Guild Wars 2

Where is “join a guild cool enough to teach me how to play” on the list of steps? You might want to pencil that in.

Shufflepants.9785:

Because 10 * 10 > 10 + 10

He asked “why” not “how”.

Seveleniumus.5973:

I agree, they should stop with temporary content, they could start by not getting rid of sab f.e.

SAB starts to look reeeeeally gimmicky after just a few runs. You don’t really think they should leave it in its current form, do you? No offense to the ANET team that made it—it’s awesome and has a whip (the whi kitten uper cool but the animation is totally quircky and hilarious)—but it’s just not that great. Mario 64 was similar and was just a way better game than SAB. Which is another way of saying SAB has little staying power. If it was left in, no one would play it after a while. Actually, some people would: the ones farming obsidian shards / stones / crystals for legendary weapons. But that’s about it.

Hopefully when they bring it back, SAB will be more polished and stuff, but right now leaving it in isn’t a good choice.

We clear this pretty easily and I run ranger so my advice is: watch successful dungeon runs on youtube and practice. GW2 is a game that requires skill in the place of gear gating / gear grind. Remember those old school games that were actually hard to beat? GW2 sort of pays homage to that.

Well, if you want a place that evolves over time, then someone won’t “be there”. News players a few years from now will hear legends of amazing past battles and loots. Speaking of loots, you’ll never get it all so don’t worry too much about that. Besides, this isn’t a DUNGEON dungeon per se, as it was designed by a different team. If people really want it back they’ll have to wait until it shows up in fractals or wait until Anet decides to open it up again.

Who knows? By the time June rolls around, you probably won’t care a whole lot for the flame and frost dungeon anymore. And if you can’t be there, it’s not the worst thing ever in my opinion. Sometimes priorities are more important in life! Happy hunting!

I thought dubs was a place for large scale combat?

I use offhand axe all the time, particularly in PvE. Signet of beastmaster + signet of stone + whirling defense has netted me 40,000 point crits against bosses in dungeons. But, yeah, like usual, Sebrent is right on the mark.

I always felt like the jump puzzle on EB was set up wrong. Why is first place given such a good starting place? Right next to the starting ledge, up high so it cannot get bombed. Second place is really in a tough spot because the starting area is low and seigable. Third place actually has a decent start but not as good as first place. To me, it makes more sense to allow the other servers to have easier access to seige and jump puzzles. I guess not?

Because it’s classified as a transformation…but whether it should be or not is a good question.

I usually pick 10% damage while endurance is full, spotter, 30% pet damage, pets gain health on crit or honed axes (your choice), then master’s bond, shout master, and natural healing. If you pick 30 in MM you can get signet of beastmaster instead. With 30 in SM, you can get faster pets that gain health on crit and do 30% more damage (health on crit really helps cats stay up).

Really, the choice is yours. And I reread my comments and they seem harsh. There is no bad advice here, necessarily, as everything is situational. However, I do tend to believe a lot in BM traitline. I’ve also found that if I’m dying a lot, 15 in WS really helps (2 sec protection pn dodge roll)

Happy hunting!

jwaz.1908:

@Chopps

Since he’s going glass cannon, I have to disagree with many of your statements. For one, Lightning Reflexes and Quickening Zephyr are a MUST for this playstyle, since stun-breaks and mobility are key.

In terms of Sick Em, Guard, and Muddy Terrain, I don’t see any of these being overly useful. For one, Sick Em is bugged and will end if you command your pet to do anything, and I just don’t see Guard being useful at all. Muddy Terrain is a fine skill, but is only situationally needed, just like Entangle.

For pets, Jaguars do very, very good damage, but I don’t see them being all that useful in dungeons since they die very quickly.

I mostly agree with what you said about longbow, but barrage is useful on occasion, and sometimes the long range can be useful in situations. You’re suggestion of using sword/warhorn makes little sense though, since sword is more of a pvp weapon, and he has stated this build is about ranged attacks, in which case axe/warhorn would be more suitable.

---

As for your second post (I wrote all of the above before reading it), I am intrigued by your build, but what I can say is, in my experience, pets die too quickly and are too unreliable to be used in such a fashion (not referring to open-world or cof p1).

Well, I don’t know, my man, but if your cats are dying that fast it’s probably because you’re never traiting beastmastery and/or letting them facetank when they could take aggro. You have to be smarter than that. Drakes can be a problem because their toughness is high enough such that bosses may aggro them, but their blast finish in healing spring is really nice for stacking on bosses.

*Note that during any dungeon I am constantly switching slot skills, weapons, pets, even trait passive tiles to best fit the given encounter. Obviously, if you’re dying a lot, you’re going to have to go more defensive than the build I’m talking. But you wanted glass cannon, right?

But that general template (30/20/0/0/20 or 20/20/0/0/30 and similar builds with berserker gear) is what I’ve found to be “best” after 300+ dungeons and 1200 hours of PvE. I mean, you can equip other stuff like LR or whatever while kiting, but during a boss fight (if you know how to position yourself) using LR is wasting DPS. QZ is not a must for any playstyle, untraited it gives like 8% quickness uptime which is only now 150% attack (basically). I’m not sure how good that is in PvE.

Guard on the other hand will keep your pet alive. And sick em will help your pet do more damage. And you can trait signet of the beastmaster for more stability, if you want. That’s not too bad. But not putting at least 15 points in BM for the 15s pet swap is really hurting your PvE potential. Part of your goal will be to keep the pet alive. Ranger has a high skill cap in that you have a lot to manage. It’s probably the hardest profession to play successfully in PvE, although it can be done in most cases and, generally, 90% of the whining is due to people picking a hard profession to play and then regretting that decision. Thankfully, I’ve never regretted playing ranger.

I’d say if you are good at keeping the pet alive, go with QZ. If you are not good at keeping the pet alive, go with Guard (guard gives the pet protection).

And to answer your question about sword, on a lot of bosses (subject alpha in particular), you will be stacking on the boss. Sword is essential for this because the evades really come in handy but also the autoattack gives your pet ~3 stacks of might with 100% uptime so long as you are attacking with sword “1” skill. Warhorn is great for buffing yourself and the party and the birds will crit a lot and hit hard. Just turn off all the “auto” stuff (including under settings like autotarget etc) and you’ll be fine. This really is important.

But there’s no point to argue, you can play your way, I’ll play mine. Deal? But, yeah, I don’t use the same exact build in every dungeon. If you really want to be successful with ranger, you’re going to have to pay a lot of attention to what skills and traits you take into any given encounter.

Pendleton.6385:

Chopps.5047:

Pendleton.6385:

Anyone know when this month’s patch comes out?

April 26th as far as I know. I am so excited. If there’s nothing for rangers it’s going to be a MASSIVE letdown for a large part of the community. ANET must deliver.

I’m looking forward to it as well. However, I’m trying to keep my expectations low.

Probably a good call. Really, it’s not that bad.

“I can understand 5 into Beast Mastery for the quickness, but anything above that seems unnecessary if you’re going glass cannon. Now that quickness has been nerfed too, I would give up Beast Mastery altogether.”

This would be a huge mistake, particularly if you like to run cats.

You get many more stats from armor, you know? You don’t need that extra +100 power from Marksmanship, particularly when the traits in that line are SO utterly terrible. The pet traits in beastmastery (MASTER’S BOND), on the other hand, are too good to pass up. In open world PvE—as well as CoF path 1 and most dungeons—I have found, through painstaking trial and error, that 20/20/0/0/30 is close to, if not, the highest DPS ranger build (using berserker gear and superior rune of the ranger).

Nevertheless, rampager isn’t necessarily a horrible choice and you will still do plenty of damage. The trick is to keep your cat alive because it will do more damage than you will. Your cat will be getting 6000+ crits with a full Master’s Bond on each attack. You, the ranger, will never make numbers like that appear unless you go invulnerable and reflect with the offhand axe (I’ve done 40,000 point crits instantly against dungeon bosses this way…but instead of signet of the beastmaster + signet of stone, I simply broke out my pig and used elixir of heroes).

I bet you rangers out there never thought of that. :P Why? Because I’m the only ranger I’ve ever seen actually use offhand axe.

Well, I’m going to be honest: I see a few problems. Not that you can’t kill stuff with this build.

I don’t really like entangle in dungeons but in PvE I can see it working—but only under certain conditions. You seem to be running a lot of power so I think you’re better off using Rampage as One, which will get you a bunch of might really fast, as well as fury and stability. Entangle really only hits for 25,000+ if and only if A.) you’re running condition damage and B.) the enemy cannot easily destroy the binds. Dungeon bosses will easily break out of a binding root.

Also, I really have to disagree with lightning reflexes. In PvE you need to do damage quickly. You’re better off with something like [Sick ‘Em]. QZ is ’ok’, I suppose, but, at the moment (until ANET splits the skill), quickness really isn’t so good anymore—particularly in PvE. I would strongly consider [Guard] or [Muddy Terrain], depending on the situation. Even entangle can be broken out in a rampager or berserker build if you really need it (I’ve used it to help with lava elementals in the grawl fractal, for example), but [Guard] will really help protect your pet and give it increased damage. So the best setup would probably be Signet of the Wild, Guard, and Sick ‘Em. By the way, if you’re using jaguar, be sure to sick ‘em AFTER stealthing lest you lose the buff due to one of many bugs we’re still burdened by (this situation will soon improve from what I understand).

You probably want to bring the jaguar (stealth makes it immune to direct damage which is very strong…we’ll see if ANET leaves it like this I REALLY HOPE THEY DO BECAUSE I LOVE IT AND ITS UNIQUE AND AWESOME). You probably want to bring a drake (tailswipe blast finish in Healing Spring on pet swap, 40s CD).

I like signet of the wild, it’s one of the best signets we get. However, I really, really, would strongly suggest more points into beastmastery and less points into marksmanship. In fact, with my open world PvE optimized build, I run dual axes and sword/warhorn. It’s just a lot better. But since you’re trying to do some rampager condition damage, you will probably be best off with sword/warhorn and shortbow. Leave the longbow for sPvP and WvW—same for greatsword, although, the greatsword definitely has its place in many open world situations (Swoop / counterattack / evade in auto chain).

I hope that helps. Rock on!

Holy moly! 13k views! WHAAAAAT! You guys rock.

Zumy.6318:

Lets all go back to “Hello Kitty Online”.

That’s every night for me! Say hello to my little friend: a jaguar. I even have pink hair.

Zosk.5609:

Can’t we just all agree that near perma-stealth is probably not very “fair” AND retaliation and confusion should stack duration? Then, everybody wins!

I don’t want to derail this conversation too far but what’s your opinion on stability stacking rather than having duration?

Besetment.9187:

Chopps.5047:

A zerk theif gets incredible burst because they have the unique ability to be able to burst down bunkers. If you’re not a full bunker and you get blown up by a thief, the blame is on you for not being aware of surroundings and/or having no team support. I don’t say that to be mean—basically, once you start taking responsibility for losing battles is when you can start to improve your game. Take your knocks, get up, and try harder next time. Happy hunting!

The thing about necro is that you don’t have many ways to avoid or ignore damage. Taking damage in shroud hurts you (because it restricts access to one of your fears and one of your only teleports). It may extend your life but having low life force puts you on the defensive.

Contrast that with a Guardian that has burst invulns like Shelter, Renewed Focus, Aegis, Shield of Wrath etc. You completely ignore direct damage (regardless of its magnitude) and you can still be offensive.

Its difficult to explain unless you play a necro. Losing control of your life force generation is a very big deal. Its never something you want to use to extend your life, if it can be avoided.

Dodge / flesh worm / spectral walk? After he misses the first burst, bleed him to death. Chill him and run to safety? Maybe give him weakness/blind? I’m not sure, I’ll ask talentless next time I log on.

Dynnen.6405:

When running around in wvw, you have to have a high amount of toughness. Is it annoying?
Yes.
Is it frustrating because other classes have mechanics that allow them to avoid using defensive stats and manage to be effective in combat?
Yes.
Can you take solace in knowing that you are playing one of the weakest classes out there?
Yes.

I will say this, coming from from SPvP you should know how to avoid the CnD/Mug + Backstab combo. You see the thief running at you waving his off-hand like a trained monkey just dodge and you’ll be fine. =D

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

Sebrent.3625:

It’s not so much “troubles” as it is:

“it doesn’t feel as offensively threatening to my foe(s) as the condition build”.

With the condition build in apothecary gear, I can kill another bunker. With the power build in cleric gear, other bunkers and I eventually just stop and bow to each other as we run off to kill glass cannons.

---

If that guildie is willing, I’d love to run with you guys somtime and observe. Best way to learn how someone else is using it.

Well, yeah, in WvW people think stacking toughness is the best. So what you find is that power is typically negated while conditions are more powerful than they should be. Are you in JQ?

Victor.7354:

Jedbacca.6297:

Figured I’d share some good times with everyone. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/y7tbSdNDnt0

Good Times 2.0, the full Strike Force Cheerleading Team. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/jDJ31YLVhM0

Nice videos, guys. It’s been fun with SoR and BG this week with some good fights. Props to TW. And for some reason I keep hearing “yoloswag”…explain that and tippity top to me. Please? Lol must be inside joke. :p

Zumy.6318:

Someon who says that mesmers are below average in teamplay, does not even know how the games mechanics work.

Period.

Well it’s not like they can share boons or anything. They can’t stealth. They can’t pull people. Mesmers are terribad in groups /s

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Chopps, being aware of your surroundings only goes so far.

I know, and I like to roam, which is why I run bunker ranger. A full bloodlust thief can get the jump on me but I will still have roughly 700 life—even after the stunlock into heartseeker initial mugging. At that point, I typically run! But if I dodge that initial attack (I don’t always because everyone makes mistakes), then I can proceed to lay him to rest. I typically “bury” thieves with a flame ram tomb and bow because any time a theif loses is a tragic event worthy of rememberance. Muahahahaha

A zerk theif gets incredible burst because they have the unique ability to be able to burst down bunkers. If you’re not a full bunker and you get blown up by a thief, the blame is on you for not being aware of surroundings and/or having no team support. I don’t say that to be mean—basically, once you start taking responsibility for losing battles is when you can start to improve your game. Take your knocks, get up, and try harder next time. Happy hunting!

A lack of a strong streaming community is one reason players really struggle with some of the more difficult professions to master. I wish I knew of one to tell you.

Sebrent.3625:

White Sylvari Ranger, running apoth gear, Axe+Dagger/Sword+Torch instead of the more common Axe+Torch/Sword+Dagger, and fighting Anvil Rock / Borlis Pass …

… Hey Menorah!

Excellent video, bud

---

I’m curious if anyone has figured out a way to be successful in the power (Cleric) version of the build? I’ve had some success, but it seems to pale in contrast to what you can do with Apothecary since direct damage seems to desire power, crit, and crit damage as opposed to simply condition damage.

---

At the post concerning the cost of the gear:

It does not take that long to farm the gear for apothecary gear. When I finally got the achievement for killing 500 karka, I had almost the 180 karka shells needed to craft the 6 pieces of armor.

I do hate that it is 30 shells per piece of armor/weapon though … ridiculous.

Trinkets aren’t bad with the introduction of the Laurels, pristine fractal relics, and guild commendations.

Someone in my guild plays that armor. As far as I know, the way you play is pretty similar. What troubles did you encounter?

I play a similar build—slightly different—with great results. I wonder if SoR and BG are sick of being killed by a cute, pink haired ranger yet.

It’s the trait I use the least—I will generally put 15 in Nature Magic before anything in Marksmanship.

Wow, thanks for all of the attention! I posted this only a few days ago and it already has over 10,000 views. There is clearly a lot of community interest in a ranger PvE buff.

I play melee because the sword cripples the enemy and lets my cat eat dinner. Chuck gets a voracious appetite and enemies like to run from him.

Maul is now a blast finisher.

I switch weapons and utilities outside of combat all the time—sometimes for fun and sometimes for necessity. I don’t find that I need to switch though. I just do for fun. Except a siege situation then it’s longbow no doubt.

Bosses have internal cooldowns and internal endurance, do they not? Zenith I demand proof.

Kryyg.8576:

For JQ

Waha Foo [FOO]
Ben Sheets [HzH]
Jedbacca [SF]

There is no good or evil. There is only Jedbacca.

Sebrent.3625:

Zenith, I disagree with both your statements :-/

I’ve found traps to be good with power builds as well in PvE. Also, because of condition caps, most people are running power in PvE so being the token condition guy (or two) in a group is fine.

The signet of renewal and signet of the wild are fine without the trait Signet of the Beastmaster.

How dare you bring logic here.

lordkrall.7241:

Actually it is the BLTC that offers the unbreakable picks Even though they are molten origin

The combination of Dredge tech and Flame Legion magic can most likely create surprising results, which the BLTC do not have.

I know who’s peddling these devices. I bought one myself to test the Dredge magic. It’s incredible technology and incredibly suspicious that BLT kitten elling them. High tech / Kom Pew Ter derived technology…SAB….junky “orichalcum” picks. Something is fishy here!!!!! I wonder if Zomorros is in on it somehow—his treachery also runs deep.

How is it that the dredge and flame legion have the molten technology to create an unbreakeable pick yet the Black Lion Trading Company (capitalists mind you) can only offer these junky “orichalcum” picks? My world is upside down.

So you’re saying having lots of disposable money gives people an advantage in life? In other news the Sun still rises and grass is green.

You know what though? The people buying that stuff are funding the new content you get to play for free all the time so it’s a good thing. I’ll support this company as long as they stick to core principles and I won’t bash them for trying to turn a profit. Money is hard to come by in this industry and the groups that can deliver such an epic experience should be rewarded.

Yeah blackhawk, that and being rooted while trying to throw the GS or the very, very short range of hilt bash (in my experience, if chasing, I have to cripple or chill before you can get in a hilt bash due to the short range but I feel like if I’m right beaide the guy I should be able to hilt bash? Maybe not! I’m just not sure what motivates these decisions and I could be way off base).

Edit: it seems that both the throw and the hilt bash require slowing the enemy in advance so it’s probably intended to chain a cripple or chill with those kinds of attacks. Actually, chaining might work better and be more fun anyways and/or support a variety of swap combinations with greatsword. Thoughts?

Probably because I’ve been pwning in T1. I had a really great night last night. I hit rampage as one, jumped off the wall into 20 SoR, and evaded and dodged a couple times, getting the attention of everyone around me. I was stunned, popped stun break, and at that moment my commander called a full assualt and everyone else gave them death from above. Rangers are a tasty target, use it toyour advantage. Then, I was just minding my own business when a mesmer had to burst me out of nowhere. Well, needless to say, that mesmer fell, like many before him.

Seriously though it’s not just me. There’s tons of really good rangers out there and thy all use greatsword not because it’s OP but because of the defense and mobility it offers.

Nice assessment, Shiren.

Yeah, dude, I was just busting your chopps about the song, jk. I don’t have the energy to defend this profession anymore. I have fun with it and that’s all that matters to me. That post is very interesting though, def. give it a read when you get a chance.

I’m sure Sebrent has the exact numbers but it’s pretty common (and sometimes desirable) for the ranger’s pet to hit harder than the ranger. Recently there was a kittenin build posted, read up on that. A full master’s bond and buffed jaguar can melt things. Try master’s bond, signet of the wild, and sick ‘em and sit back and sip lemonade while your cat wreaks havoc. Don’t sip too long though because without your direction the pet will die.

ANET makes much more money from an 800 gem sale — and a much bigger sink — than the original picks ever could be. Unless you’re a bot you will never mine enough to save gold this way. Rather, this is for min/maxers as well as covenience. I think it’s a solid product and a good call by ANET and I hope to see more items like it in the future.

Couldn’t you have picked a better song, jk? :p

On a more serious note, I thought the following quote by Jon P was quite revealing in that he actually opens up about how the community contributes to what ANET can and can’t do with the game.

Jon: One of the biggest issues with balance in PvE is that is skill cap. We see there are certain things that, as soon as we try and balance for a certain thing, we can’t change… One thing we could do, we could just make creatures do more stuff and more difficult stuff, and what would happen is… So I think one of the things is that the warrior and guardian are pretty straightforward professions. And creatures tend to be more straightforward for players to fight, so warrior and guardian tools are are straightforward tools that work well toward these more straightforward creatures. We could just make our creatures less straightforward, and that would actually kind of solve some of these problems, but it would create a new problem for players that are not good at dealing with these less straightforward situations. We would have a lot harder time balancing our encounters if we made our creatures that way. There’s kind of this fine line that we have to walk of encounters need to be understandable to a large variety of players, but at the same time in understandable encounters are probably more straightforward for classes with more straightforward tools to deal with those encounters and are generally going to be more effective in those areas. There’s work we can do and what we are doing on both ends to solve this, but that’s just one of the biggest issues. It was an issue before and it’s an issue now, it’s kind of the issue that got us to the point we’re at now and why we have that problem.

I applaud him for opening up like that and strongly encourage you guys to give it a read. What’s he talking about? Well, the sonic towers of course. Do you have any idea how many people on both reddit and these forums whines about how hard those simple devices are to destroy? Or what about the supposed OP guild bounty bosses? I remember a day when a boss was so hard (Punch out final boss for example) you just gave up and accepted that you lost that day. Those were the good old days, man.

TL;DR
Balance may be attained without simply increasing damage yet part of the problem is ranger is geared towards a crowd control / condition damage playstyle but as soon as they put those elements in PvE, people struggle and get upset. Therefore, the only answer is to split skills, leaving crowd control and tight team coordination in the realm of PvP. PvE’ers want to see big crits yo, not burning or blast finish might stacking. That said, they did acknowledge a few underwhelming traits and skills and mentioned fixing them.

There’s not much to judge right now. All I read was good news so I’ll take it at face value. If you want to be depressed: be depressed.

VitalSuit.1980:

Thieves as well? I hope this is only for pve and not pvp because thieves are the last thing that needs a buff.

Indeed, this response was in reference to PvE. I’ve edited my original post and added the original question asked by guru to clear this up for anyone else.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

What do you feel is currently the biggest issue with class balance in PvE?

Jonathan: There are a few things. It differs by content slightly. One of the big things in dungeons right now is that obviously people know that warriors and guardians are really good. We know that rangers are sometimes seen as very weak because of the liability that is the pet so right now we’re actually working on a lot of stuff to bring the ranger up and to get on the same page to be able to compete with the other guys who are taken very often into the dungeons. We’re also looking at all the different classes to make sure that they all have a role that they can fill. This goes back to some of the earlier questions. If you’ve got eight classes and five slots, somebody’s going to get picked more often than others. That’s something we want to make sure that we don’t take away some of the power that all the classes have and that they enjoy those top spots, but we want to give everyone a chance to be in there. We want to make sure that that ranger is getting a lot of help to pets and spirits and utilities. We want to get them back up there. Thieves as well.

I don’t know, man, that boss is hard as he scales up in levels. Around level 30, we’ve found we really need to keep the NPCs alive to help us but they die fast. Spirit of renewal will instantly resurrect a few of them. But as far as I know, solo’ing him will be difficult. At the very least make sure you have level appropriate AR so you don’t have to waste endurance on agony pulses.

Im Mudbone.1437:

My take on people who are like those the OP mentioned can be summed up in a movie called “Idiocracy”.

But…it’s got electrolytes!