Classic Ranged Archer - it's possible?

Hello there!

I'm new to the game, and I wonder if there's a chance to play as an archer.From what I read, the ranger profession would be the closest, but the specializations turn out to be melee.

Is there a profession whose final form is the classic archer of the rpgs? and that it is a strong and good build to play all the contents of the game?

Thanks in advance ;)

Pretty sure one of the more popular Soul Beast builds is using the Shortbow.

No ranger is as close as you can get. And as for melee it's more of both, and full melee only really got raids.

Even then there's a druid build were groups will have ranger take long bow for one of the raidwings in order to "hand kite"

(You as the above poster said also go sb for a consistent vareient)

Archer means bow. Bow is a weapon choice. Ranger has both bows available to choose from.

Ofc you can play ranger full melee and be like aragorn with a huge sword or go dualwield alla dnd ranger.

Its up to you but ranger is probably the most archer archtype you can get.

in wvw all soulbeasts run longbow pretty much

If you're lucky thief might get a longbow as an e-spec weapon.

Longbow ranger got longest range like 2k compared to many other skills that cap out at 1200 range. It's only ranged competition is deadeye (thief) with 1500 range rifle.

Its also important to note that the Elite Specs are "not" designed as upward progression, but exists to change the class's mechanics for expanding its buildcraft. They're commonly seen as stronger mostly because they'll tend to focus in specific areas, and the popular ones are typically skewed toward combat builds. Another important note is that this game has a strong combat dynamic, so trying to be "all range" or "all melee" is a huge disadvantage. This is on top of the fact that the game does heavily emphasize melee combat for high risk/reward strategies, while range is considered kite and control for stronger positioning. There are builds that do go one or the other, but they make up the deficiency using other mechanical strategies to fill the gap.

With that in mind, Ranger is kind of an odd ball in that its build synergy tends to be overly specific. As a result, a lot of its better builds are noticeably good at ONE type of scenario, but struggles with anything that falls outside of it. And where most other builds could make up the deficiency through particular skills or traits, Ranger has too much mutual exclusion to make this straight forward. Ranger has the most diverse number of builds, but this is more out of necessity then by choice, as each one has very narrow functionality. This might sound good at first: but then you realize most other classes can tweak existing builds to address problems, but the Ranger generally needs to Stack a lot of things to be competitive. Thats hard to do when your skills have narrow utility, need 2 or 3 in combination get decent performance, and doesn't have much in the way of alternatives.

Core Ranger has 2 builds, both Damage oriented. Druid technically has 2 builds, but they're both basically the same idea with different gear sets. Soul Beast 2 builds, and both are also damage builds. If you want ranged damaged, you go with one of the Long Bow builds.... but the problem you'll quickly find is that the Long bow is only good if the target can't chase you, and the extended range advantage is all it really has. Anything manages to get into melee range on you, and you're trouble. The LB itself only has ONE attack that controls movement; so you'll need to invest in dedicated mobility skills that will cost you much needed damage modifiers. Or you run a melee weapon, and invest in defensive traits (which also cost you damage modifiers). For power builds, the strongest functioning, but most difficult to trait up combo is the LongBow/GreatSword. GS has incredibly high utility and damage potential, but you have to invest in specific damage modifiers to get the most out of it. For condition damage, you're mostly building for sustain damage, and spend the majority of your time auto attacking while trying to kite around and avoiding hits.
The crappy part for Soulbeast is that it can't really afford defensive traits or skills, so you have to put a lot of effort in learning advanced tactics and maintaining safe positioning at all times. For seasoned players this tends to not be an issue (its something you need to learn just to survive in this game), but new players coming off of more static combat systems get tripped up by this a lot.

Druid is pure support, so I'm not even going to go into it for this discussion.

Now as far as Viability goes...... Longbow is not flexible enough to be used in all game modes. You only really see it in PvP. WvW, and Open world, where theres enough space to have a range advantage. In Raids and Fractals, its at best a secondary weapon for when range is the only option. Because its sustained damage potential is terrible, and both modes demand high sustained DPS to deal with the HP scaling of enemies there. Short bow in condi builds has less contention, because its the only dedicated Condition weapon unless you have Soulbeast for Dagger proficiency (and the dagger itself is not that good). Trying to run Longbow/Shortbow together is just dumb..... like not even yolo worthy.

In all honestly, the desire to fit some kind of "Role Play" is going to hurt you to no end; as the game's lore is designed from the ground up to subvert the fantasy archeypes, in order to set itself apart from the mountain of MMORPGs that simply adhere to the D&D/LotR tropes. A Ranger isn't an "archer", hes a "survivalist".... more Aragorn in his Strider days, then Legolos in... well its Legolos. And you can't have Legolos without game breaking super powers, and a combat system made for a Platinum Brawler title. And as a side note, D&D Archers usually carried Melee weapons as back up.... because range is the only advantage bows have.

Longbow + Pet in open world is probably the easiest/strongest open world build in the game.Shortbow/Longbow soulbeast does crazy amounts of damage in the PvP formats.

The only area the bows are weak in because because they deal generally somewhat low sustained damage relative to other DPS builds (very high burst/ranged advantage however) is endgame PvE raids since burst means little there and range is often a disadvantage.

If raids aren't your cup of tea, it's fine if not pretty dominant in small-scale PvP situations.

I like shortbow in open world on ranger personally. I'm just biased towards condi builds though.

For a classic Archer, I think you are better off using warrior with berserker specialization and longbow with traited arrows that add burning. It is far closer to a classic archer than any other bow users in the fame, imo.

@Opopanax.1803 said:For a classic Archer, I think you are better off using warrior with berserker specialization and longbow with traited arrows that add burning. It is far closer to a classic archer than any other bow users in the fame, imo.

how is that? even berserker uses the bow melee to get maximum hits out of it...

best archer will and should always be ranger

Disagree, warrior shooting flaming arrows and fire fields...can't get more classic than that.

Now if you are talking about a HUNTER sneaking quietly through the woods and shooting arrows here and there, then I will give you ranger.

But OP states classic ranged archer. I think Berserker is closest to that description.

@Opopanax.1803 said:Disagree, warrior shooting flaming arrows and fire fields...can't get more classic than that.

Now if you are talking about a HUNTER sneaking quietly through the woods and shooting arrows here and there, then I will give you ranger.

But OP states classic ranged archer. I think Berserker is closest to that description.

Yes but even in berserker spec you need to switch to sword/torch to get the most out of the spec. You don’t camp longbow. OP would be far better with ranger.

@Opopanax.1803 said:Disagree, warrior shooting flaming arrows and fire fields...can't get more classic than that.

Now if you are talking about a HUNTER sneaking quietly through the woods and shooting arrows here and there, then I will give you ranger.

But OP states classic ranged archer. I think Berserker is closest to that description.

he asked for a classic archer of rpgs, and thats definately the ranger in gw2, and like i said condi berserker is not played on ranged...even with longbow you pretty mich stand in melee range, alone to hit all your bow 2 shots ony our target

even in medieval warfare archers rarely used burning arrows if you want to make that referenceits just not rly practical, especially not if you want to conquer something, which is not valuable if its burned down, also you siginificantly lose reach with burning arrows compared to normals arrows

also hitting humans with normal arrows is most of the time alot more effective since they can penetrate armor way easier than a burning one, its not easy to make an arrow keep burning while you shoot it, just saying it need a special arrowhead whixh definately is not good for penetrating stuff

Archer you say? Pure archer with a longbow? And strong too in all game modes? Nope, such a beast does not exist.

However, what you are looking for is called Dragonhunter, guardian elite spec. It uses a longbow, can place traps and doesn't have a pet. If the guardian "holy" aesthetics do not bother you, this is the closest to a pure archer as you can get and traps do huge loads of damage to compensate for the fact that you refuse to melee.

@RedShark.9548 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:Disagree, warrior shooting flaming arrows and fire fields...can't get more classic than that.

Now if you are talking about a HUNTER sneaking quietly through the woods and shooting arrows here and there, then I will give you ranger.

But OP states classic ranged archer. I think Berserker is closest to that description.

@Scar.1793 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:Disagree, warrior shooting flaming arrows and fire fields...can't get more classic than that.

Now if you are talking about a HUNTER sneaking quietly through the woods and shooting arrows here and there, then I will give you ranger.

But OP states classic ranged archer. I think Berserker is closest to that description.

Any camping regardless of class is usually very poor in gw2. You are a bad ranger of you are camping longbow...

@Opopanax.1803 said:

@RedShark.9548 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:Disagree, warrior shooting flaming arrows and fire fields...can't get more classic than that.

Now if you are talking about a HUNTER sneaking quietly through the woods and shooting arrows here and there, then I will give you ranger.

But OP states classic ranged archer. I think Berserker is closest to that description.

my point stands, that ranger is the classic archer and not the berserker, sure you can play it, but ranger still fits better

Definitely not! Can't top a flaming arrow archer from a tower or wall! Berserker is the best representation of archer in this game atm! :D

@"EpicName.4523" said:Archer you say? Pure archer with a longbow? And strong too in all game modes? Nope, such a beast does not exist.

However, what you are looking for is called Dragonhunter, guardian elite spec. It uses a longbow, can place traps and doesn't have a pet. If the guardian "holy" aesthetics do not bother you, this is the closest to a pure archer as you can get and traps do huge loads of damage to compensate for the fact that you refuse to melee.

Except longbow is weaker and slower than scepter. The only reason to go longbow with DH is for that bit of extra range.For that matter, at this point core guardian has surpassed DH in strength, although it loses a bit of aoe strength.

Generic ranger answer

Come on, the class has a traitline that pretty much screams 'master archer'. Not to mention it's by far the most specialized longbow user in the game.

The game is mechanically biased, heavily, against ranged weapons. They are good to start fights, or to use temporarily to stay out of AOE's, but all ranged options do inferior dps to their melee build counterparts. Even the best ranged characters will still fight at nearly melee range (just barely outside at best) so they can get the most buffs and healing from their team. Staying in the backline flinging arrows is not a thing in PVE, but it does have occasional uses in WvW.

That said, here you go.

Ranger: Requires pet as well unless you use soulbeast. Soulbeast has higher raw bow damage (pet merged for buffs) but less sustained overall (pet included) damage. Best build is to use Wilderness Survival (Wilderness Knowledge) and Marksman (Clarion Bond and Remorseless) with and as many survival skills as possible to proc fury, which in turn refreshes Opening Shot for both you and your pet, allowing for heavy strikes on demand and near-permanent 25-stacks of vulnerability. Doesn't play well with others, since in group content vulnerability is already stacked so your main advantage is moot. Technically the most archery-oriented class in the game, with an entire traitline, but not actually fully an archer as it heavily depends on it's pet.

Dragonhunter: Very weak in the DPS department with it's longbow, forcing you to rely on traps. Has a lot of survival/utility options thanks to the virtues. Best used as a lead-in weapon to melee, which does most of the killing. Radiance/Virtues/DH gets passable DPS if you manage to keep good retaliation uptime, but I'd only suggest Guard as an archer character if you like guard for it's other builds and just want to play it for style points.

Warrior: "Shoutbow" builds used to be meta and are still viable, if not top tier anymore. Definitely the best soldier type archer in the game. Plays very well in groups because of either shouts or banners giving group wide benefits. I'm not familiar enough with it to suggest any builds though- see other posts above for good ideas. If your looking for access to "all contents of the game", without having to spec out of bow, warrior is the best choice.

Hey RailgunXAll that was said above is right....Important for us is, what game mode you want to play.

In open world, longbow is good on ranger, although a bit selfish (speak: no group buffs). It's dps with bow is not too high but because of the high range it will allow you to hit a lot of mobs in big events before they die.The ranger class can stack quite some attribute bonusses and dmg modifiers. Running solo i can get consistent 6-9k auto-attack hits on mobs and 30k bursts. You will 3 or 4shot mobs just with autoattacks.

In dungeons/fractals/raids longbow ranger is 95% of the time not welcome, there is only one boss where a range kite is needed and other classes can do that too. But ranger itself is viable, with other builds so you could swap around if you want to get into instanced pve.

In wvw and pvp longbow ranger has its place, but it's situational and requires lots of good positioning and awareness to be effective. If played well it is strong and viable.

I feel you have build questions or any other question you can write me on the forums or ingame or reply to this thread :)

*Edit: grammar and readability

Ranger: Legolas pewpewBerserker: Legolas on fireDragonhunter: Holy Legolas