Guild Wars 2

A bug occured that prevents me from progressing the HoT story beyond “Predator’s Path”.

My client crashed during the dialogue with the last Taimi hologram, and now i can’t re-trigger it. The minimap pointer showing the way to the next story instance disappears while i’m in Auric Basin, while anywhere outside i’m pointed back to Auric.

Attached screenshot shows my character with the active “Predator’s Path” quest in Auric Basin without any minimap quest pointer.

Anwsering to you, Heimskarl (I don’t know how to quote, go me), I either haven’t yet met a D/P thief good enough or no one has yet proven me wrong about LB ranger having a good matchup against a D/P thief. As i’ve noticed, ranger has plenty things to counter whatever d/p can throw at you. To note, i run S/D +LB.

As a start, thief has to close the gap. If it’s an open area like foefire/khylo sides/skyhammer mid, he’s not getting in 1k units of me without stealth. If he blows stunbreakers to close range, he’s dead since he has nothing to counter pet taunt/entangle/PBS. Even if you get backstabbed, Bark Skin softens the initial blow and usually you don’t have to pop SoS/LR due to pet taunt (I run dual birds or owl/wolf, so initial pet taunt hits like a truck). BP/HS combo can be also either countered by pet taunt or rapid fire. If that’s not available, i’ll abuse sword mobility to hop around like a kittening grasshopper to avoid being backstabbed. And if it isn’t that obvious, bird f2 into rapid fire into weapon switch triggering hydromancy is enough to 100-0 an unwary thief down.

To boot, you can easily counter thief defensive cooldowns once he starts losing. Shadowstep is rather useless since you outrange him at all times unless he abuses LOS immediately. Shadow refuge is a neon banner saying BARRAGE HERE or camera aim rapid fire over it. Shortbow does exactly nothing to help since LB outdamages at all ranges and there’s only so many autos he can avoid with #3.

As for main discussion, it’s true that ranger doesn’t bring enough to teamfights, but there are quite obvious perks, especially in Nature, with it’s magnificent Allies Aid and Protective Ward offering AoE weakness on very low icd. There’s always also a wolf fear, long duration water field and entangle. It’s not that much as other classes can offer, but coupled with all other tools like condi burst or solid range DPS ranger can offer, i’d say it can be valuable.

I find burn guards far easier to tackle on a marx/ws/bm ranger than a zerk medi guard. They don’t have a focus, their retal hits far weaker so you don’t blow yourself up using Barrage or Rapid Fire, no hammer to ring you in and burst your kitten off.

As for the burn, honestly, it’s easily manageable. Only unavoidable thing is Purging Flames activated on your face, but you should have at least one cleanse against that. Zealot’s Flame misses at above 300 range if you don’t stand still. If they’re running Permeating Wrath it means they have no F2 cleanse or F3 stunbreak. Entangle and pet taunt are your friends.

I think that whole wall of tears about how ranger sucks in current meta is grossly exaggerated. LB ranger has a good matchup against d/p thief, gs/ham warrior, any type of necro and engies not running FT HGH. Only thing that reliably beats me at this time is a lockdown mesmer, assuming equal skill.

Here’s Lenny the punk.

LB/S+D, Beastmastery as third, double burd, namely Raven and Owl. Bm tree is worth running just for the Taunt on F2, not to mention birds hit like a very angry truck. As of current, Beastly Warden interrupts blocks, Blurred Frenzy (!) and Renewed Focus (!!!), so it’s great for blasting through those long defensive skills and forcing a rapid fire down their throat.

As for the weapon choice, i ran both GS and S/X, and while GS is a great choice, i feel it doesn’t work that well without Quick Draw and otherwise it’s quite predictable. S/D gives you a highly unpredictable kiting skill in #2 and a metric crapton of evades. It’s just plain easier for me to avoid all the dangerous melees on a sword set.

As of now i play pretty much exclusively sPvP, but i’ve spent a good while roaming WvW on a full glass power ranger.

Quick Draw: Combat only. Upon swapping weapons, your next ranger weapon skill used has 66% reduced recharge. This trait has a 9 second internal cooldown.

This is what i believe the best single thing Ranger got in the update. It’s playstyle defining, requires skillful usage and can work with any possible build. Yet, i haven’t seen any meaningful discussion about it’s possible uses. I’d like to hear how in particular would you see this trait used in any given game mode?

I’m currently thinking this might be the little thing that can cause Warhorn to be useable on condition builds. Slashing 2/3 cooldown off Hunter’s Call to stack those bleeds like mad or having two blasts and maintainable swift/fury/might/*regen can be worthwhile.

Any other thoughts?

The update coming on tuesday is going to pretty much flip all traits over, make damaging conditions other than bleeding stack in intensity and introduce some pretty interesting new choices. The update notes are flying around the forum, but I’ll just drop them here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/June-23-Specialization-Changes

As for following the meta or not, it’s your choice. You can pack lb/sb for all i care, but it’s not like you’re forced into melee weapons exclusively. It’s just a reasonable choice to have one.

It seems you’re talking about PvE, since in PvP one of the most popular ranger builds is the one with shooting things from 1.9k range.

If anything, I’d wait with passing any judgement over Ranger builds till tuesday update.

It seems lurking forums pays off finally Stumbled upon this gem of a thread. Spriggo is either a master troll and you should all take lessons from him, or he’s got some serious issues. At this point i don’t know which is more probable.

That way or another, kitten’s hilarious. Keep going.

Power ranger can be both your favourite lootbag or your worst enemy. First of all, you need to gauge if the ranger you’re facing has any clue what he’s doing or not. Those two are have rather easy tells to help you distinguish, since those two are pretty much entirely different enemies to face.

In general, you want to abuse line of sight or stealth when approaching a ranger. They have about 2k range so in the open you have about zero chance to close in without burning gap closers (Tip: if the ranger knows what he’s doing burning stunbreakers to close in equals getting yourself killed). In melee they are weaker, but still have a lot of tools to stand up to you.

If you see a ranger have signet of stone or both signet of stone and renewal, a wolf and a spider, dog or bird, then there are chances that the ranger knows what he’s doing. Other tells are using a weaponswap, be it s/x or GS, moving while shooting LB, using out of combat mobility and not breaking stealth immediately after using Hunter’s Shot.

On the other hand, if the ranger has signet of the hunt, full signet bar, any pet that’s not one of the mentioned above (Devourers and bears are a dead giveaway), never switches weapons or moves while shooting LB, you can quite safely assume he has no clue.

Now, the tactics. When it comes to clueless rangers, it’s quite possible to make the player panic after backstabbing him from stealth. Usually using BP/HS to enter stealth, backstab, shadow shot, steal to interrupt heal and some autos is enough to down him. If you get hit by a random point blank shot, prepare yourself to use signet of agility and head shot, or you’ll quite possibly eat a rapid fire. Usually there’s no need to worry about the pet since the random bear or cat crap can’t do anything with you moving around. Just remember to save your dodges for rapid fires and you’ll be fine.

Experienced rangers will give you a lot more trouble. I’ll point things you need to watch out for.

• Pet. Wolves can fear you out of shadow refuge or interrupt you with random leaps, spiders can apply ~6 seconds of continous immobilize, birds hit like a truck. Dodge wolf howls, steer clear of birds.
• Weapon swap. If a ranger is any decent, you’ll be forced to deal with the melee swap. On greatsword, you need to dodge maul (bear animation), and be able to deal with counterattack (2 second block that ends in a ~3-4k counter and knockback if you hit in melee. You can safely defuse it with shadow shot).
  Sword offers sustained DPS and a ton of evades. Decent rangers are exceedingly hard to backstab since they’ll jump around with sword #2 when you’re stealthed.
  Imo, it is best to switch to shortbow and kite the ranger around when he’s in melee weapon swap. Remember that auto bounces between ranger and pet, dealing decent damage. Keeping poison up at all times is also important.
• Rapid Fire. While with scrubs it’s barely of any issue, a good ranger can rapid fire you while you’re executing BP/HS combo or when you’re about to enter refuge. It tracks through stealth, which means more often than not it will hit you at low HP. You’re at an advantage if you have withdraw, since one dodge + withdraw negates rapid fire damage. Headshot can also interrupt it.
• Stomping. When stomping a decent ranger always use stealth (BP/HS combo on his face) or shadowstep stomp. A downed ranger can interrupt a stomp up to 5 times (thunderclap, wolf fear, wolf leap, another thunderclap, another dog leap if he has drakehound), down you and win the downed war. Do not try to burn him down when he’s up from full HP, pet rez heals faster than your dagger auto deals damage.

I’m pretty sure i didin’t cover everything and it’s a wall of text already If you want more tips, contact me in game. Good luck against rangers!

It’s planned to be a field toolbox. If i get a lightning, smoke and maybe a water/fire field, i’ll die a happy man. Besides, we desperately need an elite that does something in PvE aside from a single blast on a 180 cooldown. Mortar is shaping up to be one.

As of current, Mortar serves exactly zero purpose apart from shooting fireworks.

Pay attention to rangers. If you get caught pants down with a LB ranger rapid firing you from 2k range, no amount of stealth can save you. They bend over to a stiff breeze, though, so you should be alright.
Since meditation guards are pretty much nonexistent in roaming enviroments, you basically got to watch out for engineers only, especially if they got condi duration food up. If engi isn’t distracted by other people or completely stupid you’re in for a hard time. Rest of professions and builds offer an even matchup for a thief.

As for killing a thief in WvW, if the thief knows what he’s doing he’ll either have to commit a blunder like allowing himself to get CC’d out of his shadow refuge or flattened by a zerg. Things you need to watch for are hard CC at low HP and condition overload right after exiting stealth.

Entirety of this post assumes you run D/P.

Or, you could do something unbelievable, and use physical skills to set up your burst. How does that sound?

Physical utilities are exclusively CC. Think of following up a t3 adrenal bulls charge/stomp/kick/bolas with an eviscerate or earth shaker. I think Anet was in particular aiming for this synergy in the trait line.

I’ve asked that question in the forums before, and we came to a consensus that the anwser is no. You vastly overestimate the amount of care your average open world PvE player gives to his build.

The stuff you have there is mostly the starter build for rangers you get when you login your character into HoTM for the first time. Funnily enough, some of those rangers modify their utilities, brandishing traps (!) or even shouts (!!).

As for the LB/GS, i’d bet that’s what your run of the mill ranger runs in PvE. Sadly, they can’t import the brown bear with one click.

I hope that clarifies.

Indian Nuclear Test the universe confused particle physicist.
Chest and legs are Profane, shoulders hands and boots are Zodiac. Headpiece: Goggles from dry top.
Dyed imperial gold, shadow abyss, algae.

So, where to start.
Rapid Fire. I’d play this class if it was named Rapid Fire and it’s only skill would have been Rapid Fire. Single most satisfying button to press in the game. Well, maybe Lich auto comes close.
Afforementioned Thief house busting using angry wolves, torches and Barrage.
Sword. Nothing else makes you feel like a grasshopper on steroids. And it can actually kill people.
Ranger s/t a/d condi builds are generally fun as hell and strong to use and don’t suffer from the stigma of LB ranger.
Tears. Oh, the sweet tears. I don’t think any other class allows me to feast on so much QQ, especially when someone dies from 2k range because rapid fire is hard to dodge.
Did i mention Rapid Fire being amazing already?

I can attest to the undocumented change on the beam type attacks used by bosses. During my daily p2 Arah duo i’ve been dying to Brie’s death ray far more than i usually did, since i usually just sidestep it. Tested it a few times and it seems the ray now hits in an about 60 degrees cone in front of her. Ended up having to dodge out of the way.

EU, i do FoTM 50 more or less daily. Can run ele-engi-war-thief-guard on meta builds. Always interested in finding someone decent to run 50. I’m online on GW most of the time and always eager to do fractals, unless i’m afk. Feel free to ask if you need one more, whatever the prof.

Your build is well prepared to combat thieves by default. I would switch out the warhorn for offhand dagger though, since it’s a subpar weapon which doesn’t offer much apart from a 50% uptime group buff.
First off, you don’t have to disengage from a fight vs a thief. Usually you can spot them coming at you from miles away, and you have massive range advantage. LB auto hurts like hell and baits dodges. If you see them randomly dodge your autos, proceed to rapid fire their face off. If they use their gap closers like signet of agility, PBS. Once they pop their steal and sig of agility, feel free to entangle.
When facing a D/P thief, abuse sword mobility while he’s stealthed, and when he’s performing the BP/HS combo, rapid fire. He can’t dodge, blind will only eat one hit and rest of the machine gun autofire will make him regret trying to stealth. A good combo you can perform is entangle on BP, wolf fear, PBS, rapid fire.
Versus S/D thieves, you have about as much dodges as he does. If he spams them, just wait for an opening like him using shadow retreat, and rapid fire.
In general, rapid fire is your best friend against thieves. It hits like a truck of bricks, tracks through stealth and makes kitten panic. Just don’t panic yourself, control your opponent and the surroundings. Oh and +1’ing thieves with rapid fire is probably the best thing you can do!

Llama. Preferably with condition damage/vitality based stats, medium ranged spit attack causing torment, Melee range AoE blind (imagine the llama kicking up dirt, there you have it) and a disengage move, F2 being a confusion causing screech. I’ll settle for no less. Ranger needs an actual condition damage pet, even if just for flavor.

Those whispers are an indicator that you’re doing something correctly. Summarily block and report those angries, or if you want to have a laugh, pull their tongue a bit. Their views on the world can be quite amusing, regardless of server.

During my daily hotjoin spree, i always bump into at least 4-5 rangers using the exact same build: Forge rune, rabid amulet, hydromancy/earth sigils, 10/0/30/30/0. Everything would be okay with that since it’s the meta Spirit build, but all of them have power weapons (Always LB and either sword/x or GS) and completely random utilites.

Trying to ask those poor saps always gave me dead silence. Are they a new brand of bot or just a swarm of bad players fresh from assembly line?

All of the fun stuff has been mentioned already, but there’s one thing that an Engi can do to carry a pug what nothing else can.
Remember those melee bosses that hit like a truck and oneshot everything with their 21k damage swings like Archdiviner, Ettin, Mossman? Engineer can provide at least two minutes of constant immobilize, just with Net Turret, Supply Crate and Netshot while under condi duration food (which is meta for Engi anyways), without sacrificing much of personal DPS. It’s seriously funny to see a pug that wiped twice on lvl 50 Archie already to flawlessly kill him when he can’t move worth jack.

GS is your defensive weapon of choice on power builds. You have a great array of tools to keep stuff out of your face. GS #3 is a good skill to either create or close distance, while also doing decent damage. Keep the evade frame in mind because it’s an instant 1/2 sec evade when used point blank. GS #4 is amazing for deterring thieves. If you see a thief stealth, use it, and when you randomly kick something away use Maul in a direction you kicked. Guaranteed thief tears. Also remember that auto evades on third hit, though you shouldn’t be caught spamming it.

When it comes to offense, learn to love Maul. If you couple it with a sigil of intelligence and Signet of the Hunt active, you get a 220 range, 5 target backstab in a large cone. Common combos are either using it with Hunter’s Shot, fast switch, Hilt Bash, pop SoTH, Maul. You can also easily drop mauls on people knocked back by Counterattack. Using it in open combat without any CC like wolf fear/dog immobilize or afforementioned Hilt Bash is a bad idea unless the enemy is out of dodges or senile.

Hope that helped.

I’d point out a certain Gandarran guild that has very serious issues with swearing people, but i guess i’d be pushing my luck here.

Also, if anyone has dug himself out of the nuclear debris that our guild currently is, please contact me, Pizer or Pranker ingame, so we can hook you up with our new deal, thanks.

I was a high ranking officer for the afforementioned guild. It was named Brain Fart [FART]. Yes, we got disbanded by Anet action. It happened without any warning for our leaders, and the guild was simply removed from existence.

The basis of the forced disband was apparently the “Unacceptable guild name”. While i question the basis of that alone, i’d love to know why this has happened after ONE AND A HALF YEAR, and not immediately when the guild was founded in early 2013.

We’ve lost a roster of about 400 people which we’re scrambling to rebuild now. Full guild upgrades and about half a million influence went down the drain. If you know any better definition for heavy-handedness, i’d like to hear it because i’m at a loss of words.

I’ve been roaming on an LB/GS rangers since a few months already, but this wants me to get buddies. Firing squad is 2real. 10/10

Oh kitten, mom look, i’m on TV! Well, i got my kitten handed to myself (I’m the boyscout condi ranger), but i enjoyed this encounter. I’ll add that first time we met Armageddon forfeited instantly because he didin’t manage to switch from Stone Heart to Diamond Skin.

That’s beside the point, anyways. I really like the idea put behind this build. It offers extreme verstatility on the 30 Earth slot, being able to adequately combat both heavy power and condition builds. I’d love to see how it stands up versus hybrids, though.

Also, is Perplexity the absolutely best rune choice? I believe some new runesets, like Grenth might be considered (The chill from Reaper of Grenth hurts a truckload)

Hello, lootbags. WvW thief here. Since power Rangers are considered a happy corpse on legs by most thieves, i’ll try to show you our perspective, what we hate to bump into. Okay, here it comes.

1. AoE on Shadow Refuge. Since you bothered to slot that longbow, don’t waste your Barrage on silly stuff like my Black Powder/Heartseeker combo. I’ll just move out on it. What i hate is when my Shadow Refuge has an ugly red circle on top of it. Of course, other AoE/Cleave weapons work even better. Hit me with a maul, i’m dead.

2. Did i mention “Hit me with a maul, i’m dead”? Ranger’s melee weapons are an effective choice against me. Sword/dagger offers obscene amounts of evades. It’s like trying to backstab a grasshopper. Greatsword, on the other hand, is a great backstab deterrent. Nothing makes me throw a juicy kitten like a GS #4 right when i am about to backstab, followed by Hilt Bash and Maul.

3. Canine Pets. Yeah, forget bears/cats/devourers/moas/piggies. They just take valuable space and waste natural resources. If you want to give me a challenge, at least bother slotting your Wolf. And remember, dogs execute their awesome leap right after pet swap!

4. One, two… dodge! That doesn’t apply only to Rangers, but it’s an effective strategy against all D/X thieves. If you see me stealth, count to two and dodge. You’re almost sure get away. If you have no dodge, bind about face to a nearby key. Difference between 10k and 5k crits is amazing if you ever have to eat it. Weapon dodges count too, so keep them in mind.

5. Don’t stand there. Nothing brings a smile on my face as a Ranger having a casual picnic and plonking things with his longbow. Yes, expect me to dodge that Point Blank Shot. And then you’re already a lootbag. MOVE. Especially when i stealth.

I hope those few tips will help you in countering us Thieves a bit better.

Staff wins in this fractal so bad it’s not even funny. You can frozen ground the boss through his bubble to give your party a few years of time to clean up the elementals. Meteor Shower + Magnetic Aura are a great way to nuke them btw. You also get a much needed free dodge in Fire and burning removal in Water.

As for utilities, i’d go with Arcane Shield, Mist Form and Frost Bow. Bow is amazing since the boss has a huge hitbox so almost all Ice Storm particles hit. Other skills also provide a great duration of chill to prep right before shield phase. Ice Storm can also drop a cluster of elementals in a pinch. First two are obvious since you need as much active defense for that guy as you can get.

Sadly Engi is all about mashing buttons at light speed. Most efficient way to get 18 stacks of might would be precasting Big Ol’ Bomb and Healing Turret, dropping a Fire Bomb, dropping a Thumper turret, immediately overcharging it, blowing up both turrets and using Thump, followed by swapping to your pistol/shield set and using #4. It’s still major piano but it doesn’t get any easier.

Problem is that Enduring Damage from Tools doesn’t allow you to dodge if you want to keep your precious 10% damage boost. It’s strictly inferior when compared to Modified Ammo. This becomes even more evident on boss fights where you have like 6-7 different conditions stacked on the boss and mechanics you really need to dodge, like Alpha’s ice spikes. Good luck keeping up your +10% Enduring Damage then.

This automatically makes all Modded Ammo builds better than Enduring Damage based ones, so yes, 25/20/0/0/25 and all variants are outdated.

Axe fury is redundant since you already have perma fury with FGJ! and signet mastery SoR. And while Whirling Axe does indeed deal twice the crushing blow damage, but over a very long time. Which makes it deal less DPS than mashing auto. /Axe is inferior to anything you could get.

30/25/0/0/15. What else?

Get the kitten away from my healing turret. It’s currently the best designed and one of the most effective healing skills in the game since it actually requires you to use your brain and rewards you for it. Out of all skills this one needs exactly zero changes.

Bad people wearing PVT will still die. Decent players with bumrush content anyways. That doesn’t nerf zerk speedrun parties. Your point?

Engies started the game horribly underpowered (Anyone remember pre-boost rifle during first BWE’s? It’ was like a kitten BB gun), horribly bugged and horribly useless. But some played it nonetheless. Then we got nerfed some more. Then we got boosted to usefulness. Since Engi (and this subforum’s community) has been to hell and back, we have literally nothing to complain about.

Exactly what i’ve been looking for, i’m so gonna enjoy this. Thank you very much.

Could anyone post the WvW Rifle build using Celestial stats? I’ve been hearing about it recently but can’t find anything in the forum.

You can transmute it with a white vendor headpiece, it loses soulbound status for the account bound. Then, transmute it again with the item of your choice.

I want this thing on every and each of my 10 alts. And you want me to pick one? Anet pls.

Unfortunately, as much as the new armors are awesome, we have another Heavy helmet that is shaving Norns and Humans clean. For kitten’s sake, let us keep our beards on those open helmets! I do hope it’s corrected before those are released.

Pics related:

3,080 million damage. Falling off Council Chamber in Rata Sum down to it’s very bottom. Requires some manual steering on falling.

Tier 4 leatherworking crafted armor. I believe the set is named ‘Rascal’. You can get one for measly few silver on the TP.

From the technical point of view, cats digest chocolate. It’s the theobromine, an alkaloid in it that inflicts fatal poisoning in cats, because their liver lacks the proper enzyme to metabolise it. The main question now is: do Charr originate from great cats, or not? I’d like some developer input on that.