Guild Wars 2

loki.7928:

Hey fellow WvWers

I’m looking for my perfect WvW/Zerg Class..

What do i like?
Sword and Shield!!!!! I just love it so much. It needs atleast have Sword and shield in the spec.
Support I just love to support my Guild with Buffs(Heals is a cherry on top for me).
Heavy Armor is a small plus but not a must.

A ranged weapon/spec for World bosses/fractal is plus(doesn’t need to be support).

Its doesn’t need to be a PoF elite spec. A Core or HoT spec is fine by me.

Atm i’m kinda torn between Support Herald and a Chronomancer. I didn’t Really got the time to try and test the Firebrand. But that might be a pick to.

Kinda seems like you wanted to have a Druid-Guardian crossbreed.

I think you should ask some more questions, perhaps you will get closer to finding out what you want after looking at/answering these example questions;

Do you prefer mobility over durability?
Do you wish for individual survival, rather then collectively dependent survival?
Do you want Sword and Shield for the great aestethics or for the skills?
What other kinds of weapons do you like using?

Strider Pj.2193:

Meta is player created and is there for player comfort. Each class has its place in WvW. And each class has a game mode where it is part of player created META.

If the META bores you, switch what you do in WvW for a while. Havoc some, roam, build to beat the META. It’s funny when you hit someone who is expecting condi and you hit them with power.

If META is boring: change it.

ZERG META is not something one person, or a small group can change.

One player can change the roaming meta, if they steamroll almost everyone they meet.
One group can change the havoc/5 man roaming meta if they steamroll almost everyone they meet.

ZERG META will not change much, even if 1-2 guilds have a different meta. The reason is pugs. They are teh boon and curse of WvW. We need them to keep things going, organized guild play simply isnt prevalent enough to maintain activity outside of stacking 5-7 servers with only organized guilds in different timezones. Our playerbase is too small for WvW to survive without pugs.

However, Pugs will not change their gear due to one enemy being hard. They will rather run and hide in a tower/keep/choke then bother thinking up a solution. This goes for many commanders too. Simply put, the quality of commanders when it comes to abstract thinking, isnt that great. Some are great, most are not.

My biggest grief when it comes to commanders taking charge and trying to change the ZERG META came up during the last open BETA weekend. We met a group that ran spellbreakers + scourge. Spellbreakers demolished our boons, scourge destroyed us with condi spam out of this world (i saw close to constant 1500 torment damage per movement, that is insane to deal with)
Guess what, we could have tested new METAs WITHOUT ANY PERSONAL COST. The characters were free, the only cost was TIME.

And every push, my Soulbeast was the ONLY class to make it through their zerg. Why? Because i tested out the new healing stance. Which removed and HEALED 2 condies per second. My suggestion, after being wiped 8 times by the same group, by the same method, was for a few ppl to make a Soulbeast and TRY. just TRY.
It was free, easy to test. We had communication with the other servers commander so we could test 50v50 pug zerging meta pre X-pack….

And i explained to these people, that the boost from Soulbeast was a NON-BOON. Thus spellbreaker couldnt strip it, and due to the healing effect, it would offset some of the other damage being taken. It would give us a few seconds of “freedom” and ability to land damage before being nuked with CC and condies again.

No response. NONE. instead 3/8 commanders along one of the build-crafters on my server decided to try a few more pushes, which resulted in, at best 15 kills for our side.

Maybe i am just smarter then these people when it comes to troubbleshooting (its part of my RL work, so i got experience in analyzing problems). Maybe i see the solution to what was the problem, faster. Or maybe i simply enjoy testing new things more then they do. Whatever the reason. If you cannot make the public commanders test things when it is free, easy and effortless. How do you expect a single player to EVER change the meta when it costs time, money and possibly gems to unlock character slots etc…??

It is getting kind of tiresome, that only 4-5 classes is viable for zerging.

NOW. there is a expansion on the way, but nothing in it struck me as “universally applicable” skills.

Ranger will have stability sharing, condi cleansing and high healing, but less stability then guardian. And whilst condi cleanse is fairly similar, it is negated by the need for certain utilities for self sustain.

Now, Soulbeast will be amazing for havoc/5 man groups. Due to performing similar role to guardian but with high amounts of out-of-combat mobility on low CDs.. which is essential for todays Havoc/5man groups. If you cannot GTFO on a dime, you get rekt.

Mesmer, Thief, engineer will still be small party roaming. But i dont even see niche uses in zergs.

Thief/Deadeye can do high spike damage, but become rooted. So you might aswell bring a longbow ranger. As the LB ranger can also do insane single target bursts. Have a AOE, and can share stability, protection and resistance (automatically better then thief). So in a zerg role, deadeye is worse then Ranger/soulbeast in almost every instance.

Mesmer will be really good in roaming. But will only hold “portal/veil bot” functions in zergs… yes their wells can work, but why would you bother speccing for that when a spellbreaker or revenant will do the same, better.

Engineer is, as usual, going to be a “high skill level” class. Only a very experienced engineer player will be able to provide utility. Yes, engineer DO have utility for zergs, but it takes skill to make it work (kinda like current ranger. Its a far cry from being cookie cutter)

What happened to the “play however you want” philosophy?

Soulbeast is a step in the right direction. You can take a couple of soulbeasts without sacrificing the zergs sustain too much. But you cannot take much of any of the other classes without them turning into total rallybots in a 50+ group.

I understand the need for a change in META, to maintain longevity of the game mode. But why, why oh why, could you not have tried to add the “meta tilting” abilities to the classes that is least wanted. Create some variety, rather then shoehorn everyone into playing Necro/Scourge, Spellbreaker, Guardian, Elementalist or Revenant…

Whilst in PvE, the META AFAIK is kinda opposite… you want rangers/druids for raids, you want a mesmer, you want a engineer or thief for DPS or condi… but you dont really need a warrior or revenant atm..

This imbalance has gone on for 5 years. you had the last expansion to “fix it”.. you didnt. This expansion wont “fix it” either.

When will your mantra of “play as you wish” apply to all game modes, and not just solo play in PvE and sPvP?

Dadnir.5038:

Correct me if I’m wrong but in essence what’s said in this thread is that the OP have a blast with ranger since launch (or almost), tried other profession to find that all of them have their pro and cons and find it difficult to accept that the ranger is the same : limited by pro and cons.

I have a feeling that it mean that the profession is somehow balanced when I read this.

NB.: I have the feeling that the issue is still always the same : Pet skills need a serious balance patch because their cast time and cool down is a real mess for the pitiful effect granted in the end.

I totally agree on the pet reworking. Their skills are far more situational then functional. However with experience, that too can be planned ahead for during combat.
————————————————————————————————-

To answer the rest of you. No, i find ele far more FUN then ranger/druid. But it’s limitations means it’s is far more situational then i’d like it to be. However it is not that i find ranger “fun”. Like i said, it is outright boring to play. I know the moves, i know the results of almost any fight i go into. I know if i will lose or not, and i will intentionally waste an enemies time if it means the “objective” of the match will benefit of it. It is not that i find the ranger/druid omnipotent, that is far from the truth.
It is more that the class, for all its perceived flaws, are versatile enough to throw it into almost any situation, knowing that you have the tools, build and skills to manage said situation.

For a long while, Engineer was the same, but now, with the addition of Scrapper, i feel like Engineer lost some of its flexibility as a price of gaining its specialization.

That being said, i DO miss having Empathic Bond in Wilderness Survival and Wilderness Knowledge in Nature Magic… that was great… and would be amazing in the current condi spam meta that is WvW (Shout heal with Trooper runes, Empathetic bond + Wilderness Knowledge + Evasive Purity… man that was great when coupled with Dire + Apothecary)

Wondrouswall.7169:

TL:DR – I enjoy playing Ranger so much I can’t play other professions.

Rangers can also share might, stability, and protection – it’s just tied to Spirits and their GM trait. Ask for the return of Spirits Unbound and there will be less grief on that.

Not really. Ranger is kinda boring due to it being easy…. Not really any challenge with it anymore.

Yes, this is not a joke topic. I am so kittening fed up with other classes now.. Ive been playing Ranger/Druid since december 2012 (aka 6 months after launch).
And to be frank, no other class feels worth playing. yes objectively you can do more DPS on a thief, you can do more tanking on a guard, you can do more portals on a portalbot mesmer, you can do more AOE on a ele, you can do more heals on a healbot ele and so on…

But you cannot do it all, which is what the ranger does… And god does that kitten me off.
So i started playing ranger. Then i got bored, then i mained warrior. Quickly learned that warrior was far inferior in every way other then tanking zerg frontline (which can be argued these days). Mobility outside of roaming builds is terrible, like 4/10. GS isnt a zerg weapon. Thus
So then i went to main ranger again. Got bored of it, so i went to main ele. And sure, staff ele is great, i still love it. But it is so frikking squishy, and outside of AOE DPS and waterfields/lightning fields, its not that good. I mean, mobility (unless specifically speccing for a roaming build) is 6/10 at best
So then i mained ranger again…. And i enjoyed the brutal LB DPS, coupled with staff mobility, high sustain through healing….
But then i decided that i had to do the obvious. Be the “teamplayer”. So i crafted full ascended for my guardian. Guardian is kind of nice, but it is still inferior to a Ranger/Druid. Sure you can grant stability and protection, and heal conditions like nobodys business… but hey, if you L2P ranger, you can go in and out of druid mode so often it makes no difference in terms of “condi cleanse upkeep”. Ranger wins HANDS down if you decide to go down that route….
But the worst with guardian is its 2/10 mobility outside of combat. NOTHING can improve it. Only a necro is worse (which is why i never got around to main a necro, because it was too slow)….

So here i am, fed up with boring niche classes that does one thing very well and has to be carried by other classes to make their skills work… Sure, ranger mobility in SW/WH + GS/Staff is extremely high, and iv’e been quite spoiled by that…. but guardian taught me the most valuable lesson.

Whatever your class can do, doesnt matter, if you cannot move about the battlefield effectively, you are WORTHLESS, you WILL get caught, you WILL get ganked and you WILL go down…. Regardless of your invulnerabilities, mist forms, evasions etc…

Perhaps this is all due to my extensive experience with the Ranger class. Perhaps i am simply “too good” as a ranger to be held back by its deficiencies. I mean, i have indeed spent 4 years working around limitations, theorycrafted builds, perfected tactics and honed my counter-manouvers game. But still, i wish other classes weren’t so kitten square and boring. They are just a selection of boxes. Nothing else. You either chose this, or that, or that. You don’t mix. If you mix, you die.

However i have one major grief with rangers. It is not our inability to effectively share stability. It is our inability to maintain and share protection and might… If we had a skill, heck, even a elite or long cooldown skill, perhaps Druid form “4” (protection per pulse)… that would be it. I dont want 100% uptime. Just the ability to give it when needed without having to tell your allies to stand still for 3 seconds.

Nikkinella.8254:

Reveal never really bothers me much. I don’t think most thieves care about stealth that much anymore. You have enough evades and mobility to survive. Thief still seems pretty strong to me, the only thing i really have problems killing sometimes, oddly enough are rangers. The good ones anyway that don’t have trash pve builds and know how to use their class. Neither thief nor ranger are useless in wvw, but many players playing them that think they’re actually good at it are. If you think they’re weak, you just have a bad build or are just bad at the class.

And as others have pointed out, any commander that doesn’t realize the value of a good thief or ranger is a bad commander that you shouldn’t be following or listening to anyway. Good commanders see the value in all classes and all roles. If you’re being excluded, either the commander is bad, or you’re bad. You need to find out which that is.

Agreed. As a ranger player, it doesnt matter what build the thief or ranger has really. First to hit with a burst wins 8/10 times. Only exception is when one or the other mess up.

ArcanistSeven.8720:

and this is why i dont play WvW to much because my favorite class is thief but they are pretty much useless and easy as kitten to kill when i play other classes. with the nerf to backstab and all the reveals in the game which hard counter an entire traitline to the point where no one plays it anymore your better off spamming shadowshot twice than setting up for a backstab. i also believe WvW and PvE need to be balanced separately look what happened to rev they nerfed its boon duration for WvW and it not only destroyed its viability to raids it also destroyed raid diversity.

Most of the reveals at close range AOE or require you to target the thief first. Due to shadowsteps or other “blink” skills. it can be incredibly hard to actually reveal a thief. Not to mention, the few reveals that are ingame is pointless, because their duration is so short that the thief has far too many evades/shadowsteps to completely counter-act them.

Reveal is the most overhyped useless “condition” you can put on a thief. You are better of speccing something that does a condi nuke or Chill/Slow. MUCH more effective.

This comes from a Ranger/Druid who used to run beastmaster condi bunker before HoT. When the pets hit like a truck and Sic’em actually was destructive against thieves.

QuickRain.4735:

wanna play druid? play support druid, otherwise be prepared to be kicked
I kick any Vanilla Rangers (Literally Free Bags), and if I “have” to make room ill kick any power/condi druids first, and then any useless thieves keeping the healing druids.
LB Ranger is so pointless with all the mace/shield guards, Aura Eles, WoRs, the Rev Wall thing.

Why? cause they came to be team player. If you wanna stand back and PEW PEW play hammer Rev

Fun fact, LB5 on rangers damage is not from the projectiles, its from the field. Thus it doesnt get blocked by projectile blockers. Unlike most other ranged attacks.

Kastylx.3725:

Prysin.8542:

just 63,5 Gold…. yeah that sure isn’t “a lot”… to a PvE player.

Ohh come on, i made at least 100g from packets alone since patch. Not mentioning reward tracks/lootbags and all the other kitten wvw throws at you nowadays

Clearly you dont provide siege/tactics for the server you are on. If you had, you’d understand.

But hey, just because you want to leech off your server doesnt mean the rest of us do.

Najten.2418:

Prysin.8542:

So you are saying that people like me, who DONT have agony trinkets, DONT know the map rotations, DONT know the boss mechanics, DONT know the shortcuts, DONT know the gear combinations, DONT know where to even go to play fractals of the mist has it “easy” to get the PvE her0 gear?

Do i want a fractal backpack? yes
Can i get it without investing hugely into Fractals? NO

IS IT FAIR TO THOSE WHO SPENT HUNDREDS OF HOURS PLAYING TO GET THE FRACTAL BACKPACK, TO LOWER REQUIREMENTS FOR FRACTAL BACKPACK BECAUSE I DONT PLAY IT ENOUGH TO GET WHAT I WANT?? NO

Life isnt fair. you CHOSE not to play WvW when leveling was easier. Likewise i CHOSE not to invest into PvE and learning how to play fractals.

CHOICES HAS CONSEQUENCES

And FYI, my WvW level is below 750. I dont expect to hit 2k anytime soon given how little i play. But i am not going to cry-bully my way to making it easier.

WvW never gets anything nice. Our achievements takes YEARS to complete due to the ridiculous amount of kills/escorts/flips you need. And we get rewarded with nearly nothing. So when WvW finally gets a good reward for the countless hours it takes to get where we are, then you have no right to come here and cry bully your way to make it easy.

Your whole post is infact a giant “middle finger” to all WvW players, past and present.

The issues with your argument: You’re acting as if you need to be able to start a lvl 100 Fractal to obtain the Fractal Backpack. You don’t. You don’t have to earn a single level in Fractals.. You can start the collection off without ever having set foot in there before.
The only thing that will in any way gate you is Agony resistance. You know how to get this? Buy 3072 +1 Agony Infusions go trade them in for 12 +8 Agony Infusions and 6 +9 Agony Infusions at the INFUZ-5959 golem inside the Mistlock Observatory. It’ll cost you ~63g 50s. Apply Infusions to armor and trinkets. Done. You can now complete all Backpack related achievements.
You compare that to grinding rank 2000 in WvW? Please allow me to snicker a bit.

just 63,5 Gold…. yeah that sure isn’t “a lot”… to a PvE player.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Prysin.8542:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Sarrs.4831:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

No other game mode has a system which tracks for 4 years that goes to rank 10k.

achievement points

that’s game wide, wvw has them too

If you started from 0 Achievement points. Only did WvW, you’d spend 3 years to get to 10k achievement points. Assuming you did all the WvW dailies and got ALL the WvW achievements.

you can get 10k achivement points in PvE in just 5-6 months if you have all the Living story stuff unlocked.

So cut it out with your strawman arguments.

achievement points are not game mode specific, my argument was game mode specific

Achievement points are not. The efficient acquisition IS.

But hey, if you keep making strawman arguments, you’ll have enough scarecrows to protect a texan ranch

ImLegion.4018:

JessieAngel.6254:

Ok so I love playing WvW and have from the beginning.

So this is what has happened twice now where a commander (and this in Not new commanders) comes to a map and started asking people to join the squad and then after a while when they have a decent sized squad they started kicking Rangers and Thiefs from the squad. I PM them to ask what’s going on and the one response I go was you are a Ranger and the other one did not bother to respond.

That is messed up!

Get a proper class.

Delete your account

Threather.9354:

• Rangers have no burst damage or reliable cc in zerg fights

Ahahahahaahahahahaahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahaahaha, no.

fake news

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Sarrs.4831:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

No other game mode has a system which tracks for 4 years that goes to rank 10k.

achievement points

that’s game wide, wvw has them too

If you started from 0 Achievement points. Only did WvW, you’d spend 3 years to get to 10k achievement points. Assuming you did all the WvW dailies and got ALL the WvW achievements.

you can get 10k achivement points in PvE in just 5-6 months if you have all the Living story stuff unlocked.

So cut it out with your strawman arguments.

Arkaile.5604:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I want to do lvl 100 fractals so lower the agony to half. I also want lenegedry armour so lower the cost to half. I also want to finish of my lendry shortbow so lower the mastery points by half in pve hot.

The problem with this approach is it doesn’t take anywhere remotely as long to reach both of those goals as it does to get to rank 2000 in WvW. They can be daunting to new players, sure, but not in the same “this will take so long that it isn’t even a goal I should consider” manner that the t3 WvW skins’ rank requirements are. I understand the appeal of long-term (3+ years) goals and giving something to veterans who’ve stuck with WvW through the years, but was that really what was needed to support the health of the game mode? There was an influx of players who wanted to see what was introduced and now the majority appear to have left with others continuing to trickle off. Not quite back to square one yet, but we’re getting there.

As for fractals, there are steps people need to take in order to get to the more rewarding t4 fractals. From personal experience I know getting people into fractals can feel like pulling teeth, but once a person actually starts progressing and getting rewards they seem to stick with it, provided they like the content. The progression is more apparent and players who bother to put in the time will notice tangible changes rather quickly.

Comparing this to WvW, players do get incremental rewards, like more pips per tick, but it takes much, much longer to get even those tiny benefits. Rewards for progression are spread out far too thin. Having the requirement be so high would probably seem more reasonable if there were more rewards placed along the road to rank 2000, but if nothing is going to be added it really ought to be lowered.

actually, it is exactly what WvW needs. We need fresh blood. Some will leave, some will stay, some will become frequent casuals.

WvW need activity, period. And just like with anything in this game. it is a CHOICE. Nobody forces you to get that skin. The skin isnt required to unlock a certain area, game mode, quest etc…

If this skin had similar difficulty to obtain in PvE, there would be far less pushback. People would just grind on, the same way as always.

The issue is that people want “stuff” without any investment in a game-mode they dislike. Well tough luck. Plenty of WvW players hate PvE, but that doesnt stop them from gritting their teeth for hours on end trying to achieve what they want.

Also, as a sidenote. in 4 weekends of 22 hours of gameplay per weekend. With Birthday (celebration) and Heroic booster + hero banner, i have aqcuired 85 WvW levels…. Sure, you need to get boosters. But most hard-core PvE players has racked up A LOT of gold or crafting materials to sell to gain gold. And can thus choose to spend money or gold to get gems and buy a few boosters.

Playing a class and build advied by commanders/veteran WvW players will reduce your chance of dieing, while increasing your time killing enemies (gaining WvW EXP).

BUT LET US ADRESS THE ELEPHANT IN THIS ROOM. PVE PLAYERS, LIKE ALWAYS, JUST WANT SHINY STUFF, DOESN’T WANT TO ENGAGE IN WVW AND EXPECT THAT WVW PLAYERS SHOULD BE CONTEMPT WITH BEING TREATED LIKE A UNWANTED CHILD

Warrior would probably be the best choice out of the classes you got.

Roaming has become more and more segregated to the duelist/sustain classes like Scrapper, Ranger/druid, Thief and Mesmer… Tempest CAN do well, but it takes a lot of skill to beat any of the aforementioned classes

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

The only reason wvwers do not want it lowered, is because they are being selfish and they know that they now have something that most players cant get by any reasonable means (which is basically selfishness, and a disregard for gw2 as a whole). Wvwers call anyone who advocates that they want the rank req lowered on t3 armor as being “entitled.” Yet they are the ones who are acting truly entitled, because they were fortunate enough to have their activities tracked via wxp when so many other game modes in gw2 don’t track various activities with similar a system to wxp (just wvw’s).

I wonder how spvpers feel since there ranks stopped being tracked at r80 and some people had that within 3-6 months of the game launching. (guess they get nothing since spvp rank doesn’t go to r10k). If they release armor gated behind spvp rank 80, it would be quite easy for a new player to get r80 (the cap) vs r2000 in wvw. – Pve also doesn’t even have a ranking system like this of any kind. The closest thing is masteries and that’s hardly comparable to wxp or spvp rank, its also much less time consuming.

they think wxp = prestige/commitment, which is only partly true especially considering eotm’s existence/previous exploits, and the fact that k-train is by far the most efficient way to rank up (not zerg vs zerg, not defending, not scouting, not roaming, not havoc, not upgrading, though they do add to wxp to an extent). In addition to this wxp wasn’t tracked for the entire first year of the game, a time in which i spent countless hours and none of that was tracked at all.

This is why r2000 is unreasonable compared to all other game modes and was a design decision which needs to be re-evaluated.

So you are saying that people like me, who DONT have agony trinkets, DONT know the map rotations, DONT know the boss mechanics, DONT know the shortcuts, DONT know the gear combinations, DONT know where to even go to play fractals of the mist has it “easy” to get the PvE her0 gear?

Do i want a fractal backpack? yes
Can i get it without investing hugely into Fractals? NO

IS IT FAIR TO THOSE WHO SPENT HUNDREDS OF HOURS PLAYING TO GET THE FRACTAL BACKPACK, TO LOWER REQUIREMENTS FOR FRACTAL BACKPACK BECAUSE I DONT PLAY IT ENOUGH TO GET WHAT I WANT?? NO

Life isnt fair. you CHOSE not to play WvW when leveling was easier. Likewise i CHOSE not to invest into PvE and learning how to play fractals.

CHOICES HAS CONSEQUENCES

And FYI, my WvW level is below 750. I dont expect to hit 2k anytime soon given how little i play. But i am not going to cry-bully my way to making it easier.

WvW never gets anything nice. Our achievements takes YEARS to complete due to the ridiculous amount of kills/escorts/flips you need. And we get rewarded with nearly nothing. So when WvW finally gets a good reward for the countless hours it takes to get where we are, then you have no right to come here and cry bully your way to make it easy.

Your whole post is infact a giant “middle finger” to all WvW players, past and present.

GrahamW.5397:

rank 1500-2000 is fine, god forbid that the players who have stuck it out through almost 5 years get rewarded a bit more than the people just jumping in now for the skins.

yeah, its a bloody insult to WvW veterans to lower the rank of WvW specific armor.

anduriell.6280:

Prysin.8542:

Straegen.2938:

Zintrothen.1056:

They’re already the most OP spec IMO.

Wha?????

That is a bold claim on a class that isn’t particularly good in a zerg, not great in skirmish, kinda meh roaming and gets routinely destroyed in duels.

That only happens on the server you play.

You mean that only happens in all the servers except the one where you play?

Because the commanders in my server are nice enough to remind all the druids to relroll something useful like a rev or an ele.

That is because most commanders are jerks by nature (as is most leaders. You dont become a leader by being "just nice). And because skilled rangers/druids is hard to find.

As for my comment: me and Straegen has a long history, i mained ranger for YEARS, i still play it. I still know how to build a ranger/druid to be useful, but i do not overestimate the rangers capabilities in my own hands. Now, not many has my experience with the class. I dont need to look at a guide to know which combinations/chains to use. Its not hard.

The main fallacy regarding rangers is their “role”. They dont really fit a single role, unless you go for commander DPS spike, in which they are far superior to any class due to their range and piercing.

The benefit of the ranger/druid, is never their ability to “match” a class, its the ability to do ALL the roles nearly as good, at once. People forget that. It’s not great to have many rangers, 4-5 skilled ones in a 80 man zerg is plenty for what they do. But having none, well, for the past 3 weeks ive mained guardian. I like it, but we have NO rangers/druids with any drop of skill, and it is showing. we lack the burst heal despite water fields and guard/revenant heals. We lack the atrocious focus fire on cannons, or the spike condi cleanse.

The benefit of a ranger/druid is not the ability to do X, its the ability to do X Y Z in order to let other classes save their skills for when you truly need them. And unless you intentionally build a ele or guard or warrior or revenant to do THAT task alone, they wont do it as good.

And i dare you to find a way to do this role, as effectively, as rangers does it, without wasting much needed sustain or support abilities in other classes.

Perhaps revenant can do some of it, i am not familiar enough with the class, but none of the other classes can.

Straegen.2938:

Zintrothen.1056:

They’re already the most OP spec IMO.

Wha?????

That is a bold claim on a class that isn’t particularly good in a zerg, not great in skirmish, kinda meh roaming and gets routinely destroyed in duels.

That only happens on the server you play.

Threather.9354:

There are multiple reasons:
Main reason: Pet
- your pet will get multiple conditions on it and get epid. Major target for condi necros. Pet wont get cleansed because its lower on cleanseshare than people.
Minor reason 1: lack of cc, damage and stomp potential
Melee eles run 2 invulns to stomp/ress with, druid has none. Only proper cc druid has is with entangling roots that are useless in zerg fights. Melee eles have shocking auras, frost auras, immobs.
Minor reason 2: lack of boonshare and cleanse:
Druids only share 3 boons with allies, sure they can give 10% damage boost but thats not enough to make up for lack of cleanse/boons. Trooper runes are not enough cleanse.

There are just better options. Hammer rev is worth 5 longbow rangers. Ventari rev is worth 5 healing druids

Please do not try to compare the functionality of a revenant to a druid/ranger. Totally different roles.

A ranger/druid has way higher spike, way higher range. Lower sustain and support for sure. And while it might be a bug, LB5 is quite interesting in the way it delivers damage.

anduriell.6280:

I’ve heard a lot lately only one or two druids in full minstrel are needed for squad. No more and that’s why druids are not wanted anymore in any squad.

For healing commanders are asking eles and in some degree revs, but not druids.

Druids can be a great healers, it is true because the 15 seconds cd between avatars they can’t heal the zerg consistently and that’s a problem where combat can last more than 15 seconds but can that be the only reason?

Minstrel druids are fine, but you do not do much damage. A druid is a great healer, but if you carry the longbow, you are also an excellent spiker/siege killer. Without any power stat however, you will not be helpful outside of healing.

I suggest you run Power, Toughness, Vitality and Concentration (Wanderer?) armor with Assassins + sigil of accuracy longbow and Clerics or Celestial trinkets + backpack.

Yes your healing goes down, but your versatility goes way way up. Also, if you run shouts, dont forget to run Rune of the Trooper for that AOE condi cleanse. great help in this condi heavy meta

henchmen.1856:

Fluffball.8307:

I have a 1 year old that I prefer sleeps rather than is up at like 3 am. If the PUGmander can’t handle that, kitten em.

headphones exist for a reason. no one is saying you have to talk.

holodoc.5748:

TS is not a requirement for effectively contributing to WvW. As a matter of fact a lot of people, myself included, do not join TS because of all the side effects that come with joining a public place like that. Screaming, producing all kinds of bodily noises, publicly sharing personal sexual fantasies, picking fights with other people on TS… No thank you.

what kind of weird as server are you on….

My thoughts exactly XD

On a sidenote. TS is free, it allows for easy, effortless real time communication. If you do not want to listen to the chatter, reduce volume of TS overall, then bump the volume of the commanders only. That way, you only hear what you need to hear.

The point of TS, is also not JUST for you to hear others, its for others to relay info TO YOU. A commander/zerg isnt always able to relay info in text or through links. Having to tie up a scout or another roamer to relay said info to you, because you refuse to use a simple free program to stay in the loop, wastes not just the commanders time, but OUR time.

We are all in this together. Using TS, lowering the volume so you arent bothered by it. Its easy, its FREE and i dare say it’s simply “good manners”

Sly.9518:

Oh nooo a mechanic that rewards player for not Blobbing…. yea haven’t seen any bullying either

It also rewards moving to other servers. Potentially uprooting communities.

Rashagar.8349:

Prysin.8542:

if you want to win whilst outnumbered, they are key.

But one should discern between roamers who play the objective, and roamers who only kill stragglers.

Now i’ll say it sounds a bit disengineous to constantly harp on thieves, for doing what they were created and intended to be.

Yeah, the line between a thief I respect and a thief I don’t is thinner than for most other professions. Which should say more about me than it does about thieves, but I have the feeling it isn’t a feeling unique to me heh.

Thief, sadly, does not allow for a varied playstyle. I main ranger, and i can choose between at least 3 meta and 5-8 good/strong builds, without being penalized for it. Thieves have 3 builds (dagger backstab, evade bot, condi spam) – Daredevil does improve selection a bit, but nothing like with other classes.
The fact that EVEN with daredevil, a thief’s playstyle is still fairly linear, use steal or shadowstep to approach, stab/slash, teleport/evade out of range of counter attacks. keep distance while trying to land flanking or stealth shots.
And despite all this, the meta for thieves does not change. They are still hopelessly weak against LB rangers, despite what all the “pr0’s” here say, i can regardless of your skill level still, to this day, as i did 2.5 years ago. Activate Signet of the Wild, Quickening Zephyr and press 2 on longbow while watching the thief melt. And as a thief you have next to zero defense against it, even if you know it is coming, you risk taking 8-10k damage in 1.25 seconds flat… meaning unless you are absolutely sure the ranger cannot block or evade you (staff makes LB rangers a PITA for anyone), you got no surefire way to stop said ranger.

The thief fares equally poorly against a skilled zerker DPS guard. if one rotation lands, thief is gone.

if you want to win whilst outnumbered, they are key.

But one should discern between roamers who play the objective, and roamers who only kill stragglers.

Now i’ll say it sounds a bit disengineous to constantly harp on thieves, for doing what they were created and intended to be.

The most crazy chain iv’e managed to pull was with a perfect fear train using traited pet, skull item and norn elite, sent a necromancer running for a good while. Troll setup was troll XD

utter crap build, but man its fun to use around hills and in EOTM

Well then, guess Piken should be investigated further after all.
Does anyone know somebody on Piken, involved in WvW, that i can contact ingame or over the forums?

apharma.3741:

Prysin.8542:

Kir Sakar.3647:

Prysin.8542:

That being said, how would you, “outsiders” view SFR today? Obviously i know some of the things going on, but sometimes getting other’s perspective can be very helpful.

I am on SFR’s current linked server and enjoy playing there very much, no idea why you would like to “jump ship”… I mainly play off-peak hours and it has a lot of organized small group activity outside of closed guilds. Community and commanders very friendly and helpful to newer players like me. I actually hate the fact that we probably be relinked in 6 weeks. Q_Q

You seem to like server-hopping though, I can surely recommend a low-population server like Blacktide to get around easily. Every 8 weeks a new host server for you without paying any transfer fees.

I only hop servers if the community is bad or the coverage is dieing. I left FSP when it was just about to implode. I left Deso when it had imploded, i left Crystal desert cuz it sucked, i left tarnished coast cuz someone paid to move me back to deso. Then i moved to SFR because it had the highest coverage and seemed like a very stable server.

Then you will be hopping a lot. I’m on a linked server and from my perspective all communities are pretty much the same, we’ve been with SFR, FSP, Gankdara and now with Piken. I’d say Piken is currently the best if only because chat doesn’t seem to be filled with memes and moronic drivel like on Gankdara but really most servers have issues with pug commanders now.

They all have some during prime time, then maybe one burning the midnight oil a little then it tapers off, can’t speak for morning/daytime as I work that time.

If you don’t mind Mighty Teapot he is gathering a pita pug blob 3-4 days of the week on underworld with a regular schedule. You can join him for large scale or run a small group in support or to be a pita in other areas of the map.

Why not transfer to a link server though? You get a roll of the dice of different tiers every 2 months as well as experiencing the different communities and how welcoming they are/aren’t. Besides you’d actually be helping the communities to grow that need help rather than adding onto already bloated communities.

You bring up some interesting and valid points. But i’d rather not drop down to the lower tiers. Sub T4 i feel like there is too much of a “wild card”… I recognize that you will get more activity then in the past, pre linking period, but being tied with a toxic community for a couple of months would be the death of my enthusiasm for this game.

I think i am getting some good insight, i’d love more feedback as i and a few of my friends are getting closer to the decision of where to move.

Kir Sakar.3647:

Prysin.8542:

That being said, how would you, “outsiders” view SFR today? Obviously i know some of the things going on, but sometimes getting other’s perspective can be very helpful.

I am on SFR’s current linked server and enjoy playing there very much, no idea why you would like to “jump ship”… I mainly play off-peak hours and it has a lot of organized small group activity outside of closed guilds. Community and commanders very friendly and helpful to newer players like me. I actually hate the fact that we probably be relinked in 6 weeks. Q_Q

You seem to like server-hopping though, I can surely recommend a low-population server like Blacktide to get around easily. Every 8 weeks a new host server for you without paying any transfer fees.

I only hop servers if the community is bad or the coverage is dieing. I left FSP when it was just about to implode. I left Deso when it had imploded, i left Crystal desert cuz it sucked, i left tarnished coast cuz someone paid to move me back to deso. Then i moved to SFR because it had the highest coverage and seemed like a very stable server.

Smoke.9273:

I would first ask you what makes you want to leave SFR? What is it you are missing?

The current guild i am in is looking to move onto one server. Well, some of us (like max 5), so i was looking which servers that were good choices. SFR is OK, we got a kneejerk of a commander who comes on often, and he annoys me. Then we have another one which is really kind… so im kinda torn. One makes me want to leave, the other makes me want to stay.

Well, any server without roamers isnt going to prevail in the end. Unless the coverage is near 24/7.

As for Piken, kitten , it was one of the top contenders.

As for my previous WvW experience. i came from FSP to Deso, before AoA left FSP due to drama. I then moved to Crystal Palace NA, sucked, moved to Tarnished Coast and stayed in T1 NA for all of first WvW Tournament. Then moved back to Deso for Fall tournament. Then moved to SFR after that, cuz Deso was dieing again.

Thank you for many good replies so far. I would like more detail on the type of salt/drama mentioned within Piken Square. So far, my fellow guildmates seem to be leaning towards Piken, we are currently all over the place and want to move to a common server for small scale WvW (3-15man max) and it would be a shame if we moved to a server that is no fun.

That being said, how would you, “outsiders” view SFR today? Obviously i know some of the things going on, but sometimes getting other’s perspective can be very helpful.

Dawdler.8521:

Jump ship from SFR… Currently @ some T1 server in EU… hmmmm…

Is this a trick topic? Asking whether T1 servers have drama is like asking if its ok to look up in a hailstorm. Of course the answer is yes. How else will you predict where they gonna land?

I havent updated that signature since 2015 or so……

Monica.9701:

FSP is overstacked and has a lot of internal problems with the bandwagoning and toxic behaviour. Half of Piken Square jumped ship to Vabbi, to make that the new top server. Gandara is overstacked even more than FSP and ganking as usual. Desolation is full.

I’m sorry, but that isnt very helpful. Full/stacked or not, it is just a matter of refreshing to get a spot.

I am looking to jump ship from SFR EU, to some other T3 or higher EU, server. I have a few candidates for the moment, but i havent been around lately, so i need a refresh on community relations.

How is the community within Piken Square, Desolation, Gandara and Far Shiverpeaks these days?

Has there been internal drama?

Which ones has the best coverage?

Which server has the most blob based/guild based/roaming based community?

How does the commanders deal with small guild roaming?

Is there many commanders or just a few pulling long hours?

Does the commanders share participation with scouts?

Thank you for any input on these questions.

apharma.3741:

Prysin.8542:

Straegen.2938:

Napo.1230:

1vs1 a skilled thief will always win

uhhh only if you count running away a win. In duels, thieves are marginal at best.

thieves are terrible. They STILL get rekt by bearbow power rangers if there is equal player skill. And bearbow power ranger has been around since launch, and it STILL works against thieves… just a testament as to how little has improved for the thief

Those are some pretty terrible thieves.

Not really. power Bearbow vs thief has always been “first to hit”. Ranger has zero defense, but brutal DPS. Thief has better defense, but terrible HP pool… so its litterally like a PvE matchup. Brutal damage vs low sustain.
And just like with a PvE boss, if you dont take it out before it manages to land a hit, you’re in big trouble.

The issue with ranger is that unlike PvE, its hard to just “run away” or hide from the DPS, as the pet will keep harassing you and keep you in combat, wether you want it or not.

Whenever i try play as power ranger, the characters i fear the least is necros/reapers and thieves. Mesmers used to be ezmode too, but they have gotten some good adjustments over the past year or so. Warriors are still a wildcard, often ezmode, but sometimes they can be hard to deal with.

As normal, guardian is a PITA due to their constant heal, block and protection spam. Other rangers aren’t that hard. tempest can be a pain too, due to blocks and bursts.

If you still think rangers, even bearbows, are weak, you are wrong. They are kittenedly strong for a build that has been around since launch. Recently i have been testing this setup
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBjYDVkQF4axyeg5E8OeJvlbXAIBA/Wzr/VA-TlCBQBS4CAwhjAAAeAAKU9H9pZoRKBziyPDpDoI7PshDCQAAEAH9oH9oH9otzduzduzdWIgRLAA

Its fun. Not productive, but fun….

Straegen.2938:

Napo.1230:

1vs1 a skilled thief will always win

uhhh only if you count running away a win. In duels, thieves are marginal at best.

thieves are terrible. They STILL get rekt by bearbow power rangers if there is equal player skill. And bearbow power ranger has been around since launch, and it STILL works against thieves… just a testament as to how little has improved for the thief

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Prysin.8542:

Ragnarox.9601:

coro.3176:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TobRShd-5as

Fighting a guild-mate warrior in our arena. I think he has roughly 30 seconds of continuous resistance.

dont forget 30 sec of 2stack of stability and retaliation. Pretty much immune to everything.
Boon bots with extreme dmg. They should and must be toned down.

I play mostly shout warrior, but even with shout and WH and Ire cleansing, you cannot “out-cleanse” any decent condi build… Sure, you wont get knocked over, but you’ll melt against condi users…

That’s because you’re not supposed to “out cleanse” them. Just like you’re not supposed to out block/immune physical damage. You avoid the hard hitters and recover from the ones you can survive.

That kind of mentality is exactly the reason so many people think condition builds are OP. Because they think they should be able to cleanse everything and kill them in two shots. Figure out what the biggest threats are and avoid them. Save cleanses for when they’re needed instead of trying to get rid of everything that hits you. You’re not going to go an entire fight without taking a few ticks of condition damage just like you’re not going to go an entire fight evading/blocking every single attack from a power build.

Actually, i CAN outcleanse condi bunkers efficiently, on other classes. But i wont bother to list my builds, as every time iv’e done so for the past 3-4 years, it’s been nerfed into the ground 4-6 months later.

I never said, nor implicated, that condi is OP. Being killed by something doesnt make it “OP”. Sadly, it seems you struggle with conditions to such a degree that you find them “OP”. Unfortunately, i cannot and will not help you with that.

But as you can guess, i’ve been playing this game nearly since launch, i am not a “novice”. I know how this game works, almost down to the game engine level.

Ragnarox.9601:

coro.3176:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TobRShd-5as

Fighting a guild-mate warrior in our arena. I think he has roughly 30 seconds of continuous resistance.

dont forget 30 sec of 2stack of stability and retaliation. Pretty much immune to everything.
Boon bots with extreme dmg. They should and must be toned down.

I play mostly shout warrior, but even with shout and WH and Ire cleansing, you cannot “out-cleanse” any decent condi build… Sure, you wont get knocked over, but you’ll melt against condi users…

Most OP is a bit subjective. Depends on your playstyle. If you look at overall flexibility and usefulness, Ranger and Warrior reigns supreme. Their current balance allows for good sustain, and also useful supportive roles (druid; condi cleansing; shout healing).
Both warrior and Ranger, to my experience, does very well in zerging and roaming at this moment. Both offer good sustain and damage. After returning to the game after a long hiatus, i personally experienced just how annoyingly hard it is to kill a decent druid ranger (i main ranger, and like many others i thought druid was trash for a while)

Necromancer/Reaper, Guardian/Dragonhunter, Ele/Tempest – all good choice, you cannot go wrong per say, but they have their downsides and may not be very good unless specifically built for a role.

There is 400 people, maybe, but what arethey doing?
Not many are devs, infact most of these will be HR, middle and upper management, secretaries for upper management, IT, customer support, clerks, accountants, PR agents, media agents, janitors, cafeteria personell, lawyers etc…

Big companies, like Anet, more often then not has a hard-on for employing people in fields that has nothing to do with production. This goes for all of the western civillisation.

Say maybe 200 people are part of the actual GAME development, those are split between audio engineers
audio directors
story directors
story writers
graphics designers
art directors
art designers
model designers
game engine engineers (often people who was part of the last big product, wont make a new engine, only fix what they made a decade ago)
optimization engineers (go to any game company, and they will have way too few of these)
UI designers
networking engineers
server software engineers
general code engineers (these are more often then not, interns or temporary contracts. Common practice in the software industry. Sadly this means a lot of people have to do bandaid fixes to other peoples code, and code is usualy not tidy or easy to read)
game balance/general design engineers
Bugfixers
Map/level designers

Dawdler.8521:

Prysin.8542:

B: identify repeated wishes from whatever community, run a ANET controlled CROWD FUNDING for that project. Then use the money to put one or two software engineers on THAT case. Be clear that project X/Y/Z will only continue for aslong as funding is there. As this project is not in Arena Nets current budget, it will have to be up to the community itself to cover the development cost.

Naturally, since the community would be funding it directly, the community should rightfully deserve active feedback in the form of images/video/small reports on the forums and active communication with the developer on the case.

By doing it this way, everyone gets their way. If you really desire a change to the game. PAY FOR IT!

This game is Pay once and you own it. Parts are free to play. Unlike WoW and other MMOs, this lack of active subscriptions means revenue is highly volatile. As people will only buy gems when they have time off/gets a bonus/gets their salary. This can be frustrating to a company, especially if they have to spend more time making new stuff that people will buy (aka spending time and resources making skins and outfits rather then playable content, in order to get more gem purchases).

These are my two cents. Sorry for derailing the topic.

You want kickstarter WvW changes? Yeah because all those work really great…

Look, this is what gems are for. We enjoy the game. We pay for gems. We enjoy the game some more. People buying gems is the overall approval of the game. Anet use gem funds to improve the game and we bevome happy. Anet are happy and we are happy. And around it goes. Does it fund specific things? No, of course not. But your “crowdfunding features” wont do that either, because they will fail. It will look like straight up extortion. You want commander tag shapes? Give us tons of money. Want a public tag switch? Give us more money. Want lower AC damage? Oh you better believe that means money! People wont be happy for long.

Gems are for all of the game. Not specific parts, like you said, and herein lies the issue. Gem sales are already projected into the budget. Anet has a very good idea how much to expect. based on current and past income. So huge spikes in gem purchases will not “greenlight” that tweak to tower XYZ, or the remodeling of commander tags.

Kickstarter? hell no. You do not outsource to others what you can do yourself. Kickstarter will claim a fee for hosting the service, and that will diminish whatever the devs could get for funding.

What you seemingly fail to understand is that it doesnt cost 20k dollars to tweak AC damage, it may cost 200 dollars, 500 dollars. You just need a few hours of engineer time to try and fail. But an engineer WONT spend that time, unless the manager of said engineer can pay for it. Devs have enough work to do, asking them to work for free for lulz is just rude.

But the system can be simplified. Anet can simply tell us the rate of dollars we need to pay for an hour of X/Y/Z type of engineer (designer, coder). Whether these are internal direct salary costs, or cost + revenue margin, we dont need to know. What we would need to know is; How long would it possibly take to do small things? Can the community select and provide parts? Can the community help with code in the event of a standstill?

I am not saying it is the perfect system, but i’d rather donate 20 dollars towards a specific change, then some random arbitrary amount of gems that wont give me even 1% certainty that my desired issue is being even put up for consideration.

Irregardless of topic, Since Gaile Gray seems to actually read this one.
If the developers wish more feedback, and precise feedback. And the community wants a clear way of making things happen, do TWO things

A: set up a “beta test client”. Hooked up to a limited server who only has a few hundred or a few thousand slots. Max 3 hours play time per person per day.

B: identify repeated wishes from whatever community, run a ANET controlled CROWD FUNDING for that project. Then use the money to put one or two software engineers on THAT case. Be clear that project X/Y/Z will only continue for aslong as funding is there. As this project is not in Arena Nets current budget, it will have to be up to the community itself to cover the development cost.

Naturally, since the community would be funding it directly, the community should rightfully deserve active feedback in the form of images/video/small reports on the forums and active communication with the developer on the case.

By doing it this way, everyone gets their way. If you really desire a change to the game. PAY FOR IT!

This game is Pay once and you own it. Parts are free to play. Unlike WoW and other MMOs, this lack of active subscriptions means revenue is highly volatile. As people will only buy gems when they have time off/gets a bonus/gets their salary. This can be frustrating to a company, especially if they have to spend more time making new stuff that people will buy (aka spending time and resources making skins and outfits rather then playable content, in order to get more gem purchases).

These are my two cents. Sorry for derailing the topic.

After reading your post regarding “The Road Ahead”.
Which can be found here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-road-ahead-for-2015/

I would like to adress one issue in particular.
CPU Overhead.

you got… a LOT of it…
Now, i know it is a monumental task to undertake. But making the move to DX12 or Vulcan would alleviate some of this overhead simply by allowing better use of hardware.
Now. i know it is NOT an easy task to write multi-threaded workloads and even less easy to get proper parrallellization going. But for MANY of your users, this is something we need.

I saw very huge performance change going from a AMD FX 8320 to a Intel Core i7 4790k… despite the Intel CPU being nearly 40% stronger in raw multi-threaded workloads, and about 70% stronger in single threaded tasks.

Now fast forward to my point. Enter “The Witcher 3”. A game that is based on DX11, but most importantly a game that is HEAVILY multi-threaded.

Net result? A AMD FX 8320/8350 will be within 10-15% of the i7 4790k..
By just getting better multi-core support, you would allow bigger fights, better fights and most important to ALL of your players, less lag.

A LOT of the lag we experience seem to be from CPU overhead in congested situations. Especially WvW could benefit here.

Just please. Work on it. To stand the test of time, you need more then 2-4 threads being used properly. Hardware and core count IS going up. and as such, the games should reflect that.

i also think that the main achilies heel of WvW atm is that, for better or worse, free accounts cannot enter before level 80… this means that whatever new players that join the game for free, will take A LONG time to get to WvW….

especially since they will probably be bored of the game/die hard PvE fanatics by the time they even reach level 80

Jim Hunter.6821:

msalakka.4653:

It’ll probably take 8 months to nerf since it isn’t Mesmer, Ranger, or Thief.

Funny thing is rangers were already nerfed (trapper rune nerf) because of DH. When in doubt, nerf rangers.

took them 24 hours to swing the nerf bat at Druid/Ranger…
in 8 months, we will get buffs again, to be about as good as we are now.

Ill be firing up my streaming at my twitch channel in 13 minutes…

twitch.tv/prysin

just gonna fool around. Do not expect any serious play.

Pets still need a lot of work. OPs testing methods are reproducable, accurate and consistent.
The validity of this test is without a doubt solid.

What we have learnt from this, is that pets require faster tick (0.3sec/update on enemy), shorter animations and shorter aftercasts.

Some animals require larger hit radiuses/single target splash damage (so you actually hit)…

30% of a class’s DPS being “permanently affected by weakness” is not how this should be. Arenanet CAN do better then that.