Guild Wars 2

Funny how people like to do that; I’ve seen other games where something OP was nerfed to be at a reasonable level and everyone abandoned ship. Guess that just means I get to fly in the face of meta. :P
Actually, the Hybrid Beastmaster is really catching my eye; it’s similar to how I like to play right now (heck, the utility skills are nearly identical), and it looks like it’d work very nicely. I might just go with that one for a while and see how it works, maybe switch up the armor sets a little. Thanks much!

nagymbear.5280:

Try to be a bit more specific. Like what pets you want, what weapons you want, do you want condi damage, or power? What gear are you using that would result in 3.5k hp loss if you switched to full glass cannon.

Honestly I’m not really sure what I want in regards to cond. damage or power. In regards to pets, I am rather fond of drakes and birds.
I think the reason I’m losing so much health is that a lot of the gear I’ve picked up so far are types that carry vitality; it’s as simple as that. I don’t have a full set of any one spec.

I’ll take a closer look at the two builds and see what I think; thanks very much for suggesting them.

OptimusPanda.6501:

That link only has ~four PvE builds, and none of them are particularly focused on pet … which is what OP specifically asked about. Try again.

This. And for the record, I have looked at that thread already.

Ironscale Company is a very small guild (mainly just me) planning to focus on PvE, dungeons, and fractals. I can’t really make any promises right now, since it’s all I can do to earn up enough influence to get the basic unlocks, and I can’t afford websites or TeamSpeak servers or whatnot. But we have a pretty cool guild logo. :P
What I do hope I can promise is a friendly environment and helpful guildmates, once there are some. I will not be permitting random acts of scumbaggery in this guild.

Anyway, if you’re interested, PM me or send me a mail in-game.

Morty.8160:

hannie.8963:

TL;DR
Most people I come across are voting for Kiel because ermagerd bewbs and ermagerd lower wp costs.

Double facepalm all the way.

For those that do, I’m totally with you, those are pretty lame reasons.
Only problem is that, most people i come across who think those are the prime reasons to vote Ellen are Evon supporters.

Agreed. I’m voting Kiel because I honestly find her to be the character that I can more easily support, after spending all that time running through Southsun and Dragon Bash events. I just don’t like or care about Evon, it’s that simple.
Furthermore, I am NOT a GW1 vet, and I honestly didn’t even know who Abbadon was until this whole mess rolled in. Thaumanova is something I’m a little more familiar with, although not by much.
Also, Thaumanova seems to me more likely to add to the GW lore, whereas Abbadon will probably just illustrate it. We already know what happens to Abbadon, just not how.
And honestly, the odds of me seeing either any time this year are fairly low, as I don’t have much time for running fractals between Living Story, Personal Story, world completion, and RL. So when it boils down to it, it doesn’t matter to me what fractal we end up getting.
(So I guess I agree with earlier posters who wanted to get the Thaumanova and Abbadon fractals for sure and vote on the other two.)
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m voting for Kiel because I’m more interested to see where the story goes from here if she gets the vote, as opposed to Evon.

I’m trying to come up with a good solid build that’ll let me solo most PvE events (obviously excluding group events & dungeons) while still being viable in group settings. I’m not a member of a large guild and don’t spend a lot of time working with groups, so being able to solo is absolutely essential to me.

I’ve seen a lot of really fun-looking glass cannon builds out there, my favorite of which have been crit-heavy Opening Strikes/longbow builds, but I’m not comfortable running one of those; I’ve done the builds online, and using a build of that sort with top-tier Lv80 armor actually lowers my durability as compared to my current sub-optimal Lv80 armor and generalized traits by 3.5k health and various impacts to other stats.
To clarify, I’m not saying that I will never run a glass cannon build. I’m just saying that I would need to be convinced that I would survive using one.

One thing that I’ve not liked about a lot of the builds I’ve seen is the fact that they completely ignore the pet. Come on, we’re playing rangers here; if I wanted to ignore the pet, I’d play something else. So preferably any build I chose would not do this.

Does anyone have any suggestions or advice?

Omega.1473:

It only works in combat. Sure, the tool tip is vague but regardless, its still one of the most powerful 5 point traits in the whole game. Any Ranger who doesn’t have it is questionable at best. It outclasses most Grandmaster tier 30 point traits without question.

Well said. And I haven’t had any problems with it working while in-combat.

I’m starting to consider my eventual end-build for my ranger and thought it might be a good idea to canvass the opinions on the forums regarding melee weapon loadouts.

I should preface this by saying that, except on the (currently) rare occasions that I run dungeons or enter PvP, I rarely play with others. Usually I’m soloing the PvE worldspace. Suggested loadouts for PvP or WvW will be flat-out ignored in this post, as will dual-bow sets.

A lot of people I’ve seen on build threads and such seem to like using sword/horn or sword/torch. I have no problem with sword, but honestly I’m not a fan of torch and I’d only use horn if I was (a) in a group setting or (b) if it was honestly the best off-hand weapon I had. My preferred dual-wield setup is sword/dagger or sword/axe; I think that the skills that dagger and axe provide me with are more useful, even if Dagger-4 is a bit redundant with all of the poison moves that Sword has. If someone can convert me, then all well and good, but I’m just not impressed with it.

Personally my favorite so far has been Greatsword, which honestly gives me the best damage for melee and lets me take on 4-5 enemies at once no problem. But I’ve noticed a bit of GW hate too, and I’m not sure why. Same goes here; if someone can explain (with numbers) why GW’s are ill-favored, that’d be nice.

So: what do your guys like to use in PvE & dungeons?

I agree that the racial elites are underpowered. I agree that they shouldn’t take away class abilities (like my ranger’s pet) and every other buff we have whenever we use them.
But let’s keep this in perspective, eh?

1) There are some uses to these forms. Look at Snow Leopard; besides the stealth, when I use it my crit chance goes from 14% to 144%. It quadruples my Precision. Other posts have also broken down some of each form’s merits.
2) They can always be useful if your class abilities are unavailable for some reason (say, for rangers, your pet is dead and your Pet Switch is still cooling down.
3) GW2 allows us to get as many skill points as we want just through normal gameplay, even after reaching Lv. 80. By unlocking these skills, we aren’t ‘wasting’ a finite resource.
4) Uh… they are kinda fun, and isn’t that the whole point of video games?

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that we shouldn’t expect racial skills to be game-breakers when the game itself says that one race or another will not make you any more dangerous at any role. Yes, they could be better, but my main complaint lies more in their bloated 4 min. cooldown than anything else.