Guild Wars 2

Well, suffice it to say, there are at least two PvP vets, each having played several thousand ranked matches that say electro wyvern is useful. There are some others who say it is broken and doesn’t work. OK, we can just agree to disagree on this. The minute it gets added to MetaBattle, everyone will fall in line like good little lemmings.

Ross Biddle.2367:

and rock beats scissors..

leaving paper to beat rock..

what beats diamond skin bunker tempest?

Is it Rev, or has the nerf hammer beat him into submission?

One person dealing daze, and another damage might have a shot…

FriendlyInvader.3126:

Wolfey.3407:

I have two different builds that I run, both of which are pretty successful imo.
One variation, I end up using: Fern Hound + Electric Wyvern.

Another Variation, I end up using Lynx + Fire Wyvern

One variation I have been testing is more of a condi control build that uses both wyverns. Fire for team fights and Electric for stomps + constant knock backs,

No one is going to sacrifice a pet slot for a safe stomp. Bristleback and the smokescale combo is devastating atm, they give you the burst that you do not have. Wyverns attacks do not even land 99% of the time, and consuming flames is highly telegraphed and does not make up for the wyverns overall terrible design.

And why the hell would anyone use a fern hound in place of the broken duo we have? Scratch that, why would anyone use fern hound in sPvP period?

I would pick a pet in order to facilitate a safe stomp, or to set up a chain hard CC to gib opponents. There are also several reasons one might pick fern hound in PvP.

That being said, the combination of bristleback and smokescale do work very well on many Ranger/Druid builds. The passive damage output on smokescale is impressive. There are better choices if you are trying to stack hard CCs.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Wolf can do the similar to Electric Wyvern and can do it more reliably. You can even control it’s knockdown up to some point.

The electro Wyvern’s Charge is an insta-cast Launch and it’s on demand. What are you talking about?

I replaced River Drake with bristleback and Wolf with Electo Wyvern. The on demand knockdown is priceless, and the semi passive winged buffet happens at the right time more often than not.

Ranger is just fine. Thief and Warrior are dead.

I just got to Ruby this morning, the climb has been very pleasant, thus far. Druid seems to be performing really well compared to before HoT. The team utility is nothing short of sweet.

Nonsense! MetaBattle has some nice cookie-cutter builds that are a nice place to start, if you are not sure what to do. They more or less copy/paste builds used in tournaments and call it Meta.

Q: Are the builds shown the best possible?
A: Possibly, they are certainly very good.

Q: Is it possible to use other builds and be more successful?
A: Absolutely.

Remember, the MetaBattle admins are just going with the flow. It’s a good bet that the pros are using the best builds and compositions, but there is no telling how those builds will handle in the hands of a player with less mechanical knowledge, and random allies. There is a good chance, they will be ineffective in some situations.

Yes, and my suspicion is Ruby may be better than Sapphire, as we won’t encounter so many soloers that are attempting to manipulate their MMR to get easy games. I think the leagues are promoting fantastic matches at the higher levels. I am level 4 in sapphire now, and am getting really good games (win or loose).

Did you get stuck with a thief? Maybe a warrior? This is done to help organized teams progress and feel good about themselves. :-)

Um, no thank you. I say GG whenever it is what I consider a good game. ThIs could be after a close win or loss. I usually don’t say it if I see bad sportsmanship. Deriding comments in map chat, people going afk, etc.

I’ll even say GG after winning a lopsided victory, especially if everyone tried to win the whole game. Is it really their fault the MatchMaker put a thief and warrior on the same team? I don’t think so.

No offense but DH is a pushover for a decent MoC Druid. Don’t get me wrong, DH traps deal way too much damage, befitting of noob Guardians. The Guardian has always been a low skill class, but regardless, Druid should be able to crush DH with GS and Staff. Traps don’t deal any damage to you if you don’t stand on them. They are not even useful if your pet sets them off.

The Mad Cow Attack Strategy

The Mad Cow Attack Strategy involves a key player (the mad cow solo player) rushing far at the start of a match, by himself. Most of the time the solo hero will fail to communicate this strategy until after the match starts—if at all. I think the idea is he may (highly unlikely) be able to win the match at far, or create a 2v1 at far, thus allowing everyone to win the AWESOME outnumbered battles the Mad Cow is creating with this pro move.

Of course, basic math escapes the Mad Cow, and he rarely realizes he is actually creating a situation where the battle is 1-3-1 vs. 0-4-1, having one ally sitting on home defending it against a nobody, while your team is fighting 1 man down on mid. By the time your home defender realizes what the Mad Cow has done, it is too late. Your home defender’s well intended, but fatally tardy, attempt to back up the Mid fight usually ends up with him arriving on point as your first ally is stomped to death—everyone else bleeding profusely.

The best part is, after this happens, the enemy floater will peel back to their home base and engage the Mad Cow 2v1, thus boosting the Mad Cow’s feeling of self worth (he has created the uber powerful outnumbered battle at far). Meanwhile the enemy team easily steam rolls from mid to your home, laying waste to the rest of your team. At some point around this time the Mad Cow looks up from his screen, as he looses the 2v1 on far, and says: “wtf are you noobs doing!? I was 2v1 and you lost EVERYTHING! Go back to PvE!” or something to that effect. :-)

This sounds like a confession to me. You wanted everyone to know you were the one standing afk in so many matches? Let me guess, even with the low mmr you have now, you still can’t win matches, but wanted to get credit for all those matches you ruined?

I see no other way this is possible.

Shut your pie hole!

:)

Pimsley.3681:

I guess they never got to fix the bug…

Ha, ha. I think so. I keep getting put on team 1… With the solo queue thief. :-)

Yep. Tier 5 in Emerald. Almost Every time I am about to advance I get pitted against a premade, or I get stuck with a thief for several matches. Personally, I’d rather get pitted against a premade than stuck with a solo queue thief. Thief is auto-loss. I think the next time I get one I am just going to afk or throw the match. There is no sense in trying.

Mogar.9216:

chase the dragon..

Need… my… backpack…. just one more pip! One more pip! Eyes getting tired. Fingers getting sore. What’s that smell? What time is it? What!? I just lost a pip!! How did that happen. How!? Arg…. Curse you ANET!

:)

Jekkt.6045:

rotations and focusing people down took a lot more skill in the hambow ele engi meta than it does now..

I call BS on this. The only difference now is that almost every class has access to CC and sustain like hambow, dd ele, and engi. Thieves got the short end of the stick, being given access to Rangers spiffy evasion. A gift from Rangers that is underpowered. CC > evasion.

Edit: To be clear, yes, I don’t think the current builds are any easier to master than what hambow, and especially dd ele were doing. Engie has always been hard to master, so I won’t go there.

Everything brings PBAoE in PvP now, so your only options are Drakes, Wyvern and Bears.

Those Pansy DH noobs can press a few buttons to AoE kill you and both your pets, so there is no point in taking any pet that can’t survive that. It’s hard enough for you to run away from a DH, your pet will get slaughtered.

They won’t tell you how they are going to do it, but I can think of a number of failsafe ways to find exploiters that will not make mistakes on beginners. They should show you the reaper when you try to log in after being banned.

You forgot Tempest. I can’t play a game without getting hit in the head with multiple lightning strikes. Same goes for scrapper and their little toys.

Ohoni.6057:

It just sounds like you want the prestigious PvP wings without putting any effort into the PvP part of it then.

Yes, ideally.

Bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

…ahem, OK on a more serious note… ahhh hahahahahah!

Chris Cleary.8017:

Deliberately throwing games is not something that we are OK with, and we should have something in-place in the near future to discourage this activity. I would look for enforcement against this negative behavior to start sometime early next week and may be retroactive since the start of the season.

I can’t really comment on system changes, as that is outside of my realm, however I do know that it’s actively being worked.

Thanks, something like this would be really nice. It’s very demoralizing when one of your team members decides to throw a match.

As an aside, the games where both sides are trying to win have been pretty intense compared to before the ladder season started. From a solo pvp point of view, I’ve had some really good quality matches, win or loose.

They should just add a minimum threshold so, no matter what happens, you don’t loose pips if you reach it. Like, if you score 300-400 points on the loosing side, the most that will happen is you won’t get anything.

This way sore losers (ahem GASM) won’t just afk like total noobs and moan after things start to go south 60s into match…

I think you progressed too fast, either through shady measures or though sheer determination. No one else is that determined. How many games did you play to make it to Ruby in just a few days, anyway?

As an aside, I also like the idea of being able to click a check-box to open matchmaking up to higher or lower ladder players…giving extra pip progression or simply a guarantee of non pip-loss for our philanthropy.

I am not sure if it is a good system, but if the matchmaker royally hoses you and pits you against World Champions, for example, it compensates you for putting up a good fight. If you score < 200 points, you loose a pip. 300 points you gain a pip. I think >400 would net you 2pips. It works something like this. Not positive about the actual thresholds, though.

Oh, thanks. I got killed by a noob dragon hunter a few times by this last night. Very frustrating. This is worse than unblockable taunt. Don’t know why people think it is ok for a skill to break you out of evade. I guess the pansies don’t mind when guardian can do this. It’s only game breaking if ranger can do it.

Do you like being cursed at and called bad names? :-)

Yeah, it is pretty friendly to beginners. Queue Unranked and tell your team you are new at start. Go where they tell you to go.

Asato.5479:

So you do get a point from a loss because of your high personal score?! WTF?

This game is really going into a… direction.

No, no, the team score (104-500) needs to be more like (300-500) for you to gain points from a loss. He, he. Good luck doing that against Ajured, though. I am going to bribe them with gold if that ever happens ;-)

I was wondering the same thing? Is it hopeless for a solo player? Are we doomed to tier 2? I’ve only had time to play about 10 matches, so really have no idea.

jewishjoyride.4693:

insanemaniac.2456:

jewishjoyride.4693:

Oh hi Chaith. I just thought I would put up a screen shot. I am Odoreye. My points were good enough to be second on their team. This is fairly discouraging over all if personal score has nothing to do with pips as your individual skill and impact in a match still won’t help you progress.

104-500, explains all

Yeah the over all match was not great. The point I was trying to make was that the game measures players performance through personal score. You can’t help who your team mates are sometimes but you can control your own performance in a match, more or less. If pips are only based on how your team performs, then there’s really not much point in trying. You’ll lose the pip either way.

And losing pips for a win? That’s just weird.

Also I appreciate everyone’s responses so far, but I’d really like to hear a dev weigh in on the topic. I have often observed a disconnect between expectations and perceptions of the community vs what the devs feel like they’ve communicated. I don’t think at any point we’ve had a dev sit down and give us the absolute black and white explanation of how pips work.

Hm…. Does that mean Wakkey and Phantaram were totally out-performed because they had such a pitiful personal score? The scrubs were probably camping capture points the whole game! :-)

All joking aside, your team would need to score above 200pts, I thinK 300 to get points from a loss. I’d be happy with 100pts against that team, though. ahem…

Solar beam of death!!! seriously, though, I haven’t noticed this.

Pewienpan.5168:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAnY8fjMqQ7K2tCmrAVLWcEM4k6Utq20AiVFNmAwk7ylxUnMbB-TRiGABFtPQc6HA4JAI9CD5eSAqTJYTK9eU9HlUGQKAYmGB-e

Hey guys, I’ve got a problem choosing pet for my build. Which pet now has the best damage to use with this build? And am I correct that pets condition damage doesn’t stack with my own? So is it better to use non condi pets?

That’s a tough question, given your build. I think your cats are fine with that build. You really should do some live tests against some of the hero point bosses to see how they work with your play style. The countdown timer will give you an idea of your dps. I really think you should trait QuickDraw so you can drop bonfire more frequently. I would be curious how lightning or fire drake work out (instead of Lynx). The tail-swipe will give you and beastie 3 stacks of might if you pet swap to it in fire field.

Not to sound un-appreciative, but the whole Esports thing is really boring for me. Just give us an ad-hoc, in game, mini-tourney system and I will be happy with that. Who has the time to follow the Esports scene? Kinda boring, and I work and have a baby.

Core GW2 and WvW are awesome. Focus on those more. Expand PvP for the average Joe Shmoe that works 9-5, as well. More modes and maps. Why not bring back GW1 style 16v16 conquest with keeps and several more capture points, etc, etc.

I am no expert on raids yet, but am currently building a set of armor based on boon stacking and healing. Mixing Minstril’s armor with Apothocary. With boon duration foods, Warhorn, and Jungle stalker this will be really sweet, I think.

I don’t think it is worth it to try to do much damage as a Druid healer. By focusing on healing and boon stacking, you will be able to make up some of the DPS loss you incur. Your DPS allies will do more damage than you will get out of mixing and matching, if you can keep them might stacked and maxed with lingering light. At least, this is what I think.

Yeah, it behaves like a hard CC, like being knocked down, so it does not stack in duration. At least that’s how I always see it on the receiving end.

Just use A/D Sw/T and carrion. High Condi damage and relatively low attack rate. Even better, just run Healing Druid and don’t worry about attacking.

Edit: The old meta still works as well, Axe/T and T

ReaperJr.5967:

And who the kitten comes up with the idea that condition builds shouldn’t be nullified by diamond skin? Why not?
/thread

For the same reason pets should not be able to land hits by the Ranger simply walking into a fight. It’s just lame. Ranger pets won’t hit target unless you use some form of cc or trickery to get opponent into bad spot. This requires some skill, vs something like Diamond Skin that requires nothing to work. You should always have to do something to get a result, like that. Otherwise, you are just being carried by the computer.

That’s the problem with Guardian traps, as well. They carry too much. 1 button press for huge damage, daze and knockdown. That kitten should take two or three button presses, at least. AI carried battles are lame. Diamond skin should require some kind of action, like the resistance boon.

A single Mesmer can destroy a whole teams worth of condition builds with resistance, but it requires some button presses to accomplish. I have no problem with this.

Well, I don’t turn off my Legendary Beginner Champion title when I queue up with Mesmer, and that is sometimes painful. Sorry, I am much better with Druid it seems.

Seriously, though. You get to Legenday Champion when you have around 1000 games played. Many of the PvP players have 4000+ games played… So even Legendary Champions are beginners when facing these people. It’s true. Also, if you are making horrible mistakes, the champ may decide to sit back and relax while the game winds down.

What you don’t like seeing 4 of your team run to cap far after you win the fight on mid? it’s called snow blowing… Em, or something.

Ragnarox.9601:

StickerHappy.8052:

Please. Can you elaborate the DH needs buffs?

Your Traps are ALL BETTER than rangers.
Your Trap Trait is WAAAY BETTER THAN Rangers
Your LB provides MORE TEAM UTILITY than Rangers
Your Mechanic FUNCTIONS PROPERLY ever since the beginning of time compared to rangers.
.

Your Traps are CONDITION BASED.
Your Trap traits are CONDITION BASED.
Your LB provide more DPS than DH.
Wanna guardian scepter from the beginning?

Apples and Oranges.

Yeah, but we all know condition based is crap and can’t be used against anyone with half a frontal lobe. So ranger traps are useless.

Listen, it’s really quite simple, pure condition builds (rabid, carrion, apothecary) are fun but completely useless in a highly competitive environment. Diamond skin will destroy you, period. Rabid will never deal enough sustained direct damage to take—and keep—the 10% hp off. Carrion could work if you put everything else into critical damage, but that turns you into a hybrid. It goes like this:

Power Builds and classes = Great
Hybrid builds and classes = Might be good (if class supports celestial)
Condition Builds and classes= Trashy and weak

Only options are pure power or hybrid. Condition only works if opponents are not prepared for it. Otherwise it can be hard countered. There is no way to hard counter pure power or hybrid. So…

Ha ha, maybe they’ll eventually find a nice balance. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this: Ele does not need to generate AF to run support and heal allies…

I’ve had it happen a few times. Rarely that bad, but yesterday was a bit painful, to be honest. Sometimes the matchmaker will stick you with people that are still getting their feet wet for several hours…

Tragic Positive.9356:

Archon.6480:

Druid out-damages and completely out-classes core ranger in PvP.

Edit: Also, please reread my post. You sound ignorant when your response includes topics not mentioned in the post you are responding to. Nowhere does the phrase “I out damage others” or anything close to that appear.

To be very clear, if you twist a person’s words in your response, or subsequent questioning, you are a liar. This is a form of deception and is what liars do. It tends to make people angry, and suspicious of you.

You sound ignorant to reality and I didn’t feel like pointing that out. I asked you to demonstrate what part of druid outdamages other specs. How does druid provide more than Marksmanship (20% flat)? How does it provide more than Nature Magic (up to 12% per boon plus much more damage from pet thanks to might sharing).
Druid brings only 3,75% AoE from Glyph and Grace of the Land that increases your damage when you deal none.

As if it were impossible to use Marksmanship and/or Nature Magic and Druid…

I’m fine with you saying it deals more damage. But if you don’t demonstrate, explain, or provide data in terms of DPS Screenshots or Video records – your answer is nothing but a vague will to argue with people who obviously gave it more effort by calculations… blah blah

And how are you going to prove that? This is obviously meaningless dribble. Who are people, what calculations? If I don’t demonstrate, explain, etc, etc doesn’t make my claim any less true, just unsubstantiated at worst. Unsubstantiated claims are many times true.

EDIT: My offtopic replies to this thread are quite on topic.

Or are a clear indication of trollish behavior.

Druid provides more offensive support than core Ranger, but doesn’t deal more damage.

This is what I think is False. The control provided by the Druid trait line, glyphs, and CA form, provide a large number of opportunities to line up hard hitting attacks that would otherwise be lost. This, added to the fact that Druids staff cannot be reflected increases the damage dealt by the Druid, in comparison to core Ranger.

So when it all plays out, Druid is more dangerous than Core Ranger, and will deal more damage over time, in a PvP setting, than core ranger. Even if the numbers happen to end up being lower. Because they will be more consistent, more likely to hit, and more devastating.

No, I am not going to substantiate this claim. Please, go to the PvP forum and start a thread labelled Core Ranger deals more damage than Druid and see how far you get with that, if you think I am full of it.

Here are the Druid builds I use, if you think you have a higher damage dealing Ranger, for PvP. Please show us what it is:

MoC Crusader Druid

Thorn Druid

On the 32-bit client, turn graphics to best performance during the meta battles.

The 64-bit client stopped thre crashes all together, even with high graphics settings. It also improved my frame rate significantly.

You can get the 64-bit client from the ANet website, once you log it,

Yes, they don’t move when executing f2, so you will probably have it miss when used on a moving target. Best to make sure target can’t move freely before trying to use f2. Otherwise you’ll most likely waste it, barring your opponent making a mistake.

Tragic Positive.9356:

@Archon

You outdamage others by what? Pets that everyone else has or Might Stacking that Hitzer buried flat with his version of Celestial Ranger?

If so – what does it have in common with Druid, again?

Druid out-damages and completely out-classes core ranger in PvP.

Edit: Also, please reread my post. You sound ignorant when your response includes topics not mentioned in the post you are responding to. Nowhere does the phrase “I out damage others” or anything close to that appear.

Barosmare.2196:

it’s only recent for me since hots

Yeah it started with Halloween for me as well. I wonder if the Halloween finisher is causing it. Are you still using that?