Guild Wars 2

They blew it when they made it server based as opposed to something like humans vs elves vs orcs.

I’m on TC and I’m taking most of the week off. At least I get to catch up on some RP.

When we fought an unbalanced matchup vs Crystal Desert last time, my thief ranted in mapchat that “we were conned into this war by the capitalist overlords at Arenanet. They said there were horrible weapons of mass destruction to be found in this Desert but we found nothing!”

I might have to bring her to Magumma BL this time.

I’m not confident that something like exhaustion can capture enough of the offensive behavior to prevent the siege troll from operating. Instead of building balistas he will waste supply on building oil and suicide golems; He’ll still build some balista, move from tower to tower ordering useless upgrades, etc. He’ll find a loophole in your formula and you will inconvenience legitimate players.

A report option would be great. And enough of this 24 or 48 hour warning. Outright banning not just from wvw but from the game itself would be completely appropriate for the current crew of siege trolls. He is wasting our time and your precious manpower resources.

You’re not running a mental health facility here. Deal with psychopathic behavior firmly and publicize it. There’s a reason why the Communists loved their show trials.

DaveGan.8065:

CheezeStix.1076:

Deli.1302:

Samis.1750:

I started another thread here titled “Wouldn’t pay another 5 cents for this game” due to experiencing this problem.

Please tell me how anet is going to tell the difference between:
-a person building useless siege with malicious intent
-a person building useless siege because they don’t know better

I’m going to assume you have no idea what we’re talking about or you’re trolling.

It’s a serious and legitimate question. Can you describe “siege troll” without going to extreme cases or naming specific people?

Neither of us are defending it, but you have to be able to define it. If even you can’t answer the question how can ANet? The only thing they could do without a proper answer/definition would be to take action only on the most egregious trolls with multiple violations and reports. Someone in this thread would seem to confirm ANet is doing (or trying to do) at least that much.

From what I understand, they have not banned the player or taken action against the most egregious cases.

And that is all we ask.

The Lethe.2953:

<—- Blackgate here.

I saw a lot of Ballista trolling on TC BL, in particular North Camp and Garri. It left me and my guild quite a bit upset to see it. Trolls belong in a lil cave in queensdale, not in WvW. I really hope Anet reconsiders it’s stance on hardcore trolling like this. It’s one thing to do screw around with a door treb, but instances like 6 ballistas around the supply depo is malicious and should be ban-able offenses.

Yes, I want to win but I want to win with honor. To whomever is trolling the siege, grow up and get off the map. We have no use for you.

TY Lethe. The troll was also doing it in NE Tower. We couldn’t get doors done in TCBL. We were building cannon or oil with it asap because the twit would use up the supply asap. He did this last season as well.

Anet’s stance regarding this issue is nothing short of disgraceful.

DaveGan.8065:

Samis.1750:

Unless some imbecile 1st year lawyer from a tier 5 law school drafted the EULA, it should be easy to ban somebody for being a siege troll.

So since you’re being a willing volunteer armchair lawyer, can you objectively define “siege trolling”…
1.) without specifically calling out an individual
2.) making sure innocent players do not fall under this definition
3.) ensuring a group of players (e.g., raid group) cannot grief an individual for not conforming to that group?

They don’t have to “objectively” define it for you. Who the heck are you? This isn’t the Civil Rights movement. They can interpret it internally.

But how’s this: Any player who intentionally and deliberately acts against the interest of their server by spamming unnecessary siege and/or ordering unnecessary upgrades.

You may argue: But what about this case? You can’t define it objectively? It is not perfectly clear.

My response: Have you ever read a statute? They are often open to interpretation. Otherwise there would be far less lawyers in the world.

Judges make interpretations all the time. Anet can do the same. Besides, they only need to penalize the most egregious cases.

X T D.6458:

every server has siege trolls, its unfortunately a fact of wvw, you cant ban people for using supply even if its for troll purposes, much as I would love for them all to be banned myself, you cant ban people for being a jerk

Unless some imbecile 1st year lawyer from a tier 5 law school drafted the EULA, it should be easy to ban somebody for being a siege troll. They can certainly ban somebody for “being a jerk”. It is up the them to define what being a jerk is.

If I was a competitor of Anet, I couldn’t think of a better way to sabotage their wvw business then by hiring some temp and paying him to be a siege troll.

I started another thread here titled “Wouldn’t pay another 5 cents for this game” due to experiencing this problem.

We have siege trolls during the tournament who waste supply for hours on end. One commander thinks the cretin is paid by a rival server.

These are the flagship servers in the tournament having their gameplay ruined and their efforts ridiculed by one person. You can hear the strain and irritation the voices of many people on mumble. This is supposed to be a fun leisure time activity and yet the fun is vastly diminished or even eliminated by the complete unwillingness of Anet to take any action whatsoever.

The same guy from the previous season is at in again.

It shouldn’t be that hard to police this. Screenshots are sent and yet Anet chooses to do nothing. I recall the dev of one game mentioning that you shouldn’t punish often but when you do come down hard and then publicize it. I guess that’s why dictatorships have show trials.

Sorry for the negativity, the game has offered unbelievable entertainment value. But seeing the same guy do it again this season is just cancerous to the game and so frustrating to the people playing.

Players have no rights to play wvw or even the game if they engage in disruptive behaviour. Stop being so tolerant. This is not a democracy here.

Coldtart.4785:

Mid point bunkers in spvp and frontliners in wvw barf out aoe heals like they’re going out of style, none of which will affect a necro in ds.

Everything in GW2 is balanced around team fights making synergy the top priority. Necros missing out on the most common form of support drastically limits the synergy they can have with other classes, which naturally limits their viability.

This.

My guardian in wvw has quite a bit of cleric’s gear. So often a necromancer can’t benefit from it in death force. No dodge heals, empower, staff2, regen from “Hold the Line”, heals from water rune. And when I run mace (a rarity in wvw but I like it) they even get less healing.

Flesh wurm is used by some players in wvw as an escape tool.

The devs had promised to increased necromancer survivability. After all, we are an attrition class.

In the eyes of most players, they have not delivered.

Cutting the casting time of flesh wurm would be a minor buff and address to a very limited degree a problem that the devs have in my opinion have absolutely failed to address.

C’mon Anet. Throw us a frickin bone.

If you want to run a support class, I would suggest starting a guardian.

Necromancers are mainly debuffers in wvw along with providing some damage that most classes do as well. Staff marks, wells, plague form, etc. work well in large fights. In smaller fights there are different options, but none involve healing to any serious degree.

Aside from healing not scaling well in this game, at present necromancers are unable to heal themselves in death shroud (aside from maybe a trait or 2).

You need likely need different builds and gear for zerging, small scale wvw and/or soloing.

You go with tankier gear in zerg fights. It might take you awhile to kill an NPC sentry.

I believe you can buy berserker armor from Temple of Grenth karma vendor.

You can buy some trinkets with karma, and get ascended trinkets from laurel vendors.

Builds are of greater importance in wvw – and one requires different builds for different activities (zerg fighting vs solo or small group stuff).

You can buy weapons from the auction house, running dungeons or wvw badge vendors.

I wouldn’t buy yellow gear.

Shields aren’t used that much, even in wvw.

Any chance of them lowering the cooldown?

A mace healing build works better in small-medium group wvw or unorganized zergs. It works less well in organized zergs as your light fields overwrite water fields.

Quick Mouse.7635:

I guess there is an potential exploit where everyone jumps out of wvw just before the tick to artificially increase ppt.

If you leave before the tick, you lose score. Points are adjusted follows:

Total players in wvw/maximum players in wvw (or it could be 1/2 or 2/3 of maximum and you could cap the numerator so 2/3 full is treated the same as completely filled)

The losing side might might choose to leave. To avoid this problem, I would calculate the number of players at the beginning of the tick, or at the halfway point.

You could count sub-80’s as 1/2 a player.

One would not calculate the players on individual maps due to map hopping. Total players playing wvw would be used.

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.

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

Representation by population!

You can go with a high damage setup if you sit at the back of the zerg and fire arrows from 1500 with piercing arrows and eagle eye traits. Most people in the zerg tend to have a lot of soldier’s/knight’s gear, so your damage will not be unconsequential unless you wear soldier’s gear – in which case you will be next-to-useless.

You need a different build/gear/traits/food for roaming vs zerging.

Some individuals aren’t really roamers but duelist builds. They aren’t that interested in escorting/killing yaks, taking camps, working in a small group, etc. – they want to win 1 v 1 . A perplexity mesmer might be an example of this.

Most roamers are mesmers, thieves and warriors, since they can escape from enemies fairly effortlessly. You need to figure out what to do when a thief jumps you – since they often single out rangers.

Don’t buy rares – try out builds with green gear and cheap runes/sigils.

Regarding the celestial builds: I’m not crazy on the celestial gear with a longbow. Might work better in a skirmishing build like sw/torch and axe/dagger or even with a shortbow.

You are getting 600 condition damage from gear and traits with no conditions aside from offhand dagger and sword3 poison which does low damage. Your crit rate is a low 24% with no fury from skirmishing or survival of the fittest. Your power is relatively low due to the celestial. Celestial would work well in a build with some power, some conditions and maybe some utilities or traits that benefit from healing. Engineers are a commonly used example of a class that benefits from celestial.

I would drop consider survival of the fittest over empathic bond.

I’m not sure if conditions generally need a nerf.

The 2 most popular roaming classes are warriors and thieves – and both escape fights quite easily. Cleansing ire seems pretty good.

In small group fights, the condition necromancer and the engineer get dogpiled – often by thieves and warriors. Both lack stability.

Perhaps Perplexity Runes need to get nerfed. But then again, a lot of things need to get nerfed. Runes of Strength …

I see more and more thieves and warriors every day. Don’t touch necromancer and engineers. The latter are so rare now in wvw.

This guy seems to make a lot of sense:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Here are some important questions for the developers:

1) WvWvW skill balance
- Why is WvWvW treated like pve for several skills?
- Why is revealed 3 s in WvWvW, even though stealth is obviously much more powerful in WvWvW than in spvp/tpvp?
- WvWvW meta aka Guardian Warrior Elementalist Necro (GWEN) or hammer warrior + staff guardian melee train has been the same since Autumn 2012. Any chances to shake things up? I consider this as the one of the most important reasons why many competitive hard core WvWvW players quit this game. “Hammer stun, blast water fields, double dodge left, stability, lines of warding, veils, strip boons, hit their backline now…” commander talk remains the same already for soon 2 years in this game. Thieves are most common roamers and enemy flank gankers in zerg fights. What do the developers see as the role of rangers and engineers?

2) PvE skill balance
- Just like in WvWvW certain professions are overly represented in dungeon runs, while some others are generally not wanted.
- most CC skills are useless in boss fights due unshakeable and defiant, single target CC is generally waste of time against normal mobs
- total armor is not important due very slow attack speed of bosses, making the fights all about well timed dodging/evade and berserker gear is still prevalent
- What about reducing the damage per attack, but increasing the attack rate of pve monsters? (while keeping the total dps roughly same, this would probably lead to more varied builds)
- Will the balance patches continue to revolve around spvp/tpvp ?

I would like to point out a serious mistake in many people’s replies. Warrior has the best in combat and out of combat mobility in this game, if you just build for it. Merely equipping a greatsword (no traits or utilities invested) allows warrior to outrun most professions. Combine with sword/warhorn or hammer (earthshaker is 600 leap), bull’s charge, dogged march, mobile strikes, signet of rage for another on demand swiftness (besides warhorn), signet of stamina and/or berserker’s stance, balanced stance and endure pain. After thieves warrior is the 2nd most common roaming profession in WvWvW. Mobility is king in roaming.

I also do not agree that warrior has low condition removal compared to other professions. Cleansing ire + warhorn + signet of stamina + “shake it off” + signet of rage (with 6x Lyssa runes) = massive amount of condition removal, especially if traited. Cleansing ire alone combined with longbow allows more condition removal than most other professions can achieve in long term without the use of any runes, sigils or utility slots. Mesmers, engineers and rangers are the professions, which currently struggle against conditions.

Here’s what I don’t agree with:

1. Combining servers. WvW is one of the few areas of the game where community exists. People have their favorite commanders, roam with others friends. Doesn’t make sense to do this.

2. Choosing one of 3 alliances. This is arbitrary. It might make sense if we had good, evil and neutral, different kingdoms, or 6 or 9 races that we could divide into 3 camps.

3. Increasing siege timers to 4 hours. there are siege trolls on many servers and Arenanet does nothing about this.

4. Increase AOE cap. Then you would have AOE wars. yet I understand the reason for advocating this. Hammer trains are dull.

I would support:

1. Adding more objectives. The skritt and the centaurs just waste map space.

2. Combining lower tier servers. I’m not on one, but it sounds like a good idea. I would imagine the lower tier servers look like a ghost town. It’s not long the concept of a “server” has any meaning any more.

3. Maybe nerf thief stealth. WvW seems to be losing numbers. My view is that thieves discourage a lot of newbies from really giving wvw a shot because a good thief can really embarass inexperienced players.

4. Do something to weaken hammer trains/bloobing. Good luck at that one.

You have high damage with the Death Shroud crit traits.

For running in a large group or a zerg, you seem a bit thin. Relatively low vitality due to trinkets, no stability from foot in the grave or plague form, no condition reduction food. But this can be easily tweaked to your comfort level.

For small groups you could be alright. The only thing is necros (along with rangers who have more ways to evade attacks) tend to get focused. On the other hand, you might kill them 1st!

edit: You do have stability from Lich Form but Plague offers blind (+ chill with chilling darkness) or weakness/cripple and is less obtrusive, while Lich tends to single you out for some reason.

I noticed you have carrion weapons and dire gloves. The condition aspect of these weapons is in my opinion, largely wasted. You only have 2 conditions and burning benefits relatively less from condition damage than other conditions. Plus are you procing your sigils enough with only 18% precision? They are on a 5 second cooldown and are a 50% chance. You could replace these with knight’s, clerics or other armor.

If you feel you die too easily, change some traits or gear. Aside from the condition items, perhaps add a Sigil of Energy (quite expensive atm) to one or both of your weapons. If conditions are giving you trouble, drop strength in numbers and add purity. Run Signet of Judgement for less incoming damage, a boon/debuff which heals you with your AH train and a 2nd stun breaker. (Your last utility and 1st adept trait in the virtues line can be swapped around depending upon the situation and the group.)

It is possible that you are running with thieves, mesmers, eles and warriors who all all more mobile and run away easily to recharge (and a ranger who stands 1500 yards away and goes plink with his bow). So you are the one who gets focused. The healway build is one option which you can tinker with. You will do less damage and but it will help you survive more. With selfless daring and cleric weapons, your dodge heals will do more.

In the end, you only win half the time against equally matched opponents. Maybe you are running more often against highly skilled havoc groups or more experienced players.

TC is the unofficial NA RP server.

You could guest or transfer there. It’s often tough to find RP these days with the megaserver being implemented. People ending up going to an RP Divinity’s Reach by joining others in a group and in order to change instances.

Tarnished Coast is the unofficial NA RP server.

There is also a website which might help you:

http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/

I would guess that 50% of roamers in wvw are thieves – so something must be wrong. Where are the complaints about engineers, rangers, etc? I recently faced a 4 person troll group – 3 thieves and 1 engineer.
Engineer has a smoke field and a bunch of blast finishers. That group made the rest of us look like the keystone cops. Every time somebody went down – they quickly got rezzed – even if we killed them. Eventually, somebody said, “just let them take the camp so they can go away.” Granted this is an rare case, but it illustrates the frustration people have with the class.

The epitaph of wvw will be written by stealthed thief .. or so we assume since we can’t actually see them doing the writing.

You don’t need a fern hound with the regen from guard. Wolf or drakehound would be better.

I don’t understand the purpose of EOTM. There’s no fighting. There’s more excitement fighting centaurs in Queensdale or Harathi.

Giving such high rewards to EOTM relative to other activities in the game makes no sense.

I was there once and got bored, and I am an older player. Maybe when I turn 60 it will be fun. Nah … I’ll stick to the centaurs.

WvW zergs: Warrior or guardian.

WvW roaming: Warrior is popular as the have great escapability.

Engineer is a good choice, and can be very anti-thief. Thieves are imo approx. 50% of the solo roamers.

I have roamed on my ranger with the condi-regen build. 0-0-6-6-2. Empathic Bond, Nature’s Voice, Offhand weapon training and Improved Shouts. A/T and S/D with apothecary or settler’s armor. geomancy sigil of both weapons. Taking camps is fairly effortless. Build offers perma-swiftness and regen, though though other 25% signet or rune + greatsword might possibly equal swiftness. Need to be constantly swapping weapons. Damage is somewhat on the lower end for a 1 v 1, but you have high armor and sustain with regen.

Regen is very helpful because in multi-man fights, enemy will gun for you. Warriors, mesmers, eles and thieves can blink away, guardians have blocks, etc. So the enemy likes to go for you (along with necros)

I am by no means a great player, but this is a well respected build (hyjaxx or Faux Shaux have threads on it).

There is also a trapper build – 2/6/6/0/0 or 0/6/6/2/0.
This build usually incorporates some rabid gear and a shortbow is chosen for the bleeds. On crit sigils are used.

You can also give yaks perma-swiftness if you care about that type of thing.

Which sigils do you use, specifically which on the staff and which on the scepter/warhorn?

Nice playing and very interesting build. I tried it out last night (without all the gear) and it is fun.

You get around the problem of necros in small scale wvw groups. We get focused on asap for a good reason. The warriors jump around and are tough to kill. The blink classes (thief, mesmer, ele) are difficult to pin down. Guardians are perhaps the toughest to kill. So you are left with the engineer, ranger and necro. Rangers have better endurance recovery and evades and movement skills on sword, gsword, dagger and shortbow. The devs even gave longbow some stealth. There aren’t many engies and many run vigor on kit swaps; Engies also have some hard cc and might not mind as much if you charge them.

Necros have death shroud. But it goes down real fast against minimal focusing. I played a condi necro awhile back in small scale wvw and it was frustrating as we needed babysitting.

Your build avoids the problems of sustaining death shroud and poor mobility. I thought some of the replies by posters in the other thread were unnecessarily snarky. Sure, if you’re running with 4 other guildies who are seasoned wvw players there might be more optimal choices in certain situations; but one isn’t always (or rarely) running with a guild groups in mumble with a guardian to help you.

Really nice guide Wolfineer. As I am new to the engie and soon to hit 80, it was exactly what I was looking for.

Thank-you.

Just wondering.

You need to specialize with either a power build or a condition build.

While vitality can be nice, it is a luxury you probably can’t afford and rangers have reasonable vitality to start. You lose precision, condition damage or toughness.

If you were running dire armor, you would have less power but higher condition damage. Then you can tailor your sigils, runes and food to work with your build. You could also run apothecary for a condi-regen build or rabid armor for a crit-condtion build (often involving traps).

For zergs … that’s a different story though rangers aren’t the best class in zergs since pets don’t live very long.

I will soon hit level 80 on my engineer, and have plenty of karma to spend on rabid armor.

Looking for a rabid build for solo or small group. I could supplement with other karma gear or other exotics purchased at the auction.

It adds to the duration of the regen, but I believe once your regen runs out it uses that of the fern hound. Otherwise, one could piggyback on the regen of the person with the best healing forever. But with your own basic regen from rejuve. trait 1 in nature, nature’s bounty plus the shout, the fern hound seems redundant.

I slot Nature’s Protection, but I am rarely hit for 10% of my health as I have high toughness though I haven’t played my ranger much since the newest patch (which might make this even less likely to occur). I also slot evasive purity which is of some use as it removes poison and blinds – which thieves tend to apply. The NPC guard scouts also blind.

It is tough to be really support-y as a ranger. Don’t try to force things that are not there.

You have perma regen with shouts and pets – you might not need Nature’s Bounty and the fern hound. I believe the fern hound regen gets overwritten by your own regen from the shouts, as fern hound regen does not benefit from your healing power. It still is there, but it gets pushed down in the regen queue by your superior regen – so if you keep casting the shout, it will never be used.

Wolf and krytan drakehound might be better pets in smaller encounters. I tend to go with troll ungeant as I find that people move around too much in wvw for them to stand in the field, plus you need your heal for yourself. I know the drake can blast your fields, but the wolf fear and dog immob. might offer better support for your team in small scale action as they hit 5 targets.

As far as zergs go, it will be tough to make your build work – since rangers lack stability and sword is a tricky weapon to make work in a zerg. I run something similar and find it difficult to work make it work compared to my other classes. In a 5 man group, you can keep swiftness and regen up for all. Works well solo because of the perma swiftness from guard.

As the other poster said, I would drop the axe for the dagger. I would also think about using the torch over the warhorn if you are doing small scale stuff. Your already have swiftness. Warhorn is more of a power weapon, or can be of use with a rabid build since the birds can crit for each hit. I’m not sure if it the best for your present build and gear. Torch 4 is nice when it hits. Torch 5 is good to drop into thieves when they go into shadow refuge. You can also jump back into it with sword 2 and get fiery aura. Both work well vs NPCs. You can solo camps with sword/torch and axe/dagger no problem. If you are going to dual wield 2 weapons, I would also think about offhand training.

I would also think about a weapon swap sigils. Geomancy is nice for the 3 bleeds. I thought about Hydromancy but they recently nerfed it down to 3 seconds and chill doesn’t work too well on thieves.

Don’t worry about the money. You will have more soon enough, especially now that they eliminated repair costs in wvw.

WvW: You can’t use the same build for zerg fights and roaming. Until recently, condition ranger was better for roaming, though I have recently read on these forums about some power builds but I am dubious as to whether they would be suitable for a player who is unseasoned.

Mobility is very important in wvw. You need some form of swiftness if you solo and probably if you are in a small group. Warhorn, signet, greatsword, elite Ramapge as One or nature grandmaster (no. 12 trait Nature’s Voice) are possible options.

Play other classes. You will understand the gamne better. It costs nothing extra for the 1st 5 characters. If you want to roam solo, levelling a thief helps understand thieves – since I would estimate that between approx. 1/3-2/3 of solo roamers are thieves.

You don’t necessarily have to solo. You can duo or grab a few others.

Always use consumables (food and sharpening stones/maintenance oil/crystals). You can use cheaper foods until you get yourself geared up.

Never played an engineer. Looking for a roaming build that can support allies 1-4 and that is half decent solo. No real interest in tossing grenades.

What about Sharpened Edges (Skirmishing II) to allow you to stack bleeds on crit?

You have 28% base crit and get another 20% on weapon swap – which you should be doing all the time with Offhand training and Geomancy Sigils.

I run all Apothecary/Settler’s (0-0-30-30-10) for perma swiftness/regen from guard. My damage is lacking. If I was running a trap/rabid type build I would add Sharpened Edges – constantly weapon swap to get the fury and Geomancy Sigil bleeds. You could even drop a trap slot Signet of the Hunt, or equip one or more of warhorn (birds can crit) or use Rampage as One (fury, swiftness and stability).

I tried to attend the meeting as a guest, but somebody shouted “Fire”.

Then I got trampled by a 70 person blob fleeing for the exit.

The perma regen ranger also likely has high armor (apothecary/settler’s), so it is tough for you to get his hp down as you don’t have the burst.

On the other hand, in a fight of more than 10 people, he is next to useless and you are very valuable (depending on your build).

And the rich get richer … Unfair matchups is one of the 2 main problems in WvW (the other being zergs).

We need an Occupy Wall Street movement of our own for WvW. “Occupy Lion’s Arch” anybody?

I’m still not sure how you get 52% crit from a base 21%. I added +100 precision food and the best oil and you were at 33%. 250 stacks gets you to 45% (I added +250 from skirmishing tree – I assume they are equivalent). Any chance you are using Sigil of Accuracy which would bring you to 50%?

You have 50-55% crit maybe when you use RAO. There are no points in skirmishing which gives 14% crit plus crit when you weapon swap. (Not saying I don’t agree with your selection as Empathic Bond pretty useful as a mid-liner). You have a Sigil of Force slotted.

With 2 precision boosting food you are at 33%. You also won’t have your stacks up 100% of the time as most of the time half the side dies in WvW which will likely include you as a mid-liner unless you are more of an archer or fighting undermanned foes.

I’m not saying that your way is not the preferred way to go, but saying you have almost the same stats as the alternative build is overstating things. You have more vitality and empathetic bond. That comes at a cost. There are no free lunches.

As far as 1 v 1 goes, you have no healing and low base crit so I can’t see you doing too well. This is not a major criticism as your build is not designed for it. Few builds are good at large scale fighting and 1v1.

Both your build and Kjel’s are similar attempts to create a viable mid-line ranger in larger fights. Kjel gets the skirmishing tree that gives +crit and crit damage which are nice. You pick up empathetic bond which is very useful but end up with +300 condition damage which helps on the shortbow but not on the greatsword.

Hope it works out well for you.

I agree with the OP 100%.

Arenanet solved the “gear disparity” issue in WoW by making lvl 80 gear easily obtainable.

However, by (1) making the matches server based instead of based on race or realm and by (2) not including a cap on numbers, they guaranteed an unbalanced matchup.

There is no perfect solution. WoW had queues and then instituted cross-server queues to avoid the problem.

I am not sure what they can do to resolve the imbalanced problem unless they combine servers which would weaken an already weak community.

Future WvW games will likely have queues, smaller numbers or cross-server fights.

OP: I would buy lvl 80 masterwork Apothecary gear in the slots that you need to test out the build. I used all green gear for 1st to test it out, but since you have Settler’s armor you are a step ahead. Settler’s trinkets are cheap as are Superior Runes of the Undead. Buy some Sigils (buy cheaper Corruption Sigil for now – Geomancy was cheaper as I recall) and you’re ready to go.

Check out hyjaxx’s build (google it). No bow though.

I would go sword/torch and axe/dagger for the reasons Faux Sheaux outlined in his post here (google). I use Runes of the Undead.

You can easily solo camps with this build. I enable the fast-cast ground targeting in the options menu (need to turn it off if you man an arrow cart).

Build is good solo (perma swiftness) or in small groups. Very tough for a thief to take you down which is important as thieves come gunning for rangers. Weaker once numbers are greater than 10, so not recommended for use in zergs in my opinion.

You could try it with a bow, but you are always swapping weapons with this build and I think axe/offhand is better as you can stack a variety of conditions on the enemy which makes it tougher to cleanse.