Guild Wars 2

This is the reason I like solo roaming. When I go to PvP or when I used to go around with a guild I felt very much I had to choose the meta builds because there are other people depending on me and expecting things from me, and frankly it’s out of order to go into a team environment and expect your team to put up with you messing about of some strange build because you think it’s fun. That’s not what team play means and if that’s what you want to do you shouldn’t be in a team environment or should have a team of friends who have agreed to you doing it.

In solo roaming though, noone depends on me and noone is expecting me to fill a certain role. I am free to make any crazy build I like and as long as I can make it work for me that’s all that matters.

So… Generally I do feel pigeonholed in team environments, but when going solo or duelling I feel there is a lot more scope to find what works for you rather than trying to fit a certain role.

To be honest I really like mechanics which remove specific conditions from a design perspective.

The problem this game has is either you have more condition removal than your opponent has application and are virtually immune to condition builds, or they have more application and you are pretty much dead before you start. There is very very little inbetween space. Having condition specific cleanses makes it much easier to balance because a build can be very strong to some types of conditions (like a Acrobatics thief is to soft CC) without being a complete hard counter to all condition builds.

It also promotes a little more interactive play because people think about their cleanses more than just spamming them off CD (take for example LR, another condition specific cleanse).

Obviously since EP is a passive trait you don’t get this interactivity, but I still think these conditions specific cleanses should be a much more common part of many skills, and big general cleanse-anything skills / traits should decrease.

I don’t think the Signet is OP as it is.. It’s on the strogner side but that’s not a problem.

I do, however, think it’s a pretty poor design. Healing skills are arguably the most important skills and timing your heal correctly is very important for most classes to stop it being interupted and to get the most out of it. Having a passive heal which has no interaction for the user or opponent does take an important element out of combat, IMO. Obviously this isn’t something entirely unique to Warriors… Eles have their Signet too, and thieves Withdraw is generally just spammed off CD due to it’s low CD and no cast time, but the Warriros design is certainly the worst of them.

I probably wouldn’t have said it quite as bluntly as Silvio, but I do agree largely with his points.

That said though, I always like to see a more hybrid style build than a pure condition or pure power. It has many advantages, so I approve of that part ^^

For reference, here is the build I’ve been running recently. It is very heavily inspired by other builds posted here (on the KotH thread) but changed to be hybrid and for WvW rather than PvP.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV8YjEqUzaJLusQ1aADhqdLEslArAwdR8CXdBTOA-T1SFwAAeAAqUNI++DoUzhtuBnKFacRAqqkLxRAYpygsKBJFAEbBA-w

It’s very much the same idea as yours just executed differently. There’s more focus of ranged fighting with the SB, and a little more focus on direct damage as well as pet damage. Like I said, it’s obviously not entirely my own design, but I can very highly recommend it with any changed which suit you (A/T over SB, or maybe you want to mix up the utilities, the nicest part of the build is there is a lot that can be changed).

Mesmer.

Despite all the obvious differences, to me the feel of the classes is very simular and both play very well in a kite / avoid playstyle, which is how I like to play.

I have played my Mesmer very little since the LB buff though, largely because I used my Mesmer as when I wanted to play full zerker and burst people, something which I never felt my ranger could do well enough to be enjoyable. Now though, I must admit I don’t use anything but my Ranger much simply because I can do whatever I want here (except troll, still have my S/D thief for trolling… :P)

Fair point on the stealth stomping, but still that is a weakness Ranger, Warrior and Necros all suffer as well, so it’s not a unique Mesmer problem and still leaves your #2 better than most.

It’s also quite a niche weakness.. Rangers wont pull it off thanks to the pet, Mesmers might but that assumes they have the CD up (which isn’t all that likely right after a fight) and even then their clones might give you a target if they arent careful, so it’s really only thieves who cause this issue, and they cause everyone stomping issues (except Ele of course).

The whole premise that warriors are build on is they have the most brutal attacks going (and lots of them) but that they are hard to land. Giving warriors a pretty fool proof way to making these attacks land is a terrible idea.

That said though, I can understand your second point about Rush.. It is a really poorly done leap which does glitch all the time.. so yes, they should take a look at that (probably the easiest fix to to make is a slightly shorter leap with a much fast cast time).

Very amusing to watch the melee fights^^

The only comment I would make is in the first fights when you were using your shout build.. you have a tendancy to use bonfire purely to get a fire field. It’s a nice idea but in practice you usually placed it such that he never walked into it and so was hardly ever burned, and then once you did your leap and got your fire shield you were so busy evading he didnt hit you anyway so you got at most very 3 might stacks, but more often only got 1 or even none. So, while the fireshield is nice.. I feel just simply burning him for 1-2s would have done a lot more, and just throw in the leap finisher when you can.

You could, though I’m not sure it’s a valid argument. Regardless though, my point was just because something is different doesn’t mean it should be fixed unless the difference is causing a problem.

Idk, it’s a pretty decent #2. It’s not vulnerable to stability / invulnable / stealth stomps and it’s not vulnerable to blink / shadowstep stomps like the thief #2 is.

It can be annoying, but it does have a lot up on most other classes. I’d be more inclided to change the #3 because, although it’s a pretty beastly phantasm in a zerker build, it doesn’t really help you get back up or survive any longer.

While this might be true, I don’t see the issue. Mesmers have pretty decent Elites as they are.

I could just as easily argue it’s pretty unfair that Mesmers have multiple CD reduction traits able effective the same weapon skill. It’s just one of those things which makes the classes different, but unless it’s causing Mesmers to be UP or OP in some way I see no reason to “fix” it.

Games often do this and most often it’s simply to make people play more of the game.

Now that the game has been out a while, most of their regular players have quite a lot of gold and are pretty set in what it is they like to do in game. That’s all fine at good but it means when something new comes out, most people can afford to buy it which can lead to people not really noticing it as “new content”. They can instantly buy it, so can everyone else, the community will quickly work out where it’s useful (if anywhere) and within days the new item/food/sigil/whatever it is will just have it’s set place in the meta like everything else. The content just gets rushed through with everyone instantly testing it and gets old fast.

By gating new content, however, ANet not only forces people to craft (or dungeon, or explore new areas, or whatever it is they want) and thus to explore more of the game, not just the little area they are set in playing, but they also seriously slow down how fast the community works out useful something is, making it much more interesting to play with and generally just more exciting for those who do bother.

It’s also a small way of ANet rewarding players who do bother to play all of the game at least a little, rather than being PvP only, or WvW only, etc.

The personal example I like is Pickly Pear Pie I use when trapping… It’s so much better than the usual +condition duration food when using rabid or celestial, but I still see hardly anyone using it besides myself. Even after all this time it is still something interesting and “new” which I have over most other players.. a few weeks ago I even had someone asking me what it was. This wouldnt happen if it was as easy as just buying it on the TP because everyone would use it and it would be the standard old boring meta.

TL;DR It’s a sneaky thing game designers do to keep new content from getting old and to make people play more of the game.

It’s pretty unavoidable and it will never go away. We have something which does give us a clear and un-matchable advantage – range. Obviously our range with the LB hasn’t changed but now that it’s a much more viable weapon people are feeling the impact of that long range much more.

It’s the same problem thieves have.. they could be nerfed into the ground and people would still call them OP simply because they have abusive levels of stealth which is hard or even impossible to counter in some cases.

So.. yeah. We have an annoying-to-fight-against mechanic (range) and there will always be people crying OP at it until it is 100% unusable like it was before. It will never change.

My bad

Hmm.. interesting then. I will re-itterate that I like the idea a lot… I always thought Rangers needed more “On-Crit” effects. I mean I feel like Rangers are by lore a very “precise” class, and even mechanicly we have amazing access to fury as well as spotter, and yet we can’t really do much with our crits other than bleeding, which several other classes can do.

So, I think I will say I support the idea

Really like the idea, a lot. But I do think it’s OP with those numbers. You can pretty easily get 100% crit chance which would essentially just mean all our CDs would be reduced by 33%.

Just thinking on TU alone, you could use it every 16s. For a heal which heals 8500 without any Healing Power to be on a 16s CD… That’s insane.

To be honest you lost me at the LB part.

Saying you don’t want to use a weapon just because you think it should be PvE only is no basis to balance or build design on. It is simply not a valid reason.

Also on the subject of not being a valid arguement, saying you want to play a certain weapon set “just because” and therefore ANet should make it viable also isn’t how balance works. Each weapon is designed to bring something different which means there will always be combinations just don’t work together and some combinations that are a match made in heaven. It is the same for every class and it’s frankly how it should be.

SB might not be perfect but it does offer something unique being a good mid-range condition / hybrid weapon, something which no other ranger weapon does.

I really wouldn’t recommend EB for a frontline zerg build, especially if you aren’t taking bears and are taking Protect Me. Your pet will be dead far too often to get any reasonably use out of it.

Bark Skin would be a lot lot better, or if you really want some personal condition remocal take SoR and/or SotF.

What’s even more interesting is this is very nearly the build our current EU KotH Ranger is using.

One or two small changes in weapon and sigils and a few other things, but it is essentially the same build.

Thanks to both solrik and Bakeyy for the duels

I’ll say I have not often had the pleasure of duelling other decent (/better) Rangers so I learned a lot I think the main thing being zerker builds really dont work well VS other Rangers… even if I am able to maintain a lot of distance during the fight (which against Bakeyy was certainly not all that easy) that bird following you around hitting 2k+ none stop just breaks you. So for Ranger duels I cant recomend zerker LB xD

Other than that I’d just say Bakeyy is extremely good I like his build and it’s obviously strong, but I think it’s his play which is the main issue. Even if I copied his build I am certain I would not beat him. So, very well played

And Solrik, well played too. Our duels were a little more experimental so you hard a rough time at first when trying out new builds and I had a rough time at the end when trying out things, but thanks for the fun and learning

I’ll be back Bakeyy… I think, when I have a suitable plan :P

Rainbowbird.5871:

Cufufalating.8479:

Duelling people who beat you over and over again really is the only way to get better at duelling ^^

Well then, will you teach me? ;D

Aha, theres no reason to believe I’d beat you over and over But if you see me online then by all means feel free to ask.

Duelling people who beat you over and over again really is the only way to get better at duelling ^^

I find it odd that in your OP you identify a problem, namely that the class has been over buffed to compensate for it’s questionable class mechanic, and state that the answer is not to buff weapon skills.

Then you’re solution seems to be changing the weapon skills….

If the problem, as you see it, is that the Pet mechanic is what holds Rangers back (rather than poor weapon skills) then any suggestion surely has to include fixing pets to be truely useful everywhere… no?

No not really. It’s decent for tagging and can be good for catching small sub-groups out, but really, conditions generally dont work great in 15+ groups so it’s not ideal. Trap buidls tend to be at their best in small groups, then in duels, then in large groups, IMO.

I haven’t tested Malicious Training recently so it is possible it is bugged, but it’s worth pointing out that build editors display Pets Condition Duration all wrong because they apply +ve condition durations you as the ranger get to your pet. To see this just look at your Lynxs F2 on your build, then remove your Krait Runes and look at it again.

In game your runes and condition duration don’t work on your pet, but the editor will say they do.. so If you’re basing what you are expecting off that then that might be the problem.

I actually do use WASD here, but rpfohr makes a good point and it’s exactly what I do to play DotA. I moved my keybinds over a fewkeys to give my pinkie more keys rather than having my index finger tryign to cover 5 different keys.

EDIT: Also, entirely wrong forum

Personally I dodge. By maybe thats just me.

Edit: Or just rek them first.

Sorry Solrik

It’s not that I am uninterested, but like I said before, I don’t really like booking times to be online and (especially if I were to win and become the Champion) that is a problem.

But my offer to duel anyone (EU) who sees me online is still open

I agree either everything except Crossfire.

The problem I have is this… Compared to other bleed inflicting AAs our SB has by far the highest potential thanks to it’s speed and range… if they made it work from any angle it would go from having the highest potential to flat out being the best at all times. Anet would follow this by nerfing it somehow, and since the bleed duration is already extremely short the thing they would likely target is attack speed.

I don’t want them nerfing my SB somehow just to make it bleed from anywhere… the angle you need is already extremely generous and it’s not hard to stack plenty of bleeds in a fight.

The other attacks though, I agree. Especially on Poison Voley because really, it’s pretty poor. I also wouldnt mind seeing an arrow speed increase on Concussion Shot, just because I feel it’s a little slow to reliably interupt at range.

Rangers get a 15s Weakness on a 10s CD.

Just thought I’d throw that out there

Does depend slightly on the use… when duelling I dont think RtW is entirely nessesary simply because them being able to side step attacks when at 1000+ range doesnt mean much. Any real opponent isn’t going to be at 1000 range they are going to be much closer.

If you are roaming, especially in a group, though, you really do need it as a lot of the time you will be picking off people who will not be closing the gap (like they would be in a 1v1) and infact might be trying to widen it… in that situation the ability it hit accurately at long range is essential and I’d say RtW is required.

Well, I guess that’s my point then. Even in WvW you are using the SB in a burst setup just trying to nail someone with insanely long bleeds and all 3 traps and then “tactically retreating” with the Sword and hoping the conditions are too much to handle, rather than staying on the SB and giving them the run around.

Perhaps it was a little arrogant of me to say “this is THE way to play SB” before because you know… who am I to say :P … so this is just my opinion, but there it is. Just stick to whichever weapon you do feel works for you. For me, it is the SB. I am comfortable fighting anyone on any build with it, but I don’t really like fighting people with a GS unless they are melee as well. Everyone has their thing ^^

I might suggest, solrik, that SB just doesn’t suit your playstyle at all, hense your problems with it.

A trap build should be a fair counter to Bakkeys build since he can’t actually do much damage at all beyond ~300 range. If you had Rabid gear, Sb, Flame and Frost trap it should be relatively easy to just stay at range for a large portion of the fight and wear him down, which is the whole point of a Trap / SB setup. It’s not a condition burst, it’s a slow kiting picking away whilst keeping out of their reach, as oppose to an A/T+S/D setup with geomancy sigils (like his build) which is all about getting up in someones face and bursting them.

If thats how you like to play then SB is never going to work for you, because thats not what it offers.

Enemy Mesmer phantasms also see right through my clones. Nerf Mesmer as well please.

Oh wait…..

Jim Hunter.6821:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

^ and that is one reason to take a Tunneling pet for a KB + EB and its able to avoid Epidemic if you time the tunnel with SoR.

and its onther ranged pet so staby necros will struggle vs it too.

but the main point of a Carrion pet is to use Tunneling as a AoE avoiding effect as well as prolonging Empathic bond , i realy think its worth the trade off when it comes to a carrions stats and its f2 for its Reliability for using it with EB, and its KB is very handy too as it will only trigger when its in 130 range , that makes for some good defence without having to use your own kb or control skill.

if your using a Gs you can even Maul chain that carrions kb.

After that fight I got into the habit of swapping pets right after using SoR whenever possible.

Best to do that anyway since if you’ve used the SoR active it normally means you had a huge amount of conditions on you (not to mention it can pull conditions from allies as well) and if you don’t swap your pet is likely to be in a world of pain whether theres a Necro to epidemic or not.

Video is waaaay longer than I think videos should go… but it was so good and interesting to watch you play I watched it through anyway

I think I said this on a previous post of yours but I am still impressed by your ability to fight Mesmers. I rarely play an all melee build though I do enjoy it and find it extremely powerful against other melee builds, but Mesmers give me a really bad day every time.. So very nice as always

To be honest I think Rangers have a fair amount of condition removal now-a-days. What exactly works depends largely on your build, and clearly you need to sacrifice something to get it, but that’s true of almost anything.

It also is important to understand and play to whatever cleansing option you’ve chosen to take. For example when I am playing a trapper build using EB to cleanse, I need to be very careful not to be hit by a full condition bomb as EB is just too unreliable also wont cleanse a full bomb even if by a stroke of luck it does activate at exactly the right moment. By contrast on the build I have at the moment which is a SotF build with Lyssa Runes, I can cleanse 7 conditions instantly with Entangle so I sometimes will deliberately get hit by a necros full condition bomb knowing if I can bait out all his CDs I can cleanse them all in one go, thus leaving him with few offensive options left for a time.

If you can average 3-5 conditons cleanses every 10s that is plenty plenty enough to take on any condition build. After than it really is just a matter of managing them and playing if a way which supports how your cleanses are set up.

FYI straight up moving traps to WS would ruin pretty much every trap build there is.

Why? Because you could not longer take EB for cleansing, you still couldnt use SotF because of too few utility slots to make it work well enough, condition reductions food / runes would still be impracticle because you need the +duration food and either traveller or trapper runes… so basicly, as far as condition removal goes.. such a change would completely screw over every trapper.

I think the main problem is people on this forums get so worked into a frenzy. Something is either game-breakingly OP or utterly worthless.. there doesn’t seem to be much room for things to be maybe a little overbuffed or a little overnerfed, it has to be a serious meltdown every time.

I mean the Ranger buff is the most current example… Maybe they did slightly over buff RF. There’s no doubt it’s now much better than it was… But come on, for LB rangers being a game-wide joke to the most OP thing that people are “quitting” over it, just because 2.5s came off the cast time? Please…

Running both bows is pretty uncommon and generally not adviced because you then don’t have a defensive / mobilty weapon set (such as S/D or GS) which most people want. Also since the 2 bows are bent towards different builds (LB being power and SB being condition / hybrid) it’s pretty hard to make a build which can justify using both.

In regards to the SB itself… A lot of people don’t like it much or consider it to be of much use, although personally I still feel it’s one of the best choices for any condition or hybrid build which has precision (so Rabid, Celestial, Rampagers. Not Dire / Settler / Carrion) because of all the bleed procs. It can do serious damage in such a build and gives you a solid ranged / kiting option, which other condition / hybrid weapons like Axe or Sword don’t.

I like the part where you dismiss reflects as useful because the Ranger simply dodges the reflected shots. If only the Rangers target could do something simular….

Personally I like the SotF setup, so thats 6/0/2/6/0.

I do go full zerk gear just because it’s more fun.. So that’s this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjEqUwaJLusQ1ag9gadAUAndrhw9WcwtdBnqA-TRBPwAJ2fAkyPAq/EUXwLlgkCIilRA-e

If I was going for a serious duel (which is never, but if I was) I’d probably swap half my gear for knights and replace SoH with SoS… but for roaming, I like the movement speed and the ability to rek someone instantly, so that requires sacrificing defence.

Generally though… I wouldnt say there’s a “best” setup… all the variations have pros and cons and some setups will work better vs some opponents. For example your idea of stacking soft CC is great, but will be 100% wasted effort against a S/D thief. They don’t even notice soft CC it rolls off so fast.. so a build which is heavily invested in using it will suffer in that matchup, but might work really really well against a melee ranger who tend to struggle with soft CC.

I’m usually happy to duel any time, but I really dislike booking times I “have” to be online, such as for a duel or a guild raid.

So.. If you see me on feel free to ask, or I might ask you, but I probably wont be booking duels in advance.. Sorry :P

The point of this build is not to use the traps as damage though, it’s to use them primarily to stealth. That means the lost of the condition duration on them is pretty irrelivant, and the CD reduction is a shame but not that bad (consider that even with CD reductions that Mesmer and Thieves stealth utilities are all over 30s CD – longer than an untraited Frost Trap).

Losing the ability to throw them is a possible issue in regards to the Flame Trap, as it makes it unusable as an escape once in melee range, but as long as you manage your rotations well and use Hunter Shot / Frost trap when they are close and Flame trap when they are far then that should be no problem either, and making these change fixes the biggest weakness in the original version on it – condition removal.

One does not simply go full burst without a GS.

Hey Messiah o/

I almost wonder why bother with the trap traits. I know the lose of the 20% CD reduction would be a pain, but if you dropped them you could go 6 into WS and get EB to help with your condition problem.

Something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjEqUva7KusQ1ag9gadAUAnd7h4G2BWXwFXdUF-TVCEABQcEA4e/BCuAAbpEkJlfG8AAYR9nO0FAwhAgUADsFA-w

You keep the same DPS this way, but trade some Health for Condition Damage.. but by switching to Flame Trap over Vipers you keep a really short CD trap so well as being able to make some fair use of the extra condition damage when fighting in melee range.

Also, strange food choice. I didn’t change it but it strikes me as odd.

It sounds like you just don’t like Ranged combat, which is fine, everyone is allowed to have their preference, but it’s nothing more than that… a preference.

Personally I prefer ranged combat and am glad is has over time become more viable in the game, since it has for most of the games history been relatively unused and unviable

Also I’d point out that even with the LB AA buff at short range, it still has one of the worst, if not the worst, damage outputs of any weapon AA (when at <500 range). Going up close to a LB range is still a huge disadvantage to them.

I’d be more tempted to try Rampagers than zerk, if you want to go full offense with stealth as your defence. Would obviously lose a fair amount of direct damage, but with 6 trait points into MS and Skirm for the LB / Trap traits you’d still have pretty high Power and Ferocity, and your traps / bleed procs would then also be doing a serious amount of damage.

I think that’s partly why having no immediate rematches is a good idea. It prevents 2 people just continually challenging eachother in counter builds.

If someone challenges someone then the loser should not be allowed to re-challenge until a 3rd person (or maybe even 2 other people) has made a challenged (regardless of outcome), or if noone else makes a challenge then they need to wait till the next day.

This, hopefully, encourages people to build more rounded builds which have no massive weaknesses because if they do so they will easily be defeated and not be able to quickly regain their title, thus making it better to aim for staying in the top spot rather than aiming to just get there 6 times a day.

solrik.6028:

Cufufalating.8479:

That is litterally the worst thing they could change about it, IMO.

Why?

Damage is the same, Functionality is the same, everything is the same.

What is change is that the first and last arrow will hit a tiny bit later.

Would you rather have the damage nerfed, vulnerability removed, have it made into a static skill like whirling axe, range decreased or cooldown increased?

Because we know from how it is without RtW that you end up missing half your shots even if your opponent isn’t intentionally avoiding them, which is just as bad. It means you can do everything right and your opponent can be, by sheer luck and without even realising it, be halving or more your damage.

Also no, I would actually not mind overly in the damge was slightly decreased or the vulnerability removed. It would be preferable to watching my arrpws slowly sail past targets who aren’t even aware I am shooting at them.

Can’t imagine anything game changing for Rangers. I imagine you’d just see people sticking 10 into BM to buff up their pet and get some free might on pet swap, or getting some weapon CD reductions.