Guild Wars 2

Yo, been trying league for a while now and while I don’t really care about my rank or losing, I still do want some tips on what and what not to do.

Background:
Was placed in gold, I’m now in silver and steadily going down to bronze (1051 as of writing this post).
71 games played and 26 won.
I mainly play Ranger with staff and LB (I much prefer Shortbow but oh well).
Following this build: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Shoutbow
I’m rarely ever able to kill anyone solo, I can sometimes do so if I play using shortbow, but I really enjoy Druid so.
I often die to AoE’s because the devs of this game apparently loves having millions of them that deal massive damage despite the main objectives being control points, genius.
Guardians and Necromancers I don’t know how to deal with at all because they kill me before I can react.

Some starting questions I guess:

When to decap?
Should I as a Druid even do so?
What should I as a Druid even focus on doing?

Other than that, feel free to share some do’s and don’ts’. :P

Hey man uh I don’t play ranger but I can tell you that you should be able to 1v1 guards. Your pets do a lot of the damage for you, and you are going to want to kite a lot. Don’t stand on point, you will die fast. Also, staying alive is more important than the cap so if you either gonna die or give up the cap, give it up and disengage to another point or come back when ur health has reset or your heal is up. Knockback/ancient roots or whatever andrapid fire /bristleback/smokescale is like your main damage. Cycle those, and run around. As a Druid, you should only decap if you don’t have a thief, or you just got kills on mid and you can get there fast enough before respawns come. Otherwise, if your team starts dying, and u can’t res, go to far and full cap it instead of decap. Sorry for wall of text hope this helps some

Try this build, it’s meta for a reason. You will have much better synergy and team support while playing this build and will also have better node holding potential as you can get more up close and personal with the extra evades.

I personally wouldn’t want to be running longbow with all the projectile hate and blocks going on in the meta, the attacks are easily blocked or reflected.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Bunker_Druid

“I’m rarely ever able to kill anyone solo”

In a 1v1 half of it is understanding your class, the other half is understanding their class. Try playing other classes to learn their strengths and weaknesses. Druid has a massive potential to duel, 1v1 and give massive team support. But no matter how good you might be at druid, you still gotta do the rig and roll and research that other people do :P Eventually you’ll start to 1v1 really well, a good place to start is here: http://qqmore.net

That shoutbow build that you’re using is really good at small skirmishes and all right for team fights. Druid has some support but no where near the level that elementalist has. As such its usually better for us to roam as we have access to perma swiftness and the staff #3 skill we can get around the map quite easily. Our 1v1 potential on sides nodes is really good as we can take a 1v1 with just about everything in the game and be successful. We are also quite good at decaping as we can knock our target off the point then immobilize them off the point for a free decap.

The biggest thing about playing druid is that you have to be good at kiting. While fighting on the point is good at times druid excels at moving around their target and keeping them locked down. With our easy access to stealth from CA and longbow #3 we can disengage, reposition ourself, knock our target somewhere, then lock them down with immobilize while our bristleback’s F2 skill does 50% of our targets hp. Your main source of burst damage is going to be from that skill.

As for druids role in the game, based on the build that you are running you should probably cap home at the start, or push far. Druid is really good at pushing far at the start of the game because you can keep the point decapped and kill most of what tries to cap in a 1v1. Or if they send multiples to you, you can disengage from the fight really easily. Throughout the game you want to mainly be watching for enemies to push your side nodes as you are going to be responsible for defending them. You can be at mid helping that fight, then break off and get back to your home before the enemy can get there. Then either win the 1v1 or stall long enough until you can get a +1.

My favorite thing to do on druid is just sit on the enemy’s home and make them send 2 to 3 people to me and just run around popping in and out of stealth keeping them all occupied while the rest of my team caps the other 2 points. If you can hold an outnumbered fight on druid for an extended period of time that will help your team out a lot. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions and I would be happy to help.

Spend a lot of time in dueling servers and fight against people that are a lot better than you. I’ve been playing ranger since launch and the majority of my time in game has been spent dueling. I can take breaks of months at a time and when I come back I’m still able to beat everybody simply because of all the practice I’ve had.

If you want to get good at ranked, get good at 1v1s. If you can’t fight, you won’t be able to help your team.

Thanks for all the great tips people!
I know a bit more what I’m doing now and it feels like I’m contributing more.
Still struggle at dealing with certain classes but I’ll hopefully get better at that eventually. :P

Guardian I feel I’m doing a little better against but still struggle a great deal, too much goes on at once in this game with flashy attacks sprouting out of the ground like weed in a jungle, so it’s next to impossible for me to see any telegraphed attacks like the Guardian pull.
Mesmer I find really annoying and because of the targeting system in this game, both Mesmers and Necro’s are just something I’ll never get used to, I’ll keep on hitting pets and clones forever it seems.
Necro’s are even more annoying because they have two forms, one taking damage for them.
I’ve tried playing Necro before, trying to learn how the class works, but I can’t do anything that others seem to do against me.

I play a lot of Druid longbow menders build. You can actually kill quite a lot of people with it, especially in lower tiers (gold/silver/bronze). If you want to kill someone you got to time your burst: longbow #4 – longbow #2 with bristle F2/or pet swap to smokescale.

Furthermore, Im not a fan of the Rune of the Trooper. Either use signet of the wild or rune of the dolyak to gain enough astral force. You should be able to hold a point versus everyting except for maybe engi. Practice by dueling is very important if you struggle in 1v1’s. If you’re good enough at this, then the next step is your rotation on the map.

Great tips. I went through the same on Thief. I am still nowhere near top notch, but am much better through practice, and I’ve been doing lots of it. I’ve had to research a lot of the tips and tricks. Try using google/youtube to look for Druid PvP tips and tricks videos. I am sure there’s some. There’s a lot of very good players with very good intel.

OP, I’m not writing this to shame you. If you’re struggling with 1v1s with one of the top dueling builds, that’s fine. But, my biggest suggestion to you is to play on dueling servers or join the daily tournaments before doing more ranked. Ranked isn’t for you if you’re having trouble with duels on a longbow Druid. You will get rekt and you will be blamed for losing the match. People will see and they will queue dodge you.

You can absolutely still do ranked if you really want to, but I’m still standing by this post because you are dragging yourself and others down. I know this is harsh, but it’s a reality that even I have trouble accepting.

Don’t stop playing, but you need to get better before doing more ranked. You took the right step by asking on the forums for help. Ignore those who flame and shame you for struggling. Again, this post isn’t intended to shame you. I’m only trying to save you time and energy in a game mode that won’t help you improve at the area that your profession is strongest in. At the very least, be able to kill DHs. You are their nightmare. Become their nightmare. Don’t worry about losing to mesmers. They’re usually condi and Druids just don’t do well against non stop condis. Plus mesmer is the other top dueling profession.

Don’t stop playing. If you keep working toward improvement, you can become a top player in ranked. It takes time, but trying to improve, from your level, in ranked is a waste of your and other’s time.

Zintrothen.1056:

OP, I’m not writing this to shame you. If you’re struggling with 1v1s with one of the top dueling builds, that’s fine. But, my biggest suggestion to you is to play on dueling servers or join the daily tournaments before doing more ranked. Ranked isn’t for you if you’re having trouble with duels on a longbow Druid. You will get rekt and you will be blamed for losing the match. People will see and they will queue dodge you.

You can absolutely still do ranked if you really want to, but I’m still standing by this post because you are dragging yourself and others down. I know this is harsh, but it’s a reality that even I have trouble accepting.

Don’t stop playing, but you need to get better before doing more ranked. You took the right step by asking on the forums for help. Ignore those who flame and shame you for struggling. Again, this post isn’t intended to shame you. I’m only trying to save you time and energy in a game mode that won’t help you improve at the area that your profession is strongest in. At the very least, be able to kill DHs. You are their nightmare. Become their nightmare. Don’t worry about losing to mesmers. They’re usually condi and Druids just don’t do well against non stop condis. Plus mesmer is the other top dueling profession.

Don’t stop playing. If you keep working toward improvement, you can become a top player in ranked. It takes time, but trying to improve, from your level, in ranked is a waste of your and other’s time.

No offense taken. :P
I switched to try out the bunker druid build and it’s working fairly well for now.
I never do get blamed for losing us the match, that’s actually only happened once before where someone kept spamming my whisper that I suck.
This happened on my GS/Hammer warrior though, after I had just come back after a year or so break and I had clicked League by mistake. xD

Long bow is terrible and I’ve never understood why anyone serious would play it, you can do more damage with Sword/dagger quickness. try actually playing your role.
home point defender…keep and eye on that and try to get yourself in a 1v2 as this is were i believe ranger shines. ranger took a massive hit to stab with the pulse nerf making it cake for thieves so pay more attention to thief position.

also, ranger is NOT a bunker. youre never going to be standing on point and holding it like a guardian. if you want to join a teamfight try to let your ele/engi stand on point if need be and focus on keeping him alive while being ready with cele and stab for the resses.

another tip that might be useful is if you are not getting 16-25 stacks of might during fights your not doing it right. try to learn the mechanics of heal as one and why you actually get might when you use it.

however. ranger is one of the hardest classes to soloq on and get high but dont use this as an excuse. constantly evaluate why youre losing and watch video playbacks of when you though you did good/bad. then next time round avoid the bad repeat the good simple.