Guild Wars 2

Archon.6480:

Welcome back! Have a look at WHaO and might/boon stacking. I have a feeling you’re going to love it.

might/boon stacking in general is nice now. However i am not sure running beastmaster has the same effect as before the revised trait system.

Unfortunatly, since we do not have legacy installs, or the ability to test legacy versions we cannot go back and see what they did right and what they did wrong, without turning to obviously biased opinions and glorified memories

Lord Trejgon.2809:

I have no idea who you are but welcome back fellow druid I guess

i used to be excessively active on these forums some year or two back… been playing GW 2 as Ranger almost exclusively since a few months after launch…

The lingering light nerf was bullkitten.

even if they upped it to 5 or 7 seconds, it would be pretty harsh of a nerf.

BUT, let us not remember. Ranger cannot have shiny toys, nor can Druids

incase anyone did miss me… yes i am back.

playin ranger/druid, like in da good ol days

DeceiverX.8361:

Raven.9603:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Wow ): No wonder roaming is dying alright… So many bads out there calling it quits when the going gets a little rough. Can’t insta-gib people so “nah, this game’s boring now. Things are putting up a fight.”

Go somewhere else then.

LOL. You use sPvP as an example of how condis arent OP, and when someone points “exactly, because in sPvP theres no Dire, No Food, No Perplexity” you resort to calling them bads. Way to beat people down just for disagreeing with you.

Maybe Dire never made it to sPvP because it failed to be balanced when implemented on the poor guinea pig that is WvW?

Dire did make it there for testing. It was removed immediately because it was deemed so overpowered it ruined the balance of sPvP in it of itself. Perplexity made it to sPvP in the live game, and then was also immediately removed because it was deemed too overpowered and ruined the balance of the format.

People who play dire and/or perplexity condi builds in WvW have no idea just how unbelievably overpowered their specs are.

until they face someone running faceroll condi build with more cleansing then them. Then they realize its only -that- good.

Offair.2563:

Survival Ranger has some nice condition clears through survival skills. Unsure if its the best condi removal class/build but i like it. Saved my kitten tons of times getting condi showered.

used to be better. Still pretty good cleansing, But back when you could have 4 condies/10 sec passive cleanse, and 2 utility + elite skill to cleanse 2 condies each, it was much better, condi wise.

Its still pretty brutal, since you can spam more bleeds (now with 20% more bleed damage) then any other class i know of.

23 stacks in 5-6 seconds flat… yeah, i dunno many builds on other classes that gets close.

Wuselknusel.4082:

And that’s why I keep presenting the idea of removing the damage from the pet. Keep the pet, remove the damage. The pet could be entirely utility based and it could be glorious at it. We have so many pets, so many utility niches that could be filled.

Want to spot enemies behind a wall in WvW? Send a bird over the wall to mark enemies for you. Want to sniff out stealthed targets? Send a carnine. Want to catch a running target that is faster than you? Send a Moa.

We could even keep some pets that do damage, tho not much, which can be buffed by traiting the beastmaster line. So beastmaster would still be viable.

Pets could use a move command where you could mark a position and the pet would run to that position. You could mark an enemy or an ally and the pet will follow that player. You could mark you and your pet will follow you. Simple and effective.

That is the kind of pet I want to play with. For more ideas, check my signature.

This would be a great way to use pets.

Or if they had to retain some DPS to have a purpose. Give burst and or ground targeted AOE abilities ONLY to pets.

Want GTAOE poison attack? Use a devourer.
Want GTAOE healing? send a moa to a location and have it scream…
Want GTAOE launch? Click on ground and your bear will charge in and pounce at the ground flinging people around it into the air.

I like my pet.
today, my raven killed a thief. If it hadnt been there, i would have lost….

jcbroe.4329:

Prysin.8542:

sweet to still see you around mate. Keep going!

Make the bow sing

Thanks man! It’s been forever, I figured you either took a break or moved on to bigger and better things lol.

i am still active 5-10 minutes a day, to get my login award, and a few events to maintain my karma level just enough to keep using the karma converter :P

sweet to still see you around mate. Keep going!

Make the bow sing

Spurnshadow.3678:

I’m telling you it’s the immob bug that’s killing you more than the actuall strategy. How many times have you not had immob on you, not been staticed, had stability, and still stuck in wells? Tons.

twice
both in sPvP

why not in WvW?
Wellomancer sucks in roaming

Weez.6315:

if u guys really think skills like nullfield would counter venomwells i dunno against what kind of enemies u play. Nowadays Wells are used for big dmg spikes. That means not only 1 but lets say 5 necros are using their wells at the same time at the same spot. At the same time static fields and walls and maybe the meleetrain jumps on the enemies to CC them. So if those wells were used with venomshare, normally the victims only chance is a Port a block or invulnerability. Venomshare not only comes with 1 condition but with at least 3. And venomshare condis arent the only condis when u fight 20+. there are many conditions flying around and stacking on you while u try to remove that one annoying stack of immob.
Since there is no real priority when it comes to condition remove, ( I did many tests and its not always from the right to the left) as stated before when players get caught by one of these spikes only certain classes with the right utilityskills up make it out of there.
When a teammember gets caught by venomshare a guard normally has to use at least 2 skills to have a chance to get it off the teammate unless he uses Save yourself which means the guardian instead is now in a bad situation.

I think the pulsing effect of the wells isnt the problem here since you get spiked u are already dead after the first pulse.

Im playing in a smallscale guild we fight with 5 against 15 people normally. Since venomshare is so popular now we dont have a chance anymore against those groups.

For me there are two solutions here. One is giving us the option to choose the condi cleanse priorities and two is removing immobilize from venomshare and give them another condi instead.

even with 5 necros using 2-3 wells, that is STILL 5×3 applications of immob.

which WILL FOREVER BE 15 TOTAL APPLICATIONS, because math.

However these 15 applications IS SPREAD OUT ACROSS 3 seconds. Meaning ANY FIELD that pulses and cleanses stuff that matches up with the necros, unless the necros goes all “hey, first necro, then next then next then next” in a nice orderly line (GJ not having one necro blow that rotation out of greed), then no, you will no be unable to cleanse immob with nullfields, UNLESS, you are not in group with the mesmer and thus get downprioritized hard.

Long story short, if you want to combat necromancers with some sort of MELEE option, then ROLL A RANGER.
Why?
It has evasion on auto – takes less damage
It has a utility skill called Lightning Reflexes that removes immob (+2 more condies if traited), gives you vigor and evades backwards
It has a PULSING WATER FIELD THAT CLEANSES CONDIES, thus, yanno, hoorrayy we can deal with this on our own, maybe.
They have AOE condicleansing bears.
They have AOE full wipe condi cleansing signets, with passive cleansing
They have a trait moving 3 condies onto useless pet every 10 seconds
They can trait to get condi cleanse + fury when using Survival Skills such as ENTANGLE, you know that annoying root thingy that IMMOBS YOU. or Muddy Terrain, that brown puddle that IMMOBS YOU…. great aye?

And last but not least, you can do all this at once while being hated on by the entire enemy zerg. You will be targeted first, thus enemy will waste all immob on killing pesky rangers out of hatred, saving the remaining 70+ GWEN players.

GG rangers is your solution to saving GWEN.

Use the hatred.
Come over to the dark side, cuz well, we haz fluffy pets. Chicks love fluffy pets.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

‘the well’ but these groups are 4 necros, that’s 4 wells on top of each other, those 3 people can be hit by all 4 wells and be royally screwed over >.<

4 wells that are giving the venoms most likely, however, the necros can drop an additional well each, or 2… all while the people are trapped within it, with a death sentence.

still math is not that simple theoretically you are right. practically, you’d probably see less then 3 targets as unless the necro is careful and time their placement, their wells will burn all immob on first target. 3 targets ONLY applies if 3 enemies are perfectly simultaneously entering the well on a pulse.

Due to the nature of wells, the math behind, and effectiveness is much more questionable then the theoretical numbers assume. I know this due to running trap ranger along with a friend running venomshare for a very very long time. We duo roamed like that for 3 months straight every day or two.

When you use venoms with things that pulses, it does not outright act as effective as it looks on paper.

there is also the question about actual sharing. If the group consists of 1 thief and 4 necromancers (the ideal setup for venomwells would probably be 2 thieves and 3 necros for maximum applications and uptime). Then assuming every necro is within the area of venomshare, you got a potent setup. However, practical reality is another story. Unless the thief + necro group is exceptionally well synced, they will probably not achieve this max share effect, and may waste the venoms on something stupid like a ranger pet or a hammer guard/warrior.

however a party consisting of thieves and necromancers will have no stability and virtually NO group cleansing, thus in the event of being left behind by the zerg or ending up tailing, they will have few means of catching up to the driver when facing the enemy.

@Vornollo
While i think Toxsa may not be factually right, you are also wrong in some cases.

Thieves cannot get immunities, true, but they can do the second best thing – evade everything.
Just 3 points into acro and you are set.

The different in burst is not comparable.
A ranger got ONE rapid fire pr 8-10 seconds, ONE. If that rapid fire is negate the they got NO rapid fire and are quite ineffective at anything but chipping away small chunks. If the rapid fire misses, the ranger isnt any greater threat then a staff ele spamming auto attacks.
The thief can teleport into your face, while invisible, do 5-7k damage, then keep dishing out 3-5k attacks in rapid succession. There is little you can do to stop this assault as the thief got enough damage, and enough initiative to kill you twice before needing to pull back, in most cases.

Thieves can use simple tricks to avoid damage, people just plain refuses to USE them.
In a GvG scenario, all you need to do is isolate the ranger, stay behind the guardians in your team until ranger has wasted RF on a wall of reflection, then port and burst it down.

No, ranger CAN NOT get 12 seconds of immunity, that is only a theory.
6 seconds from signet of stone
6 seconds from Protect Me, however with glassbow, your pet, even a bear, has no toughness and low HP. So that bear or wolf will realistically melt in 2-3 seconds, sometimes faster if the ranger is bit by a strong attack.

Protect me “mitigates” 12k HP if Feline or Bird, 15k ish if wolf and 20k ish if drake/bear.
After that, pet is dead, ranger has lower total DPS, less utilities, less CC, less defense.
Protect me IS NOT VIABLE. It is the second worst skill a ranger have avaliable to it short of Search and Rescue.

I main a ranger myself, and you people who complain gloryfies the rangers WAY too much. It is easy to beat rangers, way too easy. If anything, rangers, even power rangers, are so underpowered (NOT their damage, that is NOT underpowered), that it is not even funny.
WvW is more forgiving to rangers then say PvP. If you brought a pewpew ranger into PvP then you would have 1 hour of fun (first 3-5 matches) then as you got paired with players that are not complete noobs you would get wrecked every game onwards.
WvW, as i said, is more forgiving because it is more OPEN. The easiest way to destroy LB rangers is simply NOT TO FIGHT IN THE OPEN FIELD.
Fighting a ranger in open field is like trying to dragrace a rocket in a straight line. You just never going to win. Add a few corners, aka some obstacles or some bottlenecks, and that ranger is no harder to beat then any other build you can imagine.

Now thieves need a buff. But not their stealth and not their damage. They need better utilities.
Traps – a great idea, but they fit more to the ranger then the thief.
Signets – just underwhelming
Trick – Good, but needs minor improvements
Venoms – needs HUGE quality of life improvements.

since you are looking to use alt accounts, i would strongly suggest that you move those alts to EU.

Here is my reasoning:
1 – the lag is not nearly as kittenome want you to think. I live in EU and iv’e played on NA servers for about a year in total (7 months on TC in T1, left halfway through second season due to the rampant match fixing going on back then. And 4.5 months in Crystal Desert, T4/T3). T1 and T3-4 has about the same lag in general, anything but 3way SMC battles are totally playable, even TC blob vs JQ blob was playable, though i had to shut down any network intensive programs while doing WvW in kitten let GW2 hug all it could.

2 – EU and NA is quite similar, but there is differences, both in cultures (duh), languages and playstyles. While the meta builds are the same, the way these are used differ ever so slightly. Roaming tends to be MUCH more diversified then in NA. When i was in NA the only builds i saw in T1 was teef, teef, teef, teef, runaway warriors, some occasional DD ele and a couple of power rangers or terrormancers every two weeks….

3 – Different builds
In EU, roaming builds differ, A LOT. Especially T1 (my current tier), can be very surprising. This may or may not have to do with most of the best/better PvP players in this game resides on Desolation, Kodash and SFR. They often run slightly tweaked PvP builds into WvW roaming, and man is it fun. They do not show up very often, but when you do recognize a big name, you get to learn how hard these guys are to beat when they are not limited by lower stats, nerfed skills and cramped areas. Really is a fun experience.

4 – Learn a new language
Yes, one of the many many benefits of playing in EU is that you can learn a new language if you want. There is litterally 30+ language spoken across the european servers (there is many foreign players in NA too, but they do not have whole servers dedicated to their nationality as EU does).
Want to learn Spanish? Go to Baruch Bay, the native Spanish server.
Want to learn French? Pick any of the french servers, such as Vizuna Square (the former BG of EU).
German? Kodash is a strong lively server, but there is others to choose from.
Russian? Desolation has several strong russian guilds running around NA prime. Desolation itself is primarily an international server so the majority does speak english.

The benefit of learning a new language is that you simply become more interesting as a person, pluss it is a great skill to have.

drunkmoron.7069:

It’s the next living story update. Guards are mutinying against the servers for being forced to fight to the death defending towers no one cares about. Just be happy the legendary defenders at the spawn point didn’t defect yet

Soon™

i want the current F1 command, better known as “try to hit enemy”, be reworked so it is now a “hit the enemy”

Toxsa.2701:

Zephyra.4709:

Condi P/D thief if they’re not running much condi cleanse/-40 condi food.

No joke I’ve literally danced around these guys pressing #2 immobilize and they have 1 min 30 secs of poison with a vomitfull of other condis on them all the while I’m fluttering about with those 2 circus clown elite thieves guild NPCs and it’s hilarious. They have no range weapon? GG. Immobilize them. They get close? Skill #3 which applies torment or CnD on them to set up.. Oh look another face full of bleed stacks.

If they’re running -40 condi food then yes, it’s a lot harder and I’ve failed many times with those types.

Other than that – full zerk LB pew pew ranger. Yes. I’ve killed a tiny handful of these guys; just pop stability (RaO) and even that signet and GG if I’m a tad but lucky. It’s mostly the animations you need to be aware of (the big tells) when they swing that hammer coz they WILL immobilize you if they’re traited and no stab = you’re dead.

Hope that helps.

I play Power ranger for WvW roaming forever, and I can confirm, aside from dire perplex thieves and condition necro with full death shroud, GS/H is one of the toughest match-up for my power ranger.

Even if I do run empathetic Bond and -40% condition food to begin with, I still couldn’t escape all his constant cripple (the duration is quite long), and he’s too mobile that I’d pretty much ended up trading blows with him when I trying to pew pew him. Just that he has way higher armors than me, so my LB wouldn’t kill him before he kills me if I just stand there shooting, and I’m forced to retreat through hunter shot + GS leap. Usually full RF will only do around 5~6k damage to them at max, which they can easily heal up my being aggressive and force me to switch to GS. Worst case scenario is they pop Rampage while my HP has already been chipped down abit. It’s a constant stability with almost immunity to soft CC and EXTREMELY TANKY (there’s a damage reduction during that time). Snaring/ KB/ KD/ Fear, none works on him during that time, and he actually runs way faster than me even if I run Pack Rune so I have constant swiftness on me, and hits very hard.

But there’re only a handful of good Warriors play like that. Most of them either run too tanky with almost 0 damage, or too glassy and can’t live through my arrows. Just because you kill the weak ones out there doesn’t mean the build is weak. You should always use the strongest foes you encountered as the example when examining these builds. In my opinion it’s much stronger than any LB variant of the Warrior when I’m playing power ranger. If they actually use LB, I’d have a much easier time pew pew them to death because they make range for us to do higher damage, and couldn’t hit us when we enter stealth XD.

warrior is a strong matchup vs any bow ranger build, mostly because they got the CC “immunity” and tonns of gap closers and or reflects. However, this only applies to longbow based setups. Shortbow has more flexible “counter control” options through SB4 and SB5, in addition to a proper evade (which gets broken in some way every 2-3 patches).

If you had chosen to run a more evasion centric melee based, power ranger such as GS/S A or S D, then you would stand stronger VS the warrior due to them not having so many advantageous abilities, and their slow and long wound up attacks would become even a greater weakness to the warrior due to your evades.

bleedstack condi ranger with sword dagger offhand for max evades will give them a run for their money. so will most tanky condi setups WITH EVASION.

Survival condi ranger with poison master will be a kittene for the warrior to beat, mostly because of high condition uptime, lots and lots of poison, and the control options granted through pets (KD, fear etc).

Melee ranger CAN be strong against them, granted you need some skill when it comes to close quarter battles. Evasion game is strong with rangers however, so they can avoid the warriors hurt for a long time. The ranger may not win, but it certainly can make it a stalemate.

Lastly, since this build has a hammer, there is a heavy reduction in IN COMBAT mobility, which is great, because that means beastmaster will work. The most lulz setup i can imagine is regen BM with spirits, going 60% nomads and 40% Dire. Not only is this setup tanky as hell, but it is also strong 1v1 vs things that doesnt always dart around or evade. The warrior is a very “in your face” profession, so all you need to do is seriously out-tank it. With the protection uptime, access to evasion, massive healthpool and heavy regeneration. In addition to a pet hitting like a truck on steroids, this setup is FUN, for the ranger. Ive tried it, it takes forever to kill stuff, and most of your enemies that are not of the super stubborn sort will either run away, let you kill them out of sheer boredom (in the case of not being able to run away for various reasons), or they simply avoid you like the plague.

Minionmancer CAN possibly have some merits, mainly by using minions as shields. Most warrior setups focused on burst with GS have weak defenses VS conditions, especially without shouts or cleansing ire.

So, any thief build focused on condi with atleast 4 points in acrobatics will be a menace beacause they can dodge all day.

Skullcrack warrior should be able to stop them if you use your blocks (mace 2, shield 5) wisely. GS is never strong unless you can STOP the enemy from getting away from 100b + arcing slice.

Lastly, mesmer should be the ideal one here, now i am not too versed in mesmer builds, however i know they got the tools, and the “AOE efficiency reduction” going for them with illusions and phantasm making it hard to deal with the real mesmer.

Engineer, while they are strong, i think engineer would be too dependent on the terrain to be efficient. In open spaces where the engi can kite more it should have some chance, but in tight spaces the warrior will be ontop of the engi before it can properly deploy its counter offense.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Hoelbrak gives -20% condi duration. You must be saying when combined with food. It doesn’t give you more stacks of might when empowering, just duration, and might is the first boon stripped. The point is Hoelbrak is for dps front line meta. However, if you are getting chilled and immobilized all the time, maybe you should change things up. Sacrifice getting some might stacks in combat for mobility and survivability through trooper runes.

And I don’t advocate every guardian run this. I find having a mix of shout and concecration for purging flames, and other consecrations a good mix. I’ve had many people come back at me saying “Trooper Runes are dumb,” “I’d never run trooper runes,” “What are Trooper Runes?” If everyone in frontline is running dps then kitten about being chilled and imob all the time.

I just hate people who think everyone should run one thing when a variety is better and usually help the group more. It really boils down to group comp. And if you’re running with a lot of pugs, they usually need more support as pugs generally run selfish, higher-dps builds.

gotta agree with a lot of your points.
I used to ask people to slot a Sigil of Water (30% chance to proc on attack) on their melee weapons. Because if you get enough people doing so, you litterally heal the whole frontline by just swinging your weapon. Took a while, then a guild tried it because what the hell, the sigils is less then 30 silver a piece…. end result, we had 15 people wielding hammers, greatswords or staffs with that sigil, healing for 5x 550-600 HP every 10 or so seconds. Does not sound like a huge deal, but that is almost 8k HP randomly healing your guild in a AOE every 10 seconds. Just from attacking.
Is there better sigils out there, sure, but can other sigils cause so much benefit to a group, for so low price ? i am not so sure there is any other sigil that can, not unless you want to spend some gold.

people do not think, especially in NA this is definetively true. EU is marginally more flexible in builds, but they too are moving towards " only builds on metabattle or gtfo ". which kills the game.

You wonder why a game stagnates? It is because players stubbornly refuses to look at their options and they MAKE the game stagnate. So instead players demand that the devs make their current setup so weak they HAVE to change, because their own imagination apparently cannot shift the direction on their own.

Decrypter.1785:

Just wondering if condi will ever be viable , atm it is way behind power/crit builds except in certain situations like killing husks etc . The thing is i cannot see a simple solution besides removing the stack cap , Having 3 or more condi damage dealers is a waste of time in a group situation because of this . Anyone have any ideas ?

it is viable for some content.
Take silverwastes, the Slingers and other big enemies usually have “thick bark”, so they are much harder to take down with direct damage. Conditions on the other hand do the same amount of damage regardless of their armor.
Some other content, like previous living stories also had certain bosses that was nearly or totally unkillable without conditions.

My advice would be to have a Sinister or celestial trinket set ready. While neither is going to provide the best solution, they can be paired with either direct damage or condition armor to provide the best balance between offensive direct damage and condition damage. Celestial also has the benefit of granting you a slight bonus to defense, which can come in handy in situations where you are being hit hard by many foes, such as a pack of silverwastes hounds attacking you from the back or sides.

If not willing to go for sinister or celestial trinkets, you can also focus on strong baseline conditions. Stacking lots of bleeds (10-15 stacks or more), or burning is examples of strong conditions that will deal notable damage, while not requiring too heavy investment.

@archon
Hey, i play ranger, sometimes with LB. This is how you counter my cookie cutter 66020 LB build with a thief. Or any other variation of LB spam.

Solution 1:
Use Shadow Step skills to quickly teleport behind the ranger. This will cancel the skill and put it on cooldown. It will also let you perform a easy CnD + BS or Pistol Whip or basilisk + random skill.

Solution 2:
Drop a smoke screen. Not only will it block projectiles, but you can leap through it with heartseeker to gain stealth, then quickly perform a backstab.

Solution 3:
Daggerstorm.

Solution 4:
Throughout the fight, keep spamming Weakness (SB 4+SB2). EVERY power ranger build is depending on doing critical hits. If you apply weakness, their rapid fire will go from doing 15k+ damage, to barely 4k.

Solution 5:
Use the trap skill that grants you 10k teleport to target. Use it to instantly port ontop of roaming rangers and destroy them before they even know what to do.

Solution 6:
Find a tree/stone/building/bush to hide behind. This method is 100% more efficient then every other known counter. Simply teleport behind a solid object and let the ranger burn their rapid fire. Secondly, the ranger is most likely to cancel the skill and try use barrage, now by hiding behind a solid object, you have made the ranger waste 2 of the 3 most devastating skills they have vs thieves, even if they used Sic’em by this point it wouldn’t help at all.

Congrats, you now have 6 easy steps to beat a power LB ranger. If you keep returning to these forums to complain, it is simply a sign of how terrible you are as a thief. Perhaps you should play some other class. After all, even if you like the idea of a class, it still does not mean that said class will be the one you have the most potential with.
Why not try out engineers or mesmers? Both of these have very strong builds for roaming, and both can use stealth.

GROMIT.7829:

Rangers are an old/out of date and redundant class/proffesion type.

Just delete it and be done with it for goodness sake.

well you see, they are actually doing that. Go look at guardian specialization. It has OP LB….

imagine that, LB burst, now with teleports and a bazillion heals.

instead, rangers are getting a magic wodden stick, and still cannot get rid of pet.

BlackDevil.9268:

Prysin.8542:

I play, primarily, banner regen support LB + sword shield warrior for zerging (tankyness + loot ftw), or power regen ranger for defending, or i play Survival condi bunker ranger for roaming.

It would be nice if everyone would have such sort of outro as intro so it’s easier to scan through the posts. These… specs aren’t exactly what I would call very… useful and I don’t exactly see how you have the experience to make such statements such as:

Almost EVERY tactic in WvW requires ZERO skill and ZERO effort, and close to ZERO risk. The whole meta is built around this principle of ZERO INPUT, MAX OUTPUT. So naturally this will be a popular tactic.

Well you see, i played this game, and in particular WvW, since december 2012, which is. oh, 2.5 years by now, or close to it.
Ive been part of dead serious WvW guilds on both EU and NA servers, across several tiers in both regions. In sheer time spent, i accumulated more experience then most.
That being said, what do you play good sir? Some build copied from Metabattles? or some build made up by your guild leadership? Great for you, great on you finding the time to play in a guild.
I do not have the time to play in a guild, i work in construction and during projects we can go from working normal 8 hour days to working 12-15 hours FOR WEEKS OR EVEN MONTHS in worst case. No guilds that is serious about WvW will bother with someone who cannot show up and be a “regular”. I understand that, and i respect that. My working life does not synergize well with Guildwars2. This is how it is.
However that does not change the fact that when i play, i gotta perform THE MOST for my team, by making sure i do THE MOST i can ALONE. I cannot count on friends or allies bringing certain things, i gotta do it all and it is not hard to do so.

As for roaming, condition specs are the most annoying you can fight, power specs are the most threatening due to their burst, please go find me a class with more condition cleanses, more pressure, mobility and tankyness IN ADDITION to utility then survival ranger.
As the game currently stands, you will find NONE. Guardian, Cele DD Ele and Warrior can get the cleansing, but then they sacrifice some of their pressure or sustain, or in guardians case, they become one shot wonders having to balance their meditations.
Thieves, if opting to have good cleansing, will have to go SR, thus power for the most part. This makes them predictable. Mesmers and engineers lose out on utility if trying to cleanse. Necromancers are THE ONLY class alongside Rangers themselves, able to actually overpower a Survival ranger in terms of condi applications.
Survival rangers can stack bleeds faster then any other class bar a thief burning all its initiative on every “init recharge”.
It can apply a pulsing fire field so huge it can cover a camp. It has poison uptime that is seriously impressive, it has CC, lots of CC. It has evasion, lots of evasion. It has clunky mobility with sword.

It has all this, in ONE SINGLE BUILD. For solo roaming, it is a package that only a engineer can come close to matching, but i am certainly not good enough with engineer to solo roam.

So you see, while i do not play meta setups, it is not because their lack of efficiency in general, it is because they do not support and attack very well in a “solo effort” scenario.

While the warrior build is certainly under review all the time (i swap shield for WH and AOE cleanses whenever possible), the sniper ranger only need a commander to point at who he wants dead, and i will bring the target down. I Do not want people to rush over and ress my paper ranger if i go down. My paper ranger is made of paper for a reason, it is there to shine bright for as long as i can keep it alive, then i will go down, and i will take down as many people as i can while going down. (That and, well…. a good paper ranger should run circle of life. Cause when i go down, i drop a 15 second waterfield for my allies to use. My ranger does not go down without a final word)

Vermillion.4061:

The problem is it requires 0 skill to pull off a venombomb with 0 risk involved.

Any group can pick up venombombs and suddenly their bombs are massively strong.

i need to correct you here.
But first i will have to announce a tiny disclaimer.

I do not play as thief, nor as necromancer. Nor do i play in groups or guilds that heavily utilizes this tactic. I play as solo or group roamer, and we got other things to do then drag along slow moving necros

That being said.
Almost EVERY tactic in WvW requires ZERO skill and ZERO effort, and close to ZERO risk. The whole meta is built around this principle of ZERO INPUT, MAX OUTPUT. So naturally this will be a popular tactic.
However it DOES carry “risk”. Thing is, no matter how much you try to build a tanky thief, you CAN NOT DO IT. Especially so in a group or crowd enviroment. This is primarily due to the design of the class. They are high damage, low defense. Their tools to mitigate damage is all about AVOIDING IT. Unfortunately for a thief, trying to avoid a whole zerg while staying close enough to actually help the ones in the fight is hard. Very hard. You cannot get CCd as a thief, especially Venomshare. Iv’e tried to play venomshare in the past, things have not changed much on the thiefs side, so my experience, while dated, still is valid.
Venoms take up so much utility, i “say so much” and you may think “it’s only 1 slot + elite”. However for a thief, one utility slot is big. Their main tools of escape and attack is tied directly to utilities, so using a slot for something with a medium to long cooldown is HUGE.
Venoms also have a long downtime, so inbetween venoms you either gotta hide, or try stay afloat.

Then there is the elephant in the room. Thieves want to tag things too, they want loot. And sharing venoms that does not damage, does not give you “automatic loot”. So that means they gotta dart around the battlefield with a class that is about as tanky as raw spaghetti, trying to spam cluster bombs and poison fields. Without dieing.
Then every 45 to 36 seconds, they must return to the slow moving necromancers that usually stay close to the fray due to their limited range but good tankyness with DS.

Now, a “outro” disclaimer for those who are still reading my post.
I play, primarily, banner regen support LB + sword shield warrior for zerging (tankyness + loot ftw), or power regen ranger for defending, or i play Survival condi bunker ranger for roaming.
That is all. I have a level 80 guard, necro, mesmer, engi, thief and ele. They are all good at different tasks.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Why do people belive that because thieves go in stealth they should move slower, go on revealed when hit or even lose health/stamina like in some games I have seen (what?).

Do stealth fighters or bomber have any of theM symptoms when they go in stealth?

Stealth vehicles such as the S-117 Nighthawk, F22 Raptor and B2 Stealth Bomber, in real life become visible to radar when they prepare for attack. Not fully visible, but you can catch them on radar.
Their radar deflecting/absorbing coating does not cover the internals of the plane. Once the doors to their armory opens, they become visible because their radar profile changes just enough to be picked up.

To explain it a bit better with a crude analogy.
Imagine yourself trying to stab someone, but you have a special cardboard box covering you. Aslong as you sneak around while inside the box, you are undetectable. However as soon as you stick your hand out to stab someone, you are no longer a special cardboard box, you are a arm. Arms are not stealthed nor special. Hence you get busted.

Dojo.1867:

Levetty.1279:

If Druids get Mantras I am going to be very sad. Very clunky mechanic with effects not really worth the charge time compared to other classes instant use skills.

You cannot even judge any effects if you don’t know what they are. Just because mesmer mantras don’t see much play doesn’t mean druids are automatically bad. Your comment is silly.

If i had mesmer mantras on my ranger i would party hard all day long. They are indeed clunky, but they are strong and can have proper teamplay value.
It is a shame that mesmers do not use their AOE stunbreak mantra in WvW. Given the stability change, that mantra is crazy strong, since the guardian AOE stunbreak has very long cooldown in comparison.

Atoss.1056:

Venomshare + Epidemic from necro with +condi food = someone is gonna be mad :P

Insert condiclass here + necro with epidemic and +condi food is going to make anyone mad.

Venoms is one thing. Try trap ranger with 2x Sharpening Stone, krait runes and Sharpened Edges + epi…. end result – Burning, 12-15x bleeding, immob, cripple, poison and torment all in less then 1 seconds. Just for good measure, you can reapply burning, poison, cripple and another 10 stacks of bleeding within the time it takes for epidemic’s cooldown to reset.

Venoms is a niche thing. They are underrated by most. Iv’e said it probably 20 times or more in this WvW forums. Venomshare is strong. Finally people seem to realize it.

Given that there is easy, reliable counter to this tactic. Not to mention it requires at bare minimum two players on two different professions to pull it off, while it takes only one player to negate it. I still fail to see the hardships related to this.

Players should look for counters, prior to accusing or labeling something as op.

what i do not seem to grasp from this thread, that does not seem to be mentioned is this;

at best you have one or two thieves with the enemy, if they are fully venomshare with extra venom applications and whatnot, that will equate to 1-2x(5×3), so in short 15-30 applications, however wells are locked at 3-5 people, so they will only catch these, they will lock them and keep killing THESE players (unless some other player manages to get closer to the centre of the wells then the ones already caught.
However, i ran trap ranger + VSthief for some time. The way Venoms work, unless changed, is that they apply 1x venom PR pulse PR skill.

So if necro dumps 2 wells, then that will burn all their venom stacks in 1.5 seconds upon initializing.

meaning unless the stars align, you will get MAX 5 people caught, realistically.

Granted every organized and “skilled” party out there runs a guard with condi cleanse, i do not see why there should not be viable, effective counterplay through STANDARD MEANS OF COUNTERING CONDITIONS.

My conclusion, without making claims that venomwells ARE or ARE NOT OP, is that either most of you who complain are NOT running in a nearly as skilled group as you think, OR that you simply are not sticking together enough.

There are some data missing. Mainly; why do you keep getting caught, and why have you not presented evidence of trying to counter this sort of play with the tools you have avaliable

pepper.6179:

why do all the ppl who have no idea what they’re doing play ranger? is it because they can do high dps from a safe distance?

why is it that most of the people bashing rangers, are not nearly as good with a ranger as they claim to be?
Or
Why is it that most of the people who state “Everything a ranger can do, can be done better by profession X”, yet when proven wrong they start arguing that prof X can also do this and that, yet prof X cannot do what the ranger do and STILL excel in all the other stuff they say?

just food for thought, that being said, rangers are far far far from perfect, they do however have some very strong points, which has been outlined enough times by now.

Rapid Fire, contrary to what people THINK, is NOT a proper strong point for rangers, it is a crutch that keeps bad players from leaving the class, and make average to good players seem unbeatable.

Eponet.4829:

Sorel.4870:

daedalus.9814:

Use dagger storm against rapid fire. Most rangers are dumb and kill themselves.
Smoke screen also stops all longbow damage but barrage. Also makes it hard to fight into a blinding field.

Alternatively, steal from one of the numerous GS warriors running away from fights anywhere on your borderland (I’m always like “yo, why u chose a warrior if you gonna run like a lil girl?”), and use it to reflect the RF.

Or just steal from the ranger to interrupt them

or steal the pet to reduce the ranges CC and damage…… oh wait, noone wants the pet

pepper.6179:

Nate.3927:

RlyOsim.2497:

As an aside, the original post here was to continue this discussion, not to share my own views.

Personal opinion:
Beginning to think a lot of posters in this thread don’t run with organised/semi-organised WvW groups: do people understand the amount of damage zerk necros put out + a melee/FP group hitting an immobilised target?
There’s not much “counter play” to been hit by that in under 2 seconds.

Group synergy is great and all but a, lets be honest here, stupidly simple to perform synergy such as venom&wells is totally broken in a risk-reward sense.

To each their own of course but I would urge people that don’t really understand the issue to spend some time in even a semi-organised environment (reset with teamspeak for example on your respective eb’s) and perhaps you might change your mind.

the simplest answer is don’t stand in their wells. Which is what you would normally do anyway. I do run with a guild as well as with pugs. Sometimes I’m on TS, sometimes I’m not.

Condi clear + dodge back(maybe twice) or a utility/weapon skill that moves you backwards(many classes have them).

Have I been caught in them and died due to it? Of course I have, but 90% of them time it’s because of one of these reasons:

a. Wasn’t paying attention since I’m also watching tv at the same time
b. Didn’t listen to commander and was nowhere near tag
c. Lag spike

Try to get your group to practice predicting enemy movements instead of just reacting to them. As an OCX player, I deal with bad lag all the time, our OCX commanders are the same. We quite often would pre-emptively move out of an area before the enemy even drops their bombs and venom wells.

kinda hard to avoid a stealth-ed necro that unleashes their wells

use a thief + trap ranger to scout. stealth ranger, ranger drops traps. Traps trigger if enemy enters regardless of stealth.

or simply use anti stealth traps. A thief can easily sneak up and employ these traps in a smart place, prior to the zerg getting within the reach of the choke or area.

Be creative, we got tools to counter everything, even if they come at a slight inconvenience for the user.

Xtinct.7031:

how did this turn into a thief qq thread?

Every thread is a thief qq thread in disguise

Sebrent.3625:

Good points Prysin.

I’m confused on the quoting me though … was talking about the Burst thieves there … and my other post was mentioning how I seem to run into Dire Thives whenever I’m on my Mesmer and have briefly dropped my cleanse off my bar to provide some Mesmer Utility to others via a separate utility skill (ex: Portal); a different “issue”.

Was referring to toxa

Toxsa.2701:

Sebrent.3625:

Stealth and non-telegraphed, instant burst damage.

At least when my Mesmer comes out of stealth you have that nice instance where you see me summon illusions before I shatter them in your face.

If I didn’t have to “guesstimate” when they’d use abilities and could instead react to the animation like I can with a Warrior … much less of a problem.

I hate running into two thieves … how do you guesstimate two … let alone have the cooldowns for that :-/

I can handle two of anything else … or run from it :-p

Two thieves … they have to be pretty bad because the burst combo alone is enough if you fail your guess … or they came out of their immense amount of stacked stealth.

… I have been tempted to go back to double traps do deal with this though … fine you little buggers … Ignore that I just put down two invisible objects … I’m going to pew pew you and stand on this spot for no particular reason :-p

Guess what, dire condition perplex thief doesn’t mind traps. They dish our all their condition from afar and overwhelm you with bleed, poison, confusion, and torment while able to run away from any fight.

dire perplex thieves are nothing special. If anything, they are quite a lot easier then most other thief builds because people feel invincible with that setup, yet they are very easy to deal with.
While it is not THE most affordable counter, a SB bleed stack setup vs dire perplex, with Sigil of Generosity on the SB will completely demolish the thief as you will randomly send back ALL of one condition every 10 sec.

People seem to misunderstand how to counter conditions. being totally free of condies at all times is NOT the most important. The most crucial is to MANAGE.
5-6 stacks of bleed DOES NOT WRECK YOU. 15-16 stacks does. So do not blow your cleanses on low stacks, because thieves, rangers, engineers and necromancers will spam bleeds relentlessly.

Second of all, if assuming similar skill, similar experience and similar ping (just to eliminate all forms of excuses you can concoct). A survival condi ranger vs a dire perplex thief SHOULD favor the ranger, because it has more cleanses, and more damaging condition applications in addition to the ABILITY to deal DIRECT BURST DAMAGE.
If running condies on ranger, bring a hard hitting melee pet + a wolf or spider for control.
It is easy for a thief to deal with a constant source of condies ticking away, they just gotta stealth to get rid of them, or use SR, however add into this mix a bird that if timed right does 4x 1500 damage (chain F2 to be used right after auto for max burst), then that thief which has a pretty low healthpool will now have to deal with condies that already hurt (remember burning hurts A LOT when you can spam it and the enemy cannot cleanse fast enough).

The most important thing of all is to set up your ranger CORRECTLY. This is where most of you do things wrong. You run glass power or a copy pasta condi setup, which works against enemies worse then you, but struggle vs similar skill and loses vs greater skill. Reason for this is that with the exception of a few players on these forums, almost NONE of you who complain show any sort of customization or tweaks.
Why do i say you fail? Because most of you are NOT the creators of the build you are using, therefore MOST of you cannot copy the playstyle used by the original creator. This is what makes a build seem exceptional. A guy or gal on youtube who has spent time tuning his setup to his or her own playstyle, that build is optimized for them and the way they play, the way they make decisions (be it good or bad ones), and most notably, the way they react. Most of you are not going to be able to copy another person well enough to use their build 100%.

how strong are rangers you ask.

the correct answer is exactly how strong they need to be to complete the content in this game.

like eura said… Diamond skin is almost completely negated by pets. especially heavy hitters like birds or felines

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Cool story, bro. It’s a video game. Play it like one. Have fun and play what you want, who cares if you’re not contributing as much as you could be as long as you’re contributing as much as you can.

Well said.
+1

15 chars

Iv’e said it before, and ill say it again.
GWEN is not the only solution, it is the EASIEST solution. You can make a zerg with Rangers, Engies, Thieves and Guardians alone if you want. It would require the players in question to absolutely intimate and deeply experienced with their assigned profession, but it can be done.
Granted, now that most people have set up a GWEN char for their WvW purposes, nobody is going to spend time gearing out a non meta char for the sole purpose of proving that a non meta setup can actually work just as well.

So there is that.

Also, please do try use any GWEN char for roaming, i do not care how good you THINK you are, any average ranger, thief, mesmer or engineer will tear you apart in that setting. So to be fair, sure the remaining 4 professions may not have a slot in WvW ZERGING at this point, but they play another role, which can be just as valuable if not even more valuable depending on how effective you are at roaming and slapping yaks.

If you want a challenge then Tier 1-4 is the most active and most fun place…. If you do not want a “winfest”, stay clear of Seafarers Rest (SFR). Your best bet would be Desolation, Far Shiverpeaks or Gandara. These three is all international EU, meaning the majority of players will be communicating in english. The German and French servers do have english speaking players and guilds, but they are mostly just that, german and french.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 mingle every week. While there is a huge difference in maximum POTENTIAL coverage, the day to day coverage of these tiers are not too far apart. While during leagues T1 and T2 EU is very similar to T1 and T2 NA. In short, you aint got a chance vs the higher Tier.

As a EU player who spent almost a year in NA, and during a recent trip to the states i also played from NA on a EU server i can tell you from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, that the lag is a myth.
However!!!!
If you have bad ping with NA servers (just open the game menu, it will show in the lower right corner), you will have even worse ping lag with EU servers (because, there is a puddle of water inbetween, rather large puddle). However if your internet connection is stable and you have low ping with NA servers, then you will have perfectly playable conditions in EU.
HOWEVER!!!!!!!!!!
The distance between NA and EU does impact one major issue – Server lag.
If the game servers themselves lags (like in 3 way SMC battles) then your lag will be much worse then for EU players, this can sometimes cause you to be left behind by your train and does cause a lot of frustrating “EHRMAGAWD IM TRAPPED” moments….
My personal solution for this was to play periphery roles, elementalist with mistform and lightning flash usually allow you to get out, while still contributing to your zerg.

For roaming, EU T3 and below can be very very boring for NA players, unless you want to play during EU prime, which is around 7pm (early) to 00:30am (late) – thats 1 pm to 16:30 pm Eastern time (+6 GMT). However there is a few russian and american guilds operating in NA prime over in EU T1 and T2, they are not enough players to create a permanent zergfest, mostly it is one map blob running around, but they are enough to cause entertaining battles.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Beldin.5498:

Ravenmoon.5318:

I really hate to advertise other games in this forum, so just watch some youtube clips and see it for yourself. All I want is for my PC to be used at its fullest potential. It barely heats up in Gw2 … that basically means that it is idling at this game….

I watched a 30 minutes WvW video from TESO and personally it just looked horrible
to me. Maybe they had better textures, but i really don’t care about that if its just
50 shades od brown, and player characters that run around like zombies.

And for the FPS .. i still have for example 50-70 FPS when doing pre-quests for the
Svanir Shaman .. but the FPS go down when the actual fight begins. So its not
simply the rendering of all those character, but either effects in the fight, or
data that is been sent from and to the client about all that stuff that slows
down the FPS.

Sometimes stuff slows down performance that people don’t really see. I remember
when devs in SOE explained why we had a questlog limit of 70, because for every
step we go the server has to check your total questlog to see if you maybe just
discoverd something … or in AoC somebody wrote how much traffic was generated
from stuff that was thrown away onto the ground ..

Yup, TESO has amazing environment graphics. Characters take backseat, but in intense fighting character animations take a backseat in Gw2 as well to improve performance (somewhat, at least). There even was a setting where everyone ran the same character model with the same animation set. Looked funny and it still lagged. Not sure if they scrapped it off.

The “base model” setting is there for sPvP. It was implemented because players used asuran characters simply because their animations were so small, and their figures were so small that people playing other characters, such as norns or charrs, had their “view” so “high up” that you couldnt notice asurans doing stuff.

End result is that the asuran running around your giant norns legs could be winding up a eviscerate or a auto attack, only the most trained eye would spot the tiny animation in time to actually react, and even top level PvP players had struggles with asurans being so small and thus their animations being so subtle.

Calcanius.5048:

Prysin.8542:

trading will now just move over to personal guilds.

hackers can just invite the hacked account, dump all the gold into this guild then take their time to collect all the items and stuff. no need for the mailing system. Then kick the player from the guild again.

legitimate trading can and probably will, just use personal guild this way. Invite player. give them rights to deposit/retrieve. Then transfer stuff that way.

No NO and NO

Since they do not restore gold/items in guild vault if a account is hacked and empty the guild this is a terrible idea. Never have more in guild vault than you are prepared to loose if unlucky and hacked.
And hackers will most likely just wash their stolen goods on TP, purchase items for all the money in hacked account and mail stuff to hacker and the sell it to get the gold

So what im trying to say is: If i had an account that was not mine, acquired through shady means, instead of being hit by the mail spam limit or gold transfer limit. I’d simply make a personal guild on one a account that was mine, used that guild to invite the account i acquired maliciously. Then dump all their items there.

The more time you spend on a hacked account the more likely you are to be caught or the account is likely to be recovered and CS to start chasing you down. The best you can do is create a network of hacker accounts all in the same invited guild. Pool their stuff and siphon the guild vault slowly, kicking the hacked accounts when they no longer have any items.

In short, doing it this way, you can circumvent most of the “flags” that any auto banning or detection system uses.

Common detection systems looks at your IP, then look at what you do on that account (IE: if you try to send a lot of mails or stuff like that).

disclaimer: I do not condone hacking, nor do i participate or support those who participate in hacking and or scamming. I do however see if there is obvious ways to abuse things that circumvent game mechanics when they are right in front of me, i ain’t blind.

trading will now just move over to personal guilds.

hackers can just invite the hacked account, dump all the gold into this guild then take their time to collect all the items and stuff. no need for the mailing system. Then kick the player from the guild again.

legitimate trading can and probably will, just use personal guild this way. Invite player. give them rights to deposit/retrieve. Then transfer stuff that way.

Reason i preach for Mantle, aside having a AMD rig myself (cuz it was cheap and i didnt have the money for a i7 rig at the time), is that Mantle has been proven to work. It is already released and in use by consumers. It has been launched on a major title and is coming to several others.

In short, Mantle is here. It would give us the improvements we need from DX12, without having to wait for development to get full access to a finished DX12 version. Arenanet could push for Mantle development right now and we would get a game that would run better, even on old Pentium based systems.

Oh and yes, Mantle was developed by AMD, but it works for Intel and Nvidia too. So the argument that “but that means i gotta get AMD stuff” is a major fallacy….. Mantle just helps correct the horrible performance of multicore AMD CPUs, for Intel CPUs it simply boost a already very good architecture further.

Either case, for those wondering. GOOGLE “MANTLE API”… read how it works. Most of that technology will be avaliable in DX12, however MANTLE IS ALREADY HERE, AND IT IS ALREADY IMPLEMENTED IN GAMES SUCH AS BATTLEFIELD4 FOR PC.

DX 12 is still not out on the consumer market, it is close, but not here. Mantle is a solution we COULD get, it WONT require new hardware from what ive read so far. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT WILL HELP THOSE WITH LOWER END SYSTEMS A LOT.

i think it would be a smarter move for arenanet to make support for Mantle rather then DX12. Mostly because Mantle, while an AMD API, works for older devices and DOES help with older Nvidia and Intel stuff too.

DX12 will only have full support on newer hardware….
Which means to play the game itself, AT ITS BEST, you will still have to invest in never hardware to make full use of it. Yes i know DX is backwards compatible, but especially discrete graphics cards cannot make full use of the technology implemented in DX without fully supporting it, which is a kitten shame.

Now while not a perfect argument for NOT going with DX12 (yet), i think that “forcing” or rather imposing a sufficiently strong argument, onto players that they need to invest 200-300 Dollars for a new discrete graphics card and quite likely also a new power supply to accept the new card.

Either way, Mantle seems like a more valid option, for now.

Also for those who just see “AMD lel all they make sucks”…. go google around a little bit. While Mantle give more boost to AMD devices they also give a huge boost to Intel + Nvidia combinations, especially on the lower end level (weaker i5, i3 and older Pentium based systems). Which would help immensely for the CASUAL part of the playerbase, the part which nearly never comes onto this forum, yet is probably 1000-2000 times larger then the forum population.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Ansau.7326:

@Ravenmoon I don’t have the problem, maybe you have fps issues and that’s why you have such a bad experience, but that doesn’t mean the game runs really crappy.
Also, I was talking performance at same speeds. Your 2500k at 4.5GHz is like a 4690k at 3.8GHz.
And about the rest, that shows how little you know about improving fps. Yes, pcie speed increases fps (tested). Yes, ram speed increases fps (tested). Yes, some graphic options have massive cpu load with minimum graphic increase.

If I have time this Easter I’ll do some tests in my desktop about all this kind of things.

I have i5 4690k overclocked to 4,6ghz and i experience fps drops for no reason and overall performance is bad. All maxed except shadows on medium, culling on lowest i still have troubles keeping this joke at 60% fps. So if you dont have any problems you must be running on minimal..

with DX9 you are more often then not (does not apply to all games), going to run the game better on a OC’d dual or quad core then a 6-8 core that is twice as powerful. Reason is that DX9 doesn’t allow for usage of more then 4 cores (it can with tinkering, it just does it insanely poorly)

yanniell.1236:

In that especific case, they should upgrade their Pentium III servers. Or, in reality, their game engine can’t handle that much at the same time. Since we’re in 2015, with 2015 hardware and a decade old engine, I can guess which one is more likely.

brilliant deduction.

please send ArenaNet about 3-5 million US dollars to hire in 100-150 workers so they can rewrite the entire game engine, optimize, recode ALL existing code and weed out errors so that it can work with DX11 or OpenGL 4.2.

Or you can admit you are WAY outta your league and either quit the game, or stay silent and keep playing.

yanniell.1236:

I know that there’s A LOT of calculations when three zergs clash, but I’m sure as hell that it’s not even near 100 billion per second. And I’m even surer that just the stab change didn’t add that much more calculations to make that much of a difference in a 100 billion calculations universe. Nowadays, we have so much more than enough processor power to make all the calculations needed for a game like GW2 that I don’t even know how to begin to explain.

Anyway, long story short, it sounds to me much more like engine limitations and/or bad code.

an i7 can make 100 billion calculations per second, but how many bits does each of these calculations contain?

if you run a benchmark you will see that even a beastly top end CPU will get notably sluggish if the data coming in is larger.

Also, servers does in some cases use motherboards with 2-3 CPUs on them and depending on setups they share computing power internally with other servers, forming a cluster. You cannot compare them to any household system you can afford (unless you are a multi millionaire)