Guild Wars 2

I can beat spirit rangers quite consistently on my necromancer. Occasionally, things don’t go my way due to constant evade spam resulting in missed abilities. However, If I can string together several key items, its GG ranger. Also, the amount of life force I have at the start of the engagement can also drastically affect the difficulty of the fight.

Sol.4310:

QQ some more about Spirit Ranger’s. If there so strong go roll one make video and show Anet how there so easy to play.

Please QQ more, this will be like POST 10000 about people who don’t play spirit ranger or ranger come to forums and QQ. QQQQQQQQQQQQ

Really? If i had a way to record i would. They are a very easy class to play and i do play one. It isn’t your mad skilllzzz that is making you win.

Yet you all say the same about S/D thieves. Perception is a funny thing.

alcopaul.2156:

FOTMS/META builds are good for the casuals to get into pvp.

Nerfing them will be a bad idea.

No, that’s what the warrior class is for; it was intended to be an introductory class. It’s odd, however, that they made warriors one of the hardest classes in the game to do well in, competitively.

They simplified the warrior class to the point where it was non-functional for the past 8 months; only recently have warriors become borderline viable, although still non-existent in 5-man arenas.

They are horribly easy to use. All you have to do is hide behind the spirits, and they’ll intercept most projectiles and eat many melee attacks instead of you.

Properly traited they’ll have lots of health.

So all you have to do is learn to move in a way that will put them in harms way instead you, while you attack with ranged attacks like axe, longbow and shortbow.

Along some proper choices in skills and traits, this particular build requires less kill that usual, providing better results.

That’s why it will most definitely get addressed sooner or later in a skill balance update.

You can deny it all you want, but the update notes will talk.

Spirit ranger is pretty easy to be honest. When I started Guia’s build http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpDAlBmaJrI or whoever build this is I was just playing around and wanted to kill people and I’d go up against celeb players and pretty much rock there world all day long. But when I started to know how everything worked and played more defensively and smartly I started dying more. The thing about celeb players is that they’re VERY GOOD at running away and coming back, before I wouldn’t allow them to run away and I’d not cap a node, but now since I cap nodes and play to win I die more because with spirit ranger you have to keep the pressure on, if you allow enemies to heal and comeback quickly youll lose. But if you want to kill people, this is the best build to do so, so many dodges, so much dps, can do pretty much anything.

One thing I realized playing this build is some people target your spirits before they target you, its kinda nice to have something up that people have to destroy before going after you, like spirit of renewal. I’m actually liking spirit rangers in the game. Its nice to force people into being aware and killing NPCs that could change the game.

Eurantien.4632:

There seems to be some confusion in this thread. Spirit rangers use conditions and rely on their spirit actives to land. Necromancers heal more off of conditions and have 2 ways to transfer conditions back to the ranger. Therefore logic dictates that if the necro kites the ranger and stays out of melee range (spirit active range) then they are being hit primarily with poison, bleeding, burning which can either be consumed or just transferred back to the ranger, one of which is a mark (25% chance to dodge) and a seeking condi transfer that is rather difficult to dodge as well. Even if dodged the condi transfer ends up on a spirit or a pet which can then be epidemic’d. Moreover, ranger’s conditions go to their pet so with the above and a good epidemic on the pet and the ranger is doomed. So, a well played necromancer should beat a well played spirit ranger.

Thank you, sir. Well stated and supported by logic.

As I said, necros give me trouble as a spirit ranger, and you have just explained why very well.

On theory, yes it should work. On reality, it is not that beautiful. How in the worl a Necro can kite a Ranger with no swiftness nor Vigor access? Compared to massive evade skill on Ranger, access to Vigor and Swiftness, it is so sub-par, much like one of my naive thought back then when I said a War can kite an Eles D/D. I made a really long post about that on theory, D/D Eles can only be in melee to dams, and no access to Range weapon, therefore War can kite him with ease which is DEALY wrong. With so many gap closer, evade skill, Vigor and Swiftness, asking a Necro to kite a Ranger is impossible.

Odd is I find it duelling with Necro on my Engineer is way easier than dealing with Rangers. Between, a Necro and a Engineer, who you think can kite better? And note that, Engineer has a range weapon dams pretty decent compare to a Staff Necro Dam is just so kitten. Most of the dams come from fear chain combo and it only works when you are up close. The further away, the more impossible to get hit by that combo.

Stealth.9324:

On theory, yes it should work. On reality, it is not that beautiful. How in the worl a Necro can kite a Ranger with no swiftness nor Vigor access? Compared to massive evade skill on Ranger, access to Vigor and Swiftness, it is so sub-par, much like one of my naive thought back then when I said a War can kite an Eles D/D. I made a really long post about that on theory, D/D Eles can only be in melee to dams, and no access to Range weapon, therefore War can kite him with ease which is DEALY wrong. With so many gap closer, evade skill, Vigor and Swiftness, asking a Necro to kite a Ranger is impossible.

Odd is I find it duelling with Necro on my Engineer is way easier than dealing with Rangers. Between, a Necro and a Engineer, who you think can kite better? And note that, Engineer has a range weapon dams pretty decent compare to a Staff Necro Dam is just so kitten. Most of the dams come from fear chain combo and it only works when you are up close. The further away, the more impossible to get hit by that combo.

Not to mention the in-built gapcloser on #1 sword

I still can’t believe people are trying to argue about GW2 specs like there are certain specs that stand out as a pinnacle of skill.

This game is easy. Period.

“But… But… a ranger who has played for 3 days is better than x that has played for y time cuz the build is so OP.”

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups.

The entire game is simple, and every spec is easy. Sure, a few specs require more actions per minute to perform optimally, but that’s important in order to change the flow of gameplay from class to class in order to differentiate the “feel” of each class.

The “nerf the ranger” topic has been made for every single meta ranger build that has existed since launch. That includes traps, which never received any actual nerfs, the meta just changed so that the build became more inefficient than other specs at performing the same output.

It’s time to point out that at this point, it’s just a witch hunt perpetuated by peoples bias against rangers, simply because they just don’t like losing to the ranger class. It’s okay to be kitten though, it’s understandable. But it’s time to stop non-constructively demanding the game be changed because of it.

Now that all the angry peoples blood is flowing, here is some advice. Instead of shouting “nerf” with tears in your eyes on the forums, try making a constructive topic. Go into detail about what makes things too good or too easy, and how it is affecting the competitive level of the game. Then, look historically at the track record of ranger builds and begin determining what needs to be changed to make the class more competitive, and stop just trying to get a single class nerfed out of all it’s competitive options.

Much more useful, especially to devs reading forums that make the game, than to just scream nerf every time people don’t like something, without adding anything healthy or constructive to the games improvement or development.

jcbroe.4329:

I still can’t believe people are trying to argue about GW2 specs like there are certain specs that stand out as a pinnacle of skill.

This game is easy. Period.

“But… But… a ranger who has played for 3 days is better than x that has played for y time cuz the build is so OP.”

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups.

The entire game is simple, and every spec is easy. Sure, a few specs require more actions per minute to perform optimally, but that’s important in order to change the flow of gameplay from class to class in order to differentiate the “feel” of each class.

The “nerf the ranger” topic has been made for every single meta ranger build that has existed since launch. That includes traps, which never received any actual nerfs, the meta just changed so that the build became more inefficient than other specs at performing the same output.

It’s time to point out that at this point, it’s just a witch hunt perpetuated by peoples bias against rangers, simply because they just don’t like losing to the ranger class. It’s okay to be kitten though, it’s understandable. But it’s time to stop non-constructively demanding the game be changed because of it.

Now that all the angry peoples blood is flowing, here is some advice. Instead of shouting “nerf” with tears in your eyes on the forums, try making a constructive topic. Go into detail about what makes things too good or too easy, and how it is affecting the competitive level of the game. Then, look historically at the track record of ranger builds and begin determining what needs to be changed to make the class more competitive, and stop just trying to get a single class nerfed out of all it’s competitive options.

Much more useful, especially to devs reading forums that make the game, than to just scream nerf every time people don’t like something, without adding anything healthy or constructive to the games improvement or development.

Cool story, bro!

Hey everyone, Point out the Change in the last few patches that made Spirit Rangers over the top.

A spirit ranger with dead spirits is by far the weakest class in the game. Any other class with equal skill level can steamroll over them. Anyone who is above their skill level can destroy them in a matter of seconds. Their only chance for survival is hoping they can absorb enough damage to stay alive and not get interrupted during the 4.5 second recast time. If they are lucky enough to recast their spirits, they have to pray that they don’t die immediately, because then they have to find some way to stay alive for 60 seconds with little defense and no offense.

To me, the solution seems simple – spend a few seconds killing the 2 main spirits.

Wombat.3510:

A spirit ranger with dead spirits is by far the weakest class in the game. Any other class with equal skill level can steamroll over them. Anyone who is above their skill level can destroy them in a matter of seconds. Their only chance for survival is hoping they can absorb enough damage to stay alive and not get interrupted during the 4.5 second recast time. If they are lucky enough to recast their spirits, they have to pray that they don’t die immediately, because then they have to find some way to stay alive for 60 seconds with little defense and no offense.

To me, the solution seems simple – spend a few seconds killing the 2 main spirits.

If it was that easy to kill them they wouldn’t be a must for tpvp teams.

" It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups."

Riiight…OK.

To be honest there isn’t that great of a skill ceiling in Guild Wars 2 and the reason of that is because most of the skills are simplistic and/or shallow versions from Guild Wars 1 skills. Everything was watered down in the crossover from GW1 to GW2. Go to GW1 wiki and see for yourself the number AND complexity of most part of the skills.

jcbroe.4329:

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups

I’m sorry, who are you? What team were you on? What is your competitive experience with this game?

Solo queue personal best rank: 613 15-11
Team queue personal best rank: not found.

I see, you’re one of those people that hasn’t actually played the game at a high level but think it’s extremely easy anyway. Just so you know, no player or team is anywhere near the “skillcap” of this game.

But you’re telling me you can go at least 50-50 in complete mirror matches with top players after playing a class for 40 minutes? We’re talking about specs that aren’t spirit ranger, necro, s/d thief, and instead builds like d/p thief, shatter Mesmer, s/d ele. Since you’re NA, I’d like to see you 1v1 people like caed, Supcutie, and phantaram on their main builds in a mirror match.

That’s not even getting into team play, which is what this game is all about. You’re telling me you’ll out bunker someone like lily or davinci after playing for 40 minutes? Good luck with that.

You play Guild wars 2? Nah man I play Ego wars 2

Follidus.8027:

jcbroe.4329:

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups

I’m sorry, who are you? What team were you on? What is your competitive experience with this game?

Solo queue personal best rank: 613 15-11
Team queue personal best rank: not found.

I see, you’re one of those people that hasn’t actually played the game at a high level but think it’s extremely easy anyway. Just so you know, no player or team is anywhere near the “skillcap” of this game.

But you’re telling me you can go at least 50-50 in complete mirror matches with top players after playing a class for 40 minutes? We’re talking about specs that aren’t spirit ranger, necro, s/d thief, and instead builds like d/p thief, shatter Mesmer, s/d ele. Since you’re NA, I’d like to see you 1v1 people like caed, Supcutie, and phantaram on their main builds in a mirror match.

That’s not even getting into team play, which is what this game is all about. You’re telling me you’ll out bunker someone like lily or davinci after playing for 40 minutes? Good luck with that.

Folly, I didn’t once mention outplaying people in the segment you quoted me in lol. Also, you can pull rank on me all you want, I never dedicated the time to this game because I dedicated enough time to guild wars 1, and have a life and family now.

I’m not saying it takes 20 minutes to be able to outplay anybody in the game, I’m saying it takes 20 dedicated minutes of gameplay time, combined with the resources available (forums, twitch streaming, etc) to adequately learn the ins and outs of the specs and rotations in this game, especially when the gameplay has been severely dumbed down from the transition from guild wars 1 to guild wars 2.

The main component of skill in this game is teamplay. Communication, proper rotations, and trust and reliance on teammates.

I’m sorry I don’t have the time or the resources to find and play with a dedicated team in a community so small and a pvp so stagnant that it isn’t enjoyable to me, but that doesn’t invalidate any opinions I carry (yes, they are opinions), and it doesn’t immediately make things I say wrong just because I’ve spent maybe an hour in solo since its been released, and don’t have the time to play on a dedicated team.

I would love the opportunity to play against any of the people you mentioned, from my admittedly open fanboyism alone (I tell people in the ranger subforum to watch people like you to play all the time because it shows off rotations better and allows people to gain visual experience to learn the game). But I would appreciate it if in the future, you didn’t get on a high horse and try to pull rank and speak down at me, and instead, being on the high end of the leaderboards and such that you are, actually provide a counter argument from the experience I am incapable of achieving.

Until then, I will continue to stand by the fact that I believe that the classes in this game have an easy learning curve, especially after playing guild wars 1 competitively for about half a decade. The part of the game that takes skill involves learning the flow of combat, learning rotations, learning how to rotate properly, and gaining the confidence to make on the fly decisions that determine the outcome of the game.

Xsorus.2507:

Hey everyone, Point out the Change in the last few patches that made Spirit Rangers over the top.

The nerfs to everyone else and a decline in the use of Power damage?

jcbroe.4329:

But I would appreciate it if in the future, you didn’t get on a high horse and try to pull rank and speak down at me, and instead, being on the high end of the leaderboards and such that you are, actually provide a counter argument from the experience I am incapable of achieving.

You can say I’m on a high horse, that I’m an elitist, or whatever you want. I’m used to that by now. I’m just tired of seeing the same types of people say this game is stupidly easy. It’s the same thing every time:
“This game is easy, I played guild wars 1 which was a much better and more skillful game”
“I’m not investing any time in this game because it’s so easy, that’s why I have no competitive experience with guild wars 2. I could if I really wanted to.”

But you’re right, leaderboards don’t matter. They don’t matter because it’s so easy to get to the top of it if you actually tried. That’s why leaderboards don’t matter right now. But when you can’t even get to the top, and then say things like “yeah I can learn any build to it’s full potential in 40 minutes” it just makes me completely bewildered. It’s the same story with literally everyone that’s like you. Every single one.

And yet despite it being so easy, and this game being bad, I just don’t get it. I don’t get why you’re here. Are you trying to improve the game? If you’re trying to improve the game, why do you do nothing to give yourself credibility when you talk about it? If you were competitive in gw1, or any game, you know that games are VASTLY different when you start playing with and against the people that are the best at it. So who are you to say it’s so easy when you’re not even there?

I’m not saying that if you tried to play gw2 competitively that you would suck. But what I’m saying is if you did manage to put some effort into it, and started playing at the top, I think you’d realize how wrong you are about how easy this game is (except for a few brokenly easy builds that plague the game right now).

Also, how am I supposed to counter-argue you when you say things like this:

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups.

The entire game is simple, and every spec is easy. Sure, a few specs require more actions per minute to perform optimally, but that’s important in order to change the flow of gameplay from class to class in order to differentiate the “feel” of each class.

I agree with swiftpaw here. If spirit ranger is a no skill class, make one yourself and face me in a 1v1. I’ll even give you my exact build so we can be on even footing.

Please scroll back to first page and read my post.

jcbroe.4329:

Follidus.8027:

jcbroe.4329:

LOL. That’s my response. 3 days? It takes 20 minutes to learn the depth of and play skillfully any class in this game, tops. 10 minutes maximum to learn all of the different setups and weaknesses, then another 10 minutes to learn optimal roles and matchups

I’m sorry, who are you? What team were you on? What is your competitive experience with this game?

Solo queue personal best rank: 613 15-11
Team queue personal best rank: not found.

I see, you’re one of those people that hasn’t actually played the game at a high level but think it’s extremely easy anyway. Just so you know, no player or team is anywhere near the “skillcap” of this game.

But you’re telling me you can go at least 50-50 in complete mirror matches with top players after playing a class for 40 minutes? We’re talking about specs that aren’t spirit ranger, necro, s/d thief, and instead builds like d/p thief, shatter Mesmer, s/d ele. Since you’re NA, I’d like to see you 1v1 people like caed, Supcutie, and phantaram on their main builds in a mirror match.

That’s not even getting into team play, which is what this game is all about. You’re telling me you’ll out bunker someone like lily or davinci after playing for 40 minutes? Good luck with that.

Folly, I didn’t once mention outplaying people in the segment you quoted me in lol. Also, you can pull rank on me all you want, I never dedicated the time to this game because I dedicated enough time to guild wars 1, and have a life and family now.

I’m not saying it takes 20 minutes to be able to outplay anybody in the game, I’m saying it takes 20 dedicated minutes of gameplay time, combined with the resources available (forums, twitch streaming, etc) to adequately learn the ins and outs of the specs and rotations in this game, especially when the gameplay has been severely dumbed down from the transition from guild wars 1 to guild wars 2.

The main component of skill in this game is teamplay. Communication, proper rotations, and trust and reliance on teammates.

I’m sorry I don’t have the time or the resources to find and play with a dedicated team in a community so small and a pvp so stagnant that it isn’t enjoyable to me, but that doesn’t invalidate any opinions I carry (yes, they are opinions), and it doesn’t immediately make things I say wrong just because I’ve spent maybe an hour in solo since its been released, and don’t have the time to play on a dedicated team.

I would love the opportunity to play against any of the people you mentioned, from my admittedly open fanboyism alone (I tell people in the ranger subforum to watch people like you to play all the time because it shows off rotations better and allows people to gain visual experience to learn the game). But I would appreciate it if in the future, you didn’t get on a high horse and try to pull rank and speak down at me, and instead, being on the high end of the leaderboards and such that you are, actually provide a counter argument from the experience I am incapable of achieving.

Until then, I will continue to stand by the fact that I believe that the classes in this game have an easy learning curve, especially after playing guild wars 1 competitively for about half a decade. The part of the game that takes skill involves learning the flow of combat, learning rotations, learning how to rotate properly, and gaining the confidence to make on the fly decisions that determine the outcome of the game.

If gw1 was so easy then why are you struggling in gw2?

Personal best of 650? My fiancé who focuses on PvE was rank 78 on her main and a best of rank 90 on her alt.

Funny that you don’t have time to be decent in gw2 but you have time to type those walls of text and rant about how gw1 involves do much more skill than gw2. I feel sorry for your neglected family =\

Folly, I’m not trying to call you an elitist, and I’m well aware you have to defend your position probably all the time. I’m surprised you even post on the forums as much as you do.

I wasn’t trying to directly say that the game was bad, or that it was too easy. I would love to see the game improve. What I was trying to imply was that, if the ranger build is so easy (which it is, I’ve been playing the same build for like 3 months now), what makes every other spec in the game more difficult, especially with the current meta builds right now? In my (admittedly more limited than yours but still) experience, as it stands, probably guardians are running the only meta builds that take skill, and a good guardian can carry their team when played well.

If anything, the quote that needed to be derived from my long winded post was this:

Go into detail about what makes things too good or too easy, and how it is affecting the competitive level of the game. Then, look historically at the track record of ranger builds and begin determining what needs to be changed to make the class more competitive, and stop just trying to get a single class nerfed out of all it’s competitive options.

I would LOVE to have a discussion about the mechanics behind the current “OP” or easy builds. Not just for the forums to be filled with people shouting nerf every time they don’t like something. Wouldn’t it be much more beneficial to the devs and to improving the game if we could have a joint discussion on what makes the specs easy versus the reward they provide by examining the details and mechanics of the build, and then explaining what mechanics need changing to raise the bar on the skill it takes to be successful with the build? Surely that would be the better solution than to keep making “nerf this” threads that attack builds with opinions and anecdotes that turn into arguments with no real detail or explanation.

As far as giving myself credibility, their isn’t exactly a huge community here to work with, or many tools. I have to do exactly what I did in guild wars 1; play the few hours I can a week and hope that other players recognize me as a valuable player and pick me up for their roster; something that was at least possible with GW1 RA, but doesn’t seem likely in GW2 based on how not serious the community tends to take the PvP scene in this game.

So as it ends up, all I can do is play the time I’m given, and hope my voice gets heard on the forum somewhere and hope that people are either able to overlook the experience I am incapable of gaining overnight, or that a top player takes a look at my fairly roughly formed opinion and corrects anything that’s wrong or derives an interesting or well made point out of it.

My post has already done 2 things; it’s shifted the conversation towards the possibility of it becoming a more constructive and less inflammatory thread against a single build, and it’s made people argue with me saying that it takes longer than 20 minutes to learn a class, which logically means that the aforementioned ranger build has to be a part of that grouping, since there were no notes excluding it; which means that not a single person that has disagreed with me yet has provided any reasoning whatsoever as to why the spirit build is easier than other builds; by grouping all builds together and saying that none of them are as easy as I made them out to be.

By doing that it will hopefully start to lead in a direction where people try to classify why the build is easy, and not just say its too easy and needs to be nerfed.

@Lux; I’m glad that you’re finance` had the good fortune to be grouped with teammates she could succeed with in Solo Q. It’s nice to see that some people are having success with the system, so give her my regards.

As far as why I type things out on the forum, it’s because I have a better chance at contributing something useful to the improvement of the game by having a discussion on the forum than by playing the game, which is what I thought the purpose of the forums were; to have constructive conversations.

You say you can become good at any class in ~20 minutes? That’s not constructive. You come in here using your (unknown) gw1 accomplishments as the foundation for your credibility to comment on the meta? Improve at the game and then come contribute to the discussion. Perhaps you’ll come to realize that there’s more to learn than 20 minutes worth of material.

I’m willing to bet my Solo Queue Rank along with any other rank is worse than anyone else in this thread.