Guild Wars 2

After you made such an impressive and constructive post I have no doubt they will immediately take action.

mouse.1689:

Disagree with you about Protect Me. Stun Breakers don’t affect immobilize, which is one of the most common ways we get set up for burst against thieves. Rangers’ condition removal is so sparse and unreliable, you can’t really count on it to keep you out of harm’s way when you’re immobilized, and Protect Me is the next best choice. Since it’s almost always being used to defend against melee burst while immobilized, your pet tends to be in range anyway, which makes it plenty reliable in my experience. You can also swap pets in mid-Protect Me to keep them from dying. I strongly prefer it to Lightning Reflexes.

OK, the thing is while you immobilized you still can evade and thus escape damage. Protect Me while it does directly stop the damage, a ranger should learn to avoid damage through spells and dodge. Yeah, sure, you can switch pets during Protect Me, but that wastes one of the most important cooldown of yours. You lose 2 sec of quickness, as well as F2 if you haven’t used it by that time. Also the switch could be on cooldown. Anyway, a dead pet is very bad for a ranger, since your chance of survival drops by a load.
Lightning Reflexes also gives you vigor which is also extremely important. Ranger has a lot of non-direct damage sources, thus you have to maximize that.
Most classes depend on cc to have their burst, so breaking the stun usually means avoiding the damage. That’s at least something I’ve learned. Maybe I am wrong.

I’m running Flame Trap, Spike Trap, Lightning Reflexes and Rampage as One.
I explained why I think Protect me is bad. And you need cc on pets, since you lack on yourself.

Roles

- Node defender: great close point defender. Trapper. Trap the entrance to your point, when an enemy comes close he’ll already have to be used his heal due to high damage of traited traps. After trap the point itself so it would force your enemy off it, unless he wants to take a million of damage that is, of course!
Signet builds are good too. You’re basically immortal 1v1, so they’d need to send at least 2 people to your point which is already a small victory in a way.
Pets can do a lot of work here too, wolf can fear off the point and thus protect it, dog, spiders can immobilize outside of point. There are a lot of tricks with pets actually. Devourers have a knocbkack, unfortunately their other abilities are underpowered or at least PvE oriented .
Weaknesses – no knocbacks, usually low toughness built (thus really dependent on dodges), cooldown dependant.
Strengths – insane zoning (trap case), very high damage, very tough to be killed in 1v1 (signets).

- Roamer: warhorn. All there is to say really. Take any spec and add warhorn and you’re fine. As a roamer, of course, you’d want to build power specs, since you want to nuke fast, kill trebs, have quickness for res or stomps.
Ranger have potential to be great roamers, they have a lot of swiftness sources (pets, skirmishing traits, warhorn, spirit), they’d be a lot better if greatsword got changed. Shortbow roaming is great too, since you might be chasing people and killing from behind with shortbow is super effective!
For the future, I see spirit roamer performing the best, but yeah, spirits need a lot of help, but we already have a lot of tools to work with.
Weaknesses – quickness dependent burst, little group utility.
Strengths – high damage, very high mobility.

1v1

- vs Warriors: you need to dodge Bull’s Charge and Eviscerates. In tPvP always bring a stun breaker or you’ll die in a few seconds. Another choice can be to pop Rampage as One at the beginning of the fight. A bit cheesy, but it’s fine – we’re rangers. Traps work the best here since you don’t even need to auto-attack him, lay the traps down and dodge on them. Without traps you need Lighting Reflexes and / or immobilizing pet. Both condition and power builds are OK.
- vs Mesmers: good mesmers, unfortunately, you can’t beat. Shatter builds being the exception, but it requires quite a lot of practice. Whenever mesmer immobilizes you, he’s probably setting up on you, watch out for the illusions or whatever, and you use your evade at the precise moment mesmer presses Shatter. It’s tough but doable. Everything else is very hard, even with signet cooldowns, a good mesmer will find a way to kite you, avoid your bursts and wait out for your cds. That he can do very well due to stealth and mirror mechanics. Condition based builds preferred.
- vs Engineers: get away from the bombs! Engineers have close to none condition removal, it’s not that hard if you are condition specced. If you are power based, dodge blinds or you will not succeed. Also very important to use shortbow poison if engineer has Elixir S when he’s downed. Generally, keep distance, engineers don’t have many huge radius abilities. Condition based builds preferred.
- vs Elementalists: you are the bane of elementalists! You can equip just sword without offhand and still win. Dodging elementalists’ burst is the key, which sword does best. Both condition and power builds are OK.
- vs Guardians: retaliation and constant condition removal, they’re one of your worst enemies, unfortunately. Can’t advice much here, don’t use quickness on low HP or you’ll kill yourself. Stay at max range all the time, so you don’t get knockbacked. Rampage as One is almost mandatory here. Both condition and power builds do similar.
- vs Thieves: they made me realize Protect Me is very very average. In most case a simple stun-breaker does a lot more than the damage absorption. Traps work best here, although signets can take the burst too, but if the thief is smart it will not be that easy. Lay the traps down and start dodging like crazy, when the thief uses up his initiative use your main damage source weapon (shortbow or whatever) and kill him. Do not fight thieves in shortbow for the entire fight or you’ll die. Condition based builds preferred.
- vs Necromancers: without condition removal could be tough, but generally they’re the easiest to kill, they can’t avoid your quickness that well. Just apply pressure first, don’t let them take over the fight, and you’ll win. Necromancers on pressure are really in tough position, so advice would be to play aggressively and your cooldowns accordingly. Power builds preferred.
- vs Rangers: dodge quickness. Watch out for signet cooldowns, don’t waste your quickness on 6 sec immunity. Both condition and power builds are OK.

Ask any questions and feel free to politely discuss.

Weapons

- Sword: might be hard to believe, but sword is actually the best weapon for ranger in any sort of PvP build. You want to survive and win 1v1s? Use sword. It gives you movement, evades, damage and poison. It’s all there. Weapon switching and constant dodging is the key to any strong ranger player. However, the auto-attack is incredibly annoying, the lock-in-action sometimes ruins your day.
- Shortbow: 2nd best weapon of ranger. Probably every self-respecting ranger is going to use shortbow, since it gives everything you’d need on a ranged weapon. All is fine here.
- Warhorn: warhorn is the most popular offhand for rangers. It might actually be too strong, being the reason why no uses anything else. Warhorn is superb for roaming and group support, it gives significant damage boost as well. Might need a little nerf to bring in line other off-hands, but it’s OK.
- Torch: torch is amazing and very underrated. It gives incredible amount of damage, strong presence at nodes and a combo field. Throw Torch has high range, try to initiate with it, watch out for dodges tho! If you are condition based build use torch. It’s one of the few sources of burning. Also in a very good shape, no tuning needed.
- Dagger: it’s not good, movement, damage is too low and the cooldowns are too high. Warhorn and torch are what you want to use. Dagger gives another poison which sword already has, there’s no point in stacking poison, if only the spin was like sword’s 3, maybe then this could be good. The cripple needs to be replaced, it’s just horrible. Thing is after you evade you’re so vulnerable since you have no cds, no ranged dps, no charge or anything, 10 seconds on weapon switch are a lot, that’s why I want to have a bit of versatility on my off-hand.
- Main-hand axe: overrated. I want to love this weapon, but it’s so underpowered. Auto-attack is bad for any 1v1, 2v2 situations which is what you’re gonna have as a ranger in tPvP. The bleed ability is weak for one reason, you need to be up-close. Sure the mechanic is right, but as a ranger you want to know your position. Chill is OK, I guess. Axes really need a good look. Traits suggest axes should be built on crit damage, however it doesn’t seem to work. As a condition based ranger there are better options.
- Off-hand axe: awesome. I was trying to make something around it and I am sure someone will. First ability is a bit underpowered, needs more damage somewhat like Engineer’s Throw Wrench. 2nd ability is amazing – a build around, works amazing with combo fields, kills anything that’s not paying attention. Sure, lock-in-place is annoying, but otherwise it would be way too strong. However, usable mainly for power builds, the vulnerability stacks + 1st ability are asking for it.
- Longbow: not viable and I don’t think it will ever be.
- Greatsword: in my humble opinion, the worst weapon in the game. Easily. Only the the leap is done right, everything else needs to be changed, abilities themselves, otherwise this weapon will not work. Why? It’s very slow, no quick burst potential. Tanky greatsword doesn’t work because it doesn’t give any utility, cc, nor group support. Warrior’s greatsword is a great example of how mobile a two-hander should be. 1 leap is not enough with all the massive kiting, dodging abilities in game. You must take into account that apart from the swiftness spirit (which only works in combat), ranger has no mobility from utilities as far as melee ranger goes. The counter attack locks you in place, well, again mobility issues. Maybe if only the damage was right, but it’s not. All in all, needs a rework, unfortunately.

Good day, the thread will emphasize on ranger capabilities in current GW2 state, its weaknesses and strengths. I hope devs read this and this thread will help them a little bit.

My ranger experience is quite high, I have played both tPvP as a pug and with my team – Team Sleep- . I have tested quite a lot of builds, weapons, traits etc etc. In total I have played 310 tournament games of which high percentage was with ranger.

Utilities

I love the mechanics behind ranger utilities: traps, spirits and pet commands seem all great, however, there’s a huge flaw behind them all. In order to have any efficient utility you must spec for it. Meaning if you go for a trap trait, you barely can go for a signet and vice versa.
- Spirits: must have 30 points in Nature Magic. They’re completely useless and actually even worse without traiting. Even if you do spec for the spirits, they die in combat way too fast due to many AoE abilities. At the moment spirits are nowhere close to be viable for tPvP. Suggestion: increase spirit HP and make them follow without traiting. I know it’s a big one, but spirits will never see the light of the day if you’re forced to spec so hard into them.
- Traps: must have at least 20 points Skirmishing, however, 30 points work too efficiently to have just 20. Traps are currently the best utility of ranger, however, again speccing deep into skirmishing hurts a little bit (even though crit chance is OK), but mostly it hurts the versatility of the specs. It pigeon-holes. Suggestion: make traps usable from range by default.
- Signets: must have 30 points in Marksmanship. Not much to say here. Apart from Signet of Renewal, separately none of the signets are anywhere close to be worth using without traiting. Just compare to Signet of Domination or such. Yes, some rangers spec full signet with 30 in Marksman, then they have huge cooldowns which win 1v1 fights. However, such build has 90 sec cds for each utility, no group support and no cc. Anyway, suggestion: lower the cooldowns of signets by default and replace the CD reduction trait with a trait that, for example, adds an effect on use (might one is a joke, right? 1 stack of might every 120 sec?).
- Shouts: I guess most of the rangers use Protect Me, which is pretty horrible. I used it myself for quite a lot of time, but the flaws: very situational, depends on pets location and HP, no stun breaker and, well, it kills your pet. Killing the pet is the worst though, most people don’t realize how important pets’ F2 and their switching are. For basically any situation Signet of Renewal or Lightning Reflexes will serve you better due to stun breaker. (Why is Guard a utility, by the way?)
Suggestion: Sick’ Em is pretty horrible as well, movement speed doesn’t do anything to pets anyway, since auto-attack locks them in place. This ability needs more damage and possibly a stun-breaker. After all, rangers have only 2 stun-breakers, whereas ele has 4, warr – 4, guard – 3, engi – 4, necro – 3, thief – 4, mesmer – 4. So what’s up with that?!
- Survival: Quickening Zephyr and Lightning Reflexes is the best we got at the moment. Most ranger builds are based on the quickness, they’re not to be said the best builds, but apparently they’re the easiest to use with most efficiency. Survival utilities are good, however, I strongly dislike Sharpening Stone. It promotes brainless gameplay, also it’s another bleed which ranger already has a ton, give us burning, confusion, poison, whatever fits our ’’image’’.
- Heal: one of the best things about ranger. Troll Unguent is amazing and thank God for that, it’s what makes rangers very strong in 1v1s. Poison is not that effective on it, while dodging you can heal up quite rapidly. I’d love to see some troll builds with healing power like Clerics amulet. Should work like a bliss. I hope this stays as it is. Heal as One is meh, the only use I see for this spell if your HP is below 18k. Otherwise, don’t use it. Healing Spring is interesting, you might wanna use this if you’re supportish and not using sword, also you can use this if you have an elementalist on your team – combo field!
– Elites: the best part of the ranger. Elites are incredibly strong and there’s nothing much to add here. Rampage As One is nr 1 EU, it wins you 1v1 fights, it lets you stomp, it lets you stay on the point, just a wonder spell. Use it.
Entangle is great too for condition heavy builds, it offers very high teamfight utility, high damage, burst potential.
Spirit of Nature goes back to our spirit problems, even though the cd is incredibly high, it can turn fights around.

What are you all 5 years old? This is something funny my brother from 2nd grade would draw.
It’s not even accurate. Putting engis and eles on kitten tier. Clearly, you know what you’re doing.

1v3 with warrior. Thread seems legit. Just kidding. Warriors are close to being the worst class for tPvP, surely you would know that since you play so much of it (accidently).
Yeah, necros are hard to master. So are engineers or elementalists. And is that bad? No, and I am super glad I have to learn and use effort to be actually good at something rather than spamming 1 ability.
Unfortunately, gaming society is so spoiled and so over their heads, that nothing really matters as long as you’re not performing well. I mean if you’re not doing 1v3, clearly the class is broken.
And for the record, if you’re doing 1v3 with warrior, it should be time to move on from target dummies.

I don’t like something, please remove it, because my nonconstructive post clearly states so!

I can 1v1 every profession except good mesmers. Yes, clearly you’re doing it right.

We are currently seeking for a very skilled mesmer with decent experience in tPvP.

At the moment we have established 2 teams, from which one is full and the second one lacks the mesmer.

We are playing every day and hope to get ready for whatever is coming for sPvP.

Use sword on your 2nd weapon set and win.

This mostly goes for PvP, however, it fits anywhere I suppose – every pet skill locks the pet in place. Because of that:

1) there will never ever be a pet centered build in PvP
2) pets do close to nothing while the target is moving (for example, try pulling Svanir in heart of the mists and keep kiting the boss. Pay attention at your pet).
3) traits and utilities that grant pet speed bonus can be considered useless, since the pet will eventually stop when he reaches the target
4) 80% of the successfully cast pet skills will be out of line of sight in PvP

There has to be some major work done here, since at the moment pets are performing very poorly. For that any beasmaster will be unrewarded in both PvP and PvE, not to mention that pets should be like 30% of the ranger power, whereas now it’s only about 10%.

Regards,
Fellow ranger.

Hey, check out this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Team-Sleep-Desolation-sPvP-guild-recruiting/first#post108990

- Team Sleep – (Desolation server) is a serious sPvP guild that focuses mainly on structured PvP tournaments. We already have a base of experienced players that combine into a great friendly team. However, we are searching for more active people that have good traits of a PvP’er and would be willing to give time to learn, improve and win. On the other hand, you should already have a solid knowledge of PvP, profession and gameplay mechanics, and most importantly, you could handle your main PvP profession very well.
In general, we are looking to make a 2nd / 3rd teams as well as help out and sub for the 1st one.

Our secondary focus goes to WvW. Naturally, since the guild will not be 100+ people, we would emphasize on roaming and trying to kill larger groups, which at least I prefer to the huge castle zerg!

PvE is still a part of the game, I suppose. Huehue.

Our strategies, builds and communication are all with reason and in-depth analyzed. We started using our forums for build and theory-crafting, further communication and everything that makes us stick together as a good team.

This is our guild-page and where you would need to apply: (to apply for membership – to the top left of the screen)
http://teamsleep.guildlaunch.com/

Feel free to ask any questions if you need information!
Vangedas.