Guild Wars 2

I turn down pretty much any guild that demands 100% representation. Look for guilds and judge them by their members to find out if they’re just looking to bolster their influence or really trying to create a community.

Not that 100% rep guilds are all bad or anything or just looking out for themselves. But it’s definitely not my type of thing. Incidentally, I almost always rep my guild anyways out of respect, not because I am required to. I’ve known them for a decade for games outside Gw2 though; however I only joined about a year ago.

TyPin.9860:

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

Prysin.8542:

Atherakhia.4086:

snip

I play what i want, i play how i want, i play when and where i want aaaaaaand, wait for it……….. you do the exact same thing.

As we both should. And I’m happy you actually enjoy it. But you’re still as ineffective as any other Ranger.

may i suggest you for once may be wrong? Or maybe your infinite wisdom can finally shed light on something my ranger cannot provide that is not positive.

I could be wrong. 99% of the WvW community isn’t though. Rangers are easily the most ineffective class in WvW.

I respond to this with a quote from Winston Churchil:

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

Adepted for GW2 I want to say, that the mayority of players may not be right about some issues. Also the players writing in the forum and making their opinion public represent not the mayority of players playing the game. Thus, you only know a fraction of WvWer’s opinions through the forum.

I remember back in the day, when every1 said how bad necromancers are and I was beating the hell out of my opponents even 1v3 with a condition build, that was on a pre doom fire patch, before every1 complained about the op-ness of necro conditions.

What I enjoy in this game is one thing:

I am not a really great player. My responses are often slow, my dodges often random or gutt feeling dodges than responsive and my awarness of the battle field is average. Still, by building special builds (I rarely run mainstream builds) I win most of my roaming engagements. This is the matter with my necromancer, with my mesmer and with my (power) ranger.

99% of the players, without wanting to insult anyone, are playing “effective” and the builds that have been “established”. I experiment most of the time, trying new builds and adapting them. If I start out with a maionstream build (with a profession I am unfamiliar with), I quickly adept it to my needs until the build fits my playstyle and not my playstyle fits the build. And I guess that is, what the ranger that was witnessed by the OP was doing. He exploits a niche, that most players are simply not aware of.

Regarding the first part of the post, I agree. It’s hazardous to balance games around the typical player and instead it’s ideal to balance games around the highest level of play otherwise the game will naturally become broken as skill level rises. All player anecdotes need to be taken with a pillar of salt, if not ignored entirely when they pass off stuff as the absolute truth. It’s especially hard, because it’s difficult to find an authority on wvw (hah!)that aren’t self-procaimed… high end gvgers maybe, though the verdict for rangers might be worse there.

On the other hand, it would be necessary to come up with rangers that are competitive in large scale environments and the evidence and argument for that still have to be conceived of before this class can gain credibility in this context.

This change does make sense in a way since methods of acquiring badges have made them a lot more plentiful thanks to achievement chests and the like. Since they’ ve been devalued and don’t require wvw the wxp is a reasonable change, plus it ultimately can be bypassed too. If you can make a legendary you can certainly afford 28 laurels.

Yea, this is sort of a problem when the stuff doesn’t mesh well. I’ll have to preview it myself.

Also, I find it annoying that displaying headgear on someone makes them practically bald or they’re stuffing their hair all in that tiny thing.

You’ll live. Ever since the marks were made larger by default and Greater Marks is now Master instead of adept, it isn’t that required anymore though I still prefer Staff Mastery for faster cooldowns. But many builds don’t need the staff traits at all.

It’s pretty embarrassing that these things aren’t already there, especially stuff like Guild mails.

For a game that calls itself Guild Wars, there’s hardly any focus on it.

AOE AOE AOE capture towers, and should be like 2g an hour; not pretty, but at least it covers your cost.

If you want to be selfish; get one of those really tanky builds that have a cleave weapon. You’ll do pitiful damage but still be able to tag and leech.

Suitability is most important. It means less repair costs, and more time to tag for loot.

Also, use your badges to fill in your exotics.

1500 hours since release is like 2.5 hours a day. That’s more than 10% of your existence devoted to the game…

I honestly wouldn’t hope it’s too much more than that anyways.

I’d rather they introduce new component substitutes so it’s possible to make legendaries without any pve, but I digress.

It can’t be sold in the gem store, so nope.

So, what’s life like being a bad player?

I didn’t approve of wvw map completion but I feel the gift of battle is in inherently a wvw thing, so this is reasonable. Maybe add a way to get it from pvp too?

14 levels is trivial and can be bypassed by laurels anyways not to mention the wvw chests still compensate a little. Badges come from achievement chests. WvW can still be avoided.

So they have time to introduce an entirely new season, reset wxp points, and yet this is a non-priority. They couldn’t like make the season stuff (of which nobody really asked for) come a bit later until things were setup nicely, so clearly we have a contradiction of stuff being ready when it’s ready.

Yea whatever.

There’s definitely a lot of helpful commanders that have made things less of a pain; in particular living world overflow stuff.

In WvW groups when it’s not just a gigantic blob, we have room for many roles front liners (tanks— dat hammer train), support (healers), and dps (backliners).

I don’t think it’s a problem with the combat system at all since it works fine even in a broken environment such as that. It’s an issue of the quality of the encounters— Gw2 prioritizes tactics over strategy, and the later is what people think is everything.

But given how builds like the pve guardian meta builds aren’t total, all out dps, I am starting to question that it’s really just about more dps. Yes, I understand that support and defense just increases dps uptime, but then we’re going into an efficiency issue— it’s not like dps checks are common in this game anyways.

Oh lol, this thread has gotten so serious. A lot of you must be no fun irl if one has to get passionate over the tenets of marriage on the internet.

I mean really, in a game where pixels are allowed to KILL each other, and suddenly marriage is inappropriate? Maybe I’m just indifferent, since I don’t see the characters depicted in game as me so it’s not like I’m marrying someone online much like if I kill someone in pvp/wvw, I’m not actually stabbing them with a flag.

Yes, in a game that lacks critical features such as guild halls and needs improvement elsewhere, this isn’t a priority. But it’s not like they’re mutually exclusive or anything. I mean I hope people realize that the team that fixes bugs is not the same as the people who consider balance. Can’t we file these suggestions under “things to do many years later”? Or no, that makes too much sense?

In small fights, the pet is a decent distraction if not much, it still does something. But you’re still at the mercy of the AI. Rangers actually have a number of decent single target damage skills and immobilizes to make them a threat. The ranger sword is one of the most balanced weapons around and to me is one of the ranger things that isn’t completely kitten. Well, shortbow and GS are alright too

However, once we have a few people or more…

-No good AOE options unless you consider that pitiful root on barrage to be something.
-Situational Stunbreaks
-Bad Stability Options
-Traits are scattered— There’s 3 traits for longbow to make it suck less; Signets 2-3
-The class being kitten is a result of an AI dependent mechanic. There’s also a host of survival options, including the only decent condition removal besides your friggin heal that is pet dependent.
-Garbage Condition Removal aside from HS.

You have a class that pretty much lacks everything that is required for large scale play to the point when it’s arguable that when the class was designed, that they didn’t test the ranger outside of a solo environment.

Outside of it though, pets cannot survive constant pressure, and thus a chunk of your damage and survival potential is immediately taken away. And thus the only way to acquire these things is to be carried by people that do have these things. If you’re able to go in with a sword and come out without reliable condition removal and dubious stability unless you go full out traiting signets and give little support then be my guest.

This doesn’t mean that you couldn’t overcome these problems by playing better. But I would definitely say this class design is fundamentally flawed and needs severe tweaks. If you make a class so heavily focused around a broken, AI dependent mechanic, how can you forsee anything besides failure? The fact that this class has actually seen nerfs to it, does not bode well at all.

For the sake of leveling, i don’t bother with hearts unless they coincide with an event as I’m passing it. That’s reserved for the tedium of map completion.

I’m not a fan of leveling at all, though.

Yea, lol. I meant light fields. :p I edited it now.

But yea, the retaliation is just way too short for it to be of use. It’s hard atm, since I feel mace 2 would be better off having no field.

And yea, agree with everything else as well.

Oh…. I thought it was gonna be about making things harder to find.

But yes, please degrade bloodstone dust to fine or something. Hearing “Sweet, Sweet loot” when this garbage gets picked up is becoming quite the troll.

Ascended gear is a want, not a need, no matter how you spin it so “forced” isn’t too good of an argument. But let’s focus on whether or not adding more methods of acquiral are a good idea while still keeping with the same concepts. The different types of materials on their own are good idea, if you look from it as the perspective as rewarding players for playing in different kinds of content. It’s not too good when certain aspects of it aren’t particularly rewarding from a gameplay stance.

What they could easily do to sidestep all problems to boost the drop rate of ascended for fractals.

Another idea I have is to allow salvaging ascended stuff like unwanted ascended jewelry for… ascended materials. That’s not really that far out is it?

Light* fields wouldn’t blow so hard if the blast finisher was condition cleanse like the other finishers. It still would be inferior to water but at least it would be closer than this brief retaliation garbage. Like we don’t have access to retaliation or something…

*Thanks for catching that

It’s a good skill with a solid active and passive effect. Main problem is fitting it in a build.

That was my point too and why I said OP shouldn’t be obeying arbitrary armor numbers thrown out by people.

As for OP; If you don’t think it helps, then feel free to try it out. Someone with 3k armor takes like 20% less damage than someone with 2500 armor. So instead of dying in 5 attacks you’d die in 4. I think that helps in some cases, but if you can make that up with the extra damage, then go out for it and don’t listen to anyone else if it works.

Spiderwick.1879:

ArchonWing.9480:

Maybe. Some people are capable of it though I definitely am not.

The high armor “requirement” is mostly in the context of zergs due to the high number of incoming damage (and lag too!) requiring a buffer. I would say some buffer (thieves…) is preferred to avoid getting instagibbed, but in smaller groups and especially solo you need damage more. In zergs it’s ok if you hit like a wet noodle because you have many other wet noodles hitting. In a group of 50, you’re only responsible for 2% of the damage if everyone did the same. In group of 5, it’s 20%. Solo well, it’s 100%

This game isn’t balanced around 1v1 though. Some would argue not at all, but it seems optimized for groups of 5 in general.

On a side note, I actually think the meta dungeon speedrunners would actually be more proficient solo/small group (5~) wvw than most of the wvw zerglings due to reliance on “actively try to defend, via virtues, blocks, blinds etc” that you brought up. It’s pretty ironic given the scoffing most wvw’ers have for pve.

If I get hit for a lot of damage having more that 3k armor, and hit just a bit more, when I have lot less, well, it’s clear to go all out on attack and at least try to outsmart your opponent. Know when to dodge, what to block, when to blind, etc.

Guess, maybe the point of the game is not to relly on passive defense, but on active. Example, gear/weapons all on attack, traits most, then take some defensive utilities. Maybe as a guardian. I’m not sure.

Some are saying 2700-2800 armor is a sweetspot, getting more is a waste. But, why even get that if I still get hit by a warior for a lot. Compare that with a small health pool, almost each auto attack can take 5-7% of our health pool. Each auto. So, a chain would take at least 20%.

I’m kinda lost.

Like I said before in my last post, it’s about having the proper buffer. In large scale fights you cannot actively mitigate everything that happens to come your way thus passive defense is needed.

Passive defense and active defense aren’t mutually exclusive. They make each other more effective since you can’t trivially negate all of someone’s attacks if they have half a brain. And also, thieves…

And fights aren’t about just dealing with people’s autoattacks. You may dodge some, you may get hit, and you will heal. So lasting longer does matter. And there’s also burst damage that may just outright finish you off if you have no buffer.

In any case, going all out dps is certainly possible though it’s not as black and white and not to mention that 1v1 scenarios seem to be the exception rather than the norm in wvw.

As I said in the other linked thread, it’s not about conforming to some arbitrary armor value at all times though it’d be much suggested in zergs. Rather, try to maximize your damage without immediately falling flat. This is something you’ll have to find out on your own, most of what you search for on this matter is strictly anecdotal.

Maybe. Some people are capable of it though I definitely am not.

The high armor “requirement” is mostly in the context of zergs due to the high number of incoming damage (and lag too!) requiring a buffer. I would say some buffer (thieves…) is preferred to avoid getting instagibbed, but in smaller groups and especially solo you need damage more. In zergs it’s ok if you hit like a wet noodle because you have many other wet noodles hitting. In a group of 50, you’re only responsible for 2% of the damage if everyone did the same. In group of 5, it’s 20%. Solo well, it’s 100%

This game isn’t balanced around 1v1 though. Some would argue not at all, but it seems optimized for groups of 5 in general.

On a side note, I actually think the meta dungeon speedrunners would actually be more proficient solo/small group (5~) wvw than most of the wvw zerglings due to reliance on “actively try to defend, via virtues, blocks, blinds etc” that you brought up. It’s pretty ironic given the scoffing most wvw’ers have for pve.

Since people might take marriage too seriously, I recommend the more politically correct BFF feature.

A recent thread may be of help; more than what I could do.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/World-Vs-World-The-Guardian-and-You/3750026

I prefer setup #2 if you’re going to zerg. More soldier. IMO too much precision for an AH zerg build is not good because the extra precision isn’t that helpful and you need a health pool to deal with conditions. You’re not running empowering might to power your AH, so the crit is not as useful and even if you did 35% crit with occasional fury buffs from people is more than enough. Thus drop Retributive Armor for Purity or Strength in Numbers. Defender’s flame is a bit dubious too, so if you want to keep Retributive armor, drop defender’s flame then. Personally I’d stick both Purity/Strength in numbers in. Passive condition removal + extra armor is worth the crit chance loss, plus SiN is good for allies. Taking 5% less direct damage while having those offensive stats still is not a bad idea I’d say.

I do not think Divinity runes are a good idea as guardians don’t really benefit from “all stats”; condition damage is utterly wasted. You’d be better off with soldier runes/melandru runes to boost your condition removal and survival or something like hoelbrak if your intent is more damage. Although since you have them already, I guess you could still keep them.

Lastly I’m not a fan of untraited purging flames. It seems like the cooldown is a bit too much and it leaves your POV shouts to be pretty weak.

If you are small grouping though either 1 or 3 is fine. Maybe 1. You’ll need to figure out which activity you prefer more.

Deathmond.7328:

Guardian without 1000 healing? Seems you are playing solo or too selfish.
I see only one really good choice if you wanna to be guardian – cleric + soldier\sentinel
If you wanna to play with high crit\crit damage just go and play for warrior.

Cleric mace guardian is solid in wvw, but there’s a reason why soldier AH guardians are considered standard in big groups (the 0/5/30/30/5 is pretty much the meta build in the OP) and highly sought for. . “Selfish” Ah guardians provide front line support while still being able to do some damage; it’s not just a dichotomy between damage and support just like wvw is not, contrary to popular belief, just about solo play and blob vs blob.

Besides, there’s better things to use than AH solo…

I once had a scepter duel with another guardian. It reminded me a lot of those action movies where people shoot each other and keep missing.

Well it’s 3 globs of ectoplasm now and random dark matter, so it’s all good in the end. :p

It’s pretty easy to hit someone with a scepter in larger fights, but yes it’s not so hot in a 1v1 or something.

Although staff? wut. Granted the damage isn’t too bad in zergs though it’s hardly anything to write home about.

Guardian vs necro seems to come down to who’s better at least when dealing with randoms in wvw. On either side of the conflict, I find that every time I lose, it’s because they clearly outskilled me.

Vs a lesser player:
Me (guardian) vs necro: lol I’m just going to CC you (or even just walk away) when you not subtly turn your DS on and let all the LF drain away. No life force anymore? gg.

Me (necro) vs guardian: lol you just wasted your cooldowns on my first attacks and are now trying to dps me down in DS. Have some fear bro. And you’re trying to run away now.

I don’t run minionmancer builds, though I can imagine how they’re tough to fight.

But yes, neither is god tier in 1v1 sadly ;; This game isn’t really balanced around 1v1 though.

We definitely need more Rambo style looks for guys!

gpassucc.5961:

At around 42 min into the clip you note “it’s funny people still died with all the healing I bring…” This should kinda clue you into the fact that you aren’t being that helpful. With gs s/f you bring cc (binding blade) and ways to avoid damage (3 blinds, personal block focus 5). All of these are completely independent of stats.

I was skimming the video and I just reached that point and wanted to post but you beat me to it.

“You can’t survive without my healing”; and then proceeds to lose half his health. Yea…

People on the boards have said stuff like stacking is an exploit, because umm… they don’t like it.

So I was just messing around and wanted to try out a mace. Bought a berserker’s mace off the TP and it contained carrion stats instead? I thought that was funny and am going to salvage it as guardians have no need for condition damage but how did that happen?

Just to show I’m not crazy, it’s still being sold on the TP: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/25975

You can go check out the TP for level 80 exotic berserker’s maces that have the wrong stats.

IJzerkoekje.4768:

ArchonWing.9480:

Cleric gear is great for support guardian. Problem is that this kind of build is very useless in high end pve, but it works fine in wvw.

Oohh really, I do high end pve the most. What do you suggest for high end pve in type of support? Or is support rarely used there?

Fortunately, guardians provide support in almost all their builds, depending on how you look at it. The favored armor set is berserker, because direct damage scales the best though you can just gradually introduce in zerker pieces as you get more comfortable with the content. There’s actually a decent chance you may die and do more damage overall during the fight than if you were up all the time in tankier specs.

People generally favor dps-support as opposed to cleric style heal-support in high end pve. The popular build these days (10 zeal 30 radiance 5 honor 25 virtues) offers a lot of support because of the virtues lines (traited Wall of Reflect and such) but it does lack in passive survival ability. You will have to learn to use defense like blocks and dodges to keep yourself alive. The reason for this is that instance enemies generally hit too hard for you to actively tank/sustain against.

But this is why I brought up wvw and you might want to check it out— don’t chuck out your ascended chest armor by any means; it does have a place somewhere.

I miss when people actually thought of Cursed Shore as more than just temples.

Cleric gear is great for support guardian. Problem is that this kind of build is very useless in high end pve, but it works fine in wvw.

Shaogin.2679:

I didn’t really think that guardians had much problems with conditions. There seems to be plenty of condition removal skills for the guardian.

Which are unfortunately extremely mediocre if you do a dps build. Add that and all guardians need to make concessions for mobility.

If people are not doing a dps build and still dying to conditions, I would like to say that this class unfortunately can’t be played afk.

Oh, you guys are actually talking about tpvp. Never mind. :S

People are stuck in 2012.

Back then when we had zerk warriors and other classes wearing all sorta of random garbage it was only logical to think that warriors were best by default. But apparently you can zerk with any class in pve…

Though a badly played ranger is much worse than a bad warrior though. And that’s where all the stereotypes start.

Necromancers don’t depend on minions at all. Most of the strong builds in wvw/pve don’t really use minions at all. Though there is a certain point in talking about mediocrity of minions although since the health buff I don’t really see them as that bad. Sadly, they are strong in pvp, and the balance team is why we can’t have good things.

Bone minions are actually really strong. The cooldown is short, and can be used as 2 blast finishers. Along with flesh golem, they are a solid choice in non-minion builds.

I’m no fan of bone fiend, and single target immobolize isn’t that exciting; damage is meh and it dies fast. This could use a retooling.

Shadow fiend is good and is often one of the more durable minions. It’s blind is kinda there and I guess sort of boring, but not too bad.

Not really sure why Flesh Golem is put in here. Only problem is that it doesn’t work underwater. It does good damage and has an AOE knockdown and the cooldown is reasonable for an elite skill.

In any case, you’d get a lot of agreement in the poor design of the class, but just because minionmancers are niche doesn’t mean there aren’t many other builds that work.

NeXeD.3042:

There is so much fail here I cannot tell if this is unbelievably dumb or an epic troll.

To be fair, a lot of people including myself initially rolled the class to manage minions and were underwhelmed.

And Anet doesn’t really care about this class. OP just got it right for the wrong reasons.

I have about half as many hours, though I doubt I’ll have a legendary by then since I don’t really care for one. I don’t even find the skins that impressive, except maybe the scepter or something.

Of all those hours played, how many were devoted solely to getting one?

There definitely are some wrong assumptions they’re making here, but wonder if ears are even open or they’ll just ignore us and move along. :S

Brilliant Anet, just brilliant. Make yourself money while doing the right thing. The free transfers to low servers are not a bad idea at all to help repopulate them. Meanwhile, Anet did an excellent job of trolling season 1 bandwagoners to pay overpriced transfer costs which ended up with crappy rewards.

Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice…

I see…

315 742 missed 315 742 315 742 315 742 2048 315 742 315 742 1682 315 742 315 742 315 742 315 742

Finish them!

Stop spamming marks.

Oh this is 1v1? Never seen one before.

0/30/0/20/20…. well, I’m not going to hate on it because I sometimes use this trait spread in wvw a lot but unfortunately range is kitten in pve and this build shouldn’t be used in dungeons. Smite isn’t particularly good on anything but the largest targets. It may have some application against hard to hit targets but that’s exceedingly rare in pve. Also signets are frowned upon because they don’t offer group support. Well, judgement kinda does. Staff isn’t a good idea in dungeons either. Personally, I’d take Master of Concentrations and put up wall of reflect and/or purging flames in place of the signets. You may keep judgement if you insist. Empowering Might is better than 2hm because you crit so much with scepter. Don’t bother with perfect inscriptions; going 30 radiance with a one hander makes it a crime to not take right handed strength. Have fun with it farming Living Story or Orr. Or maybe if you pick up interest in wvw, which pretty much accepts guardians in any form.

Also, the standard pve 10/30/0/5/25 dungeon build works with it as well though.

You just have to wait until people in the higher tiers get disillusioned by multi-hour queues, unplayable lag, and general boredom of red sea vs green sea.

Might not be long.

I remember during leagues I couldn’t even play wvw at all unless I took a nap waiting. I had to shelve my guardian for a while because I had fired off a birthday booster and I wasn’t going to waste it on queues. Now that my server is “imploding” I can play wvw again and see a bunch of familiar faces. Win or lose, it’s just a game.

They should really discount transfers, in any case.

xFireize.6318:

ArchonWing.9480:

Yes, I mistakenly thought that in this scenario that every ally would have all their conditions converted to boons. You can scratch that point.

Though, I never said you were whining. That’s my job, but you are free to restrict the topic to such. I think it’s more of a fundamental design issue, in that I think that PoV is weak and SY is fine.

Oh lol no no. I would agree as well that “SY!” would be absurdly overpowered if that’s the case.

I apologize if I sounded harsh. I’m kinda cynical because I’ve seen many guardian threads got out of hand because one person started whining. It triggers a swarm of absurd buffs suggestions.

No problem. I would be pretty hypocritical to really condemn you for being harsh.

Anyhow, yea too much hyperbole about negative stuff has ruined many threads across Gw2. I swear we could talk about what’s the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich and someone would come screaming about how terrible healing signet is and low guardian health. :p Though the condition-hp relationship is a touching issue for some.

But yea, it’s good that you’re making an attempt to figure it out how it works, because it’s honestly not very intuitive and even the wiki is confusing sometimes on these matters. It will only help the game more if its mechanics are more consistent and transparent.

It’s the same up here too, just less. One of the biggest difference between low and high tiers is coverage. When both sides can field a blob, there’s more fighting going on, but said blob becomes harder to make during certain times of day the lower you go. Sure there are guild groups looking for fights, but there are even more just looking to pvdoor and avoid enemy players at all costs. This why many servers including mine seeks off hour coverage, either to stop pvdoor’s or to pvdoor themselves.

If you read any server matchup thread, there’s always accusations of this.

This very same complaint seems to happen across wvw, and is an inherent problem of this game mode. WvW is also the red headed step child of Gw2, so don’t expect them to care any time soon.

As for jumping ship, I’m not spending a single copper on any kind of transfer, even if it means that I never play WvW again. By keeping WvW as stagnant as possible (hey same maps forever! Well, at least EOTM is a step) and taking forever to implement basic stuff like Account WxP, I guess we can bore people enough until they bother moving up to servers where they can find some action. I’m not supporting this scheme. And no, I don’t blame anyone for transferring either.

Shelter I’d say is the more reliable heal. The thing is that you will be fighting against people with tons of ways to knock you over/stun you, and if you get bursted down, you might not be able to even get the heal off with SoR in time.

You need to remember, if you get interrupted, your heal goes on cooldown for a few seconds, and that’s not what you want.

Condition removal is good too, but burst kills people. With the cooldown trait, it becomes a lot more competitive though.