Guild Wars 2

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

My original statement was “That notion is very build dependent, some things are stronger with higher crit chance, some are stronger with higher crit damage”

True, and the chart doesn’t show that well.

So I’ll explain, look at the left hand column (chance). Starting at 50% crit chance with 0 crit damage, that is when you see the first instance of where adding crit chance versus crit damage will net you the same damage increase (any other time more chance is a better increase).

This occurrence happens at:
chance-crit
50-0
55-5
60-10
65-15
70-20
75-25
80-30
85-35
90-40
95-45
and of course, if you have 100 crit chance, then the only thing you can add is damage.

Looking at those specific places on the table, if you trace down from them (for instance from 50-0 all the way down to 100-0), those are the only times in which adding crit damage will net the same or better increase by adding crit damage.

It is also important to note that this is damage over time (meaning that you will still crit higher with more crit damage), so in general, as the number of hits approaches infinity (large sample size for accuracy) the chart shows the amount your damage will increase by.

Mongo.2490:

@Obscure One: Makes sense. I don’t like it, but it makes sense. I guess it feels like rangers are given the option to not be pet focused, but they’re .. really not. So it drives people to the profession that normally wouldn’t like pets (ie: me) and then leads them to be disappointed at the level of involvement.

You should have the ability to choose where the majority of your damage comes from, while choosing how you want to use the pet your given (utility or damage).

There is no reason to not be disappointed when you find out that you’ve been pigeonholed into playing a way you don’t necessarily want to.

Vipers Nest really only needs to be taken if you are going to go with three traps on the bar (it’s a strong damage build).

The trap you are missing out on is Spike Trap, which has a 1s immobilize not listed on the tooltip, and doesn’t pulse (meaning everything is applied right up front).

From personal experience, a good idea is to toggle fast cast ground targeting on, then put the trap buttons in a comfortable place around your movement keys, so that you are able to use them on the move. You should ideally be able to continue strafing, dodge if necessary, and toss traps, all in stride (basically on reaction, not having to waste precious moments moving your hands to hit a button that you could be strafing or needing to dodge).

If you take 3 traps, your stun breakers become passive (wilderness survival III, and IX to a lesser extent). On this sentiment, make sure you can keep track of whether they are on cooldown or not (this is done mostly by feel, and recognizing when one has been used) as well as making sure you can use your weapon dodges to react accordingly (specifically, mesmers immobilize and shatter spike. Warriors mostly use immobilizes to get off the majority of their damage now as well in a 100b build).

Also, your build, while not obsolete, can be made more defensive by dropping the 5 in beastmastery and picking it up in Nature Magic for Nature’s Protection. Natures protection can potentially act like a cheap Bark Skin (the grandmaster trait) and reduce incoming bursts you couldn’t react to significantly enough to keep you in the fight. After the quickness nerf, the 5 points in BM for a 2s haste isn’t anywhere near as valuable as it used to be.

Actually, Manekks original sentiment:

It’s better to get more crits than fewer and bigger crits, you’re a ranger after all they are tiny anyway you have one single skill across all weapons capable of doing big numbers and that is maul on greatsword everything else is needles pricks compared to other classes make sure they crit as often as you can to make up for being tiny.

I say on a power crit spec you want over 50% crit chance with oils and food this should be easy to get.

Is spot on, and the numbers can be found here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical#Table

As far as myself, I have 49% crit chance and 56% crit damage. I would flip those numbers If I could through gearing, but I would end up sacrificing too much other stuff.

I think that as an extreme generalization, a point that this thread is making is that in guild wars 2, there are a multitude of ways to play and spec, but in particular, when rangers decide to go with speccing in ways to benefit themselves (and not buff the pet at all), there is a lot of investment into those stats that doesn’t add up to its full potential because of how the implementation of the pet mechanic works, and investing into pets is a pigeonholed design but a must if a person wants to get the full use out of every stat/trait point they invest.

There are also good points to be made here, like why 5/8 of the classes need to utilize their mechanic to be as effective as classes that really would never have to use it otherwise (mechanic centric: Warrior, mesmer, ranger, necromancer, elementalist versus: guardian, thief, engineer). The latter professions, particularly the guardian, do gain things by activating their mechanics, but barely lose any effectiveness in battle by not activating them (guardians is also a passive buff), unless traited for, where as the other professions mentioned absolutely need to utilize their mechanic in order to reach full potential in a fight, even when not traiting for them.

The best solution to pets (there has been a huge dislike for the mechanic snowballing from the pvp community) would be to normalize their damage (no crits), make them only hit for ~300, and then make them much more utility based (and harder to kill as well because with the damage scaled down, their would be no fear of them destroying all the games content anymore. Also, the damage potential lost on the pet would be added back to the player). Putting points into Beastmastery would then increase their damage directly by a static amount (max hits now ~600), and offer traits that increases their utility by leaps and bounds (lets say for the sake of the idea that a pet has a swiftness utility, well now a trait lets you half the cooldown or double the duration, or gain additional boons alongside the original function).

This is a rough idea, and a compromise between many different ideas. The biggest ones being that a large portion of people would rather the damage be on the ranger, and that includes the pvp community because then the damage becomes more dependent on player skill and the mechanic of counter play becomes more valuable (instead of just the player and pet being virtually unkillable while the pet does all of the work and the player just sits on the node and keeps it from being capped).

Alright thank you. I appreciate the response

Alright, so for my WvW spec, I currently have 49% crit chance and 56% crit damage with my spec (20/20/30/0/0).

I’m trying to figure out which would be better optimized, that spec, or a 30/10/30/0/0 spec, which would drop my crit down to 45% and my crit damage down to 46%.

I’m having trouble determining exactly if the loss of crit chance/damage is made up by the gain in power, or if the difference is insignificant. It’s not something I’m finding easy to calculate right now lol.

Any advice would be appreciated. It’s probably a small detail but it’s driving me insane currently.

Shiren.9532:

Crit chance will be marginally beneficial to all power builds, crits are useful even without crit damage or on crit effects. Bows have a 20% cooldown trait in the Skirmishing line which a lot of longbow users will want, so that’s 200 precision and 20% crit chance right there. The longbow is a power weapon, power is always going to benefit (even if not as well as with crit damage) from crit chance. I don’t know why someone using the largest range weapon in the game would need soldiers or clerics stats, at some point you have to accept some weapons are better than others with certain stats and builds (there is a heal on crit sigil if for some reason you are running a cleric ranger, although I still don’t see many reasons to run a longbow on a cleric build). Plenty of rangers use the shortbow with little to no condition damage, having a bleed on flanking (you can get a respectable number of stacks) doesn’t force every ranger to run condition damage to make use of this weapon.

The issue of how many stacks or for how long etc is a balance one. It’s something that would be impossible to decide without testing it.

It doesn’t make the bow into a one build weapon, it opens up a variety of build options and choices. One might be the superior cookie cutter one, but all of them will be more interesting than “more damage”.

But that’s the entire point with crit chance, if it’s a static number, it’s only marginally effective in low precision builds, but it could have the potential to be too effective in high precision builds.

Also, when you responded to using a longbow in clerics armor, thats exactly what I’m talking about. Why should a person use a longbow in clerics armor? Well, not everybody wants to go melee, and with the dynamic of this game, using a longbow to stay at ranger with a full power/no precision setup should be a viable option (not super powerful, but not useless). With only adding a bit of crit chance to the longbow, it isn’t going to be an incentive for a person running this type of build (generally considered a bruiser build, and desirable for people who want sustain with survivability).

I’m not saying it’s a bad suggestion at all. I’m actually trying to suggest that it might not be enough of a change, even though it promotes lots of different interactions with current gameplay mechanics, because it wouldn’t boost the base effectiveness of the weapon enough.

garethh.3518:

Durzlla.6295:

Oh, you mean that phantasm that can be completely mitigated through blocking, blind, evade, line of site, or interrupt? That if they actually -do- get summoned can simply be walked away from? Oh yup, sure am jealous about that!

And I’m quite happy I don’t have the option of traiting my WD skill to reflect because that’d mean it got nerfed! Not to mention there’s this amazing thing to make it tanky called “Gear”, and the fact we -could- do as much damage as it but we’d have to actually stand there and use the skill in glassy armor, and -still- be tanker than the phantasm can be.

So… your trying to put down the phantasmal defender… in comparison to WD…
Ok, if you seriously think those two are even remotely comparable in effect, I can’t really see a discussion being possible…
>.<
The only thing I can think of to say to you that could go somewhere is… think how many mesmers you’ve seen use focus offhand in PvP… now think how many rangers you’ve seen use axe offhand.
(personally its somewhere around 80+ to 2~)

jcbroe.4329:

I think just removing the rooting would be the best thing for it if everything else remained in its current state. It doesn’t do enough damage to justify not being able to move, and it doesn’t have enough of an effect/radius to make it an area deterrent.

It doesn’t do enough dmg to justify a channeled attack that requires melee range.
The axe spammable does as much if not more dps if I am not mistaken.
I personally don’t mind the root, if it had redeeming features, like very high dps, a decent aoe range, some movement impairment or at least a decent amount on the weapon set, the dmg strikes passively after a 1~s cast… tragically it has none of that.

I was just thinking about it as a pseudo-shield stance interaction. Granted, it could use more more work than removing the root. But I can’t believe there are skills in this game that root you and don’t have an area denial effect or invulnerable effect, with the pace and style of combat that it is. So I only mentioned my priority fix.

For spvp specifically, I think that at the moment apothecary (it would be the shamans amulet in spvp) would be the better choice than clerics. You have a higher damage potential in shamans gear through conditions, while your pet hits hard and brings the damage from a power perspective. You will also have that much more toughness.

From a WvW perspective, I’m actually curious about this myself lol. Though I’m told there is much more cleansing in WvW, so that already makes me wary.

Shiren.9532:

But crit chance or vulnerability have a lot more interaction with other decisions a player can make. Vulnerability benefits from condition duration (although this probably wouldn’t matter much), it can act as a cover condition (so condition removal removes it first before something more important like a cripple, poison or bleed stacks) and it will buff everyone’s damage (because everyone hitting that target, including the pet, will benefit from the effects of vulnerability). It maintains the increase in damage, but it has far more strategic play and use than a simple DPS boost.

A critical chance boost would help it scale better with crit damage builds as well as play it on crit effects (like Sharpened Edges, numerous sigils and Companion’s Might). It’s not just a boring DPS boost, it become important for you build choices and plays into strategic decisions about your traits and sigils in gameplay. Suddenly you aren’t just worried about losing a minor DPS boost if you are too close, you lose benefits from how it interacts with several different build choices.

That wasn’t the issue I had with vulnerability, I was just questioning it in general.
-How many stacks do you think each attack should apply?
-How long should the stacks last?
-What is the highest amount of maintainable stacks you can get?

With crit chance, I have issue for one particular reason, it is only useful if you are going to stack precision. It would have no incentive for a person in clerics gear or soldiers gear. So while I agree that there are many things that can play off of it, it would also relegate it to a very specific build and not be appealing for every person building towards power.

And you really (ideally in the long run, since I know what I’m about to say is already the case for a lot of this games weapons) don’t want a weapon to only by viable for that one niche. You want it to be viable across a plethora of options.

garethh.3518:

jcbroe.4329:

I realize what I’m about to mention is a pvp environment, but I’ve been watching Battosai use Drakes to an effect. I find their ability to hit moving players questionable, but I’m guessing the drake f2s are a tad easier to land now, and the river drake breath has the potential to do a ton of damage if you can set it up (I’m assuming through axe chill/dagger cripple, making sure the dodges are spent).

I’ve tried using them.
They are no better.
Easily the worst F2 response time I’ve tried and I couldn’t get it to trigger during the swap quickness no matter how I worked the F2 key.

It has potential just a few too many bugs to pull off reliably enough to be worthwhile, at least imo.
(limited cone range, stepping out of the area stops the F2 mid cast and puts it on CD. That combined with bad response time and little->no ability to set up the pet’s positioning make it hell.).

I can see that.

The thing that’s been irritating me the most about them is how, off of swap, if you hit f2, they just use it in whatever direction they are facing and don’t even try to look at the enemy.
But I play around with pets all the time, to test if I like anything outside of dual canines. I saw battosai running it on blu42s cast and figured it was a worthwhile mention.

Personally I have no problem with my shortbow build, and I feel I rarely ever die in WvW. My gear is full exotic knights gear, with all ruby orbs/jewels. Running 20/20/30/0/0 with a berserker shortbow and knights greatsword (I would go sword/dagger, but I find the ease of running around with swoop too appealing).

I would never argue that I’m more survivable, but it was a tradeoff I felt necessary to have better damage.

Shiren.9532:

Crossfire benefits from flanking, longbow benefits from maintaining distance. These two design decisions make the auto attack on the weapons different from each other. I like that. Averaging out longbow damage so that it’s the same regardless of your distance (it just fires shorter) would actually make max range worse (less frequent attacks for the same overall damage makes it easier to dodge) and remove the importance of this being a long range weapon.

Personally I think the auto-attack on longbow sucks and there is nothing compelling about it. To add perspective, I enjoy flanking with the short bow and I think it makes it one of the more interesting weapons (admittedly, I would like it much less if it had the fire rate of the longbow). It helps that there are things like the Hunter’s Tactics trait and Runes of the Thief to further encourage this play style. I just don’t think maintaining max range is enjoyable or interesting. I also don’t think a DPS boost is a very good way to go about it (I’d rather inflict vulnerability or have a higher crit chance or something which interacts better with other elements of the game).

If you keep an open mind about it, your suggestions (inflicting vulnerability or increased crit chance) are also elements that are basically increasing DPS, with vulnerability more so as an increasing rate(each subsequent hit would do x stack% more damage after applying the first stack of vulnerability, and continue doing so til the maximum stack number is hit) , and crit chance of course (more crits equals higher average DoT, divided by a per hit basis would equal more average damage per hit, which would increase DPS).

It’s just a different idea. I think many people would agree that maintaining max range isn’t a fun playstyle, but I think (even though it is still my opinion) that auto attack spamming as the main source of a weapons damage isn’t fun either.

Hence why my OP suggestion was only intended to increase DPS, because the auto attack ideally shouldn’t be the main source of damage (unless EVERY other weapon on the bar is a utility, similar to the shortbow). But it should be able to maintain damage as a competitive weapon, and if meant to be our ranged power variant, it should be doing this better than the shortbow at every range, which clearly isn’t the case.

Not that I don’t like your ideas. But they raise the concern of:
vulnerability: how fast and how high would it stack? Would it stack fast enough to make damage competitive?
increased crit chance: How much crit chance? It has the potential to either not matter at all to precision-less builds, or break builds that stack precision. Not saying it would, just the potential to.

By no means is my idea flawless either, just as Killsmith pointed out, there is a lot to have to take into account with these types of suggestions. Personally, I’m all for any sort of improvement, so sorry if I ever sound like I write ANYBODY off, because I find most people to have extremely good ideas. Remember, it is only natural to defend your own idea lol.

Somebody said it perfectly earlier, let me find it:

Jabronee.9465:

This need to get through cause its so obvious.
Dps decreases as target get closer but auto attack time remain the same. Thats what make it weak. Agreed.

That sums up my thought process behind this 100%, and was the biggest focus of where my OP came from.

That being said, I like your idea (and many of the other ideas) on this forum as well. Nobody is going to suggest something that will agree with how everybody wants something to be unfortunately

So what we’re left with is being trying to be as constructive as possible while respecting each others opinions on things, because just because I enjoy something doesn’t mean everybody else will, no matter how good of an idea I think it is.

Which is why I made this thread in the first place haha

SOMETHING needs to be done, that’s for sure.

I think just removing the rooting would be the best thing for it if everything else remained in its current state. It doesn’t do enough damage to justify not being able to move, and it doesn’t have enough of an effect/radius to make it an area deterrent.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

You take more damage in downed state.

And your crits on that ele were much higher then average, like almost 1k more in auto attack then usual.

Only targets in current meta that seem to take 10k eviscerates are hgh engis, mesmers, and thieves due to their builds
All others average around 6-8k.

Eviscerate doesnt miss moving targets. It will change direction actually if a person teleports. It is an amazing skill.

I’d like to verify this. On my ranger in my BM build (somewhere around 3200+ armor), Evis consistently hits me for 6-8k.

I realize what I’m about to mention is a pvp environment, but I’ve been watching Battosai use Drakes to an effect. I find their ability to hit moving players questionable, but I’m guessing the drake f2s are a tad easier to land now, and the river drake breath has the potential to do a ton of damage if you can set it up (I’m assuming through axe chill/dagger cripple, making sure the dodges are spent).

RyuDragnier.9476:

I still think that calculation on distance needs to be reversed. More damage the closer the enemy is, less damage the further away they are. I know this sounds like it encourages close range LB use, but using LB in close range can be a death sentence easily. You can only fire on one enemy at a time (unless using Barrage), and Point-Blank Shot itself could be made to be a ‘burst’ attack if they did this. It would make the LB more viable in PvP and WvW because it would encourage the enemies to stay the hell away from the bowman unless they want some serious damage to the face.

While I agree that logically the bow would be more damaging at close range (physics and all that), it also has to be accounted for that the longbow isn’t rangers only weapon.
I would be much more agreeable to this idea in guild wars 2 if rangers didn’t have access to melee weapons for instance. Engineers actually already have skills like this (their rifle can be devastating at close range) simply because they lack melee weapons.

However, for rangers, melee combat is supposed to be the incentive if the opponent gets too close, just by nature of design (and not necessarily in practice in every scenario).

Though I do agree that logically, from a real life perspective this makes sense, and if rangers were a bow only class, I would be all for this type of idea.

Killsmith.8169:

I think your reasoning is good on what it should do. However, I think the damage on long range shot is currently calculated for each target based on distance. There’s no way to do something similar with attack speed because you’re affecting the ranger instead of his targets.

I think basing it on your current target might work the best since arrows usually don’t go very far past the enemy you target, but that would only be with piercing arrows. Otherwise it would need to be based on what enemy you actually hit.

Very true. It would have to do the same thing that adding traits like Eagle Eye, Offhand Training, and the Throw Traps trait do (essentially creating a new version of the skill on the toolbar with different properties).

Well… These are the issues we run into when we decide to make a range based damage weapon that also can pierce.

Killsmith.8169:

The interaction with piercing arrows I was referring to is how it would determine the attack speed while you have this trait active. You’re hitting multiple targets, so how do you decide the attack speed when you’re hitting enemies in every range category with the same attacks?

1.2k to 1.6k every 1.25 seconds is not what I would call good damage, not in PVE at least. How much damage trade off should there be for dealing ranged damage? How many unanswered attacks can you fire off before they close the gap? You can reach 5k dps? (not sure, I’m no expert) with melee builds using various classes, and probably quite a bit more than that with a few of the warrior builds.

You’re right, that isn’t excusable in PvE. I completely agree.

What I’m saying though is that if rapid fires damage, just for the sake of the point, was doubled, and the auto attack was left where it is, it would be the option that in my opinion would be more preferable, because I personally find strafing around auto attacking to make for boring gameplay, and would like to see the cooldown skills be made more worth using.

Basically what I’m trying to say (in a less anecdotal manner this time) is that the auto attack shouldn’t count for the pressure AND the burst. Auto attacks should merely provide pressure, while cooldown skills should provide the intended burst and utility.

As far as the piercing trait, I get it now! Haha. So there are two situations I can really foresee happening:
1) you are targeting the person close to you, and the arrows are piercing and hitting targets in a different range window
-for this I would think that the speed increase I mentioned and the damage would stay the same, and hit the farther target for the same as it is hitting the closer target
2) you are hitting the farther target, and piercing the closer target to get to the farther target
-same situation, the fire speed and damage should remain the same.

The reason being: if you are targeting the closer target and hitting the target behind you, what comes into play is positioning ability, which is determined mostly by player skill (the other part being environment).

The other factor is target management, which is also skill based. If you are hitting the person farther away but targeting the person up close, you shouldn’t be rewarded with higher damage on the farther target, when the reward is already that you are hitting them at all, and the fact that they are getting hit could be considered “splash damage” in a sense.

However, if you are target the person farther away, and you are capable of using skill positioning techniques to hit a closer target and deal more damage, then that is a good reward, and it isn’t an exploit because (and yes I keep using the pvp reference, but that is where the game tends to be balanced around, and the same situations can hold true for most of PvE) whoever is up close is closing on you to deal bigger damage than you are with your ranged weapon, and should be more mindful of their positioning if they are getting hit, instead of just bodying you and facerolling. If you jump in front of a gun, don’t be surprised if you get shot, in a sense lol.

That would be my take on it though. These are just my opinions as well, if they sound matter-of-factly or set in stone, I apologize, because I’m sure other people have their opinions on this, and those could be much better than what I think. I just want this to be as constructive as possible.

Now, I’m not trying to be rude to the thief player at all, because they did a good job of staying up. But I found their ability to keep the pressure on you much too inconsistent.

Noted that the particular thief build is mostly an auto attack and stealth spam until something dies, but they weren’t able to stack very much damage up on you at a time, to the point where you could even outheal the damage even if your pet hadn’t cleansed the conditions.

Bunker meta will be bunker meta I guess.

Killsmith.8169:

I like the idea, but is long range shot strong enough at max range right now?

How do you deal with the piercing arrows trait?

I don’t see how piercing arrows would be affected at all. That’s probably just a clarity issue on my part, I apologize :/

As far as the long range damage, I believe it is very powerful. Granted, it shouldn’t be as powerful as a melee weapon, because there is a risk/reward melee system in this game, meaning that if people want to stay at range, they shouldn’t achieve as much damage as a person who goes in for melee.

As it stands right now though, long range shot (on my ranger anyhow) crits for between 1.2k and 1.6k, which is quite a bit for an auto attack on a ranged weapon.

If any damage needed to be increased, my opinion would be to do it on weapon skills (this isn’t exclusive to the ranger class) that aren’t auto attacks. That way it would promote “more fun” gameplay by actually challenging people to think about when they use their damage skills, and not just strafing and auto attacking until something dies (not saying that this shouldn’t be a viable method of killing something, but if you are going to put a skill on cooldown, then that skill should accomplish killing something faster or providing a worthwhile utility function).

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

From a pvp standpoint, the axe bursts bleeds onto a target better (shortbow has that flanking requirement). You have the potential to put 5 bleeds on a single target at a time, with a fairly low cooldown, long duration, and the ability to chill the enemy while your pet weakens them and attacks them for damage because they can’t kite when chilled.

Combine that with an offhand torch and you can get some serious condition pressure going on an enemy.

Combine it with a dagger on a BM build and laugh a horrible crooked and evil laugh as your opponent -tries- to kite your pet, key word is tries.

Exactly lol. In pvp though I go axe torch with offhand training to go full condi damage on one set and evades on the others, so one set I force them off the point with torch 5 and condi them down, the switch to sword dagger to cripple them and evade until my pet kills.

Either way works haha.

Kind of makes me wish I went clerics gear. Oh well, I’m still content with my full knights setup with beserker trinkets

Nicely played though, very nicely played. I was honestly surprised at the damage output of the build, but I think I wouldn’t have been if I saw more power/cleric builds (most healing builds seem condition focused, at least the ones that there are videos for).

From a pvp standpoint, the axe bursts bleeds onto a target better (shortbow has that flanking requirement). You have the potential to put 5 bleeds on a single target at a time, with a fairly low cooldown, long duration, and the ability to chill the enemy while your pet weakens them and attacks them for damage because they can’t kite when chilled.

Combine that with an offhand torch and you can get some serious condition pressure going on an enemy.

Fomby.4295:

swiftpaw.6397:

I always find these improvement posts depressing because they’re great but I know they’ll never be taken heed of by A-net. T_T

Maybe true, but I have a good anecdote for this: OstrichEggs and I got into a discussion about Incendiary Powder (the trait for engineers) and how powerful it was in HGH builds (about 2 weeks before the last update). He and I were able to deduce that it could apply constant burn uptime, which really made the build strong.

Low and behold, with the update, they increase the ICD so the burning is no longer constant upkeep, reducing the effective pressure of that build by some amount.

Now, obviously I can’t say whether that conversation we had was seen and had an effect, but I can say that even if that wasn’t the changing factor, it was still better to have that conversation where the devs could read it and use it in their balancing ideas as opposed to just giving up having a constructive conversation about it, because there is also the chance that it could have been the deciding factor.

Back to the topic I started (I have to make this go full circle somehow), I think that the entire ranger community has been in agreement about the lack of competitive value the longbow has in the rangers weapon line up for a fairly long time (this doesn’t account for enjoyment factor, as in, just because its fun, it doesn’t mean it’s good).

So if we come across any ideas we like, its best to support them as long as possible (even if we feel like the devs aren’t listening) on the off chance that they do actually read something because they were perusing the first page of a forum and something was getting attention, and they wanted to see what it was all about. I’m sure that we all but scared away Mr. Hrouda because of the volatility of the community, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t read the ranger forum if he plays the class. So he might take some of our ideas to the balance discussions they have (or any other dev reading).

Basically, we shouldn’t give up just because they don’t respond to us, or pat us on the head whenever we have a good idea. All we need to do is provide constructive feedback for the class we play, and show each others ideas some love/criticism and support in general, with the hopes that maybe the devs can see what we see and implement it down the road. Cuz that’s really all we have lol.

FupaVirus.1502:

OGDeadHead.8326:

FupaVirus.1502:

The pets doing more damage (shorter activation times)

Eh, what? A shorter activation times = more damage? It’s still the same amount of damage dealt within the cooldown of the skill. This claim = fail.

FupaVirus.1502:

The dps pets weren’t a threat before because they were so easy to kill. You guys must not run with a decent team in Tpvp because anyone that does knows that a big part of the game is control. Whereas a player used to just blow the ranger pet up while he was immobilized or whatever, that’s no longer the case.

Let’s take a look at the popular jaguar, which would be classified as a dps pet. The jaguar belongs to the family of cats. Cats got NO increase in armor, and got a whopping increase in health from 13,000 to 14,868, an increase in health by 1,868 points. Wow, just wow. I understand that they are unkillable now, I really do… (sarcasm).
This claim = fail.

FupaVirus.1502:

Rangers are too rewarding for nothing

For nothing? This claim is insulting

FupaVirus.1502:

The fact that a ranger is now the biggest offensive threat to a team fight and must be focused on or controlled before almost any other target is what makes him OP.

That is NOT a fact, that’s your extremely biased view of things. You’d rather see the ranger class so kitten that they can be ignored completly, and a free kill to cash in as soon as you see one.

FupaVirus.1502:

Say whatever you want to defend your class, but at least be honest and acknowledge the fact that they did get buffed and are stronger.

They got an increase to health and/or armor across the board, yes. They did not get an increase to damage dealt.

Faster activation times= more DPS and overall damage, not damage with that single attack. Claim is not false. Your thinking is just too narrow-minded.

Cats got a small increase in their base hp, which equated to a noticeable increase in their survivability as their base stats are increased by percentage through traits.

Rangers are currently too rewarding. There is a reason why most people rank them in the S tier.

The HUGE influx of rangers into Tpvp and their current rise to the highest tier attest to the fact that most people, at least most people offering their opinions here, agree that rangers are now the biggest threat to a tourney group. That is the reason why they are now S tier, correct?

I’m sorry but the bolded part is extremely inaccurate. Activation time refers to how quickly it takes for the pet to prepare to use the skill. It does not increase the speed at which the attack is performed, and it does not decrease cooldown. The only thing it did was make the skills more responsive really. Pets before rooted themselves and performed upwards of 3s time frames where they would go inactive preparing to use a skill, and were a joke. This is a quality of life improvement.

Secondly, percentage increase? There is no nice way of saying it so I’ll just say it, that is DEAD WRONG. Adding points to beastmasters adds literally 350 point to every stat at max. That is not a percentage, that is linear increase. The equivalent of adding 350 power/precision/toughness/vitality.

I really have no idea where you’re getting this from, as these are huge misconceptions about the class.

Manekk.6981:

And all arrows should fly at the same speed as longbow 3, I would really like a charged power shot on a longbow too, if not longbow then on my fantasy crossbow like a 2second charge and a big painful hit with some extra condition application vulnerability probably.

Actually I like the charge idea better for a no1 skill with 3 steps of damage in it if nothing a weaker faster autoattack then gain damage the longer you charge with the highest total dps always being full charges but then you’d also risk having the full charge get dodged.

I think we all enjoyed this playstyle at the wintersday event. I think that’s something ANet is (or should be) already aware of though, so I guess all we can do is hope that they retain that knowledge, get made aware of new ideas, and then maybe meld them into a working update sometime down the line.

Fingers crossed lol.

Nice to see so many positive responses.

It really just occurred to me last night when I was doing some testing on my ranger with rapid fire against my short bow, and I realized that rapid fire shoots at the same rate as shortbows auto attack, but the shortbow hits consistently higher (up to kittenage higher, and 10s of vulnerability doesn’t bridge the damage gap, only narrows it) per arrow, with rapid fire having the same rate of fire as a shortbows auto attack.

The issue that gets brought to attention is that if rapid fire is the main damage dealer within close ranger, and it gets outclassed, then the shortbow will continue to fill the role of both a power and a condition weapon, and leave the longbow in the dark because without the suggested improvement with rapid fire in its current state, the only time the longbow is a competitive power weapon is at 1000+ range, and only by auto attacking or somebody standing in barrage.

That basically makes the longbow such a niche weapon with such a (my opinion on this one) dull playstyle to maximize efficiency, that it is easy to see why the shortbow is the preference, since each weapon is going to maximize damage from auto attacking, but one has a range requirement, and both weapons untraited are 1200 range weapons, meaning the longbow is only better as a power weapon for 200 range units at the far end.

Anyhow, thanks for the support from you guys. I wanted to post some thought processes (and also kind of bump this topic up onto the front page so more people see it haha). I can’t be the only one who feels some role distinction is needed between these weapons, because I would prefer to use a weapon that has a power design in a power based build and not feel outclassed by a weapon whose skills don’t serve the function as well.

I would agree that we were told we could play the game the way we choose, but weapons need to be tiered to specific roles. There’s a reason why nobody goes berserker scepter on a necro for instance, even though it is plausible, it isn’t the ideal weapon. So my suggestion is an attempt to boost the longbow while taking the shortbow out of being a top weapon over our other ranged weapon in every scenario.

Sorry for the text wall lol.

So, and here me out because this involves logic which we know doesn’t exist in videogames, but thinking about it, I feel like there is a really simple solution to the longbow auto attack:

As the enemy gets closer to you, you fire faster.

See, logically, it makes sense because the closer somebody is, the less time it would be taking to aim shots, and the less time the arrow would spend in the air, so you would be refiring faster as they get closer. Secondly, it would balance out how poor the damage is up close. Not that it is supposed to be a close range weapon, but it would allow the auto attack to still maintain pressure, while rapid fire still being the better close range option due to superior refire speed.

What I’m thinking is this:
Long range: 1.2-1.25s aka what it is now.
Intermediate range: .9s or about 1/3 faster. Also, this kind of matches the damage scaling between ranges.
Short range: .75-.8s

Also, this would make it stronger than crossfire auto attack, which would mean that there would finally be some distinction between the weapons as to what intended purpose they serve (and how well they actually perform it).

Thoughts? I’m aware that there are improvement threads all the time, but I don’t believe something of this sort has been mentioned, so I’m hoping it gets some feedback/attention.

Awwww, guys, no immobilize on any of your suggestions?

A throwing dagger concept is really cool.

Here’s my take: 900 range weapon.

1: Bountiful toss: Throw dagger at your opponent for about thief shortbow damage -100 or so off the maximum. If this attack hits from the side/behind, apply 1 random boon to you and your pet (might 5s, fury 2s, swiftness 3s).
2: Serpents Vengeance: Throw your dagger at the opponents Achilles tendon, crippling and weakening them.
3: Intimidating Strike: Strike your foe with a dagger that immobilizes them and grants fury to your pet.

What I meant is that rangers don’t any complex skill functions. They are all straightforward, easy to perform, and don’t require much forethought, as compared to a class who has to be mozart with a keyboard switching in and out of different things to setup a proper rotation.

Instead of that factor, rangers are much more of a micromanagement class, needing to control and position the pet well, as well as position themselves well, while other classes are more forgiving about that sort of thing, or lack a mechanic that requires any sort of managing (thieves).

That being said, it’s nice to see our resident troll pouncing on every thread and every person they can.

Mauricio.1932:

jcbroe.4329:

Why do engineers skills change when they swap kits? Why do your weapon skills and cooldowns change when you swap to a different weapon?

I didn´t mean that! What I was asking was why the first pet I was damaging resets the health when he swaps twice.

That’s actually a fair point. But that’s more of a logic thing than anything else. Like asking where an engineers backback suddenly appears from when a kit is swapped into. Or when an elementalist summons a minion, where does it come from.

My best response (besides saying it’s like a pokeball lol) is that when a pet is swapped in combat, it goes on a cooldown. That cooldown could be thought of as a heal of sorts, where one of the action swaps which pet is active, and the other heals the now inactive pet and puts it on cooldown.

Beyond that answer, you’d have to get a devs response :/

I’m not sure where anybody gets the idea that rangers are weak, other than they don’t bring much to the table that an entire team can benefit from.

It’s just that rangers aren’t a complex class to use skill wise. Most of, if not all of the skills are fire and forget. When compared to a class like elementalists or engineers who benefit more from constantly swapping kits/attunements and setting up skill rotations.

That being said, ranger is one of the classes that is very management dependent, needing the ability to micromanage the pet, as well as perform constant positioning maneuvers to maintain the most ideal situation.

The thing that needs the most improvement is build diversity. Rangers have no plausible reason to use more than half of our grandmaster traits, so it really limits what you build around. On top of that, spirits are still subpar and the only other group support we can bring is traps for the combo fields (and maybe Search and Rescue).

This is why rangers are considered top tier for pvp currently, but bottom tier pve. The opposite is true for warriors, they are considered top tier PvE, and bottom tier pvp.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

jcbroe.4329:

I would say you are probably looking for a 0/30/30/10/0 setup. You want to grab the vigor on heal trait.

Combo field wise, if you couple this with healing spring you get a 15s combo field that heals an initial base amount, and then pulses regen and vigor.

Also grab empathic bond. It is a bit out of your control, but it passively removes 3 conditions from you (to your pet) every 10s. If your pet gets low you can pet swap, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

As far as nature magic goes, you can pick either Natures Bounty or Nature’s Protection. If you are going dwayna runes and/or focusing on healing spring, pick up natures bounty. However, Nature’s protection applies 5s of protection if you take more than 10% damage (think of getting 100b by a glass warrior, or hit by backstab) in one hit, and this happens every 30s. I think of this one as a cheap, less condition Bark Skin, to make up for not being able to take Empathic Bond and Bark Skin at the same time.

All in all, I hope this provides some insight.

Yeah, it does I’m debating whether I want the F2 skill reduction or not. I use wolf and devourer and most of the time try to maximize the cc / poison when I can, not sure if it’s a good enough investment to consider going in that traitline though.

I don’t personally feel that it shaves off enough time from the F2 to make it a stronger choice. It is a viable choice definitely, and that comes down to playstyle preference. Personally, I’ve been using wolf/river drake (the river drake has ridiculous stats now imo and I enjoy lightning breathing downed players for the sake of doing it, also, the damage output is good for being so hard to kill) so the drakes breath barely ever sees action, and the wolf I use mainly for fearing people off of points, or away from me when I’m downed.
So the f2 cooldown doesn’t match well with my playstyle, but I’ve seen it utilized to the degree where people have spammed drakehound and ice wolf hounds and really controlled the flow of the battle well because of it.

So that’s a much more personal call lol.

Manekk.6981:

jcbroe.4329:

Manekk.6981:

30% petcrit is much better if you’re running cats that crit all the time, it basically adds a 300-500 damage on their basic attack depending on the targets armor and obviously more on the big hits and ups the burst on petswap by alot, the bleed is nice that it hasn’t got an internal cooldown but even with high crit chance you’ll have periods where it falls off entirely anyway plus your increased bleed duration does nothing for the trait bleeds since it’s just a ridiculous 1s bleed it will never tick more than once for each proc.

Just had a look at the build keen edge is a terrible trait because it has a 6minute cd in combat and a 60s cd upon leaving combat unless this was changed in the patch, companions might is also terrible because it only adds 1might for 1s and only from your crits, somehow you managed to grab the terrible 1s traits, not your fault though they sound good until you hear it’s only 1s wich is frankly insulting imo.

Yeah, I couldn’t see the pet choice or I would have done some math on it. Is the pet shown in the build too he used? I couldn’t find it, and I’m very used to gw2skill.net lol.

No but he posted just below you saying he used 2 cats

Oh duh lol.

Yeah, then as Manekk said, the 30% more damage on crit is going to net a higher total damage output. That doesn’t factor in environment or situation (such as being in a situation where the pets can’t access the opponent, or the opponent is kiting well enough to lose a considerable DPS).

Manekk.6981:

30% petcrit is much better if you’re running cats that crit all the time, it basically adds a 300-500 damage on their basic attack depending on the targets armor and obviously more on the big hits and ups the burst on petswap by alot, the bleed is nice that it hasn’t got an internal cooldown but even with high crit chance you’ll have periods where it falls off entirely anyway plus your increased bleed duration does nothing for the trait bleeds since it’s just a ridiculous 1s bleed it will never tick more than once for each proc.

Just had a look at the build keen edge is a terrible trait because it has a 6minute cd in combat and a 60s cd upon leaving combat unless this was changed in the patch, companions might is also terrible because it only adds 1might for 1s and only from your crits, somehow you managed to grab the terrible 1s traits, not your fault though they sound good until you hear it’s only 1s wich is frankly insulting imo.

Yeah, I couldn’t see the pet choice or I would have done some math on it. Is the pet shown in the build too he used? I couldn’t find it, and I’m very used to gw2skill.net lol.

Lol no problem, I’m just glad I can help

I would say you are probably looking for a 0/30/30/10/0 setup. You want to grab the vigor on heal trait.

Combo field wise, if you couple this with healing spring you get a 15s combo field that heals an initial base amount, and then pulses regen and vigor.

Also grab empathic bond. It is a bit out of your control, but it passively removes 3 conditions from you (to your pet) every 10s. If your pet gets low you can pet swap, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

As far as nature magic goes, you can pick either Natures Bounty or Nature’s Protection. If you are going dwayna runes and/or focusing on healing spring, pick up natures bounty. However, Nature’s protection applies 5s of protection if you take more than 10% damage (think of getting 100b by a glass warrior, or hit by backstab) in one hit, and this happens every 30s. I think of this one as a cheap, less condition Bark Skin, to make up for not being able to take Empathic Bond and Bark Skin at the same time.

All in all, I hope this provides some insight.

Okay, so bleeds tick at 92-93 damage (this isn’t a constant for whatever reason ANet decided not to floor/ceiling it).
I couldn’t replicate it exactly with pvp armor, but I can get 1370 power, and based off of that, your autoattacks are doing ~200 on the tooltip, which means crits hit for about 382.

So, that means that when Sharpened Edges procs, you increase that attacks damage by ~24%. Off of crit, with Sharpened Edges proc rate of 60%, you will apply the bleed at ~38%. Same goes with sigil of earth. Proccing at the same time will only happen about ~14% of the time, but sigil of earths bleed lasts for 5s, so once it procs, then there there is a constant bleed stack on for 5s.

So let’s assume the sigil procs; now we have 1 stack + 38% for ~3 more attacks to apply another stack that lasts for 1s until sigil comes back off of cooldown. If it procs again, then you have 2 bleed stacks that will last for 3s before going back to 1 stack for 2 seconds, followed by ~3 more attacks that could proc a 1s bleed.

Basically, as long as you are lucky (shortbow fires at an extremely fast rate of fire, so is much more forgiving) you can keep a consistent 3 and then spike to 4 bleeds without flanking. So just multply 24 by the number of stacks you have and then add a percent sign to that number and thats the additional damage on top of a crit that you’ve just added to your autoattack.

Personally I think that is good, so I think you’ll enjoy the build.

Well the bleeds will never go above 1s from the trait, so they don’t really help to apply stacks of bleed. However, the sigil offers the opportunity to get 2 bleed ticks off of one crit, and the sigil has a 2s ICD.

The shortbow attacks about 2 times every ~1s, so every 5s, you are looking at something along the line of a maximum of doing stacks per second that look like: 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, every 5s and then back down to 3.

This is if you’re lucky enough to proc EVERY time, but I would average say you are maintaining 2-3 stacks on somebody not flanking, which I personally think with enough condition damage is good pressure, though the community will definitely tell you that Sharpened Edges is a lackluster trait in comparison with all of the other professions bleed on crit traits (it is, but the balancing factor would be the shortbows attack speed being the highest in the game, and our traits lack of ICD).

So you would want to factor in your other choices in that trait slot and make the best decision when looking at a damage alone perspective. Simply put, the only other damage trait right there is 30% more damage on pet crit. So think about how often you pet lands an attack, and their crit chance, and then compare it against your crit chance, and the percentage of damage you get by taking sharpened edges (1 stack of bleed damage/auto attack damage without bleed=damage increase as a decimal then*100 to get percent increase). Then multiply your crit chance as decimal*.6 to get the decimal of how often you will proc the trait, then multiply by 100 to get percentage.

Ultimately though, while those are just numerical statistics, they are only what the crit chance is over a large sample. In a small sample, luck alone can make you crit every attack, so its ultimately up to you to decide if it is worth it.

Wallach.7291:

jcbroe.4329:

I’m just curious what changed this patch to make rangers got from tier B+ all the way up to tier S for some people.
Since the builds haven’t changed AT ALL. The only class that changed was ele really. So on the tiering list (posted by the OP), the ele should move down to A, and logically, rangers remain at B+, because NOTHING has changed since then, not even increased effectiveness (they are equally as effective as they were).

I wouldn’t say that. The signet changes made BM builds a bit better than they were previously. Still, it’s not enough to really change their placement since it’s a role they were already going great at while none of the other roles got any meaningful changes. They aren’t capable of doing anything new, even build-wise.

But again, how does that matter? Most of the signets aren’t being used for their actives still, and the passive effects weren’t changed. So unless we are talking about a build other than the standard 0/0/30/10/30 setup with Shamans, I am honestly not too sure how the signet changes have effected that particular build.

There are certainly other builds out there, but I wouldn’t say that they are common.

First off, as it has been a discussion in the past; on the typical ranger BM build, shortbow is a subpar damage weapon. If anybody would like to dispute that, then their view on it immediately becomes less solid. There is a clearly better setup than that.
The only time this would change is if somebody were to run a power variant, which then would bring up the question of why since a Shamans amulet is a stronger bunker choice and conditions can do higher damage than sustained power.

Next off, please, somebody explain what builds have changed for ranger SINCE LAUNCH? The two viable builds at launch are still the two most viable builds. Not even effectiveness has changed (the builds aren’t any more effective than they are now).

I’m just curious what changed this patch to make rangers got from tier B+ all the way up to tier S for some people.
Since the builds haven’t changed AT ALL. The only class that changed was ele really. So on the tiering list (posted by the OP), the ele should move down to A, and logically, rangers remain at B+, because NOTHING has changed since then, not even increased effectiveness (they are equally as effective as they were).

Nobody beats aquaman underwater. It’s a fairly simple concept.

Why do engineers skills change when they swap kits? Why do your weapon skills and cooldowns change when you swap to a different weapon?

waka.9826:

Vylor.3276:

I have 2 80’s a warrior and a ranger. Honestly. If you know the class of warrior ranger should be a challenge, everything should actually be a challenge. When I play my ranger the problem is people DON’T kill the pet, and that’s why i can beat them. I’m sorry anet made you think and use strategy while fighting something.

I don’t think you play the game or the class. Killing the pet is the worst strategy ever against a ranger, by the time you almost kill it, you are already in a HUGE hp loss then they switch the pet on you and you basically sacrificed all the hp for absolutely no reason.

Yeah I’d have to agree.

The best strategy (imo) for killing a ranger is through conditions. In the trap build the pet tends not to be the issue and the survivability not as impressive, so I’m addressing mainly the BM build.

Rangers don’t have that many sources of active condition removal. The passive removal transfers to the pet when traited for Empathic Bond, otherwise, the person is running Bark Skin and still eating the condition damage. Other sources of removal come from Signet of Removals passive, and the active of it pull all of the conditions to the pet, and healing spring, which not everybody takes.

So here’s how this breaks down, if the ranger player isn’t being killed by the conditions, then the pet is, which will kill the pet (and therefore most of the DPS). Naturally, just as any other fight would go, a ranger will use the heal and utility accordingly, but will be forced into cooldown on those skills and probably not get to use them again in the same fight.

So now we are looking at 3 conditions being transferred and affecting the pet on a 10s ICD. Poison is going to be the most useful (reduces the passive healing while damaging), on top of whatever you can throw at them that damages. Engineers, having access to all of the damaging conditions, should be able to do well against the ranger, as well as necros.
It’s basically just a war of attrition.

Also, while it isn’t considered a competitive build, p/d condi thieves can do well against rangers since they have permanent access to stealth (CnD off of pets) and can reset the fight at anytime, while being able to keep the damaging conditions and their own healing up.

zone.1073:

Thief’s trick shot hits 3 targets for incredibly good damage.

Just fire at the target next to the one strafing left and right. It will bounce and hit both.

End of discussion.

I’m curious, what if there is only one target? I’m guessing the implied suggestion is that if there is only one target, than the shortbow isn’t the most optimal weapon to be using, right?

You’re right, I’m just curious about the versus 1 target instance.

kostbabis.8791:

Eles werent close to 50% uptime of prot unless you go forge runes either!!
Look at my ele now..He travels extra 300 units per 10 sec and you can go 1000 units by successfully performing the sword 2 skill every 8 sec..more with swiftness..
While being a bunker
While doing non bunker direct damage through pet and condie damage through your skills
While having great cond removal
While having good amount of dodges/evades and access to a water field
Am i wrong somewhere?..Did i mention the infinite range on pet?

I assume you expect me to agree with you and say this is strong.

What I’m going to say is that I’ve been able to do this since launch, the class is stagnant to play because it’s been the same builds since launch, and I would like to see the build diversity improve across the entire game.

Now to the point where I agree and say that it is strong, but not gamebreakingly strong, because if it was then these complaints would have been going on for ~9 months now, not ~2.

The only thing that’s changed for the ranger is how many people are using it (the builds are the exact same).