Guild Wars 2

Truth to say, I have been running both of them, starting with the full damage, and gs / axe-mace with srowd – horn for certain situations. However for mid fractal pugs, 20 – 39 the build 2 was just working better. Simply because I saw way too much kiting in fotm and way too much deaths which make the runs in long terms so very slow and painfull.
I even used a sword/horn and the horn trait in tactics for certain situations, where you need to evade aoe fields.
But the only thing I really miss is the X in Arms.
Remember we are talking pugs now. And the time spend on the particular run starts at the moment when you look for people and ends when you get the daily chest – so gathering people and leaving bad groups to start over counts too.

frifox.5283:

Our DPS was consistently ticking at 35k/sec to 45k/sec. As soon as we dropped TW and FGS’s that dps went off the charts.

How do you measure that dps?

Chris RJ.1843:

What makes certain builds better? What makes anything better? It’s relativity. Better in relation to X. So, since this is the dungeon sub-forum, “better” is determined by how efficiently the build and gear enables the player and their team to clear the dungeon.

You don’t understand – I was asking what criterion you use to say X is better than Y.
Are we talking raw standing damage when stacked at boss, with a proven guard protecting the party members, who are used to work together? Are we talking a pug where the guard can be missing or unreliable?
Is the succesfull run the fastest or smoothest?

Anyway we are diverging from the original thread, so lets discuss it here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/which-war-would-you-team-for-fotm-dung/first#post3552105

Assume full zerker at both, and gs / rifle; I believe you just need a ranged weapon for fotm (but feel free to discuss this after posting sound arguments).
Which one would you prefer in a pug group for fotm or dungeon run, and why?

Build 1 (dps)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJARUjkONvJPaP4wBEzDhAIKiLjAkJ0HmDA

Build 2 (dps/shouts)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJARUncO08YyDSBhDZAx8wIAii4UIATPQDyINA

Pip.2094:

What makes common masses think they are bad, while warriors are gods, is that a MM necro or a bearbow ranger is easy to spot.

Nope. Not that they are easy to spot – they just exclude all rangers and necros. They would never see if you have a bear or a cat – once they see the ranger icon you are kicked. Even if you join as a ranger and want to relog to war, you are not given enough time to explain that.
And what makes you and the other think that the evil bow rangers, and shout heal warriors are really that bad? Theorycrafting, forum flamewars, some misguided pseudotests?

What exactly makes 30/10/0/30/0 warrior worse than the other builds? Or the lb ranger? Prejudice. Somebody somewhere said these are bad.

I say we need that bloody dps parser. Then they can kick my ranger for doing low dps, but at least it will be based on some sound facts…

It’s the common elitism known from many MMO games, namely WoW. However in WoW they usualy kick you after seeing your equipment or dps parser – in GW2 the elitists have no effective means how to sort the players, so they kick you based on your class or ap. Despite the ANet intent to prevent this, they actualy made it even worse…
So if you want to join speedruns, roll a warrior, stack, wear zerker + gs, spam gs#2 + one banner, and you are fine. Oh and roll from AOEs.

Unlike normal crafting, you do not discover, you need to buy all recipes.

For Zojja stuff, you need to buy Zojja inscription or insignia recipe (karma) and the Zojja armor piece or weapon recipe (laurels & gold) from your craft merchant.

Then you will need to make Zojja inscription, vision crystal, and 2 parts of the item (like hilt and blade). You will need vision crystal for weapons and chest armor, lesser vision crystal for all other armor pieces.

For inscription or insignia you need 400ish zerker inscription or insignia, plus ascended dovel or insignia, dark matter orb and 10x 400ish dust.

Dovel and ascended parts are made of deldimoor ingots, spiritwood planks and armor is the worst – bolt of damasc. They make damasc way harder than weapon materials, you need 100 silks and also the other fabrics, namely linen, are now extremely expensive.

Remember that deldimoor ingots, spiritwood planks and damasc need a component you can make only one per day. So even if you have all mats, it will take at least 5 days to make everything you need.

Good luck with your crafting.

Mate please do not tell me how many poor mobs, namely charr, died for my ascended pants…

Harper.4173:

The skill description should change to :

Charge and maybe strike your foe. Or maybe not. There’s always a chance.

Well missing or not is one thing, but being stuck in the animation at the boss feet and unable to do anything for a second or two is another story, and this is what the OP discuss.

Warrior is the utility class of the moment.

I like account bound ascended stuff. It is the only (and yet disputable) thing that makes crafting worthwhile.
As for ascended stuff needs:
Stat wise, you really need only ascended trinkets, these make the difference.

Ascended items, however, give you agony resistance if infused. You need it if you are doing fotm. However you will start getting rings at f lvl 10+, and you will get some pretty soon. 2 rings mean 10AR which is enough till lvl 19.

If you do not craft but farm and selling most mats (some are handy for myst. forge though) you should be filthy rich. This mean you can build an ascended back item without much problems, and infuse it, and this gives you another granted 5 AR.
Now if you infuse the back slot and both rings, you can add another 15 AR if you do not want to wait, or 30 if you are very very patient or filthy rich, which you should be.
With 30 + 15 = 45AR from the three ascended trinkets you are good to go up to 39 level and this is where you have chance for ascended drops.

So you really do not need to craft if you want ascended stuff, and you even do not need to go fractals if you buy ascended trinkets for laurels and forge your backpiece in mf.

Warlord.9074:

From easyest to hardest to play also in that order. Warrior easiest, Ranger then Elementalist hardest.

Ranger is a total faceroll for levelling, open world group events, like temples, farming etc., PVE roaming. I agree that the ele is hardest, though.

Nothing and nobody needs a nerf. Nerfing is a BAD strategy. You don’t nerf what is good, you improve what is bad.

What??? They are removing trait reset?

Ascended stuff = agony resistance. Enough said…

PUGs love warriors and hate rangers. Truth to say, and note that my somehow abandoned main I liked to play is a ranger, pug runs are always easier if the team have more warriors and guardians than rangers.

Recently I do pug groups on warrior only. Most groups where we had a ranger member were struggling, and most groups consisting of zerker wars and guards with one ele or mesmer were smooth rides.

OP, what fractal level you are talking about?

xsquared.1926:

And why would they do that? Most shouts are fine in dungeons, especially since you’ll be in melee 95% of the time anyways.

Because people are kittening all the time about being forced into stacking and there are some situations where you really need to spread. After all if there is only viable tactics for everything this would be pretty boring.

Note: I do not mind stacking, I often stack myself, and I do not want to turn this thread into another stacking hate/love flamewar.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Anet/NCSoft want you to spend the cash

Well I don’t really think so. ANet may have their issues, but this is not the one.

The games where they force you to spend cash, and trust me I played a few, look and feel different. I never spent a real world cash for anything and I never needed to. The gold is everywhere and easy to get if you want to, and you can buy the crystals for the game gold.

Ascended stuff gets common, and looks very uniform. Consider making some ascended only skins to differentiate.

It might be nice to have some semirealistic looking ascended stuff, I like how the musket looks, so what about a rapier (iirc the only exotic rapier in the game is pretty popular) and a matching stiletto for offhand?

Or maybe whole matching weapon and armor sets, like a japanese samurai, chinese warrior, german lancknecht, scottish highlander (shape the warhorn like a whisky bottle!), 15th century knight, 17th century musketeer, whatever.

Please, consider increasing shout range to 900.

+1 for instanced bosses

This is a welcome feature of several other mmos and I would love to see it also in GW2:
let us have at least 2 sets of traits we can switch out of combat after some cd. Typically this is used to keep a PVE and a PVP profile.

Nothing to do with the OP, but I just wonder why balance translates as nerfing for most dev teams.

Guys, seriously. Greatsword useless? Then why it is 3 zerker wars (all wearing gsw), 1 ele and 1 guard for most pug groups? I don’t say that nerfing is a good way how to do things, but warriors seem pretty much overpowered to me.

I never used anything but full zerker for PVE and dungeons so far. But now at medium level fractals I’ve seen obviously defensive warriors to fare the same or better than the usual full zerker dps.
Also, in some groups one just needs a spare armor.
So what to get? PVT? Knight?
And what will they nerf? Only zerker set, or will there be some, say, crit cap, effectivelly nerfing any armor with +crit stats?

Many people say that full zerker stuff is the only PVE choice and from my experience I think it is right. However sb is mostly about conditions, so if you are not a sb fan, you may consider to use some melee weapon as a secondary.

If you trait Remorseless, the useless lb skill 3 becomes suddenly usefull as it gives you the Opening strike pretty often and with Quick draw you can spawn all lb skills almost without delay, like 1 1 3 1 / 5 2 and 4 where needed (in the seldom cases when you are accepted in a pug group make sure you don’t push the mob out of melee chars reach). Quickening zephyr can be very usefull when used with skills 5 and 2 – in this order because you can’t move during 5.

I use the quick draw, which is mandatory for an archer. Steady focus is mandatory for everything I believe. Remorseless is handy as the longbow #3 has low cd and gives you an Opening strie pretty often.
For temples or anything with mob zergs I use Piercing arrows, in most PVE situations Eagle eye, if possible.
Then it depends on your secondary weapon. Since I gave up and use ranger for PVE roaming, dailies, farming and temples only, I use greatsword for it’s utility.

I think ANet set the requirement to 100silks per piece because people were making ascended weapons faster than devs anticipated.
I believe that the whole process was intended to give players a long time goal to keep them in game. OTOH the ascended stuff have stats like legendary so it should be hard to get it…

Two players are always bored and not having fun at swamp fractal, wisps stage. And since all people are natural altruists, they just do not want to see others suffer and so they let other team members have all the wonderfull fun with wisps.
This also leads to awkward situation when the most fun wisps are usualy not covered by players.
Please fix this annoying problem adding 2 more wisps so the whole party can enjoy this fractal stage.

Please make him killable, with respawn time over 30 mins.

They do attack the pet. If the pet attack first. If you shoot the mob first, the mob aggroes you, then the pet notices you were aggroed and enters combat, moving towards the target. However in most cases it will miss the target until it stops and it stops when it can attack you.

So if you want your pets to take all the damage, you either target the mob and use f1/f2 to send the pet first, or make the mob to lose target (you) so it will switch aggro on your pet.

But if you go like 1, 1, 3, 1 or 1,1, 4, 3, 1 or just 5, 2 on lb, most mobs shall be dead because they touch you. PVE farming on a ranger is really very easy.

wongdong.9162:

Those skills on Ranger LB just make more sense to me.

I like the ranger lb skills. Event the #3 makes sense if traited with Remorseless. Yeah I’d prefer it would trigger the opening strike without the trait and invisibility, but you can live with that as it is.

But the overall damage is low. They should either add damage or reduce cds to make the overall damage over time acceptable.

And by acceptable I mean that a random nobrainer should do about as much damage over time on a vanilla bow ranger as on a vanilla greatsword warrior.

Simply put, even a casual player whould be able to do about as much damage on a bow ranger, as a casual player can do on a greatsword warrior. Rangers can hit from distance, warriors have their armor. Oh, thieves have stealth.
Balance restored.

I would love to have graveling pet and I already asked for one they just look great.

Wethospu.6437:

You can use ranged weapon at melee range.

That’s right. And it should make you more vulnerable. Just imagine a swordsman and an archer face to face. Bows are pretty fragile, namely the good bows, and the most fragile part is so called back, the side which is facing away from archer and to the potential threat. A single scratch on bows back can result in a break. So the first cut goes through the bow and the bow arm, the other finishes the archer. Before he manages to touch an arrow.

Using a ranged weapon in melee should destroy or heavily damage the ranged weapon, and make the ranged fighter a very soft target.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Risk vs reward.

Not really. Try do to alpha or AC spider or any other boss at a distance and you will see the risk vs. reward. As said earlier, almost every boss have a special punishment for ranged guys… so no, your risk is about the same.
Only advantage you have at range is the overview of battlefield, you can see what is happening better and it allows you to evade easier, than if stacked. Also if you keep moving and kite the mob, you are more likely to escape slow aoes.

I think that the proper way how to “balance” melee and ranged is to make it more “real” – and use ammo for ranged weapons. And the damage should be the same.

Firearms should do higher damage with 100% ammo loss, bows shall do less damage (about as much as stabbing attacks) with some chance to recover arrows from body or battlefield.

Arc DLad.2194:

force = mass x acceleration (speed over a distance) -(resisting forces)
a big sword swung at a short distance means if its swung fast enough it will deal alot of damage – no resistance force slowing it down.

a small arrow/bullet fired from a gun although moing faster travels a longer distance and has to take into accound, gravity and wind changing its direction and slowing it down.
scientifically speaking they should be weapker

All wrong, mate. The air drag is a factor, but really not very significant.
If you want to talk real world, the effect of a weapon on human body (called terminal ballistic for firearm) is what is interesting.

A sword / knife slash results in a major blood loss and the wounded fighter will lose consciousnes fast enough. Also with a proper sword cut you can maim or even decapitate (meisterhau zwerch in german swordfighting school).

OTOH arrow / slow bullet or stabbing wounds will more likely kill the wounded person, but it will take time. The important factor here is a hit to vitals and depth of penetration. Internal bleeding will most likely occur.

From combat point of view it is just harder to hit a human sized target with arrow or even firearm at distance (namely if the target is moving) than with a melee weapon.
Melee attack can be parried or blocked, or even evaded (even the fast stabbing attack, like in sport fencing) but this apply mostly for one to one duels. In a skirmish situation with more combatants on each side it’s a different matter.

So if you want to differentiate melee and ranged combat and want to keep it close to real world, it should look like that:

Ranged attack can easily miss, unless you are very skilled, and can be blocked with shields, and the slower the projectile the harder to hit a moving target.

Melee attack can be blocked or parried, sometimes evaded, but seldom miss, and you are almost guaranteed to hit a flanked or unsuspecting target, however shield blocks your field of vision and an adversary with a longer blade can attack yout legs, also an axe or battle hammer can destroy the shield if you just block and not deflect (see duel descriptions in Icelandic sagas – 10th century, or Morte d’Arthur – 15th century).

Any wound causes immediate bleeding, but cuting or crushing melee damage can do more structural damage. Stabs are about the same as ranged wounds.

Skilled meleer can do significantly more damage than newbie swordsman, because he knows how to cut straight. Ranged attack works the same for master or newbie.

And one most important difference – ranged weapons have a limited ammo supply. Arrows can be recovered, but not all of them. This is the main disadvantage of a ranged weapon, which makes a melee backup weapon viable even in modern times (combat knives, bayonettes). A medieval archer carried 42 arrows into a battle… together with sword, hatchet, knife or a big maul used originally for hammering of protective stakes, but it also worked nicely in combat.

…if most of the bosses have very painfull attacks reserved for punishing of the cowardly ranged toons?

Lexandro.1456:

Kolisch.4691:

But… rangers have a cute, cuddly and expendable scapegoat!

Fixed that for you.

:p

Fixed that for you, too.

Well met, last roleplayer.
And you are right. Even a sylvari ranger controled by her 13 years old player, running happily around with her bow, bear and green hair tied with a flowery band, should do about as much damage as a charr warrior, controlled by his 13 year old player, running grimly around with his greatsword. And by greatsword I seriously mean the bloody greatsword, not a bow!

Archon.6480:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Nurgle.6597:

Fext.3614:

So rangers suck. Anybody knows it and no respectable player would wear a ranger. And if you happen to log your ranger, there is hardly a group where you are not told by one or more morons that you suck just because you are a ranger.

I’m just wondering

1. where this really started and how can you really tell that a class or a player has a low damage without dps parser?
People say that a thief or a war with a bow does more damage than a ranger. How can anyone prove this claim?

2. if rangers are improved, and would perform as a welcome (ranged) dpsers, how long it takes before the antiranger prejudice dies?

But it is true, I made a ranger character, I got to lvl 45 and it’s pretty clear that there is absolutely no objective reason to play a ranger over a warrior or any other class, they don’t do anything better than another class.

Spotter and Frost Spirit.

Um, unlimited party Fury? Projectile and Blast finishers… Best ranged damage? Best water field? Or do you think you can face stomp every foe in dungeons and fractals… that will go over really well on fractals 40+ and 50+.

AND you can run into a 6k+ ap ranger who, after being politely asked for Spotter, politely asks back what it is.

Barfoi.9537:

It would be… interesting, to run around sifting through trash.

Thats exactly how it works in SWTOR.

Wanze.8410:

Leather is a semi-guaranteed drop from animals through salvagable hides.

I may be very wrong here because for some sentimental reasons I rarely shoot neutral (yellow) mobs, but I think the droprate is not very high. What I had in mind was something like 2 pieces per 3 mobs or even piece a mob. Wolves, hyenas, wargs and such drop the hides only seldom.

KOPPER.1458:

At 14.96s a pop?

You are wrong. It’s not 14.96 a pop, it’s 2 bloody obsidian shards or 4200 karma a pop. This is the real deal.

Just throw out anything you will not use. I do crafting, and I destroy most of the bloodstone dust I get – just because I will never use it.

Sometimes when using warrior’s greatsword skill 5 to get to a mob (last time it was flame eggify in fractals, and iirc it happens on targets which cannot be moved or knocked down) my (norn) toon gets stuck at the target for relatively long time (say 2 – 3 seconds), performing running animation, and I have no control.

Tachii.3506:

Fractal Mistlock Instability: You heal less for being near another player.

This is already supported in most single player games. No cooperation needed, and you are guaranteed to win solo all boss fights.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wish I could make a thread about eliminating complaining about stacking.

+1

There certainly are numerous way how to enforce players NOT to stack.

But why would you want that? If you personaly dislike stacking, just find some friends who feel the same and do the dungeons any way you prefer.

What you really suggest is: “please devs force other players to do it as I like”.