Guild Wars 2

To be fair, power druids don’t have much burst either unless you go marauder. The best you can get out of a condi druid is some survivability plus enough pressure to not be totally useless. That’s doable. Something like flame or spike trap, torch, some source of poison, and then utility and survival for the rest.

Any other condi build people are running is probably a slight variation on Chrury’s build. I’ve run something extremely similar but with druid instead of NM.

The one major alternative I’ve screwed around with is a condi-slanted celestial staff+sb in WvW, and it’s definitely solid enough to hold a point in PvP if you could somehow recreate that (probably sage + dolyak or etc). Obviously cele s/t+staff was meta for a while. At some point if you’re using staff you just start to wonder why you aren’t using mender’s though.

They all have about 2 or 3 really optimal-ish builds for whatever content, and then they all have about 50 subpar but usable builds.

No it’s good stuff, I just wasn’t super interested in the topic.

Awesome vid. I’m terrible against mesmers as a melee druid.

Crapgame.6519:

Melee Druid/rangers are rare and in my opinion one of the more difficult to play.

I’ve been seeing them everywhere the past few months (with those kitten durability runes!). I wonder if a popular content maker highlighted them or something.

anduriell.6280:

and please do ignore shadelang

Wasn’t going to read his wall of text until I saw you post this. Now I know for a fact shadelang knows what he’s talking about and posted good advice.

Azukas.1426:

Fluffball.8307:

Azukas.1426:

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

I’d argue it’s a lot easier. The other night I literally solo’d on a 100% glass druid an entire guild. Yes, they were probably all newbies on free accounts. There is now a huge discrepancy between vets and newbies. Full ascended with infusions and cons you can almost 1 shot a newbie with an autoattack.

Obviously equal skill and experience: the larger number wins, but equal skill and experience are once in a blue moon.

On Maguuma so Uhh yeah

Do you guys have a lot of new guilds or something? I’m on FA. I don’t follow all the drama at all but it seems like you guys are tanking?

halex.5748:

Zachary Stiers.1879:

We’re aware of the issue and are working on fixing it.

A real life hero would give us more information.

What are you expecting? The error code? Something bugged, they’re looking for the bug.

Azukas.1426:

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

I’d argue it’s a lot easier. The other night I literally solo’d on a 100% glass druid an entire guild. Yes, they were probably all newbies on free accounts. There is now a huge discrepancy between vets and newbies. Full ascended with infusions and cons you can almost 1 shot a newbie with an autoattack.

Obviously equal skill and experience: the larger number wins, but equal skill and experience are once in a blue moon.

The numbers are 100% completely useless, they tell you nothing. I’ve literally never once looked at my numbers after a match, and I’ll happily argue anyone who truly cares about their numbers probably isn’t a very good player.

If you have 2 menders staff druids auotattacking each other for 10 minutes off point their damage and healing numbers are going to be totally off the charts, but they accomplished nothing.

• I don’t care how much damage I did, I care that the guy who needed to be killed was killed. Perhaps my contribution was a clutch interrupt or lockdown.
• I don’t care how much healing I did, I care that I saved my teammate when he needed help (think smoke field, AoE stun break, other types of peels.)
• I don’t care how often I fought on a point, I care that we held points. If we’re holding 2 points I will intentionally fight off point the entire game.

Those stats are an utterly useless way to judge skill at conquest, unless you want to identify afkers, and you don’t need those stats to identify afkers.

It happens all the time. There are countless youtube videos of even smaller groups than 10 breaking up large PUG blobs.

PvP matches you with people around your skill level, so if you play some weird build you’ll just plain lose to the masses running optimal or near optimal builds.

In WvW you can get much more creative in your builds. WvW roaming is a lot like open world PvE in that just about anything will work as long as you have at least put minimal thought into it, like having condi removal and stun break and so on. The build variety and skill level is all over the map but people generally run more creative builds rather than just pure “win win win win win” builds.

I have used SB/staff on a roaming celestial druid. It’s all right. Pretty subpar but it works.

Edit: If you meant for open world PvE, vipers or sinister would be more than adequate. Basically you just want some power and condi damage since SB is condi and staff is power. SB is where 95% of your damage comes from so lean condi with trinkets and what not.

chris.3019:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Ranger is the best solo class in the game for PvE. Necromancer and mesmer are also good, but the ranger is still best for solo play in PvE from level one to level eighty. And that class does everything you mentioned with ease.

Is there a specific set up that should run? Weapons and pets?

Longbow and sword/axe or warhorn or greatsword for swap. Take 2 cats because they do the highest damage for core pets, swap them on the off chance they actually get hurt.

No way your or your pets ever die.

Edit: If it gets too boring and you start to learn the game, use sword/axe + greatsword and ditch the longbow. Melee is much more interesting than just standing at range watching things attack your pet.

It’s already effectively impossible to take an objective if it’s defended by a critical mass. 50 vs 50 at T3 garri, ya the garri is not falling, at least not for several hours.

Ariurotl.3718:

Now if only we could toggle all those ridiculously tacky wings somehow…

Isn’t there an option to permanently use default character models in PvE? Or is that just until things load?

And suddenly everything is alright in the world. Just feels good. Like driving a Caddy. You sip your Cabernet Sauvignon and enjoy the instance.

Freud said the only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.

Pretty good. How are you?

Torch is borderline garbage when fighting something other than a stationary boss. Using it on humans or in the open world requires some thought.

There is no need to nerf a mediocre weapon because it lucked into working well in raids.

Most or all of HPs can be soloed pretty casually, and you can unlock an elite spec by doing the channels. I guide new players through it often.

I feel like this thread may be over dramatic.

It’s a super easy fractal and you don’t even have to run it regularly. Just make sure you have damage-focused exotics for underwater stuff and it’s fine. Don’t take a soldier’s stats masterwork level 78 spear.

Everyone already knows to target necros, but you call the target that messed up. Called targets all over the place means no one pays attention to them.

Well warrior in particular has access to almost every weapon in the game. It’s not the most efficient in all cases, but you can absolutely change your playstyle. For example you could play condi sword/torch + longbow as the elite spec which has excellent DPS. And all the other weapons have their own thing. Hammer guardian is popular in raids. Longbow dragonhunter is a popular choice for PvP/WvW, and scepter and/or burning guard is popular in fractals.

If you want various meta and viable off meta builds for warrior and guardian, you might check their subforums.

Edit: Just saw your edit.
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Raid

ALL classes can work in raids, like I was saying. And non high end speed run stuff it just becomes nearly irrelevant what you run.

What’s fun is entirely subjective. If you’re looking for a vastly different playstyle, you can find those within warrior and guardian already. Or you could name what type of playstyle you’re looking for and we could recommend one.

If you want something that presses a lot of buttons really quickly, try a condi pistol/pistol engi with 3 kits.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_DPS_Condition

If you’re not looking to do insane crazy high end content speed runs, it really doesn’t matter. One great thing anet does is balance classes to the extent that even if one is better, all are totally viable.

Also the balance changes literally all the time. What’s hip today might become passé.

I bought a 10th slot a few years ago to play from scratch with my wife, but she hasn’t logged in in like 3 years, and I figure it’s time to use this thing for something interesting.

I figure key farming is probably the “optimal” use for it. The idea does not particularly interest me, but maybe if I do it once every other month or so it could be fun.

Other thoughts, none of which appeal to me….

• Permanent alternate build for an existing profession
• Some sort of joke/cosplay
• Mid level character for champ bags — this might be appealing; is it really worth the annoying effort?
• Simply a storage container

Anyone do anything super fun or rewarding with extra slots?

Oh, ease rather than a themed character? Ranger or necro, although again you could do it on any profession.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon

You should be able to easily* do that on any profession. Some obvious choices would be thief, warrior, or guardian though.

People have done complete pacifist characters before, with literally zero fighting. You can get most of world completion done.

*I don’t mean easily like it will be boring, just that every profession has options for running or hiding or healing.

This sounds like a skillbar replacement, like banners or mechanical devourers type stuff? I strongly dislike those being added to WvW. It’s nothing the trait and profession system shouldn’t be able to handle, and just complicates/obliterates balance.

The less weird fluff* that is added, the better. See: EotM.

*Myself exlcuded.

Israel.7056:

I’d love to see their stats that can magically identify any one particular player motivation for participation at any given time.

They have usage stats on every single player in the entire game at all time, which is a ludicrous amount of data.

Can you identify the reason of a single player? No. Can you identify the reasons of hundreds of thousands of players across hundreds of millions of hours? Obviously.

Israel.7056:

You’re enabling weak minded players.

They’re keeping players in the game mode and undoubtedly have the numbers to support that. Doesn’t matter if you have all the tag-free features in the world if no one else is playing.

It’s not about preventing people from running tagless. People have always, and will always do that. It’s about spending resources on something the devs don’t want to support.

It’s like me saying I think we should have a comprehensive government sponsored ad campaign to promote the use of added sugar in food. It’s not illegal to add sugar, but why would the government put resources into it?

Jirayu.5834:

but those who currently run tagless now can tag up privately (visible only to squad member) and use features that need to tag up. like marker or Lt.

That’s something the devs have repeatedly said they aren’t going to spend resources on and very specifically told you why. There is nothing they aren’t understanding about the situation.

Jirayu.5834:

I still think dev missed the point. I dont think when ppl have private tag they will just flooded to it and stop running public tag.

But anyway, If they say so, I can’t do anything about it.

It’s hard to understand what you mean, but I think you’re saying people will still go to the public tag if people are running private tags? That only works if there is a visible tag. The dev’s point was people will simply turn the game off if they don’t see a tag up. And to be honest, even as a roamer I might do that because that means enemy zergs are running rampant.

Jirayu.5834:

You really missed the point here.

I think you missed the point. They don’t want to spend resources on developing features that aren’t healthy for the game population. I’m sure they have no problem with guilds running tagless right now, but they don’t want to support it, and gave very good reasons why.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

As far as I know, it’s 23.5 hours from the last time you harvested them. I’m … unable to source that, though, so maybe that’s just folk “wisdom”…

I’m almost positive that’s not right, as I often log in at different times and can harvest them. Ori is 23 hours according to the wiki. If I had to guess a pretty number for berries, it would be 12 hours.

Edit: The answer a lot of people gave in mapchat was that it was variable between about 16 and 23 hours, and certain nodes respawn at randomly different rates. Seems believable.

TinkTinkPOOF.9201:

Enough of this PC crap.

Has nothing to do with being PC. Anet has said a lot of people will automatically log out of WvW if they don’t see a tag, and that’s why it’s never going to change.

I know you can only gather them once per day, but what is the respawn rate? It’s not at reset, and it doesn’t seem to be a full 24 hours. I’m never quite sure when I can go get more.

Also unless I’m missing berry patches (entirely possible), some seem to respawn faster than others?

Your pets are good for core CC pets, but wolf is better (harder F2 CC than the other canines), and all of the expac pets are excellent at what they do.

Also solo PvE, disregard the utility advice I gave you and take selfish stuff like quickening zephyr or something.

I honestly don’t care what they change in WvW. I don’t follow the scoring changes or any of that nonsense. I just run around killing things. Roaming is as good as it’s ever been (since there have always been and always will be obnoxious builds to fight against.)

Only thing they’ve ever done to WvW I didn’t like was the DBL because it made roaming significantly harder and less fun. Couldn’t find or get to enemies.

Edit: Oh and that time they made it so contested objectives didn’t show swords was also a bad change, as it made it harder to find enemies again.

I would argue even events aren’t really what the game is about. “The game is a game of exploration and discovery” sums it up better. The game is about anything you feel like doing at the moment.

Or you could sum up the game with “I want to go here — oh that looks neat I’ll go do that instead.” And both things will reward and level you.

The speed boost does not stack. You’re capped at 33% with a few exceptions like superspeed. I would take celestial shadow for sure in WvW, and obviously the glyph one for PvE.

For WvW, you are severely lacking in condi removal, especially as a melee ranger. You have to have something other than druidic clarity, even 3 ways to clear condis. Look at the 2 WS line grandmasters, SoR, and/or trooper runes. Sigils like generosity can also help.

Your pets for WvW are slightly subpar as well. I’d look at smokescale for stealth (via leaps and offhand warhorn), electric wyvern for dazing strike and AI CC, bristleback for damage, tiger for burst damage (works well with remorseless and/or GS as well), wolf for harder CC.

For PvE you’ll want spotter, GoE, GotL, frost spirit, and possibly sun spirit for better group buffing. Pets for PvE are either DPS like tiger, or heavy CC ones for breakbars.

That’s the gist of how to play ranger in both modes. It may sound like a lot but since the two modes save your traits and utilities, it’s really just swapping pets.

People comment on my Astralaria all the time because nearly no one has one. If you’re after attention, definitely the new legendaries are the way to go.

If you want it for practical reasons, Frostfang is definitely better.

Leveling is barely a part of this game, and it’s designed with that in mind. Doing anything will give you experience. Even just running around the world unfogging new areas will level you up, crafting will, WvW will, PvP will, events will, everything. I highly recommend not worrying about an optimal leveling path unless you find it totally unbearable.

It will take you maybe a couple dozen hours of doing random stuff to become level 80, and then you can decide what end game is fun for you, like fractals or WvW and so on.

That looks like a reasonably good base-build for both WvW and non-super high end PvE. Not the best possible, but pretty good. You definitely want to stick with power.

Berserker or marauder is good for both modes. I think the vit over toughness recommendation comes from the fact that we have a lot of healing, so you can quickly heal up large health pools.

There are a lot of small things you could easily optimize per game mode, if you need advice. For example spotters and offhand axe for PvE. Also SotH and NS are a little redundant. I assume you have SotH for maul bursts in WvW?

toymachine.1673:

Btw Fluffball i forgot to thank you for the link you shared for everyone! but… there are soo many better rangers streaming then me lets me honest

Not in my opinion. I rarely see people even streaming ranger, and if I do, I usually can’t watch their gameplay for more than a few seconds. You at the very least know which direction you’re supposed to face.

If you’re going to fight multiple opponents you either need to be incredibly durable or very glassy and use tons of stealth.

Either will work, and the druid can do both, but I strongly prefer the glassy version because tanky druids won’t be able to kill even single opponents a lot of the time, and killing multiple opponents relies on them being incredibly stupid. At least with glass you can figure out if the fight is winnable and then either spike people or stealth and just leave.