Guild Wars 2

If an server holds keeps on an enemy BL or the enemy Keep in EB, the upgrades should run slower. Otherwise mismatches could get drastically worse.

Good changes. Tough for trolls to waste supply. Nobody has to waste money on upgrading stuff hoping the enemy doesn’t come to flip it.

Probably bad for weaker servers if enemy takes their stuff when they are sleeping.

Good change. German website apparently says one gets the buffs, though possibly with lower stat boosts, at rank 100 and 200. Makes the game easier for new players trying to get into WvW. Now scouts and roamers can get them faster.

The build has huge problems, regardless of game mode (PVE/WvW).

The build has no power and really low condition damage. Damage is important in this game. You currently have next to none.

If you want to be tanky, run apothecary/settler’s gear. Then either (a) use dwayana runes and take some regen traits or (b) take nature’s voice trait and slot guard utility. 6 points each in the 3rd and 4th trait line. Take Empathic Bond trait.

Choose between shortbow, axe and sword mainhands and dagger/torch off hands.

If you want to run longbow, choose a mix between berserker and soldiers. 6 points in the first trait line including eagle eye.

Stand at 1500 and fire arrows.

If you cut the rewards and the exp., next to nobody would go to EOTM.

The same cannot be said for WvW.

People go to EOTM mainly to level their alts or karma train.

The infamous TC troll had claimed EB keep for the past 1 day and 20 hours until the JQ blob took it. No buffs on keep.

He does that all the time. This is not an honest mistake.

There have been numerous screenshots of this guy doing a variety things, but Anet is excessively tolerant to a point that they are enabling the siege troll. People essentially have given up submitting reports due to lack of faith in Anet doing anything. Lets call the phenomenon “siege toll reporting fatigue syndrome”. And with such weak enforcement and $10 accounts, we will continue to see such nonsense.

Essentially, Anet is an enable of psychopathic behavior due to their excessively tolerant attitude and their decision to treat this as a capital murder trial
allowing lengthy appeals and in addition requiring what seems to be a near impossible burden of proof on the player base. The very name of his guild illustrates how he thumbs his nose at Anet and is evidence of how he takes the view that their efforts at enforcement are worthy of ridicule.

There has been some minor discussion among the WvW player base of a gems boycott, but it is only that at present.

+1 to the above post (Dhemize, not the other fellow).

Making it easier to destroy defensive siege can result in the outnumbered side building less siege, leading to a further decline in population due to a decline in morale, resulting in to more “paper” structures and more PvDoor.

I would think Celestial would work better with weapons more favorable to hybrid setups such as shortbow, sword, or main hand axe. While sword itself offers only some poison, offhands such as torch and dagger are potent in a condition build.

For WvW, celestial addresses the weak damage on the sword in a condition build but at a cost of condition damage, toughness and either vitality or precision when compared to a dire or rabid build. I’m not sure it is worth it.

Don’t bother with ascended armor as stat gain is minimal. Buy temple armor if you are using cheap runes, otherwise buy exotics on the trading post. Sell most exotics salvage cheaper rares with mystic salvage kit.

It’s worth making ascended weapons. Just save up your cash, vendor most stuff except for the stuff worth salvaging.

I would let people with extra cash or in big guilds upgrade the structures.

I ran Hyjaxx’s build for awhile with a minor change or 2. . Build was very relaxing when it came to taking camps and the perma swiftness was nice. As time went on, I found most roamers could run away easily and the build didn’t offer much pressure. Splitblade needs the enemy to be close. And as Sube Dai said, roamer builds seem far more bursty these days.

SoTF seems to have eclipsed Nature’s Voice.

Well your build isn’t a full celestial, only the armor and some trinkets.

If you ran full celestial including weapons and armor with LB/GS, I think the build would be weak.

I would think celestial could work better with the shortbow, sword or the main hand axe used in condition builds. Sword and Axe autoattacks don’t do any condition damage so they would benefit from celestial. And while SB1 bleeds from the flank, its autoattack is pretty fast.

In your build, you don’t need condition damage, and healing really only benefits regen builds. So if you eliminate those 2 stats, you’re only getting 110 in stats vs 115 for the helm. And according to the stats guys, power > precison or ferocity, not equivalent to them.

In my opinion, you’re better off mixing and matching some knights, valk, soldiers in with your zerker gear.

Treeoflife.4031:

TY for all the replies everyone. I can see how the stealth of trapper is super valuable when a large blob comes rolling through. I do really like the survival utility skill. I havnt ever been very good with ground targeting skills….maybe it is time to get better. please tell me, is it possible to run a trapper hybrid? Like this ….

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRAsf3YjEq0uaLLmrQ1aADhqdLEslA7AICmAXFBA-TlyGABAoE0XlZ3qVI69H+QXgLqjsrKHD8EAI4kAkkSDSBAzWA-w

You’re essentially giving up 500 armor for 500 attack. I don’t think the tradeoff is worth it. Your sword 1 and axe 1 hit a little bit harder, but power builds will hit you a lot harder. Trapper builds already hit pretty hard, add rabid instead of sinister if you want to go that route.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I It’s funny you mention about it being a duel build because I took the weapons with pvp in mind—starting with axe/horn to buff/condi enemy then focus on lbow for majority of dmg. Could you also suggest a trait build around my choices? I’m having a bit of a struggle

But your condis will not do much damage since you have no condi damage unless I suppose you take celestial. The thing is, enemies aren’t going to let you toss out some condition on your axe from 900, then retreat back to use your longbow. You must open with your longbow and then swap weapons when they come in close. But axe/warhorn doesn’t give you any defensive abilities. Sword/torch and axe/dagger would be a better choice or sword/x or greatsword plus longbow works much better.

LB & Axe/Warhorn might possibly work in a WvW zerg. Warhorn could blast your waterfield and I suppose Axe could be used to tag enemies (though I think sword would be better since you could escape on it or avoid a thief).

However, this choice would be awful in WvW roaming. Longbow excels at long range and does less damage from close distances. So what happen when the enemy closes on you and you swap to the axe? You have no evades, blocks, stuns or mobility skills such as those found on the sword, dagger or even the shortbow. And even if you initially lower your enemy’s health, you don’t have any burst skills since the axe does better when you’re hitting 3 foes, but if 3 foes are hitting you from close range, you’re already in big trouble with axe/warhorn. All you have is a 3 second chill on a ten second cooldown and some swiftness. The burst skill on the axe is the 2nd one, 5 stacks of bleeding on one foe that can pierce other enemies in a cone; Yet you have no condition damage. Longbow rangers tend to get singled out by enemies in small groups. You’re making their job that much easier.

Warrior is far more useful in large fights, just by bannering the commander and using the warhorn. Hammer has an AE stun and a blast finisher while sword has an immoblize that hits 3 targets

Rangers offers little to the group. Sure you can use healing spring, but then you lose your own personal heal. Your pet also is pretty ineffective in large fights.

In smaller fights, both are fine and can be fun.

NA primetime is pretty crowded on the map, so even camp flipping groups tend to be larger.

A lot of people run tankier zerg builds, so they are not really interested in an unfair fight and you run at least 1 if not 2 duelist builds. Plus nobody likes to fight a P/D perplexity condi thief(they are generally viewed as extremely cheesie), hence even if you are initially successful, you are likely to attract multiple enraged enemies even if at first you are successful.

I would try and ensure your class/build allows you to contribute in multiple roles (small group, zergings, scouting) to deal with the different situations that pop up on a map and perhaps restrict your pure roaming efforts to off hours.

Like Dyra said, Necro for zergs.

Engie for solo roaming or duoing.

Either one is fine for a 5 man group.

Weapons and armor are fairly cheap these days, and eventually you will be able to buy multiple sets of trinkets from laurels/guild commendations.

My only advice is not to put expensive sigils or runes on wvw badge weapons/armor or temple karma armor, since they can’t be salvaged.

I wouldn’t waste time of making ascended armor if you are a casual player (and even if you’re not). Weapons and trinkets give you the most bang for the buck, and trinkets can be acquired along the way and shared with your other characters.

Problem with all builds is that there effectiveness varies depending on the number of opponents you are fighting. My server has 40+ blobs at night so my choices would be different then yours even with the same playstyle.

Rage runes looks like a nice cheap option. You don’t want to put expensive runes of karma or WvW merchant armor that’s you can’t salvage. I’d also ditch your dire/rabid trinkets for your wells build and buy exotic soldiers/valk/cav/knights ones etc. and leave the others in your bag or bank.

I want to use the 2nd part of sword 2 to further create distance from enemies.

I really don’t want to turn off autotargeting, since for me it is helpful for pretty much everything else in the game.

You seem to be running some type of hybrid build, and I am not sure how well that works in wvw. I thought about a celestial ranger for wvw, but most were skeptical regarding it, and ranger sword/axe/shortbow look more like a hybrid weapon than the necro main hand or 2h options aside from the staff.

You have some zerker gear, some dire, some celestial, some knight’s, some rampager.

So you end up with relatively low power (1800 or so) and low condition damage (700). Scepter is generally viewed as a condition weapon as it main attacks are bleeds and you have low level of condition damage.

My view is go condition with some combo of rabid/dire and scepter/x or go power with some combination of zerker/knights/valk/soldiers.

I would agree with your assessment that thief is a no go, since enemies will be less likely to focus on you. The last thing you need is for your wife to get annoyed because the enemies focus on her while you are in stealth and when she dies you flee combat.

Engie looks good due since it has a lot of tricks, area effect abilities. Engies tend to get focused and they are good vs thieves.

As far as your wife goes, bearbow is the simplest (though I would replace the bear), though it is tougher to deal with a thief, never mind multiple enemies on those builds – but then again you have a lot of conditions. She could offer the ranged pressure so when they charge you, you and your friend can chew them up. Enemies will likely focus on her 1st though. Longbow ranger is also good vs mesmers and condition thieves.

She could also pick a condition build with regen which would make her a lot tankier and could provide your group with swiftness/regen if she takes Nature’s Voice trait as opposed Survival of the Fittest. In one sense this build is more forgiving due to the regen and higher armor, on the other hand you don’t get sit back and spam 2-1-1-1-1-2 as the build generally involves more frequent weapon swaps.

Trapper Ranger is usually found in a condition build. There’s no rule to say she has to run 3 traps. She can take 2 traps and 1 utility for survival.

As others have mentioned, an uplevel can rally the enemy and cause your side to lose the fight.

It is also worse for an uplevel than it was in the past. Previously, you would unlock all your traits earlier. Now they are packed into the later levels.

Players are also stronger. Today, pretty much everybody has exotic weapons, and a large proportion have ascended gear.

Also, when I started the fights seemed to be more skirmish-like. Now with the GWEN hammer train meta it’s tough to hang back and do your thing. Even pugmanders charge the enemy which makes the upleveled player more vulnerable.

Cuzican.1087:

ROFL, Thank you!

What do you use for speed? Can’t equip warhorn or Signet of the Hunt while in combat. Traveler runes? Trapper runes for me.

Speed is an issue with the Trapper Runes.

Warhorn and SoH out of combat.

Shortbow3, weapon swap and traps are your sources unless you slot a bird.

Per Lettuce.2945:

It’s an spvp build. Can’t tell from the set up? And I do have a wvw build that I use but I’m not sharing it for several reasons, one being that it’s a guild build (roaming).
….

Well, since the original poster title is “Ranger Roaming Nowadays” and since he specifically mentions WvW in his post, I would ask “Can’t read the post?”. Then you add your unwillingness to share your WvW build … lol.

I’ve started running the trap build so in my opinion:

1. Voting against the Chill trap. Cooldown is way too long, and zero damage. Sword3 poison is also unreliable. I am running SB, though a 2nd chill might be more useful in the all melee set. I used to run A/D in a condi regen build; Against camp NPCs I think A/D is likely better than SB due to Axe2 piercing, but versus players I think shortbow with on-crit sigils might be better since Axe works best at close distance.

2. Lots of thieves in wvw. Chill affects them less due to initiative system.

3. Bird over dog is an interesting choice. Swiftness is kinda odd with this build. You get some swiftness with weapon swap, shortbow3 if you equip it, traps and bird if you slot one. The thing is you don’t want to waste the traps just for speed as you want to use them for either stealth when you need it or damage or both. I find myself swapping in warhorn and/or SoH when out of combat and sometimes I get stuck with them when I get put in combat. The wonky swiftness is one factor in favor of the chill trap.

4. I find it tough to run without Lightning Reflexes. Immob is a killer and the only quasi-stun break you have is not on demand and on a 90 second cooldown.

5. Not sure about your choice in using Giver’s weapons. Looks similar to rabid in tgerms of damage; you’re going from +50% condi to +60%, so an approx. 7.5% condi damage increase due to duration, but versus players the condis will drop off faster due to cleanses. You are getting extra vitality as opposed to toughness which may be your preference.

Build is fun, but worsens exponentially once you get more enemies (say over 5).

I ran torment runes on a similar build. They weren’t worth imo as we only have 1 source of innate torment on a fairly long cooldown and they cost a lot ( I put them on rabid karma armor do I couldn’t even salvage them). Sigils are better since the are on a 5 second timer so you should get them on scepter procs.

I’m not sure death perception is worth it since you only have a bleed on crit trait and the torment sigils.

Regarding the build site that was shown to you, it is often bugged so the results show up in German. On the upper left, there is an image of the German flag and to its right is a smaller the US flag. Click on the US flag.

Regarding map completion, the Borderlands switch every week. So even if you don’t take their keep, it might be your home base next week.

Sounds like you’ve really improved in 2 months. Good luck.

I think you should wear it with a crest on the armor with the words “Queen of Cheese Builds” etched onto it.

In all serious, the answer is no. You’re losing the condition damage not using the power and the increase in the other stats/armor is minimal. Stick with your current gear.

Builds like this are one reason why longbow rangers should not be nerfed.

TC doesn’t have queues except for EB during NA primetime (9-12 or 1) and reset night.

BG tends to hibernate or come all out.

JQ has 24 hour coverage and as of this past month is the most stacked server

There is no one correct build for WvW for all situations. All builds to some extent depend upon the size of the fight. Your build looks fine for fights up to max 10 on each side or so imo. In zerg fights, conditions get cleansed. A power spec using ground targeted wells is what is needed for larger fights.

For smaller scale: Plague or Flesh Golem over Lich. Lich is for power builds.

Think about Spectral Wall. It gives you another fear. You have damage on fear trait. You have extended duration fear trait. Helps get people of your back. You can run through it for protection. It is an ethereal field. Dump Well of Power. If you want another stun break (you have sp. walk, take spect armor or flesh wurm)

You have life stealing runes and sigils. I’m not sure how much they are needed. The life steal does not work in Death Shroud (though you don’t spend much time in Death Shroud), plus you have a very big HP pool, good armor plus DS. I would definitely go for Krait runes for sure to make your bleeds better (scepter 1 and 2 and staff 2 are your main sources of damages plus fear). You could add a torment sigil for an extra AE condition, but earth is likely fine as well for now.

Condi necros aren’t a burst class. Marks are more about control than damage. And condi necros don’t get as much value from death shroud as power ones. But unless you are mainly spamming staff 1 and DS1, you are contributing.

The build the other person suggested is light years from your current build and pretty glassy and very expensive (especially runes so you will have to save for them). Melee dagger with such low armor is tricky as it could get you clobbered by the heavies.

Just add the krait runes for next to zero cost and dump WoP for spectral wall or wurm. Use plague to mess up opposition or flesh golem when in really small group (1-3). Your abilities harm up to 5 players and you have a bunch of them (fear, chills, poison, torment, immob., cripple, daze, more fears – unless you are engaging in large scale fights in which case buy karma armor or wvw armor/weapons (some combination of soldiers, berserker, even some valk, cav/knight) as you should endeavor to respec at some point.

I run the condi-regen shout build (0-0-6-6-2) for camp flipping and scouting in tier 1; S/T and A/D with apothecary/settler gear, Undead runes, 2 geomancy sigils, 1 corruption and smoldering on the torch). I flip camp relatively easily as I just tank the camps. (I usually play my necro or guardian for larger fights)

But I am dismayed that the auto attack of both the sword and axe are so terrible. Also, in 2 v2 or 3v3 or larger fights the build doesn’t put much pressure on the enemy. It does offer some swiftness and regen to help allies, but these are of limited value since most players deal with mobility within their own build.

I was wondering if celestial would make things a bit better, or would the reduction in my condition damage override any gains from the changes? One plus of my current build is that it allows me to escape from enemies easier than most. The perma-swiftness is of huge value in my opinion in tier 1. And Evasive Purity in my current build makes taking camps much easier as the NPC scouts blind.

Generally, I don’t bother fighting mesmers and P/D thieves in the open, but some give me problems even if they attack a camp where I am present since my damage is low and they have range on me plus stealth/clones . I am not really interest in dueling 1 v 1 though I wouldn’t mind being able to better dispatch P/D thieves and mesmers which seems to be a tall order unless one equips a longbow.

I thought about using a shortbow in a celestial build, but I have never really used that weapon before and the “flanking” requirement makes me think twice. Plus I move by WASD and have never strafed much before. Also, I actually like the A/D and S/T though I am open to change.

I was wondering if celestial would work in a 0-2-6-6-0 build with Nature’s Voice.

There are also the trapper builds (stealth or otherwise), but these builds tie up most of your utilities and offer less sustain so I am not sure about them as I have never tried one (though I am working on levelling leatherworking to 400 to have the option to try trapper runes). Trapper build can be used with a mixture of different gear (rabid, with some dire/apothecary etc.), so celestial is not required here.

A different alternative was to work some rabid in to my current gear to add some pressure on the enemy and pick up perhaps a torment sigil.

I doubt the people who support the removal of white swords are the ones who are sentrying the towers (or even upgrading them).

Forcing people to sit in towers to satisfy the roaming groups in not a just solution. Eventually, sentries will lose their patience as they will conclude, “Why am I spending even 30 minutes of my life doing this?”.

MarauderShields.6830:

Since we are using fluff as arguments for balancing: Rapidfire should track through stealth (I assume you mean should not)

Rangers shouldn’t be able to carry unlimited ammo (I assume you are trolling here).

You do know that Entangle is used in condition builds, so it has nothing to do with Rapid Fire?

It’s not a fluff argument. It’s an elite skill that doesn’t work very well.

Aside from reset night and aside from EB, TC usually does not have more than 1 BL map queued. Every server maps hops because none of them have full coverage.

If you log on and want to head to EB 9 pm EST on the dot, then you might have a problem.

Veeber.3192:

.

I can’t believe they haven’t perma-banned these racist trolls, especially since people have stated that these idiots have been at it for awhile.

I support your decision not to remove your post.

Is it possible to ally with the other T3 server vs the tier 2 server?

I don’t think it is as bad as the OP makes it out to be, though I agree somewhat. To some extent this occurs when a server can dominate the other servers or alternatively when a server is weaker. So people focus on other things.

But without PPT, what replaces it? The problem is without some focus on PPT, people never upgrade anything, never rebuild anything. Who cares if you snipe a yak or defend a supply camp? Why rush to defend an upgraded tower? If there is no connection with your teammates and your server, you may as well stand in the middle of a field and have a GvG. And that gets really stale after a while.

If one team plays for PPT and the other doesn’t, odd things can happen. BG group sets up kittenomewhere, JQ group rushes out and destroys catas but gets wiped. BG claims victory since they won the fight while JQ claims victory because they destroyed the catas. Without some focus on PPT, it’s as if the 2 groups are playing different games.

We already have Bloodlust and stomps. This mechanism will discourage people from fighting if they think they will lose. People will hide behind siege or let the enemy take their stuff and retake it 5 minutes later.

I repeat, IT WILL DISCOURAGE PEOPLE FROM FIGHTING if they think they are going to lose. As others have pointed out, uplevels will catch hell. The only benefit I see is that people will be less willing to bang their heads against a keep knowing they will lose people due to enemy siege. On the other hand, nobody will yell “Contest, contest” anymore since you are giving the enemy points.

They need to adjust the score based on the number of people playing.

As others have said, this will result in PvDoor.

As far as tier 1 goes, there aren’t as many people playing as some of you think. During off hours sometimes late NA/early OCX most people on all servers gravitate towards EB. And during prime time a zerg can run in and put down 5 guild catas or superior rams and take a tier 3 tower in an instant.

This change will also make it pointless to upgrade. So even ignoring the delayed reaction due to no swords, the second this rule is implemented towers and keeps will be easier to take. This is called a “secondary effect”.

Anet doles out rewards in WvW like Ebanezer Scrooge, reserving the loot for dungeons, EOTM, events and Halloween and PvE bosses. And we have to pay for upgrades that selflessly benefit our server at the individuals cost in gold. They will certainly see less of this altruistic behavior.

Instead on giving this guy a 1 week suspension, he should be banned permanently from WvW.

Anet acts so vigilantly when it comes to PvE gold exploits. Yet they are lax when it comes to siege trolls, wasting their time trying to define the behavior instead of banning the small few that engage in such behavior.

I’m on TC and saw this imbecile ruin a siege defense yesterday.

Behavior such is this is why I wouldn’t pay 5 more cents for this game.

Given a choice between the 2, go JQ without question (I’m on TC). The last thing BG needs is any more players.

Solo roaming during NA primetime won’t be that rewarding unless you want to act as a scout or change your build when a larger fight occurs. There are blobs running around and small havoc groups and just random players who show up to a camp when the timer expires. If you just want to wander around looking for fights, this is not the tier unless you’re a thief who likes trolling people in zerg builds with your dueling spec.

Aside from reset night, there are no queues aside from EB on occasion.

Instead of wasting their resources and our time on something like EOTM, players should be placed in a 2×4 cubicle and a steady stream of rewards (badges, karma, materials, etc.) should be mailed to us for each minute that one is in the cubicle.

This way we go AFK could do something more fun or useful like watch TV, read a book, exercise, cook, etc,

Yes I did.

There was an epic 3 way fight for TC garrison Wednesday night.

Great fun.

I don’t agree with getting points for capturing structures and not holding them (though giving less points for unupgraded does make sense). If there is no incentive to hold things you will have less fights. Nobody will rush to tier 2 NW tower to defend it, because you are not creating any incentive to hold them. You will end up with the ultimate PvDoor with BG taking TC’s stuff, TC taking JQ’s and JQ taking BG’s.

This is because there are 3 servers not 2 – so defending to deny another server points ends up benefiting the 3rd server.

Slicing things into time periods reduces the cohesion of the community. We don’t need to upgrade or capture stuff to help the players following us, especially if you want to do full BL resets every 8 hours.

The problem is uneven numbers which is a very tough one to surmount without destroying the current communities.

I also don’t get why some are opposed reduced scoring during non-peak periods. An off-hours player could argue that their contribution is diminished if scoring is reduced, but they are essentially advocating in favor of a disproportionate affect on the scoring.

Be very careful in doing anything that would weaken current communities. This game’s mechanics does less to strengthen community compared to Everquest, WoW or Archeage and the megaserver weakened player ties further. Now I keep hearing suggestions about multi-server alliances and full resets every 8 hours.

Who will escort yaks if the upgrades are gone in 4 hours? If you want to do full resets, you need to change things to make it easier to build stuff, reducing the amount of supply required for and cost of all upgrades and possibly increasing the strength of yaks and the power of their guards . (You might even have to weaken stealth and certain immunities so thieves and warriors cannot take out yaks so easily but that is entirely a different topic).

You can’t make these changes willy-nilly without a serious analysis as to how this well affect player behavior.

Some type of proportional system would be good:

For example:

8:00-8:15: 400 players on all servers combined divided by the maximum number of players (or 2/3 of the maximum or whatever you like). Maximum = 500.

Score Weight Points
TC 200 * 400/500 = 160
JQ 300 * 400/500 = 240
BG 200 * 400/500 = 160

2:00 am 100 players online

TC 100 * 100/500 = 20
JQ 400 * 100/500 = 80
BG 200 * 100/500 = 40

This way the scoring reflects the number of players playing, making it more democratic. It doesn’t have to be completely proportional – you can take some type of logarithm of the score. I would have a floor as well so as not to trivialize any time zone. That said, killing a player should offer the same amount of points regardless of how many are playing.

I might weight the total scoring calculated per period favor of the middle or lower server’s population. (.3 most pop, .35 middle server and .35 lowest server)

Taking Stonemist when 40 people are online should not be accorded the same weight as doing so when 400 are on.

Representation by population!

I’m not sure whether holding an upgraded keep or tower should get extra points. Initially my view was they should, but given that yaks are pretty much indefensible to a thief and their killing already offers points, my view has shifted as one could end up with paper everywhere unless you buff yaks defense somehow so they can be better defended.

I ran the 0/0/6/6/2 sword/torch axe/dagger condi-regen shout ranger build for a long time. It is a lot of fun to play. It was great for flipping camps, and you could hold off thieves though you could never catch them.

It worked on great on camps because enemy AI is pretty dumb so would sit in entangle, torch field and let you weapon swap to drop geomancy bleeds on them.

Against players, I found it getting weaker over time and I’m not sure why. One problem with the build is that the sword and axe autoattacks are really weak in a condition build so even with the weapon swapping, I found the damage relatively low even with condi food, full corruption stacks and dual geomancy sigils.

No doubt the new entangle, axe buff and improved Signet of the Wild improved things, but with the power creep all the cheesie builds (P/U mesmer, P/D thief and some would say add the LB ranger), the melee ranger lacks the killing power of the other classes. And now the longbow ranger can start firing at you from 1500 with faster arrows, a knockback and the added stealth.

I am an average player (saw a melee ranger on Blackgate who was really good) so no doubt others have better results.

But if you’re in a small group, the longbow ranger can help kill stuff fast so in my opinion is simpler and better. The regen/swiftness from the shout build are pretty weak buffs even with full apothecary.

Again, I will make the point that off hour coverage needs to get reduced PPT across all matchups, especially with Chinese servers up now.

It’s seems unfair that 20 players in Taiwan or Singapore can determine who wins WvW in tier 1. Montana has less electoral votes than California for a reason.

I can only wonder what happens in tier 8. 1 guy who works the night shift and 1 player in Hong Kong determines who wins the matchup. And if he gets a day job they lose again!

One could adjust the score, at least to some extent, based on the numbers playing to reduce the affect of off-hour coverage on scoring. The present system gives too great a weight on off hour coverage. There’s a reason why California has more electoral votes than Delaware.

One could weight the scoring as follows: .3 (highest pop server) + .6 (middle pop server) +.1 (lowest pop server). I picked lower weight for the lowest population server since one doesn’t want to discourage people from playing so as not to harm their server. You can normalize things with some type of log function. I made another post on this topic awhile back.

I would also be very careful about weakening communities since WvW is pretty much the only community left in GW2 aside from the RP community – which has been harmed to some extent by the megaserver. Most WvWers know people in multiple guilds and many are often members in multiple guilds, at least on TC.

Guilds and players come and go like the wind. The idea of a server endures. There’s a reason why religions continue to flourish in modernity. They are great at building community compared to the secular alternatives. Tarnished Coast is comparable to a religious institution or university. Guild are your team in the local softball or bowling league.

I’m not religious, but happy Rosh Hashana to you all!

I’m on TC and I’m not playing much this week. I mentioned in guildchat next week is is TC vs. 4 skritt with butter knives vs Aunt Minny’s bridge group.

FA started off Ok, but they don’t have the coverage and as the week goes on they will have a lot of difficulty building a waypoint anywhere while Magumma has few playing.

Not sure what to do unless you start from scratch and make the game race-based like humans vs elves vs orcs.

I sympathize for the lower pop. servers in whatever match they arein.