Guild Wars 2

I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, brazil. I take it back.

Fractals was designed to be hardcore, old school, “get it only if you’re lucky or farm it hard”, gameplay so I doubt they’ll make it easier to get those fractal skins. I’m not advocating any particular position, just explaining why it is in the current format. Of course, I don’t know for sure since I’m not a dev, but that’s what the evidence points to. Of course, we can always hope.

Where are the outrageous things he said? I want to be outraged but I can’t be because nothing bad was said and your little Train v Train™ “esport” was never interrupted.

I’d go with “Exagger-gate” because all I see is “zomg world is falling down because someone said something I don’t like”, but that’s just me.

Cute that people still don’t know ranger was buffed into one of the best PvE dungeon professions with spotter (150 precision aoe, always on) and frost spirit (7% dps flat for everyone in the group), not to mention tons of fury and lots of heals and aoe condi removal. Did you know with fortifying bond, companion’s might, and a sigil of strength, you can keep up 25 might stacks on pet without blasting might? Did you know your pet won’t get boons without fortifying bond? Didn’t think so because, well, your knowledge of ranger profession is nil.

As far as necro and engi goes, they’re both powerful and you’ll have fun playing them, just make sure you’re using meta builds.

Someday people might learn that rangers are A) efficient in pve dungeons and deeper and more complex than they realize. If you think ranger is boring, you don’t know how to play it.

Do we really want full ascended Valkyrie thieves in wvw? Honest question.

Best way is to stand in a ranger’s healing spring (vigorous renewal) or to get a ranger in your party with vigorous training (bird/moa grant aoe vigor on swap).

I wish I had over 9000 youtube views too. Someday I’ll be cool like you, Brazil. I’d have to move back into my Mom’s basement first though. Then we can start from the same foundation.

“spammable target drop”

@ _ @

Ryan.8367:

I’m enjoying people defend the kittenty pet AI while I’m destroying people now on my mesmer, thief and guardian class compared to my ranger which I no longer play because of it’s lack of effectiveness in wvw compared to other classes. Oh the irony.

Sorry, but delusional people play ranger, then they play another class, and realize the world of difference between the two. It’s not just pet AI that’s the issue with rangers, it’s utility , weapon synergy and coefficients.

I have been looking for someone to spar with. Maybe you can help me test my ranger builds in the field?

You must not like keyboards.

I always thought the dedicated healer was the most experienced player in the dungeon simply because he or she ends up saving everyone else’s behinds.

If you guys tell another inside joke I’m going to pepper the dungeon forums with bearbow propaganda.

I also want to add that dire, rabid, and carrion are all arguably good stats for rangers. Sure, apothecary/settlers is the most popular but then you got rabid (shortbow/bleeds/traps) being popular too, along with rampager (perplexity or bleeds) and valkryie (seeing a lot of power rangers these days, they must like the taste of DPS).

Then you got dire (zerg armor for ranger?) and then carrion (longbow/sun spirit build, not popular but effective).

A lot of ranger criticism comes due to the pet. You’ll see 90% of the complaints regard the pet. So hopefully, if we take a step back, we can appreciate the variety of builds rangers have in wvw right now. Some are more effective than others in various situations but, really, there’s a decent amount of variety.

There isn’t just one answer. The flip side is that there aren’t many ways you can go wrong.

Well [Swoop], [Muddy Terrain], and [Frost Trap]\[Spike Trap] are independent of stats and provide escapability. Soften the Fall is a good escape skill off a ledge since it activates Muddy Terrain.

You better check again because they don’t do too badly. Maybe with their aoe poison shot. That’s a slow attack. But I been using paralyze spider all week. Works great.

Did I make a thread on apothecary? I don’t think I did. Check jubskie’s sticky for apothecary guides…they’re probably slightly outdated so keep that in mind and read up on patch notes that happened afterwards.

I’ve learned to still beat warriors roaming in wvw, without beastmaster / regen. It was such a relief to find a way to beat them (stun warriors)—still good battles, I still lose to a better player occasionally (great ele’s always scare me, anything really—except one).

The thief. They necessitate aoe spam right now.

Any thief can reset the fight and run away. I fought a thief 1v1 yesterday (without aoe dmg) near the new central ruins. I made that player shadow refuge three times, each time the thief was able to reset the fight and just try to catch me off my guard again.

I don’t like that kind of fighting style because it feels cheap. If only I could force a reveal on them before they tried to pop that shadow refuge…

Advent Leader.1083:

Ranger query, though: what the hell is MH axe supposed to be good at?

Mobs and stuff that tries to crit. Except it’s really bad against a single target, unless you really value the weakness you get for pet hit on [Winter’s Bite].

swiftpaw.6397:

Chopps.5047:

Longbow at max range is comparable to sword and much better DPS than axe on a single target

Something tells me a lot of things are better than axe at single target dps.

Most weapons in the game are, check the linked google doc.

No.

How do you make a crit bigger? More power.

How do you get more power? By increasing your vitality and eating +6% vitality to power and +4% toughness to power. You use a bloodlust sigil. You use dragon’s breath bun type food. In this way, I don’t care if you’re ranger or thief. You will get more power and do more burst on that 1 shot. This is the 1 shot build whether you believe it or not. Notice I never mentioned a specific trait here besides the grandmaster that lets you get the free crit. Besides that, I only said to build in vitality, use maintenance oil and dragons breath bun, and wear Valkyrie. Any profession can do that but thieves get a free crit for stealthing. So they should be able to pop out, to a 10k or 15k burst, then stealth again. This is the build that is upsetting players and why we’re getting anti stealth.

Again: if a ranger is on tape doing a 23,000 crit on an upleveled weakling, I’m sure thief can crit much harder. Or are you admitting that thief cannot burst like ranger? Lol

I got you guys between a rock and a hard place. Either you admit ranger can burst more than thief or admit that thief can crit more than 5k.

I think the introduction of “reveal” on a shout shows that ANET wants to take the direction of making the counterplay be more active. By that, I mean you have to predict the stealth and negate it as opposed to simply being able to target in stealth. That’s a design choice for gameplay reasons.

Lol, no warriors don’t. This again? This was put to rest months ago with the spotter buff and introduction of vigorous spirits. Ranger is awesome in pve except for the occasional pet getting nuked.

Bogey.5423:

Chopps.5047:

How can there be a ranger video of a 23k [Maul] (jubskie’s sticky on ranger forums has a link to the 23k Maul thread and video) yet thieves here saying they only get 5k backstabs. That’s ridiculous. Thieves have a troll build they can practically 1 shot anyone with—out of NO where— and it probably uses Valkyrie gear and power stacking. And all you berserker thieves are denying it because you never built with vitality or crit out of stealth because VITALITY DOES NO DIIIIIIIPS BRO. (Couldn’t be more wrong when in gw2, vitality is used in burst/Valkyrie builds). Someone is trolling and it’s not me. These are facts.

Have to admit that I don’t quite get this. Berserker’s gear has power, precision and critical damage, so that would be the highest damage potential gear and the highest out of stealth critical damage. What kind of build are you talking about with Valkyrie gear? I run PTV gear and berskerker’s trinkets and do about 5k backstabs, but then again I might be a little bit on low side of damage. Build to sustain a bit longer fight and take down full berserker thieves.

EDIT: With my build there is no way of taking down even moderately skilled warrior roamer (healing signet, greatword, stuns) that does not commit too much.

Allow me to explain. If you get a free crit out of stealth, you don’t ever need precision. See, instead you can go full valkryie(power vitality crit dmg). Rangers, for example, get “remorseless” which gives a free crit after stealth through opening strikes re-application and the activation of the 25 point marksmanship trait of Precise Strikes. We can also convert vitality to power through traits like strength of spirit (5% vitality to power) or food, like a sharpening stone or maintenance oils. Now eat dragons breath bun for another 10% crit damage and more power after kill.

That’s how you maximize power and crits. Berserker is big, sustained damage. Valkryie is insane, massive burst on one blow, then few crits afterwards. If you want to spike, you play Valkyrie in pvp, not berserker, at least with ranger and thief.

colesy.8490:

Pro-GvGers are elitists? How?

I forgot the “/s”. Forgot someone might not get the joke (we’re in a pve forum so I was teasing gvg’ers). Didn’t mean to offend.

That just gave me an idea: I’m upping the ante. Beat Simin with 5 naked longbow rangers and you’ll get more shock value out of the video.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

I think Chopps is one of those 90% of testers

I just use longbow and let my bear solo everything. It’s awesome.

haviz.1340:

Chopps.5047:

Lol haviz I agree in sentiment but look what you wrote: “It was not a DPS check unless you suck”.

Sucking and DPS are two different things. rT is good, right? You might even say elite. If I gave you all Dire gear, do you think you’d be able to beat the old Simin? Hmmmm

A DPS check is a DPS check whether or not you suck. I don’t think might, fury, or anything really would have allowed you to defeat old simin in Dire. Maybe if you nailed the sparks every time.

Show me an rT video of beating the current Simin in full Dire stats.

Before all those nerfs I was joining random parties stuck at simin. If said party wasn’t made up with frenchies, we usually beat her after 5-15 minutes.

I also beat her with two necros, one with blues and 700 ap, second one with 1200.

What I meant previously was that you could be decent and do it normally assuming average dps or suck and want to have 4 warriors with a mesmer. The latter was kind of brute force bads could use to overcome this extreme challenge.

Once again, late Robert said he had watched their testers and they had no issues with Simin. Do you think their testers are filthy elitists, considering less than 10% completed normal Liadri?

No one sane runs 5 condition damage dealers in pve. It’s whole game flaw, not one “dps check” enounter.

The only filthy elitists in gw2 are the “pro GvG” crowd. I’m a big fan of rT and you guys that post fast videos. As far as I know, a solo of Lupi is a pre-req for rT which is why I said they’re among the elite pve players, which is probably an accurate statement, right?

Still, sadly, we’ll never see an attempt naked vs the old simin. I’d say pulling that off even now would be quite a feat.

I mean, if you win, I have to eat my words, right? Because you would be proving that skill >> dps gear check.

It seems berserker gear would be sort of a boost for less skilled players, a handicap per se. All I run is berserker in pve. By implication, I guess we’re all nubbs playing a handicap.

But only if you win. Haha

Dub.1273:

I can do it naked.

Lol read my mind. I’ll be waiting for the video. Good luck guys.

spoj.9672:

Spark pulls are more important than dps on simin.

I do not doubt this. Would be a cool video to see. Naked is the ultimate challenge. Why pay for Dire? Just do it naked.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Are you going to buy us all full Dire gear? You could at least come up with a real challenge.

If two people can do it in Berserker gear, I’m pretty confident 5 people can do it with Dire gear.

I mis-spoke because I have not the gold.

Fighting rangers, for me, in the wild is like fighting elementalists. I usually win decisively. But every once in a while I fight an ele that’s just like “omg how did she do that? Amazing” after winning in a 2v1.

Maybe your friends in map chat never see those moments (or block them out of their minds).

Lol haviz I agree in sentiment but look what you wrote: “It was not a DPS check unless you suck”.

Sucking and DPS are two different things. rT is good, right? You might even say elite. If I gave you all Dire gear, do you think you’d be able to beat the old Simin? Hmmmm

A DPS check is a DPS check whether or not you suck. I don’t think might, fury, or anything really would have allowed you to defeat old simin in Dire. Maybe if you nailed the sparks every time.

Show me an rT video of beating the current Simin in full Dire stats. (I’m seeing 5 ele’s and FGS haha)

Vaxx.3178:

Chopps.5047:

lol @ stubbornness

You need to learn to play. I’m trying to help you. But go ahead and keep using cats and birds on moving targets without any crowd control or cripple. You must like not hitting things. Go ahead and pick useless pets for your build, I really don’t care if you lose in battles.

You ever heard of the Yin and the Yang? That’s the ranger and the pet. They should compliment each other. If you’re going to build Yin and the Yin, I can’t really feel sorry for you.

lol @ not knowing who you are replying to.

First off, how do you know I need to learn to play? Do you know me? Second, I don’t need your “help” as I did not ask for it.

Maybe you are trying to “school” someone else in this thread. Take it to them, not me.

Secondly, I don’t use birds or cats. If someone would like to use them, good for them. The point I am making is….a person should not have to use a certain pet in order to be effective. ALL pets should be. Anet dropped the ball on moving targets and pets ability to hit them.

Fanboisim statements like yours confirms there are plenty of dolts that just take mediocre mechanics and deal with them, and use the tired old statement of “l2p” to compensate.

The only thing your post is missing is calling someone “son”. But keep it up, I am sure you can get there.

Relax, son.

jcbroe.4329:

Curiously, for the people still doing teq, are you guys making sure to abuse piercing arrows and his multiple hit boxes? Standing to the side of him will net you 2x hits with piercing arrows, literally doubling your DPS. Barrage can also hit 2 places at once.

I don’t see nearly enough people utilizing that strategy.

Genius, didn’t think of that.

Coarr.3286:

Yaki.9563:

Coarr.3286:

my ranger heals for 1500/sec

LOL no.

976 troll urgent
+255 regeneration
+85 mango pie
+122reg signet of the wild
________________
=1438

sry you are right, i heal for 1438 a sec. my mistake.

ohhh and sigil of blood every 2 sec for 553.

976 troll urgent
+255 regeneration
+85 mango pie
+122reg signet of the wild
+276,5 ( 553 / 2 ) superior sigil of blood
________________
=1714,5 HP / sec

-488 ( 50% troll urgent uptime )
________________
= 1226,5 HP / sec permanent healing

any more questions?

These kids don’t have a clue. No reason to talk sense into them. I mean, you don’t ven have Natural Healing lol they literally know nothing about regen ranger.

How can there be a ranger video of a 23k [Maul] (jubskie’s sticky on ranger forums has a link to the 23k Maul thread and video) yet thieves here saying they only get 5k backstabs. That’s ridiculous. Thieves have a troll build they can practically 1 shot anyone with—out of NO where— and it probably uses Valkyrie gear and power stacking. And all you berserker thieves are denying it because you never built with vitality or crit out of stealth because VITALITY DOES NO DIIIIIIIPS BRO. (Couldn’t be more wrong when in gw2, vitality is used in burst/Valkyrie builds). Someone is trolling and it’s not me. These are facts.

Simin was nerfed once already…zerker and boons or go home. It used to be a hard DPS check. The sparks used to aggro pets hard. You should be glad you have it easy.

Keep your longbow stowed, kirin

Rens.9870:

Am I the only one praying for 1h sword changes after they mentioned there would be changes to some weapons?

Hopefully. I really hope they don’t change the sword significantly. Maybe allow a dodge during a leap but I’ve grown passed that problem a long time ago. It’s such a nonissue that I hate seeing devs waste time on it due to people that cannot bother themselves to turn off autoattack and just practice moving with it.

Thief comes out of stealth, I am using beastmaster build and press “sic em”. I now cripple the thief with shortbow or try to stun and attempt to cast muddy terrain on thief. Cast is successful. Thief eats massive bird burst from sic em and traits. Thief is dead. And I can use muddy terrain / sic em combo really on any profession. Someone will post a video along these lines and everyone will stop worrying about “how much it will suxors”.

Sic em + entangle + bonfire GG

Sic em + muddy terrain + auto GG

What else can you think of?

Khayoss.2019:

So my question is this. If the AI required to hit a moving target is so complex and CPU intensive, how come my EQ and EQ2 Beastlords and Shaman, my Vanguard Shaman, my FFXI Beastlord and other pet classes I’ve played over the last 15 years never had such a problem?

Go back to EQ in 1999 and you could type /follow to put your character on cruise control and follow anyone anywhere as long as they didn’t get you stuck on a tree somewhere. You were always spaced directly a foot or so behind your /follow target and never got confused over which direction they may be heading, and barring any speed buff mismatches or terrain malfunctions that got you stuck you could stay that way for an indefinite amount of time.

Fast forward to 2013 and GW2, my pet can’t even follow me around out of combat without charging off in random directions as it tries to follow and perceive and react to my movement as I run across the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8ROD17gjtsE
If it can’t even follow me properly, how does it ever have a hope of following a moving enemy? Compound that with the attack delays demonstrated in Kilirk’s video above, our pets don’t stand a chance.

In the games I mentioned above as well as others, pets also attacked as they moved. If you have interest in seeing them, go google pvp fight videos from them and watch how pets consistently hit moving targets while moving themselves.

Some games also gave you control of several pet skills as well as full pet UI’s that showed health, conditions, gave many pet commands (or allowed custom binding of commands using macros) and it was never a learning curve or control problem for any of the however many hundreds of thousands of players that played them, so again I call BS on the learning curve argument that ANet puts forth on the pet system here.

You can defend it all you like, but the fact of the matter is that the pet system they have implemented is not up to par with games developed a decade plus before it, is not able to keep pace with human opponents, and is not able to compete properly against the content that they themselves are introducing into their game. If it can’t be brought up to par – for ANY reason – it should be replaced with a completely separate mechanic that can compete on a level playing field. Making excuses about how it is hard to do what the players want, or how it works great in controlled circumstances is total crap.

Also, some of the AI required to hit moving targets is actually present in the game already. For example, compare drakes to veteran ice worms. Drakes stop, charge an attack facing whatever direction you happened to be when they started and never think about changing until the attack is complete. Ice works begin channeling their skills facing wherever you were, turn to wherever you are when they are done, and then throw their rocks which then heat seek towards you and hit you on the run unless you actually evade or run out of range. ALL ranged NPC attacks with any kind of cast timer should do this by default game wide, not just our pets. But ESPECIALLY our pets that are expected to face other players should AT LEAST be given this advantage. Melee range attacks should happen without stopping the pets movement, unless they literally have zero activation time.

Read my post above this: cats and birds will never hit moving targets because they’re intentionally designed not to. I go into detail as to “why”.

NargofWoV.4267:

How do you know you’re going to be fighting a moving target? A stationary target? A hidden target? Chopps every answer can’t be… Easy use this pet in this situation… We only get 2 up. Glad you can anticipate what fight you’re going to have before you have it.

Easy. You create the conditions for it. That’s part of the reason we get abilities like Muddy Terrain or Frost Trap. Or a cripple on sword autoattack or shortbow. Or a trait like agility training. These things help cats and birds land hits and creates interplay between the ranger and the pet. So clearly we’re in beastmaster/regen territory here.

If you’re running rabid bleeds, you probably want a drakehound and a spider to immobilize which gives you a means to control stun warriors (also muddy terrain). If you’re running traps with rabid, hyenas are great for multiple knockdown in a trap. The paralyze spider’s immobilize is very good.

What about zerging? Drakes really aren’t too bad, neither are moas or bears. Hopefully that situation gets a buff.

What about dungeons? It depends. Need more fury? Red moa. (Gain in group dps from fury boom is much greater than the loss in dps from switching to moa). I like moas in general because of the healing skill in dungeons, that’s nice for melee players. But a lot of times, especially in early dungeon designs, bosses are stationary so for practiced groups birds are a no-brainer because DPS is king in that situation.

What if you’re a new ranger and can’t micro pets well? Devourer. Devourer is great for the experienced ranger too: you can stand behind it and dps while it body blocks projectiles. I do this all the time.

It’s very clear: choose the right pet for the job.

> but why are all the other skills performed by pets “stop and attack” style.

They’re not. Use dogs or spiders. Look at this graph:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/48266/Ranger_Pet_DPS_Comparison_NEW_1.jpg

Some pets (birds and cats for example) lose a TON of attack DPS from chasing moving targets.

This is intentional and something ANET gave us to build around. Think about that. Also, spider DPS is not strongly function of moving targets and looks pretty good against them (bottom right).

You worry too much, g. [Winter’s Bite]

lol @ stubbornness

You need to learn to play. I’m trying to help you. But go ahead and keep using cats and birds on moving targets without any crowd control or cripple. You must like not hitting things. Go ahead and pick useless pets for your build, I really don’t care if you lose in battles.

You ever heard of the Yin and the Yang? That’s the ranger and the pet. They should compliment each other. If you’re going to build Yin and the Yin, I can’t really feel sorry for you.

The overpoweredness is strong with this thread.

Longbow at max range is comparable to sword and much better DPS than axe on a single target

source:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AogEBO_JoiiBdDVyMTFGaDkzVXRhMjVRV0J3cnNPTHc&usp=sharing#gid=0

You can see that with fortifying bond and birds on the boss, even the pets would get telepathic boons. You know what that means?

That means the rangers could get an impressively fast kill this way and you guys are just being knuckleheads about it. Speed record? No. Still faster than you think. The so-called “bearbows” just don’t know how to longbow, son.

If you’re on EU I’m willing to help you test this.

I don’t think changing the ranger/pet damage ratios or perma stow are keys. I think the health buff should be a good start though. Besides tweaks to pet abilities (like bear and moa are rumored to be getting)—I mean, remember the drake rework? Pets perform differently depending on if the target is moving and other factors. I suggest learning more of them.