Guild Wars 2

What do you mean the problem. There are several problems with loot.

Inventory Wars 2, Container Wars 2, Sigil Wars 2, and you can probably name 10 more you’ve heard recently.

shadowpass.4236:

Cancel your knockback to bait dodges until you actually want to burst or create a gap.

Use stealth to reposition or juke enemies as often as possible. Personally, I don’t really use it for offensive purposes.

Rapid fire to bait dodges or burst damage with quickness from pet swaps.

Auto attack from range to bait dodges and do decent poke damage.

Barrage rarely. You will be revealed if an enemy steps into the arrows while you are in stealth. I mainly use it after knocking an enemy back to cripple while they try to close the gap. Also, cast it on yourself to discourage thieves from attack from stealth.

Not sure what this has to do with builds, but this is solid advice for how to play LB.

Anyone playing magi in open world is going to quit the franchise in 4 minutes.

Fashion you need some basic PvE advice. For HoT, take 1 stun break, take 1 condi clear, and as much damage as possible. If kitten goes wrong, use CA and skill 4 to heal enough to not die. If you are really struggling take Signet of Stone to buy you enough time to kill an entire mob. If a mob is particularly hard use tiger (or another cat) and longbow to kill them while you maintain 100% health.

Edit: Don’t use staff in open world unless you want to move fast. It’s one of the lowest damage weapons in the entire game and no one wants your healing. Everyone is in pure damage gear and effortlessly killing all the weak mobs, your help is not needed.

Well not sure why you made a second topic, but:

Fluffball.8307:

Based on your criteria, anything will work, and it seems like you’ve realized that as well.

Make 4 (or however many slots you have) of the professions you enjoy and maybe eventually one will settle as your main. My main changed several times before I found ranger and stuck with it for years.

Krispera.5087:

lol Justine.

More seriously tho, Staff 2 and 4 need to be looked at. So boring. 4 is just terrible.

I actually really like 2 and 4. 2 Is great for circle kiting on a tiny PvP point or when your thief/warrior/scrapper buddy is on someone, and 4 is a nice soft CC cleanse. Also nailing someone with 4 right after they cleanse ancient seeds is just so satisfying.

Color coding things in game is a terrible idea that they keep using. 1 in 12 of their players can’t tell the colors apart. I’m just guessing at what half the effects are in the game and hope I’m right.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

it’s rather sad that it’s gotten such little attention

There isn’t much to discuss. Yes, items give you bonus XP. The end.

Might try http://www.gw2wvw.net.

I don’t go there so dunno how much luck you’ll have, but I believe it’s at least active.

Someone had some wine with dinner.

Pvt Frosty.6973:

I think a big issue here is the fact that many necros play a build that is unsuitable for 1v1s. Shout necro for example can play can 1v1 very well, vs druids and engis alike. It’s even the best class to Tank out a thief gank in such a case. Druids should still win the matchup, but many don’t.

The main shutdown to a necro is the danger of the chrono moa.

Agreed in concept and thank you for validating my hideous excuse for playing a shout necro in ranked where I went something like 0 for 20.

RedCobra.7693:

Necro still beats ranger 1v1.

I don’t have high level (or even medium level) experience with every profession, but I’m pretty sure necro is unfavored in every single 1v1 in the game. Even their old hard counter of engis will kill them now.

The idea that necros can survive based purely on health pool has gotten kind of silly when most build are pooping out invulns, dodges, evades, blocks, ludicrous amounts of healing that isn’t a 6 skill, stealth, interrupts, stability, etc. etc. Most of which the necro has 0 or very little of.

Not that reapers got left behind, they’re just… different.

You’re just describing a normal condi druid. His exact build is pretty unimportant, any condi class can go super tanky. And in the case of condi druid, super tanky with little pressure.

I Imagine he had the warhorn mostly for added pet pressure.

Nearly perma regen, switfness, and prot comes from shouts.

Are you opposed to shortbow? Or only want to use LB? SB is a condi bow.

Either way, you don’t want to go with 4 traps. At a bare minimum I’d slot SoR for a stun breaker and condi clear more than CA.

The benefit of the extended mats storage is that a ton of recipes will take 250 of something, and then unless you’re using bank slots, you’re totally out of the material. Kind of a pain when you need 250 X for a recipe, and then you also need to use X to craft the actual weapon.

Also I used to overflow mats on random things all the time, so it was a QoL for me. You don’t necessarily want 0 large bones, so you’d have to split the stack and try to guesstimate what a good number to sell is based on drop rate.

As a ranger main since nearly launch I don’t understand that. Your pet will attack or recall as you want it, and you can use that to pull it out of AoE which is of extremely minimal concern in small scale.

I’m not sure what else I expect from the AI but to obey, and it does.

There are some really awful F2 pet abilities, but that’s nor relevant because you’re not stupid and using those pets.

Chrono is unquestionably the best of the ones you listed, but all 3 of them are mediocre to subpar for roaming.

Look at power druid/power ranger, or power berserker. Those can run some godly/obnoxious power builds.

Puck.9612:

your build should be self sufficient enough that you shouldn’t be getting locked down unless the whole enemy zerg turns to focus and blow a bunch of cooldowns on you. In which case you just provided a nice opening for your own zerg to hit them.

That’s why it works so well. Commanders are in a lose/lose situation when gankers are picking off their zerg. Turn the whole zerg around and you lose initiative and positioning, waste time, almost inevitably waste cooldowns, don’t get the said ganker if he’s halfway competent, and then lose about 5 people chasing him across the map.

On the other hand, do nothing, and your necros get obliterated 1 by 1 and then your eles and then so on.

Only thing that works is to have a fleet of your own gankers circling the zerg. Thus: Completely incompetent commanders berate thieves and rangers into quitting and just solo roaming, while competent commanders organize boons and ask allied gankers to patrol the outskirts of the zerg.

Edit: Which is ironically the GvG meta from the glorydays from like 4 years ago, but apparently commanders forget quickly.

Odinens.5920:

This is exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t rude about it, and he explained why. Was just saying that’s probably why there are so many roaming. They aren’t needed in the main tag’s squad.

I guess you could consider that roaming. Nothing gets me more badges than following an enemy zerg. The commander and his core group of guildies or whatever run in a relatively tight formation and do not care what happens behind them, being only focused on maneuvering around the enemy zerg. Then the other 3/4 of the squad fall slightly behind and me and 6 or so other people just pick them off one by one.

Never fall off the zerg boat, it’s ranger and thief infested waters.

Ironically if this situation arises, it’s the thieves and rangers that are responsible for the enemy zerg breaking, and the core friendly zerg of heavies does very little decisive combat until enough people have been picked off.

Odinens.5920:

Was following a commander last night that asked all the rangers and thieves in the squad to please leave the squad, and follow the main zerg from the edges.

There is a massive thread about why this is. The commander was likely not being rude, but just distributing boons properly across the ranks. Ganking rangers and thieves don’t need the ally support that frontliners do (party healing, stability, resistance, protection, etc.)

Thieves and rangers are still valued by commanders (some anyway, some are just ignorant) but they don’t need to be in the squad.

If you haven’t already, use some gold or achievement gems to get the expanded storage. Even the first level makes a HUGE difference. After that, fill everything up with the refined versions as well as the regular (i.e. 750 ori ingots + 750 raw ori.)

That will get you enough mats to do most things you want, like legendaries or ascended armor and so on. You’d be surprised how many mats of all levels you need for high-end stuff.

Since we lack stability, I would take as many stun breakers as possible. And since I also try to take as much condi removal as possible, I always take DC.

Puck.9612:

Thieves and rangers are 2 of the best roaming professions.
If you’re in one of those guilds that raids outside of na prime you will be running into a bunch of roamers that showed up to help defend something. These people likely plan on going back to roaming after they help defend so they don’t want to bother swapping characters.

This is how I wind up in large scale fights as a druid. If an impromptu zerg forms to defend a keep, I generally switch to tankier armor and wind up as a bit of an anchor in the fight, since only lunatics roam on revs and guardians.

Or the more fun scenario, 15 thieves and glass rangers show up to defend and we guerrilla warfare the offending zerg to death. There is something just beautiful about roamers interacting with each other with no communication, just from experience in small scale fights and PvP. Thieves tend to latch on to my pointblack shot targets without even touching their keyboards, it just happens from the universe doing it.

You get a “free” ascended backpiece like once a week if you farm berries.

Or just get the pvp legendary and change your stats every 4 seconds. Even the worst player ever can get it; it’s just a time commitment of 3 games a day until you’re done.

Amaimon.7823:

AliamRationem.5172:

Amaimon.7823:

Warrior are indirectly tanky, by a big healthpool and good mobility.
Necromancers have a second healthbar.

I know eles are like skritts when it comes to being tanky, toughness builds with earthen cantrip and any class can still tick of half your health with a single autoattack.

That’s incorrect. Water/Earth/Tempest with a tanky stat set (e.g. celestial) can face tank champions all day long and solo just about anything.

Maybe in pve, but the sturdyness of the ele is practically nonexistant in pvp

Someone doesn’t play pvp, eles have been staple team bunkers for years.

Well to save face and present an idea: commander stats.

You can change it anytime you want. Pick appropriate stats for whatever build you’re currently using.

Edit: Whoops, thought you were talking about the legendary, which you didn’t mention. I’m an idiot.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

This is a big part of why I don’t roam as much as I used to nor do I take losing as seriously as I used to.

I don’t know about everyone else but personally, I do not enjoy losing because of mechanics. I appreciate/recognize when someone is better than me or when I’ve made crucial mistakes but those kinds of fights are getting fewer and further between. Both with the people I fight and with myself as well, there are just so many times where either I win and I shouldn’t have or my opponent wins and they shouldn’t have because of mechanics.

And it works the reverse way too. I rarely feel like I’ve beaten someone, I just made a build that works and they die without me doing anything. It’s pretty hollow compared to when I used to roam on a core LB ranger before RF had its speed double, the arrows could be avoided by sidestepping, and signets only affected the pet.

And then there is the normal example that you can literally park your warrior afk in a starter zone where an event spawns and just let healing signet make it impossible for 20 bandits to kill you (as they attack once per 5 seconds). I once saw an event stall because all the event enemies were stuck trying to kill an afk warrior and never got to the actual spot where they were supposed to go.

I’m just talking in generalities.

Small scale reaper gets annihilated IMO. I view them as free bags. They have no invulns, no blocks, no stealth, no evades, barely any stun breakers, their condi clear is amazing but really situational… they’re easy kills.

It’s almost QoL more than a buff. It used to be a movement skill and now it isn’t. Super annoying.

You are leaving out guardian. It’s a fun and engaging tanky. Warrior and necro are just afk tanky. You might also consider ranger. It’s extremely durable and gets ludicrously durable with the druid elite spec. Can be very fun to melee with.

It doesn’t need any buffs for sure, but it didn’t need the nerf either. Just annoying.

10k gold isn’t THAT much. The average account value on gw2effeciency is like 22k, (which admittedly includes skins, but some people are going to have way more than the average.) We just usually spend it before we can hoard that much. If I hadn’t gradually blow tons of gold on 4 legendaries I’d have well over 10k.

Edit: I just looked at my liquid gold amount and it’s nearly 4k. I bet most people are similar, we hoard tons of mats or whatever.

Always have auto off in PvP IMO. Confusion hurts and it’s constant.

Also just use the regular metabattle.com build as a base.

bearshaman.3421:

Interesting. I didn’t really think of weapons as being more for a particular game type. I would be curious to hear more about what weapons are more for different game types, but don’t want to hijack the thread. PM me?

It’s a valid point for the thread, since truly hybrid axe wouldn’t be that important for PvE (who cares about power even though you’re on “hybrid” viper stats? It just ups the DPS a tick.)

The answer to your query is really obvious if you’ve done any competitive. Any weapon that has things like evades, heavy CC, self sustain, heavy support, etc.

If you’re a PvEr and have ever found a weapon useless, it’s almost certainly a competitive weapon. All 4 classes’ shield, mesmer torch, thief short bow, etc. etc.

xerokitsune.5094:

Touching a tower or keep normally nets me a death by zerg withen a minute or three.

Re-read Justine’s response. Event credit in WvW lasts like… indefinitely?

Also just put up the siege and try. If a zerg comes, leave. If nothing else you wasted 50 people’s time taking out a single regular catapult.

A lot of people view roaming as just running around dueling people or ganking newbies, and that doesn’t get you any ranks.

I am a pretty casual roamer and am several times higher rank than you. I take camps and will ninja towers and keeps while zergs are busy. I defend against ninjas and get defense credit. I scout or cut off reinforcements for commanders and get credit for their keep captures.

That’s what I view of as roaming, an I get ranks from it.

bearshaman.3421:

Fluffball.8307:

bearshaman.3421:

Dagger also seems like an unwanted outlier, I never see anyone use it, just cuz torch is so good.

Dagger has been in the PvP meta since launch.

Wouldn’t know that, sorry. I don’t pvp. Kinda thought this was a pve convo, given that it was about axe.

Well the OP mentioned all 3 modes, and the change that inspired the thread was only for PvP. Also axe has had its fair share of the PvP and WvW metas.

At any rate, dagger doesn’t need to be useful in PvE in the same way warrior hammer doesn’t need to be useful there. Most professions have some PvP specific weapons.

(Although once upon a time dagger was used for Lupi solos.)

Every profession on every build takes about the same skill. Thief is sort of an outlier because it’s either a disaster or a godsend (in PvP).

Everything is mostly about knowing when to dodge/interrupt/where to go, etc., in all game modes, i.e. not profession-dependent.

bearshaman.3421:

Dagger also seems like an unwanted outlier, I never see anyone use it, just cuz torch is so good.

Dagger has been in the PvP meta since launch.

Parlance.9584:

Im surprised about how many Rangers go LB/GS or any power build really.
I’ve tried it out and it falls behind in every situation compared to using a condition build.

He said open world and dungeons, where power does better than condi. Condis won’t have time to tick on open world meta enemies or dungeon bosses.

Also LB makes all of open world relaxing like driving a Caddy… can effortlessly solo all but like 2 HoT HPs.

PvE – Not applicable
WvW – very low skillcap
PvP – highest possible skillcap

Open world, no profession is very complicated. In fact almost every enemy you can just stand in front of an autoattack to death with no skills or dodging. In WvW, most thieves just run around aimlessly trying to gank newbies with a preset combo. and run away if they don’t succeed immediately.

For PvP, thief is a gamechanger and the highest skill cap IMO. Most thieves in PvP are the reason a team loses, and a good thief just blows the game wide open.

I was actually thinking, this update makes me want to run staff + a/d on a menders druid in PvP. Axe gets you some mild might, weakness, chill, and a reasonable ranged autotattack, plus the new power damage on 2 and 3 skills.

That’s a very reasonable matchup to the movement, evade and poison on sword.

At various points in balance patches, axe has actually been more power damaging than swords, depending on the bounces and might stacks. Also when cele was a thing and before druid came out, I used axe as a hybrid weapon in PvP.

For a while Rom was using mainhand axe on druid for the weakness. I can’t remember if that was before or after cele was removed.

The buff isn’t going to hurt anything even if you don’t want to use it.

It might not be a bad buff for some sort of tanky zerg druid using offhand warhorn. I don’t know, I’m not into zerg builds very much.

Whichever artist created Kasmeer needs a raise. A perverted raise.

I feel like every time I go to the bathroom someone is confirmation biasing me as an afk leecher.

If you think those chests are rewarding, try PvP or WvW or fractals or raiding.

It should not be a grind to level. Dungeons are not a grind, just do any and you will level up substantially. Playing content once is not a grind….?

Also you can do anything and level up. Just run around getting vistas or etc. Killing enemies is the literal worst possible way to level.

Soriki.5934:

Should I delete my characters and start over by leveling up a character to 80 and then proceeding to making alts with different crafting jobs and such?

No. Keep everything you have. It’s not important what crafting profession each character has, the only concern with crafting is which character you want to have ascended weapons or armor. If you need a ranger with ascended weapons, you’ll want to level weaponsmith and huntsman for example, on ANY character. Ascended gear can be passed around to any of your characters.

Goal 1, movement) Thief is the fastest followed very closely by druid and warrior.

Goal 2, gems) Get unlimited gathering tools and a copper fed salvage-o-matic.

Goal 3, WvW) Ideally find a reputable WvW guild. Otherwise check out metabattle.com for WvW builds, get on your servers teamspeak, and just learn via experience. Fighting other humans is always going to be hard.

Where you can learn about the game? Metabattle.com for builds, dulfy.net for PvE guides, and of course the wiki for general info. You can access the wiki in game by typing /wiki _. Like, “/wiki conditions” will tell you everything you need to know about conditions.

EnderzShadow.2506:

Alright Fluff and Pvt—- How goes it in ranked?
Any changes you’ve made to the builds you list?

I think you used the wrong name, I’ve been mostly WvWing lately and have only been absorbing the thread.