Guild Wars 2

I don’t 100% agree with these PvP/WvW but they’ll definitely get you started.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/index.php?title=MetaBattle_Build_Wiki

PvE build is pretty cut and dry. Take most possible damage.

OS literally has a dueling arena…………

Joining WvW as a <80 will be unpleasant, but you can hop in to PvP right now. I recommend a tanky condi build at least to start with, since condi is mostly about fighting in a very small space (on the cap point.) Berserker longbow is a bit of a gimmick for conquest, and paints a giant target on your butt.

This is what I’m currently using. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAsf3YjEqUxaLL+rQ1aADhqdLEsVNrAwdN8CXdBraA-TZhHwAAOCAjfAABOJAg2fwYZAA

Not much else to say, hop in and see how it goes.

Synosius.9876:

regular arrow carts

Arrow carts in mediocre numbers will stop even the most organized zerg assaulting a keep.

Ballistas are very niche.

I use the chill and lightning sigils, not using LB too much. If I were to redo it now that the sigil is available, I would use generosity without a second consideration. That sigil is ridiculously good. I’m starting to default to that on most of my PvP builds.

Your build and gear is not so bad that you can’t do the LS as is, the new enemies just require you to dodge or relocate at the right times. That said:

Yes, LB is longbow. The PvE meta (read: biggest possible damage because vets care about speed above all else) is berserker, and it just so happens LB got recently buffed back in to that meta. Its doubly powerful for PvE solo because not only is berserker longbow + sword crazy damage, if you camp longbow at massive range and let your cat or drake distract enemies, you can easily solo anything, including champs.

If you want to go that berserker route, exotic armor is relatively cheap (of any stat combo actually.) You have a few options, and you can combine the methods to make the most of the currency you do have.

If you have some saved up karma you can buy it at the god temples in Orr. Check the wiki for where exactly. You can use dungeon tokens if you’ve ever run dungeons. You can buy it relatively cheaply off the trading post (I’m guessing off the top of my head like 3 gold per piece.) You can craft if.

When you pick your weaopns, be sure you pick one that compliments your build. Greatsword and longbow are 100% pure power weapons. It sounds like you already prefer LB + GS, so you’d want to look in to getting berserker armor/trinkets.

Your arctodus doesn’t do good damage, it’s actually one of the lowest possible damage pets. The stock PvE pet would be a drake. Damage pets are cats.

I think I addressed most of what you brought up…

Well to start with, the new enemies are quite dangerous in their mechanics. That’s what’s killing you, not your play style, weapons or gear. Those wolves can 1-hit down you if they hit you from behind, and a pack of them will still easily down you if they hit from the front. I don’t remember if some of the other nasties are in the story instances, but they’re far worse than the wolves. Pay attention to what they actually do, read the text under their names and it will start to get easier.

As far as your build, it can work. If you want to use conditions, you can’t use longbow or greatsword. Maybe try shortbow + sword or axe/torch.

The standard PvE build is full berserker, but that’s for playing with other people. On your own, anything will work. Berserker is the easiest way to play on your own because of the huge damage (and LB can trivialize all content), but if you don’t want to invest in it, definitely don’t.

As for your pet, try to pay more attention and swap when they get low. If you really can’t keep them alive, use a drake or two. River is the best drake. They’re tough, and do reasonable damage. The pure glass pet would be the cat line. I’d probably skip all the other pets for PvE unless you want a specific boon/special ability.

Oh good point, I assumed the OP was talking about WvW. For PvE obviously it’s full berserker.

People run both, and they both work. It depends on your personality and how good you are with your melee/dodges. I personally find damage extremely lacking if I’m not full glass.

Context is important too. If you’re always on your own, glass becomes more and more viable. If you’re doing guild fights like 5v5, it might make it rough when you have 5 people discover you’re 1000% glassier than your teammates.

Conditions and every other type of build you can conceive of is fine for open world, if by open world we’re talking map completion (although significantly slower for open world trash, but whatever.) Conditions are almost completely useless for large boss fight though, due to the condition cap.

The new Maguuma areas are mostly not bosses, so it should be good enough.

I think it was Nike who did the math for multiple opponents, and s/a wins up till 5 targets, where GS wins by a few percent.

If you really like ranger, I think it’s always worth getting used to the sword, for whatever game mode.

I usually use GS for things like gravelings or the charr assassins in CoF, that kind of trash where the mobility and AA evade really pay off.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Yeah but then there is nothing stopping them from instantly restealthing. This is fine for mesmers, rangers and engi’s since they have cooldowns but thieves have too much access to stealth. Not having a debuff will make the skill completely useless against the only profession you really need it for.

No no, it’s an either or scenario, so the skill does both. Either you unstealth/debuff someone who isn’t targeted, or you use the skill as a pet buff and it makes the cool down shorter; think Ride the Lighning. Right now it’s borderline useless as a pet buff in competitive play.

Jim Hunter.6821:

What would be the point of revealing them without the debuff? The problem with thief stealth is how spammable it is. If they would do away with initiative and give thief skills proper cool downs your idea might work but right now the debuff is necessary.

I meant no debuff on the 20s cooldown version. So basically you can use it as anti-stealth and/or use it as a reasonable pet buff. Right now it’s an unreasonable pet buff due to cooldown and the stealth thing is useless 99% of the time.

I had a random thought last night. Sic ’em is quite weak against other players. What if the mechanics were this: Same pet buff, no stealth debuff for 20 seconds AND you can use it when someone is stealthed in the area to unstealth them, regular 40s cooldown.

Right now no one uses this skill because it’s ridiculously niche, but this would give it the BM buff on a reasonable CD, as well as the devs intended anti-trolling stealth mechanic.

No dev will ever read this, but I thought it was a neat idea.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

In fact I’d lower sic’em cooldown to 35-30 seconds.

I agree; right now Sic ‘Em is almost entirely unused outside of PvE. It doesn’t do enough for the cool down. If someone takes it, it’s usually for the BM effects and nothing to do with the anti-trolling stealth mechanics.

Use both builds on the golems in the HotM for 30 seconds. There is a DnT excel sheet for recording damage somewhere but I didn’t see it in a quick google.

My advice with the above pets (drakes and porcines) is don’t use them. Or at least use the river drake. The other drakes need the target to be CCd to land their F2s.

For porcine you need to have it on passive or recall it to you, and you need to be at range or the enemy will pick up your item and use it on you. And its special charge misses 99% of the time.

When you jump off a ledge, wait till your out of combat, use the pet swap, and then immediately swap back to the pet you want (who is now at your side.)

Pets always have trouble staying on human opponents. Signet of the hunt, CCs of any kind, the trait Agility Training, the shout “Sic’ Em” and swiftness can all help.

For PvP/WvW I rarely use anything other than dogs. They have soft and hard CC on both normal attacks and howls. Birds, which you like, are nice because they give themselves swiftness, and they pair nicely with the beast master line traits (i.e. Intimidation Training for extremely high cripple uptime.) Spiders are another option since they immobilize and rarely miss their attacks (from range.) Spiders are very fire-and-forget.

Stealth on a thief or blocks on a guardian aren’t their only — or even main — lines of defense though, especially for a duration as short as 6 seconds. That’s a big investment for the ranger when you only have 3 utility skills, and have critical needs like stun breaks. The thief is not harmless and the ranger invulnerable; the ranger is being attacked as well.

Crits are such a monstrous part of the damage of berserker LB, I don’t think the extra speed will come close to matching it. I’m terrible at math so I’m not even going to attempt to prove that.

Not just the condi removal, but also getting out of both hard and soft CC will be rough, especially if you’re using QZ as a damage boost. HS doesn’t allow you to kite very much. I’m not seeing this going well in a 1v1 or small scale, but who knows. Even zerg surfing will be rough as that is often 1v1s until you can lose or kill the guy who found you. I personally wouldn’t go out without SoR and LR, but everyone has their preferences.

Without running the math I suspect it will do a lot less damage than a normal LB build? Looks fun, although you are pretty much 1/10 on the defense and condi removal!

I view it as just for getting rid of trolls. I’m not terribly worried about a normal thief stealthing.

As long as you have berserker gear, spotter, frost spirit and melee, you’re pretty much good to go. Obviously your build does less damage than the optimal one, but I wouldn’t kick you for running that. Other than the dogs, not many people would even notice you’re not running the meta build.

What the heeeeck is going on with SoS? I knew a good 3-way fight was too much to ask for. Time for another kittenty matchup…

Well naming it after yourself is slightly pompous. This is probably the closest thing we have to a meta build right now. Tons of people are running this or slight variants of it, myself included. It’s effectively the old spirit build without the spirits, since spirits got indirectly nerfed by eles and engies.

Someone, I think it was siroso, convinced me circle of life was better than nature’s protection.

Necro and guardian are just not designed for roaming. They can roam and beat lower skilled players, but their inherent strengths are located in other areas, and their inherent weaknesses are exactly what you don’t want for roaming.

I just can’t see how it’s possible for a necro to beat an equally skilled opponent. At the very best, he can force a stalemate and watch as the other profession simply wanders off at whatever speed he feels like, and the necro can’t catch up.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

you’re totally out to lunch Fluffball

2 years of solo roaming with a necro and the one class I have zero worries about taking on one-on-one is rangers, everything else can be risky depending on player skill and build.. but rangers? free bag.

Mesmer is definitely my greatest bane and I usually avoid contact, everything else I can go toe-to-toe and hold my own.

I feel the same way about necros on my ranger; free bags. Both of us can’t be right!

Mesmers are a pain for every profession.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

IMHO the worst roaming profession is Guardian, not Necromancer.

Ya it’s pretty clearly between necro and guardian. You’re a ballsy player if you go solo roaming on them. I rank necro horrifically lower than guardian, but I’m not opposed to people saying guardian is the worst.

I have not — in my entire 2+ years of playing almost daily — ever seen a necro with the foresight to epidemic a pet.

But not knowing much about necros, is epidemic even something you’d take on a roaming bar?

2 years later and I’m still right!

Jim Hunter.6821:

hit them with conditions, and laugh as they panic because they didn’t bring any condi removal.

Like I said, someone who actually plays ranger. :P

If anyone is on SoS or YB and thinks necro is a good roaming class, I’d love to be proven wrong. I don’t duel for egos, but if someone can show me how it’s possible to beat a LB ranger with a necro I’m down.

Not that I’m saying LB ranger is OP, we have all sorts of other horrific matchups and weaknesses.

But it’s a sitting duck to a LB ranger. They literally have no answer at all, assuming it’s not a guy who just hopped on to ranger after last patch; somewho who actually plays ranger. I don’t think I’ve ever lost to a necro 1v1, and that’s a ridiculous statement.

Necros also struggle mightily with movement speed.

Edit: Hmm, after some thought I would list necros quite high in small group roaming, but zero in solo roaming.

Necro is just an unacceptable answer. Worst roaming class bar none.

It’s from the newest living world trailer. For some reason they featured a bearbow ranger quite prominently in one of the scenes. That weird cropping is the only way I could fit both the ranger and pet in the shot at the same time.

WTF Anet. Show us some respect.

GS is fine, but I prefer sword dagger for WvW. The mobility is like 500000% times more than a GS, which lends to better kiting. It’s significantly stronger against multiple opponents that GSs single leap.

I always highly recommend the drakehound/wolf pairing.

Also do you have a condi cleanse? Sounds like you’re not running SotF, so I recommend dropping SoS and going for SoR. You’re not going to be doing any kiting if you’re chilled or crippled, and it doubles as a condi comb cleanse, and triples as a stun breaker.

Birds are nice for WvW. For PvE they do slightly less damage than cats. Sometimes I’ll use birds for open world screwing around, just to get that extra speed.

Whether you count on it or not, pets usually contribute quite a lot of DPS unless you’re in lower level areas or zergs. That’s why everyone runs cats even in coordinated dungeon groups.

Get them all and try them all. There are some that are vastly superior to others, but it’s nice to know what they’re all capable of.

I often run a similar build. I would either swap SS for SotH or drop the drakehound for a bird, and the rest I think is fine. Your movement speed out of combat is fine in your build due to the 3 leaps, but the swiftness or SotH will help you stay on your opponent in combat. You might be a tad low on damage, but you can tweak gear to your liking as you go.

I vote keep strength of spirit over nature’s protection, because you’re pretty tanky to begin with and already have prot on dodge.

You might want to put battle on your sword and intelligence on your GS, since your ferocity is semi high and your crit chance is only 50% with fury. It would help with maul.

Rangers do have plenty of nice group support. but a lot of it’s tied up in traits instead of utilities. The meta builds for other classes are mostly team support utilities like stand your ground, hold the line, shadow refuge, banners, etc.

If we want to provide boons we need to trait for shouts, trait for spotter, trait for spirits, etc.

A counterpoint might be that rangers are good for skirmishing, which anet said they wanted us to be good at, and if you want to play team support you can play a guardian. That doesn’t make us ideal in a WvW zerg, but it might get us a spot in PvP. We have 3 or 4 utility skills that provide group support mostly untraited. Healing spring, SoR, MT and entangle.

If I were to change anything, it would be to address some of our never-used utilities.

If it’s PPK and not stomp, FA will overtake BG. :-O

You’ll unlock those shortly. Anet gated the roughly first 30 levels so as to introduce new mechanics to new players slowly.

I spent a few hours on my guardian in WvW tonight. She has a level 68 masterwork backpiece, to give you an idea of her gear (exotic clerics armor from game launch that I thought would be useful.)

My goodness, I had forgotten how easy the other professions have it. Oh I do just fine on my ranger, but my fingers play the keyboard like a piano to keep me alive. Take my crap guardian into WvW, spam 1, never a chance in hell I’m going to die, kill everything. I spent several gold on bigger bags to hold all the crap that was dropping.

Gah.

Edit: Relevant video if you haven’t already seen it. “When I’m Guardian”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fxuoJGdGs

Rangers are still told to alt-F4 in WvW unless you’re roaming. Spirits have been indirectly nerfed by hordes of engis and eles everywhere. I really, really hope anet doesn’t start listening to the incompetent players that struggle with LB rangers. And I don’t think they will; adding a tell to a critical skill is a good thing for everybody.

Not many servers can compete with T2 reset night fight guilds. YB didn’t win last reset weekend either. Score is about PPT, not reset night.

Bunch of buffs to other classes, slight nerf to the worst competitive class. Ok…? I do agree with the change though; tells for important skills are awesome.

Anybody suggesting a change to the cast time is nuts though, PBS is useful as a (historical) ranger interrupt because it is one of the few interrupts that is relatively instant. It’s important the skill is used to interrupt, or just kitten LB rangers.

Heh, are you just smashing buttons when you’re down? You revived yourself.

Some NPCs will do that too, like WvW guards.

Sure, YBs population is like 40% higher than it was last time FA faced them. I just hope that’s real population and not people staying up late chasing SoSs score, I don’t want another Maguuma situation in three weeks. Right now all 3 servers are in a relatively perfect balance.

I really hope this keeps up, but I have a feeling SoS is taking a week off and YB is pulling overtime due to the excitement of putting up a fight in a new tier. I think in 2 weeks we’re going to have less balance.

Whatever happens it’s at least better than it has been.

I agree Jim, it’s just a tool, and not even that exciting of one since it doesn’t prevent CC and condis, the two biggest weaknesses of a LB ranger.

In WvW I literally never run SoS on a LB ranger because there are extremely few glassy gankers. If I am facing a berserker thief instead of a condi thief, I’ve already got plenty of tools to deal with him just by being a ranger.

I can see SoS being useful for LB rangers in PvP, but then that’s a pretty suboptimal situation to be in to begin with, and you’re probably dead no matter what you do.

Agree with everything. People that transfer multiple times for WvW are just looking for an easy win, and that’s not a satisfying reason to play a game = quit.