Deadeye or Longbow Ranger?

Which is the most effective long-range dps out of these two? What are the strengths of each?

Well, they are both pretty annoying to fight. They both have pretty solid mobility and disengage options.

Ranger can take a lot more punishment than a deadeye. Ranger will have an easier time damaging multiple targets.

Deadeye has a lot more access to stealth and disengage ability. Deadeye has a stronger/quicker burst than ranger but it takes a bit more to setup. Deadeye is very heavily reliant on stealth so if you are near anything that reveals you (such as a sentry or an upgraded tower), you will have a bad time.

If you are alone, ranger will be more effective against a skilled opponent. If you are in a team fight, deadeye would probably be stronger.

Thanks, I asume Rifle Deadeye uses Berserker stats, right?

@aaron.7850 said:Thanks, I asume Rifle Deadeye uses Berserker stats, right?

I would start with marauder's or a marauder's/berserker mix until you feel comfortable enough to swap to more berserker pieces. The extra vitality will help you not get killed instantly on the battlefield.

Overall I would rather choose the ranger. Are we talking core/hot/pof ranger?

wrong format, u must have searched for pvp.

as harsh as it may sound, rangers and thieves mainly fill spots for useful classes across the servers.

Ranger, easily. Deadeye has lower damage, less range, less survivability and less utility. It doesnt really do anything better.

@kamikharzeeh.8016 said:wrong format, u must have searched for pvp.

as harsh as it may sound, rangers and thieves mainly fill spots for useful classes across the servers.

Depends on what you're doing though. Both classes are great roamers and gankers but don't do much in teamfights. Joining a zerg as a ranger or thief won't keep you a spot, but you become great at harassing tails and picking people off at ridiculous range with far less risk.

@UNOwen.7132 said:Ranger, easily. Deadeye has lower damage, less range, less survivability and less utility. It doesnt really do anything better.

I thought both classes had 1500 range

Ranger has a range advantage in certain scenarios

@aaron.7850 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:Ranger, easily. Deadeye has lower damage, less range, less survivability and less utility. It doesnt really do anything better.

Yes and no. The way Rangers longbow works, it actually has more than 1500 range. I think its around 1700? As opposed to other projectiles that just disappear when they hit the range limit, Rangers projectiles just travel in an arc, and that arc ends beyond 1500 range.

Which isnt even getting into the fact that Deadeye has to kneel for 1500 range, which has the problem that the kneel skills are worse than the unkneeled skills. As a result, the correct way to play Deadeye is to never kneel, so its effectively a 1200 range class.

Not just that, I'm pretty sure kneeling itself ends as a detriment most of the time compared to standing, I get way more issues connecting kneel shots than standing (if there's any elevation involved), kneeling is bad unless you are hanging by ledges.

Deadeye has significantly more stealth access and mobility than Ranger does so in many ways it has much higher survivability if you know what your doing.

Ranger on the other hand will do more damage and hit more targets if you also know what you're doing.Quite easy to clear a camp alone with just a few skills if you line the enemies up, and if you're running with a zertg it's very easy to get a lot of loot and kills while staying on the back line.

I've never played Deadeye in WvW myself but I have fought a number of them and they can be exceptionally annoying to fight.

That said i've had a lot of success playing a LB Ranger and running around alone, in small groups or in zergs.I enjoy the range and usefullness of the longbow both when assaulting locations and defending them, LB Ranger is also one of the best ways to slaughter Warclaws as well.Barrage is a great pressure skill to have in WvW for sure, probably one of the best weapon AoE skills in the game.Rapid Fire too is superb so long as you can actually land it, coupled with quickness this skill is going to hit hard and fast.. but it can easily be blocked and reflected so you need to learn to pick your moments so you don't waste it, kill yourself or worse kill your own allies.

@Teratus.2859 said:Deadeye has significantly more stealth access and mobility than Ranger does so in many ways it has much higher survivability if you know what your doing.

Not really. If youre playing Deadeye and anyone jumps on you, unless youve got enough initiative to shortbow out, youre dead. Ranger can survive long enough to get its mobility up. Stealth is pretty useless for survivability, especially at range (Where a lot of skills just keep tracking through stealth). And Ranger has about 50% extra range. It has lower survivability.

Ranger on the other hand will do more damage and hit more targets if you also know what you're doing.Quite easy to clear a camp alone with just a few skills if you line the enemies up, and if you're running with a zertg it's very easy to get a lot of loot and kills while staying on the back line.

You dont even have to know what youre doing, youre always going to do more damage. Even in the off-chance that the enemies are bad enough to be hit by Death's Judgment.

I've never played Deadeye in WvW myself but I have fought a number of them and they can be exceptionally annoying to fight.

Annoying is not effective. Theyre annoying because they usually just poke you once or twice, and once they see that youre good enough to dodge DJs and as a result a guaranteed loss, they just run away.

well I am trying deadeye a bit in pve and I am finding the kneel mechanic very cumbersome, i kill stuff simply much faster with pistol pistol unload

@aaron.7850 said:Which is the most effective long-range dps out of these two? What are the strengths of each?

Deadeye is more forgiving, it's better if you are not used to this classes. It does better damage overall against single targets and it has stealth on dodge which is very convenient for disengage. Highest mobility in game with shortbow.However once you have some experience Daredevil is more rewarding with the high dodge uptime and access to Vault and the thief portal with makes the class have some use in squads.

Ranger on the other side it's different, you have decent mobility but other classes have better (mesmer,elementalist, thief) so let's say once you are focuses you will go down. As ranger you get 4K of extra HP over the thief which can save you in some cases, like condition ticks or random autos. It has the pet mechanic which gives some advantages when 1v1. Longbow is worst damage and utility wise than rifle DE but it has a bit better access to AoE damage with GM trait and Barrage skill , Still Ranger is not wanted in squads in any variant for the moment.

Community cries over rangers has it on Anet shit list, so it has been the target of a lot of nerfs and will receive more in coming patches. So go with deadeye, less chance of having your gameplay changed with “balancing”

Depends on the build. In contrast to @anduriell.6280 I would say LB ranger is far more forgiving than deadeye. Other variations of ranger builds have a much steeper learning curve, but since the release of the game Longbow has always been a weapon that anybody can be effective with.

Also the claim that LB does less damage than a rifle DE is a bit nuts personally. Rapid fire remains the best range damage skill in the game, in order for deaths judgment to get that sort of damage you would need to run M7, but even with 7 malice stacks you won't do more damage than rapid fire (rapid fire = 1440 base damage to Deaths Judgment = 959.4 with 7 malice stacks, 468 with no malice).Other ranged bursts like deaths judgement, gunflame etc can be dodged with a single roll, however with a rapid fire you're forced to use utility or double dodge to fully mitigate its damage. Add the fact that due to 10 distinct projectiles its guaranteed to do consistent burst damage every time, and you will find yourself caught out on unlucky crits far less often. Which is why it is in my opinion the best ranged damage skill in the game. Even with poor timing it forces your opponent to burn utility. Whilst gun flame/DJ just takes a well timed dodge. I would also put ranger ahead of ele and mesmer for mobility any day, thief being king mobility is totally accurate however. DE's ability to run away like a coward is unmatched.

As for which to play its up to you. Ranger longbow will give you more success initially due to its ability to engage players with high damage at 1700 range, but if you have more time to burn and are fine with getting wrecked initially DE will probably perform better in the long run (in the current meta) as its quite strong when played correctly. Whilst ranger LB has a very low skill cap and you'll find yourself lacking the ability to further build upon your skill whilst relying on it alone.

Keep in mind though, these observations are exclusive to Longbow ranger and DE rifle alone, and I'm not taking into account the skill caps required for other weapon sets on these two classes, whether they be higher or lower. *Coughpermastealthmaliciousbaskstabrunawaycough

EDIT: I should add, if you try and take any fight while marked you'll be 100% destroyed as a rifle DE against any player who has taken the time to learn what their buttons do when they press them. Victory is unattainable and you should burn every CD to escape if you're caught out.

@Doug.4930 said:EDIT: I should add, if you try and take any fight while marked you'll be 100% destroyed as a rifle DE against any player who has taken the time to learn what their buttons do when they press them. Victory is unattainable and you should burn every CD to escape if you're caught out.I can't agree with you however you don't need to to build up M7 to get other player from 20K to 0 in one second from stealth. Most players still think on ranger before last nerfs, now you are lucky if you crit for 1.3K each impact with rapid fire to a paper target. Mobility has been heavily nerfed too, with hefty increased cooldowns to Swoop in the greatsword as well as the bird. It seems you don't play ranger lately .

M1+assasin signet +spotter shot(immob)+death judgement(1.65) will kill anybody in less than a second. With malicius intent you already have a +15%x2 that due how the game calculate the damage is around 35% extra damage. All that with the extra quickness from Be quick or Be killed which also gives you a whopping +200 power AND precision.As a deadeye you can even go condi and still kill easily with poison because with the extra 1000 power you get between utilities and traits you don't need to spec in that to do a decent power damage. Basically you can go tank and deal decent damage.After all of that you still have 2 traitlines and the full utility bar to do more damage or get more defensive traits/skills.

From Stealth F1 + Hit 1 + Hit 2 to win. One shot from invisibility does not allow counterplay.

But even if you don't kill the target you can stealth rapidly with just a dodge with silent scope (and also get extra precision +240 precision while in stealth) . I don't think there is a class more forgiving than a thief. Swap to Shortbow and you can teleport far enough to reset the fight.

And when you are in an squad you can use Daredevil, which is the same forgiving but with dodges. They own the hardest hitting skill up to 5 targets (Vault) is also an 600 range leap-evade. Which is totally safe for the thief player. You can spam that skill 3 times while moving around.

The skill cap in thief is absurdly low such forgiving is the class at the moment. Because of this you will find you rely more and more in stealth to the point you won't be able to use any build is not using stealth to one shot. I have yet to see a thief in game or streamer who doesn't use the hit and run tactic all the time.

If you are on ranger you mess up you are as good as done and you are going to use the full skill bar and 3 traitlines to do damage.Your Rapid Fires will be reflected or blocked by skills, LoS or terrain which is more common when you a have a channelling skill of 2.5s than a one shot one kill. And after that burst you will have no utilities left but the heal and LB3 which doesn't work most of the times because it doesn't check if you are facing the target.

When somebody tells me thief is higher skill cap than a ranger makes me laugh.But at the end It is your choice as always.

Silent scope only gives +120 precision without rifle, and an additional +120 if you use rifle. It doesn't have a mechanic that gives extra precision for going stealth). The 240 precision is there whether you go stealth or not as long as you have rifle equipped.

I think they're pretty much equal in most fights, though Ranger has a stronger edge when fighting 1v1. Deadeyes can't really use their kneel skills as effectively without endangering themselves and they lose potential damage from Death's Judgement being easier to avoid with undivided attention.

@anduriell.6280 said:

@Doug.4930 said:M1+assasin signet +spotter shot(immob)+death judgement will kill anybody in less than a second. With malicius intent you already have a +15%x2 that due how the game calculate the damage is around 35% extra damage. All that with the extra quickness from Be quick or Be killed which also gives you a whopping +200 power AND precision.

The only thing that combo is going to kill from full health is full glass player with their hands off the keyboard. If you're the type of player that's unable to avoid DJ as an opener after they hit with spotters with all your cool downs up you deserve to die, again not that you would with that combo. Even pre patch would be a struggle. I could say the same thing about sicem + quickness + rapid fire, which outperforms DE rifle burst to a ludicrous degree even after its nerfs. But I give most players I fight more credit. I don't expect them to sit on their hands and tank spotter shots and DJ for the same reason I wouldn't expect sicem+rapid fire to do the same job.

As a deadeye you can even go condi and still kill easily with poison because with the extra 1000 power you get between utilities and traits you don't need to spec in that to do a decent power damage. Basically you can go tank and deal decent damage.

Poison DE is more of a pain that a threat, but I hate high stealth and condi's so I'd be happy to see poison DE die forever.

After all of that you still have 2 traitlines and the full utility bar to do more damage or get more defensive traits/skills.

Well not full, 2 utilities right? Because assassins signet is a utility. Same logic can be applied to LB ranger, after their burst they have an equal amount of traits and utilities at their disposal.

From Stealth F1 + Hit 1 + Hit 2 to win. One shot from invisibility does not allow counterplay.I don't even know which weapon set you're talking about here. Are you still talking about rifle? Mark+DJ+spotters? That wouldn't make sense though, hitting spotters after DJ, is this player afk? So i assume you mean Mark + MBS +HS? I still wouldn't mind seeing d/p take a hit to stealth stacking tbh, but thats a different debate.

Back to shooting from stealthThis would be the case if it was true, but its false so it isn't. There is no shot from stealth, just by casting DJ it reveals the DE. There's a sound queue and a cast time. DJ is a very easy skill to dodge consistently once you learn this. Only time you should be getting hit by it is late fight because your uitilites/dodges are gone or while CC'd.

But even if you don't you can stealth rapidly with just a dodge with silent scope (and also get extra precision +240 precision while in stealth) . I don't think there is a class more forgiving than a thief. Swap to Shortbow and you can teleport far enough to reset the fight.

You're making this about thief, I'm specifically talking about rifle. We could debate thief vs ranger which is easier which takes more skill etc, but truthfully there is no proper answer to that question, it depends on the build and the situation, each of the two classes have their strengths and weaknesses.

And when you are in an squad you can use Daredevil, which is the same forgiving but with dodges. They own the hardest hitting skill up to 5 targets (Vault) is also an 600 range leap-evade. Which is totally safe for the thief player. You can spam that skill 3 times while moving around.

I mean at this point I'd call it quits if we were debating thief vs ranger. Daredevil is not particularly great at the moment. Good players can make it work, but they need to be decent. But no you can't spam it 3 times, it has an init cost of 6. 6x3 =18 so its only able to be spammed twice, then you've got no init left. Daredevil is not forgiving.

The skill cap in thief is absurdly low such forgiving is the class at the moment. Because of this you will find you rely more and more in stealth to the point you won't be able to use any build is not using stealth to one shot. I have yet to see a thief in game or streamer who doesn't use the hit and run tactic all the time.

Arguing from emotion a bit here, thief is pretty strong atm in the correct hands, and maybe don't count on WvW streamers to paint a picture of your average player. Most streamers (most not all I've met some decent ones) I've known in WvW usually roll around in a gank squad and cant really duel. Furthermore you're only going to be one shot by MBS, and even then you'd need to be glass.

If you are on ranger you mess up you are as good as done and you are going to use the full skill bar to do decent damage.

I've already pointed out rapid fire out performs DJ in terms of damage and utility. Its in the numbers. Also again same logic, DE screws up they die too. Most DE's I come across are walking bags because they have yet to learn how to play. Assuming they're power you can knock them over by landing a single burst.

Your Rapid Fires will be reflected or blocked by skills, LoS or terrain which is more common when you a have a channelling skill of 2.5s than a one shot one kill. And after that burst you will have no utilities left but the heal and LB3 which doesn't work most of the times because it doesn't check if you are facing the target.

90% of what you just said about ranger can be applied to DE. The terrain blocks, the reflects etc. Players don't need 2.5 seconds to LOS or block/reflect etc.

When somebody tells me thief is higher skill cap than a ranger makes me laugh.

I assume you were laughing at an earlier time as I never made this claim. As I said I was exclusively talking about Longbow, not ranger. Longbow the weapon set is an extremely easy to use weapon, it requires no setup or timing to be effective. Sicem + rapid fire is going to ruin someones day, and all you need to do is press 2 buttons. DE setup, depsite what you claim, needs M7 to deal similar damage. For that you need to survive and build malice, for that you need to land shots and fight before delivering your burst.

But this is fruitless, ask anybody In this game which class take the most skill. Most players will just say their own, and dump on the class they dislike the most. I play a lot of thief, but I'm not claiming that thief is harder to play than ranger or vice versa (like you are for ranger, because you play ranger). For instance, a melee ranger using great sword is a hell of a lot harder to master than a pistol/pistol thief. There is no black and white answer. I was only expressing the opinion that Longbow is easier to use than rifle, whilst providing some small numerical details showing that LB actually does more damage. All the other points you argue like daredevil and short bow are irrelevant in this context. Op wants to know which is the most effective long range DPS. I gave my 2 cents on that premise and that premise alone. As you would have read I even concluded that DE's Rifle is probably more effective overall at the moment.

EDIT: Lets just agree to disagree, Op has both our opinions and I'm sure they can make a choice.

@"Doug.4930" said:EDIT: Lets just agree to disagree, Op has both our opinions and I'm sure they can make a choice.Yes, although i think we are keeping a civilized discussion and i would love to keep talking about this (as long as nobody gets upset).In this case just because i like to provide some images, this short video was done a week after the balance patch, i don't know if the damage has been touched. Keep in mind i'm wearing 2.6K amor stat and 20K health pool as such i'm not glass. You can not do something like that with a ranger as easy and safe as done here.

I play both and Ranger has much more options in fights than Deadeye. Deadeye is good for focusing on a single target and the stealth you can get with it is great but Ranger can help with both single targets and crowds.

@anduriell.6280I would say a well positioned ranger could do it just as safely, as they have stealth access too and 1700 range. Quickness+sicem+rapid fire would output more damage than seen there, I don't have a video of it on hand unfortunately, but just a quick lookup of numbers tells you as much.

You missed the marked, at the start, burst consisted of spotters shot + DJ whilst spot was in flight+3 round burst with assassin sig, Pretty decent burst. Whilst one spotters + DJ is not enough to kill, Spotters + DJ + 3 round burst is.

Hitting doly stance would have saved you.

But even with all that being said. I would 100% support an assassins signet nerf. It outputs too much damage. It should take a hit. I'd also like to see stealth gained from combo's become unstackable with stealth gained from skills too and then on top of that, make stealth gained from additional combo's unstackable with the stealth gained from the last combo, which would make it harder for players like that guy to remain undetected for so long by stacking stealth constantly without using utilities. I made a thread suggesting this in the thief forum, but it was not popular there.