Guild Wars 2

Funny thing is…i was perma-banned from a MMO once on false accusation.
~400 euros and couple years of work down the drain.

And i find what GW2 is doing right now more offensive.

Not going to buy it either.

Kind a sad though. Was looking forward to it.

What pushed it over the line for myself was the whole “free core for everyone else”. Not that i’m against getting new people into the game. I just like being appreciated for being a long time client. This however i took pretty much as “go **** yourself”. So might as well renew my subscription to DCUO.

GL to anyone else who goes along with it.

JonPeters.5630:

• Time Marches On – You move 25% faster. The duration of incoming movement-impairing conditions is reduced by 25%. (Cripple. Chilled, Immobilize)

• Time Catches Up – Activating a shatter gives your illusions Super Speed
• Chronophantasma – Your phantasms respawn the first time they are shattered.

You owe me a pair of new pants as i just…
…never mind.

Seems that there is no more trait called Off Hand Training.

Recharge for off hand weapons -20% and +300 range.
There is a trait to reduce CD on dagger/torch by 20%, but that’s about it.

Wonder if 300 range is now by default or they removed it completely.
That range increase made torch quite fun to use…sad to see it go if its not by default.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Pet have a hard time as it is keeping up with moving targets if they dodge when I do then they will never hit their target.

Having dodge effect on pet while you dodge yourself does not mean that the pet has to actually have the full duration animation.
It may as well be something simple like 1 second distortion effect on pet when you dodge.

This is one of the buffs i have asked and hoped for ranger pretty much since the release of the game.

Eurantien.4632:

1. Pets: WE MUST BE ABLE TO CONTROL ALL OUR SKILLS AND THE PET MUST USE THE SKILL WHERE IT IS! NOT TRY TO GO TO THE TARGET! But this won’t happen because we must cater to casuals who, somehow, can handle the 25 ele skills, and anywhere from 14-30 skills on engi.

Amen to that…
Was one of the main reasons i stopped playing my ranger.

Lets take ranger from WoW as an example. There you had a nice long pet par and autocast mechanic.
Who was lazy could just put evrything on autocast ( how its on gw2 pets on default ).
Who wanted to be better hotkey’d more important abilities and put less important ones on autocast.
But hardcore players had options to use everything on their own…

Why we are forced to use the lazy person’s pet in GW2 is something i just can’t understand.

Also, another thing i have always wanted for pets is to give them dodge immunity while you dodge yourself.
Would give nice boost to pet’s survivability. Nice way to avoid those 1 shot deaths that happen on pets.

Drawbacks of trying to shoot 2 arrows at the same time…while being accurate…

Well.

IMO the best solution would be to give the pet 0.75 second evasion every time you dodge yourself.
SO if there is a huge AoE burst in PvP or high damage ability in PvE you can use your own dodge to save your pet. Maybe even keep the pet alive those extra 1-2 seconds to get your swap pet of cooldown every now and then.

Short evasion every now and then does not feel like pushing it overboard.
Also its simple as well as easy to manage.
No extra abilities, resources or hotkeys needed.
You just have to keep eye out for your pet and depending on situation make a decision of “do i want to use dodge to save the pet or save it for myself”.

mercury ranique.2170:

World of Warcraft: 25 USD to move a single character from one realm to another.
Lord of the Rings Online: 25 USD to move a single character from one world to another.

Issue here is that with your account you can only be in one server at a time.
Comes with having something like WvW in the game.

In games like WoW you can have your different characters on different servers.
Here you are forced to swap all your characters.
I would gladly pay 25$ to swap only single character over this “every character” bs.

Dawdler.8521:

Mesmer is the ONLY light armour class that lack passive speed boost and the ONLY class requiring boon gear, specific weapon or runes to achieve perma-swiftness. The other classes already are equal in this field, except the Mesmer.

Also the only class who has access to that lovely portal.

No.

Swiftness, Signet of The Hunt and Agility Training, non of them stack with each other.

Bigger boost overwrites smaller one.
So if you run Signet of The Hunt and then pick Agility Training, your pet will use Agility Training and will ignore Signet of The Hunt.
Once your pet gets swiftness, he will ignore boost from Agility Training.

So if you can provide your pet permanent swiftness, this trait is useless.
If you use Signet of The Hunt, the upgrade (5%) is too small to be worth it.
If you got neither, the trait can work (depending on build), as at some cases critical damage increase is still better.

Avathor.1849:

Try fight mesmers with 6 illusions out when your bow has a life of its own, always aiming for the least worthy target.

1. Turn off auto targeting. This game does not require a lot of hotkeys and you still have access to modifier keys. Use hotkeys for targeting.
2. Really depends on your build.

Avathor.1849:

Or try fight an assasin that has half a clue about stealth.

On you average thief case, you have very very good chance, if you play your cards right. They can melt you if you make a mistake, but so can you melt them. But again, depends on the BUILD (yours and hes).

Only thief build good rangers have always had trouble with has been unicorn (specially if you have to fight him on the point 1v1).

Avathor.1849:

When your downed, you got the worst skills of them all, oh btw the pet is dead and too slow anyways.

Oh you got it all wrong. Ranger has one of the best down states.
Btw you do know that you can use all your pet’s abilities as well as swap out your pet while your downed?
Loads of damage from the pet, chance to let the pet revive you, nice daze and not to mention depending on your pet, additional useful abilities.

For example on my build i was able to daze + fear from wolf + use my dogs immobilize to keep people from getting back to me after the fear in 1 downstate. Plus i was tanky as it was condi ranger + your dog/wolf do hes knockdown (often when you switch them in which you can do while downed). Also your pet still hits like a truck when your downed as ranger is balanced around the idea that lot of your damage comes from the pet. So yeah, don’t mess with downed ranger, specially if you can’t stability stomp him.

Only downstate you will have to worry about as ranger is mesmer’s (depending on the crits you receive).

Avathor.1849:

Entangle actually MISS opponents..

If someone evades, including your normal every day dodge, it will miss. Like every other power in game (unless it is traited to make in unblockable), it will not win against a well timed dodge. And it is not meant to.

Now, i only run with entangle, if i was on a map where i knew i will run into a huge team fight right away (Keep on Forest of Niflhel). As it can help to cause a little havoc if used well.
Now, damage has always had a scaling problem, as well as it is not the most reliable power. If you want to be strong in 1v1 or small scale battles, take Rampage As One. Stat boost + 20 second stability with a short enough cooldown to use it over and over again = amazing elite.

OK, i get to the point.

Truth be told, the main issue i had with ranger was the lack of viable builds. On my case abilities i wanted to have as ranger always came from either high trait slots or utility slots over your weapon slots.
ALL of my builds run with 30 in wilderness survival and at least 5 in beastmastery (as you don’t want to live without a quickness revives after you start using them xD).
Most of my builds run with 30 in skirmishing too(as most of them were somewhat trap based).

Now not a lot of points to spare, is there?

My weapons and utilities were pretty…static as well…

While with any other class i played…except ele (where i only run with staff tank ele), i always found different builds to run around with.

With my ranger, who i used for about 90% of my playtime and who i used mainly in my teams 5v5 sPvP composition has pretty much same build since the first game until i became inactive. (i think i swapped 1 trait, 1 utility, 1 of the weapons and 1 weapon sigil in that whole time).

So yes, i felt that in order to stay competitive, the amount of options i had to play around in my builds were…very limited. Now every single class has some kind a limitations, but on ranger i felt that it was kind a…extreme case.

EDIT:
Wanted to add that i was our teams dedicated guy to be thrown into 1v1-s against enemy team mesmers on treb or any 1v1 on our treb depending on opponents. Well played ranger can be very good in 1v1 and no → ranger does not have to hide behind someone else.

DeeTooDee.3972:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

And engies, necros and rangers don’t like getting kills and racking up points? I don’t buy that.

He meant that if you go for some 8v8 pugs, you go and roll a thief? Why?
Cos assassin signet+bow+high crit and power+cluster bomb on stacked up people is “more effective” on racking up kills than your average engi, necro and rangers. Its not about liking or not liking, thief with its class design (initiative for high burst) just works well with glass gannon AoE damage builds.

Thats why even people, who actually play ranger or engineer as their tournament main, log onto their troll thief when they pug for some laugh. Haste+assassins signet+cluster bomb just makes you smile :P

Well. It has all said before. CC and AoE give you the best chances.

Also actually keeping your eye around your surroundings is not a bad idea. Best counter to a thief is when you know hes around. There is no better feeling in this game than to dodge a huge burst. xD

As a ranger how ever i can’t complain myself (up to 7 evasion combos + 3 traps + cc on pets).

It means they are healed for more.

How ever it has been a couple of weeks since i last played, so i cant remember 100%.

Healing pet is doing himself is increased. (that i know for sure)
How ever i’m not 100% sure if healing you do on the pet is increased. That one i cant remember.

Durzlla.6295:

Greiger.7092:

*Dodging. A sword ranger essentially has 2 extra dodges.
*Ranger warhorn is better (in my opinion)
*The ranger pet allows a ranger to continue to contribute even when knocked down or otherwise cc’d
*Ranger pet allows a ranger to engage multiple targets out of traditional AoE range
*Ranger pets also have a very wide range of abilities, with a diffrent effect for just about every pet, from AoE fears, to AoE Regen
*Ranger spirit of renewal is capable of rallying everyone around not just once but twice (3 times with traits) per cooldown, as well as making a skill based self rally possible (the spirit has a short cast time on it’s rez, activate it right before you go down and it will rez you as well)

Actually, we have 3 dodges in sword (2 on the number 2).

Leap away works like dodge.
Leaping back does not provide any dodging.

So its still 2 dodges on main hand sword.

Complaining about auto attacks that reapply conditions is like condition builds complaining about power build auto attacks doing damage…

Thing with condition builds is that its steady damage. Its not hard to keep 7-15 stacks of bleeds on someone. Smarter condition builds actually use mix of different conditions like bleed+poison or even bleed+poison+burn, so it would be harder to remove.

Idea of condition removal is not to actively spam it. You are not suppose to remove every condition in game. Condition builds have usually this “burst condition apply” combo. For example for trap ranger its when hes using 3 trap combo on you / for necro its enfeebling blood+mark of blood or in some cases blood is power. Those are the times critical times you HAVE to blow your condi removal. Its like using your stunbreak+dodge to avoid pistol whip thief/hundred blade warrior.

Also when ever you see 7-10 stacks of bleed on yourself, that the moment you should use your active condi removals. Let the passive one just tick on the background, if you have any.

Idea of condi removals is not to destroy condi builds. Its to limit the condition damage, give yourself those extra 5-15 seconds to blow them up with your burst/power damage.

So the hardest part is finding the balance in dps/hp/condi removals.

And like said before, stuns are always nice. The more time you cant apply conditions, the harder it is to do any damage. As condition builds are not ultimate tanks as well. We usually have a quite nice stack of toughness, but we do lack some hp in most cases. Thats the main reason to run condi damage build. You can still do ok damae, while being a little more tankier.

I like the idea to be able to save your spec templates, so when your in Heart of the Mists you could easily access your premade layouts.

At the same time i don’t think you should be able to change your team composition / specs during the game. That limits the number of “hard” choices you must make while putting your team together and makes play very map specific.

I don’t even like the ability o change weapons in middle of match while out of combat. Free swiftness/leaps everyone? I abused it for the longest time myself, but just cos everyone and their mother is doing the same.

Only things i think you should be able to change during the tournament going on is utilities. Changing weapons is ok, as long as you cant just switch into one for a second just for leap/swiftness.

Wait, you liked Swtor Tab targeting? You must have been the only one :>. All you ever heard in chat was how bad it is.

Well it all comes down to preferences. Tab targeting in Swtor was one of the worst experiences i had myself. At least they offered option to Tab target people in your view from left to right. So that was actually useful (predictable). Original one never worked for me and i ended up using either focus target or tab from left to right.

Now there is a reason, why games offer you a lot of different targeting keys to bind. Everyone has their own preference. Such a huge priority list may work out for you, but 90% of the other people would cry about it.

To be honest, in GW2 i don’t even use Tab targeting 99% of the time. It has such a good support for assist fire, that in PvP or dungeons you end up using that most of the time anyways.

Also there is not many keys to bind, so you can easily bind couple of more keys for targeting, like target nearest enemy.

You still want to run with 2 tanks = requires less coordination.

So i’dd say Ranger/Necro/Shatter mesmer/staff ele/tank guardian if you want to have a lot of condi damage with some burst.
Or forget even the necro and go Ranger/Thief/Mesmer/Ele/Guardian. Have more burst and gt those easy steals on forest.
However your less useful to the team, unless all your traps are spot on and you get away with those quickness revives.

There are 2 kind a gamers out there – casual and competitive.

Most of the crying about class being broken in pvp forums comes from competitive way of looking the game (how ever, sadly its usually from guys who see a video about 30 kill streak and then go comment “i can do that”).
Its about the stats/reliability of powers and that kind a stuff. That usually matters when player is actually competitive – when he plays perfect and makes no mistakes.

If your casual player, which you probably are, don’t worry about that stuff. Play a class that you like. If you say you have most experience with your ranger i will want you in my party as a ranger, not as a mesmer, because there is a huge chance you make more mistakes with class you have less experience with.

So sure, try out ranger. Yes, your pet have some issues, your traits have some issues. Every class has.
You are not the most popular class in “competitive game”. But just learn the ranger in and out and you can still beat those so called “high tier classes”, because 99,9 people you meet do not play perfect.
Just pick a class, learn it, and have fun. So sure, try out ranger.
Its not most popular class in current meta, but casual gamer should forget about meta and have some fun.

Good combo?
What do you exactly mean?
Good combination of teammates?

Try running with condition spread necro. You’dd be supprised how much AoE condi damage comes out when necro uses a well timed epidemic.

However there are hard counters if you run 2 heavy condi builds (like null field).

I support slow approach.

You guys say “people will quit”. What do you think happens, wen they start throwing in huge nerfs/buffs. Same thing would happen – people would quit.

Balancing is double edged sword. On slow approach however there is a little plus. It helps the meta game evolve.

Everyone, who thinks drastic changes are needed, go make a little mod on some game (sc2/warcraft III for example) or pick up basic programming class in University / open Java (or Phyton) for dummies book and write a basic turn based rpg. Do it and then try to balance it. See how “easy” it is. :>

At the end of the day.

You can always go 2 ways. Legal or illegal.
If you go legal way you pay more. You support the game developers, help the content and patches be regular and help the servers to keep running.
Or you do it illegal, have a chance to lose your account. But you do get a little more gold out of your money.
Its like paying taxes. Your either a good citizen, pay your taxes and help your country or you don’t pay your taxes and get a little more cash to spend on yourself. However if you get caught, your screwed. It’s your choice to make.

“After a number of people report”

Yes, please! Can’t wait until I could together with my friends throw elite mobs/debuffs on random people.

NB! I thought ill take a moment and thank everyone, who are actually actively reporting, as i turned lazy and gave up myself long time ago. Nice to see, that some people still care.

WASD for the movement, space for dodge and alt for jump.
XCFRE for weapon skills and
Utilities/elite are under XCFE + shift modifier
for heal i use Q and for focus target assist i use TAB.
Other target keys i need are usually under number keys.

I use 5 button mouse.
So 4 attunement swaps are
middle mouse/middle mouse + shift
and mouse 4/mouse 4+ shift
Mouse 5 is teamspeak.

If your comfortable using modifier keys, you don’t really need “100 key mouse” xD

This is what i usually do – higher the priority of the power the easier access i want to have for it. So less important stuff goes under number keys as they are not that comfortable to use while strafing. Little more important stuff goes under modifier+"x" keys. Important stuff are around WASD and “Key” abilities go on the mouse.

Try to test it out while your in combat. A lot of traits only work when your in combat. (haven’t tested this one myself though, as i’m not fond of scepter).

Well. Bunker teams did get a nice buff recently. I’m talking about ele downstate buff. It means if you run against ele/guardian on the same point you can’t go after ele. You have to take down guardian first. Otherwise ele just jumps next to guardian/far away teammate and gets easy revive.

Focusfiring a guardian however…you know…

At the same time, if you still run 3 dps 2 tanks, if you have enough immobilize and enough stability for stomps, you should be able to focus tanks down one at a time while they just lack damage on you.

And those bunker mesmers you talk about. They still are considered as dps. Being a tanky dps does not make you a tank yet.

But yeah, like said before. Its not problem of tanks, its problem of the gamemode.

Funny thing about it is actually that you did not use your heal and you still almost took him down with yourself after that 18k.

That has been my counter against warriors as trap ranger for ages. Sure, take me down. But if you manage it, you probably come with me.

Thats how glassy they have to be to pull off this kind a burst.

However yes. I was shown this bug a little time ago by a guildmate. Don’t worry. Like said earlier, fix is already on the way.

Glory serves as a better ranking than qualifying points?
Rank in this game does not really equal skill. Having rank 40 does not mean you are stronger than rank 20 guy. Just means you have been pvping for longer period of time. One thing is to farm pvp, other thing is to actually improve and learn from your mistakes. 3rd thing is actually “how much of that rank have you actually gained with class your currently playing”. 4th factor is if you farm sPvP or tPvP.

So lets say i have farmed myself to rank 25+ on my ranger and switch to a new class (lets say elementalist). I blow on my elementalist: i mess up my cool down management, i don’t really realize class mechanics and i haven’t yet optimized the build to my play style and. Am i supposed to be matched up with other rank 25+?

What if its sPvP and i jump into a game to have fun as rank 40. Should i be allowed in? After all i can magically run everyone over.

Restricting people by rank does not really work out that well in this game.

But i do agree. The ticket system probably did mix the things up a little.

Its simple.

They do nothing “the best”.

Pigs are a little tanky, but if you want a tank, you get yourself a bear.
Pigs can give you a disable every now and then. But if you want disables in pvp, you get a dog/wolf.
If you want high damage, you don’t get a pig, you pick a bird/cat.
And if you want a pet, that can actually survive against massive AoE going on, you pick something that has ranged attack.

So why no one uses pig? Hes just half decent on everything, but there is always some other pet that can outshine him for every single build.

I have been running “kind a” similar build for past month. But its no “99% win” build.

1. Mobility? Because of endurance? If you want to have mobile you need to have some nice leaps (like GS ) or good up time of swiftness (warhorn). Right now when you need to go and help out mine from keep, you will run there about…half an hour.
Well. Swapping weapons between combat still works, so you can abuse warhorn. I’m still surprised they haven’t fixed it :>.

2. You don’t run with with high vigor up time from vigor on heal+healing spring nor do you run sword for evasions. Even i feel squishy in teamfights and on my version and i do 7 evasion combo.

3. You still have hard matchups.
Well built/played condi necros eat you alive as you lack good condi removal. And remember all those good “burst conditions” you are good form. I’mt talking about suddenly stacking loads of burn/bleed on him. Yes, he can send them all back to you.
100blades is kinda oldschool already. Now you have to worry about stunlock warriors, and if they play smart, they are one of the most annoying builds to go up against, even if you have ton of evasions.
Good mesmer should not have hard time with you. This also depends on who has defensive ground and if its fight on a point or not. At the end of the day, 1 well placed interrupt/moa will make you cry.
And your nightmare matchup is good unicorn thief. Most backstab/pistol whip thieves you can take down with yourself or survive, “IF YOU SEE THEM COMING” and you got your traps ready to throw on yourself. Good old unicorn will screw you over every time. They heal more than you, have more evasions than you, have caltrops (which will melt your pet and your only condi removal) and he will heal even more on your case, because your pet being around means he heals for 6x hits not 3x hits. If you have to fight him on a point, you can already go afk. If you have a huge open field to kite around, you may have a slim chance.
Good offensive condi engineers are pretty deadly as well. Specially if they mess up your traps with elixir S (which is not hard to do).

Not to take count all the builds that can’t really kill you when you play well but you can’t kill them as well. The tie situations. 1 example is well played tank ele.

So its far from 99%. I do win most of the 1v1-s i have to deal with on my version of trap ranger. Also i do win all of the mentioned matchups regularly. But its not because the build is that good. Its because i just outplay them or they don’t play their builds good enough.

You said it yourself, you run through sPvP. At the end of the day, in most cases its about player. So take your friend list, pick the best guys you know, find an empty server and try out on your level guys. You probably will find, that this build has lot of weak points.

NB! I can’t believe, there is actually a ranger, who does not run 5 points in beastmastery :>. Man, those quickness revives/down can save a day.

Porkchump.8276:

Also about being stunned and dazed th e first one is transferred to your pet and the second make you go invisible which is one of my all time favorites so someone has to knock back daze stun you for a 3rd time for it to be 100% effective, even more so if you have RaO on.

Not really. The first incoming disable activates both. Your pet gets stunned/dazed or what ever it was and you become invisible at the same time. Most of the time you don’t even notice, because you keep using your abilities and as you did not receive a stun, you just jump out of your stealth. So 2nd incoming disable is already deadly.

@Skolvikings

When you come back to pets dying. Yes, they die, like players die.
But can players dodge? Yes
Can players stunbreak? Yes
Can pets dodge? No
Can pets stunbreak? No
Who do you want to use your heal cooldown for? Yourself or your pet? Yes, yourself.
Does your pet have separate healing power? No.
So no dedicated healing, no dodging, no stunbreaks.
When you see huge red circle on a ground what do you do? You dodge out of it. What does you pet do? Die. Even if you call him back, he probably will be stunned/crippled/chilled/immobilized and die in that AoE before he gets out.
Because our class damage is heavily designed around pets damage (only weapon you can get away with right now is shortbow, everything else is more like a support for your pet), having such an unreliable “partner” never helps.

Now have you played other professions?

Elemental attunement are instant. Heck, you can even switch between them while in middle of casting power.
Necromancers death shroud is instant.
Guardians virtues are instant.
Thieves steal is instant.
Engineer toolkit powers are either instant or have very low cast time (0,25-0,5 sec).
Mesmers F key abilities are instant.
Warrior already has instant powers (ax and mace). Instant killshot? One is one of the highest damage powers in game (killshot) and other is simple disable/ low damage ability/ debuff. There is no reason for 2 second immobilize to be casted for 2 seconds. Make it quater or half a second. Better make duration 1,5 sec and make it instant, so it would actually be reliable.

Now i have tested out all the pets. I know how lovely eagles/hawks are, specially if you run them with 30% more damage on crits.
Have you ever tried, how long will they survive in proper tPvP match? Unless you can provide your pet permanent protection and a lot of regenation, which only a tank build can, then he will melt.

So you either go very tanky yourself to keep your pet alive, which means you don’t do any damage, or you go high damage on yourself, which means your pet is dead and does no damage.

Also having hawk around as tank ranger is pointless as well (unless you run some sPvP). It does not really help you to survive longer and lacks any disables. Not that rangers could get a spot in tPvP as tanks in current meta. We can be tanky just we don’t offer that amount of buffs to the team as other tanks do.

At the end, problem is not about pet being huge, easily targeted and taken down. Problem is that pet just dies in AoE, when thief/warrior jump in with their burst or elementalist throws in hes AoE.

Well, being asura it was actually funny how i was more afraid of decent 2 decent char jumpers and 1 norn, who were every time slowly catching me up, than that green goo. I never cared about that green goo. I was however afraid of those huge kitten guys covering my line of sight/character :>.

That was pretty much main thing that made it that challenging. Having to jump blindly a second after you got stuck for a moment and let other people catch you up :>

Loved the puzzle though. Still not as hard as xcom on impossible+ironman though…lol

It all depends on what traits you use (as maxed out traitline is already +300 points).

Now if you want to have +1k healing and you really want to go power build, then yes, Clerics amulet is your own option. Going with condi damage shaman would help you out with less healing/more toughness.

So when going with power, you can still switch your jewel on your clerics ammy to shaman’s jewel. You lose some healing and power, but get 125 toughness jewel.

Why going condition would be nice, is also that toughness trait line is combined with condi damage. Even if you are still going for power damage, having some points in wilderness survival is not bad idea. First 5 points give you permanent 50% energy regen. Also vigoros renewal is a amazing trait in adept traitline. When you go with healing spring, every single pulse actually activates the vigor. Also you want that 15 point minor trait to stack some protection on yourself. So go 15 points MINIMUM on that line.

Now if your still lacking toughness then only runeset which may help you out is rune of the earth. Some extra protection uptime + magnetic aura is actually pretty awesome.

So yeah. Depends on your situation. Can you currently keep up permanent regen, which heal are you planning to use and how your traitline is set up.

Funny name?
I just call my bears Cody and Kenny and my dog/wolf Desmond and Lucy…
Their my friends, not some stupid jokes!

Wait a sec..now to think about it, my bear Kenny keeps “dying a lot”. :>

Don’t worry about your gear. I still had a piece of level 14 gear when i was 40+. You just have probably leveled up in lower level zones (been downgraded in most cases), so you haven’t gotten gear proper to your level.

How ever there are easy fixes.

Just go and level for a while in your level zone. Items drop pretty fast in this game.

Also you can always run dungeons, easy loot.

Pve solo content is not that hard in this game. Specially as ranger you should not have a hard time with low level gear in higher level zones.

To level up quickly, find yourself a group of people or join already active group and do meta even chains in some zones. You finish events very fast with a group but you still get a lot of xp. Levels will come in no time.

And yes. Crafting in this game is kind a…more about fun than actually about upgrading your gear while leveling.

You can spend your karma, its easy to farm anyways. Although you might want to save some for couple of pieces of gear at level 80 (as like i said, you really don’t need good gear leveling up). At the same time most of karma gear you can easily replace with dungeon gear.

Just enjoy the game and don’t worry about crafting/karma :>.

Now everything i say will be mainly coming from sPvP/tPvP standpoint of a view.

Yes. Rangers have amazing traits. Rangers have actually couple of the best easy access traits like passive 50% energy regen or 2 sec quickness you were talking about.

But if you look overall viable builds right now, there is nothing that ranger does “the best”.

Elementalists bring their AoE support damage with loads of buffs.
Warriors are kind a lacking as well. They still have best stunlocks though.
Necros are your medicine against guardians. They shine with their condi damage/boon removal.
Guardians don’t even need to be mentioned.
Thieves are the best roamers.
Engis are very nice for neutralizing points (offensive tank)
And time warp/portal/moa shenanigans come from mesmers.

So when does ranger come in?

Can you tank? You can build some mean tank rangers with lot of self healing + permanent vigor. Their mean to take down and you can make them mobile. But at the end of the day engineers/guardians/eles can do same job, if not even better and at the same time offer a lot more support (buffs/knockbacks) for their team.

Can you damage?

Now that you can do. If you run condi trap you actually go well together with necro. Could you be more useful to your team on some other profession? Probably… If your a good player, yes you can still find a team. Are you as useful as you can to your team? Probably not.

Now coming to weapons.
Designing everything around your pet does not really work out that well.

There is a reason why every viable ranger spec right now (trap ranger/power shortbow) uses shortbow.

When you said that greatsword is meant for bursting, i just started laughing. Man, for the longest period of time i tried to pull off GS, as i love the mobility. But the damage numbers you get from this weapon are just sad.

The problem with longbow is that i can do more damage per second with shortbow standing in front of npc (no bleeds) with only using 1 than i can do with same dps longbow with same stats standing as far back as possible and using 1. If i blow all my longbow cooldowns (3 to 5 to 2), i still barely could keep up with shortbow autoattack. And i’m talking about our nerfed shortbow.

When you come down to numbers, shortbow is only “i can kind a live without my pet’s damage” weapon. And that’s why people use it.

Pets are just not reliable enough. I made a nice wall off text about it (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Changes-i-would-like-to-see/first#post547512) and i really hope they do change something and make them reliable.

Yes, you can keep your pet alive with well timed recalls / callbacks. But its action rpg. Your pet can’t stunbreak, your pet cant dodge. He does not have a separate heal for himself and you do not want to use your heal cooldown just to keep your pet alive. So what will your pet do in current meta game full of burst and aoe? He just dies, even with your 16 sec swap, while you provide him regen and perma protection. He will die.

To sum it up, you said it yourself. Weapons are designed around your pets. You also said that you need to put points in beastmastery, to keep your pets alive. Throwing your points into beastmastery will however really lower your own damage output on those already low dps weapons and in current meta game you end up with mediocre damage build heavily relying not having any AoE damage around.

I’ll keep playing my ranger, as long as i do not hurt my team. Right now, usually we do run necro+ranger as well as we play without ele tank, so we need a bait for enemy mesmers. In this kind a composition, i’m a perfect match and i can actually help a lot. My kind a situation is rare though. And even i slowly practice elementalist/engineer just in case, if they decide to nerf the only competitive builds ranger can currently run :>.

Hello,

Sorry for upcoming wall of text. I already cut it down by about 1,5k characters, as originally it exceeded the character limit.

In this topic i would like to focus on the pets.

In PvE solo content they are amazing. I can’t comment on the dungeons part however, as i have only done 1 dungeon run myself.

In WvW
I feel sorry for you fellow rangers who actually run WvW. I have no idea how it would be even possible to keep your pet alive in that massive AoE.

In tPvP/sPvP
Most of the time i don’t even care that my pet is around. Sometimes having pet around even hurts me (for example 1v1 against unicorn thief. Sure, just heal x6 instead x3 with signet. No worries. He will miss 90% of hes hits, including hes disables on your evasions anyways or kill himself in caltrops).
Only times i actually use my pet are
*to get that nasty AoE fear on my wolf when i’, downed
*to slow down incoming targets so i could capture the point
*oh, and how can i forget. When i’m downed! That is the only moment when people are not running, so pets can attack.

So in combat where there is not that much AoE and movement, they work. Because is the pets damage actually bad? No. Is their damage on moving targets bad? YES!

So what to fix and how to fix?
Now if you want to build a class, who should “heavily” depend on hes AI controlled companion (let the question “Should ranger even depend on hes pet?” stay for another topic), the mechanics for the companion should be solid and reliable. That’t why i would like to see pet be first thing to get fixed instead of the weapons/number of specs (which actually can increase already through more reliable pets).

But how?
Well i do have a couple of changes in my mind. Now some of them may seem to be outrageous to some people. Keep it in mind that you can always lower other numbers like hp/dps once the AI actually becomes reliable.

1. Enable attacking and moving at the same time.
Please do not make pets stop, when they attack. Every now and then depending on pet and your build he reaches your target. That lockdown really lowers the reliability of the damage pets do.

2. Make your pet’s activatable powers instant.
Now on some cases, you may need to nerf the actual abilities, as they may come a little too strong. How ever having a long cast time on a lot of abilities make them unreliable.
Target is running, lets immobilize him with my dog! Wait, the dog runs into casting range, starts casting and receives a cancel because target is “moving away”. If i would rely on that immobilize as a defensive/offensive ability, i’dd be dead about 90% of the times. Now i just randomly throw it in every now and then, just to have 1 more ability to spam.
Make them instant, so you can actually time them and use them reliably.
Also make it the priority power for pet. Let the pet finish everything he is doing and cast the power right away (like dodge ends everything you do). Right now pet still finishes hes attack and your used ability goes into hes “queue”. Another thing that makes using pet abilities as actual part of the build not a good idea.

3. Lower the AoE damage pets receive.
I think this is one ability that rangers who actually WvW would kill for.
Give pets passive AoE damage reduction. Lets be honest, programming a reliable AI who could avoid AoE damage as good as a player can do it is not really a easy job. So how to fix the problem, where your pet dies passively in the first 3 seconds of the fight without anyone even targeting him? Reduce AoE damage it actually receives!
I know that other classes get screwed over by AoE damage as well. For example mesmers and minion necros. But on those cases AoE damage is actually meant to counter them. AoE damage however should not be a counter to a single target.
Other games have done it. First and easiest example is 90% AoE damage reduction hunters pets receive in WoW. Would not say it broke the PvP.

4. Give as a bigger control over the pet.
Like i mentioned before, sometimes having a pet beside me actually helps my opponent. There are so many situations, where i would just kill to have a chance to send my pet to the side. Why not have ground target ability, which would send your pet to that location. I guess what i’m asking is to have a “guard” slot ability on my pets toolbar. Wasting a slot for something like that is not really very optimal, specially now when pets are so unreliable.
For example i would love to
*send pet to the side when fighting unicorn thieves, so he would not just kill himself in caltrops, still would take condis from me (for example empathic bond) and not give him double the healing in “1v1”.
*send pet ahead from me just in case when target appears.

Keyword here is RELIABILITY!

I’m sorry if there are a lot of grammar mistakes (which there probably are, as my English is not that great, neither did i pay a lot of attention rereading the test).
Feel free to throw in your ideas.

In most cases you can improve your rangers AoE, depending on your level. You can either trait to traps (but only if you got last tier unlocked, because without double the duration and throwing trap traits the damage is not worth it).

Or you can get piercing arrow trait, which is 2nd tier trait and makes your arrows go through targets damaging everyone behind/front of the target.

Or you can use both. So you can gain quite impressive AoE damage, only if you have high enough level and you focus your traitline to it.

Also depends if conditions actually work. On that case just piercing arrow. Although positioning will be very important.

Well,

PvP balance is actually not that bad right now. Each class has builds, which work well in certain situations and against other classes/builds. There is no ultimate “i win” button. Some builds just require more practice than others.

Right now the most stable 1v1 class without a doubt however is Mesmer. Its easy to build a mesmer with a lot of defensive capabilities without having to give up much. You can get away with a lot of mistakes thanks to evasions/stealth. Also you have the strongest 1v1 ultimate = Moa.

Lot of well executed builds can go head to head against mesmers in 1v1 and have a chance…until they get moa’d for 10 sec.

If you don’t like mesmers, then thieves are quite decent. They have a lot of cheesy builds, but they can be effective. You may try to keep your eye on unicorn thief (http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/985-lowells-unicorn-build). I used to run similar build (with different utilities though) I used to be able to win 1v1-s pretty decently even without much of experience.

But my best advice is to just pick a class you like and try start trying to theory craft yourself. Keep playing and modifying the build by your own play style. Meta game will always change, so there will not be a ever lasting best build out there, just get comfortable with a class you enjoy playing.

TheAltarBoy.3176:

How do Sigil of Earth work if you have the “bleeds on crit” trait?

Do you have a chance to occasionally ad 2 bleeds if you crit?

Yes, you can proc both bleeds at the same time, sigil one and the trait one. Although rangers trait one is very bad. Its 1 second bleed. So it does barely any damage. I did not even use it on my version of condi ranger.

When it comes to quickness vs crit on bleed sigil.

Well depends on your build (how much crit/fury you run). I’dd say sigils are already worth it when you got 30% or higher crit chance. If you run tanky short bow condi build without crit, then get quickness or something else.

But yeah, as long as you run some crit, those sigils are a lot of additional damage.

Seems interesting take on ranger. Don’t know how viable it is before tying it out though.

Your missing 2nd weapon though. If you already haven’t picked it up, then longbow is actually good choice. Having 15 sec very good knockback makes getting points in tank vs tank wars much easier. Autoattack of longbow is not good, but in most cases you throw on 10 sec !10%! vulnerability, use the knockback / rapid fire / barrage on yourself (as your tank anyways and they attack you) and do couple of dodge rolls for protection. So by the time you get done with your longbow rotation you can already go back to greatsword.

So yeah, longbow is someting i recommend you look into. I could not live without that lovely knockack myself anymore.

Also Rampage as one is something i have stopped using myself. Stability is nice, but there are quite a lot of boon removals out there, which hard counter it.

I have started using Spirit of nature on my hybrid builds myself. In team fights it can be focused down, but on point defense it can give a lot of time for you to get focus off yourself in 1v2 for another heal to come off cd or if they leave it alone, it actually heals quite a lot over time.

If they haven’t changed it, then as far as i know corruptions are actually projectiles. It means you have to be very careful when using them.

1. Aegis block it
2. Dodge blocks it
3. Blind on yourself makes it miss
4. Minions/other people in the way blocks it
5. Reflections / protective barriers block it, gl landing it on guardian

So to land it you have to look that your not blinded or use an attack beforehand to remove the blind/aegis on him, see that no one would be in the way and close your eyes and hope he does not dodge roll. :>

Well,

There is a reason why people whine about pistol whip and not the other stuff.

Your “permanent blind” has a very small area effect. So in 1v1, where people are moving, you don’t really get that much blind out of it to be worth of initiative dump in most of the cases (still can help when focused).
Your "permanent disable " does closely no damage. Don’t get me wrong. Having disable without a cooldown is amazing in the hands of experienced player. In most cases again not worth it. Usually its more important to do damage than to lock down a single target as most fights take place as 1v1/2v2.
Your 4 Second Daze is actually 2 sec daze. (so not that op)

Now your pistol whip. Main thing people complain about is devourer venom + quickness + pistol whip. It means in a couple of seconds you will get hit by nuke of about 8-18k damage depending on your toughness and thieves build. Immobilize from venom is long enough to ensure landing of the 2nd pistol whip while quickness is active.

So the problem here is that you will get multiple short stuns and multiple short immobilizes. It means you have to have perfect timing (which most guys who whine about pistol whip will never get) to avoid the burst with condi + stun removal or you will eat it all. If stun/condi removals would give you 1 sec immunity to stuns/condis it would be no problem. Then you could use your ability and just roll away. Right now if you use it a millisec too early you are still screwed.

Another issue with having good thief on other side is that you HAVE TO save your defensive cooldowns only for him, as if you use them while fighting someone else, there is good chance you will insta die in the following minute. :>

Also the pistol whip thief i run had 45 sec cd on quickness. So it meant i could do the “goodbye to you” combo every 45 sec.

Now i’m sad that you left out the best sword pistol ability of them all! xD
Infiltrators strike is my personal favorite. It was my “i can break your every knockback/stun until i have some initiative” move, when i still played a thief.

Auto balance can sometimes be frustrating.
I don’t mind getting swapped mid game. I mean it’s a good feeling when you get swapped and make a huge comeback.
Only time i hate it is when the score is 450 to 50 or something like that, i get swapped to losing team and i have literally no chance for the comeback.

For me limiting the time window when swaps are made would already solve the frustration.

If game is almost over, disable auto balance, pretty please :>

You can always not use your treb at the start at all. Just send one of your guy to kill their treb and split your other 4 guys between points. So while their 2 guys are on their treb and your treb, rest of your team can 4v3.