Guild Wars 2

I just pug a random dungeon.

There should be an option to disable your secondary display in the windows control panel under “Display.”

Pino.5209:

Dredlore.1672:

The latest math analysis of the ranger profession describes the rangers ideal DPS build as follows:
Weapon 1: Greatsword
Weapon 2: Sword/Axe

Of course we have created a scenario where the ranger has now essentially become a melee class. Oh, the wonders never cease! … as this would be another industry 1st! Maybe another award is in order?
Oh wait… Rangers are melee, without heavy armor. *confused)

You do realize GS/SA build while isn’t a heavy armor class, it has one of the best evasion combo, right?
You have evasions from GS 3, Sword 2 3
You have block from GS 4
You have your pet to soak damage, you can stand on top of him or slightly behind.
This build excel in dungeons since you get survival synergy boons from other classes like guardian for instance.

When you run solo, that weapon combo will become nothing but hard to use. Especially @ place like silverwaste. When you are by yourself getting hit from all directions by husk troll wolves and bunch of teragriff no amount of evasions and block from that weapon combos.

LB/GS is still awesome @ openworld …. i don’t have a shred of problem @ silverwaste/dry top. Dps still excellent.

I love my GS/SA. The evades are just silly good. I even run a dagger offhand for some bosses (subject alpha etc.)

To be fair, the rapid fire stance used with shortbows can also be applied to longbows of lighter draw weights.

Also, 80 pounds is a bit overkill for hunting, unless you’re hunting bears or moose.

Wondrouswall.7169:

xarallei.4279:

So what is the truth? I keep hearing some people say the remorseless GS/Sword/axe, but then I hear that predator’s onslaught with LB/Sword/axe is better. I suppose it doesn’t really matter as I’m not a min max type and I’ll play whichever I prefer so long as the damage is good. Still it would be nice to hear what the answer is.

DnT Ranger Specialization Update

You take a DPS loss with GS/SA & Remorseless but it’s useful for parties that lack vulnerability. Otherwise, LB/SA & Predator’s Onslaught like pre-patch.

I run remorseless regardless of the DPS loss because it’s more fun. Also, 20k mauls are hilarious.

I want the favor of the festival to return in some fashion. I’d love to get a couple sovereign weapons, but at over 150g each, I must grudgingly pass them up.

It only happens when you pick up an ice bow. After the bow disappears, the string stays in your hand for some reason.

Jerus.4350:

For PVP/PVE? And we have Scepter and Sword, need more than an ‘S’. Also if it’s PVE meta would dictate Mace/Torch for DPS, however if you don’t care about that, that’s fine.

If you’re referring to sword it’s pretty much GS -> Whirling Wrath -> Symbol -> Leap -> Binding Blades -> Auto till WW up and WW again, swap to the Sword/Focus -> Focus 4 and maybe 5 -> Auto attack till weapon swap it up and finish your chain then swap.

If you meant Scepter it’s pretty much the same but with dropping smite when it’s up. Maybe tossing the immobilize in either for vuln or just to lock them down if people are kiting.

If you’re running Symbolic Avenger (you should be, it works now) you want to drop your symbol before hitting whirling wrath.

rhapsody.3615:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

For me, it’s hard to grasp getting Dawn from 3 random Exotics and a Mystic Stone. Several months ago, I was dumping random Exotic weapons and ended up with Venom, but that was after a bunch of tries. I’m thinking that maybe it was due to me using expensive Exotics? Genesis is quite pricey… Or it could be that I used Exotics with skins I didn’t discover?

I don’t have enough spare Exotic weapons to test this out, so I was hoping for others with valid claims from people not using their Beta slots (i.e. pix).

You’ve been around long enough to know you just got lucky. It has nothing to do with any new skin voodoo, expensive exotics, etc. I threw all of my Exotic Hunter collection weapons into the forge, and mostly ended up with level 78 basic skins. Last night, I forged four named exotic level 80 scepters for the mystic forge daily, and no precursor. I did get something with a superior sigil of force, so that was nice.

I read this thread after trying one round of exotics in the forge, then decided to give it one last go (I had some dungeon tokens left over). I wound up getting Storm.

I suppose I just got lucky too.

I spent 3 days farming chests for the one ambrite weapon I wanted. Then once I got it, I found 5 more fossilized insects while using up my leftover lockpicks.

I’ve been flushing exotics and rares for weeks, and have nothing to show for it. So I’m going to call BS on higher precursor rates.

You hit the proverbial jackpot.

Substance E.4852:

I don’t think it removes a condition at the moment of activation anymore.

It removes a condition when it’s triggered. The old healing spring would remove a condition before applying the heal, so I could use it even while poisoned without worrying about not receiving the full benefit of the heal.

The current healing spring blows, but it’s still better than our other options.

How is it that you have so many level 80 characters, and less than 1200 spirit shards?

Across my two level 80s, I had 1,557 spirit shards when the change went live. To top it off, I’ve spent skill points on two legendaries, and a bunch of ascended crap.

BolkovonHarnfeldt.1372:

dietzero.3514:

This helps greatly:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Watchwork_Mining_Pick

However, it will take quite a bit to pay off.

I don’t know if it gives better mining results apart from the sprocket drop, but according to my quick math you’d need more than 5000 sprockets to break even on the gold you spend on the pick itself. I don’t know how small the “small chance to drop a sprocket” is, but maybe there are easier ways to get gold

I used to get 40-50 sprockets a day doing my usual tour of malchor’s leap (hitting every mithril node) I don’t run that route anymore though, so I don’t know if the amount of sprockets would be the same.

As for 10g an hour, I assume it would be done running a map like sparkfly fen, with lots of platinum nodes.

Genesis.8572:

Dead.5829:

How about this?

How about it? Revenant critics have known about this for some time. The issue is having to trait Invocation for a stun break.

Spammable stun break. No other class can boast such a feat.

Drlightningbolt.1754:

The cast time is so unnecessarily long it can’t be used in an situation in pvp and its the only stunbreak I am aware of besides swapping legends which is so bad.

Swapping legends gives revenants the most spammable stunbreak in the game. I don’t see how that’s bad.

starlinvf.1358:

On the subject of shields; Someone suggested adding Weakness to Shield4. Its actually not a bad idea, since Glancing blow does 50% damage and can’t crit. Combined with the flat 33% reduction from Protection, and weakness’s low priority on cleanse, that can seriously drop the DPS of any melee flanker caught in the wave.

Which got me thinking about what other soft conditions could be paired with boons to amplify their effect?

I used to do this with my guardian. Signet of judgement and Radiation field, then blast the poison field with a hammer. Very tanky, but not too useful in prolonged fights.

If you pop your elite, do all the tablets explode at once?

…would be a fun way to crash a map.

starlinvf.1358:

For all intents and purposes Power and Crit scale far better for most PvE content. Only Husks and some new mobs in HOT have a particular weakness against condi damage (or more accurately they have abnormally high toughness to resist direct damage).

Zerks meta is not without its reasons. It exploits 2 fundamental problems with the game’s combat…. Condi damages doesn’t scale well, while most PvE mobs are just giant pools of HP; And most mobs use slow, heavily projected, high damage attacks, making dodge extremely efficient, and Armor as a stat ineffective without huge amounts of it.

Since defense is the losing side of a DPS race, most builds focus on strong offense and using traits to boost active defense.

Even though the husks take reduced direct damage, my mostly zerker guard (effectively 0 condi damage) still melts them because burning is just that powerful.

Redemer.2601:

the best thing with the traits as they are is that you longbow do MORE dmg with remorseless build then you do with LONGBOW BUILD (btw in my opinion Lead the Wind is a joke)

The only reason I take Lead the Wind over Remorseless in open world PvE, is because of the piercing arrows effect. Without it, the longbow loses a lot of its potency. I don’t use my longbow in organized group content (dungeons/fractals etc.)

States.6387:

Quarktastic.1027:

States.6387:

Quarktastic.1027:

States.6387:

Quarktastic.1027:

States.6387:

LB took a massive hit. I came back today and spent all day messing with the different traits and no matter what i’ve done i cant get anywhere near the damage potential i had before the changes. And i think the decrease in damage is literally somewhere around 50% because i know i was hitting around 3k auto attack before this change and now i’m only doing around 1.5k

And another power build trait they removed was Strength of Spirit which converted vitality into power and instead changed it to convert healing power into power. (which doesnt even need an explanation for how useless that is)

I dunno what you’re doing wrong, but I still hit 3-4k autos at max range.

How are you doing this much damage then and with what build? Because i played with all of them and none are reaching anywhere that much damage.

And my gear is Power/Precision/Vitality/Ferocity (which is the same as pure zerk gear except i get vitality at the cost of a little precision)

A little precision goes a long way. You’re losing ~12% crit chance by not slotting pure zerker gear.

My initial post may have exaggerated slightly, but I generally open with strength of the pack and a marsh drake F2 to get some might stacks. With 5 targets, I hit 25 might instantly, assuming the drake’s attack hits them all.

So your gaining that damage through might stacking. My original comment about losing dps was without the inclusion of any buffs. Obviously stacking might is going to bring my damage up but prior to the changes might stacking would have brought my damage up as well which would have given me different numbers than 3k. This means that the issue is still present and the LB’s damage potential has been significantly nerfed.

And for my gear i’m waiting to find out if they plan on bringing back some of the ranger traits they removed before changing it back to pure zerk gear. Prior to the change there was a trait that converted 5% vitality into power which made the power/precision/vitality/ferocity gear worth it since you sacrificed a little precision for an increase in power. And with the fury buff you could still achieve well over 50% crit accuracy (right now with the changes to stats on gear i have over 50% crit before the fury buff). If they dont bring back some of the former traits however i will end up going back to pure zerk gear

The point I was trying to make is this:

I haven’t noticed any significant change in my longbow damage since the patch. Implying that longbow damage wasn’t nerfed.

You havnt been paying close enough attention then because its already been discovered why some of our damage is missing from power builds

niconori.7235:

We lost,
a +10% damage modifier from Hunter’s Tactics trait (turned into crit chance)
a +5% damage modifier from former trait Eagle’s Eye
6% critical damage via ferocity stat loss

And on top of that

States.6387:

And we lost the 5% vitality converted into power trait
Which added a decent amount of damage for only using 2 points in the vitality tree

This was replaced with 7% healing power converted to power

Thats 15% damage
6% crit damage
and if you traited as a vit zerker, 5% conversion power

I never used any of those traits, favoring piercing arrows over eagle eye, vigorous spirits over strength of spirit, and two handed training over hunters tactics.

So yeah, I noticed an overall increase in my damage since the patch. As for the vit zerker argument, only 5 items in the game have that particular stat layout, each providing 18 vitality. Strength of spirit would have provided you a whopping 4.5 power over a pure zerker, which would only receive 46.3 points of power from base vitality.

States.6387:

Quarktastic.1027:

States.6387:

Quarktastic.1027:

States.6387:

LB took a massive hit. I came back today and spent all day messing with the different traits and no matter what i’ve done i cant get anywhere near the damage potential i had before the changes. And i think the decrease in damage is literally somewhere around 50% because i know i was hitting around 3k auto attack before this change and now i’m only doing around 1.5k

And another power build trait they removed was Strength of Spirit which converted vitality into power and instead changed it to convert healing power into power. (which doesnt even need an explanation for how useless that is)

I dunno what you’re doing wrong, but I still hit 3-4k autos at max range.

How are you doing this much damage then and with what build? Because i played with all of them and none are reaching anywhere that much damage.

And my gear is Power/Precision/Vitality/Ferocity (which is the same as pure zerk gear except i get vitality at the cost of a little precision)

A little precision goes a long way. You’re losing ~12% crit chance by not slotting pure zerker gear.

My initial post may have exaggerated slightly, but I generally open with strength of the pack and a marsh drake F2 to get some might stacks. With 5 targets, I hit 25 might instantly, assuming the drake’s attack hits them all.

So your gaining that damage through might stacking. My original comment about losing dps was without the inclusion of any buffs. Obviously stacking might is going to bring my damage up but prior to the changes might stacking would have brought my damage up as well which would have given me different numbers than 3k. This means that the issue is still present and the LB’s damage potential has been significantly nerfed.

And for my gear i’m waiting to find out if they plan on bringing back some of the ranger traits they removed before changing it back to pure zerk gear. Prior to the change there was a trait that converted 5% vitality into power which made the power/precision/vitality/ferocity gear worth it since you sacrificed a little precision for an increase in power. And with the fury buff you could still achieve well over 50% crit accuracy (right now with the changes to stats on gear i have over 50% crit before the fury buff). If they dont bring back some of the former traits however i will end up going back to pure zerk gear

The point I was trying to make is this:

I haven’t noticed any significant change in my longbow damage since the patch. Implying that longbow damage wasn’t nerfed.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Alice.5360:

serow.6524:

It’s ok, we aren’t archers, we are Rangers.

But bows are a defining weapon of our class.
It’d be like nerfing staffs to be useless on elementalists.

Apparently, rangers has nothing to do with attacking from range.

Also staff is not the defining weapon of the elementalist, unfortunately. That would be D/ since most of the builds revolve around D/ and D/ is the only weapon set that requires more than simply camping in one attunement in PvE.

tl;dr
bows are not the defining weapons of the ranger class in gw2, it might be if it was based on the LOTR archtype.

Staff isn’t either for ele, it is dagger/

Aragorn never used a bow, and Legolas wasn’t a ranger.

Purple Miku.7032:

Carighan.6758:

Purple Miku.7032:

There were so few of decent traits that this class is really looking like it’s going to be weaker than necro, which says a lot.

Yes, for example that people still cry on and on about Necros in PvE despite them being far from bad nowadays.

Compared to other classes, they’re very bad in PvE. Perhaps you just haven’t really seen the classes all at their full potential yet?

Necro has nothing to bring to groups. Absolutely anything they can do, others can do better… unless we’re talking about fearing trash mobs away.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vampiric_Presence

It’s like pre-nerf lifesteal food.

States.6387:

Quarktastic.1027:

States.6387:

LB took a massive hit. I came back today and spent all day messing with the different traits and no matter what i’ve done i cant get anywhere near the damage potential i had before the changes. And i think the decrease in damage is literally somewhere around 50% because i know i was hitting around 3k auto attack before this change and now i’m only doing around 1.5k

And another power build trait they removed was Strength of Spirit which converted vitality into power and instead changed it to convert healing power into power. (which doesnt even need an explanation for how useless that is)

I dunno what you’re doing wrong, but I still hit 3-4k autos at max range.

How are you doing this much damage then and with what build? Because i played with all of them and none are reaching anywhere that much damage.

And my gear is Power/Precision/Vitality/Ferocity (which is the same as pure zerk gear except i get vitality at the cost of a little precision)

A little precision goes a long way. You’re losing ~12% crit chance by not slotting pure zerker gear.

My initial post may have exaggerated slightly, but I generally open with strength of the pack and a marsh drake F2 to get some might stacks. With 5 targets, I hit 25 might instantly, assuming the drake’s attack hits them all.

NeoSpud.7523:

FYI this may or may not help, clicking the button instead of pressing the hot key will place the AOE on you and cast.

I’m not a clicker, and hopefully never will be. 90% of combat situations, my finger is firmly planted on the right mouse button, ready to move my camera at a moment’s notice. Stopping to plant a ground target AoE feels clumsy to me. Clicking on skills feels even more clumsy.

I can’t play my guardian anymore because of ground targeted consecrations. three out of four times, when I need to drop a purging flames to cleanse a stack of deadly conditions, I wind up casting it just far enough away from myself to not get the the condition cleanse.

Too many times have I tried to defend myself with a split second wall of reflection, only to have it appear behind me, causing me to eat whatever projectiles I was trying to stop.

Anet, If you’re going to force ground targeted consecrations on all guardians, at least let us lock the target circle at our feet.

The 2 second immobilize (actually 1 second) was a bug that was silently fixed at some point before the June 23rd update.

I used spike trap a week or so before the update, and it didn’t immobilize anything, even when traited.

States.6387:

LB took a massive hit. I came back today and spent all day messing with the different traits and no matter what i’ve done i cant get anywhere near the damage potential i had before the changes. And i think the decrease in damage is literally somewhere around 50% because i know i was hitting around 3k auto attack before this change and now i’m only doing around 1.5k

And another power build trait they removed was Strength of Spirit which converted vitality into power and instead changed it to convert healing power into power. (which doesnt even need an explanation for how useless that is)

I dunno what you’re doing wrong, but I still hit 3-4k autos at max range.

I don’t get it.

Is this another thinly veiled “RANGEr” thread?

I still don’t like signet of courage for the fact that I can’t move while activating the skill.

toaster messiah.7320:

Not at all. Actually the burn guard is only widely played in pvp, and bit even by all guard players. Meta build still sticks with power builds. You can play as burn guard in any game mode. Though the results are not always the best outcome.

Power builds still output impressive burn damage though. I’ve hit spikes of 4k+ with 25 might and 36 base condition damage.

Ghotistyx.6942:

I mean, plenty of people are able to break 25 stacks of burning alone. Quark is probably hitting 5 targets with plenty of aoe and Supreme Justice, maybe with Torch traited also. With 100% burn uptime (4s passives), Quickness, GS/sw+t, Purging Flames, Symbol Burns, and Permeating Wrath, it’s not unlikely to hit those numbers of stacks.

The new dungeon build takes all those condition traits, but runs full zerker, so only having 36 condition damage is also not unreasonable. Sword is replaced with Mace though.

Pretty much this. It’s not difficult to maintain 7 stacks of burning, and hitting 18 stacks isn’t difficult either, though, not maintainable.

GS/mace+torch with all the burning traits. I also use runes of the traveler (10% condi duration) and sigils of smoldering (20% burn duration) in all my weapons.

4 guardians and a PS warrior.

Burn all the things!

Skyline Crash.6254:

Aggrostemma.1703:

Since burn does stack do not underestimate the pressure a well timed F1 can do please!

Even without any condi damage that’s 131*4sec*5 party members: 2600 damage and a blind (maybe). This is a free 500 DPS for the team.

If any of the members have condition damage stats this is a completely different story…

I was referring more to solo play but i do see how it can be strong in group play; its just really inconsistent and i loved the old burning; thats life though.

In solo play, I can consistently keep up 1-1.5k burn ticks, with spikes hitting as high as 2.5k. In a group that can keep up 25 might stacks, I can consistently keep up nearly 3k burn ticks. I have 36 total condition damage.

Protip: If you’re activating your virtue of justice, you’re doing it wrong.

SenorMoody.5908:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

SenorMoody.5908:

Its just yet another way for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

Are you implying that rich people somehow have better odds in RNG gambles? Like once you hit 1000g your rng modifier goes up or something?

That seems unlikely…

More likely is that the rich know when to stop when they are ahead and thus get richer, while the poor don’t have any economic sense so they keep gambling until they lose all their money and then complain that they are poor.

nope, just basic probability.

Let’s say the chance to hit the jackpot is 1 in a million.
A poor player could probably afford 1 ticket/dice roll/ chance. So his odds of winning the jackpot is simply 1 in a million.

A rich player can afford many more Tickets/dice rolls/chances… say 100.
His chances at winning the jackpot increased to 1 in 10,000.

I don’t know the actual odds of getting the good stuff, but yes the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

This is not how probability works.

Asuara pole dance is the best empower animation.

Ragnar.1546:

I out DPS my warrior as well as my friends. I first noticed it when I went onto my warrior and specced PS/Rampage and it does very well. But the overall damage portion compared to what I got from my Ranger was close. I tested it against a friends warrior who is just running some sort of damage oriented build (only downside was them wearing Soldiers gear w/zerkers on everything else) and I was doing better.

When I was getting ressed over the warriors or guardians when I got myself caught up in “damage mode” in dungeon runs I knew I was doing something right and it was noticeable when I got back up on my feet again.

I’m not going to kid myself that Rangers are top DPS; but we are a long way from bottom. It’s still hard to see how it will all pan out but as far as I can tell I’m glad I spent the time/money going into ascended crafting on my Ranger rather than my Warrior and especially my Necro. Wow… So not impressed with my Necro.

The issue isn’t one of DPS. It’s one of party support, which a PS warrior does better than a ranger while dealing similar DPS.

What’s wrong with getting a bit of free damage every time your aegis pops?

It’s not like guardians have any shortage of aegis applications. In fact, shattered aegis can be quite powerful when it’s made the focus of a build.

• This has been posted before.
• This thread should be in the ranger subforum
• The trait having no ICD was a bug.

Engineers one-shotting people with grenades is also a bug. I expect anet to disable the grenadier trait like they disabled guardians’ bugged symbol trait.

I’ve seen 36k backstabs from thieves.

inb4 southsun kasmeer ranger pet.

niconori.7235:

alvinjason.3109:

Haven’t been playing my zerk LB ranger on Travelers rune much because of this. Imagine hitting a kittening drake mob in wvw for only 1.7k at 1500 range. I think this is attributed to big losses in ferocity. Can anyone here running scholars rune confirm the damage they are doing?

Engi’s turret kit auto attacks took a huge 28% dmg nerf and is still doing more damage than Ranger’s longbow autos while having lower attack speed.

Zerk LB autos hit a firefly mob in wvw for around 2100 crits.

That’s why they deal more damage. I believe long range shot still deals more DPS despite dealing less damage per hit.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

This streamlining allows them to move forward now. Instead of struggling to inch forward with the jumble of (mostly) useless skills we had before.

People were saying this when we moved from GW1 to GW2.

It makes me wonder how much Anet has to “streamline” their system before they can “move forward.” And what exactly are we moving towards?

It’s a channeled skill. Stop mashing the button.

Kodama.6453:

EnderzShadow.2506:

MattyP.6954:

Yes. Traps are traps—they’re not grenades to toss at people.

Oh, so it was a bug before when you could trait for throwable traps?

He just wanted to bring a point, Anet is trying to make everything high concept and the throwable traps didn’t fit their theme. They are meant to prepare yourself for combat and throwing traps with piercing spikes coming from the ground is not logical in any way.
Just be glad they are not working like they did in gw1, guys.

And yet, ascalonian rangers still throw their spike traps.

Darknicrofia.2604:

for PvE, Virtues is a MUST have simply for supreme justice and permeating wrath

Agree.

Getting 3k burn ticks on 5 enemies at once with zero condition damage is too good.

But it doesn’t let you activate your virtue of justice if you want to keep the damage up.

The issue people are having with this has little to do with whether or not clarion bond is “fine.” Rangers were once again given something awesome and fun to use, only to have the fun (and some of the usefulness) sucked out of it because it was bugged.

The same thing will happen with engineers when anet finally decides to fix their grenadier bug.

Randulf.7614:

As for the rest of the world, it has no need or purpose there than being cool. Yes it would be cool, but there are gameplay disadvantages as well like trivialising waypoints, breaking map boundaries, trivialising JPs.

I’ve seen the way gliders work in HoT, and there are very few places in tyria where you could potentially break the map by gliding around. Besides, gliding isn’t “fly around until gravity eventually carries you to the ground” it’s “fly around until your arbitrary flying meter runs out and your glider crumbles like a stale cracker.” There would be no trivializing waypoints or jumping puzzles.

Teratus.2859:

Leveling up after HoT will grant Mastery Points so its not that the rewards have been nerfed.. just that there is a new mechanic coming to replace that role.. its just currently not in the game

And I suspect we won’t be grandfathered into the mastery system to avoid breaking things. So essentially, all the experience our level 80 characters are gaining right now is going to waste.

I wouldn’t mind an option to trade experience points for spirit shards, similar to how using a tome of knowledge on a level 80 character rewards a spirit shard rather than a level.