Guild Wars 2

Heres a picture of my rev, Shin Shock, with his shiny new hammer. Ill upload a pic of him with sword/axe out when I get home later so you can see how his armor looks without that effecting it. I was proud of the screenshot though since I normally suck at getting good ones. xD

Don’t want to hijack the thread at all so would appreciate responses to this as messages rather than in thread.

Coming from someone who has not played WoW raids and is somewhat interested in GW2 ones; How does the GW2 raid stack up against Wildstar raids if anyone has experienced both of these (just Genetic Archives and Datascape, dunno bout the most recent one at all). I’d really like to try out the gw2 raid but am missing 1 piece of ascended armor for my light set so have been hesitant to try it.

Opened ascended 51-100 box every day barring 1 or 2 since changes; 0 ascendeds other than rings.

That’s weird unless its an action shot (meaning you were moving)… mine has like darkness bleeding off of it during night and light coming off of it during day. There is a twinkle that comes off from around the handle and lingers for a little while though, so if you were moving when you took this it could have just shown up on the blade? not sure

9/10 Quark— I like it!

Kill N Chill— Asura Reaper. I like it (my ranger is Shoot N Loot)

Some of the black lion staff skins are quite nice for melee as well

chaos:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Chaos_Staff_Skin.jpg

Sclerite:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Sclerite_Staff_Skin.jpg

tormented:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Tormented_Staff_Skin.jpg

Personally, I really enjoy a few things on the pve side of gw2.

As far as overarching goals in the game go, I (probably controversial opinion) a huge fan of the extended journey (farming/grinding/etc) required to aim for one of the games extremely flashy legendary weapons. When I am focusing on pve, I usually have my eye on one of these or something that I want to save gold for. What can I say?, I’m addicted to the a-net fashion treadmill.

As far as specific activites I enjoy on the pve side of the game go, I really enjoy doing fractals (under the new system). You can now pop in and do a fractal in 5-20 mins as opposed to the longer affairs they used to be. If you decide to pay these a visit, though, I’d recommend waiting for the December rewards patch for them. They will be increasing the currency gained & also allowing for more ascended drops within the fractals (which I enjoy more for the mini dungeon feel they have). Also there are a fair amount of pretty flashy weapons from them (though I like the easier to acquire original fractal weapon skins over the newer gold ones in most cases).

The RNG aspect of these are the bullkitten in my eyes. That is the opposite of what adding the collections should have accomplished.

That being said, I don’t get why everyone assumed that the precursors were now going to be cheap. It wasn’t about making legendaries a complementary item; it was about making it possible to grind them instead of either getting lucky or saving for them.

Additionally, A few points to make here:

1) It was significantly cheaper to craft these collections than the pre-HoT price of the precursors. Precursors have gone down quite a bit since the launch (Zap at 880g instead of 1,100g; storm at 380g instead of 500g as some examples) to compensate, because if they remained so much higher no one would purchase them. These collections have the added benefit of preventing prices from eternally rising.

2) Think of the other side of coin. People have spent literal months working on them. If there was little to no cost to these collections (so far as purchasing the mats goes, not collecting/crafting them yourselves in which case there is little to no cost), it would be vastly unfair to them.

3) Why do people act as if 500-1000 gold is an insurmountable price barrier? I regularly farm in this game because I suck at playing the economy and like shinies. Id say on average (with spikes both higher and lower) one can make 15-25g per hour if they know what they are doing. YES, that means 50-100 hours to outright purchase a precursor, and 150-200 for the legendary. It is a LEGENDARY item people… its not called a “sort of rare shiny weapon”. If you want that, go with the black lion skins. Not spending gold on anything else goes a long way to facilitate savings.

If you are curious about how to farm and don’t mind spending the time, I’d direct you to either
A ) SW event
B ) SW Chest run
C ) If you don’t mind playing slightly dirty, chain farming lvl 10 molton duo fractal. It is possible to skip the trash and kill the bosses over and over again for salvage loot, caches, and lodestones/cores to sell on TP.

If you wanted ANET to make a precursor cost nothing for you so you can get it with relatively little effort, I have no sympathy for you.

/endrant, sorry if it comes off a bit kittenhole-ish.

If you are going to farm fractals, it is important to target specific levels that can be completed in an expedited fashion. The two quickest are likely molton duo and swamp. You chain farm the same one repeatedly and sell off everything. I prefer farming 40 molton duo, because you also get exotics/rares pretty frequently.

There is A LOT to do without the expansion. Unfortunately, you’ve mostly missed the Halloween event as that ends Tomorrow… but:

One thing I would strongly recommend to OP if he does have an 80 and wants to work on something progression-ish is to give the fractal rework a try. I know a lot of people who are vets dislike it, but I believe they made it more accessible to new players. If you complete scale 1-20, you WILL get a fractal weapon skin of your choosing (shiny w/ weapon trails on most of them).

Another option since you intend to get the expansion is to start working on central tyrea map completion. This should give both mastery points (to be used later to flesh out your various masteries) and Hero points (albeit at a slower rate than one would earn in meguma).

If you are not yet 80 on any characters, you need to be 80 to explore the expansion content for the most part anyhow. I’d go level in pve, though pvping in order to gain tomes is also viable. Additionally, if you have 1 80 character, you will also get tomes from fractal dailies.

I just want to add on to what many others here have said. Necro has its uses in high-end pve. I recently switched to my reaper from my ranger/druid and in the berserker meta the reaper feels more useful to my private group. Namely this is because of the vulnerability stacks. A reaper can upkeep 25 stacks of vuln a good amount of the time, causing the entire party to deal more damage.

Also dark field for comboing blind on trash (leap & blast finishers) & 2 freezes (does a ton to those new break bars).

Our group is not exactly meta (1 ele, 1 thief, 1 guard, myself (ranger or reaper), and 1 ele or mesmer. That being said, we’ve been clearing 50+ fracs without too much trouble. I think the “Necro is bad at pve” and the "ranger is bad at pve’ meta is overhyped at this point. There have been a literal ton of changes to both classes and people do not seem to factor those in.

TLDR: They hate us because they kitten.

Not to mention that with preset fractals per level it is now possible to finish them INCREDIBLY quickly if you chain farm the same one or two. This is probably the fastest gold from FoTm in combination with selling the boxes (other than selling the 1 time achieve chests).

As a long time ranger main, reaper is everything I wish druid could have been (in how it interacts with the other class mechanics— not in exact function). I’ve swapped to my necro after fully unlocking druid and I am having about 100% more fun. I’m not sure if its the most efficient thing ever (then again, i’m running a power build and condition seems to be meta for them), but everything about the specialization seems really entertaining. Druid feels too restrictive— just taking it at all feels like your damage goes to crap and the heals frankly aren’t necessary for 95% of the games content (and we have yet to determine if they are going to be mandatory for raids either).

Reaper just feels pretty well thought out. I’d be much obliged if someone could message me some info on which of the utility skills work best; I’ve mostly been using the shout heal, “You are all weaklings”, “suffer!” and then alternating the last skill between shadow minion, the movement speed boosting life steal sig, the movement speed green glowy move that generates shroud, and the spectral armor for the last one.
(holy run on sentence batman… sorry when I get excited I tend to keep rambling)

P.S.: I have had the necro for some time, but did not really enjoy the class prior to HoT & the 95% damage reduction to pets.

P.P.S: … Now I just need to get those bag slots for my reaper… 100 slots total sucks haha.

I’m reasonably certain that you can get it just for completing a 50, as I unlocked it when my reward level was 48 after doing a 50 frac.

Yeah I run into this frequently. Sometimes i"m not paying 100% attention and forget that I’m not in the Jungle… try to pop glider as soon as I jump and immediately feel like Wile E. Coyote (that moment where after he goes over the edge of the cliff and holds up a sign before plummeting off screen).

Maybe by gold / reddish medals he’s referring to the masteries? They appear in standard maps as gold medal thingys and in HoT ones as red~ also reflected in these colors on the hero page.

I’d use it to buy Zap and start working on bolt to go with eternity >.>. Almost done with building another GoF so I’m dirt poor again. yay 14g!

For me personally, it lands right on a solid 9.

It’s not perfect and I do not love all the elite specs, but the new areas and how they were handled impress me very much. I don’t think hero points are too much of a grind. It does feel like you have to put some effort in, but it hardly feels that difficult. With effort I’d say you can fully unlock an elite spec from scratch in a week or so.

Additionally, I found the new challenge to open world pve in HOT to make the entire experience feel more like an epic adventure (specially with my mothakittening hang glider… Wubba lubba dub dub, yeah!). I think the verticality present in the maps causes me to enjoy exploring them even more.

Pvp seems more or less the same other than the meta/class balance though I don’t much like stronghold (they thankfully allow you to opt out if you want).

I cant speak on the new WVW map at all, as I have been very busy with the new fractals/pve zones.

I’m working on my first alt now… QQ

As a ranger main, things have gotten much better for Ranger lately. Druid surprised me with how entertaining healing can be in GW2. That being said I tend to lean much more heavily towards DPS play and unlocking reaper on my fresh necro is my new objective.

You’ll see many complaints in the ranger forums (my own included), but don’t let that discourage you if you enjoy the class. We are slowly getting to a better place, and many of the complaints are more about how the devs have handled nerfing (suddenly, without communication, and stealthily) the class as opposed to the class being UP (though some things need work, such as the silly amount of gates on CAF).

Reaper seems strong as my first impression, but this was formed in the beta weekends so things may have changed somewhat.

One of my good friends just dropped his thief main to go Rev main, so they seem quite exciting.

I cant speak much on DH as I do not play guard at all.

I’ve been doing 50s fracs recently as druid and its pretty hilarious. People are so used to most telegraphs being bad they will RUN OUT of my heals while I’m attempting to heal them and then get downed. I’ve found it more entertaining than frustrating overall though for this same reason.

He also was changed so his smoke field is no longer on demand. Maybe rename to SmallAmountOfBurstScale

Really? We deserved to lose access to the all of the reasons to bring this pet?(blind/invis & burst)

Nothing else? How about the revamp to how AF generates on druid/additional cd/decrease to overall base healing.

You’re right… making rangers a real threat to people in pvp and highly desirable in pve? What were they thinking!?! Better nerf it into the ground.

I honestly don’t mind the overall nerf to it. I’ll just go back to using drakes/wolf/kitty I suppose. Its more the fact that once again there was a HUGE CHANGE to the functionality of something for ranger because it was effective within a matter of hours/days as a knee-jerk reaction. I’m sorry; that’s getting really kittening old at this piont. Particularly when there was 0 other effective balance changes since the launch of the expansion.

RANGERS! WOOOOOo. Literally every other change is a QoL change for various classes. They nerfed ss by 50% damage and made it so the field is no longer on demand. Why am I not surprised?

Dont worry guys, its already nerfed: “Smokescale: Smoke Assault: This skill has switched places with Smoke Cloud so that it will now be the F2 skill for this pet. Fixed an issue in which this skill dealt higher than intended damage; it has been reduced by 50%.”

GJ with your QQ, wouldn’t want rangers to have something strong for longer than 24 hours.

Unpopular Opinion: I’m enjoying the expansion and all of the new things there are to do within. This is particularly true with the onset of the Halloween event and the fractal revamp. Also ranger buffs at last!

I actually rarely catch any flack in fractal groups and I’ve been doing them a lot lately. That being said I never join any of the “1337 meta only ##GUARD/ELE plz” groups and I generally start my own when pugging. This might make a difference. I don’t do dungeons though.

Which one are you looking for? They already have wiki updates for some of them:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Smokescale
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Bristleback
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Juvenile_Fire_Wyvern

are the ones that are listed so far.

With a zerker build using GS/Smokescale, I was able to melt people who weren’t expecting a ranger to hurt in about 1.5 seconds using a pretty basic rotation (RaO —> Quickening Zephyr —> pet attack —> swoop —> maul). Those that did expect some burst usually could outlast me though (seemed easily countered by block/stone sig equiv skills).

I really like both of the names I have on my 2 main characters more than most I’ve seen. Maybe i’m a bit arrogant….

Ranger: Shoot N Loot
Mesmer: Rofl Stompskin

Well my characters are as follow:

1- Ranger — Asura
2- Mesmer — Asura
3- Necro —-- Asura
4- War —-- a horrible human.
5- Guard —-- Asura

ASURA MASTER RACE!!!

Guys…guys.. lets take them at their word and just fill the forums with constructive suggestions. I know anet doesnt have the best ranger track record, but I don’t think they deliberately do these things to harm the class. I know it sucks to see your favorite profession constantly left behind. Venting this frustration doesn’t do us any good other than as an outlet. If they say we have their ear for class improvement, lets try to take advantage of it and see if we can get some kitten done about the issues.

Wolfey, would you say it would be best to put all of our class feedback into this thread? or just that relevant to WHaO? I’ve been trying to brainstorm things that would work well as improvements (such as the recommendations from either of my previous 2 comments).

A few more to boot:
-Gonna comment on potential GS tuning thoughts here, as it is my favorite weapon to use on my rng (longbow feels too "plink"y to me, like i’m hurling toothpicks. gs feels visceral, I like that).

1) A slight AA dps boost would be nice. Nothing major, maybe just like 10% as mesmers just saw on their 1h sword AA.

2) It would be nice if the windup on maul was hurried up a little bit. That telegraph can feel like forever, and frequently only lands in pvp because I faceroll the keyboard into turning with the opponent mid cast.

3) leave swoop as is. It is already awesome and probably my favorite move in the kit.

4) Ok I have a pretty serious gripe with counter attack, and that is just that it doesn’t feel punishing enough for the fun mechanic. If you’re fighting someone and they see you cower behind your gs, if they are silly enough to attack anyways it should PUNISH them. I’m talking like a 1-2 second knockdown punish, not just a knockback. The mindgame behind this mechanic in trying to shove it into your enemies face when they want to be using dps moves is nice. I also like the fact that it has the alterantive use of throwing for the cripple.

5) Hilt bash— just feels clunky and unresponsive to me. It’s nigh impossible to use on a running target to get the from behind stun because most players can literally just walk out of it. Either polish this a bit or else once more give it more reward to the ranger player. Maybe exchange the 50% damage bonus to pet’s next attack to 25% or 30% bonus to the ranger’s next attack.

Hopefully I didn’t just put this in the wrong place.

P.S.: I’m imagining someone is about to call out the fact that I also play mesmer. I like my mesmer, but it is not nearly as close to my heart as ranger would be. Ranger was my gw1 main for the entirety of the game, and my gw2 main for the vast majority of my play here too. I would really like to come back to the class.

Since ranger pets are not functioning at the highest efficiency and ranger damage coefficients are calculated to include the pets, what about a grandmaster trait that woudl allow a ranger to exchange their furry/scaly/feathered friend for a % damage boost.

There was a trait in WHO (though maybe I shouldnt mention this, as warhammer was notoriously bad at balancing) for squig herder that allowed them to trade their squigs for a 25% damage boost.

Obviously the numbers wouldn’t be the exact same, but still an idea on how to make the class feel rewarding since any major AI improvement would require a gargantuan amount of time and effort. I would not mind switching out RaO, though that was always my favorite elite.

WHaO~ OK, so maybe the initial iteration of this skill was strong.

~criticisms~
That being said, arena net’s immediate reaction leaves a bad taste in my mouth. As someone who had switched from my longtime ranger main to a mesmer main about 2 months ago, the only way this effects me is that I will not be coming back to the ranger class for HoT as planned. My reasoning for this is that I now have the STRONG impression that if anything in regards to druid is worth using, it will be immediately “balanced” into irrelevance. I will take the 50% cut to PU and laugh it off, as the mesmer class remains useful. Give rangers something to bring them in line.

I also find the initial decision to communicate the class change to the public through twitter, rather than through the forum dedicated to the class, says volumes about the change. It leaves the impression that the change was done blindly as a reaction to appease complaints, rather than to affect balance for a class that badly needed any improvements.

~Balance Suggestions~
: (I will say that not all of these are entirely unique, as they are largly inspired by the suggestions of others, though I think my primary suggestion is unique when considered as a whole)

— I see a large amount of the "OP’ness of WHaO’s initial buff was caused by the fact that the ranger could stack boons very high when they were copied after being applied by other players. To ameliorate this, I’d propose to make only boons APPLIED by the ranger itself/its pet copy. I do not need guard/aegis from a nearby guard copied, or 25 might stacks copied from an ele standing on my pet. I would like to be able to maintain some of my own boons if I choose to sacrifice my durability/condition clear in order to acquire it.

I also see that having 8-10 seconds of quickness to be extremely strong. I’d propose a hard cap at 5 seconds for quickness from this, and a cap of 10 seconds of might (BUT NO CAP ON AMOUNT OF STACKS, 3 STACKS IS WORTHLESS). These additions I lifted directly off of other suggestions. Other boons should not be time limited. If I want to bring a worthless blue moa pet or sacrifice a utility skill to gain protection, it should not be a ridiculously short duration.

The problem with the current change, as I see it, is that 2 seconds of kitten boons are worthless. I would NEVER consider this skill over troll unguent as it stands. That being said, I am not even considering my ranger over my main as it stands either.

-Shoot N Loot… erm sorry.. Rofl Stompskin out!

Leave sunrise alone. I’ll qq so hard if changes to it or TW mess up Eternity in some way… it took soooo freaking long.

I played with a power build all last night using it and it is REALLY nice. Yeah I lost my 2s taunt from the pet, but you’d be surprised how much damage you can do with quickness while using GS (specially when also specced with remorseless).

Does the raven shamen skin remind anyone else of Dervish armor? Could I just have dervish FOW armor instead? SQUIRREL! 0.O

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/gwwikia/images/1/1d/Dervish_Obsidian_Armor_M_dyed_back.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090208043310

Individually, the changes intrigue me but are not enough to draw me back to my longtime ranger Main from mesmer even with the PU nerf.

That being said… when they combine their forces (though the boon stacking requires you to use your heal skill on cd, that won’t be the end of the world if I have multiple other heals as druid— and my damage concerns are largely alleviated by the smoke scale pet assuming it doesnt get nerfed into the ground before even releasing), we could end up with something to be reckoned with. I really like the idea of going GS/Staff… >.>

It bugs me more when I see people cry for ranger nerfs whenever there is positive without even seeing them in game. Many times when seeing the posters, you will notice that their signatures specifically demonstrate that they main other classes.

… I’m looking at you Official Mesmer Forum Guild member!
;P (even though with yours you are clearly being comedic, but this actually happens frequently in serious balance posts as well).
You can trust me though! I definitely didn’t quit my ranger for my mesmer months ago…. >.>

Llama is love. Llama is life.

I can say that the first time I attempted to get clovers I spent 530 ectos/shards to get the clovers needed for a Gift of Fortune. The second time only took about 190 of each. I assume it comes down to RNG like everything else lol.

If you type “/wiki worldboss” in game it will bring up a list of world boss timers. You still have to alt tab back in, but it does cut down on time a little.

Edit: Added quotation marks
Edit 2: It wasn’t that I didn’t read what you wrote; I did, and also think that an in game tool would be very nice. I was trying to be helpful and provide the most efficient current method that I know of, since you indicated you were alt tabbing out of the game to manually access this info. No need for hostility.

This is an awesome writeup man! Thanks for offering such detailed feedback for the devs (I really like how you broke down the different enemy types and your thoughts on them). +1

I enjoyed my ranger as a main for a long time, but have come to terms with the fact that they are the red headed step child of gw2 (well, them and necros from what I understand, though I’ve had relatively little experience playing a necro).

I recently switched mains to my 80 Mesmer and it is a world of difference (at least in pvp/wvw). Until the switch, I felt reasonably satisfied with where ranger was at, though I had some complaints about pet pathing and such. After the switch I feel like my ranger’s performance is lackluster. Yes it can do damage, but other classes can do that same damage (or more) and bring additional utility to your team or else can set up for some sort of very self sustainable build (Such as bunker guard, PU mesmer [not actually tanky, but very elusive], or a d/d ele).

I’m really hopeful that Anet will be on the ball and make druid awesome. I really would like to go back to maining my ranger Shoot N Loot.

Mesmers also feel a bit rougish, more like an illusive ninja mage than a melee specialist though. I like to use a power build on mine using gs for range and sword/torch for close range and you can pull off some really tricky stuff in pvp.

Find a fast leveling guide. I got Armor crafting 0-400 in 20 minutes (though I did already have the mats saved), and weaponcrafting in an hour.

+1— This is an amazing set of ideas!

As far as a short-term fix goes, you could always invest an immense amount of time/effort/gold into crafting Meteorlogicus or Eternity , as they reflect the current day/night cycle.

I, apharma, am happy at my sudden surprise gain at having an electro blue/green combo to work with. I was literally saving for electro green and now this praise anet! Sorry for sorta hijacking thread OP.

Get Eternity and then switch between the daytime and nighttime outfit depending on what time of day it is mwahahahahaahhahahahaha.

On a serious note though, I voted the bolt one but feel like a little bit of a lighter blue (closer to your hair if there is one) would pop a little more. If you’re up for your 3 year aniversary get Electro blue from the pick a dye item.