Guild Wars 2

I really dont understand this thread. All I do in this game in roaming in WvW, and pwoer based builds are, by a HUGE margin, the more common. I fight probably 5 power builds for every pure condition build I meet.

And then I dont find condition builds to be any harder or easier than power builds. The only 2 exceptions are P/D thieves and Condi PU mesmers… but the problem with them is more to do with the fact that they are ranged based and heavy stealth users which makes them more or less impossible to get at, it’s got nothing really to do with the fact they are using conditions.

It really does need an ICD.. 15-20 would put it in line with other classes cleansing options.

If doing that means warriors have a crippling lack on condition removal (I dont know if thats true or not, but if it is) then they need to be given other condition removal options to combine with CI.

Keeping CI OP because theres no other options is a terrible arguement.

Ahh ok.. yes you are correct you cant straight up swap them like utilities you need to fiddle round it with a 3rd pet.

You can get sharks in the WvW BL. Just go onto the BL which has your base in the South West and then go east out of your spawn and into the water.. you can get a shark there.

Edit: There http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Shark_Victor%27s_Lodge.jpg

By the sounds of it you’re stuggling with P/D condi thieves, who are universally very hard to counter and annoying to fight.

The only real advice for those types of thieves is, if they are using vemons (which is likely) they will not have much access to stealth besides CnD. Dodge that above all else and you will really start to screw with their rotation. As a warrior is quite do-able.. I main ranger and mesmer and its pretty much impossible to do there since they CnD off pets and illusions.. but for you, make it happen

Pretty sure they are refered to as amphibious, rather than an amphibian. Theres a big difference :P

And you can swap them round on the Pet interface so that the only you want comes out first. Shark is my first underwater pet all day long because it starts every fight with a fear.. which is great if you’re using the water to try and escape people

No specific thief advice since I dont play it, but if you are struggling you can always pull the 2 ranged defenders out from the others as long as you are fighting at range too.

Just draw agro and then move out of they mods “zone”. The melee ones will leave and the ranged ones will stay because they can still hit you, so you can then just SB spam them and then take on the other 2 after.

Not as fast as stacking them all behind the nearest building and AoEing them all at once, but easier to do if you’re struggling.

Yeah I dont play my thief but this sounds like a complicated way to CnD spam… And also against any half decent opponent they are going to work out pretty quickly what you are doing and just stop standing next to your BP (if they were ever next to it at all) waiting for you to complete your combo.

Because they are annoying. You cant play the way you normally do against thieves because either they spend half the fight in stealth or half the fight way out of range shadowstepping about with the sword. In a 1v1 situation its very hard to overwhelm a thief with enough CC to actually pin them down and get enough damage into them before they disappear off agai.

They are just.. annoying to fight, and it makes people frustrated, which is then compounded if they lose so they come and call OP, when what they mean is “I hate them”.

@gawker

I can see your point, but I still disagree that there is a problem. You’re basicly advocating that the casual gamer should be able to pick up the ranger (and by extention, any class) and play it well, which I just dont think should be the case. We have a class (warrior) which is more or less entirely dedicated to casuals who dont want to put in much effort for high reward, and I have no problem with that, and even within the other profesions there are builds which do the same thing (Regen Bunkers are ours, as shadowpass stated), but I dont see any need for the entire profesion to be dumbed down and made easy. There are other options if someone wants an easy ride, but if thats what they want then not every door should be open to them.

@shadowpass

I somewhat see your point to.. although I dont entirely agree, and regardless thats really beyond the scope of this thread. This thread is abotu whether or not rangers should be easier and funner to play, rather than should they be better once mastered, so forgive me for not answering you directly… We have enough people locking horns on that issue on other threads

There’s nothing bad about a class being harder to play / master. All the classes have different skill levels required.. Engis are famously hard to master, whereas warriors are famously easy, and everyone else sits somewhere inbetween depending on their build.

Theres nothing wrong with that. Not every class should be an faceroll class.

And in regards to rangers being boring.. that is really just an opinion. I find guaridans boring and regret all the money and badges I spent gearing it, but you dont see me complaining on the guardian forums. I just accept that its role and playstyle isnt what I am looking for and play the classes I do enjoy.

So yeah.. the problems you highlight are not actual problems.

I dont know, Sharpened Edges will be doing around 130 damage per proc and be procing around 42% of your hits (assuming an average of 50% fury uptime), which is an average of 55 extra damage every attack.

Not exactly knocking the ball out the park but thats still probably a 5-7% damage increase depending on your targets armour, which really isnt that bad.

I’d probably still prefer quickdraw but.. I wouldnt says its useless. People pay good money for a Sigil of Force to do that same thing :P

I was pretty underwhelmed by this entire thing TBH… Not so much because of what they said, but because of what they didnt say.

So OK, they think rangers should have the best single target ranged DPS. Not what I would have chosen as our specialty but thats fine I can live with it. What I really want to know though is how close they think we are to realising that aim. If they think we are already the best single target ranged DPS then I am laughing all the way to my GS mesmer where I can wreck any zerk LB ranger all day long without even trying. If they think the LB still needs significant buffs, particularly when untraited then I can get on board with that and like where they are going with this.

Basicly.. them telling us what they think class should be doesnt really mean anything unless they tell us how close they think they currently are to that ideal.

Thats pretty much what I expected.

We have poor coeffiecients in general because we have a pet, and our pet has them because it has us. We arent seperate and it would be way OP if we were both scaling off might the same way other classes do.

But consider that between us we have twice as many might stacks as other classes (should be 15 ish on you, with about the same on your pet, 25 on both with RoA active) then I feel it’s a fair tradeoff.

Yeah.. I did actually try to make it a more hybridly build in general with mroe condi application, but I couldnt find a way to get everything I wanted in there :P

Also, I sometimes take 2 points out of WS and put them in BM.. makes your pet really strong, and with all the might effecting it as well thanks to the NM line it really does become worth IMO.

Mm interesting. This is the Power-Might Stacking build I made

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNMQNAV8YjEqUwaJLusw1aAMhqdC0pBwrR1dzuAzcBTOA-T1BFwAIV+54iAwS9n26Gat/AgnAwVlgECw8CA-w

I tried it with quite a few weapons.. .GS, LB, Wh and then the ones you see on there.. they are all have merits but SB/Sw+D are just my #1 weapons for anything really.. cant get enough of them :P

Not all that dissimular really, I just went for more might through pet swapping and weapon swapping, as well as more cleansing.

As Sigmoid said, the 20% conditiom duration isnt actually helping you that much. It adds 1 extra tick to S3, T4 and A2. Thats it, and even then thats assuming they dont cleanse this skills before the end of their duration (with is the case of the burning and bleeds is quite likely).

But even if they dont cleanse and you get the extra ticks, they will in no way come even close to matching the extra damage your pet withh bring.

Edit: Also as an asside, looking at your build again, you have in general very poor condition application. Without sigils like geomancy or on-crit procs or even a SB, you have only 1 way to apply bleeds. I really dont think you have enough condition application to bring people down with that alone.

I’ve not tried might stacking in a condi build nor have I tried it in PvP, but I have been trying might stacking in WvW and have found it’s better to take Might Swap than might from signets.

So, I’d suggest losing the 4 points in MS and putting them into BM (or putting 2 in BM and 2 in NM, but i prefer a beafier pet).

You’ll get more might from this (can swap more than you can use signets) and pet will be a monster with 4 BM and all that might, and it also gives you more freedom to change utilities if you want to.

You are going to want some condition removal. Really.

Just as an example.. My rangers offhand dagger with one skill alone can apply 200% poison uptime (16s duration on an 8s CD). If you were to meet me you’d be perma poisoned without question, meaning your ~600 /second healing would suddenly be only 400. And since my poison ticks for over 225 /second basicly what has happened is that with 1 single skill I have made it so you have less than a third of the healing you thought you did.

So yeah.. curing 1 condition every 10s isnt going to fly on a build which is meant to be the most survivable it can possible be.

Noooope.

I’ve you’d ever encountered a thief + rifle warrior roaming together you’d know that in no way do stealth + long-range mega damage attacks (Killshot) mix to create a fun game.

Rolling killshot and stealth into one class is probably the worst suggestion I’ve ever read on these forums.

Just imagine I was suggesting we give a stealth utility to warriors… thats how bad it sounds.

I dont know about celestial, but I had been wondering how rampagers would work in a 2/4/2/0/6 shatter build.

I’ve been running that for last week or so in berserkers with GS+Sw/T and its great, but I do stack a somewhat silly amount of confusion and bleeds at times and have even had people ask if I’m a condition build because of the stacks they see on themselves.

I just wonder what the effect would be if I took Gs+Staff and rampagers instead of berserker.. could be good, but I dont really have the desire to spend the money to try right now :P But yeah.. celestial is not all that disimular from rampagers.. it would just be a more tanky version of the same hybrid style setup.

This isnt based off anything but my imagination… but if its a 1v1 it’s probably not worth getting too excited about, but if you’re in a roaming group with friend and you can all focus on one target, then 10-25% extra damage for your whole group is going to be amazing.

The reason I dont imagine its amasing is just ebcause of the difference I see between mesmers and rangers.. I play a shatter mesmer and one of the tactics is to use F3 to stack 25 vulnerability more or less instantly, resummon clones though a dodge + weapon skill or utility and go straight into a shatter burst. That is brutal, but rangers dont really have a burst like a shatter mesmer to really egt the most out of their stacks alone.

I think you the above posted summed it up more or less entirely.

I dont know what it is about conditions which makes people ignore them when designing builds and then when playing against condition builds, but people seem to think that they can take 1 maybe 2 utility to cleanse themselves with and then they should be immune to conditions. Thats just… not how it works.

Personally I almost always take too little condi removal, rather like Terra says he doesnt take stunbreakers. Just cant squeeze everything into the build, which is fine and I know my weakness is to conditions. It just means when I lose to someone using them I have to accept that it was my fault for not packing enough defence against it rather than crying that is OP and my one single trait couldnt nulify their entire build.

gawker.8340:

Condition duration food is the culprit. 40% duration is insane. That’s analogous to +40% dmg for a power build.

Hard to argue with the food (both the +ve one and the -ve one) being way OP compared to other foods, but then that needs to be the thing which is fixed not conditions in general.

A video of a zerker warrior running down noobs doesnt prove anything other than they are good at cutting down players who dont know how to deal with them.

I’ve never had problems dealing with warriors when roaming on my ranger or mesmer, and I’m not even a great mesmer.

I didn’t mean we are 100% archers and fight purely at range. Of course we melee and some people use only melee, but even then we are not a heavy melee class. We are not meant to be an unstoppable tank marching forward like a warrior, we are still an evasive class which replies on movement to fight.

Having huge access to stability doesnt suit us and we already have pretty big access.

IDK about funniest kill but my saddest death was last night… I got “Fear Me!”’ed off a cliff my a warrior.

What was sad was I knew the cliff was there and I was going towards it, I had my stunbreaker ready and thought about using it but I was so sure I was far enough from the cliff that I wouldnt fall. I had no idea the fear lastest that long, or what he had done to extend it, but it was a real facepalm moment.

In neither of those clips did the mesmer use (or even have?) any sort of cleansing. Of course he got wrecked by conditions.

It’s like going in with no armour on then wondering why thieves are 1-hitting you with BS.. Duh.

The fact is those clips show how not broke conditions are. They thief was using all 3 utilitys to condi-burst on the mesmer, and even using all his utilities for 1 burst it didnt kill the mesmer. If he had just taken Mantra of Resolve that mesmer, aweful as he was, would have dominated the thief.

I don’t think we really need it. Warriors and Guardians should be the ones with the most stability because they are melee based heavy classes and thus need it. We are a medium class and fight more at range and in a skirmishing style, and really shouldnt be depending on stability as much.

When looking at other medium and light classes our stability access is pretty envious already so… I’m going to say no.

Is cheesy just a term we apply to any build that even half works these days? I really can’t keep up.

Really nice. I just play my mesmer quite casually and have been using a 4/4/6 zerker phantasm PU build for quite a while, which works really well, but I’ve found myself using shatters more and more as I get more used to the mesmer and this looks like a great build to transition into

Can I have a pet asura? Which uses the asuran racial skills?

Can’t see the harm in this, but I have no idea why this thread is specifically targeted at Eles and Engis. All classes do this, most often to swap to a weapon with high mobility to move around, but for whatever reason it is it’s not a class specific thing.

I’ve got no issue with Hornet Sting as it is, but this actually would be a fairly cool change IMO.

Fought a warrior like this several times last night (though they used a GS +Sh over Hammer + Mace).

Was certainly… Different. I mean everyone is used to full zerker warriors roaming about, it’s perfectly normal to encounter and (in my opinion) quite easily to deal with.. but they hit so so hard it was unreal. Usually I can afford 1-2 mistakes even VS DPS heavy players but this really was something else.

We both won some and lost some, but like others have said above, the weakness really is to conditions and CC. I am used to every warrior I ever fight ever having Dogged March and probably Mobile Strikes, as well as Cleansing Ire. I dont usually even both with Entangle against warriors because they just walk out, but it became brutally effective in this case, along with my other CC from traps and pets.

So.. yeah.. Like I said they won a fair few times because I really was so caught of guard by the damage to the point of it being rediculous.. But every time I died I knew it was because I had made a mistake with my dodges / CC, not because their build was too strong.

PIGS

Who couldnt love the pigs…:)

Dagger, Warhorn or Axe are all great choices for an offhand on a Direct Damage build. I’d give them all a fair try if I were you.

In regards to pets.. the above are right. its best to learn to use it because it provides a lot of your utility or damage depending how you build.

Taking drakes is a nice way to learn to use pets, IMO, because they are very useful but also tanky so you wont have them dying every 2 seconds.

I dont PvE so I don’t know anything much about this… But it is really poor game design to be creating exceptions to the rules of the games mechanics. If something is OP or not working then it shows a flaw in their mechanics and design which needs to be fixed, not just bypassed in the specific situations they want. That’s a lazy and inconsistant solution and just re-enforces the idea that I, and most other WvW / PvP players have that PvE is not fun or interesting or difficult, it’s just a memory exercise of knowing where to stack and what to do where.

If you cant rely on the game mechanics to work round problems you face it’s no longer in interesting challenge to overcome, its just a “have prior knowledge of what the designer whats you to do because none of the mechanics you know from the rest of the game work here”.

Also as another aside, they really REALLY need to show us what buffs / conditions are on our pet. It is important information which we just dont ever have access to without breaking target to click on our pet, which is obsurd. Particularly if you’re using traits like EB, you do really need to know how many conditions your pet has on, or if you’re running a BM build and depending on your pet for DPS it would be nice to know if its got weakness or swiftness, or if its immobilised how long for? Is it going to be free in a second or should I swap now, etc. We need to know.

Chaos.2531:

Zephyrus.9680:

PPT is insignificant, WvW is all about the fights anyway.

But assuming you’re referring to PPT, that’s not true. Roamers just flipping camps can do more than a full zerg unless everyone is in K-train mode. Sometimes when things are really dead you can flip all 6 camps on a borderland which is actually worth more than soloing a keep (which can also be done solo, given enough time…). I did all 6 camps several times in seasons vs BG — supposedly the most populated server. I don’t even care about PPT, it’s just that’s what I’ll do when looking for people to fight.

If there are zergs on the map, roamers will usually be scouting them as well. Not sure how you could consider that insignificant.

Anyway, the best roamers are GS warriors and thieves. Worst I think are necros and guardians.

It is insignificant when it comes down to individual players. Even if you were to flip all 6 camps by yourself, what would that mean in such a large scale battle? A minimal difference in the total score. ( Unless for some weird reason they were left unchecked for a considerable period of time. )

If a roamer kills and stomps 1 person and caps one camp every 15 minutes they earn 8 points for their server.

A zerg of say 35 people would need to capture 11 keeps in that time to gains the same number of points per person as that roamer did.

Now clearly its not a scalable model because if you have more than 3-4 decent roamers on a map you’re going to run out of camps pretty quickly, but the fact remains that decent roamers have the single largest effect on their servers score when looking at it on an individual basis.

Looks like that “fight” lastest a good 2-3 seconds based on how many attacks he got it.. If you didnt defend yourself in that time that really your fault not ANets.

Theres a pretty typical trap ranger with a chill slant

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAnf8YjEqUua9KusQ1aAAhaVA0OHa2YgdD0BfQF7NB-T1hHwACOJAlU/J0+DAeCA2VCeW/gRlfkCAipRA-w

The only real difference is you’re taking chilling pets over spiders or whatever else you usually have, frost trap over flame trap (which is well worth it if you have a torch for burning) and rune of grenth instead of whatever else you normally take.

Sigils I sort of up to you, I just put those ones of because they are the first that came to mind, but geomancy, earth, ice, hydromancy, whatever else you like to take are all good.

Still got 1700+ condi damage, 40% crit chance, all your normal normal condition applications just with a ton of chill behind it. 100%? In theory, yeah, but in practice of course you wont always have it on due to cleanses and missing and whatnot, but even so, you will have huge uptime.

shadowpass.4236:

mine? or…

lol15charsoannoyingicanteven.

The thread in general, refering to OP really, not your post :P

gawker.8340:

I agree chill is very powerful. But it’s SO gimmicky to use frost trap to get frost aura. Eles can get frost aura on dagger 4 with one press of a button.

Such a random and pointless comparison. By that logic is it gimmicky for an ele to use Glyph of Elementals to summon a pet when rangers get one for free?

Ele is probably the only class which completes with rangers on the chill front, but even so such narrow minded comparisons between skills is really stupid.

But to humour you.. sure.. ele can get Frost Aura more easily. With one specific weapon, on the 40s CD from a skill which has no other effect. Frost trap is an AoE chill in its own right on a 30s CD which can be used to finish with any finisher you like. They are totally different and just saying “Frost Aura pointless on ranger because ele gets it easier” is, as I already said, pointless.

No sure what the purpose of this thread is, but I disagree with most of your points.

Never used it with a LB, but yeah, Rangers have a rediculous ability to apply chill and its seriously under valued. Along with poison, I consider chill to be one of the rangers trademark conditions because we are so good, arguably the best, at it.

I’ve mostly used it with trap builds, as most people have, because with Frost Trap, Axe, Grenth Runes, Ice sigils and couple of good pets (we have 6 to choose from when it comes to chill, which is insane) you technically have well over 100% chill uptime.

Cygnus.6903:

morrigana sedai.2091:

@Cufufalating.8479: so what you are saying comes down to the claim that someone should be ranged to kill a warrior with a gs+ x/shield build. Does not sound like proper balance to me. And like I stated above warriors have 3 gap closers, especially if they hardly get bother by conditions due the massive amount of reduce the food and runes of melandru gives, this means every warrior that does need to to chase like that does not use his gap closers properly.

So what you are saying comes down to that the heaviest melee class in the game should, when using the most melee oriented build ever, be countered by…melee? That does not sound like proper balance to me.

Looks like Cygnus replied for me, but to reitterate, that does sound balanced to me. Warriors are a heavy melee class and frankly it comes as no surprise to me that in a straight up “smacking eachother with oversized swords until one drops” fight that warriors come out of top. I don’t see a problem there.

That’s not to say warriors can only be beaten with range, but if you’re going to melee them they are going to have the obvious upper hand and you’re going to win with other tactics, such as a sword thief jumping in and out of the fight to do / avoid damage, or a sword mesmer going in to use blurred frenzy before backing out. You should not be able to take on the heaviest class in the game by standing there facetanking.

Also 3 gap closers is not a lot. On my trap ranger build I have 2 dodges and 1 evade backwards on my SB, and there I have instantly dodged all 3 of their leaps. And then if they do get to me I still have 2 evades on my S/D other weapon set, plus another evade which I can use to re-create distance between us, plus my stunbreaking LR which also will evade backwards and create distance. And all this is ignoring the 5 different sources of immobilize I have.

So actually, if you’re playing a ranger and a full melee warrior is runnign you down then you are going it wrong. Very very wrong.

Your stats look good but it’s clearly not a full offensive setup. You’ve gotten plenty or armour and taken low damage pets.

That’s not to say it’s a bad setup, just that yeah, if you meet a full tank player (especially a warrior or guardian) you are going to struggle to take them down. I mean just think, a guardian with maybe 3200 armour, perma protection and more blocks than you can imagine… Of course he’s not going to go down to a single player with good but not great direct damage.

Hense why most solo roamers (not all, but most) are either full zerker or condition builds, so that they can smash through even the tankiest of opponents.

Hunters call in a ranger skill and is often used to stack bleeds to high levels because its 17 small attacks (hense looking a lot like being spammed even though its only 1 attack), meaning it can proc on-crit bleeds many many times (although since mesmers lack the same bleed on crit trait that rangers have, the bleeds probably werent from the Hunters Call but rather the illusions).

As for why a mesmer had it.. All I can imagine is he has it stored from usin Mimic. I dont even know is Mimic can steal Hunters Call, and I nearly never see mesmers us that skill anyway… But it’s not impossible (I dont think).

Full melee warriors are terrible for dualing. They only appear good because they move so fast and shrug off CC that they rare actually die, but thats not to be confused with actually being dangerous or good.

The trade-off warriors make is that to get this high DPS with high survivabilty they have to go full melee, which makes them very vulnerable to being outplayed. When I am on my mesmer or ranger, even a full zerker warrior does nearly no damage to me because they spend 90% of the fight just trying to hit me. They can chose to take a rifle which means they cant be kited like this, but then they do see that DPS drop.

They do have a trade off, IMO, and dont see warriors as unbalanced at all in terms of roaming / dualing (though other game modes are a different story).

I love how in the space on a few replies, this thread has devolved into whether or not thieves are OP even though this thread has nothing at all to do with that.

Also its worth saying this… Ranger AAs are not any better than any other classes. Many classes stack bleeds on AA, often for much longer duration. The rangers highest DPS AA is the sword, and it does less DPS than the warrior sword AA (which is considered to be a fairly average weapon DPS wise by warriors).

The fact is rangers use their AA for max DPS not because the AA is OP, but because none of the other skills are better.

Tl;DR: If you want to fix it, buff other ranger skills, don’t nerf the AA’s.