Guild Wars 2

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.

evilapprentice.6379:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Taunt is no better than a stun…

Except that it is much better than stun.

I’m not even talking about how taunt goes through all defensive measures.

Here’s a list of things taunt potentially does that stun doesn’t
- generates additional damage for Torment and Confusion
- Triggers Retaliation and “on block” effects.
- Waste charges for things like Venoms and Assassins Signet
- Dynamically re-position your foe into traps/AoE’s/Environmental effects, off of points, and generally out of position

The only real potential downside to Taunt as compared to a stun is that your target isn’t standing still (which would make churning earth kind of hard to hit, I guess), and simply eating AA might be somewhat beneficial to your target (leeching venoms, sigil of blood, etc), but that’s a skill thing – you could just as easily make them waste those venoms by blocking/evading the attacks.

So yeah, Taunt is potentially much more dangerous that stun without considering the fact that it goes through all of these defenses.

Ha ha. Oh yes! Please ANet, make it a 2s stun… That would be so much more fair!

List of deadly things stun does that Taunt does not do:

1. Proc’s Moment of Clarity for Insta-Death Maul.

Yes please, taunt OP. Change it to stun.

Edit: Moment of Clarity

Mordremoth is a Ranger. In HoT, we get to decide if we want to join him and unleash our woody hate on the rest of the community. In PvP, you need to type “Serve Mordremoth!” into map chat when you stomp someone.

Puck.9612:

Archon.6480:

No, it’s probably not going to get fixed. The mess that it is right now is the fix. This used to be my favorite healing skill. Now it’s just garbage.

Pick Beastmastery and trait “We Heal as One.” You can use it to grant swiftness and regen to everyone standing right next to you. Leave healing, condition removal, and group support to the main classes: Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist.

Well if they would just fix trooper runes we could make “we heal as one” provide group condi removal as well.

Yeah, that would be really nice. The range could use a bit of an increase, as well.

No, it’s probably not going to get fixed. The mess that it is right now is the fix. This used to be my favorite healing skill. Now it’s just garbage.

Pick Beastmastery and trait “We Heal as One.” You can use it to grant swiftness and regen to everyone standing right next to you. Leave healing, condition removal, and group support to the main classes: Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist.

Excellent! Thanks Gaile, and great job Heimskarl for a wonderful, well kept thread!

Depends what you mean by meta, I guess. The meta-battle builds don’t really fit my strategy for Ranked PvP (fighting and surviving on point) so I shy away from them. Carrion Survival is the best one they have listed.

Edit: Here is the build I use: Evasive Settler

This build excels at dueling and defending side points. Don’t let that fool you, though. It has the right stuff for protracted group fights as well. By far the strongest conquest build I’ve found. Lyssa runes can be swapped for Dwayna runes and geomancy sigils for generocity sigils—if you think you will be facing a plethora of burn guards or dd elems.

The energy sigils are key to survival, so don’t remove those. 100% uptime on protection is the key to keep hp above 90% which pretty much shuts down most direct damage dealers.

Mavander.3208:

Archon.6480:

I am still holding out the idea that the Ranger elite specialization will become available, AFTER HoT is released

Regardless, I wonder why no one has stopped by to say something as simple as: “Hey guys n’ gals, don’t worry. We didn’t forget about you. We are holding Ranger till last because we’ve put quite a bit of work into making it better. We are releasing it last because we want to get it right. Stay tuned!”

That would put so many of us at ease…

They could totally say they’re having problems getting it right. They could say they aren’t close to ready yet. ANYTHING is better then NOTHING. Am I right?

Totally!

Taunt only works on d/d elem if you can get them under 90% health, first. Depending on your build, that might be hard to do. Ranger can beat inexperienced d/d elems without too much problem. You’ll should be able to stalemate the really good ones at best (assuming you stay out of the fire and have a kitten load of evasion available)

Can’t say if Ranger burning is worst. I don’t think so. It works very well in PvP against most builds you will encounter. Bleeding on the other hand, seems to be weaker after the update than before. I need to try SotF shortbow again to be sure, though.

It may just be that most of the Meta counters projectile based bleeds too easily (reflects and condi cleanse).

Edit: I think sinister AT/T (all buring) is the highest DPS build right now. Check out the PvE section of Heim’s 40+ Build List thread.

Ah, my first introduction to the word Druid was on a Commodore 64:

Druid

Seems like Elementalist stole all our skills, including our Golem. Maybe we can have a flesh Golem? In all honesty, Ranger is more like the evil druid in this game…summoning spiders and such to do his bidding.

I am still holding out the idea that the Ranger elite specialization will become available, AFTER HoT is released

Regardless, I wonder why no one has stopped by to say something as simple as: “Hey guys n’ gals, don’t worry. We didn’t forget about you. We are holding Ranger till last because we’ve put quite a bit of work into making it better. We are releasing it last because we want to get it right. Stay tuned!”

That would put so many of us at ease…

I find the OP to be incredibly arrogant and self indulgent in it’s tone. Some of the responses as well. You obviously have no idea how the game is coded underneath the covers and the real programming has more to do with managing how the game plays over a WAN while keeping everything in sync.

Your conceptualization of how to balance is skewed as well. The “simple” mathematics you describe are not simple in any way. How do you account for the effects of combo fields and finishers? Boons? AoE effects on a group vs. single target effects. It’s only simple to you because you, obviously, don’t understand what you are talking about.

And, I am fairly certain the most complex part is designing the game so that it will work on a variety of hardware and the clients will be able to communicate over the network. The game you are playing is a very small part of what the developers work on. The code that makes it work (at all) is the hard part, for sure.

In response to the OP, I think this is working as intended. This means people running the event chains will benefit from having a variety of build types grouped together.

You will benefit from having high damage people to kill the Legendary bosses and having some tankiness to deal with the mobs and extras that spawn before and around the bosses.

To be honest, though. I didn’t think the content was too difficult for zerkerish builds. I was using a zerk shattering chronomancer and felt like the mob damage was just about right. Not to high at all. The legendary bosses should kill you with one hit, regardless of how much armor you bring. you are just a little insect to them.

No, I’ve had this randomly happen as well. Not sure what the cause is. It only activates when you are in combat, and I think that messes up sometimes, when you are in-combat it behaves like you are not. But I can’t consistently reproduce this issue.

If anyone cares to read what I actually posted, instead of listening to the voices in their head, they would see I am not actually saying Celestial is “The way to go in PvE” or am I promoting defensive stats in brain-dead-easy PvE content. Those arguments are just silly. Rosetta Stone? English 101 maybe? Troll school, perhaps?

If you need to do damage and survive (in actual difficult content, like when you fight other players) defense is important and mixing celestial or going full out celestial is certainly a great way to go, if you understand the mechanics of the game.

IF PvE BECOMES DIFFICULT, similar to PvP, then I think having a set of celestial gear in your inventory might be a good idea. If you are smart, you’ll be able to make use of all your stats and be able to wreak havoc. If you are a button mashing troll noob, that doesn’t know how to make use of all your skills, I am sure you will find a way to waste some of your stats.

And finally, I run a mix of celestial and zerker in the daily 50 fractal because I usually only end up running with one or two friends and we don’t like wasting time in the LFG queue, waiting to get just the right people to join. We usually run a mix and we can finish the 50 run in under 30 minutes, regardless of teammates. With just a little mix-in you can still have high damage and enough survivability (wait for it) to revive teammates or handle situations where the team composition stinks. In this way we can queue up fast and don’t have to worry about the team wiping (the biggest, most annoying, waste of time imaginable). With a little defense, and brains, you should be able to 2-man any of the fights and finish in under 30 minutes, even if your teammates are not that great. This is smart, not selfish.

The largest factor in finishing the fights fast, is to keep 25 stacks of might and 25 stacks of vulnerability on the baddies. It’s like magic! Wow! Everything melts!

Tragic Positive.9356:

If you still feel like skeptically doubting the PvE system that has been held for several years, I’m afraid I won’t make your day brighter. I always go by the facts regardless of how much it goes against anyone’s expectations. If you can’t explain where am I wrong by real numbers and not assumptions and feelings – you may as well accept that you are playing PvE the wrong way – which might as well mean that you should refrain from advising people about playing high-level PvE content.

Well, I disagree with your sentiments. And, if you bother to read the OP, I responded directly to what was asked. Your facts are wrong when you say Ranger does not make use of vitality, healing, and toughness. Every time you are hit, you make use of toughness, and vitality. Every time you heal you make use of healing power. You can’t unequip your healing skill, so it will always be there.

The only scenario where these stats are useless, is when you don’t take damage. And that, by definition, is not challenging.

You can try generosity sigils and Lyssa runes if you think you are gonna face a flamer…

It would be nice to have a chance to test the Ranger tree hugger Druid, before HoT goes live. Maybe Druid is over the top awesome, and they are saving it for the end…

Tragic Positive.9356:

Archon.6480:

Yeah, I currently use a full set of celestial armor and Zerker weapons and trinkets for the daily Fractal 50 run. The celestial mixes in nicely and compliments GS/LB.

No, really, it doesn’t.

Celestial has the highest stat values and keeps pwr/pre/fer while adding defense. So it’s the best way to compliment a pure zerker build if you need to add defense.

I would be extremely cautious around this one. It offers the highest amount of stats that, sadly, are useless. Saying that it adds stats has vague meaning. Soldier’s Armor provides higher power and precision, and also offers more toughness – which means easier healing overall. See? That leads nowhere.
Every single second the NPC lives longer – your party suffers from damage. Celestial doesn’t belong to Fractals. Especially not those lvl 50.
By being selfish with defensive stats – you are harmful to whole party including yourself.

WvW/PvP are completely different from PvE and people shouldn’t mix those together. The only place in PvE where you can make use of Celestial is Mai Trin. Full stop and no exceptions.

As i already said – Celestial is not a bad choice for WvW roaming, especially if you have ways to stack might (which Rangers have).
But for PvE? God, please, no. Just don’t. For the sake of our community and your own.

Interesting idea, but you are twisting what I said by generalizing. For PVE, the easiest game mode, why run anything but full sinister? Kill things fast and collect loot. Or, better yet, run in a chest farm train. The OP was talking about fractals and the possibly more challenging content, like raids, that comes with HoT.

So, assuming defense becomes a factor, what stat do you think is superior to celestial, to mix in with full zerker or full sinister? Please share your thoughts. I would also like you to clarify what stats are useless on Ranger because they are all useful.

Ivarr Wolfsong.2986:

All we really need is a “stow lock” that allows stow to continue in combat until you use a pet command. This solves all of these complaints

+1 I agree this would be nice for jump puzzles and stuff. Would be helpful in some fights too (Mai Trin loves to kill fluffy)

Mossman. I hope Druid is like mossman with invisibility, teleport, and vines that can block paths. I would love to be able to drop trip wires and bear traps as well. LoL, the QQ would be a sweet chorus!

I hope we get a skill to swap places with pet, as well. F5. Please ANet!!

Pets are a huge part of our damage. To remove them would decrease our DPS significantly. If you want to remove pets, first go into battle with a group and just let your pet attack and watch the numbers… Some of them hit extremely hard when the have a full stack of might… Why get rid of that?!

Edit: Drake Tail swipe hits for around 5-6k and he blast finishes fire fields for you. His chomp can hit for 3-4k…

Yeah, I currently use a full set of celestial armor and Zerker weapons and trinkets for the daily Fractal 50 run. The celestial mixes in nicely and compliments GS/LB. Celestial has the highest stat values and keeps pwr/pre/fer while adding defense. So it’s the best way to compliment a pure zerker build if you need to add defense.

That being said, don’t convert your zerker set. Just add celestial gear to your inventory. There are times when the full zerker set is certainly the best choice. Celestial is fantastic for fighting opponents with melle GS/ST. My strongest PvP uses this.

Dungeons are so easy you could run them without Armour and let your pet destroy everything so…

Ithilwen.1529:

No, thanks. A team of 3 rangers ( for example ) would have nearly perma CC and long term machine gun dps.

This is a nightmare waiting to happen.

Pew, pe-pe-pe-pe-pe-pew! Knockback!

mistsim.2748:

Nova Stiker.8396:

I stated this before but -

ArenaNet this is how you fix ele’s

Take the condition removal from Water Magic, put it into Earth Magic. There is absolutely no reason for Diamond skin to exist, just put Cleansing Water into Earth Magic.

BOOM! Problem solved. You can no longer get high recovery and condition removal in a SINGLE trait line. So now-

• You can do very tanky with Arcana, Earth and Water, but now you lack the damage from fire.
• You can have high recovery and damage with Fire, Water and Arcana, but lack strong condition removal from earth.
• You can have strong condition removal and damage with Fire, Earth and Arcana but lack the recovery from water.
• You can have all three in Fire, Water and Earth, but lack the extra power and recovery from Arcana.

It’s that simple -_-
I got 4,000 hours on my ele, listen to the ele mains and freaking NERF ELEMENTALIST.
(And make Earth, Air and Fire traits grandmaster traits more fun while you are at it)

this sounds simple and reasonable. hope they read.

Yeah, this sounds reasonable to me as well. +1

As an alternative, You could give Rangers the same thing, call it Oak Flesh, but make them completely immune to all forms of direct damage and hard CC, while their HP is above 90%. That would be great. Totally fair. Everyone would love it!

Oh nice ring of fire Mr. Ele… Let’s see what my pet GIANT has to say about that!

No, no, no. That would make pets usefull. It only makes sense to have the pet skills be completely useless. Especially the ones that provide group support. I cry a little inside every time I try to give swiftness to allies with “we heal as one” and miss them when they are 8ft away…

Only one? Na, the Ranger elite specialization will probably be revealed after HoT goes live… I called it first!!!

All joking aside, I hope it is taking the longest because it is the best and not because it is the least impressive and least likely to impress anyone to buy HoT. Chronomancer is awesome, might just have to switch to Mesmer permanently. Can only play the underdog for so long…

I am a little jealous. I’ve always wanted to see Antartica. It must be beautiful. Painfully cold, but beautiful.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I’ll stand by my statement. If there was an advantage to running Ranger over something else, it would be all over the competitive scene. But it’s not.

It’s fun, though. And I’ll always love it.

Oh, we are in agreement here. While I think Ranger is powerful, I don’t think it has any clear advantage over anything else. Certainly not a big enough advantage (if there is one) for one of the competitive teams to make a switch. Quite a bit would have to change in the team composition and strategy to accommodate a Ranger (I am sure), so why take the risk?

I agree it’s fun and still hold hope that there is a possibility a team might be successful with one. It’s too early to tell, for sure though.

Yes, yes, of course. My favorite alternate strategy, when playing spvp, is to run straight to the point and cap it. I find that running to mid in the beginning and putting everything into winning that fight really throws the opponents off guard. This is especially effective when one player on the enemy team decides to avoid mid, for some odd reason.

Another excellent alternate strategy is to wait for an enemy player to get out of position and use that opportunity to create a +1 scenario against the other enemy players. I find the 4v3 battle to be the all time best way to win the game. You’ll usually end up wiping half the enemy team, then it will be 5v2 for a little while. The chances are they’ll never recover from this.

My all time favorite strategy is to decap the enemy home point when their players rotate out of position and hold it as long as possible, or simply decap it and run back to mid (to avoid a -1 fight there…

Quadox.7834:

trytonianYeti.4389:

no joke there are ppl here that actually cry thief op nerf pls. thieves are nowhere near as annoying as rangers.

Ranger is nowhere near as strong as thief. Not even close.

This is a joke, right? I can’t remember the last time one of these downed me… It’s been ages.

Well, we currently have a satanic singularity with elementalists so who is going to want or need the holy trinity? DD Elementalist can heal like a monk, bunker like a warrior, and spike like a thief. No need for trinity. Embrace the flaming singularity.

Edit: Of course, there is a need for the trinity in real life…

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

http://academygamingnet.com/class-tier-list-august-18th-2015/

“Ranger is by and far the worst class in Guild Wars 2 PvP. Rarely seen in competitive play, the only semi-viable build is power ranger, which can be handled and most of its damage mitigated quite easily. Furthermore, condition builds aren’t even in the question and don’t stand a chance against any other 1v1 build that is remotely viable. Let’s hope for some Ranger love in Heart of Thorns as they have been sitting at the bottom for quite some time now.” —Storm, Academy Gaming

I think this qualifies as “Ranger Hate.”

He didn’t qualify any of his reasoning. He says the only semi-viable build is “power ranger.” Why would one say that? What flavor? Then he continues to say “condition builds aren’t even in the question…” OK, why is that?

He is just saying what he says because none of the four teams in the top bracket have switched to Ranger since the last balance update. Why would they, if all their experience is on the other classes. That would be dumb. They won’t switch until a team shows up and starts doing well with a Ranger in the mix. Assuming everything is balanced and no class (aside from d/d elems) is much stronger than any other, that won’t happen any time soon.

I run both Ranger and Mesmer, and enjoy them both. Both classes can wipe the better part of a team in seconds if they make a mistake. Ranger’s strength is in beastmastery, evasion, conditions, and high vitality. Obviously he is clueless about ranger as he mentioned “Power Ranger” as being the strongest, almost viable, option for a Ranger. It simply is not at the moment.

I think most people agree that fire damage and taunt are hard to deal with, as things currently stand… so why would the “strongest ranger build” not include either of these, while the strongest flat out build (d/d elem) makes use of fire damage quite well?

HS used to be great. I used it since launch in almost every build, until they turned it into a trash trap skill. Now its great for getting yourself downed. Use TU or Heal as One, both are vastly superior. I don’t even use it in PvE anymore. It’s better than water spirit… maybe.

Agent Mulder.4531:

I just want to get a few honest opinions on whether or not it’s worth it to max out/keep working on my ranger for PvP?

I feel like rangers are extremely useless and outclassed in every aspect in PvP. At first I figured I was just probably bad at PvP, but I tried sPvP with my level 31 warrior and dominated a few games without even knowing my build.

Has anyone had real success with rangers? Or should I move on to a different class? I really love rangers, but it’s just not fun being outclassed in every game.

Yes it is worth it. Ranger is in great spot right now. I’ve had quite a bit of success with condition beastmastery builds. Carrion/celestial amulet and some sort of condition rune. High AoE spike damage and great survivability. Not to mention, unbelievably fun with all the counter abilities we carry.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Skullface.7293:

…You’ll very soon see me playing in high level matches in ESLs. We were the first team to beat Abjured after 30 weeks in a match last week and I’m pretty confident we can do it again.

Nice work on that mate, way to fly the flag! Looking forward to seeing more of your matches.

Likewise, great job, keep it up!

Darkness.9732:

Skullface.7293:

Darkness.9732:

Puck.9612:

Darkness.9732:

Everything is better than a ranger. We all know that.
If we could count all the players who quitted playing ranger…well you would accept my statement. Since we can’ t count them..there are still some rangers who have ^^ hope^^.
Loose that hope couse the first decent mesmer or ele or thief will stomp you in seconds.

You must have been a pretty crappy ranger if you were dying to thieves. No wonder you rage quit the game.

Said the best ranger in the universe @Puck I bet that you are the typical ranger who in 10 fights gets rekt 9 times and claims to be good^^
If ranger are so good…Can you tell me why in spvp finals or high level matches there are more thieves than rangers?^ Oh sorry my fault ZERO RANGERS.

Sorry to crush your fun but I have never lost a single straight 1v1 versus thieves with the build I am using with e Dream.

You’ll very soon see me playing in high level matches in ESLs. We were the first team to beat Abjured after 30 weeks in a match last week and I’m pretty confident we can do it again.

First of all i want to see you there…
Second of all…for you is normal..eventually…that a ranger takes 3 years to get to high level pvp matches?^
Ranger is broken and it’ s so weak. Everyone knows that sadly.

No, Ranger is by no means weak right now. Scull’s build and those that are similar are very powerful, in the right hands, at this moment. It’s going to take a while for teams to pick rangers up again because the prior Meta completely pushed us out. This meta leaves quite a bit of room for us.

TurtleDragon.3108:

DarkWasp.7291:

Well at least in PvE, Ranger is a top level DPS option.

• Sword auto is brutal
• Stability is very helpful
• Double Path of Scars is brutal
• Double Rapid Fire is brutal
• Two spirits that boost team DPS (Frost gives a 7% increase and Sun works great too)
• Great area condition cleanse
• Perfect candidate to use extra ele weapon summons

So when you hear PvE people saying it’s terrible, they obviously missed the potential.

And all of those are inferrior to having a 2nd ele in the group.

And that is, of course, irrelevant to the statement you are responding to.

I tried direct damage, hybrid, and condi’s on Fractals 50. No problem, they all work well. We have great damage and utility now. I did find the conditions only build a tad weak against the fire shaman and his little wurmies.

Nothing like public shame. Make their toon burp, fart and say dumb things while they walk around for an hour, as part of dishonor…

Edit: I could be wrong, but think you can report them for abusing LFG. They are kind of doing this because they are queuing with strangers and then messing up matches through their choices. It’s not really LFG, but the gist is the same, kinda.

Um, Chronomancer is amazing. Ran it with shatter on the beta weekend for several hours. Don’t know why you would say it’s about the same. Not true.

Na, DH will probably be awesome, but it will fill a different roll.

The new specializations are going to be awesome. I ran a shattering chronomancer for about 8 hours during the beta weekend and never had so much fun! Talk about an army of one! They did a really good job with that! Let’s see what Druid brings. I would not be surprised if it has synergy with our current longbow builds…

Azure.8670:

Ranger is and has been garbage in just about every way for s long time. All of my faith is in druid

Use fire.

< 15 chars.

Burning is ridiculously awesome! I’ve always love roasting things, and now it actually works! I find facing burn bombers the same difficulty as zerk thieves and mesmers. A mistake or two and you are toast, for sure. Theses things you can try:

1. Save your condi cleanse for when you start to take high damage. Don’t spam it.
2. Sigils of generosity <sinister grin>
3. Runes of Melandru
4. Be aggressive but… Don’t stand in fire fields.
5. Kill the fire spirit
6. D/D Elems are most dangerous in their fire attunement, damage them fast when they switch to it, so they are forced to leave it. Save your hard hitting skills for their fire rotation.

Please, No! Leave Hot Join as it is.

It is the perfect catch-all for PvE AP farmers. They will migrate to Ranked and Unranked matches if you remove the rewards… And that would be bad. Like, really bad.

I can easily tolerate a new player in competitive matches, that wants to learn, but I can’t tolerate an AP farmer getting rofl stomped in 2s flat every 20s on my team. Noo thank you!

Celestial works great in PvP situations and will be great in WvW. Check out Arrow Slanger’s build in the Heim’s 40+ build tread.

Taunt is supposed to go through blocks. I would think that is obvious. Blocks are weapon skills. Why would anyone expect a weapon skill to continue when your character mindlessly rages into auto attack?

This adds more skill to gameplay. Now there is a way to break characters out of long blocks. Ever see a pesky little engineer running around on point with gear shield up half the time?

I don’t know much about engie, but I ran into a really strong one the other day. I got rampaged down… You can imagine my surprise, I thought only warriors had that. Regardless he/she did very well… Even without rampage. I think the class is still strong for the skilled.

Edit: I think he was using something like this