Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the insight, pistol whip. I think you’re close to the mark. We’ll have to see what direction ANET takes it and if these leaks are indeed close to reality.

By the way, how much is ANET loving these leaks right now? If they didn’t do it themselves, they may have been a little worried at first. But now this seems like the best thing ever. It’s huge PR as far as MMOs go. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m excited to get out my beastmaster this weekend. I might even post my favorite spvp build right now. Ah, you guys wouldn’t care.

Ryan.8367:

Seems good , but how long does your pet stay alive for in dungeons regarding AoE / Targetted Dmg? I’m genuinely asking as I don’t PvE at all and I’ve always been told AoE’s are quite common in dungeons which completely destroys your pet.

Nope, not the case when you run bark skin + natural healing or bark skin + signet of the wild + BM points (at least 15). I like to run rampager armor with berserker trinkets when I run that build because you naturally get condition damage with the WS traitline and you can blast bonfire and flame trap for might.

Another option is to drop BM points entirely and run signet of the wild + ‘Guard’. Troll unguent and heal as one become more attractive the less points you put in BM. But with 30 in BM, you should be using healing spring. Healing spring is often better just hecause it’s a water field, even with 0 in BM. But sometimes you don’t know if you’ll be able to blast it easily (Lupicus, for example), so burst heals and big heals begin to look better. Every encounter is at your grasp with the right setup.

Also, when traited for shout reduction, guard is basically permanent stealth. You know how everyone cries and moans about ranger pets in the Jade Maw encounter? First of all, you’ll be glad you have them eating some lasers if crystals are scarce, but if you don’t want it eating lasers, use the jaguar and Guard (time the skills right—pet utility and shout—and pet is permanently stealthed and out of the way).

Believe me, it works. Try my flame and frost build with drakes. It’s pretty good. A good variation is using peircing arrows and replacing frost trap with signet of the wild. I think someone suggested that in that particular thread. And it works really well!

Kain Francois.4328:

I re-read the patch notes. Before we all start QQing, check out:

Companion’s Might: This trait now grants 5 seconds of might to your pet, up from 1 second.

If it has no cooldown, this will be overpowered as heck!

Pet damage vastly increased in the longrun!

Indeed, this could make up for lost power. Be aware that boons can be stripped or corrupted. Nonetheless, I see this becoming the new ‘Pet Prowess’ in terms of cranking up pet damage.

“Unconditional need for bleed” sounds like a cool name for a build…didn’t xsorsus bring up a rampager bleed build the other day? That sounded pretty fun to me.

Thank you for sharing

If you indeed posted this before, to me, isn’t it evidence the hoaxer copied your post and changed a few minor things. Did you post this before the leak???

randomfightfan.4091:

Trying to get a warrior to use his bow f1 is about as easy as getting blood from a stone. They are so ignorant and afraid of that skill that I was literly kicked from a cof run b/c I asked one of the warriors to drop his f1 so I could give the team 25 might. Their reasoning for why it was such a horrible idea? Apparently them equiping bow would drop team dps too much. It’s funny b/c they just avoided the fact that they could use the built up adrenaline from past fights and use healing surge to fill it back up again OR they could just swap back on axe/mace after dropping the field/before combat. Alas, pugs will remain ignorant but never lose their all-knowing attitude until strife makes another vid (needs 4 wars though) showing that fire+blast=good.

Yeah, pretty much. They’d probably watch part of your video then stop at the first slightly incorrect fact, negating the opportunity to learn something new out of pure arrogance.

jubskie.3152:

nagymbear.5280:

Bran.7425:

With the general state of discontent on this sub-forum I doubt we will see a developer here for some time.

Trust me, they are reading this. They won’t comment here though. Its hardly a strange coincidence that the patch notes were leaked so that players can discuss it all during the weekend.

So how about giving some constructive feedbeck on these “leaked” patch notes.
Like how about Natures voice doesn’t give 10 secs of swiftness, but 5 secs of vigor. Or gives 10 sec of vigor, but guard cooldown is raised to 20s. Rangers never had much access to protection/retal in the first place, but vigor fits Rangers well.
Or how about eagle eye raising shortbow range as well.

I would also remind everyone that the devs are listening to us to an extent. Evasive purity was moved 1 tier down, path of scars does pull targets now, spirit traits were merged, they shortened the longbow aftercast, and raised projectile speed as well, they fixed Companion’s might. We were moaning about how pigenholed we are (other classes were as well mind you) into 1-2 viable builds. Of course its not all amazing, but there are changes that were necessary, and that we asked for. Some we didn’t get, like the buff to longbow that everyone wanted, but lets test longbow first. Maybe – and its a massive maybe – this 15% projectile speed increase will solve a lot of out of range/missed problems we were having with it.

Yay! Finally someone that makes sense

Yeah, thanks for the insight. I’m afraid a bout of rage might blind players from this message.

BolshoiBooze.3406:

He explained it pretty clearly, I don’t know what part you don’t understand… Being carried: your team is doing the most of the work, you’re not doing anything vital.

While this might be true, I do think rangers can be used effectively in dungeons, just not nearly as effectively as just about any other class. Personal skill is a big factor in this.

Define “doing most of the work”. That isn’t clear at all. What do you mean by that? Be precise. Stop using generalities.

@castalia

By saying “flawed argument is flawed”, you’re utilizing the circular argument fallacy. I guess my argument is flawed. Why? Simple! Because it’s flawed!

Holland.9351:

I hope for some undocumented changes, like:
- the family restriction removed from the master pet traits,
- the flanking restriction removed from the shortbow,
- the out-of-range pet restriction removed from the Signet of Renewal,
- the living pet restriction removed from the Signet of Renewal.
- the out-of-range pet restriction removed from Protect Me,
- Search & Rescue not going on cooldown when it’s not used,
- Search & Rescue causing the pet to instantly blink to the target,
- Pets gaining an evade on ranger dodge.
- Pets becoming immune to AoE damage in dungeons and fractals.
- Melee pets being able to attack the Elemental boss in the snow fractal.

My god, I would love these.

You still haven’t defined ‘carried’ in a convincing way. Let’s say I play elementalist or engineer or thief in a dungeon. What do I have to do to not be carried according to your definition? Is it 7 might stacks and fury? Or reflection? What do you want? Must one use Strife’s build to “not be carried”?

Be clear and don’t resort to generalities. What does it mean to be carried? Because so far you are saying to play ranger is to be carried. And I don’t think most players would agree with that. I’ve carried tons of non-rangers.

Be specific, please.

Well to get back to the point, so far you’ve defined being carried as playing ranger. Am I understanding this correctly? Is there no other criteria?

By that definition, I’m not carried because I wouldn’t do well with another profession. I’m mich more practiced with ranger, although I have one of each.

Do you know how many times I’ve carried a party through Arah or a fractal? I can’t even count how many. It’s a lot. Helping your team in a dungeon is more than a profession. It’s a mindset. It’s knowing the dungeon and being able to lead a team that falters.

Define being carried.

Lol ya. Dungeons are really easy though so having a ranger really only helps, particularly when there’s not a perfect meta team comp available. Rangers do a good job filling gaps in team comps. Besides, afaik, no one theorycrafts a team comp with ranger in it for dungeons. The popular players won’t because they say the pet dies too much (which really shows their lack of understanding of ranger since pet death is only a problem on a few specific encounters—assuming you’re using a build with ways to protect the pet).

Whenever I have rangers in the party we do well. The offhands are all great (torch for might stacking, warhorn for fury etc, and axe for reflect). Ranger has more access to quickness than most think (pretty sure it’s something like 12% uptime with QZ and 5 in BM), and an instant revive elite that often comes in handy.

I just think it’s shortsighted to simply say “ranger sucks” because I don’t see that most of the time, particularly in dungeons less explored and pick up groups. Really, the truth is rangers in dungeons have been hated on based on exaggerrated claims. If it was that bad, how could I have earned every armor set and farmed nearly every dungeon in the game? We just beat fractals 48 using two rangers in the party. It’s not a big deal.

Both golf and poker involve luck, are rewarded, and not only that—we celebrate the best players in those games. There is an element of luck in most competition—and in life too. Many people are rewarded in real life for being lucky.

Also, be careful what you wish for…who’s to say you’d be successful in this skill game for rewards you allude to? Hundreds of thousands of people play this game. Just saying

ProxyDamage.9826:

Taran Redleaf.7912:

Guess I’ll keep my ranger in farm mode until this profession gets fixed.

Why bother with that? Rangers are among the worst PvE professions.

How do you figure?

Bryzy.2719:

I think the patch notes are real. Who would sit there for hours putting together such realistic sounding notes for EVERY class? If they wanted to cause mayhem they would have put in way bigger nerfs. We were already expecting massive pet nerfs from what the devs said themselves.

Those notes say there’s a guardian skill that gets a 500% buff. I find that unlikely.

Why do people say BM is OP? Run any other build and try to stand toe to toe with a phastasm mesmer. BM has many drawbacks too. Rangers literally have one basic build right now where the idea is to give yourself and your pet huge regen.

Looks fake to me :/

Let me know if you need a back up. This thread is the official sign up area, right?

Name: Faelwan
Account name: Chopps
Rank: 10
Recording: maybe, details later…I want to test framerates

I’m pretty sure this is a hoax.

The more I read that the more I wonder if it’s a hoax. Can anyone verify?

Wow, great work on the paste bin. Looks like huge longbow buffs and powerful reworks on traits. I called it too! Evasive purity became a master trait. :p

And, by the way, call lightening was already strong but a 150% buff? That’s what I’m talking about!

The bear weakness is pretty weak IMHO. Don’t forget cave spider’s utility skill that allows the spider to cast weakness and vulnerability on the next two attacks.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakening_Venom

[Winter’s Bite] means chill axe guys.

What if they moved evasive purity to a major skill and allowed it to remove blind, poison, and torment on dodge? That would make me happy. The point is that it’s better to chill axe until we have all of the facts.

@people complaining about rangers not being mentioned every time a dev speaks

Chill axe. Winter’s Bite.

Have you ever tried recording a wild wolf? I heard they lost a couple interns that way.

Just a related thought: If you have multiple commander tags, then make sure you give the two commanders similar names so PUGs on the map recognize you. Few people put faith in a commander they haven’t won battles with and/or don’t recognize.

That’s a logical direction to go. Try stacking sigils and runes that proc bleeding. Bleeding on crit is good with high skirmishing. Then there’s spike trap and sharpened stone. Have fun!

A pet that grants stability? o.0

Second that motion! Technically plasma gives stability since it is all boons.

Actually, I always like the idea of a basilisk for the lightening field and/or stun ray.

Zenith.7301:

Power builds don’t really come into strength until you reach the 65+% crit dmg thresholds. I see you’re running 48% crit damage.

In wvw an offensive power build ranges between 70-110% crit dmg.

Power builds also outperform conditions in pve because in pve keeping high might stacks and high vulnerability stacks on a target is easy. In pvp, not so much. So you see condi builds, and only few classes run power builds because their attack scale very well with power (thieves, warriors, mesmers; particularly the first two).

The issue with the ranger is that his coefficients are ghastly, and he’s balanced around the fact that his pet does 40-60% of the total damage. So power and crit dmg only affect 40-60% of the equation.

With condition damage, the ranger does not have any reduced condition damage. He applies conditions just like any engineer or necro, and his condition damage is not halved because he has a pet.

The base damage and scaling of the ranger’s direct damage skills are simply horrendous, and so you resort to condition specs.

It’s also important to note that because ranger’s burst is tied to ai, with the exception of a full signet activated maul, he will simply never function as a berserker burst class. His delivery is neither reliable or immediate.

The ranger also has no base survival outside sword evades, so he must build tanky condition regen to last enough time for his deficient pet to kill opponents with conditions. You simply cannot gib competent people the way a thief or mesmer or ele or warrior can.

Nice analysis, thanks.

Swim.6830:

“oh no, I have to reapply every 90 seconds”

…

good troll, 7/10, would read again

Why should the ranger have to get out of position to re-apply a trap in a choke? The primary advantage of traps over other professions AoE is that they persist, are invisible, and are unblockable. From a lore perspective, a trap should persist. This actually does affect rangers and, as an avid user of flame trap, it’s something I notice more often than not since I’m trapping strategically in wvw.

Yeah I am bothered my character model sizes in general. We have huge characters playing phantasm mesmers covering the screen with player models. Then there’s tiny thieves running around in the middle. It’s an inherent advantage to build players this way and definately needs balancing.

I think we had two guardians and two rangers. It felt like permanent, if not it was close.

>in a group environment, bleeds from your drake may never see the light of day, being 43 dps per bleed, furthermore, without any fury, your drake is probably sitting at around 25% crit I think, so it won’t proc often enough to make it worth it. Even with fury from teammates, it’ll prioritize player characters

I thought I had speed training and commanding voice?

>You then have two options – augment pet DPS or your own instead, in both cases I suggest you cut 20pts from BM.
option #1: Get Fortifying Bond

Yeah, that’s a good one for sure.

>At the moment, your burning uptime is overkill, it could be nicer to cut torch for warhorn, and improve your traps instead.

No, it’s easier to proc the might in bonfire than flame trap due to the uptime. The warhorn could work, sure, but I’d use it where I don’t need reflect, personally.

Nice ideas overall, good work fellas.

I think those are really good ideas. I’m going to try them, replacing frost trap with Signet of the Wild.

I like it because I want access to Moment of Clarity when facing veteran shaman rushing people in the grawl fractal using shortbow. Of course, for that fight, I would probably switch back to frost trap.

In a way, natural healing lets you free up a utility slot from Signet of the Wild but on the other hand, putting 30 into BM limits access to other useful traits.

While I’m on the topic, I’m going to try boar in that fractal too. That should work pretty well, right? Boar and wolf? With moment of clarity and shortbow?

Unless you’re in an extremely well coordinated group, you’ll eat some hits no matter what—regardless of how perfectly you dodge—so a few hundred toughness won’t hurt. A lot of professions can get that right from their traitline.

digiowl.9620:

Mirta.5029:

Randulf.7614:

Charr – they are evil – they were the bad guys in GW Prophecies…does no one remember they blew up Ascalon!?!

And now they’re not the same people. Hell they’re not even in the same generation. It would be the same as going up to a 15 year old Russian and going “your country had taken over my country once! It’s your fault!”

You would be surprised…

The German scientists and engineers who built the V2 rocket and used it against the allies. Who was it? The same Werner Von Braun who was so instrumental in leading the NASA saturn V that eventually, as you know, landed on the Moon. The story of Von Braun is a fascinating read.

ilr.9675:

yeah that too, now that they’re nerfing Pets for PvP, they better the hell give our melee attacks some stuff that synergizes a lot better right next to our pets like our builds in GW1. …“Oh, is that unkillable Rit boss permadazed now b/c i got a combo chain that’s broken in a GOOD way?? … yeah I think SO!” …man I miss the old bars…

My DPS and CC is Kiiiiitttten in this game… There’s no way in heck I’m bringing this overnerfed veterinarian into a COE or Arah unless it was on a Bet.

Go read jubskies guide and learn. My ranger does tons of damage so you’re doing it wrong.

Dutch Master.7208:

obal.3218:

Your group should be grouping up mobs and cleaving them. Rangers have single target dps which adds little value in that scenario which consists of half or more of a dungeon.

Thats so wrong…
Piercing shots trait is the most important ranger trait, bar none.

also longbow 5, greatsword 1 2 3.
I wont comment on other ranger weapons because I havent used them in a long time.

My ranger does excellent aoe damage. I prefer when mobs get clumped up. All those numbers from a quickening zephyr + rapid fire through a crowd… so nice.

Not only that but drake cleaves, sword cleaves, greatsword cleaves, axe cleaves, torch is aoe, offhand axe cleaves AND reflects at the same time. What in the kitten is obal talking about?

Milennin.4825:

To be honest, achievement points are a pretty bad way to judge player skill. I’ve seen players with less than 1000 play like pros, and people with 5K+ play as if it’s their first time playing the game.

People have off days. You don’t get 5k points by doing dailies and salvaging. Not every 1000 point player is bad but if you took 100 players with 0 to 1500 points and conpared their skills with 100 players with 4000 to 5000 points, you’d see a major difference in knowledge and ability. Guild wars 2 is a skill game and people with more plints have more practice. It’s pretty straitforward.

One way a person with that many points can seem bad would be if they were on an alt that just hit 80. They will play that profession poorly (unless they’re some okittend talented pro gamer, no one just picks up a profession that just hit 80 and does well with it).

In my own experience, I’ve pugged over 300 dungeon runs and have found many more liars (lying about experience with dungeon), non-chatters (people who refuse to communicate), and outright awful players when achievment points are that low.

If I want to run CoF1 with my ranger — even though I’m stacking AoE might like a monster and just melting foes — no one buys that a ranger can be powerful and I’m relagated to a group of 1k pointers who wipe on slave driver. They should learn on their own. True elitism is believeing the 3 warrior meta really makes a difference. Those people are the real problem with this game if you ask me.

We just did 48 FOTM with two rangers in party the other day. Permanent uptime on reflection among the rangers and guardian. We finished in about one hour despite our warrior having 20 AR.

drops mic and walks away

Geez if Lord can do a 1v5 we’re doomed to the nerf bat. :p

Lord Trejgon.2809:

@Fenrir and which place in Your fight do You have?
about that flanking 80 men blob… I could be done – just more ramgers are needed

Some might express trebidation at playing the ramger profession. I prefer arrow cats.

The shattered wings follow the motion of the dragon hologram in the sky as far as I can tell. It looks off because there is no context, right? The dragon in the sky is torquing the wings and flapping "up" whereas the rare drop wings flap as if the dragon is flying.

Personally I think the animations are fine. Stop worrying so much. :p

I created a norn warrior and the running animation / sword swings really bother me. For me, they are unaesthetic. As opposed to a human or asura thief or ranger who literally flies across the battlefield with the coolest animations you’ve ever seen.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Altered Dimension.2834:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Congrats on your time. Altered: time starts from the start of the dungeon, not magg blowing the door. This is how speed runs for cof have been measured for months, and it is the standard.

Measured by some, not by others. If you watch youtube videos of speed clears, half the videos start on magg blowing the door(for months), other half when gate opens at start of dungeon. No one can say which is the standard, it may be the standard for your groups.

So you can have your standard, ill have mine, don’t tell me its how the majority of people time their speed runs, cause its simply not true.

Since the two groups who have ever had the record (our guild and Shadow’s team) measure it that way, I would say that is the correct way to measure it. How a bunch of scrubs with slow times on youtube measure it is irrelevant.

So the fact that the self proclaimed best youtubers (how they’re the best yet have time to make all these videos I’ll never know) measure something a certain way means that’s the best way to measure something. That’s an interesting thought because it defies logic. If the measurement and your guild were so good, why are people questioning it, hmm? Subtlety is lost on some, I guess.

Sword in zerg means few bags but whatever it’s your time to waste :p (I run sword in zerg lol). Umm..yeah I don’t know. I’ll take new weapons, why not?

In my experience, I’ve found it hits harder. The burns aren’t weak by any means but I am typically counting on AoE might procs from drake with flame trap and bonfire. Might gives condition damage and power but not precision and critical damage. The runes are for more power and a longer chill duration (for chillig bolts with the whirl). One might go berserker armor but then the burns don’t hit very hard. It just seemed to work. Feel free to experiment and modify; I don’t claim this is “optimal” (whatever that means), rather, this seems to be a very strong build in terms of damage as well as team contributions (might stacking and control via chill, as well as drake blasts).

At the end of the day my favorite part is the skill bar. It looks so cool with flame trap, QZ, and frost trap.