Guild Wars 2

This is fantastic news!

Druid Spirit Ranger is going to be amazing for PvE!

My predictions:

One pet. Pet swap replaces the pet with an aura that buffs you and allies. The buff is determined by the pet class you have equipped (cat aura gives dps buff, bear aura gives defense buff, etc.). This allows “on swap” traits and pet-specific traits to remain relevant. This also helps alleviate situations where keeping pets alive is nigh impossible (certain pve bosses, wvw zerg front-lining, etc.). Also, one of the devs pitched this idea in the Ranger CDC topic way back when.

Staff will have ally support and CC. I think it will contain group condition cleanse, a water field, and a “wall of vines” that cripple and immobilize enemies that try to cross.

Utilities will be Consecrations. These will alter the environment where placed and give buffs to allies in the area and debuffs to enemies.

The Druid will be the last elite specialization Anet releases.

Yeah greatsword is a much better option to switch to if sword is too hairy (not longbow). The evades on auto and block on 4 will make things a lot easier. As you get more comfortable meleeing the content you can then switch back to sword.

Axe 5 still roots in place? Booo!

The short answer is that the game is basically exclusively balanced around PvP, specifically conquest. In this game mode, ranged combat is significantly safer than melee during group fights on a point. Ranged weapons are thus balanced around this situation.

I recommend Sword 2 and Greatsword 3 in the other direction.

Builds like P/D thief (and PU Mesmer) are pretty useless in everything except “duels.” Denying them the 1v1s they so desire is pretty much a victory for you.

Precision is already important for a lot of condition builds. There is a noticeable difference in kill time for rabid versus dire versus apothecary.

I can personally attest that this build is really strong. I have only recently starting getting into solo queue, but I have something like an 8-0 record with this build over the last couple of days, including an amazing 4v5 victory on Spirit Watch.

This build is an absolute beast in 1v1. I have also found it not too shabby in team fights. Showing up to a fight in progress and dropping entangle and bonfire on the point, followed up by a wolf fear can really swing things dramatically.

I’m going to second that Oil Slick looks awesome on a lot of medium armors. I also like Pitch for some of the metallic pieces, and Midnight Yew is a really nice dark green dye that looks great on the leather coats.

I wish Anet would just give thieves longbow as a single target dps weapon. Then all the archer wannabes will be happy and stop begging for a petless ranger class.

Since the devs are obviously terrified of necromancers healing themselves while turtling in death shroud, what do you all think of regeneration and other healing effects restoring life force while in death shroud rather than health? So if the necro has regeneration on and goes into death shroud, the remaining regen duration will add to their life force.

For PVE I always run dual cats for the deeps.

In WVW/PVP I usually go Raven/Wolf. Birds can do a lot of damage and it feels like a lot of human players don’t really notice them all that easily in chaotic fights, thus they get a lot of hits in. Bird dps is hindered by the long animation for the swiftness move, but you can get around that by activating their F2 as they start the animation. The raven blind is really useful for interrupting enemy combos and securing stomps. Wolf on swap is godly. That knockdown and AOE fear are sooooo good against human players.

I think people are severely underrating Medi Guard’s roaming capabilities. With Sword 2, GS 3, and Judge’s Intervention you have 2400 range burst mobility. The teleports are also instant cast and combined with a plethora of blocks at your disposal, you can jettison yourself out of sticky situations pretty well

Like with Necro, roaming on a Guardian just requires a bit more map awareness, with an emphasis on keeping track of ambient creatures/wildlife as escape teleport targets.

The other great benefit of roaming on a Guardian is that people constantly underestimate you, especially thieves and warriors, whom you counter pretty hard and run into a lot while roaming.

I agree with quaniesan that the Powerful Blades trait could use a second look. I think it should also decrease sword cooldowns, or give a boost to power, precision, or ferocity. A cooldown reduction would be great for Sword 2 and would really help Meditation Guards deal with kiting enemies.

With only a damage boost, it seems a little underperforming for a master level trait, especially since most master weapon traits on other classes contain two effects. In fact, even the other master Guardian weapon traits have a secondary effect, like Zealous Blade, Radiant Fire, and Mace of Justice. Perhaps the original rationale was it was strong enough since it also affects Spear damage, but I think that should be reconsidered in light of Anet significantly scaling back on underwater combat in PvP and WvW.

I really don’t think Muddy Terrain needs any sort of buff now that Survival of the Fittest exists. Especially not revealed, which Rangers already have access to via Sick ’em.

Fully traited, Muddy Terrain removes two conditions, grants fury, and cripples and immobilizes in an aoe, on a 20 second cooldown. It’s pretty strong as it stands.

At the end of the first year, Anet released a blog post with some numbers:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/

It was Mesmer and Engineer. Not sure how they calculated that, but there you have it.

I had the same thought when I saw the new runes! As soon as I craft them I’m going to try out a variation as well. I will probably use the full set of ascended celestial trinkets I have lying around and see how that goes.

I think swapping out one of your shouts for some stability is a wise move in general, and particularly useful for Skyhammer.

The easiest solution is to simply avoid the side nodes if possible. Make fighting at mid your top priority and let your teammates assault the other nodes.

Most engis will use the magnetic shield move to pull you onto the glass. If you look closely you can see a series of white lines coming out from your character, even if the engi is stealthed. There is also a quick magnetic sound effect right before you get pulled if you listen closely and can react quickly.

Night effects are still missing and it’s quite frustrating! I too crafted my Howler a few weeks before the patch. Just enough time to fall in love with the now missing effects! I have already submitted multiple bug reports in game and will continue to do so until fixed. It is clear the removal of all the night effects was an unintended consequence of fixing the infinite audio loop.

For WvW Longbow:

Fire and Ice!

Yeah, Anet’s new “design philosophy” for the Ranger was very disappointing to see. It’s hard to imagine the class with the worst condition removal in the game as “resilient.” The sustained damage over burst comes out of nowhere, and as others in this thread have pointed out, is directly contrary to the design of many traits and abilities, such as traited signet of the hunt, moment of clarity, and remorseless. What’s especially annoying is each of these abilities requires significant investment (grandmaster traits) with extremely mediocre results. If the desire is to shift the Ranger towards an attrition playstyle, these abilities need serious reworking.

I was also disturbed by the absence of any mention of archery or bows. It almost feels like Anet knows Ranger bows are terrible but has no real desire to alter them.

Evelyn Wells
Maguuma
WvW/Dungeons

Sounds like sigil of fire

Always berserker for dungeons. If you’re having difficulty, use knights and work in berserker pieces as you get more comfortable.

Druid ranger? Yes please. If done well it could solve so many of our wvw zerg woes. on demand condi cleanse? another water field? spirit-esque buffs not tied to idiotic ai? aoe cc and snares?

One can dream.

Sword/Greatsword is truly the most refined way to play Ranger.

Master trait in Wilderness Survival. Off hand training. Decreases cool down and increases range for all off hands.

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Necromancer

Yes, it’s absolutely true. When I play my mesmer people will go out of their way to avoid fighting me 1v1.

It’s certainly viable. And a lot of fun. Using sword 2 leaps and dropping spike trap and frost trap behind you will allow you to escape from almost anything. The build is strong in small group play as you can use the trap and shortbow cc to help your teammates spike priority targets quickly. It fares well in most 1v1 matchups as well. Your constant stream of poison eats right through guardian and warrior heals. Traps are great to aoe down mesmer clones. And I find trapper very effective against thieves, who I can sometimes struggle against on Ranger. Traps maintain condition pressure when they stealth and can also be used to reveal their position.

Standard trap build is 10/30/30/0/0 with rabid gear as a base, mixed with rampagers, carrion, dire, or apothecary as you see fit. For weapons, shortbow, sword, mh axe, dagger, and torch are all strong options.

Sometimes I feel like anet has no idea what they want the necromancer to be.

To answer your question, I don’t think it would fit. Necromancers already have plenty of tools that punish thieves: marks, wells, channels, and life transfer all hit thieves in stealth. You can even use reaper’s mark to knock them out of shadow refuge, which is a pretty strong “anti-stealth” mechanic as is.

If anyone is familiar with Magic the Gathering, a Sylvari necromancer fits perfectly with the Golgari, who are all about nature and necromancy.

I’m pretty sure the scaling will be the same mediocre 6 point value that was assigned to Vampiric. It will just be added to Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Master, and Vampiric Rituals.

This is hilarious and almost as amazing as discovering you could /dance in Lich form.

Check out Nemesis’s Hybrid build for a good example that uses a lot of Rampager pieces. It’s a very strong build for dungeon play. For WvW I wouldn’t recommend going full Rampager’s. You’ll be way too squishy and lack the appropriate burst to compensate. A few pieces could work to compliment the build though (such as in flow’s example).

Well of Darkness is a really strong stomp tool. Don’t underestimate it.

Also want to add that mesmer’s blink/stealth downed move requires hitting target to use. They can’t hit anyone if they’re blinded.

Yeah that’s what I’m doing as well. Gift of Mastery is done and working on Gift of Fortune. I’m really hoping for a sweet Necro-themed Legendary staff or dagger in the next batch.

Did they say which would be the primary stat? Condition damage?

Now if only we get some fixes to Death and Blood Magic we may finally be able to build a true “attrition” conditionmancer.

Afya.5842:

Really not sure about terror in pve. It’s good against single target but it can also ruin pulls. Makes it kinda works only half of the time (trash/boss), and if you think of it that way, it’s half the theoretical effectiveness throughout the whole dungeon. Of course trait can be switched between battles but your runes are also built around fear, makes it not so flexible.

The trick is to chill or immobilize the mobs so they can’t move during the fear. Try casting tainted shackles on a group and as soon as the immobilize activates, drop reaper’s mark. The mobs will cease attacking and take the terror damage, but won’t move.

Glad to see your guides back up Lopez! I don’t always roll conditionmancer, but when I do, I go with your builds.

I don’t necessarily think dagger needs any huge changes. It’s extremely powerful in the right hands. A real high risk, high reward weapon. I think a lot of people find it hard to pull off though. That’s not a fault of the weapon design, it just comes with the territory of such an aggressive risky weapon.

I run Knights gear on my siphon build. Toughness helps keep you alive in dagger melee and increases the effective power of each siphon heal. Precision is useful for all the on crit siphon effects, such as vampiric precision, sigils of blood, omnomberry ghost etc.

I run a vampire build when I PUG dungeons and I really enjoy it.
Here’s what I use:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjQaV6Zaia07JApCYP9g7xFH6RuS7MA-jwxAYLBRCSEJMAJwiox2GKiGruGT5SEVLEg5xA-e

Very nice damage output with dagger and all the passive siphoning helps keep me up and running in melee range. Wells with Ritual of Protection offer great team support.

I run the same build in wvw as well, with some modifications (10 points from Blood to Curses for ground targeted wells, swap in Greater Marks in Death Magic etc).

Nope. I will echo the sentiment that the only weapons that fit thematically are ones I very rarely use on my Necro.

I am, however, saving up for Eye of Rodgort, the true Necro “Legendary.”

Volinar
Necromancer
Condition spec w/ Exotic Rabid gear
No experience in Arah yet, but lots of experience in other dungeons
Looking forward to learning the ropes!

I think a two-handed axe would be pretty cool.

Woah, very interested in this. Love running dungeons with my Necro! Any chance I could get an invite to the guild?!

There’s basically three “currencies” used for obtaining level 80 exotic armor: gold, karma, and dungeon tokens. Gold allows you to buy gear off TP. Karma vendors in Orr offer exotic armor pieces for ~42,000 karma a piece. Dungeons net you 60 dungeon-specific tokens per day per path (20 for each additional run a day); dungeon armor costs 180-330 tokens a piece.

If you just want a full set of Rabid stats, the quickest way to accomplish that would be running dungeons. Dungeon runs give you gold, karma, and dungeon tokens. Save up your gold for the cheaper pieces, such as gloves and boots (see Khilbron’s on TP), and save karma for “larger” pieces (coat and leggings) and use your dungeon tokens to round out the rest.

Check http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets#Karma_armor_sets for Orr Karma sets with the desired stats. For Dungeons, Caudecus Manor, Twilight Arbor, Honor of the Waves, and Arah all have armor with Rabid stats. See Khilbron’s set for the TP.

If you don’t like the hodgepodge look, you can always transmute the stats to your desired armor look later.