Guild Wars 2

simply, more control.

F1 – Attack, press again, return
F2 – activate F2 skill
F3 – activate non-f2 long cooldown skill (e.g. for a wolf, it would be their knockdown)
F4 – activate short cooldown skill (e.g. for a wolf, it would be their leap cripple attack)

And with that, since druid might be heading away from the whole beastmastery tree, it might be worthwhile to just give them 1 pet, but buffing that pet a bit. so more control, more reason to actually pay attention to your pet, but not enough to be seriously op

It seems like they aren’t going to have too much mobility, it will mostly be focused around slowing the enemy down.. I wonder how that will do against the mobility of a ranger.. And with our good condi clear for their chills, to boot.

I’m happy with the current time. Sometimes my computer is stupid and takes a long time to load in the map, sometimes I need to change a few things in my build for a particular map (cough skyhammer cough), sometimes I like to say hi to my team and see where they’re all going.

Rune of the Defender.

I have too much love towards it

shaman.1938:

laokoko.7403:

-snip-

you have to tell me how you make 500g in 10 days ..

I have floated around 40 g for over 2 months and I primarily play PvE ..

they made the time consumption FOR just this set too extreme .. I like to play a game NOT be forced to live a game

not taking a stance on OP’s debate, but I just felt like pointing out that breach-hopping the silverwastes can easily make you ~50g in 4-5 hours (without any remarkably rare drops. While grinding for my ascended I did a lot of that and earnt enough to make 1 piece each day). Not that everyone has that kind of free time, nor does that make 500g any less an endeavor though.

I’m indifferent towards Trahearne, and I don’t think I should be forced to kill him just because other people dislike him.

Palador.2170:

Wanze.8410:

Pillows.1306:

-snip-

-snip-

-snap-

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I do remember reading a post by an A-Net member saying that if you aren’t actually at your computer, “playing the game”, then it’s breaking the rules. Technically speaking, I believe leaving to go use the bathroom would be breaking the rules and could get you banned..

Whether it would, in reality, though :P

Well, we killed Zhaitan with popcorn… soooo….

Don’t know much about the howler’s effects, so no comment, but…

Why do you even care if people “notice it”? why in the world would you waste the time making a legendary if you didn’t like it… Just get the skins you like.. And regardless, it’s not like people really care if other people have legendaries nowadays, in my opinion.

because there’s more than one mechanic per class.

for example:
I would looove to be stealthy. but, I absolutely LOVE longbows. but the thief doesn’t have a longbow, and no longbow classes have a focus on stealth.

I always enjoyed archeages idea of having your skill trees determine what class you are. I could grab archery, stealth, AND healing! all 3 of my favorite things.

and I bet if there was another class that was exactly like ranger but without a pet, they would re-roll. but there’s more to being a ranger than just the pet, get what i’m saying?

Aylpse.6280:

-snip-

I’ve tried it, but in the end if I need to put up SoS it feels like I’m just delaying the inevitable, where-as QZ is a pretty decent fury provider, and a stun break, condi clear, and is useful for picking up people. (not to mention the insane cd on SoS)

and maybe it’s just me not wanting to be wasteful, but wouldn’t it be better to take out the aegis with a autoattack? my pet does a 2 second knockdown on it’s very first attack, every time.

And yeah, my current strategy comprises of getting to lure out his teleports and stuff, and immobilizing him. it… kind of works. a big problem I have is not utilizing my greatsword in this kind of fight. with relatively slow attacks it feels like 90% of my gs skills are blocked or blinded.

Tragic Positive.9356:

The build would be pretty much fine.

You’ll have tough times killing them 1v1 at any time. There is no pattern how to deal with them, though.

Btw, you should be using Sigil of Fire and Sigil of Air on Longbow. Will help a lot

I’ve tried it in the past but I’m not a fan. I prefer being a bit tankier, or in this case, more.. evade..y..err.. yeah.

and it’s just one of those things where i’m just at a severe disadvantage at the start? that’s a major bummer.

I’m not a person for big long rants about fighting stuff, so i’ll put it shortly

meditation guardians are my #1 pain in the behind right now. Do you guys have trouble with them, and if so, what are your strategies for fighting them? It feels like I get them low, then in an instant, they’re at max health and I’m almost dead (of course the hammer variant hits like a… well.. hammer.)

FYI, this is my current build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQJATRjEq0xaJLusQ1ag9gadAUAndrhw9WUEtdBbqA-TJBBwAG3fAwlAYzTAocZAA

I know part of it is just me needing to practice dodging their skills more, but it’s no less frustrating

slight edit: and i’m open for changing my build some, btw.

Personally, I DO NOT want to get rid of my pet. It’s one of the coolest parts of the class to me. I just want my pet to actually be more useful than it is currently.

I’m just hoping they finally give up the “beginners will get confused” and give us more control over the pet with the druid spec, already. At this point with NPE and druid being level 80 only, there’s no excuse to saying it’s too confusing now.

assuming I had to use it on gw2…

I would invest it all to permanently crash the lemon bar market. just buy all the lemon bars as soon as they go up. I could do that for a good year or longer I bet.

But seriously, I’d first get all bank slots, then more character slots, digital deluxe, bifrost and a bunch of other rare skins I want, finish making ascended for every character, get every crafting profession to 500… Granted I’d probably have spent less than $5000 at this point so it’s not even scratching the surface..

I’d probably do a bunch of fun games at lions arch giving away money to the winners a lot. become an iconic figure of “that person that gives away 1000g if you win their games”

I think 90% of it can be summed up with

a.) looks prettier than a dude
b.) they just felt like it

of course some people also play it to get free stuff from gullible guys…

and some people use it as a release from real life.

I think that probably sums up almost all the reasons.. and if someone has a problem with it, screw them. it’s a video game.

My largest tip for anyone thinking ranger (or anything, for that matter) is op, is to actually play the class/build for a while.

Granted, as soon as I say that, it’s generally immediately retorted with “yo I mained X for a year but then I got tired of it being so op so I went to challenge myself” or something.

But seriously. I thought thieves were op for a time, so I decided to try one out myself. Now I know that for the most part, they are not (granted I still think they have too much escape potential(from a wvw perspective)), and now I have a fairly fun time fighting them as well because of it.

edit: sorry to resort to what could be considered a personal attack, but looking through some of your posting history, I don’t think this will change your perspective at all anyways.. oh well. hopefully someone will get something out of it

Ariurotl.3718:

-snip-

lol, now I can’t help but to think the engineer sees things through the eyes of a tf2 pyro.

I wonder if all the classes see different things like that.. :P

I assume you mean like, my feels when I fight them…

As a tankier variant of the lb/gs ranger build, playing mostly wvw and pvp

Warrior – Kinda annoying, because generally the fight just lasts until someone else joins. they can’t effectively burst me down, but they have so much health/regen that it makes it hard for me to kill them too.

Guardian – Generally it’s either a free kill, or I can’t get them below 80%. the latter is extremely frustrating because I don’t really understand what I’m doing wrong (or what they’re doing right)

Thief – Usually pretty fun fights until they run away. In the long run though, I think I have the advantage. I CC them, burst them through stealth, and mainly just keep the pressure on them until they die or run away

Rangers – Mostly annoy the heck out of me, amusingly. In a duel, I can beat, or be even with most (never really had a ranger that absolutely wrecked me) but in teamfights, it’s difficult if them and one other person decides to focus me down.

Engineer – Very frustrating. They seem to have really good healing and tanking which surpasses my ability to dps them. but if we’re in an open area (e.g. in wvw) I can get an advantage by kiting them a lot. unfortunately, in spvp, I just have to take their grenades and turrets to the face a lot

Necro – Condi necros feel fairly easy to me. just kite, burst, and save my 5 condi clears for the right moments. Power necros though, can be really frustrating. if I’m in an open field I can kite them, but in spvp, they generally always beat me. also lich form is hella annoying.

Mesmer – same as most of the above. in tight quarters, they CC and burst me like every 10 seconds which sucks. in open field though, I can kite them fairly well.

Elementalist – staff ele = free kill for the most part. d/d ele = out regen everything i do until I die or someone else joins the fight

I’m not going to comment on damage because they’ve said multiple times it’s not finalized (dear, i hope it isn’t)

but looking at the skills

#1.. cripples, bounces, and deals good damage? I hope it has less damage than LRS because if not, it just seems like an improved version of it
#2.. basically ranged maul? doesn’t look that op, but looks like something that would be better fitting for rangers
#5.. just looks like an improved barrage to me.

I’m going to wait, but currently it seems on par or better than ranger LB, which kinda saddens me. I was expecting it to be cool, but i didn’t expect it to be very similar to ranger lb and with cooler features. I was expecting something like team support through AoE’s and stuff.

I didn’t know I could swap weapons! TY!

Wolf, wolf and more wolves.

Slalom.3174:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Something pinkish.. too bad there aren’t many skins like that from what I’ve seen. been considering this one, but it might be a bit too… gnarled?

Maybe this one? Nice pinkish light effect, though still, err, rustic.
http://dulfy.net/2012/11/13/gw2-staff-skin-gallery/#37

I dunno.. it seems more brown/red if you ask me..

For reference, I’m trying to match it with this character, so i might be better off explaining a theme rather than a color, which would be bright and girly I suppose :P

I have my eyes currently on Kasmeer’s, Lovestruck, and Tormented right now, mainly.

didn’t realize it doesn’t glow.

I’m impartial. if I had the final say, I’d probably make it glow though. Just makes sense to me

Dante.1763:

Frightlight.3796:

Dante.1763:

Thank goodness you dont have that power. Whining is a good things for the devs too, as it allows them to get feedback on things, sure it might not sound to great, but it is feedback.

Feed back is good if it is done in the right way rather than just complaining about it without giving reason why it doesn’t sound acceptable.

Most of the whining though does give feedback, especially dealing with the new Guardian specialization. It all comes down to to things. 1.) the name is horrible for the class(Which i agree with). 2.) “traps” are at the moment useless.(Im not sure on this, i dont use them…but i only play in PVE).

bit off topic but i’d just like to chime in here and point out that one of the larger ranger builds currently (well maybe not right now because of certain bugs? not sure if it’s been fixed) is a trapper build. (at least in wvw roaming, it’s power lb/gs rangers, and trapper rangers)

granted some traps, e.g. thief traps ARE pretty useless, from what i hear

I think it got bugged at the same time things like shadowstep were changed. it’s happened to me as well, but usually when i’m in odd places like on a hillside.

zapv.8051:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Something pinkish.. too bad there aren’t many skins like that from what I’ve seen. been considering this one, but it might be a bit too… gnarled?

I’d get the tormented staff, 150 gold or so I think.

thought about it, and it does look kind of nice, but it iiss 150g, and the actual staff itself is pretty dark, which doesn’t really fit my character (granted neither is the staff i posted. but i already own this skin so i’m not losing anything)

i’m still very undecided. kasmeer’s looks nice. I’m hoping HoT comes with it’s assortment of fancy skins for me to browse

edit: looking back on it, it does look pretty good. probably in my top 3 that i’m considering right now

I’m hoping for wells or some other sort of heavy AoE and/or crowd controlling. Though my bet is on more team support, a-la guardian staff.

I’ll be super excited for either. Based on the current public specializations, I think a-net won’t dissapoint

Something pinkish.. too bad there aren’t many skins like that from what I’ve seen. been considering this one, but it might be a bit too… gnarled?

would pay good money for the yellow/blue sylvari outfit 4 rows down, 6 rows right, as armor (not an outfit, because i’m not a fan of the skirt)

I’ve always been jealous of that top when I pass by her in the grove

…Why is it that everyone seems to hate specifically the name? like, I mean sure, the name doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s not like the name is really that important to me. 99% of my focus is on the skills and new weapon, and in that aspect..

I’m really excited, honestly. traps have always been pretty cool imo, and I love the longbow. That mixed with healing (my prefered role in other games) makes me really happy.

While i’m not necessarily dis-agreeing with you, the beta key is, in my opinion, an exception to any/all of the rules. it’s has nothing to do with anything in GW2. HoT Beta access is essentially a completely different game, currently (no, not in coding and such, but as in, they’re completely seperate)

Also I could say it was arguably intended as a happy side effect of playing the newest content, rather than an “omg uber rng grindfest!”.

Also, unrelated to the above

ascended gear, as said, is unessential and practically an unnoticeable difference in anything but high level fractals. Try comparing it to a majority of other mmo’s, where you NEED to grind to do ANY of the high level content in them. in gw2, you don’t need to do ANY grind to do ANY content. And that’s a good thing to me

Also, even though there aren’t any new dungeons in the game, aside from story-mode, all the dungeons also function as endgame content. that’s ~25 paths, and ~14 fractals. a good number of endgame dungeons, in my opinion (i still haven’t even beaten all of them!)

I do agree though, that the loot system needs to change, though perhaps not in the same sense you want it.

edit TL;DR/summary: Yes I think there is problems, but every other mmo i’ve played has done it worse. so I can overlook them

It’s a very pretty skin, buuut…

-I don’t actually use a focus on any of my characters
-It’s 600 gems

so, probably not gonna get it. Very nice skin though

some of my better screenshots when first person released. I really should take more screenshots, every map has multiple areas that are wallpaper worthy..

http://imgur.com/a/IuCLi (not sure how to do multiple attachments q-q)

i’m not too upset about it, but yeah, another armor set i’m basically completely ignoring since it’s an outfit.

kinda a shame, the boots look pretty.

As long as you have your character fully geared… get whatever you think is cool. whether that be skins, working on achievements, ascended, etc. that’s up to you.

Just turned 18 last month, and the amount of people younger than me, that I’ve met, I could probably count on one hand… Not sure if that’s just because I never really asked, but I think it’s a good indicator of the average age.

I think of it as more of a trade. They’ll let us sneak a peek at new content, and in turn, we report bugs for them. It’s a win-win

Even if you don’t care about gliding, it seems like it (and the mushrooms) will basically be required to get the most out of the maguuma content

along with that, there are other masteries than just that and legendaries, such as the person said about, lore tracks. they could also introduce more overtime, akin to pvp reward tracks

Depends on things we don’t know about yet. mostly, will zerker be the meta at all when HoT comes around?

If you’re going for map completion, I’d have to go with ranger honestly

-lots of swiftness
-a decent amount of leaps
-pet is super useful for grabbing skill points and stuff
-can easily kill most champs in open world by yourself
-kills stuff at a decent pace

I may be a bit biased though ;P

also i’m assuming you’re going for map completion. if you just want to explore for the sake of exploring, any class will be fine. find a class you enjoy and take things at your own pace

I’d rather have my old exclusive living world skins and have bought skins for super cheap (like the desert rose i got for 7g, or the light of dwayna/shadow of grenth recipes i got for a couple gold a piece) than have a gemstore armor set for free ;P

I think the choice to give players those skins was in response to people complaining about low-level skins being boring. now lower levels can have an over-the-top armor set when they start the game too.

I did some leveling alts a while back and got them to 80 within a week… which in my opinion is about the right time if you’re absolutely trying to get there as fast as possible. 2 days for an 80 seems waaay too fast, in my opinion

I think, over-all, it would be very negative if they introduced a subscription. Maybe if they started the game with a subfee it would work, but as spoilt as we are, I don’t think it would work now.

Personally, I’d leave. For one, I probably couldn’t afford it right now, and secondly, I’d probably leave on principle… subfees are not for me.

Ragnarox.9601:

The only thing I hate about this game are unrewarding world events and dungeon drops.

Yeah, I agree with you there. while i don’t really “hate” it, a majority of my drops are just fodder that i toss into my salvage-o-matic to sell for money to buy the things I actually want off the TP. I don’t think I’ve ever actually used a piece of equipment I got as a random drop, outside of when I was leveling my first character.. granted, sometimes i get cool skins as drops, which are nice. but that’s extreeemely rare

I pretty much agree with you OP. While I have no problem with other MMO’s and don’t think they’re bad… I’ve recently gotten burned out on gw2 and decided to try some other mmo’s (most notably; wow’s free trial, rift, tera, and archeage) and while doing that I realized that while GW2 isn’t perfect.. I don’t think I could leave it. a few things to add to the least of things that i really like about this game

- IMO, gw2 just explains everything better. there were a few things that i didn’t get when I started, but over-all I wasn’t nearly as “omg i’m so ovewhelmed _” as I was in other mmos.

- The waypoint system. Every mmo has it’s modes of transportation, but personally, I liked waypoints the most.

- The amount of customization. freely change your dyes on a moments notice? skin over your gear whenever you want (for basically free)? and, I find that almost all of the armor in this game is actually cool! (even if other mmos have more armors and stuff, personally i’ve found that the armors are never as neat, there are a lot of armor that is basically identical, and the lack of dye-ing is painful..)

-Being able to move while attacking. OMG THIS IS SO GREAT. another mmo got close to capturing that for me… but it just ended up feeling like an offbrand version of gw2. again, not that it’s bad, but “why would i play this when I have gw2?”

-jumping puzzles. put shortly, i love jumping puzzles. other mmos rarely have them.

-no sub fee (self explanatory)

-As much as people complain and rage and talk about how awful this game is (and still keep playing it, amusingly..) I really like the community in this game. we’re kinda quirky, and most of us seem to be pessimistic, but I’ve met a lot of really cool people in this game. I can’t say that for every game i’ve played. (I do think we’ve gotten to the point of a spoilt child asking for second servings of cake though)

- the lack of gear grinding. this is a major turn-off for me that almost every mmo seems to do.

I could literally rant about this for days, so I’ll cut it here

I must reiterate, that i’m not saying “omg gw2 is 10/10 all the other mmo’s are poopy heads!”. These are just my opinions on why I enjoy(note, not “why i think it’s better”) GW2 more. wow has to be doing something right to get such a large playerbase.. but whatever that is just doesn’t appeal to me i guess

Sorel.4870:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

from what i’ve experienced, which isn’t too much since I don’t play on my alts much

fresh air ele
condi engi
lb/gs ranger
sword/X thief

I find that these builds, for varying reasons, are difficult to master. not necessarily difficult to play “decently” (I’ve barely played engi and I can do okay as a condi engi. and I will admit that a lb/gs ranger is an easy build to understand) but will take you a lot of skill and time to master it.

note that I haven’t played necro or mesmer much, so I have no comment on their builds

I don’t really agree, but I respect your opinion. For example, I play a lot on my engineer, both condi and celestial rifle, and honestly, I find triple-kit celestial harder to play. It’s also stronger, which is why some would say it’s easy, but frankly the delayed damage on condi engi allows you to focus mainly on your personal defense instead of being always offensive, since your confusion does most of the work for you anyway, if you manage to hit your foe with it. I advise every new engineer player to start on a condi build before they try the celestial build, because it’s a bit more forgiving. I also think that LB ranger is easy to play, but maybe it is a question of affinity.

Yeah, perhaps cele engi is harder. I just know when I played it, i found it a lot easier to play, along with it being more popular… it is something that takes mastering though. I’ve also never been a fan of DoT builds, so that may be part of why I would think condi engi is harder. I have very little experience with engi though, so I’ll take your word for it.

As for lb/gs ranger, as I said, in my opinion it is easy to play… just hard to master. If you pvp a bunch, you generally run into 2 kinds of lb rangers, the kinds that are annoying but are basically free kills if you pay attention to them, and the kind that are REALLY annoying, and always seem to catch you off guard. I think that’s the difficulty in playing a ranger. knowing positioning, where you should be, how to avoid being caught in a confrontation you can’t win, and actually learning how to use your greatsword. (and utilities take some practice, unless you’re using signets, imo). Granted these things are true of any class, but I believe doubly so for lb/gs rangers. we have a tough time capping points, and not enough mobility to reposition as well as say, a thief. The difference between a ranger that is not good and a ranger that is good is whether they stay on a ledge pewpewing until someone else decides to go up to kill them, or if they’re actively moving, pushing fights into their favor, catching enemies off guard, etc.

from what i’ve experienced, which isn’t too much since I don’t play on my alts much

fresh air ele
condi engi
lb/gs ranger
sword/X thief

I find that these builds, for varying reasons, are difficult to master. not necessarily difficult to play “decently” (I’ve barely played engi and I can do okay as a condi engi. and I will admit that a lb/gs ranger is an easy build to understand) but will take you a lot of skill and time to master it.

note that I haven’t played necro or mesmer much, so I have no comment on their builds

Sagramor.7395:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Sagramor.7395:

You do realize that the name “Ranger” does not imply usage of ranged weapons right? It just so happens that the Ranger archetype often overlaps the Archer archetype in many games.

i’d just like to point out that, whilst in the real world, this is true, it’s fairly obvious that ranger was intended to be a master of range, or at least a master of bows.

quoted from anet themselves
“Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. .”

that being said, i’m happy with the damage on our longbow, along with the range associated with it. what we need is more focus on the other things. team support, utility, etc.

Not going to argue Anet’s class description, but on that note do you know where Anet has been hiding the Greataxe in the Warrior class art or the Necro skill that uses Life Force to “bring allies back from the brink”?

The greataxe could be plans for the future, could just be a normal axe that just appears big, or could just be one of those things they did that “looks cool” (there have been lots of things that npc or in artwork that classes can’t actually do. e.g. the spreadshot skill in one of the earlier ranger videos)

as for the necro… well, it’s not a great excuse, but it’s somewhat up for inerpretation. maybe by “allies” they mean the minions that you summon, and you’re “summoning them from the brink”. or they could refer to wells that give regeneration, or their ability to pull conditions from allies.

I do agree with you in that we should all definitely take Anets words with a grain of salt, because, in my opinion, they have a habit of unintentionally (or intentionally) manipulating people. not necessarily lying, but twisting the truth.

With that said, it’s hard to argue that the ranger wasn’t intended as filling a large portion of the “archer” archtype (granted, i think warrior to an extent also fills a little bit of that role. the difference between a single archer that fires with precision [which would be the ranger] and the archers on a castle wall, pelting a general area with arrows [the warrior])

I guess you could technically disagree, since it’s not fact… but to say ranger wasn’t intended as being able to fill the archer archtype (granted they can fit other things. such as a beastmaster, or a skirmisher), I would definitely disagree with