Guild Wars 2

No one actually cares about legendaries, people want the rare cool skins. HoT failed on that in a couple ways, both the legendary collection thing as well as just not having a lot of skins in general.

The next expansion needs to have a lot of skins earned via drops or simple achievements (like you beat a dungeon, you earn tokens for it), not convoluted legendary collections.

Wintersnight.3061:

What I don’t understand yet – is how Druid is different than GS/LB Ranger from a year ago.

We now play a bit like the old bunker guards, in that druids have some respectable support and great sustain, and we mostly contribute to killing via CC. 1v1, you don’t need to fear anyone because all the meta druid builds are beasts at 1v1. The toughest opponents are probably condi mesmers, daredevils, and reapers if they’re in melee range with shroud ready. Condi revs can obliterate you if they catch you off guard, but if you see them coming it’s not so bad.

Tempest blow our support out of the water though, so let them anchor the big team fights and if you are in them, heal, CC and S&R as needed from the sides, being ready to escape if you become the called target.

Justine.6351:

Cause leetness and glowy backpack! Is that not enough?

I should finish that thing. When does this season end, or did it already? I think I just need to play some other classes or something and I get it. I have no idea what I’m doing.

What is the point of farming to legendary though? In my view, the whole point of ranked is to see where you stand in relation to the best available opposition. If I’m not fighting ESL players and people on that level, I want nothing to do with legendary. I hope they figure out some sort of reasonable solution for season 3 because I have not been terribly impressed with the last 2 seasons.

Not to highjack the thread or anything.

I can’t run LB/staff without skirmishing. It just offers so much flexibility with the stealth, KB, damage, healing, movement, etc. all doubled up. Whatever you need at that moment is what you double up on.

I run in both PvP and WvW BM, skirmishing, druid.

On-demand solutions are way better than the passives of the two lines you mentioned, and 99.9999999999% of the ranger community will disagree with me on that, so….

PvE content is so trivial you don’t even have to heal to begin with for 99% of the content…

But to be more “helpful”, LB ranger and just hide behind the pet. You can literally AFK kill champs.

I can’t name my source but expect glyph of elementals to get a MAAAAAJOR buff. We’re talking insta-gibs, folks.

Are you a new or experienced player? If new, are you mistaking water pets for land pets? PvP pets for PvE pets? Have you tried logging out and back in?

This isn’t limited to PvP, you could ask the same question about just about every kitten area of GW2, and it has come up (sometimes in violent explosions) repeatedly over the past few years.

People are constantly asking what the hell anet is working on. I feel like we see 1% of it and the rest gets cut…

DaShi.1368:

Actually, studies are finding that competent toxic employees are of less value than less competent friendly employees. The mantra of not caring about their attitude as long as they can do the job is a signal of a naive manager.

Choppy.4183:

With all of the evades, cc, etc on the ranger, wouldn’t I still be better off going full glass and then learning to play?

It’s not necessarily better, but that is how you play glass LB. A lot of non-rangers think of LB as being a brute force weapon, but it’s played almost like a thief. Stealth often, chain CC (when someone stunbreaks out of a wolf knockdown follow up with howl and RF simultaneously then hit them with the knockback as they come out of fear and try to heal or stealth) use unexpected movement (i.e. my standard move when I lose someone in their stealth is to sword2 in 2 random directions), hit people unexpectedly (a lot of people will automatically dodge roll when they get close to avoid the PBS 99% of rangers use at that point, so delay it and then entangle right after the dodge or whatever, maul them from LB stealth, etc.)

Rambling aside, LB is one of our best utility weapons and the toughness is either nice to have or unnecessary depending on your preferences.

@Choppy I think all the posts in the thread have great suggestions. Your new build is plenty good enough to work, so just experiment with it until you find what you like. Some things like signet of renewal, muddy terrain, and sword/dagger are difficult to use at first but are extremely good with some practice. That may or may not be worth it or fun to you. Dive in, and use LB3 often!

Re: Condis… old core LB builds typically took Wilderness Knowledge. The survival skills are all really kitten good, and you can even easily combine them with a couple shouts if you want the swiftness.

Another option is to keep it like you have and take signet of renewal, using the passive for casual condi clear and the active when things get bad. LB doesn’t need a lot of condi clear in WvW.

Soldier runes are another option.

All these would also allow you to get rid of that stupid bear (which I assume you took for “Guard!”, but… there are better pets.)

There are a few obvious choices that came to mind. To make anything that a few thousand other people aren’t wearing you’re going to have to mix and match things after looking at some armor galleries.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/7/7c/Gas_Mask_Skin.jpg
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/8/86/Forgeman_armor_%28medium%29_human_male_front.jpg
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/9/9f/Magitech_armor_human_male_front.jpg

Stand The Wall.6987:

theres also the fact that paladins will help you out in 1v1s a lot more, as healing powers effectiveness scales proportionately with the number of allies effected.

And that’s where we should be IMO. Someone always swaps to tempest and they can anchor the big fights better than us. We have the better mobility (on any build via staff, GS, or the “mobility” of LB range) to decap or +1. Any amulet will let you sustain in a 2v2 just because all the meta classes are literally impossible to kill in small fights… herald, scrapper, necro… it takes virtually nothing to keep your buddy alive.

Filhoduhomi.7496:

Is an option, I have a including, sad to lose time and money commitment.

I was joking, ranger has historically been ignored so badly by anet that their joke for the April Fool’s update was to not even list an update for it. Warrior has historically except for very early PvP mode been Anets golden child.

You should play ranger.

I think the biggest culprit is that nearly every WvW player I know was forced to move to PvP. Even a lot of (every???) high profile WvW streamers moved to PvP not out of want, but out of necessity.

I suspect the Alpine Borderland return will draw back a large number of roamers, but we’ll never know one way or the other.

EVOS does it every single day. IIRC it’s like noon and 3pm EST??? Been a loooong time since I ran wurm though.

This is NA, I believe there is a EU guild that does it every day as well. There are also some other PUG NA groups that play together regularly enough to sometime get the triple wurm, no guild attached.

It’s brutal and funny, but it seems like a little too subtle for most of the GW2 pop. I think they genuinely forgot us. On the other hand, the only people reading the post probably play the game a hell of a lot (and are thus on the forums at work) and got the joke. Hmm…

I wonder if that’s the best meta-joke of the post or if they genuinely forgot us…

Durzlla.6295:

I assumed it was a necro too, but i couldn’t think of a way they would apply it other than deathshroud, but they’re all reapers so they don’t have the same skill…

Ya scepter is what almost all of them are running now, it was probably that. I am pretty sure there is a way for them to get crit chance without investing in precision as well for agony sigil, but I don’t really play necro.

Durzlla.6295:

The thing is it doesn’t seem to be mesmers applying it to me, and i’m trying to figure out the source but can’t and it’s irritating the kitten out of me -_-

Necro scepter 3? 100% of all players in 100% of matches are playing necro, so I assume it’s a necro applying it to you.

WvW commanding and PvE are so diametrically opposed I don’t see any reason to not clear up 5 or 6 inventory slots. Trying to force 2 opposites goals to do the same thing is just going to make 1 mode or the other less fun for you.

I never said anything about not being able to command on a druid. I’ve followed commanders using every profession, including thief.

Yikes, for commanding I totally recall my suggestion of berserker’s. It never occurred to me you’d be doing that, especially with those weapons.

The general idea for commanding gear is as tanky as possible, doing little to zero damage (i.e. full nomad’s or whatever.) If you go down or aren’t able to stand in the right place, your zerg is doomed. It’s not compatible with PvE gear.

I totally agree with you OP.

I’d suggest berserker trinkets, especially if you want to reuse them in PvE. That also happens to be the mix I use in WvW.

Sometime I use condi trinkets, but your weapons don’t make much sense for that. There is a power/condi bleed build using warhorn and mad king runes, you could google that.

Ruby is where average players wind up capping out, but since all you do is PvP, presumably you’re above average and will blast through it with an extremely high win percent. It’s very all or nothing; until you hit where you “belong”, you’ll have an insane win percent. I wound up in mid-diamond and returned to my normal 55%ish wins, so I’ll probably not bother grinding to legendary. If I get there in time playing 2 or 3 games a day, I get there.

Yes you can stealth from smokescale.

All elite specs are a massive improvement over the core classes. I can’t tell you if that alone is worth 50 bucks to you though.

Well to be fair you just listed like 200 dollars worth of games as contrast to GW. I waste so much money buying steam “specials” that are like 5 dollar games and then I only play them for 20 minutes. I’ve played GW2 for like 4000 hours or something.

#ramble

Even considering how little anet looks at pets other than to nerf them, it’s still sort of baffling they haven’t looked at wyverns.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_S/A_LB_Spotter

Just customize it for open world, i.e. drop the spirit, take what’s comfy for you.

There are too many intangibles to rely on pure numbers like “Difference in damage of Mender and berserker is roughly 20%.” Example, if you do a quickdrawed RF twice on someone in menders, they continue doing damage to you. If you do it in berserkers, they have to respond in someone way (or you just straight up killed them, ha) preventing damage to you by you being more offensive. I.e., to switch it up from before, if your opponent is healing they’re not doing damage. Maybe you hit that sweet damage spot where they have to use an invuln, and then your teammate is able to kill them after, something you couldn’t accomplish in menders.

There are too many factors to play this out on paper. All you can do is present points, but it’s WAY too situational and complicated to make absolute sweeping statements… which is again why most people are swapping amulets based on your team and enemy team comps.

Justine.6351:

To improve the blind spam I may dump my fernhound for smokescale.

You’d need someone on your team with projectiles, smoke cloud doesn’t actually blind on it’s own (I think the PvE enemy does blind? Been a few months since I’ve been to HoT.)

LB + melee berserker (s/a or GS if you need more contol) is the best. Highest damage and LB is absurdly easy to play in PvE, especially against meta bosses.

Condi is fun but it can be annoying to get enemies in your bonfire. It’s also hard to stand in melee range all the times in HoT, as many enemies have strong anti-melee defenses. Like if you try to put a bonfire on a hylek, you’ll pretty much instantly die to their poison.

It wasn’t the plan; everything got thrown off by two unexpected cancellations. Use some common sense.

The staff is a fantastic weapon, but it doesn’t really do anything. It sort of does damage and it sort of heals and it sort of protects your allies.

I guess CA is basically part of staff, so that evens things out enough that I can’t complain. CA does stuff.

Burn.5401:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ_1sDVt_rI

Footage showing the “I deserv legent but mmr hell kitten da systm!” people.

Haha, what the hell was that? I couldn’t get through more than a couple minutes. Where did you find that?

Skullface.7293:

I don’t feel like Paladin is needed.

Isn’t that backwards? Paladin’s is the more offense-oriented amulet, which is why I take it. If you are ok to do more damage, go paladin’s, if your team lacks sustain, go menders’.

I also use 4 on-crit sigils, leeching, air, and generosity.

khani.4786:

I’m working my butt off trying to at least get to Ruby this season and all it’s doing is making me hate PvP. I’ve been stuck in T2 emerald for way too long and it’s frustrating, infuriating and above all disheartening. I’ll get up to 4 pips then lose them all. Or win a match, then lose 3 more. I don’t expect to ever get past Ruby or care to, but really does it have to be this maddening trying to get past the second tier of emerald? Not even to get through the track completely…just one tier. I didn’t like PvP much before this league thing….now I loathe doing matches to try and get out of this hellhole.

I want to finish the achievements and get the backpack but at what cost to my sanity?

This is exactly the kind of poster I’m talking about. Do you deserve to be at ruby or diamond or are you forcing your way there and getting angry because you don’t belong?

Would be a good glider skin/extra. Scratch that, amazing glider skin.

Edit: This post now makes no sense since a moderator moved this without copying the title. I was referring to the magic carpet.

Durzlla.6295:

I just slap on my Clerics and pray to god that my #2 skill in avatar state actually goes off so i can deal with condis (instead of me casting it, but no seed actually appearing like it has before). I’ve tried Menders, and i’ve tried paladin and both seemed very lacking to me, at least with how i play.

Does only 1 seed appear per “pustule pop” no matter how many you cast or something? I don’t use it that often except when I’m in the middle of 5 necros and it seems like it never works. I mostly stick to the last 3 skills.

jcbroe.4329:

My gut tells me that Paladins is more of a generalist choice,

I guess we could list:

• Surviving against power
• Surviving against condi
• Supporting Healing team
• Doing damage

Paladin’s and mender’s split that 50/50. That’s probably why 3/5 of the people who have posted in this thread mentioned swapping amulets regularly (and a 4th didn’t state one way or the other.)

They are … different. To pick one as just say “I’m using this” I think is the wrong answer, and the best answer is probably just to use what you think will be useful in this match.

Dojo.1867:

Also you all just talked about self defense but Menders actually means the survivability of your whole team goes up.

If your team doesn’t have a tempest, I agree I would definitely take menders.

But if it does (and I’d estimate close to 100% do because someone better than me at multi-classing swaps), then mender’s isn’t needed. A druid in any amulet + tempest means nothing is dying in a team fight. And a druid in any amulet plus a reasonably tanky class like rev or scrapper means nothing dies in a 2v2.

The defense on paladins makes a surprisingly big difference compared to mauraders. A thief* is a tough fight, but rev and definitely scrapper you’re better off in paladin’s IMO. I’m mostly concerned with the bigger offense than mender’s though.

*I think marauder’s is the best for fighting thieves.

The mention of videos wasn’t to teach anyone, I wondered if there were legit experienced, good players stuck in low divisions. It would be easy to tell if someone was playing at diamond level from a video, even if they made tons of mistakes. I make mistake all the time but I’m in diamond and roughly belong there, maybe legendary; we’ll see how it goes.

None of this is relevant, especially since neither of you are in ruby or below.

jcbroe.4329:

In theory, Menders could be equal to if not better than Paladins at sustaining, by instead of reducing the incoming damage, countering the incoming damage by outhealing it.

Probably, but paladin is my default for several reasons.

• Healing means you’re not doing damage; paladin’s is passive defense.
• Paladin’s has 2 major offensive stats vs 1 for mender’s and also triggers more on-crit procs.
• I use lb/staff and only hop on point if it’s crucial to the team fight (which is often, granted, but it’s not the #1 choice for where I am.) So sustain is less important than damage. And this combos with
• Lb/staff damage is not that exciting, and we come with sustain whether we want it or not.

If your goal is to stand on point, I’d probably go with mender’s (or maybe clerics, I haven’t thought about it that much.)

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Let’s ignore ruby? This is where MMR hell IS because you can grind it before that and will be the nexus of new players pairing with low/average experienced players.

Ok fair enough. Is anyone reading this at above a 50% win rate over the course of a few thousand games stuck on a massive losing streak in Ruby, and do you feel you belong in diamond/legendary?

Paladin’s is default, I use mender’s when the enemy condi users are 4 or 5 (VERY common), and marauder’s or even berserker’s if I’m against something like 2 druids and a tempest.

Adjusting for my own comp as well, of course.