New Ranger Skills!!

Can't wait to try barbed arrow prep with poisen arrow. Ah the degen will be beautiful!!! Similarly, apply poison with fire arrow could be good as well. It depends on the spread for the duration of the burning, though.

Similarly, apply poison with fire arrow could be good as well. It depends on the spread for the duration of the burning, though. Or apply and screaming shot. Save's an elite that way.

Similarly, apply poison with fire arrow could be good as well. It depends on the spread for the duration of the burning, though. Hey but fire arrow is 10e, poisen is only 5. Less spammable. With Poison arrow you can keep expertise at 9.

nerfed straight away Will be nerfed? Or has been?

It's sick as it is.

There seems to be way too much emphasis on critical hits... for a class that has no method of ensuring 1, that doesn't seem sensible. I agree wholeheartedly. My only guess is that they are wanting some sort of synergy between paragons and everyone else. You'll see skills like that in the warrior list as well.

I don't think Magebane shot will get changed, Toxicity is the skill that anet has to worry about on the ranger front. Barbed Arrow + Toxicity + Poison Arrow = Potential 11 degen arrows. try apply poison, burning arrow (E), screaming shot/hunter's, toxicity = potential 17 degen

Disrupting Attack looks interesting... Barbed arrows seriously seems like some kind of joke to me. Aggreed on both points.

Only thing I can figure on Barbed Arrows, is that it offers a non-elite version of Melandru's Arrows... Which will have a slight impact on Higher end PvP where a melandru's Ranger is a common build. It will free up the elite and allow the option to run TWO crippshot rangers, or whatever other elite would be neccesary.

Burning Arrow, is a great skill... depending on how the duration scales. The fact you can team it with Apply (or <sigh> barbed arrows) for an instant max degen is very exciting, and I think it will see some use as a pressure build. Degen has it's limits in PvE, but it may well make for a powerful PvP build.

Toxicity is a brilliant skill, and I hope it doesn't get nerfed to hard before release. +4 degen with poison or disease, both of which are common and easily spamable. I can see them making it an elite skill before the final product (much like lacerate) but I hope it remains useable.

I really like Prepared Shot, despite being an elite... it deals a very decent amount of damage for only FIVE energy, returns energy while your under a prep (when are you not?) and effectively nets you +2 or more energy every six seconds. While energy management generally isn't a problem for rangers, this opens any number of posibilities in energy rich builds. Once I can get my hands on this skill, I plan on trying a few out.

New beast skills are not that great at all (excepting toxicity).

The new expertise skills are VERY underwhelming. Experts Dexterity is bad almost the same way Archer's Signet is bad... there just really isn't a use for it. Only use I can think of is a debilitating shot spammer... but then I think Oath Shot would be a better choice. Sweltering Heat is much to situational. Trapper's Speed might be OK teamed up with Trappers Focus (only one is a stance) but it doesn't allow for Whirling Defense or Distortion.. both of which I find vital in any kind of PvP or Combat trapping situation. This might find some use in a 'lay traps, drag baddie, kill baddie' kinda group... Like UW farming.

I don't really think that the Skills requiring a Critical will catch on. Rangers have no way of Guarenteeing a critical, and so I can't see a prep that only triggers on criticals as a good thing.

Burning, Forked, and Screaming shots all seem like good additions to me. Forked is a better form of Dual arrows, and Hexes are generally easy to avoid in PvE. Screaming is an easier to control version of Hunter's Shot, and deals more damage.

Arcing, Keen, and Crossfire, however, seem to be poor choices. I don't care how effective people think BHA is... the ridiculous arc that delivers the condition is enough to make the skill ridiculous. I can't understand why they would add this conditon to another attack skill when it made a faction skill so unpopular. +50% in flight time isn't horrible... but it's enough to make me ignore this skill compeletly. If it had been unevadable as well as unblockable then yes, it would present some intresting possiblities... but alas, it doesn't. Crossfire deals little damage for a 10 energy skill, and doesn't really have much of a benefit, as it's rare that you are either dodged or blocked in an enviornment where foes bundle up. In PvP it's rare to have people stand next to each other long. Energy cost on Crossfire should be 5.

New spirits aren't anything fantastic, and I'm not sure what I think about the new traps yet. Natural stride, however, has sparked my intrest. As long as you can keep hex free, its a NEAR CONSTANT evasion/speed buff stance. It seems that there will be some PvE applications at least... I seriously doubt it will find it's way into PvP.

Other skills just don't seem useful, or incredibly underpowered. So in short, I'm excited about a few powerful additions, but a litttle dissappointed in the rest.

disrupting shot = screw choaking gas .... i found my new best friend
Whats the difference in Disruption shot and Distracting shot? They both seem the same to me. And I did try that Choking Gas last night up near Brauer Acadamy, and boy did it work fantastic.

I just dont see the difference in the above 2 skills.

Whats the difference in Disruption shot and Distracting shot? Disruption Shot (now called Magebane Shot) interrupts an action, and if the action was a spell it is IMMEDIATELY recharged so you can interrupt again immediatly (well, after the forced down time after interrupt...). And on top of all that, it only costs 5 energy. This potentially allows you to interrupt a spell every 1.25 seconds with precision. Choking gas allows for a potential interrupt every 1.33 seconds (assuming IAS is in use) and has no where near the presicion of MageBane Shot, but its more useful against 1/2 and 1/4 second casts.

Distracting Shot, interrupts an action, then further disables that action for x amount of time... Very useful against spam builds. It does however have the mainstay cost of 10 energy, and you're forced to use it in conjunction with other interrupts.

It does however have the mainstay cost of 10 energy (you mean 5 - you're thinking of Savage Shot, which is 10.)

(you mean 5 - you're thinking of Savage Shot, which is 10.) Why yes I was, thanks for the correction.

Barbed arrows seriously seems like some kind of joke to me. It has the same cost, recharge, duration and cast time as Apply Poison, but is interupted and does bleeding instead of poison. hmm...let me think...do I want only 3 pips of degen while being easily interupted or 4 pips of degen with no risk of being easily interupted. Kinda seems like a no brainer to me. Yeh but if u want smt to mix poison with bleeding, u can use barbed and poison arrow, if u use apply poison guess ud have to hope they move and use hunters shot, personally id rather use barbed and spam poison arrow, but hey thats jst me

Yeh but if u want smt to mix poison with bleeding, u can use barbed and poison arrow, if u use apply poison guess ud have to hope they move and use hunters shot, personally id rather use barbed and spam poison arrow, but hey thats jst me Hitting a moving target is a much easier condition to meet than recasting an easily interupted 2 second skill in the middle of a battle imho. If degen is what you are aiming for, an Apply Poison + Burning Arrow would do much more than Barbed Arrows + Poison Arrows. Toss in Hunter's Shot with Apply/Burning and you have even more degen/condition applying potential.


After looking a bit more at some of the ranger elites, I do think some of them will be worth looking at (especially compared with the Factions Ranger Elites). I have a feeling that Sweltering Heat will find it's way into a lot of PvP. After looking at a lot of Paragon skills, I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of largely Paragon based HoH builds, which may benefit largely from having a ranger in the group dropping this spirit.

Toxicity looks very interesting, but I'm quite frankly dissapointed to see this as a BM attributed skill rather than a WS attributed skill.

I had previously looked over Natural Stride, but I agree with Snipious that this does have a strong potential. Even if this stance does get cancelled, the quick recharge does give the potential for this skill to be reacitivated quickly.

I predict the following Disrupting Shot nerf:

On miss all your skills are disabled until Disrupting shot recharges. That would be a decent method of nerfing it, recharges all skills or deactivate for 10 seconds. If they increase its energy cost to 10 its gonna be useless as elites go.

I can see Toxicity springing up alot in Tainted builds. If you can spare 12/14(?) to reach -4 or -5 degen off diseased... you have some serious pressure in a single condition. Not to mention throwing apply poison in there maybe (even though its likely to be on a spirit spammer).