Questions/Discussion for new Rangers

Burning Arrow is good because of it's middle to low-ish energy cost, and its really short recharge. Burning is a good pressure degen, and the extra damage is awesome. Paired with Apply Poison or Barbed Arrows, the degen is sexy

You will generally 2 camps when it comes to barrage. There are those who will use it in almost every situation and see it as one of the best ranger elites and there are those who completely hate the skill and think it's a 'noob skill'.

To be completely honest, Barrage can be an excellent skill, but is really best reserved for certain situations. Of course the obvious place for this is Barrage/Pet type farm teams. In common PvE, however, this skill can be rather hit and miss in much of what is encountered. Use it in an area with a dense collection of enemies (such as Vizunah Square) and it will do well, but take it in many other places and you will be limiting yourself damage wise.

Personally, I prefer to use an Apply Poison interupt type build for most places. Heroes may be good at interupting, but humans are much better at selecting what skill and which enemy to interupt. It may be impressive for Jin to interupt Cry of Frustration on some mesmer, but it doesn't mean much if an ele enemy drops a big spell off on your team in the meantime. Burning Arrow is typically my elite of choice in this type of circumstance.

If you do decide to use barrage, you really will want to look at buffing yourself as much as possible to get a good use out of it. I personally suggest a customized vampiric flatbow with Favorable Winds. If you use an IAS such as Flail, then you could get a good use out of a vampiric hornbow (since an IAS will give a greater speed boost to a bow with a slower attack speed and a hornbow gives an innate 10% AP). Splinter Shot is also a good skill to look into, but there are all kinds of threads around here that can share good barrage/skill synergies.

The damage from Barrage might not look as impressive as an Ele with a Meteor Shower, but it can easily exceed it due to it's reliability and ability to be continually dished out.

All in all, Barrage may serve well, but be sure to give other options a good look since simple AoE damage output isn't always the best thing a ranger can contribute to a group.

Quote:

You should never leave home without an interrupt. What gives a Ranger an edge over other classes is the sheer number of functions you can pack into one skill bar. Conditions, interrupts, and supplementary damage is just a place to start. The afformentioned Burning Arrow + Apply poison is an excellent combo to start with, and leaves you free to experiment with any number of skills without really losing alot of effectiveness.

Quote:

Quote:

My suggestions:

1. Try the other elites. Barrage is called a noob skill because noobs overuse it.
There are plenty of other elites out there that can have great builds around them. Go cap poison arrow, Burning arrow, Punishing shot, magebane shot, quickshot, and any other elite you can get your hands on.

2.Interrupt build is the most fun. Burningarrow/interrupt is also very fun.

3.Barrage can be buffed. Try it with Judges insight, or brutal weapon.

In the pet section, Heal as One is ok, but not very needed, AI healers tend to take good care of pets. Enraged Lunge is a fairly decent pet-elite, but it is demanding on your skills (3 additional recharging BM skills), Strike as One is not bad but could use a little buff.

Since you are looking at that title using a hero to pull would keep the initial aggro from you and I've found that with the hero-flags I can use Magrid very well to pull enemies. Just a thought.

Quote:

Quote:

^ Add on top of that the damage is dealt regardless of armor and is as effective against High armor targets as it is against low armor targets. The degen also bypasses a good number of protection/buffs hexes that are common in PvE these days and is often more than the enemy AI spot healers can handle.