Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, this is my first post here and I haven’t found anything similar to it – so I post. Of course I could read all of the forums and I could get some anwser to my question but that would be unreasonable.

To the point. I have a pretty old laptop, but if I’m not in close combat with say ~8 players the game runs smoothly. I’ve got pretty decent FPS count in whole PVE content and also in PVP but when I keep at range from bigger fights. Basicly when I get in the middle of big fight my FPS drops ad I can not target and mcro-manage fast enough to be competetive – I can only AOE or try to get away to keep distance – effectively.

So in beta I tried out every character and Ranger worked for me the best. I didnt die at all or maybe once in those random arenas and I decided to play it now. It is ok in PVE. In random PVP it is also not bad – I’m usually at the top of the table with maybe 1-2 deaths. But I play as a harraser (use of LB and Axe+warhorn) – I’m not so competative and probabl not the most needed player. In tournaments and future GvG or some more organized PVP I will be probably not needed at all, since to be good and key Ranger you need a lot of micro management to get the CC right and help your team mates right. Plus at this game-stage you need to use SB and Axe+horn/torch which kinda forces you to be more “inside” the battle.
This is from what I read (here on forums) and from what I understand

So I’m kinda looking for a different class to play. My requirements are:
1) Need to be ranged. (Warrior/Guardian/Thief -> rejected at the begining)
2) As little micro management as possible + maybe lots of AOEs or something.
3) Again, some class that I could keep at range while beeing valueable for my team.

I thought about Elementalist – since it doesnt have any minions/ilusions and stuff like that but I’ve read that Necros and Mesmers are suprisingly easy to play. So I do not know now…

What can you guys recommend me? What abour Eng maybe, I havent read about that class at all?

I hope this is understandable and not too chaotic post for you. Thanks in advance. And please don’t tell me to upgrade my rig – I will when I can ;p

Upgrade your rig. Lol just kidding.

Sounds like you should try playing as an elementalist, or a mesmer. Played as a mesmer in the beta, and it was tons of fun. Same for Ele…but fi you’re worried about performance issues when there’s action, you still might get some with your Mesmer/Elementalist skills and whatnot….unfortunately, this isn’t something you can avoid since you will be exposed to this from all angles in PvP and WvW…

I just want to mention that you shouldn’t automatically discount Warriors and Thieves. In fact, while reading your post I was thinking that a Pistol/Pistol Thief might be what you’re looking for.

Mesmers need a LOT of micromanagement if they are to be played well. When played well, they are currently being called OP because noone traits/skills condition removers or notices when conditions being applied.

A mesmer is one of the most complex classes in game right now.

I can’t comment on Guardian or Thief; I do have them, but they’re only barely out of the starter quest. Warrior – I wouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss him. Rifle & longbow are both really nice weapons; rifle is single-target ranged, longbow is AoE ranged. Engineer is great fun but isn’t necessarily a ranged class. You can play it that way, but you’d be denying yourself the beautiful, beautiful bomb kit!

Basically, you’ve got 5 slots for free. Why not experiment? All classes are designed to function several ways (even the thief has ranged weapons). By the time you’ve run an alt up to L7-10, you should have most of the weapons fully available & a pretty good feel for the class. It’s all fun; just a question of what’s manageable on your (upgrade it! ) rig.

Sky.9347:

I just want to mention that you shouldn’t automatically discount Warriors and Thieves. In fact, while reading your post I was thinking that a Pistol/Pistol Thief might be what you’re looking for.

hm, that’s interesting, thief with 2 pistols sounds fun, but when I tried it I got kicked my butt kicked a lot.
It may be because of my wrongly spent traits or utility skills, but still – it probably isn’t good to die a lot.
Can you tell me more about this dual pistol thief? What about second weapon set?

Also, this is the first time when i read that “Mesmer is difficult to play” – this is interesting. I can see everywhere that Mesmer is one of the easiest. But thank you for claryfing.

And what about Engineer? isn’t that class kinda tank-ish, keeping him self at range? shooting his rifle or droping bombs?

edit:
lol I see more and more range warrior enthusiasts O_o that is geting more and more interesting.

The rifle is, frankly, pish on the Engineer. And I’ve not found a shield skill worth the time, so far, on any class. Which reduces him to a pistol / pistol build. You can do that at range. But then there’s the bomb kit. And… there’s another thread here somewhere with lots of comments about the Engineer, so why not go look for that?

But no, tank-ish & ranged don’t go together. And bombs can only be dropped, not thrown, so that isn’t ranged either. Good old BOB, though. Got to love good old BOB!

Well first let me start with Engineer…

Yes, they can be kind of tanky and ranged, but to really do well with Engineer you’ve got to be very fluid and in and out of different weapon kits. It doesn’t strike me as a profession that would work well with a bunch of lag.

So about Thief… I am not a Thief expert or anything but I will share what I know.

Personally, I like to use dual Pistols and switch to dual Daggers for melee range. I like the elusive stealthy assassin aspect of the Dagger/Dagger skillset. BUT – You could just as easily use a Shortbow on your weapon swap and enjoy some of those delicious skills… (Infiltrator’s Arrow FOR THE WIN).

So when I play dual Pistol Thief I like to stack as much critical chance, critical damage, and evasion/stealth/initiative skills & traits as I can. I like to be super hard to get a hold of, setting up massive damage spikes with the vulnerability (I think its #4) shot followed by Unload (the quick fire damage shot).

This seems legit. I’m gonna try/think about it mos def. One more thing, what about this Ele? No one here plays ele? How is it?

The Thief, from my experience is by far the best ranged class I’ve played.

I run primarily Pistol Main Hand, Dagger Off Hand for my first weapon set, and Short Bow for my second.

Pistol/Dagger gives you a couple of OP abilities. The first is dagger throw (dancing dagger). You’re actually better fighting two mobs at the same time as it will bounce between the two for absurd amounts of damage. It also slows the enemy so you can kite effectively.
After that you have a stab, teleport, and shoot ability. If enemies are too fast you use this to keep distance instead. It’s your hardest hitting solo mob attack so sometimes it’s fun to keep running in and popping it if someone else has the mobs attention.

On the short bow you have the most versatile AoE in the game. if you liked the Ranger Longbow AoE then you’ll find the thief much more compelling as you keep everything poisoned with a similar style attack but without the stupidly long cool down. Two targeted AoE’s (poison and cluster bomb) and a position shot (shoot and jump back) all on demand (once you get used to managing initiative) makes it hard to die. The base attack for the short bow also bounces twice like an axe does for rangers making it very good AoE as well.

Unlike other classes the thief is not cool down based and instead has initiative which means you can stay on a target easier and use the abilities you want. Give this a bit of time as it takes some getting used to. Once you get in the later levels you’ll have abilities that get initiative back such as one per crit per second from the traits. Early on there’s a signet that regenerates one every 10 seconds.

Spend traits in Precision (you want to keep your crit above 50%) and then power and then whatever you need.

If you’re getting hit for more than you can regen with signet of healing you’re doing it wrong. There’s only a couple of mobs in the game I can’t kite successfully (plague bearer undead packs post 35 as they run tookittenfast and poison you when they hit are one of the few, the others are rangers as they hit really hard at range).

Pistol/Pistol has a very high hitting attack, but lack the multi-target slow needed to keep enemies from catching you.

I use a signet build as well but almost never pop the signets themselves as I like the passive buffs more.

I have not tried PvP with this spec.

After 30 I grabbed Bladestorm for my finisher and with Signet of Healing you can mostly stand in the middle (still move just stay near the center) of a large group (10-20 mobs as oddly, the larger the better) and by the end of the 8 seconds you’ll be mostly at full health, and they’ll largely be dead. Dodge out of the center toss a couple of daggers and claim your loot. With the signet I’ve seem my health drop to double digits and then rapidly climb back to full in the middle of the bladestorm. Careful though, as double tapping a direction will cancel the bladestorm and then you just die.

This spec may not be for everyone but I’ve been cruising through +3 content consistently using this.

There’s also likely a significant bug with knife throw (dancing dagger) as occasionally it will hit for absurd amounts

WAter

thank you very muc for the anwser. still, I’m more interested in PVP. In a character that would allow me to stay at range while doing nice damage at the same time. To be honest with you guys, last night I tried Ele, played about 3hrs on random arenas and it was quite ok. I died ~2 times in each fight so about one more than on a ranger, but this was more fun and intense for me. I think I’m gonna stick with Ele for the moment and I’ll see what happens next.

I would also like to get back to ranger some time in future, but I’ll do that when LB builds will be somewhat better.