Curse

JR · Feb 14, 2006, 02:04 PM // 14:04

Rangers In The Current PvP Environment

This guide is to help players understand the roles, benefits and drawbacks of different bows in a PvP environment.

First off I will explain the different classes of bow available.

For the purpose of this article, I have used these terms:
Draw time: The time it takes from the last arrow leaving the bow, to the next.
Range: The maximum range of the bow, with 55' being roughly the radius of the agro bubble.
Flight time: The time it takes for an arrow at a range of 55' to hit its target, assuming no additional effects.
AP:: The innate armor piercing statistic of the bow.

The Bows:

Bow Mods:

First off, Bow Grips. There are only two Bow Grips really worth looking at in my opinion, and that is Fortitude and Defense. They are the only choices available that provide you with any serious benefit. Some people prefer the extra armor of Defense, some people prefer the extra health of Fortitude. Personally I prefer Fortitude. The extra health can help you survive against degen for longer, and there is a lot of armor ignoring damage flying around. However, this may change, and there isn't really a huge amount in it.

As for Bowstrings, this is where it becomes more complicated. Different roles will require different strings. I will detail these with each section.

Bowstrings:

Bow Grips:

Armor:

Now we have the equipment explained, I will describe the most common uses of rangers in PvP.

At the moment, there are three main uses of PvP rangers. Cripshot rangers, Trappers, and Spike rangers. I will give a brief description of all three, with their uses, and the equipment you would probably want to consider using.

(The builds posted in this thread are purely suggestions, you may find you need to change the individual character builds to more suit your team build as a whole.)

Cripshot Rangers:

Common Cripshot Ranger build:
Ranger/Mesmer

Expertise: 15 (11+4)
Wilderness Survival: 8 (7+1)
Marksmanship: 10 (9+1)
Illusion Magic: 4
Domination Magic: 8

- Resurrection Signet ()
- Crippling Shot [Elite] (Marksmanship)
- Apply Poison (Wilderness Survival)
- Distracting Shot (Expertise)
- Savage Shot (Marksmanship)
- Barbed Trap (Wilderness Survival)
- Blackout (Domination Magic)
- Distortion (Illusion Magic)

Common Cripshot Flag Runner build:
Ranger/Mesmer
Expertise: 15 (13+2)
Wilderness Survival: 8 (7+1)
Marksmanship: 9 (8+1)
Illusion Magic: 4

- Troll Unguent (Wilderness Survival)
- Crippling Shot [Elite] (Marksmanship)
- Apply Poison (Wilderness Survival)
- Distracting Shot (Expertise)
- Savage Shot (Marksmanship)
- Storm Chaser (Wilderness Survival)
- Dodge (Expertise)
- Distortion (Illusion Magic)

Cripshot rangers are used mainly for the effectiveness of Crippling Shot at snaring targets, with apply poison to cover the cripple and pressure the opposing monks to use up energy removing conditions. Obviously the main class you would be targetting is Warriors, but also other melee types such as 'Bunny Thumper' hammer rangers. Also very usefull to snare targets to prevent them from kiting out of range. Aswell as this you can disrupt opponents with the other skills on your bar. Interrupts are very usefull when you locate someone using a skill that is giving you a problem (like Aegis for example) or just looking out for people trying to use Ressurection Signets.

Blackout is also extremely usefull, allowing you to disable monks during spikes, or interrupt through Mantra of Resolve etc. Not to mention it works with Expertise (being a skill) and is on a character tough enough to get in touch range of characters.

As most of your damage is achieved through degen, you wont be overly bothered by direct damage; therefore 'AP' and refire rate are not that important factors when considering bow type. Interrupt skills also have a near instant 'Draw time' (although there is a slight delay if the arrow previously fired was also an interrupt) so this is a minor issue. Range again is fairly minor, but it can make it easier for your target to kite away from you if you need to stay quite close to them. In order to interrupt spells with shorter cast times, it is important that your arrow reaches the target in the shortest amount of time possible. Not to mention it is much harder for an opponent to strafe your attacks with a faster arrow speed.

With all of this in mind, we obviously want to look at the 'Flight time' of the bow:

Flight Times:
Recurve Bow: 0.5 seconds
Longbow: 0.75 seconds
Shortbow: 0.65 seconds
Horn Bow: 0.75 seconds
Flatbow: 1.0 seconds

From these statistics, we can clearly see that the Recurve Bow class would be the best choice in this situation, having the shortest flight time.

In the case of a Cripshot flag runner, you serve a utility role. For a general purpose bow, the Recurve class is again probably the best option. This will make it harder for the opposing flag runner to strafe your arrows, particularly Crippling Shot attacks. Your main damage is going to come from degen; poison and possibly bleeding, so there is no real reason to take anything else into account. However, it may also be usefull for you to take a Longbow class bow. This helps a lot when it comes to killing NPCs, as you might often be doing on flagger. You can degen to death them without agroing, and reach NPCs you might not otherwise be able to hit. As such, I would probably take a Recurve class bow in my primary weapon slot, and a Longbow class in my secondary.

Bow Mods:
As mentioned earlier, your main damage is poison degen. It seems fairly logical to take a Poisonous Bowstring, to lengthen the degen and pressure the opponent more.

Armor:
On a standard Cripshot ranger, in my opinion there is no real benefit from taking anything other than Druids; the larger energy pool can help when you need to spam a load of skills.

On a Cripshot flag runner however, a Studded Leather chest piece can come in handy. The main other type of flag runner at the moment is the E/Mo Ether Prodigy Air Elementalist with Heal Party, so the extra protection against lightning attacks will help here. I normally choose chest piece because that is where Lightning Orbs tend to land, and they are the big hitters.

Trappers:

Common Trapper build:
Ranger/Mesmer
Expertise: 14 (12+2)
Wilderness Survival: 12 (9+3)
Inspiration Magic: 8
Illusion Magic: 4

- Resurrection Signet ()
- Troll Ungent (Wilderness Survival)
- Spike Trap [Elite] (Wilderness Survival)
- Barbed Trap (Wilderness Survival)
- Flame Trap (Wilderness Survival)
- Dust Trap (Wilderness Survival)
- Mantra of Resolve (Inspiration Magic)
- Distortion (Illusion Magic)

Trappers are very usefull utility defense characters, especially agaisnt warrior heavy teams. They offer you an extra tactical advantage with ground controll, and can help to push opposing teams out of wards.

The build its self is fairly self explanatory, put up Mantra of Resolve, and start trapping. Distortion if you start to get beaten on, or if your Resolve gets removed with Wild Blow. You can either trap defensively around your backline, or offensively by pushing up into the opponents front/midline and spreading conditions and damage with your traps.

The strange thing with this type of trapper, is you probably wont want to use a bow. The +15 max energy you can get from using a staff helps a lot when you are throwing at traps fairly quickly, and there is no real benefit from using a bow. You can of course drop Spike Trap for Oath Shot, and spam the three remaining traps you have faster, but I find that is generally not as practical or efficient.

Bow Mods:
Well, actually Staff mods. I wont go too in depth here, as I don't want to get into a whole new weapon and modification options. However, I find an Insightfull Staff of Fortitude in my primary slot is the best option. As I mentioned before, the +15 energy helps quite a lot. In my secondary slot I would put a Hale Staff of Fortitude, should I hit an opponent running some form of spike the +60 health is very nice.

Armor:
Again, Druids. Energy with trappers tends to be fairly tight, so all the help you can get is a good thing.

Spike Rangers:

Common Spike Ranger build:
Ranger/Mesmer
Expertise: 14 (12+2)
Marksmanship: 16 (12+4)

- Resurrection Signet ()
- Read the Wind (Marksmanship)
- Dual Shot (Ranger other)
- Punishing Shot [Elite] (Marksmanship)
- Savage Shot (Marksmanship)
- Whirling Defense/Drain Enchant/Hex Breaker... etc.
- Distortion (Illusion Magic)
- Winnowing/Favorable

(If you are taking Winnowing, it may require using a superior Expertise rune aswell, so you can put points into Wilderness Survival and keep the breakpoint of 14 Expertise.)

'Ranger spike' is probably one of the scariest spike builds around at the moment. Using spirits, preparations, and orders to buff the damage of your arrows into something that can kill near instantly with just a few rangers.

Normally the spike is Dual Shot -> Punishing Shot, and then savage if the target is not quite dead yet. The target caller will usually pick the target and count down from three, some also call when to use preparations. On three the orders will be put up by the Necro, on one the rangers will all hit Dual Shot, and then Punishing. It is a very powerfull spike, especially in that Protective Spirit is fairly ineffective against it, due to the damage being in lots of small packets.

With this type of ranger your primary focus is purely damage, in one focused spike. As such, there are only two bow attributes which you should be concerned with, 'Flight time' (as slower arrows are easier to strafe dodge), and AP.

Flight Times:
Recurve Bow: 0.5 seconds
Longbow: 0.75 seconds
Shortbow: 0.65 seconds
Horn Bow: 0.75 seconds
Flatbow: 1.0 seconds

AP:
Recurve Bow: None
Longbow: None
Shortbow: None
Horn Bow: 10%
Flatbow: None

As you can see, there are two possible options here, the Recurve Bow class and the Horn Bow class. With a Recurve Bow you stand a greater chance of hitting your target, with a Horn Bow you will do more damage if you do. However, there are ways to decrease the flight time of your arrows, without having to change the attack skills used.

The first is by using the 'Read The Wind' preparation, which doubles the speed of your arrows. Also, it is sensible to use the spirit 'Favorable Winds' as it will benefit all of your rangers, whilst only taking up one skill slot.

As such, it would seem that for a spike ranger the Horn Bow class is the best choice. As for a secondary bow? Some spike groups like to get off a long range spike before the opponents can react, to do this you would want to use a Longbow class bow.

('Read the Wind' is currently bugged, in that it quadruples the arrow speed on its own, when it infact should just double.)

Bow Mods:
For a Spike ranger, there is an obvious choice for Bowstring. The Vampiric string will add an additional 15 lifestealing to a Dual Shot -> Punishing/Savage spike. Multiply that by however many rangers you are using and it becomes quite considerable. (Just make sure you have an empty slot to switch to when not spiking, so your health doesn't degen too far.)

Armor:
As with the standard Cripshot ranger and trapper, there is no real benefit from taking anything other than Druids at the moment. The larger energy pool is more of an advantage than taking Drakescale and hoping the opposing team has a fire Elementalist for example.

Whats left?
The Flatbow. The biggest drawback to this, would be the arc. It is very easy for opponents to strafe the arrows, due to how long they are in the air. It can be made more viable if you are using Read The Wind, but generally the only time you will be using that is if you are Spiking, in which case a Hornbow is still superior due to the 10% AP.

I hope this has been of some use, and thanks to Ensign for the usefull statistics he collected which I used in this post.

-JR

[Also reccomended reading is heist23's guild to Ranger interrupts:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s....php?t=115544]

Chazeah · Feb 14, 2006, 04:37 PM // 16:37

awesome article thanks.

one question:

is there a practical difference between 13 and 14 expertise?

i thought that expertise was 4% per level, and at 14, thats 56%, while at 13, its 52%.

both of these halve the energy cost, so whats the point of taking a major rune in expertise?

i know, for example, that divine favor actuallly gives 3.2 health per level, or something like that. is expertise similar, and actually gives slightly more/less than 4%?

having never actually played a spiker, i was just curious.

and sorry if i missed something horribly obvious.

thanks for the great article!

Esrever · Feb 14, 2006, 04:43 PM // 16:43

At thirteen expertise, five energy skills cost two energy.
At fourteen expertise, ten energy skills cost four energy.
Guild Wars doesn't handle fractions well, so it rounds off some numbers.

icemonkey · Feb 15, 2006, 04:05 PM // 16:05

who takes winnowing for ranger spike???

I would propose this for ranger spike skill bar

dual shot
punishing shot {E}/Quick shot {E}
savage
read the wind
distortion
XXX
XXX
res sig

Generally you would have 4 spikers, 1 which is part time runner whos bar would be different than this

one rnager could have quick instead of punishing because quick is good at finishing a target with more arrows after the spike

but this would be a basic one and then the blank skills would be favorable and your choice for one ranger Drain enchant and insp hex for another and drain enchant and maybe throw dirt or another inspired hex

theres really no reason to double up on stances with whirling and distortion
and only one ranger needs to bring favorable winds and no one needs to bring winnowing

XvArchonvX · Feb 15, 2006, 04:31 PM // 16:31

Wow, very nice article. I learned some things and I'm going bow shopping now!

ZennZero · Feb 15, 2006, 08:23 PM // 20:23

Why the emphasis on Distortion for damage avoidance instead of Whirling Defence?

Longer recharge time, but with SQ it is cut down to 40 seconds. It is not ideal for a long-term pounding as you can't really maintain it for more than 20-some seconds, but you dont pay the energy penalty.

JR · Feb 15, 2006, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZennZero

Why the emphasis on Distortion for damage avoidance instead of Whirling Defence?

Longer recharge time, but with SQ it is cut down to 40 seconds. It is not ideal for a long-term pounding as you can't really maintain it for more than 20-some seconds, but you dont pay the energy penalty.

Generally you will want to be using your evade stance at very short notice, at random intervals. Against adren spiking warriors, ranger spike etc. distortion is always there. Whirling's recharge slightly gimped, in that you can't put it up whenever you need it, but it is nice against pressure.

LaserLight · Feb 15, 2006, 08:53 PM // 20:53

Hm hm...Icemonkey, perhaps some teams would like to use both Winnowing and Favorable alongside RtW, since both allow one single Ranger to boost the damage of the entire spike. Quite efficient. And with Vampirics, Orders, Favorable/Winnowing, RtW, all applied over roughly twelve shots fired within a second of each other, you can see how even Winnowing's lousy four damage per hit can add up. In fact, it adds to up 48 extra damage over the spike. Favorable Winds adds up to 72. So with just two skill slots over the entire spike, you can tack on an extra 120 damage with just passive skills.

I'll take it.

Funk_Styles · Feb 16, 2006, 12:03 AM // 00:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZennZero

Why the emphasis on Distortion for damage avoidance instead of Whirling Defence?

Longer recharge time, but with SQ it is cut down to 40 seconds. It is not ideal for a long-term pounding as you can't really maintain it for more than 20-some seconds, but you dont pay the energy penalty.

both whirling and SQ are stances, you cant use both
and using serpents right before whirling and apparently ONLY for whirling is a waste of a skill slot

Lord Iowerth · Feb 16, 2006, 12:22 AM // 00:22

One thing it might be useful to note (add at your discretion, of course

) is sometimes during a drawn out battle, even with a decent level of expertise and druids armor: the spike ranger can and often will consume their energy pool, particularily against e-denial messies and the like. I've been having various success using a zealous string for spiking: a few times it's saved my butt, and a few other times it has had little effect. Currently, I use a zealous string on my secondary (non-vampiric) weapon and it seems to suit my playstyle well.

Just my 2 cents, great article, JR!

jimmy_logic · Feb 16, 2006, 12:15 PM // 12:15

With the trap build... Mantra of Resolve is a stance, by activating Serpents Quickness you will cancel that stance. Distortion is a stance as well so they will cancel each other out as you activate them.

Regards

Patrograd · Feb 16, 2006, 12:56 PM // 12:56

One thing I would add on gvG trapping as opposed to tombs trapping.

Whereas in tombs you are generally trapping offensively, against enemies in mobs, I have found that in GvG it is best to trap open spaces - try and predict where your monks need to kite to, and trap there, try and predict where THEIR monks will kite to, and trap there. generally on the cata maps I will lay three waves of traps. The first wave I will lay in the area of the flagstand , with all the traps spread out, never one on top of the other as you would in tombs. We are trying to catch as many individual opponents as we can rather than cause mass degen to one single opponent. My next wave will be a defensive set for my monks to kite through which will generally be in the choke point between the flag and the footmen etc. The third wave I will lay in the other choke point (risk of over extending here, so be careful) in order to catch their monks when they kite and make my warriors life easier. Then just repeat this cycle of three waves during the static phase of the battle at the stand. if they are running alot of warriors then I will sometimes lay an extra defensive wave in the cycle, so middle, defence, attack, defence would be the cycle. if they arent running warriors at all I will skip the defensive cycle altogether

In the event that they turtle or decide to hide in wards, or just arent very good and are all stood together then you need to switch into tombs trapper mode and drop your entire load at their feet.

When turtling yourself trap the entire area around your bodyguards with single traps as these will be the first targets of most assaults. try and predict the route of incoming warriors and try and ensure that blind from dust trap is a well buried condition at the bottom of the stack - so you can lay traps in a line from your body guard outwards - Spike, flame, barbed, dust - along the route the warrior will likely take. Do this on each bodyguard as soon as you turtle.

I have tried an oath shot trapper with the intention of having a permanent whirling defence instead of mantra of resolve, as the loss of energy from wanding can be critical, but I find the loss of spike trap and the loss of 1/4 of my other traps to interrupts isn't a good solution. Maybe it just doesnt suit my playstyle, but I'd rather take the energy hit and bring drain enchant to replenish energy as needed.

MAdnRisKy · Feb 16, 2006, 12:57 PM // 12:57

This is only my opinion but in my experience flat bows are the best for ranger spike by a country mile.

Because you're using both favourable and read the winds, the time from bow to target is reduced by 4 (and if I read correctly even more so if read is bugged), getting it down to a recurve bow. The draw time ie the time in between the dual and the punishing (or the QS

) is unaffected by either though, and is thus usually the factor in whether an infuse catches or not.

Horn bows are just too slow for this, even though the second shot is a quick fire, it is still slower with a horn than a flat.

And thats before you factor in the increased range with the flatbow, which is VERY useful, and shouldn't be dismissed (if for nothing else than as an anti kite).

10% really isn't worth all of those cons, because lets face it, the dmg in ranger spike is not coming from the actual bow dmg is it? Its coming from the preps, the spirits and the orders.

icemonkey · Feb 16, 2006, 02:49 PM // 14:49

on my comments about winnowing, you are certainly entitled to your opinion but if you look at every top r spike team in the meta game no one uses winnowing, and that is for a reason. If you want 50 extra damage in one skill slot put vamp gaze on the orders(one or both depending on build) then you get 50 damage that is unconditional instead of thru a spirit, becuase spirits are very hard to protect against good teams.

and horn bows are better

Electric Death · Feb 16, 2006, 06:16 PM // 18:16

my guild is using ranger spike atm with very good results, we were usually around the rank 600 mark in the ladder, untill a string of loses, 7 in a row i think, forced us to re-think our old build which was kinda a ele spike with 2 mesmers for degen and enchant removal, we had the problem of the 2 air ele's not being able to give the last 50 or so damage to finish of the monks or whatever target was annoying us.

So we had to make a new team build really, whatever we tried to tweak it just didnt work.

One of the new members made a build of 2 ele spikers and 2 ranger spikers, we had mixed sucess, and after a while we just went ranger spike.

Now as for using winnowing we thought about it and i said no because spirits work bith ways so their warriors would get an extra boost of damage which is bad for our monks or us rangers, whoever is getting attacked.

We us fav winds, read the wind, and frozen soil after we have dropped enough targets and we are stable enough to run the risk of losing one of our monks or damage dealers.

And we also use horn bows for the AP for killing warriors and the nice distance and flight time. And yes i think the 10% makes all the difference vs warriors.

Our main problem atm is killing ppl that know what to do to evade us, for emaple they would run around a corner or behind a tree or wall or house, whatever. We just need practice is all.

Also we dropped our orders necro and just have 4 rangers spikeing , when we realised our weakness was when our necro was either dead or for whatever reason unable to do the full 2 orders, so we scrapped the necro.

Also we have been switching between read the wind and kindle arrows, kindle seems to work best with 4 rangers.

wheel · Feb 16, 2006, 09:50 PM // 21:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Electric Death

my guild is using ranger spike atm with very good results, we were usually around the rank 600 mark in the ladder, untill a string of loses, 7 in a row i think, forced us to re-think our old build which was kinda a ele spike with 2 mesmers for degen and enchant removal, we had the problem of the 2 air ele's not being able to give the last 50 or so damage to finish of the monks or whatever target was annoying us.

So we had to make a new team build really, whatever we tried to tweak it just didnt work.

One of the new members made a build of 2 ele spikers and 2 ranger spikers, we had mixed sucess, and after a while we just went ranger spike.

Now as for using winnowing we thought about it and i said no because spirits work bith ways so their warriors would get an extra boost of damage which is bad for our monks or us rangers, whoever is getting attacked.

We us fav winds, read the wind, and frozen soil after we have dropped enough targets and we are stable enough to run the risk of losing one of our monks or damage dealers.

And we also use horn bows for the AP for killing warriors and the nice distance and flight time. And yes i think the 10% makes all the difference vs warriors.

Our main problem atm is killing ppl that know what to do to evade us, for emaple they would run around a corner or behind a tree or wall or house, whatever. We just need practice is all.

Also we dropped our orders necro and just have 4 rangers spikeing , when we realised our weakness was when our necro was either dead or for whatever reason unable to do the full 2 orders, so we scrapped the necro.

Also we have been switching between read the wind and kindle arrows, kindle seems to work best with 4 rangers.

Read the Wind is the superior preparation. Like the article explained, the reason you can use a Horn Bow at all is from the use of Read the Wind and Favorable Winds. Without those two skills, your arrows are much more likely to be strafe dodged and the damage mitigated. As far as the order necro is concerned, it's extremely ineffective not to have orders in ranger spike. The order necro adds a LOT of damage per ranger. You need to practice if the necro isn't able to get both orders off, or do fast cast orders.

JR · Feb 16, 2006, 11:54 PM // 23:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by wheel

Read the Wind is the superior preparation. Like the article explained, the reason you can use a Horn Bow at all is from the use of Read the Wind and Favorable Winds. Without those two skills, your arrows are much more likely to be strafe dodged and the damage mitigated. As far as the order necro is concerned, it's extremely ineffective not to have orders in ranger spike. The order necro adds a LOT of damage per ranger. You need to practice if the necro isn't able to get both orders off, or do fast cast orders.

Exactly, the reason why ranger spike works, is buff stacking. That is the problem with it. If you remove the buffs, you are just making a less efficient ranger spike. If you have problems with your necro dying, maybe you should be looking more to positioning and your backline. After all, the orders only need to be within radar range.

Electric Death · Feb 17, 2006, 04:12 PM // 16:12

Yea i know orders adds alot alot of damage but the reason we dropped it was because good guilds new to kill the orders asap, so with the orders down the spike just failed.

But i do know that it is more effective with a orders and i am going to get orders back into it, we do alot of damage as it is, but i think we will do more if we can keep the oredrs alive more, he just needs to stay in the way way way back line more, since you dont need to be close at all to order a whole team.

And as for the hornbows they do work for us cos we were using fav winds which was enough without read the wind, but as i said above we will soon change back to orders and with that change we wont be using kindle arrows but using read the wind.

JR · Feb 17, 2006, 04:17 PM // 16:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

horn bows are just too slow for this, even though the second shot is a quick fire, it is still slower with a horn than a flat.

No, it's not. Interrupts have a set "draw time", so the bow type makes no difference there.

Zephyr Jackson · Feb 17, 2006, 08:48 PM // 20:48

The Rspike groups i have been apart of have been Drain enchant, not distortion, since teams are more viable to use a bonder it would take the bond away still giving the target the full bluntness of the attack.

my 2g