Elite specs automatically remove 1/3 of the traitline choices for all professions. And most professions also have a borderline required 2nd traitline like our BM.
I don’t think there is any solution until a 2nd round of epecs are released.
I have problems with pets, but in the case of F2, no I don’t think it’s bad to have a checklist. It’s like saying a warrior can’t land primal burst without checking that the skill is in range and his opponent isn’t blocking.
AI pet problems are bad, human control problems are not bad. How is the wolf supposed to know if you want it to howl and the wrong guy you have selected across the map or the correct guy you don’t have selected?
Banning premades and allowing duo queue was stupid from a balance perspective. Obviously people want to play with their friends and I get that it’s healthy for PvP, but having two complimentary, useful classes blows a game wide open when the other team spawns with 5 necro mains who can’t multiclass.
Oh it probably doesn’t show up in the stats since you have a lot of low rank idiots just playing whatever they want, but 2 players who know how to duo is a huge advantage.
Also note that I’m not salty, I don’t think I’ve stuck around long enough to see if there was a duo in my games a single time this season. Just conceptually it’s a dumb idea for balance.
Dude has the reflexes of a mongoose after a fifth of vodka. I genuinely believe he has some sort of genetic predisposition towards excelling at video games, which would be the most useless genetic trait of all time except he’s earning money from it.
I’ve been in martial arts and boxing for over 20 years and have sparred with lots of professional fighters; ROM has a reaction speed and soft-focus awareness I don’t think I’ve ever seen in person. He’s a freak. It weirds me out to watch him play sometimes because I am literally physically incapable of seeing what he sees.
Just use LFG dude, I use to complete it every single day, and it’s still done multiple times a day. You can’t complete it on some rando map, you need a full organized map.
Could be 1000% movement speed bonus and it won’t change anything. The animations of core pets are not effective against a human. Unfortunately they said they’re not able or willing to change those animations so we just have to wait for next expansion. HoT obviously brought some major advancements as far as effective pets.
I think in the guild chat or something they said this living world session is going to set up the next expac, so we may have new effective pets soon. #RangerBone
Despite that I feel like the ‘carry’ potential could be higher compared to the destruction some other classes can cause. I can handle holding a point 2v1 or stalling, but if my team doesn’t cap anything I’m stuck in that fight while the enemy team is racking up points.
Is that just the curse of a druid/low elo right now? Did anyone have more success with a different build that works better in low elo?
I WISH there was a viable Condi build simply because I like the feel ob sb+axe/torch, then again I don’t want to rely solely on traps, any suggestions?
Ele and bunker druid have low carry potential, but if you don’t have them it’s tough to win. That’s part of the reason I prefer a glassier build most of the time, and LB can cover two points at the same time. Like on forest I tend to park myself in the courtyard area and it gives me vision on both mid and the beach to home.
The meta build with staff/GS could probably carry silver pretty well. With the super high mobility you can basically play as a thief, which has is definitely the highest carry profession.
Also check out the WvW trapper thread, Justine theory crafted a build that is not 100% trapper. 100% trapper is not a good build, but survival+traps can work. I was screwing around with a very similar build before the season started and it works. I just didn’t have time to get used to the awkwardness of the new healing spring.
You can pull it off a lot easier on non-Foefire maps. Temple has a nearly direct line of sight between the two and mid doesn’t cut off reinforcements at all.
I haven’t been able to play for the last 4-5 months and I’m finally trying to get back into the swing of things.
Is the Mender’s Staff/Sword & Dagger still the defacto spec to run or are there more options now?
Staff/LB is meta. ROM uses it, and he’s top 5 on the EU charts. Metabattle has both versions up.
There is a lot of variety in amulets too, paladins, mauraders, and berserker are all totally viable. You can probably do very well with sage and SB but I don’t know of anyone specifically running that at a high level.
People complained about this in previous seasons when they couldn’t get out of whatever division had backwards progression or even couldn’t get out of a tier with no backwards progression like sapphire. Not everyone is the best in the world. Not even the best in the world are the best in the world, that’s why there is one “God of PvP”.
That’s ok. Try to improve. It doesn’t affect your rewards and in fact makes them better because of queue times.
But doesnt that make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? When does it start to increase again?
Why would it start giving you more and more points for beating someone around your level? It will give you more points if you beat higher ranked teams.
The more sure of your placement the math is, the less it deviates. So if you lose you don’t suddenly drop 400 points because it knows sometimes you lose, and vice versa it knows sometimes you win.
Winning at 60% means you’re ALLLMOST at where you belong.
If you start winning more you’ll advance a lot faster but you won’t get more points. You’ll just defy the expectation of the MMR.
You lose less against teams you’re supposed to lose against and more against teams you’re supposed to win against and vice versa. It’s all an odds game.
Some people are posting that that isn’t always the case, but if that’s true and not salt, it’s pretty clearly a bug.
List some ideas of how anet can let people know that being at around the same skill level as most people out of 3 million or whatever active users is ok.
I think they already did the obvious. Even the worst players in the world get a bronze medal this season. The average PvPer gets a silver, which is pretty generous.
It’s ok to not be in the legendary division which consists of the top couple score people in the entire game. It’s not embarrassing to be in silver, just play your games, get awesome rewards, and try to get better. I see very few people displaying their badges this season.
Might is not too big of a deal between the option for smokescale/WHaO and SotP and a couple other niche options. If you want might you can get it. But having all 5 team members at 25 stacks for the first encounter breaks the game open vs teams that don’t stack.
I wound up not having time to play more than 1 game tonight* and the comp called for LB, but I am still going to try torch at some point.
*Well I have time now, but I’m not going to play after having a couple glasses of wine since I’d like to see what my actual MMR is for the first time ever. Playing PvP sober is super weird. Although I’m seeing people say the placement matches are really important and I personally was responsible via stupid rust mistake of causing the loss of 3 out of 4 of my placement losses. I hope this isn’t screwing me over.
For the simple pleasure of it I did a full world completion on an alt recently, and I don’t think I was ever more than about 10 seconds away from seeing another player.
I have bad PvE players on my PvP team in almost every match I play. The teams I am playing against have Pro League players on their team. I am in Gold division. How are these bad players in Gold, and why do I get matchups against players who are in Platinum and Legendary division?
Oh I understood what you’re trying to communicate, I just um… shall we say think you’re perhaps biased in your recount of the events. Your team is full of soccer moms who only do open world PvE while working two jobs and the other team is full 5 man premade of Denial Esports. Sound about right?
Devs finally implement a non-biased system with known MMR and people just get upset when they realize they’re not as good as they claim to be.
People aren’t getting carried by purposefully stacked teams any more and have to actually earn it, and a lot of people really don’t like that.
+1. I saw this coming a mile away. There is no way you can misinterpret anything about this season other than “I’m not as good as I think I am, I should improve.” And yet the entire front page of the PvP forum is people complaining how it’s not their fault.
I MUST imagine for the sake of my sanity the complainers are not adults. “It’s not my fault we didn’t make the sale, blame the dumb client that wouldn’t buy it. Dumb client, they should be embarrassed.”
Even outstanding tournament players fall prey to feeding the enemy kills. Once even organized teams are in chaos it’s game over. Getting a PUG to regroup and come in as a team is nearly impossible.
You have to be careful of a couple things. It will howl at a target, so if you’ve got a guy 2000 units away selected, it’ll run off and try to howl at that guy. The other thing you have to be careful is to not interrupt your own wolf. Like if you’re spamming F2 and hit attack or recall the pet to reposition, it’ll put the howl on a short cool down.
The surest way to get it to go off where you want it is to have no target selected and hit only F2, it should go off right where the wolf currently is with no hitch. Well the final hitch is that it is a big tell, so someone else might interrupt it.
Yup I thought about WH. It definitely does a lot of good stuff, I just got sick of people not stacking might (or even swiftness!) when there are people with combo fields available. There is no excuse for not stacking might as a tempest.
I totally agree, I have to click on a person and then mouse over the icon to tell what rank they are. It doesn’t help that I’m color blind, although I imagine it’s not great for anyone considering they’ll all just “shiny metal” color.
Thought: Riffing off my earth rune/wilderness survival concept I posted earlier, instead of shared anguish, I could take ambidexterity and leadership runes to use staff + s/t with menders amulet… hear me out.
S/D feels a litle lackluster especially since the massive rev damage nerf, and when I use it I often find myself just camping staff which is a waste. You aren’t guaranteed a competent ele, and stacking might at the start of a match pretty much makes or breaks the mid fight and thus the game. With bonfire and staff you can get at least a light might stack, others hopefully contribute if you let them know what you’re going to do. Also burning is a good enough condition that even with no condi on the amulet you can do decent damage, perhaps a sigil of battle or smoldering on the torch? Bonfire is pretty much an unavoidable damage tick when you’re fighting on point, and it doubles as a might stack if you’re so inclined to do that over a water field.
I think I will give it a whirl this evening. Do the leadership runes affect might you blast onto others? They give a minor condi damage increase at least.
I stole some of your ideas jcbroe, now depending on the comp I’m up against I either go the more meta-y route or my lb/staff route.
Switched Earth rune to Leadership, probably permanently. Earth would be absolutely perfect if it weren’t for the mediocre 6 rune bonus. Leadership and NM % bonuses + PW give less protection than WS + earth if I’ve added it all up right, but leadership is a better runeset beyond that. Both traitlines certinainly have their perks. I may have actually just convinced myself to go back to Earth because WS adds on some passive condi removal.
I tried running both signets instead of GoE. I have the exact same thoughts you do about GoE, it’s just so clutch…. stopping stomps while simultaneously rezzing, stopping rezzes while simultaneously stomping, getting that perfect final interrupt to down someone… It’s good to have all 3 skills as options at least. Maybe I’ll try running all 3 instead of PM.
Anyway, since I suck at multi-classing, swapping between the point holder and my old LB QD roamer is working well. I “feel” I should finish the season around mid platinum now that the ring rust is wearing off and I’ve got some good build thoughts (he said as he puts a curse on himself.)
I use both in WvW, personally. Smokescale is first out for most fights and I have Wolf on swap with Clarion Bond for the unblockable Fear/knockdown. If I’m against a Thief, I start with Wolf instead so I send the Smokescale in for unblockable Smoke Assault when they try to run away.
I’m almost always using one or the other. The buff to Call Of The Wild giving it the Unblockable effect made using them together quite a bit stronger.
That’s something I hadn’t really played with too much. I use bristleback for the other pet because I like the taunt into a point blank burst on the F2, but I’ll have to screw around with SS/wolf. That’s overall more CC than the bristleback taunt, so I could switch to the quickness trait.
Now that the season is underway it would be interesting to see what everyone is running. All of you I have on my friend’s list are well above average MMR, and then there is jcbroe who is ranked as would be expected. I’m sure several of the other forum regulars I don’t have my list are ranked as well.
Anyway, I swore I’d run condi survival traps, but I just couldn’t get used to TU or HS so switched back to a more standard build. Here’s what I’m using. Slightly different but I wanted to change at least something this season.
I’m almost 100% certain that there is a limit to how much stuff you can put down, but by that point you’ve won anyway. You only notice it when all 5 players are really saturating the map.
Wins and losses are not as important as the quality of your opponents. This season is a brutal reality check for everyone who swore they were better than they actually are, and all sorts of excuses are flying around.
But yes, I figure there won’t be much movement, which I actually find pretty interesting. For the first time I’m genuinely trying to play my very best in each match instead of going like 65%, really paying attention and I’ve already noticed a difference in how effective I am.
There might be a way to accidentally turn off the speed lines in the graphics settings, similar to how you can turn off the lens flare or change the sky texture etc., “accidentally”. Just a thought, no idea if you can or not.
really?? new people place in silver to start??? I won 5/5 for my first 10 matches and i got placed in bronze……
Everyone was reset to silver with zero games played. I believe they said it wasn’t a total reset so that the very best players might be at tier 3 silver or gold and the people with no games ever might be at tier 1 silver, but I don’t know the details.
Once you start playing, starting in silver, things start counting, so you presumably lost to some poorly ranked teams and got bumped down in MMR.
Do not come up with “This is an MMORPG”, yes, but in the end I have yet to find bearable people that are more than the typical “lolwtfroflcopters” folks that go rage mode when you want to talk a bit ’bout politics or economy.
Well there is your problem. “Never discuss politics or religion in polite company.”
If you started talking politics in my group, I’d probably just turn off the chat.
How would you differentiate a dagger ranger from a dagger thief I wonder. Both are acrobatic melee fighters, their offhand daggers are throw and throw, evade and stealth, both are good with poison. Either one of them could have the elite spec “assassin”.
You should have left out that last fight, you beat up two FTP newbs in masterwork gear trying to leave their keep.
Nice use of stealth. I prefer wolf over smokescale in PvP and sort of by habit take wolf in WvW, but everytime I see someone using it well I have to reconsider.
I think you should at least try s/t. The torch skills are easy and very powerful. For the sword, use the 2 skill preemptively at first, just use to to create space or get out of the way of huge attacks you know are about to come, like if a warrior charges you, just move somewhere out of his melee range and don’t worry if you technically evaded something.
Sword 3 is pretty straight forward and not that different from the dagger evade you want.
My advice is to avoid any forums and especially reddit, turn off map chat, and just enjoy exploring. The initial game is EASY and wants you to just explore. Everything gives you experience and there is no wrong decision.
Edit: Come back here when you’re level 70ish. Don’t ruin your game with jaded vets.
So with zero planning or thought, I slapped together this. I haven’t used a SB since spirit ranger was a thing and I am not used to these utilities at all so playing like garbage, but I still won most of my fights. I think there might be something to this. Got bounced around like a pinball though due to no stability and minimal stunbreaks, I need to fix that somehow. I also ignored condi duration, no idea if I’m hitting breakpoints. I hate that part of the game. Need to look at that as well. Probly need to take shared anguish at a minimum. Edit: Also I should probably focus on bleeding rather than burn with my equipement, just realized it’s a bit of a mess.
Plot twist, The dragons are a team of doctors and wardens.
Sylvari are decorative plants given life by our imaginations, Asura are patients from the children’s ward, Charr are service animals and Norn are just…tall patients I guess.
If we run into a PoI called Jacbo’s Ladder we can start to worry.
It’s basically a turret engi. Zero skill involved, they literally just hit 3 over and over and over again, evading everything.
They have the lowest possible health so even a small burst landing will end them, but as a condi ranger that’s tough. Not giving them condi removal is a good start like Justine said. Also you can stall them to prevent their kittenness from reaching your teammates, just focus on holding the point far more than killing them, i.e. lots of CA2. All their damage comes from 1 condi.
Congratulations on the baby! You’ll still have time for legend, fluffy! (Maybe)
Ha, thanks. He’s already level 1 so I lost out on the first 4 seasons. Made it to diamond in one and that felt like I’d made it all the way, being able to play a max of like 3 games a day. I have no idea what my MMR is like or should be like at this point. Should be interesting at least.
Playing PvP sober is super weird. Although I’m seeing people say the placement matches are really important and I personally was responsible via stupid rust mistake of causing the loss of 3 out of 4 of my placement losses. I hope this isn’t screwing me over.