Team Quitter ~ View topic - Rangers- The Team Toolbox

Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 1052

updated 02/26/09

Introduction

Though the audience for this guide is intended for the novice and intermediate level, more experienced rangers (or players of other classes) may find useful insights from the game being played from a different perspective. Note that the information provided here is mostly my opinion, though I have attempted to be as thorough as possible. Also, everything provided here is based on the current metagame, and may be updated periodically.

Objectives
There are three main objectives to having a ranger in your build. If you don’t plan on meeting these three objectives, then you probably shouldn’t be running a ranger.

1) Disruption- the interruption of key skills with the correct skills on your bar, and at the correct times.

2) Pressure- the application of pressure through conditions, as well as position control.

3) Skirmish- providing your team with solid split capabilities: both offensively and defensively.

There are, however, some basic exceptions (ie. Rspike, omegaspike, etc), but they are fairly irrelevant in that the discussion of a ranger’s role in those builds does little to nothing to improve play.

Setting Up
To begin, user interface and key setup is very important in maximizing your effectiveness. Like all classes, having an enlarged compass is a necessity. In addition, an increased skill activation time bar is very useful in augmenting your interrupt speed. The default bar is fairly small, and it can be difficult to recognize a skill visually. Because there are many important skills to interrupt that are 3/4s-1s long, it is important to be able to recognize skills based on visual cues. This is most often done by recognizing skill icons. Increasing the skill activation bar will increase the icon size, and allow you to better recognize what skill is being used. In addition, elongating the activation timer is also important. Though different people have different sizes they work well with, a general rule of thumb is to not increase the activation bar to the point where you need to shift your eyes in order to see the entire thing. Ensure that the activation bar is within your field of vision, since not being able to take in an image in its entirety at a glance increases the time necessary to process it substantially (whether it be subconsciously or not). Key setups are more varied between different players, but it is important to position interrupt keys in an easily accessible location. Find the positions of keys that you can reach most rapidly from reflex, and set those as your interrupts.

Bows
Bow selection is often overlooked by most people, but is significant in clutch plays for an experienced ranger. We’ll start with a basic overview of the types of bows. Though you can get the more technical information from wiki, what I provide should be enough for you to setup your bowsets.
From this table, 1= shortest range, lowest arc, and slowest refire rate. 3= the greatest of each, respectively.

Rankings are listed in order of range, arc, and refire rate.
Flatbow 3 3 3
Longbow 3 2 2
Recurve 2 1 2
Shortbow 1 2 3
Hornbow 2 2 1

For pvp, the most commonly used bow is the recurve bow. However, each bow has its uses in certain situations. The following provides situations where each may be used. Hornbow’s aren’t included since the only time you’ll ever use one is if you’re ranger spiking.

Recurve Bow: Its high accuracy and decent range makes for it to be the best choice for interrupts and cripshot. The best all around bow. Use a +30hp grip, and for each set of strings, make sure to have a 15^50 and +5 energy copy of the bow. So, for example, if you have a crippling recurve bow, have one be a 15^50, and another +5e. Start in your 15^50 set, and move to a +5 when necessary. If you're running burning arrow, use a poison recurve with 15^50 and etc.

Flatbow: This is pretty much only used for taking down archers. You’ll want a vamp flatbow (5/1) with a 15%/-5 energy mod and +30hp, since taking down archers is optimal with the highest possible dps. Accuracy isn’t important. Also, if you're running broadhead arrow, be sure to have a silencing flatbow, since arc is irrelevant when using BHA.

Shortbow: Useful for taking out close range targets like knights or snared targets like flaggers. Can also sometimes be used at the stand in close quarters, where they have a better cooldown time between attacks, so interrupts can be timed more appropriately. However, they also have reduced accuracy, making them fairly easy to dodge. For shortbow mods, use the same as you would with your recurve, except also have a 5/1, 15%/-5e copy for knights and footmen.

Longbow: What you should be using right as the match starts. Most teams put up their forms, aegis, preps, and etc outside of your normal range. Rushing with a longbow gives you the chance of getting an early interrupt, and thus an early advantage. In addition, longbows are useful for crippling targets just out of range, or finishing a target that’s almost dead by reapplying duration of poison. Even though the accuracy is significantly lower than that of a recurve, the longbow is still useful in very specific situations. For cripshot, a 15^50, poisonous longbow w/ +30hp is optimal.

Hornbow: Pretty much never used in pvp outside of spike. Don’t bother.

Though an equipment discussion isn’t entirely necessary, the weaponset I use is spear/shield, recurve, longbow, and flatbow as my main weapon swaps. Some rangers may prefer a shortbow in place of the longbow slot, and etc. That’s really all a matter of preference so long as you have the right types of bow at your disposal for swapping into if you’re forced to use something outside your primary swaps.

Also, keep in mind that positioning makes a difference in the range and damage of your bows. Higher ground increases your maximum range, lower ground reduces it. The same goes for damage. When possible, always try to attain a position of higher ground.

Armor
I'd go with full druid (energy inscription) armor. Health armor isn't really necessary on a ranger, and the energy for a few extra cripshots or interrupts makes a big difference. As for runes, use your basic minor expertise, marksmanship, and wilderness runes. Have a sup vigor, and the last rune is fairly flexible. If you're going to be playing on burning isle alot, use a cripple rune. Otherwise, go with either an attunement, vitae, or blind reduction rune. It's really a matter of preference at that point, and also what you think the opponent is going to run. No real point in doing a blind reduction rune if you know your opponent isn't running a bsurge, for example.

Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 1052

Your Toolbox
This is the standard cripshot bar:

Attributes: 10 marksmanship, 14 expertise, 10 wilderness survival,

For the remainder of this discussion, this template will be used to present how skills should be used.

We’ll begin with an overview of each skill individually:

- This is your primary means of pressure. Your arrows by themselves do measly amounts of damage, so your primary method of pressure involves the application of conditions to various targets. Your goal while this skill is active is to spread poison on as many members of the opposite team as possible. While this not only provides a cover for other conditions such as deep wound, blind, and cripple, the duration and number of opponents that remain poisoned provide a gauge as to many much pressure the other team is taking. Though you may not see your poison stick initially, if your team is applying sufficient pressure, you will notice that there will be fewer and fewer targets clean. It is very important to pay attention to your apply, since when that is interrupted there is almost no reason for you to be swapping attack targets anymore. Make sure you have natural stride up while using and apply poison, and also keep in mind that you do not need to reapply on recharge, since the duration of the skill lasts twice as long as its recharge. Although that sounds fairly obvious, there are many people who make the mistake of burning their energy out from spamming apply poison.
Advanced Tactics: In the event that your apply does get interrupted, autoattacking a specific target can be an effective way to still pressure while you are unable to spread conditions. Because much of your job is psychological, forcing an opponent to believe that you are camping them when you are actually not discourages them from using certain skills on their bar, allowing you to provide shutdown while not actually interrupting anything.

- This is one of the most powerful skills on your bar. Used correctly, and it can singlehandedly turn the tide of matches. One of the merits of this skill is that it can be used both offensively and defensively. When at the stand, crippling warriors in your backline provides your midline and backline with more room to kite, and usually forces warriors off their current target and towards another one. In addition, it makes following spikes much easier for your monks. Crippling offensively is to follow the path of your own warriors. Find the targets that they are chasing, or targets that may attempt to kite away from them and crip accordingly. Though this skill should be used often, spamming it will not only reduce its overall effectiveness but also rapidly burn out your energy pool. Even though you may have expertise, a ranger’s energy pool is not unlimited. Monitoring the duration of your cripshot is vital in flag pushing and controlling movement of the opposing frontline. Using cripshot on paragons is generally not very effective since they don’t depend on moving to apply damage and also don’t kite often anyway. Also be careful when using this skill while the enemy team is wiping or when you’re on a split. A good ranger will be watching to dshot your cripshot especially on a split, so use cripshot conservatively and under natural stride if possible in skirmishes.
Advanced Tactics: Because of the power of cripshot in movement control, you can use it to force mismatches both at the stand and away from it. One common method of doing this is to follow the position of the opposing frontline and backline. Often, warriors will be overextended and frenzied on your backline. When that occurs, pushing their backline and then crippling them allows your damage to fall back on their frontline, which will net high rates of success in frontline kills if spikes are used to take advantage of that kind of positioning. On maps like frozen isle where there are greater distances between portions of the map, taking advantage of this tactic is an easy way to generate kills.

- This is probably the most powerful skill on your bar, next to cripshot. The use of dshot is another skill that can be gamebreaking, and a more thorough discussion of its use will be made in a following section on interrupts.

- The second interrupt skill on your bar. This skill’s versatility lies in its use as spike assistance, skill interrupt, and condition spam. Although bow damage is negligible, a normal attack followed up by a savage shot deals around 50 damage to a soft target (in addition to applying a cover condition for deep wound), and may or may not be the difference in finishing a target. Tossing a savage on a spike directed towards a monk may also disrupt a skill used in self preservation. This actually happens fairly often. As an interrupt skill, this is inferior to dshot in that it does not disable a skill, but is useful for interrupting skills with longer recharges (aegis, wards) or spikes (lightning orb, esurge/burn) and etc when dshot is not available. The most frequent use for savage shot comes from its ability to spread conditions. More on this later.

- This is probably one of the worst self heals in the game, and sitting around for three seconds to troll might seem like a waste. However, the strength of this skill lies in its inexpensive cost and unremovability. Though there are people who believe that troll unguent is not necessary on a ranger’s bar, I disagree with that. Troll unguent is a necessity for splitting, and when playing with euros I find that a lot of teams want the skill off the bar because they believe you won’t be away from the stand much. They’re bad. Though you might not use troll unguent much at the stand, pretrolling on splits allow you to be much more aggressive in a push. The ability to tank damage for a short period of time is not something to be overlooked. Since you will most likely not be able to use troll during a skirmish, the initial damage that you negate with pretrolling can make a big difference in the outcome. Also, taking a page from the Koreans: if you become locked in a situation where your physical attacks are ineffective or its use undesirable (such as being chain blinded while your mtouch is recharging, having a hex stack on you), take a time out and use troll. Since you are not going to be really much use in that state anyway, it’s better to at least be useful in some way and take some pressure off your monks with self healing.
Advanced Tactics: One important use of troll unguent on a split is for faking out another ranger’s interrupts. For example, when the need arises to use apply poison and your natural stride is down, using troll often motivates the other ranger to burn interrupts on you. Though a lot of people try to fake out by canceling apply poison, burning the opposing player’s interrupt on your troll (which costs nearly nothing to cancel spam) saves energy and is usually easier to do.

- This skill is one of the two main reasons for a ranger’s high survivability potential. Though the skill itself is a spell, it only costs 2 energy under normally specced expertise. There’s really not too much to explain in the proper use of this skill, other than being careful with not having it interrupted. For example, against another cripshot, try to delay your touch somewhat after a cripshot hits you to throw off another interrupter, or use it before the cripshot lands so that the other ranger won’t be able to catch your mtouch with a followed interrupt.

- The primary survival skill of rangers. The best way to learn to use this is really through experience, but there are some basic guidelines you can follow. Primarily, try to always have it up for your preps. Use natty for cripshot in skirmishes that involve an opposing ranger, and the same with mendtouch. Depending on how your monks prot, you’ll also want to determine how you use natty at the stand. However, it’s important to note that the stance is only available for 6 seconds at a time, and outside of that you’re still pretty spikeable.

Alternative Elites- While cripshot is currently the most popular elite, there are a few other ones that are used and worthy of discussion.

- Before the cripshot buff, this was one of the most popular ranger elites. A solo BA ranger is amazing for ganking bases, and provides a decent amount of pressure at the stand. Use it on spikes and low targets. Its fast recharge makes the skill fairly spammable, and spamming it applies a lot of pressure.

-UPDATE TO CURRENT META-

Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 1052

Interrupting
Skill interruption is one of the important jobs of the ranger, and also a primary measure by which rangers are judged. How reliable the ranger is with interrupts, and the skills they set as priority interrupts are all important factors when viewing the effectiveness of your ranger. There are 3 ways to interrupt: reflex, prediction, and luck. Reflex and prediction depend significantly on ping, with reflex more so. The in game timer is one of the most useful tools for interrupting, allowing you to keep track of skill usage passively. Certain skills like wards, DA, apply/melandrus arrows, avatar of melandru, and etc are easily taken care of by using the timer.

One thing to keep in mind is that it’s generally detrimental to let your target know that they’re being camped. Though it puts pressure on them, it nonetheless makes your job more difficult if the target is intelligent, since they will try to fake you out. To avoid this, get used to shift clicking. While tabbing through targets is an effective means of scoping for interrupts, mouse clicking also works very effectively. Hold down the shift button and click targets so that you will be able to select someone without giving yourself away. Also, make heavy use of secondary targeting. Use shift+control+space to call your own targets, so that if you switch to another person, you can quickly get back to the person you want to be watching without the risk of misclicking if the battlefield is cluttered. While this may annoy some teams since you might end up overcalling warriors, if you’re in a good team this shouldn’t be a problem. If it becomes a problem, get everyone used to it since it’s an important asset that rangers can utilize.

For a lot of people, when they see a ranger tossing savage shots or autoattacking them, they’ll be under the impression that they’re getting camped. You can use this psychological play to your advantage by autoattacking one target, while your cursor focus is on another (the target you actually want to interrupt). Chances are the person you’re attacking will say on vent that they’re being camped, and the target you’re actually watching will feel that it is safe to cast. This is just one example of how you can implement psychological warfare in trying to accomplish your task.

Reflex Interrupts: Certain skills can only be interrupted within a low ping range, and it’s important to keep track of your ping so you can more accurately determine interrupt reliability. In terms of reflex, we’ll go with a standard of <100ping. Though ping and reflex speed vary between individual players, a good ranger will typically be able to achieve the following: when within that ping range, interrupts on 1s skills are attainable within an aggro circle, interrupts on ¾s spells are attainable within half aggro. With 200-300ping, 3/4s skills become significantly more difficult. Though many people use the skill monitor to determine interrupts, there is another method that many people don’t use, and is more effective for interrupting ¾-1s timed skills. Sprite animation (the animation your character uses for casting), is an excellent visual method of interrupting. For example, when a monk is using RoF, the animation is of the character leaning forward and straight, while the animation for a ¾s+ skill is of the character raising their weapon upwards. By getting used to noticing sprite animations, you will know the cast time of the skill before what the skill used is. Though using the skill monitor is good for disabling skills selectively, there are situations when all the skills you would want to disable are within the ¾-1s range. For example, when pushing a ritualist flagger, all the spells worth interrupting are within that cast time. If you pay attention to simply the skill monitor, then you may be deceived by the use of certain skills and miss interrupts. In addition, it is easy to miss interrupts on weapon-triggered fast-cast spells. In these cases, interrupting by sprite animation is superior. Also, for 2s+ skills, mouseclicking may be more effective. You’ll usually have plenty of time to select your target (even if the field is cluttered), and recognizing the icon above the caster’s head will let you know if it’s important to shutdown or not. For example, signet of humility give off a purple ball over the mesmer’s head while it’s being cast, and you’ll be able to catch it in time just by noticing the animation, click the target, and tossing the interrupt.

Predictive Interrupts: While many people place heavy emphasis on being able to reflex interrupts, the reality is that most good players can reflex 1s skills fairly easily. However, some of the most important skills aren’t easily interruptible, and rely more on prediction than reflex. For example, you won’t always (and often won’t) be able to be in a position to interrupt bsurge, word of healing, or restore conditions on reflex. To deal with this, you will have to predict the timing of the skill used. This is big in separating good rangers from bad ones, and while there is luck involved, there is a lot you can do to maximize the probability of your interrupt landing from estimation. Because ranger interrupts are so disposable in comparison to mesmer ones (and the fact that there is flight time and distance involved), being able to land predictive interrupts is an important skill to learn. Keep in mind that no matter the distance, there will be a arrow flight delay from when the interrupt leaves the bow to when it hits the target. Though it might seem like a big deal at first, after playing ranger for a while, flight time calculations should be subconscious.

The best way to increase the accuracy of predictive interrupts is to learn the patterns of individual players or patterns of classes in general. For example, for most casters, one of the first things they try to do after getting back up from a KD or after spellcasting is to kite, which often provides an easy setup for bull’s strike. Likewise, monks will usually cast a spell right after getting up, giving you a window for an interrupt. In addition, you can force targets to use spells as well. For example, you can cripple one monk, and then proceed to the other monk to dshot their rc. While different monks have different behaviors to react to these small situations, most players do have a reaction pattern that you can determine over time. Another example is if you want to shutdown rc or WoH, you can ask your frontline to call a spike on a certain target, and time your dshot for the monk on the spike. This is similar to mesmers toss shame or diversion on a monk during a spike, and requires some basic coordination. Remember, GvG is a team game, and there is nothing wrong with requesting assistance in shutdown. The ability to force skill usage is a powerful tool.

It is usually much easier to play ranger against people you know (or people in your own guild), since you have enough experience with them to recognize their playstyles. However, in some cases it may be harder to predict the behavior of bad players than good ones, since bad players might perform skills fairly randomly. This is often the case with bad monks, since they may be late on using RC/WoH for spikes. Again, while there are certain reactions take that are similar over all classes, the real best way to improve the accuracy of predictive interrupts is to get in the head of the opponent.

Interrupt Priorities: Though the priorities on what to interrupt vary from ranger to ranger, as well as build to build, there are several skills which are key to shutdown. These include:

,

, forms (ie:

),

, and

/

. Interrupts on resurrects (primarily hard rezzes) are clutch in forcing chainkills. These include:

. While most of these skills can be interrupted with a savage shot to force enough time to give an advantage, a dshot of flesh and death pact signet is preferable due to the fast recharge of death pact, and the lack of recharge time for flesh. Some teams use

+

. In this situation, you will probably miss the first hard rez to find out that the other team is carrying this method of hard rezzing, and be prepared for an interrupt on glyphsac when the next foe dies. This is also where interrupt selection comes into play. For skills with a fast recharge, it is almost always preferable to use dshot rather than savage shot. However, dshot should be a skill used when you can either guarantee a reflex interrupt, or have a high probability of landing a predictive one. Wasting a dshot is wasting a lot of efficiency, though that doesn’t mean you should play it entirely conservatively. Skills like wards, bsurge, sig of humility, song of resto, and etc are better interrupted with dshot. Depending on the build your team runs, your interrupt priority may differ. For example, if you have another midliner to shutdown bsurge or wards, then you may shift your focus elsewhere. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use your interrupts on those skills as they come up. The best method of keeping track of skills without camping targets is by using the in game timer. For skills like DA, this is very reliable since there is no fast cast/recharge weapon sets for DA. Simply look at the timer for the next time DA goes up, or when you interrupt it, and make a mental note of what the timer would be 25 seconds later. It’s also useful to call the time that the skill was used, since that allows the rest of your midline to coordinate shutdown in the even you aren’t able to interrupt the next cycle. I’m not going to make a list of all the skills you should be interrupting, but your priorities should lay in shutting down defense. Use common sense, and play accordingly. For example, if your team is falling back, make sure to dshot their cripshot, diversion, and etc. If your team is pushing, keep their defense shutdown and apply pressure to the monks and the party healer. Also, interrupting rezzes can make or break games. Shutting down hard rezzes forces the other team to burn signets, while if the opposing team is taking a lot of pressure and you’re caught between either interrupting a flesh or rez sig, it’s better to take down the sig so that you can easily finish the hard rezzer and his target right after he fleshes. If the mesmer is causing the team a lot of trouble, take some time out and take down a few skills on it. Keep track of vent chatter to realize the biggest threats, and play accordingly. Again, playing intelligently is key.

Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 1052

Condition Spamming
One of the primary modes of pressure from rangers, condi spamming is important to learn. One of the main problems that newer rangers run across is how to effectively interrupt and spread conditions at the same time. Though this is also varied between different rangers as there are multiple effective means of doing this, I will describe one that I use.

For one, tab through targets when you’re autoattacking. A simple tab+space is sufficient if you don’t have any other skills available. Constantly cycling through targets not only gives you a better idea of how much pressure the other team is taking, it also provides you with the best method of condispam. The most basic form of condi spam is space, tab+savage, tab+space, tab+savage, and etc. Dshot should not be used for condispamming unless the additional speed at which you apply poison to will overpower the party healing or condi removal. This is usually not a good idea until rc, lod (prenerf), or heal party or dshotted. To maximize efficiency for condi spam and interrupting, target casters with the savage shots you would use for poison application. In addition, constantly tab through targets and autoattack targets that aren’t poisoned since the opponents under poison will be staggered and not in the order that you condispammed.

Skirmishes
Skirmish skill is the other primary measurement of rangers. Skirmishes can be anything from splits, 1v1’s, to small unit stand battles. Though much of it depends on experience, there are several things that are useful to keep in mind when engaging in skirmishes. As an example, we’ll use a typical 3v3 engagement of a rit flagger, warrior, and a cripshot mirror match. In such a situation, using your head is very important. Be very careful when using your cripshot and apply during a skirmish, since both are very strong in small unit matches, and there are usually not many obstructions you can exploit while using those skills. Using nat stride for cripshots, or trying to maintain distance between yourself and the other ranger is key. Likewise, shutting down the other team’s cripshot and apply reduces a lot of pressure off your own team and allows your warrior to push much harder. Weapon of warding and weapon of shadow are two key interrupts, and using dshot and savage shot on them respectively should allow you to finish the skirmish quickly. Also, make sure to use your mending touch (a very strong skill in scrims) supportively. In a mirror match like the one described, the ranger is usually not the person who needs conditions removed. Taking deep wounds off your own rit or warrior as fast as possible is clutch. From an alternative perspective, if your warrior has just eviscerated someone on the other side, and you see their ranger running towards them, it will almost always be because of a queued up mtouch. Tossing a dshot when the ranger reaches the target will often catch their mtouch. Again, these notes are for the example skirmish given, and you won’t always run into such matches. Some teams run water flaggers, and etc. Experience is by far the best way for learning how to deal with such matchups.

Pushing flaggers is an important responsibility of the cripshot, and knowing when and where to push can be difficult. On maps like druids isle or frozen, flag pushing is a very strong play to use and should almost always be utilized unless you’re guaranteeing kills with the main team. For pushing flags, you don’t necessary have to kill the flagger. Slowing them down enough for you to get ahead on flags can force them to dual run flags and give you a temporary mismatch. In addition, pushing flaggers often opens more avenues of error for the opposing team, so a good push can get kills fairly easily. When to push flags can differ greatly depending on the match, though usually if you’re having problems against a highly defensive team, pushing flaggers can give your team openings for kills. Defensive teams are anchored within their defense ball, so pushing flaggers will force them to move, thus spreading out their defense, which may allow you to attain kills and positioning.

Ganking involves the killing of npcs, and though it may be fairly easy, there are many ways to optimize the killing of npcs. For example, since most npcs are archers and aren’t mobile, accuracy doesn’t really matter. Using a vampiric flatbow for maximum dps will attain the fastest kill rate. In addition, you can usually take down 2 npcs at a time. Poisoning one archer while working on the other will allow you to make use of passive damage and can increase your kill rate by about 50%. Also, keep in mind that if you’re barely within an archer’s aggro circle, they will not attack you until you attack them. Thus, using a normal shot followed by an interrupt will always catch the pin down that follows. If you’re making your way through archers and cannot risk getting crippled, use the knowledge that the archer’s passive aggro range is slightly smaller than a full aggro bubble, so tossing a savage at an archer about .5s after entering their aggro range will allow you to catch their pin down without being forced to reflex at max range. When engaging units like knights and footmen, a vamp shortbow may be a better choice since even under cripple, mobile npcs can still avoid your shots. With experience, you can learn the intervals at which npcs use self heals through intuition. However, a good rule of thumb with health bars is that archers will use troll unguent at ~75%hp, and knights will use heal sig at around 30%hp.

Joined: 03 Apr 2007 Posts: 1052

What Stops You
While you might have a fun job when you’re guaranteed to land all of your hits, the reality is that there is a lot preventing you from doing what you need to do. Following is a short list of the biggest annoyances to a ranger:

: The holy trinity of gay shit. While a couple of these skills affect warriors, shields up is by far the most frustrating since there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. With DA, you can still land hits for condi spam on offensive targets, and you can always interrupt it on the next cast. With aegis, you can call for strips on the target you’re on or have your team use mirror if it’s available. However, shields up is plain gay. It kills the reliability of your interrupts, and you pretty much have to just deal with it. The biggest problem is that shields up is the foundation for the other forms of defense. Once that goes up, aegis, wards, DA, and etc are pretty much up to your mesmer. Once that defense stacks, you’ll have to essentially wait until shields up goes down before you can reliably attempt to dismantle defense.

: A really big annoyance. An even bigger one of it’s the kind that likes to try to gale your mtouch. If they’re spamming it on you, you can have your mesmer toss a diversion or try to dshot it yourself. If they’re not, then you’ll pretty much have to deal with it until you either do something about it yourself or your mesmer does his job.

: Not much you can do other than call for enchant strips. Either that or pretend to camp someone and dshot the monk when they attempt to put it on them.

: Really gay. Good thing everyone runs hex eater now. While it’s nice in some ways that it expires much faster now, if it sticks, it can become a huge annoyance since the ele will be able to practically maintain it on you if you don’t get lucky. Try to dshot this, since it will make everyone happy.

: Sucks, but you have to deal with it. Faintheartedness is really annoying just because it slows down everything. Makes it harder to time your interrupts, and 2s cripshots are no fun. There’s not much more depressing than being the poor bastard who has to sit through a 2s cripshot because you had faintheartedness on you and diversion landed right as you started the skill.

Conclusion
This is as much as I can think of off the top of my head. I’ll update it if I can think of anything else, and any additions or suggestions to improve this article are welcome. Again, keep in mind that most of the information provided is from my own experience and opinion, meaning different players may do things differently from me. However, most of the information provided should be fairly consistent with other rangers. I hope this can be useful in helping newer players master the class, and perhaps shed some light for anyone else on the inner workings of playing a ranger.

Joined: 21 Feb 2007 Posts: 1010

I read it all and it was a nice read.

Great guide.

Joined: 24 Nov 2006 Posts: 978 Location: Melbourne, Florida

fuck you magebane shot and yue's bad arguement to saying its balanced

otherwise good read, wont help me suck less at ranger but informative

Joined: 07 Jul 2007 Posts: 892 Location: nyc

wow yue that guide fuckin owns, how long it took u to type all dat

Joined: 05 Nov 2006 Posts: 254

Oh man, awaits Mesmer guide.

Joined: 29 Nov 2006 Posts: 21 Location: Metrowest Boston

You did a great job explaining...well pretty much everything it seems. I hope your guide helps many up and coming rangers enjoy PvP and especially GvG more.

Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 444

Excellent fucking read, Yue. Well done.

Joined: 10 Apr 2007 Posts: 68

Great guide; here are some things I find helpful:

In cripshot v. cripshot battles Mending Touch is a phenomenal heal. At 3 prot it heals for just under 50 which is about as much damage as the other ranger does. Since m-touch has a 6s recharge and crip shot a 1s you're more than likely going to be crippled unless you can dodge the arrows or interrupt Crip shot so using Mtouch just to heal is sometimes a good idea.

One of the most important things for me while playing ranger is the camera angle. Many of the main skills a ranger is looking to interrupt (Aegis, DA, Diversion) have a 2s cast and are going to be the only long-cast animations that a Mo, P or Me have. You can spread poison and crip warriors/monks using tab+radar so I'll try to change the camera to have the midline+monks in view. When you see the glyph animation (INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS) or a long cast starting use ctrl+click on name+dshot. For Ward vs. Melee, waiting 20s and then targeting the Ele usually works. Many teams are so dependent on the ward that eles use it on recharge or nearly on recharge.

In addition to a lot of people not knowing how to play a ranger, a lot of people don't know how to play against a ranger. They'll often depend too much on their defensive skills and use them too often, giving you chances to land an interrupt. Knowing and keeping track of skill recharge times is a must for every ranger.

Every ranger should try to practice the timing required to interrupt a 1/4 cast from a target who has been knocked down. On skirmishes kills almost always come only when the warrior lands a Bulls Strike or some other KD and then can unload his adrenal skills on the healer (mo or rt). The healer character will always que up a 1/4 cast (RoF, Weapon of Remedy) for when they get back up and interrupting this will often be enough to land a kill. Savage is better than Dshot here usually because the extra damage from interrupting a spell plus the warrior continuing to attack will kill the target. If it's a Mo/A with Dark Escape up or a target with a lot of life still then Dshot may be better since they might be able to survive to get another spell off.

When spreading poison it's best to know immediately what the opponent's monks have for elites. Since LoD is shit now poison spreading can be great but I usually need to know the prot monk's elite before I go completely into poison spamming. If it's SoD then poison will be great but if it's RC then I'll do more to try to interrupt skills and get spike kills. RC is a monster heal for 2+ conditions so mindless spamming is sometimes inadvisable although any damage is great when monks are low on energy. Against 2 WoH monks poison is great since the monk either removes the poison for a crappy heal (dismiss) or doesn't remove the poison and just heals through it. Against HB it's best to have your mesmer harass the monk but spreading poison is still good since Heal Party still costs a lot of energy.

I've seen some rangers bring Sloth Hunter's shot now too and I assume they drop res sig for it. It's a very easy skill to use though and probably doesn't need explanation.

edit: just saw that you updated your guide while I was writing this so some of the things overlap but it's still good info!

Joined: 15 Sep 2006 Posts: 639 Location: Boston

Joined: 03 Nov 2006 Posts: 1625

Good job Yue and Iotan

Also, D-Shot or Savage when a target is getting up from KD?

Joined: 22 Oct 2006 Posts: 674

I was expecting much less from you yue, gj