Guild Wars 2

To be honest, sword is not about auto-attacking people to death. It’s more of a evasion weapon and the auto-attack should only be used when the enemy is stunned or the like.

It is based on condition damage.

Cufufalating.8479:

solrik.6028:

Cufufalating.8479:

Well.. I wrote a post but it sounded a little rude and I hate to be “that guy”… But the main point I wanted to make is why are you going all in on bleeds? It makes 0 sense to choose Sharpening Stone over Flame Trap when you already have the trap traits and no traits at all for SS.

He doesn’t need flame trap if he can manage his conditions well. Flame trap would, in this case, only be good as a cover-up condition (burning)

Secondly, the 40% cond. duration + 60% bleed duration won’t benefit flame trap a as much as it does benefit spike trap.

Well, I disagree. Stacking one conditon for silly durations (over 10s) only works on people who have a serious lack on condition removal in their build or who don’t have any idea how to play. And if you watch the video and looked at his opponents condition management that is exactly what you will see. In 80% of the fights his opponent doesnt cleanse anything more than once the entire fight (including an ele, a warrior and a guardian who don’t cleanse at all, and a s/d theif who doesnt use #2 which is meant to be a s/d thiefs condition removal tool).

There are one or two exceptions.. the 2v1 towards the end is a nice fight and well played, and there is a guardian fight in there somewhere where the guardian does have and does use cleanses a lot (though even there he just barely wins even with food and stacks, neither of which the guardian has).

This is the sort of post I didnt want to post in the first instance because it does sound rude.. and actually play wise I quite enjoyed watching the SB use with some good kiting, but build wise, I still think the whole idea is flawed. It’s good for killing people which an inbuilt weakness to conditions, nothing more.

It isn’t rude unless you make it personal

I won’t question wether you have experience with this build or not, but it’s the build that I’ve played a lot.

I do usually have spike trap & flame trap, but rather because of effect than utility. The flame trap’s effect (combined with the spike trap’s immobilise) makes people go ‘oh kitten’ and use skills they shouldn’t, because my flame trap does almost nothing to them compared to the continous 4s bleed stacks that get applied to them.

Having SS and the SS trait is a good combo because, simply put, there is too much bleeding to handle.

I agree that having only bleed in a build is a bad idea because only the bleed would be cleansed, but bleed is not the only condition in his build. He has other conditions too and with a little skill, it is rewarding to apply them in good order. Sometimes it’s also better to just stop attacking and make some distance with sword until the bleeds get cleansed (because, truth to be told, the long duration bleeds can mess it up occasionaly)

Cufufalating.8479:

Well.. I wrote a post but it sounded a little rude and I hate to be “that guy”… But the main point I wanted to make is why are you going all in on bleeds? It makes 0 sense to choose Sharpening Stone over Flame Trap when you already have the trap traits and no traits at all for SS.

He doesn’t need flame trap if he can manage his conditions well. Flame trap would, in this case, only be good as a cover-up condition (burning)

Secondly, the 40% cond. duration + 60% bleed duration won’t benefit flame trap a as much as it does benefit spike trap.

Yup, fractals is not for soloing. I tried to do it with a friend multiple times but it’s just boring. I’d rather find a group and do 5 fractals than sit alone in one for hours

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_Experience

Go down to “Defense Against Guards” to find “Gain Retaliation for 10 seconds when you negate damage from guards, lords, or supervisors This effect can trigger only once every 20 seconds.”

Oh, and rangers ARE good at almost dieing. If you go down and then you get your enemy to go down, even if you’re at half downed health, then you will win the fight.

Surprised no one said this yet:

-Has lots of evades which can be annoying for the enemies
-Has easy access to poison which can be very deadly in the hands of a skilled player
-Tanky pets can (if used right) be used as meat bags between you and the enemy
-12s quickness combo’d with 12s invincibility for you can be a killer
-If done right, pets on passive will strafe with you in front of you and can be used to block attacks

They actually don’t.

Which race is the least played when it comes to being a Ranger?

To me it seems like Asura & Charr has very few rangers, but I can’t conclude which one is least used

I swear there was a message saying that the steam would be a bit later than planned :/

Policy

Especially one part of it that says:
“In the future, we will be working directly with the community to develop app support for Guild Wars 2, so stay tuned for more info!”

What happened with that?

There are actual developers who were and still are waiting for the above statement to happen.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

gorilla warfare, with my PvT, Cav+zerk set up i can go ranged or melee close for Crippling effect when zerg fighting.

its always been the Diversity of the ranger class gw1 and gw2 also the pet can’t go without my pets i just like attacking two things at one in different locations.

guerilla*

Because it was the first profession I chose :/

Fluffball.8307:

solrik.6028:

Can you people just not accept that others like to play differently than how you play?
There is no benefit for you to actually convince someone to play as you do. (Except if the person is bearbow)

This argument isn’t from this. Way back when Archon tried to argue against like 60 people that carrion gear mathematically did more damage than berserker. He went on and on and on despite being literally proved wrong. It’s not about playstyle; if he want’s to say carrion is more fun, that’s up to him. But he made the claim is was better than berserker. It seems he has retreated to “it’s better if no one knows what they’re doing” but we shall see.

Wow, way to take this personally.

I don’t care.
You have no need to justify anything you say by degrading a person.
How difficult is it to just not press that reply button? Try to not press it, try to ignore this thread. It didn’t originate as “Axe is better because FACT1 FACT2 and FACT3” but as someone’s opinion who found axe to be fun. Archon has his opinion and you have yours.

Many used to tell me that I should play zerker here and there, but I didn’t listen because knights or other tankier sets were better. Why did I think they were better? Because I didn’t have the skill to play with the zerker set so the tankier sets were more appealing than the glassy ones. At the moment, I can hop on any set and kill stuff without problems (not claiming that I am the best player in the world)

Can you people just not accept that others like to play differently than how you play?
There is no benefit for you to actually convince someone to play as you do. (Except if the person is bearbow)

Dead Muppet.9718:

Its a bait and switch…
Sure if you play longbow on lan (with almost no latency) you will land #3 / #4 on longbow vs melee classes (which I want to kite)

With online latency this will change dramatically the difference between 30ms and 80ms is more than one could think – want proof… look at the railgun in quake.

Its not the offensive abilities the ranger needed, its the 2 key defensive abilities that needed change in order to compensate for online latency & terrain.

This blows my mind it took you five months to come up with this garbage.

Three Minutes.

First, Quake is a small-scale multiplayer game compared to GW2. It has very little, if any, lag compensation and that alone invalidates your example which was an attempt to “prove” your point.

Second, Guild Wars 2 is a massive-scale multiplayer game. It has, however, the best kind of lag compensation achievable.
In GW2 it would be impossible for to have two characters on the screen and have one jump on your screen exactly the same moment he jumps on his own. There will always be a delay even if you have 0 latency.

Away from the facts, on to experiences.
I have never experienced those two skills failing “Just because”. It failed either because they went through me or I didn’t rotate the camera enough before pressing the button. But don’t expect to have every single fight without getting into melee range because of “kite skillz” because it’s impossible unless the enemy is garbage.

Novomundum.8325:

Not even in a million years will they make an AI that will cooperate with you in perfect rhythm.

Explains how much you know about programming.

You won’t get much feedback about what to improve if you post videos of extremely short fights where you succeed with your burst (against mostly thieves according to the video) and where each fight shown in the video is a win.

Very short fights are basically who sees who first. Post the long fights, no matter if it’s a loss or not!

Fluffball.8307:

solrik.6028:

Stop being such a hardcore know-it-all player please. All it takes is joining a casual guild that does PvE and off you go playing how you want.

That’s fine, but then there is zero point to this thread. “Hey guys, I recommend using the worst possible weapon available to my profession.” It’s like saying “I don’t run for speed so here’s something to try: not using a weapon at all and only using a pet for damage.”

By all means do whatever you want with your guild, but why make posts touting the benefits of something utterly useless? If someone is such a bad player they need to use axe, they’re already using axe instead of dying constantly with a sword or greatsword.

You are listing unrealistic examples that don’t reflect the reality of the situation.
There are players who don’t min-max the game to gain 0.5% extra damage and 2% extra crit chance but rather just pick what they like and play.
I really don’t see what your real message is. Why would anyone find fun in doing a dungeon without weapons instead of any available weapon? It’s like “Hey, let’s race with very expensive cars but without the cars!”

Also, if you actually took the effort to think a little then you would realise that joining a guild is not the only “solution”. I simply listed it because it’s the easiest way because all one has to do is trype “Looking for pve guild” at the right place and invites start flying in.

No idea what you are trying to say with the sentence after the question mark…
To me it looks like you are saying “If they are doing X, then they are not doing Y”
like “If you are drinking milk at 8:00, you are not drinking tea at 8:00”

J Eberle.9312:

-_-.

Stick to axe for offhand only and run it with a sword in your mainhand. You won’t be able to talk people out of kicking you for axe in your mainhand unless you’re joining groups who just don’t care about how long their run takes.

Stop being such a hardcore know-it-all player please. All it takes is joining a casual guild that does PvE and off you go playing how you want.

The guild I’m member in never had a problem with me being a ranger and they certainly didn’t care if the dungeon took 2-10 minutes longer. Really, how much are those 2-3 minutes of your life? Not much if I were to answer. No one ever asked me to bring something unless I asked “This or that?”.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR

I REQUIRE MOOOOOOOOAR

OMG

THIS IS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIT

Why are you using HEALING SPRING!? IT SUCKS!

HEAL AS ONE FOOOOOOOOO LIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE!!!!!!!!

Fluffball.8307:

Your backstab evasion is something rangers who struggle with roaming need to learn.

Using 2 to 3 evades is something many rangers struggle with?
Or in case it’s 1 evade then it’s about using 1-2 extra skills.

Nope.

Atherakhia.4086:

Zorby.8236:

Atherakhia.4086:

The gap between sword and shortbow is much higher than you claim. 30% or so.

I think 30% is a bit much. When I tested/calculated some weapons lbow(furthest) and sbow was pretty close, and not very far behind gs. GS is something like 15% behind sword, so 15-20% for bows I’d say.

Sword DPS: 354.2
Short Bow DPS: 248.6

So it’s actually 42.5% worse :/

Hi, please clarify how often you use the other skills on the sword that barely inflict any damage while the shortbow has each of it’s skills inflict damage a little more or less the same amount as the basic attack while keeping almost the same rate of fire as the basic attack.

So much bullshirt in this thread….

The shortbow does not suck…

It has a nice auto that has a good RoF and let’s you get in quite a few hits between other skills and evades. The second skill, poison volley, is a quick skill that is very rewarding when you learn to use it when the enemy heals. The evade is a tricky skill because it can be used in different ways. Either by evading a leap/bash or stunning skill or by evading through the enemy and follow up with the fifth skill.
The fourth cripple skill is a very good follow up for the third skill because you got swiftness and the enemy got crippled, plus that your pet is attacking and doing 3 stacks of bleeding.
The fifth skill is very good for quick interrupts because of it’s speed.

I mean, you can do some really nice combos with it. Stun → Evade → Cripple, Cripple → Stun → Evade, Poison → Cripple → Stun / Evade → Evade / Stun
and that is not even with weapon switch…

Aomine.5012:

Fluffball.8307:

Not having any L2P issues on ele or ranger. Anywho, competitive players don’t keep “autoattack” actually on “auto” so you have more control. It’s really important when facing perplexity and other confusion stackers. Triply important when using a 1h sword.

Just select stop auto attack on target switch, click the floor and you wont auto-attack anymore… (Also diselect auto targeting, it’s not good for most classes in pvp)
Plus I don’t think your original post is talking about pvp anyway…
You’re just feel managing a 6 seconds recharge skill is too much to handle, which I said is a total L2P issue.

Fluffball.8307:

Not having any L2P issues on ele or ranger. Anywho, competitive players don’t keep “autoattack” actually on “auto” so you have more control. It’s really important when facing perplexity and other confusion stackers. Triply important when using a 1h sword.

I find “Stow Weapon” to be more efficient.

Fluffball.8307:

solrik.6028:

have it’s F2 skill always activated.

Anyone know, there is no round-about way to autocast pet F2s is there? I tried using an eagle the other day and found myself dedicating way too much concentration on keeping that fast recharging bleed on my opponents. So annoying.

Using the Eagle’s skill is like any other skill. For weapons, everyone starts out by looking at least 2 times if a skill is available. After a while, everyone gets a feel for it.

Same happened for me when I used the Eagle, I just learned to quickly press the F2 button or to use it when I’m in a leap or an uncontrollable situation.

I’d use the spider with Immobilise and have it’s F2 skill always activated. That way, you can proc 2 immobilisations with an average of 15 seconds between them. Also, the wolf’s fear ckittened to proc a stunbreak or using it after stunbreak has been procced.

Pro-tip: Start fights with pets stowed. Thank me

I always run Bear Bow, and just earlier today I was doing CoF with a PUG and halfway through one of the party sent me 20 gold merely because I was running Bear Bow.

Bear Bow earns you more money, confirmed.

It gives your pet might for each foe hit

Izamar.4260:

Hey there, I am quite interested in the hunter but a little scared of the pet mechanic as I have heard that it is quite buggy, is that true? And how important is the pet actually to a ranger?
Other questions are, is the ranger fun and complex?
Thanks so much

Expect the ranger section of the forum to be more negatively inclined towards rangers than positive. Most people come here to complain.

Second, as Fluffball said, there are meta builds that work best. Generally speaking, there are three builds often seen; Spirits, Traps and Regen rangers in no particular order.
The strengths of these builds is the “passivety”. Spirits are cast & forget (well, not really ofc) and are passively used based on RNG.

Traps is a bit more active and strategic and requires you to play good to be good. Traps has a big space between the “Okay” and “Very skilled” levels.

The regen build is super ‘strong’ because it is passive and requires almost nothing from the player because healing comes passively. It is possible to fight against 2 at once or even up to 4 but the build won’t get you anywhere. There isn’t much to learn there after mastering the rotation and learning when to apply specific conditions.

Outside the meta, I’ve found ranger to have many builds that work once the player is skilled enough. At the early times, I lost every single fight with knight/rabid gear but after playing around with more tanky builds I’ve learned how to survive and progressed back to knight/rabid gear and have no problems surviving or even escaping.

There are a lot of working builds;
Bleed build: Usually with 100% Bleed duration and Bleed stack burst. Weak to managed cleanses. Bleed mostly comes throuh Traits and Sigils.

Bleed build mixed with trap: Usually with at least 40% condi duration and trap traits. Less damage than above but safer too because it’s not fully bleed focused. Very weak to (the few) people who can predict your traps. Usually less survival because of traps taking up the utility slots.

Chill build: No exerience with it.

Regen Power Build: I played this with S/D + GS and it was really fun to harass people but very difficult to kill. It can be a very efficient build if you learn to use poison correctly, but I got bored because people can run away whenever they want…… and 10 minutes long fights aren’t very fun most of the times.

Regen Condi Build: Passive regen, lots of condi damage and tanky. What more is there to wish for? Unfortunately, this build will get you nowhere…. Good for learning how other people play, though.

Which pet you choose is independent in all of these builds and these builds are not all the builds there are.

People say that they are easy to kite but miss one fact; it means the enemy is paying less attention to you and more towards kiting your pet.
There are also a lot of soft-cc skills that help the pet hit the enemy.

Or this:

Heal as One:
Heals you and your pet for XXX. Revives pet if dead and activates ‘on swap’ effects. Gain vigor if you and your pet has less than 50% health.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Holland.9351:

Ranger panic buttons:
- Protect Me
- Lightning Reflexes

I won’t count Signet of Stone, but I’ll mention it anyway.

Protect me is unreliable and requires tons of awareness.
Lightning reflexes requires awareness of your surroundings. You also can’t use it every time, because the space you’d appear in would be even more dangerous.

Signet of stone is nice, but doesn’t help you survive. It helps you stay alive LONGER, but doesn’t help you survive.
You can use all of them only if you already thought of WHEN and HOW to use them in fight – which is not “oh snap!” button, but rather a “Now’s the time!” button.

6 seconds of invulnerability in a glass cannon build is a lot. 6 free seconds of dealing damage and gaining 6 seconds on your cooldowns.

It sounds like you think “awareness” is bad. LR is just knowing where the battle is and what’s behind you.
Protect me requires only a glance at your pet’s HP bar and how much time until you can swap again.

Too much roaming and sociality in WvW reveals the fact that there are a lot of highly skilled roamers who have neutral viewpoints on each class.

That is, the skilled players are the ones who can dodge every CC from a warrior and are not active on the forums. They also have no idea of what problem “people” have with rangers or what problems the ranger has with people if you will.

Short bow is not mainly condi weapon, it’s a hybrid. Skill 4 & 5 is soft & hard CC while skill 2 is poison which is mainly for reducing their healing.

Bear is good when trying to take a temple in orr with 2-3 people because you can swap two bears and everyone else can just (almost) stand still and shoot.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Since the last post of this matter is rather old, I’ll make a new one.

Things I’ve noticed that aren’t optimal:
Autoattack:

1. Second and third attacks prevent dodges and movement
2. Second and third attacks prevent proper use of other skills
3. Constantly jumping into the hitbox of enemies -> enemy gets pushed away
4. Cleaving is almost impossible to do
5. Second attack doesn’t cleave -> DPS loss while cleaving
6. Attackchain is hard to handle on a weapon that isn’t even on par with weapons of other classes and for a class that has to handle a flawed pet -> I don’t like the high skillcap
7. Has the only leaps ingame that aren’t leapfinisher

Why would you want to cleave with it?

Hornet Sting + Monachr’s Leap

1. Casttime way too long for an reactive skill -> Not usable to react to the enemy
2. Damage increase neglectable -> Not worth to include into a damagerotation
3. Direction of the evade backwards is hard to anticipate against moving targets
4. Uptime of Monarch’s Leap is way too short -> You’re forced to jump back to the enemy almost immediately if you want to close the distance again
5. Hard to utilize to gain ground

There is an evade on it… I don’t know what the third point means.
Uptime is just enough to use a healing skill or any other skill, it’s nowhere near “almost immediately” and there isn’t even something called “almost immediately”.
It’s easy to gain ground with it because you can easily jump over hole or cliffs.

Serpent’s Strike

1. Evade time doesn’t match the animation time
2. Hard to anticipate against moving targets
3. Could use a bit more damage

The point of this skill is the poison. 33% less healing IS A LOT OF INDIRECT DAMAGE

Suggestion:
Sword AA: Remove the leaps.
This is the only way I can think of to not hinder the player from moving/evading as he pleases.

No. The simple way is that Anet makes it interruptable. That’s all.

Hornet Sting, Monarch’s Leap: 2 forward leaps (600 ,300 units) and a third leap if an enemy got hit during the first two leaps (430 units). CD: 20 secs. Uptime: 10 secs. The target will be crippled.
These skills should replace the leaps on the AA. The balance is tricky because we don’t want to be a second bunny hopping warrior (SW/WH+GS), but we should still be able to travel a good distance, like we can do currently with the current skill.

*This forces a lot of people to just AA the enemy and die. *

Serpent’s Strike: Evade backwards (200 units?) and jump towards your target (300 units) immediately afterwards. If you haven’t targeted anyone, you’ll just evade backwards.
If you’re using the current Serpent’s Strike, you’ll propbably end up in weird places (atleast not behind your target). The second problem with Serpent’s Strike is, that the evade time doesn’t match the animation time, which leaves you vulnerable. I tried to work around those flaws. Note that the leap to your target should be larger than the evade, so you wont miss your target if it’s running away from you.

Alright, so we get zero escape, autoattack spam and jumping around for nothing.

warriorjrd.8695:

I’ve played the class since beta and can recognize somebody who fails to adapt to the ranger. I understand that ranger is hard to play, which is why many think it is bad, because they can’t adapt and watch those who fail to do the same. Ranger is the only class where you have to micro-manage something to be effective, something that takes some getting used to. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you take the pet for granted and don’t expect much from it, which if it’s the case is one the biggest mistakes a ranger can make.

There’s nothing wrong with a class being harder than others, in fact I like that, and so do many other rangers. Yes I am being condescending because you seem to be trying to fix what isn’t broken, simply because you find it too hard and complex.

What was the point of writing that (bold part)? Is it supposed to put you above us all and make some kind of “order” in this thread?

It doesn’t mean you’re better than anyone here just because you played since beta.

@ Everyone else:
Please, skip the self-gratification, it is a very ugly way of showing superiority and contributes nothing to the discussion. Help instead of complaining about how bad someone is and then telling about how well you play the class.

gawker.8340:

Start with slight trait rework for the power build ranger. Then rework Longbow to be free of bugs and linearize the effectiveness of LB with and without traits. Clean up the UI of pet and perhaps dedicate more time to make some weak pets better. Some of them never see the light of day, poor things. Lets give more control of the pet to the user because pets seem to attack randomly. Things that aren’t under your control are by definition tough to use. Those are just some of the things to consider for the future of ranger kind.

I think the LB is very fine.

The above applies especially to the 15 seconds quickness build. He-he-he

Pro tip

Any pet swap effects also apply when pet comes out of “Stowed” position.

Stow your pet as often as you can, enter combat, pet appears. All on swap effects are activated. Swapping the second it appears applies a second stack of swap effects (but you are without pet swap for a while).

HINT HINT it also works with zephyr’s speed HINT HINT apply super long vigor to team HINT HINT

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

i don’t see it as a improvement to change the attack to a Directional arrow it’ll mean more management and most of the time , when im using main hand sword i click my macro button on my mouse for a muddy terrain and aim at the same time when leaping backwards , when i land at the end of the animation i instantly put down the muddy terrain , then ether escape or procced to the nearest field and make use of the chain leap.

with that above i posted trying to aim the sword leap would be good.
but the first in chain should be the same it would be too much mouse management when using Ground targeting skills in conjuction with the sword 2 chain.

Good job, you just admitted to something that is disallowed to do and can grant a permanent ban.

No one is allowed to use macros that do more than one action.
1 button = 1 action, okay
1 button = 2 action, leads to ban.

Sabre Wolf.1657:

Comming from an old pro original Guild Wars, I miss the ability to remove the pet completely. In Guild Wars 2, the pet becomes more of a hinderence then a help. Pulling bad agro, no spike potential, ect. For me, it becomes this giant mini pet.

They don’t aggro, they can spike (in different ways). They seriously can, and you don’t even have to enter combat. What is in “etc” ? You can’t just write “etc” to tell us that there are “many more things”.

thefantasticg.3984:

Fluffball.8307:

Ugh god, this thread gets made once a day.

The pet is never going away. Ranger is the GW2 pet class, they should have named it beastmaster. Deal with it or play warrior.

The fact that the thread gets made at least once a day, by different users I might add, should be an abundantly clear indication for A-net that the pet is a handicap and not the benefit it was supposed to be.

Like many things in this world it looked great on paper but in practice turned out to be a horrible idea.

Oh, and a Warrior is a completely different animal than a Ranger. Thief D/D+SB is the only thing that comes close to being as fun as a melee Ranger. If you’re telling people to play a warrior it is painful obvious that you, yourself, have never touched a warrior because if you had you’d already know they are no where near the same type of playstyle… so… QFT.

You try to write like a journalist but fail at statistics. The forum does in no way reflect the ranger community or any other professions’s community. The real problem is that there is a huge step between a ranger being Skilled or just Casual.

Casual players can’t use the pets properly for things like Knockdown → 6s Immobilise → 2s stun (this was just an example out of many) and don’t have the ability to pay attention to the fight, the skills the foe uses, the surroundings and the pet at the same time.

There is a difference between first impression and experience. There is also a difference between complaining and trying.

Funny thing is, making it have 1200 range is probably just changing a variable from ‘450’ to ‘1200’ and it’s done.

It’s a simple solution.

Just save a text file locally and hold all pet names in it. When a pet is in either slot, the text file is read through and the name is checked if it is acceptable; if it is, the pet has the name and if not, the line in the file is removed and the pet is once again Juvenile <pet type>.

OP; Creates thread, never replies.

Btw, we are miles away from being miles behind other classes

The majority of people I kill that ragequits are warriors. I have no idea why but I can guess that it’s probably because rangers are very much like warriors and many of them consider themselves being a better ranger by playing warrior.

Lorelei.3918:

Pets are irrelevant in open field pvp.

Take the teleporting condi theif. he stealths. the pet stops and starts scratching himself. He teleports back and forth. The pet runs back and forth like its a game of fetch. The theif runs away, the pet misses his lunge.

Extreme example, but every class with the exception of maybe necros have the ability to keep your pet running in circles doing jack squat to help you.

Pets ARE Irrelevant.

Building a Longbow Ranger for PvP is Lunatic mode difficulty. Your weapon dmg is already penalized, and your pet adds nothing. You have to figure out a way to get around this double penalty.

The pets are not only used for dealing damage.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I did flip your own call, so if you say I’ve called you “a liar, noob and a total idiot.”, that was what you said to us first, isn’kitten It is. But nvm again

But okay, i’ll write it down for you.
GS Block does not blocking all the dmgs, and whenever the foe gets close, it tries to make a knockback, which is good until you’re not playing against T1-2 WWW foes who just ignore x3 of these effects in a row. Honestly, I don’t know how. I’ts not about stability…

And then you’re there defendles. You may [Hilt Bash], which won’t work and if it does, its terribly short – compared to warrior hammer or static field. Or swap to LB and do a [Point Blank Shot], which may helps you to get your foe just in position for a nice launch attack or else, since there is no stealth on it. And this list can go very long…

We “all” know that our skills are underpowered, the damages are way low and the effects are not the needed ones or just way short in duration.

I don’t know how skilled my ranger mates are, but I do know that I’m good and I’m usualy fighting against dumb people who wouldn’t survive me without being OP or running away 2 times faster than I ever could, like chicken on nitro.
How is that average guardians can run away from me with never dropping below 70% HP but even damaging me on the run? No, they ignore/outheal my stuns and knocks…

Anyway, the fight seems nearly equal;
Being OP and playing bad = being UP but really skilled.
It is challanging but not fair at all. I feel like should use my gamer skills to dominate, not to compete.

GS Block blocks everything that isn’t melee or unblockable for 4 seconds. I honestly don’t care much about the knockback from it and use it more for blocking big hits. The knockback creates a just too big gap.

Then I’m not defendless, because I still have my utilities (and pet) and can double evade with GS1.

Just fyi, “Our skills are underpowered” is a wide topic, because not all skills are underpowered. But nvm that….

For guardians and their endless heals, consider poison as a remedy. It’s good to know how often they cleanse it too.

I admit the first post was a bit too simplified, but a good ranger should know that a fight is not the same as following exact instructions to the point, don’t you agree? We still have our utilities, pet and escape methods.

Anyhow, we obviously have different playstyles which means something that works for you probably doesn’t work for me and vice versa.

RoyalPredator.9163:

solrik.6028:

If you’re new to the ranger and lb then please practice more before saying that it sucks. Thank you.

Guess you are. nvm…
Please avoid writing down scenarios that just won’t work in www/spvp.

Do you want to start arguing, or what? Scenarios that won’t work? How do you know that? They work exceptionally well against warriors, guardians and other melee oriented builds (which doesn’t necessarily exclude ranged combat).

Please elaborate on why they wouldn’t work?

What you just did in different words is that you called me a liar, noob and a total idiot. Besides, I don’t understand what the point of your reply is because in a very very Very short version, it’s equivalent to saying “You are wrong” just because you can

Leves.9035:

So many comments I like it

solrik.6028: Hi! thank you for your reply. Bit harsh well but usefull. First of all I didn’t not say that LB sucks or it’s a sh*ty weapon. I said it disappointed me, and underpowered in my opinion. I also said that I’m new to rangers so what i say is not golden.

for the rest of the comment it seems nice. I hope it will give me chance in 1on1 situations because i had none till this point … What do you do with ranged builds? Like condi engies, necros ( power and/or condi) Pu mesmers or gs/staff mesmers for exampe

Non of you wrote about barrage anything.. It gives me the idea, that non of you use it usually, which would be terrible ,because the concept of that skill is awesome.

Sorry, didn’t mean to be harsh. Ranged builds can be a bit more complicated.
I hate fighting against condi necros, but the key is range. You are safe if you keep a (fairly) big gap between you and the necro. There are some dangerous moves you can do; It is possible to just walk in close to the necro and waste both dodge rolls, which will probably (not always) avoid the condi spam they can achieve. You can also use GS Block & swoop to get in close and put some CC but you must be ready to create a gap if kitties hit the fan.

Use swiftness together with stealth to quickly move through the necro, ending up behind him (and PBS him when he figures out where you are). He probably wasted some AoE skills. Can’t say much more really, condi-necros are annoying.

Condi engies;
They tend to use all of their weapon skills early on, which means confusion and other annoying conditions. Evade that and you’ve got yourself a fairly big chance to win. At around half hp, they use their elite supply skill. BE VERY PREPARED for it because it’s a huge red ring that is easy to miss because of it’s size. Engies usually can’t do much at long ranges and you’ll probably lose the fight if you get pulled by their shield, so watch out for the light ray.

Mesmers;
I don’t have much experience with mesmers, but I noticed their blurred frenzy (Sword #2) is what deals a lot of damage indirectly. That is, you are rooted and is being hit by the phantasms & by the real mesmer. You’ll need to predict when they will stealth or do their burst and adjust accordingly. Falling to many times to the same trick will get you killed, but falling for it 2-3 times on intention can make the mesmer underestimate you and give you a chance for an easy win. LoS them, as much as you can and time your bow shots so that you don’t get obstructed when firing.

Barrage;
I barely use it. It’s a nice harasser in group fights but I honestly only use it if I just CC’d the enemy(ies) and have nothing better to do than to barrage ON MYSELF and move around in the aoe. (Makes kiting a whole lot easier). It is an awesome skill but too situational. I mean, you can use it on a thiefs shadow refugee but it won’t deal enough damage to scare the thief, or use it to destroy a mesmer’s minions but there is usually hardly any time to do that, or use it on a second ranger to kill his spirits (which works very well sometimes) but fighting the same class has the consequence that he knows exactly what you are trying to do.

Sorry for the long post, I tried to write as much detail as I could. Hope this helps. I am by no means a top tier ranger but I have played enough to know when my skills are off CD, when to evade and how to win most fights. Though I hate fighting necros/engies.

If you’re new to the ranger and lb then please practice more before saying that it sucks. Thank you.

LB works great with GS.
You can use LB4 then swoop with GS.
Swap to GS when the enemy closes the gap and fight a little bit, use your block, hilt bash and maul. When the wep swap is off cooldown, swoop away from your enemy and swap to lb. Now you’ve got to auto-attack, rapid fire as foe closes the gap, knock foes back with LB4, keep pew-pewing. Then you also got LB3, which gives you enough time to fire off rapid fire a second time. Is enemy close? Swap to gs and repeat the whole thing. Is the enemy far away? Swoop in with gs and fight with it until swoop & weapon swap is off cooldown so you can create a gap for longbow.

(But I gotta say this is difficult in spvp because of narrow areas)