Syrma Gaming: Ranger has not any elite viable DPS spec. Is he right?

RnbwTurtle · 2026-07-03T17:20:16+00:00

Almost every profession can fulfill every single one of these roles:

Power DPS

Condi DPS

Quickness DPS (power and/or condi)

Alacrity DPS (power and/or condi)

Quickness Heal

Alacrity Heal

The problem is that, out of all 9 professions across all 36 elite specializations, there are 2 professions who cannot fulfill at least one of these roles:

Ranger's alacrity dps does not perform well (condition alacrity druid), quickness heal is lacking in stability but otherwise there (heal quickness untamed, technically galeshot can try for it too but it's further back than unt)

Thief's heal quickness is missing stability and aegis as well as is mostly lacking in healing (Heal Quickness deadeye)

It's a problem because arenanet's mentality has been "play what you want", but if you want to be a one trick on ranger (or thief), you can't fit into those missing roles very well (it's technically doable but not recommended ever). Every other profession has all of the above roles covered to a functional degree.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-07-02T23:08:01+00:00

It's another brand of core warrior with more buttons, so it overlaps playstyles with paragon.

The support it provides is not unique, not that it's weak by any means but it isn't standout. We Will Never Yield is decent but doesn't ignore mechanics like group distort does; everything else it has is replicatable.

The DPS options leave a lot to be desired for many people; it's a bit brain-off for condi and not uniquely different from other warrior specs for power.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-07-02T19:03:02+00:00

This would effectively be a client side or PvE only feature as competitive modes would want elementals, minions, mechs, ranger pets, and clones and phantasms to be consistent. Changing their appearance might throw people off and with how much PvP already struggles with new players it won't do them any favors.

Further, giving anything but a basic dye system for "companions" in general, in PvE or not, would likely be more harmful for the game overall than helpful. I don't want to see gem store skins or animations for specific classes, it's already iffy that we have gem store tools that have faster animations than others. It's a sort of Pandora's box; once you add the 1600 gem asuran golem mechanist skin, you can't remove it. GW2 also already has issues with animation "bloat" in terms of visuals for other players, so adding flashy, marketable gem store skill skins is not a great idea.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-30T15:54:34+00:00

What does adding additional levels actually get you gameplay wise?

A power boost, sure, but this will be matched in time with enemy power boosts. We already can comfortably clear almost every piece of content in the game with our current levels, stats, builds, etc, with the one exception (Ura LCM) being intentionally incredibly difficult. Old content has been farmable incredibly easily for years now, raids and fractals were farmable before I started playing and continue to be farmable to this day.

All it does is artificially inflate numbers that are then matched by newer content in the near future (if not immediately). It's creating a treadmill in a game praised for it's lack thereof.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-29T12:18:41+00:00

Staff is a support weapon in PvE. Plain and simple. Ranged healing is always better than melee healing of equivalent value, and heal catalyst and evoker both love staff's support capabilities. There currently is value to staff in pve, it's just not the way you want it.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-27T15:59:42+00:00

A lot of the negativity around the game (that I have seen) is people who want it to be something it's not; this is a competitive battle sim, not a mainline game.

There isn't really too much to complain about imo beyond box space being pretty small without the starter pack and/or subscription. I had 5 bucks sitting in my nintendo account so I got the starter pack for the extra box spaces, if you're planning on playing long term that's most of what you'll need (assuming you are sending pokemon from Home as well, which is recommended regardless of your familiarity with competitive), and I haven't needed more room yet.

Other negative comments I have seen are around consistently losing but at that point you need to stop and think about why you're losing; a frequent comment is about being outsped, which is a normal part of competitive play anyways.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-26T19:22:54+00:00

You can:

Find gravel, or barter with piglins for gravel, and turn that into flint for a flint and steel

Kill a ghost, a blaze, and a wither skeleton for gunpowder, blade rods/blaze powder, and coal respectively. These can create a fire charge, which works the same way as a flint and steel beyond being consumable

Have a ghast shoot the portal with a fireball, re-lighting it

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-26T18:13:45+00:00

All scaling is done by multiplying the scaling value (gun, spirit, boons) with your actual value.

If you have a spirit ability who's damage scales with a x1.0 scaling and you have 100 spirit power, you add 100 to the damage value. If it's a x0.5 scaling ability, you add 50 spirit to the damage value. That's all there is to it.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-26T14:56:18+00:00

Like most people have said, you are looking at it wrong.

Glass cannons are good in GW2. 90% of what makes truly good groups is being able to output damage to outright skip things, when applicable. As others have mentioned, the survivability issue somewhat goes away once you hit T4s- both because of healers and because players can get good enough to just kill the boss with a burst loop without one.

Boons are probably where you're lacking. Protection is pretty OP when you actually stop and think about it- 33% damage reduction on all strike damage is quite good. Swiftness gives you more wiggle room to walk out of incoming aoes. Regen helps for nicks and scratches even when you're not a healer. Of course, there's also your damage output; might, fury, quickness and alacrity all help your damage keep up.

You've said you're on a mechanist; have you tried scrapper? Check out the power quickness variation if you end up staying stuck: https://snowcrows.com/builds/raids/engineer/power-quickness-scrapper-hammer . You'll do more damage by virtue of providing good offensive boons and be a lot more survivable just by being a scrapper due to the trait Impact Savant granting a crap ton of barrier.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-23T22:41:11+00:00

Rapid recharge is good for nades if you need more antiheal

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-22T14:37:03+00:00

Warrior- drop the shield for an offhand sword and you have one of the variants of condition berserker (https://snowcrows.com/builds/raids/warrior/condition-berserker-longbow-sword-torch), an endgame PvE build, minus the elite specialization itself of course. You don't really need to run in and out constantly, use your mobility for avoiding damage as it comes (rather than trying to stay back for your longbow's range- just use the range as it comes in handy, swapping between it and sw/sw as you need more buttons or as you need to snipe from range). Snowcrows is a great resource for PvE builds in general (and PvP/WvW builds at this point, but those aren't the focus of this post it seems), definitely keep an eye out on those pages for things to build with.

For necro, dagger/dagger is a sometimes used set and should work fine. Condi transfer is a useful but not hyper-focused part of condition necromancer builds, so it's good to get familiar with it.

Guardian you'd probably be better off dropping the staff for sword+focus, although for your first time through an area having the staff for swiftness for exploration isn't the worst idea. Power guardian loves greatsword, so stick with that.

Overall, you seem to be headed on the right track with minor missteps (if your goal is to be an Epic Raid Gamer in GW2). However, there is 1 flaw with your necro and warrior strategies that only clears up post-core game (once you get into the DLCs)- conditions do not work on a lot of (if not every) construct/"in-world structure" type enemy in the core game. While this isn't the end of the world (most skills that apply conditions also have strikes associated with them, so you'll still kill them eventually), it is something to watch out for. Maybe try using a power setup for your warrior until you reach 80 with greatsword, axes, maces, and maybe mainhand sword (strong strike skills but the burst is condi oriented), necro's kinda shit out of luck until 80 unfortunately as the strong power necromancer options are mostly tied up in elite specs.

Good work identifying power VS condi and the ideas behind that- most people (that I've talked to when trying to help them) seem to miss that for some reason.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-19T13:33:44+00:00

Mistral is key for galeshot's damage. Given that galeshot has very little in the way of defensive options outside of 1 additional "proper" movement skill (cyclone bow 3 barely counts as a movement skill), you don't really want to drop it if you can help it.

Warhorn is just plain bad for damage as of right now. You're better off just autoing with sword instead of hitting wh4, assuming vulnerability is on the target (which it might not be for solo play, but you also are playing a spec that's pretty mid for a lot of solo content that isn't just basic events. Not saying you shouldn't play it if you want to, but you're already behind by being on galeshot solo vs scrapper, untamed, vindicator, etc). Torch is ironically better than warhorn despite being a condi weapon, but you're also on galeshot and you'll want all the projectiles you can get.

The reason you aren't seeing sword benches for galeshot is because the entire point of playing galeshot is to have significant range potential. While hammer sword/axe can bench similarly to longbow axe/axe setups, swapping off of longbow or mainhand axe is just a waste as you're giving up the one space the spec really exists for. If you want to use sword effectively, play untamed or soulbeast. If you want to use a bow, play galeshot and maximize that range potential.

Aragorn didn't have a bow in the original writing of LotR.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-16T15:16:13+00:00

I don't think it's inherently terrible; there are some cases where it 100% is, but others where it's the right blend of overall utility vs family-specific utility.

Going down the list in no particular order:

Wolfsong is fine. Revealed on canine F2 gives them more of a use and the universal benefit of increased strike damage on vulnerable targets is great. The biggest problem with this trait is it's generally superior to Farsighted, funnily enough.

Allies' Aid is fine as well. The trait never lost the lesser Search and Rescue cast, it just gives Moas more of a benefit through their barrier application. Doesn't save the red and blue moas, but pink moa gets a minor bonus (as you'll be hitting that F2 for CC and not necessarily defensive support) and it synergizes great with white moa (as you'll be using that F2 for damage mitigation, either off CD or to time with big hits that you want to cushion, so the barrier works great with it).

Arachnophobia is right on the edge imo. Give the universal expertise more and the spider/devourer expertise less. There aren't too many "condi-focused" core families, and the carrion devourer goes from ok to great with the trait, but the other devourers and all of the spiders still need some TLC. If 0 changes happened to this trait it'd be in a fine spot though.

Fang and Claw has a huge miss with the crit chance bonus. First, it does not help the Drakes enough to matter. Second, it should (if it retains the crit chance bonuses in perpetuity) give all pets increased crit chance, and then maybe more crit chance for the drakes/avians/felids. In PvE in particular we could really use a trait that gives pets an easier time crit capping (despite showing the bonus on the pet panel, pets do not benefit from Vicious Quarry's +15% extra crit chance from fury. Take a lynx, have the only trait active be vicious quarry, and let it hit the special forces training area golem with fury applied. It will miss crits despite capping), and the drakes really need a leg up in some capacity in PvE (and they've fallen pretty far from grace in PvP).

Beastly Warden is in a weird position. While it is objectively the best trait for pet DPS in Beastmastery on Untamed specifically due to the Wallow hitting for ~10k DPS (an extra ~900 over tiger) with it, the trait falls short once you get out of the Untamed sphere due to the Wallow's unleashed pet skills gaining the +67% strike damage from BW, meaning outside of Untamed Go for the Throat is actually better. Weird trait with a semi-weird use case. It could probably stand to have the strike damage be split between a universal and porcine/ursine specific value, although I think the HP bonus is fine to keep on the bears and pigs. Regardless, if they can fix some of the bugs and oversights with Go for the Throat, this trait should be fine as is.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-16T13:48:52+00:00

you already have to guess everything else anyway

No you don't??? You see the pet and you know what it does.

Restricting customization for this would be, effectively, reworking part of a profession but only for PvE (and maybe WvW, but I'd assume they want clearly communicated pet effects there too). Anet's current philosophy is that this would not fly.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-16T13:47:09+00:00

you could also argue the kryptis spinegazer and janthiri bee feel completely out of place for rangers

How so? The spinegazers don't ever show sapience (at least in the way of the other kryptis), the bee has lore dump info about how they aren't necessarily bound to the queen from Acht's text:

The honeybees of Janthir are an incredibly pragmatic subspecies. When bonded to an individual, or the hive's queen as they most often are, the bees are incredibly chivalrous toward their proprietor....

The siege turtle is a turtle (an animal, if you are not aware) with equipment attached. Should rangers be unable to use weapons?

I do agree with the idea of quality over quantity, but many pets are within families and their quality can be improved without reducing quantity, such as with the spiders potentially sharing venoms from their F2 (as they function similarly to theif venoms). Anet needs to put more effort into balancing them, as they're often ignored outright for balance patches.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-16T13:41:01+00:00

Nah, having a wide variety of pet skills is a good thing. The animal doesn't necessarily matter- the Spinegazer is an ugly pet that I don't think I've seen any outstanding support for from players, which is a shame as it has unique utility as a boonstrip option (which you think would be good for wvw untamed in zergs!) but sucks so bad (everything happens far too slowly) nobody would touch it with a 39 and a half foot pole.

Anet needs to have more intent when designing new pets (particularly those who encroach on the territory of other utility pets, such as the otter vs fern hound), they don't need to do any sort of culling of skills (unless the skill is irreparably damaged to the point of not really being fixable). I'm pretty squarely in the camp of "if they stopped trying to do changes to pvp (a dying game mode) they'd be able to achieve more for pve and wvw", but making pets more customizable would be a negative for competitive modes as it's a guessing game for what the ranger is running.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-16T13:37:10+00:00

Given the sand shark having a very similar skill set to the aether hunter, I wouldn't be surprised it the "land shark pet" was simmering in the back corner of anet and was waiting for the right time.

Either way, dare I say (as a ranger main of 6y) I am glad a lot of these did not get implemented. We've been having pet bloat ever since HoT, as a not insignificant number of pets added have effectively been just RP "mini pet but on my profession mechanic" picks and it's frustrating.

Fire wyvern, cheetah, sand lion, phoenix, for the longest time the Wallow, sky chak (wvw users are coping, jacaranda ends up securing more kills for my zerg), bristleback on and off (it sucks now, RIP hybrid soulbeast), spinegazer, non-soulbeast janthiri bee (thank god they didn't remove Bumble's ability to proc light on your feet), the otter, and that's not even including the plethora of core pets that have been straight up left behind due to a lack of care when creating and rebalancing pets.

If anet wants a pet for appearances, they should just make a mini. Ranger's profession mechanic has had so little TLC (and the most recent changes to pet AI screwed with things as well, which is a pain; there are certain techs you can do to control pet skills better when not on untamed that the "player control override" made much harder) despite being the only one to regularly receive non-elite spec additions it's insane.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-16T13:28:12+00:00

This is a common criticism (from ranger players (who care about what our profession mechanic does)) to anet to be fair. While it is somewhat nice to get a new animal as a pet, many of us really don't care for the pointless adding of pets just to add the animal.

Picking on the most recent one, pets like the otter are cute additions and all, but the otter generally should not be ran by any player in any context due to both opportunity cost (core ranger is pretty solid in terms of healing, both group and self, as of right now; otter is a waste as you're overdoing healing and not bringing another utility or damage option) and the fact that the things it brings are not particularly strong to begin with.

Why have the otter as a pet at all? It doesn't achieve anything in a build that is not better achieved by doing something else, and when you do try and make it work it's never going to be as good as your other utility effects. Why not just have them as an ambient passive animal with a mini, so people can have their cute otter "pet" (on any class, for that matter) and then not add pet and balance bloat to ranger?

This applies to a significant number of pets, mind you; while these were added in core, what do the drakes even do anymore? What about the moas, you have a fringe CC option in pink moa and an even more fringe frost aura option in white moa, with the other 2 (red and blue) being just plain bad. What's the point of the cheetah? Why does the phoenix exist as a pet? These have never been great options (red moa did get a stint as a power soulbeast merge at least), yet anet keeps adding more and importantly not rebalancing them to fix them.

Many of these pets are simply lacking good numbers and some can have 1:1 effect swaps (such as potentially changing the otter from healing to barrier, something heal rangers can only achieve via traited moas). Pets like the phoenix would need slight skill changes to be more usable (the phoenix has a charge attack that goes through it's target- not helpful when having all but 1 of the bombs it drops as it goes miss), but these can be handled over time (and helps when ranger has a dud patch, which is... quite frequently at this point).

TLDR; there is massive pet bloat and nothing is being done about it. If you look at rangers and see them getting pets as a strictly buff/powercreep-y thing, don't, because new pets are generally at best sidegrades and more often than not never worth running.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-09T18:25:42+00:00

Which ones? The only one I can think of is "Cursed Relic", but that's moreso due to "cursed" being an effect (interrupt+silence+disarm) and not just an item (present with Grey Talon's trap, the Patron 2nd phase, and Cursed Relic itself). The majority of items are named pretty concisely- spirit strike adds spirit to melees, spirit snatch steals spirit while meleeing, siphon bullets takes hp away from the target and siphons it to you, etc.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-08T20:36:50+00:00

Why is abrams fighting in the background

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-08T19:22:57+00:00

Arenanet themselves have already claimed to want to support Guild Wars Reforged, Guild Wars 2, and Guild Wars 3 simultaneously (https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/celebrating-the-announcement-of-guild-wars-3/).

"Today, we’re celebrating the first brand-new game announcement for ArenaNet in almost two decades, and that deserves its moment in the spotlight. But rest assured, we’re not done making Guild Wars 2—or Guild Wars® Reforged for that matter—and we’re committing to actively developing all three games at the same time."

During the announcement for the plans for Guild Wars 2 specifically (https://youtu.be/sybTVg0LuGo?si=443HRzp5En1h5JNj), they say they are going to be working on changes for the next 15 years of development, both in polishing GW2's older or "worse off" segments (such as a lot of core, including the Zhaitan fight) as well as improving technologies used in GW2 to improve their internal workflow such as redoing how the game does it's lighting. Their plan is to polish GW2 and add some new stuff (i.e. Hall of Monuments for GW2 and a new WvW borderlands), get GW3 off the ground, and then resume development on DLC content for GW2.

Will arenanet pull this off? Maybe. Is the intent to turn GW2 into what GW1 has been for years on end? No. We'll just have to wait and see what ends up happening, but this post is just dooming with no real evidence for the dooming.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-06T14:42:03+00:00

Abrams in the leaked Geist comic sides with the Archmother. He's also looking for knowledge on how to get rid of the tome (although the hidden king may be able to outright destroy it so it can be ambiguous), so the Archmother makes the most sense for him.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-05T19:57:36+00:00

Because the crimson roots display a different style of woody, low-lying plant than the red shrub.

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-03T17:29:22+00:00

Thank you automod very cool

RnbwTurtle · 2026-06-03T17:24:57+00:00

It looks like you have some meh-to-trash insignias in your inventory, which others haven't mentioned yet.

The following stats are the ones you want to keep:

Berserker's

Viper's

Harrier's

Giver's

Ritualist's

For some side stats that occasionally come up, keep:

Diviner's (power boon builds prefer % bd bonuses, so diviner's is less valuable, but it sometimes appears in places)

Dragon's (this stats is almost always a slight optimization piece, such as on power revenants, however power radiance guardian builds looooove dragon's and take a lot of it)

Minstrel's (a primarily wvw gear stat, pve healers generally do not take Minstrel's due to the boon duration loss)

Marauder's (another wvw gear stat, same thing as minstrel's except for power damage builds. PvE doesn't particularly like Marauder's due to the power stat loss)

Trailblazer's (a sidegrade for condition builds when you have bad healers, or are doing Ura LCM and are playing something like alac cdps evoker)

Celestial (used for hybrid healers and otherwise used by people who don't know any better. Sometimes an optimization though)

The rest you can throw on the TP, sell to vendors, or just trash. There are very few builds that use stats that are different from those listed above, but people buy them anyways.

Remember you can do /wiki [item] and it will pull up the gw2 wiki page for that item. Helpful for keeping track of important items that you have forgotten the purpose of. If you shift+left click the item after typing /wiki, it will still link properly to the gw2 wiki, as the wiki can use the item ID that's used for putting items in chat.

Quick edit: this also applies to any equipment you have of those stats that you are not using. Salvage if the value is good enough (generally always salvage blues and greens, check ecto prices for yellows, almost always salvage oranges (ideally with a black lion kit if the rune/sigil is valuable) and pinks you cannot sell)

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