Guild Wars 2

Also don’t see why having two handed training being in BM is bad. Since they are separating traits from stats you can run a full zerker BM build if you so desire. Or better yet, an opening strike build, where your greatsword hits apply fury, which reset opening strike, and increase damage by 25%. Add in 100% crit on opening strike and you can do something with cavalier and valkyrie. You guys wanna go MM, SK, WS for the warding stuff? Too bad, you gonna have to make decisions I guess.

Edit, meant NM and Protective ward, not WS.

I’ve seen some 6-6-6 builds, but the specs are a bit unclear to me. Does this mean, that you can trait only into 3 lines in the future and spend 18 intead of 14 when this is introduced? The Ready up didn’t talk about it (at least the parts I’ve seen so far).

solrik.6028:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I think having actual trait points is too complex for the pet system, but we need some ability to change their stats…

Not more complex than elementalist.
Not more complex than engineers kits.
Not more complex than mesmer.
Not more complex than guardian.

Wait what?! Guardians are complex?!

I use to run a shortbow/sword+horn zerker beastmaster build in wvw, with Quickness on pet swap, might for pet on crit and ghost pepper poppers. I was running owl with wolf. Petswap to wolf was kinda neat. +3 might, quickness, knockdown on leap was sweet. Wasn’t viable, but was fun. I’ll try and dig up the build.

Edit: Found it.
http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNIQNBlYDbkRlOWbZxfFuWDkIUsCg3RRwOzuX3UIqTY1hNG-TFTDwAMeAA9U6N5IAwSHwTlBvU/pyBBAkmBMXAAFKBBY653+DBAOAY6AhAYPBA-w

I remember hearing in an interview that the Devs at A-Net were doing a ton of AI work for HoT. This might be the reason why our pets are passive-aggressive now. So I’d wait till the expansion is out before getting all depressed. Mesmers for example get shield as a weapon (i.e. only 2 new weapon skills). They are really kittened about it, but nothing has happened yet.

ok, here are some tips/info for you Gern

Entangle vines must hit to apply immob. If you stealth, blind, evade when they pulse you don’t get 1 more second of immobilize.
As others mentioned before Rapid fired can be blocked indeed. Rangers can only trait to have piercing shots, but that doesn’t stop anyone from using block to deal with it.
Retialiation works nice against rapid fire, just like reflects.
Speaking of immobilize, try applying some to the ranger and cover it with other conditions. Condition cleansing is not a ranger’s strong point unless they trait for that specifically. If they do its at the cost of damage.
Get in a ranger’s face and attack them. If they are bad they will stay with LB and get rekt. If they are good they need to swap to melee.

Also the ranger community is neither more nor less toxic than any other of the profession sub-forums. We get post like yours every week by someone who really hates rapid fire. Rapid fire in itself is not OP, and neither are glassbow rangers. If you want to know more about rangers there was a guide I posted about how glassbow rangers work. Feel free to read up on them.

I hace said a couple times already how awesome Ghost pepper poppers are on longbow/shortbow. Glad someone else noticed (even if on their own). They don’t have an internal cooldown either as far as I can tell. And if its daytime you get might.

Im not part of this younger generation you speak of.

I think they changed stat distribution across gear peaces, although it shouldn’t amount to a stat change of 250. Food shouldn’t have 250 effect either. So no clue.

You might want to switch oakheart salve for hide in plain sight when the change hits. 1 more stealth. Nice vid. I might need to rethink using more than one stun breaks in wvw, although most fights were duels.

Awesome video man! Loved the intro.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Yeah, it’s annoying. Besides spamming F3, Rangers can use “Guard!” and place their pet away from those encounter…

I wanted to make a Catsassination Mark 2 build with trapper runes, guard and Jaguar the other week where your Jaguar would be the trap instead. But I found out that even when set on passive, a pet “Guarding” an area will still run to your target if you start attacking. Is this something others found as well, or was it just me?

I really like the variety of tools being available to rangers. I think its awesome. I just wish the same could be said about the usefulness of said tools.

Also love naming pets (make them stick A-Net, pretty plese /puppyeyes). The other week random ranger enters AC Explo party with a brown bear called “Bowjob”. Had a good chuckle over that one.

On the off chance that some people really don’t know how to deal with LB rangers, the following might shed some light on what glassbow truly is.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/How-to-fight-longbow-rangers/first

Its because Glassbow ranger is outside of what people had to concern themselves with for 2 years and they don’t want that to change. They don’t want to change, they just want their free loot bags old rangers back.

Reesha.7901:

I faced the same decision 5 days ago. I went with Sylvari for two reasons:

• They look amazing.
• They can fit a nature theme quite well and I wanted my ranger to have a bit of forrest feel to her.

Here is some pictures:

That’s a nice looking ranger you got there.

Charrs have four ears and horns, they have huge claws, and probably great sense of smell. They should make the best rangers. However their available armors are far from being amazing.

Glad to see you are enjoying ranger.

In WvW you can have roughly 3 fields where you want to think about how you want to play ranger. Zerg surfing, small group, solo roaming. One thing you will learn in wvw is that condi spam is king in most cases. You will be overloaded with conditions, so they will be hard to get rid of. This means you will need some condi cleansing.

Signet of Renewal is fine and dandy, but might not be enough (also needs a lively pet near you to pull all condies). The other thing is hard cc (stan, daze, fear etc). This makes it a lot easier for other players to hit you with their hard stuff. Signet of Stone and Signet of Renewal is good, however I would change Signet of the Hunt for a stun break (Lightning reflexes is really good). If you are worried about speed (in solo roaming you should be), you could take either Runes of Speed or Runes of the traveller, and still get 25% higher movement speed. Keep healing spring, its really good. For the elite RaO is good as well (although there will be a change coming to stability).

All this is for solo roaming or small group roaming mind you. In zerg serfing everyone is depending on others to do their job. This means you gotta be durable, deal damage and have some support for others. So high precision and crit damage might not be what you are looking for. For a long time you could only buy Power, Vitality, Toughness gear with the WvW tokens if this gives you a clue. Team support is something rangers not great at unfortunately with spirits and pets dying quickly in AoE zerg fest. For gear cavalier (Toughness, Power, Ferocity) or Knight (Tougness, Power, Precision) are both fine.

Playstyle

I always pictured axe/horn rangers to be beastmasters and maybe this is what you should look at. However, you will find that condition builds will have better survivability, they can have good damage, and could still have a hard hitting pet. And for WvW where you fight players, you need to have a solid choice petwise as well. (Wolf is really good as a secondary, for knockdown and fear).

With all that in mind, feel free to experiment, look for builds online and try things out. If money is an issue, you can run Ascalonian Catacombs P1,3, get money, and buy either rampager gear (a bit riskier in wvw) or soldiers (P/V/T) from Ascalonian Tears. In 3-5 days you will have enough to buy a set of Speed runes as well.

Cheers.

DarkSyze.8627:

zinkz.7045:

Newsflash – they don’t balance for WvW, and if you want a no risk class then you wouldn’t pick ranger, you’d pick thief or certain warrior builds, who can disengage for the most part when they want.

I did not know ranger was not risk class until i experience it. You are correct with thief and warrior

Please stop posting such generalized statements. Ranger as a class has risk. You have to make sacrifices with traits, utilities but even with weapon choices. You can’t have it all. That is the risk rangers have to make. There is no risk in pressing the 2 button on your keyboard, true. But from your posts it seems you didn’t experience how bad things can go for a glassbow ranger if a player survives your initial damage.

On the subject of dodge, if people are willing to post their build, then they will be given other advice. Sadly, most people come to the forums and post sentences like: “We all know that rangers are broken, nerf them ANET!”.

And in you honest opinion what good is 100 range advantage in a dynamic moving combat environment?

Also speaking of opinions…

we’ll get nerfed before expansion pack now…

Do you time travel?

Well… the one skill we saw was a “beam” attack. Hope we get support and aoe, not sure how much of what we want they can stuff in one weapon. 1 new set of utility skills however sounds great.

I wonder what thieves will get….

Seems like mesmers are getting a shield.

nope. Chat is saaaad…..

Oh lawrd, here comes Tengu announcement…..

New prof, lol. Where there goes pvp and wvw balance I guess

Whaaaaat? First class change announced is ranger staffs/specializing as a druid. And others gonna have to wait. At least some ranger love.

OMG can’t wait

eldenbri.1059:

It’s easier for me to manage pets with a lot of vitality. When I was using drakehound and wolf, they died a lot. But perhaps some of that is learning curve as well.

Try spiders, they have decent damage and vitality, immob, poison and as they are ranged they will have a higher chance of staying out of harm’s way and better hit chance.

If you weren’t running trapper runes I would go so far as suggesting dropping Trapper’s expertise. It can be really useful however if you throw your traps to places where they trigger later to use stealth fully to reposition or cast (entangle for example). I would get 1 more stunbreak instead of flame trap (Lightning reflexes is amazing), or swap viper’s nest and torch for dagger offhand (cripple, poison, evade).

FrownyClown.8402:

solrik.6028:

Difficult to take someone seriously when their pet is called “kitten Lube”

not everyone can appreciate my artistic qualities.

Tears of laughter here…

Nice guide, hope to see rangers get used in tourneys like this.

Domey.9804:

nagymbear.5280:

You post a thread saying that you love your ranger and ask for a nerf on an already underused utility and have the nerve to talk about being reasonable. Nice try troll.

wow…calm down maybe.
yes i do love my ranger, atm i like it even more than my thief. i dont slot sic em, i find it cheap and boring , so for me a change to aoe destealth (+3sec revealed if removed stealth) ground targeted would be a buff cuz i would maybe use it from time to time, as it would have its uses vs more than only 1 proffession.
you could remove shadow refuge, mass invis, veil…what a nerf.
i will stop here. makes no sense to talk to others which just rage and call me a troll, bad player or whatever. i asked for opinions on that skill, not me.

I am calm man. Your post is just rediculous. You ask to make a utility that barely anyone uses far worse, because you feel cheap. Your “questions” are laughable.

Domey.9804:

does sic em need a castime?
or a animation?
or both?
make it affected by blind?
what is your opinion on that skill in wvw?

sinject.4607:

- you already have a counter to stealth on ranger, if you want to counter stealth then pack accordingly. stop whining about something you can do something about but choose not too. the whole “apply revealed on blinded/blocked/missed” is a terrible idea and has been proven terrible for ages now. it overly rewards mindless defense spam while harshly punishing a profession that already punishes mistakes harder than most.

Double standard much? How much blinds and blocks does ranger have. Please do go on and list them. Also please link us the proof of it being a terrible idea. I don’t recall reading any proof.

sinject.4607:

- this would more negatively impact stealth’s use offensively seeing as it would be impossible to catch anything

Yes, I mean they only hav access to gap closers on almost all weapon skills and a some utilities. Its not like they have access to cripple to slow their target down either, or do they? What would poor thieves do if they couldn’t juggle 2-5 opponents with easy access to stealh?

- revealed has already seen an increase in duration.

He is not talking about revealed on Sic’em, he is talking about the standard revealed.

You post a thread saying that you love your ranger and ask for a nerf on an already underused utility and have the nerve to talk about being reasonable. Nice try troll.

An exploit would be to make use of a bug/unintended utility that is not allowed. So please change the title of the thread becuase it is very misleading.

On canines, I think the Agility training, because dogs apply cripple on their attack, and this will help you kite better.

On kiting, one thing I found useful is to run sword/x with a hydromancy rune beside my longbow. If you know how to do a sword2→lightning reflexes→do a 180→sword2 you will be able to create quite some distance. I recently have been running a 6/2/0/0/6 build with quickness on petswap. As soon as someone comes in melee range I can swap to sword, use serpent’s strike if need be and then start attacking, swap to wolf, press f1. This will result in wolf using his knocdown leap with quickness, and you going off like a blender. When they get up you can still s2→lr→180→s2 to create distance. The best thing about this is that you are evading for seconds while you create distance. I use this quite often, but if someone is built to get you they will be able to close the gap quickly and slow you down still. Or you can delay your LR for when you see a gap close/cripple/immob/chill incoming.

I have played some zerker longbow ranger in wvw and I gotta say I have never felt safety on it. If you try to roam on a zerker longbow ranger in wvw you will find Hunter’s shot and Point Blanc Shot to be little to no hinderance against some melee players. Other times you get some milage out of them but its a mix of situational awareness, using your utilities at the right time (longbow skills included) and a decent build that will keep you alive. #3,4 on LB won’t. Just my oppinion of course.

I think that the pets pulling multiple mobs in range (just like players) is not down to the attack skill of the pet, but down to how aggro works in this game. If you consider dusting off your ranger do bear in mind that they fixed storm spirit (not sure if they changed it back in the meantime). Rangers still are on the periphery of pve (unless you consider speedrunners), wvw (unless you consider solo roaming) and pvp (unless you consider condi bunker).

GhOst.4019:

So when Anet said “There are too many people using LB”, that is exactly true. It’s NOT the fact that a ranger is OP; it’s the fact that either by random or by team que there is 3 on each team almost always and quite ridiculous. Just spend the match on my back…

One of my main goals with this thread was to help people (mostly new players) understand what they are experiencing, clear up some misconceptions, test just how much damage RF can actually dish out and give some ideas on how to fight against them. I am glad you see the problem for what it really is. Rangers had to suffer from the misconception that they are useless in pvp, pve, wvw, now they suffer for being easy to pick up and be effective. I guess we will never have it nice, but I’m pretty sure other professions won’t either.

‘cept for Guardians. I think they are in a pretty good place. (sorry couldn’t pass on that)

The proposal lacks depth and details. Just my oppinions of course, a ranger fearing a nerf. Ohhh lard, what is I gonna do?! :O

I’d swap sigil of geomancy for hydromancy. When you need space or just want to slow your opponent down you can just swap to sword, and use #2 to create distance.

I’d swap strength of spirit for nature’s protection to help against burst builds, as this build seems to be aimed at outlasting the opponent and dealing consistent good direct damage.

I’d swap sharpening stone for a signet. Either Renewal for dealing with bleed spam, or cripple/immob/chill, or Stone for invulnerability, or Wild for stability and damage.

I’d swap keen edge for malicious training with CC pets. More cripple, more immob, more fear. Should be very useful on a melee build with sword where you want to control when you/your opponent can hit the other one.

Jim Hunter.6821:

What the actual kitten…. in what universe does it make sense to lock away the barely functioning pet controls? GG anet….

Hey! Hey! Watch your mouth young man (or woman). Anet knows what is good for us players, mkay? I mean what is the problem here? Its only the class mechanic….

Oh.

Thanks for all the nice feedback, and also thank you all for the tips/tricks, fact checking!

Is this with or without RtW? Because I’ve had my longbow attacks being sidestepped in both pvp and wvw. I don’t think it was 8 months ago or before, but before the september patch or even RtW. If it was fixed, it wasn’t fixed 8 months ago.

Deneb.2697:

If you don’t play Elementalist, why are you posting in this topic?

CRUCIFY HIM!!!!! BURN THE INFIDEL!!!!

Yes, its stronger in wvw, but then again, so are other classes. See here some rediculous displays on what RF is capable of in pvp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eep0pd97ox4

Yes the guide did turn out to be long, but I needed all the details to show what is needed for these really huge damage numbers. Its not just rapid fire, and not just longbow. It had to be said, because some still throw around ridiculous claims. Someone suggested that the longbow received a 50% buff, which is just nonsense.

Oh kay didn’t notice that it was driving me mad, thanks.

Hi all,

Recently I’ve noticed that I sometimes end my fights with retaliation. I run in full zerker gear (runes of speed) with longbow (air, fire), sword (hydromancy) warhorn (cruelty), my build is 6/2/0/0/6 and I use hawk/wolf. I just noticed this, I swapped from longbow to sword to get the ferocity stack and swapped to wolf for the quickness. Maybe its the wolf leaping through some field the hydromancy sigil creates? I’m really clueless where it comes from, and its really strange. Or could it be the sentries in wvw? Anyone else noticed something similar?

I’m so glad we managed to get this thing going, and also glad to see some new rangers give it a go. Have fun all!