Guild Wars 2

I tried greatsword+sword before and I have to say it’s not very viable. First of all, going into a fight without a ranged weapon is not a good idea. If you’re low on health and wait for your healing skill to recharge you just stand there awkwardly and can’t contribute anything to the fight.
Second, even putting the ranged aspect aside, the swords are just too similar and in my opinion it’s just not worth it.
I would say that both swords are geared towards beastmaster builds and for heavy use of power/crit pets. The longsword empowers your pet and literally cripples your opponent as it sets up a classic hammer and anvil.
The greatsword on the other hand is about disabling your enemy and holding the line while paving the way for your pet.

1. Go into water.
2. Activate Spirit of Nature.
3. ???
4. Whale.

In response to this thread I did a bit of testing in the mists and I have to say that it still does not work. I also tested if the tail swipe is conditional and perhaps only triggers if the drake is actually surrounded but that didn’t work either. I had the drakes attack the group of dummy golems from all angles. The only thing I figured out is that the AoE for the basic melee attack is very generous, roughly 180°.
After that I did some field tests. I joined sPvP until I had my daily and I witnessed no tail swipe either.
That said, drakes are terrifying to behold with 30 points in beastmastery.

This was very important for us rangers because the warhorn was the only source of out-of-combat swiftness (besides from RaO) and even that didn’t have great uptime if not traited. While the warhorn is considered a great off-hand weapon it was also near-mandatory in WvW.
Now running two two-handed weapons is actually a possibility.

Except that when you play the lottery you can get a decent idea as to what are your odds of winning something. That’s not the case here. In most countries it’s required to disclose the odds in order to run a legal gambling business. That’s not the case here.
What are the chances of getting, say, a minipet here? I have no idea, and that’s the reason why I won’t spend any real money during this event.

What? Most modern countries have very strict and complex gambling laws that keep plenty of lawyers busy. Underage gambling is usually outright banned.
That said, “gambling” activities like these boxes are often a very grey area and I’d be very curious what happened if somebody was bothered enough to drag this in front of a court.

The problem is not the spy kits but rather that stealth trivializes any skippable encounter and that it cannot be countered. Stealth in its current form is simply overpowered. Combine that with the fact that skipping mobs is almost always a better use of your time and…yeah.
Stealth kits merely amplify this problem.

Inspired by this thread I just tried it myself with my ranger and it wasn’t too difficult, actually. I tried Kholer too but I only managed to take out about a quarter of his health before he got me. I managed to avoid all of his pulls easily (I reserved shortbow #3 for this purpose) but it would still instagib my pet and then he would concentrate on me alone and I eventually ran out of juice.
I didn’t make a video but I made a couple of screenshots.

Sadly, bodies despawn too quickly as the last shot was supposed to be a “standing on a mountain of corpses” picture.

Pretty sure applying upgrades makes them soulbound. Sorry to hear about that.

In order to craft them you need 400 in leatherworking and one onyx lodestone as well as one cured hardened leather square per rune.
If you have the materials but not the crafting discipline, I could craft them for you.

Khrysaor also happens to share its skin with the ever so elusive sword known as Dawn.

There’s also the explosives in the second part. It works perfectly fine in the first part but even if you already have swiftness you just can’t place it at the dragon without it exploding in your hands so your only option is to throw it, for less damage.
Why is it even there if it can’t be used properly?

Pearl weapons are supposed to be quaggan cultural weapons.

Because people think they are the best runes and the fact they can only be gained from random drops or the mystic forge.
In sPvP gear with divinity stats is freely available and guess how many people use them – not very many.
If you just want more flat damage, simple ruby orbs outperform divinity runes. Condition damage builds have plenty of superior alternatives and don’t even get me started on runes centered around survivability.
Overall only few builds can truly profit from divinity runes and I believe anet made a mistake when they named these runes as they are anything but divine.

No, it’s a completely new weapon. It also loses the sigil for some reason.

As far as I know there are only three icy swords: Jormag’s Breath, Corrupted Blade and the sword from the HotW dungeon vendor.
However, icebrood kodan seem to use a very similar looking weapon but I don’t think it’s available.

They look amazing and have a subtle and sinister particle effect to them. Keep in mind that there are other weapon sets that require special materials for crafting like hylek or grawl weapons.

I would like to see a citation for that.

It’s interesting to see where the games goes if it stay this way. Crafting becomes even more unviable. Nobody will craft exotic weapons anymore, safe for the odd destroyer or corrupted weapon. People will have to primarily rely on dungeon tokens to get their gear.
Precursor supply will also go down because people will think twice before throwing potential ectos into the forge.

Yesterday I noticed that unidentified dyes were approaching the 10s mark, today I sold some for 12s gross.
If you look on the TP then you will see that only very few dyes are actually worth more than that, mostly black, white, red and blue in their rare variants.
I’m honestly wondering just who buys the unidentified dyes at these prices.
I kinda miss opening them myself, though. There’s always that excitement of unwrapping a present but right now it’s just uneconomical. After all, if you can’t run the lottery the second best thing is to supply it.

Crest of the Rabid.

Pretty sure it’s to prevent killing players in one swoop.

I still need to do all Arah paths for my dungeon master title. It’s incredibly difficult to find a group to begin with, then they often just want people who have already done it, then you have to open up the dungeon and then you can actually try to beat it.
I’ve only had two shots at it so far, both times with PUGs and while it were competent people, it just took too long and people started dropping out.
That said, I’m still interested in running it though I never made it past Lupicus.

Too bad it’s going to be 50-80 gold per piece. Kinda harsh for non-cosmetic gear.

The regular reef drakes are way overtuned. Their retreat move deals about 10k damage and somehow ignores my block – and then they start stacking confusion on you, pull and deal ~3k on their auto-attack.
Veteran reef drakes are actually easier to defeat. I doubt it’s working as intended right now.
Young karkas and reef riders seem fine if a bit too durable.

So, I was quite excited about seeing the new ranger pet. Well, it does look quite nice, that’s for sure.
It only has one fatal: it’s bugged. It does not use half of its abilities, just like all the other pet drakes in the game. This includes the infamous drake tail swipe, an AoE knockback and also the ranger’s one and only blast finisher.
It’s hardly the only bugged pet but that means it’s completely useless. No ranger will ever use this pet in its current state because doing so would lower his combat efficiency dramatically.
It’s like being promised a pony only to get a horse meat sausage in the end.
I was there, sitting at Sawtooth Bay trying to comprehend what lead to Anet doing this and there was only one answer: they just didn’t care.

It’s not your fault, Keanu.

It’s just that a fairly large amount of players think that anything but warriors and guardians are worthless in PvE. I have seen elementalists, necromancers and mesmers kicked from groups.
These are not very good players.
Luckily enough GW2 has its own version of gear check for these kind of people: look at their portrait and see if they have five signets on.

Nah, tried out the salamander and marsh drake when I saw we get a new one and to the surprise of absolutely no one, still no chomp and no tail swipe. Unless it’s so rare that I missed it.

So do the regular Black Lion keys have any use right now when the new chests can be bought via gems?

The jellyfishes deploy a smoke field.

It’s simply, really. If Guild Wars 2 was a comic book then the warrior is Superman, the thief is Batman and the ranger is Aquaman.

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/045/b/6/Aquaman_Rant_by_g0N3Morganna.jpg

I get most of my oranges from thorned bags when I run TA.

Rhyse.8176:

Speed abilities do not stack. The highest currently active buff is the one used.

Ex: 10% from signet, 33% from swiftness… speed buff will be 33%.

That is correct. The only way to get beyond 33% is a full set of superior runes of speed and those are currently bugged and don’t work correctly. Also, charge skills like swoop on the greatsword move you faster but it’s hard to measure that in numbers.

I figured out the easiest way to deal with him is to lure him into the garden where you have more space to dodge. Doesn’t sound like much but fighting in that narrow corridor makes it a lot harder.
Otherwise stunbreakers with added movement or invulnerability help, too.

A couple of weeks ago I looked through the bow skins on gw2db.com and saw what appears to be a matching set of a shortbow and a longbow: Feathers of Dwayna and Wings of Dwayna.
However, they are not on the trading post at all nor has anybody I ever talked to heard of these.
I assume it’s an yet undiscovered forge recipe or maybe an incredible rare drop, not unlike Final Rest.
Anybody got a lead or even has one of these bows?

Sadly, no. Only ogres have griffons as pets, amongst other creatures unavailable to the ranger such as raptors.
Here is a list of all tamable pets: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pet#Families_and_species

Never seen something like that before and it never happened to me but quite frankly, it does not surprise me. Even months after release people look for “tanks” or specific classes. I approve of that because it’s a good indicator that the group in question sucks and should be avoided. Certainly beats trying to run a dungeon with a bunch of 5-signet warriors and glass cannon thieves.
Ultimately, player skill, build flexibility, choosing the right tools for every encounter and, most importantly, teamwork are infinitely more important than just the class. Personally, I have run dungeons with three rangers and two necromancers without anybody dying. If you’re a bad player then no overpowered build in the world will help you.
I’m not denying that the ranger has issues but none that should stop you from beating a dungeon and being an asset to your group.

Generally speaking, you want either rabid (con/pre/tou), carrion (con/pow/vit) or maybe rampager (pre/pow/con), if you plan to use traits or sigils that rely on critical hits to proc at some point. Carrion and rampager gear can be crafted but rabid gear is much harder to come by

1.) Keep in mind that condition duration only deals more damage when the condition duration in question is an integer (1,2,3 etc.), meaning that 1.5 or 1.75 seconds of bleed still tick only once. Non-damage conditions like chill or cripple are not affected by this rule.

2.) Personally, I think runes are somewhat overrated and crests or gems often offer a superior solution which is also much more flexible since you don’t have to stack a specific type. Not to mention that some of the special abilities runes give you are of dubious value. Needless to say, they are also much less expensive than most runes.

• Crest of the Rabid/Chrysocola Orb/Coral Orb
  All of these give 20 to their primary stat and 14 to the second and third one. Resulting in 120/84/84 for 6 matching crests or orbs.

• Rune of the Krait
  The absolute budget variant. It’s one of the cheapest runes there is and that for good reason. 183 condition damage plus 15% bleed duration are solid but you also get a 5% chance of causing bleed on getting hit as well as 100 power when underwater, which is not exactly impressive.

• Rune of the Necromancer
  Provides 183 condition damage as well as 50 vitality. Sadly, the sixth rune only boosts fear duration. You can still use 5 runes plus another upgrade component if you really want this combination. At least they are cheap.

• Rune of the Undead
  These runes are the favourite of many condition builds, not just rangers. You get 183 condition damage, 50 toughness and on top of that 5% of your overall toughness is added as condition damage. This makes it synergize very well with our wilderness survival trait line and rabid gear. Definitely one of the best choices and very cheap.

• Rune of the Lich
  Kind of an odd choice as it seems to have been made for necromancers in mind. However, 165 vitality and 10% condition duration are solid. The final rune adds a 5% chance to summon a minion on hit. Not too impressive and in WvW your enemy might be able to rally off of it.

• Rune of the Centaur
  165 power and 15% bleed duration are okay but the real reason to pick these runes is the +20% swiftness duration plus AoE swiftness for 10s when using a healing skill. A more utility orientated rune set for WvW purposes.

• Rune of the Nightmare
  The only rune that grants both condition damage and condition duration and is thus the best choice if you simply wish to maximize your damage. Additionally you get a 5% to cause fear when hit. Can only be gotten from Twilight Arbor chests, tokens or from the mystic forge.

• Rune of the Afflicted
  Another popular choice amongst condition rangers. The obligatory 183 condition damage increase plus 15% duration increase for bleed and poison. Obviously, it’s more for shortbow rangers. You also cause a death nova (AoE poison) when downed. I doubt this ability has ever made much of a difference.

• Rune of the Elementalist
  Very niche. You get 165 power, 57 condition damage as well as 20% duration increase for both burn and chill, so if you use axe/torch together with flame and ice trap it might make for an interesting combination. Sadly, these runes are fairly expensive as they require destroyer lodestones.

• Rune of the Adventurer
  183 condition damage, 50 power and 50% endurance gain when using a healing skill make these runes another popular and versatile choice for many rangers.

• Rune of the Orrian
  I really want to love this rune but sadly it only boosts poison duration by 15%. Besides the obligatory condition damage increase you also get a 5% to poison when hit and on top of that 5 seconds on quickness when your health falls under 20%. Doesn’t really help that you have to go to Arah to get those.

• Rune of Lyssa
  165 precision, 10% condition duration, random boon when using a healing skill and, most importantly, losing all conditions and gaining all boons when using your elite skill make for a very impressive set of runes.

• Rune of the Mad King
  The newcomer. Introduced during the Halloween event, these runes offer 165 power, 10% condition duration and 15% bleed duration on top. It also summons ravens when you use your elite skill but I don’t really know what it does, exactly.

Note: There is nothing stopping you from just using the first two runes of multiple rune sets to maximize condition duration.
Also, all of this is based on personal observation, draws upon limited data and is likely to be biased.