Guild Wars 2

Henry?? I’ve seen the other 2.

You had to scroll down 22 posts before you you found anything about 3 hours… but ok. As long as we get the message out that it’s not newbie friendly.

Olvendred.3027:

You said she’d logged 3 hours total in game. If the problem was noticeable in minutes (as I imagine it would be), then you sat there, over the course of hours, knowing exactly what was wrong, but not trying to do anything to alleviate the frustration.

3 hours TOTAL (edit: acount total). The rest of your post is not relevant or passive aggressive when you take that in to account.

We couldn’t play for a day that we wanted to play. Get it?

Olvendred.3027:

Well, the problem in this particular thread would not exist if the OP had used some common sense to explain things and suggest a change, rather than watching his wife get frustrated over the course of hours.

The thing is, it wasn’t over the course of hours. How many enemies do you need to see get exploded in front of you that you try to attack and can’t before you get frustrated? It was not hours, it was minutes if not seconds. Also I have never left her side as she played. I’m there, offering her advice and keeping her alive with my new guardian, but I want her to lead the way. She controls where we go because she is exploring the game.

It’s actually fairly insulting that you suggest to me how my wife plays the game, wouldn’t you agree? She is in control and getting advice from someone with probably more experience than you, so she’s in pretty much the best possible situation.

As a final note, my OP is nearly the highest rated post I’ve ever made in over 2 years, so clearly a lot of people feel the same way. This is not a good situation, and I want more GW2 newbies to be happy! I spend a lot of time coaching newbies if they want it because I want to keep playing this game for years to come.

Lazaar.9123:

Why should the experience of one player be worth more than others, though?

It shouldn’t, which is what this thread is about. Move vet swarms out of starter zones so vets can enjoy doing something other than 1-hitting event bosses and newbies can participate in the game. Sounds fair, right?

I made a thread from a newbies perspective (my wife), but from a vets perspective I actually have the same problem you do. It’s no fun when everyone is rushing the same goal. I would compare it to when everyone was rushing the new grandmaster traits and it was difficult to acquire them. People need to be spread out a bit more.

jcbroe.4329:

good points

I was running with a berserker LB build tonight on (T2) reset, in a zerg, which I almost never do. Queues on all 4 maps so I’m taking up a spot.

The commanders never saw it, but the focused fire I had was literally keeping the zerg alive. I actually gained a new respect for myself. If half my zerg goes down and I can get them back up again by playing selfishly, I think that’s ok. I visually saw myself saving the day, rez after rez!

My opinion of zerker LB rangers is shifting.

Edit: And the points on kill thing is just stupid, obviously a good LB ranger is going to more than rack up a few 1vX stomps + ppk on their way to a zerg fight. That definitely factors in.

McWolfy.5924:

Fluffball.8307:

McWolfy I think you may be on the wrong forum; you have post after post demonstrating you don’t understand anything about rangers other than they can use bears as pets.

Than tell me. If ranger is that supergood why noone use them in meta play?

I believe that’s called a non-sequitur.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m a bit confused. Here is husband, more than experienced at 16,000 AP, having played for some goodly amount of time, talking up GW2 enough that his wife is interested, tells her all about how fun it is and how this works/how that works. She decided to play, buys the game (or uses his), makes a new character…and husband leaves her alone for first 2/3 hours? Doesn’t help her get started? Explain how to get to LA and other starter zones? How to map the Grove? Just leaves her to flounder in a ‘zerg’ of Level 80s until she is ready to rage-quit?

Something seems amiss. Or I did it all wrong with my SO.

Nope, I paid the money for a new character to support her. A (2nd) guardian with the sole focus of keeping her alive and letting her explore on her own. My goal was not to jack her up into the upper ranks of the PvP ladder withing 2 days of buying the game, I just want her to enjoy exploring like I did. So nope, I’m not going to demand she switch zones to accommodate a daily, I’m going to advocate her position on the forums instead.

Hannelore.8153:

Despite replying to my post with a good intent, you seem to’ve missed the point that this thread is trying to throw a semitruck at a pothole just because it can’t get over it in a normal car.

It’s not your pothole colloquialism, there is just no benefit that I’m seeing to have swarms of vets outplaying newbies.

Look at it this way: There is NO reason to have zergs of overly powerful players that are potentially highly skilled swarming a starter zone and removing the option for newbies to play. There are reasons to NOT have zergs of overly powerful players that are potentially highly skilled swarming starter zones and removing the option for newbies to play.

Lazaar.9123:

Because OP seems very over-dramatic about it. Once an event is done, said people will move along to a different event, likely minutes later.

And destroy it as well, all day for the entire day. It’s not like only 20 people want to complete this daily and then it’s done.

And for the umpteenth time, please remind me why you need to annihilate events in a starter zone in order to have fun completing your daily, rather than doing something in a higher level zone?

Hannelore.8153:

I have a radical suggestion.

How about instead properly balancing lv80s in downlevelled zones?

Absolutely crazy, huh?

Despite being a good idea, that actually doesn’t fix anything. Higher level zones like Orr scale really well to more players. Caledon doesn’t scale at all, so 40 players running over the mushroom heart to do the drake quest still breaks everything. And even if they were proportionally scaled, a large mass of max attribute level 5s are still going to outdamage a new character not wearing shoulder armor or gloves or trinkets badly enough that everything is for naught anyway. Not to mention the fact that none of this makes for a fun heart completion when a zerg rolls over your intended “1v1” versus the spider.

You’re working on the assumption everyone is equally effective though. Can you imagine the rage when a berserker roamer thief/ranger/mesmer runs into a cleric’s staff zerg guardian? The roamer would rage endlessly at the useless damage of the guardian for taking credit for the roamer’s camp capture. You really can’t “penalize” people for playing with others, even thought it seems like you’re rewarding them for breaking up zergs.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

No. To all of this, lol.

Most (edit: all) of what he mentioned is the meta, or at least defensible.

To my knowledge there is still not a better build than this:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_S/A_LB_Spotter

Lazaar.9123:

Your wife could have just waited to do stuff in Caledon tomorrow, there are other zones.

Try to visit them from someone who has never played GW2 before. She’d logged a total of about 3 hours and now I’m trying to explain to her she has to leave this zone entirely and go somewhere else so level 80s can have the zone she’s just learning about. She was also 1 level away from her personal story which takes place guess where.

A lot of people in this thread are totally incapable of viewing GW2 from a completely new player’s experience… The daily doesn’t bother me, the guy with 16000 AP, it bothers my wife with 33 AP who wants to quit the game because of — from her perspective — obnoxious other players.

And do any level 80s REALLY want to be in a starter zone? I should hope not. Go play PvP or WvW or a level 80 zone.

saalle.4623:

No,game needs to feel alive exactly for new players so that they can see it.Do you have idea how many games i quit just cause i didn’t find any1 on the starting zones?First time you get to think when there are no players in starting zones is,game is dead – uninstall.

How do you explain my wife’s experience of wanting to quit GW2 because she couldn’t complete her hearts or events due to level 80s wrecking everything? Please answer, a lot of people are posting “this is for the good of the game,” and then ignoring the only new player experience in the thread, which was to quit the game entirely because of frustration. If I had not explained this is not normal, she definitely would never have come back.

DarcShriek.5829:

Fluffball.8307:

I agree with Elden, but if Anet can’t or won’t implement an alternative, the dailies really need to stop in starter zones. I agree with mrstealth the entire idea is flawed and needs to be removed from all specific non-level 80 zones, but at the very least I’d like to be able to play GW2 with my wife on a friday in her starter zone, and it’s not something we could do tonight.

You don’t think starting characters should be allowed to do event dailies. Yeah, way to recruit new players. I guess you think there are enough people playing.

I don’t understand your intent, or you don’t understand mine. The daily Calderon forest event made GW2 unplayable for my wife. She got really angry that hordes of people were swarming us and killing all the heart and event enemies before she could point her character in the right direction. Clarify how that makes her ever want to play again (it doesn’t; I told her not to play today and we’ll try tomorrow.)

I’d also like to point out (again) that new players do not care about achievments, they care about learning the game. And again, my wife, and all of the let’s plays I’ve watched, do not notice the existence of dailies.

You and I want to play dailies, brand new players do not know about or want to collect achievment points.

I agree with Elden, but if Anet can’t or won’t implement an alternative, the dailies really need to stop in starter zones. I agree with mrstealth the entire idea is flawed and needs to be removed from all specific non-level 80 zones, but at the very least I’d like to be able to play GW2 with my wife on a friday in her starter zone, and it’s not something we could do tonight.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Where will the ‘newbies’ go to complete their Dailies, if no Dailies are in starter zones?

New players don’t do dailies; dailes are a tactic taken from the gambling world to keep ‘vets’ returning. My wife has not even noticed that dailies exist, and if you watch some let’s plays of new GW2 players, you’ll probably see the same thing.

New players are not achievement hunting, they want to do events, and dailies are ruining those events.

MashMash.1645:

I really don’t see the issue. Although, yeah, the starter zones might not be the best area’s.

Starter zones are a problem because those character don’t have a choice. Ya, us vets know we can go to LA and then asura gate to another zone, but newbies are basically stuck in a zone being ripped apart by level 80 berserker eles killing the entire event spawns in a single phoenix.

MashMash.1645:

I actually like this change. It funnels huge amounts of people into zones

No zone other than high level ones need this though, how many people do we need to kill 2 level 24 wolves? It just makes it a “kill-steal” zone.

That’s actually a pretty reasonable suggestion. Edit: Actually Anet will never implement that because that would cause people to be hostile to each other. “Get away I’m trying to rank up, noob.”

Lazaar.9123:

Removing events from starter zones would make them more dull than they already are now. There’s lots of people in Caledon forest today because there is a daily for events in Caledon forest. This does not happen everyday.

Reread: not removing event, removing daily events. I’m sure it’s lots of fun for you to 1 hit the event boss, it’s not fun for my wife and her level 9 character who doesn’t get to do any events.

I’m introducing my wife to GW2, playing through a casual Caledon forest. Today isn’t exactly the ideal environment for leveling a new character on a new player… see event, event gets obliterated by three dozen level 80s in ascended gear before my wife can even point her character in the right direction. Not fun.

Try your berserker gear in 20660. Sharpened edges (counts as a survival skill for:), SotF, barkskin (or EB if you have trouble with condis), Two-Handed Training, vigor, prot, whatever, etc. LR, MT, Entangle.

You may want some soldiers or something in there, but I find those traits extremely surivivable. The number of evades and movement is huge, and you have a “float” skill to add whatever, perhaps Signet of Stone.

You can use a similar set up if wanted another beast master, that I often dueled using, 00626. SotF again, and Natural Healing or ZS are both quite good. A bird pairs well with that build if you take Intimidation Training.

Hopefully that gets you started. If you don’t want pure berserker, use it as a base and mix in valk, cavs and soldiers until you hit the stats you want.

The ele meta is soldiers with some berserker trinkets. You can kill a full glass ele in a single hit.

McWolfy I think you may be on the wrong forum; you have post after post demonstrating you don’t understand anything about rangers other than they can use bears as pets.

That would be this:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_S/A_LB_Spotter

But it’s for level 80s. As you level up, just do whatever makes you happy.

That’s correct. The PvP amulet does that. You can also wear a regular open-world amulet in your normal gear section, which acts exactly like the other 11 or so pieces of equipment you use.

That’s a pvp build, where you don’t use armor, and weapons all have the same stats. You get all your stats from the single amulet in your PvP build menu (very top middle of your screen. Edit, when you’re in the PvP lobby, not in the regular open world.)

Dire amulets aren’t a choice. Most people wither go with Rabid or Celestial. Celestial is the more well rounded, Rabid is more condition-damage focused.

Since you’re new to the game, I’d recommend Celestial because it will boost all of your defensive stats as well as offense. That’s also a good reason to pick it once you’re good at the game.

If you wanted to use a specific build for PvE, you barely have a choice until you’re high or max level. Just use whatever gear you find as you level up.

Atherakhia.4086:

If you’ve managed to win an argument with your guild leader to bring a Ranger over a meta class for either a guild run or GvG let me know how you did it! Better Rangers than I have tried. No ranger policy still in place 2.5 years and counting.

We have a guild on FA that advertises on the FA forums something like “we don’t run the standard hammer meta, we run with a lot of thieves and mesmers, we choose the player over the profession. NO RANGERS.” Ha.

Aside from my guardian for extremely lazy zerging, I am WAY more effective on my ranger than any other class, so I keep taking her.

Retraiting and requiping are SOP for dungeon running.

But anywho, the damage is why that’s already the PvE meta.

I strongly dislike the change. Unless all 4 maps have a healthy population, you have no way of knowing where to go. For example, no one is going to sit in a borderland for 8 hours not seeing a single enemy just so they can call out the sneak attack on the garri. It’s just miserable. We need to be able to find the enemy in order to get in fights!

McWolfy has literally never played a ranger in his life, OP, ignore what he’s writing.

The rage is compounded by the fact that rangers are one of — if not the best — skirmishing classes, so despite people considering us wastes of spots for 2 years, we would wind up easily killing people in small scale fights, which produced some cognitive dissonance. “Stupid ranger that can’t kill anything and is stupid just kicked the hell out of me.”

Keep an eye on the chat box when people post screenshots or videos of skilled rangers. It usually gets hysterically ugly.

The rage is compounded by the fact that rangers are one of — if not the best — skirmishing classes, so despite people considering us wastes of spots for 2 years, we would wind up easily killing people in small scale fights, which produced some cognitive dissonance. “Stupid ranger that can’t kill anything and is stupid just kicked the hell out of me.”

Those are two guys that got slaughtered by rangers a few dozen times.

By the way, is it just me or has the LB buff a few months on now produced a huge amount of new skilled rangers playing various builds. I’m seeing a ton of melee rangers, condi rangers, trappers, all sorts of stuff.

You can make the same arguments about all pets. On paper, the wolf is useless. Stationary, short range howl with 1.5 second activation time sounds just awful.

As far as F2s go, a long duration blind plus decent burst damage is not bad at all.

That looks like pretty typical melee ranger play to me, Prysin. Between signet of stone, tons of stability, poison, and the number of evades he has, it’s just a matter of time against average players. Melee rangers are so relaxing it can lull you to sleep and mess you up when you run in to that crazy good player.

I find myself spending most of my time concentrating on my own defense rather than caring if anything hits the opponent; I barely even look at their health bars and just know they can’t eat berserker hits forever. Maul recharges very very quickly. He also landed the obvious mauls against rezzing or immobilized players.

Aleksander Suburb.4287:

And i want to add, that the raven need another f2 skill, than blindness.

This is one of the better competitive F2s in my opinion, as it’s basically an interrupt. It’s also handy to swap to the raven for stomping.

Good stuff. When I play melee ranger I always go back and forth between axe and dagger. I find the pull pretty hard to land, but it looks like you used it mostly on people that aren’t strafing at all (trying to rez or run.) Do you find you consistently get more use out of it than you do with a dagger?

Also that poor ranger in the second fight was hysterical. He spent most of his time walking slowly backwards. I sort of felt bad when he went down.

For perma regen there isn’t really any variation, it’s 00662 with the necessary shout traits (and typically apothecary).

For condi, there is a lot more variation.

If you only want to use melee for getting away, s/d is a drastically better set. (I think it’s a lot better regardless, but I understand why people like GS; it does some cool things.)

Badges could have had some really cool rewards like (SALVAGABLE) ascended armor or something, but they waited too long and now we all have gigantic stacks of badges. Any good rewards would have to be priced completely out of reach of not-current WvW players, like 9k per armor piece or something. Otherwise they’d flood the market with whatever reward they gave us. Also EotM would have to stop dropping badges, because that place is a disaster.

I like that you can’t doge in immobilize, and that can set up pushes/pulls; it offers some really nuanced plays and interactions between teammates. The best solution in my view is to not listen to people complaining about trivial matters.

You’re a bad player if you’re targeting people because of rank and not because of profession or position or how much damage they take when you hit them. Rank is meaningless unless someone is below bronze.

I always found necros very weak to ranger. Necros have very little options to get out of ranger CC. Entangle is tough on them, drakehound is tough on them, they don’t have any blocks, they don’t have any reflects, they don’t have any immunes, etc.

Each profession has a “theme” for staying alive. For necro it’s a lot of health, and that matches up TERRIBLY with a profession that locks people down in soft and hard CC like rangers must.

Power ranger vs necro, necro loses 99% of the time. Condi ranger vs necro is messier but I’ve got to favor the ranger…. just my two cents, which are irrelevant since you can go fight a necro and see what happens.

00626 was my go-to dueling build for ages. Also dislaimer: I haven’t dueled anyone in ages. However beastmasters (including I believe that very trait allocation) did extremely well in our ranger forum duel thread.

Few things to think about though.

• Birds get ridiculous benefits from the BM traits like intimidation training
• Pets must have IMS
• Axe and sword both grant pets might
• Fortifying bond can grant double might

Edit: That may have been a bit vague. Here is Siroso’s, one of our dominant champs, interpretation of the 00626 build:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQNAR8YjMq0yaFL+rQ1aAOhqdAMsX67NNUbYXFbBreA-TZBHwAMLDU4iAA4BAoa/hBHBAA

That’s very similar to what I ran, although of course there are personal choices.

It is slightly expensive in that you lose the money you spent on it, but using Black Lion salvage kits on your knight’s armor is a pretty reasonable idea. You’ll get a bunch of ectos and dark matter (or whatever that ascended stuff is called) and you’ll get your runes back, and knight’s isn’t really that great of armor. For tankiness most people go soldiers and for damage people drift towards berserker, mixing in other stuff like valk or cavs or whatever.

I actually run basically Lugh’s posted build in berserker armor from time to time, even using entangle. The meta is so heavy on the boon spam, immob and CC really aren’t a problem at all, an I don’t have to be a rallybot.

That may vary from server to server though. On FA a zerg of 25 will be like 18 guardians… you couldn’t die if you wanted to.

My option 1 was not trying to dissuade him from playing ranger, but it’s an option. Guardians are pretty much inarguably better than rangers in a zerg setting. I love rangers more than anyone playing GW2, and I don’t view it as “cheating” when I log in on my guardian for some drunken and effective zerging.

Options 2 and 3 are for his hardcore ranger fix, and the ones I usually go with myself.

This thread is beyond ridiculous. The longbow is a competitive weapon, not so much a PvE one. In the cases where someone camps LB, it’s a world boss fight and everything the players do is irrelevant anyway.

If someone is KBing in your dungeon group, ask them to stop or kick them. Otherwise stop complaining about a critical competitive skill.