Guild Wars 2

The fact that you’re using 2 very squishy pets makes the way to counter this build painfully obvious. I’ve done it countless times in WvW. Kill the pet.

The Ranger and stealth and dance around all they want, but the pet is always visable and it the onl cleansing they have.. so if they are using easy to kill pets it’s a simple task to kill them both and then it’s an easy win after that. Of course if they have Drakes or Spiders it might not be practical to do this, but it’s well worth keeping in mind.

Also noone in this video seems capable of using LR (or any skill for that matter) when caught in entangle.. So you know.. Not standing there and getting bursted like a chump also tends to help :P

This seems more likely.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJAVTjEqUva7KusQ1aADBpdrTlYHoxEXFLZDLB-TVCFABop+TAXAAs3fwPlgAcIAE4IAYlyv80Fo8DAgUAQM0C-w

Because of the points made above. He doesn’t proc Oakheart Salve so thats not in there.. does have Wilderness Knowledge.. does have at least the Minor Adept NM line so presumably has the Major Adept as well, but since I can’t obviously see any of them at work it’s most like to be Strength of Spirit. It’s a logical choice anyway since Celestial does lack in power, so what I do when running my celestial trap build is take Strength of Spirit and power food to help compensate.

Anyway.. I will be off to try this out now. I run nearly an identicle build already, just with Traveler Runes and S/D instead of LB. But otherwise, identicle. Try keen to try this

I very VERY rarely watch a 15 minute video till the end.

I watched this till the end.

There is a valid point that ANet is so insistant that pets be an intagral part of the Ranger, and yet we have nearly no control over their conditions.

I mean of the Rangers condition management options we have:

HS – works for the pet just the same as the Ranger. Great.

SoR – Cleanses the pet generally but the active royally screws it over, so a double edged sword here.

EB – kittens the pet up

SotF – no effect

Runes / Food / Sigils – no effect.

It would be a serious problem if pets didn’t have so many other issues that are more obvious.

A nice solution might be making one the the Master / GM minor traits be “when a condition is cleansed from you your pet also loses a condition”.

There’s really not much to say other than…

To be honest when I play with my warrior I always think the physical skills are surprisingly good.. it’s just that in the end Shouts are better in a group by a mile.

Kick in particular… if you get Physical Training (which I admit is a bit of a pain) it does pretty beefy damage on a low CD and is an AoE CC. It’s really very good.

Stomp is almost amazing, but the long CD and the clunkiness of it to use just ruins it.

Even Bollas is pretty neat. An immob on such a shot CD is pretty handy.. and between that and Kick landing the Warriors big attacks becomes a lot easier.

Like I said, the main problem I see if that the Warrior is chosen for it support largely, which requires shouts and banners. For dueling though.. honestly.. I really like them.

xev.9476:

Maybe the pirate meta isn’t as pronounced in some of the lower tiers, but a “front line ranger” is a dead ranger in t1 – a total liability. Going full zerker lb/gs with signets has massive tagging ability and great damage, especially if you trait piercing arrows. As long as you instantly dip out of red circles and stop attacking or switch targets once someone puts up a reflective wall, I’d say glass cannon is the only way to play ranger in WvW now.

As someone who plays on a mid-low server… I think it’s just that we’ve always had this so called “pirate ship meta”. I mean we have 2 guilds with regularly do open raids, and what you find is half the zerg is guild members who are in “proper” builds, and half the zerg is pugging around on ranged DPS builds.

We’ve always been really heavy on the ranged players because that’s what pugs do.. this is nothing new :P

So you’re arguing in WvW should be free where people can do what they like, and then say it’s stupid when a person lets you res because it’s not what you would have done?

Flawless logic. Flawless.

It’s not how I like to play my trap builds.. but the common build people use is here:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Stealth_Trapper

Sound have been fixed ages ago.. it’s just a QoL improvement. Like borya and Puck already said.. having Guard interupted is not a game catching event, and not something an opponent would likely do on purpose. It just makes using it unnessesarily annoying.

This is what I use when I want to go zerging (I actually use Melandru Runes atm, simple because I can’t afford Exuberance right now)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJARVjMq0xa9KOsw1aAHhqZHEBs72AYAcGuhQKz6DPBB-TVSBABsfEAwR9Ho3fILlfnpE8hDBQEPAg80FAwFAgUA3trC-w

Sometimes I go 6/1/6 rather than 6/4/4 in order to get SotF… I also sometimes use double GS just to make use of the on swap fury.. and since you only ever really need a GS for zerging you don’t lose out of much by not having a second weapon set.

The general purpose is to hang just on the edge of the melee train and do as much DPS as you can (which is quite a lot), and use your 2 utilities to catch people out and get them run over by your own train. Used to best effect on the back of the enemies melee train, not infront on it, because then you catch the people who were already falling behind and can pretty easily cut them down.

I find it fun.. even if it’s not proper meta :P

Honestly, I like it how it is. Great skill and it brings a different angle to the LB.

Honestly sounds like you have a bad server.

This isn’t a problem I have on Gunnar’s Hold.

Sure, if you log in suring the middle of the day when 15 people are online it’s mostly PvD.. But in prime time there’s lots going on in EB and our BL.

hyjaxxx.1584:

Again I think play style holds key with the build. And guard serves more purpose then the buffs it allows you to control the drakes blast finisher. And the debuffs you can place on others can seal their fates in no time. Allowing you to heal and support.while at the same time placing cc and debuffs on focused target.

Without wanting to get into a drawn out build argument (fun though it can be) that in part of the problem. You can only hit a “focused target”. With the exception of bonfire, none of the attacks on this build can harm more than one person. Things like split blade are strong in a 1v1 but dont scale at all. Now contrast that to a Trapper (or an Ele, or Engi, or Warrior, or Necro) who can do just as much pressure to one target as you, but also have that pressure scale onto 3-5 targets. There’s no comparison.

The engi on that team was almost certainly doing 5x as much damage because his attacks are mostly AoE, bringing more blast finishers than the occational Drake blast (which requires Guard to direct it making it a pretty slow reacting blast) and quite possibly (though its hard to know without knowing his build) providing just as many buffs.

There really is nothing a Regen build (in this form, at least) brings which couldn’t be done much better elsewhere, group wise.

1v1 they have their place… PvP they have their place because you have rediculous staying power on-point… but here… meh…

In the nicest possible way I think that video Kjeld just posted sums up why people have moved away from these regen builds.

In pretty much all those fights you have perma regen and swiftness, even though you didn’t use Guard more than once per fight (often you didn’t use it at all). The group support you’re bringing is pointless because the group already has it.

Coupled with that fact in most of those fights you provide no pressure what-so-ever (sometimes landing only a single split blade and bonfire once in the whole fight) that you don’t see to be doing much other than surviving.

There’s no doubt at all that these builds are godlike in 1v1s, simply because it’s very difficult for one person to do enough DPS to overwhelm the regen you have… but in a group? Nearly no value at all. People have moved to LB builds and Trap build because they are still strong in 1v1 (although with more obvious weaknesses) but in a group fight then can also offer insane pressure, making you invaluable.

I’m no PvE expert, but my understanding on PvE is that mobs tend to be wiped out pretty quickly meaning damage over time attacks (conditions) are still unlikely to be as effective, even without a stack limit.

Still, it’s certainly possible in a full bleed build to get Crossfires’ bleeds to last 6+ seconds and tick for a good 170+ each.. meaning each attack is doing around 1100 damage.

To me this still sounds like a lot less than a berserker build would be doing, and taking 6 seconds to do it… But like I said, I know nothing about PvE so I am probably over simplifying it^^

Maybe Rampagers could work… Idk.

It’s always worth a try, but I think if they were more experienced with the class / build it wouldn’t be possible.

There are, of course, things you can do to maximise your chances (such as flawless pet management to land Drakes F2) but ultimately you are still relying on the opponent to not take measures to avoid being hit by it. Both the F2 and Tail Swipe are relatively obvious attacks, and a simple dodge would avoid most of the pain.

So.. yeah. It can be done and always worth a try… but you are in the end relying on them to make mistakes, even if you do everything right.

There’s no CD, so you can quite happily use 3 traps back to back and disappear from a fight (thanks also to the super speed).

The only thing to note with the runes is that the traps pulsing damage will pull you out of stealth, so placement of the traps becomes even more important.

Signet of the Beastmaster was the GM trait which meant the Signet Active Effects affected the Ranger as well as the pet. This now happens by default, no trait required.

Basicly means people can, and do, use signets in any build.

To answer you original question though.. Regen builds are pretty uncommon these days, although they are largely the same as they were before. People just prefer either glass LB builds, Trap builds or Survival condition builds (probably the most simular to the builds you used to run, only without the regen).

EDIT: Oh, and I dont know where people go for news or other info.. but for builds go look here

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

It’s worth pointing out you don’t need to use every attribute to make Celestial numerically worth it. You can use 6 out of the 7 attributes and have more overall stats than you would have using other armour sets. By this I mean, an Ascended chest piece gives 258 stats spread over it’s major attribute and 2 minors, whereas Celestial gives 50 to every attribute, totalling 350. So even using 6 attributes you are getting 300 useful stats over the usual 258. It only becomes numerically ineffiecent when you drop 2 attributes, because then, clearly, you’re only making use of 250 of the stats Celestial is giving you which is fewer than another chest piece would give you.

Rangers do struggle to use all 7 attributes well in a build (unlike Elementalists), so usually Celestial build end up dropping either Healing Power or Condition Damage. These 2 are picked because you can’t not use all the other attributes.

Pretty sure theres no video there

Yeah I found that quite annoying too when I made my warrior. Should work like the Rangers Entangle (and pretty much every other skill…) when if you cancel the activation channel by dodging (or in this case moving) it just goes on it’s mini 3s CD.

+1 Fluffball

Celestial builds can be great on Rangers (talking WvW here, I have no idea about PvE), but if you’re just going to run a power build in Celestial armour it’s wasted. Youd be better off in Knights / Cavelier if you want a tanky version of a Berserker build.

Sharpenned Edges wont make up for that. It’s an, at best, 3 second bleed which you will proc every 3 attacks. To put that into perspective, that means that every 100 condition damage you get will add 15 damage to your build once every 3 attacks. It’s very VERY little. Adding that 100 stat to power would have much more effect.

For a 1v1 situation I think a survival build is better. You have stun breakers, control over your condition removal and most likely better stats as well. It’s just much more survivable in a 1v1.

That said, traps obviously give you a much stronger presence in a group fight, and stealth as a defensive mechanic scales well into small scale fights by keeping you from being the primary target.

Really either would work. I’ve used both and know they both work, but like I said, I think the Survival build is a more solo build and a Trap build is more group orientated, even though both work in either situation. Traps are much more fun though

I never understand this separation between PPTs and Fights, honestly.

As someone who used to (quite a while ago now) be i na guild which only wanted fights, I remember some days where we’d run around and do nearly nothing all night because we spent so long looking for the “perfect” open field relatively even fight, which of course almost never happened.

Contrast that with now, where I am not in a guild but rather follow one of the guilds doing an open raid and we go around attacking / defending none stop, and we have fights every 5 minutes all night long, without fail.

So really, in my experience trying to playing"just for fights" results in you actually getting very few fights and no points, and playing to capture or defend objectives results in more fights and more points. The 2 really aren’t seperated.

Also with the Axe you will often find your procs happen on one of the axe bounces rather than your actual target, which isnt what you want. Procing your sigils on some clone, pet, minion, or even another random enemy isnt all that helpful.

And with the sword you actually dont spend all that much time attack meaning you just dont proc the sigil as much as you could.

And thennn the power of this weapon setup is the potential “burst” of conditions through split blade, which doesn’t benifit that much from on-crit sigils because even if the sigil is off CD when you use split blade it can still only proc once. Geomancy, on the other hand, lets you do a nice weapon swap into split blade for 8 instant (and pretty long lasting) bleeds.

And finally Geomancy is just better, numbers wise. Assuming you hit every weapon swap with geomancy, and assuming you instantly proc your earth sigil every 2s (which would never ever actually happen) the geomancy just flat out gives more bleed damage.

Earth only works well because it provides a constant stream of bleeds, and thus damage, which is exactly how the SB works, so they mesh nicely together.Torment sigils is actually only used for the extra condition, it’s a big damage drop compared to all the others.

To be honest I am never a huge fan of on-crit sigils if you dont have a SB. I would be tempted to go with Geomancy, although it would be a toss up between that and Torment.

There’s a very strong arguement for using Frailty to give you a constant cover condition, although it wouldnt work as long as you are using Sharpenned Edges.

Or Corruption, because you know… Why not :P

I will definately try it, although I really an quite addicted to offhand training when using a dagger (which is pretty much always :P). That, and since I usually play with traps having an uncontrollable stealth might not actually be as helpful is it seems.

Still, I will certainly give it a test out Change has looooooong overdue.

As far as being a LB sniper in a zerg goes, you’re probably right.

The problem is most people on the forums judge what is good and what is not based of what top end guilds do, and trying to snipe off players from top guilds is not an easy task. They are good players and they will protect eachother, making us not all that effective.

The truth is though that the vast majority of fights in WvW are made up largely of pugs, less skilled guilds or just people not taking it 100% seriously because it’s not a GvG, and in that situation it’s surprisingly easy to take down 3-4 people in a single fight, making you actually pretty effective.

The final point is though that regardless of how useful you may or may not be, the zerg could survive just fine without any Rangers. It couldnt’ possibly survive without Guardians, Warriors and Elementalists, so looking at it that way we are redundant.

It does look very nice.. And I am not bothered my the “PvE element”.

I do hope they haven’t gone too overboard of the terrain though. I know the current maps can be boring, and I know people wanted something more interesting, but to be honest the most important thing about PvP in any game is any mode is that one side doesn’t have an overwhelming advantage. If the map is too complex it becomes very difficult for groups of any size to move around because they can be easily blocked with no realistic hope of getting though.

That’s largely why I think roaming in EotM never took off. I know it’s funny and “tactical” to knock people off the edge, but ultimately it’s not a very satisfying win. Most people roam for the fun of some good fights, and running around with a LB or Hammer and knocking people off isn’t a good fight. Just look at Skyhammer.. noone liked that kitten because it had nothing really to do with fighting, just knocking people off and spamming an un-blockable un-evadable cannon. That’s not PvP and it’s not actually what people want in the long run.

Still, I am cautiously excited

If you’re using S3 or D4 to evade an incoming attack then it’s a pretty sure way to land the hit, because they can’t / won’t be evading your attack when they are trying to land their attack.

Also Offhand Training makes D4 10x better, so if you aren’t using that already maybe give it a try.

Huge buff to RaO. Really happy to see that

Edit: Oh you Hide in Plain Sight change is pretty cool too. I rarely use is because I prefer Offhand Training, but it’s certainly a nice change.

I don’t have many issues with DD Ele’s when on my trap build. I do run with SB+S/D with double spiders, so my poison application is through the roof which hits Ele’s particularly hard. I also run with Frost Trap over Spike Trap which also hits Ele’s really hard. Just wait for them to drop out of Water Attunment, use Frost Trap and you are laughing.

I agree stealth is pretty poorly handled in this game. I do prefer having ways of detecting stealth targets rather than the clunky counter of “Revealed” which just hard blocks them from entering… But at this point the thief as a class is way too dependent on the stealth mechanic as it is to make sweeping changes to it without seriously rethinking the Thief class, which ANet won’t do and wouldn’t be fair to Thieves anyway.

That’s the thing though Zenos, SOTF doesn’t remove the counters because the cleanse only activates at the end of the roll. You still have your distanced kitten but cripple / chill, even if the skill does in the end remove the condition.

Have to say I agree with Gotejj. I’ve never found any correlation because a servers rank / tier and the skill on the players on it.

Some servers seem to have more of certain types of roamers, such as an unusuall high number or thieves, or more group roamers than solo, so something… but skill wise, I see no overall difference.

And yeah, EotM isn’t a real map. 80% of the people are uplevels there to train, the other 20% are people there to boost their ego or just have some fun killing the uplevels. Noone is actually there for a serious fight.

Honestly, S/D is probably the most universal weapon set the Rangers have. You can use it very effectively on any build. You might need to offer us a bit more about what you want in the build, because right now I could post literally any viable build and stick S/D on it and that would be just fine.

On paper the Sword is much better, but in practice with the way you leap around or stick to one target (making it imposible to move with the group) it’s just not a usable weapon in zergs.

The MH Axes AA damage isnt the best, and it’s other skills arent great either for zerging, but you will at least do something. And it gives you the option, like Puck said, to back out of the main group if you are struggling to survive whilst still contributing a bit.

Bran.7425:

Deamhan.9538:

However, as a shout, it is affected by Trooper Runes, and there is a trait that allows them to grant swiftness and regen to nearby allies but the range is pathetic.

Nature’s Voice wasn’t a part of the original design, it was Anet’s attempt at making shouts of the ranger better as a build option and to keep the trait number the same when they merged a couple of traits in that line.

That’s what makes their design so sad. Guard is only used to proc NV, which wasn’t originally there. Sic ‘Em is used to troll theives with Reveal, which wasn’t originally there. I actually can’t remember, but I am not sure Protect Me was original a stunbreaker either.

ANet seems to know they are terrible skills, just the fixes they have put in place so far are just… really poorly designed, which is a shame because Shout’s on Guardians and Warriors are among their best skills.

What’s wrong with lettuce armour

All 5 of my characters are Sylvari, and every one of them is dressed in cultural I find for Medium armour I like to mix between the the 3 tiers of the armour rather than use a full set of one. Looks better, especially T1 Shoulders, T3 coat and legs, and T2 everything else.

Spirits in general just need a re-think. You occasionally still see Spirit Rangers in in PvP, and they can be OK, but it’s mainly thanks to the Spirit of Nature. The fact that this spirit is actually quite good isnt enough to mask the fact that their entire design is horribly flawed and frankly boring.

So many suggestions have been made over the year about what to do with them… But I still favour of the spirit characters themselves being removed, turning the skills into some sort of Aura on the Ranger themselves, and having the active effects eminate a wave out from the Ranger which then provides the buff to allies in the radius and whatever effect the currect actives have to enemies.

This prevents the Spirits being killed, but more importantly seperates the Rangers buff from the team buff (thus meaning their usefullness to the Ranger can be buffed, making them better for solo use, without them becoming OP in group settings) and frankly is much more elegant than turning your character into a walking zoo.

But whatever… These things will always be nothing but fantasies.

Doesn’t work on Rangers because our downed #2 is an AoE stun not a single target directional like Warriors or Engineers.

Still, you could stealth stomp no problem, just make sure to pet swap just as you are about to finish the stomp otherwise they can use the stun on your pet and hit you even in stealth. Pet swapping breaks their target thus avoiding the stun, unless they have autotarget on. Or in this case you could send your pet to attack another nearby target, again to avoid them using the stun on it in order to hit you.

cafard.8953:

Shirk.6421:

So what if the shortbow would be merged with traps like the necro’s staff?

Not enough tears in the world.

Lol. So true.

Sounds good. While they are at it I think Ranger Traps shouldn’t apply normal conditions, because it’s stupid people just cleanse them. They are TRAPS people should get trapped in them without hope of escape, so if they are made special so they can’t be cleansed that would help.

Thanks.

Yeah in PvP it happens a lot.. although to be honest even there I often feel people do it by accident. PvP is such a closed environment that you have to actively try NOT to LoS people when moving around.

Now, sure, many people do it on purpose. But I am pretty sure lots of them are just running around accidently walking behind things :P

Interesting to read, doesn’t look like Mesmers have a lot of nice things to say about us, lol.

One thing I find particularly intriguing is how many said they just use LoS to counter LB Rangers. I find it interesting because I actually can’t remember the last time someone tried to do that to me (outside of litterally hiding behind a wall trying to run away because they know they have already lost). I really don’t see people LoS as part of their strategy.

Maybe it’s because forum go’ers are generally better players than average.. or maybe it’s because people like to post what they think they play like in their imagination, even if it’s not what they actually do in the moment. I don’t know.. but my experience with Mesmers (and players in general) is that noone actually uses LoS in WvW.

borya.2964:

Cufufalating.8479:

With RaO… yeah could be good too. Again, like HoA, it would be nice just to be able to lower it’s CD a bit and being a shout would make perfect sense.

With the incoming stab change, it won’t justify such a long cd anymore i guess.

Well, we don’t know that yet. For all we know they might over-compensate and make RaO insansely OP :P Just have to wait and see.

Roaming refers to small scale fighting in WvW (solo or in a group of 2-5 ish).

If what you’re after is soloing PvE / Questing then the “General” tab is the one you’re after.

I can’t help but feel there should be a sticky detailing the uses of each pet class. This question comes up a lot, and unlike some other topics it’s pretty universally agreed by all experienced Rangers what each pet is good for.

It’s really fun that’y why

Like Lugh says it’s clearly not optimal every one knows that, but it’s still very satisfying when 2-3 people who are lagging behind their main train get caught and killed thanks to your muddy terrain.