Guild Wars 2

You already have two-handed training and RaO, so you are very well covered in fury.

With what you’re running right now I would drop 5 out of NM and take Peak Strength for the 10% damage bonus. Or alternatively go the standard 4/5/0/5/0 for a much larger increase in damage. I see why you dropped skirmishing since the traits are mostly crap, but it still winds up causing you to do more damage. And cats hit like a truck with the 2 pet damage buff traits.

Archon.6480:

I love this. :-) Well, ANet is confused like me, and you know more… Ha! OK.

Rangers aren’t currently used at all in PvP and do less damage even using optimal builds in PvE. Using your ideas rangers are completely and utterly unusable in PvE. So ya, the people that play the game a lot know a lot more about it than ANet. And you have been mathematically proven to have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.

My only problem with you is you try to defy math. Your whacky builds and armor combos do mathematically less damage and yet you continue to claim otherwise.

Archon.6480:

Disclaimer: 25 stacks of might, warrior banners and trait, 25 stacks of vulnerability and frosty combined are not normal circumstances

Those are the assumed situations for dungeon calcs because it’s extremely rare they aren’t present. Even dekeys dungeon calc takes in to account vulnerability on a boss with defiant (or whatever that buff is called that reduces vuln.)

At any rate it’s completely irrelevant. Sword does more damage, and it does it faster. Any buff you apply to sword will have a cumulatively bigger affect to the sword because of the attack speed. Axe gets worse and worse the more allies you have.

At zero buffs, sword still hits harder as well as faster.

Edit: And apparently this post made Archon delete his nonsensical retort.

Looks fine, but you really don’t need much condi removal for PvE. For condi heavy dungeons I might throw on SoR, and healing spring and allies more than cover everything else. On a similar note, lightning reflexes isn’t very useful for most PvE.

Your extra condi removal instead of [edit, named the wrong trait] the skirmishing line is really the only difference from the meta build. Healing Spring is a little more group friendly, but whatever.

Another nice thing to do with your new sword is use it to move around the map (super important for map completion obviously!) Hit the about face button, hit 2, while you’re jumping use the mouse to orient towards the original forward direction. When you land, press forward and your character will auto-orient. Now press 2 again and you’ve lept forward twice. Combo that with swoop and possibly lightning reflexes and you’ll be getting to those points of interest in no time.

Or just walk there and use whatever weapon floats your boat, since map completion can be quite relaxing.

It might make sense to use it in team fights in tPvP, especially with AI spam, perhaps with might on weapon swap. That’s one situation where range can be beneficial if you have a tankier teammate on point.

But anywho, axe has always had a place in competitive. It doesn’t have a place in “serious” PvE.

Now take in to account attack speed. It winds up being exactly a huge gap. HUGE gap.

This is for PvE. For PvP you obviously wouldn’t use axe for a power build.

If you think sword auto is meh without might and quickness, axe auto is complete garbage, since it does way less damage.

To Zeft’s point though, axe finds its use in duels, due to the bleed, chill and weakness. The auto is useless in any format. I’m not even convinced the huge might buff coming up will change that at all, especially since it will barely trigger in duels. Anet seems confused about what the weapon is supposed to do.

solrik.6028:

Fluffball.8307:

solrik.6028:

Can you people just not accept that others like to play differently than how you play?
There is no benefit for you to actually convince someone to play as you do. (Except if the person is bearbow)

This argument isn’t from this. Way back when Archon tried to argue against like 60 people that carrion gear mathematically did more damage than berserker. He went on and on and on despite being literally proved wrong. It’s not about playstyle; if he want’s to say carrion is more fun, that’s up to him. But he made the claim is was better than berserker. It seems he has retreated to “it’s better if no one knows what they’re doing” but we shall see.

Wow, way to take this personally.

I don’t care.
You have no need to justify anything you say by degrading a person.
How difficult is it to just not press that reply button? Try to not press it, try to ignore this thread. It didn’t originate as “Axe is better because FACT1 FACT2 and FACT3” but as someone’s opinion who found axe to be fun. Archon has his opinion and you have yours.

Many used to tell me that I should play zerker here and there, but I didn’t listen because knights or other tankier sets were better. Why did I think they were better? Because I didn’t have the skill to play with the zerker set so the tankier sets were more appealing than the glassy ones. At the moment, I can hop on any set and kill stuff without problems (not claiming that I am the best player in the world)

Wait what? I don’t care about you or your backstory. I want to do is get rid of nonsensical “facts”. Play with full nomads, great, but people like Archon want to do that and then claim it’s not more fun but faster. People get so anti-berskerers that they start actually believing this stuff when they really are just being contrary.

solrik.6028:

Can you people just not accept that others like to play differently than how you play?
There is no benefit for you to actually convince someone to play as you do. (Except if the person is bearbow)

This argument isn’t from this. Way back when Archon tried to argue against like 60 people that carrion gear mathematically did more damage than berserker. He went on and on and on despite being literally proved wrong. It’s not about playstyle; if he want’s to say carrion is more fun, that’s up to him. But he made the claim is was better than berserker. It seems he has retreated to “it’s better if no one knows what they’re doing” but we shall see.

So you’re saying berserker is the most effective PvE armor set and the others are just for screwing around, yes I get that. Go ahead and screw around.

Archon.6480:

I would like to think of myself as the spokesperson for logic. You and so many others are like carpenters who have a toolbox full of hammers, but swear you must use only a single hammer for all jobs. To make matters worse, you flame anyone for suggesting the other tools. Hence, forum stooges. You think you know more than game designers. It’s annoying.

Spreading disinformation? If you can speed up my dungeon run I am all ears, I want another legendary.

OH!: I forgot. The last time this came up I did the same thing. There have been some dungeon clear challenges on the dungeon subforum. If you, Archon, using a non meta carrion build, can win the challenge and beat all the berserkers, I will give you 1200 gold. I will give it to a 3rd party if you don’t trust me.

Archon what exactly are you contributing to anything? Are you like the spokesperson for inefficiency?

Edit: Archon aren’t you the person who was laughed out of the forums for saying carrion gear did more damage than berserker’s and then being mathematically proven wrong by quite a few people? Are you back being the people’s champ? Spreading disinformation? If you can speed up my dungeon run I am all ears, I want another legendary.

I think you’ve taken the completely wrong approach. Most of map completion is tedious, not dangerous. Go 100% max damage at the expense of everything else except perhaps movement speed. With that in mind I would use the dungeon meta build as a base. Remorseless for the initial 3 enemy 1-hit kill mauls is probably the best route. Master’s Bond is another option, although I often find my pet doesn’t get a single hit in before an enemy dies.

No matter what route you go, DEFINITELY lose the bear. It just offers you absolutely nothing at all. Take a damage pet so you can chew through the trash faster. Some people might pick a drake, I’d take a jungle stalker or possibly eagle. You don’t need the CC from a snow owl.

No way in hell I would ever use anything other than melee for killing trash. MH axe or bows are just painfully slow.

Obviously full berserker’s is the best for PvE.

Also wanted to point out that there is no need for your condi removal and stun protection, etc. Your build almost looks like a WvW build rather than slaughtering AI idiocy build.

Someone asked this when the fake CDI thread came up. The results were centered around the evades/mobility and the pet mechanic if I recall correctly, but that may be me just remembering what I like about it.

I actually think bows are pretty stupid in most games. I was a main thief and wasn’t completely thrilled with my weapon sets until I found ranger sword/dagger. Ranger is everything I want in a thief and then a hundred times more.

Don’t worry about ranger not being good in WvW. There is a learning curve, but it does just fine. It even does perfectly fine in zergs, it just doesn’t offer teammates as much as something like a guardian does, which is where the supposedly bad reputation comes from.

If you want to try ranger in WvW, as much as I think it’s a kitten awful stupid boring build, I might recommend roaming on a regen condi ranger. At leas by doing that you’ll get used to using the semi-awkward movement skills and evades. Once you get those two things down you’ll be totally good to go with any build you want.

For open world stuff, use the build DesertRose posted and probably just ditch the spirit. If you were with a small farming group you could also make the spirit follow you around. Anything else for dungeons is completely subpar, and it’s pretty close to the best option for open world as well.

For WvW, there are tons of popular builds. PVT signet greatsword/LB for bigger to medium sized fights, glass LB for semi-risky sniping with the zerg, dual melee for solo roaming, condi regen for solo roaming (off the charts boring IMO, but very hard to be killed) For small group WvW, you can take anything you want as long as it fits in with the group comp.

Eh, I don’t agree with giving yourself a massive crutch. In other games, sure. But in GW2, the only difference is learning how to dodge or learning how to stand in AoE and get hit by critical attacks. It’s not worth it and makes you a bad player. The people complaining the can’t use melee in dungeons are almost certainly people who gave themselves crutches like using longbows in PvE or using PVT.

The new content is still extremely trivial with berserkers. If you’re struggling with it, that’s all the more reason to not rely on the crutch of tankier armor. Get better, rather than getting worse.

Between the super high mobility on the two melee sets, lightning reflexes, the enormous amounts of CC, the absurd amounts of evades, and the couple defensive skills on LB, I’ve never had any trouble leaving fights. Thieves and warriors are faster, but it’s not good enough to kill a fleeing ranger.

Once you get the hang of ranger, you can reset fights whenever you want. Which is super handy for a WvW berserker ranger, which I also use. Just don’t expect it to be as simple as pressing a single button like with thief.

Narkodx.1472:

Fluffball.8307:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Don’t forget that if the enemy reflects hunter’s shot, it stealths them. Either that or warriors learn to stealth when I play ranger shrugs

I’ve seen more than 1 warrior kill themselves with kill shot on my axe5. Yes I did say more than one. In fact I’ve seen warriors killshot themselves agains the kitten grawl shaman. Give me time and I will find a necro to kill themselves on scepter1.

LOL

One major problem – Necro scepter is not a projectile – thus not reflectable

I wouldn’t underestimate the stupidity of some players. Give them time and they will kill themselves in a way that violates game mechanics.

Sword not only attacks faster, it hits harder…

Axe is just plain terrible for a power build.

Er, submit that to the bug forum and then stop doing it before you get banned.

You really can’t go wrong. Any combo of any of the melee weapons is excellent and brings something incredibly important to the table. The only weird one would be torch, which is very good, but purely condition.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Don’t forget that if the enemy reflects hunter’s shot, it stealths them. Either that or warriors learn to stealth when I play ranger shrugs

I’ve seen more than 1 warrior kill themselves with kill shot on my axe5. Yes I did say more than one. In fact I’ve seen warriors killshot themselves agains the kitten grawl shaman. Give me time and I will find a necro to kill themselves on scepter1.

In addition to 100% agreement with what jcbroe wrote, I’ll also add that — even if you aren’t specced for it — a longbow can be a condition counter. If you have time, quickly slap on a few traits like extended range. If you only have time to equip the bow, that can often make a world of difference against something like a condi necro. Necros are often just absolutely useless against a LB with a mobility swap.

Any good build is a cheese build. Helesek or whatever his name is that is on team Myst had a video half a year ago about how GW is a very spammy game.

Basically it’s not feasible to run 100% complete glass cannon and rely entirely on skill when you’re in the middle of a team fight because all sorts of random attacks are coming in, many untelegraphed, blah blah blah. Good players have to mitigate this risk by running “cheese” builds like your typical tanky heal sig warrior and then spamming dodges via vigor. Bad players will rely on their superior skill and get downed.

The only time skill-based builds have the opportunity to come in to play is mostly in 1v1s or 1v2s.

There is a slight caveat that you can extremely easily run a berserker build in the front line of a zerg just because of weird game mechanics. That’s half way between skill and cheese. Or just experience with the game, like a farmer’s gambit in single player civilization game.

solrik.6028:

Stop being such a hardcore know-it-all player please. All it takes is joining a casual guild that does PvE and off you go playing how you want.

That’s fine, but then there is zero point to this thread. “Hey guys, I recommend using the worst possible weapon available to my profession.” It’s like saying “I don’t run for speed so here’s something to try: not using a weapon at all and only using a pet for damage.”

By all means do whatever you want with your guild, but why make posts touting the benefits of something utterly useless? If someone is such a bad player they need to use axe, they’re already using axe instead of dying constantly with a sword or greatsword.

Not this again.

If you really want to see spirit rangers, just check out the old ToL videos. Almost every team ran one in the first ToL.

Soilder.3607:

The boar also has a 3 second knockdown which rarely hits but is great when it does.

The thing that drives me nuts about the pig family, is not only does that attack miss, the pig completely removes himself from the fight when he misses. Its a cute animation, but sheesh.

Well the other thing about going the power route is that s/d + GS is maybe the most defensive weapon set possible on any profession. So if you can do a little damage with it, great.

But ya, maybe I can’t find anyone good to fight with it. I’ve been trying to put the build through better tests both in duels and in WvW. And I still probably wouldn’t try it in a tournament since condi tanks are so perfect for conquest.

solrik.6028:

Fluffball.8307:

Your backstab evasion is something rangers who struggle with roaming need to learn.

Using 2 to 3 evades is something many rangers struggle with?
Or in case it’s 1 evade then it’s about using 1-2 extra skills.

Nope.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Between the duration of various stealth skills and your own internal timer of where the thief is as he moves towards you, you can avoid a lot of backstabs. The video shows that ability off.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Dungeon rewards ARE inflating the economy, how do you think people are getting all the gold to buy these mats?

They are, but so is the level 2 kittenwad killing scales in Queensdale. Everything adds up. The prices of everything is going to go up and up and up but dungeon rewards stay the same. It’s already to the point dungeons are questionably good income. Give it a month and maybe dungeons are bad income.

I did miss the necro hit for that much. I stopped watching with all the extremely low numbers in the first fight (pick a better initial fight for a power ranger video!) I’ll have to give it another shot, which I am super happy to do for power rangers.

With spoiling it for me, 8.5k sounds ridiculous, was that a SotH + MoC boost?

Edit: BTW are you online right now and in NA? I’ve been screwing around with this power ranger BM build I’d love to be put to the test by someone with an ounce of skill.

Soilder.3607:

Speadyjooce.3278:

Arlette.9684:

If I play this slow, I’m gonna kill myself or fall asleep at the keyboard

That’s how I’m like.

It was a great video. However, I like the fast paced, on your toes, play style of a power based ranger.

These are a few power ranger vids. You might like em.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1cbape_guild-wars-2-signet-ranger-roaming-4_videogames

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1c84hr_guild-wars-2-signet-ranger-roaming-3_videogames

Dude hit a maul for 800. Not sure you can call that a power build. Honestly condi builds might maul for more than that.

If you speed run a series of dungeons you can make money, but salvaging even a handful of mats from an Orrian event with hundreds of enemies is just way more cost efficient. Silk is going for the better part of 3 silver per piece. Heavy bags are no small prize either.

Do dungeons need a price bump to stay relevant? Let’s imagine silk goes to 7 silver per piece. T6 mats might go for a gold a piece; they are both well on their way there. Will anyone do dungeons? Is there going to be a point when dungeon rewards inflate with the economy?

Your backstab evasion is something rangers who struggle with roaming need to learn.

tekfan.3179:

I stopped counting the times I kited a boss to death while the rest of my party lay on the ground

The calling card of a terrible player….

My full nomads bearbow didn’t even take a hint of damage while all my stupid teammates tried to do damage.

Dual.8953:

Pfft. What’s gonna happen? You’ll wipe and the dungeon will boot your party out? Nope, you get infinite lives, and mobs don’t respawn. The only thing that can make a dungeon fail in this game is loss of morale (you could argue Agony as well, but that’s pretty much the only thing that creates an artificial barrier and has no baring on gear type). If you want a perfect team, why are you pugging in the first place?
You can do content in Soldiers, or Carrion or anything, and be successful. You don’t need to use meta tactics. Anet hasn’t altered the dungeon, adding codes that prevent nonmeta builds from being successful.

Ok look at it this way. Premise: you in your tanky gear all set to be inclusive. You’d like to play a dungeon but you pick up a fifth and he can’t make it past the cave troll. 2 of you respawn at the start to help him by but he keeps dying because he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. No one is having any fun. Most of the team is standing around doing nothing, and even when you get started you know the new guy is contributing absolutely zero.

This is exactly how many of us feel if we were to join a PUG with people using PVT or whatever nonsensical garbage. It’s not fun for anyone.

It sort of doesn’t matter since there is no way in kitten I would ever play with someone like you, but I want you to understand why it is I kick you if you join my group.

People continually make these asinine posts about how they deserve to play whatever they want and have 4 other people do the work for them. Do what you want but at least tell other people you have no desire to complete content.

Make LFGs like “I don’t want to be efficient and prefer to waste other people’s time” and you won’t have to deal with them.

Again prefacing this with I’m a complete and utter newbie to beast master builds, I think condi idea might be the wrong way to go. The reason I won like 25 straight duels is because my power build got in to people’s faces and they thought I was the threat, all the while distracting from the fact that the pet was the threat. Condi almost does the opposite, highlighting that you are doing DoT, like when they get hit with the torch, and then the spike is clearly coming from the pet.

To be honest I’m not sure anyone I dueled even realized I was running a BM build. People were talking about my melee pressure. You want them to ignore the pet, especially if you pick something other than bird.

Might be six to one, half a dozen to the other. Condi is almost definitely better for bunkering in a tPvP game though. I guess I’m coming at it more from a roaming perspective since rangers are a bit wonky in PvP right now.

Edit: Oh, I almost forgot, I tested the same traits but using SotF and the typical survival traits for WvW roaming. LR, MT, and I think I SotW. That really helped my condi problem. If I had unlimited money I would use berserker amor with dolyak runes, the ranger runes were a clear weakness. I got annihilated by a berserker warrior, but won most of my other encounters fairly easily.

Love the heritage. I wore that for over a year.

Power is way more fun, and a hell of a lot more satisfying knowing you outplayed someone rather than passively outhealed them.

Also it’s possible to combine the two for the best of both worlds.

This is a really weird thread.

I just tested the build I posted in a duels server. It did exceptionally well. Like ridiculously easy to play. Although it’s not terribly realistic since most people don’t use condis on duels servers. I got torn up by a condi bow warrior, but I beat literally every other type of build I faced, not losing anything. There wsa a PU mesmer, but somehow I beat him before the condis could do anything.

I swapped SoN out with RaO just to not be a kitten for the duels.

Depends on what you’re doing. If you mean 1v1s, probably mesmer. If you mean actually roaming… taking camps, dolyaks, cutting off reinforcements, skirmishing, i.e well rounded, I put ranger ahead of thief and mesmer. Ranger is way more mobile than mesmer.

Edit: Also it’s totally irrelevant. Play what you’re good at an enjoy.

You look like a thug. In a good way.

Just smack things. I don’t see the problem, nothing does anything dangerous.

Maybe if you’re in tanky armor the menders don’t die fast enough? What happens if they reach him, they just heal him?