Guild Wars 2

Lightsbane.9012:

because i don’t use sword? lol

Eh. I think I need more caffeine.

Lightsbane.9012:

i see no one using my build. i use 30 in domination. (I, VIII, X)
10 in dueling(I)
10 in chaos (II)
20 in inspiration(II, VII)
(feedback, blink, mantra of resolve)
gsword/scepter/pistol. i’m very effective in wvw and almost as mobile as a thief. it’s very hard to approach this build in a small unit setting. (i’m using Magic Find gear right now and my damage is still pretty decent)

Why not drop the 10 from chaos and go 20 Dueling(IV, IX)?

No problem with your english. It’s a very cool mantra build. The centaur rune mixed with your healing mantra is a fantastic idea. What sigils are you running with on your weapons?

The screen panning is incredibly annoying. Nice to see a dual sword build out in WvW.

Edit: Also wanted to say some cool things in your build. Using elite stealth for offense and I like the healing mantra as a speed boost.

Well, here’s where my preference to spec is for traps: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMEQJATVjEVx1tVCWo2BgVh9aPyUSMZPM0xHzYqIaNB;ToAAzCpoay0koJbTumkNtqYYB

Condition damage, shortbow/lynx are primary. Optionally swapping out hunt for a 3rd trap.

I don’t miss the Vit from nature since I have 3k armor and with 50% crit I’m stacking bleeds like crazy. The traps themselves are fantastic for holding the line and entangle is a really effective elite for both that and the 20k bleed it stacks.

The traps synergizes nicely with the condition damage and condition damage traits also boost toughness.

Nature boosts the spirits which are going to be down a lot more than my traps are and the traps are just going to hit harder. Boon duration buffing in the Vit line is pretty much a waste. Would be nice for troll urgent, but healing springs is pretty mandatory for any kind of team play.

Personally if your main is sword, I’d think staff would work better as a backup. Staff gives you more defensive options and isn’t hurt by being in close range. I guess it’d really depend on how you fight and how you’re traited.

Xyrm.5602:

You don’t need vit or toughness. Vit is almost ENTIRELY useless, because it has only a minor impact to your effective HP (not actual HP, but effective, as in how you fair in extended fights when factoring in mitigation and healing).

Problem with EHP and toughness is that condition damage bypasses toughness. So Vit isn’t entirely useless.

Dardamaniac.1295:

What about the active skills?Noone is answering me…

The active skills on spirits are nothing to write home about. If you want “effects”, you’re much better off specing down traps for the increased area size, remote deployment and double duration on the conditions.

They all recharge in about 20 seconds, can’t be killed and their spec is down the crit line which meshes very well with either a condition(proc bleed on crits) or power build.

So you have your effects and you can pump out DPS at the same time.

Kruunch.3714:

How many L30s are running around with rares and exotics at the level requirement? The fact that that’s even a point is further evidence of the design issues of the “lower level” dungeons in GW2.

You don’t need rares or exotics at level 30, greens are fine and are only about 1 sp a slot. Just using a waypoint costs between 20-40 cp. There really isn’t a money issue with it.

But I’d agree that it’s even a point is a design issue.

Kruunch.3714:

But this further strengthens my point … how many new characters are maximizing their gear as they level (especially sub 60)?

I have no idea why more people sub 60 don’t do that. Low level masterwork gear can be had on the TP for a few copper more than the base sale price.

I tend to make it a point to swap up my gear every 5 levels. Optimal gear = faster killing = faster exp gaining. Minor runes/sigils and low level food is the same way. Cheap cheap cheap.

Amen.2630:

get 1 guardian to put up shields against projectils

Actually your speed buff mesmer can go ahead and just do this job.

These guys fought hardly any opposition. 3 vs 1 or 2 vs 1 is going to be easy with any build combination.

I’d think that taking both vit + toughness would be overkill, especially considering as a class mesmers have a lot of escapes. Being the last guy standing isn’t necessarily the best thing if being spec’d for more DPS would help on the races.

I think as a start you need to settle on the weapons and trait synergies you want to play with. There’s no point in going with a sword/pistol build and trait selection if you prefer playing with greatsword and staff and are just a better player with those weapons.

> I guess it’s normal for PvE to have too many clones

Um, shatter them then

As for mind stab, I honestly don’t even use it unless I want to strip a buff off my enemy. The damage on it isn’t that great.

Typically for me the GS is my opener. 2 and 4 are my lead ins which both hit AE and cripple/debuf/self buff the pack. Then I’ll mind stab as needed to clear enemy buffs and send in more 2 for my 3rd clone and more might. Shatter as needed and typically after your opening few moves is when you start to pull some agro.

At that point a 5 on the GS gives me some space and I switch to staff, lay down a field decoy out to distract and self buff armor and bring up warlock for another clone. Armor up for more defense as needed and after a 2nd decoy I can switch back to GS for another zerker and 2 for the clone/might/debuff stack.

The GS is the long range pew pew. The mind stab small rooting doesn’t matter so much because it works best during when you’re at distance, things aren’t hectic, you can see when the mob tosses up regen or something else you want to strip. If things are in close and hectic the GS is a crap weapon anyway. You lose the good damage on 1 and there are just better weapons for in close work.

sPvP and WvW are very different, build-wise. Mobility is king in WvW and weapons like the focus can really come into their own because they push the zerg forward faster and can be spec’d for reflects, which is fantastic in the range zerg fights.

I notice a big difference in damage output using a GS over staff running a power/crit build. For me GS is my main source of damage while I switch to staff for defensive needs or if my GS is on cooldown and my clones are all down and I want more up fast.

I’ve tried running GS/sword but I really end up missing the whole “swap to staff, poof I’m outta here”.

My ranger is a condition/traps build, but my power/crit mesmer just blows him away when it comes to pumping out damage.

BlackPaw.5948:

People are not satisfied with anything.

Go see Diablo3 (okay I know it’s not MMO) forum… The game is bad, but the forum is worser.

Not to pick on Black, I also thought D3 could’ve been better, but it was so common to see people rip on that game after having played it for 200 hours or more.

I don’t know what it is, but something about a certain genre of game really brings out the complaints. Toss in internet anonymity plus some weird level of “this game should entertain me for the next 2 years” then throw in “I’m attached to my character class/playstyle” and you get a huge mess of complaints and whining.

I think it’s hilarious that a ranger is saying that mesmers do crap DPS. My mesmer kills things twice as fast as my ranger does, but it could be build differences. That said I’ll take illusions that are up sometimes vs a ranger pet that’s dead all the time.

My suggestion is to just test it out yourself. Fire up some sPvP builds and see how long it takes to down the test golems. I seriously doubt mesmers are having dps issues.

Edit: Also keep in mind that for dungeons mesmers also have very good reflection abilities. 20 points in inspiration gives reflection/20% reduction on focus skills and 20% glamour reduction(feedback). That’s a lot of group support for a small point investment.

Good feedback. I especially like the idea of being able to contribute to upgrades.

For pop imbalance I really think tweaking NPC power one way or another and adding more patrols for under pop realms would help a lot.

I think another issue is that, quite frankly, most rangers have been using shortbow because all the other weapons are lackluster. So basically for rangers their primary source of damage for the class was nerfed.

It’s a problem with the class honestly. One skill on one weapon shouldn’t be so defining to the class.

I think the issues sort of boil down to:

1> If you nerf, just co-ordinate the communication better with the teams so in the patch notes the nerf comes out as a nerf.
2> Rangers really need work done on the other weapons. This would be less of an issue if every ranger wasn’t using the kitten short bow.

nastyjman.8207:

Thieves with a D/D and S/D set up aren’t screwed. Ranged DPS (relative to my thief) is low compared to my melee weapons.

This is kind of the point. Melee weapons are supposed to do more damage, but have a lot more risk associated with them.

I think the only real problem is that the balancing isn’t done. I know for rangers the shortbow seems like the highest damage weapon of the set and the melee weapons are pretty lackluster.

I gotta ask, are you and everyone in your party in full level 80 masterwork gear? Because if your gear isn’t up to spec the down scaling to level 30 is going to really kitten you.

This will solve itself over time as Anet introduces other legend weapons via other means. The current legendaries are likely just a taste of things to come.

I love WvW, but I don’t agree with forced PvP at all. Some players just don’t want to take part in it. I think GW2 should keep the PvE, WvW and sPvP portions of the game separate.

I do wish the borderlands used 3 different maps just to keep things switching up. I wouldn’t mind even a little bit of unintended imbalance here and there if it gave more variety. This is WvW and not competitive PvP after all.

Why couldn’t NPCs be used to balance against night capping? If a realm’s pops are one sided just have more and stronger NPCs spawn. It’d especially be useful if defending NPC siege spawned. Several NPC arrow carts firing from the inside courtyard would slow down the caps and make it more fun for the attackers.

Capping a barren keep is boring.

Honestly I think GW2 first and foremost is a PvP game. I really think that’s the end game design goal and where it’ll shine long term down the road. So PvE skill use, while it’ll always be considered, will likely take a back seat to skill balance for PvP.

It is a valid complaint though.

Fozzik.1742:

So what you’re saying is, you’ve played all parts of the game you find fun, and are now going to stop. Sounds pretty normal.

Actually, it sounds pretty healthy.

That said, I think the challenge for Anet now is to keep putting out a decent flow of new content. New legendaries with new skins, new dungeons, the lack of guild content is pretty noticeable for a game called Guild Wars.

More end game weapon/armor skins would be nice. The concept of legendaries is cool, but they need to make more of them and have different ones available via different game content paths.

GW2 is a not a gear treadmill MMO and it never will be. That’s not the design goal. It’s design is as an esports game like LoL. Does the lack of gear grinding hurt that game or keep people from playing it?? What about Counterstrike? How much grinding does it take to get the AWP?

GW2 mostly needs to flesh out their esports content. We need spectator mode, guild on guild support and competition events. WvW also needs more fleshing out, but that’s a really new design for Anet and it’ll probably take a lot of tweaking.

faytte.1057:

Be interesting to see how many people would trade their Ranger for another class this second.

It’s really too bad PvP in this game requires you to start a new character and grind up to 80….

Yeah, honestly this game isn’t like other MMOs. If you don’t like how Anet tunes your class, just start another class and it’ll take you all of 5 minutes to be level 80 again in sPvP or WvW rocking your new abilities. And even in PvE it’s not exactly difficult to hit 80. Not that 80 really holds any special “end game” for you or anything, dungeon raids start at 30 which takes all of a weekend or so to hit.

Even if SB wasn’t intentionally nerfed, there’s going to be a lot of class tuning as players find flaws and FoM builds.

Actually I build towards condition damage myself. It fits my play style where I tend to harass from the sidelines rather than rushing in and trying to solo things. So I spec towards condition and traps. In PvP I try to control with traps and just pressure targets my other teammates are on and in PvE I’ve found that shortbow bleeding takes down the vets quicker and I can kite kill large groups with trap clustering.

I think that shortbow bleeding + trap conditions just synergies well together, again, for my play style.

I think that’s one of the problems with “builds”. People often play the game differently than others and some people are better at certain things than others. I mostly hope Anet focuses on keeping each class viable with a lot of play style options. Someone posted a pet build where he’s basically support for his pet that I’d really like to try out for boss tanking.

I’d hope there wasn’t any 1 way to do things or build to create. I’d think the condition damaging spec would work well where your ranger was basically pressure vs the enemy while others spiked. It also works better vs armored opponents, but with everyone playing a mesmer or glass canon thief right now spike damage probably shines.

Builds are going to change a lot when things get more organized.

Personally I use the longbow for a couple skills and to slot a +stat on kill sigil. I think of it less as a viable weapon and more as an opener/support for the shortbow

I think it’s a little early to do a whole lot. The anti-botting code and systems need a lot of work and gem to gold rates need to settle in. If Anet can get the botting to be a little pricier and the gem to gold rates to be a little better then people will just prefer to go through Anet even if it’s a little more.