Guild Wars 2

Any initial thoughts? Trying to decide what gear to start working towards.

Hell I could care less about the mechanics… I just want dagger to be a power build item so I can stop with the burn/bleed spam.

Rym.1469:

firelightx.3980:

If I may make the recommendation…

Take this section:
a)press and hold F1 button again or
b)tap F1 twice quickly
With these actions, pet resets it’s location and returns to you.

And change it to:
To remove pet from set location, either press F1 while targetting to attack target, or F1 while not targetting to return to you. Or hold F1 to set new location.

To me, that’s a little more intuitive, and means that the F1 key always has the same function no matter what the pet is currently doing. Which is pretty important, I think. It will also make a big difference in the heat of battle, cause it will take less clicks to get the pet to do what you want.

Otherwise, I think this reads pretty well, and would give me the sort of control I’m looking for from a pet class.

There’s just one issue I’m aware of when making this.
If, let’s say, I have a pet with ranged attacks, or I want to place my pet in a spot safe from AoE, I may still want to make it attack.

Let’s say, you have a spider and want to place it on some hill, and then make it attack. It’s still able to do it.
Or some melee pet like Jaguar and there’s a boss which does some attacks in cones. You locate pet in range for attacking the boss and between/away from damage cones.

With your suggestion I could only relocate my pet and call it back after threat is gone

Depends on how you design the AI, I suppose (of course we all know what track record we’re working with, there…)

If you’re using a ranged pet and have it set to guard an area, setting it to attack someone should mean that it atacks from whereever its standing. If it can’t reach from where it’s standing, it will chase.

With melee pets, the same thing. If you use this ‘guard’ mechanic to move it out of the cone, you can A) set the guard area to still include the boss, or hit ‘attack’ and it will rush straight to the boss. As long as your guard placement is correct, rushing to the boss should still keep it out of the cone, since it’s just a straight line from guard location to the boss.

Sword does the most DPS by far, so it’s sort of the go-to.

The other problem is that the Shortbow’s DPS is garbage, and Longbow’s DPS, while decent, requires you to be at max range to get the most of it. Being at max range means missing out on 20+ might stacks from your team, which is where a huge chunk of extra damage goes missing.

Melee weapons put you right on top of the might stacking, which is why they’re favored.

If I may make the recommendation…

Take this section:
a)press and hold F1 button again or
b)tap F1 twice quickly
With these actions, pet resets it’s location and returns to you.

And change it to:
To remove pet from set location, either press F1 while targetting to attack target, or F1 while not targetting to return to you. Or hold F1 to set new location.

To me, that’s a little more intuitive, and means that the F1 key always has the same function no matter what the pet is currently doing. Which is pretty important, I think. It will also make a big difference in the heat of battle, cause it will take less clicks to get the pet to do what you want.

Otherwise, I think this reads pretty well, and would give me the sort of control I’m looking for from a pet class.

Okay, suddenly I really like the idea of replacing pets with preperations as the class mechanic. Just an F1 through 4 that affects our weapon skills in some way, by providing secondary effects. Perhaps one of those preparations can be the pet, itself. And when the pet it out, replace it with the pet’s usable skill.

I’m still hoping to see something closer to what Barrage was in GW1. Was always a bit more believable to have a spammable target-based AOE, for a bow. It became a much more effective group clearing skill in PvE that way.

I got all this compiled into a build for you. Although the video is REALLY worth watching to see how it’s played. I know what I’ll be speccing into immediately.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRBMRxG2IRVcddlbFrdgYVQQtHaySmn9wQ8/RZ8UFyeA-T4Ag1CqIATBmDMDYSwsgNsYZx2jTBTPeFA

o.o

I need to get to 60 in a hurry, then.

I try to look back at GW1 for what Rangers were back then:

The kings of interrupt, with only mesmers able to beat them at it
Excellent at maintaining either poison, cripple, or burning, etc. (sometimes a combination of two) on their enemy
Great with AoE on a spammable Barrage.
A pet that you truly worked with, as opposed to just using as a condition soak.

It was my love for Rangers in GW1 that caused me to roll one here. Most classes became far more dynamic in the transition to the sequel… but not the Ranger. The Ranger got more boring.

Think about this – There’s no movie, or video game, or book, etc where a character uses two bows exclusively. Every ranger/hunter I can name used a bow and a sword interchangeably. WoW Hunters were built around having 1 ranged and 1 melee weapon. Legolas had a backup sword. Heck even the Green Arrow in the new TV show doesn’t try firing arrows at close range.

I think you’ll find yourself a lot happier if you dedicate at least one of your weapon sets to melee. Sword preferably.

I’ll start with my first question. Looked up your guide from before and gave it a whirl myself. Now… my Ranger is only level 41, so I’m sure a part of my pain is not having all the required traits. Or access to the type of gear needed. But anyway, question:

Why Guard? It seems like half the traits chosen are chosen purely to support using Guard as much as possible. Which I’m trying to do, but what’s the real benefit of doing so? What makes such an annoying utility worth using over, say, our quickness buff, or another signet, or something?

As a newer ranger desperately trying to find the right build, I would love to see these two meta builds you guys mentioned. Struggling to track them down on my own.

Hey guys,

Please understand I am coming into this forum with an open mind. I’m trying to decide on a leather wearing class to play. There’s a lot of positive feedback people throw out there about Thieves and their burst, Rangers are getting almost pure negativity… and no one seems to have an opinion at all on Engineers. So I come to the experts.

I play in WvW almost exclusively. What sort of situations do Engineers excel at in WvW? What do they bring to the table as useful? Not necessarily unique (in a fight of 20 vs. 20 nothing is unique anymore) but what ways can I help my guild succeed with an Engineer?

You have to copy/paste link from that website. Kind of a known problem with the forums, here.

Before stumbling upon your build, I’ve slotted my Knight’s armor mostly with Scholar runes. Given what your build is attempting, I -think- I can get away with staying on that path without sacrificing a ton of survivability, but what are your thoughts?

Hey, what are your thoughts on this build?

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccz0M9cMnGNmMnGNmxf0GVMkboMs08khf707khy7070M7kNb70V7ofD70m8ofy

My intent is to take your build, get some of the high GS damage out of it, while still having some survivability in there. Using Soldier’s armor with berserker jewelry. I haven’t tested it yet, but I wanted to throw this out there to get some feedback before I got too invested.

As someone who is new to Mesmer (as in, level 9 and really struggling with wrapping my head around the core mechanics of the class) I have to say… I didn’t like your Basics guide. Basically, all the guide said is “try everything and use what you like best”

With no offense meant.. I didn’t need to read a two page guide just to tell me to “try different stuff out”. What I’m looking for, as a new player, is something that tells me things like how to handle the clones, or the shatter effect, to make the most of those. What each weapon is useful for. Stuff like that.

Daedalus, I’ve seen it suggested many times to run this exact build, but run your gear opposite of what it is. Meaning, Beserkers gear, with some survivability trinkets/runes. Many Guardians running such a build claim to have some of the highest damage available while still being wildly survivable.

It’s a testament to the design of guardians, that we can use traits to become so survivable that we can use our gear purely for DPS and not suffer for it.