Guild Wars 2

So there have been a lot of changed to the game and I’m thinking about starting again.

I played the game for about 1500 hours which was mainly spent on my Ranger. I know most of the skills that other classes have, though I don’t know their traits, “combos” and “efficient playstyles”, so to say.

Basically, I know how the basics of each class. In very simple terms, I can hop into the game and kill a lot of people with my ranger, but on other classes I’d just be a meatbag spamming skills with no plan or goal.

So, since the action camera has arrived, which I always missed in the game, what class would best suit to play with the action camera? I like it when I actively have to make multiple decisions in battle, e.g. should I block, keep attacking or try to retreat for a few seconds and the like. But it’s also nice to be able to support others.

TL;DR
Which class would suit best to use with action camera, for someone who likes to actively make decision in battle and can support other players? I’ve already played Ranger for about 1500 hours.

Thanks for taking your time to reply and help me
Here, have an e-cookie: O

Sooo…. Why not prevent in-combat tonic use?
Or better yet, differentiate STOW and SWAP so the game won’t think that I swapped a pet because someone shot me in the back and then cause ALL of my on-swap trait to go on cooldown and get them wasted.

jcbroe.4329:

See, what I was hoping for is that arming time referred to a period of time traps could be stood on before then activating. That would have been the most ideal change to the way traps arm imo. That way, people would have less opportunity to activate traps at the outer edge, and pets/clones wouldn’t instantly set off traps when they touch them.

Activation radius is smaller than “effect” radius.

I like how most directs this exploit to the ranger rather than the tonic…

Coming out of stow has always counted as a pet swap.

Set a = exotic armor and b = ascended armor and y = stat difference, b > a
y = b – a
all armors get a 30% buff
y < (b – a)*1.3
Conclusions: Bigger gap between a and b after buff.

Set a = 10, b = 20. With the buff, the difference of 10 will be 13 instead….
Set a = 10, b = 100. With the buff, the difference of 90 will be 120 instead… (Note the 30 point difference)

Percents can lie

More fun:
a = 10
b = 100
b is 1000% bigger than a: b = a * 10.0,
b – a = 90
Let’s say there is a huge buff coming but the devs say b will always be 1000% better than a.
So the buff is that a and b will both be 100 000 times better. Which leaves us with the new value of
a = 10 * 100 000 = 1 000 000
b = 100 000 000
b is 1000% bigger than a: b = a * 10.0,
b – a = 90 000 000

Percents can lie

Pathfinding gets heavier performance-wise the more accurate it is.

I don’t know how many players are online at a time, but multiply that with 3-5 and you get a good respresentation of how many enemies are getting their paths calculated. I think the problem here is that Anet probably uses the same pathfinding for everything. That is, pets have the same pathfinding as other enemies. In that case, it would be very difficult to split them and make a separate pethfinding for pets (and minions and such).

Also, I believe the pathfinding was perfect in the early days of the game, when it still wasn’t quite released. During beta tests (or even alpha), Anet realised that the pathfinding would be too heavy on the servers for the high amount of players so they reduced it’s update time. A little thing that supports this is something anyone can try. Go to a fairly empty map and strafe to the left/right. The pet will adjust to your pace and actually run in front of you. This could’ve been used for blocking projectiles with the pet but their reaction time isn’t good unfortunately.

Leuca.5732:

Instinctual Bond: When you are downed, your pet gains quickness.

After all the changes being made prior to HoT, I’m confused as to why this trait (and others as bad as it) still exist and are considered viable by the devs. I think a lot of the changes are good so far, but this in particular is just confusing. Has anybody ever actually utilized this trait effectively on a consistent basis?

Should it perhaps be “When you are downed, your pet is healed and it’s skills are reset” (I.e. taken off cooldown)

Tragic Positive.9356:

Greetings, my fellow Rangers.

So I was thinking, currently the traps are being used but AoE condition bombs. Which is wrong and absolutely non-defining to what traps are supposed to be.

Greetings!

Care to explain why?

Ltomato.8649:

Your rapid fire won’t be auto canceled as long as you move your camera to where your enemy is pointing at you.

Nope. All the enemy has to do is close distance and run through you. Which will be easy because you’re going to have to be in combat before you swap weapons. So unless you run double longbow…

It’s also competing with 10% damage traits.

The rapid fire will automatically always turn towards the enemy for as long as you don’t move after activating rapid fire.

Equinox.4195:

…

You’re not getting to how this is bad, imbalanced or overpowered for the rangers.

Sure, we can shoot very far. I can shoot at 5k range with super fast arrows if I shoot extremely vertically.

Only a stupid player who runs in a straight line towards me would be hit by the 1500+ range arrows. Anyone else who just taps A or D time to time will avoid those arrows.

Toxsa.2701:

That’s why I go for power ranger and never ever rely on pet’s pathetic dps and inconsistent pathing. The only thing they’re good at is being my distraction of mobs while I enter stealth and lose argo, that’s all.

Well then I’m going to tell you that you are missing out quite a lot.

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.

Eurantien.4632:

Skullface.7293:

Fluffball.8307:

If you do want to talk 1v1, a cele staff ele beats a LB ranger, although that fight wouldn’t be at long range.

I can’t remember when I ever lost a 1v1 versus good cele staff eles in conquest mode, never had that much of a problem with them on power ranger honestly. If you see their reflect skills, just stow your longbow.

Power ranger > Staff ele

That’s a constructive post

I have 3,

1 at 80 and with good stuff (my main)
1 between 60-70 with so-so stuff
1 low level one

I’ve stopped making new characters because the pay for traits and trait hunting is a pain in the kitten for me. They don’t work with the exploring compass or have any tracking system so I have to look through my one hundred traits to make sure I haven’t missed any of them on the map I’m currently in.

You forget one aspect of barrage: Area Denial

If you’re playing with a somewhat high power build, leading up a knockback or stealth with barrage on yourself or between you and the enemy so much that the enemy is barely in the barrage you can force them to either go around or just come to you through the aoe field.

On a lb glass zerker, the way the player uses barrage can easily determine the skill level of the player. It can be used for massive damage, or defensively to keep people away.

These kind of threads make me want to jump into a pvp match and just record it from start to end…. ain’t nobody got time for that.

Electro.4173:

I’d say it should vary per pet type, but there definitely needs to be more cleave on pet attacks I think.

I’d personally go for something like….

Piercing Projectiles – Spiders

That would be completely useless if you think about how much they arc. I’d be more happy if the venom “splattered” and affect up to 2 extra targets

FrouFrou.4958:

I use both GS and 1h sword autoattacks to locate downed thieves, also you could try bumping up the in game sounds as you can hear them crying for help, that way you have a bit easier time to locate the spot where you should be swinging your sword at. Entangle works as well if they are in the range.

Entangle is broken when it’s used against stealthed targets

Shirk.6421:

It would be awesome if we could get this option additionaly “only attack my target”. Would be awesome vs mesmers for example, not attacking clones, and not having to press “attack” everytime after the mesmer gets out of stealth.

If you press “attack” on the mesmer once and he goes invisible, the pet will start attacking whatever you hit next. When the mesmer reappears, the pet will automatically attack the mesmer unless you specifically gave the pet any command while the mesmer was invisible.

robertul.3679:

Hello. Ranger is in a weird place with some overpowered things but weak overall.

Greatsword autoattack. Increased attack speed and damage, reduce the evade frame. Lets be real, it’s not like the evade is reliable enough and currently it gets shut down completely by blinds because it’s too slow!
Reduce maul cast time! It’s a huge freakin bear animation! People should be able to dodge it anyway. Now they can just walk away slowly..
Fix swoop and other rush bugs regarding terrain.

Entangle. Requires the ranger to stand still. No more fancy jumps to reduce the telegraph.

Shortbow. Move the bleeds to other skills. The autoattack has no counterplay. Move them to crippling shot or concussion shot or whatever.

Axe mainhand auto. Even after buffs it’s pretty meh and the might is too short. Increase the might duration but add an icd. Takes longer to build might(and less stacks) but it doesn’t go away instantly.

Signet of renewal. Now works even if your pet is far away/dead/ etc.

General pet stuff. Remove the penalty for dead pet swap. They explode in team fights anyway. No reason to punish the ranger further.

Merge piercing arrows and read the wind traits.

Shared anguish has a buff icon.

Hunter shot stealths even if it misses/gets blocked.

Tone down the burns on the torch bonfire.

Add more condition removal that’s reliable. Empathic bond is strong but too unreliable. Survival of the fittest is fine but it requires a big investment.

Please be constructive (next time). Otherwise noone is going to discuss these.

Go with the shortest female norn possible, for (imo) obvious reasons

Dadnir.5038:

Just look at the rangers around you that almost all use longbow. Do you think it’s just because of fashion or because this weapon have almost perfect synergy with all damaging traits, ok damage, nice burst, ways to disengage (PBS and stealth) easily and outstanding range?

A very big part of those rangers only use the LB because “metabattle” tells them to do it. For the average player who doesn’t care about improving but rather about quickly playing a match, the LB glass build is perfect because it seems overpowered to noobs.
For people who don’t go into the depths of each professions, all they see is just a bunch of arrows hitting them in quick succession while seeing their health going down. While it’s a strong build, only a small minority knows how to play it effectively.
All that’s needed to win against an “average” lb build ranger is to evade or LOS the first 5 seconds.

What will a GS ranger most likely do after using hilt bash? Maul
…after block? Maul
…after swoop? Hilt bash or Block
What will a LB ranger most likely do after using Rapid fire? PBS
…after PBS? Stealth
…after Stealth? Barrage
…after Barrage? Rapid fire

Dadnir.5038:

Survival skill :
Sharpening stone : I believe, this is the most enigmatic skill of rangers skills. How come 5 bleed stack have enough value to justify this long cool down? There is certainly a reason but, does even halving the CD make this skill overpowered?

Shouts :
Guard : while it’s probably the most used shout of ranger (due to it’s short cool down) the basic effects are near uninterresting. I believe, this skill could be reworked to be easier to use and give a bit more survivability to our pet. Just removing the targeted area, removing the stealth component and give it instead something like 2 second distorsion for the pet would be way more interresting.

Search and rescue : With this skill, the ranger is the only profession that have 2 revive skill. Is this necessary? When you look at the actual game I believe that it’s not. This skill could be change to a lot of other things that would actually benefit rangers. For example, this could be a shout allowing pets to remove boons on hit for a short duration.

Spirits :
I’d love to see change on how spirits work but, right now i’d prefer to bet on a druid spec that could change that.

Pets :
survivability : The change to pet’s health pool have, in fact hurt even more pets survivability, mainly because with a larger health pool, they just become harder to heal. We just ended up with having a hard time sustaining them. I believe a permanent damage reduction on one of the grand master trait in the beastmaster traitline would have made a greater job for pet’s survivability. Maybe replace “invigorating bond” by a -50% damage trait a la “Bark skin” but without the life percentage requirement.

Maniability : Pets have 4 skills and we end up being able to controle just one of these. Honnestly, at least, we should be able to disable some of these skill so that the pet don’t use them but still use it’s basic attack.

Pet’s shout : While I believe offensive shouts are well done, I also believe that support shout need change. Support shouts need to get rid of their animation and cast time. These are actually the less responsive skills in game with little to no meaning in actual use In Game.

Weapons :
Right now Longbow outshine every other ranger weapon. A lot of dedicated traits, best range, almost best overall damage per second… The heck! with proper trait and sigil it could even be the best condition damage weapon. Other weapon need love.

Axe : Honed axe could use a flat damage boost instead of a ferocity buff. Or, better, an attack speed buff for each axe equiped.

Sword : Common, a bit of love for the sword!!! (well we could say that “predator’s onslaugh” have been made for her but, no it’s a general trait)

Greatsword : The “two-handed training” trait feel pretty weak due to the fact that he is in a defensive traitline. I’m pretty sure it could use a buff like also giving 5% more damage to the pet.

Shortbow : The shortbow used to shine a lot brighter until it got nerfed to the ground. Maybe a slight buff could revive him. I think it could use a little buff to it’s autoattack damage (10%, up from 136 to 150 base damage should be just right).

This is just some though to revive dead stuff on ranger.

Edit: I do not assume that any of the change proposed are balanced in any way

Sharpening Stone: 4200 damage on a condition build with 0% condition duration. And since every bleed is 7 seconds long, it scales pretty well with bleed builds, which would bring it up to 14 seconds stacks and damage of 8000+. If there is a change, I’d rather have it changed to 10 stacks of bleeding with 4s duration for each stacks. 7s stacks are likely to stay for the full duration, but 14s stacks will most likely be cleansed.

Shouts: No comment… they should be removed and then be replaced with REAL shouts that a beastmaster would use.

Pets: I agree on those except the survivability. They only die in wvw for me and sometimes in dungeons, but the latter is because I don’t pay attention. By the way, there is 1 F2 skill for each pet, but most, if not all, pets have a skill that they use as soon as they can.

Axe: I never pick Honed Axes. Too little for too much.

Sword: The second basic attack should be changed to allow free movement. The short kick-leap is too short and doesn’t have much benefit to it. Or, add an evade to it. Otherwise this weapon is one of the best escape weapons and good for getting “OMG COOLDOWN HACKER” whispers in wvw.

Greatsword: The fury from the trait is nice, but simply too short imo.

Shortbow: Make #2 narrower, #3 evade further, #4 more bleeding or longer cripple, #5 shorter CD or more daze duration.

Dragon.8762:

Arrow 1 bleeds from the side and on crit thanks to “Sharpened Edges” trait and the 60% chance to bleed

Keep in mind this is atop of the crit change you have, which means that if you have 40% crit chance, the change to proc the trait is 60% of 40%, i.e. 24% chance to bleed on hit.

Dragon.8762:

Hey everyone,

This is the first Guild Wars 2 Video besides streaming that I’ve made and would like some pointers/ advice/ or anything else:

• Don’t use splitblade if you can’t hit with at least 3 of the 5 axes. You can bait the enemy to evade by using Stalker’s Strike, then use Splitblade.
• Always use Winter’s Bite, it both chills and makes your pet apply 10 seconds of weakness, which can be a big help. Time it either as the first attack when swapping to axe to make the damage-trading into your favor, or just before swapping to shortbow to give some breathing room with easier kiting.
• Don’t use concussion shot unless you want to intentionally interrupt a healing or something of value.
• Poison Volley should ever only be used in 2 cases: At long range just before the enemy is using a healing skill or at almost point blank ranger where you can hit with at least 3-4 of the shots.
• If you swap to Axe while still being at range, open up with Crippling Talon and then close in while either basic attacking to build your pet’s might¹ or sending away a Winter’s Bite. Then use the Stalker’s Strike → Splitblade combo
• It is advantageous to use every condition applying skill on your weapons before using Entangle. Since you have Krait runes, you want to make sure that the Immobilise, Torment and Bleeding effects stay, so just spam your enemy full of other conditions.

¹ – The pet gets 10 seconds of Might whenever you get Might

Notes on the build:
Very defensive, but you can experiment with a few changes that do not necessarily reduce defense.

By changing Oakheart Salve to Offhand Training, you get access to more frequent Stalker’s Strike which now becomes a pretty decent gap closer. You would also get more frequent access to Crippling Talon with bleeding and cripple.

If you notice that you can stay above 5k health in most of the fights, you should remove 2 points from Wilderness Survival and dump them into Skirmishing to pick up Quick Draw (and the minor trait Furious Grip) which would lead to more procs from Sharpened Edges because of the fury on swap.

One last thing you absolutely must do:
Change Nature’s Bounty to Nature’s Protection because the only regeneration you have is Oakheart Salve. Troll Unguent has it’s own effect and it does not count as a Regeneration boon.

Good luck!

wauwi.9162:

@S/A vs GS discussion, that started here:
Sword AA = pet might&perma cripple (ensures Predator’s Onslaught)

Don’t get me wrong here, i love the GS of the ranger and it’s usually my to-go weapon for hurr-durr-PUGs, but the difference in damage IS very noticeable to me and many others.

Just take a stop-watch with ’ya and kill some risen giants on orr or ettin-champs and compare yourself.

But what makes the Sword the optimal choice for me, are the off-hand flexibilities.

• Dagger for mobility
• Axe for damage and reflect
• Horn for fury and blast finishing
• Torch for firefield

solrik.6028:

Guide for hardcore dungeoners, with overused commas

It would sometimes be nice to know who’s behind these guides through an introduction, especially when it’s a long one.

You’re almost as cynical as “those” hardcore dungeoners. :P

Also, hello, i’m wauwi and i like playing some GW2 once in a while.
I play for sooooooo long, that i still sometimes open fights with LB#3, because i just can’t completely get rid of that pesky habit.
K, bye.

Haha lol…

I think you meant LB#4, no? I usually open fights with LR!

Guide for hardcore dungeoners, with overused commas

It would sometimes be nice to know who’s behind these guides through an introduction, especially when it’s a long one.

Your usual combo with Axe+Dagger would be 1. Winter’s Bite if available, 2. Stalker’s Strike to get close, 3. Splitblade for the burst.

I can guess that a problem for anyone can be that Splitblade is easily evaded. Fear not! Your enemy doesn’t evade because of splitblade, but because of Stalker’s Strike. When you do Stalker’s Strike, the enemy thinks “Oh crap he’s close and probably setting up to do something” but the normal reflex is to evade. Soooo, this leads to a conclusion.

Use Stalker’s Strike to bait evades and it will usually go down like this:
1: Stalker’s Strike
2: Enemy evades by reflex
3: Splitblade hits right in the face
3b: Enemy evades again and splitblade misses

If 3b occured:
Enemy has no evades and is forced to be on the defensive, exploit that.

Torch? Burning… Naaaaaaaaaaaah it’s good with sword for the fire aura, though… Or pets…

Sube Dai.8496:

solrik.6028:

Sagramor.7395:

Prysin.8542:

Sube Dai.8496:

Main hand axe and 3 points into nature magic.

The rest is up to you.

this setup is more effective, in most cases, then 6 points into BM.

Very True

Totally

It actually highlights how bad a state the class mechanic is in.

I’d rather say how bad a state most of the pets are in.

Sure, the pathfinding can be improved a lot, but most pets have no real purpose, they just are.

Two canines give the ranger a lot of CC, while spiders can screw people up with super long immobilisations. Other pets are less controllable and less reliable…

If you haven’t tried an immobilisation build, do it. Equip the 2 spiders with paralyzing venom, muddy terrain and entangle, condi bomb your target with all your conditions, except immobilisation. Then use F2, wait for immob, use muddy terrain, wait for another immob from the same spider, switch pet, use f2, use entangle, wait for second immob from spider.

He has a point imo, but no nerf needed here.

I always notice my pet gets interrupted while healing, but it seems like whenever I try to interrupt a “Lick my wounds” on an enemy ranger, their pet just gets back up and continues healing…

I’m kitten serious

Sagramor.7395:

Prysin.8542:

Sube Dai.8496:

Main hand axe and 3 points into nature magic.

The rest is up to you.

this setup is more effective, in most cases, then 6 points into BM.

Very True

Totally

Something like “Taunts nearby enemies for 3 seconds, gaining protection for the duration” would bre very fitting imo

DarkSyze.8627:

I was in keep while enemy zerg attacking it: i was only ranger attacking in range while my server party was attacking with close range. That is how i experience the long range 1500 easy kill: i keep spamming #1 until it kill enemy. The class i kill are- ranger, mesmer and warrior. I do not know what level they are because wvw is automatically level 80. I do not know if they are veteran player: just enemy player.

I made other suggestion for ranger longbow speed increase and have longbow ranger range decrease to 1300. I think it is ok fair trade?

No offense but this proves that you are a noob. Just by not knowing if they are really level 80 or just upscaled to 80 shows it. Also, just because you get a loot bag at your feet when you die doesn’t mean you killed the enemy alone. For example, if 5 people attack and kill 1 enemy together, all 5 will get loot. Lastly, their rank tells you how much the enemy have played in wvw, like “Bronze Knight” or “Platinum Champion” amongst others.

- Don’t use hardcore music (including metal, screaming, nonsense)
- Long fights, wether you win or not, are better than any short fight (because it’s real display of skill)
- If you are very serious about videos, put text in the video that pop up, like; in green: “He uses skill X” and then in red: “I react with skill Y”

For drakes yes, otherwise no.

Banebladez.9057:

Hello everyone! I played gw2 at the release on engi, and now back in game. So i leveled thief first, to lvl 20, and i am not satisfied. He seems to be weak, very low health and defenses, and not such as “crazy” damage as you can wait. I know that thiefs are strong in pvp with their burst backstab damage, but i’ve seen many videos, where ranger hits out 60% thief’s hp with only rapid fire, so mb he is not so strong? My question – is ranger more robust than the thief? Is he still viable in pvp, can he beat other classes with no probs? I want a class which will be comfortable in solo pve, cause i like to explore, will have worthy damage for dungeons and not being a kitten in pvp (i dont need an imba, i just dont want to feel myself weak all the way). Please help me making a choice – to delete thief and begin ranger (cause i dont have more slots) or to continue thief?

Please just keep in mind Rapid Fire only deals damage if the target does nothing about it. In general, any LB ranger that does what you said is dead as soon as you start hitting him.

You could try a full Rabid trapper build with bleed runes, bleed traits, condition duration weapons…
Short: Full Rabid bleed build with traps.

I used such a build in PvE for a while because I didn’t have to patience to change from my WvW build. It’s fun to see hundreds of numbers pop up

I will speak from a level 80 perspective.

Rangers aren’t very supportive in zergs. However;
Having 3 rangers in an organized zerg can do a lot to the enemy zerg.
These 3 rangers can use;
LB with piercing arrows to knockback up to 15 people in the enemy zerg, before the zergs clash.
Wolves can fear up to 15 enemies, Drakehounds can immobilise just as many
Entangle can pin down 15 enemies.
Muddy terrains can also pin down 15.

“But elementalists have static field and guardians have the wall”, you might say. Well, elementalists has 1 thing, guardians have 1 thing and rangers have 5 different things.

And always use warhorn 5 to support with swiftness & fury

Edit:
Playing in WvW with a low level character is okay, but don’t do it if the whole zerg is low level because 1 single half-skilled level 80 guy can take on 2-5 upscaled people.

I played in wvw with an LB quickness build… It was a lot of fun, because I wasn’t zerker but dealt as much damage as a zerker without quickness

But miss once → Dead.

Someone made me suddenly think about this.

We got Retaliation
“Retaliation is a boon that damages anyone who hits the affected target. The attacker will not be damaged if the attack fails to hit. Retaliation does not reduce or prevent damage taken.”
Retaliation works against any and every attack that hits.

We also got Reflection or Reflect
“Reflect is a combat mechanic that returns incoming projectile attacks to their source, including all properties of the projectiles; the original target is unaffected by a reflected attack.”
Works only against projectiles.

Against melee, there is Retaliation
Against ranged, there is Retaliation and Reflect

Why have reflection against ranged is there is retaliation?
Why not have retaliation only work against melee?

It seems, to me at least, that ranged builds have an extra disadvantage because suddenly they have a counter that turns projectiles back with their full effect. Retaliation works against everything, including ranged projectiles. Reflecting is an extra disadvantage for ranged builds because it completely counters them.

Bran.7425:

This might be bias of me, but it kind of feels like projectiles should not proc retaliation with the existence of reflection.

Hahah- Wait… That…

That actually makes sense…

For Melee there is Retaliation
For Ranged there is Reflection and Retaliation

Reflection fully protects against projectiles and reflects them with full effect, which means that any projectile that would CC or deal damage is turned against the source….. Whieeeech also means that anyone can potentially screw up their own zerg by using projectiles that CC.

Or just completely rework how camouflage works. The ranger and “Ash Legion Spy Kit” are the only ones that use camouflage.

“Camouflage” – Enemies can’t target you while camouflaged. Half-stealthed.
Half-stealthed: Enemies see you as you see a friendly stealthed player.

I’d rather have the quivers changed so they aren’t on back but on the waist…

Malchior.5732:

I have a few questions since I don’t actually know much about Rangers:
2. What are common Ranger mistakes I should avoid in general? Aside from letting a Bear tank stuff for me, this would include bad traits to avoid, utilities, etc.

3. What pets are best overall? I’d really prefer to use Wolves(reasons in question #4) though.

2. Not using both weapon sets and using skills when it’s unecessary. The next part is kind of a follow up on this….

3. Canines have knockdowns and CC F2 skills. The biggest mistake rangers make is having their wolves on aggressive, which causes them to waste the knockdown. Have your pets on passive and when you get stunned/knocked/feared/etc press F1 and your pet will knockdown the enemy. Or press F1 when you want to chain/bait stun breakers. Something like GS Block→Kick→Hound F1 to knockdown→ F2 to immobilise → Swap to wolf → F1 to knockdown →F2 to fear → whatever you got left

I think a change to “Destroy a projectile when you swing a melee weapon” with a 3 seconds internal cooldown would be good enough for it to be a grandmaster trait.
That way, the RNG is eliminated and the trait becomes controllable.

anet should implement something like this in the game. Every week, there is a survery that anyone can answer if they want for a minor reward. That way, they would get a lot of feedback. They can even limit it to experienced players with like 500+ hours. Or limit it to unexperienced players with <200 hours to improve the “new player experience”

Tribio.8531:

solrik.6028:

Just an advice, moment of clarity is pretty much wasted on a LB/SB build because none of them has a 1 hit high damage skill. The best use for MoC in a LB/SB build is on long range shot, if anything…

Agree, good point..
It was mainly for the increased daze/stun duration that I took it out.. Most of the time after a LB#4 will indeed follow a plain LB#1. And after SB#5 it is, most of the time, plain SB#1 to put some dmg and condi’s on the stunned/dazed target..

It doesn’t apply to LB#4 either because it’s a knockdown knockback, not a stun.

Sorry for your loss

A simple question…

Do you use the grandmaster skirmishing trait called Strider’s Defense? Why or why not?
Have you tried it in real fights?

Tribio.8531:

I’m soooooo relieved that there are other rangers running dual bow.. :-)

I run it in a full glass cannon build, so my LB is the actual dmg dealer, while I put (low damage) conditions with the SB (but that triggers lots of condi removal on your opponent – the more cooldowns on his/her skill bar, the better).
And in order to get your spike dmg very high, I use Moment of Clarity. Very handy for shutting down an opponent..

Rapid fire hits around 9k-12k here.. :-)

Just an advice, moment of clarity is pretty much wasted on a LB/SB build because none of them has a 1 hit high damage skill. The best use for MoC in a LB/SB build is on long range shot, if anything…

Dahkeus.8243:

L U X A.9452:

I do think that this skill has a bit too long effect duration especially compared to some other professions …

If you compare no damage skills, then yes, on paper, Signet of Stone looks great…

…but do you really think that those 2 seconds make a ranger more hearty than a warrior? A guardian?

This is why you can’t do skill balance in a vacuum.

Endure Pain – 4 sec invulnerability against white damage, 60s cooldown
Traits,
Grandmaster Defy Pain – Use Endure Pain when at 25% health
Adept Sure-Footed – Increases duration to 5 seconds
Adept Vigorous Focus – Add a 6 sec vigor to the effects

Signet of stone – 6 sec invulnerability against white damage, 80s cooldown
Traits,
Adept Signet Mastery – Reduce cooldown to 64s
Master Beastmaster’s Might – 15s might 3x

You decide.

Just don’t complain when you see a ranger that you can’t hurt for 12 seconds while getting pew-pew’d by a 12 second quickness longbow.