Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

shadowpass.4236:

I made a build with:
3.2k power
3k toughness
20k health
100% crit chance
205% critical damage
100% boon duration

Am I OP yet?

3k Toughness? whistles ;D

Fixed it :P

I made a build with:
3.2k power
3k armor
20k health
100% crit chance
205% critical damage
100% boon duration

Am I OP yet?

It can drop someone from 100% health to 0% in 4 second just by spamming skills.

It is also ridiculously tanky for no reason.

For example, I 1v11’d in WvW within 2 hours of making a Scourge for the first time. I downed about 5 with the rest streaming in to try to rez the downed, at which point, I dropped them as well.

Haha yeah I just realized that all we have are:

1. Reflectable attacks
2. Bad aoe damage
3. Minimal boonshare (only the common ones like might, fury, and swiftness, which everyone already has access to)
4. Time gated group support with CA that requires us to be in melee range (which we don’t have access to enough survivability mechanics to help us survive)
5. And a class mechanic that becomes useless in large scale WvW

Let me know if I missed any :P
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Btw, this thread isn’t to ask for permanent unblockable on longbow. Its just for piercing to become baseline. Though, perma unblockable would be welcome as well haha

Stop mentioning top stats. They really don’t matter.

Power mesmer is bad unless you can play it very well. Which, from the sound of it, you can’t.

Also, using scepter instead of sword does nothing but harm you. Use sword if you insist on playing power.

Don’t play power, play condi mesmer. You’ll do better.
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Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the best method to improve: go to a dueling server.

Once you’re in one, duel the best players in the servers (the ones that seem to win every single 1v1 they have). This almost always guarantees that you’ll lose extremely hard, but will offer a fantastic learning opportunity in exchange. Eventually, you will get better.

For reference, I was about 25-20 in Plat 3 when I was quing for lolz. Once I actually started trying, my record went to about 70-30.

Dagger 4 can be used to get out of gravity well. Just throwin’ it out there.

Azukas you were the one in the dueling server complaining how druid was boring and skill-less to play, yet you were playing condi thief, a build that only requires 3 buttons to kill someone with.

jcbroe.4329:

I just want to preface this by saying as far as this thread is concerned, this isn’t going to be some revolutionary build posting, just a refinement.

So, after stress testing some more builds, I think I’ve gotten to this version of all the builds as the one I like the best: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYD7kQFoWQsfFwhFgrFsMJYOVuLXmrJA84mAw/0iaTtEjnG-TphIQB+7BAsj9HAwRA4YHEg3VGwgXAAA

I’ve found this build to have the most staying power and be the most capable of killing things in an environment where you need to constantly worry about being outnumbered and surviving/winning the outnumbered fight. As well as roaming and dueling and all of the other roles/strategy discussed previously.

Note:

• I’m still deciding between battle or energy on the sword set. I don’t know that the might stacks are significant enough to run them over getting dodge energy back.

I hope you guys get some good mileage out of it, I know I’m enjoying it.

Why do you recommend warhorn?

StickerHappy.8052:

shadowpass.4236:

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WS/BM/DR Menders Glyph Build (Testing): http://bit.ly/2eyqVRd

• I’m currently debating whether to run “Glyph of Alignment and Lingering Light” or “Glyph of Empowerment and Grace of the Land.”

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On your Glyph build, why wilderness knowledge? So you are only getting the Cleanse on the heal since you have soften the fall trait. IS that really worth it?

Also ambidexterity, I am guessing just for the CD reductions? so I mean you are only benefiting from 50% of the trait?

I like the cooldown reduction and the additional healing from Rugged Growth. Wilderness Knowledge also gives me the condition clear and fury on pet swap with Zephyr’s Speed. Not to mention, the slow on heal is great on point. NM doesn’t really do much because you don’t have anything in the way of stacking boons meaningfully. So, the damage loss isn’t significant.

I feel like this thread should be bumped. It’s helped a lot of people so far and I don’t want people to forget about it.

jcbroe.4329:

shadowpass.4236:

I’m top 20 in NA and I’ve found that core ranger is a lot stronger than druid. I am able to hold up to 1v4 in ranked if I have stability/don’t have a thief spamming interrupts on me. If druid is necessary for team support, WS/NM/DR or WS/BM/DR both work well. Also, at least for solo/duo que, longbow sword/dagger is fantastic for both team fights and 1v1s. I find staff unnecessary as it is only good for CA regeneration and a small heal with the water field and 3. The pressure you are able to apply with longbow drastically overpowers staff’s dps and it lets you keep a point decapped as well.

Don’t take me as being dismissive, but from how long I’ve known you and come across you in game, you could run anything with relative success lol xD

That said, my biggest hang up is still that Druid with Menders stalls better than it kills, and I’ve been wanting to run more damage oriented so that I can push kills better and be more independent instead of relying on teammates to actually be competent.

I’ve been back and forth about whether to run WS/NM/BM or swap out one of those for Druid, with a damage amulet. I actually find the hardest thing for me to cope with is the loss of staff, since staff is so strong to me relative to core Ranger weapons and the metagame.
It could just be that Druid has spoiled me for far too long now lol.

Thanks haha. I’ve been experimenting with a full glyph build in ranked. It actually works fairly well.

Core ranger can actually stall better than druid and get kills faster. I find druid actually very annoying to use in a 1v1 on point. Because such a big part of our sustain comes from entering and leaving Celestial Avatar, the constant stealths from Celestial Shadow make it very difficult to keep a point on your cap. Core ranger doesn’t run into this issue because the only time you need to stealth is when you’re fighting multiple people, or a class with teleports once you knock them off point. For example, a s/f DH… you knock him off point with lb 4 and stealth with lb 3 so he can’t teleport to you using Judge’s Intervention or Sword 2.

I find staff to be underwhelming. It lacks evades asides from its 3, and if you use it on point in close range, you’re left with almost nothing from the weapon asides from the immobilize to prevent a single gap closer. After that, it’s just spamming 1 and 2 for CA regen and your 5 if they are shooting you with projectiles.
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You guys asked about my builds. Here they are:

Core Diviner Build (SoloQ): http://bit.ly/2xK2dWs

Core Menders Build (SoloQ/DuoQ): http://bit.ly/2eydEIq

WS/NM/DR Menders Build (SoloQ/DuoQ): http://bit.ly/2vZlYHe

WS/BM/DR Menders Build (SoloQ/DuoQ): http://bit.ly/2xJ19C1
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WS/BM/DR Menders Glyph Build (Testing): http://bit.ly/2eyqVRd

• I’m currently debating whether to run “Glyph of Alignment and Lingering Light” or “Glyph of Empowerment and Grace of the Land.”

I’m top 20 in NA and I’ve found that core ranger is a lot stronger than druid. I am able to hold up to 1v4 in ranked if I have stability/don’t have a thief spamming interrupts on me. If druid is necessary for team support, WS/NM/DR or WS/BM/DR both work well. Also, at least for solo/duo que, longbow sword/dagger is fantastic for both team fights and 1v1s. I find staff unnecessary as it is only good for CA regeneration and a small heal with the water field and 3. The pressure you are able to apply with longbow drastically overpowers staff’s dps and it lets you keep a point decapped as well.

I support this 100%.

I don’t understand why Anet continues to add armors with trenchcoats when a massive amount of the playerbase has told them numerous times to stop. It’s pretty much “screw the players, we’re going to do what we want.”

We won the match 500-96, my screen went black in the last few seconds of the match. I lost kittening 23 rating and received 15 minutes of dishonor. At kittening 1750 rating, 23 rating loss is the equivalent of 5 GAMES WORTH OF WINS!!!!! HOLY kitten… someone fix this please I’m kittened off… I should have gained rating not lost it…

Holland.9351:

Funny, it’s already way better than it used to be.

You used to go into 2 trait lines to get your Longbow traits (Marksmanship and Skirmishing) and get 3 different traits for it Eagle Eye (1500 range), Piercing Arrows (piercing) and Quick Draw (20% cooldown reduction).

And when you did all that it couldn’t even hit a target that was moving sideways.

But, I would be happy to see piercing become baseline. I just wanted you to know how terrible it used to be and maybe appreciate having Lead the Wind a bit more. They made 1500 range baseline, as well as like 100%+ projectile speed, and put both piercing and 20% cooldown reduction in a single trait.

I’ve been a ranger main since release, I remember how bad longbow used to be, yet I still played it against the top PvPers at the time and made it work. I do appreciate Lead the Wind, but I would still like to have longbow pierce be baseline because it would free up our trait choices in large scale WvW. :P

The problem with longbow is that it doesn’t pierce baseline. This means that in order for it to be viable in large scale WvW fights, we almost always have to take Marksmanship for Lead the Wind.

• Making the arrows pierce 5 targets without having to trait for it would be an absolutely fantastic QoL change!

Lead the Wind could then be changed to have an interesting effect like “Critical hits reduce all active cooldowns by 1/4 second. ICD: 1 second.”

InsaneQR.7412:

Well just a stunbreak on petswap would be neat.

+1

This trait is extremely weak. I honestly don’t know how it made it this far in the game.

Compare Shared Anguish which transfers 1 incoming disable to your pet on a 60 second cooldown, to a warrior’s Last Stand, which gives them 2 stacks of pulsing stability for 8 seconds on a 40 second cooldown.

It could be something simple like: Break stun and gain attack of opportunity when hit with a disable. 20 second internal cooldown.

Other effects in place of gaining attack of opportunity could be:

• recharge pet swap
• reduce all of your active cooldowns by 2 seconds
• gain 3 stacks of stab for 5 seconds

Honestly, almost anything would be better than our current version of Shared Anguish. Please Anet, make something happen.
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Discuss!

Krispera.5087:

shadowpass.4236:

@Krispera, what power ranger build uses MH Axe and is viable in high tier play? I don’t think there is one.

Our offhands are fine. OH Dagger 4 could use its range increase back, but other than that, Axe is pretty useless in PvP as a MH weapon in competitive play.

It’s still used in other contents than PvP. I’m more of a PvPer myself, but I’ve come to realise that weapons don’t have to be viable in all mode.

Your suggestions aren’t going to make it more viable with poison or evade/leap.

If you follow meta builds, sure, you’ll never see someone play Axe. Nobody used S/D with Staff before Season 4-6, yet it became meta because it was posted on it. If you want to do your own thing, Axe is doing just fine as a burst/support oriented pet/beastmastery.

It’s good at what it does : might stacking, damage and debuffing. Condi for those that use it as condi.

Weapons should be viable in all gamemodes. I’ve never heard of a PvE specific weapon, nor a PvP specific one.

The fact is, we lose too much survivability and movement by taking MH Axe. If we were given those options, it would become a much more attractive weapon.

@Krispera, what power ranger build uses MH Axe and is viable in high tier play? I don’t think there is one.

Our offhands are fine. OH Dagger 4 could use its range increase back, but other than that, Axe is pretty useless in PvP as a MH weapon in competitive play.

I just realized that the reason MH Axe is not a viable competitive weapon is because by taking it, we lose out on the survivability and movement we’d get from using another weapon in its place.

If Splitblade or Winter’s Bite had an evade/leap attached to them, MH Axe would definitely find its way into more builds.

Also, if Ricochet was made into a melee attack that applied a condition like poison, that would be beneficial too. Right now, Ricochet is pretty much useless. It doesn’t do any damage at all, is super slow, and no one really cares about it.

Alright, let’s get into it. These are my impressions after spending the demo weekend testing out Soulbeast and its various mechanics.
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Dagger:

• MH dagger feels very clunky.
• The autos feel very slow. Its base speed should be what it is when we use it with quickness.
• The 2 skill doesn’t have enough damage/utility. It is also relatively hard to hit and doesn’t do anything special. It feels like another auto attack.
• The 3rd skill also feels very slow. Its base speed should be what is is when we use it with quickness. It should also be an evade.
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Stances:

• They are all very lackluster. Shouts beat stances out by a wide margin. I’m sure some dedicated ranger players could come up with much better ideas on how to rework/improve them.
• Dolyak Stance seems the best out of all of them, but it didn’t even work for the demo weekend. No one had been able to test it.
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Beastmode:

• Honestly it’s pretty decent. At least with some pets, the additional combos and rotations we get access to by entering SLB to use f1-f3, and leaving it to use/swap pets feels pretty smooth.
• Boons from the pet should automatically be shared with the player when entering Beastmode, without having to trait for it.
• Any boon the ranger had received/currently has should also be shared with the pet upon leaving Beastmode, without having to trait for it.
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Traits:

• Soulbeast doesn’t offer enough in terms of survivability or damage to justify dropping one of our core traitlines/Druid for.
• There is also a lot of inconsistency in terms of what actually affects us and what doesn’t when we enter Beastmode.
• Every trait that affects the pet should affect us as well when we are in Beastmode. If some do, and some don’t, many traits won’t be taken because they will be useless every 10 seconds.
• Core is a lot more fluid to play than Soulbeast. It does more damage and has better survivability.
• Again, experienced ranger players can come up with much better ideas to improve the experience.
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Pets:

• They are pretty meh. Nothing special here. Jacaranda and the Fanged Iboga are the best out of the 5 we got in terms of their AI and Beastmode skills.
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Conclusion:

• Core ranger and Druid are stronger than Soulbeast. Soulbeast’s Beastmode mechanic feels like it should be a part of core ranger, rather than an elite specialization.
• Soulbeast needs more in terms of survivability and/or damage to be worth dropping our core/druid traitlines.
• If Anet would be willing to take suggestions, I will personally gather some of the top ranger players in the game to discuss possible changes to be made to Soulbeast.

You missed a lot of movement skills…

Where are these numbers coming from?

Alright, let’s get into it. These are my impressions after spending a few hours testing out Soulbeast and its various mechanics.
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Dagger:

• MH dagger feels very clunky.
• The autos feel very slow. Its base speed should be what it is when we use it with quickness.
• The 2 skill doesn’t have enough damage/utility. It is also relatively hard to hit and doesn’t do anything special. It feels like another auto attack.
• The 3rd skill also feels very slow. Its base speed should be what is is when we use it with quickness. It should also be an evade.
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Stances:

• They are all very lackluster. Shouts beat stances out by a wide margin. I’m sure some dedicated ranger players could come up with much better ideas on how to rework/improve them.
• Dolyak Stance seems the best out of all of them, but it doesn’t even work atm. No one has been able to test it.
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Beastmode:

• Honestly it’s pretty decent. At least with some pets, the additional combos and rotations we get access to by entering SLB to use f1-f3, and leaving it to use/swap pets feels pretty smooth.
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Traits:

• Soulbeast doesn’t offer enough in terms of survivability or damage to justify dropping one of our core traitlines/Druid for.
• There is also a lot of inconsistency in terms of what actually affects us and what doesn’t when we enter Beastmode.
• Every trait that affects the pet should affect us as well when we are in Beastmode. If some do, and some don’t, many traits won’t be taken because they will be useless every 10 seconds.
• Core is a lot more fluid to play than Soulbeast. It does more damage and has better survivability.
• Again, experienced ranger players can come up with much better ideas to improve the experience. But I don’t want to personally spend the effort if Anet isn’t going to take any suggestions into account.
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Pets:

• They are pretty meh. Nothing special here. Jacaranda and the Fanged Iboga are the best out of the 5 we got in terms of their AI and Beastmode skills.
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Conclusion:

• Core ranger and Druid are stronger than Soulbeast. Soulbeast’s Beastmode mechanic feels like it should be a part of core ranger, rather than an elite specialization.

I not on da list.

#sadness

+1

It should be a minor.

It would be great if a dev could let us know that our suggestions have been noticed. There’s been a lot of feedback so far based on what we’ve seen from videos/wiki.

+1

These traits seems kind of unimaginative imo. Anyone want to propose something more interesting?
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Oppressive Superiority

• Quickness makes skills and actions an additional 25% faster.
  When you have quickness, critical hits have a chance to apply slow.

Twice as Vicious

• Critical hits have a chance to apply Lesser One Wolf Pack.

Lesser One Wolf Pack functions the same as the elite but only lasts 2 seconds instead of 8 seconds.
Twice as Vicious has an internal cooldown on the proc of 20 seconds.

Soulbeast is actually going to be a dps increase over having your pet out in PvP. Pets are generally used for their burst rotation and then swapped. In between their burst and pet cooldown is a time that they rarely hit a moving target. Even with pets like Electric Wyvern, which leap on their auto attack, they will still struggle to catch targets that are constantly leaping and moving around.

Basically, Soulbeast will be used with the pet out to do a burst rotation, enter Beastmode to use the f3 skills, leave Beastmode, swap pets, second pet burst rotation, and then enter Beastmode again… Rinse and repeat.

So, yes. Staying in Beastmode 100% of the time will result in a dps loss vs. none stationary targets. However, playing around Beastmode intelligently, using pet bursts with your new skills, will open up new damage rotations and additional combos.

LughLongArm.5460:

@shadowpass In some of your skill breakdowns you ignore the fact that those are AOE skills with nice radius range and not a single target effects like(rev rune, SB bleed etc) or a narrow angle effect with small range cleave(maul). I will agree that among the 5 options, at first glance, “Primal Cry” seems to be the weakest, doesn’t mean it’s weak, the other 4 could be proven OP, we still don’t know.

But let me make the case regarding “Spiritual Reprieve” – This skill got huge radius of 600. The Supportive buff that comes with the kit will buff the heal in 25% so it’s over 5k heal. The 3 sec resistance can be further buffed with the new Soulbeast skills and traits. “Essence of Speed” will buff it for extra 2 sec while on quickness(we have a lot of it), Moa stance will buff it with extra 66%. So, with the right build, over 5k heal and 8sec resistance for 5 targets in 600 raduis, This is a very powerful Supportive skill.

I didn’t even got into the extra potential with other core ranger traits(NM) and gear scaling(could be very high, we will see).

Hmm. Yeah, I should have said Primal Cry looks weak compared to the other ones rather than just saying its bad. It feels too much like a regular weapon skill or weak utility. It doesn’t feel special like some of the other, more unique, f3 skills.
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Good points about Spiritual Reprieve. I no longer think it is weak.

I meant channel time, not cast time. Either way, it is still interruptable.

By your logic, if Maul does 4000 damage and hits 5 targets, its insanely strong because it does 20,000 damage in one skill!

Rangers can apply around 20 bleeds with a single skill, and 30-40 with a few more skills. I don’t see how 15 bleeds (3 per person) is anything but weak. Condis only start to do damage in high stacks, 3 bleeds alone is nothing.

The vulnerability is okay, but honestly the skill as a whole would benefit a lot from being instant cast 3 bleeds and 9 vulnerability.

I’m telling you, from a PvP standpoint, channeling a skill for a second just to apply 3 bleeds and some vuln isn’t anything special.

Sevans.4619:

I agree that Primal Cry looks weak in its current form. Hoping we see an adjustment to it.

Something to consider on the topic of cooldowns: There’s a chance that taking BM with Soulbeast will grant us the cooldown reduction for all pet and ‘Beast’ abilities, like they get.

I hope Pack Alpha will function that way. At the moment, we have no cooldown reduction traits in SLB.

Unfortunately, that will also mean that we will be “required” to take BM if we want the stats and shorter cooldowns. This reminds me of how Defense and Discipline are pretty much required on warrior if you want to be competitive. Builds will end up as BM + SLB + one extra traitline as a result of this.

Sevans.4619:

I was definitely hoping for some condition removal traits, but these seem pretty interesting. Second Skin may not remove conditions, but the affect is potent; especially for those of us running both WS and NM (Protective Ward.)

Unstoppable Union is really interesting by design because it gives us a reason to not camp Beast Mode, I like it. The stun break is pretty sweet, too.

Predator’s Cunning looks really fun as well, provided there’s no ICD. Does Poison Volley count as 5 procs if shotgunned into a single enemy? What about using the spider’s Poison Gas while in Beast Mode on a group? That’s a LOT of ticks.

UU confirms that we can enter and exit Beastmode instantly, which is a good thing.

Dadnir.5038:

So Primal cry hit 5 targets 3 time over 1.5 second, apply 3 bleeds and 9 vulnerability and have a cool down of 20-25 seconds… You feel that’s weak?

And spiritual reprieve which is a 4k group heal that also grant 3 second of resistance to every group member and have a 40 second cool down seem also weak for you? Seriously, you even got 25% outgoing healing to boost that that come along… Cumulated it apply 15 seconds of resistance!

3 bleeds is the equivalent of:

• 3 auto attacks on shortbow
• 3 procs of Sharpened Edges
• 3 procs of Sharpening Stone
• 3/5 of Splitblade
• 1 Crippling Talon
• etc. etc.

So yes, 3 bleeds and a little bit of vulnerability is weak for that long of a cooldown. Not to mention it has a cast time of 1 1/4 seconds. If it was instant cast, that might be justified because it could fit into a burst rotation. But right now, it’s meh.
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Where did you get 15 seconds of resistance from? In general, I’m not a fan of long cooldowns. I don’t mind it if they weakened the effect to justify reducing the cooldown, but when you can only use an ability once or twice in a fight, it feels slow imo.

Zorpi.5904:

Seriously speaking i don’t have problem with boon shearing as it is now. But in this case i don’t see eany point adding new trait to move boons from pet to ranger, when i would ben far more reasonable have fortifying bond to do same thing when enterin beastmode.

This would be a good QoL change to Fortifying Bond. I support this. It would have no effect on core ranger/druid, but it frees up a slot for a new trait in Soulbeast.

Channeled skills track stealth… haven’t you been playing this game for a while?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Primal_Cry
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spiritual_Reprieve
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At the moment, Primal Cry applies 3 bleeds and 9 stacks of vulnerability on a 25 second cooldown. I can’t even say how underwhelming this f3 skill is. If it applied fear and/or applied weakness and/or gave us stability/stunbreak as well, it would be worth the cooldown.

If the effect isn’t changed, reducing the cooldown to maybe 12-15 seconds would be sufficient in my opinion.
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Spiritual Reprieve is a 4k heal and 3s resistance on a 40 second cooldown.

Honestly that is ridiculous. The heal and cooldown are on par with a seemingly underwhelming Eternal Bond, and the 3s resistance is pretty terrible if you take the cooldown into consideration.

To put it into perspective, Superior Runes of the Revenant gives us 2 seconds of resistance when we use a healing skill, on a 10 second cooldown. In other words, every 40 seconds, we’d receive 8 seconds of resistance if we were able to use these runes every time they came off cooldown. This duration would be increased if we utilitized boon sharing.

Finally! I’m happy we get to see what we’re going to be getting

On other other hand, Eternal Bond and Oppressive Superiority still seem underwhelming to me and not worthy of being GM traits.
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Leader of the Pack should at the very least have 20% cooldown reduction on stances. If Anet is generous, the allies’ reduced duration removed as well.

Stance durations are as follows:

• Bear: 4s
• Dolyak: 6s
• Griffon: 8s
• Moa: 8s
• Vulture: 6s
• One Wolf Pack: 8s

Those durations are halved on allies when you take Leader of the Pack.
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Also, for consistency, Fresh Reinforcement should copy the boons you have to your pet when you leave Beastmode. In the current state, we leave Beastmode with a weakened pet because every boon it had went to us and it receives nothing in return when it comes back out.
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Furthermore, I can see One Wolf Pack being extremely underwhelming if it doesn’t function similarly to Reaper’s trait, Chilling Victory. Single attacks can activate this trait more than once before going on cooldown.

In WvW especially, One Wolf Pack won’t be worth taking if skills like Barrage, Rapid Fire, or shotgun skills such as Splitblade or Volley, only proc the damage once. Though, I believe that this change would be welcome in all gamemodes.

Ranger

• Fixed an issue in which pets were delayed from performing actions upon swap or world entry.
• Fixed a bug that was unintentionally stowing ranger pets.

There have been several updates so far and our pet is still unresponsive after swapping. Is this being looked at? It is crippling our performance in fights.

still afks after swap. noice

They changed the functionality of Empathic Bond to function better in places like WvW where there are foods and other buffs.

Honestly, its still pretty good. If we use EB with Natural Stride, Melandru Runes, and Lemongrass Poultry Soup, we cut the duration condis tick on us by a lot. If I missed anything, let me know please :P

Actually, I have to say that most of these changes are pretty good! I’m genuinely surprised. Thanks anet!

Djinn.9245:

There was an Anet video of some kind (don’t remember) released prior to the Legendary Armor where the dev responsible for the Legendary Armor basically acknowledged that they knew the players didn’t want trenchcoats but they did it anyway. So there’s that.

I can’t believe he actually admitted that.

I support this 1000% please make it happen!

Imagine the hype if Anet sneakily added the Dervish and Paragon classes into the game upon the release of PoF.

I’d probably have a heart attack from the shock.

It probably won’t happen… but just imagine the hype 0

Zoe.4830:

Hey shadowpass, you seem to really know your stuff! I was wondering what pet you would recommend for PvE? I’d also like to know which pet is best for WvW/PvP? It would be great if you could help

I’m not really familiar with PvE, but I’ve heard Electric Wyvern is great for demolishing break bars in raids (whatever those might be) and that felines have the best dps for stationary targets.

For PvP and WvW, Smokescale, Bristleback, Tiger, and Electric/Fire Wyverns all have their uses. I’d recommend using Smokescale + one of the other pets I mentioned above.

Durzlla.6295:

shadowpass.4236:

If anyone in this thread wants an invite to Favorable Winds [Wind], an all ranger guild, in preparation for the new expansion, let me know here until I can bump the old thread or make a new one.

Best of luck!

Darn, guess I can’t join since I’m a Druid…

After careful review of our Terms and Conditions, we’ve deemed it fit to extend our invitations to Favorable Winds [Wind] to Druids as well.

:)

safka.8514:

How are rangers now? I only played this game for a couple of months when it was released 5 or so years ago. Rangers were bad back then afaik. I have HoT and a boost ready and am torn between this class/warrior and necro. What I specifically want to know:

1. How many good weapons/builds do we have? Can I be a melee ranger?
2. Do people still see rangers as a burden in dungeons like back in the beginning?
3. How are pets? Do they scale with my gear now? Was pathfinding/ai improved? Are they generally a pain to manage?

Anything else you might want to tell to a new ranger?

Hi! Welcome back to the game!
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Rangers are in a good spot at the moment. We are strong in PvP, PvE (afaik), and are one of the best solo roamers in WvW.

• We have a wide variety of viable builds. This spectrum ranges from ranged and/or melee: physical DPS builds, condition builds, and support/bunkers. Yes, you can be a melee ranger.
• I don’t believe dungeons are really a thing anymore. The rewards were nerfed a while ago and the newer PvE content has a lot more to offer. Although, do take into account that I am extremely unfamiliar with PvE as I have been strictly played PvP/WvW since release.
• The pets that came with Heart of Thorns are pretty good! Smokescale, Bristleback, Tiger, and the Electric/Fire Wyverns all have their places in builds in every game mode. Unfortunately, no, pets do not scale with gear. The pathfinding/AI for the new pets are miles ahead of the core pets. The HoT pets are easy to manage while the core ones are roughly the same as they were at release.

I would definitely pick ranger as your main character! It is versatile and strong and offers a wide variety of interesting (yet effective) playstyles for whatever you wish to play. A well played Druid can beat any class/build in game with enough practice.
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If you have any other questions, feel free to ask!

Best of luck!