Guild Wars 2

The odds are probably closer to 1 in 25,000 based on things like unbreakable bell research, assuming unbreakable bell was similar in drop rate to precursors, albeit rolling one involved cracking a wintersday gift. Think of how many MF rolls there are per day compared to the number o precursors that appear on the BLTP per day.

They’ve said in old interviews that there was only going to be 7 professions and engineer was added last, literally squeezed in, for the last profession, for anyone who cares about random facts.

Dante.1508:

Stark.1350:

Clearly you guys not only buffed the mobs on these, but removing the ability to stop the bounties and adding 3 more to make tracking utter tediousness is getting a little ridiculous.

1.) The three new mobs mechanics are ridiculous. Putting mobs with that intense of mechanics in the open world with a six minute escape timer is ludicrous.

2.) Half-Baked Komali and Diplomat Tarban are broken. WHO LIKES 20 STACKS OF CONFUSION. YAYYYYY.

3.) Hunting some of these mobs down with a small group of people can be stupid. Sotzz, Big Mayana, The Rat Wrangler are a pain as it is – Tricky’s path is too stupidly big.

4.) Their difficulty increases WAY too much with more people on them.

Remove the six minute escape timer and reduce their difficulty with added people. This is getting straight up silly.

Totally agree OP, nothing about these things are fun..

Actually did one today, while searching for triksy treksa in blazeridge for an hour i came to the conclusion i’m done with Guild bounties, done with commendations and Ascended crap, the whole set up is a waste of my life and i have better things to do than waste hours searching for needles in haystacks…..

Well Tricky is transformed as either a curious cow, weird wind rider, or a couple other animals so maybe that’s why you missed her. That’s a tough map to search though due to all of the rocky terrain, I’ll give you that.

Can you bring a necro and turn the confusion into retaliation? Perhaps you should limit the number of people fighting komali so you can better time your crowd control skills. We’ve beaten komali with a small coordinated group so I know you can do it. Bring removal, a necro, probably a mesmer, and any crowd control you can muster and try to deal with the stability boon right? Rip it from him then CC out of the shield. If you attack him while he’s in the aura he will stack might all day.

As a ranger, I often find myself being a quiet hero. Just now, we tried fractals a little above our AR at high levels. Jade Maw repeatedly attacked my moa, even when everyone was down but me. It allowed me to rez everyone and prevent a full wipe. Being a hero means a lot of different things to a lot of people. I’d say our guild leaders are heroes in terms of leadership and guidance and tolerance, for example. Rock on, have fun.

Sirius.4510:

…yeah, this is weird. It’s more likely to mean the speaker is role-playing… but that’s not the only reason people do it.

Really, there are just certain kinds of people who type with proper capitalization and punctuation, even on-line; I don’t do this anymore, but I can’t fault people who do. I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that they think they’re more important just because they do this.

We use office communciator at work and this one woman always writes with perfect english in the IM window and it just comes off as so pretentious. She is an arrogant, angry person too. I mean, punctuation is fine, but it’s a little weird to worry about perfect grammar and capitalization in instant messages. She really thinks it makes her superior. Whenever I instant message her, I make it an effort to use incorrect everything in chat just to tick her off!

Khai.6435:

For me it’s simple, “Why are the classes so hit and miss?” It doesn’t matter what you play.

All of the content, even if you are an average player, is simplistic in design and level of effort to overcome.

The difference comes down to the only metric more aggressive players can come by to justify their “skills;” Time.

If we took another class we could beat this dungeon in 10 minutes vice 13. Who cares.

People have migrated to a simple game; with simple mechanics; and are trying to drive some sort of measure of worth to their gameplay. When time is the only result you can measure; since you don’t really progress in gear with any measure of significance; you start watching the stop watch.

“It’s costing me money if only get in 5 runs in an hour vice 6.” Well, that is the fault of the designers making you run the same dungeon 1000 times to get … a 1% ring upgrade… not the ranger and his pet.

You are a smart person. I think it’s hilarious the balance team discusses how terrible it would be if ranger pets could tank a boss yet they’re totally cool with the two guardian two warrior and mesmer easy mode faceroll rofl easiness.

Also, there’s a full thread on this build that’s pretty popular (600 hp/sec regen…) so you might want to check that out for more in depth explanation. I ended up goong with runes of dwyana but to each his or her own.

Healing rangers with clerics and apothecary is unconventional and effective, if that’s what you’re after. Rangers are extremely powerful in the down state and also have lots of healing utilities/trait choices. Your water field, as a healing ranger, will be greatly appreciated at the right time. Run a sigil of life in the zerg and, in an organized group, enjoy doing well. The drawback is that you yourself won’t hit too hard so you have to use your skills to slow/cripple your enemy so your cat can get in hits. Again, I do not recommend these gears in dungeons since the healing power is easily overcome by bosses and you will want more damage so you can do the DPS race that currently catagorizes most dungeon encounters. But you seem smart, you already knew that I bet. But I’ll leave it for anyone else reading and interested.

Hmm, maybe, I thought that was rabid though. If anyone more familiar with temples wants to chime in, I’m sure OP would appreciate it. Thanks guys!

Oh, and if you can’t afford apothecary, try cleric’s in its place. Also, trap/rabid ranger (0/30/30/5/5) is considered ranger’s most “OP” bunker build in PvP. That’s because ranger are a condition source—as opposed to guardian, which is a condition sink or necro which is a condition manager. Not to say guardian/necro can’t give conditions of their own…they can, but they can’t keep throwing, basically, every condition at you the way a ranger can with unblockable traps and stuff.

Toadslick.1426:

I hit my 500th fractal over a month ago. I have over 50 pristine relics, and almost 30 useless ascended rings. I’ve been running 20+ fractals almost every night for months. I have never, NEVER had a fractal skin drop.

One member of my party, who has run less than half the fractals that I have, has gotten five. This system is ridiculous.

Dude that sucks so bad! I don’t even play FOTM, really, anymore due to being a main ranger. But on my very first level 20 I got a fractal axe skin—and axe is one of my favorite weapons! RNG is truly a nasty beast.

Leveling the ranger will basically be a breeze in open world. You won’t be able to PUG high up into fractals due to internal biases between professions, nor will you be able to convince people of your usefulness as a ranger in wvw. In sPvP the play is pretty decent. One sad thing about rangers is that one of the strongest builds for wvw is a regen/healing power build but you want apothecary trinkets for that. That kind of armor scales nicely for rangers because you and your pet can have a lot of regen boon uptime leading to a very powerful and hard hitting cat that isn’t a paper tiger. With 1611 healing power max buff last night, I was getting almost 600 HP per second with near permanent regen in combat.

The reason why it’s sad is due to the price of apothecary trinkets, few can afford to play this build. Early on in November, I had observed the value of sigils of generosity and passion flowers and I bought as many as I could. That money helped me afford the gear (plus I picked up Southsun Rose the other day). Right now, an appthecary trinket will run you about 50 gold.

I never said anything about rocket science. I just asked a simple question and somehow got a mile long response. I’m not reading that, dude. I have no opinion on the matter. You said “meaningful time” and I wanted a definition. So sue me.

I think part of the problem is the popularity of Strifey and his videos. Everyone thinks you have to play like he plays (not Strifey, the people copying him). And that group of people has been cancerous to the communtiy. I don’t even PUG dungeons anymore due to all the whining and ridiculous “l33t” behavior by kids who just copy everything Strifey does. Strifey is very efficient, sure, but most people copying him just don’t think for themselves at all and as soon as something goes off script they flip and rage quit.

While it’s true that some professions have more access to things you need to do the current DPS race that dungeons are, I think the true gap between professions is misunterstood. I’m hoping with the split skills patch in April, the lesser professions get a little overbuffed so opinions can quickly change. Playing a warrior is terribly boring and of course guardian will be awesome considering it’s ANET’s favorite profession. But playig a ranger is pure fun. :p

I’ve been playing lots of wvw with this build. It’s a lot of fun. 1611 healing on max buff (I have some of ghe wrong trinkets) and basically really nice survivability, particularly in a “zerg” (platoon). I will post some video of my play as soon as I get the chance to compile it into one video.

What do you consider “meaningful time” spent playing a profession?

Count me in guys, maybe if you beat me enough I can join the ranger dreamteam.

Thanks, Sebrent, you rock. Carry on!

Maybe erros stands his big giant body in front of people trying to stomp, absorbing enemy CC impacts. But ranger sucks at teamplay, god forbid you even CONSIDER using ranger at all in a team. A guardian is at least 4.865% more effective at this. Xsorsus, I thought you quit man. Ranger lover.

Erro, I think you would be 4.865% more effective if you rolled guardian. You’re not allowed to even believe in ranger on this forum. Ranger is a hypothetical class that doesn’t exist. In fact, you might want to quit the game.

AlexRD.7914:

Oh man, i remember when you could use Guard to put your pet on top of cliffs. I would always send my wolf and use fear. Once i killed like 5 people doing this in EB JP.

You can also wait by the chest in EB JP, and wait for the person to climb the stairs and point blank. Insta kill.

Dude that was a blast, I used to do that too. And peg leg ping pong.

“Not to say ranger doesn’t need work in other areas of the game.”

haviz.1340:

Chopps.5047:

You guys don’t even know how hard simin used to be. It basically required five full zerk players with impeccable timing and teamwork. Now it’s a cakewalk, huh? Shame. It devalues the Dungeon Master title enormously.

I seriously hope you’re trolling.

Not at all. How did you beat Simin? We failed repeatedly until we wore all zerk. I don’t remember it being easy at all. In fact, when I played her, you could not hit her while she was under stealth/regen…there used to be a bug where you could take advantage of that and hit her while she was stealthed. Her regen used to be so fast that one mistake with the sparks meant full reset. One tear too late meant no progress on her health bar.

Gasmask plays a ranger and he’s top 3 in the leaderboards. Not to say ranger doesn’t need work in other areas of the game.

The common wisdom is gold find in dungeons and magic find in PvE open world / Orr. There’s no reason to break that rule since you’re skipping most mobs in dungeons anyways. All the good loots drop from chests which isn’t affect by magic find.

You guys don’t even know how hard simin used to be. It basically required five full zerk players with impeccable timing and teamwork. Now it’s a cakewalk, huh? Shame. It devalues the Dungeon Master title enormously.

While were on this tooltip journey, I tested Concentration Training yesterday and saw no effect. Anyone confirm this?

I also want this but Sebrent said no.

Mixy.7358:

I noticed that the Poison trap doesn’t have a Poison combo field, the Fire trap has a Fire combo field, the Frost trap has a Frost field….why no Poison field?

Unless it’s a mistake it could be because they gave a poison field to carrion devourer and murellow pets. I wish storm spirit was a static field and I wish rangers had more reliable access to confusion. But I can wish all day doesn’t mean it’s fair or balanced! It sure would be nice to have even more access to conditions. It would be cool if hilt bash on greatsword gave the enemy 2 stacks of confusion. Either that or buff the hilt bash distance. What was that about wishing?…

Yeah sorry about that. This is fantastic work, no doubt. I really like how you dive in and dive out, I think that rhythm worked great for the times you used it.

Thanks, Sebrent—you are doing great work. equips warhorn to fight thieves…

haviz.1340:

You don’t need to figure out how to deal with necrid trap, just stay in one spot and don’t move (which is basically what Zogyark did). He only had elite with 180s recharge and a wurm. Rangers have similiar elite plus evade with lightning reflexes which timed correctly will make you evade that skill. Let your pets die in phase 1 (kick or two from lupi should kill them). Problem starts when you start moving and he uses necrid trap 3-4 times in a succession. Not every proffesion is able to survive that kind of offense.

This is good advice, thank you. In the past, when I’ve played lupi, the bubble seemed to pull me in even if I thought I evaded…was that just bad timing on my part? I might as well make sure I understand the necrid trap mechanic so I can factor it in properly on my first run. That’s one less time I’ll be sent on a jog back to phase 1 (lol).

Thanks, Khal, I’ll take all the luck I can get. Hopefully planning and skill gets me the other 90% of the way.

It’s been fun Xsorsus, I’ll see you around. Rock on.

The pet mechanic would be more interesting if more things happened on swap, like blast finisher, as well as a better way to position pets. We talked pet dodge button before but I don’t honestly think that’s the answer and expecting one person to dodge for twp characters is a bit much. Another idea is shorter CD on pets but then this mut balance with the action on swap idea. Hmm. See how tricky this is? Gettig rid of the pet altogether isn’t a solution, although it’s often brought up. It’s just not the answer and moves away from the design of the game where having a pet is critical to the way ranger plays. Speaking of pets, many of them are bugged as it is (pigs) so I expect fixes soon at least on that stuff. But here’s the good part:

I’d like to see more control over pet positioning. That’s the problem in PvE in my opinion. Pets are really bad at figuring out where to stand, when to attack, and when to retreat. Most players are bad at this! And ANET’s AI isn’t where it needs to be for that: remember the cave troll vs kohler fights? It’s like two boxers just exchanging face punches without ducking, weaving, blocking, or anything.

One idea I had was a behavior key, sort of like what we have now except the AI behaviors are more interesting than passive/aggressive (before you guys point out all the flaws with the idea I will just say it’s a springboard for discussion). Ok so I was thinking a behavior defined by following rules (call this behavior ‘mirror mode’): there is a radius of a circle defined by the distance between you and the boss, right? Well the pet always stands on this circle but is 180 degrees from you. That way, you naturally position yourself to the side of a boss and the pet is on other side; when you dodge, the pet dodges, etc. This might not be the best idea in the world but what I’m trying to do is make positioning pets more approachable and possible for rangers.

Let’s see if ANET has something up their sleeves this month but I wouldn’t get my hopes up at the moment.

I haven’t played a daily in a week. Who cares about laurels? Unless you’re playing fractals you can get by without them. You don’t have to do anything. Get laurels when you feel like it or have the chance. It will make that purchase all the better to you once you save enough for the widget you want.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Zogyark.4597:

now your turn to solo it with your ranger ;p

Stuck on phase 3, having a really hard time escaping the bubble when it gets me. I’ll get there soon though!

The key is to survive. Rangers are survivors. I will try this very soon-likely this weekend. Work and stuff, all that “IRL”, gets in the way. I expect success but we shall see. I’m not in a race to be first (I haven’t even tried yet) but I remain confident that it can be done.

Kain Francois.4328:

I’m sure Muslims and Jews wouldn’t appreciate this because Bacon is not kosher…

Omnom berries on the other hand, are kosher.

But surely they can appreciate humor?

While theorycrafting ideas for pets, with my guild, I think it would be cool if when a pig died in a fire field, it procs AoE bacon. Thoughts?

I’m not sure how good it is but here’s some related facts about ranger might:

Sword gives pet, basically, 3 stacks of might just on autoattack.

Stalker + warhorn + fire trap + drake swap will, while in melee, give 9 stacks of might to nearby allies along with fury and swiftness

Fortifying bond leads to great might stack possibilties for pet

Just some things to chew on, sort of on topic. I think the trait that gives boon duration on pets (concentration training? I’m working), is broken. I’m also not sure if expertise training is working. Sebrent, you test that stuff too?

That’s a good reason to pair a necro with a ranger if you want fire.

Durzlla.6295:

Chopps.5047:

Chokolata.1870:

I do use Muddy terrain , I said that it would be nice if the pet landed some hits WITHOUT me burning crowd control skills non-stop

First, I should mention that it’s a wilderness survival skill that grants cripple and immobilize, neither of which are crowd control. Also, muddy terrain has a ton of uptime so you don’t need to constantly cast it. Are you sure you’ve tried that?

Regarding the other part of your post, do you feel improvements to pet AI would upset the pvp balance? Because most people would try to cripple or chill in your situation. Don’t like using axe or dagger offhand? What about greatsword swoop to pet swap to hilt bash? You’ll get some hits in there I bet.

All of those -do- work and are quite nice combos for guaranteeing pet hits, however I’m with Chak on this one.

Our pets need to hit more than they do, it wouldn’t be OP since we’re balanced around our pets hitting the target.

Now, of they upped both ours and our pets damage and sorta said “your pets only supposed to have ~ 30% uptime on a mob, but you deal 120% the damage other profs can do while pets up on it…” Then I would have NO issues with my pet hardly landing things, because when he lands something it’ll freaking hurt.

Yeah this gets into a deeper discussion, Durz, I mean, yeah, it’s a problem. I was just trying to get him solutions. I think the issue of pets landing hits is a complex one such that any simple analysis or simple AI fix wouldn’t be enough. The point I always try to make is that, if you really want to play ranger, you can make it work. It will get better, I know it.

Ya durzlla you’re right. Anyone else want to join us? I’m thinking around 900 hours server time, sunday, about eight days from today. Please post if you want to commit.

Team support with ranger is all about combo fields. Try stacking might with bonfire/flame trap and blast finishers. I know thief and engineer and warrior and guardian and elementalist can all help either finish these fields or help keep fire fields at 100% uptime (ele has slightly more access to fire fields but they have to sacriice other play-styles to really make use of it). Other team support includes search and rescue, spirit of nature, and signet of renewal. Don’t forget meurellow’s poison combo field or moa’s protection/heals. Drakes do a blast heal in healing spring on swap with it’s tailswipe attack.

Neb.4170:

Chopps.5047:

Adding haxi to blocked list…where I keep trolls in their place.

‘Anyone who doesn’t like my pet class is a troll’

You sure put him in his place???

Not at all, rather, all of the writing style and all the “inb4” just seemed really spammy and trollish. I may as well block you too. No reason to have to take a chance that I might have to talk to you guys in game. It’s better this way. It’s not about putting someone in their place, rather, putting trollish behavior on “ignore” in game. That stuff only flies here, as you guys lose with ranger and lose against rangers then stroke your ego by putting down everyone who has fun. You must not play for fun.

Adding haxi to blocked list…where I keep trolls in their place.

Chokolata.1870:

I do use Muddy terrain , I said that it would be nice if the pet landed some hits WITHOUT me burning crowd control skills non-stop

First, I should mention that it’s a wilderness survival skill that grants cripple and immobilize, neither of which are crowd control. Also, muddy terrain has a ton of uptime so you don’t need to constantly cast it. Are you sure you’ve tried that?

Regarding the other part of your post, do you feel improvements to pet AI would upset the pvp balance? Because most people would try to cripple or chill in your situation. Don’t like using axe or dagger offhand? What about greatsword swoop to pet swap to hilt bash? You’ll get some hits in there I bet.

SlemFyr.7936:

Rangers do suck and I’m seriously considering rerolling if nothing happens soon. I really want a ranger option to be lose the pet and have different “pet buffs” as a supplement.

Just re-roll. People like me, who will stick with ranger and still consider it “main”, play it because of the feel and the play style. For us, maximum fun is an arrow to the knee of the foe, or a stealth cat yak attack. People like to do what’s most fun to them. Why don’t you? Or is trolling the fine folks here having fun with ranger your idea of maximizing fun?

What I can’t understand is why you guys would come here and troll or whatever. Everyone knows where ranger is. I think it’s funny how people talk about “ANET doesn’t care/know our problems” when they designed the profession and, as a whole, know more about it than most of us ever will. ANET knows where ranger is, no doubt. What we can say for sure is that ranger is far from useless, some people maximize fun by playing them, and the difference bringing a ranger to a dungeon, in general, nil. Dungeon runs are skill limited not profession limited.

SlemFyr.7936:

BlackhawkSOM.6401:

Chopps.5047:

You ever use combo fields to help your group blast heal, stack might, or proc weakness on your foe? Devourers make great dungeon pets since you can proc an abundance of might with it’s dual attack and RaO. Have you tried that? You can even try fortifying bond to get even more might on the pet. What about muerellow? Everyone like applying weakness to a boss. Muddy terrain, spike trap, and frost trap turn out to be great choices for skipping trash and/or chilling a boss. Do you make use of these? How much do you let your pet tank the boss as opposed to calling it back? Heck, I’ve been playing since beta weekend and I still wouldn’t consider myself someone who’s mastered all the details of ranger. At one point I thought I had it all figured out. But then I realized there was more options, more things to study, and more things to test.

Pets are literally 50% of our damage why whould I call back 50% of my damage on a boss? Does that make sense to you? And I am well aware of weakness I use black bear tons on higher level fractals…pets straight up die to much and so do spirits theres no sugar coating it and this whole “pet management” of calling your pets back and swapping I am fully aware of. It is a stupid system that needs change as it feels like an alpha stage pet mechanic.

Also on devourers and their combo fields try using your devourer in coe, end boss of most fractals, and other dungeons that dish out hardcore aoe. Yes they can survive but only if the boss is standing still the entire match….

^
Pets are useless vs bosses and make sure nobody wants a ranger in their group

Useless is an awfully strong word. Are you sure you don’t want to qualify that?

Personally, I wouldn’t want you in my group since you appear to be close minded and inflexible, the opposite of what a ranger represents and the opposite of the kind of player people want on a team. Anyways, chew on that. Back to work for me.

Do you guys want to go again later today? I’ll need a break at some point. I’ve been working really hard on some deliverables, analysis, and report for work and haven’t really played all week. It’s weird not getting laurels haha

If today is too short notice we can always go again, say, next weekend. Baseball has been getting some of my time too since I love baseball so that makes it tough in the middle of the week. Let me know when you guys want to get together, shoot the breeze, and help beginners and the advanced alike get some pets for wvw.