I got the impression it was an ad hoc warband feeling, and not a sexual thing. He and Rox are both outsiders to an extent and have been depending on each other in battle for quite some time now.
I noticed this a few weeks ago, and assumed it was part of the thumper updates. Since it’s still there, and doesn’t look like the thumpers, I’m curious what’s going on with it.
It really doesn’t. Like you said, don’t stand near the helibombs and there is no way you’re going to die on that warden. You could do it completely naked with a permanently zero endurance bar (assuming you still had enough damage.)
I really like it the way it is, I just wish the cooldown was a tad shorter. It’s an extremely powerful skill but utilities are so completely jam packed for PvP it’s hard to fit in.
For PvE, player rezzes usually aren’t helpful because so much of the content you can just WP rally if you fail. That’s why S&R has seen so much use for the Marionette fight. If we continue to see more relatively challenging content, I think S&R will find a home. Unlike PvP, PvE utlities have plenty of room to fit stuff in.
Seriously, this is the most desperate defense of bear/bow I’ve ever seen. Please show anyone soloing 2, 3, or 4 with a bunker guardian.
My main is a “properly” played ranger: sword, spotter, full berserker, mostly ascended gear. But if I’m on warden III I whip out a bow. And while I keep the snow leopard out, a bear is probably a better pet for this one. I’m not sure if the bear can tank the warden, but I assume so, especially with the invulnerability skill.
Bearbows are a smart choice for Warden III. Although since 1 bad player will cause Warden II to fail, you might wind up with a problem of tons of bearbow rangers on Warden II and not understanding the mine mechanics. I’ve seen this exact scenario more times than I’d like to recall.
Has nothing to do with them playing a bearbow, it’s again people not understanding the mechanics.
80%? No… If 1 out of the 5 platforms fails every time, then everyone fails. So it takes just 20% of the players present to doom the event despite the other 80% succeeding.
Unfortunately it takes a lot less than 20%. For warden II a single person can cause it to fail. For other wardens, one person knowing what they’re doing might not be able to make up for 2 or 3 people messing it up and/or dying. The entire half hour event can be failed by single digits worth of people.
Most of the Guardians I see around. They of course wield exclusively staff.
Your picture doesn’t make sense. If you put a light field on top of a fire field, the fire field takes precedence for blasts and you will still get might.
Anyway, failures come almost exclusively from warden II in my experience. One single person who is stupid and has aggro will cause that lane to fail.
The reason I see people failing so much is people still do not understand the 2nd warden.
Even if there is only a single person that has aggro and is an idiot, it will fail the entire chain. So all 40 people you’ve got there won’t do any good. The entire half hour event comes down to hoping you don’t have a single idiot on the 2nd warden attempts.
It may actually be more effective to have like 15 people on lane two to reduce the odds of someone being stupid. If 1 out of 10 people is a complete idiot, you might get lucky and have 15 normal people.
These are fantastic videos. It really helps me fight mesmers, which are my absolute nightmare. I think I won my first point ever with a 30+ mesmer guarding it tonight. : O
If you run a sword/warhorn ranger with frost spirit and spotter, you will definitely be welcomed by PUGs. I have never been kicked from a PUG and I run dungeons or fractals almost every day.
But Kilger’s post is the first and last question of ‘ranger or thief?’. Their gameplay feel is very similar other than the pet.
I wouldn’t recommend either, and I’d also not recommend using those stats. You’re going to be glass as hell. It might be fun for hotjoin screwing around, but I think you’re going to be on the floor a lot.
i never had a problem fighting thieves 1v1 on my zerker ranger in wvw. most of the times, thieves will stay to fight to the death and thats what i wanted. when they see me as a ranger they always think they can beat me. lol
it’s really a matter of who’s gonna make the most mistakes and when i duel thieves i make sure i dont make any. when i see a thief alone while i’m roaming, i see him as a free loot bag.
Agreed. Although I’m cautious around thieves and mesmers. Any other class I will hunt to the death. Mesmer is the only class I’m REALLY cautious of, but if they react poorly to an autoattack of the LB, I pounce!
I tried out the YouTube version of this build on a sPvP dueling server last night. It was interesting, to me, that for a condition focused build, it doesn’t seem to have a very high condition application rate.
I’ve tried multiple times to get a pure condition ranger using a sword/x axe/x to work in sPvP and am always disappointed. My solution was to use a similar tanky build but focus on power, which is the main damage of both a sword and axe. I use barbarian’s and +5% crit sigils which give me a 40% crit rate as well as over 27 thousand health. You can hybridize it just as well (perhaps better) with flame trap/Rabid amulet, but I didn’t like the health loss.
The concept is the same: you’re tough to kill, and slowly whittle people down. I just find the autoattack much more consistent than trying to apply conditions I don’t have.
Edit: Should also mention it gives you an excuse to bring Spotter.
Fluff, have you tried this in WvW at all? It seems that you would be a lot squishier in a 1vX situation without the healing power and toughness. Maybe there is a sweet medium somewhere in there though.
Also, I might drop the Axe/X in favor of GS in a power setup, just to have the added mobility (again, thinking WvW).
I have not tried it in WvW because of the money of changing builds.
In PvP I use Dolyak runes to up the regen and toughness. The 67% crit chance during fights and almost 3k power (I go 25 into MM and just leech some out of the other two trait lines) with fast attacks winds up killing PvP roamers pretty effectively. The axe hits heavies for like 600-800 per autoattack bounce, which is acceptable. The build is borderline unacceptable though since there are things like spirits.
In WvW there might be something there because you can boost the crit damage through gear mixes. Have to see what happens after the crit nerf though.
Warrior and guardian, both because of the kind of player I picture playing a hambow or bunker guardian, as well as the fact they are both easy targets in WvW outside the zerg. I just have been conditioned to kill them.
If they don’t defend RF somehow they’re going to eat the full 12k of damage. 8-|
It’s pressure; 4.5 seconds of steady, high damage. Autoattack can be avoided. Almost all guardian skills are easy to avoid. RF is difficult to avoid, not even stealth will protect against it. If they use a block on it, that’s exactly what you wanted.
Slow and steady, that’s how rangers win small scale fights.
I would rather to see rapid fire become some skills as warrior’s rifle F1 — 1 big hit, even with longer CD. Ranger also has many ways to maximize that 1- deadly shot.
Kill Shot has no chance in hell of landing in a 1v1. RF is a really unique ability. Stealth tracking alone makes it invaluable, but also the fact that using a dodge on RF is a complete waste of a dodge. RF was there before you started the dodge and it’s still there after you finished dodging. Even berserker rangers win their fights through pressure, not spikes, and are therefore difficult to defend against.
I tried out the YouTube version of this build on a sPvP dueling server last night. It was interesting, to me, that for a condition focused build, it doesn’t seem to have a very high condition application rate.
I’ve tried multiple times to get a pure condition ranger using a sword/x axe/x to work in sPvP and am always disappointed. My solution was to use a similar tanky build but focus on power, which is the main damage of both a sword and axe. I use barbarian’s and +5% crit sigils which give me a 40% crit rate as well as over 27 thousand health. You can hybridize it just as well (perhaps better) with flame trap/Rabid amulet, but I didn’t like the health loss.
The concept is the same: you’re tough to kill, and slowly whittle people down. I just find the autoattack much more consistent than trying to apply conditions I don’t have.
Edit: Should also mention it gives you an excuse to bring Spotter.
This thread has made me totally reconsider birds. I didn’t realize their autoattack damage was so much higher than cats. I think I might try several of the birds in WvW instead of drakehound. The massive damage increase might make up for the hound having the immob + KD. Blind on a low cooldown, 6 seconds of chill, even the bleed all sound pretty ok. And swiftness is never bad in a small scale fight.
The birds actually have an 8s leap finisher, so that will heal them more than the 30s lynx heal (although it’s not on demand.) The swiftness buff is only 3/4s of a second once every 20 seconds, so it’s not that relevant.
It comes down to whether the situation you’re in calls for more vulnerability or more condi damage. If you’re fighting a boss in a dungeon with 4 berserker wars/guards in the party that aren’t putting out a lot of bleeds but already have max might/fury/vuln, bird may actually be the way to go.
I usually go with the jungle stalker for PUGs, but those never have max might, but it looks like birds are something I should consider based on the party composition. Interesting.
EDIT: I don’t use pets in dungeons for their condition damage, so I have no comment on that.
Edit on my part too. In a PUG, usually people will reach max bleeds through sheer accident. If that isn’t the case, the bird can put out 1275 of bleed damage every six seconds, which is not a bad supplement for a long term boss fight.
Red Moa, or Moas in generally have the 3rd highest dps behind Felines (1st) and Birds (2nd).
- Birds and cats have the same base stats
- the bird autoattack does a lot more damage while the cat causes vulnerability
- cats have an extra damage normal attack instead of the birds’ quickness
- birds’ bleeding special attack does large amounts of condi damage. The lynx has a similar attack but on a 30 seconds cooldown instead of 6(!) seconds.
Does the vulnerability the cat applies make it do more damage over the long run? If you’re fighting a human or champ?
I mentioned the bomb run just because your pets are mostly useless there. The brownbear can distract the flamethrower guy as well as the condi removal. It’s along the lines of “why not?” You likely have RaO up the whole time, so birds are maybe not useful.
Also, I almost never use bear and agree that people should think more carefully about their pet choices. But there is so much bear hate some people don’t realize they are actually useful. It would be a shame for a ranger to be embarrassed to use a brown bear for the Old Tom fight.
I’ve been seeing some polar bears for the marionette fight. I prefer a snow leopard, but I definitely understand the choice of a polar bear. Especially if they’re running protect me during the warden fight, or just want to keep it alive for S&R.
The “jab” on a longbow is the stealth and KB. Use them liberally.
But you’re right, the range of it will kill bad players almost instantly. I do that a LOT; people just panic when a third of their health disappears and I’m that far away. If they run, rather than do something appropriate to protect themselves, they’ll be dead in seconds.
If I can be bothered I switch to a brown bear during the gather bombs phase of CoF 2. For many champs or bosses like the volcano fractal or Old Tom I’ll use a brown bear. It is also strong for “Protect Me!” I prefer dogs for PvP and WvW, but I would understand if someone wanted a bear, especially considering all the condition spam. (And on that note, emphatic bond is the current meta run by the top of the team arena leaderboard rangers. http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-FF3V;1wEkv-l2BEk-0;9-8E;19-TT-2;323A36A;1VN17;2Rk06Rk061FY)
My concern is that the distance between you and your foe can be closed within seconds because of shadow steps and invuln/dodge leaps. Once your enemy is in point blank range your longbow is useless. Even if you use point blank shot your enemy will just leap or shadowstep back.
You’re probably not using the longbow correctly. This is a big theme of this forum; a ton of posters use berserker longbow roamers to great success so I’m not going to beat a dead horse. Use it for the utility first, damage second, and that goes for ALL ranger weapons.
There is an expression in boxing, “chasing the KO”. If you try to knock someone out, you will get knocked out yourself. Instead, just stick the jab, move your feet, box well, and almost unexpectedly you’ll KO the other guy. That’s how rangers fight.
If you need specifics I’m sure about 600 people will point you to other threads on how to use a longbow, or offer up the same tips again.
What are your group utilities, as a zerker?
You tag enough people to say you killed enough to be useful, then you die and rallybot 5 foes…
I believe he was talking about picking off squishies and wounded like I mentioned above, while supporting the main zerg with muddy terrain, entangle, cripple and pet CC. In that case you never die to rallybot people. Just pick a target, kill it, continue, stealth and evade if necessary.
Rangers and thieves both get a lot of flack from warriors and guardians in zerg fights. The reality is, there are tons of squishy or wounded targets that need to be ganked. A full third or more any zerg is going to be squishy, and everyone gets wounded. A half dead warrior quickly becomes a full health warrior unless you finish him off.
I play primarily as a roamer, but thinking thieves and rangers aren’t playing a critical role in zerg clashes is doing them a big disservice. Just because warriors are doing the glorious job of eating all the damage doesn’t mean they’re actually killing more players. Thieves in particular can 1-shot the glass cannon eles that make up the majority of a zerg’s damage. Not to mention the effect on the enemy zerg’s formations.
That’s talking about berserkers. There are of course plenty of durable rangers that can wade through the middle of a zerg while eating cake, but I don’t play those nor know much about them.
Fluffball it’s not that simple. I’ve seen plenty of zerglings who just won’t stack no matter what, and plenty of WvW commanders who agree that the radius needs an upgrade, or we otherwise need an easier method of getting counts.
It is that simple. If they won’t stack they aren’t part of your group and don’t care what you’re doing. Why do you need to count them? They don’t want to play with you. There is similarly no command to count all the players in Lion’s Arch.
If people aren’t going to stack for a count, they aren’t under the commander’s influence, and thus counting them is pointless for anything except this particular event.
These updates are a metaphor for life. I suspect most of the people complaining things are too hard and don’t understand why they can’t have everything with no work are under about 25.
I think people that are intentionally trying to fail the event like Elbegast are as limited as people that have no idea what’s going on. Probably 5% or so of people are trying to intentionally ruin the event or are so bad they are the equivalent. I’m just guessing at numbers here.
Do you go to a playground and expect everyone to leave just because you want to play soccer?
Yes, if it is a designated soccer game time. I mean I really can’t fathom how inconsiderate someone would have to be to shove themselves on to this map at this point just to do “defend the bridge”. You’re not doing it except to be contrary. I refuse to believe anyone is THAT rude than to do this specifically to be contrary. “Oh I don’t like this meta so I’m going to level up in the 15th overflow of some random map, let’s say… Lornar’s Pass.”
Don’t tell other people how they should play the game.
Then don’t ruin an event for 160 people. As someone mentioned, you know what’s going on. You know people are scrambling to get on this map. GET OFF, die, or participate. Insanely rude to be on this map if you’re tooting around farming onions.
If you saw a soccer game taking place would you decide to start looking for four leaf clovers in the middle of the field?
If the number of people who quit Teq as soon as they’d “cleared” him is relatively high, then that is a bad sign.
No it’s not. Teq and the wurm were specifically created as content for a certain type of player. Much the same way you will NEVER get a lot of PvErs to PvP. But no one in their right mind thinks PvP is a bad idea for GW2.
Not everything in the game is created for everyone. And when things that aren’t created for one specific person, that one specific person usually throws a temper tantrum.
Listen to the end of the Desolation kill of the wurm video, there are the better part of 200 people all cheering and screaming as loud as they can. That’s pretty cool!
From the ranger point of view, barrage and entangle (entangle landing is a BIG deal!) work across platforms. I’m not sure if might and fury do, but I toss those up if someone comes in range. I heard someone say S&R worked if someone was really close, but I have not been able to try that.
The biggest thing is to NOT chew out people, or yell at them in chat for making a mistake or failing a platform, it happens. Keep encouraging the lanes and those fighting on platforms.
I was in a rather hilarious OF today. We had one commander take the lead and start coaching people through the event. Seemed like a well enough organized map and all lanes had enough people. We failed all but the max number of chains almost immediately, and the commander grew more hostile until he finally raged and left. With him gone and the weapon bar charged to like 97% with 1 chain severed, we then won in very short order.
You don’t need to dodge the Warden III bombs at all. Either stand in between them and range or get right on him and melee. Dodging may be what is getting you killed (unless you are dodging stomp).
I have seen some groups who can make him not move very much, Im not sure how they are doing that, it seems he drops a mine then immediately hit his own mine again, it make it great for burning him down fast.
It’s dodging in to him instead of running in a small circle. He’ll drop a mine and then immediately turn around to run in to it.
Ideally, yes, we would all give rangers a detailed instruction on how to use their pets…
However, in an event this large, you have a lot of players that cover a very wide range of experience. Considering that you’ll probably have several rangers that don’t even have their pet’s commands hot keyed, however, it’s unlikely you will be able to explain this to them in a timely manner before the event starts and even if you did, it’s unlikely that they could pull it off well enough in the middle of a giant fight to be successful.
If a ranger is experienced enough to know how to control their pets, then you probably don’t have to explain this to them anyways.
The problem is that it confuses the average rangers to tell them not to use their pet, especially if they have done so previously. I’d be ok with telling rangers “don’t use your pet on the wardens if you are not 100% sure of the mechanics” or something. It’s also important that good rangers know people won’t be screaming at them to put pets away when the ranger is rightfully and perhaps critically maximizing DPS to win the event.
