I hate anything cute in a world like this. It’s extremely stupid to be fighting hordes of dragon minions and have a charr run past you wearing a stuffed quaggan on his back while beeping out Nintendo 64 sounds. But whatever, I rarely pay attention to anything other than combat or story anyway.
Enough people realize the value in LB4 that it will never and should never change.
For the idiots in PvE, defiance bars were added to anything important. I don’t care if someone pushes a centaur away from me in Queensdale, and if they spam it on a boss, great, it’ll lower the defiance bar.
RGive the bloody option for a petless ranger (make it balanced) and if someone wants a bloody pet, she can choose it.
That’s why it’s never going to happen. I’d estimate off the top of my head that 2/3rds or all traits and skills concern the pet in some way. It would be a complete profession rework, way more than even an elite spec.
Honestly the best thing Anet could do at this point is rename the profession to “beastmater” so people would stop harping on this silliness.
Personally, I think Necro beats Ranger for that. I’m soloing some HoT HP’s with my Necro setup. Not entirely certain if Ranger could accomplish some of the things I’m doing on Necro.
My main is a ranger; I can pretty easily solo every HP challenge in HoT with the exception of the one that spawns 3 champs in VB.. Your pet gets a 100% heal every 16 seconds in addition to you healing it and it healing itself. If a champ kills your pet weren’t looking at the monitor.
I always felt that pets being the “core mechanic” of rangers was kind of badly thought out. Pets should be a utility option. Having them operate as the core mechanic for rangers creates annoyingly shoehorning gameplay for a class that covers a much broader theme than beastmastery.
I half agree with you on principal of pets being bad, but also disagree. Ranger is a pet class no doubt. Yes there is this nature-esque theme, but the same could be said of the entire sylvari race. What defines a ranger is his pet, and I don’t even “role play” my ranger as a nature hippie. I view her as a special forces kind of scout, which is very much in line with the ranger archetype of high fantasy (i.e. Aragorn.)
Beastmaster at home in the wilderness, not even necessarily caring about the wilderness. If you’ve ever seen the show Dual Survival I view my ranger as the military guy, not the hippie. Same result, different view.
And I do realize I divulged from the pet theme there, ironically. Just ramblin’.
Roger that, thanks. It’s still somehow satisfying despite just autoattacking all the time. I think it’s the neat dodge animation and helping every random passer-by with boons.
Drakes have a hard hitting AoE, so they’re a solid choice for PvE. Cats do very high single target damage. The best drake is probably lightning because the special F2 attack always hits multiple targets.
You should be able to google up a pet DPS chart, but basically it’s cats or maybe drakes for PvE.
Edit: For PvP/WvW you generally take a pet based on it’s F2 special attack because the other AI attacks are hard to land on humans.
Edit2: You can click on the pet info to see what skills pets have. I believe the default key is K.
How does it work later on? I noticed with the necro my pets were dropping one by one and I had to constantly re-summon them, sometimes it got pretty close to running out of pets before I managed to get my flesh golem back up with its cooldown. For Ranger, wouldn’t you be able to just keep swapping pets and never be in danger of actually running out? Just wondering, since it seems like you would run out of pets much quicker later on with necro.
For ranger, yes, that’s how it works. Your pets never die in PvE for the most part.
For necro, I’ve never actually played a minionmancer for any length of time. The base necro is so tanky you just stand there and whack at champions.
Isn’t every other class (i.e: warrior, guardian, thief, revenant) better than ranger at melee?
Depends on what you mean by “better”, and this is the crux of why you can’t compare professions in GW2 at a super basic level.
Anet has done a decent job balancing the professions. It’s not perfect, but you can’t look at druid and say “it does crap damage”. Why? Because druid is one of the most in-demand damage boosters.
Well, I played both up to 35 now. Still having a hard time deciding which to play honestly. I managed to find and drop a champion on my necro, and both classes are capable of soloing the two champ bandits in the human zone (to be fair they aren’t all that dangerous, just massive health bags) so I guess I’m still not sure which to go with. Wish my ranger had been able to hunt down a random champion also, may have to just camp a spot and wait for it to spawn.
This is pretty much what we’re telling you. Both professions can effortlessly solo anything in the open world. Just pick the one you like thematically if nothing else.
SB + AT is 32K DPS
SB + AT druid is 22K DPS
LB + SA druid is 16K DPS
if thats true, berserker sounds really underwhelming, why does anyone use it?
I don’t keep up on the latest DPS numbers since I haven’t done high-end PvE stuff in years. But the basic idea is condi takes a while to ramp up. For example if you go kill a level 10 enemy, a berserker will kill it in 1 hit and a condi player will have to wait for their condis to tick a few times.
So the harder the fight, the more likely condis will do more damage. In lower-end stuff like dungeons and early fractals, berserker does a lot more damage because the fights are over instantly.
Edit: And I should point out when you’re talking about fights that aren’t over instantly, druid damage is sort of irrelevant. The main thing we bring are the unique buffs, spotter, spirits, GotL, GoE.
Your LB opening mention is the way to go. As you run towards the boss, hit with barrage and RF, then just camp the melee weapon of your choice. That’s pretty close to ideal play anyway for fractals.
Metabattle is the sort of 98th percentile of good builds. It’s rarely the absolute perfect up to date build that the best players in each game mode are innovating with, but it’s the one that is tested by the community and overwhelming accepted as excellent.
The builds posted on these forums; be cautious of. Some of them very very rarely are going to be the next big thing, many are utterly useless, and most are decent and slightly subpar but are posted because we get bored playing the same things over and over.
TLDR: Use metabattle until you are bored or have a thorough understanding of the game, or if you’re brand new, kitten it and do whatever you want while you learn the game.
It’s not that weird, video games need to be addictive and habit forming or they aren’t going to retain customers. Developers spend a lot of time thinking about how to get people addicted to their games, and you can easily find articles about that by developers from companies like Blizzard online.
It’s not necessarily nefarious like how slot machine comes spend millions researching how to make their games more addictive, but you’re not going to have a very good MMO if you don’t constantly draw customers back into it. Daily log-in rewards are one of the most obvious ways Anet does it, “you don’t even have to put in effort, just think about us.”
Acknowledging that videos are specifically designed to be addictive is the easy way to control it. No one walks down the street and accidentally gets addicted to heroin.
I agree with Illconceived that there is not really any difference.
But there is never a reason to run a bear in PvE except for extremely specific encounters like in Fractals or trying to solo some Arah dungeon bosses . DPS pets should never die and are able to kill things, bears do really bad damage for pretty much no gain. If you really don’t want to heal your pet, run the HoT dinosaurs or a second drake.
Since a huge portion of ranger DPS is forcibly tied up in pets, make your pets be decent.
doesn’t that exactly prove that class and what your bring does matter?
I see what you’re saying, but everyone can do that. A naked druid would bring a bunch of water fields and condi clear and spotter or whatever. Zergs are all about being a body in the right place on TS.
I almost exclusively roam, but sometimes I’ll join a zerg in pure glass armor and I don’t feel bad about it. Especially now that the rallybot thing is gone, there is really no penalty for running around high on heroin doing nothing useful or whatever it is people like to do.
I don’t think class is important for zergs. You represent like 0.2% of the zergs power, and as long as you are meaningfully contributing, which a druid obviously can, you’re good to go. It’s all about positioning and little about anything else.
I always point to a video some guy made back in BGs glory days of him running a front line guardian completely naked in massive zerg clashes to prove that point. He wasn’t leeching, he was throwing up boons, blocking attacks for teamies, etc. Just do your thing.
Looks pretty much like what I would recommend as well.
I see why you didn’t take it, but GS is just so ridiculously good for zerg fighting. Automatically avoiding like a third of all the damage… sometimes just being a body is more useful than utility.
Is there a worse trait anywhere in GW2 than Predator’s Instinct? This could be a fun mini-game in LA where you win a bag of masterwork gear for naming a worse trait.
Am I the only person who feels like this would slow you down?
No, did you only read the first post? Several other people in the thread have said the same thing. And dozens have said the same thing when this has been brought up before.
Personally I would however still prefer Ancestral Grace like functionality more than directional arrows.
This makes controlling the direction a lot easier since how close your cursor is to your character doesn’t make the arrows flip out. AG is better than axe4 also because AG has a huge target and axe4 is hard to find at all.
I also understand exactly what you’re saying. If you don’t already know where your mouse is, when you activate the skill your leaps could be pointing in any random direction. Think about how difficult it is to use axe4, it takes me like 2 seconds of preparation to find where the hell I’m throwing it.
Now for axe4 and staff4 it’s not so bad, as they are offensive skills. For defensive skills like sword 2 it’s way too slow (or someone even suggested LR once upon a time, just hell no.) Especially if your mouse is near your character model the slightest mouse movement sends your directional arrow flying in circles.
Try making a warrior and using the greatsword skill that has a directional arrow. I think it’s GS3. It’s incredibly clunky, I want my movement skills to go in the direction my character is pointed, or the exact opposite direction, like mesmer staff 2.
Sword 2 functions better in combat than out of combat is what I meant.
I’m referring to combat as sort of anything involving other players, rather than say, running to a vista.
At this point I’m sure anet considers everything involving mobility because the conquest format is so well established, but hopefully you get my point.
I’m specifically asking for a directional arrow similar to Vine Surge on each Monarch’s Leap and Hornet’s Sting. You don’t need to download a custom mouse cursor…
YOU don’t need to. I can never find my mouse cursor so any skill that requires a directional arrow on a melee weapon is unacceptable to me. Staff is easier as a ranged weapon, but when you use it in melee range I find it difficult to point the VS in the right direction.
In a perfect world anet would have made their mouse cursor even slightly visible at the cost of their extremely rigid UI philosophy.
Edit: I’m referring to pressing the button the instant I want to use a skill, not visually confirming where I’m going and then readjusting using the arrows. I may get the evade with the warrior GS but I go a slightly wrong direction. That can cost you the fight.
Because I want to know exactly what direction I’m going without having to download a custom mouse cursor. I effectively can’t use the warrior GS movement skill without some serious pre-planning effort and I would hate for ranger suffer that same fate.
I should probably have a downloaded custom mouse cursor anyway, but that would be a terrible thing to require of players.
I don’t view it as an out of combat movement boost, and I doubt any skill created in the game is really intended to be used as that. In combat, it’s always a speed boost.
Since I disagree with what you’re proposing, I’ll repeat a suggestion that has been made before. Have the directions be toggle-able, so if you always want, it goes forward/backward or forward/forward or whatever.
I don’t know if Anet would ever make something so customizable, but it’s the best way to not change something simply to annoy half the players and make the other half happy.
Ya pretty close to the same idea. I feel like we have some potential for moving back into the classic thief/revenant role, like back in the glory days of LB.
I mean we’ve always had the option of going glass, it’s just now it seems more effective than other options. So we got nerfed into a more fun playstyle.
Edit: And then anet sees my post and claims they planned it all along.
I dunno, I’ve been enjoying success with this with berserker/maurader.
I think people still view druids as a less optimal target than DH or other various “easy” targets. If someone calls you on it, run away faster than fast? Thoughts on viability? Obviously just PUG queues since running isn’t exactly useful with team comm.
Quick note that regular forum viewers will know, I ALWAYS run quickdraw regardless of build so I’m a tad faster than most.
I don’t think forcing interaction is a social thing. That’s like saying the cashier at McDonalds is a social contact of yours.
I actually find that because dungeons are pretty low-key it allows for a lot more social interaction. If you explain a run to newbies, then you have until the next mechanic to continue the conversation “I like your axe, how do you get that?” or whatever instead of “big water on me in 3-2-1” then silence until the next command.
Also, newbie dungeon runs! Seriously. I always help newbies who still enjoy the content and we talk and laugh a lot, no rush. I’ve made tons of friends that way. Do the story in dungeons as soon as you unlock them, search for “story – all welcome” groups in LFG. Those people are usually relaxed and fun!
This is a great point, Anet abandoned dungeons but left the in-game mails telling newbies to go to them. It’s pretty easy and very (socially) rewarding to show someone the mechanics. I usually wind up doing multiple dungeons with people or introducing someone to PvP or etc.
With the power creep dungeons are a joke, and with everyone else running HoT stuff in fractals you don’t need to concern yourself that much.
For fractals, I believe you’d be looking at:
Phalanx Strength (trait) Warrior. You buff all party members to 25 might constantly, are extremely durable, buff further with banners, and do good damage yourself.
I think that’s the best option. Your old ranger as a condi ranger would be massive damage and does well without druid. You can look on metabattle.com for the exact builds for anything. It’s worth looking over everything at that site anyway to see if anything else stands out to you. I mean a lot of the old core builds are still quite decent in PvE.
Edit: Or as Linken just more succinctly says, warrior.
Both professions can effortlessly solo anything in the open world. Just pick the one you like thematically if nothing else.
Several other people in the thread have said the same thing. And dozens have said the same thing when this has been brought up before.