Guild Wars 2

I always thought it was a cool nod to Monk poses… Hmph.

Malchior.1928:

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again until Anet implements it.

Change the Shrouded Removal trait into “Shrouded Resistance”. Give 3 seconds of resistance on DS entry. Trait improved by over 9000%.

So with Near to Death you’re half immune to conditions? I dunno about that.

Focus is the answer. It strips our ranged advantage and forces us to shuffle up close, where 95% of rangers you’ll encounter in WvW will crumble. Ranger greatsword I find to be especially bad in this setting, so just keep an eye out for Maul once you close the gap. Sword/Dagger users are going to be a lot harder for you because of their poison uptime and evades; mainhand dagger for ele is very easy to dodge when you’ve got so many evades at your disposal.

I find I struggle most with S/F eles because the damage is a lot harder to get away from and they have silly good defense with focus.

Save an emergency cleanse for Entangle.

I think there’s enough counterplay to Entangle to warrant it not changing. Blinks, stealths, cleanses, and damaging the vines all work just fine. It’s annoying, yeah, but so are half the other elites in the game. They are elite, after all.

I agree with Borya a bit, here.

This build isn’t aggressive enough and doesn’t seem to have the sustained damage needed to deal with good players running good builds without kiting for minutes at a time; Which is fine, if that’s how you like to play. It’s smart, really, just not very exciting.

I noticed you never really used barrage. When I do use it, I always cast it on myself and set-up a bit of a ‘killzone.’ Most enemies want to close the gap on you so they are either forced to give you breathing room or eat the barrage damage and cripple, which tends to lead to them needing to back off or dying.

Cool music!

Hey Aussie!

Fun video. Shortbow + Piercing arrows put to good use.

I like running 4/5/0/5/0 with GS in cases where I feel like need to be more survivable. You lose a little single target damage, but you probably lose more if you’re always downed…

Tyrannis.5963:

So, you bad speak, ok? So, you yoda words waste time not? Fear challenge you are? Fear, is the path to the darksyze. Outside, change not! Within, change you must!

My nomination for Post of the Year 2015.

If you had moved in and secured the kill after the first down, you probably could have avoided the rest of that encounter. All it took was Viper’s Nest! (Or just stomping them.)

You can’t use the same solution to every problem. The prompt to stomp enemies is there for a reason and the reason is to put an end to them in a timely manner. Lick Wounds is double-edged anyway; It’s literally useless if an enemy knows to just stomp you, where some other classes can be more of an annoyance with their Downed3 skill.

I’d say it’s there to make up for the fact that rangers have the worst class mechanic in the entire game.

I <3 Sword. Please don’t change it.

(Well, maybe add something else to Monarch’s Leap.)

To answer the question simply; Yes.

I always thought they should do away with the stacks and make it a flat buff like: “Your pet inherits 10% of your stats.”

Percentage would be debatable, but you know what I mean.

I’ll keep an eye out!

Anything else? There’s gotta be some nice little necro tricks.

I’ve tried Axe/Horn, Dagger/Horn, and Dagger/Dagger thus far.* I haven’t a clue what I prefer yet. I was going to try out Dagger/Focus later today to see how much the extra damage from Spinal Shivers helped.

I’ve been running a spectral/shroud build a lot and I find it to be fun and (mostly) effective. What are some other builds I should check out?

• = I’ve always run staff on swap because of the utility and the fact that I love ground targeted abilities.

@Nexed — Everything. WvW is my favorite game mode, but I want to learn it all.

@Drarnor — What time this evening?

I’ve been a Ranger main since headstart and as much as I love the class, I don’t find it very fulfilling anymore. Necromancer is really the only other class I’m interested in learning the ins-and-outs of; So I figured I’d work my way up from the basics.

Obviously after all this time I’ve got a good grasp on general combat mechanics, but I want to know if there any juicy tips for necromancer. Maybe a list of do’s and don’ts. If it helps, I really prefer power based specs, but I want to learn everything, so don’t spare me.

Good example would be burst rotations or absolutely vital traits to use (or not bother with.)

Thanks in advance!

Sword/Axe is going to give you better damage than GS would anyway, most of the time.
Offhand warhorn can be nice if your team is lacking in fury, swiftness, or blast finishers. Offhand dagger excels in PvP but I find it has few uses in PvE aside from an extra dodge that you’ll rarely need.

LB bursts well at the start with Barrage and Rapid Fire, after that you’re gonna get much higher DPS from your melee set.

If you need range for anything, obviously LB is your go-to, but that’s few and far between.

Exactly what Lazze posted, but I usually substitute a feline with River Drake. The damage that F2 can pump out is silly.

I’d love to see this implemented as a basic, cheap upgrade for any structure (including camps.)

Amazing idea, though I don’t agree with the option to let players light it.

Ithilwen.1529:

In my opinion, the lack of “top team” rangers is no evidence of it being balanced or underpowered. To the contrary, no one wants to be seen as using an easy mode class.

I’m not going to allow myself to believe that anyone is this ignorant.

At the top tier of competition nobody cares about anything but effectiveness and efficiency.

Of course I agree with the Tail Wind change! Even with Pack Runes and some additional boon duration it still wouldn’t put us at permanent out of combat swiftness, so I don’t see a problem. Heck, migrate another trait to the minor slot (Primal Reflexes? Companion’s Might?) and make me slot Tail Wind as a major, so long as it works OOC.

The proposed changes to Martial Mastery and Warhorn #5 look awesome. (WH#4 still needs love, but that’s for a different thread.)

Also in regards to Ranger mobility, I think that dropping Hornet Sting’s activation time would go a long, long way.

Crippling Throw does not require line of sight, so you throw that sucker behind you if you’re trying to create space for a hit and a cripple; And as others have mentioned, it actually does solid damage.

I think the biggest buff to GS in the 9/9 patch was that we can now use Signet of the Hunt without needed to trait for it. It synergizes unbelievably well with our greatsword. You can risk it all on a big maul, you can react to a counter-kick and activate it before the attack connects, or you can use it on a swoop/crippling throw to deal big damage to people trying to get away.

I popped a mesmer for about 4.5K + Air proc as he was retreating into stealth via mass invis (if you press throw before the stealth goes active, the blade will track,) and it put him on his kitten . It was pretty awesome.

Oh, and it’s been said a million times, but leeching sigil is awesome for bursting with maul out of longbow stealth.

I kind of miss the bleed stacks (Three stacks, by the way,) on maul, but I really don’t want more of the celestial might stacking crap plaguing the game.

Empathic Bond has never been my condition removal of choice with BM/DPS pets. You’re putting too much crap on them (Weakness, Cripple, Chill) for them to effectively dish out the damage that you’ve dedicated so much of your build to.

It’s pretty deadly against any of the new Husk type enemies that have massive toughness and low vitality.

I think the SB shines with Rabid/Rampager/Sinister gear and Sharpened Edges.

I agree with most of these. Especially shared anguish, considering other classes get a lot more out of their similar traits for the same CD.

When pets can stop being free Cloak and Daggers for SA trolls, then I’ll start caring.

- I think sylvari are the master race and I hope the rest of LS2 is very sylvari-centric.
- I think most of the legendaries are ugly.
- I have the hots for female norns.
- I think people that run full bunker specs (particularly in WvW) are bad and probably get carried by their build.
- I am very loyal to my server and I will actively hate on people from other servers, given the chance. Even if it’s in jest. Team spirit thing, I guess.
- I’ve never done a single Arah explorable path and I feel like less of a player because of it.
- I started practicing archery IRL because I’ve been playing rangers in GW ever since Prophecies.
- I judge people harshly on how they dress and dye their characters.

Greatsword, River Drake, Fire Sigil. Martial Mastery.

Been working well for me. The doors that spawn a ton of mobs all tend to be stacked so you can just sit there and auto, then Maul when it’s off CD.

Ride out your Hunter’s Shot stealth, use it to hide important abilities that’ll keep you alive.

Listen to Atherakhia. Don’t wait until the last minute to swap to GS.

Jungle Spiders are kiting monsters. And though I haven’t tried it yet, I imagine that a LB slotted with Cripple/Chill sigils is rather annoying.

To all Engineers and Mesmers in Mad King’s Labyrinth:

Please stop using Big Ol’ Bomb and Illusionary Wave.

Is that how this works?

As others have pointed out, each class has a niche and this just happens to be the rangers. You have to have variance in playstyle or the game is going to stagnate into a “which class melees the best?” situations (which it already has in some game modes.) There’s a reason Dhalsim and Guile are part of Street Fighter’s roster… Those characters give up a lot to perform well at range, much like rangers do.

This whole Rapid Fire-is-OP episode reminded me of when people found out that Cable could link AHVB’s in MvC2 and people were all “Oh noes, rushdown is dead” But in the end he still ended up getting bodied by Magneto. ;~;

I love it and I don’t want to see it change.

It’s a ton of fun locking onto a target (like a Mesmer) then hitting ‘1’ while you’re walking to them, your first two attacks will initiate on their clones then you’ll fly out of their clone-pack with “Pounce,” hitting them in the face.

Because two of the three attacks in the chain are considered to be “leaps,” which are prioritized over everything other than weapon-swapping, I believe.

Longbow, Jungle spider, cave spider, muddy terrain, entangle, and (if Sylvari) grasping vines = many, many trivialized champions.

So normally I leave the volume down for these videos, because I can’t stand the music most people put with them.

Then I see the song credits roll at the end and kick myself in the kitten because Devin Townsend is probably my favorite single musician. Very nice!

Also, fun video. Nice zerg juke, haha.

I’d kill for 20% cooldown reduction on TU.

Yeah, this has been around since launch. It’s nifty but it’s never really saved my kitten .

Fun video. I’ve always found the longbows kiting potential to be invaluable versus condition engineers and necros.

LughLongArm.5460:

Strange thought, do you think it will be worth it to use the new trapper rune set in a power build? You can take the fire rune with ground targeting and just place it wherever to get the 3 sec stealth and speed. That build can be even more annoying.

I encountered a power (or maybe hybrid) longbow/shortbow ranger using the trap runes and 3x trap utilities. They seemed useless for anything other than frustrating people. One of those builds with fights that just end in stalemates all the time. Good if you’ve got back-up, probably.

The kittening machine gun sounds were priceless.

Pro Tip #2 — Toughness.

I got called a flavor of the month ranger earlier today as well! I was also offered tips by someone I beat suggesting to go full glass instead of built with some toughness.

Silly people.

Oh lord, here we go.

Just give it some time. Let the dust settle, let people change their strategies against these builds. People are so used to 99% of longbow rangers being free kills that they’re flustered that they now have to use a few brain cells to kill them.

I don’t really use trap builds, so I’m more excited about the other runes, but yeah. If there’s no ICD on that then trappers just got insane in WvW.

Check these out, guys:

Superior Rune of Evasion:

+25 Ferocity
When executing a dodge roll, you gain 3 seconds of swiftness.
+50 Ferocity
When executing a dodge roll, you gain 3 seconds of fury.
+100 Ferocity
When executing a dodge roll, deal a crippling strike to nearby enemies.

Superior Rune of the Trapper:

+25 Condition Damage
The duration of conditions you apply last 10% longer.
+50 Condition Damage
When you use a trap skill, gain 3 seconds of super speed.
+100 Condition Damage
Gain 3 seconds of stealth when using a trap skill.

There’s some serious potential here. We have the obvious synergy with trap builds for the Trapper runes and some more synergy using runes of Evasion; With our massive vigor uptime, Natural Vigor trait, and protection on dodge roll, this set will make dodging a huge source of boons for Rangers.

Ashen.2907:

At times a word will be appropriated to fulfill a purpose as a technical or context specific term. That appears to be what you are seeing here. Within the context of the meta or elite play environment anything less than optimal is, apparently, considered non-viable.

Technically they are correct (in at least one sense). Viable means capable of succeeding. If the goal is to produce the best possible results only the most optimal build is viable. Anything else would not be, “capable of succeeding,” at that task or achieving that goal.

Well at least someone here gets it. Thank you.

I came here to mention the FF7 mini-game, but you beat me to it OP.

I don’t think there’s enough context here to really gauge whether or not they were misusing the term.