Eso lol. Anyway lets keep this on topic as it is the gw2 forums. I think whenever LS 2 starts, if they decide to release the big meaty content then(this is a separate patch id guess theyd release from the feature release), it will be around the same time gw2 releases in china. I think they want to synchronize the beginning of LS 2 with a brand new community that will be entering. I highly highly doubt they will want china to join 1 month after the LS already started and miss the hype.
But whenever it LS 2 hits, I think new maps are obvious. DE’s that expand upon the very system of DE’s, pushing them to farther technical limits. I don’t think a new race to be honest or a new class even though I really hope im wrong. Im pretty confident new weapons for current classes will hit first and im pretty sure it will come this year(it should since its bee 18 months already, probably close to 20 when LS 2 starts).
I think what we should be excited for is new features anet plans on adding. This always adds diversity to the game. Perhaps gvg modes? more spvp modes im sure. The obvious rune/sigil/class changes. As for the others I really don’t know, anet said they had some they weren’t ready to talk about which makes me excited kind of.
I think a cool idea. The only problem I see is that people who want to do it for the challenge and the rewards that come from the challenge would have to wait enormous amounts of time. The timers on these bosses already make it exhausting to do multiple attempts on them for practice or for a legit kill attempt. The biggest reason I wouldn’t like this is because its just Anet catering to casuals again which happens too much in this game. I say keep making notoriously difficult dynamic events(perhaps they arn’t just boss events, perhaps they force players to spread out like LA but imagine an event that required you to save 2k citizens whcih seems practically impossible).
Quests really wouldnt be added for the sake of leveling though like other games do. I admit leveling up through crafting is a lot more fun jk lol no but really dynamic events make it more fun. But something like quests added, say even more personal story like content, could be added for the sake of having cool lore content. Instead of personal story, the story wouldnt be about you, but another npc, that you are taking part in.
Its been about 18 months or so since the game has came out and the ideas that anet must have circling around in their head must have drastically changed tbh. I have a hard time seeing them extending the personal story. If they do go back to it, I think it will have changed a lot. I think the same can be said about the living story. Anet certainly has learned a lot from the enormous amount of community feedback in the 15 months that elapsed for season 1, in my opinion too long of a season. The reason I mention the Living story is because its the main driving force behind communicating lore in the game right now. But its a type of lore that isn’t old and distant in the past, its lore that is currently taking place. This is still why I don’t think the living story can’t compensate for quests either.
I think if they wanted to put their own spin on lore content that explored the past, the best place to look would be expanding fractals. There would be the fractals that you use for dungeon content what not, then these fractal portals that perhaps sit in each zone next to a certain spot that upon entering let you into a certain instance in the past in that exact same zone. The only difference from fractals is that fractals have the dungeon mindset even though that is cool lore while these would be focused purely on an ongoing story in the past that you can’t experience in the present. It would be a series of instances that you had to progress through to finally get to the peak of the story.
I dont think gw2 should have been without DE’s. Its pretty revolutionary. But im just saying lorewise its pretty blan. DE’s do give the feeling of a living world though. Its just that they arn’t very flexible with what they can do in terms of story. A lot of it is “push off these mobs that attack this town” or “this generic named mob has spawned for the 85th time, champion spider queen, kill it.” You cant really have a dynamic event chain that led up to a unique boss named “Ripjaw the defiler” or something stupid like that, then kill him, and have him spawn 30 minutes later.
Questing for achievements its not questing lol. Questing is starting a sort of task in a zone that could be small and sweet like that one quest(pretty much the only quest in game) in a certain zone in ascalon where you help a charr engineer repair his bike and as a reward he gives you a hat. Or it could be epic, it could lead you through a story line that captivates the lore of the very zone. There is an awful lot of lore for most zones in this game but pretty much anyone who plays gw2 would have to look online to learn most of it. Its just presented very poorly in this game, and cant really be presented well with DE’s.
Dredgehaunt cliffs for example is one of the most hated zones in the game, mainly because people hate dredge, and the environment is depressing, and nothing special really goes on. However it has so much lore to do with the dredge and dwarves. Its just presented in a very poor way. They attempt to do so through two sources. 1. NPC dialogue when you talk to random NPC’s, and 2. Heart’s which really provide shallow content just for leveling up. It’s not really captivating at all.
Its been about a year and a half since the game has released and one thing I still miss about gw1 or any mmo in general is questing. Quests have the ability to tell certain immersive and personal storylines that DE’s cannot because of their nature. Quests can only be completed once by a player(except daillies) while DE’s have a timer and reset. One thing about this game that I think has alienated players is the absence of quests. There is a HUGE audience out there who literally just wants to do quest storylines that take them across an entire zone or perhaps multiple zones, telling a unique story, that is very lore-heavy. Obv DE’s cant do this because they arn’t one time only.
I at least feels that zones in this game are incredibly empty because of this. A few heart quests where we go fight off some boars, collect some scraps for some dude’s house, etc. I don’t know if Anet realizes this and plans to add some type of hybrid heartquest or dynamic event. I think it would be rather cool. It would also cater to an immense audience in the game if they regularily did this. How does the rest of the community feel about this? Would the introduction of gw2’s spin on quests be interesting to players? Something that adds more story-driven content to the game? Something the game currently lacks besides what the personal story can do.
Hammer trains really arnt as big a problem as you think. I think wvw strategy may be getting diverse actually. A higher focus on proper ranged class usage. If you ever face a hammer train you must remember that they can only push one target area at a time. Which is why skilled ranged ultimately will kill a hammer train every time depending on numbers. Also, most guilds dont run a ton of hammer warriors either. The melee ball that consists in a guilds force is usually 60% if the number of people is 15-25. Of those 9-15 melee, most are guardians, whose hammers dont have CC. Like say in a 25 man group, with 15 melee/10 ranged, id see most guilds running about 10 guard and 5 war compared to 10 warrior and 5 guardians. Also,being a hammer warrior, landing a clean hammerstun can be hard be hard to do because of blindness or stability that the enemy may have. Or they just are quick enough to dodge.
If you really ever encounter a hammertrain of some 20 melee, just use a bunch of necros and eles. 5 necros and 5 eles are pretty more much than enough to melt even a strong 20 man melee group. This is consideirng these eles/necros are well placed in combat while all the messy stuff is going on.
I think you’re missing the point. The fact is that hardcore pve in this game has been reduced to players using bad game mechanics(bad mob/boss mechanics and fgs stacking) to rush through dungeons. I think its also sad because I dont think the players are bad but I think the content offered is so easy(besides liadri which was certainly more difficult and fun and felt rewarding upon completion) that players are forced to make up new ways to make it challenging. Make liadri difficulty 5 man instances and that would be pretty cool.
8/10. It got better in the last few months. Things could have been better though. However, it was very climactic leading towards the end in this patch if you do it right instead of skip all teh meaty fun epicness and just go straight to the instance. Going from 3 knight bosses taking 15 minutes and rushing back and forth, dodging, to porting into scarlets drill and fighting her for a good 30 minutes with multiple phases and organization. Finally killing it, chasing her away and then stomping her. It was an awesome finish to the living story. I do wish anet made it so you couldnt go straight to the instance though. They are just catering to kitten casuals there. I think they have learned a lot so far in the game and will do great in season 2.
The thing about zerk is it doesnt really take any talent and just displays bad pve in the game I think. If you actually watch runs of official hardcore pve guilds (#lolhardcorepve), its pretty much full zerk with eles and fireswords, stacking a boss, timewarping, finished. Im actually embarassed as a player to see that in game as hardcore pve and id be embarassed to show my friends joining gw2 that this is hardcore pve. Hardcore pve should be hours of practice by a group of dedicated people to practice mechanics, positioning, build coordination, to kill a boss. Not skip 80% of the mobs and firesword the 2 bosses in the instance just to get done with your dungeon as quick as possible. I am glad they are nerfing zerk a tad and im sure future bosses will be designed to prevent zerk.
We have already seen that in today’s update that has the watchknights hit extremely hard(event to tanky people) at melee range. Thats not necessarily nerfing zerk but it is nerfing zerk warriors who go with hundred blades, stack 25 vulnerability and might, then hundred blades the enemy for 50k.
This reminds me of how a certain DnT member solo’d his platform because he is the only zerker warrior. Ironic !!!
Again I see nothing but stakcing lupi on a wall and bursting him lol. Its kinda a joke.
The thing about zerk is it doesnt really take any talent and just displays bad pve in the game I think. If you actually watch runs of official hardcore pve guilds (#lolhardcorepve), its pretty much full zerk with eles and fireswords, stacking a boss, timewarping, finished. Im actually embarassed as a player to see that in game as hardcore pve and id be embarassed to show my friends joining gw2 that this is hardcore pve. Hardcore pve should be hours of practice by a group of dedicated people to practice mechanics, positioning, build coordination, to kill a boss. Not skip 80% of the mobs and firesword the 2 bosses in the instance just to get done with your dungeon as quick as possible. I am glad they are nerfing zerk a tad and im sure future bosses will be designed to prevent zerk.
We have already seen that in today’s update that has the watchknights hit extremely hard(event to tanky people) at melee range. Thats not necessarily nerfing zerk but it is nerfing zerk warriors who go with hundred blades, stack 25 vulnerability and might, then hundred blades the enemy for 50k.
I didnt make clear what it is for people who dont know. Its where zones that are underpopulated are combined with people in the same zone from other servers that currently have that zone overpopulated. So say 5 people are in some zone in about 6 different servers or more. Combined them all into one underflow servers so now 30 people in that server.
From what I heard and it sonuds somewhat accurate but currently when looking at the map, we only have about 60% unlocked. Many zones are already barren because of this. Guesting can slightly fix this, I really want the game to have more zones added, and im pretty positive we will see this with magus falls or maguuma wastes. However, Anet pretty much realizes this spreads people out creating the illusions that the game has a low population. AND for the 10000000th time, I will add to the list of people who suggest they add UNDERFLOW SERVERS. This will pretty much save arena net and the game, single-handedly, and conquer the illusion of low population in a gigantic world(when more maps are added).
Apparently 400,000 people play this, and looking at the number I can easily imagine that summing together all the servers playing in a certain zone = plenty of people for an underflow map. I dont think ive ever heard arenanet comment on this and id really like to know. I hope they have or can obtain the technology for this because I believe it could absolutely drastically change the game and heal the problems that are too come with new maps.
And yes you are FORCED to get ascended armor if you want to be COMPETITIVE, it’s either GRIND OR GET WRECKED in WvW versus an opponent wearing ascended. People suck on A-net’s stick by putting excuses and talking smack but in reality if you don’t FARM/GRIND/SPEND GOLD/or $$$$ then you will get destroyed by an opponent in ascended armor who has the TIME and the DESIRE to GRIND for it.
Fanboys say "it’s only a 10%? 15%? increase in stats, well IT IS an increase and therefore an advantage. If you dont see it well you are blindfolded.
Obviously these people force you to do GRINDING AND SPENDING.
I mean…. let’s be honest who the kitten likes to CRAFT ? 10% of players?
Spending time/gold and farming mats to get a DIGIT OF SKILL INTO YOUR CRAFTING REPERTOIRE. Hardly believable. Gamers are poor souls, most of us are computer addicts and these companies take advantage by putting more grinding and more kitten into their games. I quit long time and I’m glad I did.
lol thats bs. as someone whose in a regular hardcore wvw guild, thats not true at all. the stat different is negligible. You can buy all the ascended armor you want but you’ll still get wrecked by better players lol.
They are going extremely overboard on gemstore skins(armor/weapons). I dont honestly mind them do it, as long as they balance it out in game. They need to make an in game skin or full armor set that is new(not like the craftable ones) that you can get in a cool way. Perhaps through the living story. Doing a series of tasks, even achievements, to perahps craft or unlock one of the armor sets or even a piece of it, feels so amazingly rewarding. Anets alternative to this is okay rather pay real money which is one of the most unrewarding things you can do. Or grind an absolute ton of gold(hundreds) and trade them in for keys to get chests to hope for tickets. Anet does too much of this. They need a better balance of the items you can unlock through doing actual content in game compared to just paying real money.
I thought u needed exotic or ascended at first too. But you just need the blue, its amazingly easy to get, and if you cant put that little effort in, i dont know why youd care anyway.
This is just another rant. Please ignore it lol. The OP ruined himself in the first comment. There are better reasons to criticize the LS but not anything included in the OP.
The end cutscene was absolutely amazing however the events leading up to it were incredibly anti-climactic lol. We’ve chased scarlet for 14 months and thats how she ends? I dno I thought it could have been better, a lot better, but who cares the cutscene was sick.
it doesnt really have anything to do with the philosophy behind thieves as much as the actually mechanic of the class initiative. id really like to know from the devs why they made this decision because it blatently separates thieves from every other class. i think thief skills need to be nerfed for this reason because of how initiative is a periodically regenerating currency(with traits and signets its super powerful) and the skills that use initiative are a little two powerful. Like heartseeker, and how you can spam it on an enemy about 7 times in a row lol. Thats a little off topic anyway.
I do suspect wurm may be on farm status in the next month or two but only at certain places(tts, desolation/bg MAYBE). It is quite obviously not a fight I see being done with a random group of pugs who semi know how to do it. It does require coordination and teamspeak for sure. Which I think is ok, this game needs fights like the wurm but the only down side is that people realize tts or desolation or maybe bg are the only ones who can complete it so they just bandwagon there and then fill up the map that specific group is in then screw up the event. The only way to fix this is probably just make much more guilds that can have this level of coordination which I believe is possible.
o.0 All classes have a unique design some more then others. While yes every other class has a cool down timer they each have a unique perks about them.
In ways warriors have slight initiative like setup with the F1 skill as well as Mesmer with there F1-F4 skills.
Not as unique as thief though. I kinda dont see the logic in doing this for arenanet. However I dont necessarily think they should have resorted to giving each class something like initiative aka mana/rage. They should have just done something completely unique with initiative that doesnt function as a currency and made it so thieves have skill cooldowns as well. It obviously would be a completely different thief then we know today but thats okay.
I didnt really think about this til now but why are thieves the only class in the game that has a unique design. In terms of weapons, none of its weapons have a skill cooldown, they have a currency cost, called initiative. Why is it that every other class in the game must obey a time cooldown? Not that I am upset but it seems so trivial thieves have this pretty significant difference compared to every other class in the game. Why do eles and necros not have mana? and warriors and guardians have their own type of special skill currency? Or why didnt anet just decide to make thieves obey the same time cooldown restrictment that other classes did? I think its quite cool thinking about how immensely pvp and wvw would change if every class had a currency cost on skills compared to cooldowns.
We are currently in some what of a rebuild phase, our guild has halved in size yet true quality still remains. Group sizes now run 10-12 on average, 15 at most, 8 at smallest. We like running such small groups to place emphasis on each player there, making sure individually we gain skill. We are recruiting and are looking for players on CD or willing to transfer who can play 3 times a week at minimum, around daily reset. Classes we prefer are guardian/war/nec/ele for now. Especially necros.
Hardcore pve’ers in dungeon: “Okay guys, listen, were gonna skip the first 60 % of the dungeon, take out fireswords, use our berserker builds to fiery rush the boss to death, and game over, we win.”
Hardcore wvw: “Ok were gonna static field the enemy group on the first push and focus hard dps on them(wells, showers,melee), and when they regroup we’re gonna to static field them again when their stability is down and blast poison fields on them to prevent them from topping on…etc.etc…”
Pretty much an entirely accurate summary of both parts of the game currently, unless you count fights like liadri, p4 arah, and the wurm.
If you plan on doing hardcore wvw skill groups than yes it would. Especially when skill groups run in sizes 10-15 where you’re facing groups 2-3 times your size. At that point, there is pretty much no room for error from anyone, which is why someone who is spvp savy will already have enough combat sense to keep up the momentum and not screw up. People who just jump right into wvw don’t have this combat sense, because all they do is really run with the blob, unless they are roamers, which is similar to spvp style combat. However if you plan on just following whatever zerg is running that day, then you don’t need to worry about 1v1 type fights.
For skills groups/wvw I mean. I hear a lot about 0/0/10/30/30 being the new meta from certain wvw guilds but checking the stats with armor, toughness is still incredibly low even with full pvt armor. How is this build that seems to focus more on virtues and boon duration better than 0/0/30/30/10 or 0/0/20/30/20?
Most of this discussion can boil down to "But warrior can counter you with skill “A, B, C, D, E, F, G”.
Ok, here’s one for you all. Normally when you run in a zerg, each profession perform their own task. Warrior CC is in 99% of instances easy to negate. Why? Because really do you think the enemy do not have warriors too that uses SwWh? If you think so, you are an idiot. It is proven beyond a doubt that ALL servers spam warriors and guards like there is no tomorrow. So Warrior cancels out warrior. Skill is irrelevant in zergs anyway.
In the end, what you want to do is CHAIN your CC. Now a warrior does this naturally, thanks to the design of the profession. Hats off to Anet for making it so smooth. The guardian also does do some mentionable CC or rather Area Denial (RoW, LoW).
However, neither of these professions, even with max condi duration produce anything by mediocre effects on 1 skill (flurry is a cleave, not a AOE. In zergs you want AOE, not single target w/cleave effect). Ill give guardians a slight +1 over warriors as they can apply heavy chill and immobilize at once, albeit, at longer cooldown.
Yet, whatever proper AOE CC these two professions dish out, CAN BE OUTDONE BY ONE RANGER PET.
You say pet dies in Zergs, yes they do, if you run right into the enemy melee train. So yes you have to do some positioning. Generally, if you keep your pet hidden and just avoid the whole melee train your pet will survive long enough to use it’s skill(s).
you are either very deluded or very inexperienced with other professions or going up against them. guardians and warriors have vastly superior hard CC, in addition to spammable soft CC (immobilize cones). ele is up there as well. this is why theyre better.
pet CC is mediocre at best. the problem isnt actually survivability because you can get around that by timing your signets and pet swaps. the problem is F2 cast time. canines are by far most reliable for larger fights.
the fact that you talk about stacking condition duration points to how inexperienced you are in this type of gameplay. conditions simply dont stick to a good melee train for longer than 0.5-1s. warriors are virtually immune to immobilize, so any hammer train or guardian train will literally run you over. you can survive with good positioning, but your soft CC will contribute nothing and you wont be doing any significant damage, independent of spec.
regardless of that, the ranger simply doesnt have the sustain for drawn out Gvg/GvZ fights in which youre either greatly outnumbered, or challenged.
again, in this discussion, we’re asking “how can any responsible raid leader justify a slot for the ranger?” we’re not concerned about “partial” effectiveness, only absolute. this is min-maxing. raids and gvg’s are min-maxed. sorry, but it’s true.
Did you not see the pic of the ranger’s combat log hitting 7k with autoattack? For zergbustings that not terribly bad.
You need to be playing with people who are 1. Good or have the ability to be Good and 2. are very comfortable with, friends. Ive had to deal with players who arn’t both or are only one and its incredibly akward when you have someone who proves they dont have the ability to improve but are your friend o.O
Run staff instead of DD and bring a few guards with hammer and staff and u can kill coordinated grps instead of pug grps!
We tried this. Staff can’t stand on its own. 5v10, your staffs will get run over every time. You can kite, but unless they want to stand still for you, you aren’t going to get those meteors to hit.
(but 30 fire, 30 lightning is balls of fun)
There was so much going on in the video with the enemy that you probably could have gotten away with running 3 mildly berserker staff eles to wipe that zerg while they sat on the steps.
In SPVP and WVW, this game is completely affected by combo fields, especially wvw in skill groups, “BLAST BLAST BLAST”. Does anyone know if ANET has made any comments about expanding this system? In my opinion this “meta” of combat has pretty much been the same in wvw for about 15 months. Skill groups have been pre might buffing with firefields(also empower) and healing up with waterfields, since the beginning of the game. I would really like to see some diversity added.
These guys def got some talent. Moving to tarnished coast was a good decision for them as HOD was too low tier for the action they were looking for. Im sure ill see them raise ranks really quickly in the next few months on TC.
7k LB shot to the face, gotta love to see them run.
Pics/’tube vid or it never happened.
This was before ascended weapons and armors.
Ik the bow can hit kind of hard but I have a hard time believing this wasnt on a completely glass uplevel class.
You can spec fully into Cavaliers, albeit you wont hit 11k with LB AA then. Opening Strike has 100% crit chance, 10% damage from full endurance, 10% damage when flanking/hitting from behind, 10% Rune of Thief if flanking/hitting from back, +5% damage sigil on LB, together with signets adding 150% and 25% respectively, frost spirit is another 10%. LB trait adds another 5% damage.
By now, you should be able to hit 8-11k on LB AA. Mind you, the video showing such damage was made way way before LB buff. You should hit even a little bit harder now, but not all that much.
I was missing the signet. Thats pretty OP. lol. I dont know any other class thats autoattack can hit that hard. I think you’ve pretty much proven rangers arnt useless. I mean obviously youd have to sacrifice traps and youd be a ranged bot but still. If you have arrows piercing, 2-3 rangers could easily melt a zerg. Its easily more powerful than meteorshower/tornado with that damage.
It’s nowhere near as effective as a meteor shower/tornado combo simple because it’s not aoe, and to get those numbers you would need to be max range with a LB which won’t happen all the time. You will still hit like a truck mind, rapid fire can get pretty high with that.
Yup, Meteor Shower is way stronger then AA + Piercing.
At best you can hit 3-4 people with Piercing, and even then, you prolly wont crit all 3-4 for max DPS.
And no you dont need to be at max range ever since the LB buff, but you have to play backline and if your frontline cannot defend the ranger properly, you will die. Your only “get out of jail card” is Signet of Stone. 6 seconds of invulnerability ,then you are done for. The build itself is ridiculously risky.
Meteor shower tornado has a super long cooldown though, 2 minutes if im correct, while meteor shower has a 30 second. While the bow has no cooldown, its an autoattack, which is why its so OP. If you can really consistently crit 5k and up with the attack if you have all the buffs, I think the bow easily wins. Especially on a melee group that is stacked tightly.
7k LB shot to the face, gotta love to see them run.
Pics/’tube vid or it never happened.
This was before ascended weapons and armors.
Ik the bow can hit kind of hard but I have a hard time believing this wasnt on a completely glass uplevel class.
You can spec fully into Cavaliers, albeit you wont hit 11k with LB AA then. Opening Strike has 100% crit chance, 10% damage from full endurance, 10% damage when flanking/hitting from behind, 10% Rune of Thief if flanking/hitting from back, +5% damage sigil on LB, together with signets adding 150% and 25% respectively, frost spirit is another 10%. LB trait adds another 5% damage.
By now, you should be able to hit 8-11k on LB AA. Mind you, the video showing such damage was made way way before LB buff. You should hit even a little bit harder now, but not all that much.
I was missing the signet. Thats pretty OP. lol. I dont know any other class thats autoattack can hit that hard. I think you’ve pretty much proven rangers arnt useless. I mean obviously youd have to sacrifice traps and youd be a ranged bot but still. If you have arrows piercing, 2-3 rangers could easily melt a zerg. Its easily more powerful than meteorshower/tornado with that damage.
So? Necro’s dont have a ton of aoe? The best aoe they have are wells which have a super long cooldown, and are hard to land. You’re lucky if a melee train sits in them for 3 seconds. Marks are not meant for damage but for utilities, chill, fear, transfer conditions. Again, a lot of their good damage comes from lifeblasting which is single target but also piercing.
Epidemic and Plague Form are both AoEs that are extremely powerful when used properly. Wells and Marks are also very powerful AoE just not big damagers.
Rangers are the best class in the game for rallying enemy players.
actually no, the best rallybots are eles and PvE Heroes with full zerker armor and zero sustain.
D/D ele duelists are still very difficult to bring down and certainly no rally bots. Zerk is fine in roaming with the right class, build and skill. Zerk warriors and thieves do very well roaming. I will agree in most instances full zerk has little to no place in group fights.
Epidemic is pretty useless since its just 1 bar of conditions that arnt pulsed, and will probably be quickly removed. Plague form however is really useful because of the blindness that pulses. However its not damage, and I was arguing that necros dont have a lot of good aoe damage skills. That the ones they do have(wells) are extremely limited.
So? Necro’s dont have a ton of aoe? The best aoe they have are wells which have a super long cooldown, and are hard to land. You’re lucky if a melee train sits in them for 3 seconds. Marks are not meant for damage but for utilities, chill, fear, transfer conditions. Again, a lot of their good damage comes from lifeblasting which is single target but also piercing.
Rangers are hated for two main reasons:
They draw the worst community of players
and because they have drawn the worst community from day one, people have become used to this assumption therefore if you’re a Ranger you’re automatically bad/useless even if that’s not always the case (although 99% of the time it is.)
I disagree completely that anything the Ranger can do another profession can do better. Although yes, Rangers are lacking in some key areas, that doesn’t make them useless it just means the player behind them has to learn not to neglect the weaknesses and to overcome them.
I have fought many people on my Ranger 1v1 as well as 1v2 and come out the victor. Although it can be a struggle where as on a Warrior or Thief it might not, that doesn’t mean the victory was in vain. I didn’t spam a single attack (Earthshaker/Heartseeker) and I didn’t either facetank everything or spend 90% of my time in stealth where I’m virtually (let me stress virtually for those who play Thief and will freak out to defend this) invincible because all they need to do is side-step attacks and their opponents would be none the wiser.
As a Ranger you need to be constantly aware of your position. And it should be the main thing on your mind when in combat. Position
If you’re not paying attention to where you’re standing you’re going to get facerolled. And this is why so many Rangers get spiked within 5 seconds of combat. When in ZvZ, duels or roaming, or what ever form of battle I’m in as I enjoy all roles in WvW, I’m always thinking about where I’m standing or where the best place to stand would be. They should be treated like a sniper not a heavy machine-gunner. If I get on a nice hill when zergs clash I can pick people off all day long. Just yesterday in blue keep I was standing on the dome above lord and with max range when the other server broke through I sat up there just watching bags pile around my feet. 3.5k + at make range with Long Range Shot on a squishy enemy… Lol. One Rapid Fire with every arrow hitting, which uninturruped from a good position isn’t hard to pull off, can take half someones health bar out easily.
Ranger’s aren’t useless… If you’re going to war you’re going to want one or two snipers with you to pick off the stragglers. The people behind the Rangers are the useless ones… They’re the ones standing with people 5 feet infront of them and they’re not even looking down their scope.
So although yes; they are lacking in certain areas.
Yes if there are too many in a group they will become more of a burden than a help.
And yes the majority of them are bad players. -
It doesn’t mean they’re all useless it just means you need to try a bit harder to recognize which ones are using the profession properly.
And for the record, if what a Ranger can do any other profession can do better… I feel sorry for all the Longbow Warriors I’ve killed pretending to be a Ranger.
The first part is especially true. A lot of wvw people have been told that rangers are poo, as pve people say, and if you keep repeating it enough everyone else seems to believe it too. Its funny how ive seen some prestigious guilds on here still make somewhat ignorant comments about the status of rangers. Theyve just been used to the meta of not using rangers, and won’t change.
So? Necro’s dont have a ton of aoe? The best aoe they have are wells which have a super long cooldown, and are hard to land. You’re lucky if a melee train sits in them for 3 seconds. Marks are not meant for damage but for utilities, chill, fear, transfer conditions. Again, a lot of their good damage comes from lifeblasting which is single target but also piercing.
If anyone insists that rangers are good in high end of WvW I have a challenge for them as follows:
Make 2 20 man teams
Team 1:
5 warriors, 5 guards
10 more of any mix of the following classes: Warrior, Guard, Ele, Necro
Team 2:
20 Rangers
The challenge is to have the 2 teams fight in open field combat at least 10 rounds, preferrably more, not necessarily on the same day. Breaks for switching traits, gear, utility skills etc. must be allowed every round.
Record videos of these battles, watch them. You will understand why rangers are left behind when recruiting for serious WvW.
The funny thing is one of the T1 servers made a ranger zerg when the fought Agg’s notorious melee train and wiped them over and over and over again.
I only see people supporting another Ranger I saw by the name of Max Range Leecher. Plus you can’t look at one 25 second recharge skill (when traited) to say the profession is good. As for the comment for mesmer pulls not being useful…they can pull people off siege and if your group has CC then it’s even better because you can kill people you pull that way, including commanders because yes there’s a lot of commanders that are that bad.
If you are just going to max range enemies to avoid being hit, you have to be doing something else to make up for it and I don’t think the damage ranger does is enough to be useful. And to the same guy that laughed at my comments, rangers do have a piercing trait….I’ve been using it on my ranger ever since I unlocked it.
Thats one pull though. Rangers can spec for survival and traps so they have 2 cripple/immobilize utilities every 20 seconds. You cant call mesmers “useful” just because of their pulls though. Thats pretty low standards lol. Guardians have pulls? So does that make mesmers useless? No. But based on the reasons why you called them useful it does.
This thread again? It’s been explained a million times. Anything a ranger can do another class can do better.
Really? No other class has utilities as deadly as rangers trap, that pulse immobilize.
I think the funniest comment I saw here was by Radian who called rangers useless but then said mesmers are useful because they can pull things off walls. Thats not being useful at all. Mesmers are useful because of their timewarp, nullfield, veil, and thats about it. Most the damage from a mesmer comes from his bouncing greatsword and phantasm. 2 skills. You could easily say rangers are equally as useful because of their traps. Thats literally what a lot of classes are in wvw skill groups, just utilities. The mesmer is a perfect example of that. Rangers do have pretty poor aoes though, almost none. For constant aoe they can throw their axe which can bounce for about 1600 through a group is you spec him right for good damage.
In excess they are pretty annoying, but having 1 or 2 running with you can be extremely useful. They can cleave pretty heavily with the greatsword or keep up pulsing cripple with spike trap, muddy ground, or barrage. Not to mention the immobilize on entangle and muddy ground is probably the most annoying situation to be stuck at in game, since they pulse.
The build is one I like to have a few of my guardians run in wvw. It has super amazing damage and survivability. A few trinkets could be switched out to add more critical chance since 96% crit damage is almost overkill. Enjoy.
We’re about to be down to 4 wvw guilds. 3 that raid daily in the evening, and 1 that raids twice a week around reset night and midweek. CD used to have quite a few nice wvw guilds before season 1 started, and from there we have consistently lost guilds do to fairweatherness syndrome.
