Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty sure there’s a bug since it was impossible to flip all four camps last time I checked on that server.

Drakes ::::::::::::::::::::

It used to be hard but they nerfed it so everyone and their kid brother could get Dungeon Master and feel special.

This is it, if the wiki is wrong you’ll have to point out where:

“If you have <50% more critchance than critdamage then you gain more from adding 5% critchance than 5% critdamage”…
“If you have 50% more critchance than critdamage then you gain the same from adding 5% critchance or 5% critdamage”…
“If you have >50% more critchance than critdamage then you gain less from adding 5% critchance than 5% critdamage”…

Afaik, I followed those rules in my examples, sorry if it’s confusing mannek. I don’t know though what the value of this argument is besides correcting the wiki. I hope that helps.

In general, Kasama, you’re correct about drakes. I should point out that other pets have their place. For example, dogs work well against nightmare hounds in TA because there’s usually too many dogs to keep up endurance to dodge knockdowns so CC’ing them first really helps. Red moa gives 15s of fury and a melee range AoE heal that’s roughly 3,000 health that’s not bad, really. For high single target dps (simin arah p4) you can’t reall beat a cat with quickening zephyr. But I agree, cats are tough to deal with when you have little healing power.

My older brother would say “get better at pvp, bro”. His words, not mine. I haven’t been competitive in crab toss since last week. Haha

The mad king clock tower was designed to be hard yet there were many tears shed from those who could not finish.

You know, I remember a day when you weren’t guaranteed a win in video games. I never beat the final boss on punch out, for example, and struggle with I wanna be the guy and old mega man games. I’m ok with that and I still celebrate the achievements of people who can actually conquer those games. About the hardest platformer level I ever beat was this one:

http://youtu.be/bTPT2kv6PXw

Anyways, I don’t really have a point here! Lol I guess I’m saying there’s difficult challenges in the game you just have to make them up yourself. How about manually playing hardcore where if a character dies you manually delete and start over? Or how about solo’ing Lupi with ranger? Has anyone done that yet? I just came up with those two off the top of my head.

You won’t get an achievement for it but we never got achievements back in the day so who cares? I’m an old school gamer maybe I just have the wrong opinion. Anyways, I hope this starts a positive conversation about existing challenges in the game for people who want it.

Happy hunting!

Ya, I don’t get people saying “it’s an mmo everything needs parties”. GW2 is a game where the individual can and should be encouraged to improve their play. For me, that journey is what it’s all about. The mystery of how to win or whether you can win.

Pfft L2C (learn to click). Get those mad loot clicking skills, man.

Wow, colesy, not cool, man. At least this player looted their abyss. I can almost guarantee you shelled out hard earned gold for that Dusk. Of course you’ll say you didn’t, but you did.

There are dungeons you can solo, just search these threads. The content was never designed with solo’ing in mind, but being able to solo hard dungeon content is certainly a challenge worth pursuing for people that like that kind of stuff.

aIJay.8125:

Mesmer – High DPS
Ele – High DPS
Ranger – High DPS
Ranger – High DPS
Warrior – High DPS

Highlighted your problem for you right there.

Ranger has very high single target dps. Team composition makes zero difference unless you’re doing some speed run. 90% of players out there will fight simin exactly one time. For them, telling them their ranger can’t do it is flat out wrong. I beat it so you’re wrong. I beat it with back when simin was hard. It’s a joke now from what I heard.

There’s more to this fight than dps and if you can’t see this then you need to reevaluate your understanding of the game.

If you all have high attack and lots of DPS then your issue was not being able to handle sparks or tears.

There are three aspects to the fight that create a balance. DPS simin, tears that freeze 20% dps (one party member), and kiting sparks. All three require dedicated roles. One person shouldn’t be holding a tear the whole time, for example. You have to be faster. Or else dodge the purple stare.

When I beat this, the advantage to ranger is ranger can DPS while throwing tears so that was my job. But it was noticeably better if I hammered on simin too so I made sure to throw a tear if I had to then dps my little heart out.

We beat it so can you.

I think you’re oversimplifying things, G. By the way, agility training is nice to call pet back faster.

Manekk.6981:

Faux Sheaux.6179:

If the wiki says that, then it’s definitely wrong. Would you mind linking that exact page please so we can fix it? I’m still not seeing it.

Also, are you sure you aren’t interpretting it incorrectly? If you were saying…

• “If you have <50% more critchance than critdamage then you gain more from adding 5% critchance than 5% critdamage”…
• “If you have 50% more critchance than critdamage then you gain the same from adding 5% critchance or 5% critdamage”…
• “If you have >50% more critchance than critdamage then you gain less from adding 5% critchance than 5% critdamage”…

…then it’d be correct. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m saying as well. The effectiveness of CC is dependent on CD is all I’m trying to explain.

I’m saying the same thing as you I’m just using diffrent terminology, it’s the same wiki that’s been posted in this thread several times, I’m using plain language aka once you go above 50% critchance is when you want to add crit damage since before that it’s never better point for point.

50% isn’t a threshold. What it means is that if and only if the chance is 50% MORE than damage. In other words, if you have 65% crit chance and 5% crit damage, then 1% damage beats 1% chance. However, if you have 65% chance and 40% damage, the. 1% chance beats 1% additional damage. It’s the difference that has to be at least 50%.

But as others have said and Faux calculated, the armor doesn’t scale in equal increments of 5% crit damage corresponding to 5% chance from precision. What this means is that it’s never as simple as our straightforward cases are showing.

That’s enlightening, thanks Faux.

It’s worth a test. skirmishing has carnivorous appetite and agility training, both of which are good for pet survivability (faster call backs and healing attacks). I’d say you don’t really want permanent regeneration in a dungeon, especially because one shots reign supreme. Just get good healing power, like you’re saying, and with 15 in NM and 15 in WS you will be looking good.

It would be interesting to compare this build to the same build with rampager trinkets. Just to see how well you can stack might compared to how much damage your traps and torch can do.

Neat stuff!

Well, do you always get 5% crit chance from a two handed weapon secondary precision stat? Or is it a little less? How does precision and CD compare as secondary stats? What about when precision is primary stat? And does this support my theory than max ranger DPS would use rampager gear? I know those are sort of ill-defined questions, but that’s what I was getting at.

Chokolata.1870:

Low level fractals you can do with whatever, mid level fractals you can do with whatever. High fractals you wont be able to do because noone will take rangers.

That’s insane, I just beat level 48 fractals with two rangers in the party and one thief. It only took is one hour. That’s not so bad considering we did grawl and cliffside. With the rangers, guardian, and thief we could attain 100% reflection uptime. In any case, this composition works best with communication. You have to work together. PUGs can’t do that a lot of times. Failure is a failure of teamwork/ability not profession composition (unless your goal is a world record Lupicus kill :p )

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Wiki is wrong ;( Mind sending the link to it so I can edit the page? I looked, and I didn’t see where it said that.

Wiki is correct, manekk misread the axis on the table.

Not true, Manekk. The table supports Faux. It’s just simple calculus and what he proved was that you need chance to be at least 50% greater than CD for another 1% CD to be greater damage than another 1% chance. Indeed, the table shows exactly this. In many cases, I should point out that the difference in damage of having either 5% more in CC vs CD is generally really small but Faux’s theorem holds. Although this is all rather academic as a proper analysis would compare how much precision gets you CC on a primary or secondary stat. It might be that critical damage scales better as a secondary stat, if that makes sense. Faux, please, if you feel like it, extend the analysis to answer that question?

The ranger needs healing power. Without that, dead pets will kill your DPS even with full berserker, when the pet dies—almost a guarantee in dungeons with a zerk build—your own damage isn’t enough to make up for the loss. I estimate that top ranger DPS would be a combination of rampagers stats with healing power trinkets or runes along with 20 or 30 in BM.

DevonCarver.5370:

Everyone knows that the true key to the sandwichmancer class is the bread. New weapon confirmed! Ciabatta!

Indeed. The bread makes the sammich.

Spirits unbound should do more, I think. Can you think of a single instance where you want a spirit beside you? Storm spirit swiftness / regen bunker is about all I can come up with.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure rampagers armor with sword/torch and axe/axe is highest DPS. Going 30/30/x/x/x without any healing power means you stand at range not buffing at all while your drake gets smashed. The strongest ranger builds have points in BM and healing for the pet in trinkets or armor.

solrik.6028:

It would be pretty nice if they made every trait useful and made us give up some for others.

E.g. Should I take empathic bond or Bark skin on bm ranger? How much conditions will I face and how much direct damage?
Should I use 30% pet speed or 30% pet crit damage? 30% speed for catching mesmers or 30% crit damage to take down that guardian faster?

The funny thing to me about agility training is that you need it to run cats. But aren’t cats inherently agile? I never understood that.

No 30/30…. Is actually really bad. Don’t do that. You will stand at 1000 range with a bow and contribute very little in terms of dps and survivability and aoe boons and your pet will die a lot. This isn’t the way rangers are optimal right now, beginning of june, 2013.

All you have to do is cripple the assassin and sick the drake on it. How could they possibly mess that up? Amazing.

I noticed a big improvement in skill lag in T1 garrison fights. I don’t know how long you’ve been around but at least I can cast sometimes and it doesn’t skip so many frames. It used to slow down….time dilates and things would stre e e e e t c h out a lot. Skills would light up and flash like a holiday decoration after being pressed. You could only autoattack. Now things are a bit better but, ya, there’s still skill lag.

Rampagers with torch/flame trap and drakes is pretty strong. Berserker/celestial is strong. I would say your best bet is points in BM and/or SotW or “Guard” because keeping your drake alive is a large part of DPS. Drakes do strong damage, blast finish, and cleave on most attacks. I prefer axe/axe and sword/torch with rampager armor.

So something like x/x/x/x/30 (natural healing) is very strong and why clerics armor is often a good choice. You won’t max DPS but for how tanky you are you can ressurect and put out some decent damage. I still think the build xsorsus made popular, 0/0/30/10/30 is probably one of the best builds but you can do stuff like 0/0/20/20/30 and still be in great shape (+5% vitality to power and just more vitality and boon duration…also you need fortifying bond if you want pets to get buffs in a party of 5. Note that I don’t always run traitlines in stats that match my armor. I pick traits, usually, because I want them for play than stats. But that’s hopefully going to improve with traitline work.

Again for more DPS you might start moving points North of BM. 15 in WS is usually a good choice and, well, the issue with this traitline is if you go 15 you might as well nust go 20 and get offhand training for your offhand axe.

When I solo Arah through crusher, personally, I prefer something like rampager’s though. You get a lot of crits and still decent condition damage with traps/torch.

My thinking is always evolving on this stuff because I don’t like to run numbers and optimize that way. I just play. Lately I’ve found rampagers with some healing rune or celestial trinkets pretty strong. You can go rampager trinkets too, the issue is that below 700 healing power, in my experience, pets are much harder to keep alive for simply a modest gain in DPS. Again, do not let your drake die or your DPS drops like a rock.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Chopps.5047:

Very nice analysis; I would like to see a stun break on signet of the hunt. What do you think?

I think adding stun break to it would make it too powerful. It is already a very good skill, which most rangers equip it anycase and it has only 30 s cooldown, plus signet mastery trait would lower that even more.

Since Signet of renewal is already a signet and a stun break, I think it would be a good idea to spread ranger’s stun breaks to other types of more rarely used skills:
“Protect Me”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Protect_Me%22
“Sic Em”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Sic_%27Em%22

I feel both of these skills are under used, but making them into a stun break, would add some needed viability to them.

Yeah, I expected you to say that. Honestly, though, the value of SotH is the run speed as opposed to the attack buff you’re referring to. Maybe I’m wrong about that?

For me, I often feel rangers need to be mobile. It’s Signet of the Hunt that I really don’t like because whenever I choose it, I really have to use two slot skills: one for SotH and one for stun break. I’m not kidding when I say to you the opposite: I was just thinking today that if SotH was also a stun break, I would be able to put Protect Me on my bar more often. Do you think that’s a valid perspective?

If I may think further outside the box, maybe rangers need an adept NM trait that gives a 25% speed buff to the ranger (not the pet). Then simply rework SotH. I could be way off here and I hate throwing out ideas because usually I overlook stuff. Anyways, make of it what you will.

My offhand axe loves when thieves switch to SB; just saying.

Ranger FTWolf!!!!

I think the source is the tooltip. I’m more concerned about QZ. It doesn’t appear to break stuns. Can anyone confirm this or am I just zoning out at 3:30am? I’m away from desk and cannot check. Thanks!

Deniara Devious.3948:

Zenith.7301:

Marksman is a garbage tree until 30 major trait, Skirmishing is only good up to 20, WS is pretty bad at 10 but starts getting great at 15+, and NM is only good for bunkers with 20 points at most.

Huh? Of course the viability of the traits depends on the game mode and many other things, but in my opinion Eagle Eye is a really good 20 points Markmanship trait:
It increases longbow and harpoon gun range to 1500 (longest range in the game besides engineer’s grenadier 30 points trait!) and also increases longbow and harpoon gun damage by 5%. For comparison many other professions give only 5% dmg increase with a 20 point trait at a similar tree (e.g. dual wielding master trait in Strength line for warriors).

Wilderness Survival can give your ranger amazing survivability. Natural Vigor is probably the best 5 point trait in the game. Engineer needs 30 points, adrenal implant, to get exactly the same effect. There is no difference between those 5 and 30 point traits.

So compared to many other professions, many of the ranger trait trees, which you were claiming to be bad, are actually better than average.

Ranger has some weaknesses e.g. lacking AoE (besides barrage), stun breaks (shared anquish trait helps a lot), but to call all ranger traits just crap is not a fair analysis.

Ranger pets require some adjusting, because ranger can make himself into a full bunker and still do good damage using pet. If most other professions go full bunker, their damage is really low as well.

Ranger underwater should also be looked upon, because currently lick wounds is too good.

I hope the next patch will give more stun breaks to ranger, because 3 stun breaks to choose from is little:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun_break

Very nice analysis; I would like to see a stun break on signet of the hunt. What do you think?

There’s a lot of creative people working on this game so it’s probably best just not to worry about it.

Signet of the beastmaster isn’t bad because you’ll often benefit from invulnerability while resurrecting someone or stability from SotW (cliffside fractal). It depends what your team comp is too. I PUG a lot (I like the adventure of teaching players) so I end up using it a lot. Everything is situational, you know?

Bambula, I think, has the best answer. See, drakes are great in dungeons, especially with a little healing power. Berserkers or rampagers will get you high DPS. Utilities are situational.

Mif.3471:

Chaosky.5276:

If it makes you feel better, Dragon’s Tooth is borderline useless against players.

Don’t think it makes siege equipment feel any better…

They will nerf this just like they nerfed my pet climbing keep walls. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Whisper me in game later today.

[Whirling Defense] is HUGE when using off hand training. This is a nice fix.

The one just rolled yesterday.

Why do you say that, Puandro? Is it because you don’t like to roam in glass cannon in your #1 WvW solo guild?

Oh, no need to be defensive; I know you’re not saying that. I didn’t mean to implicate that anyone is paranoid, I was just saying in general terms that I doubt anet simply makes food items that cancel each other out. Sorry about that!

Let’s take a step back and just talk about condition damage. Like you said, it’s unique in that it ticks via pulses over time. In this way, clearly, at some point, getting another tick of damage is better than adding a little condition damage. So if there’s a food that gives +40% condition duration, that’s great because now you will get extra ticks. Anyone care to offer more thoughts on the theory behind condition damage and duration? Maybe if we think this through, we can logically decide how fair lemongrass food is without just jumping straight to the end and saying it’s OP or fine as it is (or UP, although that seems to be a laughable suggestion). For the record, I play ranger and love conditions but I am trying to stay neutral here.

I too am sick of PuGs following old guides that teach exploits. I now tell them right off the bat that if they kill hunter or pull crusher it will be harder due to rezzing ability. I also warn about standing behind crusher and how hunter immobilize prevents this movement. I tell them to stay by me and use my brown bear, signet of renewal, and healing spring to make sure the party can move around. Beyond that, don’t PUG arah if you can avoid it. Practiced teams make it much more pleasant.

If every food canceled out every other food, then why have food? Certainly it is tin foil hat like to suggest ANET wants us to burn 10 s/hr for food that’s just getting canceled out. Maybe it’s possible that things are working as intended? (I have no opinion on this matter, I’m just trying to drive the conversation further)

I knew I got a full set of CoE rampagers for a reason. I’ll have to brush the dust off. Rabid trinkets, you think?

You look bad ass, dude. (can I say that here?) Grats!

I am on JQ and willing to test this today with anyone from SoR or BG. I will be on in roughly one hour. Send me a PM or whisper in game if interested. Let’s get to the bottom of this.

Xsorus.2507:

Moment of Clarity is actually really powerful as far as talents go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hJvzVeXqPw

Ya, I’m a big fan of that trait. Stuns are so freaking powerful. Yesterday I was running moment of clarity with a condition build in EB. I saw a warrior attacking someone from a distance with rifle so I ducked down and ran behind him using the nearby valley and terrain. Meanwhile, I got a tuft of hair from my Seeyamoth. I popped that stealth, ran up to him and BOOM hilt bash into bonfire. GG