Guild Wars 2

Just want to add my voice that if I wanted to play mini-games, jumping games, and gamble, I would go either to Club Penguin, Facebook or a real Casisno.

So far we have not seen any substantial real new PVE content. I don’t consider Southsun or the whole jumping puzzle zone as substantial, that’s flufftent pure and simple. Southsun is a tiny island. You can explore it in minutes.

When the Living Story first started, it looked like old areas would get some love and new content, but instead we just got temporary instances. Meanwhile the other two areas of the game Spvp and WvW are languishing, with nothing but very small technical tweaks and addtions, but nothing I would consider substantial.

Here we are coming up on a year, and the game clearly has become a kind of 8th grade playground with silly mini-games, jumping puzzles and which just happens to include gambling, while the MMO part is more of a backdrop and themed GUI than the actual content. So many places are completely deserted now like Orr, and most of the mid level zones with the exception of the clockwork world chest events repeating like tired animated shop displays.

I am glad WvW has not been infected with all this kiddy fluff. I just wish some actual new areas were added or at least the existing ones make a little less samey.

Lastly ‘look to the skys’ I hope does not refer to another 2 minute cut scene or marginal fireworks show.

King Amadaeus.8619:

As others have said, you want to flip enemy towers to keep them paper

I appreciate the answers, it really helps me understand a bit more the overall different motivations that are occurring in WvW.

I have only been doing WvW on a regular basis for a month or two, so I am afraid I don’t know what the term “paper” tower means.

What does “paper tower” mean?

I infer it means towers that after being taken, are left undefended, but I am not sure.

I don’t understand the overall meta that many commanders seem to follow which is to flip as many camps, keeps and even SM as fast as possible.

Take it, abandon it and run to the next objective. Most of the time they seemed unconcerned about holding these places. Is there a logical reason for this? Do you get more badges or world points?

Then at other times there is a defend our keep or SM at all costs, but I can never really tell why. How do people decide when it is desirable to hold an objective over running off and taking others?

Can anyone explain this or is WvW just a jumble of the whims of whatever commanders are present on the map?

To me this is an even greater oversight than how they delivered the game without a decent LFG tool. Guilds are the lifeblood of WvW and overall long term player retention.

These improvements are sorely needed to make running a guild fun and not an overwhelming chore that it is now.

Fixing the guild systems would result in more happy faces and would not take an army of artists, modelers and level designers to do. A few command line tools would be more than welcome and really how much design does it take to rework or add to the current guild options window?

As a former mostly PVE Guardian, I have been having fun learning the ins and outs of WvW. I am puzzled about which elite skill to run in WvW as a Guardian.

In PVE I always used Renewed Focus. Are either of the Tome elites useful/recommended for WvW? Are the specific situations where they are key, like Line of Warding can be at a choke point?

What Guardian elite do you recommend for WvW and why?

Steps like this might address some of the current speed bumps with WvW. I enjoy WvW a great deal, and perhaps if someone is getting bored with running with a successful zerg flipping paper objective, they need to take a break, as you can get burned out from any repetition.

The OP makes some very good points.

The problem I see is that Arenanet does not seem to have clear long term objectives for WvW. They clearly have goals for sPVP, and in PVE they have the whole living story direction. When they speak of WvW it is like it is done, fini, and all that is left is polish and tweaks from here on out.

If they have a clear statement of purpose for WvW, I seem to have missed it. About all I have been able to glean is that they see it as a game mode that should be able to stand on it’s own, i.e. players can earn most of the same stuff there that they can in in other modes (leveling, gear, AP’s etc.)

I hope they do take the suggestions of the OP to heart and consider redoing WvW rewards and mechanics so that flipping paper camps and keeps by zergs gets balanced more by holding and defending the same.

My experience is WvW in the lower quartile of the rankings, so for all I know, WvW may be very different farther up the ladder. But at the lower end, defending objectives is a lower priority than flipping mostly undefended or lightly defended objectives. Take it, and move on, rinse and repeat for most of the evening etc.

Is there a difference in the reward between taking a paper keep and a well defended one? Is there a difference between taking or defending an objective in terms of rewards?

From a world standpoint, I’m not sure what the benefit is of being in 18th place or 10th place in the rankings, other than the obvious bragging rights and tougher opponents.

Wvw has it’s warts to be sure, but it is still more fun than anything else in the game and the only reason I still keep the game installed.

I agree Arenanent does not have grandiose plans for WvW like they do with their sPVP e-sport wet dream, but I don’t really care, in fact I am glad they have not messed up WvW with all the goofy living story gimmicks.

They did do us a huge favor in fixing as best they could the culling situation.

Be careful what you wish for. I like WvW just the way it is. A new map or map revisions would be nice, but not worth stressing about.

If they were to give WvW some more resources, I would like to see something done about how imbalanced and unfun many of the bottom tier matchups are sometimes, but that seems to be a tough nut to crack. As it is, some weeks its a good time to go back and suffer all the foolishness in PVE rather than get beat up.

Arenanet has stated a vision and a long term goal for sPVP. They want it to be an popular e-sport and bring media attention and prestige to the company and the game, hence devs and marketing staff working overtime on many fronts in that area.

WvW, according to Arenanet is done, baked, finished. There is no grand long term plan or goal for WvW beyond polishing what exists. A few tweaks here, a few cosmetic changes there and maybe in the long term a new map or map revision is all I am aware of.

If anything I will bet there is internal resentment at the company that such a large percentage of the player base ignores much of their sPVP and PVE flufftent while spending most of their time in WvW.

As someone who has bounced around in the lowest tiers for quite a while, I don’t give any truck with the small town homeyness others have mentioned. The gap between the bottom 3 tiers and the rest is just so major, when ever we get matched with a world 5 tiers above us it’s almost comical, until close to the end of the week, when the high tier world gets bored and shows up less so that you can again start to roam without chancing 40+ man zergs at every intersection.

Rather than permanent transfers, I would like to see the bottom 4 tiers made into a free-for-all zone, where anyone from higher tiers can guest, and maybe make the guesting choice last a bit longer, like a week perhaps. It might introduce some more spying issues, but I don’t think the competition at that level is really that sophisticated or the prize involved worth getting worked up about. I rather doubt it would change overall rankings much, but it ought to interject some more balance and fun for all involved.

I have no idea how to manage the rewards, except that perhaps those guesting might just be happy to be farming badges.

If you compare the total stats added by an ascended amulet with a typical exotic amulet, I would not describe the difference as minimal. If the rest of ascended gear has a similar stat boost, it would seem to be very influential in combat.

That said, the adoption rate by players per world is likely to be very much the same, so I doubt there will be any new imbalances.

I am wondering if at some point once enough people are decked out in mostly ascended, if the up-level formula might get tweaked in the lowbies favor a bit to account for it.

I don’t see what the attraction is for some arbitrary group vs group combat scenarios.

It sounds like a weird no mans land somewhere between WvW and team spvp.

It does not interest me, but I thought there were places already established where players can congregate for duels and fixed group vs group play on and ad hoc basis.

Other games base their large scale PVP on different size ‘sides’, but Arenanet decided to go with world versus world, so that is what we have.

Based on many of the great tips in this thread, I decided to try out those that include retaliation and also add as much retaliation as I could to a build.

I ran it last night in WvW with very good results, Here is a brief recap of the build tweaks:

Utils:
Signet of Judgement active: Gain 3.5 seconds of retaliation plus 5 seconds of weakness to foes.
Stand Your Ground: 6 seconds of Retaliation and Stability
Save Yourselves: 12 seconds of Retaliation, Fury, Vigor, Might, Protection, Regeneration, and swiftness, plus stun breaker.

Traits:
Radiance: I, Healers Retribution, 3 seconds of retaliation when using a healing skill.
Honor: I, Wrathful Spirit, Aegis gives retaliation when it ends.
Virtues: Master level, Virtue of Retribution, gain retaliation when you activate any virtue.
II Vengeful, Retaliation lasts 25% longer.
IV Retaliatory Subconscious, gain 3 seconds of retaliation whenever dazed, stunned, knocked down, knocked back, or feared. (Those times when you get rooted and your out of condition removal were far less fatal.)

The Stability from SYG made a huge difference in being able to stay mobile while in the thick of enemy zergs. I found myself alive and playing for far longer in environments like that. My first character was a Warrior where I got into the habit of thinking of stability only as a way of staying planted to get 100 Blades to complete. I may try swapping the Signet of Judgement for Hallowed Ground for more stability. (Not sure, HG lasts longer, but is limited to a fixed area.)

Living longer in big zerg fights, with all the accompanying skill lag and frame rate drop, it was hard to tell how much retaliation was contributing, but I did get more badges than I usually do. I’m guessing the retaliation ends up tagging more foes, so you get more credit for contributing, but I guess that’s another question/topic.

Thanks for all the tips so far.

Knowing when each one is strong is very helpful.

I will be giving these a workout in the next week or so.

I am still relatively new at WvW with my Guardian, and trust me, I am not that great of a WvW player yet.

I think I have a handle of builds in terms of gear, traits, and stats, but I really not sure about which utils to slot and when to use them.

While I was leveling up in PVE I sloted offensive utilities like Purging Flames, Hallowed Ground (for the fire field), and Save Yourselves.

I usually run a Hammer and Staff in WvW.

Which utils should I be running when fighting with a large zerg, attacking or defending keeps etc.? Which ones are the most unique, i.e. things only Guardians can do well, etc.?

Which ones do you like use, why, and which ones do you like to see other guardians on your side use?

My world has been bouncing around in the bottom 3 tiers for months. As long as we are in the the last two tiers, we get matches where we have a chance and there is a contest.

Once we win a few and bounce up to tier 6, we get matched with worlds that so outman us it’s not a contest, and I have a hard time trying to eek some fun out the situation where even if you map hop, even the most remote supply camps are a sea of red tags. Those weeks the best plan of action is to go back to PVE and wait for our world to slide down a tier or two.

It looks to be the opposite if you manage to get into one of the top worlds, then its 2 equal matchups and one steamroller where you are the one doing the rolling.

I don’t see any solution given the way WvWs rules and system are framed. Unless a few really large hardcore guilds move in mass to my world, I don’t see it ever getting into a situation where our matchups are ones where we have a decent chance. Saving up in order to bandwagon up the ladder via world transfers starts looking more and more like the only alternative.

Stacking is a very successful tactic, and I can think of only one reason why Arenanet has not taken steps to nerf it.

The main problem I see with this tactic is in very big battles, like say trying to take the Lords Room in Stone Mist, the frame rate drops so low that it becomes impossible to keep a stack together.

If we are out in the open, I have been in 25-30 player stacks that have mowed down 60+ player zergs with impunity. But, concentrate more players in a smaller area, like a Lords Room, and it becomes very difficult to keep up with the blue taco. Between the slideshow framerate, skill lag and lag in drawing characters, it becomes impossible to know where your commander went, and you are soon downed and back at respawn.

A poor commander will then rage at his allies for not keeping up, and usually this results in more allies suddenly finding something else to do outside of WvW.

At least that is how stacks work for me with an average computer and Internet Service. Maybe if you have the latest and greatest souped up rig and top of the line ISP, you can stick to a commander in really huge dense battles. If that is what some commanders experience, they quickly forget many of us are do not enjoy that level of performance.

Fancia.3746:

The same button has two skills dependant on where you’re standing and in which direction… Normally, you have the ground target, but if you’re standing in certain spots, turned towards a small lightning obelisk, you will get the other skill which pulls you to the obelisk without the targetting… You can see which of the two skills is selected by looking at your skillbar… If there’s a ground target red ring on top of the 3, it’s in the normal mode.. If there’s no ring, it’s the obelisk pull version

A Big Thanks, that was confusing the heck out of me.

The Lightning Pull skill targeting is very flakey.

Sometimes you tap it once and you get the targeting, and the second tap activates the movement.

Other times tap it once and no targeting, just instant unintended movement with death often resulting.

Is this a bug or am I miss-understanding how this is supposed to work?

I would say more permanent additions, less flufftent, and a huge kudo for delivering new permanent content gradually instead of infrequently in gigantic patches.

What I think is the most constructive change and one I hope they continue to practice is slip-streaming new content in dribs and drabs rather than in huge patches that take hours to download.

There is nothing I hate more than a big huge patch that take hours to download.
Rush home from work, fire up your game ready for some play, and wham, go find a book to read cause this monster patch is going to take hours to download.

So I give them huge kudos for metering out new stuff gradually.

I don’t really care about narrative all that much. I hardly ever watch cutscenes. The whole ‘Living Story’ rubs me the wrong way, like a marketing droid gone berzerk spewing Orwellian doublespeak.

A positive change would be to have something in the story that is an opportunity for your actions to make a lasting change in the world, which rewards you and adds your name to a list of champions etc. sort of like a memorial.

What could it be? That’s the rub, I don’t know of a single MMO that has done this successfully. How do you incorporate something that permanently changes the world, that thousands of players can do and get long lasting in game recognition?

What we have now are scripted narrative events where your participation makes not a whit of difference on the outcome.

Thanks, I totally missed those. I think I was reading Dulfy’s chart wrong.

I am still curious why the Magi’s karma heavy gear is missing the boots, and why all the karma sets only cover 5 slots.

I guess that leaves room to add more karma sets and pieces in the future.

If it ever comes to be it will definitely be one per character and soulbound.

My guess is the APs required will more than anyone has now, so no risk to gem sales.

Does anyone know or can think of why there is no Magi’s Exotic heavy armor or why there is no heavy exotic boots available with Magi’s stat equivatlent (healing, precision, vitality?)

The Magi’s armor line only goes to Rare while the Magi’s weapon line goes to Exotic.

I was doing some theory crafting and discovered I cannot find an Exotic set of boots with Magi’s stats in the game (healing, precision, vitality), although there are plenty of Exotic armor in the other slots with those stats.

Do you think this is an oversight or intentional, and if intentional, why?

Taushullu.6180:

Good, good. Nice to see some suggestions appearing. Awesome job.

I’d like to share few of my observations on ranger as a profession. I see ranger being more of a precision type of class, PvP ranger runes increase precision and crit dmg after all. …

I think your idea for a role could be fun, but the games core design rewards might so much more than precision. I think we need some of both. By traiting ways to get might, it leaves stats available to put into precision.

I have run max crit Ranger builds which can seem powerful but get beat down fast by other squishy classes that can generate might more easily and often.

Add roughly 100 points of precision and see your attack rating go up by single digit percentage points.

Add 25 stacks of might to the same build, and watch your attack rating jump with double digit percentage point increases.

Either global precision and crit related mechanics need a major buff or might needs to be globally toned down before I would see becoming a crit based profession as viable, especially when competing with other classes with better might generation ability in pvp or indirectly for dungeon slots, etc.

Your suggestion about Moment of Clarity is a good example of how many of our traits just need a little more oomph.

Rather then get into a drawn out debate, I would really like to hear more suggestions and leave the judgement/analysis for later when more voices have been heard.

Nice to see some positiveness regarding the class

My suggestions for traits:

We need more ways to add retaliation and stack might on ourselves and allies.

Rangers need a blast finisher they can control, add a blast finisher to one of the first three weapon skills for each weapon.

Do away with any ‘on swap’ traits unless the benefit is directly related to that weapon or simply adds might or retaliation to self and allies.

Give might or retaliation for most trait benefits not, boon stripping, swiftness, vulnerablity, etc. and make it for self and allies.

The negative effects of conditions transferred to pets should be less 50% shorter and less powerful.

Up spirit percentage procs to 75% chance and make them susceptible to direct targeted attacks only, not AOE.

Add or modify a trait that will temporarily make more pet attacks AOE in nature.

While traits may be at the heart of why we lack much viable choices in builds, what really needs fixing first is Pets so that they are less susceptible to AOE, fixing ranged pets so they maneuver as ranged pets not melee ones, and make pets in general less kitable by human foes.

I appreciate your effort in putting up your build and explaining it. I was quite happy with my Ranger in vanilla PVE where I played for the first 6 months of this game, but recently I started doing WvW, and find it quite a struggle. When I first started WvW, it was with my full maximum crit SB, Sword/torch Zerker build, which got owned pretty quickly.

I have been trying different builds and generally heading in the direction of your build, so I went ahead and adopted it.

I have tried several variations on this build in WvW. It is the best thing I have tried yet, but I think the class still has a long way to go in WvW.

First I tried the build as posted. It was fun running around the WvW map a lot faster, but I can’t really say the regen or swiftness made much difference in combat.

The regen helps marginally dealing with things like siege fire, but I can’t really see where it has made much difference in direct, trading blows, combat.

The swiftness helps with maneuverability, but the trade off is how distracting and cumbersome it is to try and maintain it during combat.

You have to hit the guard button once, aim it, and hit it again, and then remember to hit return to me, if it is mobile battle and you move away from the spot. Combat is so fast paced the few partial seconds you take to do this, takes away from maneuvering and casting, attacking etc.

It works pretty well for me if I am running with a big zerg and can hang back and choose my fights, plink away and finish off already half health unfortunates. You can survive getting critted and hit with siege much better.

In one-on-one fights, with nothing in the first two trait lines, my condition damage simply does not have enough time, as direct damage classes can whittle through my increased health and regen much faster than my conditions eats away theirs.

I have three full sets of gear, the condition/healing set like yours, a zerker set, and a soldiers set, and I tired all three with your suggested traits and weapon types.

I really did not feel or perform very differently between all three set ups, but the condition/healing set did seemed to work a little better in more situations.

I think conditions are the Rangers worst enemy in WvW, especially immobilize, it gets me killed more often than anything other than sheer stupidity (Doing a Leeroy.) I love Entangle, but think it’s a bit over the top, I would prefer it if it were not an elite, just a simple immobilize only, but with a shorter cool down. When most of the other classes have two or more, and ours is on such a long cool down, it is I think our biggest weakness in WvW. Condition removal is one area where I could see making the things like Shared Anguish have a shorter cool down in WvW ONLY. It big battles there is just so much getting thrown around, it is a much more hostile environment than spvp where you are only dealing with 1 to 3 players at a time.

I appreciate how this builds traits offload most but not all of that to the pet, but the trade off is, you lose the pets damage, condition output and distraction factor, so your left trading blows with someone running 100% of their damage potential while you only have 60% of yours.

I am totally dismayed, an see no point is putting any more effort into my WvW Ranger.

It just looks hopeless.

Which class, Warrior or Guardian, did the best with this batch of patches? I am ready to switch to one or the other, I am tired of trying to swim against the current here.

I was going to write up a wall of text, but I see that Arenanet has made up their
mind and I just want to register my dismay.

I admit I am not the greatest player in the world, but I simply don’t see where pets were ever approaching OP or the class ever dominating any PVP. When I look at tournament videos, I don’t see Rangers dominating, in fact if anything they are under-represented.

So, I don’t understand why they are nerfing a class that I am having trouble being competitive in WvW with.

I guess I am going to go back and look at the Warrior and Guardian patch notes to see which one I should take off the shelf and play, as I never felt OP in the Ranger class and the only thing unique about the class, the pets are now not much more than buff and condition removal tokens that die a lot.

If anything I was expecting some improvements to pet AI, because as it stands now, they are simply too easy to counter through movement, so that one or two ‘lucky’ pet hits, will be worth far less now.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

PS: 10 points in BM lets you stack perma regen and swiftness for your group with the reduced shout duration trait if the notes are right. Not bad for zerg fights imo.

That would be Too Good To Be True and actually make Rangers comparable to other classes in terms of support, , I’ll bet there will be a long global cool down for this, otherwise everyone will run it.

I just wish pets had some skill/power progression or some way to upgrade them that would give you something to work towards.

All other weapons have six progression levels (white, blue, green, gold, orange and legendary.)

While it is true your pet scales with your level, it is identical to every other pet of that breed.

Size could be one way to identify pet progression.

These discussions would be much more constructive if this game provided accurate combat logs that display direct damage, condition damage, and some indication of various forms of control like stun, immobilize, elapsed time, etc.

Without this hard data, so many of these discussions just turn into lists of anecdotes about how I play my _ build well etc.

My experience with bows is that the damage is slow and sub par unless you go complete glass cannon, by stacking power and crit, which on a Ranger means neglecting toughness, HP, vitality and your pets via the BM trait line. This will bring your individual direct damage up somewhat, but it comes at a high cost of severely limiting how you play. To survive versus good other players you have to do a lot of kiting and be willing to break off when conditions are not perfect.

You may very well use a bow in WvW to have your way with various inexperienced new players, but eventually you will hit some that have the bows number and they will know how to close the distance, control you, and lay some serious melee damage on you before you realize what hit you.

Personally I found that once you get to know how to use them, either GS or Sword/Dagger will bring down enemies, in PVE and PVP, faster than bows. You spend far too much time for my tastes with bows, kiting and maneuvering for position.

That is not to say bows are not viable. They work quite well, but it is a very different play style and experience.

I find running either GS or Sword/Dagger, AND Axe/Torch gives you the best of both ranged and melee combat. Granted, the Axe/Torch are short range and not suitable in long distance siege, but with siege you always have the option to break off and swap to a bow of choice or simply grab a siege weapon.

For WvW roaming and running with a zerg I find the melee/short range set up to be the most flexible, and the melee side can be very successful in both 1 on 1 and large group battles.

In general PVE content is so easy, you can get by with practically any weapon set you choose, unless you fret about shaving seconds off COF speed runs, in which case you probably should just roll a Warrior or Mesmer.

I have to agree GW2’s pet system certainly has faults, however they also have some major improvements over other game pet systems.

First and foremost, GW2 pets have generaly excellent path finding. The occasions when a pet takes a senseless detour are very few, and easily overcome by using pet swap.

I think the way pets are now is a good starting point, but they have a long way to go.
There are no upgrades currently. There is no way to improve your pet. Other classes can chase better weapons and sigils, but our weapon, our pets has no progression.

Pets are currently balanced in a negative fashion. By negative instead of being balanced to make them more fun they are balanced to not be OP in PVP.

Even though Arenanet claims to have adopted split balancing, they have yet to roll back a single Pet nerf that was instigated by PVP.

Another negative type of balancing is the fear of some devs that 5 rangers could steamroll dungeons, which seems to be reserved for 4 warriors and 1 mesmer at this time.

Sorry to see you go, but I can understand, as Arenanet so far has not been very supportive of the class or pets specifically.

I’m a pet addict, so I will most likely play the class no matter how munged up it stays.

SM makes sense, if you dominate a land mass in real war, you always grab the strongest most defensible location where you can control and supply your war machine.

Working as intended. SM is not impregnable. It does not become OP instantly. It depends on supply.

I like SM just the way it is.

The maps and the waypoints are fair, as your world enjoys those benefits on your BL.

If your consistently getting outmanned in both EB and BLs, then it’s just a bad matchup and there is nothing map changes will do to fix that.

Sneaking into your enemy’s backyard is supposed to be hard and a homeland is supposed to be an advantage for the home team.

They need to dump the timers completely. Normally when you build anything it lasts untill you or someone else chooses to destroy it.

As a casual with a short time every day to play WvW, it’s a waste of my resources to build siege that will vanish in a few minutes.

The whole ‘ticking’ grind is just silly.

It adds nothing to the game.

It’s just a bad idea that slipped past the early development of the game.

Kudos to commander AtomicJellybean and all the HOD players who took FC’s keep, and then hunkered down in the lords room and proceeded to repel countless FC banzia zerg attacks, with virtually no walls left.

Thanks to FC for giving us such a target rich environment, which provided me with completing my WvW monthly, and lots of badges and other loot.

I think the system that works for major league baseball, the NFL and NASCAR, where whoever wins the most matchups with a final series each season, is number 1.

Sure there are blow outs occasionally, that the nature of competition. But skill is rewarded, you don’t need a PHD in math to understand the results, and most importantly it is fun and entertaining.

The only people I see applauding this WvW fiasco are a few math pin heads, a few elitists in the upper tiers looking to jockey this to their advantage. Everyone else is being subjected to more than average number of egregious match ups.

When 75% of the winning worlds are losing ranking, something is dreadfully wrong.
Until that percentage comes down, players here are not going to be happy campers.

I am on HOD, Borlis Pass can steam roll anything we hold in a manner of minutes when they choose to, they are simply more numerous, better organized and better skilled.

There have been times in the last week where they have owned every control point in EB and our BL, yet the stat system says they are not beating us badly enough.

The way it appears to me the only way they can keep rating or improve it against us would be to taken everything and spawn camp us for days.

I can tell when a BP zerg is approaching just by watching my computer slow down from the lag caused by the sheer numbers they often bring.

With the exception of a few hours after reset, I don’t think we have ever pulled anywhere close to even with them, most of the time they have an almost complete shut out of control points, or we manage to take a handful during off hours, which they take back in a few hours.

Even thought people have been kind enough to explain the underlying math to the system, it still just seems absurd the degree to which the stronger side is expected to wipe the map in order to stay even or improve rating.

It would seem this will lead to near permanent lopsided matches as strong servers simply can’t meet the formulas expectations while the weaker servers gain points.

The end result in the quality of the matchups would seem to be worse than if they were just totally random.

As to the rating’s somehow becoming more ‘true’ over time, well it sounds like the cure is worse than the disease. There is no guarantee the end result will be positive. If it works as intended who benefits, one or two good worlds that were near the cusp of breaking into the top rankings.

Everyone else is right back where they started, except most matches will continue to be blowouts, as it simply seems very rare for any winning server to maintain or improve rating.

That does not sound like it is worth destroying what was for most worlds a pretty decent match up system where sides were evenly matched.

Personally I think the Glicko system is a load of academic crap. I’l take rankings based on wins any day in any competition. Someone at RNDnet is too pretentious for their own good and seems intent to run this game into the ground just to enforce their complicated game theories.

I am dreading the next patch.

slingblade.1437:

Guard – Your pet will aggressively protect the target area. Pets can scale/jump down walls.

The scale/jump walls bit got nerfed a while back. A shame because I thought it was a perfect Ranger kind of thing. It was not OP, any competent player can counter a pet all by itself. You would think bird pets would be naturals for attacking players on walls etc. but nooo. The suggested bird as scout is a great idea too.

Guard is a short term skill.

OP missed that warriors also bring pretty sweet group buffs that don’t have counters like the way spririts can be killed.

If your trying to start a ‘Rangers Suck in WvW’ meme like the ‘Rangers Suck in Dungeons’ one, well, we all can see just how effective that has been.

I get the impression RNDnet thinks that what makes us special is that we do fairly well in one on one fights and we should be happy with that. I know I prefer roaming, hitting sentries, yaks, and the occasional enemy roamer, because those are the only thing this class seems to be good for in WvW.

RNDnet just inserts head in sand, and re-iterates that all classes are viable (except Warriors in Spvp, who they think need more buffs that also carry over into WvW and PVE.)

I love my Ranger in WvW, but I gave up looking for any balance efforts (other than a few minor ones) from this game.

I tried both GS and Sword/dagger, and while I preferred the greater mobility and animations of the GS, I actually found I was much more successful in WvW with the Sword/Dagger set up.

The lack of control can be an issue that you have to learn when to stop spamming 1 and always keep 2 in reserve for an escape, however it does seem to have a huge response lag compared to other melee skills in general. If there is one thing they could do to help Rangers in pvp it would be to make #2 respond faster. It seems if your riding the Sword 1 skill cycle, it takes forever to break out of it with skill 2.

Snowreap.5174:

Jalad Lantana.3027:

Could someone tell me just how much of a lead does BP need right now against HOD and DR in order to keep the same rank or gain rating. It appears on the surface that for them to do so would require them to hold all points and spawn camp 24/7 or is there some kind of gimmick for flipping control points?

BP’s score needs to be 3.07 times as large as HoD’s score in order for BP to not lose rating to HoD.

BP’s score needs to be 2.97 times as large as DR’s score in order for BP to not lose rating to DR.

try to keep DR and HoD even with each other, and make sure your score is triple each of the others and you should do ok ratings-wise. this translates to an average PPT of 417 over the entire match. if you fall behind you’ll need a higher PPT to catch up again.

-ken

Thanks, that really helps me get handle on what is going on. It gives me much clearer picture of what both sides have to attain in terms of points in order to ‘win’ better ratings. I’m no math wiz and things like this ranking system gives me the willys.

If you look at the all the the current matches, almost every world that is ahead in points in a match is loosing rating, while those in 2nd and 3rd are gaining rating.

Could someone tell me just how much of a lead does BP need right now against HOD and DR in order to keep the same rank or gain rating. It appears on the surface that for them to do so would require them to hold all points and spawn camp 24/7 or is there some kind of gimmick for flipping control points?

To put it differently, at this point 4:41pm Central time, what is Blackgate doing that the other point leaders are not?

Use axe/torch as follows:
Use #3 to chill foe and pets next attack adds weakness
Use #4 to add a 6 second burn
Use #5 bonfire to add an AOE burn and a fire field
Swap to sword/dagger (With Sigil of Geomancy for a nice bleed)
Use #5 Crippling Talon for more cripple, bleeding and a projectile finisher
Futz around with skills 1-4 until swap cool down is reached
Swap to axe/torch (With Sigil of Geomancy for another bleed)

Repeat cycle as needed, but usually once the projectile finisher goes off, your average level 80 mob will have just a sliver of life left, so you may not need anything after the finisher.

At least that’s how it works for my vanilla BM Apothecary Build using Jaguar and Drake.

Works great vs mobs, and unsophisticated WvW players. Good WvW players know the counters etc. so more effort is required.

Criticize the design and balance of Rangers in regards to dungeons, and immediately the ‘blame the victim’ effect comes out.

“Ranger’s don’t suck, you do”

I have played pet classes in several MMOs simply because I like pet classes.

Here are some simple universal truths about pet classes:

1. Devs will NEVER allow pet classes to be on par DPS wise with direct damage classes. In RNDnets case pets have sub par combat AI, ranged pets position themselves within melee/cleave range of foes, and AOEs totally counter them.

2. Devs will ALWAYS nerf a pet class if it becomes very successful in PVP. Just what RNDnet is doing now, except past nerfs all carried over to PVE. To my knowledge all Ranger nerfs handed out in the past to balance PVP were also applied to PVE and to date none of those nerfs have ever been removed in PVE. Nerfs only to PVP seem to be the exception, not the rule. They won’t stop until tournament rosters are devoid of Rangers. Look at the most current tournaments to see a trend of fewer Rangers than there used to be.

RNDnet will never even admit there is a problem with ranger’s being dungeon benchwarmers. They have officially stated several times the official party line which is all classes are viable in PVE and hence dungeons.

I completely disagree, with their assessment, I reject blaming the victim.

I still have fun playing my Ranger despite all the douchbaggery aimed our way, be it the intentional acts of idiots or the benign neglect of RNDnet.

Bas.7406:

SOTG has zero to do with pve or wvwvw. Unfortunately at this point there is no SOTG for WvWvW or PVE. Though from conversations I have had this may be coming soon.

Unfortunately SOTG has everything to do with PVE, since Anet has never practiced what they preach about splitting PVP and PVE balancing. Almost every single PVP nerf has been carried over to PVE and none have been removed from PVE once given to PVE.

Based on past performance there is little evidence they will ever do anything but keep their head in the sand in regards to PVE dungeon balance.

You can plead for people to give Anet the benefit of the doubt and concede that they are good guys who will magically balance the entire game given time.

It’s very unreasonable to expect unbalanced classes in one mode of the game to sit on there hands for ages while other classes get luv.

Archon.6480:

Rule #6: The GW2 Secret. Team based skills and affects benefit you less, but when all the numbers are added up, are much more effective than the seemingly more powerful individual effect skills (the selfish ones that save you and hose your team). The Ranger has nice team based skills..

You totally lost me on Rule #6. I don’t understand what you are talking about, or which skills you think are “nice.”

I think you are trying to say something like use Healing Spring instead of Troll, since spring benefits allies somewhat. But as far as that skill being nice, well it’s not a team heal, it’s just team Regen, which is pretty marginal in terms of value to the group. The same as far as I can see for any other group boons we can provide , they are fleeting and simply not on the same scale as what Warriors, Mesmers and Guardians provide, so many people dismiss them as lackluster.

Why do so many people say Rangers are better off using melee, but when pressed for which melee weapons to use they recommend Axe/Axe, Axe/Dagger, Axe/Torch or Axe/Warhorn over Sword or Greatsword.

Sword and Greatsword are the only two primarily melee weapons available.

With the exception of Warhorn which does one ranged attack and a skill that is not an attack but casts multiple boons on close by allies, the other weapons choices provide 4 ranged attacks and one melee attack each.

So technically they are recommending going from one ranged type weapon set (SB and LB) to another ranged type (Axe, Dagger, Torch, Warhorn).

No wonder some new Rangers get confused.

Note: Please do not interpret this to mean those choices are not good ones. I am just pointing out the language typically thrown around in build discussions can be very confusing and misleading to new players.

If past performance is any prediction, they will end up further nerfing Rangers in pvp and absolutely gutting them in PVE dungeons.

I will give them credit for at least making a stab at pets drawing less unwanted aggro, but that simply makes them less annoying to team with, it does nothing to close the huge gap between what the class brings to dungeons in comparison to the new trinity (Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer.)

They are obsessed with making Warriors OP in pvp and really could care less if those buffs make them even more OP in dungeons. The are also obsessed with nerfing Rangers in Pvp where they obviously think the class is way OP. They seem totally oblivious to how this plays out in PVE dungeons. They have paid lip service to splitting skills but in practice we have seen almost no such thing happen.

It obvious none of the principles play rangers outside of their little bubble of associates and elites. If they do, it’s most likely only in pvp, which seems to be the only topic on their minds other than the constant stream of fluff content designed to sell new cash shop items.

I play a Ranger and it can be a blast. I have leveled every other class except thief, engi, and necro, to 80, and I prefer the ranger.

That said, in dungeons only the most extreme support skills are appreciated and wanted. Ranger support skills are simply not on par with what Warriors, Guardians, and Mesmers bring to the dungeon scene.

The fanboys and Anet want you to ignore that scene, and if you can, good for you, but it does nobody any good to pretend there is no major imbalance there.

hyjaxxx.1584:

… i use the toggle to Ermerrgad! Kill it all mode and it sticks to the real player.

I am sorry I don’t follow, please explain, sounds useful. :-)