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Can Rangers Kill Scrappers In PvP -if so, how?


EnderzShadow.2506

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@Eurantien.4632 said:@jcbroe.4329 I think both of these are strong builds, my only issue with them is they do not excel at anything. Sure, they can kill other dps classes decently well but seem to have little chance of killing warriors and no chance of killing scrappers.

The reason I am liking marksmanship at the moment is because it offers you so much more damage to be able to quickly kill things (something I felt ranger has always lacked - not enough damage). With Marksmanship I am not really bound by the 4 -> 2 longbow combo. I can Rapid fire, burn a dodge -> knockback -> interrupt -> proccing all the dps trait increases and hit someone for a 6-9k auto attack. This essentially turns longbow into a weapon with two separate bursts instead of one.

On top of that, Clarion Bond is actually amazing. I can not only leap through my smokescale field for stealth but even when i'm in longbow I can swap pets to get stealth (or double up on stealth. Moreover, when I swap to the owl the owl gets an opening strike proc from clarion bond and then I can buff that with maul and get a quickness F2. I have had the bird hit for 10k because of this set up.

Then of course, I still have all the good old GS burst combos. A counterattack -> anything is now deadly. A maul self buff -> gs throw can do about 8k. There is just so many more damage options with marksmanship.

All that said, I think owl, sic em, and zerker, might be a little too all in. I have been testing swapping owl for siamoth, and sic em for dolyak stance and although I haven't killed any scrappers 1v1 yet, I have felt a lot stronger in prolonged fights due to the ability to have 2 invulns, more CC, and extra stability. In this case, I might not get as big damage numbers without sic em, but If I get an interrupt combo someone is still dying.

@"EnderzShadow.2506"The nerf to the stance durations has made stance sharing a very undesirable trait imo. The only reason I would take it now is to try and share the boons from moa stance and dolyak stance to my pet (and maybe my teammates) without running nature magic. The duration on allies is so low it's really not worth it to share stances for their effects and the duration buff on you is negligible, in most cases its a 1s increase and the 10% damage is just a better option at that point.

Oh I know and understand why you do it and it makes total sense and works for you. The fact is that you're just a flat out better player than I am, especially with utilizing the full scope of the build.

I can't for the life of me make GS damage work consistently in my favor. I feel like the moment I try to go GS in any situation that I'm not fully capitalizing on a guaranteed opportunity to make good work of it, I get outplayed or I whiff and I'm dead. Your build goes all in on the GS, and I just die trying to make Marksmanship work for me.

That's really why I put up some more generalist style builds, not because they're better, but because they're exactly that, generalist and more forgiving. I know you'll probably get more benefit in a fight from Siamoth over Owl, but I get all my mobility and kiting from Owl and use it to roam across the map and play roaming DPS better. If I was better at my engagements and disengagements, I probably wouldn't feel the need to rely on the swoop buffer, and similarly, if I was better at utilizing Siamoth for anything more than the merge skills, I'd probably want to use it more.

I also feel like I melt to damage without Troll Unguent alone. My playstyle is so heavily sustain and attrition that I feel unsuccessful trying to play anything else, which is probably also why Mirage always feels/felt miserably glassy to me but Spellbreaker and now Scrapper feel fantastic to play.

Truthfully, I wouldn't play Soulbeast at all if ANet hadn't nerfed Druid into the ground (and then introduced an even MORE power crept, imbalanced meta while leaving Druid in a sad state). That and that pets melt to the power crept state of the game, so watered down Druid feels even worse to play because you can't revive the pet.

But yeah, you've always been one of the best DPS Ranger players I know, if not the best, and the playstyle absolutely suits you. Obviously, I have to put together alternatives to make it work for me. Heck, I'd be better of playing this because it just feels better and more sustainable to me: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjEqQLLWyCOsAXLG+DqOFu9d4Tjf4o3XPDCgSk+bA-jpxHQBcY/BG+AAsXZAAcEA83hA4bXAAA

But yeah, hopefully this doesn't come off as ranty, it's not like we're disagreeing. I just felt the need to explain my reasoning to you because the full damage builds, especially in the current state of the game, do not have a lot of ease of use.

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@jcbroe.4329

Yeah, I totally understand. The two builds you posted before this last one made me consider running almost exactly what you're offering on that last one (MM/WS). I do miss not having more sustain. If I run the first build i posted. Zerk, MM, Owl, Sic Em. I have lost games with like 14 kill and 0 deaths simply because I cannot hold a point for the life of me. Going siamoth and dolyak stance has given me a much higher win rate simply because I think I can survive longer and sort of hold a point when needed - whereas before I would just immediately abandon the point.

Giving up beastmastery is scary... the synergy with two handed training and remorseless is awesome. Troll is definitely one of our strongest heals and I miss that I cannot really run it at the moment and pre-cast if before fights as we usually do. I overheal all the time or even use my heal at full health simply because thats where I have the opportunity to cast it and I'm mostly doing it to get boons... but I miss out on so much sustain through no troll.

With WS I'd get more condi clear and sustain at the cost of shout CD's and remorseless CC synergy. It could be worth it though...

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@Eurantien.4632@jcbroe.4329

jc, On my vanilla Ranger account, I run something very similar to the vanilla build you mentioned.Except I run wolf for the fear. I can't kill scrappers in record time but I can decap and wait for the plus oneBetween LB 4, Wolf knockdown and fear, gs 4 and gs5, I can severely hamper a scrappers ability to support at mid.

As to the stances and leader of the pack trait, it works for me in the comparatively lower tiers I play in.The build I run is much more tanky/support related.sw/wh LB Earth /paladin wild/nature/sb leader of the pack and invig bond Full stances (depending on the comp were facing)The spike dmg is moderate.Sustain is goodMobility is great.and the support is a spike of sorts.

Far too often, the randoms I play with are having trouble in mid. With the tools I have, I can put out heals/condi clear and resistanceand a load of boons that support offensive/defensively. If I have a few opponents near me while supporting mid, I can pop whirling defense and often times turn the fight in my teams favor.

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Personally, I've swapped to Demolisher Amulet ever since the last update where it is less common to have Mirages burst you down before you can react to their condis.

So with having taken the past week or so of the PvP season to build test in ranked......Tanky sidenoders, tanky midfights. Very, very sick of the game right now, thank goodness the Division 2 just came out.

Complaining aside;The high damage sic'em builds are fun, but they aren't my cup of tea. They feel too single target focused and die too easily, so they don't really +1 as well as something like a Herald imo. Other people will make them work for the sake of them still playing the game and keeping a bit of variety at the highest tiers of play, but that won't be me, I'll be playing Div2.

Some thoughts before I retreat back to my Ranger hiatus, only logging in for guild WvW raids:

  • Sword/Warhorn on the boonbeast build doesn't keep up the damage output enough in this high sustain sidenode meta.
  • Nature Magic with Fresh Reinforcement is still the only thing keeping the class from being a 1-shot gimmick or a bottom tier pick in a crowded sidenoder role.
  • Offhand Axe and Greatsword are the only reliable weapons you can use on a point to push kills. The rest of the weapons are too easily countered or too weak.
  • Axe/Axe and Greatsword seems to be the logical setup. Owl for mobility and sustain, Siamoth for the knockdown alone.
  • Extending the sentiment from above, Axe/Warhorn and Greatsword seems to work to keep the pressure up very well, but the reduction in skills you have that can threaten the kill can be exposed more easily by good players. However, swapping the Owl to a Smokescale in this setup creates a very capable dueling build, might be worth it over the above bullet point.
  • Tether Rampage and Unkillable Scrapper are cancer, combined with the ongoing cancer of Firebrand and Scourge dominating entire sections of the map, the latter combination has been contributing to the slow death of the gamemode alone. The visual spam from Chrono is also cancer. Boons are crapped out, condis and corrupts are crapped out, cleanses are insanely over the top to match the condi/corrupt loaded classes, and AoE is way over the top. Scale all of this back. Make boons limited in source and meaningful in application and make corrupts limited source, high cooldown/skill shot to match. Do the same to condis and cleanses. And barriers. And immune/invulnerability. Every class should have single target and AoE options, with AoE being weaker than single target because of the multi-target potential. Maybe remove phantasms entirely, give Mesmers whatever back that they'd lose so they wouldn't cry, and make them actually think about a clone cap again while forcing the reduced visual cancer through mechanics; right now they're a worse spirit ranger zoo. Get rid of rampage entirely, if Guardian elites can be rebuilt, so can Warrior and Engineer elites.
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On the contrary, I feel the one shot soulbeast-esk build I posted earlier is actually amazing right now. It beats warriors really easily if outplayed. It can beat scrappers while they do little counterpressure, It can beat eles, and your damage is high enough to make it comparable to a herald in a +. I even feel (not often but) sometimes thats its superior to a herald when +ing in that I can burst from 1500 range, allowing me to rotate faster. In team fights with good positioning I can easily net downs and really only have herald to worry about. That being said, it is very high risk, if I mess up I instantly die while so many other classes have a ton of get out of jail free cards.

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I tried your build in WvW, this thing hits harrrrrrrrrrrd. I landed a 16k maul after a 18k opening burst against a full health mounted enemy. They went from 100 to dead in just a few seconds flat. Easily blows away anything else I have played damage wise.

It does melt rather quickly though under pressure. I had some spectacular deaths, some of them were getting surprised by the same glassy type Soulbeasts.

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@"Eurantien.4632" said:On the contrary, I feel the one shot soulbeast-esk build I posted earlier is actually amazing right now. It beats warriors really easily if outplayed. It can beat scrappers while they do little counterpressure, It can beat eles, and your damage is high enough to make it comparable to a herald in a +. I even feel (not often but) sometimes thats its superior to a herald when +ing in that I can burst from 1500 range, allowing me to rotate faster. In team fights with good positioning I can easily net downs and really only have herald to worry about. That being said, it is very high risk, if I mess up I instantly die while so many other classes have a ton of get out of jail free cards.

Playing with the setup style a little more, I had much more success with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBHhF6kSFoVQsWQwiFglXs8HYLvuMQAIP8eejvPphfQDoEpfA-jpBXABP/AAaoMQwHBgjPEAAs/gonAAA

Granted, our testing fields are going to be different and obviously this build is even more unsafe.I was even considering Farsighted over MoC in this build, not sure yet. Maybe I just don't play glassy Longbow well, or maybe people are too used to LB to really get surprised enough by it during a match anymore and I don't want to or am currently incapable of putting the effort in to make it work well for me, but with this I'm taking a page out of this video "series" and putting it to use in PvP, and I find it to work much better for me:

=

Edit:I guess the video I initially linked proves the LB point lol, I meant to link the more Axe centric video:

=
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Very often I'm finding myself using berserker/scholar these days in SPVP.There are only 5 professions you need to go up against and with the rise in popularity that scrapper has had, that's less of an issue.Keep in mind there are also other slow-moving builds like the necro variations and Firebrand. You may only end up being worried about a couple of people in any game and I really only find myself disengaging when a herald has me targeted while being in full glass gear, thieves can be troublesome, but I find them much easier to deal with than Heralds generally speaking.

On very flat maps like Coliseum or Revenge of the Capricorn, you can swap survival for the marksmanship tree for piercing arrows which is incredibly rewarding in big team fights. Just be sure to bring along a pet you can merge with for extra mobility such as an owl or the ram.

With the massive nerfs to condi mesmer and buffs to Scrapper (which has no real way to gap close on a LB ranger) this is a great time to play LB ranger.

TL:DR just watch the scrappers their CDs they have massive tells and burst them down. You can do it 1v1, but IMO a longbow Rangers is much more effective to a team at being a +1 rather than a duelist.

Edit: Trevor recently, added a video this subject matter.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI80zsNaW0M

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@Amadeus.5687 said:I have been able to kill them sometimes running LB/GS sic'em build. While its not easy we do have the tools to take them down. I have found it best to poke at them from ranged first and waiting for them to pop the bulwark and heal gyro and then go in for the burst. Most of them only run a single stunbreak and one stability skill, so if you can make a stub combo on them with your pet you can get them.that said, hell of a complicated fight!

Can confirm. I play scrap. Only 1 stun break and 7 seconds of stab. Have been killed by knock back and unblockable pew pew before.

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I ended up with 2 builds I'll probably invest in and play on until the next real rebalance:1) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqAtCiN8CusAs8ilCB7pLMDCANdgV3LIP7udLvl4w0A-jpBHQBA4QAAk9HE3RA4gXAgH+AAyXZAASwap out the runes for Earth Runes if more survival is needed.

2) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRBHPxG2JhKQFvYDvgLLALvYZSwcicXuMXTA4xNByzt/2kbJKON-jpxHAB+fCA4Y/BlPIAf/AAA4IAYfZAA

Will have to see what the ranked queue meta pans out to be next season to determine which I gravitate towards and/or refine. Hopefully Scrappers will be more manageable after today's patch.

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