Guild Wars 2

My PVE Zerker build that’s great at self stacking might and puts out amazing damage.
Taking advantage of clarion bond, brutish seals, onslaught, quickdraw and zephyrs speed in BM tree.

sword horn/GS

flame trap can be substituted for zephyr or another signet etc if you have someone else dropping fire fields

flexible and open to optimization!

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-J;4wEFy-f2kDV-0;9V8b;1YZb;0236236147;45cX0S;1zxrUzxrUs-FiY3hG;3HbH6IbI6JbJbCH0BN2s;9;9;9;9;9;9;0VRk3L

rotation goes:
cast jungle stalker f2 (might stacks)
Rampage as one
signet of wild (might stacks and dmg buff)
flame trap on enemy
warhorn 5 (blast might stacks)
AA chain
swap pet to jag (blast might stacks, zephyr speed and might stacks)
swap to GS (might stacks from sigil)
Maul (pop signet of hunt during animation, might stacks and dmg buff)
AA
Maul after quick draw cd
swap to sword and AA until cd

pretty rough draft, but you get the point

My PVE Zerker build that’s great at self stacking might and puts out amazing damage.
Taking advantage of clarion bond, brutish seals, onslaught, quickdraw and zephyrs speed in BM tree.

sword horn/GS

flame trap can be substituted for zephyr or another signet etc if you have someone else dropping fire fields

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-J;4wEFy-f2kDV-0;9V8b;1YZb;0236236147;45cX0S;1zxrUzxrUs-FiY3hG;3HbH6IbI6JbJbCH0BN2s;9;9;9;9;9;9;0VRk3L

rotation goes:
cast jungle stalker f2 (5 might stacks)
Rampage as one
signet of wild (3 might stacks and dmg buff)
flame trap on enemy
warhorn 5 (4 might stacks)
AA chain
swap pet to jag (blast finisher +4 might stacks, zephyr speed and 3 might stacks)
swap to GS (2 might stacks from sigil)
Maul (pop signet of hunt during animation +3 might stacks and dmg buff)
AA
Maul after quick draw cd
swap to sword and AA until cd
repeat

Easy,

each time you don’t get a drop fitting into a category rare/precursor/asc drop, etc,
your chance of getting said drop is improved each time until you ultimately GET THE DROP. At which point the timer resets.

Eventual guaranteed drop. I can’t stress how bad this game needs more reward systems to keep players interested. Let’s be realistic people, we’re all RNG cursed. The gambling factor for hours invested in this game is atrocious.

I mean kitten ultima online implemented this system back in 2000 LOL

Here’s my Sylvari Ranger I’ve played since launch.

Wreath
Prowler Shoulders
Zodiac Chest
Zodiac Gloves
Sylvari T2 (I think) Leggings
Sneakthief Sandals
Rox Quiver

Chaos Sword Skin
Howler

Katana GS Skin

Curunen.8729:

Lol at warrior complaining about ranger buffs.

ikr…who ever thought we’d see the day

Rangers can have their time in the limelight, it only took 2 years to get them there

Kilger.5490:

I’m curious about the axe buff, 3sec seems kind of short, could have fun looking putting together a might build with it tho. Regardless should be able to keep up 3 stacks fairly consistently…

add runes of strength, might stacking sigil…..should stack up nicely with jungle stalker f5 and fire trap/horn 5

was kinda hoping for some horn love though….maybe blind/dmg buff on horn 4 and better cd on 5

Kysin.6349:

Seriously can’t wait to play my ranger again!

“Rise from your grave!”

Omg, is this all really happening!?

Finally the rangers get some proper lovin’

law.9410:

The only changes I’d like to see are: reduced pre-cast on sword #2, and make the AA chain interruptible

x1000

This just in:

There’s nothing ‘hardcore’ about sitting in front of a computer for 18 hours a day.

Plus, it didn’t help that they postponed it for about a week and a half without notice.

…probably hoping we’d forget and sweep it under the rug. They’ve promised changes for a year and a half now and haven’t made good on them. I’m convinced theres only a small handful of people that work for anet and they probably contract people out to make ‘big changes’ on the programming end….as I’ve never seen such ‘abandoning’ behavior from a dev team on a game before.

CRrabbit.1284:

GS burst will be far more than that. You should be able to deliver 20-30k maul if you traited all for damage. Also don’t forget you can do this burst in stealth as BS thief did. But since you can 1 hit kill anything, why need survival?

Good….its OUR kittenING TURN

Wasn’t this supposed to happen Monday or Tuesday originally?
If it was about any other specific class I’m sure it would’ve been addressed by now.

I bet Anet dreads Ranger discussion/patchwork etc….. they know its broken af

I’m not quite sure when/if this is happening, but wanted to throw up my quick notes on the class and some realistic improvements I think would be great. I’m at work and threw this together fast so bear with me please. I feel that if I didn’t add my 2 cents, I had no room to kitten and moan when (AND IF) the ranger buffs/nerfs do come down the pipe.

Since we know we are stuck with these rancid pets for the time being, I hope Anet can focus more on the ranger character itself along with kits/utils/etc to help put us and THE GAMEPLAY WE CAN CONTROL in a better spot.

WHAT WE KNOW:
Pet issues:
Horrible pathing
No Dodging/Aegis/invul capabilities
Unreliable skill execution
Bad scaling
No brains
Cant hit moving targets

Ranger Character Issues:
Underwhelming/buggy weapon kits
Minimal burst capabilities
Poor condi removal
Trait lines don’t synergize well/some overloaded
Signets/Shouts need revamp badly

A Few Realistic Suggestions/fixes:

Weapons:
-More blast finishers
-Help make us the true unrivaled ranged class. Make arrows pierce by default (Mesmer gs has this capability without needing to be traited…why can’t we?) Overall pity DPS buff due to incompetent pet mechanics maybe.
-LB: do away with max range requirement so we can be close to group.
-SB: remove flank requirement for aa bleed
-GS: Increase auto attack speed or DPS. Give us a knockdown. Please include a boon mechanic in GS kit (without gm traiting)
-Sword: improve auto attack chain/dodge availability. Reverse Hornet sting/leap (ie Leap in….you have 5s to leap back otherwise it goes on cd) for more mobility. Make aa be interruptible by sword 2 and 3 skills as well as dodge.
-Warhorn: Needs some cd love badly, perhaps even a special traiting feature similar to warrior horn….condi removal, etc. Skill 4 should blind. 5 is in a good spot.
-Axe MH: more scalable dps for power builds on aa….i know its in a decent spot pvp wise so nothing too OP. skills 2 and 3 seem underwhelming a bit. Offhand axe is in a pretty good spot I think.

Abilities:
-Heals seem to be in a pretty good spot, perhaps make healing spring traitable to a bigger field.
-Spirits should be unbound/mobile/moveable by default…like necros minions/Some Mesmer phants/banners/guardian summons (idk who uses them though) etc.
-Traps: add combo filed to poison, move traits to a different line and split powerful traits in marksmanship between marksman and skirmishing for build diversity. I would love to see f1-f4 skills be our traps and have our pets less of an impact on our class, but that’s serious overhauling.
-Signets: Active effects need to effect the ranger as well, this might bring up some balancing issues, but besides 30 in marksman and might stacks, they are meh. They are all ‘just ok’….but I feel a few could be combined into one and made a bit stronger, etc.
-Shouts: We need more group utility and less pet stuff (since our unreliable pets are 99% of the problem) from our shouts. Ie might stacks/stabil/protection/CONDI REMOVAL/regen etc…similar to war and guard shouts, rather than a handful of shouts that are USELESS in 90% of the gameplay
-LR should remove movement impairing condis
-Sharpening stone can be deleted and you can remove sb aa flank requirement.

Traits:
Move spotter to precision tree. Traitable 25% movement speed please. Trap traits revampedand moved. Ran out of time, sorry…

Moved to CDI Thread, soz

Rym.1469:

Hi there! Decided to post my Ranger, Misspoland
It’s not finished yet, as not necessairly best option for shoulderpads remains, but it will be changed in close future ^^

One of the best looking chars I’ve seen!
Which dye selections did you go with?

Great article, thanks a ton!

for the love of god RANGER!

Good afternoon all,

I haven’t been able to play gw2 much over the past few months, but when I’m able to, I like to hop on and run a 10-30 fractal run….most often in pick up groups :S

I’m basically looking for videos, tips or guides that can help me be the most viable I can be to the party. Primarily looking for help with:

-‘tell animations’/exactly when to use feedback for most damage (boss fights)
-optimal portal usage/ tricks
-group stealth skips
-Optimal TW timing

Thank you in advance for any help/tips/guidance you can offer or link!

Here’s the build I currently use, feel free to critique it as well!
Pretty standard 20/20/0/30/0 S/F + GS phant build, swapping blink out for null field as needed, etc…is my build out of date?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgEQNAsdRlwzCoHTzqGa9IxpHMH6LnkCVn6SKwNvB-jwCBYfBCbJhEBgUBCRJPFRjtMsIas6aYKXCyaXJ1gTZ1mTQWKgyVGB-e

I have a friend who always plays paper thief, and says that he is just as viable to a group and does better damage spamming auto attack on short bow (gets “4k auto attacks”) in the back and dropping his aoe, providing more utility than any might stacking, banner, zerk warrior would be. He rarely uses SR for party

He has a level 80 warrior who he refuses to gear and insists on bringing his thief everywhere, how can I convince him otherwise? (Most people I play with think thief is rather useless outside wvw roaming and certain dungeon paths for SR skips.)

An unselfish dungeon, jack of all trades build, focusing on sword/horn and maintaining good party support through spotter and frost spirit. Secondary weapon can be changed for whatever suits your play style I switch between GS or LB myself

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBMhNakoqquuywi1SQsUsn93UkJzzKkIniSdqMW6kZSA-jgCBYfBCDEk8LQEBgZmBJ7casFXFRjVhET7iIq2grIa1CBMaBA-e

Features:
-Spotter for great group support. (Roughly 7% party dmg)
-Frost Spirit for great group support. (Roughly +7% party dmg)
-High DPS and survivability from sword.
-Over 1600 toughness, 50% crit chance 80%+ crit dmg.
- Good party might stacks via jungle stalker f2 and flame blasting your own traps.
-Excellent vulnerability stacking.
-Great party fury upkeep from horn 5 and offhand training.

Can take 10 from skirmishing and go 30 in Marksmanship for 6 sec invul, helps for PUG groups!

Anet, WE GET IT. You want us to spend more time playing a game that already feels like you have to binge game just to keep up with content/achievements, not miss out on skins, etc… JUST so we are more likely to purchase gems from your shop.

How do you plan to achieve this? By continuously making the items we work (VERY HARD) for irrelevant in the end and forcing us to conform to new meta and dedicate ourselves to a new grind.

It seems Anets idea of ‘fixing’ something is just to nerf it into uselessness like so many other aspects of the game.

You guys wanted to take away the trinity, healers and tanks. So what’s left after that? DPS of course. Isn’t this game working how you intended? Condi builds do have their place in the game, although it is mostly pvp.

How about Anet focuses on fixing things that are truly broken atm? Ranger pets/traits I’m looking at you.

TRAIT LOADOUTS:
Let us switch between trait loadouts when ooc. Personally, I think a 2nd loadout template should be awarded at lvl 80, and additionals should be purchasable with gems. per character of course. OR if anet absolutely has to, make us buy a 2nd loadout with gems….the 70 gem stone just isn’t convenient or reasonable enough to justify the cost for a ONE TIME RESET. PERIOD.

GRAWL FRACTAL:
when you go to open bonus chest before cutscene at first boss, it cuts you off and you can no longer open it after cutscene. Please fix.

VOTE/KICK PARTY UI:
If someone votes to kick a party member and the secondary vote screen comes up, it will be cancelled and bugged by a situational cutscene and you wont have option to vote/kick said player after cutscene.

• I have played several classes extensively, Mesmer, Necro, Warrior, Thief and Ranger…one kit sticks out like a sore thumb to me….RANGER SWORD***

RANGER KIT:
LB had some GREAT improvements! Let’s keep it going…
polish sword kit PLEASE!
-ie. #2 should be a leap IN if not in melee combat, else a leap out…a reversal of the skill order, if you catch my drift
-#2 and #3 should override the #1 chain/root….kind of like GS 4 does with the rest, and take priority on hit…..faster/more responsive animations/executions would help too!

(Yes, I know i can swap/dodge and disable auto attack….but thats just a bandaid on an obviously broken/clunky kit. Sword ranger has so much potential.)

• Make room for pet boons/conditions to show near their lifebar on player interface.

**Warhorn 4 (bird call) should blind…nuff said.

Escalate issue pls, call in emergency staff. Your game is currently BROKEN and 110% UNPLAYABLE!

Invest in a test server with staff to test for a solid week or so before shoving patches down the playerbases throat, please.

THIS DID NOT HAPPEN TO ME BEFORE PATCH A FEW MINUTES AGO, BUT NOW I AM RECEIVING THE SAME ERROR AS OTHERS AND CANT EVEN LOG ON TO THIS SPECIFIC CHARACTER ANYMORE.

LightningBlaze.4913:

I do agree that eles with the constant healing is “op” against the other professions. Eles with this bunbker/heal build can still defeat others even with low dmg simply because they out heal them. Surely Anet knows this by now and will try to fix it.

Just like they fixed infinite stealth thiefs, right?

oh, didnt you hear? its going back to 3 seconds….

QZ nerf left zerk rangers dead in the water, which seems to have been their plan all along. I loved the QZ + pet swap ‘burst’…..even though rangers have always done kitten poor damage.

now its just….useless.

I switched to all power/tough/vit armor with pack runeset (i roll warhorn for support buffs and it hunters call helps make up for the gear swap) and still roll zerk back/trinkets (those took way too long to get/infuse in fractals). Tried to be a little more beefy for a GS focused kit, but to have any kind of reliability, you need to give up all damage and trait hard in the non dmg trees. Guess you could call it a hybrid build, although rangers dont really do any one thing good…..just alot of stuff with poor numbers across the board.

Plus, the pets are always dead when it matters.

Why cant anet realize that AR doesnt help when my pet gets one shot before the agony bomb drops?

Dead pet = half a class.

Turbo Whale.1738:

Rangers get a wide range of abilities with pets and their abilities. I’ve seen tanky rangers burst for 7k damage with their pet in sPvP.

ROFL

please link to a vid of a tank ranger ‘bursting’ 7k dmg

zerk rangers/ 30 beastmaster builds wont even hit that with jaguar

You have stealth every 4 seconds…with NO guaranteed way of pulling you out of it.
Any thief who is decent and with half a brain has complete control over every fight they instigate or get thrown in to. Watch videos of thiefs taking on groups of 10+ people….stealthing…2 shotting… rinse and repeat.
Show me a vid of another class doing that (besides ele).

Thief in the hands of any good player is the most unbalanced class in any game ive ever seen.
I cant believe people who main thiefs have the nerve to come here and kitten and moan about being UP.

Sorry to say, but stealth needs a complete rework to something similar to wow, and other classes need abilities to counter stealth…besides the obvious building all tank only to counter the thief gibs and sacrificing the rest of your build.

I’ll gladly trade you my crap AI, ranger pet thats always dead, for non counterable stealth every 4 seconds.

Keep running, thiefs…..

Things I feel would improve the game:

Traits – be able to unlock additional trait loadouts at certain levels/for certain amounts of gold so you can have up to 3 (no less than 2)
trait loadouts instead of having to pay/respec several times a day….ie one for casual pve/dungeon/pvp play. Make them costly to keep the
obvious anet goldsink well oiled.

Traveling/armor repair expenses – its an obvious goldsink, but its just overkill…please adjust it.
WVW armor repair – please waive these fees to prevent discouraging people from wvw…..‘LOLolol you got rolled by 50 ppls,
that will be 15 silverz plz’

Legitimate trade window for player to player…i dont see how the game was released without a feature like this.

Dungeon group finder tool…let players be able to pick which classes they are looking for, etc.

Dragon Bosses/map champions – make loot factor by time spent at event/dmg done. More time invested = better rewards.

Loot upgrade in general

Be able to search for certain armor values/stats in Trading post (light/medium/heavy armors…certain stats, etc)

Dyeable weapons

Server lottery system

joke/burp/fart/flirt/other emotes/sounds

Make magic find numbers not so misleading.

Exclusive achievement point rewards….more/better titles

Gem Store: (aka ways to make anet monies….no pay to win stuff pls, pure cosmetics):

exclusive dyes (neon/glowing, sparkling, multi hue, pretty stuff)

Skin Dyes

Hair/etc redo tokens

Sex change tokens

name change tokens

Ranger Class:
-quivers for backpiece
-when you stow pet, make pet STAY stowed until you CHOOSE to unstow…..the auto pop out when you take damage is very annoying
-Pets age/grow in size over time
-Pet skin dyes/look customization
-isntant skill activate on f2 press…..delay is ridiculous for some
-If pet is set to passive, DO NOT have them run and auto attack if you activate the passive pets skills/buffs (red moa, fern wolf, etc)
-Fix bear/fern wolf footsteps….its STILL bugged

I have only leveled a ranger to 80, so I cannot speak much for other classes….sorry.

Some may be less realistic than others, but its all stuff I feel would fit and benefit GW2. Thanks for your time…

Steven.8027:

Stop assuming that the way you feel is the way everybody feels. It’s incredibly narcissistic and aggressive behaviour.

If you got off your pedestal and took the time to actually read the dungeon threads, you would know IT IS how everyone feels

Robert Hrouda.1327:

5/5 would read again.

When people started posting about him, I looked into his skills and found he does need a few updates to certain things that weren’t working properly or displaying properly. Those will be in next week.
Our QA group, Alphas, and even groups on Live are able to defeat this boss, and I’ve seen those groups have vastly different class makeup.

He’s hard, but not impossible. Explorable dungeons were billed as being hard. Some things are unfairly difficult though, and we are actively trying to balance these things. Bringing them to our attention always helps with speeding that up

Sorry dude, but it’s the testers job to bring that to your attention…..it makes many doubt that these instances were even tested in the first place, and if so, what kind of god mode/staff characters/gear they had.
The updated failed to address the most pressing issues:

-Dungeon balance/strategy
-Cost/time vs reward
-Grind fest
-Approachability to more casual gamers (aim your game towards a small group of hardcore players and thats ALL you will end up having in a few months)
-Crap drops
-NO FUN

Sorry, but only a group of 5 guardians can survive the kiting…..if they’re lucky