what do you do with a bow ranger?

Well, rangers can focus fire someone without needing to be next to them (advantage over warriors) and can't be prevented from focus firing the target by body blocking (another advantage), plus they can switch to a new target without needing to cover the distance between them. Thus they are good at focus fire, and deal good damage, if not always what a warrior can pump out. They can have more range with a bow than a spell can, and can ditribute conditions at this range, for example crippling the warrior on the monk without needing to run up and hamstring him. The have very cheap attack skills, so can spam them, dealing out conditions more rapidly among targets than a warrior can, making a good fit with spells like epidemic. And yes, the flexibility can be nice too.

ugh! must i spell everything out?

a short bow and half moon take 2 seconds to between fires not to mention a .65 sec delay before actually hitting the target as opposed to a sword or axe's 1.3 second attacks. That's about half the time.

don't forget to add in the occasional misses and preparation casting times and you'll see that a bow's dmg isn't that great considering it's supposed to be the main source of attack.

you bring up a good point with speed skills, the best one being Tiger Fury, and you know the controversy behind that...

don't keep telling me that bows excel in damage. i understand that they do massive short burst damage, which is very useful in pvp, but that's not enough to get them chosen over classes.

good point epinephrine. but does flexibility warrant value in the eyes of the group? afterall, it is a team game.

honestly in your opinion, would you pick a flexible char over a specialized one to fill that last gap in your party?

maybe it's just that i've never actually seen a great bow ranger. i do admit that their flexibility makes them decent in four on four encounters but not that desirable in HoH. maybe i've just never had the privelege of seeing one.

Have you played a Ranger with a max damage bow? With max damage longrange, slow bows AND max damage shortrange, fast bows? All with mods? Just asking, because the 20 W/Ele I play with whines all the time that I kill things before he even gets a chance to swing on it.

well... i have all the grips, i'm missing sundering string and shocking, so I'm using cold dmg string at the moment. i'm still fairly new to the whole bow thing though.

you seem happy with your build. do you suggest focusing on a damage oriented build?

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sulos, you're harping like a little baby. seems i touched a sensitive spot. the sad part is, you still haven't said HOW they are better. looks like you need to work a little on your communication skills.

if you need convincing about my skills, give me a r/w lvl 15 and with a sword will beat your pvp built ranger.

you seem to me to be one of those annoying rangers in pvp who think leave the group right before dying saying "my group sucked"

Well, really, it depends on what you are wanting to do with your ranger. Right now I have all my skills focused in Expertise & Marksmanship, with the extra mostly in Wilderness Survival, and some in Beast Mastery. Note that I am strictly playing PvE until I have completed it and unlocked whatever I want to unlock. If you want to see my weaponry, check the Screenshots forum, the Weaponry thread. My style is completely bow-centric. Up until around 13th or 14th level IIRC I carried Sever Artery & Gash and would switch between sword & shield and a bow. Once you get up around that high though, you will never do as much damage with a melee weapon as you will with a bow - the enemies simply have too much armor. So I switched to all bow. My favorite skills are Pin Down, Distracting Shot, Hunter's Shot, Apply Poison, Penetrating Shot, Lightning Reflexes, Frenzy, Incendiary, etc..

Also I like Healing Spring. Currently I believe mine heals 33 points every 2 secs for 10 secs - for big fights I will hit lightning reflexes and plant the spring right under the warrior. They pound on him, the spring just heals him right back up.

If there are a lot of tough enemies, I also like to spam Poison on them all. As soon as I see them, I Apply Poison, then when that is just about done I hit Lightning Reflexes and Tab Space, Tab Space, Tab Space, etc. - soon they are all nice and poisoned.

According to the OP, ranger's can't specialize in anything but capable of doing everything. Isn't that power in itself because you have a way with dealing with every possible class? Versatility is what the ranger is knwon for isnt it.

Okay, maybe I'm missing something. I play a R/E, strictly PvE. I have a max damage bow and no Elite skills. The damage skills I use are Power Shot and Penetrating Shot. I outdamage every warrior I have been in a PUG with on every enemy that we've come up against. Right now I'm only at Ventari's Refuge, so I may be slightly better equipped than some people, but still, I don't see how Warriors outdamage Rangers, at least in PvE.

Also, the only Warriors I have seen that have a prayer of soloing a mission when their party members all die, is the W/Mo's. I had to do three missions in a row solo, practically, because people make very unwise decisions. Anyway, I could have this totally wrong or have just been paired with some not-so-great Warriors, but this is just what I have noticed.

Okay, a Ranger not using Tigers Fury and Barrage is going to lose on damage horribly to a warrior or aero elementalist. A Ranger with them and other preps such as a conjure and favorable winds will be able to stay on par. Are they going to be outdamage a smiting war/monk or outspike a elementalist? No.

However, Rangers are very very good at doing consistently high damage over time. They don't require adren, so they can start shooting right away rather than having to wait for enough for hundred blades or such. In the case of the elementalist, they cannot continually spam their spells too effectively and are targeted with energy degen stuff more than Rangers would be and expertise allows continuous skill spamming. Buffs like favorable winds and a conjure last for a minute or longer and iirc Tigers Fury gets ready very quickly allowing for continuous use of all of their top skills without having to wait.

As has been said, they can switch targets very quickly due to range and are often safe for most of the match. Debilitating and distracting shot are very good anti-caster stuff for the little amount of deviation from the regular firing routine and throw dirt has it's uses along with other traps. Most damage potentials also assume that Barrage is only hitting single targets. But occassionally (the beginning sometimes when unprepared), the enemy is going to cluster. And when you let a few Barrages in there...it hurts, a lot!

So yeah, Rangers get outperformed in all of the areas you listed. But damagewise, it is by a very slim margin. They don't have near the abilities of a mes/nec, but they still have great flexibility. They don't do anything best, but they do everything great.

Rangers get bonus's for been higher up, so when they shoot down on enemies they do more damage, they can have a pet that can take damage and deal it. they can cripple ppl, stop ppl running, kinda stop spell casters. and deal fair amounts of damage, dont need to run round as much.......

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Why bother comparing stuff to bad people in fort koga? Warrior potential is far beyond that of a ranger without those skills unless you consider incendiary arrows but TF is still a big boost.

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There seems to be a misunderstanding of the original post

I will try to clarify with these assumptions
1. the original poster (whom i will now refer to as he, pardon me if you're a girl) is talking about pvp
2. he is talking about damage/sec not damage
3. he is asking what unique role rangers can play on a bigger team such as gvg or HoH or whatever.

correct me if the assumptions are wrong, and disregard my post. He just sounded like a pvp player from his tone and knowledge depth.

First, TF is hard to use well esp with your secondary and with a bow. marks + expertise + beastmastery + (wilderness) + secondary is hard to do, but can be done if you forgo some essential ranger skills.

I've been playing since the betas, and I must say rangers are extremely fun to play and very valuable in pve but in pvp, they're just fun to play. You have to play helping roles, helping this person here and there, and thus are disliked by most groups.

A good warrior will (a decent warrior, lasher ) out damage a ranger by a fair margin. You speak of time lost in preps and misses being a bigger deal because of the slower rates but this is very marginal (yes, shortbow is slower than even hammers. if you disagree you're a complete noob. and skills that make you attack faster are not limited to rangers).

Poison, bleed, blind, burn, slow, whatever, can be done by others. I will almost never take a ranger over a distinct role build.

The problem is, most rangers are mostly played by teenagers who want to be like legolas. They sit there button mashing and thinking they are so totally awesome. That "you suck at ranger" dude is probably one too . That probably accounts for rangers' full potential not having been discovered yet. But don't get me wrong, they are not worthless as some idiots in the game tend to think, and they do hold their own in any arena. They can dish out dmg, kill casters, and do aoe WELL, but what many people on this thread don't tend to understand is that, in higher end games, they aren't wanted much because they don't have a role like everyone else.

Unless... I've been thinking. What if you have a group of all rangers? Throw in a couple stances and wards here and there and you don't have to worry about attacks too much, and you can all target one char with ease. At an average 60 dmg per hit, you can kill someone off pretty quick, whereas 8 warriors will spend a day and a half chasing someone across a map. Pick the right targets, have members use different preps and you might have yourself a fun(ny) and decent team.

on another note, warriors are so boring to play! adren + low regen = blah. But to each his own huh? :P

OP is correct in alot of his arguments. Ive tried many diferent builds and I simply cant do enough dmg as the other classes. Ive tried almost maxing my ranger skills 12marks/11expertise and the bow (27max dmg 1/2 moon Vampiric Bow, probly not the best in game but best ive come accross) simply didnt do much noticable direct dmg so tried DoT type of dmg, not really a winner there because those types of dmg are easily healed by a monk. So now Ive settled on an interupt/energy thief build of R/Me STILL not as strong as say a Mesmer primary but at least I know/feel im accomplishing something (when in the middle of the fight sudenly 2 or 3 wariors leave the main fight for me lol).

The problem with the "jack of all trades" being seen by some as a positive,rember what the rest of the saying is "Master of NONE". This is a pretty usefull trait in 1v1 PvP and in PvE. But in larger PvP areana's you DONT really feel they need a "master of none" type of class when they can get someone with a primarry they feel is better. The bottom line is even in a pretty evenly classed game as GW there will always be LOW end classes, and the common consences is Rangers and Necros are the bottom feeders, and the way the game seems to be progressing any class other than W/?? or M/?? sucks as well. Also rangers have a horible reputations comming from other games such as DaOC and EQ wich dont help the sterotyping.

Also heard wild tails that Rangers are still the "Uberist of all Uberness". Tales of 2 hitting people or can take on 5 warriors and a healer at one time. Yet they dont explain their builds or tactics in detail they just say the poster must be a NooB and tell their exploits like a fisherman would and leave (not talking about this post in particular Ive read way to many rangers suck threads so kinda lumping them altogether LOL).

I'm afread I have to admit that I'm lost at the moment.
I'm a R/W (RP char but I plan to use it for PvP aswell) which is very close to lvl 17 at the moment.

However, I feel that I'm not doing enough damage.
My first setup was:
Marksmanship 9 (+1 from my mask makes 10)
Expertise 5
Swordsmanship 8

My bow was doing about 30-40ish damage with normal attacks to these lvl11 monsters with a 15-28 Flatbow Of Shelter.
My sword does around 20ish damage (also normal attacks) and it's a 14-20 Barbed Scimitar.

I heard all this talk about doing 60-110 damage with a bow so I was getting worried why I was so underpowered.
My build was more like 8 marksmanship +1 from a mask and 2 from a major rune but this seems to be to little to have an acceptable damage output.
So I trashed the swordsmanship, wilderness survival and 1 point of expertise to get marksmanship up to 12. (+1 from the mask again thus 13)
However still I only find myself doing barely 50 damage on a good hit, the average is about 45.
This is less damage a shot then all but the weakest warriors (lvl 12) I have quested with in the lions arch area and they swing there sword twice as fast as my bows refire rate...

So how do you guys manage to outdamage a warrior?
Will it make such a big diffirence to add a superious rune of marksmanship?
Perhaps it's the fact that my bow is simple piercing damage.

Someone help me here and perhaps find me a way to do good bow damage and still have points left for lvl10+ swordsmanship and lvl 9 expertise.
I won't take expertise any lower as I need the dodge skills to stay alive in melee situations, without expertise i have no need for swordsmanship either.

Lately I've been thinking about working my way up to lvl20 as a full ranger and then changing my secundary into either a monk or a mesmer.
(mesmers own with there health degeneration spells and monks have a beter healing spell then troll unguent and can use the ress skill instead of the ress signet)

A side-note:
I have had some meager succes in PvP, pin down+huntershot work good after which I can charge into melee, keep the enemy bleeding with sever artery and keep myself alive thanks to the dodge skills.
However this was in the yaks bend arena vs mostly lvl 12-14 players and I was lvl 15 at that time.

I feel rather useless and a waste of a good party slot really as I can't do anything another class can't do beter then me.
Also I'm not that versatile as I carry Powershot, hunters shot, pin down, ress signet, lightning reflexes, whirling defence, troll unguent and apply poison/read the wind/favourable winds and have no skill slots left when I have to carry all of these necessary skills.
The only thing I have going for me is the fact that I'm one less person for the monk to heal since I'm not in the middle of the fight but it's not that big of an advantage.

Someone please help me find the cause of these weak attacks because shooting monsters for 15-20 damage (monsters around lvl 16) is not acceptable damage to me and is not helping me, my guild or my party in any way.

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Your expertise is also far, far too low in your first build. That's going to be a large factor in your damage output, since having higher expertise will decrease the cost of any of your bow attack skills (ie. Power Shot, Penetrating Attack) and thereby allow you to fire them off more frequently and spam and/or burst damage more effectively. Even in your second, I'dr recommend doing your best to get it around 12 or so.

But as the above poster said, you need to ditch Swordsmanship as well if you want to be effective with the bow. Either that, or get rid Marksmanship entirely and go for a melee Ranger build. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. Melee or ranged, you have to choose.

So in conclusion, throw out Swordsmanship entirely if you want to go the bow route, or Marksmanship if you want to go the sword route.

Thanks for your advice guys, I really appreciate it.

I've decided to change my secundary profession to Monk as soon as I get the change which will allow me to get Healing Breeze (less cast time then troll unguent), Restore Life (to replace my healing signet) and Smite Hex (which will allow me to dispell those annoying hexes)

My new build will turn out something like this:

New stat point distribution:

12 Marksmanship (+1 from a mask and +3 from a superiour rune = 16)
11 Expertise (+1 from a minor rune = 12)
6 Healing Prayers
2 Wilderness Survival (+1 from a minor rune = 3)
2 Points spare

The wilderness survival is for when I want to bring Apply Poison into battle.

New skill distribution:

1. Power Shot
2. Hunter’s Shot
3. Pin Down
4. Distracting Shot (pvp) / Marksman’s Wager (pvp/pve)
5. Whirling Defence
6. Healing Breeze
7. Restore Life
8. Smite Hex / Marksmanswager (pvp, if I decide that I want both distracting shot and marksman's wager)

If anyone could comment on my new attribute and skill build I would greatly appreciate it.
As you see I plan to be turning into a ranged damagedealer/support ranger.

Why 12 expertise?

13 is a nice breakpoint for 5 cost skills, dropping them to 2 as well as dropping the cost of 15 cost skills to 7. 12 is a break point only for the 10 cost skills, dropping the cost to 5 (though it drops to 4 at 14 expertise). You have 2 5 costs and a 15, with 2 10 cost skills, so the level 13 breakpoint seems more logical - switch the Marksmanship and Expertise to 11 and 12 base.

Why use Smite Hex with no Smiting? Remove hex is cheaper and cycles faster, and is unlinked.

Judge's Insight would probably be worthwhile on any R/Mo build focused on doing bow damage. Penetrating Shot is pretty much strictly better than Power Shot. Healing Breeze does cast faster, but you might miss the energy discount from expertise. Have you looked at the R/E conjure build and the R/Mo barragebot build from the ranger basics thread? Those are probably the definitive archetypes for a ranger primary focused on bow damage.

I play a R/W since the World Premier (Same character, minus the wipes), and have found that more and more, I prefer using the Bow. Rangers were made for the bow, and visa-versa. Melee Rangers are very effective, don't get me wrong, but the fact is, you are better off going for a warrior build, if you intend to do pure melee.

The biggest advantage of the bow, is, of course, the fact that it's a ranged weapon. A Ranger's strength is not so much in the damage he deals, but the way he can bring damage to bear from the team, onto a target. Being a ranger is a subtle thing. You often get overlooked (Both a good thing, and a bad thing), but this also makes you self-reliant. I've had many-a-monk say that they appreciate the fact that they don't have to babysit me like they do the warriors up front. They also like my ability to keep them safe from charging warriors. Making your Monk happy is ALWAYS a good thing.

Agreed, other builds can put down more damage. That's not what a Ranger is for. A Ranger is for making sure that the damage a team deals out, gets where it needs to go. Rangers generally are able to have a more external view of the battle. This gives them a better awareness of what's going on, and they can help direct tactics and targets to take advantage of an opportunity that opens up.

Bow skills for Rangers are very diverse. They can give out just about any condition, from a long range, and keep an eye on how those conditions affect the overall battle. If a lone enemy strays from his group, warriors have a hard time dealing with that. Rangers are GREAT for taking down runners. A properly built and played Ranger can adapt to nearly ANY situation in a very short amount of time, and those few seconds that he buys the team, can be the difference between defeat and victory.

All in all, it takes a very special kind of player, to really enjoy (and be GOOD at) playing a Ranger. You will find that it is not the skills, the energy, the armor, or the math that makes a Ranger great. It is the player behind the keyboard, using that superior flexibility to maximum effect. Everyone here has pretty much conceded that the flexibility of the Ranger is it's main asset. The truth is, its a very subtle and hard-to-grasp ability that really does make him so great. Many of the people who say they have a hard time playing rangers, probably are playing the wrong class.

Simply put, you are either a Ranger player, or you aren't. Those of you who LOVE your Ranger, know what I'm talking about. Every real Ranger player I've talked to would use that character above any other class. Everyone's got their style.

I'd buy you a Mountain Dew if I were there.

I do more damage than my little brother's warrior EVERY HIT, without all those fancy skills (near max damage bow and 13 Marks), shrug off elemental attack, and have enough DoTs from my mesmer secondary to round out serious damage. I don't heal, and I don't rez, but long range damage? Right here.

But, I find other people I play with (there are quite a few in my area) don't get these things. They don't grasp the subtleties of when to use one skill over the other, or completely scrap a loadout for another, or swap weapons against sense cause you know if you stand a little further back it'll compensate for that lost time.

It's not numbers, it's enjoyment. And I LOVE my ranger. No other class satisfies like it. At least not to me. I'm a jack of all trades in real life, I'm one on the screen.

What do I do with a bow ranger? Hurt stuff. Bad.

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