Guild Wars 2

As someone who plays traps constantly and moved into hybrid builds over pure condition quite some time ago, my opinion is its 100% worth it to take that route. Frankly 1000 condition damage is more than enough to wreck someone whose condition removal cant handle your application, and having halfway decent direct damage helps me a lot when dealing with more or less anyone except warriors and guardians, who I never think much on on a trap build anyway. I mean really, full melee players with no teleports or stealth just running head first at you? Thats any trappers dream. But I digress.

You arent really even hybriding at all, honestly. All your armours still stack condition damage as their primary stat, you’re basicly just replacing the half dire with half carrion from the typical trapper build, which is no bad thing, but I think you need to take it further than than to see the real benfits and change to the build.

But in responce to question #3, no I dont think force is doing much to help you, not with so little power. If you balanced in more power and less condition damage then maybe, but even then I’d still stick to Sigil of Earth. Toning down your condition damage to increase direct damage is one thing, but I’d never give up condition application for it.

True, but perhaps them the solution is to be buffing frost trap and vipers nest to perform different functions.

For example, removing the cripple and bleed from spike trap (I know, the hate is coming!) and give it a longer immobilise and hugely buffed direct damage, essentially making it a non-condition trap. Make Vipers nest to be a hard hitting direct damage trap too and there you have it, flame trap and frost trap can be taken happily by condition builds and spike trap and vipers nest can be used by drect damage builds.

To me, thats in a nicer solution to giving every trap a good use, rather than trying to apply some awkward engi mechanic to rangers.

I have to say I really REALLY hate this idea of traps in a kit. I dislike the way engis play because of they way they constantly are swapping kit, and it would completely put me off wanting to play traps at all.

Also, I dont feel like trap rangers lack survivability. 2 traps + LR/SoR is perfectly fine.

I do like the idea that traps could be traited for provide defensive buffs in some way if people generally think the survivability is lacking.. but reworking traps into Grenades V2 is a terrible terrible solution.

I’d like to have torment, and it makes most sense to be on the ranger, but TBH I am fine not having it.

I really wish ANet has made conditions a little more class specific, so each class had things it was great at and thigns it couldnt do. Rangers are a great example.. We are fantastic and poison, buring and chilling, but lack confusion, torment blind. I like that. Warriors is also pretty balance with burning, torment and some confusion, but lacks any poison.

Its kinda of ruined by classes like necro and engi who just get everything under the sun.. which is sad.. but I’d rather they removed some conditions from other classes than added more to us. Would make each class a bit more specific in how it played conditions.

Yeah and those power builds.. its like every attack they do does direct damage I mean wtf… just spamming anything they like and doing damage constantly. So op boring, only like 1-2 attacks on each weapon should do direct damage else its just spamfest. plz nerf

I like the idea behind confusion, really it’s good, it just doesnt seem to work that well in practice in my experience. I mean sure it might stop people AAing, but most of the time you have little chouce but to keep using skills because otherwise you’ll die even faster.

Its the same with Torment. Nice in theory, but its almost never worth standing still to take 200 less damage from your torment because doing so will get you hit by a million and one other things.

Lorelei.3918:

So some of you who use traps are against having them buffed? You are against something which is beneficial to you…

You don’t happen to be republicans by any chance…?

Just because I use something doesnt mean I automatically am in favour of any and all buffs to it. Hard as it is to imagine, some people genuinely hope for balance in this game, not just to have their build / class / playstyle be the most powerful one to rule them all.

Zorby.8236:

shadowpass.4236:

I keep saying, I know zerker deals more damage, i’m just trying to max the damage you can put out in full soldiers

And what you seem to be missing is that that is already a fundamental contradiction. If you’re in full soldiers your intention was never to deal any damage at all. And if you intended to push damage you wouldn’t be in full soldier. It might’ve been a fun little thought experiment for you, but that’s all it is ever going to be and it’s not clear in your OP that’s what it is.

So having a disucssion on how to get the best possible defensive setup while in full zerker would be a waste too, because zerker gear is for full DPS and defense is irrelevant when using it? No. Just because you have DPS armour doesnt mean you dont think about how to defend yourself, and just because you have defensive armour doesnt mean you dont consider how make the best of your attacks.

I really dont mean to be here defending this build, and some you have very valid points that mixing in knights or w/e with it would be much better, so my posts arent directed at everyone, but honestly… half the replies to this thread are people just stating the obvious or being completely closed minded to the idea of trying to maximise damage with defensive gear (be it soldiers, clerics, knights, or w/e you wish to pick).

And yes, I do consider 9k damage over 4.5 seconds acceptable. Any fight worth considering a fight will last more than 30 seconds and ultimately your average DPS will be less than 1k / second throughout a fight. So if you have a setup which can be doing at LEAST 2k / second (since RF has a low DPS compared to most skills) that is actually not that bad.

Nope.

They are traps, the whole point is they can be laid without your opponent knowing their location / without being seen.

You cant just compare them to Marks and other skills in such a one-minded way.. They arent the same and arent for the same purpose. Only a few days ago I was opposing the suggestion to increase traps radius and range to match that of marks for the same reason, so this isnt be being bias towards rangers or traps.. its just thats the reality of what traps are meant to be – and its not the same as marks, glyphs, wells or caltrops.

Depends on your build so much, honestly. I have only got 4 classes to 80, and only truely play 2 of them (Ranger and mesmer).

I play my mesmer in full zerker as a PU phanstasm build and honestly its just so easy. I play it when i want to kitten , go around trolling people and bursting them down before they know whats going on. I wouldnt ever claim to be a great mesmer, but I stil lwin over 80% of 1v1s I get into, and even the ones I lose I usually survive.

With that said though, I did breifly try a shatter spec and I couldnt get my head round it. I am sure with some practice I could, but its clearly much more involved than just kitten ing around in stealth with OP phantasms, and thats not what I play mesmer for.

So yeah.. just an example of how even within classes, its can be played in easy mode or in “hard mode”. The main problem I think with this game is that the “hard-mode” specs often arent even much better than the easy ones (see PU mesmers, like me, Spirit Rangers in PvP, D/P thieves in WvW, etc).

I think I am going to lose the will to live if one more person comes here and says “You can do more damage if you take full zerker@!££!!!!”.

The RNG is what puts me off pigs… I want to like them but I just cant.

I remember a few months back when they changed MoC and people were so interested by our 9s fear… I spent litterally 15 mintues swaping out between all the pigs using their F2s and didnt get a single skull. At that point I figured, not matter how good it is, its nothing going to work for me.

That would essentially make it a 6s invulnerability, during which time we could still use all our other skills. It would be a little too OP, even wit hthe downside of your pet taking the damage for you.

Not sure why people are so opposed to this. I mean sure, stacking all those modifiers is a bit over the top (noone actually uses those foods/sigils), and obviously if you’re in full zerker with those modifiers you get much more damage (duh).

But in a simular build, using full dire, doing 9k damage over 4.5 seconds is the same as having burning, poison and 5-6 stacks of bleeding on, which is a fair amount of damage.

And since we all know RF isnt actually very good DPS.. in a simular tanky build using S/WH you could likely be doing 12-14k damage over that timeframe, which is more than you’d manage on an “OP” full dire build.

So… yeah.

Burnfall.9573:

Everyone has EQUAL access to runes, sigils, armors and so forth.

Seriously, what is wrong with some of us in the community ?

Why not complain about Not having Equal Access to things we don’t have; like stealth, invisible, invulnerability, Perm-Everything and God Mode, like the Thief class, like the Warrior class and like the Elementalist class ?

Stop Punishing our Freedom To Equal Access !!

Equal access doent stop something being OP and game breaking. They could just as easily make a runeset which gives +1000 to all stats. Just because every class could use it wouldnt stop that being game breaking.

I’m not saying Rune of Strength is OP or game breaking, I actually have nothing much to add to this discussion… but that logic is just so very bad I had to point it out.

Perhaps, but you could just as easily say that if your opponent cleanses before healing, is using a healing skill which removes poison (like thieves HiS, or necros CC), or covers their healing by stealthing first, or anything else… then your poisons healing reduction becomes irrelevant because you cant get it on them when they heal.

There are always lots of other variables you cant account for when analysing skills, most of which depends on your skill and your opponents skill, so you cant predict if those things will be an advantage or disadvantage.

Nice video Always enjoy seeing SB get used, its such a powerful weapon I find it bizarre that most people seem to prefer A/T+S/D.

I find it odd that you use SE over Flame Trap, but still, all very nice.

An average healing skill works out to heal around 300-400 HPS. An actual regen-based build might heal 700-800 HPS, taking into acount their healing skill and other sources of healing.

That means than increasing poisons effectiveness by 7-12% only represents an increase of 21-96 DPS, depending on how much healing/regen your opponent has.

That is significantly less than what they have done by increasing poisons damage by 50%, which increases your DPS by 42-150 depending on your condition damage.

I wouldnt listen too much to the tool-tips on condition attacks because it depends entirely on how well they cleanse. I mean you can get Entangle to read well over 30k damage, and then if you hit 5 people with it you can theoretically do 150k damage with the single attack.. but thats never going to happen in reality

This is also the reason why I favour condition damage and re-application of conditions (precision) over condition duration.. because extending durations to too long doesnt actually make a huge amount of difference after certain point because they will be cleansed by then anyway, whereas if you are constantly just reapplying short bleeds non-stop then their cleanses really make very little difference.

Still havent gotten round to trying this… But I have to say when it comes to backline harrasment / ganking I still think mesmer is the best choice.

I’ve tried it as a LB ranger, I’ve watched my guild theives try do it in GvGs, but having done it as a mesmer nothing compares. You can go in pretty much full zerker, have huge piercing DPS at 1200 range with the GS, easily matching the rangers LB, you can be nearly as hard to catch as a thief is and you dont struggle with the need for melee range to burst, meaning your target cant just disappear into their zerg for protection, and you can still dedicate your elite and 1-2 utilities to glamour support (albeit untraited, but still good).

Still… I need to try with these new traits. I dont think they will have changed much though in terms of ZvZ / GvG play though.. They look like they have more impact on small scale play and duelling.

I have to agree with LostProphet on this. Someone also suggested on the Ranger forum than traps should be the same size and range as Necro Wells… but traps just arent meants to be Wells with a different name. Necros and Eles are clearly the closest thing this game has to the traditional AoE caster gods who dominate a battle, and their Wells and Staff abilities reflect that.

Traps and rangers, on the other had, are designed for smaller scale combat and to be used different, as reflected by their shorter range, size and also CD. They are still good for larger battles, just not with the ranger playing the long-range caster role.

Because reasons.

But really, the combat log in GW2 isnt that great in general.

And its our healing skill, which can lead to complications with using it when the group needs it or when you need it.

While I do think there are some issues with thieves, they do attract a lot of unnessesary hate.

Its to be expected though.. because they (along with mesmers) are essentially designed to be the most annoying and slippery class, as well as being designed to be excellent at duelling. Duelling classes / builds will always recieve over-the-top complaints because when people lose a duel they can only blame 2 things; themselves or their opponent. So, naturally, most people blame their opponents OP build / class rather than admitting to themselves that they either built an inadequite build or played worse than their opponent.

I can understand that being poisoned might be a pain after just being BS’ed because of the heal reduction.. but there are much better ways a thief could achieve that than wasting and entire runeset just to poison their opponent every kitten .

Dont see a problem here really O_o

I dont know.. I play trap builds a lot (almost exclusively) and trap range is not something thats ever bothered me. I find trap builds lend themselves to a defensive playstyle and its not common that I even throw my traps to their max range. Usualyl I just throw them infront of myself (200-300 range).

Maybe its just personal preference with how you choose to play the build, but I’d sooner see them change something else such as removing the cast time on traited traps (its much less when untraited), or adding some other buff to them (such as a stunbreaker of Frost Trap, perhaps).

Valneer.3854:

It’s the most ez mode class in tpvp, there is no problem.

If its too easy / OP then it needs to be toned down balance wise, not made annoying and unresponsive to play.

QoL improves should always be made to any build, regardless of how balanced they are.

Aah Rangers.. forever the foot-note at the end of the page

Warriors do seem to get a lot of passive play, but to be fair its a Master level trait which is easily bypassed by simply using any CC at the start of a fight with a warrior. That will tell you if he has the trait or not, and if he does it will be put on a long CD – much longer than the CC you used to proc it.

I still think this is a PvP problem, not a game-wide problem. Conquest as a game mode promotes and enhances bunker / AoE builds just by the way you are forced to fight in a tiny little circle, making the whole idea of this game being about position and movement useless. Defensive mechanics like stealth, teleports and mobility in general are weak in such a setup making other defences like armour and straight up bunking appear better than they are. And then with the AoE nature of lots of condi builds (necros, engis, hambow, etc) the problems of fighting on a circle again enhance those attacks artificially.

In WvW roaming (the other game mode were 1v1s are common) you dont see the bunker / condi spam you do in PvP. Necros are much rarer, hambows warriors are extremely rare, condi mesmers are seen but not as often as phantasm mesmers. Sure, there are plenty of condition roaming builds, but they dont dominate, and full on bunkering is really not that commonluy seen.

From a WvE roaming perspective, personally I think the balance is right. I am someone who likes to fight at range and kite / evade people as much as I can (on both ranger and mesmer), but honestly I dont like the idea that you could kite someone indefinately. That, to me, sounds like a game breaking idea.

There are plenty of tools on most classes (all the ones which are likely to be fighting at range) to keep people away from you while ranging. Even if you only keep them away for ~30% of a fight that is plenty enough to mean you are killing them much more than they are killing you.. and thats all you need.

EDIT: There is an issue in PvP where because its conquest, the balance is all messed up because of the need to fight on points (which also makes AoE spam from necros and warriors artificially OP).. but thats more a sPvP issue than a balance issue.

LB has been buffed considerably, but honestly if what you want to do is “pelting people from a distance and possibly killing them before they could even get close to me” then this isnt the game for you.

As others often point out, this game doesnt allow for kiting in the tradition sense that other games does, and frankly you’re never going to be able to stay entirely out of range VS a competant opponent. Thats just not how this game is designed to work.

Pets have been fixed to an extent. They still suffer underlying issues such as being useless in zergs and most bosses, but they are more responsive now.

Build diversity wise, I think rangers are actually in a pretty good shape. We still lack a truely comptetative full DPS build (IMO), but there are dozens of BM, spirit, trap, shout, various other more bunkery builds you can play, and not all of them are condition based.

Pretty much any class can roam, since they can all be built for 1v1 / 1v2 fights and be good at it (guardian is probably the hardest but a DPS guard can work).

Its easy to avoid larger groups / zergs on any class, thats more a l2p and watch your surroundings issue than a speed / stealth thing.

The main advantage thieves (and PU mesmers, to an extent) have is that they can go into more risky situations and escape from them much more easily (such as going to take a camp which is far from any of our towers or stomp someone whos close to a larger group).

In terms of actually fighting though, I wouldnt say theres much difference between the classes. Thieves kill quickly which makes them good at killing zerglings (being who are built for zerg fighting and arent used to / good at dualing) but they arent really any better or worse at fighting other roamers, in my opinion.

I think a better solution is putting the stealth attack on CD to 2-3 seconds. That way the thied can clear aegis or blind while in stealth, but they cant just spam 1 till it hits.

I havent tried them but it does look a lot of fun with entangle. I know Entangle gets a lot of hate because of how easily some can get out of it, but if you use it a lot (its really the only the elite I use) you get used to using it at the correct time so that people dont just insta-escape. Sure, you’re never going to trap someone for the full 20s, but even just 3-4s is enough to wreck them, and with all these extra conditions it just makes overloading them in that time that much easier.

That said, I could think it is stronger for condi thieves and warriors simply for their low CD elites, but that doesnt make it bad on rangers.

As others have said.. looks like you’d be a monster if left alone on the sidelines of a team fight, but if you actually get targeted you’d be a world of trouble. Your only defence really seems to be protect me, which on its own I cant imagine will help much.

Still, I look forward to seeing your video

I dont understand this arguement that “larger groups should steamrole smaller groups”

Thats true, they should. But they should be doing it because they have more people, thus more damage output, more combined health and generally more of everything. They shouldnt need a game mechanic in place to give them an advantage and to ensure they always win, because they should be winning already.

You cant just say WvW is a game of number thus they bigger group should be given bonus mechanics to help them win.. No.. WvW is a game of number BECAUSE of those mechanics. If they were removed then blobbing anf winning through sheer numbers would be harder.

If you want a tanky trapper really your best bet is 0/6/6/2/0 in full Dire armour. With a SB though you’d be better off with at least half rabid gear though because SB really does rock with on-crit bleeding.

Generally though trapping builds arent the most tanky Rangers can go simply because of the need for fully traiting into Skirmishing.

Not a huge fan of the down state either.

I mean I like the idea in principle, but I dont think people should be able to attack in down state (so no 1-3 skill) and I dont think rallying should be a thing either.

If you can teammates to defend and revive you, great, nothing wrong with some team play… But when you have been downed you should not be fighting back or rallying just because you’ve tagged everyone on the battlefield and some up-leveled somewhere has been killed.

I dont usually go for melee – centric builds, or DPS pets, or anything even like this sort of build…

But this looks fun:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQNAsYRjMqUwaJLusw1ago9gTW68vCp39AVdCAZ8UJymA-z0BBofCiEHgkIBK1sIasVOFRjVZDT9iIqmUARsFA-w

With those Runes, Sigils, Traits and Pet, should easily be holding 10+ might stacks, with many more on your pet thanks to RaO, Fortifying Bond and Sword AA… Potential damage is rediculously high and still which 3k armour and 26k health.

I’ve talked myself into it.. this will be my next build. If I ever get more than 10g ever again :P

EDIT: Not sure how I ended up posting that here. Got a bit offtopic.. sorry. Was looking at what Prysin said above and went off building^^

At the moment I have just Sigil of Ice on my SB (Earth was already on it) and have swapped spike trap for frost trap. Chill never gets old really lol.

I find myself doubting that your damage has gone from 20k to “at most” 10k.

Rangers werent the only class to take a DPS nerf on power builds, and since ranger power builds are generally weaker than their mesmer/warrior/theif counterparts, this nerf has probably been less damaging to our class than others.

They have gone a long way to fixing pets this patch. Should check that out before complaining about it for the sake of it.

It is a problem I have had when using SoR. Especially since you often will want to pet swap after using the signet, so swapping to make you pet be next to you before using the signet is not really an ideal solution either.

Its mostly a problem if your pet is ranged and you are melee, or vice versa, but I dont use SoR much anymore so…

This thread has become quite heated I see. I can see some value in poison master, and there are certainly alternative condition removal options (especially now with SotF). Personally my preference for EB really ony comes from my love of trap builds, which whilst fun, do back you into a corner utility, rune and even sigil wise. EB is just the best solution to condition removal for traps, IMO, but in another setup I could surely see myself taking Poison Master over EB (make not Bark Skin though :P but I couldnt say without trying it).

Aha.. never thought of that. I rarely use LB, and actually rarely see mesmers taking that trait because theirs is a Master instead of Adept.. but still.. Interesting :P

Odd point after listening to it.. I’m someone who you will see opening a fight (certainly against warriors, but often against rangers and other classes to) with SB#5.

The reason is pretty simple.. 99% of warriors (and a lot of other classes to) run their equivalent of Shared Anguish. If I save my CC till when they try to heal or when I really want to interupt them, that trait will be up and ready to protect them making my interupt useless. I’d rather open with SB#5 right at the start, knowing that it has a 30s CD and their trait has a 90s CD, so later on when I do need to interupt them I know it will work.

I’m sure plenty of peopel do just spam it without thinking and thats bad, but there can be some logic behind using it early on even if it appears random

I can understand that some big condition attacks are poorly telegraphed. They’ve tried to fix that on the warriors LB and hopefully will continue to do so with other classes / weapons, but honestly, to say conditions promote passive play is not true.

To counter direct damage all you need to do is stack toughness and healing and you’re laughing. Thats exactly what bunker warriors, guardian and even rangers do. They dont need to do anything other tham spam random skills in any order and know that they will heal faster than a single person can hit them. That is the very definition of passive play.

Conditions, on the otherhand, bypass the passive defence that is armour and force people to actively cleanse. They make you choose when to use your cleanse CDs and heals because if you’re just spamming them you’ll find you are wasting them and they are being ineffective. All the “active” defence mechanics such as dodging, blocking, invulnerabilities and immunities all work vs conditions just the same as with direct damage, only instead of passive armour you have another active defence in the form of cleansing. So really.. defending from conditions is more active, not less.

Conditions actually promote a lot of active play and have conciderably lower damage than direct damage builds, people are just unwilling to try actually learn / build builds to deal with condition builds because they rather just rely on huge armour or stealth to be their only defence.

Its been pointed out so many times its amazing they havent taken notice yet.

I mean… How they can justify food giving a (theorical) 40% damage increase I will never know, and the same goes for the duration reduction food.

They both need to be lowered to 20%, or something in that region. Maybe we’ll see it in the next big patch… in 10 months time… T . T

Because its just so fun \o/

Rangers have pretty good access to fury, so I imagine most power builds can get away with less prec and still maintain a decent crit chance if they want to. I can highly recommend getting 15 points into Skirmishing for fury on swap. I get it as part of playing a trap build and that trait alone give you a huge amount of fury just on its own.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I reckon run them all in full zerk, imagine 25 rangers with piercing arrows firing off Rapid Fire into an oncoming zerg. Assuming usual zerg packed in close and flat ground its like 1.3 million damage lol. And from 1500-1200 range. If on average, you need to do 20,000dmg to down someone, that is enough damage to down 65 people right there.

All I can imagine is the mesmer in the opposing zerg thinking all his christmas’ and birthdays have come at once. When I play mesmer in a zerg I equip feedback, as many mesmer do, and and watching that show unfold would be hilarious. I given they are all in full zerker, I would give it >2s before every single ranger is downed.

But still.. I have always wanted to see all ranger roaming groups so I hope you get this going, and if you do, be sure to video it

I dont think this is a bug, its just how the skill (and most skills work). Most classes dont have any utilities they can use during channels, the fact that blink and shadowsteps can be are the exception not the rule.

If you dont want to cancel your heal dont use decoy, and if you are in that just trouble use decoy first then heal. That makes a lot more sense anyway.