Guild Wars 2

Liston.9708:

You used the term we meaning server. I used the term you in the same context – server not you in particular… Either way, I’d imagine the queues will lighten as people just give up or move off. I don’t think my alt account on Jq has as bad of queues right now as you all. I feel you – does suck not being able to play when you want to where you have played for any length of time…..

Ya I know what you meant, I didn’t take it personally. It’s just pretty obvious a bunch of people are trying to leech off of us and this is not what any real FA players wanted. The collective “we” did not want new players other than maybe 20 in SEA.

Liston.9708:

You did start the ball rolling with the purchases and discussions of buying IOJ, but yea once that momentum starts nothing you can really do about it as peeps jump on the wagon whether you want them or not. I know you all have been trying to re-direct, but you can’t exactly lock the gates either – best you can do is show the queues……

I didn’t buy any IoJ. And for anyone considering FA, we have all 4 maps queued from ~reset until I go to bed. Complete horse kitten. I love WvW and I now basically hate WvW.

Cool. I love the surprise element of running non-LB builds. There is a false assumption out there that all rangers run LB, and I’ve been in PvP games where there are 3 or more rangers all NOT running LB… melee traps, melee, condi, beastmaster, spirit, cele, etc. People don’t know what to expect.

Would you be better off with an offhand dagger? It give you some “oh kitten” defense you sorely lack and you already have a lot of burning via flametrap. It would also free up one of your doom sigils, if not both since you would have poison on both weapons plus the trap plus the spider.

Durzlla.6295:

I’d also ask (and probably beg for the information), if any of our tankier pets cough BEARS! cough will get access to taunt.

Perhaps those neutral beetles in the Silverwastes are a hint at that, since the enemy AI versions have high invulnerability.

It would be mostly useless for dungeons, but it would actually be really strong for PvP!

Kaiser.9873:

This made T2 more balanced until FA overstacked themselves

We didn’t do this. I’ve been on FA for years and this is the worst WvW experience I’ve ever had. All these bandwagoners piling on to FA have made it so tonight (at 1:30 in the morning) was the first time I’ve gotten to play WvW in weeks. It’s absolutely miserable. A lot of the hardcore base of FA are pretty upset.

Screw 30 v 30, lets do and entire world versus an entire world. HAHA! That would be amazing. Will never happen though, anet is incompetent.

Durzlla.6295:

What’s the name of the utility line that druids get? Ie spirits are labled spirits, survival etc.

i’d ask for something more complicated, but i highly doubt they’d answer anything like that xD.

Thank for the only reasonable suggestion, and not “kittening elbow the devs in the face until they admit their lil kittenes that can’t make AI.”

The people posting LB is OP are never ranger forum goers.

Condi rangers are more versatile than LB rangers, so you have to slightly shift your viewpoint. You’re not necessarily meant to just +1 fights from the outskirts with your axe. If you see someone about to take your point, you now have a build to go sit on the point and duke it out with them. It’s interesting you think it doesn’t have good defense, coming from a LB build, especially since your linked build also uses signet of stone. You’re wrong in thinking that, so you probably need to play with the skills a bit.

Perhaps try customizing the build to your liking. For example rabid +undead rune with sharpening stone instead of carrion with scavenging and keen edge is a popular option. That will provide you a lot more toughness, which can help with the popularity of berserker amulets.

I use the celestial amulet with condition enhancing runes and sigils to round out my stats and get some good damage out of my sword, but it sounds like you might prefer rabid and getting the damage from torch and splitblade.

Cufufalating.8479:

I don’t know.. but my experience with Mesmers (and players in general) is that noone actually uses LoS in WvW.

LoSing in PvP is fairly common. WvW players in general I find to be significantly less informed and experienced than PvPers since many of them are lost zerglings or newbies. I guesss PvP is supposed to automatically put you up against equally experienced players as well, maybe hotjoin is a mess.

Anywho, I actually prefer a mesmer LoSing me because then I can LoS him. There is one section of the ruins where there is a small hill with ramps on either side and a cliff in the middle (think NW camp only 50 times smaller.) That little hill is great for LoSing and AI-path messing mesmer clones and bursts by repeatedly climbing and jumping down. Many experienced players will look for areas like that against a roaming LB ranger, perhaps not realizing it can be used against them. By the time we engage again I have PBS, RF and HS off cooldown. :O

LB rangers have relatively low sustain, so LoS is not always your ally.

For the record, you can take slightly different runes/amulets with similar builds to those posted and make a condi ranger that can contribute to a PvP match and still be nigh unkillable. The Nature’s Voice apothecary ranger (not available in PvP) has been a build concept since pretty much game release. Does mediocre damage and is off the charts durable. The original build uses Shirk’s trait allocation with s/t + a/d.

You might have a whole lot more money than you realize. Look at your crafting materials and get a rough value of their prices on the TP if you were to sell them.

Stuff like iron and ori you can easily gather yourself over time, and the rare T6 mats can be bought with other useless mats you have saved up. Some T6 mats you don’t need sell for a lot, and selling lower tier mats in bulk can quickly net you a few dozen gold.

There might be more efficient uses for unnecessary mats like crafting and forging things or whatever, but selling is a quick and easy way to get gold.

And on your PvP subject, I personally believe LB has no place at all in solo queue. I’m probably in a large minority, but I think it doesn’t fit conquest at all; it barely has a place in an organized team comp.

On daily ranger winner days, I take the s/t + a/d build out and just farm the ever loving kitten out of bad LB rangers.

Why the hell not?

http://gw2dungeons.net/

And when you need a break or it gets old, hop in to WvW and PvP.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

High maintenance/High DPS: Jellyfish.

Jellyfish are surprisingly tanky. The have an aoe blind (dark) field and AoE regen + waterfield which makes them able to tank just about anything as well as giving you some combo options. I use them when soloing underwater champs or for super annoying fights like if some ungodly reason I’m in HotW.

And as a bonus, their whirling tentacles is a quick 25 stacks of might with RaO.

tichorum.2415:

I never wrote “engie skills”. But yes, I have played it before.

Woosh.

You listed engi skills as the best in the game for every category. I assume you main an engi.

tichorum.2415:

Take my stab at this.

engie skills

Have you ever played engi before? Seems like you might like it.

Why no signet of renewal? And Healing Spring is ridiculously low on your list.

Is happening within walking distance of me. I don’t think I’m going to go because it seems like it will be focused almost entirely on the revenant. If I do go or if I go to a bar and the devs are there, is there any magical 1 ranger question we want to know?

Jana.6831:

Fluffball.8307:

Jana.6831:

It depends on who you are facing. In general ranger is the easiest class to play since they got buffed. Sorry, but it’s true.
Anyway, it’s than.

Ok you play LB ranger and I’ll play anything and we see who wins. Sound good?

Did you read what I wrote?

Yup. Did you read what I wrote? I won’t pick a LB ranger hard counter, just some random profession. Cool? You’re not going to win.

What do you enjoy doing? Do that. Then get better at that and ask for advice about that. The dungeon running crowd won’t help you at all in PvP and vice versa.

It’s not that turrent engis are OP that everyone hates, it’s that there is a build where the AI is more durable than most players and it’s basically a troll build. Why would you even design a class that can do that? If they want to make tanky AI, the tankiest they should be is about where necro minions currently are.

Jana.6831:

It depends on who you are facing. In general ranger is the easiest class to play since they got buffed. Sorry, but it’s true.
Anyway, it’s than.

Ok you play LB ranger and I’ll play anything and we see who wins. Sound good?

LB rangers are borderline useless to begin with and you want to take away one of their only forms of defense. Makes perfect sense…

I was watching a PvP video today where the maker was going over hard counters, like thief over mesmer of necro over engi. When he got to LB ranger he listed basically every class in the game.

The balanced amulet isn’t balanced?

I don’t mind it at all, you sacrifice some damage for some durability and that’s fine. It’s the turret engis that are completely out of control.

Of course not, you rob the police station. Open with lord rush.

I get the feeling they’re going to be making boon removal counterplay a bigger part of the game, so this might actually be something of a buff.

For example one of the new master (not even that big an investment) revenant traits is to remove boons on hit with a 15 second CD.

It’s often the guys with the lowest scores that are contributing the most. For example if you and an ally are capping a point… don’t. Leave and let him have the points. If you’re playing selfishly, it’s almost a 4v5 and you’ll lose consistently.

No you’re right, there is very little reason to run a pet that isn’t giving you CC.

Some people prefer drakes, and those people are wrong. Put a drake ranger +…. let’s say s/d thief against a dog/wolf ranger + s/d thief and we all know who wins. Drake survivability is a stupid thought when you can simply recall or swap pets. Ain’t nobody targeting your pet in PvP except that bunny in hot join.

I have many thousands of PvP games and the number of times my pets has died is like .001% of them.

Birds and cats are like “sort of” because the 1v1 damage of them is definitely annoying/intimidating. But you know what else is annoying, is a human player using skills intelligently and CCing for his team. So a cat ranger + s/d thief vs canine ranger + s/d thief, I go with the canines.

If you use a devourer, you’re just flat out wrong.

Cufufalating.8479:

People just like archers.

This plus more. For example I had exactly zero interest in playing an archer. Then I tried ranger, and found out they have the best melee skills in the game. BOTH swords are more fun than any other class except possibly thief. Really amazing design on both those weapons, especially the 1-hander.

So you fought a burning-based build for over a minute and are complaining it did burning damage. Sounds reasonable.

Ashkew.6584:

If someone hacks cooldown it would be easy to trace and he would go to prison for it.

I had a cousin do time in federal for using ride the lightning twice in a row… dude spent three months in the hole just for hinting to his cellie that it could be done. He’s a changed man now though.

That’s certainly cancel-casting. It’s also not always intentional, especially in team fights you’re often forced to dodge mid cast.

Immobilizes on a ranger are also pretty common. Many rangers run with 4 or 5 different ones.

I hope that wasn’t because of me Sube, heh. I meant I use celestial with the sword. Celestial with a GS feels like a complete waste, which is why I’d love to have a 2nd 1-handed melee option.

Some sort of CC bleed mace 1-hander with dagger offhand, and sword+torch could be very cool and viable.

Sube Dai.8496:

Or even a condition removing GM skirmishing trait to replace striders…?

Yup, one of the biggest issues I have is that despite have more condi removal than any other profession, we’re still depressingly stuck going all in on defensive traitlines for the good ones. If I could go something like 6422 (just making up numbers, not real traits), that would be perfect. Look at gaurdian and warrior builds and their traits tend to be all over, picking up useful weapon or bonus damage traits. We have almost no choice but to go six for condi removal instead. HS + SoR and possibly even brown bear might be an option, but even then there are huge obvious drawbacks, like having a kittenty pet.

Eurantien.4632:

I’m trying out the first build I posted. I think a big thing we lack is an insta cast stability on melee ranger.

Medi guard is the perfect example of this. Ranger damage comes from sustained attacks in all but 2 cases, and both of those are slow to deliver. Compare that to our compatriot melee fighter, the medi guardian, and he precasts or instacasts every single skill in the burst.

Medi guards brings upfront damage in one massive spike, plus they bring some decent team support and survivability.

Even in WvW where I often run full ascended berserker, full bloodlust stacks, full guard stacks, borderland bloodlust, and consumables, I find the damage from ranger melee frustratingly slow, or I make myself too fragile to survive.

Basically, if you’re going 66XXX why not use a LB? And if you’re going XX66, why not use rabid or celestial?

Sube Dai.8496:

Does melee need more damage or more survivability to be challenge for this spot?

The annoying thing about melee ranger is there is no really clear build. The traits are not ideally placed, and they wind up really lending themselves to a hybrid build, which completely defeats the point of greatsword.

For example the obvious build most melee rangers run is 6 in NM and WS, but that gives you:

• No bonus damage unless you take SoS
• No added power, precision or ferocity via traits
• Max condi damage and condi damage on the sword, which makes you immediately want to consider a melee condi build or at least hybrid

And now all the sudden you’re running the s/t condi build.

And you still didn’t bring the team support a medi sword/GS gaurd or shout sword/hammer warrior bring.

The other option is to go glassy as kitten, which works great in roaming, but you’re not going to hold a sidepoint like that. You basically turn yourself in to a thief with slightly less mobility.

Edit: Or the final option, the one I like, is to go celestial with main hand axe on swap. You can hold a point and contribute to team fights. I hope we get a 2nd 1 handed melee option at some point (mace?) so you can run a full melee hybrid build, which rangers are just born to run.

Eurantien.4632:

S/x provides little counter pressure. If a power ranger swaps to sword main hand I pretty much can ignore it for that 10s if I wanted.

S/X provides counter pressure more than anything else. If you ignore a sword power ranger, you’re going to wind up taking way more damage than just /dancing in a maul. A power ranger maul is going to hit for what, 7k? Sword autoattacks for 2 or 3k. (I run power only in WvW with very different stats than PvP, so I’m guesstimating the numbers) and it perma cripples the target for your allies.

If someone is truly ignoring the s/x ranger, offhand axe is going to be easy to land. If you’re not fighting an idiot (soloq bunkers I’m looking at you), PoS is best used after CC though, much like how you might set up a maul. I think it outdamages maul in that case. If you’re some sort of god with the axe you can get PoS to hit 3 times if the opponent is CCd.

Trap LBs are sort of popular, but you have very little defense with that set up. Drop your least favorite trap for some sort of stun break (probably SoR since you have 0 condi removal) and either replace the axe with a sword or the torch with a dagger or both so you can get an extra evade or 2 or 3. With no toughness or vitality you’re not going to want to rely 100% on stealth for defense. If you’re not deadset on using sinister, I’d consider making a hybrid armor set that is a bit more well rounded.

Edit: Also you need to take run of the trapper, just noticed you didn’t have that selected.

Zenith.7301:

Plus with the amount of guardians and warriors around having stability is a must. You might as well alt+f4 if you try to duel a hammer warrior without RaO.

Or just dodge the colossally telegraphed CC skills.

Entangle is my go-to elite for both WvW and PvP and I do just fine against hammer users. Terrormancers in PvP, now those are annoying.

10 stacks of torment would hurt even with zero condi damge. :O

Wait till you get a 500/500 game. :O

1h sword does well in a power build. The two condis it puts out are condis a power build is going to to want anyway, and s/d is very mobile and evasive (exactly what you want as a glassy ranged character.)

I’d switch the first two trait lines, so you have 6 in MM. I don’t see what you’re gaining from MoC, especially with no GS, and the MM traits are too good to pass up.

EB is a great trait, just keep a close eye on your pet, especially in team fights.

Logged in just to try the shield 4 and it did in fact show the text, still no animation. I think something is just buggy or laggy.

That’s the weird part, I don’t even see the text. And I run max on every setting.

Just seems weird I wouldn’t see the animation 100% of the time over like 40 play sessions. As long as it definitely triggers (which I honestly don’t believe it does, but I only have like 5 emergency examples of me blasting RM to refer to.)

I know, I drop it immediately* and still no animation unless I’m wounded. Bug? Anyone else tried this and seen it in the HotM? Bye compatriots.

*Edit for clarification: RM + AB in less than 1 second = no animation
Jump off cliff + RM + AB = animation

Edit 2: If anyone is in game nowwe can test you to see if it affects others who are wounded or not (i.e. jumping off cliff or not.) This happens with 100% frequency over, I don’t know 60 trials.

lujate.5432:

I hate, hate, HATE those scout NPCs that hit you with blind. On Mesmer and Ele, I focus them down first.

CC them out of the dark field and you’re good to go!

Wolf fear, LB4 etc.

I only get the AoE water heal animation if I’m wounded. Every other waterfield blast I’ve ever tried on any profession triggers the blast animation no matter what.

Does RM + AB always trigger, and this is just a permanent animation bug? Or is there something else in play?