Guild Wars 2

We should retitle all these forum threads to Warrior and it has 1000 times more chance of getting looked at.

Come on another, give us something or just say working as intended so we can move on to Warrior.

Ranger isn’t Warrior, that’s why it hasn’t been acknowledged yet.

In all seriousness just a “Hello, thanks for letting us know.” is enough.

None of the Ranger bugs have been acknowledged yet, maybe if we called it Warrior a developer might notice.

All those significant beneficial changes to Warrior and making the Spellbreaker a significant difference in the competitive meta and yet Ranger pets are now more unresponsive than they ever have been! At least acknowledge this issue please ANet!

One of two game breaking Ranger issues, the other being the pet responsiveness after swapping, making newly brought out pet functions, boons and buffs USELESS, this problem will only make this worse for us once Path of Fire is released, ANet please respond!

Posting to raise awareness, this needs to be addressed or at least acknowledged!

Posting to raise awareness, a developer acknowledging the situation would be nice!

Posting to raise awareness, if this remains in the game on Path of Fire release it will break the class even further, for when you hop out of beast mode, the pet is going to sit there and do nothing still!

Hitman.5829:

I have been noticing too that “fear” is now lasting much longer even when I have 6 melandru runes and food with (-) condition duration. This leads me to believe that the Melandru runs are not treating “fear” as a condition.

I have noticed that “fear” last for around 3 to 4 seconds. So, if we do the math correctly, the “fear” condition is 5 to 6 seconds.

If the person using “fear” has 65+ condition duration, then this is plausible.

Interesting, I’ll attempt to test this sometime over the next day or so, or if anyone else could it’d be beneficial and appreciated. But don’t forget I did suggest that the Runes of Melandru will only be half as effective against Fear thanks to a possible fix (I can’t remember entirely, busy day), and chain fearing aside, I believe extreme condition duration enhancement and key traiting can create a fairly long fear.

When trying to complete my skill interruption on my dailies, I noticed fear wasn’t counting for it.

I understand that recently there were issues with things such as Runes of Melandru and Sigil of Paralyzation and on those fronts they were fixed so that Fear was not being affected by the stun modifiers but rather just the condition modifiers, but now it’s not counting as a interrupt too.

I would like developer clarification on whether it’s now ‘working as intended’ or if a error was made and a fix is on it’s way.

Evon voter here; I’ll remain as civil as possible whilst posting during this frustrating time.

As a fan of ArenaNet, I have near no doubt in my mind they will do a impressive job with the Thaumanova Fractal but the Abaddon Fractal could have been SO MUCH MORE. I’ll attempt to explain why shortly after this point.

There are a number of theories as to why Kiel or Evon were favored to win, be it the clearly populous friendly waypoint costs from Kiel, the imminent BLTC tax increase (if) now Evon lost, the ‘saintly’ hero Ellen or the dastardly fat cat Gnashblade, as the ordeal is over, I’m not willing to entertain them, but I am willing to think that not all players knew the whole political agenda and manifesto of each candidate, and through that, a bad (in my own and assuredly many others opinion) decision has been made.

Now that’s out of the way – innovation; both prospective fractals seemingly had equal amounts of, but that is not the case if I may say – yes we know the outcome of both events, we’ve been to the locations where the events took place and seen the aftermath first hand, yet we could do with experiencing exactly how they came to be rather than told by a third party. With everything stated it seems equal right? No; quite simply, it’s not.

The Thaumanova Reactor incident happened fairly recently in terms of the lore, the Asura (and even us ourselves!) have already launched expeditions into the site and if they are as smart as they believe, I’m sure they have a near full account as to what exactly happened within the structure, yet, the Fall of Abaddon, happened in a place which we know nothing of what has happened to it, for at least 250 years, furthermore, the premise of where the fractal would have been set suggests in happened in a time which no one but the developers have even seen, in addition to which in the events that transpired, turned a sea into a desert, who can say they’ve seen that happen?

The architecture also has a prominent tie to innovation, we’ve all become very acquainted with Asuran architecture, the giant floating cubes bound by magic, the illumination from the magical energies creating a mystical feel, heck, we know how big the reactor is, we’ve been there, but, what about the Mouth of Torment prior to the Fall of Abaddon, he would have had followers, maybe they would have had unique homes, maybe he only had Margonite followers close to him and they spawned out of ( now truly :[ ) incomprehensible magical aether of which surrounds the god and looks truly terrifying to the small seemingly insignificant player?

What about the new enemies and allies we could face or fight, sure, we might see a Grand Magister of the Inquest do a unique (and probably annoying) mechanic amongst a number of his already troublesome peers, or some snotty stuck up Asura telling us we’re somehow doing something we know works well wrong, and that for missing a chance to interact with races we haven’t fought for a long time such as the Margonites, the once enemy now allied Forgotten, we could have even talked to the five Gods first hand or see the full power of Abaddon before his incarceration.

What about being at the event itself at the time too, we could embody the Inquest seeing what they did wrong which caused the catastrophe or be a sect of anti-Inquest adventures attempting to stop what will be a(nother) Asuran disaster, compared to fighting as the Gods chosen against Margonites and Abaddon or even be the Five Gods themselves (see how that perfectly fit into a party dynamic?) assuming archetypal roles which a number of people still wish to see how ArenaNet could integrate it into GW2?

There is little truly innovative with this Thaumanova Fractal, I know ArenaNet will make it spectacular , but it will be nothing compared to that of which the Fall of Abaddon could have been.

As a GW1 player, the prospect of Kiel winning sucks, and yet more intriguing lore will be lost in the annuls of time all thanks to a temporarily lower waypoint fee, of which most people bypass by going to Lions Arch through either PvP or WvW, or just leave characters in their farm spots and using WvW as their access-any-time bank.

The potential of the Thaumanova Reactor fractal, whilst ‘closer’ to GW2 lore, is significantly smaller than what the Abaddon could have been, in the first instance we have a already well acquainted with and incredibly aggravating enemy in the Inquest, who we already fight in a number of sections of the open world, personal story and Fractals; and we’re inevitably tasked with finding out how something Asura related blows up – yay, as if we don’t see that everywhere else in almost every Asura related instance.

And we miss out on a instance where we witness the fall and or sealing of a god, where we could have even been the actual gods or aspects of them in order to seal him away, having to fight potential hordes of Margonites or whatever else from the Realm of Torment, let alone Abaddon himself, maybe for the first time seeing what Orr was like before it was sunk into the depths, before the Charr invaded even. Maybe we would even see the start of the Exodus where the Gods left Tyria after Abaddon fell, the beginnings of the Crystal Desert, the Forgotten fighting alongside as Allies, and so much more.

But no, it is looking as if we are stuck with yet more Inquest, and we have the Kiel-loving, temporary-lower-waypoint-cost-despite-price-being-reasonable, ‘new’-yet-often-repeated-‘hijinks’-of-the-Asura crowd to thank.

No matter how you Kiel lovers try to spin it, you made a bad choice and the whole community is going to suffer for it.

In every game that has stealth as a mechanic, the classes that have higher access to it (GW2 cases being Mesmer and Thief) will be generally the most loved by it’s (ab)users and hated by everyone they fight, but they also often, and especially when it comes to GW2 have extremely high importance. It’s well debated how effective a Thief is in PvE content (including dungeons) is, we know it’s harder to survive for the Thief without good play and it doesn’t have the advantages that many other classes have like group utility, naturally high defensive capabilities and good sustained damage.

However, PvP, whether in S/TPvP or WvW is where the class shines in a lot of aspects, and it’s definately a whole lot more than just roaming or straggler sniping.

- Morale; normally thought of in a group or general context, instead applied to just individual players can tell a whole lot, and prior to just today after gearing my Thief to be WvW worthy, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been kittened off by or even just logged off thanks to thieves, and I know for certain I’m not the only one. Whether it’s another roamer being backstab burst down out of nowhere or a member of a rolling group, you’ve weakened their force leaving the rest of the opponents that bit more susceptible to your attacks, or at the very least if they rejoin the fight they’ll either try and focus you down or get more frustrated when they get dropped again, one way or another your providing good skirmish support.

- Blast Finishers; having access to a spammable blast finisher is pretty kitten awesome, applying might, stealth, swiftness or weakness to allies or enemies turns the tide of the fight quickly.

- Deciding when to fight; aside from the Mesmer, near no other class has the options of initiating and disengaging like thieves do, makes it even better when a large majority of the skills thieves possess can very quickly dispatch or easily hinder an opponent, and even in a failed attempt, you’ve got your opponent on edge.

- Stealth; yes, you can be killed whilst you’re in it by smart players, that fact doesn’t make it any less useful though; stealth stomping, stealth reviving, stealth recuperating (health, conditions, initiative) and moving unseen are all incredibly powerful in-combat fight changers, and no other class besides Mesmer can do this, and even they can’t harness the potential Thieves can with it.

Yes Thieves are great at roaming, yes Thieves can dispatch opponents with considerable ease when they get the drop on them, which is incredibly often, but you apply the qualities of the Thief to group fights; small, large or even zerg scales, Thieves can still pack a very distinctive punch.

Whilst I would love it to be implemented, being a quite unlucky with RNG player, I just don’t see it happening through this method, whilst it does take dedication to reach X achievement points for whichever play style, it makes it too accessible for everyone to achieve devaluing a legendary item even more with the inflation of the number acquired, to those lucky sods who already have a legendary or sold a precursor and having a free pass to yet another, it means they still yet have more than I do, thanks to luck and now thanks to a proposed guaranteed means.

Void my comment if you make the precursor account bound though, then I don’t mind too much.

I don’t hate the game in the slightest, this is pretty much the best MMO I have played and no others I might play come out til 2014, and on top of that they aren’t MMORPG’s.

The difference is, I didn’t want the easy way out; I’ve stuck by the Ranger (who is almost fully geared except the backpiece not being ascended) since pretty much the first public beta when I got some proper play time, I’ve been hit by almost every nerf that hit the Ranger since that point and this is the first time it didn’t really affect me aside from improving my effectiveness.

It just feels entirely horrible that every redeeming factor, every useful and unique ability we have gets pretty much unjustly destroyed thanks to fixes, balance and nerfs, and for a extra kick in the teeth we have next to no correspondence with the developers other than SOTG, which even then is sketchy and evasive whenever a issue regarding the Ranger is mentioned.

Underneath all the nerfs, we’ve had incredibly little redemption, we can live under the water but that will be ‘fixed’ at some point, the GS was buffed but pets still fail to hit their target unless they are completely stationary or have their movement impeded, the LB has been cleaned up a little in terms of animations and frames of inactivity, but it’s still awkward damage and requires the cool down and or piercing arrows to become tolerable.

It doesn’t make it any more fun to know that similar Guardian, Engineer and Warrior Bunker builds received no similar nerfs, Elementalist bunkers still persist and are still able to do damage and yet we.. now deal less total damage, it’s not far off the point where we actually do no damage at all.

I want to play the Ranger; I love the unique animations with the Sword and Greatsword, I enjoy the companion being with me, it’s served me well many times, but I want all that in the build diversity that every other profession has, where as we have a grand total of 2 left, and they are both variants of the same premise.

I am ThirtyOne, and I am no longer a Ranger.

After almost a year of trying to love this profession; putting up with the horrendous pet A.I., the ever unnecessary balances, incredibly lackluster traits and empty promises, I’ve had enough.

It’s difficult enough to find any one thing the Ranger is solely good at; yes we have versatility but Elementalists can do that better, yes we can evade but a Thief has the edge on us there, we are ‘unparalleled archers’ but the Warrior can easily do greater damage with the Rifle and the Thief’s Shortbow not only out-damages our own, but it’s auto-attack bounces, it has a spammable AoE, a blast finisher, a deployable weakness field, a similar evade skill and a 900 range teleporting shot.

It’s no better with our other weapons; Axe, main hand or offhand is pitiful, the damage output on the main-hand is completely laughable despite the bounce, #2 is only useful in condition builds when you are in the enemies face or against multiple opponents, if thats the case whats the point of having 900 range in a weak hitting cone attack. #3 the only good mainhand axe skill is has a distinctive tell, the offhand #4 is the saving grace, expect with the movement of combat is quite unlikely to get the second hit, which has the pull hard CC and half the potential damage, and #5 roots you in place for 2 seconds and is easily interrupted.

Sword roots you into animations on the auto attack, and occasionally leaps you off of cliffs, the Greatsword does less damage than the Sword yet a Guardian, Warrior or Mesmer gets easily up to 3 times at least the highest potential damage with each of their own Greatswords or even basic swords. The Dagger whilst nothing inherently wrong with it has no redeeming factors to justify the Ranger’s poor main hand options, the Torch is nothing more than a weapon bound Flame Trap and the Warhorn is pale in comparison to the Necromancer or the Warriors, who have better spammable boons, hard CC’s, and a blast finisher.

I won’t even get started in the water.

The utilities are pretty much god awful, whats the point in the shouts if the pet is dead or can’t hit the target? The signets are on much longer cool downs than the equal other profession counterparts, the traps whilst good are pretty much for condition builds only and are easily avoidable, and the Wilderness Survival options either don’t work (Lightning Reflexes doesn’t stunbreak Knock Down) or again on awkward cool downs or limited to different builds. The Spirits still get blown away by the faintest of winds.

The traits are incredibly messy, we often have to have 3 traits to replicate the effect of another professions similar single trait, such as bows range and damage, signets being beneficial to both the user and the pet, the traps needing both the major and grandmaster to be useful in a trait line that offers no bonuses for the build traps are designed for, no matter how you trait the Spirits, they will still wither in the wind, and the pets despite whatever traits near never hit the opponent you leash them on if they simply decide to focus on the ranger, all the opponent needs to do is move and the pet is negated.

Oh and did you know the pets are a walking Cloak and Dagger target for the Thief, the only time they can’t target the pet is when the pet is ‘in recovery’ mode, which is where the pet is even more useless anyhow.

Oh and did I mention all of this is because we have a ‘always present’ pet which is supposed to represent a good portion of our ability and damage?

I have a simple solution, reset the Ranger to how it was in the very early Beta’s, our Greatsword did damage, the Shortbow had the redeeming quality of hitting very fast, Spirits weren’t swept away by a portable face cooling fan, and ultimately, Rangers were happy.

/end rant.

8/10, themed and amusing, you can probably assume he’s Kurzick too so it fits with GW lore a bit to boot.

Pretty much all my characters are Human, most of them female except for my Engineer who rocks it up as a London mobster kind of vibe, but he has a little bit of a cheesy name, so instead I’ll post my Mesmer.

Roya Saira – A youngish looking olive skinned female human, Roya is a Persian name meaning vision, premonition or dream, and Saira is a Muslim name which can mean happy, beautiful or traveler.

PistolWhip.2697:

Steal was a well oiled mechanic? Lol such a powerful mechanic steal is, that 900 range bro.

Steal is such, granting you a extra variable in a fight against your opponent to throw them off guard, plus the fact you can trait it for many different things, such as applying conditions, stealing boons, gaining boons, gaining stealth, gaining initiative and dealing damage which can cause other effects to trigger like sigils and such. All of that on top of a unstoppable gap closer unless the thief is dumb enough to stand inside a hard CC field or is somehow caught by a different hard CC, not forgetting shadowstep utility and the multitude of other stunbreakers.

Even better if the changes come to light (which sadly is looking like they are) now you can trait it for extra range, put another daze on it and use it every 22 seconds or whatever.

Yeah, pretty kitten strong if you ask me.

It was early for me when I posted that so thanks for the clarification, but even with 2 seconds difference my opinion doesn’t change. Thieves have enough access to stealth, daze and steal, it’s very debatable whether or not they need to be toned down (go and flame away, I won’t back down and I’ll continue to stand for what I believe), not further improve upon an already ‘well oiled’ mechanic.

I wouldn’t get your hopes up as far as new legendary skins, they have bigger yet similar priorities to get through first. The Scavenger Hunt however I actually think is closer than most people feel, and I can’t wait.

Tough to say, I actually really like them all. However I’d have to say Ranger is probably my most logged and achieved character, no matter the ‘animation fixes’ nerfs, the horrible pet A.I., the poor and never cleaned up traits, the power to pet ratio, the clunky to heck and back again sword auto attacks and the throw weapon equals quiver disappearing (sucks if you use axes like myself), I just keep coming back to her.

Those ‘leaked patch notes’ smack of fake all over them, as a Adventurer profession advocate all the changes are just too good to be true with a added flavor of what’s already been stated as changing to make it look convincing.

For example; Steal on a base 35 second cooldown, with a possible 30% cooldown reduction from 30 points in Thievery means it’s down to 24.5 seconds already, with a added 20% off, means at the very least is just shy of 19/20 seconds per Steal, which is quite frankly ridiculous with the other synergies already in place, like Stealing gives you Stealth and Stealth ‘skills’ gives you 2 initiative.

Or the flat 14% damage increase on the Ranger Short Bow skills along with finally fixing the Longbow arrow flight speeds, not to mention sorting out the horrible self-cc’ing Rocket Boots and Jump Shot animations for the Engineer, as well as making the Rifle power builds even stronger (as a current user I would LOVE that).

All of these changes, and I’m sure many others I haven’t addressed are either too good to be true or something that only extends the already in place imbalance to even greater lengths.

If these changes come to light, the discontent players have with Thieves will only increase, and as much as well like killing these ‘newbs’ we don’t want more kittening on the forums about how overpowered or ‘broken’ we are.

What horrifies me even more is that people actually want changes like these.

I’m not going to say I’m outright opposite, but I choose to play against flavor of the month curves, and oddly enough it’s happened in a lot of the games I have played.

At the very start, I had a Thief, I got it to around 50, then deleted it because at that point I wanted one of each class, and my character design and name didn’t appeal to me no longer, and after that I set out leveling each class enough to get a feel for how they played and how much i liked them. Mesmer was my first to 80 after the previous endeavor, quickly followed by Ranger and Warrior, but it seemed each time I had moved on to my next project, the rest of the playerbase was playing these classes in abundance.

Necromancer was my 4th 80, and at the point of getting it to 80, was probably at it’s lowest point, the minion/vampiric fixes hit about a month after she got to 80, maybe I’ll pick her up again after next tuesday but it’s doubtful thanks to my current in progress character.

Engineer is my most recent 80, and I had pretty much started it in it’s rise of finding builds that worked for it, yet I never played a single one of them, it’s still in it’s Zerker-esque build which to my knowledge is quite dissimilar to all of the current and previous ‘flavor of the month’ builds.

Finally I’ve started leveling all three of the low HP classes, with the Thief leading the charge at 52, again, it’s not in a flavor of the month build and it’s recently seen people drop it in favor of the Mesmer thanks to the Shadowstep nerf and I yet I have intentions of making her my next fully geared character. The Guardian and Elementalist are in low level hell with not a lot of the fuel to start the fires but I have a few interesting build ideas for both which at least for now are against the most optimal curves.

The problem I have with Flavor of the Month builds and classes is that they are more likely to be hard countered by the player base or be ‘nerfed’ by the developers, by keeping away from them I won’t encounter and like the powerful builds and be sad when they are gone, yet experience new life in the class and builds where other haven’t.

I have to admit, I’m fairly new to playing a Thief, but I feel as if I can step in here.

As the above poster says, he is correct that the condition damage builds being weaker is somewhat blown out of proportion, but only in respect of the fights you look for, the larger the active player number, the less effective condition builds become, whereas Burst builds can and do work almost everywhere.

Regardless of your build, Thieves in general work better in the smaller scale warfare, picking your opponents and knowing their abilities will win you more fights than ‘winging’ it. D/D and P/D condition builds are probably the way to go if you wish to play conditions, taking utilities like Caltrops, and traits like Caltrops on dodge, as well as speccing heavily into the 3rd and 5th trait lines can help you remain highly evasive and drop conditions like rain on the enemies. You won’t be the quickest at killing with conditions, but with high access to stealth, built in evades into attacks and vice versa, you’ll still be more than a threat.

KStudios.2850:

Jinks.2057:

So what’s everyone gonna do when tonight’s reset pits all of us together again???

Well, it’ll be about 7:00 am Saturday morning before I even know who we’re facing (if I resist the urge to peek in here from work first).

First, I’m gonna have my post-work shower and glass of iced tea. Then, some toast. Then I’ll check the match-up once I log in. If it’s the same lot of us, there’s a good chance I’ll just set myself up to akitten-dance in LA, hang up the mouse for the morning, and go get my play and cuddle time in with my year old daughter instead. Before she grows up to hate my guts, lol.

Edit: Again, why is “away from keyboard” omitted Anet?

Because F and K together is regarded as short hand typing for a derogatory word starting with F, followed by a letter between but not including T and V, repeat the previous process for a letter between B and D, finally ended with the K.

I play quite a bit yet still consider myself a casual player, with 1300 hours logged I have 5 classes at 80, 4 fully exo’d or better, 3 alts on their way, 1 map completion with 3 others above 50%, and about 10% of that time logged in SPvP and 30% in WvW.

How do I stay interested? I set myself a number of goals I want to complete before I hang up my PC MMORPG boots (unless ESO turns out to be awesome or GW3 crops up and looks good) like having all profession at 80 with at least 3 working builds complete with gear switches, or owning a legendary or high costing weapon(s) on every character.

It’s difficult if your attached to a main, I fully understand that with my beloved Ranger, but leveling other professions has helped me understand not only potential opponents in SPvP or WvW, but a whole multitude of things for my Ranger, and each time I get a character through another map or battle with it in WvW I can use my winnings to fund my main into being the best she can be.

In response to your class question, I would have to say Mesmer, it has so many defensive properties built into it’s attacks you can remain offensive like with your Thief and stomp your opponents and still get out and prepare for your next attack, almost all the other classes don’t get those opportunities to do that. Warrior can be fun, although at it’s most damaging potential, many PvP players know what to look for and how to stop it or at least prevent the damage or survive. If you can wait, eventually that will be forgotten and the Berserker warrior will be back on the rise again when new players come into the game or we’ve all got sick to death of dealing with the new Warrior builds that are cropping up.

As someone stated early on, some places have more chances to drop an item of said quality than others, but at the end of the day it’s down to plain and simple luck.

As previous experience for a example, I have fairly high MF gear on my Warrior, and have had for a few months now, I’ve had fairly consistent rares from drops and chests, but only as recently as last week did I get my first dropped exotic after 1200 odd hours played, in WvW, on my exotic geared berserker Engineer, killing BPBL’s Garrison Champion.

My friend, who I play GW2 with a heck of a lot, only has 300 or so more hours than me, has probably dropped in excess of 10 exotics, all in front of my very eyes, he even got the rifle precursor during the Lost Shores event.

Either way, it’s all luck, I know mine is pretty rotten and it seems others get ‘preferred treatment’, but someday either my hard work will pay off or we’ll get a scavenger hunt, and I’m more than prepared to wait.

Screenshots might suffice or video proof just to be sure, if it’s that commonplace I’m sure you could capture it and send it to the developers either via support options in game or the separate support services (which can be located at the bottom of these very forum pages).

Now, to eliminate possible speculation, consider the following scenarios;

A) You were fighting a Mesmer shatter build, these are intended to throw out clones at a exceptional rate, and through various traits, utilities and cooldown management, a Shatter based Mesmer can easily produce enough clones for 3 or even all four shatters at (almost) full power (before considering illusionary persona).

B) You were fighting more than one Mesmer – I, as a former Mesmer player, would roam with other Mesmer, often those within same guilds and or of similar appearances to my own or since the WvW culling fix, any same race Mesmer, to perplex the opponent as much as possible with the illusions, even without Shatter builds, between X+1 Mesmer, there will be clones, a lot of them.

Before any offense could be taken, I do want to clarify I have or had no intention of insinuating that you might be a inexperienced or a ‘bad player’, it’s just that more often than not, smart play can be easily misinterpreted as hacking.

Here’s mine, also in order of when achieved 80.

Mesmer – 80 – 2nd most played, 2nd most active at present.
Ranger – 80 – Most played, 3rd most active.
Warrior – 80 – Working on bringing it back into play time.
Necromancer – 80 – Inactive, little intention on brining it up again.
Engineer – 80 – Most active at present.
Elementalist – 2 – Intended to be next 80, some experience SPvP.
Thief – 2 – A lot of experience SPvP, dwindling other intentions.
Guardian – 2 – Little to no experience in any fields, little intention at present.

Probably the most fun class in the game, simply thanks to it’s adaptability and versatility, however it comes at the price okittenward utilities, self CC skills and some RNG factors to consider, which can be costly when running heavy elixir based builds. However well played Engie’s are a nightmare to predict and deal with thanks to being able to bring anything to the fight, and sometimes even things the Engie doesn’t plan on.

It does require a little keyboard dexterity, but it’s more than worth it.

The Warrior in my view is in nowhere near as a bad place as people make out, they have great survivability with very little repercussions and the damage ain’t half bad either. The problem is the Warrior lacks a lot of versatility when trying to make better use of their strengths, which is something no other class suffers as much as the Warrior. I actually think the Warrior is better for most users when they try to increase the range of it’s versatility rather than sticking to one or two acts.

I’ll never say it’s a players fault, I don’t genuinely know how good they are at playing the game, but I will say don’t be afraid to try and work around your own shortcomings rather than the classes. Everyone is different, just like those who swear by shout healing, or melandru runes for condition draining, they found those things work for them. My own personal killer is conditions, I detest having lingering conditions that I can’t clear or being controlled via immobilize or chill, so I run shouts clear conditions and warhorn conversion, and often find I’m a fair survivor in group warfare being fairly mobile support and damage. My point is I cover my own hinderance so I can remain effective as I’d like.

I remember hearing in kind of passing that they are looking in to this, but I don’t believe it’s in any kind of priority, although it’s the same reason I don’t have any fancy back pieces on my Engineer, but I don’t regret buying my purdy Vigil rifle one kitten bit.

I think the above poster has pretty much nailed this, but in all truth, it’s just down to what people perceive as too little or too much, and everyone is different.

I personally see myself as a mix of both, I don’t devote all my time to videogames and GW2, but I do a heck of a lot of it, and have no intention of stopping, I enjoy GW2 a lot.

As of late, after deciding that Ranger is a long term WIP and Mesmer is a little on the boring side, I started to level a Engineer with WvW, PvE and Dungeons in mind as her main focus, however, I have next to no idea in which direction to build her towards.

For leveling I’ve been using a Static Discharge variant ( working towards 0/30/0/10/30, currently at 60 ), and whilst it plays well in PvE, Dungeons and WvW, I just find it a little lackluster and boring to play, long before my intended glassy aspirations at 80. However I don’t like Condition builds all that much in PvE/Dungeons and I don’t 1vX anywhere near often enough to consider them for WvW ( I’m naturally inclined towards group/guild play ) and my Elixir build, although easily changeable and adaptable, doesn’t quite dish out the damage I feel comfortable with.

Drink Tank - My Elixir build, intended for dungeon and WvW play, easily interchangeable utilities and traits for dungeons and obvious switches in WvW where necessary. Elixir X is in my opinion great for and immensely fun in WvW, and will probably be switched out for Supply Crate in dungeons. Other switchable utilities include either Elixir aside from C for either Grenade Kit, Elixir Gun or Elixir B as and where the need arises. As for traits, the Rifle cooldowns can be switched for the Elixir Gun cooldown in dungeons, as with Cloaking Device for Energized Power, Automated Response for HGH and possibly Invigorating Speed for either Self Regulating Defenses or Cleansing Formula 409 again as and when need arises.

The thing is, I’ve seen other people have great success with so many other builds, and I know I can probably handle being a bit glassier or running a completely different build entirely like Static Discharge, ‘Nades or Bombs, I just really don’t know which!

So yeah, there’s my build in progress, and a description of my ideal play styles, looking for any and all suggestions, and maybe even trolling will be tolerated within reason.

Aiming for a 0/30/0/10/30 for general use, with Air runes, vulnerability and rifle traits, and vigor traits where the SD/Speedy kits aren’t for in combat evasion and mobility. I’ll post it another time.

A fair few all got DC’d from Eternal Battlegrounds about 40 mins in, kinda sucks as a EU player on a US server on reset night.

I’m still not running a full Catmaster build, I love too many traits in Wilderness Survival and Skirmishing to trait into Nature Magic at all or further in Beast Mastery, that said I’m considering trying 0/20/30/0/20 or possibly 0/10/30/0/30 in the future when I have better range of accessible equipment.

Currently in full exotics, sub-optimal runes, with a 0/25/30/0/15 and enjoying my WvW time, the Jaguar doesn’t get as many kills, but many don’t realize it’s not the greater threat when facing me, as Greatsword provides the mobility and control with #3, #4 and #5, of which they usually burn their evades and stun breaks, and Longbow creates the distance and killing potential with Barrage and Rapid Fire, each hitting the upper ranges of 6-7k. Yaghwaugh and Devourer damages are bonuses or aid me in getting the kills without weapon swap.

Eurantien.4632:

Not sure if it is still bugged but GS 5 used to give the pet the extra damage regardless of whether or not you hit anything. Might want to test it.

This amazingly still holds true, and does work, was testing earlier on a dummy in LA, not in full Catmaster build but…

Basic attack averaged 750 damage
Bite averaged 1.5k
Maul averaged 1.8k
Basic attack + Hilt Bash averaged 1.1k damage
Bite + Hilt Bash averaged 2.2/.3k
Maul + Hilt Bash averaged 2.7k

Funnily enough, you can preload this as well.

Doing further testing, it would appear Hilt Bash pressed after does not cancel “Sick ’Em!” and as far as I can tell, stacks the damage. Hilt Bash + SotH doesn’t seem to stack either way round.

Not sure if intentional, but your owl is completely photobombing you.

Here’s my Ranger in a odd mix of T3 cultural, T2 cultural x2, Rawhide and Vigil, with Sniper being awesome.

I don’t SPvP much, so I can’t really comment there other than just agree with the consensus.

However, WvW is almost a completely different beast thanks to a tonne of factors; the strongest classes without much thought are Elementalists and Mesmers, although both require a bit of micromanagement, they also both have insane combat versatility.

Weakest will have to go Ranger or Necromancer, while both have great build options in their own ways, they are both hampered thanks to awkward Pet / Minion AI.

I’ll probably get a lot of flack for this, but I would say Warriors are middle ground in WvW; they have good survivability and almost over the top damage output without sacrificing much, if any at all staying power. Their problems lie in predictability, everyone and their mother by now knows the tells of a Hundred Blades or Kill Shot coming their way, and more often than not when fighting 1v1 every class will have a stun break or dodge ready to prevent being hit by a nasty potential one hit kill.

I’m not going to say that career Greatsword + Rifle Warriors are playing wrong, nor going to say if any other tactics or builds have better success, but Warriors aren’t a one trick pony, despite whatever the vocal others will say.

Here’s my pretty little Bird Master in mostly T2 Human Cultural, just wish I could afford some of the nicer dyes for it.

^ This, seriously, just makes me feel awesome when being a Bird Master, I just don’t know if I want to complete the look with the mask and gloves or leave my pretty lil ranger as she is. I’ll post a screenie in the Ranger thread soon.

I don’t think the Hammer will be hit incredibly hard, but there are causes for concern within the Auto Attack and Earthshaker, so if anywhere in my mind, they will be the first ports of call if the Warrior Hammer gets addressed.

Great Sword (3), Longbow (3), Spear (2 and 5) and Axe Offhand (5) I think are in for a seeing to as far as Warrior should be concerned.

I thought I encountered a similar problem, and maybe this might help.

When you purchase a armor, be whatever it actually is, it has it’s own default dye settings, and some of those dyes you may not of acquired or unlocked (a common misconception is ebony being the same as black), if you don’t change all of the dye slots to ones you have already unlocked, the item will keep reverting back to it’s original colors, regardless of if you haven’t unlocked them already.

TL;DR – Change all the dye slots to colors you have unlocked.

I thought I encountered a similar problem, and maybe this might help.

When you purchase a armor, be whatever it actually is, it has it’s own default dye settings, and some of those dyes you may not of acquired or unlocked (a common misconception is ebony being the same as black), if you don’t change all of the dye slots to ones you have already unlocked, the item will keep reverting back to it’s original colors, regardless of if you haven’t unlocked them already.

TL;DR – Change all the dye slots to colors you have unlocked.

Thanks for the responses, in truth I’m wholly content with the plethora of options available to get what I want, and I agree in most part with the comments here, it’s more his opinion thats conflicting, and there is some sense to what he wants, but he isn’t ready to accept the idea that it’s current functionality could be working as intended and refuses to aid said cause or work around the problem until it’s fixed.

I’m not going to call him one of these ‘entitled’ types, but it’s difficult to see it any other way.

I still think a more concrete way of acquiring them in the game could be a way forward, even if it requires a extreme cost (X>1 Basic Transmutation Stones + Mystic Coin + X ‘Y’ Dust = 1 Fine Transmutation Stone).

Recently, I’ve found my willingness to play the game in a bit of a quandary, I love the game, immensely so, I’d even managed to get some good friends of mine to play it with me, but, them not playing has directly impacted why I almost can’t bring myself to play it, and, as frivolous as it sounds, that very reason is Fine Transmutation Stones.

My friend is in the situation where, and I quote in part from him, he wants to play, but use the looks he’s taken the time to craft and get, but can’t because he can’t afford to buy Fine Transmutation Stones with Gems from his own money, yet can’t justify spending what he calls extortionate rates from the Gold to Gems conversion, I’ve tried to sway him by even offering many ways where I would buy them for him, but he’s one of these stubborn ‘no resolution other than my desired way’ types, and that would be to somehow acquire them by his own volition.

So, I’m asking, for ANY other way to guarantee acquisition of them, via Mystic Forge, Karma, Map Completion or any other way I’m sure some creative thinking can come up with (Achievement Rewards also seems a rather good option).

Response from a Developer as to why they can’t would be greatly appreciated if such a outcome occurs.

Nemesis.8593:

I chose the name of my build carefully… it is “ultimate” as in best you can get with these current items in game, damage-hybrid as in damage oriented hybrid as in both burst and conditions.
It lacks support or tanking because the priority is damage. I will make other builds that have more of the tanking/support stuff in the future.

True, and I have no doubt it will indeed do just that, I’m considering giving this build a good try once my little neccy gets moderately geared and 80 (providing my computer can keep up with everything) and somewhat hoping I can cast aside my apprehensions with it. I must ask though, how do you think (or have you tested how) this build fares in WvW?

I want to like it, but for me it has next to no defense other than smart play, and while it’s true that only that is all you need, if you get focus fired it might be a lethal issue which this build doesn’t really accommodate for.

Really nice damage though.

Ok, I need to come in and say a few things here, things are getting out of hand.

We can’t have different borderlands, coming quite simply down to the point where people will complain that something isn’t fair, be it server X on map A has a keep where it only has two effective trebuchet attack points on a keep where as the other two maps have three or more viable points on the same relative keep, or server Y is a desert like landscape and certain players can’t see that well with this shade of yellow. You name any slight difference and people will complain, guaran-kitten-teed.

You as your home server are fighting for only buffs and benefits, the team with the most points only benefit is being able to get these small buffs quicker, and all in a large part the bonuses are not too (if at all) detrimental to the opposing sides if one is getting them quicker. If they were to add something which is exclusively for the winning server, that would be deemed as unfair and you’ll see people server hopping more than ever.

As for the Tiers and same fights, that’s a irreparable fault of which we the players are just as much to blame as ANet can be accountable for, you get people who want to win and will happily jump ship for a more successful side, but there will always be people who will stand and fight the good fight, it’s up to the players to make their server appealing to fight for just as it is the developers to put some restraint on the server hoppers.

The final thing I want to address is this apparent communication issue. As much as I (and many of you lot too) would like to hear about various directions things are taking, if they mention anything as little as something in passing, it can be easily misconstrued with subsequent posts and they lead to people being incredibly disappointed and followed up with rage on the forums, and exactly the same situation can and will happen from consistent external testing which some others have suggested, not to mention other issues such as many players opting to play a persistent beta rather than the actual game, and the people who switch in between the two relaying false information. An example of the prior point happened with the Mesmer and a proposed more reliable swiftness or movement speed ability, and we see the fallout from that still rampant today.

The best and most constructive thing we can do as players is give feedback, not cut down and insult developers and their assumed inability to work on changes you (or whoever/ how many else) personally want to see. If they only cared about lining their pockets and wallets the game wouldn’t be buy to play, they want this game to work, and they need the encouragement, patience and probably a little bit of faith from you.

As it’s past midnight where I am, and I’m about to retire for the small sleep before people start pestering me to get up, Merry Christmas to you all.