Guild Wars 2

Bought GW2 to try something different. Rolled ranger because I wanted a pet and like to pew pew from a distance.

Ranger is fun, but the game seems to just dump you in there with little to no instruction on how to play. The pamphlet that comes with the game gives you a link to a non-existent website. guildwars2.com does mention a wiki, which isn’t terribly helpful to someone who doesn’t know much already.

I think I reached level 8 or something before it just stopped being fun. No real idea why I should choose a fire trap over a spike trap, how F2 works or how to change it. Like I said, the game just throws you into the water.

This isn’t a rant against GW2. I have no intention of quitting. I’ll keep at it. But truth be told I haven’t played in over a week because I just don’t know what to do with my class.

Some instructional quests for the noob would really have been helpful.

Hello there!

Seems like you’re having trouble learning the game in general. I think posting in the general discussions subforum is a better idea!

But this is a ranger sub-forum, so I’ll try to answer your questions.

Fire trap applies fire. Spike trap applies cripple and bleeding. So a fire trap does more damage (I think. Fire does more damage than bleed.) But the Spike trap has the additional utility of a cripple. But skill points are such that you will eventually be able to unlock all your skills anyways, so don’t be afraid to get them both, try them out, and see which one you like better.

F2 is your pet’s main activated ability. Pets have a total of 4 skills. 3 of them they control by themselves, and 1 you control as the player. Different pets have different F2 abilities.

And yes, Anet does like throwing you into the fire with little help. However, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask. I’m sure many posters here would be glad to help you out.

There are little popups when you get to certain levels and unlock something new like a utility slot. As for how to build your character there are several resources available, or you can ask the community for a build to suit your playstyle “I like to go pew pew from ranged with condition damage can somone help me?”. Also if you want to mess around and try out all these build ideas click on the swords and go to heart of the mists, it allows you to use all skill points up to lvl 80 and you can respec at no cost so it allows you to mess around with stuff there.

As for what to pick fire trap or spike trap, it is really personal preference. Fire trap applies burning (640 dps [condi spec] for 3 seconds if enemy stays on) where spike trap applies a slow and 3 stacks of bleed (usually around 300 dps if condi spec for 6 seconds on initial condi hit). Fire trap is a shorter cooldown, and down the road it can be traited in to throw the trap, make the trap area larger, and double tick each second it is active. The fire trap is also a field effect which allows ranged projectiles to gain a chance to catch fire and add burning on top of their damage (look up fields or projectile finishers on the wiki for more information). Spike trap can be traited in the same way fire trap can, which also adds a 1s immobilize which is not labeled anywhere as to why it just appears. As to which is better than the other, the answer is “it depends” since bleeds stack in intensity (more bleed stacks = more dps) and burn stacks in duration (more burn stacks = longer lasting) it means that you should choose something which uses both bleed and burn for damage (as a burn for 1 second is the equivalent of a 6.4 stack of bleeds for 1 second). If you use a torch for example using a fire trap will be an excessive amount of burn damage. It all depends on what you are using for everything else, or what your friends bring to the table as well.

The f2 ability is changed through the pet window (you click on the pets portrait) and it brings up a list of all the pets you have available to you, each pet will have a different f2 ability in addition to the normal trait from its animal sub-group.

I’d be happy to answer questions for you if you have more, always willing to try and get more people into the game

What about link on “online manual” right in login panel?

I had the same problem when I was new. But, I found a lot of it was easy to pick up as I went. It introduced things to me gradually that I was able to figure out on my own; level 2 I figured out the weapons, level 5 I started to figure out the utilities as well, and then level 10 you start getting trait points, etc. Honestly though, just do the quests, work on the tasks/map completions, and you will pick up the little things really quickly.

The pets F2 is unique to each pet, along with three other skills they use at their own discretion. Once you have charmed more juvenile pets apart from your starter, you can change them freely in your pet window with “k”. You can also assign yourself two active pets that you can switch around with F4 freely in battle, which changes the F2 skill depending on what the pet is.

With your conditions, you have the three main damaging ones; poison, burn, and bleeding. Poison does average damage, but has the benefit of reducing the power of the afflicted target’s healing abilities. Burn is a very powerful one that does a lot of damage straight up. Bleeding is stackable (you can get up to 25 stacks) and does more damage with subsequent stacks. The shortbow’s 1 will apply one stack of bleeding on each hit if it’s from the side or behind, and the spike trap applies 3 or 5 stacks. (I don’t remember which right now lol) The spike trap does cripple as well, which lowers the target’s movement speed, so it can be handy. Basically, flame trap does more outright damage, and it’s usually my first choice for a trap on almost any of my ranger builds. Spike trap is useful if you want the cripple, or you’re working on stacking a lot of bleeding, since higher stacks do more damage than burn, but also take more dedication to get the stacks up in battle.

This game is a lot about experimenting though, and I think that’s what ANet intended; you find the things that you like, instead of them trying to tell you how to play your ranger. If you do have any questions, feel free to message me in game. If you’re uncertain about something that’s popped up, just ask a quick question in the /map chat, and someone will probably help you out.