Guild Wars 2

shadowpass.4236:

well, I doubt ur gonna be staying at 1200+ range the entire fight… so warrior lb wins in the grand scheme of things (longer fights)

I mean, it’s good for starting a fight with a 9k aa from lb lol, that’s half their health gone right there, and another aa and rapid fire (with or without qz) can usually finish the job

If the warrior is using his LB the entire fight, you’ve already won.

But I actually think that unintuitive synergy between close and long range LB skills is why it’s an effective weapon in WvW. Long range it shaves health off, short range it supplements your melee.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dual_Shot
Damage (2x): 212 (0.66)

vs
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Long_Range_Shot
1000+ range: 317 (0.9)?
Damage 500-1000 range: 263 (0.65)
Damage 0-500 range: 211 (0.5)

Yeah…

Up close the warrior autoattack wins, at long range the ranger autoattack wins. Warrior LB is really more of a close range, condi support weapon. The ranger LB is either extreme long range, power weapon or an up close, almost pure (self) support weapon.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Still not the same thing. :P

It’d be like saying the charr Shaman caste and the Flame Legion are the same thing (fun fact: they’re not).

A Bladestorm or something isn’t mistakable Shaman caste. I think a better analogy of guns and cannons aren’t the same meaning would be saying broadswords and swords aren’t the same thing.

This is getting bizarre.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Guns and cannons are not the same thing.

Cannons are guns, just not in household vernacular where “gun” means handheld. In the military or dictionary, gun means something else entirely.

/semantics

Ayrilana.1396:

The only new dungeon you will see is if it’s part of the living story. Even then it will just be a single path.

I wonder if no dungeon added will ever be permanent outside of fractals because of this: People like to do all dungeon paths in a day, and adding more could burn them out in the same way dailies were dramatically reduced.

I completely disagree that that should happen, but I wonder if it crossed Anet’s collective mind.

That would also explain what happened with TA.

GrimmR.3541:

As a dedicated ranger player i have to say that people tend to overreact when the sword is concerned. It is quite smooth to play if you practise it alot.

If you’ve got an experienced group of berserkers, I go ahead and turn autoattack back on. It makes you lazy but saves your finger a bit!

There are ways to get around that, that you should definitely use (pet swapping and recalling), but I agree in principle.

I don’t think it should be random, I think the player should be able to tell the pet to dodge (with a limited endurance bar.) That way it’s pure skill/awareness.

GW2 can be directly compared to the way life evolves. In the beginning, there were millions of different builds. Through a process of natural selection, those builds were narrowed down. New players inherited these builds, and when a new threat arose, they either adapted the build or the build went extinct.

Where the comparison eventually falls apart is that GW2 builds have artificial rules and we can only develop a build so far. You can’t keep adding health until everyone is running around with 100k, although that would help you survive. Eventually, you’ll have a group of the best possible builds (read: meta builds.)

There is an idea called Convergent Evolution which says that lifeforms in similar situations will evolve similar traits, regardless of how or if they are related. For example, multiple species across every variety of life form from plants to insects to reptiles to mammals have independently developed venom.

QUESTION:
In a parallel universe, has the WvW evolved in to the exact meta that we currently have?

Is the current WvW meta the final evolution until the devs change the ‘rules’ (i.e. remove the condi cap, etc.) Or is where we currently are merely an australopithecus afarensis on our way to the modern kitten sapien of WvW metas?

Edit: Kitten sapien sounds adorable. Or horrifying. Can’t decide.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Um… all of the above?

“Open world” is kind of vague. I’m assuming you’re wrapping things like exploring, map completion, guild events, role playing, and such into that category?

Yes, basically unorganized, social, random play. Honestly I forgot all about guild missions, but I doubt there is a sizable portion of players spending the majority of their time in them.

Forzani.2584:

Put a few hours into the Ranger today after not having played him for a few weeks …been playing Warrior. Crazy culture shock. Played a semi-glass LB. You need to be on your toes at all times. It feels like the Ranger goes from full HPs to almost none in a flash. I guess having lower hps…toughness, and not having 1600 hp regen every 3 seconds is quite noticeable

I really try to avoid playing my warrior and guardian, since I mostly play ranger (and in the past mostly played thief.) Heavy to medium just messes up your game play so bad. Warriors are good for eating sammiches while you play though.

As I stated, the example was for simplicity.

Edit: Although ironically the single melee player can relatively easily solo it, while a range player in the background is going to cause problems.

Your pet only eats a single Lupi kick. With one player at range especially, that is an extremely small percentage of the fight.

Durzlla.6295:

How does us using LB from 1500 range make you take more damage?

Think duoing Lupi, just because it’s a really simple example. His kicks will 1-hit anyone. If both players are up there, they both have an opportunity to get kicked. If either one messes up there is a chance the kick is directed at the player that didn’t mess up and no one is downed. If the player that messes up gets downed, the other is there to quickly rez him.

If 1 player is melee and 1 ranged, the melee player gets all the kicks. He can never mess up because not only will he for sure eat the kick, the ranged character also can’t quickly rez him.

that baby stealing dingo.7216:

And please, don’t tell me to “play how I want” while simultaneously disparaging my style of play.

If you’re in a play how you want group, I have no problems what so ever with you using a longbow and having a full sentinels warrior up front tanking. Have at it, hoss.

On the other hand, anyone from the above group is completely incompatible with the meta. More and more I’m kicking bearbows on sight just because I know they are going to be responsible for the run not going smoothly. I only hate ranged PvE rangers because they make my play experience absolutely miserable. If you want to rag about the berserker melee mesmer being dead all the time in your holy trinity group, that’s totally legit as well. The two play styles are not compatible.

Being at range is just forcing someone else to take or dodge your hits for you, and on top of that your’re forcing them to do it longer because you do bad damage. You’re making it harder for everyone else.

That’s really all that needs to be said. Play how you want, but don’t moan when you get kicked.

Why?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The definition for open world is way too wide. By being almost anything, it means the poll means almost nothing.

It really isn’t it you look at it terms of game play. The difference between socializing and RPing is literally zero. I will admit my poll doesn’t allow for those nuances that make those results interesting, but I was only thinking about gameplay when I made it.

unicorngirl.1487:

People actually care about dungeons?

People actually care about whatever it is you find fun? That’s stupid. Your opinions are stupid.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Though I would advice you to split up “Open World” since it is a big category as it has Socialzing, Roleplaying, Leveling, Exploring, Jumping Puzzles, Achievemtn hunting and more. While world boss train is one thing and dungeons/Fract is two things and so on.

My idea was the open world was just basically “kitten going on”. If you just wandered out the door of Rata Sum, what would find? Not hardcore farming or dungeon running etc., but probably socializing or leveling or jumping puzzles.

All of those are (presumably) Open World.

If the only thing you do in PvE is nothing, I think you can safely bypass the poll.

Speaking as an almost exclusive ranger player, no one can match the unadulterated hatred of bearbows that a ranger has.

And yet we all use them when we’re feeling lazy and drunk and want to AFK a champ in a bandit camp in the Brisban Wildlands. Oh bearbow, why do you seduce me so? Is it the soft brown fur? Or the sweet honey whispers of “Shake it off”?

Oh Bear, you bring me a champ bag as faithfully as my dog brings me the morning newspaper. Half not expecting it, half angry if you don’t bring it. Why do you treat me so well? I don’t deserve it. That much is clear since I am using a bearbow.

Just curious.

Feel free to write something out if I missed an option. Living Story would go under Open World unless you only play the LS dungeons or something like that.

http://strawpoll.me/1712502

Condi bunker. He was using Nature’s Voice and probably Shout Mastery, all points in vitality, toughness and condition damage, armor usually focused on condi damage and healing. Perma regen.

Damage is kitten, but if you stick around and fight them, you’ll probably lose.

Lynx gives them a big “power” boost. Cats hit hard without referencing the ranger’s traits.

I think everyone collectively answered it. It’s all of the above. No it’s not the ranged damage, it’s not the melee damage, it’s not the burst damage nor DPS… Not the healing, neither support power. But kitten rangers bring all of those anyway.

PvP wise, if I had to pick a single defining feature about rangers, it would be the elusiveness through CC and evades. (Although the meta may prove me wrong since we are most famous for party support.)

I mentioned in the “hardest boss” thread I thought Alpha was actually super easy on your own because you can just leisurely wander out of his AoE. Two seconds is a really long time.

Without having tried it, I’d bet you could kill him with ‘run’ turned off on most classes. Necro and engy I’m guessing not, but I don’t play those much.

Archon.6480:

Oh no you didn’t pull the Arah P4 card on me!

Yes I did. If I said an experience group in CoF1 takes 30 minutes with everyone using ranged (or carrion or whatever homebrew you want to insert) versus 10 minutes with everyone in melee berserker, no one would care. But I often do multiple, or all dungeon paths in a day, and good lord does that time add up. It’s not just melee berserker kills things faster, it makes the run go smoother in the process, and that decreases the time exponentially. The less time you’re in combat, the less time you have for things to go wrong.

Arah4 is my metaphor for multiple dungeon paths.

Archon.6480:

Who said anything about ranged carrion gear?

It’s just a general reply to people using ridiculous builds like sentinels or longbow or whatever.

Archon.6480:

If you don’t like carrion don’t use it. I don’t care, but it is disingenuous to tell everyone the damage output is inferior in a group

This isn’t an opinon, it’s fact. I don’t understand how you can argue berserkers isn’t the highest possible damage. I need a smiley with ??? over its head.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

TurtleDragon.3108:

If you can’t melee every encounter in this game, then that is a problem with either the player, your strategy or your team composition.

please, we don’t need this kind of hyperbole. it’s simply not fruitful to the discourse.

It isn’t hyperbole, so it is fruitful to the discussion. Using ranged in dungeons makes them unbearably long. Add in carrion gear? Arah P4 would take you what, 6 hours?

Don’t confuse successful dungeon runs for thinking ranged carrion gear is successful. Those berserker warriors and guardians were probably what was successful.

Cats have the best DPS, although drakes have a couple AoE attacks which probably boosts them to around equal if not better if everything lands.

The other notable pets are birds, which have the 2nd highest DPS and give you swiftness. Very useful for running around completing hearts as fast as possible.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I sat on a rock with the ranger on longbow one time. We didn’t wipe…

Clearly it was because you were a ranger using a bow instead of a warrior using a bow. You carried your group there.

Kitten, not the whole “ranger derives from ranged combat” misconception again!

No amount of ranged DPS is going to make bows wanted in a dungeon run. People stay close to each other so they can support each other. Ronin’s post addresses that: rangers are usually extremely selfish. Sitting completely out of harms way not contributing anything to anyone is not good group play.

One time I did a CoF2 run where an incompetent warrior sat on the rock during the assassins stage using a longbow. That left me and 3 spell casters down on the floor to take 20% more hits, and him neither giving nor receiving any boons. We wiped twice before kicking him. We finished the run effortlessly on the third try with a player who stayed on the floor taking his share of the hits, giving and receiving boons, and doing cleave damage.

What’s your AP at? I see sub 2k people get booted all the time from any type of dungeon group regardless of class. I literally never get booted and I almost exclusively play ranger.

Mainhand axe isn’t melee and has horrible damage. Only place I’d use it is for running through blossoms in TA, then put your sword back on.

While it sucks, the end boss chest is not terribly exciting. Sure you miss out on the one in a hundred million chance at a precursor, but you got a gold and a half pop up in your UI.

At a certain point, the build or profession is irrelevant and it’s purely a skill and game knowledge competition. Any forum discussion from that point forward is seeing who can kitten further.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The pet can be very good in dungeon, since your targets are not moving, so your pets can’t be kited. They tend, however, to die very quickly to AoE heavy bosses like subject alpha. Same applies to your frost spirit.

Pets should rarely die to Alpha. I assume most AI AoEs have the same 5 target limit that humans do, so your pet will never even be targeted. In Alpha’s case, you can see this in effect if your in a PUG that panics and scatters. In that case it’s not uncommon that you are never targeted at all in the fight because Alpha is attacking 4 players and the NPC, or some other random combo of entities.

Arah and fractals aside though, I can’t immediately think of places your pet should die. The last bosses on CM P2 and AC P2will often kill your pet if you don’t recall them out of the AoE circles, but… just recall them if you care (those bosses melt in seconds anyway.) Frontal attack bosses you have to do the same thing, Wraithlord’s Crusher, Malrona, Howling King etc., recalling your pet if they are standing directly in front of them saves them. As a fail safe, you can swap the pet.

As for the Frost Spirit, we should get a thread going on optimal locations for each boss or big fight. Maybe I’ll take a few screenshots next time I do a dungeon run. A lot of times you can place the FS in a different room or someplace you wouldn’t immediately think to put it. For example the big pile of elite golems in CoE, you can put the FS outside the door of that room, then when everyone goes in to the corner, you’re still in range of the FS. FS = completely safe.

Asura also have the same advantages in WvW they get in PvP. Asura hands down for any competitive play.

Arujin.5984:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNUQJATRnMqQrK2KI+rAXLGYPoWHAB8Zz6CcvEHRTnyrOhUPA-TxSBwAP3fooyvPKBf8EAup+zkLBAKdF41gs4AIgw8HgDQggAGF-e

that is what I run for gear atm, so your saying its good just need to learn all the fights and upgrade. But the stats I want are those (also put in the runes and stones I use)

You’re a little off meta build. For dungeons, ditch the bow for a 1 handed sword and warhorn and take Vigorous Spirits. Look over that ranger guide I posted.

But yes, your equipment (other than LB) is ideal and you’re only dying because you aren’t used to the fights. Note that PUGs will sometimes get you killed if they don’t know the fights. For example, if your party doesn’t have any reflects, don’t stack against the spider champion Malrona in Twighlight Arbor.

Edit: You’ll probably be happier learning the fights using the greatsword instead of 1-handed sword. Once you get better at them, you can use the more efficient 1h sword, but GS is far more forgiving.

Rangers excel at roaming, there is absolutely no question about it.

Also roaming is more about personal skill than anything else. You are going head to head with someone else’s playing ability and knowledge. Bearbows tend to be horrible players and thus the bad reputation.

Sounds like the problem is how you’re controlling your character and your knowledge of the dungeon paths, not your equipment or utilities.

For example you’re going to go down every single time you fight Subject Alpha in Crucible of Eternity if you don’t know when to dodge. On the other hand, being in 100% berserker gear and knowing his attacks, your health will often never drop at all.

Anyway, general guide to ranger:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first#post3868491

This will help you with dungeon mechanics:
http://gw2dungeons.net/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first#post3868491

GS = trash mobs, mobility, and ease of use
Sword = best DPS

I think everyone covered the questions you asked me. In addition to bows being pretty much unacceptable in dungeon runs, bears are the lowest DPS pet and offer little utility in any of the 3 game modes (CC pets or damage pets are the most common.) Thus “bearbow” is pretty much the worst of the worst.

Bows in WvW have a bad reputation because if you catch a ranger using a bow away from a zerg, he’s usually an extremely easy target. Many of us play with that stereotype and run bows while solo roaming, but we all do it while having a melee swap. It’s not possible to maintain bow distance in WvW or PvP due to all the gap closers and the fact that running forward is faster than running sideways or backwards.

Now that you know this, you will avoid any redflags and a need to reroll.

Lindbur.2537:

6/6/6/6/6 do everything build

What’s really hysterical is that would literally not make the bearbow a better party choice than a meta ranger.

Read this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first#post3868491

The idea that rangers are poor at the end-game PvE or WvW comes from people using bows and bears, commonly known as “bearbows”. Bearbows are generally kicked from any party in any game mode on sight.

Competent rangers are very welcome in any game mode. Educate yourself on what rangers do, because they are far more complicated than a warrior, for example.

Asura have a very significant advantage in PvP. For a general character, anything but charr really, as charr have really horrific armor and clipping problems.

It only gives me the option of 240. Must be some regional thing?

I think Alpha is actually easier solo/unstacked. You can simple walk out of the circle and still whack him constantly with melee. Not very group friendly or efficient to do that of course.

Read this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Guide-PvE-Meta-Ranger/first#post3868491

Bearbows run 6/6 and then stick the remaining point wherever floats their boat. Possibly 10 in NM for a personal FS at 2100 range. I know this because my main is a ranger and someone posts that build in the ranger forum on a weekly basis.

Steady Focus, Eagle Eye and Piercing Arrows. Quick Draw is pretty much the only relevant trait in skrimishing. QZ is the only relevant utility unless they have a personal FS. RaO elite.

Dear lord, that resolution. It burns.

If you’re a good player you can make literally anything work, it’s just meta builds will generally allow for higher potential.