Guild Wars 2

Drakh.3128:

Better yet, try being a confusion mesmer. I hit them for 65 with confusion then get hit back for 375 from retaliation. Yeah, that’s fair…..

Confusion also stacks in intensity, retal only duration. Also retal doesn’t injure you for trying to use a heal skill / non-direct damage move or utility (i.e. block, stun breaker, etc). To modify a quote all the confusion defenders said a few patches ago “if you see someone with retaliation, just don’t attack them!” Sounds a little silly doesn’t it?

You can work around retaliation in zerg situations…like if you know throwing a large aoe skill into a zerg is going to hurt, just make sure you have enough health to survive it. Also dodge rolling / other evades avoid retal damage iirc. Another option is having the sigil of nullification if you have high crit chance; it removes the highest stacked or longest durationed boon 1st. So if people are retal stacking then with 1 crit proc it’ll disappear real quick.

I got 2 as well. Got a greatsword and a shortbow skin for my ranger, but truth be told I wish I had made the longbow skin instead….it looks way cooler lol.

Aylpse.6280:

Setun.4368:

as a melee Ranger I can stand toe-to-toe against Warriors and Guardians all day.

4 Warriors full Zerker, 1 Zerker Mesmer, ping gear.

Ranger Dps is a joke. Warriors just 100b all day in a time warp….

CoF speed runs are one thing, pvp is another. None of those warriors or the mesmer would last half a second in a 1v1 against anyone of any class actually trying to win.

jcbroe.4329:

RaO is very useful in pvp for point holding, and just as useful in WvW for escaping. The might is useful, but fairly inconsequential. The Fury, Swiftness, and Stability are pretty big though.

I would even go as far as saying as it has the potential to be stronger than Entangle against other players. Simply because most classes can escape or destroy the vines easily, but RaO can only have it’s boons ripped by a select amount of sources, and can shut down the opponents ability to line up bursts long enough for you to gain the advantage in the fight.

RaO would be crazy good if it also acted as a stun breaker upon activation. I noticed that since so many people these days are running stability more people are using immobilizes, chills, and snares way more since stability doesn’t prevent those and can be just as devistating in pvp.

Daecollo.9578:

Every trait in the game is getting merged/changed and looked at.

I believe rangers should see what they get first. They might even make pets able to move and attack.

That’s what every class should do when it comes to changes / balances, but they’re still going to flip tables and get upset before they even see what said changes / balances are going to be. Personally if they make it so that pets have a better rate of landing attacks on mobile enemies a slight drop in their dps is fine by me. But again, I’m going to wait until we get some real patch notes to look at before flipping my own tables.

I use knight’s armor with full vampirism runes (for lifesteal procs / mistform if I get jumped by a lot of people in a fight.) It’s been working out really nicely.

Oh Lord….people be freaking out about balancing patches before any real patch notes come up….I can’t speak for any builds / roles beyond what I play, but I can tell you as a melee Ranger I can stand toe-to-toe against Warriors and Guardians all day. I use full knight’s armor and a mix of p/v/t and knight’s trinkets and it’s working wonders for being both super tanky and having high sustained damage. My pet’s dps, while pretty kitten good, is merely icing on the cake to my character’s damage. I typically use greatsword / axe/axe or greatsword / longbow (depending on what I feel like using for the day) and have had no problems with keeping up with dps or survivability. Condition builds do counter my build, but unless it’s a condition thief I can usually power through most condition classes from all the evades / blocks / reflects / interrupts my weapon combos have.

beriah.5168:

For what it’s worth, Monk’s Focus is still pretty great – it’s a very solid heal (not quite half as much as Shelter) and combined with Meditation Mastery it’s almost like having a couple extra healing skills. I had a rather fun solo PVE build (10-25-30-0-5) that focused on burning, bonus damage vs. burning foes, and using meditations with Monk’s Focus to heal easily. Nice thing about running a bunch of meditations is that they give you a lot of resilience vs. conditions and stuns; downside is you give up a lot of your group support, though you can mitigate that a bit by adjusting your trait choices if you end up grouping.

In a way you give up some group support by not providing boons as often, but at the same time you can still anchor a lot of mobs in pve from the amount of staying power meditations have from the burst heals / conditions removals.

I give it a 5/10. I like the progression in terms of settlements that have popped up in Southsun, but the story element was effectively mia. It kinda felt like I was playing old school EQ1 where everything storyline wise was haphazardly placed / explained. The zone definitely looks pretty at least lol!

I personally would love if there were dragon attacks that could attack towers / keeps and make them vulnerable by destroying walls and such the threat isn’t dealt with…it would definitely spice things up for sure, but dunno how they’d go about putting something like that in. =/

Tricare.2946:

sweet vids

Boy do I feel you on fighting DB lol….start fighting one and 6 more appear 90% of the time lol. I’ve barely seen any of you guys from Maguuma this week in EB. =/

Kryopsis.6081:

Mister Mustard.7203:

I just want to make one point: Why is someone a poor sport if they don’t want to play the game exactly like you do?

I don’t think they’re the ones being the poor sport.

Laugh emotes, saying, “look at the score,” and insulting people who want to do things differently than you are all examples of poor sportsmanship in my book.

I assume you are from DragonWagon so I am not surprised that the definition of fair play eludes you.

EnRohbi.2187:

destoyer of lives.7963:

CptWheezy.6439:

Aeonblade.8709:

This thread is awesome. I didn’t know Maguuma could cry so much as a server. I stand by my statement that I miss the old Mags.

SBI you are a new face to me, and I still don’t really know much about you guys, as you rarely come out to play, forums or otherwise. Keep on truckin

Had a few good fights this week, mostly it’s been a thrashing sadly, it’s not any fun for DB either running over everyone, hopefully next week all 3 servers get a more appropriate match!

What a grejat post. I love paosts like this, I reaclly do. Its the genuine nature of it that really warms my hearkt. There is not evean a hint of overbearings or missplaced pride or anything.

:-)

I really wish people from DB would quit doing this on the forums. All this flaming all it does is really makes the server as a whole look bad. I respect our opponents whether we are winning by 10k or 300k.

Don’t worry.
We have plenty of respect for our opponents. Maguuma just gets different responses from many of us than most servers do. We have spent a lot of time together, and frankly the whole “Good game, good tactics, Maguuma are awesome opponentents” shtick is wasted on most of them.

Like 90% of Maguuma’s game is forum wars, so why shouldn’t we give them battles on the only front they’re good at? ;D

The burn wards are going to need more beds.

Zumi.6384:

Guardian is my alt, so I’m far from a Guardian expert, but to me Purity doesn’t make sense in this build. 2 of your utility skills rely on having conditions to purge in order to be effective, so isn’t removing them with Purity counter intuitive?

My thinking is you have enough condition removal with those utilities and they get extra effects when you use them, so the trait could be better spent elsewhere. IV, VI, and IX all seem like decent options.

CoP is a sick utility to keep on your bar not just for the condition cure / reversal, but as mentioned above it’s a stun breaker, will heal you since it’s a meditation skill, and in general is a good ‘oh kitten’ skill for when a ton of conditions get dumped on you at once (something that can happen easily in wvw.) I will say that since you have such a decently high toughness you should change out purity for retributive armor; it’ll give you a few extra crit chance % to work with.

I typically use greatsword and axe/axe, and the chill effect on axe #3 + the overall utility and mobility of the greatsword have worked wonders with keeping mesmers in place or at least on the run and unable to get any effective clones up. I also use the alpine leopard since the F2 chill effect if both hits land is 6-8 seconds of chill on top of the axe skill. My secondary pet is the jungle spider for the constant poison dots (I’m not a condition spec, but having access to poison is mega handy as reducing any healing they may try to use.)

Also path of scars is awesome at blowing up clones from a safe distance / pegging the actual mesmer with the right pathing toss.

While not a fan of the amount of coverage DB has been able to pump out vs us or Mag, I will admit the random 1v1’s or small group encounters that have popped up were kitten enjoyable. Definitely want more 1v1’s before week’s end though!

Also I haven’t Mag on at all just about this week…not sure where y’all have been!

Let’s try and get a thread going where we show off our Rangers in all their glory! I’ll start things off with my 2nd video of Beastmaster Jahn I made today!

Peetee.9406:

My recommendation is to not get discouraged, if they have to send an entire zerg to wipe your havoc wear it like a badge of honor.

Totally agree! If a server has to send anything more than what you’re roaming with just to find you and take you down then that’s a victory in itself since that’s manpower taken away from other areas your server can capitalize on!

Once I finished my character’s storyline and dropped Zhaitan Orr’s been dead to me. Get it?! I made a funny!!….I’m not leaving I still have things to say.

Seriously though I just went there for the story stuff and that was it. I don’t mind the zones themselves much, for me the annoyance is the PBaoe mobs that yank you as soon as you aggro them.

Sleel.8365:

Setun.4368:

Sleel.8365:

snowaugar.1823:

Kitten kitten mewl mewl zerging isn’t bad l2 counter the zerg -insert arrow cart joke here- its not hard when u l2 organize

Actually, the best nerf to mindless zergballs is to remove the stupid AOE limit. If I poison a room, more then 5 ppl are going to choke on it if there are 20 in it. I laugh at the ones that say a few ppl shouldn’t be able to hold off a massive number. Tell that to the 300 at Thermopylae. Or any of the other “lost cause, last stands” in history. Artillery hits more the 5 when it goes off overhead too, or any of a number of examples. You’d still have the same number of ppl there, just can’t exploit a stupid hit limit that’s brain damaged, and they’d have to spread out to minimize it’s effect, just like real soldiers do.

No one yells “Incoming! BALL UP!”

I definitely believe siege weapons should have no cap at all. Player aoe cap I can understand getting away with, but if a ballista punches through 20+ people sitting on top of each other they should all feel it.

Ahh. So when I throw a grenade into a group of ten ppl it will politely decline to hurt half of them…..

I would say just remove the cap all together, but that would still only give the larger zerg force an even easier means of rampaging across the countryside. Siege though is stationary and dependant on positioning to be effective, and ACs / ballistas are meant to counter large clumps of people standing on top of each other.

Quarktastic.1027:

Puandro.3245:

Quarktastic.1027:

I love how rangers have to jump through all these hoops and blow all their cooldowns to get these 5 digit crits, while warriors and thieves can achieve the same thing with the press of a single button.

Seems legit.

But your pet is also doing damage. Balance escapes most people.

Using only my pet, and weapon skills, I hold no hope of achieving the same damage numbers as a warrior or thief. I still have to blow all my cooldowns to match the damage they deal with just weapon skills.

Where is the balance?

If my pet does a double swipe that crits for 5k against an enemy (using no utilities), and I hit them for the same at around the same time, that’s 10k right there. It’s just split between 2 sources. It’s kind of like playing Ice Climbers in Smash Bros; together they’re strong, seperately they’re just alright.

I understand Anet’s reasoning for limiting player-based aoe’s due to the large fights in wvw being a super aoe-fest for the most part, but siege weapons should have no limit. Taking the limit off of siege weapons will help immensely with a lot of the heavy zerging, and ‘balling up’ philosophy. This also will help outmanned servers or servers who are up against a numerically superior server since they’ll be effectively able to hold down a tower or keep with good siege placement.

Sleel.8365:

snowaugar.1823:

Kitten kitten mewl mewl zerging isn’t bad l2 counter the zerg -insert arrow cart joke here- its not hard when u l2 organize

Actually, the best nerf to mindless zergballs is to remove the stupid AOE limit. If I poison a room, more then 5 ppl are going to choke on it if there are 20 in it. I laugh at the ones that say a few ppl shouldn’t be able to hold off a massive number. Tell that to the 300 at Thermopylae. Or any of the other “lost cause, last stands” in history. Artillery hits more the 5 when it goes off overhead too, or any of a number of examples. You’d still have the same number of ppl there, just can’t exploit a stupid hit limit that’s brain damaged, and they’d have to spread out to minimize it’s effect, just like real soldiers do.

No one yells “Incoming! BALL UP!”

I definitely believe siege weapons should have no cap at all. Player aoe cap I can understand getting away with, but if a ballista punches through 20+ people sitting on top of each other they should all feel it.

That would be neat actually….as for your dilema with your server not running many dungeons you can go to gw2lfg.com to find a group for other people across servers who are trying to do the same dungeon you are!

Amins.3710:

The larger problem is that the dead don’t stay dead.

What’ is this… some bad horror syfi… where the zombie apocalypse raises from the ashes to defeat every living thing?

Get rid of this mechanic.

At least then, small roaming groups could do drive by’s on the larger zerg, or kite the zerg, knowing that what they acutally DOWN… STAYS DOWN.

Srsly.

Maybe instead of getting rid of the mechanic, add a timer to it, much like the righteous indignation buff in supply camps. Like maybe a 3-4 minute timer before being able to be rezzed. Most engagements (with the exception of a good stonemist / garrison fight) are over by that time anyway.

displacedTitan.6897:

Some of you need to take off your rose colored glasses with the DAOC crap. That game had plenty of major problems of its own, I would love to come in here and tell you that Shadowbane had the greatest large scale PvP ever because it was for buildings and cities that took months of peoples work to build and the classes in that game were far far more unique than in any other game. That would be a lie though, SB had SO many problems just like DAOC.
There is NO REASON 8 people should be able to wipe out 20 by using the hilarious CC that was available in that game.
Xsorus, you a little kitten over losing to SoS more skilled players? I hope you are on CD, we love farming you guys.

Granted it’s extremely difficult to fight a much larger force than what your server has at the moment of the engagement, but earlier today me and another ranger held off a group of 15 or so SoS from taking bluelake tower on our home BL (SBI) for almost half an hour with just 1 arrow cart plus the ranger using barrage on / pegging whatever siege was placed. They eventually took the tower because they got even more people to join in. Also I kind of have to agree with Xsorus, when against even numbers SoS crumples every time from all the engagements I’ve been in. Hell, even in even matched 5v5’s or less y’all book it. Just sayin’.

I made a build that focuses on greatsword as the primary weapon here:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ranger/?6.3|1.1p.hd|7.1g.h15.7.1g.h1d|1n.7f.1n.7f.1n.7f.1n.7f.1n.7f.1n.7f|1c.9c.21j.0.2t.0.1c.9c.1p.61.8c.9c|0.u17c.k3a.0.k51|15.7|4j.4q.4r.4w.0|e

It’s been working out really well for me thus far.

Largest crit I can remember that I’ve done was 8k on a returning path of scars toss. My pet has done 6k. Largest I’ve received has been 3-4k or so.

Mahedros.9103:

I didnt paly my ranger for like 2 weeks, came back today and i feel weaker, my LB ikittening for max 3k on autos (pve) and i use to hit for like 3.7 4k at max range.
Same with wvw use to hit for 3k+ now is 2k-2.5k idk if its that ppl are geting more toughness or what but i feel weaker.

Tanky builds are on the rise that’s for sure, so I wouldn’t doubt that has something to do with it. My Ranger’s damage seems to be alright…crits are pretty high (3-6k per crit) using maul and path of scars, and autoattacks are anywhere between 500-2k depending on crits. /shrug

Sil.4560:

So the difficulty is in fighting the guardian the way our class was designed to be primarily played. BALANCE.

I haven’t had much trouble fighting Guardians on my Warrior at all…there’s been tons of stalemates for sure, but I’ve never outright lost to one in a 1v1 situation. I use hammer / sword & warhorn with a tanky heal shout build with enough crit chance / damage to really put on constant pressure / dps. Hammer is the main damage tool, while sword & warhorn primarily for the F1 and #5 (iirc) for vigor. Most Guardians like to run around with greatswords so those moves are extremely telegraphed and easy to manuver around. The main thing with downing Guardians is burst CC-ing them. I.e. using the hammer CC combo with some high power + crit chance will have them pooping themselves or just insta-downed. Just personal observation though…this actually reminds me I really need to get that warrior video uploaded lol. Oh! Don’t underestimate the power of vulnerability. I also use axe + mace in place of hammer, and all the vulnerability moves + on my mark is about 20% free damage for you.

It’s a 1200 range from your point of origin. That gives you plenty of space to control territory and still have a relatively safe area to port back to. Yeah the pathing is buggy now, but that’ll get fixed. Having an infinite range on that skill was not ok. That’s like if the beginning and ends of a Mesmer portal had infinite range from where they can be dropped. Thief class still maintains a lot of mobility, this is merely a fix, not a nerf.

Well that’s the majority of it anyway. Pets also draw aggro now if they attack players in an enemy supply camp, whirling defense’s radius of reflecting projectiles was increased if you pick the off-hand training trait, and it’s overall attack radius was increased to be like that of other melee skills. Lastly barrage / rapid fire can no longer be uninterruptable or some jazz from having a specific trait line selected.

Bash.7291:

I mean, I can give you the list of every CC or gap closer off the wiki if you want, you will see that guardian is severely lacking in almost every aspect compared to most classes, and even more so compared to the other two melee classes thieves and warriors, who also even have ranged options.

Good for you on being able to chase everyone down though. I guess you don’t get many thieves/warriors/eles/rangers/mesmers that turn tail when they start to lose.

Agree to disagree. I find the amount of CC available to us to be pretty kitten good. All I ever see in wvw honestly are thieves and mesmers these days roaming; just have a knack for guessing when they’re going to try and run and making sure they can’t get very far after fighting so many for so long. /shrug

Basically you can’t shoot harpoon gun skills backwards i.e. you’re swimming away from an enemy, but still shooting at even though your back is turned to them. Also the projectile speeds for them have been fixed.

phokus.8934:

There are only two changes I’d like to see:

1) Flashing Blade: can teleport without selecting a target
2) Zealot’s Defense: keep the mechanic but get rid of the root when activated

I swear all I want for Christmas is being able to use flashing blade and judge’s intervention without needing a target lol

Junkpile.7439:

SoggyFrog.4170:

Junkpile.7439:

SoggyFrog.4170:

All ascended gear kind of has a cap on the rate at which you can acquire it, I can see why it will be no different for WvW ascended pieces.

Only a WvW player knows Anet won’t spoonfeed you, I’ve collected 149 laurels since they introduced the currency.

If there is cap why PvE player have so many rings that they don’t have room to store those? Cap just mean that devs take revenge against players who haven’t done their flavor of the month dungeon.

Because they’ve been doing several tiers of fractals a day since November and ended up getting bonus rings with useless stats. They still need laurels for amulets and accessories… Don’t tell me you’re jealous of those people :p

But they already have rings so they can get more amulets. One ring cost 35 laurels so i don’t know how you exploit this game if this seems small thing for you. Well maybe if you could get 100 laurels/day it wouldn’t matter that much.

Fractals lvl 10 and beyond award a daily chest that gives a chance of getting an ascended ring. lvl 26+ gives a chance for that daily chest to give a free infused ring. On top of that, every 5th daily chest is a guarenteed ring in the chest. So people (like me) have tons of random stat rings sitting in the bank wondering when they’ll be useful / tradeable / able to breakdown for mats.

By this reasoning I should be able to use Judge’s Intervention on my Guardian from within my keep to port surprise CC a zerg it by pinning them in with ring of warding. That would be stupid to be able to teleport through a wall / gate at will like that. Mistform is something else entirely. Want to prevent them from going into the keep? Immobilize them before they pop it, or have a Guardian buddy deny them access to the door.

Bash.7291:

Words.

The point of my post was to show that there’s options. Now whether you want to complain about said options having a counter is your business, but the fact remains that we have tons of ways to keep in someone’s face, or at least control their movements. Every class has a way of negating / dodging their CC moves (i.e. blind will kitten over a ranger’s entangle and put it on full cooldown), and we ways of impairing their movement skills through knockdowns, and knockbacks. Also just a fun fact immobilizes still work on people who run with stability, so even if they walk out of your ring / line ward you can still keep them pinned for a few seconds via immobilizes. I do everything under the sun on my Guardian from solo roaming to zerging, and in none of those cases do I ever have an issue with chasing down enemies (unless they hide behind their gates), or getting away from what could be a bad situation. Do I still get caught / does an enemy escape? Of course, it’s going to happen sometimes, but I don’t run around crying that we have 0 ways of hard CCing or chasing someone. kitten happens, just deal with it and move on.

Bash.7291:

Viable builds…. 10/30/30/0/0 RHS builds, 0/x/30/30/x AH/EM builds, 0/0/10/30/30 Healway builds. Though there are some slight variations to these builds, all in all, we have about 3 well used viable builds. Yes there are random off builds (like the one I use) But those are generally specific to the person that uses them, and set for that one person’s playstyle. What I find funny is that a warrior also has things things that we don’t have, such as range and mobility and CC, which in WvW (which is my main focus) are huge and can determine the outcome of the battle. To gain any of these (except for range, which we have 0 of because of scepter AA speed) We have to sacrifice alot. I would honestly kill just to get a little bit of the CC that a warrior has, maybe I could kill runners in WvW at that point.

AH builds aren’t the only viable builds for Guardians. I keep saying this but meditation builds are just as viable / disruptive, and they don’t have to have the crutch of boons to be useful. Any boons on a meditation Guardian makes him/her that much stronger since it’s a skill / timing based gameplay.

Some Guardian CC / area control that is available to us that is invaluable in most wvw encounters: Bane Signet active (2 sec knockdown), Signet of Wrath active (3 sec immobilize), Binding Blade (greatsword #5), Ring of Warding (hammer #5), Line of Warding (staff #5), Zealot’s Embrace (hammer #3), Shield of Absorption (shield #5), Chains of Light (scepter #3), Sanctuary (consecration), Wall of Reflection (consecration), Hammer of Wisdom spirit weapon active.

Some mobility options Guardians have: Retreat (shout), Save Yourselves (shout), Judge’s Intervention (meditation), Flashing Blade (sword #2), Symbol of Swiftness (staff #3), Contemplation of Purity (meditation; counts if it converts a snare to swiftness), Leap of Faith (greatsword #3), Might Blow (short hammer #2 jump, but good at closing the distance in a fight)

As for ranged autoattack options are few and far between I’ll give you that. However Smite, Zealot’s Fire, Zealot’s Embrace and Ray of Judgement are 1200m attacks, and with the exception of Ray of Judgement are on really short cooldowns. Then there’s Zealot’s Defense, and Shield of Judgement at 900m, then staff autoattack, and Binding Blade at 600m, iirc.

As for ‘sacrificing a lot for CC / mobility’ I literally sacrifice none. Hammer / scepter & torch in a meditation builds has worked wonders both in wvw and spvp, both for damage and control. With this particular setup not only am I using JI to jump around, but I’m denying enemy movement with all the immobilizes I have at my disposal (imo way more important since that’s more work your target has to put out to try and escape if at all), plus ring of warding. Lastly conditions fall off me like water droplets since smite condition / contemplation of purity not only remove them, but heal me on use as well as aoe damage or convert conditions to boons.

So there’s A LOT of options available. Certain builds / weapon wield styles have their pros and cons, which is how it should be. Like I mentioned in the paragraph above there are very few instances where I cannot keep chase with someone or pin them.

Ision.3207:

And I also heard that they will finally be adding Carrion and Valkyrie ascended trinkets !!!

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Just kidding …………………………………………………… ;-)

You got me so excited for a minute lol….

[edit]

Hurr durr made this post without rating the one above mine…

8/10 for Zack Harte. He sounds like he’d be a ladies man, shadowstepping into a room with a rose in his teeth! [/edit]

I got another human to lvl 80 recently, and his name is Beastmaster Jahn; an older adventurer who got a late start in life after helping his adopted parents run the local inn and tavern that they owned for a number of years. Jahn has always had an affinity for animals, but it wasn’t until he finally got out of Divinity’s Reach that he discovered he had a knack for developing bonds with what would normally be very dangerous animals. He decided to put these new talents towards the betterment of Tyria and joined the Vigil to fight the undead with his plethora of animal companions at his side.

Eurantien.4632:

Does nobody use conditions in wvw? A lot of builds I see have no condi removal.

There’s a lot of condition builds used in wvw, that’s why I incorporated the -40% condition duration food. I really want to use signet of renewal in this build more so than signet of the hunt, but the active effect for signet of renewal is mega buggy. It almost never pulls any conditions off myself or anyone around me from what I’ve seen. Now my Guardian on the other hand is an anti-condition machine with his meditation build lol

ProxyDamage.9826:

Not bad. A few things to point out though.

First of all – you have 2 “on critical” sigils on your axe/axe set. This is a mistake. On critical sigils share internal cooldown, so when one of them triggers the other one won’t be able to till it comes off cooldown. By having both you’re seriously crippling both of their activation frequency. Since mainhand is checked first, this means that more often than not, it’s sigil of nullification that’s going to waste.

- I understand the internal cooldown part, but since sigil of nullification has a higher chance of proccing + a 10 sec cooldown, they both tend to pop fairly regularly. Just my observations though during a fight.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Second, sharpened edges… why? You have no condition damage. Sharpened edges is a no internal cooldown 1 second of bleed. The point is to, essentially, add condition damage to your normal attacks. But you have no condition damage at all. Why not Pet’s Prowess? Free 30% critical damage for your pet.

- I actually changed that for the 30% pet crit damage trait a day or so after I made this post. In the youtube video I posted I left my build in the comments with the changes I made (gonna change the original build to reflect it.)

ProxyDamage.9826:

I’m also not a fan of Shared Anguish due to the massive internal cooldown and uncontrollable use, and would rather have vigor on heal, but your call.

- Shared Anguish has come in handy quite often with blocking that 1st CC opening move most players try to open up with, and has blocked out a downed state stun that would’ve prevented me from finishing off an enemy faster as well. The CD on it is indeed very long, but it’s proven its worth keeping it on for me anyway. =)

ProxyDamage.9826:

I’m also very much not a fan of Runes of Vampirism. Sacrificing too much for too little IMO. Either go full offensive runes here (or Orbs), or take something like Dwayna. Extra regen is always nice on a ranger.

- I love the vampirism set for a number of reasons. First are the lifesteals it provides (free 500-600 heal.) A guaranteed lifesteal after using a heal (comes in handier than it initially sounds), and a chance to proc another lifesteal on hit is extremely nice. The mistform at 10% has saved my kitten so many times when in large group fights that turn sour or just in situations where I would normally be overwhelmed it’s crazy. Aside from any pre-existing conditions on you when mistform hits, you are 100% invulnerable for 3-4 seconds, which if you have the luck I do, is just enough time for either an escape move, or heal to come up. What’s nice about this build though is that it’s open to different rune sets of your choosing.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Additionally, you have almost no condition removal, so I’d seriously consider trading Troll Unguent for Healing Spring.

- That’s where the food comes in. -40% condition duration on you helps out tons with regards to that. I also use heal as one (another change I need to update) since for the most part you’re in the front / mid lines during fight, having a big heal you can pop is pretty vital imo since troll unguent and healing spring’s regen may not provide that extra healing buffer that is needed. I’ll still give healing spring a shot and see how it works with the way I play though!

ProxyDamage.9826:

Lastly, I wouldn’t pick off-hand axe myself. #4 is ok but unreliable damage, #5 roots in place, so it leaves you very vulnerable for the little defense it gives you. Personally I’d rather have warhorn. Better damage on 4, and 5 gives you extra swiftness and fury.

- I use axe off-hand’s skills after getting a good snare or chill on an enemy before tossing the #4 skill. I will admit I love having a guarenteed reflect on #5 just because people who are mostly/pure ranged (shortbow/longbow rangers, bow/rifle warriors, engineers, etc) can’t touch me for 5 seconds, or can only do a minimal amount of damage with any ground targetted moves they have. Meanwhile I’m throwing everything back at them. Granted in a large zerg situation #5 can be spotty on usage, but overall axe mainhand’s #3 has great synergy with offhand #4. I’ve done 10k to people with just one toss of the #4 (4k one way, 6k return). Guess I just like having options for dealing with specific playstyles and builds. Thanks for your feedback Proxy! =D

Cempa.5619:

Just a FYI, Stun/Daze Sigil is rounded up, so a 2.2 sec would become 3.

Well now, that is very interesting indeed! Thought it only rounded up once a duration was above .5….I’m going to give it a shot, thanks for the tip!

So I recently completed the storyline quest where you recover a water orb that the Krait found and were using to keep the risen undead at bay from their strongholds. Upon giving it to Trahearne and some priory scholars one of them mentions they don’t really know how it works, but it does have a large magical energy to it. So my question is:

Is this water orb that the krait originally owned a piece of the underwater dragon’s power / corruption? Like perhaps after x-distance away from the dragon it has enough of the water dragon’s power to repel the other elder dragon’s minions? That would be interesting if the orb could have a similar effect on Kralkatorrik’s, Jormag’s, or Primodus’ minions if so, and it begs the question of what to expect from that dragon should it arise far enough from the depths of the ocean to become another dragon to the checklist of things to murder the kitten out of.

Cempa.5619:

Why Axe at all, SB also benefits from the clarity trait.

In any case I would move points out of clarity and max out BM for regen and change trinkets a bit to gain near 500 healing.

Point of axe/axe is for splash damage via #2 and #4, chills, and projectile reflect. I also mentioned at the beginning the bows in this game are boring to me. Also this build isn’t a defensive regen build, it’s a tanky offensive build, with pet traits for faster skill recharges all around / crit damage.

Finally made a video to show off the build! I also modified the build a tiny amount, and have a new link to the build itself in the description. Enjoy!!

Charr storylines are all amazing. They’re both funny, and kitten at the same time. I really liked the Human poor storyline as well; was very gritty and seedy for how ‘safe’ Divinity’s Reach usually feels. That said I enjoyed the Human noble storyline as well, even if the whole ‘missing sister’ quest bit was extremely short. Norn storyline is much better as a male Norn imo…the female Norn voice just sounds bored / dead inside. Can’t say about the Asura or Sylvari, both races disinterest me something fierce.

Xuro.5861:

ahuba.6430:

Xuro.5861:

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drama queen much?

Thank you for your major contribution to my thread, your outstanding intelligence as shown by your post is very impressive.

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I didn’t miss the statement about also unlocking a group mode but my point still stands, a solo instance shouldn’t even exist in a MMORPG. Why play one if you can solo everything? Seems pretty pointless to me.

I was hoping that after the enormous complaints on the Personal Story (I dislike the fact that this is all singleplayer too), they wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes again with future content.

I want to play a MMORPG, not a singleplayer game.

Fun fact: The Personal Story can be done in a multiplayer setting. If everyone is on the same point in their story, then everyone who’s in your instance when you go in will get credit and the option to advance as well. Hell, the battle for Claw Island has multiple player usable trebuchet’s that your party members can use. I’m 90% positive the new single player instance will be the same way.

Lokheit.7943:

Judging by your screenshot you spend a lot of time in WvW but close to zero time in PvP.

WvW experience is far from a good measurement of how good a profession is. Most opponents there won’t match your equipment and will be easy kills and many run around following instructions or the closest event/zerg without a clue of what to really do and the Thief is expert at exploiting less skilled players. Most outnumbered videos are against that kind of player that you find all the time in WvW.

WvW is just as good a measurement as spvp. Bads are gonna bad, regardless of what pvp mode you prefer. I’ve encountered tons of players that really knew their class inside and out in WvW, especially in the upper tiers (T1-T3). Hell, full guild vs guild events in WvW are awesome to watch as one downed person can make or break the encounters. Devs tend to gravitate towards more to spvp only because it’s a much smaller combat environment, which makes data gathering easier for them on classes.

Aegis.9724:

Whirling is ok, people complain about it because its the worse reflect of any class, and the damage strapped on doesnt really impress that much. Still, it’s salvagiable and has uses, personally i use it for karka farming and works ok

Other than the reflect, to me the skill shines at being able to give up to 12 stacks of vulnerability in a full channel. Makes it rrreeeaallll easy to drop people when they’re taking 12% extra damage. Heck, any stacks of vulnerability make it easier to drop enemies.