicious training though. That probably provides more to the party than shout mastery. More CC in exchange for more AoE regen and swiftness, and the selfish healing boost on my own extremely high regen. I’ll have to give that a go.

Ah, that’s my dodge button haha. I have a basic keyboard/mouse combo too, so Guard for me ends up being either Q or E (I use 1-6, E, Q, Z, and X for my elite, with ` as my weapon swap). Q makes it more like my engis weaponswap though, and after playing sleight of hand thief a lot, transitioning my hand up to F1 is definitely less than a 1 second task, especially since I still use escape as my action cancel instead of stow weapons since I’m a hardened GW1 vet and unwilling to change lol.

But that aside, yeah, Malicious Training with spiders looks to be my favorite option. For one thing, you can use Guard to keep your pets out of AoE, so you can essentially place your spiders wherever you want them to range from, and their poison field gets you as close to incorporating what makes the trap build so strong as you can possibly get, on top of the crazy immobilize durations, and weakness to help slow down direct damage characters on the Cave Spider.

It seems like the best team oriented build I can come up with without sacrificing much of any of our own damage output, though I did drop a stunbreaker, but still. You have more kiting and the regen helps with any recovery from damage you do eat, so in a build like this, your only true threat is going to be an equal or greater skill tiered thief/mesmer who can potentially burst you faster than you can react, especially thieves, who have less tells for their burst because of Steal/SoH than virtually every other class (a good DPS guardian will do so nasty things to you too if you let them, but we have enough resources to slow them down and kite them while condi damaging them down to win the matchup).

I’m still a little wary of the boon stealing and corrupt booning, but the build brings so much to the table, and no build in the game is meant to have the most effective answer to everything, so at that point, you’ve done so much for your team by just being there and pressing Guard and pressuring people and not dying, that your team can do their job and keep the thieves away and the necros dead.

Fluffball.8307:

I meant NV with spirits. Obviously you move towards healing bunker away from the Storm Spirit damage by going that route.

I typically use a healing condi ranger that can both bunker and support in team fights. It’s HS on top of Spirit of Nature on top of Naure’s Voice, couple with AoE swiftness and protection, and even use those AoE healing sigils sometimes (which heal for almost nothing, but it all adds up dramatically.) It just makes your whole team annoying to kill, and you’re a solid bunker in your own right. The regen boon alone heals me for 3.7k every 10 seconds if I remember right.

But anyway, none of what I wrote is important to this thread.

Ah, alright, I see what you’re saying now! That’s absolutely a fair option. I have no arguments against that setup at all, except that for a lot of people, Natures Voice is harder to pick up and use than other options. But even then, learning curve aside, a build like this that isn’t really on any VoDs anywhere and is relatively unspoken of has all kinds of potential.

Following up on the comments I made about regen, because you are also running spirits now, a Nature’s Voice spirit build is full support for us, and even with the regen overlap, we are providing so much to a team, and arguably the swiftness is the more important boon because it creates some much momentum for chasing/kiting/capping.

These are the build discussions I like to see! You have no idea how happy I am to see that I can still be genuinely surprised by ideas and builds with this much potential to get suggested. I will play around with this today and get a feel for how I would want to gear it, though I’m pretty dead set right now on this idea:

Shortbow: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YnMqQvg2sC+qARLGAQoWFAtnhmNGcvEPxQXymiC-TJhHwAU2fAwTAIwFBwYZAA

A/D: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8YnMqQvg2sC+qARLGAQoWFAtnhmNGcvEPxQXymiC-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Prysin.8542:

you forgot the celestial option i told you about earlier.

If it’s the 0/2/0/6/6 one that you’re speaking of, it’s the same reason that I didn’t post my own BM chill build, and that’s because as far as cookie cutter meta builds go, BM focused builds don’t make the cut currently, because while they hold up fantastically outside of team fights, in any sort of teamfight, the pet loses so much effectiveness compared to something like going traps for AoE condi cleave and poison pressure, or Spirits for teamwide utility support that it doesn’t really compete for the “meta” slot well enough.

I’m not discounting the build at all though, it’s a great a build! Most people aren’t going to be able to pick it up and use it and be immediately as effective as other builds, which is a huge factor when it comes to determining a meta build, especially since I tend to go by the standards that the old PVXwiki for GW1 went by. If you know anything about the old wiki, the build would probably rate a 5/5 for effectiveness, but not receive a meta tag due to their being better options.

Also, a team that builds around your (or my) build is going to make it work no questions. But then it no longer really fits the definition of “cookie cutter,” I don’t think. Dunno, would be worthwhile having a conversation about this as well! Propose your build and give it some brief reasoning and explanations! It’s going to be a fun thread if we can get a bunch of good discussions going, and I’m always open to reason!

Fluffball.8307:

Vigor is obviously crazy good, but I don’t know if it’s 10-points-into-skirmishing-for-unreliable-vigor essential when you already have a permanent 25% regen.

People always yell at me when I bring it up, but Nature’s Voice is seriously underestimated for a group support (aka spirit) ranger. Ya ya, the meta is supposedly only insta-kill bursts now. In reality, you have to expect your teammates to be able to defend themselves, and permanent regen and swiftness on them plus the HS is really strong for keeping people up. The regen heals an entire ele’s health pool back in something along the lines of 4 seconds, every 4 seconds, in theory removing the option to put steady pressure on your team.

And this will never be stickied. Turtle wrote his PvE meta guide months ago and it still isn’t stickied.

Well, without the 25% factored in, Primal Reflexes is essentially going to give you 1 dodge per crit per 15 seconds. With the 25% factored in, you gain 1 dodge back every 8 seconds, and unless you are attacking an afk or completely oblivious person/team, you will not have 100% of your endurance bar for very long. Because every class right now has a meta build that is running precision, except some necro and warrior builds (warriors still use sigil of intelligence and crit you though, so only Carrion Necros won’t crit you), the vigor is going to go off and help you gain all of your dodges back at almost every opportunity when you would want more endurance regen.

But beyond that, Primal Reflexes is the lowest opportunity cost way we have to gain more dodges outside of the standard 25% base you gain with cookie cutter builds. Not to mention the 5 points in Skirmishing is an incredible boon for kiting enemies and escapes (swap to sword set, gain swiftness, use your swiftness-extended leap to disengage a fight and reset or rotate, or just kite around).

I do see what you’re saying though, and for the builds I have listed in my posts, if somebody would prefer to not run Primal Reflexes (since you are already 6 in Skirmishing for traps, Primal Reflexes is just the best pick up option you have right there, unless people want to try to make Sharpened Edges work, but my opinion is that the defense lost for the offense gained is not worth the trade at all), they can go an extra 2 into Marksmanship instead and pick up Malicious Training, which is the best way to spend those points outside of Nature’s Vengeance since you are increasing both your damage and utility options.

As for Nature’s Voice, I don’t disagree with how effective a Nature’s Voice build is at surviving, but against the current meta right now, I would argue simply that you are going to see an extreme overlap in your regen output versus your teammates. Eles give out Regen like its candy, and in essence, you are sacrificing all of the utility you gain with spirits in that line to try to overlap your regen with your teammates, which yes, does make it permanent regen, but at a very noticeable cost. Also, the S/D standard meta thief build is going to rip as much swiftness and regen with his attacks as possible, so at a certain point, it can be argued that its just helping the enemy thief survive, as well as giving necros another boon to corrupt. Not to mention, with any amount of coordination (or even common sense as this translates down competition tiers), you already have a ton of regen output with just Healing Spring.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing duelist build that also offers team support, which makes in one of our swiss army knife option in a sense. But I didn’t list it for the same reason I don’t have my chill BM build listed, because at the highest tier of competition, neither build can compete against best in slot competitors (even engis can give a team perma regen, and the BM build, even though I love invigorating bond, also gets replaced by an engi easily while the engi offers more options to a team, where as even the tankiest pets melt in team fights).

I do appreciate the input though! This is just my initial stance for what is a very good and worthwhile discussion as we try to mesh out where we stand versus the current metagame. I’ll have to wait to see and have further discussions with people, and I hope I don’t mean to sound as though I’m discounting anything you say, I’m just backing my own reasoning for the sake of a good conversation

Thanks guys, I appreciate the support of the thread. Glad to see some other people can back some of what I’m saying.

Hopefully this helps people with their builds and success rate in PvP.

Also, I’m updating some things to add more info that I missed the first time through, like additional sigil options.

• A/D+S/T Traps: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0ua3K+rQ0aABhaVA0+FS2Wgd9mBbQBbqA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA This build is arguably the best utility build we can run against the current meta. Grenth Runes+Axe+Hydromancy Sigils are amazing, and allow for near perma chill to be maintained. Couple that with the unblockable, long duration poison against the current tanky/heal meta, and you end up with one nasty build. The shortbow trap build does offer the same poison, of course, but nowhere near the rapid output to take full advantage of somebody that takes a stroll through your traps.

• A/D+S/T Spirits: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0savK+rQ0iABhaVA0+FS2WgV968IWiC2UB-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA Same concept, it’s the shortbow trait spread with chill. Alternatively for this build, Storm Spirit can replace Stone Spirit for another damage option, and with the weapons, you will be fighting more in range of the Storm Spirit anyhow. When taking storm spirit though, it is strongly recommended to drop the 2 in Marksmanship for Nature’s Vengeance for the active radius increase, and the “death nuke.”

Some thinking processes and alternatives: Primal Reflexes is an incredible trait that can keep the dodges rolling in (see what I did there). You can make a build without it, but you do lose a noticeable amount of dodge roll capability without it. Sharpened Edges just doesn’t ever seem worth it. The current EU 2v2 meta build for rangers is (0/4/6/4/0) Spirits with both Primal Reflexes are Sharpened Edges, but with 34% critical chance and 66% proc chance, only about 1/5 critical hits proc Sharpened Edges. Keen Edge is overall a much more reliable alternative that also increases damage just by power traitline investment, AND condition duration.

Pet Options: Wolf. Always wolf. The AoE fear is an invaluable tool and the best pet F2 we have access to. It interrupts stomps and rezzes, and in a shortbow build, it can turn people around so that we can flank and stack up a bunch of bleeds (even more with a Keen Edge activation). There is no reason to even run anything in the place of a wolf at this point. Swap options can include Drakehound for more control, similar to the Spider with the immobilizing F2 venom. However, a last alternative, and especially for chill builds, is to go with Owl. This will make properly managed chill application on those builds permanently effect your opponent. And the Owl damage, it is not negligible in the least bit. People will blow every cooldown they can to remove your chill and get away from your owl. River Drake for the corpse cleave and teamfight uses.

That just about wraps up the cookie cooker PvP meta builds. Any questions, concerns, debates, anything, go ahead and talk about them.

Next, what are my weapon options? Well, you will be running one of the two combinations of weapon sets:
1) Shortbow and Sword/Dagger
2) Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch*

(*You can run Axe/Torch and Sword/Dagger, but you limit your defensive capabilities to one weapon set and your offensive abilities to the other, and a smart opponent will take advantage of this).

These weapon options offer distinct capabilities and playstyles, and while they can be used on either build setup, there is going to be a noticeable difference in your capabilities versus certain situations. A quick rundown, the shortbow build centralizes the weapon as the main damage source. What it lacks in the ability to rapidly apply conditions, it makes up for with it’s constant autoattack damage output and utility options. Axe/Dagger on the other hand is a weaponset that will swap fairly often, and is much better and “bursting” conditions on to a target, but suffers from an inherent lack of ranged pressure, and relies less on the axes autoattack than the autoattack centric Shortbow.

You will be running +condition damage runes. The only exception to this currently is going with the trolly option of Pirate Runes for the extra bird summon for AI damage madness, but other classes benefit arguably more from the other benefits of the set than certain options available to us.

So, let’s get to the rest of the gearing options. For the record, every weaponset is going to be using a Geomancy Sigil. It hits for direct damage and applies a stack of 3 bleeds until the next weaponswap, and is one of the best ways to get “free” damage. Hydromancy will be the other option I choose for the utility and the kiting you gain from chill, however, where there are other options, I will discuss. List:

• Shortbow+S/D Traps: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjMq0ua3K+rQ0aABhaVA0+FS2Wgd9mBbQBbqA-TJhHwACuIAU2fAwTAwYZAA Balth runes are your damage option, but they are not always the most efficient option outside of the inherent improvements to Flame Trap (and later Sun Spirit).

• Shortbow+S/D Spirits: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjMq0savK+rQ0iABhaVA0+FS2WgV968IWiC2UB-TJhHwACuIAU2fAwTAwYZAA This is a debatable trait spread. Nature’s Vengeance most important usage is with shenanigans involving the elite spirit. If you go down, or an ally, and your spirit dies to to being killed or lifespan, it will trigger the active revive/cleanse. However, Nature’s Vengeance is arguably less valuable for your regular spirits, and outside of the effect you also gain from Bountiful Hunter, Nature’s Vengeance is not always going to be the most efficient traitspread and is very RNG/dummy player driven.

Sigil Alternatives: Shortbow builds are the builds where I can foresee there being the most room to drop hydromancy sigils on your weaponsets. So, your best option is more than likely Energy sigils for more dodging. There are other things that can work, like Doom sigils for more poison, or even Agony sigils for more bleed duration, but I would argue that the functionality of Hydromancy sigils and Energy sigils are the best options we currently have (I would also argue that because of the suggested cookie cutter axe builds, Hydromancy sigils are a necessary option for them to reach full effectiveness).

These are your shortbow builds. Your shortbow is like a mosquito, and while you aren’t able to really burst any sort of damage either, you can train and pressure people all day, making the shortbow much more invaluable in teamfights for damage/pressure than the other weaponset option, which is:

So, if anybody has been keeping up with the PvP meta (this includes the weekly 2v2/3v3 cups), then they know that the April 15th patch essentially placed rangers on the backburner in PvP, as all of the swiss army knife builds that weren’t nerfed beforehand, and that were created post patch, are giving the team slot you would typically fill with a ranger the most competition (celestial ele, celestial engi, etc).

But, that being said, rangers haven’t lost effectiveness. More so, it seems that most builds that I’ve observed just haven’t been adapted to the meta very well. So, that being said, let’s talk meta builds, and viable options, based solely on my own opinion and observations (aka, these aren’t set in stone definite facts, so feel free to discuss whether there is any agreement).

Let’s start with a simple discussion: “what are my cookie cutter build options?”

Well, it’s very simple. You are going to be running x/x/6/x/x with Empathic Bond, Offhand Training, and Shared Anguish (III, VII, XI), with a Celestial Amulet, and either Spirits or Traps as utilities, going for 2 of each, and your last utility slot being Signet of Renewal. You are going to be running Healing Spring as your heal, and 9/10 times, you are going to be running Spirit of Nature as your elite, regardless of the build you are running.

For the visually oriented: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQBLyoi/KEtCAToaPAdaAA-TZAZAAQZAA

This is going to be what the base of every viable PvP build is going to start with from now until the next balance patch at the soonest. Yes, other things do work in hotjoin and even solo Q. But this is not a Hotjoin/Solo Q discussion, but a discussion about the highest level of competition you can possibly face in the game and how builds hold up in that environment, and all other things equal, just assume a trickle down effect (if it’s viable in top team settings, then it’s viable in solo Q/hotjoin).

izzuedotcom.2498:

I really like the idea of a chill ranger as its different (and we have lots of pets that apply the condition for some nice variety away from the “meta”) but what exact benefits would I have? I feel like going into chill or taking chill traits takes away from my effectiveness of just power burst or just condi, so what benefits would I have from my enemy having perm chill for example? Thanks for the feedback in advance

Well, there’s a lot of different things that Chill accomplishes that helps not just you, but your team too. The up front advantage is the movement speed reduction. Being able to help you and your teammates escape a melee opponents damage is crucial, and with certain builds offering up perma/near perma chill, it greatly increases the overall kiting potential you have against a chilled opponent.

The other side to that is that pets become more reliable damage sources against chilled opponents. Some people may call it “compensating” for the AI, but melee pets become inescapable regardless to a person who is constantly chilled.

Moving beyond that, Chill also impacts opponents cooldowns by 66% as they use skill while chilled, which isn’t visibly noticeable at all, but is exactly extremely important. This means that potentially, an opponent has to wait 66% longer for their heal or utility or damage skills before using them again.

It’s essentially offense, defense, and utility, all packaged into one condition, and, assuming that you would be using Axe for a chill build, you can also maintain perma-weakness, while having one of the most consistently re-applicable chill sources in the game.

@Thread;

I see that there is a duration debate going on for chill. I think it would be valuable to discuss sources vs duration, and what a good ratio would be. For instance, at what point would running Hydromancy Sigil by better/worse than the chill duration sigil? Is it more important to have more sources of chill, or more duration, or should both be maxed out to their full potential? Is there a point of over investment? (like when using a runeset/sigil only gives a minor benefit to chill where another runeset/sigil could be more efficient).

Just things that ran through my mind to discuss.

Prysin.8542:

Shortbow is our highest DPS ranged weapon only if running Dire, Rabid, Rampager or Celestial. Any other armor stat will wildly favor the longbow, even at minimum range, due to the buff the lower range damage got a few months back.

Shortbow is however, our most sustainable ranged option, with 2x control (read cripple + daze), 1x evade and 2x heal denial (read poison + interrupt). It allows for responsive control within shorter ranges.

I don’t remember and am too lazy to look at what I posted throughout the thread, but I do believe that this was my line of thinking.

I’d actually argue that rangers in most of the games content are more viable as hybrid damage than other directly one or the other, because Axe, Shortbow, and Sword/Dagger or Torch are all very conducive to hybrid damage. However, there are definitely situations where going directly one (usually power damage) is a more preferred alternative.

Just my opinion though haha.

To go a bit beyond the title question and just say outright what the weakness of the class is, it’s that rangers don’t tend to scale well with multi-target content.

Now, that isn’t actually all that noticeable all the way up to 5 man content. But where most people have issues is WvW zerging, where none of our options really scale well with the amount of bodies there are. Granted, they scale “well enough,” but in that level and scale of play, rangers don’t really offer anything over other classes that would make them competitive at a “best in slot” level for a team composition.

That being said, rangers do have builds that work in General PvE, PvP, and WvW small scale/roaming. As far as how pet reliant we are, it depends on the pet on the content and the build. I’ve found, with my PvE builds, that the pet is there, and adds damage output, but outside of the damage, you don’t necessarily need them for some sort of clutch play or skill rotation. When it comes to PvP though, the pets, on top of their damage, hold a huge portion of our CC utility with the right pet selections, and knowing how and when to use them is crucial to playing at a top level performance.

I would say that in general, Celestial is probably going to give you the most build options. Granted that I PvP with only Celestial Amulet on my Ranger (meaning I don’t know the exact value of full Celestial in WvW/PvE gear) since the April 15th update, but in general, we have more hybrid weapons than we do full power, and a combination of like, Shortbow/Greatsword with like x/6/6/x/x allows you to bring just about every offensive option you possibly can into a fight, while providing some of the better defensive options we can offer, and not forcing you in to any particular utility option.

It just really depends on what you plan to do, you have the other armor types I would recommend, so you’re left with mostly hybrid or condition options. If you’re looking to go hybrid though, I would look to make a shortbow centric build.

It’s a shame you don’t like sword though, because shortbow and sword/dagger is just about one of the best dueling/survival sets we can run, and shortbow and sword are our highest DPS weapons, and the combination of weapons works so good with hybrid stats. But I understand the reasoning.

I’ve been running a chill ranger since the April 15th patch, and had theorycrafted one using Grenth Runes for when the runeset got buffed (it did).

Granted that I play primarily PvP, but: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0savK+rQ0aAAhaZAUAtnhmNGcuEPRBPqA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA

Also, that’s just the spirit version (spirits are still unfortunately considered the “meta” build). My preferred build is dual Birds with 0/2/6/0/6 Celestial with the same runes/weapons and SoR, SotH, and SotW, with the pet crit damage trait in Skirmishing, same WS traits, and Might/Vigor on Pet Swap with the new Healing F2 trait.

Anyhow, yeah, those are PvP based though. I particularly love chill ranger because it’s the closest thing we have to Magebane Interrupt Ranger from GW1 where we could punish opponent cooldowns.

I’ve been working on a bow version but can’t tweak the traits just right and figure out which utilities I want. Right now my theorycrafted version has me at this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8fjMq0savK+rQ0aAAhaZAUAtnhmNGcuEPRBPqA-TJxFwAJuIAo2fAwTAoZZAA
Which essentially allows each weaponswap the possibility of applying 6s total chill with weapon swap, and then 3 every 10s after that, but ideally you’d be swapping more often than that, and only sticking primarily in shortbow for teamfights where you don’t want to be in the fray if you don’t have to be.

I prefer the Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch when I can afford to run it though. It just doesn’t necessarily always “carry” as hard in PvP, not to mention the rage inducing factor that the shortbow has being that it is an autoattack centric weapon.

Half of this thread is an unnecessary argument, which is a shame because at the moment it is currently the best outlet to discuss ranger specific balance philosophy by the devs.

So first off, a tip for everybody that didn’t actually watch the livestream and just read dulfy’s notes; watch the livestream, please. I did the same thing at first and reacted poorly, because dulfy presented the information in a poor way, and unless it has been corrected, it did not capture what the devs said.

So here is the biggest key thing I heard from the livestream:

• Rangers should be the best single target damage at range in the game, with only mesmers competing with them. The longbow will be seeing improvements in the future to make sure that this goal is met.

That’s huge for me. The longbow is my biggest complaint with the class, and imo one of the worst designed weapons in the game right now.

A big concern of mine: ANet never seemed to specifically address any idea of where the improvements are headed. For an example, a BIG part of what a mesmer can currently do at ranger with their GS is use GS2, and iZerker into a well timed 2x long range shatter whose combo also incorporates the damage from iZerker. That combo alone in a full shatter spec with crits can be a near instant 5k damage. So I mean, unless I can shoot my pet 1200/1500 range at the enemy and have it pin them down and attack them while I attack them, the longbow is going to need to see improvements to either or all of: base damage, damage coefficients, burst capabilities.

Because ANet did not clearly state what the intention of the weapon was, or whether they are sticking behind their imo silly “sustained damage” philosophy, I’m uneasy plunging into the unknown with them, because while their general assessment agrees with mine, I have witnessed first hand how much we have differed over the years when it comes to how things actually get changes and what effect they actually have on the effectiveness of the class.

The thing that I’m the most skeptical about is their stating where the pet basically is at the moment, and when they said “high end content,” I personally include WvW, though I don’t know if they do, which is problematic because I might already disagree with their initial assessment that the pet could only be a weakness in high end PvE areas; when the pet suffers first hand at large scale, multi-80 encounter in WvW, and with enough organization I would consider it to be high end.

Anyhow, I’m skeptical, because I don’t personally see a fix for how ANet could handle the pet mechanic versus the content it suffers in without either breaking something currently, or overhauling the mechanic a bit so that it would be a bit more malleable to the content it faces. I mean, right now it’s a semi-competent (the pathing at times still, oh lord. And some of the AI usage of the pet skills makes me scratch my head still, even if I understand all the situations they use their skills, because some of it can still be nonsensical) extra skill that holds about 25% of our effective output in it’s not control hands.

I’ve played mesmer long enough now to know that even if AI can also be a hindrance on my mesmer, at least I can Shatter the ineptitude (GW1 reference anyone?) and start fresh. I can’t exactly shatter my pet, and pet swapping can be made useful, but certain ranger weapons (LONGBOW) are heavily dependent on traits, and if I ran the traits I wanted to with a pet swap build, I’d be shoehorned into imo an ineffective weapon selection for particular stat setups.

They also didn’t address Skirmishing specifically, which is a poor excuse for a traitline as far as the effects of the traits in the line go. It’s basically a second BM traitline, and has barely any traits that actually support the stats it gives in any way (most classes precision line give them effects that play off of stacking precision).

So I mean, I’m just skeptical. Yes, I agree with all of their initial, nonspecific assessment. And I do agree that not one build or one class should be able to do everything. But I’m just extremely skeptical of how well any sort of improvements we need will ACTUALLY be handled, because we are at the point where we don’t need any additional things, we need revamps, reworks, and overhauls. Maybe not to the extremity that those words suggest for some of the things, but still.

Fluffball.8307:

jcbroe.4329:

It’s actually the only class from dulfy’s notes that lists the mechanic as a weakness.

Sort of. Other class mechanics that are weaknesses are mesmers reliance on clones, or ele and engineer’s “jack of all trades, masters of none”, and every other class. In some cases it’s a hindrance instead of a weakness, for example necros not starting fights with any life force, but ya, every plus has a downside.

Ask any mesmer player how they feel about being in a WvW zerg and you won’t get a positive response about their clones.

Dulfy doesn’t capture in essence at all what was actually said during the stream though. Dulfy needs to reorganize the page imo so that it represents better what the devs said the ultimate goal is from there perspective and whether or not things, like pets and the longbow, need work to get where they seem them, which they said that they need work for both those topics.

Didn’t want to join the “negative” crowd til I watched and took my own notes lol.

Seth.1308:

I love how our primary class mechanic is listed multiple times under weaknesses.

:(

It’s actually the only class from dulfy’s notes that lists the mechanic as a weakness.

• Time spent on point

This would be pretty big in its own way just for the ability to determine who is and is not playing the obvious objective. Obviously there are other things and strategies that occur in a match, but it does allow for people to account for their actions and locations during a map a bit better, which is important for individual players, but HUGE for teams looking to improve their strategies.

That thread led to the ranger CDI, which wasn’t even 3 months ago, 2 maybe. The patching process and red tape and whatever else ANet deals with has made them turn balance patching into 4-6 month patching increments, so for fairness sake, take 3-6 months, and add that to April 15th, which is the date of the last significant patch, and that is the first patch you should start to see any sort of significant ranger improvements.

So August-October this year is when to expect any sort of update that stemmed from the communities response, unless ANet decides patching for balance is actually important for keeping players interested in the game, in which case it might (italicized for lack of probability) happen sooner.

Josh Davis.6015:

Great responses, all. Really impressed with the turnout. Posts like the ones from Holland, SuinegTsol, and pierwola (to name a few) are exactly the type of high-level role discussion we are looking for.

As a note, I want to be very clear that we’re looking for comments from all game modes, PvE, PvP, and WvW included. Don’t be shy.

I’ll be going through the thread quite a bit today, distilling your thoughts into something a bit more digestible that we can talk about on stream.

Thanks!

Fair enough.

Ranger specifically doesn’t truly have an issue AT range, but at MAINTAINING range, particularly the longbow. The longbow lacks “instantaneous” burst in favor of a more constant output, but most of the constant output comes from maintaining range, which is difficult with the lack of supplemental skills and utilities.

Maybe making Rapid Fire a bit of a “scarier” skill to get hit with so that it punishes classes that are attempting to close the gap and mitigate the damage output, and giving the weapon a bit more of a control style function (like a short immobilize) would differentiate it and give it a bit more “interesting” playstyle than just the “shoot an arrow, shoot a few arrows” playstyle, and give it an effective role that currently no other ranger weapon truly fulfills except the few stuns.

What if, Rapid Fire applied like, a 1/2 second cripple per shot, and LB 3 became a toggle so that part 1 stealths the player and pet, no arrow fire or anything so that the stealth is guaranteed, and part 2 was like, a 1s immobilize? Obviously those numbers aren’t balanced, but incorporating the core ideas into the longbow formula would be the key to making it a successful weapon.

As for the rest of the class, the biggest issues are trait organization and function, and how “vanilla” or basically lacking the utilities are as a whole, or without a heavy investment that doesn’t always create the desired traitspread for particular build due to wonky trait placement, like Skirmishing being a second Beastmastery traitline with some trap traits thrown it.

Keeping this brief as requested, but please don’t sacrifice any details of the devs vision of any of the classes for the purposes of time or etc.
Knowing the balance philosophy is definitely an endlessly fascinating topic, but a lot of the profession subforums would really be appreciative of any insight that can be given by the developers on what the ultimate goal or purpose of the classes gameplay is, and will help to reignite constructive discussion amongst those communities.

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

Kibazuka.1390:

So ranger is bad in one particularly playstyle in one mode which is messed up and badly balanced by basic design and was never intended or subject of any balance decision ever.

Oh no, how horrible!

And thieves are terrible at bunkering points, quick, they need help!

Not entirely true, the situation post-patch has bled over into TPvP where rangers have fallen out of the “meta” team composition where, all other things equal, other classes can accomplish the same goal ranger builds accomplish while being more versatile and useful in teamfights. You’ll see evidence of this during the previous weeks ESL and Mistpedia tournaments, and will more than likely see a repeat of team comps lacking rangers in the upcoming ESL/Mistpedia events.

And it has nothing to do with rangers being bad at all. They just don’t fulfill as many functions as another class would in their position, especially since now people are realizing how easy it has always been to fight a spirit ranger, and how minimal the benefits of the spirits actually are and how easily they are countered. Considering that this is the most optimal utility selection for what people build for in team comps if they aren’t a pure damage class that can build selfishly like a thief, rangers are ending up in the same place in PvP that they are in WvW.

As a baseline for building right now, I go Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch with a Celestial Amulet, Grenth Runes, and 30 in WS for Empathic Bond and Offhand Training. Oh, and Geomancy/Hydromancy for sigils, which ends up making the builds virtually a perma chill build, and absolutely a perma-soft CC build.

Everything else is still being theorycrafted by me. I personally enjoy rolling 0/2/6/0/6 with Invigorating Bond, pet swap traits for vigor and might, and pet crit damage. However, it is a very 1v1 build, and I’m not part of what would be considered the “highest tier” of players in TPvP to be able to say how viable it is on a team composition since it is highly selfish and 1v1 oriented, though you can seriously lock down people in team fights, and your birds function as “pocket S/D thieves” doing consistent 2k damage hits, and if you are attacking the same target as the pet, people can’t get away due to chill.

That being said, most of the functionality of that build comes from the mentioned baseline. It can be incorporated into spirits or traps or whatever else you would run with Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch and be effective.

Fire and Air all day. Gives the weapon some sorely missing burst damage.

If I was you, I’d edit out the last line of the OP because, while it is understandable that you have frustrations with ANet, I do sincerely think this topic is important and deserves to have some discussion, since it is actually quite relevant.

As mentioned, there are lots of “useless” traits, especially from a WvW standpoint. Skirmishing is actually the least functional traitline available, and does nothing of value for builds outside of stat increases. Meanwhile, WS has a ton of useful traits for all types of builds, but doesn’t necessarily have the most desirable stat increases for power based builds.

Nature Magic improves the most group oriented utility, which is spirits, but spirits just so happen to be ineffective in a lot of the WvW encounters. Between siege and AoE spam and the paper quality spirits have even when fully traited, combined with their “uninteresting” or more or less unnoticeable effect in large scale situations, they aren’t really all that great.

Combine that with lots of selfish utilities, like Signets, that require heavy trait investment to even be useful but are less effective than they should be if you are arguing whether or not to take a ranger or another damage class/build and which is the best in slot option.

With food buffs and large cleansing due to how well classes like guardians stack and how limited removing boons is (like retaliation), traps are basically just a no, and what is a shout ranger really? They are easily replaceable, and usually heavily invested into a pet mechanic for their damage that just doesn’t scale well at all with any number of players outside of about 2, which is also the argument for BM invested rangers.

Some of those options are clearly good for roaming and small skirmishes, but ranger is truly just about, if not, the most lacking class when it comes to larger group encounters, particularly if you are talking about Best in Slot compositions, at which point every other class can either completely replace rangers while offering better utility, or bring so much more to the table that the loss of whatever a ranger actually brings (being a nuisance with a pet and no real burst damage unless they are suiciding with GS or in PVT gear and like a fly buzzing in your ear).

Honestly, at the end of the day, ranger is just some poor hybrid between thieves and warriors that have decent enough mobility, but don’t benefit and output at the same level as thieves to justify building selfishly, and aren’t damage oriented enough as warriors to be effective tanky damage dealers, and are stuck with a very poor excuse for a class mechanic that scales increasingly less with every single content patch, not to mention just existing WvW content.

Just some thoughts from me (fyi, I’m one of the ranger SOAC podcast hosts, or the cohost more technically).

I haven’t been using Frost Trap, however, I have been running a Perma Chill PvP build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnY8fjMq0vaBLWsQ0agDhqdJ8rjArA4dxusXdBPSA-TJhHwACOJAh2fAwTAwYZAA).

It’s pretty amazing. I could probably drop SotH for Frost Trap, but it’s being used mostly for the pets increased movement speed as well to make them that more efficient and less reliant on their own swiftness. Not to mention I can pop the signet for a big F2. Same thing with SotW.

I run SoR on every build to top it off, and wouldn’t trade it for the world since it’s our reliable full cleanse and doubles as a stun break.

Eurantien.4632:

See, I’m under the impression we have enough lock down with our pets but we just can’t control them.

As for the lb vs gs. I find GS only good for mobility and burst but it greatly lacks in the effectiveness of the block or the hilt bash. I think the animation for hilt bash should be smoother so it can be used on targets running away (if they are in ranger) and I think gs 4 should be reworked in order to block multiple melee hits. Personally, I want the counter attack gone but the GS throw to be either a daze, stun, or kd so that we can maintain the the CC (when only targeted by 1 melee person) but gain more defensive capabilities for this weapon and its associated builds.

I would be absolutely fine with that, though I’ve always wanted to see the thrown greatsword be an immobilize, so that even though it loses play from moment of clarity, Stability can’t negate the control effect.

I’d personally love to see the lowest tier of the longbow autoattack removed, the highest tier shaved a tiny bit, and rapid fire be a bit more burst oriented, and with a shorter channel time. Combine that with turning LB 3 into a two part skills so that the first part, you just stealth, no arrows shot or anything (so that it’s a guaranteed stealth) that also effects the pet, and then either add Point Blank Shot as the 2nd part of the skill and open up the 4th skill slot for a new skill, or a shot that immobilizes for a short period of time.

I’m always back and forth about what I want to do with Barrage. The skill itself is fine, but in truth it’s kind of the skill that is least like the other skills on the longbow, and changing it to something different could definitely make it more efficient, just as slightly altering the skill could, or even just leaving it. I would like to see it changed so that it functions like Meteor Shower though, if it doesn’t. I get the impression that it doesn’t, but essentially, canceling the channel early shouldn’t drastically reduce the amount of hits by as much as I feel it does versus the whole channel. Never tested it, could just be the impression I get.

I agree with Eurantien, and I absolutely agree with merging the F1 and F3 into a toggle for pets.

I’ve mained ranger in both GW1 and GW2 forever now, and not only have I been forced to witness the class become completely and totally be reworked to be less interesting, engaging, and effective, but I have watched other classes simply acquire functions that were unique to the ranger in GW1 leaving them with nothing nearly as unique or effective to work with.

So, that being said, I’d like to add my own perspective on some things. Not to say I disagree with Eurantien at all, just a different perspective.

I don’t actually think there are any issues with our Greatsword at all. When going full melee and combined with S/X (usually dagger), the greatsword is a very decent damage tool and a strong bursting weapon in the right build. You can extract from that then that the issue lies with the Longbow.

The Greatsword truly is not a defensive enough weapon right now to be coupled with the Longbow, but there isn’t really a better option than the Greatsword because too much damage and burst capability is lost otherwise. So, if the longbow were a different sort of weapon, maybe either a more burst heavy weapon, it could be combined with a more defensive swap set of S/D and be a viable combination at that point.

However, my suggested alternative, since the greatsword already functions as a decently strong burst tool for us, is to make the longbow more control based. One of the biggest issues I’ve found is very similar to what I would consider a damage guardians issues are; which is that rangers lack lockdown abilities on opponents allowing them to negate a lot of our damage.

Making the longbow a more control based weapon would be a boon for more than just adding more play and more burst options combined with the greatsword, it would also give more options to the weapon to lock people down and hit them with the very constant, no burst style damage that the longbow outputs, and would give a third benefit of gaining some defense through appropriately and skillfully using the lockdown on the weapon.

Sorry if it’s a lot to read. I personally would think that would be the best option, and a control based longbow would add some interesting plays to teams as well I believe, being able to make plays as a team on a single target and being able to contribute something more than just damage, for instance, as well as the weapon combining with other weaponsets, like S/D, to make it more of an evasion style constant damage nuisance (I call it the “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” playstyle).

It could be argued whether or not the game really needs more control based effects, but in reality that’s a different balance discussion of “are control effects where they need to be right now” and not a valid argument for whether or not the suggestion actually benefits the class and fixes any of the discussed issues.

Edit: Also, when combined with the right pets, rangers do have “enough” control options, but then the discussion of the effectiveness of pets gets put back into play, which I believe Eurantien and others are discussing and full force, and I would simply say that I support everything Eurantien said, and can back the ongoing discussion.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I disagree with the conditions. We need LESS condition spamming on auto attacks, not more. I personally like Mesmer Greatsword the way it is.

But it could also be argued that Mesmer GS has more mechanics working for it than the ranger longbow, like the fact that it is a beam (so no flight time) that pierces by default.

While that might not always be as significant in PvE content, it definitely helps the weapons effectiveness in PvP based combat.

Anywho, @Thread;

I agree with what some people have mentioned, that distance based skills shouldn’t be treated as a bonus damage at range while punishing players up close, but a fair base damage, and then an added bonus for being at a certain range.

In a sense, the skills with flanking requirements in the game for bonus effects are all examples of position based combat that work well, and they usually have a base effect and a bonus effect if flanking.

Similarly, I would think that adding a base effect and then a bonus “do this” function at a certain range that doesn’t necessarily hinge on maximizing damage output would be a good way to treat distance based skills.

Piercing Arrows technically isn’t AoE.

Area of Effect (AoE):

A term used in many role-playing and strategy games to describe attacks or other effects that affect multiple targets within a specified area. For example, in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, a fireball spell will deal damage to anyone within a certain radius of where it strikes. This term is not limited to just role-playing games, however; in most tactical strategy games artillery weapons have an area of effect that will damage anyone within a radius of the strike zone.

Area of effect can also refer to spells and abilities that are non-damaging and non-explosive. For example, a powerful healing spell may affect anyone within a certain range of the caster (often only if they are a member of the caster’s party). Many games also have what are sometimes referred to as “aura” abilities that will affect anyone in the area around the person with the ability. For example, many strategy games have hero or officer units that can improve the morale and combat performance of friendly units around them. The inclusion of AoE elements in game mechanics can increase the role of strategy, especially in turn-based strategy games. The player has to place units wisely to mitigate the possibly devastating effects of a hostile area of effect attack; however, placing units in a dense formation could result in gains that outweigh the increased AoE damage received.

Point-blank area of effect (abbreviated PBAoE) is a subset of AoE in which the affected region is centered on the character that is performing the ability, rather than a location of the player’s choosing. That term, however, is rarely used by players because of its relatively higher complexity to spell out. Thus AoE is more favorably used, especially in MMO games.

Just point that out. If anything, Piercing Arrows would be considered more like collateral damage, or even cleave (collateral being the better term).

I WISH we had a skill that added true AoE to our arrows. Maybe in that Skirmishing line that has more Beastmastery related traits than Skirmishing related traits.

You know, kinda how rangers lost that ability in the transition to GW2 from GW1.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ignite_Arrows

Not saying that Piercing Arrows is ineffective, but it isn’t AoE.

DUDE!

Some EXCELLENT suggestions thank you so much!

I was using the signet indeed b4 going for the flame trap, mainly because of the reasons you said. Then I wasn’t so sure and switched, so glad my original thought had logic xD.

Celestial def will try that out as well! Makes sense in this build! How did you feel the settlers amulet did in this build set up btw?

Ill give these changes a try. Also I do have a gameplay video Ill be releasing tomorrow of me in a match.

Cheers again!

No problem! Happy to help.

With settler’s, there isn’t really any issue with the build at all, it’s more of an issue of how the build competes against the meta, or because I don’t have a direct damage comparison, how I feel it competes.

Playing against some of the more common meta builds like Soldier’s Amulet Warriors and Celestial Eles (and engis, etc), Settler’s feels like you have to work a lot harder to do damage since the pure condition investment can be almost completely negated by the condi cleanses and immunity available to certain classes.

The gain in vitality of the celestial also gives the feeling of celestial being close to as tanky as settler’s, combined of course with the healing power you’re also gaining and taking advantage of since healing spring has a 1:1 scaling with healing power and gives regen which also benefits.

I’ve actually personally been using the new Invigorating Bond trait coupled with a raven and owl in a very similar setup to your build, except I’m running a chill build, and either I’m crazy, or the healing you get from Invigorating Bond helps make build that much more sustainable.

Can’t wait for the new video though!

Actually I’d argue the reverse, that NOBODY should have base condition application on autoattacks. At least not any with zero limiting factors on how they’re applied.

Then again, I actually want to play a balanced game, and not a game plagued with power creep and obvious imbalances, so I mean, any efforts I suggest in an effort to nip it in the bud seem moot at this point.

I would imagine the next patch we would see any sort of progress towards the discussions we had and the CDI will be around July, especially if ANet has another PAX PvP tournament planned.

Otherwise, it won’t be until after PAX, or as mentioned earler, Q4 2014 at the earliest, late summer if tournaments aren’t a factor.

Not to mention any number of “secret” projects ANet might be working on for PAX/etc to drop any info on.

No, I absolutely agree with you Bri. I know I wrote a lot of text and the point got lost somewhere in there that I was trying to make, but what I was meaning to say that the distance is just one side of the issue and that another view on it is how not healthy it potentially is for a weapon with its particular skillset to have to rely on autoattacks to begin with.

Wordy, again, I know, so let me ask my point as a question: Would distance based skills be as poorly designed if they weren’t the source of the maximum damage output? (so that a repeatable skill rotation using the autoattack as filler would be the maximum DPS)?

I mean, yes, maximum damage would still be at maximum range, but the other skills in the damage rotation wouldn’t be affected, so I would assume that it would be an overall better situation right now than having total DPS scale entirely with how far away you are to something.

Because as you said, currently, it promotes playing selfishly and at times forces you away from your team, which imo is a very, very poor design choice, especially in a game where pick up groups are going to be fairly common since it gives the impression of a person working against their team from a purely observational standpoint alone.

Cufufalating.8479:

This is slightly off-topic, was I apologies in advance..

@jcbroe

I’ve really never liked that sort of logic. I don’t see any gain in adding “active” gameplay for now reason, and really Mesmer GS and Ranger SB are the two weapons I use the most and are perfect examples. For the GS I use 2, 3, and 4 pretty much off CD because they offer the best DPS. It’s very active and I am always using skills. With the SB I am mostly just AAing, sometimes going quite long periods without using my other skills because the best DPS is on the AA.

To me, the SB is much better design, not because I’m lazy and its easier, but because I am thinking about my skills. When I use a SB skill its because I want the specific special effect that skill profides for the situation I am in. I am constantly thinking, choosing, waiting, planning. It’s interactive. With the mesmer GS (with the exeption of the #5) there is very little thought. I am spamming every skill all day long purely for the DPS. Sure, I know the #3 removes boons, and the #2 gives Might, but I am not using the skills for those purposes.. they are just random bonuses that happen from the spamming to get max DPS. That, to me, is much worse design because theres no thought other than “must press all buttons!”.

Now, maybe the ranegr SB does take with slightly too far… It would be nice if all weapons had a bursting skill (like 100B, or iBerserker, etc) to give a quick sudden DPS increase, but otherall the AA should give the best sustained DPS with the other skills offering utility so that people are using them with thought and skill.

TL;DR – Interactive play >>> Active play for no reason

That’s true, and out of any example you picked in the game, Ranger Shortbow is definitely THE weaponset to pick, as with it you should always be moving to create the flanking scenarios for the most damage, and picking the appropriate time to use the cooldown as every cooldown has a unique function and purpose (I’d argue thief shortbow is in a similar boat, unless that weapon achieves maximum DPS by doing something other than autoattacking).

I think the key to that though is that there are situations and reasons to use the cooldowns.

So maybe the idea of active gameplay should just be substituted with engaging gameplay, or as you said, interactive gameplay.

In which case weapons like Longbow still need to be changed. Vulnerability isn’t as effective against bosses, and Rapid Fire itself is a DPS loss unless used at the perfect moment in between autoattacking as to not interrupt the animation of an autoattack at all. LB 3, because it isn’t an evade, could maybe help drop aggro I guess, but you are sacrificing your DPS to stealth and not help offensively at all through the entire usage of the skill, which due to ANets dungeon mechanics is a big “no” for lots of people since the game is all about the “damage meta,” and LB 4 is a hard CC which is also not useful against a boss all that much.

So you end up just autoattacking and dropping barrage on cooldown.

So that could be fixed just by improving dungeon mechanics so you can’t just damage your way through dungeons anymore, but I do think that most people would prefer to see the weapon be changed to reflect a more engaging playstyle.