Guild Wars 2

This, if it turns into the way things shall be, will mean an endless series of hastily cobbled together, poorly plotted, un-QA’d, marginal quality updates with a lot of shinies to get through quickly, but little larger substance.

We’ll never see the remaining 2/3rds of the core game: Elona and Cantha – as those are too big to plop into a bi-weekly update.

I remember as a kid reading comics, and a certain publisher Eclipse, putting out a title ‘Airboy’ decided its grand independent publisher move would be to shift titles to a biweekly schedule.

- Writing and art suffered. We started seeing guest artists who looked like ‘interns’ getting issues, and writers who looked like ‘the guy who ran our D&D sessions last week’ writing the stories…

Any hope of larger plot changes was lost.

Expansions are needed – they give space for the HUGE changes, the world shakers. Like adding a whole continent back in.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Sokar Rostau.7316:

Kichwas.7152:

If for example… this game were to make people who chose avatars of certain skin shades have a max level lower than others, or weaker stats, or not allowed to join guilds… that would be real world racism.

By that definition, playing Dungeons & Dragons, which has all of the things you listed and more, is real world racism.

Yet having say, females of a certain “race” in a game especially humans have less physical carrying capacity is just a fact of genetics and species morphology. They are the lighter (usually) half of the human being or targeted race in question (Read up on sexual dimorphism). Its just biological facts of life, but lesser intelligence stat or w/e because you think women are stupider than men (they are not and some games do reverse sexism like Sega’s Phantasy Star Series making humans the average race and females slightly better in terms of mental power compared to attack power and health) is wrong.

Maybe I severely misread you…

What I have quoted appears to be trying to defend the racism in D&D because of misogynist theory…

A racism which works via applying ‘real-world stereotypes of ethnic groups’ to its fantasy races. Stereotypes which were taken from the arguments made during and for the purpose of promoting historical REAL WORLD genocides’…
…and the quote seems to justify it because of misogynist theory?

Or is the quote arguing that sure, misogyny is all fine and good, but racism is not?

First these things are unrelated, and second it is unwise to defend the presence of one evil by arguing for another…

Either way… that’s bad mojo. I’d recommend steering clear there on both counts.

And you do NOT want to start debating biological gender differences… That is off-topic and will just land us in inflamatory waters.

Right now, up to this point, a thread which has every potential of turning into a flame war on the level of getting a LOT of people banned, has managed to stay civil. Lets not cross the water here.

I see a risk in temporary content but not at all for the reasons you cite.

- Content here today gone tomorrow: This is a good thing, it means the world is never constant. Events occur that you have to catch when they are there.

- Stuff changes: People know that if they leave and come back, it will be a different experience.

- Need to play catch up? This is the argument of ‘my kid was born in 2013, and so needs to read the patch notes back to 6 million B.C. or he’ll be left swinging in the trees with the other monkeys.’
- History is important, but not ALL of it needs to be read first.

My concerns are twofold:

First the pace appears to be outstripping quality control…

Second, an update every two weeks makes it harder to fit in the big updates like say, putting Elona or Cantha back in. Living Story almost precludes the potential of an Expansion. We’re missing major parts of the world right now, and its starting to show…
- The unraveling seams of ‘wait, what about Cantha and Elona’ are becoming visible.

Imagine a World of Warcraft that launched without Kalimdor (all of it) or StrangleThorn Vale. Elona and Cantha, because of how they were originally presented, were not ‘minor addons’ like Outlands or Northrend, but core parts of the world… and references to them keep popping up in current lore, that just leave us scratching out heads… sooner or later that itch will get unbearable.

But with constant small updates, where do they fit a huge update of the remaining 2/3rds of the core game?

Look on the bright side… we could all be getting a series of Brazilian carnival hats.

:p

Sokar Rostau.7316:

Kichwas.7152:

If for example… this game were to make people who chose avatars of certain skin shades have a max level lower than others, or weaker stats, or not allowed to join guilds… that would be real world racism.

By that definition, playing Dungeons & Dragons, which has all of the things you listed and more, is real world racism.

You will get very few minority writers or minority political / social scientists who would disagree with that.

D&D pretty much is based in racism, especially when you look at the descriptions given to many of the races. Some editions went so far as to use the horrendous ‘myth of how Africans got black’ that was used during slavery by slavers to “justify” their actions as the myth for the Drow… while also giving the Orcs the “fabricated fashions and false culture myths” used from the 1600s through 1950s to justify the ‘Indian Wars’.

Why do you think so many minorities have written up about the racism in that game, and why there are so few minority roleplayers?

I’ve written articles on that myself in years past. And the lack of this racism was a part of my early reviews of GW1, which was and sadly still is the only game to come out of the video game industry without using stereotypes for ethnic groups: either patronizing or condescending.

In GW1, every Acalonian, Krytan, Elonian, and Canthan was an individual, and not a stereotype. Even Koss with his hair, still had a distinct personality not based on a stereotype. And when we finally met some Charr – they were distinct people… though by Eye of the North some of this was breaking down and stereotypes were creeping in (the Norn are basically one big ethnic joke…).

GW1 got some reviews noting its distinction in this regard as a ‘maybe finally gamers are willing to move past the racism everyone else has thrown out.’

Welcome aboard and to Tarnished Coast. I recommend looking up ‘www.guildwars2roleplayers.com’ as a sort of unofficial forum for the server that will give you a much nicer environment than the forums here might.

Lots of friendly folks on server, and should not be hard to find a guild to your tastes.

The one I run is mostly older folks with families – as such we try to stay active but sometimes have people on break for a bit.

Ranger shortbow gets a 14% damage BUFF and so people jump ship and toss their shortbows out the window…

/facepalm.

Hey if anyone has one they don’t want… I’ll take it for free.

Dodgerrule’s right, but some of you are being too tunnel-visioned to try new ways of using your class and so don’t see it.

The class brings excellent support with spirit buffs, pets revives, spotter, area heals, area condition removal, and other elements.

It does solid damage if traited and geared well.

There are plenty of conditions for good control.

It alternates well for the situation – very good for being in melee, ranged, or with a split between self and pet: both.

Ranger played with ‘just auto-attacking stuffz’ can solo just fine, and sucks in group content… but it might be time to learn to do more than auto-attack.

Oidmetala.8426:

just rename the ranger to zookeeper and give us a real archer with an add on :P

The new ranger? :p

Or wait, zookeeper not zoolander.

Terkov.4138:

WTF AGAIN?!
GW2 is made by ppl who made GW1. In GW1 ranger was only class using bows. If GW player wants to play archer, he will roll ranger.

My archer’s profession is warrior.

My melee skirmisher’s profession is ranger.

3 bow classes in this game: warrior, thief, and ranger.
- You can make a good archer out of any of them. Arguably the thief is the one archer fiends should focus on. My warrior went archer simply because I didn’t like the rifle… anytime she’s not trying to ‘tank’, she pops out her longbow and goes to town. My ranger and thief are not bow users because I don’t like how bow plays on those classes, even though it is very powerful on both. The patch made ranger bows even more powerful than they were before.

The ranger archetype is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirmisher
- And you will note that these are troops designed to harass enemy lines by ‘any means necessary’, weakening the enemy with quick in and quick out strikes, setting them up for an engagement with the main troops. That in modern warfare has evolved to become the main tactic.

As a contrary opinion:

Get two pets. Preferably ranged ones. Use them to draw out enemies and distract foes. Getting mobs and opponents to waste time and cooldowns on the pets.

Swap them constantly for the positional advantage:
Pet goes in, does a hit or two, swap it for the other one as soon as an enemy has peeled off to attack it.

I will often hit f2, and then swap the moment it has gone off, and repeat.

Tank for your pet, rather than having it tank for you.

I like devourers for this as they apply condition pressure for me, and burrow to avoid attacks giving me another second or two of time to get the swap handled.

Your pet can be used to revive you (#3 on downed) as well as others (one of the utility skills). So if you’re getting really low or someone else is getting really low, that’s a good time to trigger a pet swap so you have better odds of success on the revive when it comes time.

Melee Skirmisher ranger:
http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/gw2-build-skirmishing-hardy-ranger/

Designed for PvE use:
This is a ‘balanced’ dungeon build, somewhat ‘tanky’. You will have moderately high aggro, but you will not be subject to one shots.

I build to be sort of in between melee and ranged. Weapon choices of Sword / Torch and Axe / Axe. A melee option that pops in and out a lot, and a ranged choice is fairly close in.

Portal mesmer skill is a tier 3 Utility.

That means to get it requires 26 skill points.

If people are making toons just to use that skill and get 60s… more power to them. In the time it takes to get a toon to the point where you have 26 skill points, you’d have made twice that doing other things with an existing character.

EDIT: Unless you mean folks making new toons to use a portal and existing mesmer lays down.

Sunflowers.1729:

Guys, the OP is asking for the highest skill ceiling. Not “Which class is hardest to do well at”.

What he wants is “which of the eight classes has the highest potential when played at the maximum level” (or simply ‘which is the hardest to master’)

If you want my opinion, the hardest is the Engineer, by far.

I find my engineer absurdly easy to play.

Get two pistols, slot the elixir with the purple icon, the one that’s got a green square bottle, and the wrench icon. I don’t even need to hit the win button, it’s set on a timer to hit itself…

I can’t even remember what my skills are named… its so easy I don’t bother… I have those, and its “what me worry?”

Excuse me a second, the win button just went off, there’s some stuff waiting for me at the counter.

Engineer is so easy… if the game had one change, I could program my computer to log itself in and play for me: click target to move to it like they had in GW1. That’s about all I need to do on my own when on engineer.

Oh that win button just went off again. I’ve told the lady at the counter to hold my stuff though, until I can get to the bank again. All this win is filling my bags…

As for the highest ‘skill cap’ I don’t know… That’s a weird term if its meant to mean the class that is the most powerful when played by a player who never makes a mistake, ever. Not even on tax day.

Since I don’t think any player is close to that point, egos aside: I’m not willing to say which yet. To me it often feels that way for whichever one I was logged into last: I see potential in all of them that goes untapped by the community (self included).

SynfulChaot.3169:

By telling ANet that you think the class is fine despite it very obvious and noted shortcomings you are holding us back from improving. We are still the least wanted class in PvE, and near the bottom in PvP and WvW. If you want us to stay on bottom, then speak up all you want. If you want us to be more competetive and more viable then let us speak on how we can improve the class.

I disagree with you. I find it just fine, and my numbers back me up in my experience. And the rangers I speak with in game tend to agree with me to varying degrees. On most blogs I frequent, I also find agreement.

Only here and on ‘gw guru’ do I find the complaints.

You can call that holding back all you want. I see nothing to hold back, and nothing but short-sightedness in ‘have to have a hunter build or highway’ thinking.

If people choose not to take rangers, that’s their own fault. Ancient armies used to dismiss skirmishers all the time until they got their butts handed to them by the ‘rabble peasants’ of the enemy. And the British dismissed Colonial skirmishing tactics all the way back to getting sent home to King George…

If your pet was doing 40% of your damage, well, I just don’t know what to say to that… /sigh

If your pet’s attack was 40% as strong as yours – fine. So lets say you did 100 damage. Pet then did 40. Now it does 32 with the one of its attacks that was nerfed. Its other attacks remain where they were pre-patch.
- This is more than offset by your bow now doing 100 not just with autoattack, but with that and 3 other skills…
Plus countless buffs to traits here and there.
Heck the bonus I got to spotter alone, let alone my axe skills, more than makes up for what I lost in my devourers. Unlike you shortbow folks, I didn’t ALSO get the 14%, and I still came out ahead.

SynfulChaot.3169:

stale.9785:

Second issue is group utility. Right now, that’s limited to Healing Spring and Muddy Ground. There’s nothing else rangers bring to a fight that someone else can’t do better. The ideal solution? Fix spirits.

You have forgotten the one last great ranger utility, Signet of Renewal. So long as your pet is alive, which is most places if you micro it well, it is a full team full party condition clear.

Spotter: 150 precision to you and your team.
- That’s handing out a ‘free crits’ card to your side, and is pretty potent.

And all of the spirits give potential group buffs. People might not like them, but they are there.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Lightsbane.9012:

a major problem with ranger is that you have new players playing as a ranger expecting it to be like WoW’s hunter.

I don’t think this is true at all. I don’t think a majority of rangers are stuck in that mentality. Most of us are playing the ranger as we want to play the GW2 ranger, not WoW’s hunter. The problem is that many of our core and required mechanics has large glaring flaws that we need to openly build around just to mitigate as much of the broken mechanic as we can (read: pet AI).

I actually get incredibly good use out of my pets in PvE as a distraction and condition pressure. Note that I write pets, not pet.
- If I see a ranger using the same pet for a whole battle, I feel that’s someone not maximizing their potential.
I constantly swap pets as a way to draw out adds or draw in a boss to where I want them, or to take pressure off of teammates, and of course, if I get low I will pull my pet in in case I go down for a quick self revive.

You just can’t throw the pet out there and have it fight battles for you. You need to keep two of them active – swapping them around often. I prefer two ranged devourers… and this is actually a FLAW of mine. I should be using two very different pets and swapping to get specific effects. But it is easier to have two similar pets and swapping to control enemy position. Both are effective tactics and I go for the second easier one even knowing that were I to master the first I’d be better.

(My issue with the first is that you NEED to be swaping dozens of times in a fight, and if my pets were very different, I’d want to time my swaps more carefully – very easy to poorly time that. Swapping often for position, a mistake is easier to factor into things.)

SynfulChaot.3169:

Now when I look to our ranger forum here I see contention everywhere. Any time I see anyone talking about the real problems with our class, it is rare that someone else doesn’t come by and try to tell them that it is not a problem. By doing this each and every time we are telling ArenaNet that the class is fine as is. And by our excessively low standing in all game modes, I feel confident in saying that it is not.

There’s contention because many of us found our rangers MORE powerful after the patch, or found new builds that were more powerful or close in power to where they were before.

Others blinded by the rage of losing power where they imagined it was lost, have not tried to look for new builds (my harsh words might make you mad, but read theirs: several flat out refusing the idea of even trying to make a new build. Just a “shelving the class, no builds possible” fiat declaration that gets no one anywhere).

The only nerf in the patch was to pet damage for about 3/4ths of the pets and shortbow range.
- one of these is trivial because pets were already only a small part of damage (*). The other is a playstyle change: telling rangers on the shortbow that their weapon is meant for medium distance, and the other bow is for long distance.

EVERY OTHER CHANGE was a buff or neutral.

- Which meant people looking to find ways to get around the two nerfs with other builds, or people who’s builds did not use shortbow or a pet on the list… those people all came out ahead.

And shortbow itself came out ahead if you liked standing closer in – which most dungeons and sPvP maps require because of walls anyway… Only in WvW is it a significant change, and for that: adapt or use longbow. The 14% damage boost to 3 shortbow skills was a MAJOR buff because unlike pet damage that’s a core damage buff, and it made 3 skills equal to the auto-attack, but with different conditions: opening up a lot more options in play.

I’m going to tell ArenaNet that the class is fine because my experience playing it post patch on my new build tells it is more than fine. Of my 6 80s, I think its my number 2 in damage while still being my number 3 in tankyness.

It is NOT the same as it was before, but what it has become is a class with a clear direction that is quite potent. Its a skirmisher – like a special forces soldier. Be that ranged, melee, or ideally both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skirmisher

The legitimate cry of frustration would be that this is NOT a hunter, not a ranged from safety DPS. In that role, a lot of its abilities would seem like wasted space.

(*) Pet damage is a bit of a skirmish itself now: it pressures the enemy with enough that it cannot be ignored, but not enough to the primary threat. The ranger as a class is this: in and out of the fray, skirmishing alongside the main force applying pressure to open up the weaknesses and keep the enemy from being able to focus.

Treeline.3865:

PolishSausage.1279:

For those people complaining about being “one-shot,” try replacing some of your zerker gear

You do not get one-shot in zerker gear. Sincerely the all, and I mean ALL zerker ranger. Base toughness. Base vitality. Did the dungeon thrice now, all pugs.

Just because A resulting in B is true, does not mean B being present means A as well.

Just being in zerker gear won’t get you one-shot in and of itself.
BUT, you cannot get one-shot unless you are in zerker gear in any content in GW2.

If someone does get one-shot… they need to lose the zerker gear.

Defiant is annoying. But its the same in WoW and other MMOs…

I agree its not the best design. It is a major flaw of the ‘boss’ idea.

Its why I feel dungeons need to be us versus an enemy team. Not a boss. If you made them a team, they could be on par with us in many abilities, and would not need such gimmicks to be “challenging”.

Dungeon bosses, even in other MMOs like WoW, are not dynamically challenging, they’re just time sinks and repeatable dances. Hard as heck until you learn the dance – then suddenly farmable.

Defiant is just GW2’s version of the same Gimmick we’ve been seeing since CastleVania on the Super-Nintendo… Big guy at a stage.

We’ve moved beyond side-scrollers, dungeons should as well. End of bosses, end of defiant… that’s what modern MMOs need.

Calixtus.8617:

So what has The Mists and the Obsidian JP got to do with Aetherblade Sky Pirates?

Out of order putting this Cache in here.

Some people love PvP and WvW and don’t want to leave it.

Putting an achievement in there is a GOOD thing. Those folks can get one of the 12 they need without having to leave WvW. They still need to leave for the other 11 though.

And if you don’t like it, there are some 19 to 20, but you only need 12… so you can be like me, and get the mini-pet, without doing this one.

I started into it, and then decided against it. I’m not a PvPer, and I didn’t need that one, so I went and did another one instead.

But I really like that this was there for the PvPers. In future, they should make a list of “do x of these 3x achievements”, and then put 1.5x in PvE, and 1.5x in PvP/ WvW.
- So that the PvPers never have to leave their place at all. I’ve got one guildies (one of my co-GMs) who has one character that other than coming on dungeon runs never leaves WvW. I’ve known people who never leave WvW or the mists after character creation. The game is not just for me as a PvEer, but also for them.

Teevell.1684:

I think a lot of the problem is
…
people not knowing how to adapt their profession to the situation. We get used to using the same skills over and over again. I know I have my standard utility bar, and there’s very little variation on which skills I use for the most part.

So, if you haven’t switched weapons and utility skills on your profession since level 30, now might be a good time to go back and re-acquaint yourself with your other weapons and skills. You might find something useful in there.

This.

In my first night we had 3 guardians. The other two flat out refused to try a weapon swap. So we had me, and two faceplanted greatsword guardians. I was using the scepter – a weapon which one of the guardians had even tried to claim was not a ranged weapon… ( O.o ??? But it gets better, the other guardian not only agreed with him, but also noted, when told to then try staff, that that weapon only works in a straight line so can’t be used while circle kiting)

In my run last night with my thief, while we never made it past Fritz, I noticed my survivability got a LOT better on my thief when I gave up my usual precision and power signets and put in a bunch of traps. I kept my movement speed utility, that I usually drop in dungeons (usually only use it for soloing open world or groups in WvW). So I was slowing them down and speeding me up – and that meant I had much more control over what was happening to my character.

Dungeons like this: don’t go with a cookie cutter build. If you fail n an attempt, swap up your action bar for the next try. What I did is not necessarily THE ONE TRUE THIEF OPTION… its just what I did. People should keep swapping their utilities and weapons around to get what works for them and their group.

VitalSuit.1980:

Major issue I have with the dungeon is that Aetherblade elementalist with the kitten scepter autoattack. I had 2 of them targetting me, no way to mitigate the damage and i just melted. Got revived by the team and melted yet again. There’s no way to counter them unless you can block or dodge constantly (or cc them constantly). Was wearing rabid gear too so i have a decent amount of toughness :/

The only thing that was hurting me on any of the toons I’ve brought was getting pulled into the laser fields by the golems.

Looks like I need to bring stability:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability

But my thief got good at avoiding last night somehow – despite us never making it past the laser room. Not enough of us were able to stay up though near the end I was usually one of the ones to last longer (granted we had two leave and replaced them, so this was more due to 2 who were fresh to it).

What scepter elementalists? I did notice that the very first pull of the dungeon, right after you come up out of the water – they hit pretty hard. But all of the other trash pulls in the dungeon are… trash pulls…

And that first one might just be from not yet being ‘in dungeon frame of mind’.

Its not just toughness one needs on things like this, but also condition removal. Granted my lowest toughness 80 I think is around 2400. Most are above that. And they all slot for condition removal.

Confusion statcks… frustrating but the least of my troubles. I just switched to running until the confusion wore off. It usually only got me 1 to 2 times when first applied and before I could get auto-attack to stop hitting that golem…

Its nice to have a dungeon that involves more than bringing a greatsword character in and hitting the spinning blade key of choice for that class.

No nerfs need apply.

Make more dungeons like this.

Yes, its a dance-dungeon (learn the steps to win), and people will have it down so well in a week that they will end up farming it in the amount of time it takes to run to the end and glitch-teleport past a few things (most likely…)…

But for now, its great.

Considering that the class got a buff to its ranged damage… I think one could say it still is a strong ranged class…

But it is also more than just ranged – and that is why Aragon has been being mentioned recently. While Legalos was an archer, Aragon was a ranger.

A ranger does it all, and not just one thing – so back to back pictures of him with a sword then with a bow: that’s the model. Switching it up for the situation as an ideal skirmisher would.

Spaceman.1063:

fanboys start pouring out en masse,

Everytime someone disagrees with the direction things are taking, they trot out the ‘fanboy’ statement as if that would somehow make their point valid.

It has the opposite effect.

We could sit here and run around saying ‘all those haters ever do is blah blah blah’ and it would be the same thing in reverse… and that wouldn’t get us anywhere.

We might not agree, and we can debate the points. But don’t trot out cheap shot comments.

Some dislike the change, some like it, many don’t care. But reasons go deeper than ‘fanboy’ or ‘hater’…

The only thing about ranger that got nerfed was pet damage. The bow changes are buffs – more damage to the non-autoattack skills so that they can move into the rotation giving better access to varied conditions. And a shift to medium range means closer to the action for applying boons and benefiting from other’s boons. As for longbow – it got faster.

So we’re left with a pet nerf… and as pets only did a portion of a ranger’s damage anyway (what was a pet attack, 50% or 2/3 damage or something?) – the loss is smaller than the percentage implies. If you use shortbow, the boost to the non-autoattack skills more than makes up the difference: resulting in a net damage boost.
- Basically we’re being told that we have to play, and not let our pet do it for us. Rangers that were weak before were weak from too much pet reliance. The pet’s meant to be like a mobile engineer turret. If an engineer popped out one turret and then just auto-attacked – they’d be weak too…
- Shifting damage off of pet and onto the ranger makes not playing this way more beneficial.

If anything, melee rangers like me are the ones who should be complaining. My axe (which is actually my range option) got some buffs, but I got not 14% damage boost to any of my abilities, yet my pet suffered the same damage loss as the bow folks did.

Bows actually got buffed…

Shortbow used to be ‘only the auto-attack is good for damage’ now all of the skills are.
Longbows got faster.

What’s changed is how you use them. No more sitting in the back on auto-attack while your pet plays the game for you.

The pet got nerfed down to being about as useful as a single Engineer Turret, only mobile and easier to swap with an alternating turret. In short, we now have a turret with fur.

Now you have to play the game, and not have your pet play for you.

Hunter class got deleted, ranger is just fine.

I do play a melee ranger, but the patch almost makes it worth considering going shortbow… Only so-called nerf to shortbow was a move to medium ranged – and that’s really a buff in bringing you closer to the action. In places like WvW, this means more ability to get benefit from nearby group boons, as well as buff your allies with traits like Spotter.

GUFF.5692:

I just made another zerg build based around this.

I used it in my new build too.

Its hard to imagine any build that would NOT want this trait. Its insanely good for both self and group support. The trait alone almost justifies having a ranger along on any wvw zerg or dungeon run. 150 precision is nothing to laugh at.

If the goal of the patch was to increase variety, making a trait so powerful its almost mandatory is a little peculiar.

I love the class. Its a lot of fun, and I find it quite powerful.

BUT

I might be doing very different content that most folks here, and I’m fairly sure my build is very different.

My ranger is all about melee skirmishing.

I define ranger like this:
*
A ranger is NOT a World of Warcraft Hunter. And the recent patch set out to make that crystal clear by hitting pet reliance very hard.

So What is a ranger? It is a skirmishing class meant to be highly mobile jumping in and out of melee and ranged combat, with a pet as support (not support as in the ‘role’ in GW2, but support as in a sort of mobile semi independent buff). The is modeled off of the idea of the wilderness survivor: Grizzly Adams, combined with the special forces soldier: an Army Ranger.

The true fantasy icon for the ranger is NOT Legalos, but Aragorn.
*

From my build on my blog:
http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/gw2-build-skirmishing-hardy-ranger/

The content I run is dungeons. BUT not the farmer dungeons. I run with balanced groups, where I focus on bringing solid damage and solid aggro control.

If you are looking to play a hunter, go make a longbow warrior. You can sit at 1000 range and spam your skills with not too much difficulty.

If you want a skirmisher, melee and/or ranged, ranger is fine.

But you cannot choose this class as the ‘easy sit back and collect loot’ class.
- If you just want to auto-attack and let your pet do the work, the class is very inferior. Even More-so with the new patch. So no hunters. But bow using skirmishers are just fine.

Chopps.5047:

It’s a conspiracy theory.

Also, I do dungeon pick up groups every single day. I have yet to be kicked out of a run in high level FOTM for being a ranger. In fact, I usually get “thank god we don’t have 4 zerk warriors, 1 guardian, 1 ranger, and 3 warriors is fine”. That’s the common opinion.

The only thing you can’t do is a warrior/mesmer cof 1 speed run. Big deal, I’d rather play than farm my life away anyways in Baelfire’s prison.

This.

I’ve only seen threats of kicking zerkers. Never seen threats or actual kicking of rangers or anyone else (well, I have seen and kicked DC’d people, but that’s different).

What I -DO- see is that the latest patch is a shakeup for a lot of people’s comfort zones. Many builds will require radical rethinking and may or may not be able to find viable results without a playstyle change.

My own playstyle change got a buff. A bow ranger I regularly speak with also noticed a buff to her abilities. But I don’t think either of us plays in a ‘common’ way.

ArenaNet nerfed the ‘popular builds’, left some unpopular ones alone, and buffed some others. But when you nerf the choice the majority uses, it can look like the sky is falling.

If you’re looking for a pet ranger, a zerker DPS ranger, a hunter, or a bow ranger…

This is NOT the guide for you.

My build is meant for Dungeons and Open World content, but not for dungeon farmers. Its a ‘balanced’ to almost ‘tanky’ build meant to hold aggro often, but not necessarily most of the time.

And its a condition damage build, mostly; balancing that with direct damage for varied effect.

This might not be the ranger most of you want, but it works for me, and if you run with people who have builds that balance between DPS and mitigation (support / control / whatever) – you might enjoy it.

http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/gw2-build-skirmishing-hardy-ranger/

And… under the new patch, it works rather well, though the playstyle is going to be very different from the commonly recommended ones.

I don’t think this profession is “dead” at all. It might look very different today for some than it did a few days ago – but its actually not all that bad. I get better damage out of this class with this build than out of all of the other choices save for my Thief (which also has a ‘non-traditional’ build).

Sandpit.3467:

BTW, try taking a ranger in a dungeon then tell us the nerf wasn’t bad/

The only thing on the patch that will affect my ranger (sword/torch + axe/axe) in a negative way is this:
Devourer: Twin Darts: Reduced the damage by 20%.

By contrast without ANY CHANGES to my dungeon build I am getting this:
Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.
Path of Scars: This skill now pulls enemies on the return flight.
Winter’s Bite:. Fixed an issue so that it now chills for 3 seconds (as listed in the tooltip) instead of 2 seconds.

Spotter: This trait has been increased from 70 precision to 150.
Keen Edge: This trait now activates when the player strikes a target whose health is below 50%, instead of when the player’s health reaches 75%.

My ranger was already doing more damage than all of my other 80s save perhaps my sword-thief.

So I think I just got buffed. I don’t think the 20% from one of my pets attacks is going to hurt that much, when the pet already only did a portion of my damage.

Substance E.4852:

Kichwas.7152:

AlexisRosewood.4210:

They’re called RANGERS for a reason they fight at range. Might as well call the profession a melee class kthxbyeinb4haters

When I was a kid in spelling class, we also had to write the definition of the word next to it on our spelling list.

Do they no longer do that in school?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ranger

rang·er
[reyn-jer] Show IPA
noun
1. forest ranger.
2. one of a body of armed guards who patrol a region.
3. ( initial capital letter ) a U.S. soldier in World War II specially trained for making surprise raids and attacks in small groups. Compare commando ( def 1 ) .
4. a soldier specially trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare, especially in jungle terrain.
5. a person who ranges or roves.

The profession definition might say one thing, but if it was meant to be the word used in a manner other than the English language – its skills would have been more limited.

Since the actual skills of the class more properly match the English language, and its uses in fantasy – and even seems to be based on the 1974 game Dungeons and Dragons to a degree… I go with English.

That someone could assume ‘ranger’ means ‘range’ shows a failure at language skills – as that person didn’t quite the profession page, but cited merely the word as definitive. So there is the definition.

AlexisRosewood.4210:

They’re called RANGERS for a reason they fight at range. Might as well call the profession a melee class kthxbyeinb4haters

When I was a kid in spelling class, we also had to write the definition of the word next to it on our spelling list.

Do they no longer do that in school?

mojowalker.3798:

but, not to belittle the point, it has become almost cliched that a ranger in any fantasy-set game is going to use a bow and have a pet.

WoW was not the first fantasy game.

That honor belongs to a game called ‘Chainmail’ which later got renamed to ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’

Nor is WoW the last fantasy game, nor even the majority of fantasy games.

Xsorus.2507:

Quick Shot: Decreased the range to 900. Increased the damage by 14%.
Crippling Shot: Decreased the range to 900. Increased the damage by 14%.
Concussion Shot: Decreased the range to 900. Increased the damage by 14%.

Wasn’t an actual damage increase, They upped those abilities to do the exact same damage as our spammable Crossfire auto attack, That’s right..Unlike most classes in the game the Rangers auto attack actually did more damage then all its other attacks

Plus their assorted conditions are still there. & now there is no sacrifice to make the choice to use them. Buff.

Xsorus.2507:

And then:
Call Lightning: Increased the damage by 150%.

Its from one our Spirits…so it waste a utility slot for something that really isn’t worth it*

Wasn’t worth it before, might be worth it now. Buff.

Xsorus.2507:

And these:
Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
Rapid Fire: Reduced the initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
Point Blank Shot: Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
Barrage: Increased the cripple duration by 50%.

Longbow is improved now..

Yeah. Buff.

Xsorus.2507:

Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.
Path of Scars: This skill now pulls enemies on the return flight.

Path of Scars having a pull doesn’t make Offhand Axe more usable..Cause the reason Offhand axe isn’t used is because of how bad the number 5 ability is

- Perspective. I use #5 ability all the time in PvE dungeons & world events – where it is amazingly potent in both for hitting a mass of enemies. I suspect it would also shine in WvW when in a thick battle – like in the inside a tower.

But this just boosts up one of the other off-hand axe abilities as well. So… buff.

And lets not forget the buff to splitblade… :p

Xsorus.2507:

Stalker’s Strike: This skill no longer loses evade duration when traited with

This was a bug fix, They broke this is the last patch on the 12th…not a buff

End result however is working better than it was, so buff.

Xsorus.2507:

Winter’s Bite:. Fixed an issue so that it now chills for 3 seconds (as listed in the tooltip) instead of 2 seconds.

This is again, is a bug fix

Which improves performance of the ability, so… buff.

Xsorus.2507:

Keen Edge: This trait now activates when the player strikes a target whose health is below 50%, instead of when the player’s health reaches 75%.
- That’s a BIG buff…

This is an actual buff, to some extent, Its more usable not on Shortbow, I actually would use it for Barraging on Longbow because Retal would usually set it off, but it is a buff

Essentially it means a player has more control over triggering the ability, and doesn’t have to play ‘wannabe suicide bomber’ to do it. This means that the second half, the burn phase, the ranger gets to shine more.

Xsorus.2507:

Beastmaster’s Might: This trait now grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds.
- Suicide pets FTW.

not that great, Comparable talents give 5 stacks of might, or something else

But it is still a buff. And lets you get some use out of that pesky pet that keeps getting hurt… especially if you swap it out before it hits zero, and the other one then also goes to 50%. Still – managing the use of this will be very tricky.

Xsorus.2507:

Spotter: This trait has been increased from 70 precision to 150.
- That’s insanely good.

No one will ever run this because you can’t afford to..We have a Range increase and Pierce Arrows, viaing for the same spot, and in GM slot we have the Signet Buffs being usable by the Ranger talent..Those 3 will always be more valuable then that talent

Melee rangers will run it, as will Axe rangers. I’m a sword/torch axe/axe ranger and an additional 70 precision is nothing to laugh at.

Xsorus.2507:

Companion’s Might: This trait now grants 5 seconds of might to the player’s pet (up from 1 second).
- There’s your pet damage back.

Not even close, You’ll never stack enough might to equal the damage loss by the pets this patch

In a span of 5 seconds I’d assume an easy ability to do 1-2 crits on a regular basis. Meaning this buff might be perma-cast on my pet.

Xsorus.2507:

Peak Strength: Damage bonus when the player’s health is above 90% has been increased from 5% to 10%.
- Big buff to the ‘stand in the back half AFK’ WoW style “hunters”.

Minor Buff

Taking a 4000 hit to 4400 instead of 4200. Minor, but adds up fast. Combine this with the shortbow damage buffs, and you can make up much of the gap if not all of the gap lost from the pet nerf.

It might even work the same way for a melee ranger if you manage to avoid aggro.

NemesiS.6749:

so what to do now with my shortbow? What to do now with the ranger in wvw?

It might salvage for a few ectos. To build yourself a longbow or an Axe. :p

My ranger’s always been sword/torch and axe/axe and used devourer pets because they stay and range and rarely get killed while adding in conditions.

Patch seems neutral to maybe a slight buff for me – need to go over my build tonight and see in detail.

The pet damage reduction seems to be designed to make the class need pets less. For bow users there is a compensating speed and damage boost. For others – all kinds of trait and skill changes that may or may not make up the difference… Need to examine it to find out.

As a Mace/Shield and Longbow ‘tanky’ warrior – the patch seems to justify the rationale behind a lot of the build choices I’ve been going for. I see almost nothing in my build as yet that I expect to be changing.

darkace.8925:

Is the hysteria here as bad as it is in the warrior sub-forum? The patch notes look pretty good to me; but those guys are losing their minds because their precious ’zerker greatsword build took a bit of a nerf, which of course means the world is ending as we speak.

What changed for zerkers?

I didn’t see any GS skills in there. But then again I last used a great sword on my warrior during day one of headstart… O.o

Deified.7520:

Mesmers are now only going to be going shatterer. Just what this game needs more people going burst.

I saw the opposite.

Harder to reach the shatter cooldown reduction trait, but illusions have a 270% boost in health. Time for builds that rely on illusions being alive rather than sacrificed.

Valin.4527:

Einlanzer.1627:

Rangers are being hysterical and reactionary. The changes are in the right direction.

Rangers have been asking for one of two things:

1- Make the pet able to hit moving targets
or
2- Reduce the pets damage and move it towards the ranger

They didn’t do #1 and they did the first part of #2…

Am I the ONLY one who saw all of those ranger skills that got a 14% damage boost?

Quick Shot: Decreased the range to 900. Increased the damage by 14%.
Crippling Shot: Decreased the range to 900. Increased the damage by 14%.
Concussion Shot: Decreased the range to 900. Increased the damage by 14%.

And then:
Swirling Strike: Increased damage by 33%.
Call Lightning: Increased the damage by 150%.

And these:
Long Range Shot: Reduced the aftercast from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
Rapid Fire: Reduced the initial cast time by .4 seconds. Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
Point Blank Shot: Increased the arrow speed by 15%.
Barrage: Increased the cripple duration by 50%.

Splitblade: Reduced the aftercast from .4 seconds to .2 seconds.
Path of Scars: This skill now pulls enemies on the return flight.

Stalker’s Strike: This skill no longer loses evade duration when traited with

Winter’s Bite:. Fixed an issue so that it now chills for 3 seconds (as listed in the tooltip) instead of 2 seconds.

Keen Edge: This trait now activates when the player strikes a target whose health is below 50%, instead of when the player’s health reaches 75%.
- That’s a BIG buff…

Beastmaster’s Might: This trait now grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds.
- Suicide pets FTW.

Spotter: This trait has been increased from 70 precision to 150.
- That’s insanely good.

Companion’s Might: This trait now grants 5 seconds of might to the player’s pet (up from 1 second).
- There’s your pet damage back.

Peak Strength: Damage bonus when the player’s health is above 90% has been increased from 5% to 10%.
- Big buff to the ‘stand in the back half AFK’ WoW style “hunters”.

Meglobob.8620:

Holds hand up, my Ranger has quit, not playing him ever again…thinking of quitting GW2 fullstop…

Lost ALL confidence in developers…

Yeah, that was one rough buff to the class.

Or rather: they buffed up weaker builds and lowered down stronger ones – result: more parity and wider diversity of options.

Since when has more options been a bad thing?

vincecontix.1264:

Well mesmers got a big nerf with the change to first minor trait in Illusions

I call that a wash. The replacement trait is pretty solid too. BUT it will mean having to use more variety in which shatter to go for. But 5 points in the line will mean any of the 4 shatters will still apply confusion. So even if you don’t need the ‘daze’ for example, you might still use it to get confusion.

But with the illusions having more health – in PvE at least, there’s now less need to shatter them the very instant you have 3 going.
- Builds that keep them up will now be more able to be as good as builds that shatter them quickly.

anigel.5438:

Sad day to be a ranger,

It depends on what kind of ranger you were.

anigel.5438:

They nerfed the kitten out of the shortbow and pets. I mean I now have axe skills with the same range as arrow skills.

I’ve always been a sword/torch and axe/axe ranger with ranged devourer pets.

Seems a neutral patch for my build.

Looks like that’s the theme for everything – nerf some builds and buff others to try and make them all on par with each other.

Looks like thief pistol/pistol still needs a helping hand though (unless they nerfed thief shortbow – I’ve not used that since level 3 or so, so I couldn’t tell – I don’t even know the names of the shortbow abilities), but a LOT of other builds will now be competitive.

Gabe.3976:

I imagine this has got to be annoying for rangers. I mean, not for me—I run mostly longbow, not BM build, and I run birds because that’s what fits the character—but I’m pretty sure I was in the minority. Everyone else seemed to run BM/cats, and got hit with the nerf hammer pretty hard. I’m not sure that it was necessary to nerf pets so hard—but, then, I’m focused on the PvE side of things.

Pet management is a very difficult issue for many players. So they seem to have taken the route of making them less important.

Not sure I agree with this because the pet is the ‘special thing’ for the ranger.

That said, I used devourers so never had pet management issues (they stay at range and apply conditions, and rarely ever get hit by anything). My ranger is all about being a PvE ‘tanky’ skirmisher, so this is a buff for me in many ways.

But I’m not sure its the buff my ranger needed.

I would have preferred they just give pets a special toughness versus AoE. The WoW solution. But I can understand not doing that: Pets in WoW simply -NEVER- die no matter what you do with them (unless you try to tank with them), unless everyone else is already dead…

It looks like a LOT of rangers will be making new builds. I might be one of the few who just logs in and continues where I left off.

Korrigan.4837:

EQ is definitely not a copy of UO. UO was fully skill based (you design your character as you want to), while EQ is class/level based. UO is a sandbox, EQ invented the raid grind “endgame”.
And yes, GW2 is closer to games like UO or also Asheron’s Call 1 than to EQ, and that’s why I enjoy it so much. After 8 years of EQ/WoW clones, finally a top developer dares to do something different in a AAA quality MMORPG. Just for that, ANet deserves the money I give them.

/nod.

I concede that I have not tried Ultima Online and my comments to it were based on common statements I see. If it is different, then the line of MMOs being all the same starts at EQ…

Which means we have 4 choices, as I have yet to see a sandbox MMO. But I set my standard for that high: Give me a Second Life ability to make and upload PERMANENT CONTENT or its not a sandbox.

The GW1 Warrior design philosophy seemed to be that it would have the highest DPS of any class, out of the gate. But that every other class would have stacks of abilities designed to shut down warriors. Played well, you could reduce a warrior to a guy standing there with a lolipop…

So every class also had abilities designed to remove the conditions stacked on their team’s warriors.

And even in PvE many runs were reduced to a battle of adjusting the buffs and conditions on each side’s warriors… who stood there trying to hit each other with sticks that were either nerf bats or portable nukes, and they had no ability to control which other than to hope their mates were fast enough in propping them up…

I was not so fond of that model, though it did teach me how to “tank” in a game without tanks… which is a surprisingly useful edge to have when you get to a game with tanks, as it lets you know some tricks about aggro and pull control that people who just spam taunt buttons and mitigation cooldowns never learn.

(and is also why I can almost tank in GW2, and find the warrior is actually better at this than the guardian.).

The design for the warrior in GW2 seems inspired by the notion of fixing the flaws in the GW1 design model. But its not fully hit the mark.

Its ended up being easy enough to play competently, hard to master (note the number of people who will claim it cannot be tanky – which shows a lack of expertise). Its also still the mega-DPS choice, but because players in this game have not considered the CC/condition game enough – the stripping down of this does not come into play enough. And in PvE, the warrior is good enough at self-removing these shutdowns without even using cooldowns that players often miss that it is even going on.

(If you take your warrior down the tanky path, you will start to notice it, as being tanky requires a LOT of focus on both you and your targets boons, conditions, and interrupts while still maintaining very high DPS).

Its hard to say where the class needs adjustment though.

If you go back to GW1, you might find that Warrior is still the most popular class. You could ‘run anything’ with one – it was the easiest class to be competent in, but it was also the hardest class to be good at.

I personally think the same is true here. I don’t think the warrior is actually the best class – but that class mastery in the player base is low enough that people have yet to find where the other classes shine. Just like in GW1… But that game was around long enough that people did finally figure out how to master the remaining choices…

I keep sampling other MMOs but have trouble sticking with them.

WoW I can stick with a bit longer because I have history with it. But things start to grate on me after a while.

This MMO, GW2, really was made for the ‘rest of us’ that were not happy with the common norms of an MMO. You can have a game that is an online shared world full of a huge number of players all there at the same time… and it can be anything.

But every other MMO is basically a copy of EverQuest… Which I’m told is a copy of Ultima Online… Which I know is a derivative of LPMud (That I was once a major developer of).

But Ultima Online was the last innovation in MMOs before GW2…

There are really only 3 MMOs out there: LPMud, Ultima Online, and GW2. Everything else is just a re-skin of one of those.

The entire format has been locked into one trope since 1997…

I don’t care of Ultima Online. I left LPMud in 1991. I finally have a third choice.

(Some might say fourth, as Second Life is ‘the other choice’, but that is a derivative of MUSH rather than LPMud.)

I’m mixed on Orr. I don’t like it because its too repetitive – the same look across three zones. But I love it because in small doses its visually very interesting.

Sometimes I think the best looking and worst looking zone of GW2 is Orr. It wins both prizes.

buff is when they make a class overpowerful in comparison to the others.
nerf is when they take away an unfair advantage.

http://kichwas.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/guild-wars-2-a-rare-intrinsic-reward-based-mmo-or-why-loot-is-so-low/

- Loot is low because the design goal and intended player base is not like that of other current MMOs.