Guild Wars 2

If you want to stay in Silver League transfer to Crystal Desert. Our match up with Borlis pass and IOJ was possibly one of the best match ups in wvw history (IMO). We can have more of that hopefully…

…IF we can shove FA and Mag into gold league so we don’t have to see them again. No offense guys, I definitely feel the magswag but you guys just zerg too hard.

Give the Necro the Longbow. Give it a stealth mechanic and make it a true hybrid weapon. Let me brainstorm for a sec…

Skill 1: Wraith Shot – Fire piercing spectral arrows at your target. Each hit gives 2% Life force. (It fires twice as fast as Staff but gives half as much LF)
Skill 2: Twisting Fangs – Fires a twisting pair of ghostly arrows that pierce targets. Each target hit causes Life Siphoning and receives Bleeding.
Skill 3: Soul Chains – Fire a fan of arrows with ghostly chains attached. Each target hit by a arrow is afflicted by 1 stack of torment and 1 sec of immobilize. Becomes Soul Reaping; you yank your chained targets to you. Each target yanked gives 3% life force.
Skill 4: Grenth’s Assassin – Fire a poisoned arrow and stealth yourself for 4 seconds.
Skill 5: Grenth’s Reach – Fire a Piercing Arrow for significant damage to all targets it hits. If fired from stealth, it causes Weakness also.

So bleeding, Torment and Poison + Weakness and a good power coefficient. The concept here is that a necromancer uses incorporeal arrows that naturally pass through targets. This could jive with Shroud builds and Condi builds, you could even use Soul Chains in combo with wells. This would also make a true torment necro very viable.

Yeah after thinking about it, if etiquette demands I have a empty lifeforce bar at the start of the duel…well, I guess i’m just going to be a Rude person then. Lifeforce is our defensive mechanic…it’s like asking a guardian to pop all their seals or w/e they are before they go fight.

Agriope.4523:

sephiroth.4217:

that laugh spam

Just do what I started doing to those folks who spam emotes. Invite them, click report to get the acct name, if you can’t get their char name to blip up. Then GW2LFG, “CoF speed run lf1m any class/experience welcome”

Betcha those folks love that.

That’s spam like theirs, except it takes no continuous effort on my part and I can go about my roaming. :]

That is deliciously evil. I love it.

Starting a Duel with a full LF bar,is looked down on.Most Necro’s will go in to DS to show the other person they don’t have any.

That is news to me. Of course I don’t go do formal fight nights either, just random duels with people I meet in wvw.

Also to the guy who talked about rotations; yeah, its never a 100% sure thing. You have to know your skills well enough to be able to improvise if the crap hits the fan. I’m also always further tweaking my build, like today I am moving to Runes of Exuberance. I will use a Dagger with a warhorn slotted with a rune of speed for roaming (to make up for the loss of swiftness duration), and keep my D/F for zerg fighting. I also slotted a sigil of fire in my staff, and moved the bloodlust to my dagger. So dagger/Focus for building Lifeforce and Bloodlust, and Staff for max dmg.

As for spvp, this build works there too. Just go soldier trinket with a zerker jewel and pack (or divinity) runes with the above traits. Sigil of Fire (or accuracy or force, your pick) in the staff and whatever in your secondary set.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW4djMah7dbabM8JEoCvX0DkRZYGqHwz68hA-jEzAY/Ij/BIIAEGIiAc2rIasVyioxqXwUmJV5Codjs7QZVKABVGB-w

This is my build. It has won quite a few duels for me. It focuses on fighting from Death Shroud. I spend most of my time with staff out in general wvw.

However in duels you want to make sure you start with full LF bar. Go immediately into shroud and fight in it till it runs out. Then pop Spectral Armor, and then Lich Form. Fight in Lich Form until you are at 25% health. You must let your life get low, because you want to proc the other Spectral Armor that activates when you are hit below 50% health. These 2 spectral armors will refill your LF bar while you are fighting as a Lich. As soon as you pop out of Lich form, go back into shroud.

If he STILL isn’t dead as your second shroud is getting low, try CCing him and back off. Leave shroud and heal, use marks to kite then switch to D/F to quickly rebuild your LF. Switch to staff and drop marks right before you return to Shroud. Repeat this cycle as much as you can….and if Lich comes off cd then you need to /bow to your opponent because dang that fight lasted too long ;p

but yeah I regularly win 2 and 3v1’s with this build. It’s a awesome combo of tank and heavy crits.

Watch out for chain stun wars/engi’s though. Against these people Lich form is vital. If you don’t kill them in Lich then forget staff because you will need to generate LF like crazy to make up for all the time you are going to spend with your face on the ground.

Daendur.2357:

Seras.5702:

Daendur.2357:

it’s the whole hybrid concept that is misplaced…

Please explain that one. Are you saying you shouldn’t be able to build hybrid in this game? DD or Conditions or nuthin’?

I’m just saying that a thief built hybrid, in my opinion is much less effective than a thief built condi or burst.
And I say that after having tried it.

That’s just like, your opinion, man.

Just because you couldn’t play a build to its full potential doesn’t mean its a bad build. I have been having a blast with my Carrion D/D build in sPvP and will probably level my theif to use it in WvW too.

Anyway you look at it, both of your servers are ganging up on us and using the actions of a couple trolls from our server to justify it.

Aeros.2046:

If you guys agree that its a problem, just block the dude so he can’t spill the beans to you. Rather simple and elegant solution to the spirit of fair play. To be fair though, these shenanigans were very effective at rallying our server to hit Crystal Desert hard. So it was kind of a double edged thing. On the one hand it sucked, on the other hand it led to a 30 minute long assault of CD’s fully upgraded Bay ending in a Cap, and a 3 hour long siege of hills that delivered incessant and never ending slaughter, ending with a flip of SM out from under Crystal Desert.

As with all things, every action, reaction

So what you are saying is you need to put down and demonize a entire server in order to rally up the will to fight? Mmkay whatever you say. Just stop acting like you are on some moral high ground.

It’s Disgusting.

Dio.2394:

fooey.5824:

Guess someone didn’t want IoJ to feel left out on treb trolling

Oddly enough, the griefer, after first claiming to be brand new to the game, claimed that he was from CORE guild. Which just confirmed the idea it was actually a CD player trying to make people think he was from IoJ.

correct me if I’m mistaken but you can’t guest wvw right? So this greifer, wherever he is from, had to spend money/gold to be on BP server. Which would mean he is not a CD player, he is a BP player.

Also holding a entire server accountable because of one person is pretty shallow. It’s not like we can pick and choose who is on our server. If someone from CD did transfer over to BP to greif, that doesn’t mean CD is some nefarious server sending out spys and saboteurs because it can’t win on its own. It means that a former cd player acted on their own accord.

To say anything else is just thinly veiled politicking…

Similar to what I run but I am 30/10/0/0/30. Also I have less precision and more vitality.

Best thing about a shroud fighter is that you force the enemy to chew through like 50k hp if you keep filling your bar up before they can down you. In a pitched fight I can fill my bar 3 times over. Other nice thing is deathly perception lets you stat less precision. Personally I chose to use spectral walk instead of BiP, the extra stun break and lf generation is clutch. ALso I can’t afford Traveler runes u-u

The ruins themselves are fine. I like using them as a hideout while roaming around. Capping ruins is a waste of time and I’m glad to see at least in my current matchup that there is a unspoken agreement to just leave them the F alone. Bloodlust is a broken mechanic but if we as a community organize around keeping the orb distribution even then we can overcome Anets tyranny.

Happened to me too. All I did was mention the nationality of Anets owners, NCsoft were. Apparently the K word isn’t allowed around because just mentioning it is ‘hate speech’.

Actually Necro can do more damage to siege then any other class…

If you run a full MM build

“I want progress, yes. Improvement of the pet. Removing the pet isn’t progress. It’s avoiding progress.”

What if I told you…

That Anet’s programmers are not capable of improving the pet?

To bring this game back, there are 2 changes you can make immediately that would certainly please much of the community.

1. Make Ascended Items account bound. If you wish Ascended Items to remain time gated and very grindy items to get, at least let us pool our few items together, so that we could swap them from one alt to another. Right now this game is VERY alt-unfriendly and that needs to change. I leave it up to your wisdom whether you think Legendaries should be account bound or not. If you could make more account bound skins for Spvp that would be a bonus too… because right now spvp is boring, dull and has no variety…

Which leads me to number 2. Please start adding more stat combos and rune sets to Spvp. You clearly want us wvwers to use the spvp function but we’re not going to until we have the same amount of choice and build selection as we do in wvw. Forget about Esports. Focus on making your game fun, then, maybe just maybe your game will become the Esport you want it to be. Sports don’t become popular because they are mind numbingly simple, or else dodgeball would be our national past time. Worry about balance later, balance can come after people have a chance to try these things out in the Spvp setting.

These are two things that would please old and new players a like. In a build diverse game like this it’s hard to imagine being forced to stick with one character or else be forced to climb Mt. Everest again. Yes I know it was worse in WoW and you know what? This isn’t wow and it isn’t 2006 anymore either. C’mon…_Dare to be progressive, ANET!_

(reposting edited post, apparently my last one had ‘hate speech’ in it.)

Spot on. This pretty much sums up how I feel about this game as well. I think the problem may be people like us who despise vertical progression and barriers to entry are a minority…

We’re like the lab rats that got away, liberated and free, we can’t be put back into those cages no more. Most of the ‘lab rats’ in the mmo scene though long for their hamster wheel and regimented dosages of ‘fun’.

You could even make a allusion to Moses’s Jews wandering the desert, searching for a home. We are few in number, with a unique point of view, or faith even…always looking for our holy land. GW2 was suppose to be that holy land, OUR holy land…and it feels JUST like our holy land has been invaded and corrupted by the Romans. So now I guess, following this to its logical conclusion, we need a Messiah to liberate us and lead us to gaming salvation. One can only pray… ;p

CrassBippy.4619:

Professor Sensei.2941:

WvW gives players an actual end game objective. If we all used “balanced” stats with no player progression there would be no real investment in any of your toons. That’s how I see it at least. I love using my jacked stats lol.

this is what is wrong with MMO players. Everyone treats it like a second job and thinks higher stats is necessary, when all it does is raise enemy levels to make it all pointless too.

All it does for PvP is ruin it

A million times this. I too have been playing Mmo’s since the days of UO and I know how bad it can be. Vertical progression is pointless. All it does is give workaholics and basement dwellers the chance to be better then everyone else for awhile by virtue of their mindless grinding. Certainly not by their skill or intelligent builds.

All we ask for is a skill based game, not a “how many hours can you invest into the game” based game.

As far as I care the golden age of this game came and went. Around the time of the Karka Queen, before ascended gear became omnipresent and no one had the wxp to gain guard buffs. When Karma was plentiful and exotic gear was cheap and easy to get. When people focused on their builds, their strategy, their outfit, and just generally logged on every day to score some kills. Every one was on a even footing and if you lost to someone, it was on you, not your or their gear/server buff/wxp traits.

Anet had a chance to capitalize on this time. They could have offered more stat combos, more skins, more skills, better traits, better balanced game play. They could have refined GW2’s game play to an elite tier, the kind of game play people talk about years later. But no, they decided to just add more barriers to entry. Like wxp, bloodlust, vertical progression and heavily gated ascended gear.

It’s just another wow clone now and it will go the way of every wow clone before it….

Solstice.1097:

Could not agree more however, you didn’t know? Anet WvW devs aren’t allowed to have good ideas. WvW is only used as leverage to create more server transfers and gem sales.

WvW business model:

A) break the game
B) sell the solution in gem store
C) tell us how we should feel about it
D) repeat

Very well put!

Niim.9260:

While I generally disagree with the buffs, I think folks are over-reacting a fair bit as well. More often then not I see the buffs moving around and you never seem to have +100 or more for very long.

Bottom line is that the stat balance is only going to mess up close fights and let’s be honest, how often do we actually have those? When I spent all my time soloing I fought on average one person a week worth fighting, the rest of the fights, the buff would have no impact at all on the outcome.

It impacts GvG, but if the GvG community (big generalization here) didn’t strut around like roosters because they managed to master a hammer train they might be in better standing with their fellow players and be able to ask them to balance the buffs out for the duration of the GvG.

You miss the point. Many people are not reacting to the bloodlust buff in isolation. For many, like myself, Bloodlust is the straw that broke the camel’s back. You can search back into this thread if you want a explanation of how I feel.

KUTM, you don’t understand.

The code trigger that will make these sound effects play IS zerg lag. You already get that chill down your spine when your skill buttons stop working. Now you can hear the steamroller coming too. Brilliant! xD

Because Anet is doing the one thing that has killed SO many mmos in the past.

They’re trying to kill WoW.

Killing WoW means a 100% focus on pve content and gear progression. It’s also impossible, and therefore a monumental waste of resources. Remember Anet’s top guy is a former Blizzard employee. The desire to show up his former employer surely runs deep…

Thanks for the compliments guys. I check this forum every other day just to see if if Anet has said anything. It’s been nothing but grim silence from them so far.

I think someone else said it best in a different thread. Between having to listen to their ever dissatisfied customer base on this forum or their korean overlords, its easier to listen to their overlords. While I still am not sure what the reasoning is (the motive is always money), I am pretty sure that they are receiving some pretty high level orders to take this game the way they are.

That’s right, I still care even though I have uninstalled the game. Gw2 has the best basic gameplay of any mmo period. Hands down. Can’t even touch another mmo now.

However unlike so many others out there I believe in principle. Anet can’t keep stepping on my toes and expect me to keep dancing with them. Mr FPS over there isn’t really as deep or engaging but he has never let me down like this either. There’s also TV, anime, Manga, books, archery, bicycles, cooking, politics, history, tvtropes…I’ve got a lot of past times.

But yes lets go over just how unbalanced WvW can be now. It really didn’t start with bloodlust after all. As Zen points out, world buffs can be pretty strong, though in of themselves weren’t a issue. In total super blowouts where you can feel them, there are so few of the enemy to fight its really rather moot.

But then they added wxp traits. Guard Defender and Attackers final traits are pretty powerful. For a long time that was ok because no one had the points to get them. That is starting to change as the ‘sh*tbucket’ players are pulling way ahead of casuals in wxp (kudos to those who get the reference).

Then they added Ascended weapons. Sh*tbucket (and/or rich) players with their ascended weapons or Legendarys now have another time-exclusive advantage.

THEN they added Bloodlust. While this buff is relatively easy to get compared to the former mentioned items, it tends to be overwhelmingly in favor of the winning server. This is neither fun for a individual player on a winning or losing server. A losing server player (especially a casual player) will face a overwhelming disadvantage. Not only will bloodlust be stacked against him, but so will world bonuses. If he is casual, he will have ascended and/or wxp traits stacked against him as well. For the winning server player, there is no honor or glory in killing an enemy who is at stat disadvantage.

Granted some people get great pleasure in winning fights not because of superior skill (which they usually lack and have a significant inferiority complex because of). They get pleasure from winning with their superior gear, server, numbers, ect. These are the kind of people who are ruining wvw because they are the ones pushing for power creep, gear progression, Stacked Teams and basically everything that made WoW TERRIBLE FOR PVP.

……

Once upon a time a person could invest a relatively modest amount of time to gear up in exotics. Figure out a decent build and then head off into WvW knowing they would be fighting on mostly even terms with their enemies.

That was fun.

Where the devs are taking us is definitely not ‘fun’ territory in my book.

I’ve quit altogether. I agree with Daze. Anet took a great base game and ruined it. WvW is what I signed on for.

Ascended weapons that must be crafted, account bound t7 mats.
Asinine new king of the hill mode with no rewards aka ruins
Bloodlust buff makes fair fights and duels impossible.

but other things that have irked me over time

not being able to mystic forge wvw armor/weps
not being able to salvage wvw items
not being able to test new runes/gear in spvp
not being able to easily acquire karma via wvw

Not to mention letting Ranger just completely fall behind in the WvW meta.

Anet doesn’t care about user satisfaction. That’s common to B2P games though…

The Devs have earned the ire of many people in this game for many different reasons. The viciousness will never go away, because this game had something good going and the devs chucked it out the window for the sake of more profit.

As you say, its easier for them to listen to their bosses, then their customers.

Scrolling through this thread. I see

NOOOOOOOO

Then I see anets post: NANANA I CANT HEAR YOU WERE PROCEEDING REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU SAY!!

Then more NOOOOO.

Lolanet.

What is and isn’t a bannable offense depends on how the GMs feel that day. If they decide after the fact that something allowable by current game mechanics is ‘game breaking’ they expect players to have the foresight not to do such activity regardless of how rewarding or easy it is. One day they will declare said activity as game breaking, then proceed to ban every player who ever engaged in it. It’s their fault, you see, since they lacked the foresight not to forsee that said activity would get them banned. Keep in mind I’m not talking about glitches or hacks or anything like that. I’m talking about game mechanics working as intended. The player will be punished for the devs design flaws. Thats how things work here.

Rule of thumb; if its profitable, don’t do it. You might get banned.

I used to play eve. I wish I could go back but I just dont have the $$$ to pay every month. Everything about Eve is better. The battles are more organized. The community is tighter knit. The economy is MUCH better run. The only grind that exists is the waiting game, since it is entirely time gated game. Of course gathering money is difficult if you are like me. But I have never been able to make money in any mmo ever.

Speaking of which, kitten anet for making the economy go into hyper inflation. Now I can’t even afford to regear into greens. Rabid greens are 20 silver plus !! Karma is so slow to get too…

and kitten anet for making it impossible to mystic forge exotics of different types, and exotics purchased from wvw.

and kitten anet for making wvw completely unprofitable.

and kitten anet for deviating from their manifesto. I bought this game because of that hype. If I knew it was going to turn into this “grind fest pve wars 2” I never would have bought it. Liars and swindlers are what they are, the lot of them.

Ibbuli.4027:

Lorelei.3918:

Also Final Rest is the only scythe in game currently.

Search “scythe staff skin” from TP.

Zoinks!

Oh hey look at that…149 gold price tag. No wonder I never knew it existed!

Zoinks to you too.

That has been the WvW meta for a long time now actually. We have experienced that treatment at the hands of FA and TC. One reason we are all over your BL’s is that EB is running a que now.

Funny, we never had a que in EB when we were up against T2 servers, yet we don’t mind coming out swinging against tier 6? I have a sad now :c

I like the bone armor you get from wvw vendor. Cheap and necroish. Also Final Rest is the only scythe in game currently.

Necros have been terrible at stomping forever. This is why necro’s can’t solo roam. Even if you down 2 or 3 people, 1 of them is bound to kill a mob and they are all going to rally before you ever get a stomp off. Even if you do go 30 into Soul reaping, you still have to choose between deathly perception and foot in the grave… 2 very awesome traits.

To be fair Necro’s have one of the best raw offense/defense combos out there. In a straight duel we can smash every other class but mesmer.

oh btw Rangers can stealth stomp now.

It’s been a long while since CD was the “bad guy” server hasn’t it? Oh well..

Its not like the Imperial March plays everytime our zerg goes by, does it?

There are only 2 classes in the game that can use Longbow right now. We could use a third, and there is a existing model for a Longbow Necro; The Dark Ranger.

We ARE a pet class after all, and our golem is actually more effective then a lot of Ranger pets ( ;p ). If we do get a Longbow (or shorbow) those arrows better darn well pierce by default or have some nifty aoes attached.

You would be right it would be like aspects if I wanted every skill to change. But if just skill 1 and 2, or hell just skill 1, changed, then that would be EXACTLY like warrior mechanic. Which isn’t a bad thing. I think trying to make a death shroud that synergizes with every build with only 5 skills is pretty impossible.

Also are you suggesting what I am saying is a ‘ridiculous fantasy’? Because that is pretty low. And who appointed you thread moderator? You could have just left this alone and my comment would have been washed away by every one else’s valuable input.

Edit: Oh alright andele. I never played D&D much but that was something I remember about necros since that is my go to class in any game.

Edit 2: Just to rub it in your realistic face, spoj, I vote for Longbow Necro. Because longbows are awesome, and would essentially make us like the Forsaken Dark Rangers. We could even name our pet golem!

Did you ever watch a show called Outlaw Star nike? They had these guns called casters that fired magic bullets. You could get bullets that did all kinds of different things. Your suggestion reminded me of that.

The only problem with your idea is we don’t get pirate armor, so the whole undead pirate using pistols is out the window :c

How does that combine ele? That has nothing to do with aspects. I can see it combining warrior and necro though. But if every other class gains a new weapon and we gained new DS skills that would be fair right?

Also, gaining a new weapon IS gaining new skills. That’s all a weapon is, IS 5 new skills. I suggested 6 new skills. So that’s pretty much in line from a development point of view with receiving a new weapon.

Traditionally the ‘Necromancer’ is not always a pure caster class. In UO Necromancy was a kind of support magic that could be paired with any discipline including melee. Of course WoW had their death knights. RO also has a kind of death knight called a rune knight. Even in D&D the necromancer could wear light armor without a spell penalty where other casters could not.

Besides that, lets not forget the Rule of Cool.

Who wouldn’t want to see their necro causing havoc with their scythe in melee combat?

Now here is my idea:

Instead of Death Shroud giving a set 5 skills no matter what. Let the Death shroud have a few different skills based on main hand weapon. Leave 3,4,5 alone, but lets say..

Staff 1 is now a melee attack with a swirling 360 degree attack at the end that gains life force for each enemy hit. Staff 2 now sends out ethereal chains that bind the enemy and can be yanked, like the Guard GS skill.

Axe 1 sends out a swarm of locust similar to dagger 4, it bounces between 3 enemies and causes blindness. It doesn’t transfer conditions but it does do more damage. Axe 2 is a high powered spinal shiver that does 2x the damage.

Dagger 1 does lifeblast, Dagger 2 is Death claws. So the old skills/playstyle isn’t lost.

Scepter 1 Does a low power life blast that transfers 1 condition and causes bleeding. Scepter 2 is a reverse blink, that does a aoe bleed and chill around the caster. Like a reverse death claw.

In my wvw death shroud build I run full valkyrie with just a smidge of zerker and a set of runes of the pack. This gives me 28% crit base before deathly perception. and 26k hp. While dagger does awesome damage if you have high crit chance you sacrifice a lot to get that precision stat up.

I would take my 26k hp necro that does 4-6k dmg hits at range to a 18k hp zerker dagger necro that does 8k at melee range. The crux is that by maxing vit and 30 into soul reaping, my DS HP is: 20451. 1% of 20451 is 204hp versus a 30/30/0/0/10 Dagger necro having about 10400 DS hp and 1% at 104 hp. While we produce life force at roughly the same rate percentage wise, not only do I start with twice as much hp, I get twice as much hp back pet hit. For instance one staff 1 ‘heals’ me for 816 hp.

In a fight the dagger necro has to get in range of me, not easy between multiple fears, chills, ect. Then he has to chew through 46k effective hp where I only need to lifeblast through 28k hp. Meanwhile I am regaining hp twice as fast as he is. So even if he had double dps, I would still win via lifeforce ‘healing’. Realistically, I can neutralize a lot of any melee enemies dps via kiting and skill. So I actually win hands down, even if my dps isn’t top notch.

I fought a very skilled mesmer not too long ago. He was that condi stacking build that is considered the best 1v1 build in wvw right now. Well, we fought for a very long time over a camp. Eventually he partied me and we talked. We agreed to a duel and we literally downed at the same time. Afterward he commented I was the first necro he could not beat. I’m not saying my build is the best 1v1 build for necro right now but I bet its pretty kitten close.

So don’t count out lifeblast. Even as a single target attack, range matters, and with the right build, you can even beat top notch players with it.

You sure about that Ross? It’s true Mesmers are the hardest thing for me to beat but I have beaten them. Note I am not a condi necro, but a power necro.

I have Abbadons eye, and Solaria and Lunaria rings. I was wondering what anet would do about these since they do contain magic find. Apparently they just removed magic find from them but gave no boost to the other stats. You know origianlly that including magic find on them factored into how much stat points they gave. Would it have been more if it weren’t for the magic find? If so then shouldn’t they get that now?

I want a melee scythe. That is all.

I lost a very close fight because I “fat fingered” Death shroud. Give DS a .25s internal cd. That wouldn’t destroy shroud dancing builds but even a fraction of a second is enough for the brain to recognize its in DS and it should stop pressing the f1 key.

DevonCarver.5370:

skeet.1390:

So do 4 leagues in NA. This eliminates the enormous population difference from server 1 to server 12 and 13 to 24.

If you really think the server that is ranked 12th at the start of this stands any chance against the top servers you are delusional.

I never said they did. However, I’d argue that they do in fact stand a chance against the 6th ranked server and the 5th ranked server. We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

Devon, c’mon man…it’s not about skill. Skill is not a major factor in wvw outcomes. It never was and never will be. It’s population, population, population. And do you know what happens when you match a rank 12 server against a rank 1 server? Rank 12 goes home. That’s what happens. And if you think that’s ‘pathetic’ or something, then maybe you need to rethink what it is you are making. It’s a game and people want to have fun in a game. Being outnumbered 5 to 1 all the time is Not Fun.

In fact, it doesn’t even need to be a 1-12 difference. CD spent just 3 weeks fighting t2-3 servers and by the end of it we had pretty much given up. It’s much worse for others I hear.

Sorry, this isn’t angels in the outfield. Miracles aren’t going to happen. The outcome of matching servers with more then 1 tier of disparity is pretty much already decided.

I’m ready to go back to the old system now. I’ll take the same ‘boring’ old 3 servers every week to the way things have been: not being able to even play for weeks at a time.

If you are a condition necro, kill his pet(s). Rangers major condi removals are Signet of Cleaning and the survival XI trait. Both send conditions to the pet. if the pet is dead though, those abilities do not work. You can even use the pet to get a condi stack going, and then epidemic it over to the ranger.. >:)

If you are power necro, burst harder.

Spectral Staff Build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW4djMah7VbabM8JEJFXzzEpAZUGqHwD78hA-jEDBYLRGfBggAgIAiKAO9pIasVSFRjVZDT5CQ7KyqXJ1iuIa1SBIoyI-w

Edit: oops looks like when I changed the build descrip I forgot to change the build link to go with it. That is now fixed.

This is a unconventional build, so please be forewarned. This build is a Death Shroud centric build. It leverages the staff as both a LF generation tool, aoe dmg source and dmg modifier.

Explanation Let me go over the theory with you. Look at the staff. None of its attacks really jive with power. Yet it has the best power coefficient by far for us. You really don’t need crit for any staff skill. Now look at DS. Mostly power skills, even ds5 hits hard at the end. DS benefits heavily from crit. Now you got this nifty trait that gives your 50% crit in DS. You got another nifty trait that gives you fury when you enter DS. So, 70% inherent crit just for hitting f1. So thanks to traits you don’t need to stat much precision, which frees you up to stat vitality. Which leads to the next section…

Gearing: I run all Valkyrie because you don’t need precision, but crit dmg is still very useful. Runes of the pack ties the whole thing together. The 20% swift buff gives you one button perma swiftness via S. Walk. The call of the wild procs give you extra fury time and swiftness. The precision makes sure you are close to 100% crit in DS. All of the gear has vit, which increases the amount of dmg you can soak in DS.

As for weapons its staff and dagger/focus. After practicing with this build I’ve found that in some 1v1 situations, being able to rip off boons can be invaluable.

Utilities Now lets talk about the utilities. If you look over the build you see you have all spectral utilities. You want to fight in ds form for as long as possible to maximize dps. Well thanks to the patch you can now gain lf while in ds if you have either spectral walk or armor up. If you are being attacked head on, put up armor right before going into DS. You will tank their dmg output without getting a scratch on your hp. Knowing when and how to use armor and walk is very important. There is a variety of tricks you can play with Spectral Walk alone. Play around with it.

Summary When fighting a extended fight, because you simply manufacture so much LF, you can’t be killed (not easily). This fusion of survivability and huge crits will simply overpower most builds or force them to run away. You’ve got a extensive toolbox including Lich form, 2 fears, 1 yank, 2 total cleanses, 2 stun breakers, a boon rip, and a reverse blink. Use them wisely and you can win.

EDIT After testing I found that the build simply doesn’t need condition damage. Maxing out crit damage is far more useful.

Im testing out something pretty funky.

20/0/20/0/30

I’m using the disposable minions as a Life Force generator to fuel a high powered death shroud build. I love Final Rest staff so I want a build that doesn’t force me to swap away from it. Anyway I took the 50% crit in DS trait.

I got my stats to 2k power, 1.3k vit, 1.3k tough, 400 condi dmg, 70% crit dmg and 26% crit. So in DS I have 76% crit before food buffs. Not having to stat so much prec frees me up to stat vitality and condition damage in the form of Carrion gear. Since I get my power to the soft cap with food and stone, I use corruption sigil on my staff.

I’m running runes of speed atm (no pun intended) for the vit and run duration. 20% swiftness + 20% boon duration + -20% recharge on spectral means 1 button perma swiftness. Of course that means I have to choose between marks making life force or piercing lifeblasts…….

Finally, I use Shadow, wurm and golem as my minions. The first two are generate Life force. Also Spectral walk + Wurm teleport is awesome. You can really throw a chasing enemy for a loop with it.

Not too great in zerg since minions just insta die. You can put the worm in the back then Spectral walk into the blob. DS 5+4+3+2, then when they all focus you, teleport out and XD at them.

EDIT Whoops, for some reason I thought bone minions created life force when they die. Oh well, I like shadow too.

Kjeldoran.3849:

Lorelei.3918:

Sorry for the long winded post. I just wanted people to know that the future for all ranger builds is fairly bleak, not just the power ones.

first of all this will be my only and last answer about condition builds, then stop please
… ok man you evidently don’t know what anet is going to introduce… this is the most full of absurdities post…
1)our condition build is better than almost every other classe simply because we get condition damage, defense, heals (tons of heals considering all regens we can get), pets and a fatal elite (for some classes)
2)we get confusion as other classes do! cmon are you so blind? we get confusion from pet (up to 10 stacks in a row) and look at the daze build thread to learn how we get more confusion stacks… and never forget asura’s power! (asura ftw! ) also we get 10-15bleed stacks simply spammin our auto attack with short bow… do you think this isn’t enough? other classes can put on you 20-25 bleed stacks but every 10-20-30 secs we can do it permanently (remover’s are quite useless against a continuous bleeding stacker)
3)again, il repeat again… if we get ascended gear our condi/direct damage will remain the same! it’s a %.

Am I blind? Do I not know what anet is going to introduce? Is my post really full of absurdities?

Who knows? I do know you really, really need a lesson in manners.

Second, every single thing you listed is situational. Not every Ranger is a asura. Confusion applied by a pet is garbage because it doesn’t scale with your condi damage. Confusion applied by a soon to be nerfed rune set is also a straw man argument. Implying we can maintain 25 stack of bleed is rather ridiculous because it requires you maintain a flank with a shortbow. Sure you can do that in pve easy enough but I’m talking strictly wvw/pvp terms. Third our survivability is good, but then so is every other rabid stat using condi class. That is really nothing special.

Finally, I’m very aware what ascended weapons will do to our power build. It will be a certain percentage higher dmg coefficient. However, our pets damage does not scale with our weapon damage and our weapon damage is purposely held back because we have a pet. The math others have stated here is correct.

So what was this post about again?

Sovereign.1093:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITIJFNFaNaI

Ty FA and CD. May the odds be in our favor next matchup.

TY for what? I’ve barely logged in this week, thanks to this match up. Can’t even play at night anymore. I get a couple hours before I go to work in the day when CDBL isn’t crawling with TC EVERYWHERE.

Hopefully one day TC will get their comeuppance.