Guild Wars 2

It’s obviously been way too long since we were promised fixes/improvements and it’s not happened at all. We had nerfs, underwater combat, and slight dps to GS instead. So, what now? I’ve accepted the fact that our situation will not improve, if it was going to it would have by now. I’m creating this thread to see if people have any suggestions on viable builds, or at least the best we can do with what we’ve got.

PVE or PVP, if anyone has any effective builds, tips or suggestions I’d be interested to hear what you have. There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

Pedra.4381:

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

That literally made my day. Thank you. There is so much wisom in your words.
Pedra.4381, you’re a wise man, I can tell.

Pedra.4381:

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

I’ve decided it’s time to just accept it. I’m not rerolling a different class, because honestly it’s just not fun to play through something that was dull and dragged on in the first place (1-80 kill risen for hours on end and farm the same events forever). This is where we are at and it’s not going to change significantly. If it was important to the devs it would have been fixed by now as they’ve been aware of the problems but not addressed any of them at all. I think we should try and figure out what works best for our class as it is, rather than continue complaining and getting our hopes up each month.

An effective build is to go reroll something else. My guardian puts out some pretty hefty AoE damage at all times, is unbelievably durable, and provides the party with tons of condition removal, permanent protection, near permanent retaliation, a fair bit of healing, aegis spam, some bonus toughness, and can choose between some great niche utilities for things like reflection walls and group stability. Swapping to staff gives me even more group support. There is no aspect of him that feels weak and other than sword/shield, all of my weapons feel powerful and useful. I have tons of great traits and wish I could spend more because I want so many of them. I don’t have to rely on some stupid, squishy pet to not get killed or confused and am always effective.

My warrior deals an absolutely absurd amount of damage to 3 targets in melee while dealing pretty respectable DPS at range, can take hits very well, and gives the party great might/fury uptime, permanent regeneration over a huge radius, 15% crit damage, and 170 precision. And so on and so forth. There is pretty much nothing at all that a ranger does better than these characters, and whatever very tiny, specific advantages he has over them are greatly, greatly outweighed by everything else.

I’m not really confident that Hrouda has actually ever played a good class because while you can easily finish dungeons as a ranger, the effectiveness of one compared to something else is so unbelievably vast that the differences should be immediately apparent to anybody who’s touched them.

So whatever, just reroll. It’s pretty quick to level a new character if you do some of it through crafting. I suggest getting to around level 20 normally, then checking out gw2crafts.net to give yourself a bit of a boost through maxing out cooking, jewelcrafter, and artificing (or even more if you have money to spend).

We can as well re-roll or stop playing. Scroll last 2-3 pages. There are several topics about people re-rolling to their alts (which become main) or some even stop playing.

Ranger was my main and only for first 3 months of game and for the last 1.5 month, but it’s time to get clever once again and just spend time on proffession I can actually do something.

Awarw.5081:

Pedra.4381:

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

I’ve decided it’s time to just accept it. I’m not rerolling a different class, because honestly it’s just not fun to play through something that was dull and dragged on in the first place (1-80 kill risen for hours on end and farm the same events forever). This is where we are at and it’s not going to change significantly. If it was important to the devs it would have been fixed by now as they’ve been aware of the problems but not addressed any of them at all. I think we should try and figure out what works best for our class as it is, rather than continue complaining and getting our hopes up each month.

Awarw, please understand that I take no issue with your decision nor your desire to find a way to continue your enjoyment of this game. I wish you the best of luck.

I still play with my Ranger simply because it’s the one class I feel most at home with, just due to the way it works and my personal tastes as a player (I prefer being the long range debuff master with the bow). It’s also one of the only classes I will dungeon with simply because I know how well I am with it, and how much I can take before getting taken out.

As others have said, re-roll.

In the long run, it’s good to have a stable of 80’s of different professions available to play. That way, when the profession you’re currently playing gets nerfed (and it will), you’ve got others to fall back on.

I’ve used this strategy with good success in several games, but nowhere has it been as worthwhile as with GW2.

Awarw.5081:

So, what now? I’ve accepted the fact that our situation will not improve, if it was going to it would have by now. I’m creating this thread to see if people have any suggestions on viable builds, or at least the best we can do with what we’ve got.

PVE or PVP, if anyone has any effective builds, tips or suggestions I’d be interested to hear what you have. There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

Well, I have a few different variations of my current build that I will share with you.

Easy to master:
0/20/0/30/20 – Crit/Vit/Heal type of setup.
0~
20~I, VI
0~
30~IV, VII, XI
20~II, IX

-or-

30/20/0/15/5 – Crit/Heal/Vit or Power type of setup.
30~IV, VIII, XI
20~I, VI
0~
15~VI
5~

-or-

0/0/30/20/20 – Toughness/Healing/Condi – A BM variation setup.
0~
0~
30~III, IX, XII
20~III, VII
20~VI, X

Harder to master:
20/0/30/15/5 – Heal/Condi/Toughness or Power – This build is capable of beating a BM build if played correctly.
20~III, VIII
0~
30~III, IX, XII
15~III
5~

I wont get into details, but I have had success with these setups. Critiques, comments or flames are welcome.

Awarw.5081:

Pedra.4381:

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

I’ve decided it’s time to just accept it. I’m not rerolling a different class, because honestly it’s just not fun to play through something that was dull and dragged on in the first place (1-80 kill risen for hours on end and farm the same events forever). This is where we are at and it’s not going to change significantly. If it was important to the devs it would have been fixed by now as they’ve been aware of the problems but not addressed any of them at all. I think we should try and figure out what works best for our class as it is, rather than continue complaining and getting our hopes up each month.

You can level a character 1-80 quickly if you have enough funds just by crafting. Look up some good guides online, buy all the mats you need BEFORE you start, then just knock it out in one afternoon. This won’t be cheap, but you can always farm up everything you need on your ranger before you roll the new character.

I’d never say ranger is weak or sth if I didn’t read forums. You know what I mean

I’m playing ranger since headstart, I played ranger in GW1 and I played archer-guys in all games. I’m not going to reroll, becasue nothing changed. Outside of some P2W asian MMOs I never saw a game that didn’t get some class fixed after some time. Be it year or two, I can wait, coz ranger IS fun for me.

Rerolling other character everytime your old main gets nerfed? In GW1 it’d mean every balance changes, so no thx. Also, some ppl like to have 1 char and play only on it, so moving because it’s weak/broken/hard/whatever at this moment, is bad idea in internet game.

Terkov.4138:

I’d never say ranger is weak or sth if I didn’t read forums. You know what I mean

I think this is actually really important, because you get a lot of people who say that they feel perfectly fine and useful on their rangers because they haven’t played anything else and don’t have the perspective necessary to see how much less effective they are. You go into a dungeon, you do do damage that seems pretty good by your own metrics, and get excited when you help out your team with healing spring. What you can’t really see is how much more everybody else is doing. How much less they have to sacrifice to be on par or exceed what you can offer.

Vargs.6234:

Terkov.4138:

I’d never say ranger is weak or sth if I didn’t read forums. You know what I mean

I think this is actually really important, because you get a lot of people who say that they feel perfectly fine and useful on their rangers because they haven’t played anything else and don’t have the perspective necessary to see how much less effective they are. You go into a dungeon, you do do damage that seems pretty good by your own metrics, and get excited when you help out your team with healing spring. What you can’t really see is how much more everybody else is doing. How much less they have to sacrifice to be on par or exceed what you can offer.

Agree, but there is also opposite thing: ppl who never learned to play ranger and compare it to classes they know better or that are easier to play. I’m not saying ranger is “fine”, but it surely isn’t as broken, as some ppl say.

If you’re not happy playing ranger either leave the game or reroll, I’d support that 100%, but it’s a fact that you are being either very very naive or you’re very very new to MMOs.

Awarw.5081:

PVE or PVP, if anyone has any effective builds, tips or suggestions I’d be interested to hear what you have. There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

If somebody decides to go for a trap build, I suggest this.

The greatsword is used mostly for the utility in this build, so it’s used for combos, blocking, escaping, and just annoying enemies by stopping their skills in their tracks. As you can tell, I also suggest setting up the greatsword so you’ll be able to take more punishment while in it.

The Superior Runes of the Dolyak, despite being a weird sounding setup, is actually pretty useful when combined with regen as you can actually outheal poison and bleed effects, or slow down their effects (as long as the stacks aren’t too big), and the extra vitality and toughness isn’t too shabby either. Hell, combine this with Signet of the Wild’s passive HP regen for some healing that can really annoy other players.

As a warning though…you’re not going to do much damage outside of conditions with this build, simply because it’s highlighting the most powerful thing in our arsenal…condition damage. And Signet of the Hunt is there simply because I rarely take it off unless I’m going to be in dungeons or doing a boss.

Vargs.6234:

An effective build is to go reroll something else. My guardian puts out some pretty hefty AoE damage at all times, is unbelievably durable, and provides the party with tons of condition removal, permanent protection, near permanent retaliation, a fair bit of healing, aegis spam, some bonus toughness, and can choose between some great niche utilities for things like reflection walls and group stability. Swapping to staff gives me even more group support. There is no aspect of him that feels weak and other than sword/shield, all of my weapons feel powerful and useful. I have tons of great traits and wish I could spend more because I want so many of them. I don’t have to rely on some stupid, squishy pet to not get killed or confused and am always effective.

My warrior deals an absolutely absurd amount of damage to 3 targets in melee while dealing pretty respectable DPS at range, can take hits very well, and gives the party great might/fury uptime, permanent regeneration over a huge radius, 15% crit damage, and 170 precision. And so on and so forth. There is pretty much nothing at all that a ranger does better than these characters, and whatever very tiny, specific advantages he has over them are greatly, greatly outweighed by everything else.

I’m not really confident that Hrouda has actually ever played a good class because while you can easily finish dungeons as a ranger, the effectiveness of one compared to something else is so unbelievably vast that the differences should be immediately apparent to anybody who’s touched them.

So whatever, just reroll. It’s pretty quick to level a new character if you do some of it through crafting. I suggest getting to around level 20 normally, then checking out gw2crafts.net to give yourself a bit of a boost through maxing out cooking, jewelcrafter, and artificing (or even more if you have money to spend).

The perfect answer. I’ve been playing a Ranger since Guild Wars 1, and they’ve pretty much always sucked at everything. I was hoping Guild Wars 2 would bring massive improvements to the Ranger class, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. 4+ years in Guild Wars and I’m about ready to go back to WoW because they know how to balance classes. Anyway, like others have stated, reroll to a Guardian or a Warrior. They get improved frequently and outdo Rangers in pretty much every aspect. Not to mention, their survivability is around 3 times as better than a Ranger’s.

Galtrix.7369:

The perfect answer. I’ve been playing a Ranger since Guild Wars 1, and they’ve pretty much always sucked at everything. I was hoping Guild Wars 2 would bring massive improvements to the Ranger class, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. 4+ years in Guild Wars and I’m about ready to go back to WoW because they know how to balance classes. Anyway, like others have stated, reroll to a Guardian or a Warrior. They get improved frequently and outdo Rangers in pretty much every aspect. Not to mention, their survivability is around 3 times as better than a Ranger’s.

The bolded makes me laugh so hard. Those classes can outdo Rangers in Condition Damage? I think not. Also, survivability? I was in WvW and fought two warriors by myself. I took out one and was halfway done with the other when I got taken down by him. And the guardians…oh dear god how sad I’ve felt fighting them, just due to how fast their HP has been burned through. If they’re the top, then I weep for the meta. Not to mention the only times I got wiped 1v1 were against a thief (who really knew what he was doing), and…wait, that’s it. No other class I 1v1’d tonight was able to take me out at all, and with the exceptions of Necro and Engineer (made me sad that I didn’t see a single one in WvW), I wiped them all out (save for the thief who knew what he was doing, of course).

RyuDragnier.9476:

Galtrix.7369:

The perfect answer. I’ve been playing a Ranger since Guild Wars 1, and they’ve pretty much always sucked at everything. I was hoping Guild Wars 2 would bring massive improvements to the Ranger class, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. 4+ years in Guild Wars and I’m about ready to go back to WoW because they know how to balance classes. Anyway, like others have stated, reroll to a Guardian or a Warrior. They get improved frequently and outdo Rangers in pretty much every aspect. Not to mention, their survivability is around 3 times as better than a Ranger’s.

The bolded makes me laugh so hard. Those classes can outdo Rangers in Condition Damage? I think not. Also, survivability? I was in WvW and fought two warriors by myself. I took out one and was halfway done with the other when I got taken down by him. And the guardians…oh dear god how sad I’ve felt fighting them, just due to how fast their HP has been burned through. If they’re the top, then I weep for the meta. Not to mention the only times I got wiped 1v1 were against a thief (who really knew what he was doing), and…wait, that’s it. No other class I 1v1’d tonight was able to take me out at all, and with the exceptions of Necro and Engineer (made me sad that I didn’t see a single one in WvW), I wiped them all out (save for the thief who knew what he was doing, of course).

Yes, you can build a good duelist for WvW, but Thieves and D/D eles are still better roamers and apply superior burst damage like roamers should, since a lengthly skirmish is fun PvP but bad WvW gameplay. A good WvW roamer isn’t the one getting lots of kills by fighting all those upleveled and unskilled players you can’t find in tPvP, it’s the one doing things that actually give points, while minimizing the time spent traveling to the next objective that will give points by quickly disposing of any enemy they encounter (and choose to fight) before the proverbial zerg shows up to ruin your plans.

Rangers are still outperformed by any other profession in dungeons, especially if they go for direct damage, and since going condition is ill-advised due to the shared bleed cap, crappy direct damage is what you should build for. Even if you went for condition damage and were the only condition dealer in the party, you’re just a bad Necro. A Necro would also have better condition damage since they don’t need to invest 30 points in a traitline that gives Precision and Crit dmg to reach consistent condition application, on top of being way tankier than the Ranger and the pet combined.

I see excuses Venereus on why we’re supposedly not good. But have you ever just said “To hell with what other people think!” and just play the class for fun? You’ll see a lot more enjoyment out of it, as of right now you seem like somebody who cares about what other people think more than just playing the class.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I see excuses Venereus on why we’re supposedly not good. But have you ever just said “To hell with what other people think!” and just play the class for fun? You’ll see a lot more enjoyment out of it, as of right now you seem like somebody who cares about what other people think more than just playing the class.

Reality is a bit of a bubble burster isn’t it?

One can still enjoy the class and continue playing while admitting it is subpar in dungeons.

It’s possible.

I know that swiftpaw, but the negativity is irritating…and this is coming from somebody who is a known pessimist.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I know that swiftpaw, but the negativity is irritating…and this is coming from somebody who is a known pessimist.

I don’t much remember people’s names, I just don’t like singling people out and labeling ’em and stuff.

I understand where you come from though, the class is fun and skill dependant and it’s irritating when people trash talk it. Especially given that, as many people read these forums, it creates a class bias and has in many cases resulted in people not wanting to take ranger in their groups. This affects good and bad players alike.

At the same time though (for me) I want to just look at this realistically and say to A-Net, look.. it really needs some improvement here, instead of saying well at least it’s fun. I’d like it to be fun and on par with other classes in dungeons so I don’t feel guilty when I’m playing my ranger.

Vargs.6234:

An effective build is to go reroll something else. My guardian puts out some pretty hefty AoE damage at all times, is unbelievably durable, and provides the party with tons of condition removal, permanent protection, near permanent retaliation, a fair bit of healing, aegis spam, some bonus toughness, and can choose between some great niche utilities for things like reflection walls and group stability. Swapping to staff gives me even more group support. There is no aspect of him that feels weak and other than sword/shield, all of my weapons feel powerful and useful. I have tons of great traits and wish I could spend more because I want so many of them. I don’t have to rely on some stupid, squishy pet to not get killed or confused and am always effective.

My warrior deals an absolutely absurd amount of damage to 3 targets in melee while dealing pretty respectable DPS at range, can take hits very well, and gives the party great might/fury uptime, permanent regeneration over a huge radius, 15% crit damage, and 170 precision. And so on and so forth. There is pretty much nothing at all that a ranger does better than these characters, and whatever very tiny, specific advantages he has over them are greatly, greatly outweighed by everything else.

I’m not really confident that Hrouda has actually ever played a good class because while you can easily finish dungeons as a ranger, the effectiveness of one compared to something else is so unbelievably vast that the differences should be immediately apparent to anybody who’s touched them.

So whatever, just reroll. It’s pretty quick to level a new character if you do some of it through crafting. I suggest getting to around level 20 normally, then checking out gw2crafts.net to give yourself a bit of a boost through maxing out cooking, jewelcrafter, and artificing (or even more if you have money to spend).

sir, if the intention of the ranger was to be tanky with group support, ArenaNet would simply have given the guardian a bow, or the warrior better range DPS and evades.

One can compare the raw outcome till ones eyes melt. However it does not change the fact that the ranger was never intended to be raw DPS or raw support or raw tank. It was supposed to be something else.

While ArenaNet’s definition may differ from what the players envision the class as, the facts are clear. A ranger is surprisingly enough a RANGER. It is not a warrior or guardian, or mesmer, or elemetalist, or necromancer or engineer. A ranger is and will forever be a RANGER.

Now go trait your longbow and look at all the Q_Q’s from warriors and guardians that cannot interrupt that AOE from miles away.

Galtrix.7369:

The perfect answer. I’ve been playing a Ranger since Guild Wars 1, and they’ve pretty much always sucked at everything.

lol!

Galtrix.7369:

WoW because they know how to balance classes.

LOL!

Galtrix.7369:

Warrior. They get improved frequently and outdo Rangers in pretty much every aspect. Not to mention, their survivability is around 3 times as better than a Ranger’s.

L O L !

Honestly guys, if you’re going to make things up at least TRY and make it believable.

swiftpaw.6397:

RyuDragnier.9476:

I see excuses Venereus on why we’re supposedly not good. But have you ever just said “To hell with what other people think!” and just play the class for fun? You’ll see a lot more enjoyment out of it, as of right now you seem like somebody who cares about what other people think more than just playing the class.

Reality is a bit of a bubble burster isn’t it?

One can still enjoy the class and continue playing while admitting it is subpar in dungeons.

It’s possible.

I know, that’s why I still take it for a spin when some guildies need someone for a low level fractal or something. I coudn’t care less about what other people think, I just care too much about my fellow man to bring a Ranger to a hard dungeon, since I don’t like that being done to me. If I’m doing a high level fractal run and you bring a Ranger to my party you’re blatantly disrespecting me or don’t know better, either way I don’t want you in my group, pugs are already bad as it is.

Galtrix.7369:

Second of all, it took awhile for blizzard to balance the classes, but when they did, they did it superbly.

L O L !

Galtrix.7369:

Lastly, I only need to state one fact for you. Warriors have better ranged skills than Rangers. Google it if you need to, kid. Now it’s my turn to laugh.

L O L !

I EAT ranged and melee warriors for lunch and breakfast. PLEASE do go on.

If you actually want a conversation, cut out the bull because you’re either making stuff up or you’re just plain bad, I’m sorry but that’s how it is dude.

Actually , with my build I found myself very strong and unbeatable.
I can solo champions and do many events easily.
http://tinyurl.com/ctzrrqc

I haven’t played gw2 in months simply because I do not have time to level other characters besides my lvl 80 ranger and I was too fed up with class balancing issues at the time. After months off it seems that the ranger has not significantly been updated as was promised. Makes me very reluctant to log in at all.

I’ve been trying to go back to my first build with traps. Has anyone had any success with a trap heavy condition build in dungeons? I originally moved away from it because I wanted to bring some more defensive utilities and I hated the poor synergy between trap range and bow range but crit builds were hurt really badly with this last patch (and they weren’t in a great place to begin with).

I was thinking of carrion armour, shortbow and axe or sword with torch offhand. Three traps and runes of the thief (I will still do some direct damage, conditions alone aren’t viable on the ranger) for the condition damage and strafing bonus (I’m going to be flanking anyway).

I was also considering a great sword build with knight’s armour. I don’t think there are many utility skills worth bringing with that kind of set up (great sword isn’t really a condition damage weapon so traps are wasted space) so maybe just signets.

Mostly I’m struggling to respec because I had invested in crit damage ascended items but I’m increasingly finding that less viable. I play other classes now, but I’d really like to find an acceptable way to contribute again with my ranger.

I really don’t suggest sword at all if you’re going dungeoning. It does some nice DPS sure, but in a dungeon all that bouncing around will either get you killed by falling off a high ledge, or attract enemies you do not want attracted. I’d stick with the axe as the main hand weapon.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I really don’t suggest sword at all if you’re going dungeoning. It does some nice DPS sure, but in a dungeon all that bouncing around will either get you killed by falling off a high ledge, or attract enemies you do not want attracted. I’d stick with the axe as the main hand weapon.

I use sword/warhorn and dual axes in dungeons. (1400 hours on ranger, dungeon master title before simin nerf / full set of armor from everyone dungeon except SE—thats ugly gear unless you like star wars—and arah because I’ve been buying arah weapons with tokens instead of armor. I’m level 28 FOTM and I play 30+ but I haven’t played FOTM lately because it’s about an hour commitment or longer and I like playing pvp a lot more lately)

The bouncing around is awesome but to control it you need to turn off autotargeting. You also need to turn off melee assist and turn off autoattack and rather spam the sword’s basic attack sequence. With a little practice you will not fly off an edge (I did that when I wasn’t very good and I’ve improved my positioning—dont aim at edge!—and my autoattack off such that if I do it now it’s incredibly embarrassing and I probably need sleep. I have to be tired to make that mistake now.

It’s funny you say you’ll attract enemies you don’t want…so you recommend axe. You know axe ricochets right? That will tag way more enemies than sword ever will. Again I suspect this behavior of targeting lots of things with sword is from autotargeting being on in the settings. Ranger play is hard mode so it depends on you getting your settings and keybindings right.

Keep in mind that sword is great for melee because serpents strike is a built in evade which is great for saving endurance while avoiding bosses attacks.

I took the advice of most of the posts in this thread and rerolled even though it’s going to take me ages to level (too broke to level through crafting). Anyone got any fast leveling tips? Made a guardian and even at lvl 15 I’m seeing how much more useful it is than ranger and how selfish and weak of a class ranger really is, brings literally nothing to groups. Which is sad because he’s been my main since the head start and fully geared up, what a waste.

Awarw.5081:

I took the advice of most of the posts in this thread and rerolled even though it’s going to take me ages to level (too broke to level through crafting). Anyone got any fast leveling tips? Made a guardian and even at lvl 15 I’m seeing how much more useful it is than ranger and how selfish and weak of a class ranger really is, brings literally nothing to groups. Which is sad because he’s been my main since the head start and fully geared up, what a waste.

Try to follow the personal story quests and close the gap of level requirements by completing map areas. Level 20+ you can be decent in WvW and running with the zergs racks up experience fast. Around level 50+ you should considering jumping to 80 through crafting. Jeweler (up to 375), Cooking and Artificer are really cheap to level, and once you reach level 70 you should choose one crafting profession that you actually want to use and level it to 400 for the last ten levels. Each crafting profession from 1 to 400 yields ~10 levels worth of experience, and with a Crafting Booster it can go up to ~15.

Venereus.9473:

Awarw.5081:

I took the advice of most of the posts in this thread and rerolled even though it’s going to take me ages to level (too broke to level through crafting). Anyone got any fast leveling tips? Made a guardian and even at lvl 15 I’m seeing how much more useful it is than ranger and how selfish and weak of a class ranger really is, brings literally nothing to groups. Which is sad because he’s been my main since the head start and fully geared up, what a waste.

Try to follow the personal story quests and close the gap of level requirements by completing map areas. Level 20+ you can be decent in WvW and running with the zergs racks up experience fast. Around level 50+ you should considering jumping to 80 through crafting. Jeweler (up to 375), Cooking and Artificer are really cheap to level, and once you reach level 70 you should choose one crafting profession that you actually want to use and level it to 400 for the last ten levels. Each crafting profession from 1 to 400 yields ~10 levels worth of experience, and with a Crafting Booster it can go up to ~15.

Cheers, so i take it zerging in WvW is basically just tagging mobs right? So bring aoe skills, etc. ?

@Shiren

It’s kind of like; there are problems with a trapper build, but the problems are game-wide concerns about DoTs in general for PvE and nothing necessarily specific to Ranger.

Namely, mobs rarely ever give you a reason to prefer a slow damaging status effect versus front-loaded direct damage. Usually DoTs are valuable for their consistency. But attrition isn’t a thing in this game so DoTs aren’t really ‘cost-effective’, and mobs don’t do much in the way of moving or blocking; so there’s nothing keeping direct damage itself from being perfectly consistent.

Though the new dungeon revamping might be taking that in a better direction, if Graveling Stalkers are any indication.

Well in the recent SoTG they said GS and LB dmg was to low. LB can be spec’d for high dmg but then has bad utility. Something about lowering the GS cds and ramping up the power of the skills. And they went over the Pet resists/fractal etc.
And something About SB getting tweak….

2bh they were very good right before release (to good I guess) they suddenly nerfed them and broke the most viable builds; including the Spirit build.
They reduced dmg across the board, Bows r very weak compare to then.
Its just the drastic change showed how the ranger traits are not the best; set up etc.

I get them saying they don’t want to split pvp and Pve versions of skills… But tbh they should have a while back. They don’t want people getting confused and to be able to flow from pvp and pve at will with same skills…This is bad thinking.
There are lots of players that prefer 1 or the other and they are always getting a nerf because something in pve brakes the pvp or vic versa.
Its pretty standard now a days that you have to have 2 sets…

They said they want to get everything balanced before adding more skills or traits…But doing just that will unbalance them all again anyway lol…

I have to say though its not as broken as most people say… Matter of fact there are Melee and Range that kitten in pvp…
Then again I understand its annoying not to be able to play the way you want; which they promised players.

I think they need to give in and start bringing certain gw1 elements to the game; I means tons of things worked really well or was the bread and butter that made gw1 what it was; and they just drop it when making gw2..makes no sense.

Pvp is not the sport ppl thought it would be and the lack of skills is beginning to wear on people… Why not just open the skills up and let people change them as pleased like in gw1…

I say this extra stuff because I think this does affect the classes over all.

I even think (I thought no Trinity was so great) they should bring a trinity back in.
I only say this because its to chaotic; the game lacks a certain structure.
Or at the least give us the same skill system as Gw1. I would had so much more fun in the game collecting skills.
Sry shutting up now..

Rangers start around 55 min in:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/377719641

Scratch that… I just remembered the SB tweaks are going to be for Thief I think…?
So only LB and GS for Ranger

Keyska.4105:

Well in the recent SoTG they said GS and LB dmg was to low. LB can be spec’d for high dmg but then has bad utility. Something about lowering the GS cds and ramping up the power of the skills. And they went over the Pet resists/fractal etc.
And something About SB getting tweak….

2bh they were very good right before release (to good I guess) they suddenly nerfed them and broke the most viable builds; including the Spirit build.
They reduced dmg across the board, Bows r very weak compare to then.
Its just the drastic change showed how the ranger traits are not the best; set up etc.

I get them saying they don’t want to split pvp and Pve versions of skills… But tbh they should have a while back. They don’t want people getting confused and to be able to flow from pvp and pve at will with same skills…This is bad thinking.
There are lots of players that prefer 1 or the other and they are always getting a nerf because something in pve brakes the pvp or vic versa.
Its pretty standard now a days that you have to have 2 sets…

They said they want to get everything balanced before adding more skills or traits…But doing just that will unbalance them all again anyway lol…

I have to say though its not as broken as most people say… Matter of fact there are Melee and Range that kitten in pvp…
Then again I understand its annoying not to be able to play the way you want; which they promised players.

I think they need to give in and start bringing certain gw1 elements to the game; I means tons of things worked really well or was the bread and butter that made gw1 what it was; and they just drop it when making gw2..makes no sense.

Pvp is not the sport ppl thought it would be and the lack of skills is beginning to wear on people… Why not just open the skills up and let people change them as pleased like in gw1…

I say this extra stuff because I think this does affect the classes over all.

I even think (I thought no Trinity was so great) they should bring a trinity back in.
I only say this because its to chaotic; the game lacks a certain structure.
Or at the least give us the same skill system as Gw1. I would had so much more fun in the game collecting skills.
Sry shutting up now..

Rangers start around 55 min in:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/377719641

I loved the satisfaction of capturing the elite skills in GW1, also being able to respec on the spot and saving build templates to load up easy was great. Lack of skills that actually feel like they do something is the main problem here, most fights are just spam DPS so you rarely see anything other than everyone slowing sapping away health bars (is it just me or is every mob in a dungeon a dps sponge?). Whereas in GW1 you specced DPS and you’d actually feel like you were hitting things and making a difference, that feeling is just missing from this game… it’s hard to explain. Healing is too passive (again, no feel/effectiveness to it), interrupting was done much better in GW1 (how you could see the skills being cast). I don’t know, just feels like the weight of weapons and the satisfaction of seeing your character affect the battle in someway is missing in what is basically a big cluster of DPS spamming and watching health bars slowly chip away.

Keyska.4105:

Scratch that… I just remembered the SB tweaks are going to be for Thief I think…?
So only LB and GS for Ranger

LB ended up getting nothing, GS got a slight boost to Maul, that was it. The update came and went. ;_;

Keyska.4105:

I even think (I thought no Trinity was so great) they should bring a trinity back in.
I only say this because its to chaotic; the game lacks a certain structure.
Or at the least give us the same skill system as Gw1. I would had so much more fun in the game collecting skills.
Sry shutting up now..

There is a trinity of sorts: Warrior = tank/dps, Guardian = healer/dps, Mesmer = utility/dps.

What I miss from GW1 is the necessity of interrupts. There are very, very few places in GW2 where interrupts are either critical or nice to have. Most of the time you can just dodge whatever it is you didn’t bother interrupting anyway, so there’s almost no point at least as far as PvE is concerned. I would like to see more instances where mechanics like interrupting are critical or at least very, very nice to have.

On a side note, running a bunch of Ranger Heroes in GW1 all equipped with interrupting skills was hi-lar-i-ous. Enemies could hardly ever do anything.

“I’m going to summon a meteor shower to—” no you’re not.
“I’m going to heal—” no you’re not.
“I’m going to attack you with my hammer—” no you’re not.
“I’m going to—” no.