Guild Wars 2

Aethersong.5189:

HTech.8016:

Dahkeus.8243:

This is my #1 most anticipated bug fix by far. I really hope there’s a patch to address this soon…

What’s there to fix? The sword skill is working as intended. There is nothing to fix. The sword just requires you to have a more active playstyle.

With auto-attack off, I think the sword is working close to how it was envisioned, but I can’t see how the current auto-attack rooting the player is intended.

ArenaNet has acknowledged the #1 skill as a bug, so yes, there is something to fix.

It’s a weapon where you have to turn off auto attack and use weapon skills to dodge since you can’t dodge during the animation of it’s main dps ability. Sure, it looks fancy to jump around a lot, but in the end, the short bow does more dps without forcing you into melee range and preventing you from using your main dodge.

Right now the sword is really a weapon to swap to for defense in sPvP. I’m still waiting for a reason to use this in PvE.

This is my #1 most anticipated bug fix by far. I really hope there’s a patch to address this soon…

Yea, pet swapping is pretty awesome. In PvP, we have a pretty good downed state because of it. Use a wolf as a second pet and when you go down Thunderclap (down ability 2) → swap to wolf and use the howl F2 → set wolf to attack your target, which often leads to a knockdown.

Also, as far as tips go, avoid using a Black Widow since they have less vitality for some reason. A jungle spider does everything the same as a black widow, but has better stats. Also, avoid using Hyenas. They have what looks to be a great F2 ability, but they have half as much power as any other canine pet, which gives them less damage overall.

After testing in the mists, I found that wolves and wolf-like pets are best for moving targets. Jaguars come in close, but that’s only really because they are glass cannons.

Wolves keep up strong damage on moving targets because A ) they snare with cripple and B ) they have a fast attack speed with minimal attack animation.

Also, the runs peed doesn’t make a difference for most pets, but it does actually help a bit with wolves.

Also, birds are terrible at moving targets since their attack animation is so flamboyant.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV3fjEVV2RWOWsWCgli9CspgTN5MOkxvgUOVGWKF;TsAg1CqomxMjYG7MuZkzsCYEwWAA

^ This.

Swap muddy terrain for Sig of Renewal when conditions are heavy.

If you don’t need a stun removal, Sharpening Stone works.

Some pets work better for certain situations (such as a brown bear on a condition fight, jaguar on a fight where pets take very little damage, etc.), so swap them out as needed.

There are some other viable options for which Skirmishing and WS talents you pick up, such as Carnivorous Appetite, Primal Reflexes, Hide in Plain Sight, etc., so you can always change those if you really like one of those instead of what is here, but the point allocation gives you a solid balance of power, survival, and condition damage.

Also, I have centaur runes since they’re so useful for travel, but if you really want something optimal for dungeons, there are other options.

I’ve done a lot of tweaking of a similar build and came upon this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNAV3fjEVZ2RWOWsWCili9EomCOJJOD+zovgUmxUWjB;TkAqZMzImxOjbG5MrAGBsFA

I’m using Axe+Torch as offhand, which still serves for AoE, but you could just as easily use a longbow instead if you prefer.

Some of the traits can easily be switched to fit your preference, such as Vigorous Renewal or Off-Hand Training instead of Hide in Plain Sight.

Also, I swap out Muddy Terrain with Signet of Renewal regularly, depending on what I’m going against. I.e. if you need CC, grab MT, but otherwise take Renewal for condition removal.

Overall, after trying a lot of builds, I find this nails down the perfect balance of dps and defense.

I haven’t seen this variation yet, but it looks solid.

Florgknight.1589:

Swiftness and crowd-control are your friends.

Making your pet move faster actually doesn’t do much difference in getting your pet to land attacks since so much of what makes them miss is their attack animation. Go to the mists and set your pet to attack the moving golem and time how long it takes to go down, then spec into the 30%+ movement speed for pets talent and do the test again.

masztipapa.7519:

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, you’re a kitten good player and it shows in these videos, but the damage from Pain Inverter is just stupid, especially for a racial ability.

Hes full condition dmg based, the dmg is normal! Actually confusion dmg is based on the target and not the caster, people tend to forget about it and spam like crazy killin themselves. A simple conditon removal or wait for the 5 seconds and its dmg is 0.

Yea, but no one is going to expect 3 stacks of confusion and retaliation from a ranger, especially since this is something that can only happen in WvW.

The spear is fine, but hit boxes of underwater enemies tend to make what is already an awkward experience even worse.

But personally, I’d scrap underwater melee combat if I had the chance.

Before I get into this, I should that first of all, I’m very thankful for this game and so many aspects of it (today is Thanksgiving after all).

However, I’m frustrated that I am still unable to PvP with my fiance outside of WvW. We both love PvP, but the sPvP experience when we try to join together has pretty much discouraged us from even trying any more.

If we try regular sPvP pick up games, we get put on opposite teams most of the time and even if we do end up on the same team, we get “rebalanced” and put against each other.

If we do free tournaments, we have to wait a long time to get into an actual game and when we get joined with 3 other random people against what is almost always a full team of 5 that is experienced and organized.

Please ArenaNet, give us a better option for this.

Depends what your build is. You can bring more talents/abilities to counter this, but you can find out what those are from spending a few seconds looking at the talent tree.

Are you talking PvP or PvE? If it’s PvE, just swap in Sig of Renewal and use a brown bear. If it’s PvP, change your spec.

Ugh, so many broken abilities on the ranger and other areas of improvements and people are asking for a speed buff, when a simple rune swap fixes this with minimal sacrifice.

Yea, you’re a kitten good player and it shows in these videos, but the damage from Pain Inverter is just stupid, especially for a racial ability.

That’s a good point…I never thought of that.

Fate.8673:

This definitely should be one of the signets they are looking at, the 50% increased damage for pets is great for burst but there’s barely a reason to justify the passive (although it does help jump puzzles quite a bit).

Dahkeus you’re a bit offtopic, Centaur runes require heavy investment (a whole rune set just so I can get around?), and GS isn’t something all Rangers should have to carry around to feel mobile.

If all you got from centaur runes was speed, yea, it would be a heavy investment, but considering that you get a bunch of power, they’re a good choice.

Look, you have to make a sacrifice somewhere to get the speed, whether it’s from runes, talents, or skills. For example: with engineers, you can easily get 100% swiftness, but you’ll need a 10 point investment down Tools. For thieves, you have to give up a skill slot if you go with the signet and that doesn’t even make you go as fast as swiftness.

Don’t get so hung up in the fact that this comes from runes and not a ranger-specific aspect. One way or another, something’s gotta give.

Also, you don’t NEED a gs to feel mobile. You can run around without a GS and still have 100% swiftness, but if you’re running around and not in combat, why not? It’s not like you have to have an exotic GS with a sigil just to be able to use swoop, lol.

On a constructive note, there will never be a perfect fix for keeping ranger damage consistent as long as they are a pet class, but I will admit that it would be nice to have:
A) flying pets able to fly (although this probably just isn’t realistic considering how much of a change would be needed for core mechanics.)

B) Increased range on ranged pets (devourers/spiders) so that they could keep up dps while with a ranger defending a keep.

I’m all for some improvements, but running speed isn’t where we need it. Centaur runes are too easy of a fix, especially if you pop on a greatsword when travelling and spam Swoop.

What we need is a fix to the 1h sword so that we’re mobile where we really need it: in combat. Also, an increase on attack speed for the longbow would be a big help to make the class feel less sluggish.

Centaur runes + warhorn = 100% swiftness.

Yes, you sacrifice some damage to pick up these runes, but it’s not much since the primary stat for them is Power (the bread and butter stat for rangers) and if you didn’t need the rune, you’d be losing dps by spending a talent point or skill slot to get the run speed.

Standing on a wall, you can annoy your enemy, but personally, I don’t think spending a bunch of time in zerg fight is a good reason because:
A) most enemies will take some damage, then run back out of range before they die, even if you are doing good damage.
and
B) you’ll be more useful and will get more rewards from sticking with a moving group to take supply camps and take out dolyaks.

If you’re going to defend a keep, work on setting up a siege weapon or getting supplies for other people setting them up.

There’s no magic number for how much you need of certain stats, particularly with defensive stats since it depends on your build. I.e. someone running a glass cannon build will want some tough/vit on gear, but not as much as someone running with more defensive traits/stats.

As for choosing which offensive stats, power is a pretty safe choice whenever you can choose it since condition damage will depend on your build (which will probably change more frequently than you can change your gear).

If you’re running a trap build, then I would suggest staying with your carrion gear, but consider supplementing some pieces with some Power/Tough/Vit as needed.

In the end, use your own experience to decide whether you need more defense on your gear or not. Are you wiping in dungeons a lot? If so, is it from taking too much damage or from not killing a boss fast enough. In my experience, surviving a fight is more important than trying to burn through it quickly. You don’t want to spend forever fighting a boss, but very few fights really require a dps race and of course, you deal no dps when you’re dead.

Soul.5947:

Dahkeus.8243:

I sense a mountain being made out of a molehill here.

Yes, there are some situations where you just can’t get the benefit of your pet’s damage, but this is the case in ALL mmos with pets.

Look, success won’t be handed to you. If you don’t think the benefits of pets outweighs the problems, then don’t roll a ranger. If these problems were as big as you say they are, then people just wouldn’t play ranger, but guess what…

Lots of people play ranger.

but like I said, if it’s too much for you, feel free to go warrior or something else, but there are glitches and problems with every class.

after reading some of your other posts i can see you are quite the ranger fan boy, but please tell me have you played any other class or you are just posting stuff just for the sake of posting. Take a look at mist pvp and tell me where are all the rangers if rangers are so balanced. Nobody will take ranger in 5v5 tournament just so you know, so stop speaking like you know what you are talking about because you do not.

You must not have read them very well, because I never said that rangers were great for 5v5 tournaments and if that was all there was to GW2, then yes, there would be a problem.

But that’s one small niche of a huge game.

p.s. go back and look to my posts from the 15th before you call me a fan boy. I have issues with the class, but I’m not going to act like the sky is falling because of it.

I sense a mountain being made out of a molehill here.

Yes, there are some situations where you just can’t get the benefit of your pet’s damage, but this is the case in ALL mmos with pets.

Look, success won’t be handed to you. If you don’t think the benefits of pets outweighs the problems, then don’t roll a ranger. If these problems were as big as you say they are, then people just wouldn’t play ranger, but guess what…

Lots of people play ranger.

but like I said, if it’s too much for you, feel free to go warrior or something else, but there are glitches and problems with every class.

Plaxy.4617:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMUQNBhODbkoquuvSxi1OA0ekplYyUkIiOFo6ZKvaLttC;TEBA1ytEaJ1StlSLKbM2IsxajzGpNrNGbc2Y7wbDA

here posted my version of a tanky greatsword Great surviability, in the melee, Lots of Dodges that grant protection steady critical rate 33% with fury That grant pet heals and might. Heavy Hp Pets who cosistantly eat all conditions at me, a CC save once every 90s. Stability for 24 seconds ((thats actually a pretty good portion of a boss fight)) out of every 2.5 minutes. With Axes and Flame trap I can kite fairly effectively when needed to do so.

Armor and accessory’s are Soldiers all the way giving both Vit and Tough ness and a strong level Power, Armor Supurior Rune of the Dolyak nothing like a bit extra vit and tough but mostly for the extra regen giving the Ranger 3 nearly always uptime sources of Regen ((multiple sources slightly makes up for the lack of Healing power in the build its somewhere around 500-600 a sec by my estimation)). Sigil of Water for weapon for the heal thats about guarenteed every 10 seconds, also gives a bit of support.

Strategy is get into battle and start auto attacking while constantly strafing to the rearside of the mob, Use healing spring practically on cooldown and swoop in and out of the spring to gain an extra splash of healing. Hopefully your pet will eventually grab aggro making it much easier to whack, and yes my bears typically survive big boss bashes giving time to swap them when hp is low on them. Don’t forget to use other greatsword skills like counter attack when a boss rears for a big attack It wil block and allow you to stay ontop keeping a steady constant dps on it. When roaming keep the axe out and horn before going into melee giving a nice start up of Might and fury to start a fight with.

If you’re set on running with 30 in WS, swap out Empathetic Bond. There aren’t enough conditions in normal dungeon conditions to justify it, especially if you have signet of renewal. If you’re going into an encounter where conditions are heavy, then swap in sig of renewal and empathetic bond if you want, but otherwise you’ll get more benefit from bringing something else (like QZ and Wilderness Knowledge or Sig of Stone and Bark Skin if you want to be more tanky).

Also, considering swapping your warhorn for a torch and swap out your flame trap for something more useful. As good as the horn is overall, you won’t utilize the swiftness in dungeons much and a single stack of fury and might don’t really justify the weapon swap.

Outside of this, looks solid!

I just meant that the short bow has a fast attack speed with it’s auto attack and wasn’t talking about the Rapid Fire skill on the longbow. Sorry for the confusion.

Short Bow > Longbow

As for traits, go for damage traits while leveling and if you plan on running dungeons, get Piercing Arrows (requires 20 talents in Marks) as soon as you can.

For the most part, you can go straight into Marks and Skirmishing. I usually don’t go more than 20 into marks, but that’s a matter of preference. Also, picking up 10 points into Wilderness Survival is a strong choice since it works so well with Quickening Zephyr (great skill for any build). Muddy Terrain is another handy skill for leveling and benefits from this talent as well.

Traps are great for leveling, but they won’t really shine until you can invest 30 points into Skirmishing for the matching talents since this will greatly increase their damage and allow them to be used at range.

Tl; dr Go for something like this until you can get master level talents:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBlODbEoqxOySzi1SAsUsXgtCcyUYIjfBA;TgAAzCpomxMjYG7MuZkzA

When you can get master level talents, go for something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBlODbEoquOySui1SAsUsXgtCcyeYojP+K0KA;TgAAzCpomxMjYG7MuZkzA

Yea, agreed with the OP. I used the longbow as a swap from a shortbow for a while and as much as I liked using Point Blank Shot with Piercing Arrows to help get mobs off squishy teammates, it still just felt lackluster compared to axe + torch.

Honestly, I’d like to see a buff to the rate of fire because even if they increased the raw damage, it still feels sluggish and weak when you’re plinking out arrows so slowly.

While you’re leveling, don’t be afraid to experiment, but if you’re looking for something efficient, then the shortbow will be your best bet with long bow as a close second. The rapid fire of a short bow pushes it ahead of a long bow in damage for most situations, even if you can’t flank for the bleed. Unless you can really keep max distance for the entire fight (which rarely happens when leveling), then you’re getting less damage than you would from a short bow.

For your offhand, axe + horn is the way to go since it will give you more aoe options with the axe and the swiftness from the horn is awesome to help you get around quickly. If you run up close to your enemy and use splitblade, you also get a lot of stacks of bleeds, so grabbing gear with +condition damage works very well for this.

As for pets, go with what deals as much damage as possible without dying. For most content, you can get away with just using a glass cannon pet, such as a jaguar. They will bring strong consistent damage and also deal big damage when attacking from stealth. There’s no real wrong answer with pets and each of them brings something unique to work better in certain situations (well, most of them at least), so get comfortable with using a different pet in different settings.

“Now, shouldn’t we deal extra damage when our pet is dead or out of combat?”

No, because you shouldn’t get rewarded for bad pet management.

Yes, it’s not a perfect, but in exchange for having a perfectly efficient bit of additional damage, we get the ability to choose from a huge range of pets that allow us to adapt to a lot of situations very easily. It also just makes the profession fun. If it’s not fun for you, then it may be that the ranger just isn’t for you…

Durzlla.6295:

Dahkeus.8243:

Himei.5379:

Try this build, it’s what I’ve been using and I think it’s pretty effective, even in Dungeons and I expect decent in WvW.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQJARVjEV11RWKWs2Cgli9CspQTL5HM8LwVA1K+0E

I’ll edit in my stats when I have taken a screenshot of it.

My build is primarily Pow/Prec/Toughness, Head and Coat is Knight. Pants, Shoulders and Boots are Berserkers. All have Ruby Orbs in slots. Amulet is Knight, Earrings are Valkyrie and Rings are Berserkers. Greatsword is Knight with Superior Sigil of Battle and Shortbow is Berserker with Superior Sigil of Fire. Found the added toughness on helmet, coat and amulet gave the best stat distributions. Ruby orbs to supplement my prec/pow with only 15 into Precision trait tree. I did 15 into Skirmishing for the minor traits of weapon swapping. Goal of build is to lay down flame trap, then grab enemies with shortbow then use my traits of weapon swapping with greatsword but if solo enemy, I just stand still because my toughness allows me to take hits (PvE). After swapping to GS, swap pet for QZ and it’ll melt mobs. The sigil of Fire is added CC and dps from SB damage. When it activates, it’s like a added burst damage of an additional ~1000 give or take. Depending on situation/battle, swap flame trap/QZ for Lightning reflexes for stun break if you’re block is mistimed or on CD.

Total HP is ~17500 and crit rate is 39% (will edit other stats when I take a look).

Pet is Fern Hound for reasons I mention above in post and River Drake for F2 DPS.

Signet of Wild will help keep your hp up along with Fern Hound’s F2 and gaining vigor on using a healing skill.

Wow, this build is all over the place. You really need to specialize your talents and slot skills.

A) Don’t bring traps without trap talents. It’s just not worth it.
B) If you’re running QZ, there’s no reason not to have Wilderness Knowledge.
C) Spec into talents that help your mainhand weapon or your offhand. Don’t stretch your talents across both (i.e. go piercing arrows with a bow OR martial mastery with a gs, NOT both).

I actually tested out a few all over te place builds and they work REALLY well which caught me off guard, I wouldn’t bash it before you try it,

PS: I don’t follow any of those suggestions you made with several f my PvP builds, and it appears I’m one of the people with the least issues with ranger, so I woulnt take those as fact.

Issues with ranger have more to do with people’s attitudes than what build they are running.

Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that choosing talents and skills that synergize will increase their performance more than trying to take on multiple tasks with longer cooldowns and decreased output.

For example: If you’re talenting into Piercing Arrows and Martial Mastery, then you’ve invested 20 talent points when you can only use 10 of those at one time. There’s also no benefit to trying to use a greatsword and a longbow/short bow as a primary weapon in PvE since they’re so redundant.

Running a primary weapon (bow or gs) along with a 1h and offhand makes sense since they synergize, such as dropping a torch, then swapping to your bow and getting burning projectiles or switching from a bow to an axe to get better AoE damage. Swapping from a bow with piercing arrows to a greatsword sacrifices your directional AoE to a 3 target cleave, which gives you no real advantage except for some more defensive abilities, in which case you’ll only be periodically using the gs and won’t benefit enough from the talents.

Tl;dr your annecdotal evidence doesn’t add up.

Himei.5379:

Try this build, it’s what I’ve been using and I think it’s pretty effective, even in Dungeons and I expect decent in WvW.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQJARVjEV11RWKWs2Cgli9CspQTL5HM8LwVA1K+0E

I’ll edit in my stats when I have taken a screenshot of it.

My build is primarily Pow/Prec/Toughness, Head and Coat is Knight. Pants, Shoulders and Boots are Berserkers. All have Ruby Orbs in slots. Amulet is Knight, Earrings are Valkyrie and Rings are Berserkers. Greatsword is Knight with Superior Sigil of Battle and Shortbow is Berserker with Superior Sigil of Fire. Found the added toughness on helmet, coat and amulet gave the best stat distributions. Ruby orbs to supplement my prec/pow with only 15 into Precision trait tree. I did 15 into Skirmishing for the minor traits of weapon swapping. Goal of build is to lay down flame trap, then grab enemies with shortbow then use my traits of weapon swapping with greatsword but if solo enemy, I just stand still because my toughness allows me to take hits (PvE). After swapping to GS, swap pet for QZ and it’ll melt mobs. The sigil of Fire is added CC and dps from SB damage. When it activates, it’s like a added burst damage of an additional ~1000 give or take. Depending on situation/battle, swap flame trap/QZ for Lightning reflexes for stun break if you’re block is mistimed or on CD.

Total HP is ~17500 and crit rate is 39% (will edit other stats when I take a look).

Pet is Fern Hound for reasons I mention above in post and River Drake for F2 DPS.

Signet of Wild will help keep your hp up along with Fern Hound’s F2 and gaining vigor on using a healing skill.

Wow, this build is all over the place. You really need to specialize your talents and slot skills.

A) Don’t bring traps without trap talents. It’s just not worth it.
B) If you’re running QZ, there’s no reason not to have Wilderness Knowledge.
C) Spec into talents that help your mainhand weapon or your offhand. Don’t stretch your talents across both (i.e. go piercing arrows with a bow OR martial mastery with a gs, NOT both).

It’s a typo. It’s 1.4-1.6k.

But even with the broken attacks, the drake is still a pretty awesome pet. Sadly, I doubt they’ll fix the bugs without nerfing Lightning Breath.

Ranger has the potential to be the best profession for farming with the right spec and gameplay because of traps and piercing arrows.

Run something like this and you’ll be able to tag everything before it dies easily.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBlODbkoquOySui1SAsUsXgtCcyeYojP+KE7Jf6CLA

Target the farthest enemies possible and line up your attacks to maximize your attack damage and drop traps on mobs to the side. If your traps are on cd, use the carrion devourer’s F2 to drop an AoE poison.

However, if you’re convinced that the Ranger is the worst profession, then you’re probably doing something very wrong…

Personally, I’m not a big fan of running too many healing traits. Until they fix spirits, I’m not inclined to mess with any healing support build, so I’ve been running this as a greatsword tank build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNBhODbkoKxOyywi1OQ0UwJL9eEL13enC/7pMm5jXTA

For better condition removal, switch QZ for Sig of Renewal and change Wilderness Knowledge to Expertise training.

First event – Too laggy to experience. Also scheduled when a lot of people were working/busy with other things.

Scavenger quest – Broken. People sat around waiting for dynamic events that never happened.

Commendations – To get anything with commendations, you have yo spend more to get the commendations than what the loot is worth.

New dungeon – Looks like it will be fun, but until it stops bugging out, who knows?

So, yea, I’m not a fan of when people are overly dramatic, but literally everything in this expansion patch is broken.

How to do GW2 events:
– Spend the majority of your time on google figuring out wtf to do.
– Race around and try to get at least some things done before the event is gone.
– Hope everything isn’t bugged or broken.
– Realize the hard way that the donation systems they set up for these events are really just money sinks to get you to pay more than you normally would for lackluster items.

Dear ArenaNet. The next time you plan on releasing an event, please don’t do it until you’re 100% sure it’s not going to be a miserable slog of lag, broken quests, and waiting around forever for events.

I’ve read all the details on the ascended gear hoping it wouldn’t be so bad, but honestly, this is still a disappointment all around.

Progression does not have to be done by adding in a gear treadmill.

Bringing the gear treadmill into GW2, even on a small scale is a fast way to lose my business. One of the biggest reasons I came to GW2 is that I can play with my friends, even if I don’t have tons of time to grind through dungeons for top of the line gear.

One of the reasons I enjoyed playing GW1 for so long was because I didn’t have to do the gear rat race.

I don’t need gear with better stats to keep me motivated to play. Diverse and creative content along with rewards that allow me to change the appearance and customize my character’s appearance is more than enough.

ArenaNet, please do not make this change.

Not sure what server you’re on, but I’m on Tarnished Coast and it’s been like that…

Until the main attack of the sword doesn’t root me in place, I’ll always be skeptical before taking it. However, I have found that axe+axe is a pretty underestimated combo for PvE.

The event overall was pretty cool. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it covered the holiday well. However, here’s my only complaint:

I didn’t have enough time to do anything.

A lot of the event (especially the late phase stuff) took place on the weekdays and as a veteran MMO player, I don’t have as much time to play as I did back when I was a single college kid. This means that I had very very little time to play during the week. and completely missed the stuff that happened on the last day.

My suggestion: extend events like these past their real-life counterpart’s dates. I hate to make the comparison to WoW, but this is what they have done and it’s worked for them.

You should level in a way you enjoy. If you need someone else to tell you what to enjoy, then maybe GW2 isn’t for you. There are plenty of options if you really just want a game that tells you exactly what to do with little to no other option when leveling *cough*TERA*cough*.

If you do want to stick with Guild Wars 2, then tap into your inner explorer and your inner curiosity. What zones look cool? What haven’t you tried yet? Are there any zones with lower level content that you haven’t tried yet?

Also, don’t get caught up in what level you are. If you’ve been playing MMOs for a long time, you probably have this pre-conceived notion that you have to level up before you can do any fun stuff, but you get this fun stuff right from the start in GW2. If you’re not digging your experience now, then don’t expect anything about being 80 to be radically different.

Theives have had some insane burst in PvP with the right glass cannon build, but some of their main burst abilities (heartseeker and pistol whip) have been toned down recently. However, they are still a very solid profession and excel as solo, roaming team members who can capture lightly defended points by themselves and take care of tasks away from large enemy groups.

As for gear, just realize that upgrads in sPvP are for appearances only. To get these upgrades, you can A) increase your rank, which grants a chest containing random gear, spend glory points to buy more of those chests, or C) craft the gear. You can get crafting materials for this gear from the chests as well as from using a PvP salvage kit (purchased from PvP vendor) on spare PvP gear.

Ramza, that’s kind of a stretch. Yes, technically, if you JUST lost a keep, you could teleport up there once assuming you put down the other portal before the initial one expired, but that’s a hell of a long way from just being able to loljump up any wall with someone standing on it.

I’m curious to see what other people would want to buy from the gem store if they could request anything they wanted.

Personally, I would pay good money to be able to do the Gangnam Style dance.

So, when running Ascalon Catacombs in explorable mode the other day, we encountered Lieutenant Kholer for the first time. Before we learned that we should watch for his animation before his AoE 1-shot attack, we wiped a few times. Before we came back, we decided to explore the area around the boss to see if there was something we were missing. After running around a bit, a group member came across a cave troll…which gave one of the group members an idea.

So, we aggroed the cave troll and kited it into the boss fight. It turns out Lieutenant Kholer seems to have some grudge against trolls, so the two of them started to duke it out. This made killing his adds a LOT easier, but more importantly, made it one of the more memorable boss fights I’ve had, lol. Sadly, I didn’t get many good screenshots and the attached pic was taken after the cave troll glitched out into a pillar, but you get the picture.

One day we all become casual gamers.

I used to be a hardcore gamer…then I finished college and got a job and a fiance. Game time will be even less once I have a kid.

This is my #1 beef with GW2. I play the majority of my time with my fiance and we play casually, which means we don’t want to mess with tournaments. Unfortunately, this means that we just skip sPvP since we almost always eventually get pitted against each other.

It’s a shame they can’t take a page from many other games that simply use queue logic to put pre-grouped teams against other pre-grouped teams. This would keep games fair for players queuing by themselves as well as those who join with friends.

Jungle spider for ranged damage/snares. Also is primary pet for sPvP.
Wolf for fear. This prevents getting stomped while downed, which makes it essential for any PvP build. Secondary pet PvP.
Bear/Arctodus to tank PvE or just for survival in WvW.
Jaguar for straight up DPS. All attacks from their stealth crit and damage done while stealthed doesn’t break it, which makes Jag stealth + Quickening Zephyr pretty awesome as long as your target is standing still.
Drake of some sort for PvE AoE.

Everything else is for fluff/fun. If spirit health gets buffed, I might run a support build and take a blue moa, but I won’t mess with it until then.