Guild Wars 2

Lesson learned here is to never balance games around QQ’ers. The meta is to whine until you get your way!

As for the necromancer class, well, dhumfire was something nobody really wanted and balancing around that really ruined the class as everything was nerfed with the assumption that you HAD to take it (for condi builds) including stuff that was not used by condi builds.

Ranger will most likely be nerfed. If they do it in the bad way (like they did with necro) would be to nerf signets either by increasing cooldowns or reducing effects, which will make LB rangers even more reliant on that burst. :S I expect QZ to be the first victim and they will completely ignore the fact that other builds use QZ.

It’s just like how they nerfed blinding powder for thief. They just had d/p in mind because they felt it was too good on d/p, yet ignoring the negative effects on s/p and p/p.

Hello frand! It is nice you have tried ranger.

When Archonwing uses sword, he turns off autoattack. That way he won’t feel like someone glued him to the floor! Now he just feels the floor is sticky. Archonwing thinks sword does great damage, and is very sorry if you already have turned off autoattack! But it is easy if you just sidestep and practice! Now he will stop here, before people with a lack of sense of humor comes in and this way of typing is very tiring! Also, sensical** not being a word is very thlly! thilly English!

Wahoo! Bye frand!

**Really, why is sensical not a word?

Ugh, so most of the buffs don’t even work, and we’re just testing the old flamethrower basically? :o

Been toasting wvw zergs with this. Also, those guards also just melt, lol. I’d like to get celestial armor, but friggin time gates means the exotic is a no-no. Maybe in the future when I make ascended.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUp+q1axdLseNSdBNqoA6AUguK6EuwYA-TFSAAB/oiRR7Pwj6InqSwWK/AwEEf6AsQJIZAK2CA-w

Defensive stats are a bit weak but that 200 toughness sure helps… (wait, it’s bugged?)

Also retal is fine (yea I found a stack of 30 people to fire it into) unless you decide to 11111 into them when they stack. Hitting people with aoe in those situations regardless of class is foolish. I lose a few thousand health, but that’s nothing really. Use the toolbelt skill and go flash some blunderbuss and go clear some condis on your allies with fumigate and use a flame blast instead of just mashing 1 because you’ll lose 2 seconds of dps. You can also lay down a firefield in the meantime and blast it (hopefully others will do it).

Kilger.5490:

Varani.9207:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

stuff

Conditions?

Exactly, and cc, hard and soft. Not much will happen as youre tossed around like a wet paper bag, blinded, immob, etc. Then get your bow w/rapid fire completely negated by others blocks and immunity or even tossed back in your face with reflection … I self destructed several this way, and I also saw lots of clued in other classes with lots of reflection up for the ranger zerg!

Saw so many new rangers in spvp just melt or made completely ineffective (and then melted) without condition protection and stun breaks. You might get the odd spectacular run of luck but thats exactly what it is.

Does protect me save you from stuff like necro spectral walls and unblockable attacks?

Also, if your pet runs out of health, it doesn’t work anymore right?

But thieves got nerfed too… better find another class to blame soon.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

Terrahero.9358:

hailsatan.2865:

If you didnt know the new patch added direct dmg for every time napalm ticks. Its awesome,

The damage is pitiful. I think its sole purpose is just so you can proc things on crit with it now, but also eat retaliation.

Yeah, with the exception of lava font all fire fields that do direct damage are pitiful for the direct damage portion of it.

It’s mainly just for the fire field it seems.

We have a shield?

Heh… if people think they can be more entertaining, I’d like to see them post their exciting gameplay. Ranger roaming is already hard enough in and of itself in a 1vX.

Fun video, btw.

lvis.3824:

TooBz.3065:

I can see the gap closing point, but almost all classes have gap closers (which have largely been repurposed as escapes)

Thieves have stealth, sword 2, short bow 5, dagger 2, shadow step
Warriors have sword 2, greatsword 3, greatsword 4, endure pain,
Elementalists have ride the lightning, lightning flash, burning speed, mist form
Mesmers have stealth, blink, feedback, mirror images, temporal curtain (traited)
Guardians have wall of reflection, aegis, sword 2, greatsword 3

I have no idea what engineers and necros have as I I don’t play them.

Usually, people save these skills as “escapes”. If something goes south for them they get to run away. However, there’s no reason these skills couldn’t be used to close the gap and get to the Ranger. It just requires a little thought and practice.

Holy kitten, you must be a really bad ranger reading all your posts to defend ranger .. really.

TooBz.3065:

Thieves have stealth, sword 2, short bow 5, dagger 2, shadow step

none of these abilities has a 1500y range, using SR to engage a fight is super selfish + ranger can easily wait for it run around a bit, use GS#4 or even Sos .

And well really, you must be terrible to list dagger#2 here, once the thief even comes in the range to attack you , your LB#2 will have him killed, not to mention you can CC him with your pet and once he is in range just knoch him back using LB#4.

Oh and forgot LB#3 to stealth of something …

Its so funny to read in the ranger or profession balance forums, all the bad rangers try to defend the OPness while the better one will admit that its too much.

And the sad thing is, Anet knows it but it will take 6 month until a fix will hit, as usual.
The question is , why ?
They know it, why don’t they balance of things faster, like they did in the beginning.???

lololol. LB stealth.How hard is it to use thief shortbow 5+ steal+ any of the gap closers you have on the weapons? It only costs initiative aside from the 30s or so cooldown on steal.

Oh sure, and ranger can run away too, except they have to swap weapons and all this OP ranged damage must wait another 8 seconds.

Oh and SOS, yea. Keep bursting them down despite that big icon on their head with that 64 second cooldown.

Anyhow, I like how it’s only been 24 hours, but people are declaring there’s no counterplay. Definitely way out of my league if they know everything.

Oh and before you say I’m a terrible ranger. That’s not exactly true. I am a terrible guardian that sometimes plays as a terrible ranger and also a terrible thief that kills terrible rangers. Now that they’re more than target practice, I don’t mind. I do remember a ranger shooting me off a cliff once. I think they should definitely nerf point blank shot. :p

I could hit people for 2k with LB autoattack…

Before the patch.

And what is 1500 range really? Infiltrator’s arrow + steal= sup. Heck, even guardians have a 1200 range teleport and they are pretty bad at mobility.

Rangers still have crap for condition removal, and their amazing “burst” relies on various skills (quickening zephyr, wild signet, elite skill) with long cooldowns. Oh, and their amazing stability uptime and access to stunbreaks. Right.

TooBz.3065:

I can see the gap closing point, but almost all classes have gap closers (which have largely been repurposed as escapes)

Thieves have stealth, sword 2, short bow 5, dagger 2, shadow step
Warriors have sword 2, greatsword 3, greatsword 4, endure pain,
Elementalists have ride the lightning, lightning flash, burning speed, mist form
Mesmers have stealth, blink, feedback, mirror images, temporal curtain (traited)
Guardians have wall of reflection, aegis, sword 2, greatsword 3

I have no idea what engineers and necros have as I I don’t play them.

Usually, people save these skills as “escapes”. If something goes south for them they get to run away. However, there’s no reason these skills couldn’t be used to close the gap and get to the Ranger. It just requires a little thought and practice.

Engineers can lol with either shield 4 or tool kit. Necros admittingly got the short end of the bargain, but it’s not like life blast doesn’t hurt or the copious amounts of poison.

I don’t really see the problem. Seems pretty fun to me. I mean a backstab thief can do a bunch of damage too and they don’t need to sit there for 2.5 seconds.

It’s true that you may have a hard time dodging the whole thing. But even if you dodge it partially, the damage goes down the toilet.

It IS fun to fight other bow rangers though, lol. It’s not really OP; many classes have builds than can kill you before you can blink. People just don’t know how to fight against rangers atm, because most probably haven’t come across many that can fight back.

Also, try taking a zerker/ranger runes build into a zerg for some real fun.

Oh, so I can hit the level 20 scroll then.

All is well.

But they really shouldn’t hide the wvw buttons for older players.

Wait, the bank is level locked? So I can’t even make use of those level 20 scrolls until later?

Sounds pretty awful. I wanted to have a use of scrolls to bypass this useless process…

Any indication of being shoehorned into condi builds is mostly a factor of wvw roaming , and that’s actually more broken due to +/- condi duration food and ferocity nerfs, not a problem with the engineer themselves— condi bunkers are often pushed for most classes. In larger groups, for example, condis are not dominant. In PvE they are useless. And not to mention wvw roaming is not balanced at all and should not mean anything in the context of proper game design.

Tarsius.3170:

Arc: Also the Monks Focus bug is still there so you still get an extra heal even if you don’t TP to an ally – contrary to the skillbar preview. ( so you get 1x 2k heal from MF and 1x 2k heal from MI regardless of target )

Harbinger – nice! what’s the coefficient?

Shame about the fix to the shield bubble…

Is that really a bug though? Some skills will proc effects even if they whiff. For example, the thief’s thrill of the crime which grants swiftness/fury/might on steal will still grant the thief boons even if it fails.

I think it makes sense that it should heal even if it fails— assuming the skill was activated and goes on cooldown. You should be able to invoke it for a proc heal even if the skill itself fails— ranger shouts are often used for that purpose; the shouts themselves are pretty terrible.

Tarsius.3170:

ArchonWing.9480:

Does focused mind’s fury happen when renewed focus is cast? The thing here is that the fury would be pretty wasted during the channel.

Both the heal from MF and the Fury from FM occur at the end of the channel.

Other things I’ve noticed:

Shield of Absorbtion: Popping the shield no longer roots you

Tome of Wrath: no longer boosts your base power to insane levels ( so no more one-shotting folks in WvW for 25k using Shield of Wrath ) – I guess they fixed this along with the Ele tornado. It still gives you about +50% precision though

You still get the MI heal on a mis-teleport even without Monk’s Focus slotted

MI lets you teleport upstairs – something JI always had trouble with (haven’t tried an arch jump yet)

You can now avoid fall damage with MI, like other teleports

That’s excellent.

Ok, that’s just really stupid. They did a good job with some of the other classes but …

Necro shelved.

Well that depends. I don’t think in most practical situations you’d be able to stand in that well for 10 seconds for it to take its full effect. Then again, I rarely use this heal anyways…

I’m not really sure why they did it.

Does focused mind’s fury happen when renewed focus is cast? The thing here is that the fury would be pretty wasted during the channel.

Meditations were buffed to be competitive. Pigeonholing this class as support has caused it to stagnate. In a game where everyone brings their own dps and main heal, restraining the guardian to support is to ignore how the game is actually played

Bomb, rifle turret (switch to elixir gun vs troublesome content), and rocket boots (mobility is key to leveling). IMO, this will ensure a fairly carefree leveling experience. Make sure you have swiftness from speedy kits (get it asap). Pick up healing turret because you will need to learn to use it.

Also keep in mind the toolbelt skill for rifle turret has a really short cooldown so don’t be afraid to fire away if your turret is dead.

Grenades are not good without grenadier which is sadly a grandmaster trait, meaning grenades are pretty much out of contention while leveling.

/shrugs

I haven’t rolled a warrior but Engineer seems pretty straightforward. Well, I don’t pvp though, but I assume that would be hard regardless of what you picked vs competent opponents.

When I want to relax, I use my engineer instead of guardian in dungeons. Grenade spam closeup is still easier than timing blocks and meleeing directly and grenades pretty much kill everything.

In wvw, it’s mostly the same, except sometimes Elixir S and that elixir gun stunbreak is used when I don’t like the fight and want to leave. The only class that can pursue you is the thief, and thieves are not that hard to fight as an engineer. Well, I guess there are warriors, but those don’t seem to do much when poisoned enough and run out of that stance that negates condis. But I run saffron bread + prot injection so it’s kinda funny when they bonk me on the head and don’t seem to do much.

Engineer’s aren’t that great at zerging wvw I guess, but they’re pretty easy elsewhere. And if that fails just use your low cooldown water sprays.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve even learned any proper rotations yet. I keep confusing elixir gun 4 and 5, and also fail at setting fire fields with big ol bomb but whatever.

People can’t even fathom others playing differently from them, and see it as “wrong”.

Wouldn’t really call that melting. Still pretty broken.

Working as intended. They don’t want to handle trade scams.

Good change; I hate everything about the TP interface— so slow and clunky atm.

They want to make money. That’s just a fact of life. You can’t be subtle about these things if you want your business to stay afloat, and as a customer, I have to live with this.

Now if there was a popup telling you to buy more gold, that’s a reason for complaint.

The signet isn’t worth it. 180 healing power isn’t that much and you could have better active effects.

I also don’t recommend the tome with this build. If you’re going deep virtues, you need renewed focus, otherwise the long recharge on your virtues won’t help. And yea, staff is generally best with this build

Also, your health is a bit low and conditions would kill you really fast. A sigil of hydromancy for aoe chill would be more effective than sigil of ice.

I would do something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVEQNApeWl8AbgaFmCXL83xZ4KE/wfIFAEVmFREaVAgdM8D3wVTAA-TVTBABWcCAcUJ4GPAAjPQAhp0LLlBCqh55jAwnq/gwhQIP9Bys/AAHwgAAIA3sND28m38m/5P/5P/5P7n/8n/8n/sUAFpMC-w

Indomitable Courage for the stability is nice but it’s fallen out of favor for me. Taking strength in numbers would increase overall survivability I feel. When the new patch hits, you could take elite focus in favor of indomitable courage with tome, or take meditation mastery to get a reduced cooldown on renewed focus.

Kagamiku.9731:

And yet I never see a warrior run a shoutsheal in pvp. The damage output of a shoutheal warrior who only heals (no party wide protection or aegis or stability or anything else; save for their warhorn skill)) is so bad that it’s not worth running. You also need to grab cleansing ire in the defense line (which is a far better trait line) which leaves no investment into a damage tree.

It’s fine in wvw, but guardians still do that role better and maintain more damage while doing so.

Relentliss.2170

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VSMD3rmL2k

Or 1vZerg… I’ve never seen a Guardian do what this guy does. And BTW I do realise this is an old video. One doesn’t need 11k self heals when you regen more damage than a Zerg does to you.

Are you serious? Since when does two people = zerg. And we know nothing of the builds /armor they were using to attack him with. And I know the damageless build the warrior was using wouldn’t be able to kill them, either.

Maybe 1.5 people = zerg? Autoattack axe ranger /w no poison, lol. (Wait is that a power ranger?) Would struggle to beat a sentry.

I wish my comp wasn’t crap so I could cherry pick scenarios where I can look OP. Shrug off 2 people while having a thief doing their stupid heartseeker is pretty standard on my engie.

I mean, I understand the issues with warrior heal and this warrior probably wins a lot, but that video isn’t a telling example.. I’ve come across unkillable rangers, warriors, guardians, eles, mesmers, and engies. Vit tough too stronk.

PS I get the point, I just think it’s funny. Medi guardians were buffed for a reason.

Each tournament is largely a trick to get people to buy gems in exchange for some so-so rewards, so of course not. Pretty smart practice to get some extra money out of a stagnant game mode that doesn’t make money otherwise.

Shanks.2907:

ArchonWing.9480:

What if it were symbols causing chills (1s cooldown), instead of hammer crit hits?

It is quite unimaginative. A boring passive proc that you can’t choose when you’d like to use it. And the fact that it’s only on one weapon really drops it’s usefulness.

I liked my idea of a symbol trait a while back. The idea is that each of our 4 symbols give give their own soft cc effect. GS symbol for chill, hammer for cripple, mace for weakness and staff for immob. A trait playing into what a guardian already uses giving us different sorts of soft cc for different weapon sets.

Okay my idea may be a bit unimaginative though I have no idea what you’re talking about passive play, since besides hammer autos each weapon’s use of symbols is different in usage and aren’t just spammed. I don’t see how my idea is any less active than yours.

Chill is a less common form of soft CC, and extremely powerful, and GS/staff/hammer each would have their own way of using it.

Pretty sad when I’d rather have 2 yellows than a useless ascended ring or something.

At rank 700’ish, I’ve recieved

1.) Celestial ascended armor
2.) Rabid Asc Armor
3.) Knight Asc ring
4.) Soldier Asc Ring
5.) Cleric Asc Ring
6.) Apoth Asc Ring
7.) Celestial Asc Ring

It’s not too awful but the lack of control over drops tends to make it a bit frustrating when it’s pretty scarce.

I’m satisfied, but it seems to be many steps backwards and forwards. Some of the balanced changes are nice, but the way they’re changing the leveling process has been pretty questionable. They also seem to make a lot of changes where it doesn’t seem needed; I’m not really sure why they had to nuke boon duration so badly.

What if it were symbols causing chills (1s cooldown), instead of hammer crit hits?

Well, as much as I never take Chris seriously on anything, he does have a point. A lot of t3 servers probably have the perception to stay out of gold and let t2 be on its merry way but it imploded, and we’re left to clean the mess. We’ve already had the crap before when they were 7 gold league servers and one of them would always come down and beat on whoever was on t3. Now with Mag out of the equation, someone’s going to go up and most likely be crushed. I really wished t2 would have lasted forever, so t3/t4 would have all these nice matchups too. In a way, it’s pretty kitten ed hard for us to be sympathetic.

However, reality is reality. I blame Anet’s stagnant wvw (stale maps forever) for killing the population and fact of the matter is that like it or not, someone from t3 is moving up, and they’re going to have to deal with it. If Mag drops down to t3 next week and someone gets moved up, then no amount of tanking is going to save anyone. When one’s at the mercy of the RNG, they need to be able to deal with any worst possible scenario, and digging heads into the sand isn’t going to help anyone. And if we were thrust into this scenario would you still want to be perceived as someone that just gets shot in the back like an EOTM’er or at least do something about it? Well, I guess one could just tuck their tail and transfer too.

Sooner or later…

I like Save Yourselves + Purging Flames on a 0/0/6/4/4 build, you can use SY to draw all conditions on you and absolute resolution/pf is enough to clear them away. Melandru Runes and -condi duration food for maximum effect to absorb condis.

Another possibility is 0/0/6/4/4 Hallowed Ground/Purging Flames/Stand Your Ground. Hallowed Ground works nicely with AH, though the stability itself isn’t too hot due to mobility in zerg fights but every bit helps people running through. Also, fire fields galore. Consider a hammer for this. Depending on your needs, you can take indomitable courage for triple stability or absolute resolution for condi clear (I prefer the later)

I agree it should be adept. Elite skills have such a long cooldown that it really isn’t that strong. It cannot compete with traits such as Absolute Resolution and Indomitable Courage even with the buff… Besides if you take that, you can’t take either without going full out virtues which I don’t think is a good idea.

I think Drink Elixir B should gain stability too, but maybe I’m crazy.

Toss B is just too clunky.

oxtred.7658:

The easiest way to gear a char is dungeons, but since you won’t do that, you can buy them off the tp. Karma only gives you useless stats.

Not true. The temples were changed lately— Grenth karma vendor gives exotic zerker stats so that’s where I would head. (With megaservers, it’s not long until it opens) Each piece costs 42k so with 150k karma one could afford 3 pieces already (I believe chest, legs and boots matter the most)

Until then, I would put on some cheap yellow zerker armor with green/yellow zerker trinkets. (exotic trinkets tend to be stupidly overpriced and ascended rings/amulets can be gotten with laurels soon enough)

You can’t salvage the armor though so putting away throwaway runes in them isn’t a bad idea. Though you’d only replace exotics with ascended and that’s a far way off.

I only get luck because salvaging (and getting mats/luck) is faster than vendoring/tping the items which slows you down if you have a good farm going. I find this practice to grow your MF naturally. I only have 100, so no rush. Rare items tend to show up a bit more, but the thing is most of the good stuff comes from boxes.

Scared?

And outright dying is better?

I don’t even understand the downstate at first, but I figured I might be able to button mash my way to survival. Thinking that your players can’t handle 4 buttons is a terrible joke. You can’t learn if you’re dead after all.

This happens every zerg fight.

It most certainly should give yourself aegis, given the cooldown, so it can compete with the other 2 GMs. Which it really can’t mostly.

We don’t need that.

Make it break stun. =p

KorlicGibbs.8456:

From what everything sounds like on majority of the updates on all classes is the fact that ANet is helping the Team and Solo PvP builds. Tell me who would run a Medi Guard build in WvW or PvE.

Meditations are useful in small scale wvw. In PvE it is definitely useless.

Merging servers… has anyone looked at EOTM? That faceless karma train? Why would anyone care for defending when they’re on a generic team? Server already means nothing in pve so…

Merging servers only fixes the symptoms. As we can see from EOTM, if the content is trash, the gameplay will remain trash no matter how many people you put into it. WvW is losing numbers due to stale content, poor balance, and lack of developer concern. Oh, and all that blobbing harder. Let’s use numbers to solve all our problems and hope engaging gameplay solves all our problems.

They will merge servers someday, but that’s not going to change a dead game mode.

Wow, you can stomp/res in DS now? That’s a great change.

Axe remains questionable.

IMO, granting stability with tomes should come inherent with the skill, or move Elite Focus down to adept. I just can’t imagine taking it over the other stuff.

Glacial Heart is okay, I’m not sure how that’s gonna turn out.

Renewed Focus being a meditation is very amusing. That middle valor slot for AH builds can be used to take meditation mastery, and of course is a natural boon for medi builds.

I don’t know how spirit weapons will fit, but it’s worth a try.

Medi Guardians needed the most help, and they got some.

Yea, I wouldn’t mind a spirit weapon video. :p

And nice video too. I like how you picked the right times to finish people off especially in a 1vX scenario; stuff’s hard. Actually just fighting outnumbered on a guardian and winning is impressive enough. The other thing I noticed is that you were able to win these fights w/o any guard/sigil stacks even when your enemies had them. (Do people usually roam with bloodlust stacks or w/e, btw?)