Guild Wars 2

It will probably come to PvP in time. We all know WvW is their test server where they through in new stuff to see how they are (see Perplexity Runes, new Armour stat combos, etc) before putting them in PvP.

I find with meditation guards the best thing to do is just keep those evades ready. They are so squishy they come at you hard and fast, so as soon as they teleport or leap at you you know theres one hell of a burst coming (doesnt really matter what it is). Just evade the second you see the teleport or leap and keep evading till its over. This is why I personally prefer A/D, S/T, or S/D, as long as the sword or dagger is in there, because you always have an evade ready and waiting. If you’re caught with A/T out you can be in for a world of pain, like you are experiencing.

Also as a side note, it seems a bit odd to be using GS with a condition build. Is there any particular reason?

fellyn.5083:

Shockwave.1230:

The reason you can’t do this is that blind, aegis, and 1 time block skills would completely prevent thief from being able to deal damage while in stealth. Thus means when a thief stealths all it can do is run away or eat damage.

Almost like blind, aegis, and 1 time block skills will completely shut down burst skills after the patch….

It’s really not even slightly comparible. Warriors do not depend on their burst skilsl to do damage. They are nice, sure, really nice in some cases, but by no means are they the only or main damage source.

A Dagger thief without BS is a sad joke, they wouldnt get someone past 80% health.

fellyn.5083:

WhiteRose.6934:

Please stop the melodramatics, it’s getting pathetic. God forbid warrior has a little risk.

A risk that perhaps only the ranger class shares, but not exactly in the same way.

If you want it to be fair let us interrupt the use of every classes core mechanic.

Give guardian virtues a cast time, same goes for eles switch elements, and necro death shroud. Oh yeah and engineers as well, with their potions, elixirs, and turrets. Thieves should lose stealth on a miss, etc etc etc.

Point is that warrior will become the only class in the game that can have it’s class mechanic completely shut down by 1 single condition. The worst part is that conditions are so easy to spam you don’t even have to be trying to target them with it either.

Fair is fair, after all. You want risks in your game play every other class should have them, too.

Risk? Are you kidding me? Warriors could never even look at their F keys are still be top tier. It’s a shiny added bonus to you, not something you need. There is no risk.

Try looking at Rangers who suffer a 30-40% class wide damage nerf thanks to our mechanics, or Necromancers who suffer having no defensive mechnics other than their class mechanics, or Elementalists who are forced to have a serious lack of build diversity thanks to no weapon swapping because of their mechnic. These are classes with depends wholely and entirely on their mechnics to compete anywhere in the game.

So cry me a river if you are worried your mega-burst skill could possibly be countered, because god forbid you need to do without that bonus skill you have.

I mostly agree with OP, but I can understand the problems this would cause thieves.

I still favour a middle-ish ground where Sneak Attacks get a 2s CD if they fail, meaning the thief can then either choose to back off or use another CD to re-stealth and try again. This doesnt leave the thief so vulnerable by being releaved, but stops them spamming 1 till it works.

On a simular topic though, MH Dagger and Pistol thieves really need changing to be less dependant on their sneak attack in the first place. It should be a nice extra element to the weapon like it is on the Sword, but not the one and only thing they can do with it to do any real damage. That is a large part of the problem, because if you nerf the sneak attack too hard these sets in their current form become useless.

Really proves one of 2 things… Either they have plans to change spirits somehow and this is part of the prework for it which they put in a little too soon, or more likely they simply don’t think at all before changing things.

I can, in some ways, understand the fact that all classes have utilities which are useless. They are things which sounded good on paper but just never worked out when people started playing the game.. it can happen. But to take a skill which works well, is strong but not OP and to make it so SO bad where on paper or in practice.. thats just a whole new level of fail.

I know this isnt the most useful information in the world because spirits arent used outside dungeons and PvP where there are only 5 people anyway, but they also buff 15ish people. This is because they re-apply their buff to 5 nearly targets once every few seconds, but because you can only recieve the buff once every 10s it results in the spirit giving the buff to 5 different people each time until the 10s ICD has run out on the original 5 people.

So yeah.. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but they can buff 15-20 people just fine.

I still share a lot of Prysins sceptisim about these being real Runes/Sigils.. but even if they are, the trap runes wont be as good as they look at first glance I dont think. There seems to be some confusion with the translation on the Quickness, and it’s more likely it will actually be be Swiftness from what I can tell. Ontop of that, the traps triggering or pulsing would pull the ranger straight out of stealth anyway, meaning would couldnt really make much use of the stealth at all once you were fighting.

Actually I think that is a fair arguement for these to be a troll.. having stealth with traps just doesnt make any sense, the 2 mechanics are totaly at odds. It would be like clone attacks pulling a mesmer out of stealth.. would be pointless.

Is that real or a troll? Because it looks OP as kitten.

Because despite all that you list above, power builds still hold many advantages. They have MUCH faster kill times, they tend to have more mobility options, on some classes (mostly Mesmer and Ranger) they can be much longer ranged than any condition build, they scale FAR far better with numbers, and also tend to have more build diversity options.

It’s been said hundreds of times but I’ll say it again… Condition builds are only truely strong in solo roaming and 1v1s. That is it. And even in those fields they are NOT the most common.. I have been recording (as in writing down, not videoing) all my solo roaming encounters the last week to try and proove that this is the case and so far roughly 75% of my fights have been VS power builds, 20% with Condition and 5% with hybrids (though I will admit right now I don’t have enough data for it to be nessesarily representative, but I believe it is).

This “condition meta” people talk about simple doesn’t exist because condition builds only exist in 2 psuedo-gamemodes out of the half dozen or so that there are (Openworld, Fractals, sPvP, tPvP, WvW roaming, WvW zergs, WvW havoc, Dueling), and even in those 2 areas they are in the minority.

Looks relatively standard, and whilst I’m no PvP expert I would say I have always found SoH to be a bit of a waste in PvP. Speed is essential for WvW roaming, but in PvP I really think there are better uses for your utilities.

Also I feel rnning rabid without having Skirmishing II is a bit of a waste, but maybe thats just me.

Even ignoring the above comments on Ascended, why dont you just go play in exotic till you know for yourself what it is you want?

Making Ascended gear before actually knowing for yourself it’s a setup that works for you if just asking for trouble.

You can use the Stow Weapon key to cancel many actions (maybe all, I havent used it much myself).

Also turn off Auto-Attack, that will prevent your character from continually doing things even when you dont want them to.

Another happy day on the Ranger forums.

Genuinely amazed to see we still argue over the definition of “Ranger”, especially since one of the main premises that this game is built on it breaking away from old MMO stereotypes, such as the Holy Trinity and clear cut roles for classes, and yet people are persistant in their belief that if the class isn’t exactly like a WoW Hunter, or Aragon, or Legolas, or whoever else, then it must be wrong.

I don’t get it… at all.

On the build I use I get 16s poison on an 8s CD thanks to the dagger. I mean if that isn’t taking the kitten I don’t know what is.

Khenzy.9348:

I never said Shortbow is a luckluster weapon,

I know, sorry, I should have been more clear. Not all of that was specifically replying to you, more to Wolfey and to others in the community who dislike the SB (because I know there are many :p)

I don’t really agree with where you are coming from. Ranger weapons are in general extremely good for at hybriding, really the only weapons which aren’t are the LB and GS, all the others can be used in power, condition builds or hybrid builds, and it’s something I love about ranger. I think it would be a real shame to lose that and start polerising weapons even more into condition only or power only.

Also I generally disagree the SB is lackluster… If you ask me it’s one of our very best weapons.

The only thing I can acknowledge is I can understand why some people dislike the way it works (being very AA attack heavy). Personally, that doesn’t bother me and dont see it as a problem, but I can understand why others dislike it.

Could my conditions also crit please so my bleeds can tick for 600.

Thanks.

I am forever in favour of giving Frost and Spike traps a serious amount of direct damage. The other 2 traps are heavily into condition damage which is fine and great, but these two would work really nicely as power-based traps. thus openning traps up to be used into whole new builds. It would also help justify the trait trait placement, although TBH thats not something which bothers me overly.

I actually agree the skill was more interesting as it is now (pre-buff), but the simple fact is Anet cant/wont fix the clone pathing issues which really screw up the ability. So, with that in mind, this seems the only way to actually make the skill work reliable.

If they were able to completel fix that pathing so that it never failed then I’d be all for that and keeping the skill as it is.. but until then.. this buff is needed.

Most enjoyable ranger video I’ve seen in a long time.. thanks

Nice build, wonderfully played, honestly I’m a little bit jealous of your GS prowess. I’ve got a GS S/D build I play now and again, and whilst I can wipe the floor with any other melee opponent with it I really stuggle against ranged classes like mesmers or other rangers, so it was nice to see someone doing it so well

shadowpass.4236:

can we get torment on every 3rd shot of sb aa too? 4s duration

I actually always wondered since I made my mesmer why the Scepter has an AA chain. I realise it’s not entirely unique to it, but it is uncommon for ranged weapons to have a chain.

I wonder if all ranged weapons would benift from having a chain… -wonders what the LB and SB chain might look like-

Like most people I’ll probably go dust off my berserker gear and go troll around with the LB. Probably followed by messing around with the axe. I’m a hybrid fan and might stacking on a hybrid build is twice as much fun so.. worth playing with. Something like this I think

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAV3YjEqUwaDLusw1agChq9LMsnA7BIAegXJbJjqC-ThSFwAEOCAnV/BwDAg0+D9VCuRDSjLCQVlfY0QgW3QAAEgQmBgUALqMC-e

Maaaybe if I know I am going to be fightign a Guardian or Ele.. but even then I’m not sure, andI certainly wont be using it perminantly.

I always enjoy your threads nick… really I do.

solrik.6028:

Cufufalating.8479:

Well.. I wrote a post but it sounded a little rude and I hate to be “that guy”… But the main point I wanted to make is why are you going all in on bleeds? It makes 0 sense to choose Sharpening Stone over Flame Trap when you already have the trap traits and no traits at all for SS.

He doesn’t need flame trap if he can manage his conditions well. Flame trap would, in this case, only be good as a cover-up condition (burning)

Secondly, the 40% cond. duration + 60% bleed duration won’t benefit flame trap a as much as it does benefit spike trap.

Well, I disagree. Stacking one conditon for silly durations (over 10s) only works on people who have a serious lack on condition removal in their build or who don’t have any idea how to play. And if you watch the video and looked at his opponents condition management that is exactly what you will see. In 80% of the fights his opponent doesnt cleanse anything more than once the entire fight (including an ele, a warrior and a guardian who don’t cleanse at all, and a s/d theif who doesnt use #2 which is meant to be a s/d thiefs condition removal tool).

There are one or two exceptions.. the 2v1 towards the end is a nice fight and well played, and there is a guardian fight in there somewhere where the guardian does have and does use cleanses a lot (though even there he just barely wins even with food and stacks, neither of which the guardian has).

This is the sort of post I didnt want to post in the first instance because it does sound rude.. and actually play wise I quite enjoyed watching the SB use with some good kiting, but build wise, I still think the whole idea is flawed. It’s good for killing people which an inbuilt weakness to conditions, nothing more.

Well.. I wrote a post but it sounded a little rude and I hate to be “that guy”… But the main point I wanted to make is why are you going all in on bleeds? It makes 0 sense to choose Sharpening Stone over Flame Trap when you already have the trap traits and no traits at all for SS.

They should probably make you invulnerable in stealth too. I mean we all know spamming is bad, so why should people be able to spam AoE and #1 and kill you while you’re stealth? Just promoting more spam not skilled play like stealth.

Much as I’d LOVE a MH Pistol.. I feel a 2H melee weapon could be even more fun. It’s Hammer Time!

Probably already been said, but Vemons can never be really nicely balanced for solo use as long as Vemon Share is in the game in it’s current form, because if you take a set of perfetly good skills they will clearly be OP as kitten when you (litterally) make them 5x better with a single trait.

So either they have to remain pretty poor for solo use, or Vemon Share needs to be reworked (something like shared vemons only have one use, or maybe just a tiny share radius to make it hard to use) to allow them to be properly buffed.

Yes

/15charrrrrrrr

Deso eh… You disappoint me

Still, we can talking in game when I get home next week if you want to know anything.

Messiah on the Ranger forums… I’m so happy… Hello I’d help you in game but I am on holiday at the moment, I just couldn’t resist replying to you so I logged in :P

The above posters aren’t wrong and you seem to have picked up already of the differences between a trap build and a SotF build… Clearly the latter is a more defensive setup with more condition removal and health, with traps having more AoE and condition output.

You know I like to play traps so I am somewhat biased.. I’ve tried SotF conditions builds quite a lot recently (largely out of curiosity about how such a build with Lyssa Runes + updated Entangle will go) and have consistently found them lacking. They lack the pressure and offensive power of a trap build, and then lack the raw survivability of a regen bunker, and I don’t find the middle ground to be particularly effective (or fun, but that probably just me).

If I were you I’d either go back to traps (perhaps with EB on Poison master, and I agree TU is better than HS), or go for a Regen Bunker. If you want to 1vX then the latter really is your best option as a ranger, but honestly since rangers can neither spike down bad players instantly like a thief, nor stealth and avoid damage from 20 people just the same as if it was 1 person like a thief, it’s never going to be the same experience.

Any character ever has aspect which will offend someone. Braham is too sterotypically male and some people here don’t like that. Trahearne annoys some people for the opposite reason because he needs to man the kitten up most of the time. Some people dislike Jory+Kas, whereas other’s get annoyed when every couple everywhere is M+F.

Really I think people just need to stop being offended by these things… Anet probably doesn’t mean anything in particular by it, they are just trying to represent every possible type of person so that everyone has a character they identify with, but noone is ever going to like every character.

*never enough single play content.

There are pleanty of dungeons, fractals, world events.. infact pretty much everything in this game which is group orientated.

As someone who prefers to play alone, I am very grateful that I can play through the lore without having to depend on other people. Now if they made a “hardmode” LS which you did need a group for then thats fine (and I’m pretty sure you can do the instanced in a party already O_o), as long as it’s always optional and I’m not forced to play through it with others.

Late reply but.. I’m on GH too, and I can tell you we have a surprising number of Rangers, many of whom you can find defending the home BL throughout the day. If you’re new to WvW I’d go there.. we have quite a nice bunch of people who roam about our BL and chat through most of the day Pay attention to the chat and you’ll know where people (both enemies and allies) are and where they are going, so you can join in any action thats happening^^

I’ve always found traps and regen difficult to blend, though that doesn’t mean it can’t work. I like your build mostly, and I very much agree with your choice to maintain precision in the build. It’s very tempting to drop it when you’re trying to cram another stat (Healing Power) in.

Anyway… This is my contribution to the idea:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNEQNAV8YjMqUua7KusQ1aADhq9J8ulA7AICmAX7QJjqJ-T1yCABAcAEU4AEc8FBgH1f0Z/BsUGwlSvJOCA6pbZ6HAwYKBDAgAwMn5QTmFCYxaA-w

By taking HS we gain very high regen up-time, even without Dwayna Runes. I prefer this because it frees up the Runes for things like Travelers or, given the coming changes to Entangle I put Lyssa in there. The combination on HS and the Lyssa Runes also largely solves the longstanding problem Trapper builds have with conditions, as we will have a nice burst cleanse every 48s with Entangle and more constant cleansing with HS (for both us and the pet, which is nice when using EB).

I’ve also swapped to the S/D setup over A/T. Personally, I much prefer this because Flame Trap has such a low CD that the torch often feels wasted to me, and the survivability S/D affords you is considerable. Other benifits include a leap finisher for HS, as well as enough Poison application to no longer need Viper’s Nest (for 1v1s at least), which leads me nicely into dropping Vipers Nest for a stunbreaker.

Overall, I feel the setup is much more balanced, and although it does lose some of the DPS that the Axe2 gives, I think it’s a minor lose when looking at the defensive gains^^

It was a weird quirk of the skill that you could teleport to the clone even if the clone was dead… so I actually support the bugfix since it was clearly a bug… But you are right the skill has so many negative aspects (both in its mechanics and in just how unrealiable / glitchy it is) that it is annoying they go out of their way to fix the benifitial bug and leave all the negative ones there.

So.. yeah. I support the bugfix but if they are going to bugfix they need to fix they other issues too.

These builds look pretty cool, but I don’t think they will change anything zerg wise. Adding ~400 power + condition damage to the axe doesn’t address the things which hold us back in zergs, which is poor AoE (hitting 3 people on AA is nothing special), poor team support and no pet. None of that has changed, especially since in an organised group you should have 25 might a lot of the time anyway… in which case litterally nothing has changed for the axe.

For smaller fights though, I am very curious to see how a power/celestial axe setup could work. Could be good!

Nice video, some interesting fights and I quite like how you play

I would say though there was a noticable lack of “good” fights in there… By which I mean, after the 3rd or 4th clip of you wiping out someone in a single condi burst it gets a little samey. Killing people who are clearly lacking condition removal with a full condition build is amusing but not all that impressive to watch.

There was also a noticable lack of condition builds fight against you, and since like most trap builds you only had EB to cleanse you a strong condition oppenent would be your greatest challenge, and thus more interesting to see how you appraoch / deal with it, rather than (as I said above) slaughting people your build clearly beats.

Still.. I don’t meam to sound negative.. I actually was quite impressed by how you move / play, so I am sure you’re capable of going up against better opponents.. would just have been nice to see it

Sure didn’t take the Ranger community long to go from happy about the best patch we ever got back to arguing about who needs to L2P and how good/bad the class is

Proc’ing Nature’s Voice trait.

Really shouts should be next on ANets “to fix” list… one is just used to proc a trait, one is used for it’s secondary effect not its primary effect, one is about to be dwarfed by SoS and one is so bad I don’t think most people even know it exists.

T raw.4658:

I’m just wondering when rangers became so weak while being a VERY strong 1v1 class…

Quite simple really… poor AoE and all our group utility is based on the Pet skills and Spirits, both of which scale horrifically with the size of a fight, thus leaving us pretty well balanced in 1v1s and 2v2s.. but the more people who add in the worse and worse we become.

MightyMicah.7451:

All I can say is, “Welcome to MMO’s.” I’ve never observed more hostile, unforgivable communities in any other area of life.

Try MOBA’s, lol.

I’m pretty highly ranked in DOTA and you stil lcant go throug ha single game without someone in the game being flamed out at the end for ruining it, it’s pretty sad really.

While I agree it’s not the greatest trait in the world… it is worth noting the sword (which is our highest DPS weapon) provides perma-cripple whilst AAing, meaning the trait is more or less a flat 10% DPS boost to our already high damaging weapon. Also, with the update to our pet traits they mentioned, it’s possible some pets will also be able to grant perma-cripple (although it does seem likely the trait will be given an ICD to prevent this.. but you never know).

Ranger’s do in general have the best soft CC of all the classes, so it does make sense as a trait for us, even if they % seems a bit low IMO.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

axe might is too short to seriously build around. With 3 sec might it’s 9 stacks at best that start dissapearing the moment you stop throwing that axe. In vid it was 12, but he admitted he had +boon duration. Even then it’s dropping the second you swap to second weapon at an alarming rate.

And another issue is that for stacking mights on axe you need multiple mobs, while rapid fire is single target. going single target when mobbed is not the best idea under the sun.

I think you’re right TBH. I still think axe is going to be primarily use for condition builds where is could turn out pretty nicely. Could easily use Axe2 and whatever other condition applications you have on the offhand or traps (or whatever else) and then just throw the AA a few times. The might will effect all the conditions you already applied quite nicely, which is fantastic because previous with the axe where really wasnt much to do for 5 seconds inbetween using the #2.

I find it amusing too.. As someone who plays both Ranger and Mesmer equally it’s really noticable.

Even after all the nerfs mesmer have gotten over time and all the (small) buffs rangers have gotten, Mesmers are still, by far, a much better put together profession. The reason they complain though is because they used to be even better, unlike Rangers who are pretty used to being looked down on by now.

It’s most noticable in discussions about zergs.. where mesmer complain and complain they are just veil / portal bots…. Dear god what rangers wouldnt give to have ANY use in a zerg. Anything at all.

Now this doesn’t mean Mesmer’s dont have their issues… every class does… and Mesmers are particularly beset by little bugs and glitches (like Ranger, funnily enough) mostly stemming from constant use of AIs, which also causes them problems in PvE (again like Rangers), so there are things that need to be addressed… But really most of the complaining from Mesmers is due to them once being gods and now being around normal.

Samurai.7269:

oh I understand ,
but i asked my friends they said they didn’t lose health :/

They are wrong

I see your point, but I don’t think adding a new mechanic which actively punishes stacking is a good way to do.

Better is to examine the reasons which cause people to stack, and then try to change that. In PvE it’s mostly to do with needing to be close to share buffs, LoSing opponents, and being together makes it easier to focus down targets together, and finally melee DPS being the best DPS and so naturally everyone is going to be meleeing and thus be up close together anyway.

Most of those are hard to change, but they certainly could (and IMO should) make the range of buffing skills MUCH greater to players in your party. Maybe as much as 2000-2500 range. This would allow people to spread out whilst not missing out on group buffs.

They could also try things like giving more NPCs cleaving / AoE on their general attacks rather than just on big dodgable attacks, or give NPCs big attacks which function like the Sky Hammer does (being un-evadable) which will force people out of their spot and to move around the room, rather than just evading it.

In general though I am not in favour of mechanics which actively push people apart, since this is meant to be a team based game, not 5 individuals runing about trying to avoid eachother.

Merging would be nice, but really the new trait is not required for LB.

10% damage is nice on any weapon, but it doesnt offer anything specifically to the LB, nor does it fix any pre-existing issue the LB has. Frankly it’s probably better suited to other weapons such as Axe or Sword, as they have better access to Soft CC.

So I cant say I agree.. it’s a cool trait, but by no means is it one of the “must have” traits, for LB or for any other build.