Guild Wars 2

AurioDK.2867:

Lethal Njection.8741:

I think that the best thing a noobie can learn is proper rotations around the map. Everything else is mostly secondary. Casual PvP is infinitely more lenient in terms of build creativity as well.

Oooh, and Lethal, my first advice is very true, I get targetted a lot less when small and grey than when big and red. Have had about 200 matches so far and there is a big difference in how people target you.

Hot Pink, try hot pink. Most people who are serious about competition will use Standard Character Models, so they can recognize enemy skill activation. Thus the little grey asura won’t help you much.

Honestly, if you are starting out, the best thing you can do is play a bunker build. This will make the fights longer and give you more experience recognizing enemy skills, so you can practice your evasion/damage mitigation.

:) You should also try Troll Ungent. I think you would like it.

Rizo.9534:

Roy says, that WHaO are working not as intended!
Too much for 1 skill.
Meanwhile Revenant by DOING NOTHING just standing OUT OF COMBAST and pressing 0 Buttons keeping 12-14 Might stacks. No buttons no weapon swaps, No keyboard touching… Just by afking.

Working as intended. Indeed.

Yeah, and Engie can keep insane boon stacks in the same manner. Whatever. Ranger is working as intended when it is at the bottom of the pack in PvP. Why change this. The population keeps growing with the current formula. I bet WHaO gets nerfed again.

Learn to evade, man!

All joking aside, this is another reason why Ranger needs to avoid ranged weapons and fight with melee. The pet has a better chance of hitting when you are exchanging blows with someone in melee.

Regardless, the really good players keep moving in melee range, so the pet will only hit when it gets lucky, or you use some kind of control condition to slow them down. I try to keep swiftness on pet as much as possible. That helps a little.

PvP:
Staff #4: Cast time is too long and effect too weak.
Staff #5: Healing from projectiles too weak.
Glyphs: Equality works great. Range is too short on others.

PvE/PvP:
Astral Form: Too difficult to charge without using Staff. Please let outgoing Regen and healing from Pets charge it.
Staff #1: Please double/triple Healing. It really is a little lackluster right now.

Other than these, I really enjoyed Druid. Fun to use in PvP, and PvE.

One more thing: Could you add an option to always see friendly health? It’s very difficult to tell where we should focus and position, in a large fight, without being able to see friendly HP.

Aw, I wasn’t trying to belittle your frustration. I was trying to inject some light humor with the kittens stuff.

All joking aside. I won’t linger too long in PvP and if something is clearly OP people like me will move on. We really are beta testing. Once we are finished trying Druid with our favorite builds, will post a few threads for the Developers and be done.

Play your best, and you’ll be helping us. See it as a community effort. Sorry if that is not appealing. I don’t know what else to say. Best of luck in your PvP endeavors. I do the same and queue up matches to relax after work. I totally get that.

Some of us like fighting against good players, purely for the fun of it.

Well, I am going to test Druid in Ranked. I’ve played a few thousand matches on Ranger already, so it is the best place to get a feel. Don’t you want to know if Ranger is massively OP, before the new ladder season starts and people like me squash your kitten for fun…

No one likes dead kittens! Better find out now before it counts in the ladder season.

brannigan.9831:

Come on the buff was a mistake. Rangers need fixes elsewhere. Running around with ridiculous protection duration and quickness is no way to buff a class.

Ordinarily, I would agree with you, except Engineers are running around with just about every boon in the game (self buffed, at the same time) AND 20-25 stacks of might. You see why I am a little bitter? No one complains about THAT!

I’ll keep it simple. WHaO went from being a little too strong to being too weak to add any meaningful value.

Yeah it’s pretty funny. All the good, but unwise, Rangers use LB in competitive PvP. But, it’s a team killer (as in your own). All the low MMR Rangers (like myself—I am told) use S/D A/T. It was almost good before the last balance patch, but it is worse off now. Go figure.

LB is not viable in PvP. In a 2v2 or any other amalgamation, the other team always has the advantage on point. If they down your ally, you are too far away to help in a meaningful way and you only have skill 4 and some weak pet skills to help you (which they wont, because the other classes have invulnerability, and and endless supply of Stability, Invisibility and other tools to aid in squashing your not-so-lucky friend). Not to mention, there are two of them and you only have one knockback. This is the main reason that LB is not worth it in PvP, and never will be.

I could get into things like, how the abundance of Reflect and Retaliation on a low damage, but rapid fire, weapon also render your attacks useless. Whereas they won’t do anything against melee or the Mesmer’s superior GS attack.

Ranger’s base attack damage and scaling is too low. The WHaO update to over-usefullness, and subsequent nerf to mostly-uselessness show Rangers exactly where they should stand in the crowd. That is, outside the crowd. Think Red Shirt when you think Ranger in PvP.

Always a good candidate for the first target to attack.

Ragnarox.9601:

so pet doing 9k dmg plus maul doing 8k….nice buffing and creating new power creep…GG AT BALANCING STUFF!!

ranger can do 20k dmg in 1 sec..thank you.

:) You got hit by a Drake Chomp, who had 25 stacks of might and Momemt of Clarity active. Yep, that hits hard. Be glad it wasn’t the tail swipe. It would have been worse. You have to evade after being stunned or dazed by a Ranger.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all.

I just returned from San Francisco and am going to crash hard from the busy weekend at Twitch Con very soon, but first I wanted to clarify something:

During the skill balance stream on Friday we weren’t able to go into depth or even talk about the reasons and expected results for changes we did reach due to time constraints[sub]1[/sub]. Because the June 23rd patch was mentioned during the stream many people seem to expect a patch of that size and magnitude.
…

Welcome back Irenio!, You did an excellent job at Twitch Con! I enjoyed watching your presentations.

I really like the direction you are taking with Ranger. Druid looks amazing, and the changes to MDG, We Heal as One, and Natures Vengeance are going to give us some really great pet-related options. Ok, Ok. Just wanted to say you’ve buffed my favorite playstyles. Get some sleep!

Thanks for dropping in!

Hey there, I solo queue ranked and I think my MMR is pretty OK (It’s hard to say). Anyhow, my win rate is right around 50%. I find most of the fights pretty entertaining.

I think if you queue Ranked, with a good team, for several matches, then go back to soloing, you may get paired up with dungeon masters, and um, Golden—I know not pvp—bunny rabkittenamps. If you know what I mean. This seems to happen until you get back to around 50%.

This may not be how it works, but I always seem to get put into several really tough matches after a good win streak.

Hey, I just wanted to point out that if there is a raid or two, that does not require healing—and instead needs max dps, Rangers can continue to run Frost Spotter, but now get 2 high damage pets to bring along, opposed to one. No harm no foul.

The biggest threat to pug speed is actually not the Ranger. It usually comes down to Eles, guardians, and warriors doing a kitten poor job at keeping team might at 25%. It’s like they don’t know what to do with a fire field, half the time.

Last point. The auto attack, on staff 1, was hitting pretty hard in the videos. Looks a lot like mesmer GS skill 1. Why can’t Druid run full berserker with sigils of Life or benevolence, and Rune of the monk? I think that would do the trick for a DPS monk.

I just finished watching the reveal, and wanted to point out that Druid is also going to have some extremely high damage options with the new utilities. The added daze and stun abilities will proc Moment of Clarity for us.

In addition, the new pets come with a very high base condition damage, opening the door for us to double up on condition damage, or focus on power and let pet deal conditions. This is new.

Settler’s rune will be great for a condition Druid. I am betting Valkyrie will work with GS and other melee amalgamations along with Moment of Clarity and Remorseless. The new elite skill will put Xinrae’s Weapon to shame. We will be able to set up some amazing traps for unaware noobs and pros alike.

Don’t think we will be pigeon holed into running a toothless healer. The base damage and malaise on some of the PBAoE utilities and skills we bring will be perfect.

We needed utility. We got it. We needed a place to fit in. We got it. I am extremely pleased. Did you see the PBAoE utilities we have? Wow!

mistsim.2748:

Archon.6480:

This is a strange thread. Please see the Heim’s 50 build list thread. Settler is arguably one of the best amulets for PvP Rangers now. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 or 2v2 with it, and I queue Ranked every day.

Rangers have no evasion? I don’t understand. Maybe you should elaborate?

sure let me explain.
…blah, blah, I am the best…
I’m not interested in arguing about hotjoin builds and low MMR antics.
(read: And you are bad so your point is also pointless)

…burning and Mesmer spike can kill a Ranger fast… (yeah right, that’s soo unique to Ranger…)

increasing ranger’s base HP would open up a lot of builds, and make the current marauder builds competitive (which they aren’t currently, despite the best rangers in the game using them).
This is true. Ranger’s running Maruader and LB are rally bait. If the Best Rangers are using this they are unwise.

I also want to clarify I’m talking about health pool, not healing power or heals per second (HPS). I thought this would be obvious.
This is not related to anything I said, voices in your head maybe?

You also dodged (pun intended) the very valid and true, single point, I made: Rangers don’t have no evasion.

In fact, if you are not taking advantage of Ranger evasion, you are most certainly nerfing yourself. Dodge rolling feeds protection, combined with regen and vigor, feed massive damage reduction against direct damage. If you can then manage to find a safe way to remove conditions, you are doing well. This is Ranger 101.

That depends on whether they are the ones who sack Rata Sum, or if Mordremoth does it.

This is totally awesome! Great design decision. If you are upset about it, just create a Sylvari. They are cute, have a great story, and glow in the dark. What more can you ask for?

ColinJohanson.2394:

…
From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.
…
I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

This is really great to hear. Thanks for setting the record straight. I queue PvP just about every day, for an hour or so, and really enjoy the changes that have been made. Even as a solo player in Ranked, I find it exciting and fun. It is always getting better.

Looking forward to Leagues and Stronghold. It really does seem like the PvP population is growing. I rarely run into the same players on a day to day basis.

Not Foefire, please not Foefire again, it’s not my favorite map, it only says that because everyone else queues it!

Pimsley.3681:

There were organized team matches where I’d wish I brought my bunker guard, d/d ele, powerwells/cele sig necro, survival/healing springs trap ranger, marauder/soldier engie or rampage warrior instead of burst burning guard….

I got hard countered like there was no tomorrow

But of course I reciprocate and treat burst burn guards the same way I get treated on mine

Burn damage really does make pvp more challenging. If you learn to adopt, I see it as a good thing to have another burst damage source

^ Well said, I couldn’t agree more. Besides what does everyone expect a Ranger like me to do without being able to roast people to death? Run around with a Longbow? No thanks, not fun! I love being able to get into the thick of a fight and contribute a little bit.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

xd sigil of Genorsity helps tons and i mean a lot if it procs well at 20 stacks it can down a burn Guardian before they can react .

try using Sigil of Air+sigil of generosity(on both weapons) with your normal amount of Condi clears this is more than enough to protect you from Burning spikes .

^ This. Generosity sigils destroy burn stacking builds. You can even up the ante and throw lyssa runes on.

Belial.9350:

Archon.6480:

Might be useful against d/d elem (if you can keep them under 90% hp).

Because every pro ele runs diamond skin right?

Archon.6480:

Mostly useless. Easily cleansed

By that logic, all conditions are useless as they are easily cleansed.

I’ll elaborate a little. Might be useful against a d/d elem because most of the good ones will mitigate it, without cleansing, if the slowness puts them in danger (which it might not). They can mitigate it by moving away from you with weapon skills, knocking you down, or simply dodge rolling. The can also weapon swap to air and auto attack you. Chances are they’ll hit harder than you, so the chill has little effect.

In a group battle, the friendly neighborhood guardian, warrior, mesmer, or necromancer will have a plethora of ways to remove conditions from everyone on their team, thus randomly cleansing your conditions.

By this logic all conditions are useless, as they are easily cleansed?

Na, conditions like chill and cripple are mostly useless. There are some uses, but in the current meta, there are better skills to bring along. But, if you think you have a great Chill build, feel free to post it and let us know how you use it. I am open to the idea.

I see nothing wrong with this. It is in the highest league, of it’s own. The other meta builds don’t really compete with it.

Sometimes, you’ll get matched up with better players in Ranked. Sometimes, I have no idea what is going on and feel like I am playing hot join, bodies everywhere, and Svanir is eating a teammate alive.

Mostly useless. Easily cleansed as has little effect on d/d elem, warrior, guardian, mesmer and necromancer. Might be useful against d/d elem (if you can keep them under 90% hp).

Fire better.

But think how good it would feel to smack a thief or dd elem in the face with a large stick.

For effect they could let out a muffled scream…

Sube Dai.8496:

I really don’t think ranger survivability has a problem.

I think we have a melee DPS problem.

^ This. Our melee DPS is too low, forcing us into hybrid or condition bunker builds.

The kind that can shoot people with lightning, and summon flesh golems.

This is a strange thread. Please see the Heim’s 50 build list thread. Settler is arguably one of the best amulets for PvP Rangers now. I can’t remember the last time I lost a 1v1 or 2v2 with it, and I queue Ranked every day.

Rangers have no evasion? I don’t understand. Maybe you should elaborate?

Personally, I would like the option to join Mordremoth’s horde, at night time, and aid Mordrem NPC’s in their quests. It would be great fun to aid the computer in vanquishing PvE players. Besides, the Dungeon crowd relentlessly harps on ANet for making PVE too easy… Well then, there is nothing like facing player controlled Mordrem to wipe that Zerker armor off your toon.

I really hope Staff is a powerful sweeping cleaving melee weapon loaded with blast finishers. Two would be perfect.

Nothing. I already bought it. Seriously, they gave us a game that can be played for thousands of hours of a measly $60.00. I mean seriously, why not consider the price of HoT as a donation for them being so nice?

You know, the servers they provide for us are not free… And they need to pay their employees… Don’t be cheap. Thank them for not requiring monthly fees like the other kitten companies do.

Puck.9612:

Going to have to disagree with several of the suggestions you’ve received here.

First don’t get brown bear. If you want a tanky pet get a river drake. Drakes are tanky, they are the one pet family with decent cleave, and if you spec into the BM line (which you should be doing first) their tail swipe and f2 hits like a truck.

If you trait for shouts “we heal as one” will actually do more healing over time than troll unguent, it has the advantages of being a burst heal, and it will provide you with swiftness for better mobility. This also has the added benefit of freeing up one of your utility slots since you won’t need signet of the hunt.

After beast mastery I personally trait into skirmishing for quickdraw but wilderness survival is fine. If you go into the WS line you may want to consider running entangle over rampage as one for better cc.

The other thing to keep in mind is the majority of your damage on longbow and GS comes from your first 2 skills, so don’t automatically use your other skills because they are off cooldown.

If you are being focused and are in danger of dying hunter’s shot will stealth you and switch the aggro to your pet.

Point blank shot should almost never be used in PvE, save it for interrupting but be aware of the area and the people around you, if you knock a mob out of the aoe of 5 other people they are going to rightfully be kittened off at you.

Barrage is good for tagging multiple mobs and does decent damage since the mobs in this game are too stupid to avoid aoe damage.

^ This. Completely agree. Lyssa Runes have nice synergy with traited shouts and We Heal As One, as well.

dankid.9321:

Let me preface this by stating Im not concerned with what is Meta, and instead, just in what is “fun” and viable.

Questions
1)What (if anything) can the ranger do better than the other two?

2)What is a “fun” Ranger build that involves a bow?
For me, Ranger MUST use a bow. This is more important than the pet even. In other MMOs, typically, the bow is what makes the Ranger, and the pet is sometimes an option or specialization that can be taken.

Answer 1:
Ranger can 1v1 better than both, in fact, a good Ranger can utterly destroy warriors and guardians.

Ranger can use pet as distraction, or to attack a different foe. You can do two things at once. Warriors and guardians can’t.

Ranger’s mobility is much much better than guardian and pretty much the same as Warrior.

Ranger is much faster in combat than warriors and guardians. Our evasion is leaps and bounds (pun intended) better.

Answer 2:
Eh? How fun would Guardian be if you said it must use scepter? That would be very BORING. Same goes for Ranger. If you feel this is a must, you should roll a Guardian or Warrior. Especially if you don’t like the pet mechanic. Ranger will never be effective vs Guardian or Warrior without pet.

Invulnerability skills add skill to the game and are fine like they are.

Yeah, wish they had titles for every thousand win in Ranked with a specific class:

1000 wins: Legendary Ranger
2000 wins: Legendary BeastMaster
3000 wins: Legendary Druid
etc…

Hm, I think the OP is talking about Remorseless melee Rangers who capitalize on unselecting target and use weapon skills along with quickness to move AND attack fast. In addition they hit hard. Maybe he thinks this is superspeed?

I disagree that this is overpowered, but you will be in for a tough fight against a good one. Like any other class. Don’t assume melee Ranger should be a pushover.

Edit: Just to be clear, this is what a Ranger brings to a melee fight. Fast, hard hitting and slippery. This is done right. Warrior is slow (lumbering) hard hitting with CC and high survivability.

Taku.6352:

Right click -> kick from party/leave party.

If Pugs cannot kill mossman normally then they can’t probably kill anything else normally and it’d be easier to find a new party.

^ This, Mossman is a good indicator of noobiness. Better to find out sooner than later that your party is going to be stuck for hours at some of the more difficult fights.

Odesseus.1472:

Deim Hunir.8503:

Torqiseknite.1380:

Mordremoth’s triumvirate of evil:
1. Trahearne
2. Scarlet
3. The sylvari that keeps spamming “More violets I say, less violence.”

Number 3 just made me laugh so hard … XD

I had to log in to say this, too. I nearly spewed my coffee.

Lol, it would be perfect if she spammed that phrase while maiming players with an oversized hammer. That would be priceless.

Gotchaz.7865:

Well a month left and no ranger beta testing so…. you know it’s going to bad lol

Hm, do they really need us to beta test, though? I think the “beta testing” is more of a sneak peak for us, than anything else. They can test their own stuff.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

There will be no POI next week because the team will all be at TwitchCon… where we will talk about the final profession spec, as well as more cool stuff on our TwitchCon stream.

Now let’s all calm down and tune into Points of Interest today at noon.

It’s kind of difficult to remain calm when you tell us Druid will be revealed at TwitchCon.

That can only mean it will be Awesome!

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Rev and berserker will get a lot of taunt once HoT hits. If you defend the unavoidable taunt with narrow mind thought simply because of ranger’s vulnerability, then you’re in for a big surprise.

Change taunt to be evade-able/blind-able and compensate ranger for other soft CC (eg. 2s chill/slow etc) along with taunt to make pet more useful.

As if that would sway us. The other classes have always had better skills than us. They can and always could do everything ranger does, only better. Look at the bright side, at least you can see the pet get close to you. You can’t do anything against instant mesmer shatter form stealth or guardian virtue (burn) activation.

Mefiq.7039:

Archon.6480:

Burn guard is one of the easiest classes to kill, if you are interested in playing the build wars game.

1. Equip a sigil of generosity on each weapon.
2. Equip runes of Lyssa or Melandru.
3. B-line and condi-bomb or crit strike them to death.

yes yes, change sigil and runes to counter 1 enemy, seems like legit tactic. I wanna see moment when you wont get sigil proc when you get 12burn stacked, also with melandru u will get like 1 less tick per burn that doesnt rly save you

Well, if you prefer another way, stay at range. They can only burn you up close. Treat it like mesmer shatter. Make sure you have condi removal and gap openers in your build. Burn guards are weak to conditions AND direct damage. Puts focus target, and beat them down. Bunker/Medi guards are the tough ones.

Edit: Also, make sure to have decent condi removal in your build. Lyssa is nice because it is active condition removal, but you should still have some other way to shed conditions in addition. Facing a burn guard without condition removal is like fighting a thief without armor. We all know how that ends…

Remorseless works wonderfully well in PvP if you use Crusader, Cavalier, or Valkyrie amulets along with GS and S/A.

You can hit like a full zerker, yet have high toughness. This takes quite a bit of practice and timing but Maul and path of scars become devastating.

I think the best way is to trait shouts and use “We Heal As One.” Just think of your healing skill as AoE swiftness. Use it for speed boost, it comes back in 16s so you don’t need to keep it ready all the time.

To OP, yes I am actually quite hopeful it will be amazing. The silence can only mean this. They would be planting seeds and hyping it, if it was not going to be any good. It would have been released in the middle, as well. Best should go first and last.

Ryou.2398:

I know every thread is complaint after complaint of pure speculation people really need to be more patient.

If Druid is good, everyone will say Ranger is brain dead easy to play… 111111111 noob ranger. If Driud is underpowered and weak, everyone will say Ranger players are the worst in the community and can’t win a fight. No matter how it pans out, we’ll get no love

Yes of course. This is the second hardest fight after a good dd elem, but you have the advantage with AD/ST Apothocary BM. Just sick your bird on the real on and pop his clones with MH axe. Lyssa runes and generosity sigils help if you know you are going to face one.