Guild Wars 2

Condition based trap builds with Flame Trap/Spike Trap, etc. and the traits that decrease trap cooldowns and let you cast traps from range is by far the strongest AoE spec available to the class, ranged or otherwise.

• Focus on Crit/Crit Damage, Power, and Condition Damage in that order.

• Put at least 20 points in Marks for Piercing Shots. Put 25 points in Skirmishing for Sharpened Edges and Quick Shots. Put at least 10 points into Wilderness Survival for Wilderness Knowledge. Put 5 points into Beast Mastery for the minor trait, which is amazing. The rest of the traits are up to you.

• Take Healing Spring as your heal for group PvE. Take Troll Unguent for solo PvE. Take Quickening Zephyr and Sharpening Stone for DPS. Last utility is up to you. Flame Trap is nice for AoE damage. Signet of Renewal is nice for condition removal. Lightning Reflexes is nice for survivability. Take Rampage as One for your elite – big damage and an extra swiftness buff for running from place to place.

• Use Shortbow no matter what. Use Axe/Warhorn for solo PvE because of the quickness buff. Use Longbow for group AoE situations.

Have fun!

• Empathic Bond should be moved to tier 1 Wilderness Survival. Guardians have a tier 1 trait that does the exact same thing, and it doesn’t require a pet. Empathic Bond is not even remotely tier 3 quality.

• Signet of Renewal should not require a range. As long as you have an active pet, it should work every time.

Those two changes would improve Rangers’ condition removal significantly.

They’re both solid 1v1 classes. A bomb build Engi is better at defending control points. A Ranger is a better roamer.

Against each other 1v1, Ranger is typically favored over Engi.

Shortbow attacks way too quickly for an unconditional bleed application. The way it works now is fine, and actually requires some skill to use. I’d by far rather have the fast attack speed than an unconditional bleed.

Mesmers need nerfs, but not huge ones. Moa needs to have its duration cut in half and its cooldown cut in half. Phantasms (particularly duellist, swordsman, berserker) need their damage toned down a bit, and possibly have slightly higher cooldowns.

That’s it. Mesmers would be in a really solid spot without being OP with those changes.

Anet’s stated design goal is that they want to do away with the typical MMO trifecta of tank/healer/dps. That doesn’t mean that particular classes can’t have niches based on their playstyle. If they didn’t, classes would be incredibly homogenous and uninteresting to play.

Thieves do excel at 1v1, and due to their high mobility make excellent roamers.

Warriors, on the other hand, are much worse in 1v1, but do much better in large scale skirmishes when supported by teammates.

Guardians are phenomenal point defenders.

These are all niches that these particular classes are good at. That’s not against the stated design intent.

That said, it’s entirely possible to nerf abilities that are relatively too strong without taking away a class’ niche. For example, Thieves are amazing at 1v1. Their Heartseeker ability was nerfed today. They’re still going to be amazing at 1v1.

The key will be for the devs to make balance changes without over-buffing or over-nerfing anything to the point where a class simply has no viable niche at all.

In theory, they longbow does substantially more damage at long range.
I’m not sure how well this actually holds up to practice.

It doesn’t. At least not outside of WvW, where you can hide behind keep walls. In sPvP, maps are much more constrained and you’re constantly on the move. Maintaining max distance for Longbow is virtually impossible in most situations. This is particularly true when defending or taking control points.

That’s why Longbow is fantastic in WvW and pretty bad in sPvP.

The second part of what you said is why the first part of what you said is true. Fights don’t last long when you spec glass cannon.

Take 10 points out of Marks and Skirmishing and put them into Wilderness Survival, and take one or both of the traits that give you defenses against being CCed.

Try using Knight’s Amulet instead of Berserker’s.

Take at least one defensive utility, ideally two. Lightning Reflexes or Protect Me can go a long way in keeping you alive against burst.

Get pets with defensive capabilities. Wolves have an AoE Fear. Spiders have Immobilize. Lots of pets have Chill, which is a slow. Use these abilities to create gaps between you and your enemies.

If you want to spec glass cannon and blow people up, roll a Thief. They can get away with being squishy because they can stealth and leave when kitten gets heavy. Rangers generally have less burst damage but more survivability. Try speccing and playing yours that way and you’ll see an improvement in your results.

I think the situation would improve a lot if players couldn’t rally off enemy deaths. Rallying should require excruciatingly slow self heals or aid from a teammate.

Unspecified.9142:

Yup, the best part is it usually says “Obstructed” for me instead of “Missed” which can be confusing when trying to resolve the issue.

The only classes that want to strafe like that are other ranged classes. Just run up to them and shoot them at point blank range.

EDIT: I agree that it’s stupid and should be fixed, btw. Just suggesting a solution in the meanwhile.

Damage over time. The Shortbow’s autoattack hits 2.2 times per second. Over time, it does more sustained damage than any other weapon available to the class. That’s not even accounting for the bleeds, which do even more damage if you’re able to flank your opponent.

The numbers you see won’t be as big, but they’ll add up to significantly more over the course of a fight.

For casual sPvP they’re fine. They’re very solid in 1v1 and make good roamers and point defenders.

In competitive 5v5 tPvP, they’re currently one of the least desirable classes in the game. This has more to do with how good Thieves, Mesmers, and Guardians are than that Rangers are bad, though. Right now, certain classes (the aforementioned) just have way more burst damage and/or group utility than other classes, and so those classes are less desirable in highly competitive environments.

If you’re wanting to do casual sPvP, WvW, and PvE, Ranger is a great choice. If you want to do tPvP at a highly competitive level, you’re taking a gamble. Right now they’re not on par, but a few balance tweaks could change that.

Guardian is presently amazing at most aspects of play, simply because of their versatility, survivability, and phenomenal group utility. Their only real downside is their relatively low mobility and lack of ranged options.

Movezigg.1238:

Which traits you think its better besides the 20 points at Marksmenship?

Glad the information was useful to you. This is the build I currently run for Roamer / Point Defense: http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.6.10.4.0.21.20.20.0.33.133.301.138.145.151.2.2.8.378.383.0.394.400.0.408.414.0.423.0.0.0.0.0.20.20.20.10.0

It’s a fairly standard build. A few points to note:

• The main thing I do differently than most people is that I run a full set of Dwayna Runes, combined with the Natures Bounty (III) trait from the Nature Magic line. This makes regeneration you apply last 50% longer. Using this combination, the regeneration from Healing Spring lasts 36 seconds – 6 seconds longer than the cooldown of Healing Spring itself. This can be very useful for 1v1 or 1v2 point defense, because as long as you’re fighting on top of your Healing Spring you have permanent regeneration, and it ticks every second for about 158 healing.

• If you don’t care about point defense and want to get more aggressive as a pure roamer, you can drop the 10 points in Nature Magic and put 5 into Beast Mastery for 2 seconds of Swiftness every time you swap pets (very good) and 5 more points into Skirmishing for added damage while flanking. If you do this, I’d also swap to Divinity or Lyssa Runes as well.

• When I want to play a little more defensively or focus more on point control, I swap out the Berserker’s Amulet for Knight’s Amulet + Berserker’s Jewel for a little more survivability.

Hope this info is useful to you. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. I’m always trying to learn more about the class and find new ways to play it.

Agree with most points in the OP. Disagree with point 4. If anything, I think Warriors are probably the perfect baseline in terms of power level right now. Thieves, Mesmers and Guardians are all above this baseline to varying degrees. All other classes are below this baseline to varying to degrees.

Minor adjustments to each class that bring them all to a power level relative to Warrior’s should be the devs’ aim, imo.

Melee is viable but generally subpar for both PvE and PvP. Obviously, being in melee means taking more damage from enemies. In most games, this is incentivized by doing more damage than ranged options. In this game, Shortbow does more damage than any melee option available to Ranger.

So in short, yes, you can melee and you’ll do alright, and Greatsword is a lot of fun to use. It’s just not optimal.

Pretty sure the OP is referring to WvW when he says PvP:

My bow is Eir’s Longbow for the stats

Longbow is great for WvW. It’s pretty awful for sPvP. It’s hard to have a conversation about a build unless we’re clear on where it’s being used.

Moa should last half as long and have its cooldown cut in half. Problem solved.

Ranger PvE is fine and easy. You do solid DPS (at range) and have good condition removal. When leveling, your pets will tank most damage for you, so it’s not difficult at all to fight 4 or 5 mobs a few levels higher than you if you know how to manage your pets and kite properly.

Having played Engi, Thief, Warrior, Ele, and Ranger to at least 25, I’d say Ranger is the easiest of all of them in PvE and the most capable of handling multiple higher level mobs at once.

The only downside to ranger in PvE is that pets last about 2 seconds on boss fights. As long as you don’t mind just leaving them next to you and using them as buff bots, you’re fine.

I don’t think Protect Me not absorbing condition damage is a bug. Most other damage immunity abilities in the game also don’t affect condition damage. (Ele’s Mist Form, for example.)

One bug to add to the list: Signet of Renewal’s Active ability only seems to work about 50-60% of the time, even with an active pet. Need to do further testing to be sure this isn’t an issue with the pet’s distance from the ranger on use, but I don’t think that’s the case.

Depends on whether you mean WVW or sPvP when you say PvP. I can provide some general advice for sPvP:

• One of your weapon sets should definitely be Shortbow. Damage output is higher than any other weapon available to the class, and the bleeds are solid.

• Axe/Warhorn is a really solid secondary choice for sPvP because Warhorn 5 provides Swiftness for getting from point to point quickly and is a solid group buff. It’s my secondary set of choice in sPvP. In WvW, Longbow is the best secondary weapon because of its range and AoE capability.

• As tempting as it might be, don’t use Greatsword. After nerfs, its damage is lower than Shortbow and is melee range versus 1200 range.

• One of your pets should be a Wolf. AoE fear is very strong for controlling points and preventing enemies from stomping allies.

• Put at least 20 points into Marksmanship for the Piercing Arrows Trait. It’s one of the only talents I consider absolutely mandatory in PvP. It’s a huge damage increase and gives you incidental AoE damage in group fights.

• Shared Anguish and Hide in Plain Sight in the Wilderness Survival Tree are both amazing Traits for sPvP. Less good in WvW, but in sPvP they’ll save your bacon against people trying to lock you down with CC and burst you to death while you’re incapacitated. I consider at least one of these talents mandatory. I run both.

• Don’t bother trying to make a pet based build. Pet AI is too wonky for it to be viable. Aside from being a glorified DoT, your pet’s most important role is in soaking up damage and providing some extra cc.

• Unless you’re planning to play a total solo roamer build, run Healing Spring as your heal. It’s the best group heal in the game, providing heals for your allies as well as AoE condition removal. It’s very strong for point defense as well.

• Quickening Zephyr and Sharpening Stone (in that order) are your biggest dps utilities available. If you want to play a burst damage spec, run at least QZ, and probably both. Flame Trap is also good DPS, but I wouldn’t run it unless you’re running a trap build supported by traits.

• I consider Signet of Renewal mandatory in competitive sPvP. It removes a condition every 10 seconds, and on use it will remove all conditions from you. This is amazing against people playing condition based builds, Necros and Engis in particular.

• Lightning Reflexes is a very popular survival utility, as it breaks stuns and evades. Personally, I prefer Protect Me in that role. Lightning Reflexes doesn’t break immobilizes, which are some of the most common ways that Thieves and Warriors will set you up for huge burst. As long as you have an active pet, Protect Me will give you 6 seconds of damage immunity, regardless of the cc being used against you. Both utilities are strong; use both and see what you like.

• I prefer Rampage as One as my elite utility. It provides Swiftness when you need it, and more importantly, it’s the Ranger’s only means of gaining Stability, which can be vital for stomping downed enemies.

There’s a whole lot more to be said, obviously, but hopefully this stuff will help you get started.

Warriors are actually one of the stronger classes in competitive sPvP right now. Mesmer, Thief, and Guardian are by far the strongest, but Warrior is just below that, and all other classes are below that.

Warrior fulfills a very specific niche in sPvP: they do huge damage in a supportive role. They’re not particularly strong in 1v1 scenarios, but in group fights where their teammates can provide CCs for them, their spike damage is through the roof, and a lot of it is AoE. That’s what they’re good at, and they’re definitely viable in a competitive environment.

Incidentally, a properly specced glass cannon Rifle warrior can do some of the most single target burst damage in the game. A properly specced glass cannon Longbow Warrior can do more AoE damage than any other class in the game. Bear in mind that these specs are awful in 1v1 scenarios, but when backed by teammates in group skirmishes, they’re very effective.

If you want to be a roamer or lone point defender, Warrior isn’t for you. If you want to do amazing damage in a group scenario, Warrior is unmatched by any class in the game.

EDIT: For a longbow AoE build in action, see this video.

For the Longbow build used, see this video.

For Rifle crit build in action, see this video.

For the Rifle build used, see this video.

(These aren’t my videos, but Ayra is a talented player with a lot of good info.)

Durzlla.6295:

Yeah… spirits weren’t nerfed… and i’ve been rocking support ranger without taking a single spirit, i will say that Quickening Zephyr is AMAZING in tPVP though.

Spirits were nerfed about 2 weeks before release. They had their health cut in half. If you see a Spirit specced Ranger in sPvP, kill his Spirits and enjoy your free kill.

Longbow is awful outside of WvW and Greatsword’s damage was nerfed in half about a month before release. You can make just about anything work in hotjoin 8v8, but (no offense) that’s not really competitive PvP.

In tPvP, OP is correct, Ranger is one of the weakest classes in the game right now. Very few teams run one in competitive 5v5.

The Ranger’s primary role is mostly roamer, but Thieves do that job better because they have higher mobility, better 1v1 capability, higher burst damage output, and in certain builds, better group buffs.

Rangers can also play point defense, but a defense specced Guardian is better at that job because it has better defensive capabilities, more ways to control opponents and knock them off control points, and far better group buffs.

Part of this is that Thieves, Guardians, and Mesmers are unquestionably the strongest classes in the game for tPvP right now. There aren’t any dedicated 5v5 teams that I know of that don’t run at least one of each right now. This is a balance issue, and over the coming months, I’m sure ANet will work to tone these classes down a bit, and/or bring the other classes up a bit to match.

With regards to Rangers specifically, they’re relatively weak and could probably use improvement in the following areas:

1. Condition removal. Aside from their Healing Spring heal, which removes a single condition on a 30 second CD, Rangers have zero group condition removal.

Their personal condition removal is relatively inconsistent or unreliable. Empathic Bond (laughably a Tier 3 trait) removes a single condition every 10 seconds and puts it on your pet. Suggest making this a Tier 1 or 2 trait.

Signet of Renewal removes a condition every 10 seconds as well. It can also remove all conditions on a 60 second CD, which would be amazing, except a) you have to have a live pet active for it to work, b) your pet has to be in range, and c) it seems to fail completely about 50% of the time even when a and b are true. If this ability were fixed to be more reliable it would be a huge improvement.

2. Group Utility. Rangers just don’t have much. Warhorn 5 is an great group buff, and Healing Spring is a nice group heal, but outside of that, the vast majority of Ranger abilities are selfish in nature. Don’t have specific suggestions on how to improve this, but I hope the devs will give it consideration.

3. Control. Again, Rangers don’t have much. They have 1 knockback on Longbow, which is awful for tPvP. The majority of their cc comes from their pets, which are unfortunately very unreliable.

The fact that pets’ abilities cause them to be rooted while they cast, and that they have a long cast time, and that F2 abilities don’t cast if the pet is already casting a different ability makes Rangers’ cc exceedingly unreliable. Recommend removing the self-root on pet casting, possibly a slight reduction in F2 cast times, and making F2 abilities override any other abilities being cast by the pet when used.

4. Pet AI. It’s pretty bad. When a huge chunk of a class’ damage is attached to an NPC, that NPC needs to be able to reliably stay on a moving target, unless it’s being CCed. Right now, pets will occasionaly just not attack, or sit completely still, or run just inches behind a moving opponent without ever connecting.

Currently, a pet focused build is completely unviable for PvP because of poor Pet AI. AI needs improvement, and again, pet abilities need not to root the pet when cast.

5. Other Issues. This is kind of a personal nitpick, but Ranger Greatsword is my favorite weapon in the game. Unfortunately, its damage was nerfed so hard that it’s outdamaged by Shortbow’s autoattack (not even including bleeds), and Shortbow is a 1200 range weapon. Suggest buffing Greatsword damage some to compensate for the fact that it’s a melee weapon. Right now there’s no reason to use it outside of cool factor.

Sounds like a lot, but it’s really not as bad as it sounds. Ranger needs a bit more group utility, cc removal, and reliability from their pets. If these issues are addressed, they’ll be on par with the better classes in tPvP.

Ranger
rang·er [reyn-jer]
noun
1. forest ranger.
2. one of a body of armed guards who patrol a region.
3. a soldier specially trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare, especially in jungle terrain.
4. a person who ranges or roves.

There’s already a thread on this topic.

Honestly, time to kill in this game is very high. Quickness buffs are by far the biggest culprit, and I think at some point the devs are going to need to tone down Quickness buffs across the board. In my opinion, (and I ’m sure plenty will disagree) all Quickness utilities should have their drawbacks removed and increase casting speed by 50% rather than 100%.

Aside from that, it’s also important to remember that PvP in this game is designed around Tournament style 5v5, NOT 8v8. Time to kill is generally much longer in 5v5 than in 8v8.

If your experience with PvP is limited to hotjoin 8v8 games, time to kill is going to feel artificially high, because the game wasn’t balanced around it at all.

I’ve heard the devs have said they tested several different gameplay types during the course of development, including MOBA style lanes, CTF, TF2 style escort, team deathmatch, etc.

My understanding is that they felt node-based conquer style gameplay was the best fit for the game’s combat mechanics (e.g., using knockbacks and other forms of control to fight over capture points.) This type of gameplay is also ideal for spectating, because combat is broken down into small bite-sized chunks, where it’s fairly easy to process what’s going on in individual skirmishes, and combat is centralized around 3-5 very specific areas.

I don’t think it’s outside of the realm of possibility that they’ll add more gameplay types at some point, but I think you’re going to see new conquer maps added long before you see different gameplay types.

Also agree. Weapon switching midgame allows for on-the-fly out of combat weapon switches, which are almost certainly unintended. A guardian hot-switching to a Staff for swiftness and then immediately switching back to his main weapon set is a common example. If you want the abilities granted by a specific weapon set, you should have to commit to them at the beginning of the game.

If weapon switching IS intended, then there should be a UI element added to facilitate it. Opening your bags to manually click weapons for switches is counterintuitive and clunky as hell.

It’s been the devs’ intent to minimize UI elements to the greatest extent possible, and have players rely on the visual effects of the game itself as a replacement. This makes the game play more like an action combat game than a traditional MMO.

I think it’s as likely that they’ll add friendly health bars as that they’ll add enemy cast bars, which is to say, not. It would be nice feature in hotjoin 8v8, though. In 5v5 tournaments, you have your party bars providing that information, so it’s not as big a deal there.

They’re not going to do it. From the devs’ point of view, 5v5 Tournament sPvP exists for those that want to queue and play as a group.

It’s mildly inconvenient to play with a friend and get on the same team as them, but it’s really not that difficult. Frequently playing against 5-8 man preform groups as a PUG would be highly undesirable for most players.

I suspect that in ANet’s minds, the mild inconvenience of getting on the same team as your friend is outweighed by the headaches of large preforms in hotjoin games.

ANet have stated they intend to implement a ladder for sPvP, and that they intend to allow people to rent their own personal custom servers (for cash money) to allow them to practice and scrimmage at will.

These things are definitely coming. The game’s been out for a week, and they have a very full plate, but these features are definitely on their way.

Team balancing is important for enjoyable gameplay. Being down a single player can be very frustrating. Being down 2 or more makes the game essentially unplayable and will clear out a server very quickly.

I think they should leave in team balancing, but it should automatically disable after a team has reached 400 points. That way you don’t lose your investment in helping a team win for the majority of the game by being auto-switched at the very end, but the teams stay balanced for the majority of the game’s duration.

The lack of responsiveness is because if you hit F2 and your pet is already casting another ability, it completely ignores the F2 ability like you never pressed it. This is a big problem for reliability in PvP, because taking several seconds to spam F2 while neglecting other abilities can be the difference between life and death.

If nothing else, the F2 ability should queue behind whatever ability is currently casting and cast immediately after. Ideally, imo, it would override any other abilities being cast and be given priority whenever F2 is pressed.

Another issue is that pet abilities can’t be cast on the move, and have a long cast time. I understand the willingness to give players a chance to react to pet abilities, but the combination of immobilizing the pet and the long cast time makes it very difficult to land the ability with any degree of consistency.

In my opinion, the ideal fix is to keep the cast time (and possibly reduce it slightly) but ditch the immobilization and allow it to be cast on the move. This is particularly relevant when trying to use abilities against fleeing opponents.

In sPvP, Eles are in fact one of the weakest classes in the game right now. They were in a very good place a few weeks before launch but between BW3 and launch, they were overnerfed.

Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage, once staple elements of an Elementalist’s burst, simultaneously had their cooldowns doubled and their damage cut nearly in half. Their once decent condition removal was essentially cut in half by moving Cleansing Water from tier 1 to tier 3 Water. Lava Font and Meteor Shower damage was very significantly reduced.

All of these changes happened in a single balance pass, with virtually no testing before release. Except for their AoE efficacy in WvW, Elementalists were very well balanced in BW3, and yet they took big nerfs in a whole lot of areas. Where they were once one of the more effective professions in sPvP in BW3, they are now one of the least.

They don’t need huge buffs, but they do need them. A reversion (or at least decrease) of the nerfs to Arcane Barrage and Arcane Blast, and moving Cleansing Water from tier 3 Water to Tier 2 Water would put Elementalist in a very solid position, imo.

@OP:

Sounds like you want a Guardian. They have a ton of utility, and a wide range of specs, ranging from a very glass-cannonish build with very solid DPS output via Greatsword, to an exceedingly tanky point defense build that can hold a point and/or support teammates. It’s strong in 1v1 and in group roles. It’s easily one of the strongest PvP classes in the game right now.

Warriors are strong too, but they (generally) have a much more specialized role in competitive PvP: they do tons of damage and do it very quickly. They’re far less reliable in 1v1 situations. With a group supporting them, however, they can dish out massive amounts of damage, and have strong AoE options. Their group utility, by comparison, is relatively low.

If you like seeing huge numbers and killing lots of people in big group skirmishes, opt for Warrior. If you like having tools for every situation, a strong 1v1 capability, solid damage output, extreme survivability, and the ability to defend points better than any other class in the game, play Guardian.

They nerfed the hell out of Greatsword damage during the beta. It’s a crying shame, because it’s the most fun weapon in the game to use, in my opinion. It’s pretty counterintuitve that a melee weapon is doing less damage than every ranged weapon for the class, and I suspect the devs are aware of it. I think it’s likely to get some damage buffs in the near future.

In the meanwhile, the most popular secondary weapon set for a Ranger is Axe/Warhorn. Axe 1 hits multiple targets, Axe 2 gives you an attack that stacks multiple bleeds, Axe 3 gives you a ranged slow, Warhorn 4 does a very nice amount of damage, and, most importantly, Warhorn 5 gives you an AoE Swiftness/Might/Fury buff that lasts for 15 seconds on a 35 second cooldown.

I can’t imagine playing a build that doesn’t run at least Warhorn in one of its weapon slots. It’s amazing.