Guild Wars 2

Belzebu.3912:

Yeah, in the preview bows appear in the right band, while in game you use it in tje left hand. That may be the reason you think it is upside down.

woops my bad

I don’t know if this is a problem with the entire Ranger class or is a problem specific to Human Male Rangers, but we hold our bows upside down. Now when the game came out this was not a problem since all the design for the bows were symmetrical and it looked the same no matter how the bows were held, but the newer bows are not as symmetrical and if held upside down look a little silly.

Bows that this is a problem on:
- Arachnophobia (spider is facing inside)
- Crustacea
- Arthropoda
- Ascended Longbow
- Ascended Shortbow

alcopaul.2156:

double checked it and it does heal. but imo its weak to be noticeable (if there is constant source of dmg)

The whole combo is worth a lot more health than without the combo I find though.

I was choosing my Gambits and traits when i got a bluescreen, I came back finished traiting and tried to queue up for a match where i got the message that said i had no tickets. However just before climing up there to chose my gambits before the bluescreen I bought 10 tickets, and I had around 20~30 left from the champions I had farmed. I don’t think I was queued up for a match before the bluescreen, but it make no sense to lose all my tickets when I hadn’t fought in any matches.

Can’t get the achievement or chest from them, and have been stuck on 1/5 for a long time now.

I haven’t stopped using shortbow, the third spell is really useful as an evade and for situations where you don’t want to go melee I find it still decent. The only problems I’ve have had with shortbow is for chasing people running away, it is A LOT harder to catch people running away with it now compared to before.

Have your party guest to one server, and enter through that server. Seemed to work when we tried it like that.

Would be nice for the candidate trials

lordkrall.7241:

Hule.8794:

With a change of siege bound, this should be reverted.
Because golems are so cheap now in 30 seconds party of 10 can melt throught all doors of fortified keep.

And yet with a good scouting force those 10 can be found and killed before they reach the keep.

There is a limit to what you can do with scouting, it has the highest risk and probably the lowest rewards of all the roles you could do. Also not all classes can scout easily, and not all of them have access to the same utilities and abilities so some are naturally better than others. Even if you do successfully find a zerg, to get an accurate idea of what they are doing you need to get close enough to see what numbers they have and what direction they are heading. If you manage to do all that safely then there’s the problem of communication sure you can notify on VOIP or map chat , but not every one is following chat all the time especially when the zerg is attacking a tower/supply camp. There are too many limitations on being a scout, there is no reward for it, it is difficult to deliver information accurately/noticeable/quickly, and your success as a scout is dependent on how others react.

Anyone noticing that the under attack swords are appearing very late? Earlier our keep on Kaineng was under attack, and by the time the under attack swords came up they were already working on the second gate already.

I under stand that it shouldn’t be too easy to defend keeps and that attackers should have some advantage, but if the keep is lost in minutes after the the under attack swords appear (fully upgraded keep too) there is nothing you could even if you had the ability/man power to fight off an attack.

Plonk.4697:

Glad to see someone running similar traits as I am. I’ve only done WvW/minor PvE stuff as of yet, so I’ve been using GS & sword/horn with clerics, still getting ~45% crit rate with maintenance oils and fury. Considered using Magi’s but I figured I’d miss the power bonus.

Other differences being getting Martial Mastery for the -cooldown and Runes of the Water for boon duration and slight condition removal (since Evasive Purity is broken from what I hear?), forcing me to take Strength of Spirit for a minor bonus. I tried Runes of Altruism before that but the 6th effect seemed sort of useless since I already had almost 100% fury uptime.

The thing is, I feel like the BM traitline is almost useless for me now since the might stacks and Guard’s protection sort of makes up for the stat loss and the points are better spent elsewhere. Shout Mastery was the only trait really appealing to me, but with high +boon duration (45%) I figure you don’t really need it. That, and spamming Guard every 15 seconds instead of every 12 seems better DPS-wise (less, even, if you’re using sic’ em alongside it).

Just my view on things, I’ve only played for a month or so, take it with a grain of salt I suppose. First post.

Yay, another fan of the playstyle! and even if I have been playing the game longer, I’ve only been looking at this build for a month (before this I wasn’t really using a build, and just put points wherever). So I’m probably not the go to expert for this build just yet and looking at your comments I can see some great advice there so your opinion is of value.

I just tested Evasive Purity on forest spiders just now and it does seem to be broken, however I swear that I’ve used it successfully before in the cliffside fractals. On the first boss drops that aoe poison wells, I walked into one and got poisoned and dodge rolled out of it with no poison, but on the spiders I couldn’t get it to trigger at all.

I have thought about switching some of the armor pieces for clerics (and if not clerics than maybe knights), since with fury and consumables I hit 80% crit which feels like too much 50% crit sound more ‘right’, but I haven’t gotten around to buying or figuring out what other pieces I want just yet. I also took a look at greatsword and it actually looks really great for this build (better then sword/warhorn), I’m surprised I missed out on it. I’m also curious as to the other differences in our builds, you should post a link to share when you get the chance.

You are also right about the Runes of Altruism for the 6th bonus either (8s of Fury i think?), but at the moment it seems to fit better than anything else I’ve thought of so far. I may try something that has just +might duration, but I still haven’t explored all the options available to me just yet.

jubskie.3152:

Added to the compilation thread!

Thanks!

Just tested the trait and it seems to be broken for me too.

jubskie.3152:

Very detailed guide, we see very few boon-based builds as most focus on passive regen + condition damage or just straight up glass. Good job making a guide on something that is unexplored

However, Carnivorous Appetite works on the pet’s crit, not on the ranger’s. It says so on the wiki. From what I can see, your pet surviving is more due to the protection from Guard than this trait. If it didn’t function as you initially thought, would it break your build? Or would that open the Master trait slot for something else?

It looks like you are right, it seems the Guard regen tick sync up with my attacks which is why I made that mistakes. But yes with this you can place something else in that master slot, also this doesn’t break the build I’ve already run this build in FOTM and AR the only places the pet dies are the places where it would’ve died in any other build.

Reserving this post, for possible future use.

Skill Setup (This won’t be a very big section)

• Signet of the Wild is a must
• Guard is a must if you go for Nature’s Voice in Nature Magic.
• Last one is situational, I generally get Quickening Zephyr with Rampage As One, since it is very easy to hit 25 stacks of might when used together. On bosses that have a lot of conditions, like the final boss in AR, I take Signet of Renewal, “Prayer to Lyssa”: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prayer_to_Lyssa is another option if you play the Human race. In some dungeons on certain parts I may also take trap instead.
• For the elite I take Rampage As One 90% of the time, we get 8s extra on the boons through the boon durations. There are certain situations where entangle might be better (high mob density, wvw, etc..), just judge the situation and choose.

Play style
The build has a bit of flexibility in it since you don’t need 100% critical chance (50% is more than enough) you are able to give up precision for other stats but more is better here. Also healing power is the other stat you have some play with, the healing power is solely for you here, so if you are great at dodging you might even be able to pull this build off with an armor set other than Magi such as Knights or Rampagers. With this build you generally want to take a weapon that can hit fast and critically hit lots, critical hits equate to your pet lasting longer and hitting harder. From the build and consumables you can hit 60% critical hit chance very easily 60% critical hit and 30% critical damage increase your damage output by 45%, with a Fury buff your damage output increases by 64%. Short bow, sword, and axe are the best weapons for this build, shortbow for ranged single target damage, sword for single/multiple melee target damage, and axe for multiple ranged damage. If you are lucky you can gain 11 stacks of Might on the “Superior Sigil of Strength”: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Strength alone, generally I see 4-8 stacks from this sigil though, for your pet that is probably just short of 25 stacks of might. I try not to stay to far from my party, that way I can regen from my shouts (Guard is very spammable) to the whole party and if I use warhorn I can give Fury, Might and Swiftness to everyone. The damage increase from having high stacks of might is very noticeable, full 25 stacks increases your damage per hit by around 200 damage and lets your condition ticks hit harder too.

We can gain a lot of boons in this build with decent uptime heals grant Might, Fury, and Vigor, Guard gives Swiftness and Regen, Critical Hits grant Might to your pet, Dodge removes conditions and grants Protection. If you are lucky you can gain 11 stacks of Might on the Superior Sigil of Strength alone, I generally see 4-8 stacks from this sigil though, for your pet that is probably just short of 25 stacks of might. If you include the buffs from your party, than you and your pet might have hit 25 stacks of Might already. If not Rampage As One will let you hit 25 stacks of Might every 2 minutes very easily.

For pets I generally run Jungle Stalker as a pet, but it depends on the boss I am fighting. Bosses that you fight ranged I use a devourer, bosses that hit very hard I’ll use a bear (bears are useful if you find you are on a boss that may leave you as the last man standing, you can get your bear to tank the boss while you resurrect your team.), I’ve also tried Bird pets but I haven’t gotten a good feel for them yet, and I don’t have any good spider pets just yet to try them out. You could choose whatever you want here, but pets who give boon duration seem to have a bit more appeal in this build.

Not sure what else I can add to this write up, but hopefully this build has been helpful to you. If you have any questions/concerns/suggestions please do post them, feedback is always a good thing, if not you can also post what your impressions or opinion on the build is.

Also thank you for your time in reading all of this (or some of this ).

Trait Setup
(Current build I am using can be found here; detailed explanation will be given below.)

There is some flexibility with the traits but with each trait there is a trade off if you use something else. I have tried other slight variations on this the build, before the patch the other setup I have used was 0/20/20/15/15 but with the addition to the new grandmaster trait to Nature Magic I am finding the current build slightly superior.

Skirmishing: (20 points)(Precision and Crit. Damage are good for the Magi Set and Might for your pet)

• V Companion’s Might: Very easy to give your pet high stacks of Might with this (I think I’ve seen up to 18 on my pet with this and just Superior Sigil of Strength), other options are I Pet Prowess and Sharpened Edges the rest are maybe more situational. I chose Companion’s Might since with it, it becomes easier to give your pet 25 stacks of might.
• VII Carnivorous Appetite : This is probably the most important trait in this build since this is what keeps your pet alive, I found this trait to be reliable enough to give up the Beast Master Traitline. It has less healing power in general compared to the BM builds, but it is still enough to give your pet a lot of survivability. With a Shortbow our attacks land twice every second, with more than 50% critical hit chance at least one of those shots will critically hit every second. Each critical hit at level 80 grants your pet 276 Health, as long as your auto attacks land and can critically hit you pet will essentially gain at least 276 health per second on this trait alone (I don’t know if there is an internal cooldown on this trait just yet, so I don’t know if 276 HP/s is 100% accurate). (Need to go over this trait once again, looks like the healing ticks that I thought were from this were from the regen on Guard.)

Wilderness Survival: (20 points)(We take this trait line more for the boons we get in it, such as regen, vigor, protection and for the toughness it adds. You could ignore this trait line or put more points elsewhere and it wouldn’t destroy the build, but I find this trait line has more benefits to this build than the other lines.)

• IV Vigorous Renewal: You can choose anything you want here, but I chose this since we get added benefit because of all the boon duration we run in this build.
• VIII Oakheart Salve: I am not 100% certain if the boon duration we have increases the 5 seconds, but the regeneration is good regardless. The other Major spells here are a lot more situational though, so choose what you think is better for you.

Nature Magic: (30 Points)(A lot of boons here as well as more boon duration, you can get regen/protection/swiftness/condition removal from here. There is also Fortifying Bond, with this any boon from an a source other than yourself is applied double to your pet. If something gives you and your pet a stack of might your pet will gain 2 stacks of might, if a regen is applied to you and your pet the duration on your pet is increased as well.)

• III Nature’s Bounty: Either this or Nature’s Protection.
• VIII Evassive Purity: You can choose what you want here, I chose this since it is useful in getting rid of poisons which will reduce the effectiveness of your Regen boon. You could also go for Nature’s Protection.
• Nature’s Voice: This is really good you can get 100% uptime on the regen boon by spamming Guard, before this trait was added I only put 15 points into Nature Magic and had the other 15 spread out all over. This is very good even with no healing power this heal 130 HP per tick, with a set up like mine it heals 222 HP per tick and with the Signet of the Wild your pet heals 529 HP per second.

Introduction

Hello, I am a bit hesitant on sharing this build considering the amount of debates our class is currently getting and the fact I haven’t fully explored this build. I started working on this build slowly about a month ago but with the recent patch this build has become more viable and now has a lot more flex to it. Originally this build was created to be used with Magi armor, but with the addition of the new shout trait you may be able to use pieces other than Magi (pretty much anything with precision on it would work on this build). The other reason I have decided to share is that from the other builds I’ve seen so far no one else has made use of these stats like this. Again I haven’t fully tested the build (especially on other armor sets) but it is a lot easier to use after the June 25th Patch. I also don’t know how viable the build is outside of PVE/Dungeon content since that is what I mainly run, I have ran it in WvW but I run with a zerg normally so I don’t know the true effectiveness of this build in WvW.

This build is currently based around the Magi Armor set (Healing power/Precision/Vitality), and focuses on boons, boon duration, critical hits and getting high stacks of Might on you and your pet. There are a couple of disadvantages with this build, first is the armor set is hard/harder to get and there are no ascended Magi pieces, second there is certain content in game that can’t be critically hit, third is that the build is RNG dependent (the build offers high critical chance, but RNG is still an uncontrollable factor), and finally your pets survivability is dependent on you landing critical hits if you get stunned or you can’t critically hit than your pet could die easily (so be good at dodging!). There are also advantages, on content that you can land critical hits you will hit harder, this build is also more group friendly as it provides boons, when you hit 25 stacks of might there is a very noticeable increase in damage, this build has more flexibility than the other ranger builds I’ve seen and is a nice change from the Apothecary builds and doesn’t rely on condition damage (you can use warhorn again!).

Equipment Setup
(Current build I am using can be found here; detailed explanation on will be given below.)

This build essentially lives off the 20 points in Skirmishing so depending on how good you are at dodging and surviving different encounters, you could give up the Magi armor entirely and go for something else that adds precision (Knights, Rampagers come to mind and I’m not sure about Berserkers). From my current experience with this build you only need about a 50% critical hit chance to keep your pet alive with this build, so if you want to put those precision points from equipment after that elsewhere you can. Need to re evaluate, I left it in for you guys to read for now though.

• Magi armor slotted with Superior Rune of Altruism (healing power and boon duration, you also have a lot of flexibility here I chose Altruism because they were cheap and they give boons on heals). Magi can be obtained either from the Karma vendors at the different temples in Orr or through the dungeon vendors for AC and HoTW.
• Main weapon is Shortbow with Superior Sigil of Strength, the type of Shortbow doesn’t matter too much I use Berserker but anything with Precision on it would work out well. Secondary I switch between sword or axe depending on the content I am challenging but I normally carry a Warhorn with Superior Sigil of Strength in the offhand slot.
• Accessories were a little bit more difficult to build for, to begin with there are no Ascended Magi Trinkets so for FOTM I had to mix and match (Precision and Healing power are the main stats of this build so I used anything that gives me either or, for back piece I currently use the Ascended Sclerite Karka Shell). There are exotic Magi trinket that can be bought on the TP and an Exotic Magi back piece can also be obtained through karma as well, so if you FOTM isn’t for you than this part will be easier for you. All the trinkets have been slotted Emerald Jewels (Knight stats), since there is no Magi gems/jewels).

The reason why there is so much debate over rangers, is because we do not have a clear structure as a class and the class doesn’t seem to agree with ANETs design philosophy for the game. GW2 is designed for casual players and rangers play very poorly as a casual class, in that sense warrior and rangers are two classes on the opposite side of a spectrum.

Warrior is a very good casual class you can play your warrior pretty much however you want and you could still be decent at it, and if you are a more hardcore player you can optimize the class easy for that as well. Warriors also have a clear/clearer class structure, even somebody who doesn’t play a warrior probably an idea of what a warrior is and how they play out. Rangers on the other hand is not like that at all, you can not play a Ranger class however you want. We have a lot of things Rangers are poor at, and there aren’t a lot of things they excel at. A lot of our mechanics also seem to be incomplete and poorly implemented, our weapons aren’t optimized, we lack pet mechanics, we lack a decent pet AI, and we have no clear design philosophy. This game is made as simple as possible for casual players, but we have many mechanics that go against that. Spirits need to be managed, pets need to be managed, we have traps, signets, shouts, and we seem to be the only class in game with survival skills. A lot of our spells also have a second portion to them, and we also have spells for our pets too.

We have no “obvious builds”. If you go on a warrior and build a beserker build chance are very high you have a general idea on where to put your points, same if you play a shout build or a banner build, on a ranger there is nothing like that. Rangers on the other hand aren’t like that at all, we have a Beast Mastery trait line to focus on our pets but we have a lot of traits in the Skirmishing that are also for our pets. There is a trait that decrease the cooldown on our survival skills by 20%, but we only have 5 spells that are considered as a survival skill and 2 of them happen to be offensive spells and no where in game does it tell you what is classified as a survival spell and what isn’t. On launch there were already different warrior build guides out for the class, it took the ranger community more than 6 months to come up with a good way to build our class and that only happened after the release of the apothecary armor. Chance are if Southsun was never added in the game, we would still be in the same place we were 6 months ago.

To be honest I could right a whole essay on the problems with the ranger class, and it might still not be enough. We are getting better as a class and still are, but it will take time. With the recent changes I was finally able to justify using a build I’ve been thinking about for almost 2 months, only reason why I didn’t try it before was because it was far less effective then the previous BM build. So things are moving forward, but not as fast as people want them too.

Yes! I thought I was going crazy, but in the dredge fractals after after clearing a group of them my pet started zig zagging and eventually attacked another group all on its own. Another thing I’ve noticed is that auto target no longer targets w/e is closer to you, which is very odd and might have to do with why our pets are attacking the wrong targets.

Puandro.3245:

Axe has a .25 activation time and .75 aftercast. Basically it means 1s per attack.

There is no mention of an after cast on the skill in game or on the wiki though.

urdriel.8496:

Mjolniir.2541:

urdriel.8496:

Now Anet will nerf the axe too…….

Huh?! Did you read the post?

it is called irony.

sarcasm*

But can we get back to the topic? this topic does not have any thing to do with the balance patch.

urdriel.8496:

Now Anet will nerf the axe too…….

Why would they nerf it, when it is attacking slower then they intended?

Zuer.2814:

Pretty much in the title. But if you can’t figure out what I’m trying to convey by that then just know that “Ranger” isn’t in reference to the word range. A ranger is a woodsman, outdoorsman, or someone who acts to protect the wild.

Just figured I’d post this. It’s annoying reading the forums and seeing people say that we should be the longest range or best range class when to justify how they think the ranger should be played.

“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

I was browsing the weapon skill window in game, when I noticed it said Axe 1 had an activation time of 1/4 (it also says this on the wiki). This didn’t look right so I decided to look into it, and I am finding that it has an activation time closer to 1/3 instead of 1/4. I posted the reasoning on why this matters and how I got that below, but I could use a second opinion or a second pair of eyes on all of this in case I am wrong or missing out on something.

First off to answer why does this matter?, if the activation time is closer to 1/3 instead of 1/4 it means that we are attacking ~30% slower than we should be. Since the axe is a slow weapon to begin with this may not mean a whole lot in short fights (such as in SPvP and WvW) , but in PVE and dungeons where you are more likely to be hitting multiple targets with high hp for quite some time this will hurt us a lot more. The reason why this is not a big deal in the PvP content is because there is no group who will let you get that close and hit them for many minutes at a time, in PvE and dungeons this is a lot more common when you clear trash mobs or adds or groups of veterans. The group of monsters that takes us 130 seconds to clear right now should actually take us 100 seconds (maybe even less since I rounded the 30% number down) if the activation time implemented in game is wrong.

My first test was actually very rough, and I used it to confirm my doubts. What I did was use a stop watch to time how long it took to throw 30 axes (88 Ricochets since I didn’t time up to the last two bounces), I timed my character taking 31.2 seconds for the 88 bounces. This gave me an activation time of .354 seconds, which made me look into this further.

The reason I did a second test was to confirm the first one, and to get a more accurate activation time. This time instead of using a stop watch I recorded my character attacking the practicing dummies in Lions Arch for 30 seconds @ 40 FPS (I don’t use the whole footage since that would take too long), using a recording lets me get actual time stamps for each axe thrown and an error for each time stamp (+/- 0.025 seconds). The times I recorded for 10 throws are as follows:

1st attack 0.000 seconds (reference point and when the first damage number popped up)
2nd attack 1.050 seconds
3rd attack 2.125 seconds
4th attack 3.225 seconds
5th attack 4.300 seconds
6th attack 5.475 seconds
7th attack 6.475 seconds
8th attack 7.525 seconds
9th attack 8.725 seconds
10th attack 9.700 seconds (didn’t count last 2 bounces again so 28 ricochets)

Using the above, I get an activation time of .346 +/- 0.050 which agrees with my first test and give us a more accurate activation time.

tl;dr I think we attack >30% slower with Axe 1 then intended.

I think that wiki page is also missing first few events need to start the event chain. I attempted Balth with a group, and we spent maybe 10~20 minutes trying to figure why we couldn’t get any of the 3 chains to start. We realized that there is an npc you need to talk to in Fort Trinity, who will start an event(s) to destroy a bone ship (bone ship is unforgettable by normal attacks. Once the bone ship is destroyed all three paths can continue/start.

characters under 80 are given bonus stats to fight level 80s, once you hit 80 you wont have that same power.

igor.6159:

Tinni.4351:

Warrior

i think i said RANGED class guys

They have rifles and long bows, and all the classes have a ranged weapon option.

I’m personally going with necro, since ANET seems to atleast follow them.

Just another issue to add with the harpy hunters, if you manage to successfully evade all the attacks from rapid fire (I think this is what the spell is called) while in combat with them they go invulnerable as well. Although it sounds difficult to do it is actually very easy to replicate (especially as ranger since you are aware of projectile mechanics since you’ve always seen them), but the biggest peeve I have with this is that you get punished for skillful play. Every time I run this fractal I have to make a mental note to not dodge the rapid fire spell completely, or else I’ll stand there like an idiot waiting for it to reset and hit me back.

I think I’ve figured out how the bug is triggered, but am not sure how to fix it. I believe invulnerability is triggered when you character and a monster are both in combat and if the monster can not damage you in X amount of time they become invulnerable. The problem with harpies is that the rapid fire spell is too telegraphed by sound, so it is possible to dodge the entire spell by simply by listening to the sound and moving your character left and right (you don’t even need to look at the harpy or even use dodge). The duration of rapid fire is also very close the X amount of time as well, so if the entire spell misses they can go invulnerable easily.

Ryan.8367:

Seems good , but how long does your pet stay alive for in dungeons regarding AoE / Targetted Dmg? I’m genuinely asking as I don’t PvE at all and I’ve always been told AoE’s are quite common in dungeons which completely destroys your pet.

I don’t have a problem with AOE in dungeons, melee attacks are the bigger problem since they are hard to see coming most of the times and they can nuke your pets.

arent you supposed to place bombs on it or something? I haven’t done it in awhile, but your not supposed to use your autoattacks to take it down.

This has been bugging me for awhile, but the if you participate in the SB pre event and run back to the SB boss area you sometime miss the boss because he gets downed so fast. Of all the pre event for world bosses, SB is the only one I try to avoid because of this. Even when playing on off hours he hits below 50%, when running from the pre event area to the boss area.

Won’t ever play sylvari or asura, they just seem annoying to me.

bind wasd to szxc, and use 1-5 and for 6-0 use q-t

LostInSmoke.2590:

JJBigs.8456:

Minute.7293:

….

The other problem I’ve noticed is that even after reaching past 10, is that most people don’t know how to run the separate fractals. I’ve been in groups where people still don’t know how the switches work to open the doors in the dredge fractals or how the hammer works in Cliffside. By far the most difficult problem I’ve had in running fractals is people all do them differently, or don’t do them properly. People have been carried past 10 by other more active members in the party, and then when you get a party of these passive fractal runner you see nothing but them dying over and over at even the most simplest parts. There have been multiple times where I needed my pet to 1v1 a boss, while I had to resurrect my team. If I can manage my pet well enough (with a system majority of people consider very poor) to hold off a boss to rez 4 people, then I don’t understand why people who have made it past level 10 can die over and over to the same mechanic.

they are playing a non useless class/spec?

Obviously not. People need to learn the concept of class roles and party composition. If this were an experienced party, they wouldn’t be running a ranger in the first place.

I am confused, are you saying the my class was the problem in our group? I often find that a poor player is much more detrimental to a group than any class could ever be. It doesn’t matter how great the warrior class is, if the player does not know how to utilize the class it all goes to waste. I would take an average player on a bad class (arguable) over a bad/lazy player on a great class any day.

I feel as though the 1-10 levels of fractals are pretty good reward wise, they are easy to complete and have a good chance of dropping cores. After those levels I start to notice that the time vs reward starts to drop off.

The biggest flaw I’ve noticed is with agony and agony resistance. Agony appears after 10, and you can’t get a ascended ring until after you pass 10. I ran fractals 1 to 20 on my warrior back when it first came out and gathered a lot of ring on him in the old system, but when I started running it on my ranger (this month) I’ve got nothing in terms of ascended pieces/AR until I got to level 12. To attempt the levels 10 to 20 properly you need at least 10 AR, and most people who have recently started running fractals don’t have the luxury I’ve had (I can take the extra rings from my warrior) and can only gather up 0-5 AR for this range unless they hold back and climb the same even level over and over for a chance at a ring or to gather the pristine tokens to buy one.

The other problem I’ve noticed is that even after reaching past 10, is that most people don’t know how to run the separate fractals. I’ve been in groups where people still don’t know how the switches work to open the doors in the dredge fractals or how the hammer works in Cliffside. By far the most difficult problem I’ve had in running fractals is people all do them differently, or don’t do them properly. People have been carried past 10 by other more active members in the party, and then when you get a party of these passive fractal runner you see nothing but them dying over and over at even the most simplest parts. There have been multiple times where I needed my pet to 1v1 a boss, while I had to resurrect my team. If I can manage my pet well enough (with a system majority of people consider very poor) to hold off a boss to rez 4 people, then I don’t understand why people who have made it past level 10 can die over and over to the same mechanic.

I know most rangers go with either cats or bears, but I was really surprised when I decided to try out a devourer against some of the FOTM bosses. Maybe I am late to the party, but I was surprised how little I had to micro manage them. They are ranged to begin with so they avoid all the close to mid ranged spells, and when the boss got close they burrow and distance themselves. With the bunker build they can survive all the long range spells no problem, and as a last resort you can swap one for another if they drop low.

It was a huge relief, not worrying about calling the pet back and forth to dodge some spells and a big relief that I could worry more about the fight than my pet for once.

Here is a picture to show what i am talking about.

Anyone see this? the level 70+ white axes are all above 1 silver, and some of them are 9s and 15s. If it was a yellow fine, but it makes no sense on a white item.

What about something like 0/20/20/20/10 or something along those lines? You give up some crit chance and crit dmg, but get more in heals and still keep a large bulk of the damage from precision.

I’ve been curious as to how to keep the heals from from the beastmaster build and get some damage from the ranger on top of it, and remembered the Magi armor set. I know this set doesn’t get much play as the ways you get it are very limited, and its not very nice to look at. Right now for the armor you can only get it through dungeons or through karma, the trinkets are from drops and there isn’t any magi jewel to slot them with. On top of that if you go for the ascended magi trinket makes a very lengthy process to obtain pieces for a build that may or may not even work effectively.

Now I haven’t obtained the armor or done any ingame testing but I think the most useful thing about this armor set is, that it uses precision instead of power/condition damage which may open up some more options in terms of sigils. With enough precision we can keep something like Sigil of Strength to give us a permanent power boost in battle.

The more ‘solid’ benefits for this is with 30 points into Skirmishing and 30 into Beastmastery, if we hit 65% crit chance and 50% crit damage (very doable as far as I can tell) we would increase out damage out put by about 60%. If you add fury into that, our damage will increase by about 80% and since we do not give up healing power nor the points in beast mastery our pet should still have high uptime.

I did do a mock up build here and the build does look worthwhile. However it takes a long time to obtain, and I would like some input from anyone on whether or not I should pursue it further. I may have missed something important that you may catch, and all in all would like to know if that this is a good idea.

Currently when you equip a 2-handed weapon over two 1-handed weapon, the first weapon will switch but the second weapon will go to the first available inventory slot. I think if the bag the 2-handed weapon is in is empty, both 1-handed weapons should end up in the same bag and right besides one another.

When your inventory is empty, and this happens it is not inconvenient. But in wvw when you have a partially full inventory of drops, it becomes an annoyance finding that warhorn/shield/focus when you have 3~4 identical icons for each.

nvm, I found a post that said to retype the username and it worked.

I can’t log in to the game client, it keeps saying either my username or password is wrong. However I am able to log into the forums and the website just fine. I’ve resetted my password once already and the problem still continues, anyone have any idea what is going on?

This is on the isle of janthir server, but don’t know if it’s only on our server. At first I thought they were all pets, but almost none of them are pets and occasionally they randomly die. There are other monsters in the mix, but not as many as black bears.

Anyone have an idea of what’s going on?

EDIT: Now there’s a bunch of Hawkeye griffons and Devourers too

I know not everyone has this problem, but I’ve ran level 10 three times gotten 3 rings and have gotten a ring for every even level getting up to 15.

I have 5 rings and I can only use 2, the others aren’t really useful for my alts and they just sit in my bank/inventory taking space. If I continue up climbing levels I can only imagine ending up with more and more rings, so what are we supposed to do with the extras?

You can’t chuck them in the mystic forge, you can’t salvage them, but you can sell them for 5s. I was hoping you could make Captain’s Council Commendations, but doesn’t look like you can do that atm.

Orion Magus.5348:

It’s not as silly as my guardian yelling “retreat” during a fight and then charging into the enemy… Aparently he is confused as to what retreat actually means.

It’s probably a rune or a trait that gives might/fury, and the might/fury spell happens to be “For Great Justice!”.

Posted this on a topic a while back, but figured I should post it here:

Minute.7293:

I am no expert in designing dungeons, but as someone who has to experience them I don’t like the current state of them. This was intended to be a short rant, but as I started writing it kind of grew.

I’ve done quite a lot of dungeons and a lot of them seem similar formula wise. Currently it feels like entire dungeons are composed of nothing but HP bars, you go through the HP bars of the trash mobs, the HP bars of the environment (gates for example), and the HP bars of the mini-bosses and bosses. Currently the harder dungeons don’t feel like they need more involvement, but rather more time. Explorable mode doesn’t even feel explorable, each dungeon has 3 different paths but they don’t feel different from one another. Yes there is some strategy involved but after the first and second run it all becomes second nature. Some dungeons don’t even require that, since you can figure it out by just following your other members.

I want dungeons that lets party members to split up up into different paths, and dungeons that can’t be done by just following your party. I want more dungeons like the dredge map with out all the dredge, I want switches that activate things, that move objects or terrain that may not be obvious in the first few few seconds after activating them. I want things to happen in the environment that if we miss we miss, and that if we catch it we may end up with a different ending dungeon. I want dungeons that require more effort instead of just time, and I want more explorations instead of chasing map objectives. Right now you path off from a dungeon you hit a wall or a dead end.

The other thing that bugs me is that you got rid of the ‘trinity’, but you haven’t replaced it. The bad thing about trinity was that it forced people into roles they may not have wanted, but the good thing about it is that it was forced involvement and punished people for not being involved (dungeon wipe etc). Now I can mindlessly play any dungeon and still complete a dungeon and be rewarded, maybe I die few more times but overall that is nothing. If we die we get a do over, even if you fail a dynamic event in PVE you don’t get a do over you get something else, but in dungeons we get as many do overs as we want. With the trinity if you lost any role, the dungeon would get a lot harder. Here you can 3 man most dungeons minus a lot of the new ones added in the fractals, the difficulty doesn’t really go up but amount of time spent does. The only dungeons that really get harder from being a man downed in this game, are ones that become impossible because they require a minimum number of players.

TL;DR I want dungeons that are more than just HP bars, dungeons that are actually explorable, dungeons that require a team but not to eat away at an HP bar faster. I want dungeons that if you fail a certain portion you fail it, and have to find another way around or if you find a certain portion you can ignore another part.

Drake Brimstone.3706:

I’m not using a 3rd party website and potentialy getting viruses just to get a group.

I’m not saying that website is a “bad” website, just that it’s not official and a potential security risk.

what how can you get a virus if you don’t download anything? Hundreds/thousands of players use the website and none of them have complained about it so far, if there was a problem with it people would recommend to NOT use it.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I think fractals do a slightly better job given they’re a set of random encounters with some that have other random aspects thrown in (the dredge fractal, for example, will give you either a dredge suit boss or an ice elemental boss… killing them is the same strategy, but the two bosses do different things). It’d be nice if explore mode dungeons had a little more of this randomness thrown in even if you still choose a particular path to go down.

Fractals does a much better job, and things even change as you go up in higher levels. But I still feel Fractals are missing certain elements/ideas, as to what specifically I don’t know. One thing I know for sure I’d like to see in Fractals are dungeons/paths that don’t have a boss, where you go from start to finish to find something and that’s it.

I am no expert in designing dungeons, but as someone who has to experience them I don’t like the current state of them. This was intended to be a short rant, but as I started writing it kind of grew.

I’ve done quite a lot of dungeons and a lot of them seem similar formula wise. Currently it feels like entire dungeons are composed of nothing but HP bars, you go through the HP bars of the trash mobs, the HP bars of the environment (gates for example), and the HP bars of the mini-bosses and bosses. Currently the harder dungeons don’t feel like they need more involvement, but rather more time. Explorable mode doesn’t even feel explorable, each dungeon has 3 different paths but they don’t feel different from one another. Yes there is some strategy involved but after the first and second run it all becomes second nature. Some dungeons don’t even require that, since you can figure it out by just following your other members.

I want dungeons that lets party members to split up up into different paths, and dungeons that can’t be done by just following your party. I want more dungeons like the dredge map with out all the dredge, I want switches that activate things, that move objects or terrain that may not be obvious in the first few few seconds after activating them. I want things to happen in the environment that if we miss we miss, and that if we catch it we may end up with a different ending dungeon. I want dungeons that require more effort instead of just time, and I want more explorations instead of chasing map objectives. Right now you path off from a dungeon you hit a wall or a dead end.

The other thing that bugs me is that you got rid of the ‘trinity’, but you haven’t replaced it. The bad thing about trinity was that it forced people into roles they may not have wanted, but the good thing about it is that it was forced involvement and punished people for not being involved (dungeon wipe etc). Now I can mindlessly play any dungeon and still complete a dungeon and be rewarded, maybe I die few more times but overall that is nothing. If we die we get a do over, even if you fail a dynamic event in PVE you don’t get a do over you get something else, but in dungeons we get as many do overs as we want. With the trinity if you lost any role, the dungeon would get a lot harder. Here you can 3 man most dungeons minus a lot of the new ones added in the fractals, the difficulty doesn’t really go up but amount of time spent does. The only dungeons that really get harder from being a man downed in this game, are ones that become impossible because they require a minimum number of players.

TL;DR I want dungeons that are more than just HP bars, dungeons that are actually explorable, dungeons that require a team but not to eat away at an HP bar faster. I want dungeons that if you fail a certain portion you fail it, and have to find another way around or if you find a certain portion you can ignore another part.