Guild Wars 2

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

that ranger would of won , if he used his siamoth correctly apart from using it to forage he immobilsed you many times and never took advantage of it by stealthing close swapping pets triggering the pigs charge to KB instead of wasting a pbs.

pig charge + signet of the hunt and a pig thats stacked up easly crits 6k-8k on its own.

the spider was a waste he had enough KB’s and entangle / huntershot + the saimoth to keep gap would of been better off with a Snow owl to slow your skills recharges while giving himself swiftness , he could of used Signet of the hunt off every time its off cooldown.

his good certainly knows how to kite well using the stealth>leap back but he has a lot of timing issues to ween through , if that ranger keeps it up you’ll want to avoid him.

Dont even try to land a pig knockback… it is so bad atm… Anet might want to apply the #5 GS warrior skill pathing to it. But if you do land it, it is quite a fight changer haha.

And if he didnt missed his 2 knockbacks.

Warrior and Ele seems to be pushed in one direction to be effective… But are also one of the best class atm. I think Anet should wait the change of the expansion to take place and balance accordingly after. Since you cant predict the outcome.

And it’s me or ranger has ALOT of viable builds but none are as good as warrior/ele. Ranger → jack of all trades?

Axe auto + fortifying bond = steroid for pets as your pet get 12 sec of might even tough yours are shorter. So 3 stack for 12 sec per auto.

Perma stealth ranger with double longbow too haha. 9 sec on hunter shot with 66% reduced cd means ~3 sec before the nest use. And the stealth last 3 sec! And then you have 6 sec out of 9 in stealth. 3 other sec to put out a rapid fire and swap again!

I had the same issue as you before i discovered the wonderful diversion shatter. That shatter put insane pressure to someone and let you breath/do free dmg. Plus it add nice vulnerability stacks for an incomming mind wack. I think its a huge part of shatter mesmer because it can also be a life saver (IE: hammer warrior f1 on you, you can interrupt it.) as well as a pressure tool.

To play mesmer effectively, try to mind conrol him haha. Force him in defense mode.

What i find ironic now, is that ranger has the best stability (8 stacks each 3 sec with RaO). Is it the era of the melee ranger train? haha

I would like to learn double melee but its a playstyle i can’t understand. Maybe im too used to S/D thief…

Carrion vs rabid debates also include which class you will facing. As if you face a condi user you will be way more tanky using carrion for more health to tick down and vs a power class you will have much more effective health with rabid.

Personnally, GS is way too predictable to be useful against any decent opponent. All the ability are really obvious. The only way they can pass is with CC. When i face a LB ranger that swap to GS its 9 second of breathing room. I just need to leave melee and range dps him down without fear of any retaliation (except dodging the swoop + follow-up). The mobility is not good enough on GS. That weapon is only good on immediate melee pressure. It seems useless for ranged pressure (except the block).

That being said, the true reason why ranger has difficulties in pvp is how bad ranged weapon translate into melee fight and melee weapon into ranged fight. Its all about timing the swap at the right time.

That’s why i prefer S/D as it has tool to create distance/buy time to swap to LB and continue to DPS. GS can only follow up 1 time with swoop and after this you get kited until weapon swap. I would see GS viable only for double melee spec as with the other set you have the tools to catch up and swap to GS to inflict your burst and quickly followup if he use a defensive cool down.

Condi busrt after they swapped out of water. Thats mostly 9 sec of garenteed ticks for your condi. For power, you will need to kite and avoid bursting when he has protection on (which is quite hard) and chain cc him if possible (best one is dog pet on passive and make them attack for a knock down then swap for the other and make him attack for the knock down again and do wolf fear). Thats mostly what i use.

AND NUMBER 1 THING TO AVOID: #3 fire + teleport.

Certainly not by using trapper rune haha

That being said, i think all ranger weapon have a low skill ceiling. Except LB and sword. The rest involve standing there taking dmg (axe) or have extremely unreliable attack (gs).

You are not really supposed to use sword auto as a primary source of dmg. I mostly use it as a kiting weapon. Mastering #2 is the key here. If you want to be fancy, you can alwars auto attack with no target to get 2 leaps. It helps to create distances.

Just remember: sword is more a utility weapon rather than a damaging one in pvp.

Infatum.2481:

Muddy terrain makes a good condition cover no? Since it has both immobilize and cripple to start with and keeps reapplying the cripple so unless they do a big cleanse they’re just going to keep removing that instead of damage. I could maybe see adding sigils of doom for some extra poison, but it looks pretty nasty to me.

Its not lasting 10 sec… you need a decent covering uptime to keep your burst active. Like a sigil of frailty/generosity on SB and sigil of torment add up 2 condi that can be cleanse instead of your high bleeds stacks (Well it will depend on the condi cleanse used as every condi cleanse has different priority). You can also swap the spider for the forest one (poison) or the cave one (weakness and vulnerability, It would be my choice).

For the rest, I noticed a lack of stunbreaker which is really needed in spvp. That being said i would suggest you to get lightning reflex, as it is a survival skill, instead of signet of stone. But you an also replace signet of stone by protect-me.

Finally, if you choose to stick with Healing Spring i suggest you Sword/horn. As you can blast it twice, it add a nice poison, some evades and hunter’s call apply quite alot of bleeds on crit (16 procs for sharpened edges and keen edges).

Just a random tips like that: dodge before you heal/blast, because you will proc evasive purity thus cleansing poison. So your heal will be fully effective.

The bad point of this build is your condi bomb is not covered by any other conditions. So your massive amount of bleeding will most likely get cleansed pretty often. Thats why having access to some other condis help “cover” the real damaging ones (thats why necro’s signet of spite is so strong!).

All i see is “BLAH BLAH BLAH… Mesmer high skill cap ranger to ez”. And i respond “BLAH BLAH BLAH… Ranger high skill cap mesmer to ez”.

Reaching the bad ranger skill level is so easy, but reaching the good ranger skill level is really hard.

What is the change haha?

Is it me or the PvE hardcore player are even worst than sPvP elitist? I run a ranger build that i know i can finish almost every boss alone… Thats what you get when you running with pug. That attitude kinda ruined PvE for me…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

A lot of great advice here, thanks guys! Already learning a lot.

On the subject of pets, I was recommended double canines for their awesome CC ability, but I reealllyy was hoping I could rock out with a bird and a spider. Would that be an inferior choice? Speaking of which, does anyone have any hints/tips/strategies for using the pet? The longbowing is easy, but everything else is much more nuanced and intricate.

Also, as for trait spreads, I was given 6/6/2, but I’m more than willing to explore. What exact traits should I be looking at and why are they valuable?

As far as bird goes, Owl is the “only” one useful because of the chill allowing you to kite. Some might say raven because his f2 blind and on a shorter cooldown but its up too you to choose chill or blind.

Spider pets are all great. Most people tend to go the poison spider as it provide almost a perma poison by itself (considering the aoe poison attack is landing). They also provide a nice 3 seconde immobilize.

thefantasticg.3984:

Atherakhia.4086:

Druids will likely follow suit, and in the MMO genre Druids tend to be more support/healer archetype focusing on crowd control and conditions.

Which means I’ll never spec to Druid because that means giving up DPS in a game all about DPS.

But if druid is about buffing, you will “gain” dps trough the buffing of your pet. I hope druid will be about buffing allies and debuffing enemies as it would perfectly fit the pet mechanic.

Sigmoid.7082:

Klonko.8341:

MoC overrated imho… I would swap it for protection on dodge. Its a huge defense increase, especially with a vigor focus while choosing the traits.

0/5/3/6/0 > 0/6/2/6/0

that 3 points is a must in EVERY ranger build.

Tried it and wasnt a huge fan. Can really feel the loss of MoC and i have no way of making use of that condition damage at all in the power build. Each to their own though.

I dont know how you can feel it tough. The extra daze/stun is handy but the interrupt bonus is situationnal. If you use GS, the #5 is unreliable as well… MoC doesnt benefit ranger because ranger doesnt have big hitting abilities except maul. If it was a duration that your skill are hitting 20% harder after an interrupt or something like that, it would be good. The current version? nay. Protection on dodge OP too.

But like you said, each person has its own playstyle.

You just discovered why ranger is harder than press #2. Everyone can press #2… but not all person can use melee weapon on ranger. My suggestion:

-go S/D when the opponent has closed the gap.
-use #2 to create distance before you switch back to LB so you have a sizeable range advantage over him.
-use 1st #2 to retreat and use casting animation such as your heal (bonus point if healing spring since you can leap right after), Signet of the wild or even Rampage as one.
- #3-4 are there too avoid major hit or apply poison before your opponent heals.
-i use #5 right before switching to LB as -50% movement is handy when you have LB equipped.

- AND THE MOST IMPORTANT: learn to chain the 2 leaps of the sword in the same direction.

MoC overrated imho… I would swap it for protection on dodge. Its a huge defense increase, especially with a vigor focus while choosing the traits.

0/5/3/6/0 > 0/6/2/6/0

that 3 points is a must in EVERY ranger build.

Rampager/carrion works well too. Because precision scale well with the “sharpened edges” trait and the fact you have some power (and crit dmg from the tree) to back it up.

As a ranger using LB (no fire/air sigil), I consider 5 ranger in a group something REALLY lame. No profession can survive a focus fire of 5 ranger. That being said, only if you live long enough to down them all…

But i hate it when i am solo roaming 1vxX and then a ranger come in and crit you for 10k. Usually its ok because i choose my fight, but ranger are good at ending fun/challenging fight.

PS: Im a LB ranger user…

Amir.1570:

They are hated because they’re so easy to play. Most people who play ranger think they’re good but in reality most people who play ranger are just unskilled people. People who main ranger will probably fail on a class or build that takes real skill.

#Rangereasiestclassgw2

Think whatever you want of ranger but one thing stay true: “it is easier to do well with a ranger,but it is way harder to excel as a ranger”. I hope one day you will find a good ranger because they are among the best dueling class.

I obviously troll. But im kinda tired to see those post honestly. I rather thinking about some change to traits that doesnt work rather than possible weapon for each class!

Its gonna be focus thief mainhand. Everyone know it. And for warrior it gonna be warhorn mainhand for dualwield warhorn. Ranger gonna be able to dual wield LB, ele gonna get a GS. Necro will get shield mainhand and offhand. Mesmer gonna get shortbow. Gourde gonna get a shortbow. And finally, double torch engi.

It is confirmed in the interview I got with Travis from Anet. Those weapon where the one that fitted the most with each class. So please STOP THOSE THREAD. It pollutes and should be signaled as spam kkthxbai.

D/D cele elementalist was OP and this patch broutgh this build in line with the others. And you want a change to put it where it was before? Not gonna happen. If Anet judged it was worth nerfing, it means it was abit too strong to their standards of healthy pvp.

You need to generate more active might than before (blasting field) because passive might (sigil of battle) is nerfed by 1. Also, even might stacking now is less efficient because you loose 5 power/condi dmg for every might stack you have compared to before.

Päähenkilö because why not?

uberkingkong.8041:

That link, nothing but nonsense, requires too much critical thinking to figure it out and understand it.

These developers, and coders get paid big bucks not to put information out in only terms other coders and developers know, but to put it into terms where a simpleton can figure out what it means.

Also, I thought if you beat a team bad enough you get more points, and if you get into a really close game if you lose you may get points. I thought the game score matters.

Obviously I was a solo que, my team was solo que and we ANNIHILATED that team, which was solo que. I don’t see how I was in favor to win, we all solo que. I deserve +3 for FLAWLESS victory, heck I deserve +5, FLAWLESS victories should give +5, should be incentive to ANNIHILATE the other team.

You should be able to see how many points you can get per game, and what scores you gotta be within to get those points, like +1 if you win by 100, +2 if you win by 300, +3 if you win FLAWLESSLY. That way people can tell they are able to earn those points in game.

Because I gotta say, some people don’t realize the point system and they play around, and they could be getting +2s +3s but since they played around they got +1.

Maybe you team was heavily favored to win… Thus even if you annihilate them, its only a feat of noob bashing and not worthing +3s.

I’m a bit worried about the release of the new expansion as for now I play gw2 using wine with terrible graphics and bad overall performance (15-20 fps which is great for this kind of game, WvW zerg sometimes drop to 10 and lower). So I fear to not be able to play this expansion due to lack of support for linux user if wine is not able to handle the expansion (might be unreasonable fear as expansion will probably use the same tech choice as the vanilla version).

Also this fear lead to those question:
- Is linux support is planned in the future?
- Am I alone playing GW2 on linux?

Thank you in advance for the answers!

Note: I don’t mind playing trough wine with bad performance because I enjoy playing the game!

Zenith.7301:

Fluffball.8307:

SilverWF.4789:

At the 99% of roaming vids (for every class) we can find only “Me the Great against bads” and nothing else.
Who is better in beating kids? This is the same question.

While I agree with you, I’m not entirely sure what else you’d put in a video. A montage of getting the kitten kicked out of yourself?

I’ve thought about making a video with in-depth breakdowns of difficult fights, but I suck at getting video recording to work, I have no experience with video editing, and I doubt anyone would learn much at this stage of the game. And I’m lazy.

That idea mostly came from back in the day before LBs were “viable” and everyone claimed you couldn’t roam on a power ranger. Now any idiot can beat a thief 1v1.

Not really. A half decent thief will never die to anyone in WvW if he doesn’t want to.

He can own any build he’s strong against since nobody can run away from a thief, maybe a warrior or FGS ele, but absolutely no class can catch a thief who knows he’s facing a build that counters him.

And with patience a thief can wear any class down by baiting their cd’s and constantly resetting until they can burst you down with any cd’s up since thief skills thanks to initiative have far lesser cd’s than normal profs.

There’s a reason most roamers are thieves.

Now, for team fights, there is nothing more OP than a warrior+guardian melee train.

Klonko.8341:

Kjeld.9730:

Everyone’s ranger alt in [Walk] We currently hold all 10 top spots of best ranger EU
our latest vid here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-MEnbmOerQ

Top 10 ranger loosing a pet in a fight where he stands at 1200 and pew pew? I guess you are not…

Its sad you are not including spvp player… Because those has often a better skill level than wvw roamer.

sPvP and WvW class balance are vastly different, so no sPvPer would do betetr than a WvW roamer.

For one, stats are inflated, increasing the value of burst builds in WvW. D/P thief and hammer warriors are vastly more porwerful in WvW than they are in sPvP, for one. Thief in spvp who wants to build D/P is at ebst sporting 14k HP.

In WvW a thief can sport 18k hp and still land 6k backstabs. That would never happen in sPvP. Similarly good dueling warriors are stupidly OP in WvW. Build hammeer and axe/mace combo with stance spec, signet, swiftness on rage signet and fear me and he’s a completely absurd dueling build. He has CC for days, axe auto does ridiculous damage in between hammer stun cd’s.

So, yeah, combos that are nonexistent in spvp due to stat limitations on amulets are fairly prevalent in WvW.

Also, sPvP’ers are often trained to fight over points and to abuse certain map elements with blink, none of which is a part of most WvW play.

Sorry to halt your hype for WvW combat, but spvp do have dueling arena… And you will find the best player there. Someone skilled that don’t know how to build for wvw will take 1-2 weeks MAX to adjust to WvW play. But someone less skilled that try to spvp in dueling area just get rolled over. Good player adapt, bad player don’t.

And all your build you said are not valid for WvW roaming. There are mostly dueling spec in WvW which is completly different. WvW roaming build are extremely powerful build that are efficient in most situation. Outnumbered, 1vs1, 2vs2, XvsX that build must be able to win/survive/flee them according to your knowledge.

And for the gear impacting the gameplay, its just a scalable element moslty. Better stats for 2 opponents = worst stats for 2 same opponents. If amulets restrict build in Spvp, i think WvW roaming spec are even less large than the said spvp build due to being able to win or give a fair fight to outnumbered opponent.

Kraljevo.2801:

Klonko.8341:

Kjeld.9730:

Everyone’s ranger alt in [Walk] We currently hold all 10 top spots of best ranger EU
our latest vid here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-MEnbmOerQ

Top 10 ranger loosing a pet in a fight where he stands at 1200 and pew pew? I guess you are not…

Its sad you are not including spvp player… Because those has often a better skill level than wvw roamer.

To be honest I don’t know anything about EU competitive play.

But 1 thing is sure, SARCASM is REALLY hard to understand with non-verbal component such as a forum.

Kjeld.9730:

Everyone’s ranger alt in [Walk] We currently hold all 10 top spots of best ranger EU
our latest vid here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-MEnbmOerQ

Top 10 ranger loosing a pet in a fight where he stands at 1200 and pew pew? I guess you are not…

Its sad you are not including spvp player… Because those has often a better skill level than wvw roamer.

I wish we could have a spear on land. Like an accrobatic melee weapon with a decent range for a melee and no cleave. I think it would be good and fun to play

FrownyClown.8402:

put the pet to avoid combat and only use its f2 when needed

Yeah I do it in every situation. As sometimes you can knockdown someone on demand. Plus most of the pet f2 are AoE and benefit from being near you. Becauselets face it, any buff are better applied on you and the debuff are better applied on the enemy focusin you.

Try Sword/mace + Mace/shield.

The wrong base spawn is a bug in the game. I got it so often its ridiculous…

Ele are less affected by battle sigil change because they can combo field a lot more than any other class in this game.

-LB :sigil of fire and air
-GS :Intelligence and battle

Armor rune: rune of the ranger or rune of the scholar. Pack might work too.

Well i do roam with thief not only ranger.

The main difference I see is: thief kill alot faster than ranger, ranger is a bit beefier when traited right, ranger survivability is lesser when getting zerged, and ranger are really good counter to condi (ranged).

What is similar: both are extremily unforgiving. Both as way to mitigate dmg. Both are extremely mobile.

On the other hand, I use double S/D with cleansing (can be purity or generosity) sigil and shadow step +pain response. So it might only just me having not so much problem with that (in WvW).

I dont know if im weird, but I think a thief with more condi cleanse would be over powered. It has some high statying power for a full zerk class that if you make him cleanse condi more often it would be impossible for some condi class to bring down.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Could add a short pulsing reveal to it so as long as a thief or mesmer is in entangle they have to break out of it the same way as everyone else.

No need to reveal, the vines already have an animation if they have someone caught in it.

Sebastian Knight.4736:

Axe 5 still roots in place? Booo!

+1… Addressed the engineer shield #4 but not our axe #5…

Eurantien.4632:

It will be hard. RISK IT ALL! STOMP THAT BADDY!

You got SoS, pet fear/kd, you got invis, you got a knockback/stun, you have stab with RaO… besides that… sometimes it best to leave.

Yeah TOO OFTEN its better to leave… Even after I down someone 1vs3-4…

sigh…

Could be fix by making pop the foraged items right in the hand of the ranger… And maybe add a non-random item.

And for your question, yes it does. There is some troll build that use 100% condi duration and moment of clarity to get a fear out of boar items to ~8 sec.

Why no touch to dagger offhand? the #4 animation without the trait is AWFUL. I wish they would buff it to thief #3 distance.

Im having a hard time stomping in 1vsX situation as ranger. I use a zerker so I can’t hard stomp them. And if I know I can tank the dmg I dont necessarely have stability up. Therefore, stealth stomp is the only option.

Having played alot of other class, they can mostly safe stomp (warrior,guard,thief,mesmer, ele) or cover the downed player of aoe(engi,necro). But ranger has almost none of these. The only way is to save the stability for stomp.

Anyone facing this as an issue?