Guild Wars 2

Sure it wasn’t a ranger’s pet? Taunt goes through everything atm I think.

I read through a little bit of this thread and came to like the idea of this trait resembling a cornered animal. I would like to see the trait function as a fight or flight mechanic. If we were to keep the same concept (gain strength once below 50%), I would change it to my first suggestion. I’ll also list a second suggestion as reworked idea.

1. When you fall below 50% hp, gain 4 stacks for 6s every 3s. (A compromise fix to make this trait slightly more usable but still garbage. It will take 3s to get full benefit and you start out much better than you do currently.)

2. When you fall below 50% hp, activate Quickening Zephyr and gain resistance for 6s.
This gives you super speed, quickness, and condition immunity allowing you to fight or run with ease for a bit. Good synergy with marksmanship adept trait “Enlargement” but nature magic adept trait “Instinctive Reaction” may need to be changed (that would be a lot of quickness!). This seems a tad op and would probably need to be toned down slightly, but I doubt anyone could argue it being worthless.

Hmm. I too noticed I got a random bleed around SMC once a couple days ago. My friend later got it when we passed by the same area again. There was no mention of an attack in either of our combat logs. When on my ranger my pets almost always get this permanent chill effect on their skills randomly during WvW but the condition doesn’t show up (the bleed on me does).

This is the exploit I found (I mentioned a possible exploit in my beastmastery traits thread). It works with the taunt as well (those traits function exactly the same except a 15s ICD). Not pleased it was announced like this (bug report it and move on) but oh well.

Know that it means you won’t be able to land Wilting Strike (weakness) but a blind every 4s and taunt every 16s might be worth it if you aren’t using birds.

Gotejjeken.1267:

So, all we have learned from these traits is that they segregate pets even more. Thanks Anet!

I was kind of hoping someone would bring this up (testing each pet made me think about this a bit). While I agree that there is a definite separation of which pets are capable with these traits versus which are not as capable. I found that these traits make more types of pets viable in all game modes compared to a ranger without them. Pretty much every melee pet can make good use out of 2 of these traits if not only for helping the ranger by applying a 2s control effect. Pets with long F2 cooldowns will struggle, but how often does a pet survive long enough to use it’s F2 twice in both PvE and PvP? This encourages pet swapping to get more use out of these traits, which also brings a pet with full health.

Let’s take an example of a fairly useless pet before these traits. Can we agree that the Pink Moa was pretty well unused by all rangers? Now the Pink Moa can taunt a target into it’s daze screech to increase the likely of it hitting the target dramatically. Very few pets stand out so poorly with these traits like they do without them and players that understand this may be able to create some new ranger builds that utilize these new found capabilities.

I’d like to see this trait function passively without the dodge requirement. Lead the wind is practically the same trait for longbow, yet you don’t see any requirement for it to function. Maybe reduce the targets per arrow to 3 (how often will you be able to hit 5 with the shortbow anyway) and drop the damage buff to 5%. There, it’s now a potential pickup over quick draw (although I love quick draw too much to ever drop it).

Anyone talk about how bad Most Dangerous Game is? Sitting at <50% health seems like a really poor decision. Not to mention how it takes you at least 8 seconds to gain the most benefit from this trait. Why not simply add 200-300 power to the ranger when their health falls below 50%? Yes, I know that doesn’t scale with boon duration, but it’s fundamentally better. If we wanted to get interesting we could scale in increase in power based on health thresholds.

WvW. Maybe a dungeon/fractal if I’m bored and want to see big numbers.

Durzlla.6295:

Also keep in mind Go For the Eyes gives toughness which makes all your pets tankier

Good point. I was focused on the active aspects but no reason to leave that out.

It’s not that toughness is broken. It’s that just about every class dishes out significantly more damage than they could prepatch.

Bunuka.3154:

I don’t believe the 4.75 Weakness is an exploit…

I didn’t mention the exploit I found but I can say that isn’t the exploit. It isn’t too difficult to find, and it feels like an unintended consequence of how these traits work.

I preordered the game for $60. It was worth my initial purchase, but I’m glad I didn’t waste any more money on it. Unless this expansion offers at least half the content the original game had, I don’t see myself spending $50 on it. Still, I wish them the best.

So you may be wondering which type of pet is the best. It depends on the activity (of course). If you are in PvE, most mobs stand still when fighting so all you have to do is tell your pet to attack the target and when within melee range use the F2. This won’t be so easy with spider and devourers, but you can still do it if you want by telling your pet to follow you and guiding it close to the enemy. Therefore, I can fairly safely conclude that the worst pets for these Beastmastery traits are Devourers. Spiders take a close second. Every pet that I mentioned that can’t apply the weakness condition goes third (or you could choose another trait if using those pets). The rest of the pets share the spot for capable trait users in PvE.

In PvP I’ve managed great success with birds and canines. I imagine drakes and felines could also have their place, but canines and birds both synergize very well with these traits. The more skill based pet is the canine, but since the taunt is applied instantly on F2 cast it isn’t that difficult. I personally have been running with the eagle and hawk for blind and weakness spam (4.75s CD).

There is one possible exploit of these traits I discovered but I’m unsure if it’s even considered an exploit so I won’t post about it hear unless Anet confirms it’s intended. I assume it will be fixed alongside a nerf of at least one of these traits shortly.

If you have any questions or input to provide, feel free to say something. I would like it for somebody to confirm the unit cap on Go for the Eyes and Beastly Warden. I know certain pets don’t fit into the categories I provided (hyenas aren’t canines) but I wanted to make this easy to understand and felt that lumping pets with similar basic skills together under a single name would help. I hope you find this information useful and easy enough to read.

This thread is going to primarily focus on the function of the traits “Go for the Eyes” (adept), “Wilting Strike” (master), and “Beastly Warden” (grandmaster) and their interaction with each type of pet. For starters, I will explain how each skill works.

Go for the Eyes – Applies blind to enemies near the pet in a 240 radius aoe. Assume capped at 5 targets. Activates as soon as your pet starts casting their F2 skill. No ICD (or very small <0.5s). Grants pets up to 300 toughness based on level.
Wilting Strike – Applies weakness to any enemies struck by an F2 skill. The skill must do damage in order for the weakness to be applied. If the skill does damage multiple times, the weakness is only applied the first time it hits an enemy. No ICD (or very small <0.5s).
Beastly Warden – Applies taunt to enemies near the pet in a 240 radius aoe. Assume capped at 5 targets. Activates as soon as your pet starts casting their F2 skill. ICD of 15s.

Now that you know how these traits function, you can guess how they will work with each pet. You don’t need to though because I’m going to test them and give the results here.

Bears – The Black Bear and Polar Bear function identically to the canines (skip to canines if you want to know now). The Murellow and Arctodus run to the target and reliable land the blind and taunt. The Brown Bear strangely run towards the target but doesn’t get close enough to land the blind and taunt and can’t apply the weakness.
Birds – All the birds F2 skills function the same way. They “fly” within 240 units of your enemy before casting their F2 so you reliably get the taunt and blind. The weakness quickly follows thanks to their quick animation.
Canines – Canines with damaging F2 skills will run within range of the target before casting but will miss the blind and taunt because it will be too far out of range. Take the position of your pet into consideration before casting if you want the taunt and/or blind to land. Hyena and Fern Hounds will cast in their current location and can’t apply weakness. The wolves and drakehound synergize astoundingly well with the taunt because the specific condition only overlaps the last 0.5 of the taunt and the weakness is applied at the same time as their respective condition.
Devourers – All devourers have a ranged F2 skill so they function similarly to canines in respect to how to expect the taunt and blind to work. They all apply weakness. Getting them within range to land the blind and taunt is an issue since they have ranged attacks far exceeding the blind and taunt range.
Drakes – The drakes that cast a 250 range cone reliably get within range to land the taunt and blind. This could provide a surprising amount of synergy as enemies may be forced to stand right in front of the drake (but only for 0.5s as the cast time take 1.5s of the taunt). The Marsh and River drakes will function similar to the canines and will be out of range of the blind and taunt.
Felines – The felines with a leap F2 skill function similarly to canines in that they will miss the blind and taunt due to their F2 skill outranging the traits. The Jaguar can make great use out of the taunt as the stealth disallows the enemy to attack and gives the Jaguar a couple free hits in before the taunt wears off. Remember that the Jaguar casts it’s F2 at its current location and that it can’t apply weakness (the F2 does no damage). The Jungle Stalker F2 is activated at its current location and can’t inflict weakness.
Moas – The Pink Moa runs to the target and reliably lands the blind and taunt. The White Moa casts its skill at its current location. The other moas can’t deal damage and cast at their current location.
Pigs – The pigs function identically to the Fern Hound and Hyena. They simply cast their F2 skill in their current location and since they are unable to do damage with it they can’t apply weakness. Not ideal pets for these traits.
Spiders – Spiders are unique by applying venom to their next attack(s). This allows them to be the only pet that can apply the weakness condition from Wilting Strike on multiple attacks. The weakness condition is only applied whenever the spider does an autoattack with the venom active (I know this seems obvious, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an exploit with it.). The blind and taunt are activated at their current location (which can be problematic for the same reason as it is for devourers).

Puck.9612:

Don’t play PvE
WvW- worse off than before. We took some small nerfs , received some neat new tricks, but most of the other classes are in a much better place than before so they have passed us up
PvP- about the same, still fun to play, solid in 1v1’s, but they still didn’t do anything to address our weaknesses that keep us from being viable for high level PvP (lack of boon stripping and ports).

Agree 100%.

Outside of roaming, our best WvW aoe abilities took hits. Roaming wise we are around the same as before (except I’m finding thieves by far the easiest class to kill and mesmers insane which was never the case before).

Nice video. I’ve always been interested in a trapper build but I haven’t put any effort into making one since the trapper runes came out. My only concern with the build is the condition removal.

Also, why sword/dagger and axe/torch? I found better synergy with sword/torch and axe/dagger (spreads out your weapon evasions and poison application). Not trying to attack you, (I noticed other rangers take build criticism very seriously) just thought bringing it up might be helpful.

Extremely vague question. Not even sure how to answer this. Open world, dungeons, fotm? Power, condi, beastmaster, tank, support? What do you want?

Sadistus.8095:

Here is some feedback on your build.

Love the ideas and will definitely do a bit more work with Radiance to see how things go. I really should have mentioned in the topic that I don’t run dungeons, ever. This was meant more for open world PvE and WvW where large globs of players are unorganized and in constant need of healing. I’ll go back and edit that into the main post. It’s supposed to be a “fun” way to support allies build that is also surprisingly effective but I’m always seeking outside opinions as they open my mind up to things I hadn’t considered.

Phobos.2879:

Any thoughts on [vit/heal/condi] with this build?

I’d say off the start it would be ineffective due to the lack of burning application and toughness, but I’ll see what I can do to throw a test build up. I assume I would need to change one of the trait lines to Radiance for that.

Valderius Rex.4108:

Bovan.9481:

Clearly the thousands of people who played a Ranger over the past 2 years were all wrong, and you’ve got it all figured out.

Ok A) condition damage was actually quite useful pre patch provided you were the only one doing it. This made a Condi meta impossible.
B) you’re a jerk and just because you lack the ability to think creativity and innovate doesn’t mean you should attack others. Try working on your obvious deficiencies rather than covering them up with baseless sarcasm.

Thank you for that! I see now how my wording may have seemed elitist. What I meant originally was what you said in that if you are the main person applying conditions, it worked quite well and that in sPvP you feared the condition ranger much more than the power ranger back then (power was incredibly weak for at least a year and a half after launch).

I’m all for a shield rework but actually don’t mind the animations of either skill. I’d like to see shield 4 additionally apply 4s of weakness to affected enemies. Shield 5 could additionally apply aegis to all allies on activation and a blast finisher + medium damage on detonation (but detonation ends the light field before applying the blast finisher). I think these would both be balanced and fit right in with how the skills function.

Dire Condi

Works in WvW and PvE well. You are very tanky, maintain constant regeneration and fury. You can apply constant bleed and poison pressure and burst at will quite frequently. I managed to hit a 5k bleed tick and a 1.2k poison tick on an enemy player simultaneously without even really trying (which is significantly higher than prepatch). The next tick hit for 4.8k bleed and 1k poison and that warrior was down (obviously was wounded from the initial blows to gain these stacks). My point being burst condi dmg is real post patch.

Pros
- Condition cleanse on every skill (not weapons)
- 2 stun breakers
- Low weapon cds promote constant weapon swapping to continue pressure
- Permanent fury uptime (used to apply bleeds)
- High swiftness uptime in combat
- Does very well at both close range and medium range
- Melts other Rangers and Guardians (both classes usually lack enough condition cleansing to keep up with the pressure)

Cons
- Doesn’t fare well at long range
- Lacks mobility outside of combat
- Can’t escape from anything (although the fear factor of reengaging has kept many players from chasing)
- Players running -40% condi duration foods require a bit more focus
- No stability
- Lack of aoe skills

I’ve been running condi for 2+ years. I run a dire setup with only survival skills (gives me a lot of condi cleanse on demand, fury, and low cds) and it’s stronger than ever. I personally think power is viable (haven’t tested it post patch) but condi ranger has always been where the rangers that want to excel go.

The change to traps bothers me. I’ll test them later but I’m unsure if they are even worth the time. Especially now that spike traps has an insane kitten cd.

Traits

Honor
Adept is a given. Master is also a given unless aegis you give allies provide them with heals. If so, it could have some serious play with this build (think valor master trait Communal Defenses coupled with a Virtue of Courage Activation).

All three grandmaster traits could be used. I prefer Writ of Persistence because I found it incredibly effective at keeping a constant hps on frontline allies. Pure of Voice would work well if pick up Stand Your Ground! instead of Merciful Intervention. I tried Force of Will and found it underwhelming. Without healing symbols, you have little use out of the nice bonus healing effectiveness this skill provides. I imagine you could make it work by constantly dodge rolling with the frontline/tanks but dodge rolling when you don’t need it can leave you in some serious trouble.

Valor
Adept is a toss-up between Smiter’s Boon and Focus Mastery. If you choose Smiter’s Boon, you may consider picking up the master trait Stalwart Defender and using a shield (although focus is still recommended). I know many players loathe Guardian’s shield, but in a healing build the fifth skill can provide a nice burst heal and the aoe protection is quite nice.

As for master, the most obvious choice is Strength in Numbers. If you have a shield, Stalwart Defender is probably the best choice, but still a toss-up. Communal Defenses could be effective if Honor master trait Pure of Heart works on allies.

For grandmaster, Monk’s Focus feels like the best choice since we use RF as our elite and 1-2 meditation skills. Altruistic Healing is a possible alternative and this build could use it effectively but I found I have enough healing for myself already and the reduced cooldowns really help out more.

Virtues
Adept is a no-brainer since we don’t use consecrations and lack damage and it gives us more chances to proc Honor adept trait Invigorated Bulwark. Master and grandmaster are even more obvious.

Conclusion
I know this build has weaknesses. Specifically, it can’t handle conditions very well and any focus is going to be difficult to deal with. However, if left unpressured, it can provide allies with huge burst heals and decent buffs. It also doesn’t pull much attention since you are rarely attacking opponents directly. Notice the mix of Cleric and Magi trinkets and weapons. This is pretty much required now or you will end up with too few hitpoints. Overall, this build can provide a substantial amount of burst healing and consistent healing per second while being moderately self-sustainable. Damage is poor, but keeping your glass cannon allies alive might be the difference between a win or a wipe and this build does that well.

Tell me what you think. Recommendations are requested and I’ll try to respond to any ideas and confusion if something is unclear.

Edit: I know I use a lot of incorrect capitalization. I’m using it to make certain words or phrases stand out so the reader quickly understands I’m referring to a certain skill or trait.

So this will be my (as in these are all my opinions and should be treated as such) guide of a heal based support guardian’s build. I would love feedback on what you guys think about any aspect of this and will provide a recommended build. I am no “pro” guardian player but have always had a passion for guardian in both PvE and PvP and think I have enough experience on Guardian to help many people who are confused (especially at this time). I should mention I very rarely run dungeons. I imagine this would work fine in a dungeon but probably highly ineffective in high level FotM. I found playing a heal based Guardian incredibly fun so I would like to share my experience with others seeking a similar role.

Many players find this controversial due to the lack of damage output, but I found it extraordinarily effective in both PvE and WvW, especially when playing with unorganized groups. I recommend opening a build and then reading the “guide” so you understand what I mean. I try not to go into too much unnecessary detail so I leave a lot out if you don’t see the build. Note that I haven’t made a sPvP equivalent build yet as I don’t think it would carry over the same, but I may be wrong. Feel free to adapt it to sPvP and give it a try.

Focus Build
Shield Build
Untested Aegis Healing Build

Unlike prepatch, there are several ways in which you can set up the build now. I’ll list what I would use and what can be interchanged. Remember that this build isn’t designed to be a mass condi clearer or buffer. The main purpose of this build is to heal allies and provide them with what they need to survive. The aegis build is completely experimental and I would love to see someone test it out and tell me if it works.

Weapons & Sigils
Mace/Focus & Staff = Recommended
Mace/Shield & Staff = Optional

I highly recommend energy runes on each set of weapons. The extra dodge rolls provide a lot of burst healing to nearby allies. The water rune on staff is optional and can be replaced with what you want. I recommend a Benevolence rune on at least one weapon.

The biggest issues with shield is the new Honor adept trait Invigorated Bulwark. It synergizes with the focus quite well. You can make a shield work, but the focus is probably the best bet.

Heal
The most obvious choice was chosen. All of the other heal skills are selfish. It can be a very effective team healer if timed right but it severely limits your own survivability.

Skills
You have a little of variety here but I stand by my choices fairly confidently. Truth of the matter is that you are going to need a button to cleanse all conditions off yourself with this build and with meditation mastery being a GM trait, this skill proves to be the best option. Being able to apply protection and regeneration to allies is excellent and needed. Merciful intervention provides a powerful burst heal to nearby allies and some mobility on a decent cooldown. Alternatives for each skill will be listed below.

Contemplation of Purity > Purging Flames (if traited and in an organized group, purging flames is completely viable)
Merciful Intervention > Stand Your Ground! (except if you are an in organized group)

Elite
While the new Signet of Courage was appealing, it is dreadfully disappointing. The passive radius is paltry, the cast time is far too long, and the active has little use when you have so much healing power that you can fully heal most allies with little effort. Stick with Renewed Focus and use it to keep your virtues up.

I use it in my heal build. The burst heal is really strong and it can be used while stunned. Of course this build isn’t designed to be played solo.

If you are running a meditation build, it’s practically required. If you aren’t, it’s still a solid choice.

So my pet’s F2 skills were permanently chilled in EBG. I could swap pets, check for conditions, get out of combat, go back in combat (I never got downed though), and it didn’t fix the issue. I’m about to go test if they are permanently chilled all the time and nobody noticed or if it was just a fluke.

Couldn’t reproduce the problem. I don’t use empathetic bond or signet of renewal.

notavailable.4137:

Regeneration stack doesn’t increase amount of heal, just duration. So if this skill turn into Regeneration, total heal per sec would be decreased. For example, with Virtue of resolve, Signet of Courage, Regeneration, Symbol Heals, Warrior Healing Signet, Warrior Adreanal health , Ele Soothing Mist, … etc total heal is 1000hp per sec and Signet of Courage is turned into Regeneration, the amount would be less.
And Tome of Courage comes with 3 heal skills.

Oh, I see we don’t understand each other. I want to retain the current passive effect of providing a periodic heal (separate from regeneration) while also giving the regeneration buff to allies as an added bonus only once the skill is cast.

Then again, my ideas were just minor buffs that really could be anything. My point was that in its current state, this skill is garbage. With how heavily damage has been buffed, I would wager most players can kill your allies before you even finish casting this skill. I managed to simultaneously inflict 5k bleed and 1.2k poison damage on a player without even trying in a mere few seconds of combat whereas prepatch I would have been lucky to hit 3k bleed and 500 poison on my condi ranger.

x indigo x.6981:

4- I STRONGLY DISAGREE with the idea of switching it to give regeneration. The reason being is that regeneration boon DOES NOT stack in intensity but rather only in duration. We need more Healing Over Time skills that stack with each other. (Virtue of resolve, Signet of Courage, Regeneration, Symbol Heals, Warrior Healing Signet, Warrior Adreanal health , Ele Soothing Mist, … etc) .. These combinations with a good party comb and coordinated group would add AMAZING sustainability. So .. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t turn it into yet another regenration giving skill because we’re saturated with those already.

I don’t understand why you disagree with the regeneration. It would only be a buff. The original tome of courage 3 skill gave allies 10s of protection and regeneration, which is where I pulled the idea from. Maybe my wording is poor or you misunderstood but here is what I meant to say. On activation, allies are first fully healed and then given 10s of protection and regeneration.

Teckos.1305:

The passive aoe is small but acceptable, the real problem is that the skill is in competition with RF, and with its current drawbacks (CD + cast time) I really don’t see a point in taking it over RF.

Agreed.

Troll Unguent is now the best heal by a significant amount. Quick draw is fun. QZ is pretty much required now. That’s about it.

I’m not even sure the new staff trait that is supposed to add 20% boon duration works. We lost kitten boon duration and it hurts my support build quite a bit.

It’s junk. The passive aoe is a tiny 300. The active has a 4.25s cast time and retains a 180s cd. Sure, it’s a signet but who is going to invest in the radiance tree gm signet trait just for this skill? Perfect inscriptions is terrible anyway.

Even though I rarely used it, the tome was significantly better. What would I change to Signet of Courage?

- Increase the passive aoe from 300 to 600 (matching resolve).
- Reduce the cast time to 3.75s.
- Give all affected allies 10s of protection, 10s of regeneration, and 3 stacks of stability for 5s on active cast.
- Heal friendly allies for half the current amount every 5s (effectively the same but much more forgiving if somebody misses a pulse).

Edit: Lot of people talking about this. I was just spitballing with my initial ideas, there are likely far better options. I think we all agree this skill needs some kind of buff.

Not hating on the video, but that ranger wasn’t the best. He/she knew how to kite well but skill usage, pet management/choice, and build were all subpar at best. Running no condi removal on ranger is a death sentence. However, he/she was still better than 90% of rangers you will encounter so I would say this is good advice.

Is it just me or should virtue passives never turn off. Why do they need to function like signets? They aren’t even that strong in the first place.

Anyone else notice how condi ranger builds are going to do significantly more bleed damage? And by significant, I mean 50%+ per bleed. I’m sad that poison mastery is going to be overshadowed, I actually used that quite a bit.

Sebrent.3625:

Keen Edge was 5 bleeds with a kitten ICD. That averages to 1 bleed every 9 seconds.

It’s only other feature was that it could proc SotF … but it wasn’t very controllable so it wasn’t that great in my opinion.

It also had issues if your build also took Sharpening Stone since that would affect its ICD. Not a huge deal, but did make it “worse” than it would have been without that interaction.

Big difference between applying 1 bleed every 9s and 5 bleeds rapidly. It provided the build with a somewhat controllable fury buff (which can be used to proc more bleeds), 2 condi cleanse, and 5 more bleeds. I could easily drop 25 bleeds on an opponent in a matter of seconds and with ~1700 condi dmg it would tick for over 3000 (not to mention the amount of condi cover ranger has which defends against cleansing). What I’m getting at is that it provided a condi ranger with an exceptional amount of burst for practically no investment.

Edit: When I say no investment, I mean that most decent ranger builds are required to use these trait lines already or else fail (which has been a plague of ranger since beta).

Yes, I knew about it. There is a trait in marksmanship that gave you a free sharpened edges that does the same thing. I thought that was one of the most powerful traits you could get for a condi ranger but sadly it will be removed.

Kelnter.7530:

Condi Rangers and I used to play one.

I’d have to agree.

As a power ranger, you lack the ability to burst down a well built condi ranger, the cc to control him/her, and the ability to consistently dodge his/her constant condition pressure. Condi engi is an extremely close second (but I haven’t faced a decent one in well over a year so things may have changed with that profession).

Razor.9872:

MESMERS. Good mesmers are impossible.

Hardly. If you know how a mesmer plays and build properly, you should be able to avoid his big damage, wait until his cds and blown, and then burst him. Just don’t frontload all your cds and dmg in a panic (like most people do).

Of course, all this will change on the 23rd. My condi ranger build looks pretty dead and I’m struggling to put something together that has half the synergy my old build had.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Mag is currently roflstomping in its matchup. It’s looking to be possibly the second largest blowout of the week in NA, and you can’t find a commander or guild? That seems… odd. I mean, look at the scores:

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/

Somebody is clearly playing a lot of WvW.

I managed to find a guild and it appears there are at least 2 other major WvW guilds now but recruiting doesn’t seem to be on their to-do list. In fact, I’m seeing a lot of guild hostility amongst the few WvW guilds on Maguuma. I hope we can climb the ranks. Our current competition barely manages to pull together a 30 man pug zerg. If we defeat them once they leave the map and we just take everything.

I was a player from the very beginning and can tell you that about a year ago, this game’s sPvP scene was on the tipping point. We had quite a few fairly popular streamers, a dedicated twitch stream that rotated people, and a community following that was growing (and eventually stagnating). Lack of many things including balance, different gamemodes, introduction of maps like Skyhammer, and terrible leaderboards (notice how many of these still plague the scene) lead to the players ultimately quitting and sPvP falling into a near dead state (at least at the higher levels).

I have since recently returned and am glad to see many more people in sPvP, but I don’t think the higher level play has quite returned the strength it was and doubt it ever will considering how much time has passed. While I always enjoyed playing this game, watching it is an entirely different story and was downright dreadful in it’s implementation a year ago.

I’m sure you can find a niche community somewhere, but for the most part players aren’t interested in a competitive scene in this game after a couple years of disappointment.

Raap.9065:

With that said, organised WvW is still enjoyable, but only as enjoyable as the people you play with. So take that with you when considering if changing server is worth it for you and your friend.

Exactly.

We tried EotM a few times recently and found it basically a PvE karma train. I was amazed at how we could capture things back to back for hours without a single enemy encounter. I’m looking for the large, experienced player fights we once had and EotM seems to be 80% upscale zergs with 5 man level 80 parties roaming around.

So, I quit a year or so ago. A friend got me back into the game and we are moderately excited to get some WvW action. Thing is, we can’t find a guild for our home server Maguuma that does any real WvW and neither of us want to dump more money into this game in order to transfer to a bigger WvW server. Quite frankly, I would rather quit again. It doesn’t seem like WvW has changed much, and if I remember correctly it felt like it was on it’s last leg back then. Is it really this dead on the lower ranked servers? I’ve asked in every map several different times each day for the past week for a guild invite and haven’t even so much as gotten a response.

So, what do I do now? The PvE in this game is still dreadful (the new map silverwastes? is a step up but still nothing too special) and the sPvP never appealed to me at either a pub or team level (I think I’ve played somewhere around 900 matches with about 50 team matches). I posted in the Looking For … section on the forum with no response as well. I guess I’m just curious at what happened (I’m starting to think megaservers may have been the killing blow) and if it is possible for my friend and I to get some quality WvW in on a lower population server. Did I mention that half the time on peak hours I can’t even find a commander on maps? I’m not even exaggerating.

As a player who played a ranger from the headstart, My opinion on Entangle has changed for the better since I started playing again last week. Here is what I use to make Entangle a viable skill. Note that I was a strong advocate against using Entangle for over year (then quit for a year).

Krait Runes – They apply nice condition coverage and make all your bleeds last an extreme amount of time on anyone not running -condition duration food.
Wilderness Survival Trait VI Wilderness Knowledge – Reduces the cooldown on Entangle to 48s.
Nature Magic Trait XIII Survival of the Fittest – Entangle grants me Fury and removes 2 conditions on use.

I basically treat is another skill now rather than an Elite. Rampage as One is still tempting, but a 48s Entangle that applies 4 conditions initially and cleanses you of 2 can be devastating when used properly. I still see way too many rangers blow Entangle way too early. Save it until your enemy has burnt through their energy and follow it up strong.

I’ve been testing out a new condition burst build with great success recently, but really want to try out these new trapper runes later. I’m going to link my current build (I hear it is fairly standard now) for those who may be interested. If you (the reader) have any questions, feel free to reply or PM me.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAnYVjUq0yaNLmsQ1aABhaVA0uGS2u2dTcDfdJfoJ-TRyCABAcEAU4QAc8JA4F9N+o+zEPAgEVCmlyvZ2fgUAwM2C-e

A friend and I are looking for a guild interested in doing all types of content (less so SPvP). I’m a veteran player (but quit about a year ago) and my friend just started out. I have a level 80 Ranger and Guardian. He has a new level 80 Mesmer. I don’t feel like swapping servers again, I think it was one of the main reasons I quit before. While I can’t speak entirely for my friend, my attendance will be a little above casual (probably 3-5 days a week, however attending timed guild events may be sporadic), but I play with a desire to complete whatever objective I aim for efficiently. We both will use voip. We would prefer fairly large guilds so that when we are able to get on, there will be sufficient numbers to do things.

So a friend recently purchased GW2 and pushed me to reinstall (I quit over a year ago). I decided to delete my warrior (level 71) and create a new one because I wanted to experience the game as a new player would (and all my other character slots were full). Well, we quickly hit level 30 just to be slapped in the face with a massive “to-do” list in order to obtain the traits we want to create a desired build. Compared to the old system, I couldn’t believe this. It honestly felt like, “You want to have fun creating a build while leveling? That’s not how this works anymore, kitten you.” and I’m baffled at the decision to move to a system that is “simpler” yet obnoxious and tedious. I wish I hadn’t deleted my old warrior. Luckily for me, nothing really seems to have changed in a year and everyone else in my old guild except 4 people have quit. Doesn’t look like we will be playing long.

I understand an expansion is coming out and was curious about it. However, I’m not impressed in the slightest. The current information is vague at best and the “expansion” seems to be used as a reason to have never patched much of the broken aspects of the game (main reason I quit). In fact, a patch today fixed the GS #5 skills “Rush” so that it works like you would think it should. This skill has been sluggish for over 2 years. While I’m glad it looks like they are ever so slowly still fixing the game, the pace is so poor that I can’t fathom the expansion having anything significant. I hope the people that still play will find it worth their money and I hold no ill feelings towards the community.

Thank you for the response Solandri. From what I’ve gathered, pets are more responsive but still not reliable, which is sad. Good clarification on the Hunter’s Call skill.

I probably won’t come back. It’s been too long, the game seems to be more passive than ever before, my main profession lacks a purpose in most content, and a continual stream of ascended gear barred behind annoying time gates and activities makes my gear unsatisfactory for the only area of the game I enjoyed, WvW.

So I quit playing about 6 months ago and decided to come back and skim over some path notes to see if anything has been changed for the ranger profession (I main a ranger) in that time and came across some interesting points. A friend of mine was considering getting GW2.

First, are the “Pet responsiveness updates:” listed under the April patch truly fixed? This was one of the biggest reasons I stopped playing the game.

Second, (this is pushing me to continue not playing) “Hunter’s Call: Fixed a bug that caused the hawks summoned by this skill to become obstructed if line of sight was broken between the player and their target.” is listed by them as a bug when in fact I can remember that they patched it shortly after release to function this way. I’m amazed they try to hide this as a bug now instead of simply changing it.

I’m basically asking if the pets actually function like you think they would and no longer hinder the ranger like they could before. Other than that, how are rangers now? We don’t seem to have changed much (if at all) since I left. Are there more viable builds/weapons or are we still clearly bottom of the barrel.

In terms of a burst heal, our new one looks really, really bad. You have to cast it (1.5s) then activate it (1s) before you get the burst off and wait (~2s) and be within range of the spirit for the follow up heal.

Then again, I would actually prefer the healing spring over this for groups support for the quick pulsing condition removal on 5 allies + regeneration alone (PvP related) and I don’t see how this will work very well in PvE where all the (important) enemies still insta-gib the spirits. In fact, you might even miss the window to cast the active if it dies quick enough.

Ranger is stronger than it was, but so is just about every other profession. Ranger is still towards the bottom of the list in terms of effectiveness when it comes to any content.

Holland.9351:

I think it should, considering next patch Enlargement is going to act like the Signet of the Wild active and it will be affected by other traits: Signet of the Beastmaster, Signet Mastery and Beastmaster’s Might.

But then again, I think it shouldn’t, because the trait has a 30 second cooldown and the utility has a 45 second cooldown. So it’s already better than the utility.

Unless they just changed it, Keen Edge also has a 45 second cooldown. The buff lasts 30s if unused.

LughLongArm.5460:

Watch Xsorus’s videos, notice how he watche’s his distance until the necro use heal.

This. Rangers really shouldn’t lose to Necros if you know what you are doing. Sorry, but once you make them pop their heal and if you bring adequate condition removal you should be able to maintain more pressure than them and be able to bring them down. Just watch out for their condition bombs (what I mean is you don’t want to soak everything they have, play defensive at first but keep constant pressure) and then dump everything you have. They have trouble evading skills and entangle is quite effective against them, especially if you use it after their heal.