Guild Wars 2

You know after finishing most of the game content with exploration, all eight classes, all five races, and etc, the only realm that could be limitless turns out to be PVP. SPvP is alright, but there’s really little incentive and WvW can get repetitive and have the zerg mentality.

Some of the PvPers out there do enjoy arena style combat. Remember guild wars 1? That great game which this game resembles only so much? It had a variety of options and arenas for PvP. Maybe some of that would be nice!!

Would be even nice if you enable a 1vs1 / 2vs2 / etc ladders for PvP and enable progression with gear. This would be an alternative way to improve and collect gear in a reasonable fashion that is comparable to grinding dungeons or exploring the bowels of Tyria.

Going to be really blunt here, but I loved guild wars 1, and I had a lot of fun in it. That’s why I bought GW2 to support the people who made such a legend of a game. However right now there’s not much to do. Content in exploration takes time and I don’t mind waiting (unless its rediculous), but give us something in PvP to hustle over.

Have a nice winter. Don’t choke on a bagel.

Which is why I love my necromancer and ranger You summed it right up nldixon very well. It’s all about balance

Vs rangers: just outplay them, Straightfoward and simple process. Bows and conditions don’t do enough damage in most cases.

Vs warriors: you have enough dodge to avoid most of their big attacks and burst skills and keep an eye out for bulls. Lightning reflex when you have to but evasion is more than enough.

Vs thief: evade during their burst damage, you have enuff survivability to take a few hits, but keep yourself in position so you don’t get hit from side or back. Use short bow to avoid skills if you need a breather to dodge. Your block kick and wolf howl is a great too against them. Then you just wear them down slowly.

Vs guardian: just an attrition fight, if they are super bunker then it will probably end up a tie. Ur damage isn’t too spectacular but it is possible.

Vs elementalist: attrition fight again if they a dd, but you should time ur cc and fear from pet and catch them off guard that way. Entangle for the kill once they use their escapes.

Vs mesmers, they become a headache with their phantasms but keep track of the real one. Whenever I play against them phantasms don’t really do enuff damage versus my regen and heal, but it’s just a pain in the kitten class to play against.

Vs necros: can be hard depending on build, but long as you don’t stand in wells and manage condition removal you should be fine.

Vs engineers: can be a pain sometimes if they go bomb build, but dodge them and you should be fine. Turrets are annoying but won’t kill you.

Honestly I would put rangers close to the top of the list in strength when it comes to duels or spvp play. They arnt the underdogs of pvp like everyone believes considering their built in defensive abilities and evasion within their attacks.

To answer your question ghandi, the main ranger build I use that beats a lot of people and their bandwagon perception is just a great sword ranger with either short bow or axe dagger. The great sword is your main beat down machine, and by beat down I mean you grind them down slowly like those ubiquitous dd ele. Shortbow has some nice needling capabilities for short ranged combat, it has a nice evasion dodge attack, and a nice cc number 5.

When I trait my ranger, I go 0/0/30/10/30 for increased survivability as well as a little bit of pet boost and what not. Reason for this is that, in pvp it isn’t like pve where it is whoever can do the most damage or have the highest output. It is more about outlasting and killing them before they kill you. It is surprising but sacrificing a few elements of the glass cannon and going into tank you can survive much better. To be honest your dps ONLY has to be greater than their healing capabilities.

So with your weapons and traits the last thing you need is gear. I use full clerics gear which is healing toughness and power. Sometimes I mix in vitality elements, but your natural hp with traits and toughness is good enough to survive pretty much anything. Factoring in your evasion and toughness, your regeneration and heals should be pretty hard to beat.

For runes and sigils, I use energy in my great sword and short bow. On switch might, bloodlust, are just extra tips on the iceberg, whereas half of ur endurance enables u to dodge their magic missile or wonder attack. For runes, there are many kinds you can use, but I use rune of Dwayna to compliment my healing and offer regen support.

For skills there isn’t much variation.troll unguents or healing spring. Quickening zephy, lightning reflex, and regen signet is what I use the most often with entangle as my elite. Sometimes I sacrifice and make room for the condition removal signet but that is circumstantial.

This has been one of my favorite builds for rangers for a long time and I havnt lost a duel ever with it. There has been cases of ties, when people build super tanks healing bunkers and such.

I would be glad to take questions in game or show them how well it works in spvp etc. for wv3 it is a bit harder since rangers… Like mesmers… Have trouble engaging multiple enemies especially if they are skilled enemies. There are no extremely hard matchups for this build, but there are a lot of unconventional and less commonuilds out the that can give this one a run.

Since everyone loves to compare things to the flavor of the month dd ele. This build with good pet management, eats elementalists up. In most cases they run away and try to harass you again to no avail.

There are a lot of things that may be deemed off but all in all every class in the game is viable in wv3 spvp and pve. Some have advantages over others in certain departments, some bring in more utility for team play.

If anything think outside the box for builds and what out and try odd combinations. But I will say this though, a lot of people are just a bit short sighted and just see strictly numbers such as damage and hp. A lot of people love going glass cannon builds because they think it’s the only way to be efficient because killing stuff is important.

To be honest, it’s only a small bit of the equation. Think of the elementalist as a Swiss army knife, it can do a lot of things. Why just focus on the knife part when they can do a lot of things. This can be applied to a lot of classes.

But since we are talking about the ele they have one of the best aoe dps, burst dps in the game if spec that way. They can be really efficient healers and can semi tank too. They have the best mobility in the game as well as perhaps the most ways to escape stuns etc. can’t complain much about them.

Ranger’s at the moment are “fairly” balanced. You don’t have the best damage out there, but you do have a lot of evasion, dodges, and evasion within attacks to compensate. So it has the built in survivability that a lot of other classes has to adjust for.

Their damage overall are sub-par considering other classes and their DPS spec, but not many of them have the sustainability and survivability a ranger has without sacrificing their DPS or more.

Ok. This entire thread is a really big joke. Rangers could be made better, but do they need a buff or rework? No. The truth is, Rangers right now are fine as they are; you need to think outside the box on their strengths, weaknesses, and their utility and how to approach WvW/PvE/PvP.

I can tell you right now, they do decent damage when specced right and they can contribute to the team easily in PvE.

As for PvP, they are one of the strongest class if played right. If you don’t believe me, I’m down to bet gold for duels. You can use any class and I’ll use my ranger.

@NdranC The whole point of this build is to be tanky and to outlast the enemy. The damage output of this build isn’t great, getting a bloodlust sigil or corruption sigil isn’t going to change much at all. The most important stat in this build is toughness with the combination of healing support and bigger than normal health pool. You sacrifice damage for survivability.

I would say though the stated advantage of having superior DPS is rather misleading. This build doesn’t have superior DPS. It has a moderate sustained DPS with a focus on defense and healing aka tanky. Like any other tanky-dps/bunker builds you win through attrition and wear people down, which if I may crude, works on relatively unrefined builds and glass cannon noobs. Take this into any serious SPvP setting which is a nice microcosm for duels and small team play (removing the zerg effect) and you will find out how inefficient this can be.

@Azure I have 18,925 HP with this set up: Full Pow/Vit/Tough Armor + Dag/Dag. Koss on Koss ascended back peice. Ancient Karka Shell. Triforge Pendant. Rest are Sapphire Jewelry. All accessories have the exquisite sapphire jewels. This is also using 30 into water.

I’m also debating to whether use the all stat ring from fractals on the elementalist or not. But that won’t change the HP too much.

I have no idea where people started to get the idea about this is the only solid ways to play in PvP. There are condition elementalists, Scepter/Dag burst, Healing/Support Elementalist (which is pretty king in team fights). If you really think D/D is forced, then maybe the class is not for you. Seems it isnt the class for a lot of people who complain.

There are two ways (more than two but in my opinion) to build a staff elementalist. You can either go the big DPS route with critical damage or support elementalist with moderate damage.

For critical damage, you will become more or less a glass cannon, by stacking power/precision/crit damage %. You can get up to 6k per tick on firestorm and your auto attacks will do about 2k+ on auto attack. Gear wise, I just used berserker armor (pow/prec/crit dmg) with 6 ruby orbs + full ruby jewelry.

For support elementalist, you equip yourself with full clerics armor (for healing and toughness mostly) with 6x runes of dwayna and use sapphire jewelry. This you will spend a lot of time shifting to water to spam AOE heal and to remove conditions for your party.

Condition damage is ok, but it is not really viable using a staff. If you want condition damage you are better off with a scepter + offhand.

Just keep in mind though that the elementalist’s greatest advantage and utility comes from the fact that they can switch between 4 attunements which enables them to cast a lot of great spells. But if you want to keep it simple then here’s two builds you can use that are easy.

DPS Damage Elementalist
Full Berserkers Gear (Pow, Prec, Crit Dmg) – 6x Ruby Orbs
Full Ruby Orichalchum Jewelry – 6x Exquisite Ruby Jewels
Staff (sigil of fire) or Scepter/Focus (you can use sigil of fire, might, etc)
30 fire 30 air 10 (wherever you want, probably arcana though)
Straightforward critical hit damage elementalist. 10k dragons tooths, 5-6k per proc firestorms, fairly straight forward.

Healing Elementalist
Full Cleric’s Gear – Full Set of Dwayna Runes
Full Sapphire Jewerly – 6x Exquisite Sapphire
Staff (sigil of water)
10 Earth, 30 Water, 30 Arcana
For traits you can just set it for purely defensive with evasive arcana as the trick.

Those two builds should work pretty fine if you want it to be clear and simple. Long as you two can play together, that’s great. If she wants to hit “next level play”, she can work on attunement switching, but that will come in time with experience and confidence. Enjoy.

@Shazor
Could try making one and give it a shot. I know a lot of new players are looking for pre-existing builds to build a foundation to start on, but you will never learn the class until you play it yourself and learn the builds.

But to answer your question, DD elementalist build has always been and is a viable build even with the updates. How you should build it depends on what you want it to do. If you want to troll WvW against really “questionable” players, then build a full tank spec and learn your rotations (not to jab at phoenix here). Keep in mind though, that your objective is not really to burst but win through attrition.

If you want it to be a bit more offensive, consider adding critical hit to your build and don’t play recklessly (a good DD ele can pretty much burst down most squishy classes in 1 rotation with arcane finishers). Lightning —> Fire and they explode.

For PvE and especially dungeons, you are hurting your group for the most part by using this build as a tank because you could be doing much more damage otherwise. Ele’s can do massive aoe burst damage with staff or scepter, and has great condition damage if specced into it. You can go DD glass cannon and live on the line as a squishy in dungeons too

@whatever
Kinda sad this bandwagon got created since Staff/DD tank ele spec was one of the first tuned builds I enjoyed in WvW and especially SPvP. grumbles :P