Ranged PVE questing, dungeons, and raids.

[Vicus.5841]

Been awhile since I've played, is there a viable ranged spec for any class outside of engineer that is useful in dungeons and raids (able to do 85%+ the meta dps of classes). At this stage of my MMO addiction...I know I love playing ranged in this game and really dislike melee. So I am looking for a ranged spec that actually is useful for (elite) content for PVE. Prefer Ranger, rogue, warrior, gaurdian, and maybe necro. Elementalist and Engineer just have to many buttons for me and don't enjoy the micro management. Hopefully something has changed over the past year making something viable....like the "Range"er? I want to invest time into this game just don't want to be booted from raids for not playing the meta melee only spec all the time.

Looking for good news!

[Ojimaru.8970]

First and foremost, regardless of what build you're looking for, nine times out of ten, you'll be grouped up in melee range of the boss anyway. This is primarily to facilitate the distribution of healing and boons, rather than DPS rotations. Otherwise, if it's just the matter of having a ranged weapon anyway, then there are indeed builds that accommodate, such as

• Condi scourge
• Shortbow/Shortbow Condi Soulbeast
• Rifle Power Deadeye
• Scepter Condi Mirage/Chrono

[Lexi.1398]

Ranged in high end PvE will put you in danger sometimes- esp where kiting mechanics, distance based aggro/mechanics, and small usable fighting area exists (a fair share of raid encounters).

It's not bad everywhere and sometimes is neccesary, but I would not suggest trying most raid encounters at range unless you know their mechanics. T4 fractals don't really get much of that- but in BOTH you will still want to be at melee range for boons anyway.

[Vicus.5841]

@Ojimaru.8970 said:First and foremost, regardless of what build you're looking for, nine times out of ten, you'll be grouped up in melee range of the boss anyway. This is primarily to facilitate the distribution of healing and boons, rather than DPS rotations. Otherwise, if it's just the matter of having a ranged weapon anyway, then there are indeed builds that accommodate, such as

• Condi scourge
• Shortbow/Shortbow Condi Soulbeast
• Rifle Power Deadeye
• Scepter Condi Mirage/Chrono

how is the Soulbeast and Deadeye in PVP with similair setup? I want to dabble in pvp but only like ranged as well. But as far as raids go, raids are basically stack on the everyone and attack the boss? Sounds pretty boring. Is there a decent amount of strat to it at all or is it mostly zerg/dodge?

[Aaron Forestman.4758]

@Vicus.5841 said:how is the Soulbeast and Deadeye in PVP with similair setup? I want to dabble in pvp but only like ranged as well. But as far as raids go, raids are basically stack on the everyone and attack the boss? Sounds pretty boring. Is there a decent amount of strat to it at all or is it mostly zerg/dodge?

Raids vary in difficulty, but they all have some sort of mechanics that prevent you from sitting in place and attacking the boss. The general idea is to stay as grouped up as possible to get maximum healing and boons.

As for PvP, SB and DE can do fairly viable ranged builds, but you have two weapon sets for a reason. If you try to stay exclusively ranged, you're making yourself less powerful.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Lexi.1398 said:It's not bad everywhere and sometimes is neccesary, but I would not suggest trying most raid encounters at range unless you know their mechanics. T4 fractals don't really get much of that- but in BOTH you will still want to be at melee range for boons anyway.

At least 4(volcanic is more situational but it is still more bad than good) out of 20 fractals have boss mechanics where ranging makes things worse and several more where space simply isn't available. Solid Ocean has mobs with projectile reflect.

[Ojimaru.8970]

@Vicus.5841 said:

@Ojimaru.8970 said:First and foremost, regardless of what build you're looking for, nine times out of ten, you'll be grouped up in melee range of the boss anyway. This is primarily to facilitate the distribution of healing and boons, rather than DPS rotations. Otherwise, if it's just the matter of having a ranged weapon anyway, then there are indeed builds that accommodate, such as

• Condi scourge
• Shortbow/Shortbow Condi Soulbeast
• Rifle Power Deadeye
• Scepter Condi Mirage/Chrono

how is the Soulbeast and Deadeye in PVP with similair setup? I want to dabble in pvp but only like ranged as well. But as far as raids go, raids are basically stack on the everyone and attack the boss? Sounds pretty boring. Is there a decent amount of strat to it at all or is it mostly zerg/dodge?

I can't speak much about PVP, as I haven't cared enough to keep up with current trends since the last balance patch. However, as far as I know, Soulbeasts usually go high-sustain builds with Axe/Warhorn and Greatsword; a previous cheese Longbow unblockable burst build was nerfed some time back, and may not be usable anymore. On the other hand, Rifle Deadeye is very hard to pull off well in the confined spaces of the PVP maps, and are more often played as roamers to harass capture points; you'll probably find more of what you're looking for with a ranged playstyle while roaming in WVW.

As for raids, there are enough mechanics to make things interesting, and each boss requires some amount of coordination and awareness. Even as a DPS focusing on their damage rotation/priorities, you still need to respond appropriately to boss mechanics, while still maintaining a certain level of DPS.

[Tinker.6924]

In every game I always pick the ranged dps style class and so far in gw2 I've tried 3 (Ranger, Necromancer and Elementalist) and without a doubt Necromancer was the strongest in ranged dps with both a power core build and a condi scourge build.

I would say that this game is unfortunately biased towards melee combat in general. The healing and boon-sharing game mechanics in groups basically dictate that everyone group up and since there is always 1 or 2 melee in fighters in every group, that forces you into into melee range. Unless a mechanic forces the group to step away in which case you can still attack while the melee guys stand around and suck their thumbs.