I agree you definitely need a utility stun break.
I am like you and prefer the wolf over smokescale, but in your build you could go either way. The wolf is usually better in team fights, and the smokescale is better in 1v1s.
Except in two cases where it’s opposite: I use the wolf because it makes getting 1v1 decaps or even full caps easier, but your build obviously isn’t focused on that. And smokescale can be better in team fights if you’re playing at a really high MMR and solo Q randoms know what to do when they see a smoke field.
I am not interested in this video and did not watch more than about a second at a time, but I did find the choice of builds he fought very suspicious. Core warrior? Trap DH? 100% glass chrono?
You either making a bragging video against weak specs or you make a video where you sustain for like 45 minutes against the same guy because both of you are running dueling specs. Bah humbug.
You can run from one end of any map to other in like 5 minutes. I think there is a pet finding guide on this forum, although I haven’t looked at it. Just run to the location.
An hour is more than enough time. Just run to the location and ignore enemies. You may want to google a map since the first time you run through the HoT maps you will probably get lost.
Sure, but don’t you hate being segregated to a certain type of Rune?
I could be wrong but I always through runes and sigils are used to tune the class. Depending on the type of Druid you are running wouldn’t you like the option to run Runes of the Grove, Druid, Durability, or any other for that matter in sPvP or WvW?
You do tweak with runes and sigils. With your druid example, you could run the typical glyph/clarity build and have excellent condi clear, or you could run a hybrid glyph/survival build, you could run a clarity/surival build, you could take shouts and trooper runes, you could take generosity and Lyssa runes, you could go full signet druid (??) and take EB…
Ranger, even before druid, had more condi clear than any other profession. The major complaint was that both of our grandmaster traits were in the same line. Now we have 2 trait lines with huge condi removal, plus quite a few skills, several runes, a couple sigils, and a pet. It’s not hard to find condi removal anymore.
The argument for keeping EB in the game is that it opens up condi removal for non-druid, non survival skill builds. I’m fine with that. Viable for competitive PvP? Not right now of course, but I’m sure it sees plenty of use in dueling builds or WvW roamers, etc. Places where you can be more creative.
Another thing to be aware of if you plan on using it is that quoting anything from Romeo and Juliet makes you sound like a 13 year old drama student.
I gotta be honest, with druid out I don’t mind EB where it is. I think condi removal is in an outstanding place and we have quite a lot of options. Especially with the new shouts and soldier/trooper runes.
A lot has changed since the days of EB being our only condi cleanse on the entire class!
Wyverns have broken (via bad design) animations that make them unable to hit a moving target nearly at all.
If you want a tanky pet, take a drake or smokscale instead of bear. However a canine is plenty tanky, as is the DPS-focused bristleback.
Between HaO, RaO, and traits you very rarely find yourself without swiftness and regen anyway. If there any teammates around, it’s pretty much a given you have those boons. I’m not going to worry about it.
For solo roaming in WvW, the new guard is definitely a more effective skill than the old perma regen build. Now you get perma regen plus damage reduction.
More important, why would anyone like the old guard?
It’s going to take people a little while to realize you can’t use guard anywhere and expect to get good results. Use it in a 5v5 at the start of the game and your pet is clearly going to die. On the other hand, a 2v2 when the enemies come via a stealth gyro, maybe that saves your point. I can definitely see uses, although I’m not sure I’ll be taking it regularly.
Edit: I mused in another thread about combining guard and SoS. It feels like way too much to get it to work, but I wonder if that gets you mid at the start in this post-bunker meta. Probably not, but it’s something to try.
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I haven’t tried any PvP yet, but I think guard will be a pet explosion button without SoS, so people may try some weird builds like that. Is there anyway to force a bear to use it’s invulnerability? Will it automatically when it starts taking huge damage from guard?
First of all, not all CCs affect the breakbar the same. The “harder” the CC, the more it breaks it. So the chill on your axe does practically nothing, but a daze will do full “damage” to the breakbar. With that said, the immob on your drakehound is substantially worse than the fear on a wolf or daze on a moa in a 1-shot scenario, and that’s usually how bosses work. You get 1 chance to break it, and then a big time where you aren’t able to break it. The non-CC pet you probably want pure damage, so look at bristleback or a lynx.
Onto ranger: Axe/Warhorn is one of the worst possible switch weapons for a power ranger because axe is primarily a condi weapon and doesn’t really add anything your build anyway. That’s fine if you don’t care. I recommend trying greatsword (easy to use) or sword/axe (needs quite a bit of practice to use in the jungle). If you hate them, well you tried.
Rangers that don’t switch from LB are either lazy or bad. A lot of people play ranger because it’s incredibly easy to solo in the jungle by just hiding behind your pet and going AFK.
Your traits sound reasonable. Most people take skirmishing for quick draw, which is a colossal damage increase for any build. If you want that, drop NM. Spotter is also in that line, and is one of the best group damage modifiers in the game.
Eh, honestly, I think that’s more of the meta than matchmaking. First team to win the big teamfights usually wins by a good margin.
I half agree. I don’t think it matters what the meta is, if you lose members in the opening fight, there is little chance of a PUG reorganizing themselves and not just stagger-feeding themselves to the other team. Bunkers or DPS, you’re going to lose a 5v3 with two people on respawn at all times.
As I’ve been leveling I can see why. I’ve noticed a lack of aoe attacks. I run Sword/Axe and Longbow.
Couple small things: Axe 4 will pull (up to) 3 enemies and your sword auto conveniently cleaves 3 enemies. And there is also a final tier trait that allows all LB skills to pierce. You probably haven’t unlocked it yet but when you do it will really speed up PvE.
Staff for a ’’healing’’ weapon is better than SB, an offensive weapon.
We’re saying the same thing. Staff is a better weapon but it’s dishonest to suggest you can max your staff damage higher than SB. They simply can’t be compared like that.
You don’t see them use SB or LB either.
It’s been a subject of esoteric debate, but LB is either part of our highest PvE damge builds or one of the highest.
The AA nearly outdamages the LB AA without any amulet, but with precision it might be even better than the LB. Havent tested it yet in comparison with the SB.
This isn’t fair. People keep comparing SB-from-front and LB autoattack to staff autoattack, and then forgetting that the bows are at least partially offensive weapons and staff is a healing weapon. LB2 does a lot more damage than staff 2, to put it mildly.
You don’t see any DPS comps in PvE running staff.
Staff is a great weapon and you can win fights with it. I wouldn’t be offended if you said it was our best weapon. But without checking the wikie I suspect it’s the worst damaging weapon across all 9 professions (shields and whatnot aside.)
The daze doesnt double with ancient seeds, you need the marksmanship traitline for it, which is basically kitteneless traitline for shortbow.
I didn’t mean the duration doubles, I meant it “doubles as” a proc for ancient seeds. You’re thinking of Moment of Clarity.
Furthermore, the staff is overall a much more valuable weapon than the shortbow in PvP.
I totally agree, but that wasn’t relevant to the conversation about staff putting out equivalent condi damage. Staff puts out atrocious, unacceptable damage on any gear set, but it’s still a good weapon. SB puts out a ton of damage when used properly, and is probably our worst weapon.
I’m not sure how relevant that is though. Both have high rates of autoattack which is the only thing we’re talking about here, since we’re ignoring that SB does a lot more damage when using all the skills available. Especially since you’re going to flank via your build if you really want to take it.
When you consider the offhand is open to whatever you want, I think axe compares pretty favorably to the mesmer staff. Edit: They both actually are “profession mechanic” weapons if you think about it.
Both have a weird AoE ranged attack that gives boons and does okish damage (via pet and slightly increased condi ticks in ranger’s case), and then utility and bigger damage on other skills. With axe you get big damage from 2 and presumably 4 and 5, or they can be more defensive with offhand dagger.
I think people get too hung up on the low power damage of the auto. Stick earth and agony on it or something, and then use the other 4 skills and your bristleback F2. There is a reason it’s been a popular/meta weapon for over 3 years. (Well, 2, in that we don’t really have great condi weapon choices.)
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SB has several offensive advantages over staff. The high projectile rate is basically a 20% chance to proc burning on auto. It puts out some significant poison. With positioning, the condi damage blows staff totally out of the water. The cripple attack puts more bleed on your bristleback. And finally the daze (which doubles with ancient seeds.) SB is not good, but it’s dramatically more offensive than staff.
It’s hard to compare SB and staff because they don’t have the same purpose.
Pretty much the only time I see SB used in WvW is on a trapper build, shooting through the flame trap or bonfire to increase burning. With a decent crit chance, SB procs a lot of bleeding as well between sharpened edges and sigil of earth.
1v1, spike trap, entangle, and stealth help you get behind your target as well.
How much does a character slot cost with in-game money (not gems, or converted to gems)? Is it a price that you actually can afford then at lvl 80?
The conversion rate varies based on the market, but I used gold to buy character slots for all 8 core professions. It’s cheap for a regular player. It’s not cheap for a beginner.
You can unlock 100% of an elite spec in PvE in a matter of like… 10-15 minutes. There are a ton of just “commune here” places that give you 10 points each. I unlocked it on all 9 of my characters. I bet you could find a guide with google.
Warrior is widely regarded as one of the simpler, more straight forward, and frankly boring professions. It’s also one of if not the most played professions. I’d also argue warrior and guardian play sort of similar. Both are heavy armor front line types, while the others you listed are more unique.
You’re able to buy additional character slots with in-game gold if that influences you. It’s a massive sum for a new player, but if you get into the game you’ll be able to buy them whenever you want to save up for a bit.
I think someone reported me for hacking today because I quickly killed him in druid vs druid. I couldn’t quite follow the situation or what he was in disbelief about… maybe my use of an offensive amulet?
I assumed he didn’t have HoT, although maybe he owns it and just doesn’t want to play it.
If thieves are going to be as scary as anet made them out to be (and they showed a 4k autoattack on the heavy golem), toughness or just pure glass will be all you can run .
Don’t get your hopes up, kid.
It’s not polite to refer to people as “kid”, particularly when they’re likely twice your age. The more you know…
With so much armor/healing and condi removal, my survivebility was as good as ever. Lysaa is actually great with builds that uses crusader but dont go for remorseless as it probably the best precision rune.
It was mostly that I was using Lyssa runes in place of druidic clarity, like we talked about in another thread. Once I gave up on primal echoes — it still works and is very fun, I just felt not as strong as DC — I didn’t need so much condi removal. Warrior runes are just an experiment, but I like what they give me. Everything they add fits very nicely with what I’m doing, which I can’t say about every rune (even Lyssa has that random 5% boon duration.)
We saw 100% of the changes, trust me.
They specifically said it was not all the changes, and previews are never finalized.
Every profession does damage and supports their team, so just try them out and see which of the 9 you prefer playing. You are automatically level 80 if you enter the PvP lobby so you can test out skills on the test golems.
Wait for the patch to be finalized. We saw a preview.
I’ve been screwing around with crusaders, warrior runes, and quickdraw. They compliment each other well. I was using Lyssa for the precision and condi clear to use primal echoes, but even though I prefer that setup, I just felt too hampered without druidic clarity. Also Lyssa without cele leaves your health dangerously low.
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I like the nuance in the new PM. If you get taunted, you can’t complain because you did it to yourself. But even if the opponent doesn’t get themselves taunted you still basically get the effect of the old PM (no damage).
Ok, definetly full sinister then, similar traits to the metabattle. Cats are the best PvE DPS.
Unfortunately SB is our crappiest weapon, but it’s more than adequate for open world. If you have quickdraw, bonfire is your best source of damage, and you can shoot projectiles through it for more burning. I’d take flame trap and signet of the hunt in place of the spirits.
BTW, full zerk LB + GS is very quick for open world. GS helps with movement, and rapid fire plus maul will melt even vets to the point you never even stop running forward.
Do you want the best build, or a short bow build? And do you want the best possible SB build? Because literally anything will work for exploring open world core Tyria, so take what you find fun.
Best possible core-game SB build is probably full sinister gear with axe/torch. Check out this build for an idea, and ditch the spirits for solo play.
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stuff
You had the better comp, dude.
it’s bearable.
Actually, and this is totally off topic, you should be able to easily get all 8 off. For simplicity’s sake, let’s make this a turret engi, so there is no downtime swapping kits, just slam down the 6-0 keys all at the same time. The BoB can be cast premptively, and then you only worry about dodging and blasting shield. I imagine you could do the whole sequence in 1 second or less.
(it can explode up to (5?) times in it’s water zone
Every single utility has access to a blast finisher, plus the shield, Big ol’ Bomb, and the trait that gives blast finishers on dodge. So I think it’s 8 unless I’m missing something. And knowing engi, I am missing something.
Aside from piercing arrows, quick draw in skirmishing is the most important trait for LB (or any weapon for that matter.) When I run LB, I usually use druid/BM/skirmishing.
I don’t really care about flavor of the month. Who’s to say reapers wont get nerfed and rangers won’t get buffed? I just want to pick a do all class that I’ll like.
I don’t think I got my point across very well, but this is basically what I was trying to get at. Don’t worry too much about who heals or who can survive or who does damage, etc., because GW2 allows all professions to do everything (+/-).
Play a profession, and if it’s enjoyable, continue playing. Also make as many professions as you can fit in your character slots. Your preference will change over time.
For example I started with a thief main because I loved the evasive, acrobatic melee style. Liking melee, I also gave warrior a try. I grew to like using the rifle in WvW, but found the melee style of warrior very dull. I finally settled on ranger once I realized it was basically the combo of these two things I had discovered I like in other professions.
I don’t have a problem with damage on the autoattack, what worries me are things like fear, slow, burning, etc. on autoattack. Necro scepter already has a very good autoattack, so it may become meta to do nothing but hit 1.
- We have too many players who have vendettas against certain classes and spout non-sense at every turn trying to get their class buffed and their hated classes nerfed.
Words of wisdom.
PvP in every single game I’ve ever played attracted immature and hostile players. I have no idea why, I’d love to see some actual psych articles on it or something. I remember reading one about how people who rage in games are powerless in real life or something like that.
It seems to get stuck on a regular basis. Did you ever get into a game? If you’re still waiting, try relogging.
I don’t believe his story. Getting to ruby in two days is an excessive amount of playtime, especially considering he would have lost most of the early games.
Edit: Actually style’s guess that he was in a party makes a lot of sense.