Guild Wars 2

Anka.3675:

T1 female medium glows on the upper arms and the berries around the waist.

Thanks for the answer, +1!

I stand by my original statement, Anet made a big hoopla out of releasing a new end-game PvE area and no one wants to go there, so the last thing they’ll want to do is remove the only incentive to visit the area at all. Let’s face it, Southsun is less attractive than other areas of the game, nothing interesting really happens there, and fighting crab monsters is just plain boring.

It’s pretty funny that so many people believe this to be a supersecret farming location though. Everyone knows Southsun Cove is good for farming, it’s just that some people have trouble with the karka. If you can’t breeze through the map with ease then you’ll probably make more gold per hour in Orr or Frostgorge Sound.

So what seems to provide the most powerful blood, fighting skelk underwater or karka on land? Any recommended spots?

PS: some of these replies are ridiculous. Moaning about people sharing good farming locations, really? Besides, Southsun was a pretty big flop for Anet, the very last thing they want is LESS people there.

I’m planning on buying the Sylvari T1 medium female armor and transmuting it to end-game stats, does anyone know whether this specific armor has a glowing effect?

Take Root is very useful, it’s the elite I run with the most in PvE. As well as giving you 3 seconds of invulnerability, the turrets act as decoys when fighting larger groups of mobs. In specific situations such as NPC defense (eg. kiting all those mobs in CoF path 2 to protect the NPC) this can come in very handy. I guess Grasping Vines could be pretty useful too, but my Sylvari is a ranger and the Entangle profession skill is a lot more powerful.

The skill just needs to activate as the animation begins, rather than on completion.

I was about to post this as a recommendation for gem store. I think weapon dies should be gem purchases, ArenaNet would make a lot of cash out of that.

Great idea, Anet needs ideas like this to drive gemstore purchase.

Does anyone else seem to occasionally not receive the quickness on pet swap buff? I’ve noticed this a few times, swapping birds. I doubt it’s at all tied to the actual pet, hawk and eagle just happen to be my go-to pets at the moment.

Just use whatever you’re more comfortable with, or the weapon in your inventory that happens to have the highest stats since you’re still leveling

Pet selection is situational and depends on your personal preference I think, more than your build. Until you hit dungeons you shouldn’t have problems keeping any pet alive in basic PvE anyway, so just pick whatever style you like best.

PS: I am full berserker and use LB/GS, and usually birds in basic PvE because I like the spike (canines in PvP for CC)

Yeah I saw that, but it isn’t completely broken and still seems far preferable to Rune of the Eagle or Orbs. Anyway hopefully ANet will fix Rune of the Ranger eventually, if it really is broken.

Why don’t you just use Rune of the Ranger, for a 5% damage boost all the time? (almost)

Really? I never noticed, figured it was a bug. I’ll look more closely!

Barrage and trap? Also, soak up initial spike with SoS or protect me. My issue with thieves is that they slip away too easily.

The skin seems exactly the same to me. Stats are definitely identical, at least on the tooltips. I’m not complaining though, I run with both most of the time for the great spike with low cooldown.

Me neither, all I really want for christmas is a sword root fix.

Lysico.4906:

Rune of ranger, last one with 5% is broken.

If you need a cheaper option, rune of the thief is really solid and the last one is 10% bonus to damage from back/side which is not horrible.

Is that confirmed? Exactly how is it broken? I’ll test this tonight.

Edit: @wmtyrance: issue with rangers is PvP, not PvE

Seriously??? I just spent most of my hard earned gold on 6 runes of the ranger today. Can anyone confirm a bug here?

Sword root bug, if I could pick just one. I’d really love to be able to use this weapon but not to the extent of turning off autoattack and mashing the 1 key to work around the bug. To me this is a must fix.

PS: why is it so hard to give straight answers to such straightforward questions in this forum?

I would fix LB1 damage at its current max range values and increase crit chance at range instead. And I’d increase rapid fire damage per arrow by about 15%, or better yet do away with it completely and substitute with a single high power shot that inflicts chill.

You need to do the opposite and get them to blow their initiative. Knock them around and Cc them while you can see them and pop SoS or protect me when they stealth and you know they’re coming at you with a backstab. My main issue with thieves isn’t so much them killing me, as it is them slipping away in stealth before I can down them.

Rapid fire is really poor in my opinion, the only thing I like about it is the possibility of rapidly proccing crits in conjunction with certain sigils. Other than that its only utility for me is briefly avoiding the distance penalty at closer range. I wish anet would rework this skill, I find it absurd that it does almost the same damage as autoattack with no real benefits.

Sol.4310:

I run no points in Marksmanship at all and I’m a Precision/Critical Damage ranger, you make up for loss of power in might stacking and most armor/acc, why waste points in a trait line when critical is so much better.

But crit damage scales off base damage. If your base damage is low than points into marksmanship will give you lots more average attack per point than skirmishing. At near equal damage levels crit is preferable due to ‘on crit’ effects from sigils and traits, but do the math to make sure you wouldn’t be better off damagewise with additional power.

Yeah thieves are pretty easy, all you need is protect me or traited signet of stone and you should win most 1v1’s. Mesmers and guardians are a lot harder for me, and eles too.

QZ yes, but lightning reflexes is rarely on my bar. It is a good skill, but I’d often rather have a trap, SoH, or traited SoS. I don’t melee much though, so LR isn’t as useful for me.

You’ll start making gold much faster soon, I really wouldn’t worry about it. I had no problem affording the trait book by the time i was lvl 60, and I wasn’t even doing dungeons. Depends how much wvw and crafting you do I guess, both of those can be a big cash drain and can level you quickly without the loot.

Sb, no contest. You can rarely keep max range in spvp so LB ends up being much weaker.

What gear are you using? Precision / crit damage is pretty much gimped if your base damage is low, and you have no points in marksmanship for power.

Yeah you have to buy the master book first. But you WANT to buy the book, it unlocks great new traits for you that are probably more useful than most things you could spend your money on.

I just think PvE, WvW, and sPvP are very different game modes with very different mechanics. It seems normal to me that not all weapons can be viable in all game modes. Longbow is designed for extreme long range, in areas where I can’t keep range I simply use a different weapon. Rather than adapt the longbow, my complaint is that there are no open field sPvP maps that allow for different play styles.

Rocklin.4106:

Atherakhia.4086:

You would have expected the bows to do the same damage at close range but the longbow to outshine the shortbow at long range, at the very least. Hopefully they’ll decide to improve longbow damage or increase its rate of fire.

LB does outshine SB on long range, as you can see at the numbers posted, you cant compare them with any Set that has Condition dmg, because LB has no conds … but with berserker, LB has, even if just slightly, more DPS on long range than SB.

and also, always keep in mind that you cant shoot your targets from behind/the side permanently, and that your target might just remove your bleedings every once in a while and so on… imagine a SB cond Ranger fighting another berserk LB ranger 1v1, standing/strafing in healing spring and always facing you, good luck with that bleedings.

That’s true, but it’s often just as hard to keep max range with a LB as it is to keep bleeds up on the SB. In sPvP it’s so difficult that I wouldn’t ever consider using a Longbow.

nerva.7940:

i thought about this setup. is it effective? whats your role? i see you as being way too squishy, and not having a role outside of keep defense and maybe chasing down runners in smaller engagements.

you brought up a good point. gearing up for wvw is a major pain, for the ranger anyway. builds that are effective in pvp arent that effective in pve and vice versa. i roll a glass cannon guardian and he excels in both with one set of gear.

i will likely stick to a tanky condition build as i can stomp pve in it and do well in wvw at the same time.

I wouldn’t say any build really locks you into a ‘role’, per se. But let’s put it this way, with a LB glass cannon build you are probably as effective as you could possibly be at both sieging and keep defense, which is what I spend the majority of my time doing in WvW. Squishiness is largely irrelevant when there’s a wall separating you and your opponents, hence why I choose glass cannon for WvW but would never use this setup in sPvP. Also remember that at level 80 with a full set of exotics, all of your opponents are at best on a par with you in terms of gear, and many will be considerably weaker.

In the open field, power/prec LB is good for weakening groups of players through AoE and sniping from a safe distance, making life easier for your allies on the front line through barrage, healing spring, traps, revives, and pet buffs or knockdowns. It’s NOT a build for meleeing, if that’s your game then you might prefer a condition build.

Glass cannon LB main, power and precision. QZ, muddy terrain, SoH. LB is an absolute must imo in wvw for barrage, which is useful in so many situations. Siege, defense, open combat, you name it. I just wish we could have WvW specific setups like in sPvP so I wouldn’t have to run this build in PvE, I’d much rather run a condition sb build in dungeons.

IMO a true trap build has to have trap potency from Skirmishing, the diff in damage output is huge. Why arena net would choose to put trap traits in skimishing truly baffles me though, I really wish they’d put them in WS.

I’ve been using this build in sPvP since I started, but with Undead Runes (Cond Damage/Toughness, with 5% of Toughness being converted into extra condition damage). I want to experiment more with other builds though, as I find it hard to flank opponents in 1v1 situations and this build is all about the shortbow bleeds.

I would be very happy just to receive the buffs JP already told us about. I kinda wish he hadn’t actually, I would have expected nothing from this patch and gotten a great surprise Just how effective the changes will be remains to be seen, but it’s great that they’re addressing our key issues.

If rangers had rifles then engineers would have to have bows, and that makes even less sense. Besides, guns would scare our pets away!

Thanks Ursan, this is really useful info! I now feel a little bit better about running with a Berskerker LB build, I would have expected it to come up much shorter against SB than it actually did in your tests

Cloud.7613:

Agadar.4931:

neverborne.4736:

• For PvE leveling rangers complaining that these changes won’t help you, that’s because the ranger is already very balanced for PvE, if not overpowered.

Oh god, my sides! Lord have mercy upon them! I cannot stop laughing!

Lol, I cried a bit laughing, I thought he was telling the truth about everything till that, haha. xD

Guys….. Ranger is VERY strong in PvE, what are you talking about? Do you actually play other professions? My main is a ranger, but I have a thief, warrior, ele, and guardian, and I assure you leveling a ranger is far, far, easier. Why do you think bots are all rangers? Easiest profession to keep alive. It’s not about the damage output, it’s that pets hold aggro marvelously well against trash mobs and are tough to kill in basic PvE (unlike in dungeons). The pet + range mechanic works extremely well, any other profession is getting constantly aggro’d and attacked by anything around them while a ranger can turn on LB or SB autoattack and go take a nap.

Dungeons are another matter entirely, other professions are more effective depending on the specific dungeon. Essentially, the Ranger is the undisputed king of solo PvE but is less effective in group play than other classes.

Superior sigil of agony, always. +10% bleed duration is great on sb.

How it would play out in my mind:
“I’ll swoop in with GS, interrupt her next attack with GS 5, block her subsequent attack with GS4 and knock her down. Then I’ll swap to LB and LB2 her while she’s getting up, then knock her back with LB4 and cast my CCs at her again. She doesn’t stand a chance!”

How it would play out on the battlefield:
I’d swoop in, get blocked, get CC’d, and get roflstomped. For added humiliation, my corpse may receive a /point followed by a /laugh.

It’s weird isn’t it? IMO, either it’s an oversight or Anet’s logic was that we already get poison fields from some pets, as Quarktastic mentioned, whereas we only get fire and ice fields from traps and torch. I hadn’t thought of pet poison until you mentioned that.

If this is so hard to fix, I would just drop the melee mechanic and put an invisible damage field around the pet that pulses for damage, so anything the pet is near takes damage on each tick (attack animations would just be for fluff). I know it’s a crude hotfix and the damage would be AoE and unblockable, but at least the problem would be solved. If pets become OP, just decrease their DPS.

Hi,

For WvW I’ve built a glass cannon build with LB as my main weapon, which I use primarily for barraging and shooting at groups of players. I’m undecided as to which sigil to go with, in theory Sigil of Fire seems like the most useful in WvW for the AoE fireball, as I do a lot of group barraging, but in practice I wonder whether some of the other sigils such as Air (lightning strike), Earth (bleed), Rage (quickness), or even Force (+5% damage) might be more effective. Any thoughts or suggestions? Note that I will probably equip Bloodlust to my secondary weapon for +250 power, and that I have high crit chance so the on-crit sigils are particularly appealing.

Condition damage is definitely worth speccing, most ranger weapons rely on it for damage output. And I disagree that it’s bad for dungeons, a good condition build requires lots of points in Wilderness Survival for the condition damage increase, and that trait line also gives you increased toughness which is really handy in dungeons and sPvP.

awe extender.1908:

A signet build needs 30 points in Marksmanship to get Signet of the beastmaster. Without Signet of the beastmaster a signet build is not optimal. When you use 30 points in Marksmanship you wouldn’t make a good condition ranger. Therefore it would not be optimal to use weapons that are condition oriented, like SB, axe, dagger. Now here comes the issue with a signet build. The non-condition weapons like LB and GS (and maybe sword) are really not good atm. So you end up with crappy weapons and some weak signets. Overall not a good build. If the GS and LB get some buffs along with the signets, then it might be fun to make a signet build.

What? Marksmanship is essential for condition builds, it increases condition duration by 1% for every point! One of my two main builds is designed around SB with 30 points in marksmanship and 30 in wilderness survival for maxxed out condition damage and duration.

Not me, maybe I stick to stereotypes too much but I don’t feel that rifles have anything to do with the ranger profession and definitely would not want one. Bows for me!

Also, in case anyone missed this, the increased projectile speed should only really help your game in PvP. The reason for the change was that arrows frequently miss their target in WvW and sPvP, particularly at long range, as they travel slowly and your opponents are constantly in motion. So don’t expect to see higher damage output in PvE where arrows already connect almost all the time.

Yeah I think arrows should arc, while bullets should fire straight. Projectile speed for bullets would remain higher, but with a bow you should be able to shoot over obstacles.

Hawk is great, I usually run with Eagle and Hawk for the high damage F2 spike with the really fast reload.

If you’re only level 10 though, what’s the rush? The only pet I ever got from zones above my level was the new drake in Southsun cove during the last event, when we were all bumped up to 80. Makes it a lot more fun to level when you have new pets to look forward to, rather than getting them all at once