Bows: are they underpowered?

The skills available are more important than the properties of the weapon itself. Hammers would not be used, ever, if it weren't for the unique knockdown abilities of the weapon. Bows, as weapons, are terrible, but Distracting Shot and Savage Shot are awesome and require bows, as do the best Ranger elites.

If you looked at everything in a vacuum, spears and scythes are clearly overpowered while bows and hammers are underpowered, from looking at their weapon properties alone. You can't look at them in a vacuum though, and when you take the skills each weapon enables into account the entire package tends to balance out - the weak weapons have the best skills, the best weapons have the weakest skills (except Scythe, but, yeah), and on the whole every weapon has its place. That's balanced right? The Hammer obviously requires a unique condition, that is, knockdown, to be used. But then again... Shock Axe? Its not quite as good but it does make Hammer less desirable, especially with the lack of a shield.
But interrupts really aren't unique enough... i mean Hammer gets the knockdowns and it seems pretty much all anti-knockdown skills aren't used anymore so theres your interrupt + a little disabling. Even spear has an interrupt, albeit crap. But i'm sure you of all people would know that Thumpers are very likely to hit you with Hammer Bash purely to interrupt a vital skill if its cast time is long enough to hit.

I would agree that if you just looked at the weapons then Scythe and Spear are clearly overpowered... but really bow is definatly underpowered. Purely looking at attack speed, bow is absolutely awful. But even if you compare some of the skills... i mean Spear has skills with 1/2 cast time that actually do damage, not interrupts, Scythe has 3/4 skills that do damage and are spammable, Axe and Strength have 1/2 cast skills for damage. Punishing Shot is completely out of date now, what is the point of using it... Glass Arrows gives ~+17, Punishing does +21 and doesn't help with the first skill. Forked Arrow not working on a hex is just too far, with an enchantment the reason is obvious but with a hex its almost a useless skill with hexes easily lasting 20-35 seconds.

The weak weapons having the best skills just doesn't work with the bow... i mean the bow is a weak weapon, before it use to be a mediocre weapon, its damage is poor, its refire is abysmal. Its new skills seem to be getting stronger and stronger, but its old skills just don't change... pretty much all Prophecies Marks skills are useless. The balance has really gone to pot... i'm not saying damage needs to be increased on the bow, but its attack speed really needs looking at, so do the skills.

There’s just no question that Ranger DPS sucks.

Most people that say hunters are fine say something along the lines of it would be OP if rangers could do ever good dps. With the new professions, Rangers being perma-slotted into degen or interrupt bots just doesn’t cut it. It’s one dimensional and particularly not fun.

Monks can smite like bananas if they chose to spec that way and focus less on heal/prot. Why do people have an issue with Rangers having the OPTION to dps?

Rangers don’t need a big boost. They need some small overall buff, and some conditional option to do decent dps. I think three things could happen that would not _completely_ change the Ranger roll or balance.

1. Increase bow refire rates across the board (especially with short/recurve).
2. Buff the pure dmg attacks (power, marauding, etc), but not the degen/disrupts.
3. Create a new prep that does _good_ (ie better than GA) direct damage, but gets wiped on use of not just barrage, but also any interrupts (and possible any condition application). That way Rangers have the option to dmg while still holding on to their hallmark skills, but they couldn’t do everything at once. I coulda sworn I was just reading on the WoW guru..

The damage of the bow varies how high you are against a target and players still don't see it? You shoot far and have high damage but accuracy will drop instead... its fair enough. Boosting the damage of the bow is simple rediculous seriously in GW. Like Moriz said, its a team game. You want the damage, you need a teamwork, not by yourself. I must be missing something here... when did PvP maps actually have cliffs of a decent height? Terrain works against a Ranger almost all the time when it comes to PvP, groups either seek higher ground, hide behind walls or stay on bridges so the games useless RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up obstructions coding comes into action and everything misses. And what moron actually fights a Ranger willingly at the bottom of a huge hill anyway.

I suppose that is why you see so many Rangers in teams, man they're all over the place, PvP is completely dominated by teams with (at least) one or two Rangers and in every PvE outpost people are shouting GLF Ranger.

Try again. Rangers are rather rare, there must be a reason for it, and that is certainly not because they are so overpowered. vD's AT build always features a BA ranger. there are tons of top pvp guilds running rangers. just yesterday, i saw a single cripshot in top gvg dominate and turn the tide of the entire battle by interrupting key skills on 5 different targets. a few months ago, i saw eF run two rangers (BHA and cripshot, when it was still 15 energy too) and delivered some serious asskicking. and that's just a few of the examples.

instead of bemoaning the supposed lacking of the rangers, maybe you should... what's the phrase.... learn2play?

as for the reason why rangers are rare: people are stupid, and don't know how to play them. also, there are only 5 open spots on any gvg team (3 of them are taken up by monks and runner), so there's not always room for a ranger.

lastly, i never said they are overpowered. they are currently right where they should be. people should just play to their strengths (disruption, movement control, degen, being annoying, being hard to kill) and not force them to fulfill a role they are not designed for (as in straight up damage and spiking).