Guild Wars 2

Fluffball.8307:

Amaranthe.3578:

seems like the build would suck in aoe sitations wouldnt it?

Welcome to druid. AoE is limited to autoattack for the most part.

Just go full glass anything. Druid spec keeps you alive. I’ve done every living story to date in the typical berserker build (LB/SA/SWH/GS any combo of those are fine) but glass condi should be fine too. LB is just a little more fail-safe with the range.

Unless you’re new, then you might want a few soldier’s trinkets or whatever. Whatever you’re comfy with. Just SoS pop hould get you out of any danger long enough to full heal with druid, worst case scenario.

i find that with full glass my celstial avatar doesnt heal that much
im using 4 and 3 and then leaving
am i doing something wrong?

scorekeeper.6524:

If you use the use Dire instead of Viper you should be fine. You lose condi duration but your condi damage is still good enough in open world content. The health from Dire stats will keep you alive.

I just threw this together- http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalcThatYfXw6KQ7FLsFF4HWiBgYHNFPRYKeRvGA-TBiAwA40Dk4EAA4BAYV5XGlgw2f4o6PPM/RKAFlGB-e

The alchemy and inventions line can help keep you alive as well, with easy condi clears, bunker down, and mech legs. You can replace elixir B with elixir S for even more survivability plus a stealth.

Wouldnt rabid be a better idea to actually proc them med kits?

voltaicbore.8012:

The axe/torch + shortbow condition druid build on various sites (check metabattle) has served me very well, with a couple minor adjustments.

One of the best survival adjustments for solo working through HoT and LS was putting on a lot of Survival skills (Troll Unguent for heal, Lightning Reflexes as an extra dodge, Quickening Zephyr for a stun break, and Entangling Roots for elite) for very easy access to tons of condition cleanses. Each of those can be specced to cleanse 2 conditions, which is a godsend. That left me another slot open to use Spike Trap, which in addition to adding a lot more bleeds also helped with its area knockdown).

For survival, I got used to having 4 dodges (shortbow #3 is a backstepping evade, lightning reflexes is similar, plus your two regular dodges) and that negates a ton of damage while your pet is hopefully plugging away all the while. Shortbow #3 also has a short cooldown, so it’s a consistently available option as an extra dodge. As a druid, having access to celestial avatar is HUGE. The sustain is even more viable when you learn how to heal yourself while consistently moving out of danger. There is almost nothing my ranger can’t safely kill or walk away from, as a result.

I also ran cc pets (Electric Wyvern and the regular wolf) early on just for insurance, to keep enemies at bay if things got out of hand. But I find bleeds and burns work remarkably well for getting you through HoT safely, and Troll Unguent works quite well as a preemptive heal (it ticks for a long time, in exchange for being a weak burst heal response). I quickly found the extra cc not necessary for survival, and instead focused on rapid kills with some small amount of healing when necessary.

I focus on stacking bleed and fire mostly, but you get access to poison via shortbow #2 and pets as well. Stuff like pocket raptors die rapidly as they try to mob you while you’re standing in your bonfire.

The one drawback of this setup seems to be that almost all of your attacks are going to be projectile based. I think Torch #5 is your only non-projectile attack, aside from the trap and roots. This means when your enemy enters a projectile-reflecting phase, you have to be careful about not shooting yourself repeatedly in the face.

seems like the build would suck in aoe sitations wouldnt it?

for PvE in the open world,like HoT maps and the new LS maps.
can anyone recommend a build that will be bulky enough for those maps yet hit hard enough?

Same thing.
dced multiple times during story missions,said kitten it and left.

In Heart of the Mists map chat.

Endless Soul.5178:

MoZing.1594:

if you want RP go to FFXIV or even ESO.

No.

@OP – I’m completely with you. However, my asura do get a form of satisfaction when they can sit in a seat, and everyone else around them fails.

Yes.
The games he mentioned support RP much better.
WoW would be another great example and is the best possible mmo for you to RP in hands down.

RP in gw2 has much bigger problems

Behellagh.1468:

Depends on how you define “best”. I personally suck at PvP so crafting was the “best” way for me.

even if u suck at pvp you will get your ascended set faster through playing pvp and save your gold for asc weapons or something else

the best way to get ascended gear is ranked spvp O_o"

which build are you guys using in open world HoT maps ?
i find that going full zerk with the full dps build is too squishy

Nope.
15chars

fraidknott.1859:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhatYfWwELQ7FLpF13GGANAYJuiHw4PmGlBA-TRSFQBA4BA4u9HEmKIjUJYDV21O9AJ4EAQMlC9T9DSBsoyK-e

Basic build I use, tons of dps but ya gotta be quick with the dodges/blinds to stay up. Weaps/Armor all vipers with 2 sinister mixed in for cap, karma armor or adins on tp is cheap till ya can make vipers or ascended

thats the raid build
i find it too squishy for hot maps

your idea for DS would be fantastic

Krispera.5087:

Condi Pistols and Flamethrower works, so is Power Rifle with Proc traits such as (Takedown Round, Aim-Assisted Rocket, Static Discharge, Siege Rounds) with Mortar as the only kit.

What would a pistol/flamethrower condi build look like?

Krispera.5087:

Condi Pistols and Flamethrower works, so is Power Rifle with Proc traits such as (Takedown Round, Aim-Assisted Rocket, Static Discharge, Siege Rounds) with Mortar as the only kit.

power rifle? is that a thing?

hey guys,kinda of a weird question
can someone recommend a decent build for doing content in HoT maps solo and in events that doesnt involve 3+ kits? something chill
maybe a build with 1 kit or 2
dont mind if its power or condi

The Greyhawk.9107:

Thermaltron.6829:

Duke Nukem.6783:

i just want marjory and kas to die

Yay for bigotry!

Yay for tunnel visioned SJWs that can’t tell that the collective dislike for the aforementioned characters has nothing to do with with their sexual orientation!

to sjws everything is bigotry

logan not being gay

Mesmer…………………..

if someone is interested in gw lore where is a good place to start?

can someone recommend a good condi build for open world content? currently im using the raid build and i find myself dying too much

hey,im in trouble cant pick a main
i want a fun and most importantly versatile class
i want a class i can spend 90 percent of my play time on
i want to have more than one build i can use in each game mode
the engineer seemed very cool at first but the good builds are using way too many kits for my liking
the tempest is very fun but its versatility is fake as there are very few good builds out of the huge apperent possibility
any suggestions?

hey,im in trouble cant pick a main
i want a fun and most importantly versatile class
i want a class i can spend 90 percent of my play time on
i want to have more than one build i can use in each game mode
the engineer seemed very cool at first but the good builds are using way too many kits for my liking
the tempest is very fun but its versatility is fake as there are very few good builds out of the huge apperent possibility
any suggestions?

the thing is anet decided they are going to make a more traditional game
the classes will be balanced around elite specs and the core trait lines are there as bonuses
it will be much easier to balance the classes that way if they have few specific structures
the problem is that in order for this to work you need at least 2-3 elite specs per class and we only have one
imagine if in wow you had only one spec instead of 3.
its that level of ridicilous

hey there guys
a returning player here
im a guy who really spends 90% of his time in mmos on his main and id like to main a necro.
however i keep hearing necro is trash in raids/fracts/wvwvw now which IMO wont make him a viable main
how true is that statement?

ReaverKane.7598:

Leo G.4501:

Meh, if the game is marketed so that the players that bought the game have an advantage, sure, go ahead and lable the game as P2W. But labels, in this day and age of the internet, are hugely exaggerated and taken out of context. People that rely on lables to make decisions are begging you to lie to them. In that context, I don’t care if those particular people decide to play the game for free or move on to some other game. Players like that aren’t expected to have much loyalty to a particular brand or game anyway (same as me, but at least I’m not ignorant enough to allow someone else’s lables of a game decide if I try a game or not).

Since the environment of the game has changed over time, I’m more inclined to accept the inevitable so long as that inevitable end is tolerable, i.e. if I’m a PvPer going into GW2, I can accept that there might be more options for me to excel if I purchased the game so long as I’m not strung along a constant stream of payments. If I’m so outmatched that purchase is necessary (I can still beat people and help win hotjoins with base Ele) then P2W may extend to a degree that it’s likely not worth investing time and money. But if I can still compete with modest skilled or below players, that’s a different story.

You need to understand this from the marketing perspective. There’s a HUGE negative perception on the western market for F2P games, which are usually looked at as lower quality games that are either low quality Asian grind fest ports or Western games that didn’t make it as subscription games and had to lower their bar to keep a float, it doesn’t matter that in truth GW2’s model didn’t really change and that the “F2P” account is a demo, people still talk about it as free to play, people still see it as F2P, and most people that don’t know the game will look at youtube reviews, and if they get too negative the game doesn’t sell.
Easy examples, look at Black Desert and Archeage. Both HUGELY antecipated games, both pretty high quality when they released, both didn’t live up to the hype and although active are way below the player base they had before “P2W” started being associated with their brands.

DeceiverX.8361:

Something that I wish more people recognized a long time ago when I posted walls on this topic; the existence of the “berserker (gear type) meta” is entirely player-made and in terms of run consistency, sub-optimal. It just came down to people demanding efficiency for gold gains or people who were dumb and senselessly copied the hardcore scene. Nothing’s going to change that demand for raw efficiency, ever, as even the concept of the trinity and roles are just an exacerbated and design-enforced meta-optimization done on the developer-side of things.

The only thing to offset this is to frequently update and change the existing PvE content and provide alternatives for other builds to potentially save time (tank thief in the old Thaumanova fractal crossing the fume chamber to skip a boss, for example).

Otherwise you’ll just end up in an infinite cycle of emergent optimizations, which, let’s face it, are very easy to achieve in this game to the blatant trait-power disparity and the half-dead-snail-crawl-pacing of the profession changes.

As for the optimization in PvP, and lack of viability, well, there’s going to be similar optimization for the top-end, but the meta is set in stone just because the game as it stands is horribly balanced and most elites are just abysmally-designed, major power creep.

+1
Basically this.
For build diversity to happen we need ~2 more Elite specs, or that Core professions are brought up to Elite Spec status.
For example basic trait lines could use improved synergies, instead of having disparity in trait lines where you have to pick whole trait lines for one trait, or have conflicting traits in a single line.
Then there’s the obvious power creep of Elites themselves, everything about them blows the core specs out of the water. And yet, over a year later, we still haven’t seen a patch addressing that huge elephant in the room.
Core Specs aren’t an alternative, they’re a filler. It’s 2 specs you pick to go along with your Elite one.

agree for the most part

anet will never do it

ReaverKane.7598:

GW2 was pretty balanced pre-hot, all classes had at least 2 viable builds per game mode (and by 2 viable i mean both were pretty much even, with minor differences depending on opponents), if nothing else, you could pick between power and condi builds, since after the big content patch pre-hot condis were made pretty viable.

Hot brought Elite specializations with it, and Raids. For Raids min-maxing became a thing, and although people are finishing raids in half-strength groups and with equipment restrictions for the kicks, the common mortal still has to overcome a ton of barriers to begin rading. Especially because 1/10 people are kittens, and you’re bound to get one in a raid, so if your spec isn’t the exact one listed on MetaBattle, you’re gonna get kicked from groups sooner or later.

But that’s for raids, what about the rest of the game? Well, from my experience, the rest of PvE is solid, there was a time when Guardians were kind of persona non-grata on raids because of the boon steal Instability, which was removed.

PvP on the other hand, from my point of view has only gotten worse since HoT, Season 3 was kind of ok, there were still a lot of balance issues, and progression was kind of easy, but at least it was fun.
Of course elitist players again marr the fun out of the games, and since they don’t want people to make them look less godly (which honestly, most people won’t, because most people don’t play the game professionally), and whatever made Season 3 fun was removed. And then they removed having fun with your friends, because multi-player games are about playing alone. But i digress…

In PvP build variety is pretty much crap, sure you can make a few off-meta builds, but 90% of the times, there’s 1-2 meta builds, especially on mesmer and elementalist, that broker no contest, because of elite specs, and hot necklaces and runes they can be made pretty much unkilalble, and still dish out awesome damage. Which is great for PvE, but makes the game no contest for PvP, so yeah, in PvP if you build outside the meta, you’ll be bronze, and even then, because matchmaking is crap, you’ll probably never get outside silver, if you don’t play a TON of games to beat the odds. Or just cheat, some people did that.

the way i see it this : the elite specs are the new pillars around which the game is going to be balanced.they are trying to make the game more traditional/
if in wow a mage has 3 specs : arcane,fire and frost the ele is going to have lets say tempest,pyromancer,avatar.
however we only have one spec now T_T

penelopehannibal.8947:

I can dive into the water with a speargun, trident or a spear, and kill a deadly man-eating shark. Why would I want to stand still with a rod for the same thing?

cuz its different,its a variation of gathering
you might not like it but many people would
its just something chill extra to do

i would really love to see fishing in gw
and maybe mini-battles too?

i honestly dont get it,i took a break from to give gw another chance and its just absurd to me.
almost every class is limited to one build in every game mode thats not open world pve where everything goes.
just tell me that this comparison is not extremely weird:
a class in wow has 3 specs that are viable in every game mode(except for tanks in pvp and healers in solo obvioualy)…for example if im playing a shaman im wow i can heal im every game mode,play ranged in every game mode AND play melee on every game mode.
lets take the engi and the necro as examples in gw..
viable specs for pvp? one…thats just a joke
viable specs for fractal? engi with 2 omg and reaper? emmm half i guess
viable raiding spec? engi has 1 and necro has none
the fact that some classes are not raid-viable at all is just hilarious to me.
how are you still playing this game? am i missing something?

everything is so bluevi love it

Xyonon.3987:

Mesmer or Chronomancer?

either

the mesmer has any decent open world builds?

i want to become active again but i cant choose a main.
(im on of those people that has to have a main)
honestly i like the flavor of all the classes but i really care about being viable in almost every game mode as i like to play a little in every game mode.

Hamfast.8719:

This solution is not “epic”.
It is “fail”.

Here is the visual evidence:

looks fine to me

DeanBB.4268:

Meh, if you all would just follow the Human Female Meta, none of this would be an issue and we’d have a thousand more armor sets in-game already. Hmm, should I have included “ever-shrinking” in there somewhere?

until then,removing the tail works.

Dawdler.8521:

But without a tail a Charr would wobble around like a drunk :/

Nah he would be fine
and without ugly clipping issues

Mea.5491:

Haha, that would be weird but awesome.
Offtopic: Your display name is my favorite band.

it would be awesome

Im aware of the fact that I’m not the first one suggesting this but honestly I’m surprised that it still didnt happen.
We all know how annoying it is to play a charr and use an armor that just makes you wish you didnt have a tail…so why not have an option to remove it? Why not have an option in the character selection screen to make your charr have no tail?
If they added such an option I would roll a charr in a heart beat.

kiwituatara.6053:

I would recommend getting full zerkers (exotic). Then start working towards ascended gear (full zerkers or full vipers). These 2 sets are what people are running in dungeons and fractals.

I believe most raid groups prefer full magi druids.

i can make one ascended set
should i get full zerk or vipers?

hello there guys
im about to capp my 1st ranger and i have no clue which set i should make first
i have enough gold for one set
i need to work in open world and fractals
should i just make a zerk set? anything else?
once ill complete the 1st set ill start working on a raiding set,what should it be?

Honestly this can go either way.
It so vague it can be total crap or pretty good.

am i the only one that suddenly gets disconnected randomly since the last patch?

Bast Bow.2958:

Hi!

In short.

PvE, fractals, raids, dungeons: Good!
WvW: Ok!
PvP: I’ll leave that to others.

well thats great to see
i never played a ranger before but reason tells me that ranger is the best class for pve solo play
am i correct?

howdie
returned after a short break and im going to main a druid/ranger all the way
how are things now?

yea no matter how you twist it you are not a guardian/paladin
youre actually a mystic knight

hey,im looking for a main that i can take into any game mode and not feel like dead weight
does the rev have a role in spvp,raids,fracts and wvw?

emkelly.2371:

I did. He didn’t go to the thread.

there is no open world build in your kittened thread