Guild Wars 2

jcbroe.4329:

I can’t make up my mind (yet again).

The sheer amount of warriors I’m queued with atm makes S/D feel almost necessary. Dunno.

That happens every season. They start out with good balance and are fun because everyone is playing their favorite class, then eventually people switch to the cheesiest possible build and you get a thousand bunker mesmers or necros or revs or warriors. If thieves were stackable this would be the season of thieves, but warriors are the next best build.

Well ignore anything I’ve written in this thread. I went from a solid win percent in platinum to free falling 300 points over 2 days. I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m like 3 and 20 over the past couple days. I’m playing against the worst players I’ve ever seen all the way down in gold 1, hammer revs and p/p thieves and and bunker tempests that I obliterate in seconds, yet keep losing. I don’t believe in blaming teammates, so I am at a loss… My last game I was 2v1ing in a dang maruader amulet…

No real point, I just am incredibly annoyed and wanted to whine.

The meta warrior GS + mace/shield is what you’re describing, however that philosophy is present for every single profession in PvP, even classes that aren’t apparent. I’ll use druid as an example since that’s my main, druid is thought of as a bunker, but the way it gets kills is to peck peck peck at an opponent until their defense is used up and then boom, you CC lock them and explode them.

GW2 PvP is very much wearing people down and then exploding them unless they are inexperienced, in which case you just ignore their efforts to stay alive and explode them with a daredevil.

I really thought allies were involved, but that was ten thousand small updates ago. It would make sense that it didn’t base it’s usage off of allies to keep the pet itself alive.

If I have a second tonight I’ll go out to some medium level zone and try to figure out exactly what the pet does.

If a nearby ally is below like 80% health it should trigger, but it’s been like 3 years since I used moas regularly.

For warrior self-combos, typically you use longbow F1 > LB3, which blasts area might. The 3 heavy classes are pretty light on the combo fields by design, where professions like ele, scrapper and druid live or die by combo fields.

One thing I didn’t see mentioned above is leaping into a waterfield will heal you (as opposed to blasting a waterfield which heals you and everyone around you.) If you see a waterfield and have a mainhand sword equipped, it’s a good idea to hop into it to top yourself off.

Other than the blast combos mentioned above, check out that wiki link because there are some niche combos like condi removal, weakness, blind, etc., you’ll be glad you knew about. That’s mostly a PvP thing though.

You can swap those 4 pets anytime you’re out of combat, so you actually have access to all 50 pets in a single fractal or dungeon or raid encounter. And it’s often a good idea to do that, using niche pets for specific encounters like tanking, breaking defiance bars, aoe damage or single target damage.

I often rename my pets to “Champion” or “Veteran” _. Being juvenile doesn’t affect the stats, and if it’s killing an elder dragon with you, go ahead and consider it a champ.

And of course we always want more good pet choices, that’s always a thing for any topic, like shoes. I’d like to have more nice dress shoes. We’ll probably get some more next expac. Pets, not shoes. Well, shoes too.

It’s WvW, I’m guessing he is just using the armor he made for a more standard druid.

I miss playing as a ranger instead of just druid all the time, maybe I’ll go back to good ol’ berserker LB ranger for a bit. Stupid good staff.

This is what I’ve mostly settled on.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqA1CiVsCOsActgFMBDumuTLqNLrBQA45GsqiclI9KA-TJBFABAcIAI4KA02DAo99HAA

Nothing too ground breaking, there isn’t a ton of variety possible. I left the amulet blank because I switch based on both team’s comp. Menders is my default but if there is a lot of power on the other team and we have a tempest, I’ll go paladins. If there isn’t enough damage on my team I’ll go mauarders. I can’t multiclass in PvP so I just switch roles.

I also switch SoS with SoR based on the enemy comp.

Like jcbroe I’ve pretty much entirely abandoned the s/d and fight smaller scale fights or from the fringes. I can’t beat a thief with s/d, but with LB I do fairly well, and if I’m focused in a team fight nothing will save me except stealth.

I’m only plat1ish (gold 2 at the moment because I messed up my build experimenting) so it’s not like my build is an expert opinion.

I’ve been pretty consistently preferring to run WS for the extra condi clear, barkskin, and shared anguish. I think that comes out ahead of NM, you lose a bit of team support with allies’ aid and PW, but I think the selfish build works better since the druid is often or usually the main target. Also I’m running the slightly non-standard GoE, pet taunt, and wolf, so that more than makes up for allies’ aid. Made it to platinum with WS, thought I’d experiment with NM and dropped 10 matches to plummet down to gold 2.

WS it is for me… infuriating.

Burn.5401:

With proper placements 400+ rating gain should never happen.

Ya the placement matches clearly have problems, but that wasn’t the question.

Also it should happen because people can get better. The guys with 2000+ rating didn’t start playing GW with that rating, they gradually improved.

Xaylin.1860:

I wouldn’t take this result too literally considering people tend to overestimate their own performance. There is plenty of research on this topic.

I’d argue that this is actually a very positive result for the new system.

I think my placement is below skill level because I keep winning more than losing and my MMR keeps increasing. It’s gone up 400 points and climbing. I may be an outlier, but I highly suspect this is true for a lot of people. Almost everyone on my friends list has increased their MMR substantially over the course of the season.

‘LB = more damage’ I think comes from the fact that it’s significantly better at +1ing than staff or sword. Everyone knows the whole sit on cliff at Foefire thing, but you can do that on a lot of maps. On Kyhlo you can lock down darn near the entire map. With s/d you need to go all the way to the point (or use staff to give erotic massages to the opponent), and then you lose the point you were holding. So s/d is an in your face weapon set and LB is an opportunistic weapon.

LB also is significantly better at running non-mender amulets. Have a tempest and another druid on your comp? Slap on LB and marauders or paladins and rock out, yet still be able to 1v1 and clean team condis.

Yobculture.5786:

Fluffball.8307:

1) Why are you running dungeons? They are completely obsolete content that is almost 100% not supported by anet anymore. Endgame is not dungeons.

I’m not saying don’t run them — I do — but why are you doing it?

2) If it’s purely for money you need to do a lot of different paths and not just 1 or 2.

I do dungeons all the time because they’re fun

lol

Me too!

Jim Hunter.6821:

If they decide to eat the full damage of our burst after we’ve suddenly grown in size they have no one to blame but themselves.

It’s like maul. SotW and maul have got to be the 2 biggest tells in the entire game. Maybe kill shot is ahead of one or the other. Anything bad coming from those if you aren’t CCd is your own fault.

And I write this knowing that I eat mauls all the time…

StickerHappy.8052:

No matter what changes you make, let’s face it, if you have Druid, you HAVE to support. Really, otherwise the whole traitline and AF form is a waste.

I think the real value is the 1v1 or 2v2 ability. You can support ‘yourself’ and get good value out of staff and druid.

That alone isn’t good enough, but you have the other goodies like reasonable team support, reasonable pressure, good CC and so on. Druid is decent at like 10 different things. I never freak out if I see multiple druids on my team, I just swap amulets to something more damaging and we’ve got all roles covered.

That’s the exact reasoning I use when selecting weapons before a match, jcbroe. Tempest = LB.

And I think GS/staff is still something that should be considered. It’s a great decap build if you don’t have a thief and it makes sense with the rest of the comp.

Druid is not the best at any one role, but it’s probably the most versatile profession without having to change traits, just swap your non-staff weapon and boom, new role. Very easy before a match.

For top tier organized teams is kind of irrelevant as literally zero of us are involved in that. And none of us are qualified to talk about that because organized teams do whatever works for them and meta is often thrown out the window, or even created by that particular team running a unique comp. Whatever abjured and TCG are currently called have done that countless times, running classes people insisted were not even viable at any level. As has been mentioned there have been pro league teams running LB.

There are what, 10 druids or something that will ever be in that scene? For other 3 million GW2 players…

For bunkering, s/d is definitely the better set, but you don’t play LB like that. You CAN bunker just by being a druid, but LB is for +1ing. I usually set up between mid and home on any map, not just talking about Foefire.

Many of the skills you listed also prevent staff from hitting, and staff can be LoSed. The reflect overabundance has been overblown. On paper it’s a problem, in practice it really isn’t a big deal. And people tend to use reflects immediately rather than strategically. Show a LB, reflect goes up, swap to staff and you’re good to go for the rest of the fight.

If you’re using staff you can ignore AF generation. It’s just there, no problem.

I’m a little skeptical of what you’re doing with the healing, especially in open world or dungeons and with one of the lowest damage weapons in the entire game, but whatever, there is your answer.

It’s been answered but your question is wrong. Killing and interrupting the pet work — even underwater if you know what to do.

Also when we did the ranger forum 1v1 king of the hill, finishing was mandatory because rangers can occasionally rez themselves via timely pet management. I remember I had at least 1 duel where we both were down and rezzed ourselves. That’s one of a few reasons (albeit the most minor) I tend to keep wolf on the swap-to pet. You’ll never rez yourself against a mostly healthy opponent that isn’t doing something stupid, but sometimes you can squeak one out, usually if your opponent is very low on health when he downs you.

Dell laptops got the highest rating from Consumer Reports if I recall correctly. Should be able to find a reasonably priced one in any store and then get a cheapo mouse to play games with.

Vukorep.3081:

signets dont have stunbreak but has 0 damage for 6 seconds.

SoR is a stun break. It’s one of our best skills.

I guess I was more focused on the “what should I do after gearing up” bit.

Dungeon berserker gear is used to run… dungeons which are obsolete.

Fractals, raids, PvP and WvW are typically considered endgame, where dungeon gear is useless or suboptimal.

1) Why are you running dungeons? They are completely obsolete content that is almost 100% not supported by anet anymore. Endgame is not dungeons.

I’m not saying don’t run them — I do — but why are you doing it?

2) If it’s purely for money you need to do a lot of different paths and not just 1 or 2.

Neural.1824:

As for “you don’t have to do it”, that concept may not be flawed but it is horribly weak. No-one has to do anything. We don’t even have to play. Anet doesn’t have to make a game.

Well there is no penalty for NOT doing it, and you also have like 14 other choices for completing your optional daily. I challenge you to find someone outside of this that cares “toypocalypse takes too long but also give me lots of video game gold.”

This is NA culture right now: Gaming the system. Look at the “president”. This season got gamed. Hopefully next season does a bit better. We need some safeguards in place.

Duke Nukem.6783:

Fluffball.8307:

You don’t have to do it. Also it’s effectively impossible to fail and is highly rewarding already.

you are officially never allowed to complain or criticize anything ever again because……“you dont have to do it”

Ok….? I’m not much of a whiner to begin with. Not going to whine about being forced to do a daily.

You don’t have to do it. Also it’s effectively impossible to fail and is highly rewarding already.

redcore.3940:

What bronze? What are you talking about guys?

There is a PvP ladder season going on right now and you place in various precious metal divisions based on games won and quality of opponents.

400+ games is insane. That’s the bigger accomplishment, that’s some good practice!

Nope. Level 32 is really low level and you’d be back at the same level after like an hour or few of play. Just keep doing whatever you find fun and eventually you’ll figure out or remember what you’re doing.

I do remember someone running LB/staff other than eura in the pro season. Can’t remember the name though or even what team. It was a decap focused build, and then hold it neuted with menders. I think he may have had GoT??

I don’t think LB can be reduced to “gimmick”, if RF is what the gimmick is. RF does not do particularly impressive damage.

What I view as LBs purpose is setting up the kill for someone else. So if you’ve got teamies 1v1 on mid, you +1 while simultaneously covering a side point, hit the opponent with a hard CC, RF, smoke assault or whatever floats your boar and then leave to defend your point again. Druid with any weapon can easily hold a point, and LB is outstanding at catching people in the open field. On point LB is not ideal. I generally play between points, although thieves can complicate that.

Justine.6351:

You assume there wont be an elite spec with permanent projectile shield and another with permanent laser beam shield and yet another with minion immunity.

There will be but hopefully the murderer (please let that be the name) Espec will have a plasma cannon.

Ya they definitely said you can only do 1 spec at a time, but if all the new especs are at least as powerful as druid, it will give us some variety. I expect the next round to be 9 new majorly OP specs that will be tuned down once the expansion is mostly done selling.

If the next ranger epec is all DPS, you could have a thought-out 5 man team with a druid and a “murderer” or whatever the next spec is called.

Eleazar.9478:

I dont understand this thread you can litarlly use any weapon or trait line and have a viable build.

Because every good build in all 3 game modes revolves the druid traitline and how to power CA; 93% of the time it’s BM which also makes our ranger profession mechanic work and staff. It gets a little old.

That’s a problem with all 9 professions though, they just need a second round of Especs to shake things up.

One other thought, they buffed LB a bunch a few years ago (provides stealth now, double rate of rapid fire, some minor damage buffs, etc.), but they also buffed SB recently really well.

SB trappers are very common. LB trappers were extremely common for a while but I guess people got bored. I still run into LB trappers every now and then.

We now have quite a lot of access to stealth so it makes trapping much more reasonable than at launch.

LB is excellent for WvW and PvP (or even PvE if that’s your thing). Traps are condi based and always will be, but you can use trapper runes which give you stealth off trap placements, or you can go hybrid power/condi and shoot through flame trap and bonfire for burning procs as well as the LB power damage.

I would switch natural stride to celestial shadow. SB has more than perma swiftness on it already, and CS is the single best trait we have for roaming.

I’m guessing you don’t have HoT?

I think your utilities are what’s messing you up. As general rules of thumb, don’t take utilities that aren’t traited (I break this often) and spirits are pretty crappy right now.

With that in mind without changing too much of your build, I’d go full survival skills, LR, QZ, or sharpening stone, entangle. That will give you plenty of condi clear and all of them will be quicker recharges. Then protective ward over nature’s vengeance with no spirits.

I would also slot signet of stone into one of your utilities, so something like LR, SSorQZ, SoS (untraited but worth it), Entangle.

Finally, with no other traps at least consider troll unguent and primal reflexes over trapper’s expertise. IF you decide to do that it may change your weapons, to s/t + a/d which used to be the meta setup before HoT was released. That will boost your 1v1 ability substantially with evades on both weapon swaps as well as the powerful torch skills. I don’t want to pigeon hole you into a build you don’t want though, and your original idea is apparent.

Post finally, you might want to try wolf over spider. I think it’s a better pet all around, although spider is reasonable. Wolf has phenomenal team support to protect rezzes and secure stomps before rezzes, and is excellent in 1v1s for the 2 hard CCs.

Chase.8415:

In the lower ratings, I’ve heard countless stories of trash talking; seems to be only in the very high ratings and lowest ratings where this is an issue.

Your post kind of contradicts itself with “hearing stories” being your evidence. As I said I am mid gold as well and play with people who at least claim are in platinum. The trash talking is literally in every single game. And trash talking is a euphemism for the sort of verbal abuse I wouldn’t want to see in a bar room brawl. Just ridiculous rants. I block and/or report someone in most games I play.

I have a special PvP chat tab with say and map turned off, and it’s usually even better to play with team chat off and that really defeats the purpose of playing a team game where you often want to communicate. Which is why I’m done with seasons, no point trying to relax after a hard day to someone spending more time typing vulgar insults to every player on the map than he spends actually trying to play a fun game with us. The PvP community gets worse every season. This one is the worst yet because you can’t just grind your way to legend and people lose their kitty minds over that.

Crapgame.6519:

Seems very toxic in low silver. Hopefully others are finding some fun.

It’s toxic in every single division, always has been and always will be. And seasons bring out the worst in people. Forget it, I have a good idea of how good I am, not going to expose myself to the vitriol anymore. Even with map (and even team chat) off the guy dancing in your spawn gets his point across: “Kitty all you guys.”

Crapgame.6519:

Need to find a way to punish those who throw games or clearly stop playing a 1/4 of the way into a game. Could be back luck on my part, time of day, no idea, but this is the most frustrating thing at the moment I see.

Enter game. 1 or 2 minutes in you are down 50 or so and the team in-fighting starts. Someone or some two give up and it is a 3 v 5 no win situation. There isn’t much you can do. Rest of it, well, should work itself out. But this throwing games in spit, or giving up, or afk, whatever, is hurting those of us trying to honestly manage our score to climb the ladder.

Can’t carry afk.

I’m doing fairly well in mid gold and was planning to get to mid platinum, but I’m already done with this season. Every time I join a PvP season I remember why I stop playing PvP for long stretches: Babies that quit at the start of the match. It ruins the game for 9 other people, and the games are fairly long.

You get much better small scale fights in WvW where people play for fun instead of giving up at the slightest hint they’ll have to play decently rather than just coast.

Sword both attacks faster and hits harder than axe, so if you’re doing something where you want to be optimized for damage, like fractals or possibly even dungeons, use the sword.

And the counterpoint is that nothing really matters in almost all PvE scenarios.

vove.2768:

Fluffball.8307:

The use IPs to track hackers. Seems like they could do the same, one ladder spot per IP.

Bad idea. What with 2 different people who share an IP but have two separate accounts? I won’t mention people who have to use proxies and VPNs. Banning by IP address is the worst form of banning.

I thought about that after I posted. I think F2P accounts should be limited to 1 per IP if there is a pay account on the same IP. That should clear up most of the mess. And if someone buys multiple accounts I guess they’ve paid to have multiple ladder spots…? In that case all we can do is to ask them to not be a jerk.

Proxies tend to wreck pings as far as I know. I’m no computer expert though.

cgMatt.5162:

Do you really not see the correlation between the quality of matches, number of accounts and hours played? Some people obviously enjoy the climb more than others.

We’re talking about not having multiple ladder spots taken up by the same person, not banning MMR on alt accounts. By all means achieve 2100 MMR on 15 accounts, but don’t take up 15 ladder spots.

cgMatt.5162:

What if some people want to play more and aren’t getting enough matches? This happened a lot when the queue times were insane.

What does that have to do with being placed on the ladder multiple times?

Ryan.9387:

I use alts to learn classes without the stress of ruining my own mmr. I can’t get the same competition in hotjoin or unranked. The ranking let’s me see how well I’ve done.

Having multiple accounts isn’t bad, but taking up multiple slots in the top 250 is pretty obnoxious for the guys that are rank 251-350ish. Alts should have normal MMR, just not be placed on the ladder.

The use IPs to track hackers. Seems like they could do the same, one ladder spot per IP.

In theory you could have 1 guy fill the entire ladder with F2P accounts.

Thieves.