Guild Wars 2

The tier 1 cultural medium has bare shoulders, and the tier 3 shows patches of skin around the sides and one shoulder (if you don’t mind looking like Eir anyway).

A trait or something that stealths you whenever you are standing still and out of combat perhaps? That’s actually a brilliant idea.

A good name; sounds nicely Celtic, although not Nordic in particular. Although if you can point to a Nordic source for it, I’ll eat that comment.

Ulfri Stórrbrjóst

translation (probably with murdered grammar, but Old Norse is a dead language so who knows anyway): Wolf the Large-Breasted

Schnitter hit the core of condition pistols. I’ll add to that, and say that either Prec/Cond or Prec/Power is the way to go. I just swapped to the second and was very surprised at how much my damage increased. All of the pistol skills are combined damage, direct and condition. So with 30 pts in firearms, and a lot prec/power on gear, you are getting high returns on both parts of your damage- incendiary powder procs a lot this way as well. As a bonus, most kits (Flamethrower in particular) get more return from the same stats, giving you more skill options.

Any kind of DPS ranged pet. Both of the ranged pets atm are baseline power/crit, with either extra Vit or Toughness. Dungeons would benefit a lot from having a high-crit ranged pet, so it would benefit from the heal-on-crit trait in skirmishing.

Dante Dragonhand.2538:

No, stealth just needs a cd on the skills like cloak and dagger. Give that skill a 10 second cd, maybe 15 and problem solved.

There’s already a debuff that prevents them from restealthing (although it’s really short atm, it was just changed to start counting only after stealth wears off. Go to thief forum and drink up the tears), and it won’t address using multiple skills either. Either way, IMO it’s always better to make an ability counter-able by the other player, then to put an intrinsic limitation on it.

Forgot to address the greatsword- it’s prbably my favorite melee weapon in the game. It’s got a perfect mix of offense, mobility, and defense. 4 is one of the best blocks in the game, doing both decent damage and an interrupt, and 3 is one of the best gap closers with very long range and short cooldown. GS’s one downside is no burst, but combined with the control the weapon brings it makes a very good attrition-type, wear the other guy down kind of weapon.

Both types of swords combine extremely well with traps- if you’re in melee range anyway, dropping them at your feet will always set off the trap. You can get a lot of extra damage or utility that way.

S/D is a great up close an personal combo. The ranged cripple is very nice since sword is weak on the gap-closing front, and it dagger 5 does good damage on top of it. Sword has great single target dps (with a little AOE on step 1 and 2 of the chain), and a high attack speed great for proccing crit effects. The only thing holding it back is the self-cc on the 1-chain. Really, for a defensive weapon set based on popping evasions, it’s completely counterproductive to have a skill chain that prevents you from activating other skills.

Dagger 4 is not really redundant, because the other two evades are on enough of a cooldown, and attacks are incoming often enough, that the additional evade is worth it. Not to mention that Sword 2 is not the same kind of evade, and is used differently. Dagger 5 also applies a hefty bleed, so it’s pretty comparable to Torch 4 as a condition attack. Which leaves the fire field as the only noteworthy difference for torch, and it’s really not that impressive. The radius is small, the cooldown is high, and flame trap does the same job only better.

Axe offhand doesn’t work well in melee range, so if there’s anything competing with dagger it’s the warhorn, which everyone should be pretty familiar with.

Speed abilities do not stack. The highest currently active buff is the one used.

Ex: 10% from signet, 33% from swiftness… speed buff will be 33%.

I think that, more to the point, Stealth needs to break when struck by direct damage (bleeds shouldn’t count). There’s no reason to make it a ranger specific skill, GW2 is not designed with that kind of rock-paper-scissors thing in mind.

If the goal is to give more reason to play a ranger, then the core issues should be addressed and not just adding a gimick.

Asura, College of Dynamics storyline, at one point you have to fend off an inquest assault culminating in a fight with a huge golem named STAB-0 (actually, a lot of golem names are references to something or other).

This one’s a Robocop sendoff, with the golem listing his four prime directives during the fight. eg, “Directive One: Uphold the Goals of the Inquest”

Also, unrelated to that one, there’s a waypoint in Dredgehaunt called “Nottowr Fault”

In contrast to the details others have given, how about a couple simple guidelines?

Use it early to soak or deal damage (if specced for it), but drop out of it before 50%. This lets LF you generate during the fight count, but leaves you with a buffer if you need.

4 is good aoe, 3 is a good interrupt, and 2 is a gap closer (for dagger spec). Any of these is worth the 10s cooldown.

If you die while you still have LF left, you havn’t used DS as much as you should.

My adorable little engineer, showing how it’s done.

Do I win?

If you’re going to be testing, you start with a 0 traits test to use as a baseline, and only add in the various traits after that. Otherwise, you’ll be testing builds, and not weapons.

All of them.

Mesmer gets noticable mention as the bottom of the pile, since it’s reliance on clones and disabling foes makes it the least resistant to swarms. But really, all of them can excel if you “get” how they work and are good at it.

Or maybe they had it burned/arcaned/lasered/reverse-polarity-neutron-flowed off in a tragic lab accident.

Make one of each, go through the tutorial up to like the first storyline mission, and see which one has better animations, voice acting, etc. Also, the wide hips is mostly an illusion because the armor is designed for humanoids- Asura look best in their cultural armor, so get to rata sum and preview it on your character. The top right, and bottom left female body types look pretty decent when you get out of the starter gear.

I went with female mostly due to the voice. And the pigtails.

I always find it funny when people try to bring up whats “real” in games where you can play as a cat-person or 3-foot yoda loot-alike and shoot fire from your fingertips. XD

There’s real, there’s “rule of cool”, and there’s just plain silly. Trying to slice up your enemies with a coffee table is the last one.

Where you get those stats from? I see a much larger mix then that on my server.

Lions Arch was intended to be the main hub, so the fact that’s it’s the main hub isn’t really surprising. I go to Divinity’s Reach when I want to do crafting or something because there’s less lag, and the TP and crafting stations are much closer together with handy waypoints then they are in any other city. I’m sure others have noticed the same thing.

monepipi.5160:

If they want the GS to be more viable in PVP, it has to do more damage and skill #2 needs to inflict more stacks of bleed.

Like most range weapons, it’s built around the assumption that your pet will be doing enough damage to make up for it. We all know the problems with that. In PVE it works well, since you’ll be tanking as much or more then your pet, you can afford to use a high DPS pet like jaguar or bird.

nldixon.8514:

Not to mention the fact that the greatsword doesn’t “clobber” anything. It’s damage is too low. It’s a utility weapon.

It’s damage isn’t that bad, and it’s utility is exceptional. It’s a really good control/disruption weapon.

On the whole though, the damage of the 1 chain should go up by roughly 5-10%. 1h sword does more damage just autoattacking by roughly that much atm- just without the huge aoe or great utility.

Gryph.8237:

Rhyse, have you tested that? if we are talking only about the #1 attack, axe is complete garbage, and scepter, with its ability to put bleeds and poison on a target does way more damage in the short and long term than axe. Granted axe 2 with the 3 retaliation is not bad, but the axe 1 damage is just complete crap. And vulner compared to condition damage is piss.

That’s pretty much what I said. Axe was balanced around the vuln on 1 being useful; vuln got nerf, and axe with it.

The low-level marksman armor from you quest line rewards is nice (it’s called “duelist” in pvp locker, but not in pve). Not sure where else to get it though. Also, some of the racials are good, norn in particular.

Panther Chameleon.8465:

monepipi.5160:

Jaguar’s stealth ensures a almost guaranteed crit….its good for burst damage..its actually quite good.

I would say the pigs and their F2

4 second fears and 2 second stun initiations are bad?

When it has two cast times, is unpredictable which one you will get, and makes your pet stop fighting for the duration: yes, it’s pretty crap.

Also, jaguar is one of the best DPS pets there is. It’s natural attacks are powerful and bleed as well, it’s natural crit and power are high, plus it comes with an aggro drop+100% crit buff for 6 seconds. Win.

Scepter 1 does do direct damage, but it’s a pretty pathetic amount and you won’t get very good returns from a power build. A crit/condition build will do very nicely though, since crits proc conditions and benefit directs damage skills (like dagger or DS) at the same time.

Xom.9264:

Can’t figure out why A-net made axe so bad. Really cant figure out why some necros think the axe is anything other then terrible…. do people actually test things vs other options?

The problem was vulnerability got changed just before release, so huge stacks (like in dynamic event bosses) weren’t overpowered. Axe was never adjusted to make up for it.

Axe runs best with focus. You need to be in close to get the most benefit out of Reapers, so it bounces off you to stack vulnerable all 9 times. It works really well as a backup to a dagger spec, since you can disengage and debuff the target while kiting them with Axe 3. Once you’ve got regen on you and piles of vulnerability on them, jump back in with the dagger to tear them up. If you’re using axe as a main weapon, try combining it with minions to get the most out of that vulnerability stacking.

Ranger Greatsword has the single best skill bar in the game. It has something for every situation, and all on short cooldowns as well. If it has any drawbacks, it’s the mediocre damage- fix the various pet bugs, and GS ranger is good to go.

1. Solid aoe damage with slightly longer then average reach (150- except on the 3rd chain which is 130. grr) and the evade is nice when you get lucky and dodge a fear or something.

2. A moderate burst skill, and respectable bleed. Not amazing, but very short cooldown makes it solid.

3. The only 1200 range gap closer in the game that’s not a slotted utility- and it’s only a 12 sec cooldown untraited. And a leap finisher besides (use with traps).

4. The best block in the game- the counterattack hits harder then any of your other skills, and doubles as an interrupt as well. Throw it up to stop a whirlwind, unload, etc in it’s tracks. The cripple half kinda sucks. Long cast, short range, and self-root. Meh.

5. A good old fashioned interrupt. 25 sec cooldown, which is short compared to most other classes, and it’s useful against any kind of target if you are watching their tells, which you should.

Combine with traps (you’re in melee already, drop them at your feet and enjoy the fun) and Rampage as One for 20sec of stability, and you become a monster. Now if only pets worked better so I could get my damage up to proper levels…

The biggest problem with this combo is the sword 1-chain. Also, dagger synergizes with sword better, since Whirling Defense will root you and sword doesn’t have a gap closer to get back in range after they back away from you.

Quoting broken.

Winters Bite
“Could make the bounces cripple and the primary target still get chilled”

This is an amazing idea. That would do perfectly. Blind or weakness on the bounce would be an alternative if the aoe snare is found to be OP combined with traps or whatnot.

“I think Staggering Throw should make a comeback. Put it on 4 with a knockdown instead of a knockback. That makes Axe/Axe more interesting, the playstyle would revolve around using skills 3 and 4 to control opponents to hit them with SplitBlade/Whirling Defense.”

This is also an amazing idea. I’ve played a bit more with Path of Scars, and kinda grown to like the damage when it double hits through a combo field. But it’s buggy and hard to aim, so I’ll take this change in a heartbeat. It would complement MH axe just where it needs it, and make OH axe a worthwile control/defense counterpart to warhorn. A simple 1 sec (or even less) knockdown to use as an interupt, or stop an advance would be all it takes. 600 range would help keep it as a defensive move.

Here’s some random discussion- I really like the dagger OH, it gives some great all-purpose utility and the conditions mesh with MH axe really well. Unfortunately 4 is too short range, and the evade duration is too short to work with ranged weapon. Which leaves dagger as a really solid complement to the sword as it stands now. Warhorn gives a superlative support ability, and a straightforward range dot. That goes well with either MH weapon. Which leave OH axe where? A weak/situational ranged skill, and a ranged defense (I don’t count it as a pboa, the damage is not high enough and it roots). The changes suggested by posters above would make it Axe/Axe a control/defense alternative to the 2 bows, and Axe/WH a good backline support set. OH axe would work really well with sword this way well, covering it’s weakspots with an interrupt and a ranged defense. Fix the sword-1 problems as well, and Melee and Support rangers both just became a lot more viable. I think the ideas are great.

I don’t like the majority of them one bit. They are WAY to wide. It’s a sword for heaven’s sake, not a diving board! Especially annoying if you know anything about real weapon use, you would understand that the myth of the huge chopping sword is a crime. There are a few good ones though. The Aureate Gsword, Ebonhawke and Human T2 swords are all very good. AC sword is a nice look but a bit wide for my tastes. Most of the rest are comical. Literally. They belong in Anime.

mulch.2586:

. Or behind that party member. This isn’t a strict collision-model type game, but it’s like it’s soft-coded that you’re not supposed to go thru your target.

Single target attacks don’t go through the target- especially noticeable with projectiles. You may simply be absorbing the blows aimed at the person you are stepping in front of. This makes a good peeling tactic actually.

Tank is not a combat role, and never has been. Tank is just someone who controls the fight. That’s all- the traditional meatshield version of Tank is one, very simple way of controlling a foe. Get their attention and keep it. Very simple, very easy for game designers to balance, and not very interesting imo. GW2 gives you many more options, and then distributes them among the group.

Depending on the fight, my Elementalist can “Tank” -that is, control the encounter- better then a warrior can. In others, a warrior will do better. In all of them, one person will not be doing it 100% of the time. It’s not how GW2 is designed.

It’s really not. I come from a tabletop RP background, so I tend to refer to my characters by their name, or as e.g. “My Elementalist”, not as “Me.” I think of them in the third person, and I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s just the way it is, and whenever someone says to my character in all seriousness “You’re hot” I get genuinely confused. (note: this is much rare these days then in the early MMO’s; people have learned since then) The avatar is how you choose to interact with the world- when the world is imaginary, so is the avatar.

Was having a conversation with my guild earlier today something along these lines. We have a higher then average number of women in our guild (for that matter, GW2 seems to have a higher then average number compared to most other mmo’s too), and they informed me of something that I had not noticed.

That is the male characters of GW2 are sexualized more then they are in other games (*ahem*Logan Rule 34*cough*). This is not necessarily a bad thing- I like my fanservice to a point (as long as it’s respectful), and have no problem when it’s on the other side of the mirror. In fact, it’s rather refreshing and adds a dose of fairness to the whole thing. But it may also be pushing a larger number of people actual males away from male characters. Let’s face it, how men see their fantasy selves and how women see their fantasy men are not the same.

Also, I think that MMO’s have been around long enough that most people are just used to separating avatar/self now and gender bend for the fanservice without a second thought.

No it’s not the same, but it does look like they added more sway and bob to it so it’s less jerky now. It’s still more out to the side then the old one.

I also noticed the Female Human uses the old Norn animation now. Dunno if they did before or not, since I don’t play one with a GS.

There’s actually a lot of synergy already there, with you and the pet causing boons, etc for each other and all that. The problem is the pet is buggy (no attack while moving being the worst), and the F2 skills are pretty lackluster. It’s really sad when the best pet skills (canine leap, devourer push, spider immobilize, bird swiftness, bear damage immunity, etc) are all AI controlled. There are a few good ones, but maybe like 70% of pet skills just inflict some short duration condition with a long cooldown. If more of these were unique, or worth using, and could actually hit the target, and activated when you told it to and not 2 or 5 seconds later, then the BM traitline would actually give a whole lot of synergy just as it stands now.

Bran.7425:

Main-hand I would like to see Ricochet (button 1) more constantly bounce off of the environment; walls, trees, rocks etc when there are not additional targets to bounce from would give the weapon it’s own positional awareness to maintain.

Splitblade (button 2) weak as it stands now I suggest adding piercing to the attack and tighten the cone some to allow mokittengets at mid range are hit with all 5 axes, perhaps building in a increase in damage base on how far or close (whichever fits the design teams image of the weapon) and lastly boost it up to full projectile finisher 100% it is on a cooldown so why not let it finish combos.

Winter’s Bite (button 3) the only single target skill on the weapon seems out of place. I would have it bounce as well probably 4 targets.

Offhand I like Path of Scars (button 4) and if it could get a buff maybe have some sort of knockdown on it maybe the return path or just from being hit with it or perhaps a daze both ways.

Whirling Defense (button 5), let us move while channeling for pity’s (or Dwayna’s) sake.

On a mostly related note the would be nice to see the Trait Off-hand Training be changed to effect the cooldowns of all axe skills as the other main hand/two hands have cooldown reduction build into traits.

Agreed on most, but some comments.

Chill is extremely powerful- making 3 bounce would be kinda ridiculous. It would need increased CD, or replacing chill with cripple.

4 is situational and slightly buggy (the return axe gets obstructed by the smallest things). Adding a utility of some kind (bind or daze would be nice, matches the defensive aspect of 5) would be a good addition. It’s good at what it does, but what it does is really simple.

2 is not TOO bad, but it’s only effective at close range. Making it a Whirl finisher (spin while throwing axes! yay!) would give it some additional offense and support options when combined with things like Traps or Healing spring, and would make it a much more adaptive skill.

Axe(s) need an interrupt or other utility. With the exception of 5 (reflection) and 3 (chill), every skill is pure offense. It’s kinda boring to just cycle through the DPS skills and only have 1 thing you can use to react to a changing fight.

What I really, really want from this trait is just one change:

Don’t make it trigger the dialogue!

“Nooooo! Not my minion!”
“That’s ok, they’re easy to make!”
“That’s ok, they’re easy to make!”
“Look, Life after death!”
“That’s o, they’re easy to make!”
“Noooo! Not my minion!”

Of course, all that stuff to make it useful is good too. But this one thing makes me ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

Toolkit skills add a few more finishers and fields both. Turrets do as well (detonate is a blast).

It’s still very awkward compared to other classes, the combos are spread out between kit sets and hard to both position and time right.

On the upside, the jerkiness from the 3rd attack in the ranger attack chain is gone (or minimized to unnoticable levels).

On the downside, the transitions to every other animation are jerky now.

The T2 weapons are just “verdant” weapons, which start showing up as rares around lvl 40 and aren’t hard to get. The T1 is just “Glyphic”, which are available as drops from lvl1. Kind of a bummer there’s no second tier of their own, but they make up for it with the amazingly awesome T3 weapons.

I have a max height female Norn ranger that I have a blast with. I made it a melee ranger for teh luzl, and it looks really awesome as a giant Norn. It’s probably better with the female because they are about 1/3 the width. The height does cause camera bouncing issues in tight jumping puzzles, like Troll’s End, but that’s more an issue with the buggy camera and it’s the only place it’s noticable.

Yes, it just looks comical on the huge, powerful Norn. Very out of place for them.

I’ve done regular AC runs with guildmates and occasional pug to fill spots, and they usually take no more then 30 minutes per path, regardless of what level characters everyone brings. Knowing the dungeon and what to do is far more important then character level. I laugh at people looking for 80’s only, because it means they don’t know what they are doing and are looking for a gear crutch.

As for grouping tool, NOT an automatic one. No thanks, no way. It inhibits community forming when you don’t need to communicate to form a group. A realm-wide lfg tool that lists groups, lfg’ers, and what content they want would be much better. A quick tell here and there and you’ve got your group, and you’ve met at least one other member of it so you have a chance to back out of (or be prepared for) a bad one. It also encourages guild formation since you can see the same names popping up all the time and get to know your local server people.

Do your daily achievements, save up the Jugs of Karma, and use them all at once with a karma booster. It should be roughly 60k karma (maybe a bit less) per week if my bad math skills are right.

You might reach your goals sooner by farming, but that’s a good reliable method that’s easy to work in between anything else you like doing.

Hopefully never. Fortunately, Anet has officially confirmed that position since long before release.

The reason is that it eliminates the illusion of scale, making the world seem small, and that it encourages people to skip content because they don’t want to dismount when they see an event pop up.

Their teeth look like lizard teeth, so I’d kinda figures it was insects. The ooze idea is interesting, it would explain all the research on them.

Ranger feels custom built for Norn, especially if you use greatsword at all. The animations fit with the spirits of the wild stuff perfectly; the high esteem that Norn give to hunters, it all fits.

Norn cultural is probably the best looking medium armor in the game ATM, so if you’re going to make a medium class, make it norn.

Dang. LastDay beat me to it.

I’ll just leave this here

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-endgame-reimagined/