Guild Wars 2

Condi thieves are a troll build. Just leave.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgUBqAKoA6g~

Everything you said is true, but it’s something to think about when playing new builds. If you want to use any of the options I listed because they fit your build/playstyle (for example double melee plays really well with HS), and then decide you want SotF just by default, you could actually wind up with too much condi removal. And then it gets even more complicated if you have friends you play PvP or WvW with.

There is a sweet spot for condi removal, and maybe you can reach it by just taking a sigil of cleansing instead taking 6 trait points away from something important to your build.

I’d rather have a spirit ranger on my PvP team than a banner warrior or MM necro. Spirits are lame, but they’re still effective.

I was annoyed with our traited condi removal for 3 years, and then I finally decided to try out builds that intentionally ignored those traits. We actually have some really decent options, and my current WvW build works phenomenally (in small scale scenarios) without the 2 big traits.

We have the signet, HS, the bear (hey, it’s a legit option if you need condi removal badly enough), the spirit, food, runes (lyssa, etc.), healing to an extent (regen is specifically in the game to counter degen from condis), and sigils (these are outstanding!)

I think the ranger community has intentionally crippled pun intended ourselves with thinking the traits are the only way to get condi removal. Yes you need a lot of condi removal, newbie LB rangers, but it doesn’t necessarily have to come from traits.

Fun news: These aren’t HoT changes, they’re coming to everyone before the expansion is released.

I think you can still see further on tall characters, which would be useful in WvW. Useful might be the wrong word for the amount of benefit.

I’m not sure if the camera changes made all characters have the same max camera height though?

Now that the signets affect rangers, they’re way more powerful activated than passive. So it’s sort of irrelevant that they’re signets.

You can make just about any traits work if you fit them to your playstyle (I assume we’re talking WvW, here?)

You can’t make nomad’s work. Not unless you’re a commander.

The devs are very aware of why people don’t like spirits, but for your clarification:

• At the moment, you have to invest all your traits in to them to get them to be any good. And if you stick all your traits into them, you need to take at least two for it to be worth the investment. That’s already being changed with the upcoming trait revamp.

• Incredibly boring playstyle, both to play with and to play against. AI spam in this game is horrible. That’s being fixed a bit with the trait revamp by having them be stationary.

• Speaking of stationary, warrior banners can’t be killed and have 100% effectiveness with better effects. Spirits can be killed, have random procs, and have crappy effects. Supposedly all of this is being addressed with the trait revamp, but we haven’t seen any examples yet.

It’s been brought up a bunch, but I’m happy to call more attention to this bad design decision.

I agree with most that temple is the best.

Then forest and legacy, and then the others are all pretty even.

When we did the ranger forum King of the Hill tourney, many duels ended after several downs. I don’t know if using your pets is a giant mystery to most or what, but real rangers will use them.

I didn’t even look at your build. You’re talking about the meta thief build, panic strike.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_Dagger/Pistol

If you’re like me, you don’t like to end on a losing streak, and will play until you end on a win. There has been plenty of research done that shows that people have a favorable view of an experience if it ends on a high note. For example if your plane is announced to be delayed 2 hours, and at hour 1:30 they announce you’re leaving and everyone get’s free cookies, the airline is rated as having done a good job.

After I lose three in a row and get teamed up with multiple thieves of mesmers, this idea crosses my mind. Is Anet trying to force me to play more guaranteed losses so I’ll play more PvP?

I don’t think so, but it crosses my mind. Thieves and mesmers…. thieves and mesmers…..

Edit: Just got teamed up with 3 thieves and a mesmer. I raged quit. Not doing this anymore.

I agree, it’s a very poorly considered trait allocation they’ve got going on. I think/hope enough experienced rangers have pointed out they’re slaughtering build diversity that this will change even by the time druid is revealed.

I honestly think anet is trying to kill EB as a skill but leave it there for newbies. It’s like “either be lazy and have this crappy condi removal, or be active and have a super buffed condi removal.”

No I get it, I think the survival skills in general are better than the skills I’m using for group play, not even a question. Except SoR, RaO and my signets are 100% selfish. I sort of embraced that selfishness and made what I’m more and more considering an outstanding solo roaming build. I’m getting more kills than survival condi or glass LB.

I’m in no rush for druid. I’m much more curious about the ones we haven’t had a single hint about yet, like warrior and thief.

I’m actually not sure if reflecting counts as a block. My first thought was “no”, but I looked up “block” on the wiki and it lists axe 5. If I’m in game later tonight I’ll head out with an axe to double check. I wanted to see if I can double CC with ~.5 second use of axe 5 on a PBS and then axe 4 anyway.

Edit: Axe 5 doesn’t trigger any of the benefits.

I didn’t inspire your build, you’ve been playing stuff like that for years!

I’ve seen most of your videos before, but watching this with a new perspective highlights the completely different circumstances we play in. It looked totally alien to me. :-O

Two of the biggest factors in my roaming build are the culmination of regen (SotW, regen, NB, food, and NH) and the eagle’s fast F2 attacks with RaO up. Did you try either of those? I’m kind of curious how well the pet holds up with the full regen in a larger-scale roaming situation. I’ve hooked up with a few small scale zergs (like 15ish people) and attacked enemy backlines during clashes like I was a thief, but that’s not a lot different than my normal 1v1/3s.

Look at signet of renewal for condi-heavy dungeons. For example the first dredge boss fight in P2 (I think, it’s been a year or so since I’ve run dungeons) stacks near max bleeds on the entire party. You could take it for individual fights even.

As has been mentioned, signet of stone is pretty good in some places. The CoF path 2 assassin part you don’t really need your normal skills, and it’s a very sustain-y type fight, so if your party lacks protection that’s the time to use it.

You can use warhorn situationally as well. Keep your axe for when you like to reflect, and take the WH for if you know you’re going to need that little extra heal.

If I remember right, they intended combat speed to be the default speed setting, but players said it was too slow when walking around, like from waypoint to waypoint. So now we have out-of-combat.

Despite having a twilight skin, I use a ceremonial scimitar skin on my guardian. Looks so friggen cool. I just use the twilight because it matches my ranger’s color scheme.

SotH does give you a speed boost even in combat, it’s just offset by the movement penalty. Without SotH you run even slower.

I know this is the most basic advice possible, but them running around with the shield up telegraphs them about to teleport and CC lock + explosion someone, and most zerk builds are toast without a strong reaction or prevention.

Just covering the basics here, sorry if you were already avoiding that.

eldenbri.1059:

How do you think this build does against a condi trapper? I get that the bird has a ton of healing, but since I’ve been playing trapper, I’ve never seen any healing that keeps up.

Ya that’s a bad matchup, but that’s also a bad matchup for every profession. I’ve only run in to a hanful of condi rangers, but I’ve lost to about 50% or more. The bird does fine, but it’s just a long drawn out fight of me slowly getting whittled down, and condi rangers have more sustain than any build out of any profession. On the other hand, I could have easily outrun any of them, I choose to stay. That’s one of the reason I prefer this over the cele condi ranger I play in PvP, I just can’t catch anyone.

I fought a Yak’s Bend trapper who I recognized from videos on youtube the other day. I can’t remember his handle. Not sure if he posts here… I might wind up in one of his videos. I was trying to record it with the 30 second intervals of fraps, which totally hosed me every 30 seconds (was a pretty long fight), but I was going to lose even without that.

Forum bug where I can’t see the thread, I wanted to edit. I just won a 1v…something… Mesmer + guard died, at the same time 2 more guards and an upleveled warrior showed up and died, and overlapping with a guard and an upleveled guard showed up, uplevel went down, guard was at like 5% health and I finally went down. Twas nuts.

And… no footage, I never installed ItIsFinished’s perma recording software.

Mistsim I’ve been playing and succeeding with double melee rangers since launch. There isn’t anything you can say to convince me they don’t work since, well, they’ve worked for 3 years. Since I know more about them than you, and they work, I don’t see how you writing things will invalidate experience. No, you did not help.

vespers.1759:

The whole BM line is just awful. the increase in pet stats is tiny at best. I also dislike relying on pets, especially the birds. the 6s CD looks good on paper but it fails to activate most of the time. Also you’ve gone way into that line to get some regen and cripple on activated skill.

Imo there are easier ways to get cripple and if you micro pets better you won’t need the regen. Of course they’ll die vs heavy aoe classes like guards and such but until anet decides to give pets the pve boost that will continue to happen.

I think you have sacrificed way too much to invest in the pet with very little benefit.

I agree with you in that there are more efficient builds out there. However I’ve played the more typical condi survival, glass LB and various other more traditional melee builds for thousands of hours and thousands of PvP games and I got bored with them. (I think this works better than the more traditional melee builds, like 20660, but it’s a little bit apples and oranges.)

Investing so heavily into the bird is not the optimal route; I’m fighting the basic premise of a ranger, which is to switch your pets extremely often. It does, however, work. The bird does put out some extremely good pressure. There is no other way as a ranger to get this high amount of cripple uptime, and that makes the bird F2 land pretty much every time. In fact the bird is responsible for most of the damage, despite the sword auto hitting for over 2k with RaO up. I’ve actually been considering taking master’s bond to see if that works, since I do so rarely swap away from the bird.

Basically I set out to make a durable build that used both the pet and the ranger. It worked. If I have to swap away from the bird, my damage plummets. With the bird up, I’ve engaged people that lost half their health in a fraction of a second and just plain ran. It’s a very fun build that works.

The second theme of the build, I also love the fact that I don’t have to heal. I don’t know what my opponents are thinking or if they even notice, but I’ve won a lot of 1v1s where I never even looked at my heal skill. That’s one of the main reasons this works in 1v2s. If you hit your important evades and blocks, I’m often at near full health when fighting multiple people.

Mistsim, there are tons of players who have posted S + GS youtube videos on this forum. In fact FrouFrou who posted in this very thread has a link to her videos in her sig.

What would you change about it, vespers? What do you think the weaknesses are?

I’ve been trying to get archer-people to play thief or warrior for years. They’re all just names.

Surely they’re going to do something with guard. It will be useless once we have access to good shouts to use with nature’s voice.

You reach 25 might stacks on the bird in like 3 seconds.

At least try the build before you comment, jeez.

mistsim.2748:

you cant hit anything with a melee ranger, unless they afk or decide to stand still for you. it also wouldn’t work too well as a frontline build as you don’t have enough condi cleanses.

Wat. You have 75% swiftness uptime alone. Let’s ignore the bird and RaO. Let’s also ignore the 6 movement skills.

mistsim.2748:

I love birds, but theyre so much more effective on condi builds when ure running axe and stacking might. if you like birds, I don’t think anyone will be able to stand up 1v1 to our 0/0/6/6/6 condi bunker when the patch hits.

Wat. 25 might stacked birds with perma cripple. You have not even tried this build I know that.

I bought mine. It’s a little expensive, but only about 8 gold or something.

It’s hand’s down the best rune if you’re using GS IMO.

Of course we want to see it. Is the perma cripple working well in group settings? I could see that putting a ton of pressure on people, especially if anyone you’re with runs condis.

Probably not as strong as immob spam from MT and pets, but whatever.

That build is probably just flat out better than what I’m running, but intimidation training (with 1 pet) is so friggen cool.

I’ll play around with that at any rate. It won’t be much longer before these types of builds are gone forever.

borya.2964:

Siamoth is your best friend, there is no point to run a ranger without your ugly siamoth.

I extremely strongly disagree. Pigs are one of the families that should basically never be used. They do some cool stuff, but when compared to canines they just don’t compare.

I know Flopy uses one though, and I get it since he apparently likes to 1vX on a LB. You could also compare that to the fact that ROM carries PUGs on a berserk GS warrior.

100% team support would be garbage for PvE, but based on how major the last 2 reveals have been, a 100% team support druid could be game changing for competitive.

Helly.2597:

Decent videos overall. Pretty solid gameplay.

Only major thing I disagree with is placing pets on the “aggressive stance.” Perhaps I’m missing something, but the ability to actually control the pet a lot better with “guard” (and commanding when to attack) seems to only really have advantages. It requires a bit more micro on your part, but it just adds a dynamic new aspect to the class and raises the skill cap especially when it comes to power ranger.

Its possible that I’m just missing something, however, and if that is the case please inform me, since I’ve only spent 65 hours on ranger.

Your pet stance is not that important. You’re constantly spamming attack and return during fights.

I keep mine on aggressive because if I get overwhelmed, I’d rather have my pet attacking than doing nothing.

Holland.9351:

My problem with the Dragonhunter Longbow is that he has 3 mouse-targetted skills. I hate those. I can live with Barrage, but I wouldn’t want 2 more.

I used to feel that way and then I played 500 games on my engi. It’s the stupidest thing in the world, but it actually improved my barrage “skills”. :O My dislike of ground targeting was entirely because I wasn’t used to it.

It really did feel like a ranger/rogue/demon hunter archetype. I could play that and not even feel like I was cheating on my ranger.

That’s more about group stealth openers being lame.

It looked like a ranger specialization to me, or the D3 demon hunter.

I’m basically ignoring all the balance issues and barely even looking at tool tips. Not until the expansion comes out. Right now it’s all just dev ideas.

Have they confirmed that the staff is support? People immediately speculated that from the second the trailer went live, but I can’t remember them saying anything about how the staff is used.

Dex your ranger is hot.

Dex.7092:

Isn’t the revenant staff speculated to be a melee weapon, though? At least from what we saw in the trailer. (I don’t think ranger staff will be, however. Just revenant for now.).

Oh ya, he does smack someone with it in the trailer I think.

FrouFrou.4958:

I gave up with solo roaming when there was nothing else but thieves and mesmers to be fought. At least during group fights I might be able to stab a necro or an engineer once in awhile!

I find a pretty random assortment of roamers in EB. It’s a little hard to get in to, but because the distances are so short I’m pretty likely to run in to any of the classes. Good fun.

ItIsFinished.9462:

If you do, try out Shadow Play. It’s constantly recording so you never have to worry about hitting any buttons.

Sounds perfect, downloading now.

borya.2964:

I’ll take your advice into account and take the time to read more attentively.

Thanks. All of your “criticisms” I had already directly addressed at least once. In the opening post I said it’s not a cele build. I’m thinking I am going to run full zerk with this, I’m just hesitant to override my PvE runes. I’ll see how the trait/stat changes play out first. It’s so durable already I don’t think that little extra damage can do anything but help, as demonstrated by me face tanking a LB.

FrouFrou.4958:

Idk about other rangers but my ranger eats her vegetables so she is really strong. She skips leg days tho.

You don’t need to be in a gym to exercise. She gets plenty of leg work with all that jumping around.

I don’t think they’ll ever make a melee staff, only because many of the staff skins would look weird being used as a martial weapon. It seems like they’ve made a bunch of skins with a casting staff in mind. Most of them look ceremonial, even.