Guild Wars 2

Leveling is coming along nicely on my Necro. Starting to look ahead at potential builds. I have been dabbling in PvP with a minion build and it has been fun so far.

At 80 I will mostly be in WvW solo roaming or small man. I’m sure it will change numerous times…especially after suggestions from the experts….but here is my initial attempt at a build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAW7YjEat61aKb07JAJFPT90DuBPcIF7KNA-jUyAodBZKAMtAi+AkzLiGbFtIasadioa9CmLpIa1CBIbNA-w

All suggestions welcome !

Thanks

CHIPS.6018:

Chris.3290:

ko killer.3692:

Oh please, the amount of times my 5 man groups have had to deal with this same issue from TC and FA is unreal.

Yeah, I was actually laughing when TC sent 30+ people to take out 5 of your guys with a cata outside Klovan. They zerg so hard that I wonder if they ever can click anything other than the #1 skill all week long.

I was laughing the whole time I ran away then got ran over by one of the few FA zergs who dared take a TC camp.

I feel bad for high tier players that are “stuck” on a low tier server. They just gets bitter and becomes a forum warrior. So sad to see.

I feel bad for low tier players that are “stuck” on a high tier server. They just gets bitter and becomes a forum warrior. So sad to see.

FrouFrou.4958:

Prysin.8542:

no really, it seems you all think T1 WvW is where it matters…. in T1 or T2, all that matters is MANPOWER. The bigger blob wins. get down to into T4 hell, try T5-6-7-8 and you’ll see that roaming is what pays off. Not because roaming is all you can do, you got lots of zerging there. but its not impossible to make it on your own.

Actually, tier doesn’t matter as a rank 20 server you might end up against a rank 1 server (hello borked rating system!), thus this problem exists in every single tier and rank. Arenanet supports and keeps on adding features for zergballing with wubwub patches so there isn’t really any point of thinking outside of the box when the 80 man blob rolls over your poor little ranger.

I can’t recall the last time an 80 man blob has rolled my ranger. Pretty easy to avoid. Recently I have been shadowing the zerg on my solo Ranger waiting for opportunities to cull the herd by picking off stragglers.

Some really need to use their imagination and think outside the box a bit. Why do we expect Ranger to excel in every aspect of the game ?

-20v20
-small man havoc
-solo/duo
-zerg blobs

Yes, the Ranger can do well in all those scenarios. They can contribute to help win the fight. Which is kind of the point ? Depending on build, the contribution can be wildly different. Maybe they don’t get as much WvW xp ? lol I don’t know and don’t really care if true or not….because quite frankly WvW xp means less than nothing.

No doubt. Too often people are so myopic they don’t see the big picture. Movement and capturing points + delay enemy from capturing points > 1v1 win.

Furiousbeard.7602:

When rangers and warriors duel, the ranger should win 90% of the time.

The two play styles are very different and have different roles to play in pvp and pve.

That used to be true, but like someone else said, not anymore. Maybe a 70/30 split in favor of Ranger now ? Maybe even as low as 65%. Whatever the final number is, Warriors are much improved and way tougher to fight. The skilled warriors can absolutely wreck people now.

Note: Above comments apply to WvW

lol good job. Very amusing.

I want to make a 6th class. I only have 5 slots. My choice is to buy another version of the game or use gems to create a 6th slot. Not sure what would be a better deal.

I guess with another game version I would increase my bank slots.

The question is how do I go about ordering the digital version. Different credit card and email address ? …plus I wouldn’t have to actually download it…correct ?

Thanks for any advice

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

I do duel all the time and while I won’t say conditions can’t be a problem they most certainly can but generally that is only if they get stacked I find, however I might just not see it your way simply because I have never been that dependant on strong regens almost all my builds have been with realtively low healing power I don’t think anyone has been over 800 and most at or below 500 when I did use only empathic bond though the only thing that really bothered me was soft pets getting overstacked with conditions sometimes like I said before.

Yea that might be the difference. My healing was always over 1000. The condition damage was manageable with my heals. It’s just that when poisons were involved, and healing was halved, that things would fall apart.

Test it in duels. As mentioned earlier I had a long duel session with a thief. I won every duel quite handily. He kept changing things up and still losing…until he made it a point to use a weapon set that constantly reapplied poison. after that it was game over. My heals went for kitten because empathic bond couldn’t keep up.

Now this was before they fixed Evasive Purity. I haven’t tested it yet but I am hoping that will keep the poisons off

Manekk.6981:

Forzani.2584:

These are all good points. The problem is, and I see the subject is rarely touched upon when discussing regen builds …poison. If you don’t have a way to clear poison, then your healing is null and void.

So high regen + low vitality + poison = dead quickly.

True but I don’t know anyone that runs without any condition removal at all, most have several means for it and/or use lemongrass soup.

You would think so, but I check pretty much every build that is presented on the forums. Most of the current regen builds only have Empathatic Bond as any kind of condition removal. That won’t cut it.

These are all good points. The problem is, and I see the subject is rarely touched upon when discussing regen builds …poison. If you don’t have a way to clear poison, then your healing is null and void.

So high regen + low vitality + poison = dead quickly.

sean.6058:

So whenever I do a WvW match everyone always follows someone with a commander title. I looked around and found out that the only thing you need to purchase the title is 100g. If there aren’t any WvW achievements associated with buying this title, why do people blindly follow them around? What’s stopping me, someone who has no idea what they’re doing, from spending $50 USD on gems and converting them to 100g to buy the title?

I believe there are a few commanders that have done exactly that.

PinCushion.7390:

The “Fire’s Embrace” trait gives you a Fire Aura every time you use a signet.

Also, Dagger – Water 4 is a Frost Aura

I figured there was a hidden aura source somewhere in that build. Solid stats in that build. The celestial sure helps.

I am semi new to Ele’s. You have a couple of traits that benefit from Auras…yet I don’t see anything that gives you an Aura ?

Send me a tell in game if you want to test it chomp. We are facing you all this week.

I don’t recall the name of it, but Daoc had an initial shot that bypassed all defense. IE blocking/bubbles etc. The 2nd shot would hit the defense. So you could still burst with your initial shot. I think Warriors just received a skill that bypasses all blocking.

Nikkinella.8254:

WvW is just getting horribly boring. Same thing week after week. One server will always be a super zerg that has 24 hour coverage and 80 people on constantly rolling over the other 2 servers and spawn camping them. People have made countless suggestions on how to fix this and Anet does nothing about it. Customers are getting kitten ed and this wait and see what happens attitude by Anet isn’t helping. DO SOMETHING OR PEOPLE WILL JUST GET BORED AND FIND ANOTHER GAME TO PLAY! Atleast freaking act like you’re trying to fix it. No one is enjoying the current system except for the mega zergs. It needs to be fixed now, not later.

Countless suggestions ? I have yet to hear one good suggestion. For many reasons, I don’t think it is solvable.

BlackBeard.2873:

Also, the timings wouldn’t match up. You would have even the worst NA server dominate during NA peak hours against an empty EU server, while the mirror would also happen. WvW across too-large of a time-zone gap would just PvDoor to the extreme.

One real way to shake things up would be to give rewards for “winning” on a ratings basis on any given week. All of a sudden, slogging it out in the top 3 isn’t as attractive for some guilds who would flock to “easier” wins in lower tiers. It may not completely balance it, but it would certainly help.

I get the idea of winning or losing based on ratings for a week. The problem is the game play though. I don’t really care about the score, but I do care about the fights. When your server is outmatched you spend most of the day running somewhere since you have no waypoints. When I see that type of map I take a break.

The Boz.2038:

All of the NA servers are in the same physical location in the world.
All of the EU servers are in the same physical location in the world.
These two locations are not the same. The NA to EU connection would suffer from lag. And buying a dedicated fiber line to negate that would cost A LOT.

Gotcha. That is what I was wondering.

Hule.8794:

Interesting idea, but how will U force players to leave their servers towards new ones? And how will you make players stay on their old server while many guilds abandoing it?

See below ..

Would be better to just combine the EU and NA servers for ratings and matchups. Would definitely add another layer of volatility…

Like I said, I don’t know if it is possible for a NA server to play a euro server. If it is possible it definitely should be considered.

Mif.3471:

I hope the problem gets even worse so ArenaNet actually have to do something about a problem that has existed for a long time.

You shouldn’t be able to buy your way into someones lord room via golem blueprints, and there should always be a way to actually defend (damage wise, it’s mathematically impossible to stop huge golem rushes).

Fairly predictable what is going to happen. 20+ Golem rushes will make defense obsolete. Already the game is evolving more and more everyday into a karma/xp train mode…which I can’t stand. If you don’t have ACs pre-built and people in place manning them then there will be no time to stop the zerg golem rush.

When people realize this they will also realize they shouldn’t spend any cash on upgrades or seige since they are just flushing that cash down the drain.

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Vena your points are solid but there are a number of things ANet can do to still help improve things:

1. Lower the RNG on the Ratings Deviation used for Matches (better chance of Servers close in Rank playing each other)
   1. Switch to a “One Week Random/One Week Tier” Schedule so at least every other week Servers would play those they are supposed to be closest to in Rating
2. Add a Handicapping System so matches can still be competitive even with imbalanced Coverages
3. Redo the whole Scoring System so that the weaker 2 Servers in a match have some incentive to team up on the strongest one
4. Break the matches into “Weekend” and “Weekday” formats where fewer Maps count for WvW Scoring during the week helping to offset huge coverage imbalances
5. Lower Map Capacity to both force people on over-populated Servers to choose between long queues or transferring (preferably with a Free Transfer Window to lower-ranked Servers) and also reduce/eliminate Skill Lag

Several of these should be easy for ANet to implement quickly while others might take more work, but all we’ve seen so far is silence and it is definitely hurting the game not helping.

1. + 1000. I think people would really embrace this. It adds variety every other week and some more balanced matchups every other week. Best of both worlds.

Vena.8436:

Chris.3290:

Maguuma is going to lose it’s match (ok, take 2nd) by over 100k behind; but they are still pulling ahead of SoS in the ratings because CD and SBI didn’t roll over and die.

……snip

In general, if the spread was cut-tighter the top six servers should be pretty much isolated from the others, leaving T1/T2 pretty much stable (of course this becomes a problem in T1 where the match-up is already so likely that TC will almost never break into T1), much to the chagrin of the stale T1 match-up and, possibly TC, who haven’t showed much trouble in beating their rank-neighbors.

.

100% agree. T1 + T2 should be in their own little world and battle each other. The drop off from 6 to 7 is massive.

haha lol just spit out a bit of my coke. I HATE that Asura noise they make when they attack.

Engineers ? Currently I avoid them if possible. 1. Because I don’t know the class at all. 2. Sometimes I die to them so quickly I have no idea what happened. Bombs…pistols blah blah I don’t know what hit me at times.

So I am going to roll one and drop my level 17 Thief !

Until this week SoS was ranked 7th. It would be a longshot if at least one of FA/DB or TC (4,5,6) wasn’t included in their matchup every week. Any of the three would cause problems.

Too simplistic to categorize people into Trolls/Fanboys/Braggert. Maybe add a fourth category…Realists.

Many of the best played Rangers don’t often post on the forums. When they do you can spot right away they have a good idea what is going on with the class. They acknowledge Rangers aren’t the best…or the worst. They recognize where their could be some adjustments and fixes….but, they put a lot of hours into the class and know the strengths and weaknesses. They succeed with the class because they put the time into it. Those are the people I listen to….most of the time is in game.

Honestly, only a few people can jump right into a class and play it well. Even if you take a month off and play another class, when you come back to the Ranger you will be rusty. Same thing when you change builds or weapon sets. There is a learning curve. If you are not at the top of your game, you will struggle.

This is my opinion on WvW, which is all I play. In WvW the Ranger is more than playable. In the right hands, they are dominant…..yes, dominant. In fact so dominant it is not uncommon to hear in world chat …" that Ranger is taking camps again. He is headed north. Don’t try and stop him on your own because he will kill you. Bring a couple more at least"

I understand people frustration when they struggle in WvW. Who wouldn’t be frustrated when you die more than you win. What ends up frustrating them more is when they roll another class they think is really good…because when they play their Ranger this class beat them up pretty good. They head out into WvW, face a Ranger and get pummeled. I hate facing Rangers when I play another class. In general, they are tough to beat.

tldr – Put the time in to learn your class. Find a playstyle that fits your personality. Rangers are more than competitive in WvW

Anet will never solve the two biggest problems with the weekly matchups.

1. Uneven matchups where everyone knows who will finish 1,2+3
2. Repetitive matchups.

In NA, you would think the 6th ranked server would have a good match vs the 7th ranked server. Reality is it wouldn’t be close. 1,2,3 are in a different league than 4,5,6 etc. So no matter what Anet does, there will be blowouts pretty much every week. There just isn’t enough servers that are close to being equal.

Since many servers in NA have a big SEA and Oceanic presence I don’t see why NA and Europe are split up ? Are the games itself different somehow ? (I honestly don’t know).

Making a pool of 54 servers to create matchups would give Anet a better chance of creating a little more balanced matchups …plus obviously more variety.

I used Stone Spirit for about 10 days a couple of weeks ago. I dueled a few people in WvW and a Thief actually though I was hacking somehow with the protection I had up most of the time. I didn’t have the trait where it followed you around though…..and I didn’t even think of using the Elite Spirit ( I’m slow sometimes)

Once I get over my Zerker LB/GS trip I will go back to it and tweak it some more.

jcbroe.4329:

Forzani.2584:

Eurantien.4632:

The best Spirit Ranger NA wins almost every 1 v 1 with full rabid gear. He said this when he duels, “I just spam skills :p.” I also think it’s not that hard to use.

I play around with the editor and can’t find how to put it all together …always see something else I need . Really curious what spirits he uses…..and I am guessing he wouldn’t use a trap either.

I assume the crit is for Sharpened Edges.

Well this is the build they have listed on the gw2esports page: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-F7kF3;0wEFx-n2wDk-0;9k2a;29TT;25;036A36A;1KwF4F;1hoHAhJG42Vh

But this is how I build it: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjEVl1dVWWg2Bg2DNlETWBDdPKl0TB-TsAAzCpI+S9l7LzXyisFNqYVxeBA

The difference on the traits is mainly just Sharpened Edges and the Wilderness Tree, because I chose to use Shared Anguish and since I have a shortbow, Offhand training isn’t nearly as useful as having a target drop on CC.

If I was playing in a more organized group though I’d take Vigorous Renewal every time for pulsing Vigor for the group.

I like yours better right away because of the Sharpened Edges. At first glance Natures Vengeance doesn’t look that great. Although likely it is better for pvp…and since I am only WvW I don’t see the value.

Eurantien.4632:

The best Spirit Ranger NA wins almost every 1 v 1 with full rabid gear. He said this when he duels, “I just spam skills :p.” I also think it’s not that hard to use.

I play around with the editor and can’t find how to put it all together …always see something else I need . Really curious what spirits he uses…..and I am guessing he wouldn’t use a trap either.

I assume the crit is for Sharpened Edges.

I think Evasive Purity is almost a must for any regen build. Poison will absolutely wreck a regen build. Just recently I dueled a friend of mine who has a Thief. Fought him 5 times…beat him 5 times. He changed things up to sword I think. Applied poison and it was game over. My heals dropped to nothing and he beat me three in a row.

Delbaeth.2739:

Something to note from my own (basic) tests: Longbow DPS actually goes down when using rapid fire at 1000+ range. It’s odd, but true. So if you do decide to go for full rotations, leave rapidfire out of the rotation at max range for a better idea.

I was wondering about that recently. Makes sense.

nagymbear.5280:

Aridia.3042:

jubskie.3152:

3.7k damage from flame blast!! O_O

You did 12.7k damage in that one shot :O

It’s an uplvl that ran full glass. So not that impressive in that sense.

It is for a long range shot. If you can hit 4-5k hits on lvl80s that aren’t glass, that is good damage. Not a roamer build but still. Can you imagine a group of 5 rangers focus firing someong with that kind of auto attack? One day a zerg will come with glass rangers in the back line putting out a lot of hurt from 1000+ range. Just you wait.

Yes, yes I can. Did that for kittens and giggles in daoc once in awhile. Too funny. I need to find a Ranger partner or two to try it in WvW on my server…SoS

hyjaxxx.1584:

yeah, i feel ya manekk, I dont use that method with the primary condi based Re-Port331 and 331R. But the DD version is in need of a little flair so i try things…thats how new metas are made, Amirite?

The condition version of the build is Unstoppable. it doesnt matter who i fight. during 1v1’s i can hear people rolling their faces on the keyboard..and that makes me happy. In 1v2 and 1v3 as long as they arent super coordinated i come out on top 75% of the time.

But with the DD version i dont have that same confidence. as i said i still feels hollow and lacking something. but with the celestial gear out. im hoping for some new combos to spice things up.

as a side note…Im possibly thinking about transferring servers to a more wvw centric one. Any suggestions?

I wouldn’t mind seeing your final version of your condi build. I see a few different version listed throughout.

Also, how do you roll in WvW ? Reason I ask is in your first post your build has no movement to get around.

Bababu.3852:

Kain Francois.4328:

In High Level FoTM 38, the idea is to go more power-oriented rather than defensive, because bosses do not hit you enough to justify going defensive (as you could heal back to full health before getting hit again.)

Read the first post again please ! The build is using Valkyre set, not berserker, because we gain dmg from Vitality. ……..

We also gain dmg from Sigil of bloodlust, and in pve you won’t keep those stacks up. Overall you won’t have that much dmg and only a ~20% crit chance
With berserker stats we loose all the dmg we get from vitality(which is in fact not that much).

You want to play berserker then do it with one of the standard builds…

Just noticed this. What do you mean you get damage from vitality ?

If that is in fact true…and I have never heard that before, you lose 11% crit chance without zerker armor. How do you make up for that ?

Edit: Strength of Spirit …gotcha

These are great ideas…..and a lot of fun trying to craft the “perfect” build. I had never considered Might as a possibility but it is a nice addition. I for sure am going to add the new kitty. I don’t think I can go with the signet might…even though I use 3 signets. To do so I would have to give up LB range and 5% damage trait. I think it is needed when my LB does most of my damage.

I don’t know why Anet thinks JPs are the holy grail of any new content or continuing story. As soon as I hear jumping is involved I move on to something else.

The Total Health WvW buff is from your guild ?

salocinn.4120:

i played that kind of build for a while and yea it is fun in PVE. In wvw tho if only one ennemy decide to focuss you, you become useless since you are glass. If it’s a thief well you won’t be able to do kitten if he knows what he is doing. He may as well 2 shot you if he is zerker too. If you can have a zerg around you all the time there should be no problem tho. Also, i don’t believe long range shot can do over 4k if oponent isn’t an underlevel and has some toughness

Yea, Thieves are bad news…but, where there is bad, there is good ! when I play my bunker/regen/condi build a Thief can kill someone right in front of me…and I can’t do a thing about it. with Zerker build, he will die…and stealth won’t prevent it.

So sometimes the bear eats you…and sometimes you eat the bear. I can live with that.

hyjaxxx.1584:

Well , with evasive purity fixed ive been testing it out with both the Condi and DD versions of the build. and it really is amazing, With protection and poison/blind removal on dodge roll we are really able to put extra pressure on necros and thieves. and makes having vigor up constantly a new focus.

Jaxx of GRIM
-Darkhaven-

I agree 100%. I have been doing my zerker thing after being disappointed with my regen build because of poison making the heals pretty much useless. Evasive Purity fixes that ! now the problem is figuring out what traits to pick in that line. I like more than 3

I’m sure the score is a factor for some people. For me it is the loss of waypoints. Looking for a good place to possibly get some fights and it takes a long stroll to try and get there. Also getting spawn camped when your map is completely owned by someone else. That’s when it is frustrating.

GimpCent.9268:

Week after week, one server beats down two servers to the point of no contest…

I mean honestly instead of making living world updates for one month I pray you guys would just take a look at WvWvW. These match ups have been horrible to say the least.

…and the same thing was happening before Anet made the change. Ask Ehmry bay and Borlis Pass how they liked their 10+ week matchup. BP won the first week when EB took a break. EB won every match after that and the beating got worse and worse.

The only difference in the beat downs now is it is usually different servers giving and receiving the beat down…and that changes every week

I would have to think about it some more since I have two conflicting views on this.
My initial thought was to go more pet+bunker. Let pet do more of your damage and the build is more forgiving to any mistakes.

Then I realized that any bunker build the fights go on for a lot longer…sometimes they don’t actually end. I know after some of those fights my hands/wrists are sore and I need to take a quick break. That doesn’t sound ideal for you.

So maybe more GC would work for you. In and out, kill or be killed…quickly. It’s all about the pre-fight setup and patience to wait for the right opportunity before committing.

Maybe try both styles for a week and see what works best for your situation.

4am and a tad drowzy at work so I can’t come up with a better analogy than this.

..every week you get your paystub you notice they are charging you for parking…yet you don’t use their parking services. You also notice they are paying you $1 an hour more than you should be getting. Me? I don’t say a thing about parking. I don’t want anything to be " fixed"

I like that sword 1 sticks to the target. 2+3 are two of the best skills in the game. Would it be batter if 1,2+3 stayed the same and allowed us to dodge with 1 ? Maybe. Maybe not. Personally I like it the way it is. I think the potential loss far out weighs the potential gain.

So fear ? Maybe a little(and there is more than enough precedent with Anet to give that fear some substance), but I also do like it the way it is now…and because I like the way it is now I don’t support any change to it.

Xsorus.2507:

If sword is to complicated for you to figure out, Please don’t ask for it to be dumbed down, Go play a different class, or use a different weapon.

Sword in this game is perfect..

Having to explain why Sword 2 has a backwards leap (which is amazing) or why having a leap on our auto attack is amazing gets old after a while.

Yep I agree. I do not want sword changed.

To those people that worry about not being able to dodge when using a sword. Duel someone good while you use sword/Dagger. Then switch up and use a GS. Everyone says the GS is a defensive weapon…correct? So since you can dodge with it…and it is a “defensive” weapon. That combination would make you tougher to hit than using sword …right ? I think you will find that you get hit a lot less using S/D. Even when you don’t turn off auto attack. So you will get hit less and do more damage …what ? In addition you are hitting them with poisons/bleeds and cripples…..which makes their heals less effective and allows you to kite easier.

I absolutely hate fighting a Ranger with S/D. Very hard to track them down because the Ranger decides the ebb and flow of the fight. Every single time I duel someone with S/D I get the same comment ….stop jumping around so kitten much so I can hit you.

Nah, kitten the dodging. If you are a very good player that can reap the benefits of Sword and also get dodges with auto attack off …and can pull off the superior movements (escape and close gaps) then kudos to you. I don’t have the skill to keep auto attack off and control the weapon. It still is a terrific weapon with auto attack on.

Not only don’t change it I worry they might nerf it.

havoc.6814:

XII.9401:

He wasn’t asking for opinions about his build. Also, didn’t you see the disclaimer at the end?

…….

I really feel sorry for those people who have such a problem with a bit of negativity. I notice the OP himself took it in stride.

I know, right ? Who doesn’t like negativity or negative people.

…feel sorry for those people ? lol

jubskie.3152:

There’s your problem Check the vids, he always blows the SotH and SotW on the first attack since it’s a guaranteed crit.

Yep, I am itching to give it a try…but I am at work for next 8 hours

(I usually have SotH already cued up for initial arrow)

jubskie.3152:

Forzani.2584:

- No way I have ever hit a 9k longshot. Highest is in the 4700 range.

Were you burning SotH in addition to SotW?

No I wasn’t. I didn’t think they stacked so was staggering them.

Nice job. Good to see someone having some fine….and lol @ anyone who is offended of this video.